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Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter
April 23, 2015
This week: Eduardo Galeano, Latin America, the Vietnam War
In this issue of Other Voices, we
mark the death of Eduardo Galeano by featuring two of his books, as well
as an article about his life and work. Galeano once wrote that he was
“obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America and
above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.” In
his writing, especially Open Veins of Latin America and the mesmerizing Memory of Fire
trilogy, Galeano contributed enormously to bringing alive, and keeping
alive, the memories of Latin America, and especially of those whom he
called the “nobodies” – the people “who do not appear in the history of
the world.”
Next week also marks the 40th anniversary of the final
victory of the Vietnamese war of resistance against the American
invasion and occupation. On April 29-30, 1975, the last U.S. military
and CIA personnel, along with their local collaborators, fled Saigon as
the victorious Vietnamese resistance forces moved in to liberate the
city. The American war against Vietnam stands as one of the greatest
crimes of modern history, and the Vietnamese victory as an inspiring
example of what popular resistance can accomplish even when faced with
an ruthless superpower. We feature several items on the Vietnam War in
this issue, including a brief history of the war by Neil Faulkner, a
review of Nick Turse’s chilling history Kill Anything That Moves. The Real American War in Vietnam,
and a short article about “fragging” and combat refusal, forms of
resistance by American soldiers in Vietnam which forced the military
command to recognize that it could no longer rely on its own men.
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The Canadian Ministry of “Truth”: “Reality Is Whatever We Say It Is”
Canada’s new “anti-terrorism” law
is ostensibly aimed at potential terrorists and “violent jihadists.”
However, says Fred Guerin, this legislation is not meant to address the
external threat posed by terrorists, but is rather the cynical
employment of law as a tool for citizen control, political repression
and population domestication. Guerin argues that the vague and overly
broad language of Bill C-51 is specifically intended to create a
chilling effect on any Canadian citizen who might have the audacity to
show their disagreement with government policy or corporate kleptocracy
by engaging in grass-roots dissent, protest or civil disobedience. Read More
Keywords: National Security - Ideology
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Chávez and the Communal State: On the Transition to Socialism in Venezuela
Socialist and radical democratic strategies have often focused on
seizing the state and using the state apparatus as the main means of
instituting socialism. But in the process the revolutionary, constituent
power becomes first subordinated and then negated. The Venezuelan
revolution has attempted to cut through this dilemma by promoting
participatory democracy and communal organization. In the communes,
residents in geographical areas smaller than a city unite in a number of
community councils with the object of self-governance through a
communal parliament, constructed on participatory principles. The
communes are political-economic-cultural structures engaged in such
areas as food production, food security, housing, communications,
culture, communal exchange, community banking, and justice systems. Read More
Keywords: Bolivarian Socialism - Venuzeula
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South Africa xenophobic attacks: A view from below
According to Abahlali baseMjondolo, a South African shack
dwellers’ movement, the recent attacks on African migrants in South
Africa are connected to oppression of poor black people in general. To
prevent the poor from organizing and standing up to their real enemies,
the state is tacitly encouraging violence against foreigners. Read More
Keywords: Migrants - Xenophobia
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Dagong Diary, Part 1: Job Hunting
An article on hunting for a factory job in the industrial city of
Shenzhen. One of a series of articles on the chuangcn.org website on the
lives of factory workers and migrant workers in China. Read More
Keywords: Precarious Work - Workers
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Repair Cafes
Some people like fixing things - others have things to fix.
Repair cafes bring the two together, writes Jade Herriman - giving
satisfaction to both, sharing skills, keeping stuff out of landfill,
fighting ‘designed obsolescence’, and building communities sustained by
mutual help. Read More
Keywords: Alternative Lifestyles - Sustainable Communities
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Eduardo Galeano, ¡Presente!
Eduardo Galeano, the world-renowned leftist Uruguayan journalist
and writer made famous with the publication in 1971 of his book The Open
Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent,
died April 13 at the age of 74 in Montevideo, Uruguay. Dan La Botz pays
tribute. Read More
Keywords: History - Writers
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A collection
of first-hand accounts by Zapatista women about their lives and
struggles. These are stories of lives transformed by collective
resistance, resistance above all against the appalling oppression of
indigenous women in rural Mexico, as well as resistance against the
state, but also resistance against machismo within the Zapatista
organization.
The focus is especially on the time of the 1994 uprising, a
watershed moment when “a tremendous amount of change was compressed into
a very short period.” With women’s participation in the uprising - a
reported 40 percent of the front-line rebel forces were female - as well
as a backbone of tens of thousands of women in the communities, the
cause of women advanced exponentially in just a few years before and
after the rebellion. Zapatista women explain how it seemed that several
generations of change seemed to take place in a condensed time of
revolutionary upheaval. Read More
Keywords: Women - Zapatistas
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In a long
and costly struggle, an army of peasant guerrillas defeated US
imperialism in a full-scale war. They did not fight alone. During the
struggle, millions of people around the world, including those in the
United States, had become their allies. Read More
Keywords: Vietnam War - U.S. Imperialism
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Political Smears in the U.S. Never Change
What is most striking about the
U.S. government’s smears against Edward Snowden – apart from the utter
lack of evidence for any of them – is how the same smears are constantly
recycled against anyone whom the state sees as a threat. Daniel
Ellsberg, the whistleblower who released the Pentagon Papers in 1971,
was subjected to the same treatment. Martin Luther King Jr. was also
attacked in the same way, for allegedly undermining the United States by
calling the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the
world today.” Read More
Keywords: Lying - Propaganda
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A history
of how the United States conducted its war against Vietnam, the war
“that so many would like to forget, and so many others refuse to
remember.” Turse’s book is based on extensive documentation from the
archives, as well as interviews with hundreds U.S. veterans and
Vietnamese survivors. This book should be read by anyone who doubts that
the U.S. war against Vietnam was one of the greatest crimes of the
twentieth century. Read More
Keywords: Vietnam War - War Crimes
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Venezuela-based media organization providing coverage of Latin
American and world issues. Working to promote the struggle of peoples
for peace, self-determination, respect for human rights and social
justice. www.telesurtv.net/english
Keywords: Latin America - Alternative Media
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Book of the Week: Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone By Eduardo Galeano
A collection of fragments, vignettes, and observations
about history. The original subtitle was “a history of the world,
refracted.” The refracting, of course, is through Galeano’s eyes as well
as through the lenses of history, and the telling is at times
humourous, wistful, wry, angry, or several at once.
An example: “Official history has it that Vasco Núñez de Balboa
was the first man to see, from a summit in Panama, the two oceans at
once. Were the people who lived there blind??”
Other entries are poetry without an overt message:
“Stalactites hang from the ceiling. Stalagmites grow from the floor.
All are fragile crystals, born from the sweat of rocks in the depths of caves etched into the mountains by water and time.
Stalactites and stalagmites spend thousands of years reaching down
or reaching up, drop by drop, searching for each other in the darkness.
It takes some of them a million years to touch.
They are in no hurry.”
Keywords: History - People's History
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John
Pilger’s 2007 film explores the current and past relationship of
Washington with Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and
Chile. The film shows how serial US intervention, overt and covert, has
toppled a series of elected governments in the Latin American region
since the 1950s. The democratically elected Chilean government of
Salvador Allende, for example, was ousted by a US backed coup in 1973
and replaced by the military dictatorship of General Pinochet.
Guatemala, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador have all been
invaded by the United States. The film unearths the real story behind
the attempted overthrow of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez in 2002 and
tells how the people of the barrios of Caracas rose up to return Chavez
to power and force the leaders of the coup to flee the country. It also
looks at the wider rise of populist governments across South America
led by indigenous leaders intent on loosening the shackles of Washington
and bringing about a fairer redistribution of the continent’s natural
wealth.
Keywords: Latin America - U.S. Imperialism
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In marking
the recent death of Eduardo Galeano, it seems appropriate to make Latin
America the Topic of the Week. The Connexions Library catalogue features
a wide range of articles and books on Latin America. More materials can
be found under related headings, such as the names of individual
countries, and under topics such as Bolivarian Socialism.
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Many of us have made working for
social justice a lifetime commitment. If you are thinking about leaving a
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April 23, 2015
Dignity: The Essential Role It Plays in Resolving Conflict
Toronto, Canada
April 25, 2015
Greater Sudbury Earth Day Festival
Sudbury, Canada
April 26, 2015
South Shore NS: Coming together to boost youth voter turnout in 2015 --
Nova Scotia, Canada
April 26, 2015
Peace And Planet Mobilization
New York City, United States
April 29, 2015
Kamloops: Walk for Peace
Kamloops, Canada
The Connexions Calendar is an online calendar that exists to
advertise events that support social justice, democracy, human rights,
ecology, and other causes. We invite you to use it to promote your
events. Adding events to the Connexions Calendar is FREE. We’ll give you
a username and password which you use to log on. Use the contact form to arrange for a username and password.
Read more →
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April 23, 1968
Columbia University Protests:
Students at Columbia University in New York protest against the
proposed construction of a gymnasium which would take over a public park
and have separate entrances for students and for black residents of
Harlem. The demonstration ends in a takeover of university buildings.
Police storm the buildings on April 30 and violently evict the
occupiers, but protests, and police violence directed against them,
continue throughout the spring.
April 24, 1916
The Easter Rising:
Irish rebels launch a rebellion against British colonial rule. They
seize key buildings in Dublin and declare an Irish Republic, independent
of Britain. The rising is suppressed after six days of fighting, and
the key leaders of the rebellion are executed. Nevertheless support for
independence continues to grow in Ireland, leading to another
declaration of independence in 1919, and an Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921
recognizing the Irish Free State.
April 24, 1967
Abbie Hoffman & Co. at New York Stock Exchange:
A small group of protesters, including Abbie Hoffman, cause chaos on
the New York Stock Exchange by throwing down fistfuls of both real and
fake dollars. Traders on the floor scramble to grab the money as quickly
as they can.
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Copyright
Connexions 2015. Contents are licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution Non-Commercial License. This means you are welcome to share
and republish the contents of this newsletter as long as you credit
Connexions, and as long as you don’t charge for the content.
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter, is available online here
Thanks to Ulli Diemer and Darien Rickwood for their work on this newsletter. A special thanks to Tahmid Khan for his work in coordinating the production of Other Voices ever since issue #1.
Connexions
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Toronto ON M6G 1L9 Canada
Phone: 416-964-5735
www.connexions.org
Enjoy this issue of Other Voices? Want to share with friends and family? Then we encourage you to share this link. All issues of OtherVoices are available on the Connexions website at www.connexions.org/Media/CxNewsletter.htm
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