Letters

Solidarity and the Democracts
Van Gosse’s article, “Active
Engagement: The Legacy of
Central America Solidarity”
[March/April, 1995] contains
tremendous illusions about the
Democratic Party that can’t help
but be harmful to solidarity move-
ments, and to Latin American liber-
ation forces that seek to base any
kind of policy upon them. Ac-
cording to Gosse, “the Democrats
never stopped fighting with Reagan
over Central America.” This is
either a misprint or the result of a
massively downgraded estimate of
what constitutes a “fight.” In El
Salvador, it is no secret that U.S.
intervention was undertaken under
the Carter Administration. If
Reagan had decided to send in the
Marines, dissident State Depart-
ment and CIA officials acknowl-
edged, he could have claimed that
the way had been prepared for him
by Carter. Some Democrats did
occasionally wonder out loud
whether maybe too much emphasis
was being given to military rather
than political solutions. That was
basically the extent of their “fight.”
It never stopped Congress from
sending the Salvadoran butchers
the third-largest shipment of U.S.
military aid in the world, behind
that sent to Israel and Egypt.
There was a bit more Democratic
opposition to the war against
Nicaragua, partly because of the
potential for superpower confronta-
tion at the time of the Cold War,
and partly because overthrowing a
government is more difficult than
propping one up. Again, this oppo-
sition can hardly be called a fight.
For Gosse to call the Boland
Amendment, which banned all mil-
itary aid for the purpose of over-
throwing the Nicaraguan govern-
Readers are invited to address letters to The Editors, NACLA Report on the Americas, 475 Riverside Drive, Suite 454, New York, NY 10115. Letters can be sent by e-mail to: NACLA @igc.apc.org.
ment, one of “the great victories for
the left in recent history” is wishful
thinking. The Reagan Admin-
istration did not respond to the
amendment by throwing up its
arms in defeat and agreeing to
coexist peacefully with Nicaragua.
It simply continued aiding the
Contras, claiming that the aid was
still legal under the amendment
because it was being used to cut off
alleged Nicaraguan arms shipments
to the FMLN-despite the fact that
it was being given to forces openly
committed to overthrowing the
Nicaraguan government.
“The Contra war,” writes Gosse,
“nearly provoked an impeachment
crisis at home” (my emphasis).
Now, how nearly is nearly-and
should any surviving victim of
Contra terror or Salvadoran army
death squads be expected to feel
grateful for this alleged near suc-
cess? Near success, at the risk of
stating the obvious, is failure-for
which Gosse may be able to find
mitigating factors. For my part, I
can find none. The Democrats were
ready, willing and able to actually
provoke an impeachment crisis over
the Watergate burglary in which
Nixon was caught doing to the rival
party of U.S. imperialism a little of
what he’d been doing-with bipar-
tisan support-to the left and the
antiwar, black and women’s move-
ments for years. That they did not
do likewise in order to halt the U.S.-
organized carnage against the peo-
ples of Central America-compared
to which Watergate was the teddy
bear’s picnic-speaks volumes.
Nick Webber
Aylesbury, England
Van Gosse responds:
am struck by the sentimental
optimism displayed by Nick
Webber’s letter. The only “tremen-
dous illusions” at work here are
those of Webber concerning how
politics actually functions in the
United States. Does he really think
that the only real “fights” in this
country are all-or-nothing affairs,
with doughty workers ever ready to
rally under red flags and each
“party of U.S. imperialism” vying
with the other to snuff out the peo-
ple’s struggle?
Those sections of my article that
provoked Webber’s ire were an
attempt to acknowledge the un-
avoidable fact that nearly all of the
U.S. left finds itself dealing with and
within the arcane political world of
the Democratic Party. The Party is
an historic bloc of various powerful
fractions of capital and numerous
other sectors. Among those other
sectors are the women’s movement,
gays, African Americans, organized
labor, and other progressive groups.
We all know this, but far too many
prefer to dodge it as a fact of life not
worth mentioning. The interesting
thing to me is that under particular
circumstances, the Democratic Party
occasionally finds itself having to
respond to the wishes of its subal-
tern elements. The unending legisla-
tive turf wars over Central America
emerged from one of those
instances.
Why? That is the question I sug-
gest needs more investigation.
Webber evidently would prefer to
silence even the question itself.
Who knows what deviations might
follow, after all! Webber knows full
well that the complex and indeed
subtle strategies of the U.S. solidar-
ity movement sprang directly from
its interaction with the Central
American revolutionary move-
ments, and the latter’s appreciation
of how to work the fissures of
North America’s political culture.
The FMLN and the Sandinistas at
least understood that revolution,
and victory of any sort, was no sim-
ple matter. I remain deeply appre-
ciative of how they performed the
“war of maneuver” in the field
while perfecting the “war of posi-
tion” here in the metropole. If this
is “failure,” let’s have more of it.
Arpilleras in Chile
A s the director of Fundaci6n
Solidaridad, an organization
that defended human rights during
the Chilean dictatorship and sup-
ported the work of the women who
opposed the dictatorship by weav-
ing powerful political arpilleras, I
would like to take issue with
Marjorie Agosin’s claim [“Patchwork
of Memory,” May/ June, 1994] that
the arpillera movement has disap-
peared.
Our foundation receives and
delivers a large number of
arpilleras made by many of the
same 200 women who initiated this
work. As always, the arpilleristas
portray Chilean reality-the bad
and the good-on their tapestries.
Some celebrate the arrival of
Chilean democracy with rainbows.
Others depict the oppressive condi-
tions of the poor. Still others
demand justice for the victims of
the dictatorship.
It is a mistake to think that the
government or anyone else might
have closed the workshops. They
have never belonged to the govern-
ment, the Church, or the foundation.
Women arpilleristas have always
been the owners of these work-
shops, and they are the only ones
who can decide on their future.
Winnie Lira
Santiago de Chile
Marjorie Agosin responds:
W inni Lira’s letter saddens me,
and confirms that democracy
in Chile is both frail and ambigu-
ous. I have no doubt that arpilleras
are made in Chile but those made
by the mothers of the disappeared
are not supported. In Santiago, I
was told over and over again that
the Vicarate of Solidarity which
once supported the workshop had
ceased to provide working space
and a distribution market for the
arpilleras. This is why they were
given a room at the headquarters of
the Methodist Church.
I also have great respect for Lira
and recognize her pioneering
efforts in building the original
workshop, but it seems we have dif-
ferent sources of information. My
information comes directly from
the women themselves. They are
my only source. I am aware of the
exhibits sponsored by Lira’s orga-
nization. A recent one that I visited
in New York displayed arpilleras
with no political themes, showing a
deceptively peaceful country.
The women who make arpilleras
are independent and free-spirited,
but without church support they
woutd never have been able to mar-
ket their work. The original groups
have been isolated, and women
without a political history now
make arpilleras for export. They
are the arpilleras of a Chile that
refuses to acknowledge its past.
Legacy of the Dictatorship
A s a visitor from Chile, I was
interested in the exchange
between Stephanie Rosenfeld and
Marjorie Agosin [Letters,
March/April, 1995] over human
rights in my country. Unfortunately,
Agosin is correct when she says
that Chilean “perpetrators of human
rights abuses enjoy freedom and
impunity.” I might add that they
parade their impunity in the press
and on television, mocking the
rights of their victims and relatives,
and deriding the incapacity of the
courts and the present government
to insure that justice prevails.
Memorial monuments and public
funerals notwithstanding, the fact
remains that most of the murders by
the dictatorship remain unresolved.
This is in part due to the fact noted
by Agosin that Chile is a “con-
trolled democracy,” where the
inability of the executive, congres-
sional and judiciary branches of
government to initiate and facilitate
the investigation of these crimes is
guaranteed by the veiled but
omnipresent might of the military.
Hundreds of thousands of workers
and students dismissed from their
jobs and expelled from their
schools-many detained, tortured
and exiled without a cause-still
await the recognition of the injus-
tice done to them, and the redress to
which they are entitled by the bru-
tal interruption of the course of
their lives. Assets ranging from pri-
vate houses to works of art, which
were illegally confiscated from
individuals, institutions and politi-
cal parties during the dictatorship,
remain in the hands of their illegit-
imate owners, despite the sanctity
assigned to private property by the
dictatorship’s own constitution.
Regarding the “challenges of
constructing civil society in democ-
racy” mentioned by Rosenfeld, I
am afraid that in spite of her opti-
mism this worthy goal may prove
unattainable if the current environ-
ment in Chile persists. It would be
like Germany reconstructing its
devastated social and economic
institutions after World War II with
a civilian government answering
to the requirements of Herren
Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler. I am
afraid Rosenfeld misjudges the sit-
uation when she labels Agosin’s
concerns for the country’s histori-
cal memory “nostalgic.” The lack
of recognition of the barbaric prac-
tices of the dictatorship can only
have a corrosive effect on the social
development and collective psyche
of the country.
Felipe C. Cabello, M.D.
Valhalla, NY