En relación a [PEN-L:1484] Re: Imperialist progressivism (was R,
el 8 Sep 00, a las 9:16, Michael Perelman dijo:
The debate on the Falklands/Malvinas is troubling. I thought the
outcome meant that Thatcher triumphed politically, while the junta
had to face political defeat, eventually.
The Junta, as a bunch of people, yes. The defeat was the ultimate
victory of the interests they had fought for. Even in their defeat
they paid a good service to their masters. The Argentina that emerged
from the South Atlantic battles was a defeated country, and its
ruling classes had lost every sense of national defence, on any
ground. It was quite easy for imperialists to push the dagger of debt
to the core of the country, force the destruction of the productive
assets, destroy the state, and imbue a good deal of the population
with a defeatist and cynical mood. That is why the flags of
supermarkets are so symbolic here. They replaced the flag of the
country. Remember _Robocop_, I insist.
As to rights, such matters are troubling. I live on property stolen
from the Mexicans who stole it from the Native Americans.
To begin with, Mexicans are mostly of mixed racial stock, and the
Spanish colony was a more complex thing than the Anglo American
massive slaughter of Indians. Today's Mexicans (and with more reason
those of the 19th. Century) are appropiate inheritors of both the
Indian and the Iberian assets, cultural as well as material. And, as
regards the war between Mexico and the United States in the late
1840s, Mexico arrived at an agreement, however unjust, and signed a
treaty. This was explained by the very Mexican government when
imperialist speakers tried to raise the same argument against the
rights of Argentina over the Malvinas. We have never surrendered our
rights (Menem put us at the border of the abyss, but not even he
dared to leap). We are still, technically and (more important)
spiritually at war with England. One of the few good results of the
war was that today, almost nobody in Argentina still believes (as
many believed during most of the 20th. Century) that England was a
civilized and reasonable patron.
While I
recognize past injustices, I would not be happy to see either group
reclaim their land. Africa still suffers enormously from the problems
caused by imperialist borders, but how could you rectify the past
mistakes today?
I send you to my above: this is not the same problem as in Africa.
The Malvinas were seized by force, and we have not (and will never)
admit to it. Though we Argentinians are probably the most Extreme
West on earth (a French essayist defined Latin America as the Extreme
West, in what I consider a very sharp fit of insight), we are, on
this issue, as patient as a Chinese. We shall wait and when the
moment comes, we shall be able to recover our occupied territories.
On the other hand, in the current state of indefension that Argentina
has been left after the 1982 war (a state of affairs that has been
consciously generated by the same high commands that lost the war!)
the solution passes through the Latino Americanization of the
conflict, which connects with our basic and essential problem: the
construction of the Latin American nation that was the idea of the
generation of the Independence, and of --Leon Trotsky!
A hug,
Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
