Activity to the south
Something remarkable is going on in South America. This began as a travel blog, and while it has turned into Kendall’s Random Thoughts on Just About Everything, international politics is a field I generally avoid, because there are other people more fit to talk about that than I am. But the whole “Dirty War” happened in Argentina in the 70s, and I didn’t know a thing about it till a few years ago. I feel ashamed of the privilege and ignorance that allowed me to be a happy hippie girl in those years, to think of myself as a “leftist” because I participated in a few marches and a “revolutionary” because I licked some envelopes and sent out some fliers advocating peace and love–while I remained clueless about the systematic torture and elimination of thousands of people of my own generation that was going on in Argentina. My political activity in those years was wearing a T-shirt with a peace symbol on it. Now, perhaps because of blogs and the internet, I think many of us are aware of atrocities going on in Guantanamo, Iraq, Darfur, and Tibet (and in isolated towns in Texas), and I think each of us wonders rather lamely what we can do, which is a tiny bit better than having no awareness at all. But something very different, much more hopeful, is going on in South America.
Though the mainstream press isn’t saying much about it, thanks to Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now, I’m aware of a swing to the left in South America which I find inspiring. President Yvo Morales of Bolivia had this to say to Juan Gonzalez today:
[Translated text] I feel that there’s a rebellion in the Latin American people, especially in the South American people, vis-a-vis the empire [that would be the USA]. Before, there were dictatorships at the service of the empire…. And democracies are coming about as a result of people’s struggles and vis-a-vis democratic movements. There were dictatorships and dictatorships in the last twenty years. There have been neoliberal governments that have been pro-capitalist. Now, as they’ve not resolved their social or structural problems, the social movements are growing with their own sentiment of dignity, of sovereignty, of development. And at this juncture, they’re growing. The liberating democracies in South America are on the rise. It’s very striking.
So there’s Yvo Morales, and there’s Lula in Brazil (with whom Morales has big issues because Lula is all in favor of bio-fuels, which seem to be contributing to the rising cost of food and the growth of starvation all over the planet, all in the service of big cars)–but Lula is exciting in other ways. And now there’s Fernando Lugo in Paraguay. And of course there’s Chavez in Venezuela–who may have gone over the edge in some ways, but who came to power on a populist platform. There’s Michelle Bachelet in Chile, about whom Isabel Allende (also on Democracy Now) has this to say: “She has broken many rules. She’s single, agnostic, a socialist. She’s very different from the normal presidents that we have had in Chile.” So it sounds to me as though something very big is happening to the south of the USA. I’m glad to hear about it.
This reminds me of a conversation that took place around me recently. There had been some allusion to the upcoming presidential elections in the USA, and someone at the table said, “The trouble with the USA is that there’s so much extremism. There are the nuts on the right and the nuts on the left. And nobody’s talking about the middle.”
“Who,” I asked, “are the nuts on the left?”
The answer I got was pretty foggy and led me to suspect the speaker meant Hillary and Barack. Extremists? Please. The most articulate person at the table (not me, mind you–I was sitting with my mouth agape, still trying to figure out who the left-wing extremists could possibly be) managed to get a word in edgewise and observed that from an international perspective, the USA is so far right that even its “leftist” politicians are slightly right of center.
I’m glad Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez are out there. I’m glad there are alternative news outlets like Truthout and blogs like Baghdad Burning (which seems to be the voice of a young Iraqi woman, although it hasn’t been updated for a while). So I’m wondering where other people get news they feel they can trust? Anybody have a favorite blog or internet site that represents views that might actually be a little left of (international) center and might keep us all a little more roundly and fully informed?
Tags: alternative news sources, Democracy Now, Juan Gonzalez, South American politics, Yvo Morales
April 24th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Here are a couple:
http://www.sideshow.me.uk/
That one is a blog of blogs–it has lots of links. I think she doesn’t always think things out, but there’s a lot of information there.
I like this one too:
http://www.digbysblog.blogspot.com/
Both are by women. If you want more blogs by women, try here:
http://whatshesaid.the-goddess.org/
or here
http://www.blogher.com/
April 25th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
For me, the place to start is to avoid “mainstream” media. As the SF Mime Troupe said in one of their shows “Shoot your television”. Once I detached from the blare of received opinion, I’ve had time to seek out, and figure out for myself, what I think is going on.
And part of that, of course, is to seek out news and opinions from outside the U.S. The biggest shock to me when I returned from the Peace Corps was the extent to which U.S. media ignore the rest of the world, except as it affects the U.S. My slightly askew memory cites a report along the lines of …Tsunami strikes Indian Ocean, five Americans killed. I know I’m exaggerating; but not by much.
And I have to say that I completely agree that something quite exciting and promising is going on in South America.
April 26th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Hello Kendall!
After a long time of just thinking about touching base with you, I finally made my way to your blog. Imagine my surprise when the subject was not Portland but South America!
I enjoyed your entries, it sounds like you are loving it up there.
Back to South America, I saw and interview last night with John Negroponte, deputy Secretary of State. He was talking about Cuba as the only “undemocratic government in South America right now” and pretty much taking credit on behalf of the government of the US for the “democratization” of latin america, saying how much better this is than the dictatorships of the past! If I did not know any better I would think that this is something that the US government helped to build. But I know that the US government trained the military to fight the”terrorists” in Latin America -whose views are represented by the elected governments now- using kidnapings, clandestine “detention centers”, assasinations, distortions and flat out lies about the facts. They kept all those “tactics” secret for several years, first denying they were doing it at all, and then distorting it to sound like they were defending the population from a dire and imminent threat. Does any of this sound familiar at all? The only thing they did not dare do in Argentina in the seventies, was to suspend the “habeas corpus” guarantee in the constitution. All other constitutional guarantees were suspended, but “habeas corpus” was considered too sacred and too basic to be taken away!
Alicia
April 26th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Hola, Alicia! Negroponte makes me ill. Bush’s disregard for habeas corpus makes me ill. Maybe part of what is going on in South America is a result of the USA being distracted by Iraq, etc. Maybe covert US forces are too busy with the Arab oil-producing countries to keep stifling dissent in South America.
And Bob: where do you go to seek out news & opinions from outside the USA? That’s what I’m asking. Would love to see what some of your best sources are.
April 26th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
In general, I tend to read analysis rather than “news”. Along those lines, I regularly read The Nation [http://www.thenation.com/], Socialist Review [http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/], and (with an appropriate amount of scepticism) Foreign Affairs [http://www.foreignaffairs.org/].
Sometimes I take that even farther, and read history rather than “current events”. One of the books that I’ve been making my way through is Albert Hourani’s A History of the Arab Peoples.
And I find BBC News “World Have Your Say” particularly interesting, since it is the voices of people from around the world. I have to remember that there is selection of who we get to hear–and it’s biased by being in English so not including non-English speakers–but it is voices from around the world. For example, I don’t know where else I could have heard from people in Nigeria about the conflicts between Christians and Moslems in the north. I find that it works best for me to hear a whole variety of perspectives, and then try to figure out for myself what makes sense.