H06131
Headlines : InternationalChe's Second Coming?
Che has become something of a pop icon recently; this revolutionary has a dark history as well as a history celebrated by most socialist organizations such as the International Socialists. However you feel about Che, Bolivia is in dire straights, and needs strong leadership again. For most Bolivians: “globalization, or what they commonly refer to as neoliberalism, has failed so utterly to deliver the promised prosperity that some Bolivian commentators I met insisted that what is astonishing is not the radicalization of the population but rather the fact that this radicalization took as long as it did. Bolivia often seems now like a country on the brink of a nervous breakdown.”
[Posted By supercanuk]Republished from The New York Times
The Bolivian Congress is an ornate building in the Spanish Colonial style. It is also a study in cognitive dissonance. Located on the Plaza Murillo, one of the central squares of Bolivia’s main city, La Paz, it is flanked by the Presidential Palace, the Cathedral and the mausoleum of Bolivia’s second president, Andrés Santa Cruz, who fought alongside Simón Bolívar. Around these decorous buildings, soldiers in red pseudo-19th-century uniforms stand at attention or march ceremoniously from point to point. Were it not for the fact that most of these young recruits have the broad Indian faces of the Andean altiplano, or high plains, and that those gawking at them in the square are also themselves mostly indigenous, it would be easy to become confused and believe you were in some remote corner of Europe, albeit the Europe of a century ago.
Inside the Congress, this effect is, if anything, even stronger: marble floors, waiters wearing white shirts and black bow ties, photos on the walls in the office wing of the building, many now yellowing with age, that show previous generations of congressmen among whom there is barely an Indian face to be seen. The burden of this faux-Europeanness seems overwhelming…
Posted by supercanuk
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Posted by ShiftShapers on Wednesday, November 16th 2005
Last I heard, Soldiers of Fortune were in it for the money and the kill. So, no, I wouldn’t call Che a “kind of . . . soldier of fortune”. Pffffft.
Lula has proven to be a lame duck. Hugo says stand by him and I will but anyone breathing a sigh of relief is definitely on the wrong side of the fence. The fact of the matter is – the guy has his hands tied by the IMF black hole of debt. And he’s not alone.
What kind of idiot calls Hugo or Fidel militant? They’re almsgivers for Christ’s sake.
To speak of neoliberalism’s complete failure to improve people’s lives is absurd – unemployment has skyrocketed, wage levels have plummeted. So has healthcare and education. UNICEF has estimated that at least six million children under five have died, EACH YEAR, since 1982 in Africa, Asia and Latin America BECAUSE of IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs.
OMG etc etc etc
We want Evo! Osama bin Laden of Latin America – give me a f*cking break.
Nice post, though, SuperC Thanks.
A NACLA investigation funded by the Samuel Chavkin Fund for Investigative Journalism finds that U.S. “democracy promotion” programs in Bolivia seek to prop up discredited political parties, undercut grassroots movements and limit the scope of debate on the ownership of natural resources. This is the first article of a two-part series.