11.27.00, 10:23 a.m. || funny ha-ha, but
also funny-tragic
Derrick Cameron sent me an old black humour joke from the 1980s
that seems appropriate:
Two US generals are out for a walk. The first US general
says, "Chilly today."
The second US
general answers, "No, El Salvador."
Ay!
11.22.00, 11:00 a.m. || of dictators and dirty
fingers
reading: Pinochet and Me, Marc Cooper (advance copy to review, thanks
Maximumrocknroll )
At a "memorial" for fascist dictator General Francisco Franco, 3,000
young skinheads and older Franco fans waved flags and chanted in support
of the dictator, rallying in front of Madrid's royal palace, lamenting
the last twenty-five years of democracy following his death.
Throughout the "memorial" the crowd burst into chants of ''Franco!
Franco!'' and stiff-armed fascist salutes.
Meanwhile Spanish antifascists clashed with police
at a counterdemonstration. Police attacked the protesters with truncheons
and shields. Apparently antifascist sentiments are more "dangerous" to
the public? Cries of "No pasaran!"
echo, and
fade.
Last Monday the United States officially
acknowledged its role in destabilizing Chile three decades
ago after the declassification of a third and final batch of secret
documents on Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. The 16,000 documents,
including 450 reluctantly handed over by the Central Intelligence Agency
relating to covert work in Chile, reveal new details on former President
Richard Nixon's efforts to unseat socialist President Salvador Allende
and the CIA ties to Pinochet's secret police after the 1973 coup.
Guatamala, El Salvador,
Brazil, Nicaragua, Chile -- the list goes on. Is there a dictator or
a dirty war in the Western hemisphere the United States has not
had a hand in creating during the Cold War era? My grasp on the
history is made hazy by the incommensurate proportions.
Last May the US
House of Representatives voted to close the controversial Army School of
the Americas (SOA) located at Ft. Benning, Georgia, by a 214
to 204 margin ; but in the same vote Congress approved the
Pentagon proposal to immediately open a clone. The new school, called
the Defense Institute for Hemispheric Security Cooperation, is a combat training
school for US-sponsored Latin American soldiers, also located at Ft. Benning.
Thousands of activists gathered at the new "School of Assassins" at
Fort Benning this last Sunday to protest the continued human rights
abuses so helpfully abetted by the United States military. The date
is the 11th anniversary of the murder by SOA-trained soldiers of six
Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter at the University of
Central America in San Salvador, El Salvador.
A procession of at least 3,400 protestors carrying crosses bearing
the names of victims murdered by SOA graduates crossed onto Fort Benning
military base in a mass act of civil disobedience calling for the
closing the new "Defense Institute." A group dressed in priestly
vestments led the demonstrators, one of whom carried a string of origami
cranes. Masked, black-cloaked pallbearers carried a collection of 50
coffins onto the base. The marchers stretched from the gates of Fort
Benning for a half-mile to the Military Police line inside the base.
Upon reaching the MP's line, the coffin bearers set down their coffins,
doused themselves with red paint for blood and fell to the ground to
symbolize the murders committed by SOA graduates.
There would have to be millions more to
represent the actual number of dead. How else do you represent the disciplinary hand of the state? Or
can you?
Writing about the "dirty war" in Argentina, the state-sponsored
terror that "disappeared" so many, Avery Gordon suggests, "The ghost is
primarily a symptom of what is missing. It gives notice not only to
itself but also to what it represents....We are in relation to the ghost
and it has designs on us such that we must reckon with it graciously,
attempting to offer it a hospitable memory out of a concern for
justice.
"Out of a concern for justice would be the only reason one would
bother."
The problem is profound. Not everyone recognizes the ghost, let
alone the violence at its origin, or the need for justice. ("I don't
want to think about it.") What are the limits of some kinds of recognition? Legal?
Juridical? Historical? Geopolitical? Structural? (Speaking of,
churches feed the homeless during Thanksgiving and Christmas, all the
suburban families so grateful for their own bounty volunteer to serve
turkey and potatoes and it makes them feel good, but where is
the outrage at the state and the structures that produce the
conditions of poverty?) Are there some kinds of "recognition" that occur
within the conventions of uneven power relations, nationalist scripts?
(The United States as global policeman? The patronizing discourse of
"tolerance"?) How do we pursue justice -- or even define it? (Do
we demand reparations/redistribution, build monuments, convict war criminals, uncover bodies, register
our rage with the nation-state?)
Argh. I need to stop before I make myself crazy.