At The Nation, Ariel Dorfman writes—Salvador Allende offers you an outlet to Maduro. The late Chilean president shares some advice from beyond the grave: (If you prefer you can read his entire essay in Spanish.)
Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s embattled president, has frequently invoked Chilean President Salvador Allende, who was overthrown and died in a US-backed coup on September 11, 1973, as a hero and a model. As a fervent supporter of the democratically elected Allende, who worked with him in the Presidential Palace in Santiago in the months before the military takeover, I feel compelled, therefore, to imagine the words of advice Allende might direct from beyond the grave to his Venezuelan colleague at this dangerous moment for Latin America.
Señor Presidente Nicolás Maduro:
I send you these words as you fight for your political life, vowing that you will not be deposed as I was in Chile by a military coup carried out by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, terminating democracy in my country for 17 years and leaving a lasting legacy of pain and injustice.
I understand why you wish to emphasize the similarities between your situation and the one I endured. Though there are many uncomfortable and embarrassing differences between us—which I will not hesitate to point out—there are also striking and alarming parallels. As in Venezuela today, revolutionary Chile back then was ferociously divided into two warring camps, with leaders of Congress seditiously asking the military to intervene against the constitutional government, goaded on by the more prosperous sectors of the population, whose interests were under siege as we gave birth to a society for the majority and not the select and privileged few.
The Chilean experiment—we were trying to build socialism through peaceful means, rejecting the sort of armed struggle that had prevailed in all previous revolutions—was in trouble, and undergoing considerable economic difficulties, albeit nothing like the extraordinary humanitarian disaster plaguing Venezuela at this moment. And just as Nixon and Kissinger and American multinational companies conspired against Chile in 1973, Trump, Pence, and Pompeo (not to mention the redoubtable Elliott Abrams, of Iran/Contra infamy) are leading the effort to oust you, the constitutional president of Venezuela, through the force of arms.
Latin Americans can be excused if they see in this imperial arrogance a sad repetition of the countless interventions—military, political, and financial—in the internal affairs of countries around the world that have disgraced Washington’s foreign policy for far too many decades.
Despite these resemblances between Chile in 1973 and Venezuela in 2019, I feel that you do a disservice to history and to the cause of revolutionary change by comparing yourself to me. I was, throughout my life, and until the moment of my death, a defender of democracy in all its forms. Never, during my three years in office, did I restrict the freedom of assembly of my opponents (even when some of them engaged in virulent tactics and terrorist acts), nor did I curb in any way the freedom of the press (even when papers, radios, and TV stations owned by the Chilean oligarchy were calling for my removal and spreading lies about my person and my tenure). Not one person was jailed for expressing his or her opinion, nor, heaven forbid, was anyone tortured while I was president. If anything, my opponents were given free rein, which they grievously abused, helped by millions of dollars expended by the CIA. And I scrupulously respected the result of all manner of elections during my time in office, especially when they were unfavorable to me. [...]
The situation is, therefore, complicated: Echoing the Chilean crisis of 1973, you find yourself threatened with a military takeover financed and coordinated from abroad, while, at the same time, you display strong authoritarian tendencies that I most definitely do not identify with or condone. You are right to reject the flagrant foreign intervention in Venezuela’s internal affairs and right to warn about the consequences of calling for the armed forces to drive out a government elected by the people of your country, a move that would fracture the legal constitutional order and imperil hard-earned sovereignty. But you are wrong to undermine through your repressive actions the democracy you claim to be protecting, and wrong when you persecute many citizens whose patriotism and love for human rights cannot be disputed.[...]
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QUOTATION OF THE DAY
"I fear that if [Trump] loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.” ~~Michael Cohen, House Judiciary Committee, Feb. 27, 2019
xJesus. How do you have any disarmament at all without knowing what North Korea has to start with? We’ve caved entirely in these negotiations, and North Korea has given up nothing. Trump is the only one who is desperate for something to come out of this, for his Nobel Prize. https://t.co/q2TyDYTJtY
— John Aravosis 🇺🇸 (@aravosis) February 27, 2019On this date at Daily Kos in 2017—Crisis actors? The long history of ugly attacks on survivors and activists as fakes:
Before the far right was floating conspiracy theories about “crisis actors” pretending to be survivors of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, there were similar claims about civil rights activists. And before that, the people who were supposedly fakes being paid to spread a politically motivated story were former slaves testifying to Congress about what they’d suffered. There’s a history here, in other words. A long, ugly history of attempts to delegitimize people whose stories are too powerful to take on honestly.
Sound familiar?
Sixty-one years before teens at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., would survive a mass shooting only to be labeled “crisis actors,” the nine African American teens who braved racist crowds to enroll in Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas were also accused of being impostors.
False rumors that the Little Rock Nine were paid protesters even forced the NAACP to issue a statement condemning the stories as “pure propaganda.” The students were not, in fact, “imported” from the North, said the NAACP’s Clarence A. Laws, but rather the children of local residents, including veterans.
Or what about this?
The same thing happened in the 1870s when African Americans again testified before Congress about the Ku Klux Klan.
“Hundreds of black women and men played a remarkable role, coming forward to testify during the hearings,” Kansas University history professor Shawn Leigh Alexander wrote. “Democratic committee members attempted to discredit their testimony, equating the two-dollar-a-day allowance that witnesses received to bribery and accusing local Republicans of coaching them.”
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: All eyes are on Michael Cohen today, but Greg Dworkin and Joan McCarter have eyes on even more. The Dotard chows down with the guy who gave him the name. Medicare for All is back on the table. And Roberts has the SCOTUS hanging on for dear life.
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