A Question of Solidarity HIS SUMMER I ATTENDED A SMALL GATHering of leftist journalists to listen to an FMLN comandante. He was defensive and on edge as he discussed the FMLN’s participation in the peace process. I had the sense that his remarks were directed at a second audience not in the room-those who had abandoned El Salvador solidarity work when the armed struggle ended, and the historical drama subsided. At this key moment in Salvadoran history, when some of the social changes for which solidarity activists have struggled may be realized, many activists have already abandoned ship. History might not judge us kindly if the FMLN encounters new repression and the democratic opening clamps shut because of the lack of international scrutiny. Not too long ago, my Central America solidarity group in Kingston, Ontario put together a small-town extravaganza to mark the tenth anniversary of the Nicaraguan revolution. We festooned part of a city park with banners and streamers, and invited an eight-member Central American band from Toronto to entertain. Some 200 people came out to celebrate. I still have a T-shirt commemorating the anniversary, but rarely put it on these days. Partly of course, it’s because the T-shirt seems to mock my bright expectations of that time, the Sandinistas having been electorally defeated shortly thereafter. But it is more complex than that. The T-shirt stirs up my ambivalence about solidarity work in light of the solidarity movement’s dismal contraction today and the seeming defeat or stalemate of movements for social change in the hemisphere. Did all the time and energy we devoted come to naught? How might the solidarity movement have accomplished more? Latin American solidarity work takes a multitude of forms. In this essay, I don’t pretend to speak for all activists. Rather, I reflect upon my own involvement in, and observation of the North American solidarity movement from 1984 on. A KEY QUESTION CONFRONTING ALL ACTIvists concerns the very nature of solidarity. Should we present a unified front, because, after all, the popular struggles already have enough detractors? When should we critique or try to influence those whom we are supporting? For instance, in the 1980s, many activists were aware-and critical-of the Sandinistas’ top-down form of decision-making. Should we have been more public about this criticism? By giving our carte-blanche support to the revolution, were we not in some small part responsible for ensuing events? This issue presents itself in its most pointed form in the case of Cuba. Earlier this year, I attended a large Cuba-solidarity event in New York. A parade of speakers came up to the podium, and intoned the revolution’ s many triumphs. This mind-dulling verbiage was occasionally interruptedby an anti-Castroist who would unfurl a banner, and be hauled kicking and screaming from the building. Most on the Left would agree that the United States has done everything in its power to subvert the Cuban revolution. It is equally apparent, however, that many activists have tolerated human-rights abuses we would have condemned elsewhere. By presenting a unified front, the organizers presided over an event that degenerated into shrill rhetoric and empty slogans. When and where is it appropriate to engage in a real dialogue and develop nuanced perspectives on complex realities such as Cuba? Finally, a solidarity group must find the right mix of providing material aid, and working to inform and transform society here and in Latin America. I sometimes wonder whether our group devoted too much energy to fund-raising at the expense of the meatier, more demanding work of education and movement-building, whose success is much more difficult to calibrate. We hosted a number of visiting speakers, but invariably the same people came out to listen. We tried, with mixed results, to imbue our larger fund-raising events with substantive content. Of course culture provides an aperture into society, but a salsa band can go only so far in shedding light on the situation in Latin America. Once we invited a Guatemalan theater group to perform. Their play depicted the military repression in that country in wrenching, visceral ways. On that occasion, culture served as a powerful conveyor of information, not an end in itself. THESE QUESTIONS MUST ALL BE POSED IN the context of the precipitous decline today in Latin America solidarity activism. Central America in the 1980s was the site of a veritable holy war between the antiCommunist Right and the progressive Left. Certainly, the collapse of Soviet socialism and the end of many armed struggles have tempered the ardor of many on both the Right and the Left. The days of black-and-white situations and clearcut solutions are gone. This grayness seems to have induced paralysis and indifference among former activists or, on occasion, provoked a swing to the extreme Left, for example in the case of U.S. supporters of Peru’s Shining Path. Latin America today is no less desperately in need of the support we can offer. What has changed is that the U.S. government’s intervention in the region has, for the time being, taken more subtle, less attention-grabbing forms. The Bush Administration quietly devoted itself to cultivating cheap labor pools, and less to waging ideological battle. We respond more readily to overt repression at the hands of U.S.-backed military forces, than to the grinding poverty of millions for whose plight “we” are equally responsible. With the media spotlight turned elsewhere, our interest in the hemisphere has ebbed. Perhaps the media and U.S. politicians have led solidarity activists by the nose more than we’d like to admit. It seems we rise up all too well when baited, but we don’t have a strong enough independent agenda to propel us forward when outside provocation is lacking.
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