Nobody In, Nobody Out

I am sitting on a wooden bench in the eighth floor apartment of a family whose five year-old I am trying to teach English. I am watching the Chinese television's English language coverage of the Honduran election. Reporting is only ever a collection of images and soundbytes, but it is interesting to observe which images and soundbytes different cultures consider relevant. The Chinese version of the story shows a man surrounded by supporters in blue shirts accepting victory on behalf of Hondurans of all colors, and a man surrounded by supporters in red shirts conceding defeat in an election conducted by a sovereign state. Then the TV shows the green flag of Brazil and a third man speaking his version of events. The newsreader goes on to mention that multinationals such as the OAS refused to send observers or recognize what happened on November 29.


Elsewhere of course I see other versions of the events. Al Giordano reports on rallies organized by the Frente Nacional Contra el Golpe de Estado rallying outside the Brazilian Embassy. Jim DeMint of South Carolina also stands by his friends in Central America--but of course he has a different set of friends. Last time I was in Central America I talked to an American who had just been in Honduras and said that the people he had talked to didn't seem to think much of either side. Journalists often try to search for the authentic story, to give us the true voice of the people. But I have come to believe that there are often multiple simultaneously valid narratives—and which version you identify with depends—in life as at Fenway Park, on which team you were already rooting for. And a lot of what people say is really just picking apart some one with a good fastball. Most of the criticisms by human rights organizations after the coup (Government violence, suppression of dissent) were the same complaints they were making prior to the coup. And by putting a national figure in the spotlight, their actions gave dissident groups a common cause to rally around—peoples' frustration could be directed in a concrete direction. Central Americans who organize with Frentes Nacionales have had better success in the long term than those who looked to International figures for deliverance. At the beginning of the twentieth century soldiers under the command of the oligarchs killed men like Sandino, Zapata, and Farabundo Marti, but Marxists were eventually able to use them to create movements based on home-grown inspiration, as opposed to concepts like international socialism, neo-liberalism or deference to the Yankees. And at the beginning of the twenty-first century Zelaya's not dead, he's only in the Brazilian embassy.


I have just begun teaching a course on the history of English-speaking countries, and just did a unit on Ireland during the troubles. It is interesting to see what the people who designed the Chinese textbooks think is worth mentioning—did you know that under the Brehon Law which applied in Hibernia prior to the arrival of the English, a woman who had borne a child was sometimes considered a better candidate for marriage because her fertility was proven? And I talked about the Troubles. I did give it a little bit of a slant—as some one who grew up listening to the Pogues, I can't help having a different attitude about what went on in Ulster than some one who grew up listening to Skrewdriver. I'm in the green corner, not the orange one—but I tried to be fair to both the Celts in the UDA and those in the Provisional IRA. I talked about Bobby Sands—who took the weapon of the Hunger Strike even farther than Mohandas Gandhi had. Of course Sands' people had had to endure more centuries of oppression by English concepts of Law and Right than Gandhi's had. The New York Times obituary on Sands talked about how Sands' actions would only prolong the conflict. It is true, but things written in places like the NYT play a role in prolonging conflicts as well—including criticisms of rebels in Catholic countries who have demonstrated willingness to put their lives on the line for their beliefs. Researching my presentation, I also found that after Sands was called home, the Islamic Republic of Iran renamed Winston Churchill Boulevard, to Bobby Sands street. Both were elected members of the British parliament who inspired the armies of their people, but for some reason the British Embassy changed the location of their main entrance to avoid putting the Irishman's name on their letterhead.


The date November 29 stood out for another reason. Ten years ago another group of rebels faced the men with guns and disrupted a different three-letter internationalist organization. People who talk about genocide of precolumbian peoples forget that what was done to the peoples of North America by the soldiers of the city of Washington DC, is not so different from what was done to the peoples of Europe by the soldiers of Rome and her successors—the tribes disappear as independent political entities and are only remembered in place names like Seattle and Tegucigalpa. Every time you say those words, you are using the vocabulary of a non-Indo European language. In the movie recently made about the encounter you can see a generational rift between the protesters of my generation, and those like Paul Schell, who faced the men with guns during the Vietnam conflict. Supposedly one influence on the protestors who orchestrated the complete collapse of the WTO in that city was Ward Churchill, author of Pacifism as a Pathology. Talking, marching documenting, speaking truth to power is a game which the system has figured out how to keep marginalized. Sometimes it is necessary to use the chinks in the neo-liberal model to slip in a Trojan Horse which becomes impossible to ignore. Vietnam era liberals have created a huge alphabet soup of organizations in which people talk, and publish documents, and pass resolutions and criticize actions from a perspective which infringes on national sovereignty without having having a coherent alternative to put in its place. And the members of the working class on both sides of the barricades in Seattle are marginalized from the discussion. The English system of Law includes a concept called “duty to retreat.” People are required to cede space to an officer of the Law as representative of the sovereign—and this expectation makes possible a certain type of order. However, in nations without a King, much has been accomplished by those involved in civil disobedience in violation of the “duty to retreat” before officials representing a government or multinationals. What the protesters in Seattle had in common with Gandhi and King was this refusal. Refusal to obey “duty to retreat” results in violence—but it also makes the violence embodied in Law and its enforcement, impossible to ignore. It is a reminder that people who say “violence never solves anything” should not be identifying with the Sheriff of Nottingham.


It was interesting to read my president's attempt to find a coherent way forward in Afghanistan. In my unit on English speaking countries we talk about government. How the English constitution evolved over time, through centuries of trial and error—and even in the American Republic the original articles of confederation had to be replaced by a constitution written in light of experience. And the role of a place called Langley cannot be ignored. CIA training helped bring down governments in many parts of the world—since they installed different native figures, it was not exactly colonialism. But it was a distortion. And many people resented it—and resolved to change the leaders which CIA operations had left them with. It is important to remember that the Islamic Republic of Iran exists not merely because of those who marched beneath the banner of Khomeini's interpretation of Islam, but also Marxist groups such as the Fedayeen-e Khalq. The CIA represents something different from the armies which have existed from time immemorial. Their trade, like that of a soldier, is overthrowing and protecting governments. But they do not march beneath a banner, and do not wear uniforms. Unlike people in an army or a color revolution, they are not risking their lives for a piece of cloth. They are, to put it in union terminology, scabs. And the current Afghani constitution, like so many documents from the latter half of the twentieth century, would not exist, without events orchestrated by those who took money from the scabs in Langley.


In the 1848 century the Maya of the Yucatán staged an uprising against the foreigners who had oppressed them for centuries. They had their enemies on the run and were about to take the city of Mérida. They suddenly stopped—a swarm of ants informed them that it was time to plant corn. It seems unlikely that some one ordered this maneuver—some actions do not have intellectual authors, they merely reflect empowered individuals acting within established cultural priorities. War can be documented in almost all human civilizations, as violence can be seen throughout the animal kingdom. But different civilizations have different priorities. The Maya did not seem to consider it a grave sin for an animal to kill another animal—but the calendar, and cultivating Zea mays was more important than continued attacks against their Spanish overlords. Bobby Sands said his revenge would be "the laughter of our children." And all kinds of people take actions which reduce the number of laughing children in future generations--some even more significantly than armies.



Even in a season when nation does not lift up sword against nation, it can still be useful to learn war to understand the conflicts going on between the various elements present within every nation. This is for the citizens of the Islamic Republic of Iran: those who renamed Winston Churchill boulevard Bobby Sands street in memory of the Irish Republic Army's officer commanding for the Maze prison. And to those with their boots on the ground, wearing my colors.


Ay-ay-ay-ay Cantan, no llores
Porque cantando se alegrese
Cielito lindo, los corazones.