Restoration of democracy, socialism and Indigenous pride in Bolivia

Luis Arce was elected as President of Bolivia in the elections held on 18 October. He is the chosen successor of Evo Morales, who was President of the country from 2006 to 2019. 

 

Morales made history as the first native Indian to be elected as president in 2006. Although two thirds of the eleven million Bolivians are indigenous, they had been ruled by a tiny (15% of the total population) white elite of European descent in the last five hundred years. The oligarchic rulers had excluded the Indians away from political and economic power. They had marginalized and discriminated against the Indians keeping them as poor, illiterate and backward. Bolivia was like South Africa minus the formal label and laws of Apartheid. Morales fought against this racial domination by mobilizing the Indians, uniting them and getting them to vote him as president in 2006. Morales comes from a typical poor Aymara Indian family without any educational qualifications. 

 

As president, the first priority of Morales was to uplift the Indians from poverty, provide access to economic opportunities and empower them politically. In 2009, he got a new constitution for the country to reflect the rights and aspirations of the Indians. He got the name of the country changed to “ Plurinational State of Bolivia” in recognition of the many  distinct indigenous communities of the country. 

 

Morales had done a tremendous job of transforming the country. Firstly, he gave unprecedented political stability to the country which had gone through many coups and dictatorships. There were five presidents in five years before he came to power. 36 of the 83 governments in the past had lasted a year or less. Morales was the longest-serving president of the country. He survived a few coup attempts, separatist insurgencies and US destabilization.

 

Secondly, his government had reduced poverty drastically in the fourteen years of his government with pro-poor and Inclusive Development programmes. His administration had reached out to the indigenous communities in rural areas with building of schools, hospitals, roads and utilities. The World Bank and other outside agencies have recognized this as the most successful poverty reduction in Latin America. 

 

Thirdly, Morales nationalized the oil and gas and other sectors from which he increased state revenue. He got better price for the gas exported to Brazil and he even fought with his idol President Lula for higher prices. He ploughed the increased revenue into welfare projects.

 

Fourthly, Morales managed the economy prudently and pragmatically despite his radical leftist rhetoric. This was evident from the impressive average annual GDP growth rate of 5 % from 2006 to 2018. During his terms, inflation and external debt were low and the currency remained stable. Before his presidency, the country had suffered hyper inflation and currency devaluations in four to five digits and had exploded with debt crises. 

 

More importantly, Morales gave dignity, self esteem and pride to the Indian community. The Bolivian ladies wore polleras (traditional pleated and long skirts) proudly to offices and shopping malls.

During the protests against the interim government, the Indians chanted “the pollera will be respected!” Before his official inauguration in 2006, he visited the ancient temple in Tiwanaku and performedtraditional rites seeking the blessings of Indian gods.

 

Morales lead a simple and austere life without any personal ostentation. He was free from large scale corruption and did not acquire personal wealth or indulge in any luxuries. He continued as a bachelor and dedicated most of his time for the country, except for his indulgence in playing football and occasional girlfriends. 

 

After having been in power for such a long period of 14 years, Morales should have stood down in the 2019 elections, as mandated by the term limit imposed by his own new constituition. This would have safeguarded his great legacy of achievements.

 

But hubris went to his head and he started believing that he was indispensable. He held a referendum in 2016 seeking approval for another term. This was rejected by the people. Disregarding the verdict, he went to the constitutional court and got from friendly judges a verdict approving his reelection, on the spurious ground of his personal human rights. This shocked and divided his own supporters.

 

Morales made his worst mistake during the counting of votes in the 20 October 2019 elections. The live counting and telecast was shut down abrupty and mysteriously for almost 24 hours, when the margin between Morales and his nearest rival Carlos Mesa was narrowing. The next day, counting was resumed and it was announced that Morales won with more than ten percent difference in votes. This raised suspicions. When the opposition and external election observers questioned, Morales agreed to an audit and later to holding a new election. But it was too late. Seeing the best opportunity to bring down Morales, the opposition resorted to protests and clashed with his supporters. The military and police took the side of the protestors and turned against him. The US-trained army chief had advised him to leave the country for his own safety. He got the message and took the offer of Mexico for asylum and from there went to Argentina. 

 

The power vacuum following his departure was seized by a conservative senator Jeanine Anez, who proclaimed herself as the interim president with the support of the military. She was the second vice president of the senate and overrode the claims of the president and first vice president of the senate after intimidating and rejecting their constitutuinal rights for succession. Anez formed an interim government consisting of conservative whites who wanted to take revenge on the Indians who kept them away from power for fourteen years. 

 

The interim government gave extra powers to the security forces which brutally suppressed the protests of the Indian supporters of Morales. During her swearing in ceremony, Áñez made a show of bringing Christianity with her, after the last administration’s emphasis on Indigenous traditions. “The Bible has returned to the government palace!” she declared, carrying an oversized Bible. Anez posted racist twitter messages belittling indigenous people. Her supporters burnt the multicloured traditional Indian flag insulting the indigenous.

 

The interim government carried out a witch-hunt against the leaders of MAS (Movimiento Al Socialismo- Movement for Socialism, the political party of Morales) with detentions and prosecutions. They charged Morales himself with terrorism (by inciting anti-government protests), communism, drug trafficking and sedition. Interior Minister Arturo Murillo vowed to jail Evo Morales for the rest of his life. Several ministers of Morales' government went underground, left the country or sought refuge in foreign embassies. The interim government even sought the help of Israel to fight “terrorism”. They resumed relations with US, which had earlier shunned Morales.  They suspended relations with Venezuela and Cuba and sent hundreds of Cuban doctors and Venezuelan diplomats home. Áñez participated in a ceremony in Santa Cruz to honor the military veterans who captured Ernesto “Che” Guevara in the Bolivian jungle on Oct. 8, 1967 to mock Morales who is an admirer of Che.

 

The blatant acts of revenge and restoration of policies of discrimination and disrespect to the indigenous people by the interim government pushed the Indians to reunite and vote for their own party MAS. The Indians realized that the white elite had not given up their past racial prejudices. 

 

The President-elect Arce is a moderate and pragmatic technocrat. He was the economy and finance minister of Morales and before that had worked in the Central Bank. He did his Masters in economics from a British University and had worked as professor in a Bolivian university. He was responsible for the successful management of the economy during the presidency of Morales. 

Besides winning the presidency with an impressive 55% (as against the 28% of his nearest rival and 14% of the third candidate),the MAS party has also won majority in both the Senate and the Lower House. This means that the government of Arce will continue to be stable and could continue the progressive socioeconomic policies of the Morales presidency. He has said,“We’re going to work and resume the process of change without hate, and learning and overcoming our errors as MAS.”

Morales will soon return to Bolivia from his exile in Argentina. However, he is not likely to get any governmental position. He will continue as head of the party and be active in trade union bodies. 

 

It is important to note that a number of new young MAS leaders have won the elections to the Congress. These talents will be nurtured under the Arce presidency to take over power in the future providing continuity to the rule of Indians. The new Indian leaders and cadres of MAS 2.0 have learnt valuable lessons from the mistakes of Morales and the excesses of the interim white government. With these renewed beginnings, Bolivia is set for a stable political future with economic equity. 

 

The success of the MAS party has gladdened the hearts of leftists in Latin America, who were dismayed by the right turn in some countries of the region. Bolivia has shown that socialism need not be a dirty word as its critics see it in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. The victory of MAS is an apt response to the right wing leaders such as Bolsonaro and Trump who were waging a war against socialism.

 

The success of the Indians in Bolivia is an inspiration to the forty million Indians in Latin America. The Indians in other parts of Latin America will now feel emboldened to seek their entitlements and respect for their identities.

 

Despite their excesses, the interim government of Anez should be given credit for holding free and fair elections. There were no major incidents of violence or controversies during the elections. Anez was quick to congratulate Arce even before the completion of counting of the votes. The main opposition candidate Carlos Mesa also accepted the verdict gracefully and promptly. The Bolivian democracy has now become stronger and more stable. The debates and speeches during the Bolivian election campaign of the candidates were more civilized and decent unlike the racist, polarizing, ugly, ridiculous and hate-filled noises in US, the biggest and oldest democracy in the Americas. Bolivia has also averted going to the other extreme of right from left as happened in the case of Brazil. The democratic renewal of poor little Bolivia is a ray of hope and optimism at this time when the democracies in US, Europe and other parts of the world are being vitiated by the polarizing forces of racism and extremism. 

 

Purgatory – Argentine novel by Tomas Eloy Martinez

“Desaparecido” (disappeared) is the theme of the novel “Purgatory” by Tomas Eloy Martinez, the Argentine writer. The noun ‘desaparecido’ is an addition to Spanish vocabulary by the Argentine military dictatorship which made thousands of leftists disappear. 

In the novel “ Purgatory”, Simon Cardoso, a young cartographer and leftist sympathizer is made to disappear by the military dictatorship. This is soon after his marriage to Emilia, the protagonist in the novel. Devastated by the disappearance, she spends the rest of her life waiting for the return of her husband. She does not believe the news that he was killed, since she has not seen the body. Her oligarchic father, who makes money by collaborating with the Generals, thinks it is good riddance. Unable to have a life of her own without her love, she spends her whole life searching for her disappeared husband. She goes to Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico, when she gets false tips of sightings of Simon in those countries. Finally she settles in US but continues to look out for Simon even there. She is completely obsessed with her impossible hope of return of her husband and is lost in hallucinations and delirium.  She meets another Argentine also on exile in US and tells him her story. She says to him “the most unbearable loneliness is not being able to be alone”.

 

During the military dictatorship, the soldiers went on a rampage by picking up anyone, branding them as subversives and detaining, torturing and killing with impunity. Emilia and Simon were detained when they were on a map making mission in Tucuman area for the Automobile Club of Argentina. But the illiterate and ignorant soldiers on patrol in the area did not understand the mapping work. They arrested the couple, abused and tortured them. Emilia was saved by her influential father but not Simon. 

 

When asked about the whereabouts of someone abducted by the regime, one of the dictators responded, “ ni vivo, ni muerto, simplemente desaparecido” (not alive nor dead but simply disappeared). The military picked up leftists, and anyone suspected of sympathizing with communism, jailed, tortured, killed and even thrown a few prisoners from planes. Workers disappeared from their factory gates; farmers from their fields, leaving tractors running; dead men from the graves in which they had been buried only the day before. Children disappeared from their mothers’ wombs and mothers from the children’s memories. The sick who arrived in hospital at midnight had disappeared by morning.  Truth was made to disappear by the false propaganda of the regime.

 

The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo movement started a silent protest march in Buenos Aires in 1977 seeking information on their ‘disappeared’ children. The regime abducted three of the mothers and made them also ‘disappear’. Undeterred, the other courageous Mothers continued their march throughout the time of dictatorship which ended in 1983. 

 

The military regime made even the body of Evita disappear in 1955. Fearing that her body and burial ceremony would rally the leftists, the authorities sent the body in a coffin to be buried secretly in a cemetery in Milan. They made identical coffins and sent them to other European cities to confuse anyone trying to trace it. Finally Evita’s body was found and brought back to Argentina in 1974. 

 

In 1974, the Montonero guerrilla group kidnapped from the cemetery the body of General Aramburu who lead the coup against Peron and became President in 1955-58. He was earlier abducted and killed by the Montoneros in retaliation for his execution of Peronists. The group demanded the return of Evita’s body in exchange for that of Aramburu. Once Evita's body arrived in Argentina, the Montoneros gave up Aramburu's corpse and abandoned it in a street in Buenos Aires.

 

The military regime made even the names of Evita and Peron disappear from the public after the coup in 1955. Mentioning of the names in public or media was prohibited and violation was punished with imprisonment. In government files, Evita’s name was avoided and she was referred as ‘that woman’, ‘deceased’, ‘mare’ and ‘the person’.

 

Martinez has described in poignant detail the anguish and agony of Emilia who is unable to come to terms with the disappearance of her husband. This was the case with thousands of other Argentines who lost their loved ones and could not say farewell with proper burials. 

 

Martinez has written novels and articles on the disappearances, dictatorship and devastation of the Argentine society. My reviews of three of his novels in the links below:

The Peron Novel- https://latinamericanaffairs.blogspot.com/2010/02/peron-novel-by-tomas-eloy-martinez.html

Santa Evita - https://latinamericanaffairs.blogspot.com/2008/08/santa-evita-argentine-novel-by-tomas.html

The Tango singer- https://latinamericanaffairs.blogspot.com/2009/10/tango-singer-novel-by-tomas-eloy.html

 

Purgatory is Martinez’s last novel before his death in 2010.

 

Martinez himself was a victim of the dictatorship. The newspaper for which he was working in Buenos Aires was closed down by the authorities. He was forced into exile in Venezuela where he lived from 1975 to 1983. Thereafter he moved to US. On his exile, he says, ‘No one returns from exile. What you forsake, forsakes you’. 

 

El Salvador, the country in need of The Saviour

El Salvador was given its name by the Conquistador Pedro de Alvarado who dedicated the land of his conquest to Jesus Christ, The Saviour (El Salvador). The capital of the city is San Salvador which means Holy Saviour. The country is in dire need of the help of The Saviour.  It has one of the highest murder rates in the world and is notorious for deadly gang wars. The country has been traumatized by civil war and the right wing military dictatorships which massacred thousands of indigenous people and leftists. These days, the country keeps hitting news headlines in US with the caravans of Salvadorians seeking asylum, giving more fuel to Trump’s anti-migrant vitriols. It is in this context that we get a Salvadorian perspective of the issues from Roberto Lovato, a Salvadorian writer living in US,  in his memoirs “Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas”, published in September 2020. He narrates the history of the tragedy of violence through his own personal life story and that of his family. 

Lovato has the unique real life experience of having lived as a Salvadorian mara gang member in US, guerilla fighter in Salvador against the dictatorship, a redeemed evangelical and finally as a writer, journalist and human rights activist for the refugees from Central America coming into US.

 

Lovato’s father Ramoncito was an illegitimate son of a rich coffee planter. His mother was a poor Indian woman Mama Tey who worked for the planter.  Roberto is traumatised at the age of nine after witnessing the 1932 Matanza (cold bloodeded massacre) of indigenous community in his village by the military death squads.  After the massacre, Mama Tey flees to San Salvador, the capital where she makes a living by stitching clothes for low class prostitutes. Ramoncito gets his first job as a receptionist in a brothel, receiving customers and serving coffee for them. He takes to alcoholism and crimes in the company of his other poor friends. Later he and his mother move to Los Angeles, which has the largest Salvadorean community in US. His son Roberto Lovato is born and brought up in Los Angels. Lovato and his Salvadorean friends are taunted and attacked by the bigger Mexican and local white gangs. Life for Salvadorian youth in US is as insecure and dangerous as in El Salvador. For protection, Lovato joins a small Salvadorian gang “Los Originales” which steals cars and distributes drugs. But despite this gang involvement, Roberto finishes his university studies successfully and becomes a professor and writer. Moved by the tragedy of the massacre of innocent people, he travels to El Salvador and joins the FMLN (The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) guerilla movement fighting against the military dictatorship. He gets guns and supplies for the guerillas from US arranged by his own father besides others. After the end of the civil war, Lovato returns to US and resumes his academic career.

 

Lovato goes back to El Salvador to investigate the old massacres and the new gang wars. He goes to Ahuachapán, where his father was born and learns that his grand father (from father’side) was one of the active participants in the massacre of the Indians. He meets ex-guerilla leaders of FMLN who have now come to power through the ballot. He interviews members of the two notorious gangs MS 13 and Barrio 18. He visits the places where leftists and Indians were executed and buried in anonymous mass graves. He sees the working of the forensic laboratories which work with the bones and skulls to identify and analyse them for the government and family members. 

 

The Salvadoran military death squads had run “counterinsurgency” programs that starved, shot up, and bombed indigenous communities they perceived as supporting the FMLN, the main guerilla movement. As a former Guatemalan president and School of Americas (at Fort Benning, Georgia) graduate José Efraín Ríos Montt put it, “The guerrilla is the fish. The people are the sea. If you cannot catch the fish, you have to drain the sea.”  Ríos Montt was eventually convicted of genocide but was not sentenced due to his poor health.

 

In the infamous El Mozote massacre of 1981, Colonel Monterrosa and his troops mistook nearly one thousand campesinos for FMLN guerrilla–sympathizing civilians and slaughtered them. Investigations by forensic specialists have revealed that many of the victims were women and children. Of those killed, 553 were minors, 477 of whom were under twelve. The majority of the children were six years old or younger. 

 

The US supported the right wing military dictatorships of El Salvador and gave counter insurgency training in the School of the Americas to Salvadorian and other Latin American military officers. Of the twelve accused in the El Mozote massacre, by the UN Truth Commission report, ten, including Monterrosa, were graduates of the School of Americas. Counterinsurgency is a multi-billion-dollar industry for US arms dealers and military contractors who supply weapons, helicopters and other equipments to Latin America. The guns used by the Salvadorian gangs are illegally supplied from US.

 

Those killed in the massacres were buried in mass graves throughout the country. The cruelty of this can be seen from a letter from the country’s director of public health,who advised the governors and mayors “to take necessary sanitary measures in the face of reports of growing numbers of unburied bodies and mass graves. It is necessary to make the dimensions [of the mass graves] uniform for reasons of health. The accumulation of no more than fifty corpses in a single grave allows for better decomposition and less absorption into the soil. Even better would be isolated graves, in which no more than eight to ten corpses would be placed”.  The land of El Salvador made fertile by a natural mix of volcanic ash and minerals, there is a new fertilizer, the decomposed bodies of thousands of indigenous people.

 

Lovato falls in love with a FMLN guerrilla fighter and diplomat who comes to LA to work with the Salvadorean community. Born to a poor Indian family she studied to become a nun. But when her family was killed by the army, she joins the guerrillas. She surprises Roberto saying that she loves operas and her favourite one is ‘O Fortuna’ from Carmina Burana,”. She says calls it as her ‘música de combate’, the music she listened in times of personal and political combat. She says, “Whenever we would march in protest against the government policies and death-squad killings, they would often kill many protesters. And then, to make things worse, they would play opera music in the government radio to mock us. So it became the music for us to remember our martyrs, our música de combate”.

 

After all these adventures, Lovato is now settled in his postwar identity as a writer, journalist and human rights activist. He has finally found peace after almost twenty-five years of clandestinity, secrets, and fear. He is critical of the US police which treats all the Central Americans and Mexicans as gangsters and drug traffickers and harasses the whole community. 

  

Lovato says, “Throughout my life, our family has been divided by the border between memory and forgetting. Where most see the refugee crisis as “new,” I see the longue durée of history and memory. Where many see the story beginning at the border, I see the time-space continuum of violence, migration, and forgetting that extends far beyond and below the US-Mexico border. Where others see mine as a Central American story, I see it as a story about the United States”. True. It was the genocide and atrocities of the US-supported right wing Salvadorian military dictatorships which made people flee to US in the beginning. The US trained the Salvadorian military in counter insurgency and also sent its own advisors to guide and observe some of the operations. The US gave billions of dollars of military assistance which was used by the Salvadorean dictatorships to fight its own people. Young Salvadoreans in US were forced into gang culture by the US drug gangs. The notorious MS 13 and Barrio 18 gangs of El Salvador were originally formed in Los Angeles. When US deported the Salvadorean gangsters back to their home country, they formed bigger gangs and caused mayhem with more deadly US weapons. This has made more Salvadoreans flee and seek asylum in US. It is a vicious cycle with clear US complicity and culpability as the exporter of gang culture and illegal weapons to El Salvador. 

 

Lovato ends the book saying, “My Salvadorean journey from being half dead to more fully alive has begun”. He quotes the poignant lines of the famous Salvadorean poet Roque Dalton who also took up guns as a guerilla fighter and took bullets becoming a martyr in 1975.

 

Ser salvadoreño es ser medio muerto

Sobrevivimos pero medio vivos

 

To be a Salvadorean is half dead

We survive but only with half living

 

Nothing by Accident : Brazil On The Edge – book by Damian Platt

Brazil excites one’s mind with images of football, carnival, samba and copacabana. The world sees Brazilians as cheerful, lively and joyous people. The tourists are swept off their feet by the picturesque beaches and the spectacular sugarloaf mountain view of the marvellous city of Rio. But, later in the night when they switch on the TV channels, they are shocked by the gruesome images of violence, gang wars, police and ambulance sirens and pile of dead bodies in the favelas (slums), which are not far from the hotels and beaches. More shock follows with the statistics of murders and deaths in police encounters which make Rio as one of the most dangerous cities in the world. According to the Brazilian Forum for Public Security, there were 65,602 violent killings in the country during 2017. In 2018, killings by police in Brazil stood at 6,220—in Rio alone that year. Brazil has one of the highest murder rates with firearms in the world.

So one starts wondering how so much violence has come to coexist with the carioca (resident of Rio) happy- go- lucky spirit. According to Damian Platt, the author of the book (published in August 2020), the crime and violence are not accidental but are designed and perpetuated by the deadly combination of criminal gangs, rogue police and military officials and their political patrons.

 

Platt explains the origin and evolution of the violence in Rio and Brazil. He traces the origin to the illegal lottery sytem called as ‘jogos de bichos’ (animal games) run by bicheiros (lottery operators). It is based on a sequence of 25 numbers with pictures of animals which allows you to bet as much or as little as you wish on any combination of numbers you choose. This lottery system was invented by a flamboyant entrepreneur Baron de Drummond in 1892 . He had opened a zoo in a new residential neighbourhood ‘Vila Isabel’ he had developed on the northern edges of Rio. In order to attract visitors to the zoo, he started a raffle with the entrance tickets which carried the pictures of animals. Winners earned a cash prize twenty times the value of the entrance fee. Visitors to the zoo multiplied and Vila Isabel flourished. Police were deployed to maintain order on the overcrowded trams transporting the public to the zoo. People visited the zoo to bet on the jogo de bicho, rather than look at animals. With a view to save gamblers from the trip, the Baron organised ticket sales in the centre of town. The innocent raffle had quickly outstripped its original purpose and became wildly popular. The government imposed ban on the jogo as an anti-gambling moral policy. This forced the lottery to go underground. Individual entrepreneurs got into the operation of the illegal lottery which became even more popular. The law considered the illegal lottery as a simple misdemeanour and there was no serious prosecution or punishment. The lottery operators resorted to bribery, favours and alliances with political leaders and security forces, to guarantee their business. Newspapers published daily results, both explicitly and covertly, while individuals within the police force and the local authorities developed an interest in maintaining the lottery for their illicit personal financial gain. The bicheiros became the patrons of samba groups participating in the carnival. In their VIP boxes, they entertained presidents, ministers, governors, generals, chiefs of police, celebrities and television stars. Later in the seventies, the bicheiros got into drug distribution when cocaine arrived at Rio on transit to Europe. The bicheiros used their underground lottery network for drug distribution to the thrill-seeking local jetset. They took the help of off-duty and retired police and military men for protection. In Rio de Janeiro and across Brazil, most military police work on a shift basis, often with 48 hour breaks between police duties. Consequently, it is standard practice to take second jobs as security guards, as they have the right to carry weapons. Most of the private security firms are owned and staffed by off-duty or former police and military officers. 

 

The military dictatorship from 1964 to 1983 added a new dimension to the illegal lottery racket. The military intelligence used the bicheiro network to collect information and infiltrate the underground leftist groups. As a quid pro quo, the military officers gave protection and immunity to the bicheiros. Some of the officers joined the illegal lottery network and made personal fortunes. 

 

The criminal military and police elements who flourished during the dictatorship did not like the return to democracy in 1985. Some of them formed secret groups and tried to sabotage democratization through terrorist actions, but without success. Some others formed militias which ran rackets of protection, extortion and contract killings. The militias succeeded in finding new patrons among civilian politicians such as Jair Bolsonaro and his sons. The militias finance election campaigns and help politicians to get votes. In return, the elected leaders provide political cover to the militias. Fabricio Queiroz , a militia member on the run from prosecution was arrested eventually from the beach house of the family lawyer of Bolsonaro. When a journalist asked Bolsonaro why Queiroz paid money into the personal accounts of the wife of Bolsonaro, the president threatened to punch the face of the journalist. Queiroz was chief of staff of Flavio Bolsonaro from 2007 to 2018. The alleged assassins of Marielle Franco, a popular political activist of Rio were reported to have had links to the Bolsonaro family. The Justice Minister Sergio Moro resigned earlier this year protesting against the interference of President Bolsonaro in these investigations to protect his family. 

 

In 2008, a then-obscure Rio politician and former army captain, Jair Bolsonaro, defended militias in a BBC interview, claiming they provided security, order and discipline for poor communities. In 2005, Flavio Bolsonaro successfully petitioned to award a police officer turned militiaman Adriano da Nobrega the state of Rio’s highest honour, the Tiradentes medal, which he delivered personally to the disgraced policeman – inside prison. 

 

In other Latin American countries, the military men who committed atrocities during dictatorships were brought before justice and convicted. But the Brazilian military torturers and killers got away  with their crimes. The impunity has encouraged the criminal captains and colonels to continue to undermine democracy even now. Bolsonaro had dedicated his vote for impeachment of President Dilma Rouseff to the notorious Colonel Ustra who tortured her when she was caught as a leftwing guerilla fighter. He called Ustra as a national hero. During his first official visit to Chile, President Bolsonaro praised Pinochet dictatorship causing embarrassment to the democratic citizens and politicians of Chile. Bolsonaro keeps repeating his statements for killing of communists and maintains that not enough were killed during the dictatorship. In a TV interview in 1999, Congress member Bolsonaro said that the only way of "changing" Brazil was by "killing thirty thousand people, beginning with Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the President of Brazil at that time.  These have encouraged right wing extremists to  demonstrate in front of the army headquarters calling for the return of military dictatorship and closure of the Congress and Supreme Court while President Bolsonaro, their patron smiles and cheers the crowds. Flavio Bolsonaro made a statement threatening that the supreme court could be closed just with a soldier and a corporal. In July 2019 a Brazilian Air Force Sergeant, on a special flight accompanying President Bolsonaro to a G20 meeting, tried to wheel a suitcase containing 39kg of cocaine through Spanish customs. He told officials who opened his suitcase that he was bringing cheese to a cousin. The Sergeant, Manoel Silva Rodrigues, had made 30 national and international trips for the Brazilian Air Force in five years. This is just an example of how the criminals are feeling free to commit crimes with impunity since the election of the extremist Bolsonaro. 

 

The security forces make money by selling weapons illegally to the criminals. Theft and “losses” of registered police, military and private security arms are routine. A 2011 state legislative enquiry into weapons found that 8,912 guns were “lost” or stolen from police stocks between 2000–2010. A follow-up enquiry in 2016 found that that 17.662 weapons (30 per cent of these companies’ total supply) were “lost” or stolen in the period 2005-15 from Rio’s private security firms most of which are owned by active and retired police and military personnel. 

 

The security forces conduct raids and make drug busts in the favelas in front of TV cameras basically as a show to divert attention and stigmatise the poor black residents of favelas. This is done to generate and sustain the atmosphere of fear and hate. The violence is used to generate insecurity which means money for the private security companies owned by high-ranking police and their political patrons. President Bolsonaro is openly encouraging the police to shoot first and ask questions later. He said criminals should “die in the streets like cockroaches”. He wants the killer cops to be decorated and not investigated for killing suspects. 

President Bolsonaro has loosened gun control to make more firearms available easily to more people. More guns mean more crime and more business for the militias which run protectionist rackets. Gun ownership rocketed by 98% during Bolsonaro’s first year as President. Sale of guns increased to 105,603 in the first eight months of 2020. This is more than the 94,000 sold in the whole year of 2019.  Weapons newly available to the public now include semi-automatic rifles, previously only available to the army. In April 2020, Bolsonaro revoked decrees that existed to facilitate the tracing and identification of weapons and ammunition. One week later, he tripled the quantity of ammunition available for purchase by civilians, saying on record in a ministerial meeting, that he wanted “everyone” to carry guns. His political philosophy, wrote Fernando de Barros e Silva, editor of the respected Piauí current affairs magazine, represented “the victory of the militia model of management of Brazilian violence”. 

Bolsonaro's signature favorite pose is shooting gesture with the thumb combined with the index and middle finger, mimicking a gun as in the picture below

This gun gesture has spread among his supporters across the country who show it in every pro-Bolsonaro street demonstration. During a campaign rally in the northwestern state of Acre, Bolsonaro picked up a tripod, put it on his chest to simulate a machine gun, and yelled: “let’s shoot this petralhada (a derogative nickname that the right wing created to their opponents, the workers’ party’s supporters) here in Acre!”

President Jair Bolsonaro has galvanized a new gun culture in Brazil. His three oldest  sons, politicians themselves, have been fierce proponents of expanding gun ownership through policy proposals and social media posts. Eduardo Bolsonaro has spoken admiringly of the Second Amendment in the United States. He has lobbied to make the Brazilian market more attractive to foreign arms manufacturers, which he says would lower prices and provide gun enthusiasts with more choices. Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator, made the promotion of gun manufacturing in Brazil the focus of his first project in the legislature last year. 

 

The rule of Bolsonaro and bullets condemns Brazil to suffer more violence and bloodshed in the coming years.

 

The Divine Boys – Colombian novel by Laura Restrepo

The Divine Boys (Los Divinos in Spanish) is the story of five boys who form a brotherhood gang called as Tutti Frutti in school. These are Muñeco, Tarabeo, Duque, Pildora and Hobbo. They are into pranks, games, alcohol, drugs, girls, and the night life of Bogota. Inspired by “One for all and all for one” they have a pact “ One for Tutti and Tutti for Frutti”. Their common code: worship of drink, dominance of females and scorn for the weak. They carry on their boyhood bonding even in their thirties by getting together to relive the nostalgia and push the social boundaries.

 

The hero of the gang is Muñeco, also known as Mi-Lindo, Ken and Baby-Boy. He is handsome, wealthy, athletic, stylish, charmer, talker and party animal. He is short fused, prone to rages and gets into brawls ending up sometimes with black eyes and broken bones. His appetites grow wild and twisted. After having exhausted a vast repertoire of sexual deviations and perversions, he goes after a little girl, rapes and kills her. He seeks the help of his brotherhood to help him out after the crime. But he is caught and convicted. 

 

The other four members of the brotherhood are: Tarabeo (aka Dino-rex, Rexona, Taras Bulba) is a playboy and master of the art of seduction. He makes plans and decisions for the group. He and Muñeco  are known as the Divine boys; Duque (aka Nobleza, Dux) is a perfectionist. He is the wealthiest and has a country home where the Tutti Frutis meet for poker and drinking binges; Pildora (aka Pildo, Pilulo, Dorila) is the errand boy. He does whatever he is asked to do: shopping, driving, picking up things for others and supplying party drugs to the gang from his mother’s pharmacy; Hobbit (aka Hobbo, Bobbi and Job) is an introvert who is into literature and has a phobia against physical touch by others. He does not belong to the rich class of the other four. But the others take him in for his complementary qualities missing among themselves.There is a girl who joins the boys group occasionally. She is Alicia (aka Malicia), the girl friend of Duque but she has a secret affair with Tarebeo and flirts with Hobbit.

 

Laura Restrepo, the author makes the characters come alive with her graphic descriptions and elaborate narratives. She develops each character with their own phobias and fetishes, craziness and creative talents, inner demons and outer appearances. She describes how an individual is shaped as a monster in brotherhood gangs. She gives a glimpse of the Colombian society through the adventures and circumstances of the characters. Hobbit exclaims, “This country of ours has had so much war—so very much, borne for too long a time—that we the living have grown inured to it”. Colombia has suffered so much violence and death from ideological conflicts, guerilla wars and drug trafficking. Much more than any other Latin American country.

 

The only disappointment is that after building up the characters and the story so steadily and elaborately, the author finishes the novel fast at the end.  The reader who is settled in for a long journey is woken up and asked to get off the train before the imagined destination. But I had enjoyed long fantastic journeys in her other novels such as “ Leopard in the Sun” “Delirium”, “ The angel of Galilea”, “ The dark bride” and “Too many  heroes”.

Laura Restrepo is a gifted writer and guide to Colombian and Latin American society. Her works are not just pure imagination. Some of them are based on her own political experience and personal witness to violence, crime and wars. She combines the facts and fiction seamlessly and creatively in her novels. Her life is as interesting as her fiction. She has seen life from different angles as an academic, journalist, political leader, member of guerrilla movement, writer and novelist. As a journalist, she was in the frontlines covering the US invasion of Grenada and the Contra war in Nicaragua. 

When she was working for a Colombian TV channel, she wrote script for a miniseries on the theme of a deadly feud between two families involved in drug trafficking. But the Channel did not air it since they received the visit of a lawyer who " mentioned about blowing up the office building of the TV channel"

In1982, President Betancur of Colombia nominated Restrepo as member of the commission to negotiate peace with the M-19 guerrillas. She received death threats after voicing her loud opinions and comments on the peace negotiations and the guerrillas. She was forced to go on exile to Mexico for six years. During this time she wrote the novel " Isle of Passion" about Mexican revolution after which an army group is stuck in an island off Mexico.

She started her career as a professor of literature at the National University of Colombia. She worked as editor of the popular magazine " Semana" for twelve years. Later she got involved in the politics of Colombia and was a member of the Trotskyite party. She became a member of the Socialist Workers Party of Spain where she lived for three years. She was in Argentina for four years as part of the underground resistance fighting against the military dictatorship. This experience comes out in her novel,"No place for heroes". She was briefly married to an Argentine politician with whom she had a son. 

 

Malgudi to Macondo to Mallgudi

I have just read “My Days”, the autobiography of R K Narayan who has created the fictional town Malgudi in his stories. I could not help the temptation of comparing it with “Living to tell the tale” the memoirs of Gabriel Garcia Marquez whose imaginary town in his novels is Macondo. Both Malgudi and Macondo are emblematic of the culture of South India and South America.

 The titles of the memoirs of Narayan and Garcia give clear clues to their lives, novels and characters. 

 

“My days” of Narayan is simple, clear and short.  It gives details of his life as it happened from the beginning to the end chronologically. “Living to tell the tale” (Vivir para contarla) of Marquez holds suspense, mystery and excitement. There is a quote attributed to Marquez, “ Men have three lives: a public life, a private life and a secret one”. There is a Latino macho saying, ‘A man without stories is no man’.  So one’s curiosity is raised as to what next would come out from his ‘story telling’. In South India life is just a life. It starts with birth, childhood, education, employment, marriage, children, grandchildren and the end with philosophical reflections. In South America it is a story. Marquez’s book starts with the visit to sell his ancestral village accompanying his mother when he was twenty three. The following chapters go back and forth with whatever stories Marquez feels like telling. 

 

Narayan writes in simple and unpretentious prose narrating the story and describing the characters without delving deep into any analysis. He adds touches of humour, irony and satire but in a subtle manner. Marquez’s writing is graphic and filled with rich images. He weaves fantasies and realities one after another and blurs the line between them in the same style of Magical Realism he uses in his novels. While Narayan’s narratives flow smoothly like the calm Cauvery river in the flat delta area of Tamilnadu, Marquez’s writings are like the Magdalena river of Colombia which is turbulent and unpredictable. The river journey by boat could last for a few days or weeks depending on the formation of sandbars, variation of water depth and accidents on the way. 

 

Marquez wrote in his mother tongue about the people who spoke Spanish like him. But Narayan wrote in a language foreign to his characters. The ordinary men and women of Malgudi speak Tamil or Kannadiga and do not understand English. It is amazing that he has made the natives to come alive in a foreign language. I could feel the emotions, characters and moments as naturally as I felt when I read such stories in Tamil with familiar local expressions. 

 

Narayan is a writer of few words. But within his short descriptions and phrases, he evokes vividly a whole lot of emotions and feelings around the events and characters. Marquez, on the other hand, is given to overwhelm and mesmerize the reader with long, lyrical and effervescent expressions which flow tumultuously like a mountain stream. Narayan takes us through the short village roads. With Marquez it is a long journey through mountainous roads overlooking jungles, valleys, peaks and precipices. 

 

Narayan gives details of his life one after another in a direct and linear way: his childhood in Chennai with a monkey and a peacock as his pets; his college days in Mysore; his choice of career as a writer; his short married life and the death of his wife; his struggles to make both ends meet; his experience as being part of a typical joint family; the challenges he faced in renting houses and building his own home eventually; his interactions with neighbours, relatives and friends; his success as a writer with money and fame; and the happy ending when he sees his grandson’s attempt at a short story on his next door uncle.  

 

Maquez tells us tales of his adventures and misadventures in his signature style of his novels. His life story is dense with details, twists, turns and many labyrinths. His memoirs mesmerizes and surprises the readers. He opens his life boxes randomly and one does not know what will come out of each box. One is filled with anticipation and excitement. Marquez ends his book with this last sentence, “ On Thursday of the following week, when I walked into the hotel in Geneva at the end of another useless day of international disagreemnts, I found her letter of reply”. Later we come to know that the letter was from his childhood sweetheart Mercedes Bachart. He had proposed to her when she was thirteen and she took her time to say yes. They were married when she reached the age of twenty six. 

 

Narayan’s autobiography avoids the larger issues of politics and history. He is apolitical and holds no ideological beliefs or associations. He does not touch issues of the day such as freedom struggle, Mahatma Gandhi, British colonialism, Marxist theories or the world warsof his time. The Malgudians are insular and somewhat disconnected from the issues of the world outside. They do not try anything revolutionary. Nor do they expect any dramatic changes. They are tied deeply to their millennial traditions, horoscope, rituals and practices. 

 

Márquez relates his life to the issues of violence, wars, repressions, revolts, dictatorship, revolutions, exile, politics and history of Colombia, Latin America and the world. He refers to heroes and villains who achieve greatness and face tragic ends. Marquez was a leftist and remained as a personal friend of Fidel Castro, even after many other writers distanced themselves from the Cuban dictatorship which stifled freedom of expression. His anti-imperialist statements were labelled as subversive by US which denied him visa for many years. 

 

Narayan lived his entire life in Chennai-Mysore area except for his travel to US, Australia and UK. He lived in the traditional Indian joint family system of grandparents, parents, brothers and sisters. Although he chooses an unconventional career of writing Indian stories in English, he follows the tradition of his Brahmin caste and works within the framework of south Indian culture in his personal life. He is austere, straightforward and modest in his style of life. He chose an auspicious day (Vijayadashami) to create his imaginary town of Malgudi for his novel. Horoscopes and astrologers played important part in his family life. After his wife dies within a few years of marriage, he refuses to remarry and continues his life as a widower. His daughter is brought up in his joint family. He never set his eyes on other women or sought sex outside. He was a teetotaller. His only sin was smoking.

 

Marquez’s life is colourful and adventurous. He is a typical Latino mujeriego (womaniser), just as his father was. Besides affairs and romances, he was a regular visitor to the brothels. He claims that he was a veteran of two bouts of gonorrhea by the age of twenty three.

 

While Marquez chose a young whore as protagonist for his last novel, Narayan’s last book is about his grand mother. Both the books are considered as autobiographical. The title of Narayan’s last book is “Grandmother’s tale”. One does not have to guess. It is simply the story of his grandmother and what she had told him in his childhood. Marquez’s last novel is “Memories of my melancholy whores (Memoria de mis putas tristes). It is about the romance of a 90 year-old man with a young and almost adolescent whore. But the word ‘whore’ does not appear in Narayan’s autobiography or his novels. Nor is there any descriptions or narrations of sex in his novels. 

 

Here are a few commonalities between the two writers. Both were brought up by their grand parents in their childhood. Both worked as news reporters to earn a living to start with before becoming professional writers. Both had struggled with financial insecurity during the initial phase of their carreer.

 

Coffee was the common stimulant for both. Narayan gulped cups of the steaming hot filter coffee made in traditional Tamil Brahmin way. In South India, you ask for coffee and you get only one kind, coffee and milk premixed with plenty of sugar. But in Colombia, there are many coffees and one has to specify what one wants.  Tinto is sweetened black coffee from leftover beans and the most popular. Perico is Tinto in which half the coffee has been replaced with warm milk. Perico escuro has less milk while Perico claro has more milk. Pintadito is black coffee with milk without foam.  Carajillo will make one tipsy because it has the alcohol of aguardiente/rum. 

 

The Colombians describe the complexion of people through coffee. Whites are milk, blacks are coffee and the mulattos are coffee with milk (café on leche). In some cases there is more milk and in others less. There are a number of Colombians who look like Indians with their coffee with milk complexion. There is a delightful Colombian comedy film “Ambassador of India” (Embajador de la India) in which a crook from the city pretends in a rural part of Colombia as the Indian Ambassador of India and manages to fool the people and take them for a ride. This is based on a true story. The Colombian was able to do it because of his coffee with milk skin colour.  

 

Marquez spent hours together in the cafes filled with the aroma of the famous Arabic coffee of Colombia. Sometimes the coffee had the aroma of women. True.. There is a popular Colombian Television serial called as “Café con aroma de mujer” (Coffee with the scent of a woman), produced in the nineties. It is the story of romance between a coffee plantation worker with the son of the owner of the estate. There is a song in the serial which goes like this 

Dame un beso que me sepa a café

Café y tu lo estas con mi aroma de mujer

 

Give me a kiss that tastes like coffee

Coffee.. you are with the scent of my woman

 

Both the writers have said that their invented towns of Malgudi and Macondo are not so much as places but they are essentially states of the mind, which allow you to see what you want, and how you want to see them. But they have a personal resonance for me.

  

“Malgudi to Macondo: the journey of an innocent Indian through the seductive Latin America” is the title of my book published in 2012. Caution: It is not autobiographical. It is a collection of real life stories of Latin American people, their culture, history, politics and business as well as their encounters with India. 

 

 I was born in a village fifteen km from the nearest town called as Lalgudi in Trichy district of Tamilnadu. Lalgudi rhymes with Malgudi. I had spent the first twenty years of my life in the village. Lalgudi has a railway station like in Malgudi and Macondo. When I travel by train from Chennai to my village, I get down at Lalgudi station. While approaching the station, I always look out for the dense green plantations of bananas on either side of the railway, a scene similar to the Macondo station. 

 

I was like one of the simple Malgudian characters in the stories of Narayan. But when I reached Brazil in 1996, a new world opened. My Latino friends tease me saying that I lost my South Indian innocence in the South American magical realism. The twelve years of my stay in Latin America was full of discoveries, exploration and excitement.

 

The third chapter of my life started since my retirement in 2012 and settling down in a place which I call it as Mallgudi. Malls surround me on all sides with their bluish green glass and grey steel. It is a millennium city of  malls, money and multinational corporations.

It was called as Gurgaon and now changed to Gurugram. Here, Cows walk leisurely between the BMWs speeding on the roads.  Villages can be seen through the glass windows of the Malls. Migrant workers from other states are helpers in the mansions of MNC executives from other countries. Young English-speaking professionals share seats in the metro with Oriya speaking plumbers.  Mustard farms are lurking behind the mighty high walls of the multistory apartment buildings. Amidst the arid Aravalli hills, there are lush green luxury golf courses with blue water ponds. A new kind of magical realism?

 

I am on the lookout for a book whose title will fit the chapter of my Mallgudi life.

 

 

 

Latin America’s exports forecast to decline by 23% and imports by 25% in 2020

Latin America’s exports and imports of goods are estimated to have fallen in value by 17% and 18%, respectively in the first half of 2020, according to the August report of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)

Worsening growth prospects for several of the region’s main markets and uncertainty over how the pandemic will evolve mean that a recovery in regional foreign trade in the second half of the year is unlikely. 

 

So ECLAC projects a 23% contraction in the value of the region’s goods exports in 2020, as a result of declines in both prices (-11%) and volumes (-12%) 

 

The largest contractions in exports in 2020 are expected in those to the United States (-32%) and to the region itself (-28%), while shipments to China are projected to fall by just 4%

 

In keeping with the trend in exports by destination, the sharpest falls in value are projected for mining and oil, and manufacturing shipments. In the case of mining and oil, this is partly a result of a steep drop in prices, while in manufacturing it is mainly because of smaller export volumes. Agricultural and livestock shipments look set to be the most resilient, with a projected increase in value of 2%. 

In 2020, oil prices are projected to fall by 40%, minerals and metals by 6.1% and agroproducts by 5.9%. The only exceptions are: gold whose prices are likely to increase by 14.9% and iron ore by 10.1%.

 

For the value of imports, the expected fall is even larger (-25%). Imports are expected to fall across the board, but the largest contraction will be in fuel purchases, owing to the fall in prices. 

 

As imports are forecast to fall more than exports, the region is expected to record a trade surplus of just over US$ 45 billion in 2020, concentrated in the countries of the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), Chile and Mexico. For the Andean Community, whose members have been hit hard by tumbling oil and mineral prices, a trade deficit of just over US$ 4.5 billion is projected. The Central American and Caribbean countries are expected to see their deficits shrink significantly compared to 2019.

Impact on India

 

India's import bill from Latin America will decrease in 2020 since the prices of three of its main imports from the region namely oil, copper and soy oil will decline by 40%, 12.6% and 7.8% respectively. However, the gold imports bill which were about 4 billion dollars in 2019 would go up since gold prices are predicted to go up by 15.9%.

India's exports are logically expected to go down with the general decline of 25% of the total imports of the region. However, the decrease in exports could be much less than the 25% since the region is expected to increase imports from less expensive sources such as India at this time of austerity.

More in the ECLAC report  https://repositorio.cepal.org/bitstream/handle/11362/45878/1/S2000496_en.pdf