Letter from Boston

My old college classmates have been very busy this summer! You've already heard from multi-talented media activist Daniel del Solar, organizing film festivals in Managua, and Renato Rosaldo, previously famous as an anthropologist, triumphing in a new career as a poet. Here's Ivan Light, well-known UCLA sociologist and my old college roommate, working to make the world a better place through practical politics. I assume he won't mind my sharing this letter. 

7-28-04

Dear Claremont/Pomona Democrats

I am in Boston, attending the Democratic National Convention as a John Kerry delegate. If you are reading the newspapers, you are getting the basic story. What you may not have acquired from the newsmedia is the unity, the optimism, and the determination that animates and pervades thisconvention.

There is no controversy about the platform under debate, and no one seems to care about the platform. (I have copies).   This is quite unusual as platforms matter. The reason, I suppose, is the unanimous determination of the 5000 delegates to dump Bush. Complete focus on this issue, a negative pole, has eclipsed interest in exactly what the Democrats areoffering as an alternative. We may be sorry later.

Terry McAuliffe, DNC Chair, reported some very encouraging news. The Democratic  Party has raised more money than the Republicans for the first time ever! The Gore campaign raised $40 million by November; as of now the Kerry campaign has raised $60million, and there are three months left! The DNC has paid off its debt, and is awash with money. This is the best financial condition the DNC has ever enjoyed. It shows the extent of public interest in andawareness of this election. It also shows the effectiveness of the inter-net as a fund-raising tool. We can thank Howard Dean for this too.

Incumbent Presidents are hard to beat. Nonetheless, polls show Kerry leading Bush by 5% in the country. No previous Democratic candidate has ever led an incumbent President by this much in July. Implication: we can win it.

All the speakers say, and everyone listening agrees, that this is the most important presidential campaign in three generations. The stakes are high, and the Democrats know it.

It's very easy to tell the professional politicians from the delegates as only the former wear suits and ties.

Barack Obama made an electrifying speech yesterday Tuesday. This is an orator to watch. The lady next to me, watching him in awe said, "a star is born." I agreed. Our first mixed-race President? Diane Feinstein will nominate John Kerry tonight at 5:45pm Eastern time. Feinstein was the first Senator or, at least, one of the first to back Kerry; I sense that this is pay-back.

There are 97 days left to work for victory. Let's make every one count. See you all July 30.

Ivan Light, Program Vice-President Claremont Democratic Club

Why Spain matters

Apologies for not updating this blog more frequently. Susana & I have had to delay our return to New York from Spain, due to unforeseen complications in the work we're doing in Spain, and these have taken up most of our time. Fortunately, Spain is a wonderful place to be stuck, and great things are happening here now that most Americans may not be aware of. I hope to write in the next few days notes on each of the following themes, three ways in which Spain matters to all of us:

I. Spain in the world balance of power: This country has finally recovered from the gross underdevelopment fostered by the Franco regime and is now the 3rd or 4th power in Europe, after Germany, France and (if it considers itself part of Europe) the UK. Since the elections of March 14, its shift from the pro-Bush side of the scale to the Franco-German side strengthens Europe as a potential counterpower to the world's only superpower. This I regard as a very good thing. Under Aznar, as an unconditional ally of the US, Spain had no independent voice and was simply begging for crumbs, because Spain's power is negligible as seen from Washington. In Europe Spain is more nearly equal to its allies and will have a real voice.

II. Spain as a linchpin in the Hispanic world, and that world's main link to Europe: For practical as well as sentimental reasons, Spain is connected to all those countries where colonists, conquistadores and frailes have carried her language. Now, with the Spanish economy stable and growing, and its rule of law more firmly established than anywhere in the Americas (especially the U.S., currently the great international scofflaw), Spain plays an important role in the consolidation of the entire tricontinental Spanish'speaking world, economically, juricially and culturally. I hope to tell you more about this relationship, which is growing and strengthening all of Hispanolandia.

III. Spain as a laboratory for remaking a democracy for the 21st century: This is really the most fascinating new phenomenon. The PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español) under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and the men and women he's brought into the central government (for the first time ever, Spain has as many women as men among government ministers) is seriously rethinking and remaking what "socialism" means today. Zapatero is particularly taken with the theories of Philip Pettit, the Irish political theorist of "republicanism" (which is not at all what U.S. Republicans stand for), ideas of liberty that are also congruent with the economics of liberation of Amartya Sen. More on this soon.

I hope to hear from some of you about these (or other) issues. Let me know your doubts, questions, quibbles or tirades. Just punch the contact link at left.

Renato Rosaldo wins Before Columbus Book Award

This just in about another old friend. Renato Rosaldo and Daniel del Solar (see note below) were both college classmates of mine, so we go WAY back. This is great news about Renato, forwarded from the good folks at the bilingual literary journal, Terra Incognita.

Dear amigos/amigas,

Please join us in congratulating Renato Rosaldo for being selected as a winner of
the twenty-fifth annual Before Columbus Foundation American Book Awards for 2004 for his book of poetry Prayer to Spider Woman / Rezo a la mujer araña. Other recent winners have included Sherman Alexie, Miguel Algarin, Don DeLillo, Martín Espada, William Gass, Sandra M. Gilbert, Kimiko Hahn, Bob Holman, Li-Young Lee, Luis Alberto Urrea and Al Young.

If you happened to catch Renato during our spring reading series at Cornelia Street
Cafe, you'll remember his beautiful and powerful work from the book, as well as
other oringal poems and his exceptional translation of San Juan de la Cruz's "Dark
night of the soul."

And, of course... his amazing jacket!

If you weren't able to hear Renato that night, he will be reading again on Friday,
September 23 at Patrias, Paulina Pérez Bemporad's wonderful Latin American Folk Art
shop in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The event is part of Hispanic Heritage Month and will
probably start around 7. We'll give you all the info as the time draws near.

You can read Juan Felipe Herrera's review of Prayer to Spider Woman / Rezo a la
mujer araña.

If you would like to purchase a copy of the book - and we definitely recommend doing
so! - please let me know. I don't think it's available online yet. We may try to
offer it through the Terra Incognita web site, using Pay Pal. But for now, we'll
take orders for Renato and pass them along to him.

Congratulations again to Renato.

Un abrazo fuerte,

William y Alexandra

LETTER FROM MANAGUA

My good friend Daniel del Solar writes:
First Ever Retrospective of Film and Video Opens in Managua
By Daniel del Solar

The opening of "Ten Years that Changed the World," a film festival lasting a week in four different venues around Managua and featuring films by and about Nicaragua, opened last night at Managua´s, and Nicaragua´s, most modern commercial film venue, the Alhambra. Largely composed of films and video´s that were made in the ten years following the demise of Nicaraguas Somoza dictatorship that had lasted 45 years, even the aisles were filled by those wishing to attend the Latin American premiere of Canadian filmmaker Peter Raymont´s film "The World Stopped Watching."

More detail of the Raymont film can be found at his website.

The standing room only audience on opening night consisted of a Nicaraguan film makers, representatives of the Spanish and Italian embassies, and regular Managua film buffs both young and old.

The opening night featured a second film produced by xyz describing the literacy campaign initiated in the early 1980´s by the new revolutionary government that had dedicated considerable portion of its meager post-revolutionary resources to counter the more than 50% illiteracy rate tolerated by the previous government. The campaign had literate people from the cities traveling to rural areas to teach people how to read.

Shot in Nicaragua in late 2002 and early 2003, THE WORLD STOPPED WATCHING is a sequel to the award winning documentary film "The World Is Watching" (1987) - a cinema verité examination of foreign news coverage of a climactic moment in the US-financed Contra war against Nicaragua’s revolutionary government

Afterwards, at a modest reception following the film showins, I ran into Susan Meiselas, Kay Stubbs, a hollywood actress who was in town visiting Giaconda Belli, and many other individuals. A good time was had by all. I will catch up with Kay, who had married Enoc, a Nicaraguan who had lived in exile in Washington DC. Enoc was killed on the last day of the conflict and I wrote a poem for him, and her, which Kay still has. I also was introduced to a number of nicaraguan film makers. I will be at the movie theater tomorrow mornng for the early showing at 10•30 am. and for the rest
of this week through next Thursday.

The exhibition of films is composed of works that will help the Nicaraguan people recover their history as many of the films have not been shown in NICARAGUA. 70% of the nicaraguans are younger than 30 years of age and so many do not have any clear idea of what happened in Nicaragua during or after the dictatorship.

More than 50 films will be shown in four different locations in the coming week and there will also be discussions about the role of film in the development and maintainace of Nicaraguan film industry.

Fundacion Lucierniga, the organizer of this major international film and video retrospective, was organized ten years ago. See cinenica.net >for all of the information about the film festival, including brief descriptions of the films and videos that will be shown.

Nicaragua, in addition to being a nation of young people, is also extremely poor so that of the one million children of school age in Nicaragua, only half can attend schools as there are no schools for them to attend. The current government that is ruling Nicaragua in a coalition with the Sandinistas, have no current viable plans to remedy this situation. As a result, illiteracy in Nicaragua, which had fallen to 25 percent in the years following the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship, is currently above 50%.

A week from this coming Sunday is the big party for Managua, the fiesta of San Antonio, Saint Anthony, where there will be a number of home-made floats, the appearance of many mounted Nicaraguan cowboys on horses decorated with fine saddles, and much music and carrying on.

Water has been missing for five days from one of Nicaraguas principal cities, Granada situated at shoreline of Nicaragua´s largest lake, lake Nicaragua. The reason most of the city has had to make do with no water from the city supplies is that a pump has broken and it technicians have thus far been unable to repair it.

In other news of Nicaragua, the government has announced the planned
destruction of 333 SAM-7 anti-aircraft missiles as part of its aim to maintain good relations with Washington. The missiles have been assigned a cost of $20,000 each while informed sources say that such missiles can bring more than $200,000 each on the world market.

A previous consignment of SAM-7´s were also destroyed within the past year as part of a deal to sell several thousand AK-47´s to an arms dealer in Panama. The ship onto which these weapons had been loaded never landed in Panama but was found to have delivered the shipment of AK-47´s to a United Fruit Company dock in Colombia and the weapons were delivered to para-military forces in that country. These same forces have been accused of serious human rights violations, and the news of the final landing of the Nicaraguan arms in Colombia has not been explained by the Nicaraguans.

Considerable money exchanged hands, but the exact identity of the parties involved, other than the Nicaraguan military, has not been clarified.

Managua, Nicaragua, remains a key element of United States Government interest.

Daniel del Solar,Solarmedia
solarmedia@hotmail.com
IF you WANT PEACE work for JUSTICE

Rhetoricians (gabologists) in Spain

This blog is now on summer schedule, as our editorial team-members are on their separate vacations. Bear has gone back to the woods, Lion is back on the African veldt, and Fox is in Spain, which, as you may have read earlier, he regards as his “patria tía abuela”. Glib has also decided to visit Spain for the annual convention of the International Guild of Articulate Blabbers (IGAB), this year held in Boca Corrida, Andamaslúcida, Spain. Today’s blog is in the form of an interview by editorial team associate Hyacinth Glib of newly elected IGAB president, Agustín Labia Locuaz of Spain.

HG: One of the great differences between Spain and the United States is that, whereas in the US a growing minority of voters is beginning to suspect that Bush is a dangerous imbecile…

ALL: … and here in Spain everyone knows it.

HG: Everyone, that is, except José María Aznar, the former president, who has been making such wild pronouncements that even his own party is trying to disown him. He is still insisting that Spain was right to send troops to Iraq and calling the defeat of his party by the socialists a coup d’état. And he lashed out at the new European Constitution, which the new leader of his party is pledged to support. Agustín, from the perspective of a professional gabologist, what do you make of these latest statements?

ALL: I think the Guiñol CNN+ has it just right, when they portray him as a doom-breathing Darth Vader.

HG: For our non-Spanish readers, we should explain that the “Guiñol” is a satirical news review puppet show that comes on right after the nightly newscast.

ALL: Yes, and that its name is a juego de palabras – a play on words. “Guiñol” sounds like “guignol,” as in “Grand Guignol,” but it is also a “guiño,” a wink of the eye.

HG: So the puppets can say whatever nasty things they want about the politicians and still expect them to laugh. Does Aznar, the real Aznar, know how to laugh, by the way?

ALL: Oh, yes! But lately it comes out mostly as a – what’s that word in English? A “snicker.” Rather loud, like a donkey’s braying. But, coming back to our professional specialty as gabologists, what is especially interesting is how his rhetoric has been infected by listening too much to Richard Perle and Dick Cheney. There is a peculiar Anglo-Saxon, if I may use that term, accent to his snarl. He can’t really manage the true imperious disdain of, say, his historical hero Generalísimo Francisco Franco, the Caudillo.

HG: Maybe that’s because he’s too short to look down on people?

ALL: Why do you think the Caudillo always like to be portrayed on horseback?

HG: Ah, that would do it. So, blog readers, here is our professonal gabologists’ tip for you today: If you really want to express disdain for your opponent’s opinions, instead of spending valuable mental energy trying to think of a logical rebuttal, get a horse!

"La patria Tía Abuela"

My friend José Luis Rénique has wished me an enjoyable stay in la Madre Patria -- the ¨"mother homeland" -- meaning Spain, of course. José Luis is from Peru, and he and I communicate in Spanish, but it's not my mother tongue. For me Spain is more of an adopted great aunt (tía abuela) than a mother. And I am a sobrino de crianza.

I want to say more about Spain, especially the fortunes of its Socialist Party (very high right now) and its Communists (much lower, but complicated) and how this red province (Almería was the last province to succumb to Franco in 1939) views its combative past. But that will be a future blog.

"Iraqi Freedom"

Walking up the narrow cobblestone calle Sorbas here in Carboneras, the little (pop. 6,000) village in Spain where my compañera & I have been hanging out this month, I was startled to see the slogan "Iraqi Freedom" emblazoned on the black T-shirt of a man who would be central casting's idea of the American soldier. Wow! Was he so proud of that mayhem that he was willing to defy overwhelming Spanish public opinion condemning it?

Actually, of course, we are all for Iraqi freedom -- and the quicker the US gets out of there, the quicker Iraqis may be able to construct it. My suspicion though is that the blond man in the T-shirt thinks that freedom is the same thing as being occupied by foreign troops. That's as crazy an idea as imagining that "democracy" can be imposed by a foreign power, or that "sovereignty" can be limited. But alas, the US has declared itself an outlaw nation, outside the Geneva convention, rules against torture, and the jurisdiction of the world court. Somebody ought to call the cops. Problem is, the US armed forces ARE the cops.

Fe de errata

This correction just in:

Mr. Fox --

You may be interested to know that in your 11/21/03 posting you confused Bob Gottlieb, former editor of The New Yorker, with the literary agent Robert Gottlieb.
They are two different people. Given the quote you mistakenly attribute to Bob Gottlieb, I might suggest that you appear to have unfairly maligned him.

I apologize to both Gottliebs for my confusing them, and thank this correspondent for pointing it out, but I don't see that anybody was maligned. Check for yourself the original blog, in the Archive (left side of this screen), 2003/11/21.

End of the world as we know it: version 2

Our favorite Spanish daily, El País, also carried on Sunday an interview with Samuel Huntington. He's not worried about the melting of Greenland and the disappearance of all modern civilization (if he has thought about it all), but with something much closer to (his)home: the erosion of Anglo-Protestant dominance of the United States. Briefly, in his book and his famous and controversial article in Foreign Affairs, he argues that the Hispanics, particularly the Mexicans, are taking over, and that they are enemies of the American creed and dangers to our values of democracy, tolerance, etc. And Huntington can't tolerate anybody who is likely to be intolerant.

In the interview with the Spanish reporter, however, he retreats considerably. The Mexicans in the U.S., he allows, are not really a "threat" in the sense that the Muslim presence may be in Europe (because some are drawn into fundamentalism and al-Qaeda). He expects no violence from the Mexican immigrants, he just finds their presence irritating. He quotes Mexican authors (including Carlos Fuentes) to support his view that Mexicans are lazy (which was not really what Fuentes was saying). The reporter points out that nobody is working harder in the U.S. than the underpaid Mexican laborers, and Huntington chooses not to dispute her observation (easily documented). Instead, he goes back to his argument that the Mexicans do not share the "American creed," as described by the Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal some 60 years. I don't have the article in front of me, and it was a Spanish translation anyway, so I can't give you Myrdal's exact words as quoted by Huntington, but they all had to do with respect for individual liberties and equal opportunities for all. Fine. No Mexican immigrant I know would have any problem with that. But then SH switches to describe the creed as speaking English and practicing Christian Protestant values. Weird!

See the first item (movie about disappearing Mexicans) in the Global Information panel to the left of this screen.

The end of the world as we know it: version 1

El País last Sunday carried an op-ed by James Lovelock (translated from The Independent) arguing that the only way to save the living system of the globe (which he calls "Gaia") is to switch from burning carbons to relying on thermonuclear energy, which he argues is much, much safer than most ecologists like to claim. And even if it weren't all that safe, we really have no alternative if we want to keep Greenland from melting and raising sea levels by 7 meters (there go all of Ireland, Manhattan, and countless other islands, and our little property on the coast of Spain). Nothing else -- wind and solar power, hybrid fuels, whatever -- will work, he says.

Two answers: Chernobyl, and time. Lovelock may be right that, with all the proper precautions, nuclear energy need not be dangerous. However Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and -- for a non-nuclear example -- Bhopal all demonstrate that neither government authorities nor corporations can be trusted to take all the proper precautions. Thus there will continue to be enormous political and popular resistance to nuclearity. That means that, even if nuclear energy has to be part of the solution (I'm prepared to believe this; even apart from the terrible contamination problem, we're running out of petroleum and will have to find a substitute), we won't be able to deploy it sufficiently widely and sufficiently quickly to avoid the disaster Lovelock predicts.

The only solution is political. That is, we the peoples of the world are going to have to make sure that the people who govern us first of all recognize that there is a problem. Bush's rejection of the Kyoto accord is shamefully irresponsible to the whole human race (not to mention all the other living things that make up "Gaia"). Second, we must demand that they supervise and protect us from noxious contamination from all sources, including coal, petroleum and nuclear fission, and that they be responsible to us. Not, like Cheney, to hide their dealings with Enron and other corporate profit-seekers behind a screen of "executive privilege." Technically, the solution will probably involve all known means of producing clean(er) energy, but we can't reach a technical solution until we have power in hands we can trust.