Where are the Aleksander Boyds of Latin America?
By Aleksander Boyd
18.01.06 | I know, I know, it sounds incredibly egotistical, but please bear with me. The whole continent is going south -isn't that ironic?- yet the youth is too busy partying and shagging to pay attention. The few that can't afford to shag or rave are, in fact, building political platforms. The way they see it is this: to escape from misery all one needs to do is either enrol in the army or become a politician. Ergo one sees how a 26 year old is courted by chavismo in Mexico; a 30 something year old is appointed as the head of Telesur in Venezuela; another is given a high profile diplomatic job in Chicago and the 'literary work' of other throws her into the limelight. All mere parrots of the great leader, the new Che Guevara on e$teroids. Hence where are the counterparts?
The answer is nowhere. The left is very well organized. They have forums, guerrillas, universities, PDVSA, narcotics to finance their activities, powerful NGOs, Soros, Live 8, governments and international news outlets at their disposal. What do I have? Nothing, as the cockneys say "fuck all." Is that fair? Mind you can the conservatives and the republicans expect that an army of Alek Boyds is going to do the dirty work for them? Without support? Against, in my case, a deranged individual that controls at will, at least, $30 billion? Give me a break.
The truth, as I see it, is this: radical fundamentalists are, country after country, reaching office. Once there, full of complexes, resentments and psychopathic problems, they unleash their repressed rage against civilians, society, enterprise, private property owners and the like. In Brazil, the Landless Movement has done nothing with the lots confiscated, expropriated or stollen from land owners. This is replicated in Venezuela. In Yaracuy state many second and third generation European descendants are kicked out of their small farms by the army and the chavistas, just for pleasure. Women raped, men killed or lynched. What are the truly powerful doing? Fuck all. Lord Vestey, for instance, expecting a reasonable ruling from chavista-packed Supreme Court. Right...
What's Big Oil doing with respect to the illegal migration to new contractual terms? Fuck all, smiling and focusing in the big picture... In the meanwhile tons of drug-money fuel radical movements across the sub-continent. It will come and bite the yankies' ass. They are about to get into office in Mexico... Where will the desperate and unemployed go, to Cuba? LOL!!
Europeans, watching from afar, detached, nothing affects them - apart from the token bombing in Madrid and London- are salivating, thinking "the next time the filthy rich tinpot dictator comes round, make sure we sell him something..." Workers from weapons factories stop in protest at America... Would they cope with a Chavez-like ruler? Right...
In Venezuela, the opposition, playing Chavez's game, discussing candidacies, as if the country were a democracy. As if the will of the electorate was reflected in results, as if the electoral authorities were legitimate...
In sum folks, we're up to the neck. Denial won't cut it. The other day someone ask me about the useful idiots in America; I was too nice, I didn't say anything about Carter, about USAID, about the NED, the OAS, Delahunt, the NYT, Jackson and his Rainbow Coalition, TransAfrica Forum -black people, how ironic, praising a racist, womaniser- the world is upside down.
But there's hope. Mary, just got back from visiting her family in Venezuela, humble Trebol neighbourhood in Maracay. A poor woman, friend of her, who lives in Piņonal Sur, in front of her neighbourhood, went to see a Cuban doctor, those who purportedly cure people in Barrio Adentro missions. She asked the doctor for contraceptive pills; she's due in March... Another friend of Mary, ailed with a headache, went for some aspirin; the Cuban proceed to inject her; she's lost her senses...
Poor people, barrio people, Vargas people, all around the country, are absolutely fed up with Hugo Chavez and his pseudo revolution for which no one voted.
Hopefully they'll react and oust the caricature of a president. Soon.
But then again, where are my companions? Where are the real anti-establishment figures? Where are the true patriots? Where are the Aleksander Boyds of Latin America?
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