European Fascism Will Strike Hard, The Pope's A Cynic: José Saramago

José Saramago, Nobel Literature Prize winner of 1998, has accused Pope Benedict XVI of “cynicism” and has said that the “reactionary insolence” of the Church had to be answered with the “impertinence of sharp intelligence”.

“That Ratzinger has the cheek to invoke god to reinforce his global neo-medievalism, a god he has never seen, with whom he has never sat down to have coffee, only shows absolute intellectual cynicism of character,” Saramago said in a discussion with the Italian philosopher Paolo Flores D'Arcais in a recent visit to Rome. Saramago was in the Italian capital to present his book, Notebooks (a collection of his blog articles) and to meet his Italian friends like the 1986 Nobel Prize for Medicine winner Rita Levi Montalcini.

In his discussion with Flores D'Arcais, Saramago claimed that he was a peaceful atheist but that he was now changing his idea. “The insolent reactionary ideas of the Catholic church has to be answered with the impertinence of sharp intelligence, of good sense, of responsible words. We cannot allow that the truth be offended every day by presumed representatives of god on Earth, who in reality are only interested in power,” he said.

According to Saramago, the destiny of the soul bothers the church very little and what it has always sought is control of bodies. To a question if the tardy faith of writers and intellectuals could be one of the causes of the crisis of democracy, the Portuguese writer said certainly so, but not just it, and that all of society was in that condition with a crisis of authority, of family, of traditions, a moral crisis in general.

Saramago warned that Fascism was growing in Europe and seemed convinced that it “will attack with force” in the next few years for which, “we have to prepare to confront hate and the thirst for vengeance which the Fascists are feeding”.

“Though it is clear that they will present it with pseudo-democratic masks, some of which already circulate among us, we should not be deceived,” he emphasised.

Source: Aporrea

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Havana Book Fair '09: To Read Is To Grow

The 18th International Book Fair in Havana, Cuba, ended on 22 February with some 600,000 Cubans and foreigners attending and 1.2 million books sold. A prominent fixture of Cuban cultural life since the Eighties, the book fair is more than a selling orgy. It has as its motto, ‘To read is to grow’.

More than 80% of those who attended the fair participated in one of the many presentations, lectures or events. There were special events for children. The San Carlos de la Cabaña fortress was the venue for the fair with the Tres Reyes del Morro castle serving as a store selling books and handicrafts from different countries.

A thousand Cuban and foreign authors presented their books and participated in the events. The Havana book fair’s fame has spread throughout Latin America. 43 nations were represented this year, including 165 Cuban exhibitors and 183 from other nations, as well as 266 publishing houses. This year’s fair was dedicated to Chile and President Bachelet inaugurated it along with Cuban Raul Castro. There were homage musicals to Violeta Parra and Victor Jara, emblematic Chilean musicians. Next year’s book fair theme is Russia.

Before the fair itself started on 12 February, 46 book stores in Havana were offering some 200 new titles and the book fair is taken to all manner of events, including agricultural fairs. After curtains at Havana, the fair moves to 16 other Cuban cities in the provinces and concludes at Santiago de Cuba on 8 March. That about 90% of the new books published in Cuba are by Cuban authors must surely have something to do with the book fair.

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Galeano on Haiti: The White Curse

Haiti was the first country to abolish slavery. However, the most widely read encyclopedias and almost all educational textbooks attribute this honorable deed to England. It is true that one fine day the empire that had been the champion in the slave trade changed its mind about it. But abolition in Britain took place in 1807, three years after the Haitian revolution, and it was so unconvincing that in 1832 Britain had to ban slavery again.

There is nothing new about this slight of Haiti. For two centuries it has suffered scorn and punishment. Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner and champion of liberty at the same time, warned that Haiti had created a bad example and argued it was necessary to "confine the plague to the island." His country heeded him. It was sixty years before the U.S. granted diplomatic recognition to this freest of nations. Meanwhile in Brazil disorder and violence came to be called "Haitianism." Slave owners there were saved from this fury until 1888 when Brazil abolished slavery-the last country in the world to do so.

Revolutions, certain specialists have concluded, lead straight to the abyss; others have suggested, if not stated outright, that the Haitian tendency to fratricide derives from its savage African heredity. The rule of the ancestors. The black curse that engenders crime and chaos.

Of the white curse, nothing was said.

The French revolution had abolished slavery, but Napoleon revived it.

"Which regime was most prosperous for the colonies?"

"The previous one."

"Then reinstate it."

To reinstate slavery in Haiti, France sent more than fifty shiploads of soldiers. The country's blacks rose up and defeated France and won national independence and freedom for the slaves. In 1804, they inherited a land that had been razed to grow sugarcane and a land consumed by the conflagrations of a fierce civil war. And they inherited "the French debt." France made Haiti pay dearly for the humiliation it inflicted on Napoleon Bonaparte. The newly born nation had to commit to pay a gigantic indemnification for the damage it had caused in winning its freedom. This expiation of the sin of freedom would cost Haiti 150 million gold francs.

The new country was born with a rope wrapped tightly around its neck: the equivalent of $21.7 billion in today's dollars, or forty-four times Haiti's current yearly budget.

In exchange for this fortune, France officially recognized the new nation. No other countries did so. Haiti was born condemned to solitude.

Not even Simon Bolivar recognized Haiti, though he owed it everything. In 1816, it was Haiti that furnished Bolivar with boats, arms, and soldiers when he showed up on the island defeated and asking for shelter and help.

Haiti gave him everything with only one condition: that he free the slaves-an idea that had not occurred to him until then. The great man triumphed in his war of independence and showed his gratitude by sending a sword as a gift to Port-au-Prince. Of recognition he made no mention.

In 1915, the Marines landed in Haiti. They stayed nineteen years. The first thing they did was occupy the customs house and duty collection facilities. The occupying army suspended the salary of the Haitian president until he agreed to sign off on the liquidation of the Bank of the Nation, which became a branch of City Bank of New York. The president and other blacks were barred entry into the private hotels, restaurants, and clubs of the foreign occupying power. The occupiers didn't dare reestablish slavery, but they did impose forced labor for the building of public works. And they killed a lot of people. It wasn't easy to quell the fires of resistance.

The guerrilla chief, Charlemagne Peralte, was exhibited in the public square, crucified on a door to teach the people a lesson.

This civilizing mission ended in 1934. The occupiers withdrew, leaving a National Guard, which they had created, in their place to exterminate any possible trace of democracy. They did the same in the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua. A short time afterwards, Duvalier became the Haitian equivalent of Trujillo and Somoza.

And so, from dictator to dictator, from promise to betrayal, one misfortune followed another.

Aristide, the rebel priest, became president in 1991. He lasted a few months before the U.S. government helped to oust him, brought him to the United States, subjected him to Washington's treatment, and then sent him back a few years later, in the arms of Marines, to resume his post. Then once again, in 2004, the U.S. helped to remove him from power, and yet again there was killing. And yet again the Marines came back, as they always seem to, like the flu.

But the international experts are far more destructive than invading troops. Placed under strict orders from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Haiti obeyed every instruction, without cheating. The government paid what it was told to even if it meant there would be neither bread nor salt. Its credit was frozen despite the fact that the state had been dismantled and the subsidies and tariffs that had protected national production had been eliminated. Rice farmers, once the majority, soon became beggars or boat people. Many have ended in the depths of the Caribbean, and more are following them to the bottom, only these shipwreck victims aren't Cuban so their plight never makes the papers.

Today Haiti imports its rice from the United States, where international experts, who are rather distracted people, forgot to prohibit tariffs and subsidies to protect national production.

On the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, there is a large sign that reads: Road to Ruin.

Down that road, everyone is a sculptor. Haitians have the habit of collecting tin cans and scrap metal that they cut and shape and hammer with old-world mastery, creating marvels that are sold in the street markets.

Haiti is a country that has been thrown away, as an eternal punishment of its dignity. There it lies, like scrap metal. It awaits the hands of its people.

***************************************************

1943: Mont Rouis

A little grain of salt

In a bar, surrounded by kids with bloated bellies and skeletal dogs, Hector Hyppolite paints gods with a brush of hens' feathers. Saint John the Baptist turns up in the evenings and helps him.

Hyppolite portrays the gods who paint through his hand. These Haitian gods, painted and painters, live simultaneously on earth and in heaven and hell: Capable of good and evil, they offer their children vengeance and solace.

Not all have come from Africa. Some were born here, like Baron Samedi, god of solemn stride, master of poisons and graves, his blackness enhanced by top hat and cane. That poison should kill and the dead rest in peace depends upon Baron Samedi. He turns many dead into zombies and condemns them to slave labor.

Zombies--dead people who walk or live ones who have lost their souls--have a look of hopeless stupidity. But in no time they can escape and recover their lost lives, their stolen souls. One little grain of salt is enough to awaken them. And how could salt be lacking in the home of the slaves who defeated Napoleon and founded freedom in America?

1937: Dajabón

Procedure Against the Black Menace

The condemned are Haitian blacks who work in the Dominican Republic. This military exorcism, planned to the last detail by General Trujillo, lasts a day and a half. In the sugar region, the soldiers shut up Haitian day-laborers in corrals--herds of men, women, and children--and finish them off then and there with machetes; or bind their hands and feet and drive them at bayonet point into the sea.

Trujillo, who powders his face several times a day, wants the Dominican Republic white.

1937: Washington

Two weeks later, the government of Haiti conveys to the government of the Dominican Republic its concern about the recent events at the border. The government of the Dominican Republic promises an exhaustive investigation.

In the name of continental security, the government of the United States proposes to President Trujillo that he pay an indemnity to avoid possible friction in the zone. After prolonged negotiation Trujillo recognizes the death of eighteen thousand Haitians on Dominican territory. According to him, the figure of twenty-five thousand victims, put forward by some sources, reflects the intention to manipulate the events dishonestly. Trujillo agrees to pay the government of Haiti, by way of indemnity, $522,000, or twenty-nine dollars for every officially recognized death.

The White House congratulates itself on an agreement reached within the framework of established inter-American treaties and procedures. Secretary of State Cordell Hull declares in Washington that President Trujillo is one of the greatest men in Central America and in most of South America.

The indemnity duly paid in cash, the presidents of the Dominican Republic and Haiti embrace each other at the border.

Latin America Kingdom Of Paradoxes: Galeano

[This is an abridged version of a speech by Eduardo Galeano on July 3 in Montevideo, Uruguay, on being accorded the title of the First Distinguished Citizen of the region by the countries of Mercosur. Paradoxically, the only Mercosur President not to congratulate him was his own, Tabare Vazquez of Uruguay.]

Our region is the kingdom of paradoxes. Take the case of Brazil: paradoxically, Aleijadinho, the ugliest man in Brazil, created the highest art of the colonial epoch; paradoxically Garrincha, ruined from childhood by poverty and polio, born to misfortune, was the player who offered the greatest pleasure in the history of football; and paradoxically Oscar Niemeyer, who has completed 100 years, is the freshest of the architects, the youngest of the Brazilians.
***

Or take the case of Bolivia: in 1978 five women overturned a military dictatorship. Paradoxically, all of Bolivia made fun of them when they started their hunger strike. Paradoxically, all of Bolivia ended up helping them until the dictatorship fell.

I had known one of these five stubborn ones: Domitila Barrios, in the mining town of Llaallagua. In an assembly of mining workers, all men, she had raised herself and quietened everyone. “I want to tell you this,” she said, “Our principal enemy is not imperialism, neither the bourgeois nor bureaucracy. Our principal enemy is fear, and we bear it inside.”

And years later, I met Domitila again, in Stockholm. She had been thrown out of Bolivia and had gone into exile with her seven children. Domitila was very thankful for the solidarity of the Swedes and admired them for their liberty, but it pained her how alone they were, drinking on their own, eating on their own, speaking on their own. And she gave them advice:

“Don’t be silly,” she told them, “get together. Us there in Bolivia get together. Even if it to fight among ourselves, we get together.”

And how right she was. Because I say: do teeth exist if not joined together in the mouth? Do fingers exist if not joined together in the hand?
***

All through the first half of the nineteenth century, a Venezuelan called Simón Rodríguez, travelled through the roads of our America, on a mule, challenging the new holders of power: “You,” Simon would cry out, “you who so imitate the Europeans, why don’t you imitate from then what is most important – originality?”

Paradoxically, he was heard by nobody, this man who so deserved to be heard. Paradoxically, they called him loco because he had the sense to think that we should think with our own head, because he had the sense to propose education for all and one America for all… and because he had the sense to doubt the independence of our newly-born countries.

“We don’t own ourselves,” he said, “we are independent but we are not free”.
***

Fifteen years after the death of mad Rodríguez, Paraguay was exterminated. The only truly free Hispanic American country was paradoxically assassinated in the name of liberty. Paraguay wasn’t in the prison of external debt because it did not owe anyone a cent and did not practise the dishonest freedom of commerce which imposed on us, and imposes on us, an economy of imports and an impostor culture.

Paradoxically, after five years of a ferocious war, amid so much death, the origin survived. According to the most ancient of its traditions, the Paraguayans had been born of the language that named them. And amid the smoking ruins, that sacred language survived, the first language, the Guarani language. And still Paraguayans speak in Guarani in the hour of truth, which is the hour of love and humour. In Guarani, ‘ñe’é’ means word and also means soul. Who lies with the word betrays the soul. If I give you my word, I give myself.
***

A century after the Paraguayan war, a President of Chile gave his word and gave up himself. The planes spat bombs on his government palace, also machine-gunned by troops on the ground.

He had said: I will not leave here alive.

Paradoxically, one of the principal avenues of Santiago is still called, Eleventh of September. And it is not named for the victims of the Twin Towers of New York. No, it is named in homage to the executioners of democracy in Chile. With all respect to that country which I love, I dare to ask, out of common sense, would it not be time to change the name, would it not be time to name it Salvador Allende Avenue in homage to the dignity of democracy and dignity of the word-soul?
***

And leaping the mountain I ask myself: why is it that Che Guevara, the most famous Argentinean of all time, the most universal Latin American, has the habit of keep being born? Paradoxically, the more he is manipulated, the more he is betrayed, the more he is born. He is the most born of all.

And I ask myself, will it not be because he said what he thought and did what he said? Will it not be that for this he remains so extraordinary in this world where words and deeds very rarely meet and when they do they don’t greet each other because they do not recognise each other.

Source: La Jornada

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