Bolsonaro, Bible, Beef and Bullets

The Brazilians did not elect Jair Bolsonaro as President in 2018 because of his agenda, accomplishments or charisma. The voters wanted to punish the Workers Party (PT) of Lula after the sensationalized Car Wash corruption scandals. Bolsonaro was carried by the high tide of public anger. Anyone who stood against Fernando Haddad, the PT candidate would have won. 

 

Bolsonaro does not have any leadership qualities to speak of.  In February 2017, when he stood as a candidate for president of the lower house, he won just four votes including his own out the assembly’s 513 deputies. Bolsonaro’s incendiary pro-military views put him at odds with many pro-business and pro-market conservatives. His political ideas were regarded as anachronistic and out of tune with the liberal democratic mood of the post-dictatorship era. His pronouncements on sexuality and violence were so inflammatory and outrageous. “I’ve got five kids but on the fifth I had a moment of weakness and it came out as a girl”, he told an audience at the Clube Hebraica in Sao Paulo in April 2017. His vulgar, obscene and abusive language shocked the cultured and educated class.

 

Bolsonaro did not sustain membership of any political party nor did he succeed in creating his own party. He had changed parties seven times. When he announced his Presidential candidature in 2016 he was member of the Social Christian Party. In 2018 he shifted to the Social Liberal Party. He left it in November 2019. His efforts since then to form a new party, the Alliance for Brazil, has not succeeded. 

 

Some overlooked these negatives and voted for Bolsonaro hoping that he might change for the better after becoming President. But he has become worse with even more outrageous behaviour.  While the Brazilians are grieving over the 472,000 covid deaths and suffering from the economic and social impact of the virus, Bolsonaro rides horses, motorcycles and jetskies, smiling, joking and laughing. The death count would have been much less but for his denialism, championing of wrong cures and propaganda against masks, social distancing and vaccines. The world leaders practice social and political distancing from the toxic Bolsonaro, who has driven the country into isolation. 

 

While consistently and constantly doing and saying everything negative, Bolsonaro has no positive achievements or fulfillment of major promises or legislative initiatives to show in his term so far. The only positive thing that has happened was the passing of the pension reforms bill in 2019. But this was done by the Congress in spite of Bolsonaro’s lack of interest and the open opposition of many of his hardline supporters. 

 

Most Brazilians are ashamed when the puzzled foreigners ask how could Brazil elect such an obnoxious character as President. The Brazilians are angry again, outraged more by Bolsonaro’s crimes than the corruption of PT. Going by the logic of anger which defeated PT in the last elections, Bolsonaro should suffer the same fate in the next election in 2022. His role model Trump has been voted out in US. 

 

But even if Bolsonaro loses the 2022 elections, some forces and constituencies which have surfaced or strengthened in this age of Bolsonaro need to be watched out for their long term impact. This is the conclusion of Richard Lapper, former Latin America editor of Financial Times, in his book “Bible, Beef and Bullets: Brazil in the age of Bolsonaro”. 

 

Lapper is an authentic expert on Latin America and Brazil. He had worked as a journalist in Central America in the early eighties. He has a personal and emotional relationship with Brazil, being married to a Brazilian from Salvador. He had lived in Sao Paulo from 2002 to 2008. With this background, Lapper has given comprehensive back ground information and objective analysis of the rise of of Bolsonaro and the conservative constituencies.

 

Lapper characterises Bolsonaro as part of a broader populist phenomenon with makings of a fascist. He sees him as an extreme right-wing populist, as someone similar to leaders such as Donald Trump, Viktor Orban, the Hungarian president, or Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippine leader.

 

According to Lapper, three developments have come together to activate the dormant genes of Brazilian right wing forces , coinciding with the rise of Bolsonaro. First, the country’s recession between 2014 and 2016 was the worst in its modern history until hit by covid even harder. Second was the Car Wash corruption scandal which tarnished the image of all the established political parties and discredited the major corporations. The third was  the increase in violent crime, which became the subject of obsessive interest in the press and on social media. 

 

Bolsonaro’s presidential candidature got traction with the rise of a broad conservative alliance of people who had been unhappy about Brazil’s drift towards the socially liberal left. The alliance had already existed in the Congress in the form of the Bible, Bullet and Beef lobbies. These have latched on to Bolsonaro, the first President, who share their views even more enthusiastically. No mainstream politician would dare to be openly associated with their agenda, let alone promote their interests as Bolsonaro does.

 

The Bible lobby represents the growing power of the evangelicals. An estimated 30 per cent of Brazilians were evangelical Protestants in 2020, up from only about 6 per cent in 1980. They are against abortion, liberal education, same-sex marriage and other such socially progressive proposals. Bolsonaro’s noise on these issues resonate with the Evangelicals. Many of the Evangelical pastors have become millionaires and Edir Macedo, the founder of Universal Church is a billionaire. They wield power in the media and Congress. They advise their flocks to whom to vote for. Besides implementation of their obscurantist proposals, they seek a share in political power.  Edir Macedo’s nephew Marcelo Crivella became a minister in Rousseff government. Macedo supported Bolsonaro since his church had issues with Fernando Haddad, the PT candidate.

 

The Beef lobby includes ruralistas, ranchers, loggers and large land owners who want more freedom to exploit the lands in Amazon and in the reservations of indigenous people. Their Congressional caucus has been steadily increasing its strength. It had 192 deputies and 11 senators after the 2010 election in which Rousseff took office. Four years later the lobby increased its weight with 228 deputies and 27 senators. And by 2018 it went up to 243 deputies and 37 senators.

 

The Bullet lobby consist of police and military officers, both serving and retired as well as their sympathisers which include Bolsonaro. Twenty years earlier, there had been barely any police officers in Brazil’s Congress, but in 2018 more than three dozen won seats. The Bullet lobby is financed by the gun companies who want to increase their sales.  Former police and military officers dominate or run the militias in the violence ridden parts of the cities. These are a kind of self-defence forces claiming to provide protection to the communities against drug gangs and criminal elements. They doo racketeering, extortion and even drug trafficking. They collect illegal monthly taxes from residents and business owners for the protection service. They have monopoly of sales and distribution of gas and other items at higher rates than the market prices. The residents have no option but to buy only the militia’s products and services. These militias commit crimes and murders with impunity since they have made the security forces as accomplices by sharing their collection. The militias have the support of the security forces. They control the voting blocs too.  The Bolsonaro family have longstanding deep connection to the militias in Rio de Janeiro. Besides  protecting and patronizing the militias, the Bolsonaros praise them in public and have even taken initiatives to shower public rewards to them.

 

Besides helping these three constituencies to become stronger and more powerful, Bolsonaro has added a new constituency in the politics of the country. He has co-opted the military in government at various levels with several hundreds of both serving and retired officers. His cabinet includes several officers of the armed forces. He has let the military officers to taste power which they had enjoyed during the time of military dictatorships. 

 

Bolsonaro, the former army captain, has not only militarized the government but has also politicised the armed forces. Chavez had done the same in Venezuela with tragic results. General Eduaro Pazuello appeared in a political rally with Bolsonaro, violating the army conduct rules. Bolsonaro prevailed on the army high command against taking disciplinary action against him. The General was till recently the Health Minister, in which capacity he bungled the covid management by blindly obeying the disastrous line of Bolsonaro. 

 

Bolsonaro has always been proud of the military dictatorship and the killings and tortures of leftists openly and unapologetically. He has never hidden his contempt for democracy. During his visit to Chile, he praised Pinochet dictatorship, causing embarrassment to his Chilean hosts. “Elections won’t change anything in this country”, an angry Bolsonaro told an interviewer on the programme Câmara Aberta, broadcast by TV Band in 1999. “It will only change on the day that we break out in civil war here and do the job that the military regime didn’t do, killing 30,000 people. If we kill some innocent people that’s fine because in every war innocent people die.” Shouting at the interviewer, an intemperate Bolsonaro said that if he became president he would dissolve Congress on his first day in office. 

 

The release of Lula from jail and his announcement of Presidential candidate has given hope for the optimists. Lula is leading in the opinion polls ahead of Bolsonaro. However, one should watch out for the voters from the Bible, Beef and Bullet constituencies, who have received unconditional and proactive support from Bolsonaro. No President has ever done so much to protect and promote their agenda. Even if Bolsonaro becomes a one-term nightmare, those constituencies would continue to be a force demanding share in power and narrowing the space for liberal and progressive political leaders in the coming years. The mainstream candidates including Lula have to make compromises to get the votes of the Bible, Beef and Bullet constituencies. 

 

If he loses the 2022 elections, Bolsonaro might try a drama similar to the one staged by Trump and might even try a coup. The Brazilian military might not bring out the tanks for him in this new era of democracy in Latin America. But Bolsonaro and his crazy extremist supporters, with blind belief in bullets, might not give up power easily. 

 

India’s trade with Latin America in 2020

India’s exports to Latin America decreased marginally by eight percent to 12.14 billion dollars in 2020 (January to December) from 13.2 billion dollars in 2019, according to the just-released trade figures of ITC Geneva. 
 
Venezuela has surprised with a spectacular increase. Exports to Venezuela have gone up from 241 million dollars in 2019 to 758 m in 2020. In fact, the annual exports were in double digits around 75 m in the years 2016 to 2018. The reason for the increase is diesel exports which accounted for 662 m.
 
Exports to Argentina have gone up from 634 m to 739 m in 2020.
 
Exports to three more countries have increased marginally: Guatemala from 290 to 299 m, Paraguay from 136 to 149 m and Nicaragua from 65 m to 73 m.
 
The top destination of India’s exports were as follows:
Brazil  3.68 billion dollars,  Mexico 3.05 bn, Colombia 830 million, Venezuela 758 m,  Argentina 739 m, Chile 738 m and Peru 701 m.

 

Major exports were: vehicles 2.54 bn, chemicals 2.32 bn, equipments and machinery 1.29 bn, pharmaceuticals 1.13 bn, diesel 1.1 bn, textiles 355 m and iron and steel products 546 m
 
Pharmaceutical exports crossed the billion dollar mark with 1.13 billion dollars in 2020 from 967 m in 2019. India is the fifth largest global supplier to the region. Main destination of pharma exports were: Brazil 321 m, Peru 125 m, Chile 111 m, Mexico 100 m, Colombia 68 m, Venezuela 55 m, Guatemala 45 m and Dominican Republic 46 m.
 
Imports have declined sharply to 16.7 bn dollars in 2020 from 21.4 bn in 2019. The fall in imports of crude oil and copper was the main reason for the decline in imports.
 
Principal sources of imports were: Brazil 3.19 bn, Mexico 3.06 bn, Argentina 2.62 bn, Venezuela 2.34 bn, Peru 1.38 bn, Colombia 1.16 bn, Bolivia 1.02 bn and Chile 853 m. 
 
For the first time, Bolivia has joined the billion dollar club of Latin American exporters to India.
 
Main item of imports: crude oil 6.92 billion dollars, gold 3.57 bn, vegetable oil 2.5 bn, copper 631 m, raw sugar 631 m, equipments and machinery 517 m, wood 293 m and chemicals 283 m
 
The crude oil suppliers were: Venezuela 2.3 bn, Mexico 2.2 bn, Brazil 1.18 bn, Colombia 694 m and Ecuador 239 m. 
 
The major sources of gold were: Peru 1.33 bn, Bolivia 1.01 bn, Colombia 378 m, Argentina 259 m, Brazil 247 m and Dominican Republic 154 m. 
 
As usual, Argentina was the most dominant supplier of vegetable oil with 2.23 bn. The other supplier was Paraguay with 271 m.
 
Chile was the main source of copper with 580 m. The copper imports of India have drastically declined by fifty percent from its peak.
 
India continues to import raw sugar from Brazil, refine and reexport it to other countries.
India was the 8th largest destination for Latin America's global exports in 2020. 

The region which had a historic GDP contraction of 7.7% in 2020 is forecast to rebound with a growth of 3.7% in 2021. 

The region's external trade declined by 8.6% in 2020. Latin America's imports were 904 billion dollars (down from 1006 bn in 2019) and exports 935 bn in 2020, declining from 1007 bn in 2019. 

India’s total trade with Latin America has come down by 17% to 28.8 billion dollars in 2020 from 35 bn in 2019.

The Latin America-US trade had also declined by 14% in 2020.

However, China's trade with the region held steady at 315 billion dollars, the same figure as that of 219. China's exports had gone down to 150 billion from 151 bn while the imports had gone up from 164 bn to 165 bn. 

Neoliberalism started in Chile and it is being buried now: Allende should be smiling.

Salvador Allende, the socialist President of Chile from 1970 to 1973 gave priority to fight against poverty and inequality. General Pinochet, in collusion with local oligarchs and the US government, overthrew Allende in a bloody coup. Besides  bombing the Presidential palace with airforce, Pinochet followed up with systematic killing and disappearance of thousands of leftists, student and trade union leaders and liberal intellectuals. In 1980, he imposed a neoliberal constitution which promoted and protected capitalism and privatized education, healthcare, water rights, utilities and pensions. This helped the private market to grow its profit freely while depriving poor and lower middle class access to education and healthcare. After the restoration of democracy in 1990, some amendments were made to the constitution. The socialist governments tried major amendments but they were blocked by the right wing coalition. The trade unions, students and the marginalised population took to the streets from time to time against social injustice. These were contained with the heavy hand of security forces. But when the conservative government of billionaire President Pinera increased the cost of metro tickets by 30 pesos in October 2019, it became the tipping point. The protestors escalated the violence and paralysed daily life. Driven to the wall, the Pinera government sat with the protest leaders and agreed to their demand for a new constitution, among other things. 

The result of elections held on 15-16 May for the 115 membership of the new constituent assembly is like a political earthquake. As someone put it aptly, “ the social uprising in Chile is "not about 30 pesos, it's about 30 years." The voters have punished the two coalitions, both rightist and leftist, which have ruled the country for the last 30 years. Independent candidates have secured 48 seats, the left 28, the centre-left 25, and the right-wing coalition 37. The independents are mostly those who lead the  protests. Many of them are left-wing community organizers and activists of traditional left-wing causes, including environmentalists, feminists, public housing advocates and community organizers. 

 

The remaining 17 seats go to the indigenous people of Chile, whose existence or rights were simply ignored by the Pinochet constitution, one of the only constitutions in Latin America that doesn’t acknowledge Indigenous people. The indigenous constitute 13% of the population. This is the first time ever the indigenous have been recognized and given guaranteed representation.

 

The new constitutional body is the first in the world to stipulate a roughly equal number of male and female delegates. A total of 699 women and 674 men stood in the elections.  The women have got 77 seats and the men 78. The gender parity idea was opposed by right wing parties but it was overruled by the Congress.  

The sound defeat of the right wing, reduced to just 37 seats mean that they cannot block the proposals passed by two third majority. The 20% of the vote got by  President Pinera’s ruling “Chile Vamos” coalition is its worst electoral performance since democracy was restored in 1990.

Along with this election, there were also simultaneous elections for 16 regional governors, 345 mayors and 2,240 municipal councilors for the period 2021-2025. Although the final results of these elections will not be known until the end of the week, the preliminary results indicate a similar blow to the governing coalition, which lost important mayors offices and regional governments. Meanwhile, the left-wing parties retained their municipalities and gained several others across the country, including in the capital Santiago. The communists doubled their mayoralties to six. The most significant victory was that of Irací Hassler in the symbolically significant commune of Santiago Centro, in the capital. She defeated the current right-wing mayor, Felipe Alessandri.

Both the leftist and rightist coalitions which have ruled Chile in the last three decades have acknowledged their defeat. President Pinera said, “the citizens have sent a clear and strong message to the government and also to all traditional political forces. We are not adequately tuning in with the demands and desires of the citizens. We are being challenged by new expressions and leadership. It is our duty to listen with humility and attention to the message of the people. It is a great opportunity for Chileans to build a more fair, inclusive, prosperous and sustainable country”.

The Chilean neoliberal experiment, protests and end of neoliberalism should be a lesson for Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and other countries in Latin America which have seen such protests against inequality. The Chileans have shown how the social disparity could be tackled democratically and relatively peacefully without too much bloodshed

 

The new constituent assembly will draft a constitution within twelve months. Because the convention will have a veto-proof left-wing majority, the new constitution will likely include many of the long lists of social rights that those candidates campaigned on, including the right to housing, education, health and, most importantly, a public pension system to replace the private saving accounts. Greg Grandin, a world-renowned historian of Latin America, tweeted, "Allende is smiling. Neoliberalism started in Chile. It will end in Chile”.

  

Frida Kahlo: pain and painting

Frida Kahlo took to painting to distract her mind from the acute pain she suffered after a terrible accident at the age of eighteen on September 17, 1925. The bus that took her home from school was rammed by a streetcar in Mexico City. She was literally impaled on a metal bar in the wreckage; her spine was fractured, collarbone broken, her pelvis crushed, her abdomen and uterus punctured, shoulders dislocated and leg crushed. Her scream was said to have been louder than the siren of the ambulance which took her to the hospital. Frida’s condition was so grave that the doctors did not think they could save her. They thought she would die on the operating table.

 
It was a miracle that she was saved after surgeries and treatment for two years. After the accident, she had to wear a special corset made of metal or plastic to keep her spine straight. She had to wear special shoes to adjust for the deformed leg. The wounds within her deteriorated from time to time causing infections and requiring further surgeries. In her life of forty seven years, Frida had undergone at least thirty-two surgical operations and amputation of toes and one of her legs. 
 
Her life from the day of the accident until her death, twenty-nine years later, was filled with constant pain and threat of illness. It was a grueling battle against slow decay and continuous feeling of fatigue. Pain killers became part of her daily diet. Towards the end of her life, she was drinking two litres of cognac a day to drown her pain, besides taking morphine. She wanted to be a mother but her attempts ended in miscarriages and abortions since her damaged body could not hold the baby.  
 
When she was bedridden after the accident, her father gave her brush and paint and a special easel which was attached to her bed. Since the plaster cast did not allow her to sit up, she had to paint while lying down. She wrote, “ I began to paint during convalescence from an automobile accident that forced me to stay in bed for almost a year. During all these years I have worked with the spontaneous impulse of my feeling. I have never followed any school or anyone’s influence, I have not expected to get from my work more than the satisfaction of the fact of painting itself and of saying what I could not say in any other way. Since my subjects have always been my sensations, my states of mind and the profound reactions that life has been producing in me, I have frequently objectified all this in figures of myself, which were the most sincere and real thing that I could do in order to express what I felt inside and outside of myself”.
 
“I was not permitted to fulfill the desires which the whole world considers normal, and nothing seemed more natural than to paint what had not been fulfilled. My paintings are the most frank expression of myself, without taking into consideration either judgments or prejudices of anyone”.
 
Three concerns impelled her to make art, she told a critic in 1944: her vivid memory of her own blood flowing during her childhood accident; her thoughts about birth, death, and the “conducting threads” of life; and her desire to be a mother.
 
Frida poured out her suffering and transmuted her pain in paintings which became her biography. “I paint myself because I am so often alone,” Frida said, “because I am the subject I know best.” Dramatization of pain became her central theme in paintings. She became her own model. She spent long hours scrutinizing her reflection in the mirror and reproducing that reflection.
 
Frida had made some two hundred paintings, mostly self- portraits. Exhibition of her paintings were held in New York and Paris besides Mexico City. Louvre had acquired one of her paintings. Her works have been declared as  part of  national cultural heritage by the Mexican government.
 
Frida had a remarkable mental strength with which she overcame her chronic suffering and tried to live a full life. She hid her grief with outward cheerfulness and loud laughter. She refused to be confined by the dictates of the bodily pains and handicaps. Even when she was very sick and when doctors had prohibited her moving out of the bed, she went in an ambulance to the gallery hosting exhibition of her paintings in Mexico city. She was carried on a stretcher from the ambulance to the special medical bed installed in the gallery. Lying down in a colourfully decorated bed, she interacted with guests and joined the party singing and celebrating. During another period of illness, she went in a wheel chair to participate in a political protest in Mexico city. 
  
She married the famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera in 1929. She was 22 and Rivera was 43, twice married and divorced.  She was petite (5’3”), light (44 kilos in weight) and pretty while he was a huge man over six feet in height, 130 kilos in weight and was somewhat ugly and monstrous in appearance. She used to do paintings in small canvasses while he used to paint large murals on walls standing on scaffolds. It was like a classic case of beauty and beast. It was she who took the first step of reaching out and seducing him. She went to the site where he was doing mural work and asked him for his assessment of her painting. She told him openly that she knew his reputation as a womanizer and asked for an objective view. He was taken aback but liked her instantly for her courage, boldness and artistic talent.  But after the marriage, Rivera continued many affairs despite Frida’s fierce fights. He had affairs even with her own sister. Frida hit back and took revenge on Rivera by paying him back in his own coin. She started having a number of lovers including his friends both men and women. Her famous affair was with Trotsky, the Russian communist leader who took asylum in Mexico city to escape Stalin’s persecution. Frida and Rivera ended their marriage with divorce in 1939. But they remarried in 1940. Despite his irrepressible infidelity, Rivera loved and cared for Frida. He admired her independent spirit and courage. Her candor disarmed him. Her odd mixture of freshness and unmasked sexuality tempted him. Her spunk and mischief appealed to his own boyish prankishness. On her part, Frida had loved him and taken care of Rivera in a motherly way forgiving his sins. 


Frida wore colourful costumes and jewelry drawing inspiration from the native Mexican cultures. She dressed in flamboyant clothes and accessories causing a sensation wherever she went. With her Mexican dress, she stood out from her compatriots who were copying European fashion. The extravagant dress was also a clever way to hide and distract attention away from her scars and her handicaps. Ribbons, flowers, jewels, and sashes became more and more colorful and elaborate as her health declined.
 
Frida’s vocabulary was equally colourful both in speaking and writing. She used the choicest abusive words and liked to shock the cultured and refined elite. She loved to use foul language—words like pendejo (which, politely translated, means idiotic person) and hijo de su chingada madre (son of a bitch). She enjoyed the effect on her audience, an effect enhanced by the fact that the gutter vocabulary issued from such a feminine-looking creature, one who held her head high on her long neck as nobly as a queen. In her letters she calls Paris as Pinchissimo (most vile) Paris. She says, “ I rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas, than to have any thing to do with those “artistic” bitches of Paris. They sit for hours on the “cafes” warming their precious behinds, and talk without stopping about “culture” “art” “revolution” and so on and so forth, thinking themselves the gods of the world, dreaming the most fantastic nonsenses, and poisoning the air with theories and theories that never come true. Next morning—they don’t have any thing to eat in their houses because none of them work and they live as parasites of the bunch of rich bitches who admire their “genius” of “artists.” shit and only shit is what they are”.
  
Frida died at the age of forty seven in 1954. Her legend lives on as an admirable icon of extraordinary strength, courage and resilience. Frida’s life story has inspired books, movies, plays and ballets.
 
The art and life of Frida have been portrayed elaborately and sensitively by Hayden Herrera in the book “ Frida: A biography of Frida Kahlo” published in 2018. Herrera, an American art historian and biographer has brought out ‘the extraordinary qualities that marked Kahlo as a person and as a painter: her gallantry and indomitable alegría (joy) in the face of physical suffering; her insistence on surprise and specificity; her peculiar love of spectacle as a mask to preserve privacy and personal dignity’.
 
The colourful Frida wore Indian saree too, one day in the summer of 1947. Nayantara Sahgal and Rita Dar, the two daughters of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (who was later ambassador to Mexico in 1950-51), visited Frida in her house called as La Casa Azul (Blue House) during their vacation in Mexico City. They dressed her up in a saree and she loved it. She gifted them her autographed photos. 

 
Some Indians describe Amrita Sher-Gil as the “Frida of India”, based on some similarities between their works. But this comparison does not do justice to either of the artists since the contrasts and differences in their lives are enormous as against a few common themes in their paintings. 
 
 

Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar

" Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar" is a book by Virginia Vallejo, a Colombian journalist and TV anchor who had a romantic relationship with Pablo Escobar, the notorious narco lord of Medellin.

She fell in love with him while attending a party in his ranch Hacienda Napoles in 1982. Later in 1983 she interviewed him to showcase Escobar’s project to provide houses to the poor as part of his plan to become popular and enter politics. She was the first journalist to interview him on TV. He got elected to the Congress but was hounded and expelled on the charge that he had made his money in narcotrafficking and his involvement in several murder cases. 
 
Virginia continued her romance with Escobar for five years till 1987. She was thrilled to be picked up by Escobar’s private Pegasus jet from Bogota to Medellin. They used to meet in hotels and sometimes even in her apartment in Bogota. Later when he was on the run, he met her in secret locations. He showered her with gifts and financed her shopping trips to New York, Paris, Miami and Milan. She and he pretended to be like Bonnie and Clyde and sometimes as Libertador ( Simon Bolivar) and Libertadora del Libertador (Manuelita Saenz). She proclaimed to him repeatedly that she loved him as she had never loved another. She has reproduced many of her conversations with Escobar. Some of these are personal and romantic while many are about Colombian politics, corruption, drug trafficking, guerrillas and inside story of famous events such as the bombing of the Supreme Court and assassination of Luis Galan, a presidential candidate. She had supported Escobar’s campaign against extradition of Colombian drug traffickers to US. She had recited Neruda’s love poems to Escobar and shared her knowledge and wisdom with him. He tried to impress her with stories of his exploits, adventures and power. It was a mutual win-win for the partners who made use of each other.

 
He shared some of his trade secrets including how he and his fellow drug traffickers financed politicians. For him, the beautiful, educated and intelligent socialite TV personality was a trophy and free publicity. Virginia used her Escobar connection to advance her own career with the knowledge and contacts she had gathered through Escobar. She carried messages and sometimes money from Escobar. She even tried to mediate in the dangerous rivalry between the Cali and Medellin Cartels. 
 
Virginia was already married and divorced twice before she met Escobar. She had affairs with many rich men, about which she boasts openly, “ I had met my first version of “the richest man in Colombia” in 1972 at the presidential palace; I was twenty-two, and he was forty-eight and divorced. Days earlier, my first lover had told me he was the second-richest man in Colombia. For the next twelve years of my life, my boyfriend or secret lover would always be whoever occupied the throne of Colombia’s richest man”.

 
When the Colombian and US governments as well the Cali Cartel went after Escobar, he retaliated with bomb attacks and assassinations. During this time Virginia started courting other men including a German Count. She even flirted with Escobar’s mortal enemy and rival from the Cali cartel. Escobar became jealous and started troubling Virginia. She was scared of Escobar and his henchmen who tapped her phones and monitored her movements. That’s when she started hating him. He was killed by the security forces in December 1993. In 2006, she turned an informant for US FBI which took her to Miami for deposition in some drug and criminal cases. The US government gave her political asylum in 2010 and she is settled in Miami since then. 
 
Virginia Vallejo’s book “ Amando a Pablo, Odiando a Escobar” ( Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar", published in 2006, became a best seller. A film “ Loving Pablo ” with Penelope Cruz acting as Vallejo was made in 2017. There are also a number of other movies and soap operas based on the romantic relationship between Vallejo and Escobar.  
 
Vallejo’s book gives an insight into Colombian politics, drug trafficking, guerrillas and corruption from the view point of a smart, beautiful and ambitious woman who took advantage and tried to get the best out of all that she has exposed. She had no scruples or conscience in making use of men and their money for her own ends with her belief, "when women’s bodies pass through men’s hands, it is the men’s heads that pass through women’s hands". She was prepared for all the surprises of the underworld of drugs and crime, singing Rubén Blade’s Salsa, “la vida te da sorpresas y sorpresas te da la vida” (Life gives you surprises, and surprises give you life).

 

The success story of the musical revolution of El Sistema is a lesson for the Bolivarian revolution of Venezuela

Gustavo Dudamel,  the Venezuelan conductor, has been appointed as music director of the Paris Opera this week. He will continue his current job as musical director  of the prestigious Los Angeles Philharmonic which hired him in 2009 when he was 28 years-old. He is also the music director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. He has conducted  the Vienna State Opera in 2016 and the New York Met in 2018. He has become one of the most famous and sought-after conductors and an iconic brand in the world of classical music. He is a rare classical artist to have crossed into pop-culture celebrity as a superstar conductor. He has won a Grammy award, among other honours and awards. He has appeared in Superbowl half time with the pop band “Coldplay”. He has invigorated the sometimes staid world of classical music with his refreshing youthful vibrancy and electric performances.  

Dudamel is the star product of El Sistema, the unique classical music educational programme, National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Venezuela, known popularly as El Sistema. 

Dudamel was born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela in 1981. His parents were both musicians. His father played trombone in a salsa band, and his mother gave singing lessons. Dudamel, a child prodigy, was enrolled in the El Sistema at the age of five. Although the boy wanted to play the trombone like his father, his arms were too short and so he took up violin. He studied music composition and conducting. He took to mock conducting of music at the age of 11. He was assistant conductor of Barqusimito Youth Orchestra at the age of 13. He was spotted and mentored by José Antonio Abreu, the founder of El Sistema. Abreu, who also grew up in Barquisimeto, took Dudamel under his wing and focused in making a conductor of him. Dudamel toured the world with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, a group of the best musicians in all of El Sistema. At the age of eighteen, he was appointed as Director of Simon Bolivar Orchestra of Venezuela. He became famous after winning a competition in Germany in 2004. As his fame spread, he was invited to conduct in Germany, Italy and Austria. 

El Sistema was founded in 1975 by Venezuelan conductor and educator José Antonio Abreu. He had studied economics as well as music, and served in the Venezuelan congress briefly. He had a vision to take the elite classical music to the poor children. Besides giving access to high culture to the underprivileged he believed that collective work through orchestras would inspire a social transformation in the community especially in the slum areas. He was convinced that classical music would occupy young people with music study and instill values that can come from playing in ensembles: a sense of community, commitment and self-worth. This is especially important for children in slums exposed to criminal gangs, drug trafficking and violence. 

Abreu started a new youth orchestra and held the first meeting of the orchestra in a parking garage with few teenagers. Within a year, he had built an ensemble, and took it to a festival in Scotland and won critical praise for his work. After the success of the programme in Caracas, he opened centres (nucleos) all over the country. In 1995, Abreu was appointed Special Ambassador for the Development of a Global Network of Youth and Children Orchestras and Choirs by UNESCO. Sir Simon Rattle, director of the Berlin Philharmonic said in a statement in 2011,  "What Abreu and El Sistema have done is to bring hope, through music, to hundreds of thousands of lives that would otherwise have been lost to drugs and violence." El Sistema has proved to be a programme of social rescue and cultural transformation for thousands of children from poor neighbourhoods in the country".

 

Abreu persuaded successive governments (both conservative and leftist) to finance El Sistema. President Chavez saw it fitting with his Bolivarian Revolution and 21^st Century Socialism and extended generous financial support. “Revolutionary Venezuela is aware of the infinite value of music as a bastion in the fight for equality and happiness,”  Chávez wrote in a 2011 letter to Mr. Abreu. Private foundations stepped in with donations. The Inter American Development Bank extended grants and credit for building of regional centres of El Sistema in Venezuela. The Bank has praised the program after studying its impact through an interdisciplinary group. According to the study El Sistema has helped the children improve their capacity to control their attention, behavior and emotions besides showing lesser aggression and improvement in relations with peers. 

 

El Sistema provides free classical music training during after-school hours in the afternoons. It organizes orchestras with children and teenagers (between the ages of 2 and 18) many of whom are from poor families. The system provides musical instruments. Talented and interested adolescent students are trained to become teachers and encouraged to open new centres. The most remarkable feature of the system is its instant immersion. The children begin playing in ensembles from the moment they pick up their instruments. They enjoy the novelty of playing instruments they cannot afford to buy and feel spiritual uplift from the soothing classical music in their  neighborhood filled with the noise of gunshots and screams. The parents and neighbors of the kids in El Sistema, who cannot imagine going to the theaters for classical music performances, are fascinated by the opportunity of exposure to the high culture within their community. They are proud of the performance and achievements of the students of El Sistema.

Dudamel conducting the orchestra in a poor neighbourhood in Caracas

 

El Sistema has trained over a million students. It operates 442 centres and 1722 orchestras with more than 5000 music teachers. The students, depending on talent and ambition, advance to statewide orchestras, with the younger ones in children’s orchestras and those in their late teens and 20s in youth orchestras. The best are selected to join the national Bolívar Youth Orchestra. Some alumni of El Sistema have gone on to distinguished careers in famous orchestras around the world.

 

El Sistema has inspired a number of similar projects in two dozen countries including US, UK, Canada, Spain, Bolivia, Philippines and South Korea. There are nearly 200 Sistema-inspired programs in the United States. El Sistema USA was founded in 2009. There are books, documentaries and academic studies about the El Sistema programme. Here is a link to one of the documentaries made in 2010 “Dudamel: Let the children play” https://www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/play/52739/Dudamel--Let-the-Children-Play

 

Dudamel attributes his success to ‘El Sistema’ and misses no opportunity to express his gratitude to his mentor Abreu, who passed away in 2018. "He (Abreu) created this beautiful and huge program that is unique," Dudamel said. "We are his sons, we have his blood in our veins, and it's not just about music, it's about building the society and creating better citizens." Dudamel carries on his mentor’s torch by continuing to work with youth orchestras around the world encouraging and inspiring the young. In Los Angeles, Dudamel has contributed to the development of Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA), created by the Los Angeles Philharmonic after hiring him.

 

As a Venezuelan celebrity in the global stage, Dudamel could not avoid raising his voice about the political crisis in Venezuela. He issued a statement after an 18-year-old El Sistema-trained viola player, Armando Canizales was killed during a street protest in 2017. He said,” I raise my voice against violence and any form of repression. Nothing justifies bloodshed. We must stop ignoring the just cry of the people suffocated by an intolerable crisis. I urgently call on the President of the Republic and the national government to rectify and listen to the voice of the Venezuelan people.”

 

He followed up his statement with an Oped in New York Times on 19 July 2017 saying, “ In the past, I have fought the urge to enter the political discourse, believing that it was not my role. I am not looking to take sides; I am willing to take a stand. My country is living through dark and complicated times, following a dangerous path that may lead us inevitably to the betrayal of our deepest national traditions. Venezuelans are desperate for the recognition of their equal and inalienable rights and to have their basic needs met”.

 

Predictably, the Maduro government was upset and  cancelled Dudamels’ planned international tour with the Simon Bolivar Orchestra in 2017. President Maduro mocked Mr. Dudamel in a televised appearance saying,  “Welcome to politics, Gustavo Dudamel. But act with ethics, and don’t let yourself be deceived into attacking the architects of this beautiful movement of young boys and girls.”

 

But the government has let Dudamel continue to hold the post of music director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. While he has not been able to perform with the orchestra since then, he still works with it remotely and has sometimes met members of the group outside Venezuela. During the pandemic he has had sessions with them over Zoom. Dudamel has now become a Spanish citizen after his second marriage with a Spanish actress Maria Velarde. His first wife Eloisa Maturen is a Venezuelan actress and journalist.

 

Dudamel believes firmly in the El Sistema philosophy about the role of music in social transformation especially for young people from the poor communities. He has created the Gustavo Dudamel Foundation with the goal “to expand access to music and the arts by providing tools and opportunities for young people to shape their creative futures.”

 

The Bolivarian Revolution of Chavez is stuck in a systemic crisis at this moment with political, economic and humanitarian problems. But the musical revolution of El Sistema has been a spectacular success story.  Venezuela will become a better country if the politicians of the country learn from El Sistema and play harmoniously like members of the Simon Bolivar Orchestra directed by Dudamel. They should listen to Dudamel’s words, “As a conductor, I have learned that our society, like an orchestra, is formed by a large number of people, all of them different and unique, each with his or her own ideas, personal convictions and visions of the world. This wonderful diversity means that in politics, as in music, no absolute truths exist”.  .

Democracy is the winner in the Ecuador elections

Guillermo Lasso, the centre-right candidate has been elected as President of Ecuador in the second round of elections held on 11 April. He had contested the elections in the 2013 and 2017 elections and had come second. He is a banker and is pro-business in his approach. But he is moderate, sensible and pragmatic and not an extremist like Bolsonaro. 

Lasso got 53% votes as against his opponent Andres Arauz from the Left who got 47% votes.  
In the first round of elections held in February, Arauz was the leader with 32.72% votes while Lasso was second with 19.74%, marginally beating Yaku Perez, the indigenous and environmental activist who had got 19.39%.
 
If Arauz had won, Rafael Correa, the former two-term President from 2007 to 2017,would have been back in Ecuadorian politics and restarted his polarizing and personal vendetta policies against his opponents. Correa has been indicted for corruption and would face jail on entry into the country. He lives in Belgium, the country of his wife. President Correa had done a remarkable job of poverty alleviation, reduction of inequality and socioeconomic development. But he was too much authoritarian, polarising and confrontational against opposition parties, media, US and the West. When his chosen successor President Lenin Moreno turned against him, Correa had carried a vicious campaign against him. So the election was seen as a fight between pro and anti Correa forces.
 
Lasso’s coalition has won 31 seats (of which his own party CREO got just 12) in the unicameral Congress of 137 members. The leftist coalition (Union for Hope) of Arauz have got 48 seats.  Pachakutik party of Yaku Perez has got 27 seats, the second largest group in the Congress.  Lasso needs the cooperation of the leftist opposition parties which have the majority in the Congress, for passing his legislative bills. 
 
President Lasso will face the immediate challenge of dealing with the acute public health and economic crisis caused by covid. He will also have to deal with the huge burden of debt owed to China and IMF. Income from oil exports, the main foreign exchange earner for the country has come down due to weak prices and demand. 

It is interesting to note that Ecuador's economy remains dollarised since 2000. After the severe economic crisis of 2000, the country abandoned its national currency 'Sucre' to deal with hyper inflation, fall in exchange rate and capital outflow. Even the extreme leftist anti-US Correa did not try to change the system of using US dollars as the national currency. This means that Ecuador does not print its own bank notes. Panama and El Salvador are the other two Latin American countries which are also dollarised. 

 
Both Arauz and his patron Correa, have gracefully accepted the verdict despite the small margin (400,000 votes) of the victor. They did not ask for recount or alleged fraud despite the fact that Lasso himself had refused to accept the 2017 election results with accusations of fraud. He had called on his supporters to protest. But Arauz and Correa showed magnanimity by congratulating the winner and promising to play the role of a constructive opposition. The peaceful holding of the elections, the non-controversial transfer of power, the absence of gun-totting thugs and extremist rhetoric during the campaign and the prompt acceptance of the verdict by losers  are a reflection of the strength and maturity of democracy in Ecuador and Latin America, in general.
 
The peaceful and civilised democratic transfer of power in Ecuador should be a lesson to the so-called global champions of democracy who preach from the top of the Capitol Hill which saw ugly undemocratic horrors earlier this year. 

The Ecuador example becomes more important and timely in the context of the poisonous Bolsonaro who threatens to unleash his armed thugs if he is not reelected in the elections in 2022. 
 
Although Ecuador is a small country with a population of 18 million, India has a substantial trade which was 614 million dollars last year. India exported more (253 million dollars) to Ecuador than to neighbouring countries such as Cambodia (188 million) and Kazhakstan (202 m) which have the same population as that of Ecuador. India has been sourcing crude oil from Ecuador regularly. The Ecuadorian government has shown keen interest in strengthening bilateral relations and have sent a number of high level delegations to India. Given the growing economic relations, it would be in India’s interest open an embassy in Quito as soon as possible. 
 
 

“Neruda: the biography of a poet” by Mark Eisner

Pablo Neruda from Chile was one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century in Spanish language. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1971.  

Mark Eisner, the biographer, had spent two decades working on projects related to Neruda. He has translated Neruda’s poems in English, written articles and books and produced a documentary on the poet. With this background and confessing that ‘his life was saturated by Neruda’s poetry’  Eisner has brought alive the remarkable life story of Neruda.

Neruda was a ‘people’s poet’ appealing to ordinary people such as workers and miners, besides intellectuals. He read his poems in election campaigns, factory visits and to masses in sports stadiums. His love poems are quoted by lovers in Latin America even now. His anti-fascist poems were read in the front lines of the Republican fighters during the Spanish civil war. In ‘Canto General’, Neruda constructed himself as the poet of the Americas.

 

He wrote his first poem at the age of eleven. At the age of twenty, he became famous after the publication of “Twenty Love Poems and a Desperate Song” which would go on to become one of the most popular books of poetry in the world. By 1972, two million copies had been sold in Spanish alone, with far more sold in translation. More than ten million copies are estimated to have been sold worldwide. 

 

Neruda had an adventurous and colourful life as a bohemian, diplomat, politician, communist and anti-fascist fighter. He had to secretly run away from his country into exile on horseback through the Patagonian forests of Chile into Argentina to avoid arrest by the Chilean authorities. He had three wives, many lovers and numerous affairs. He socialized with great artists like Pablo Picasso and Diego Rivera as well as with famous writers of his time. He had travelled around the world and collected masks and sea shells, among other things, which are displayed in his houses converted into museums in Chile.

 

Since his poems did not earn him enough income in the beginning, he needed a day job for survival. Through some contacts, he managed to get appointed as consul in Rangoon at the age of 23 in 1927. Next year he was transferred as consul to Colombo and in 1930 he went to Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia) as consul. In 1933, he was posted as consul at Buenos Aires, Argentina. Here he flourished as a literary celebrity and used the diplomatic status to reach out to the Argentine literary and cultural circles.  The consul general of Chile, Socrates Aguirre told him “You will be responsible for making the name of Chile shine by establishing friendly relations with writers and intellectuals. Your job is culture”. In 1934, he was posted as consul in Barcelona and later in Madrid.  When Neruda assumed his post in Spain, Chile’s consul general, Tulio Maquieira, directed him: “You are a poet. Please dedicate yourself to being a poet. You don’t have to come to this consulate. Tell me no more than where I can mail you your check each month.” In 1940, he was named as Consul General in Mexico City. In 1971 he was posted as ambassador in Paris, a dream came true.

 

He won a seat in the Chilean senate on the leftist ticket in 1945. He was considered as a candidate for presidential elections in 1970 but he stood down in favour of the professional politician Allende. He was a Communist and clung to his Stalinist views even after the horrors of the gulag were revealed. Later, he admitted his error of pro-Stalin position. He was an admirer of Cuban revolution until the pro-Castro literary circle turned against him. He was a cheerleader of the Republicans against Franco during the Spanish civil war. He helped thousands of Spanish refugees to travel to and get asylum in Chile.

 

Despite his communist leanings, Neruda liked the luxuries of life. He had bought and built expensive houses and enjoyed partying and travel. His rightwing critics labelled him as a “Champagne Communist.” Neruda was conscious of the contradictions and complexities within him, from the shockingly shameful to the inspiringly heroic. 



Neruda says that it was not he who found poetry but it was poetry which found him. He writes in Memorial de Isla Negra: 

“And it was at that age . . . poetry arrived 

in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know 

where it came from, from winter or a river. 

I don’t know how or when, 

no, they were not voices, they were not 

words, nor silence,

but from a street it called me, 

from the branches of night, 

abruptly from the others, 

among raging fires 

or returning alone, 

there it was, without a face, 

and it touched me. 

—“Poetry”

 

Eisner makes an interesting point that Neruda’s career as a poet was nurtured by Chile which has a long cultural history of reverence for poetry. Poetry was ingrained in the culture of Mapuches, an indigenous tribe. From the early sixteenth-century epic poetry of Alonso de Ercilla to the strong roots of oral poetics in indigenous Mapuche culture, Chile has earned its reputation as a “nation of poets,” where poetry is not only enjoyed by the elite, but also recited by campesinos, factory workers, miners, and ordinary people around their campfires or kitchen tables. This unique environment nurtured Neruda’s passion for poetry from the beginning. Tiny towns in the middle of nowhere would have poetry contests as part of their fairs. In 1919, at the age of fifteen, Neruda traveled north some 250 miles by train, probably alone, to read a poem in the tiny, dusty town of Cauquenes. He took third prize for best poem at the Maule Flower Games. The importance of poetry in the Chilean culture allowed Neruda to gain popular recognition early on, which eventually evolved into widespread fame.

 

In a 1970 interview for the Paris Review, Neruda said, Chile has an extraordinary history. Not because of monuments or ancient sculptures, which don’t exist here, but rather because Chile was invented by a poet, Don Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga . . . a Basque aristocrat who arrived with the conquistadores—quite unusual, since most of the people sent to Chile came out of the dungeons. De Ercilla, “the young humanist,” wrote La Araucana on scraps of paper as the Spanish troops pursued the native people in the forests and towns around Temuco, the region from which the poem’s name derives. Neruda described the poem as “the longest epic in Castilian literature, in which he honored the unknown tribes of Araucania—anonymous heroes to whom he gave a name for the first time—more than his compatriots, the Castilian soldiers.” Published in full in 1589 and then translated throughout Europe, it is still considered one of the great masterpieces of the Spanish Golden Age.

 

Besides these anthropological explanations, there are social factors that were also of great importance. Chile’s poetry is rooted in the remarkable oral storytelling tradition of the Chilean campesino, the mine worker, the factory worker, the proletariat of the country. Stories told through verse were passed down in front of a fire, from one generation to another. At the turn of the twentieth century, northern miners would break into poetry readings at social gatherings. In the early twentieth century, coinciding with Neruda’s coming of age, poetry in Chile served as an art that was accessible to people who were poorly educated. They were the principal audience for the poets, more so than those in the high-society literary salons. Poetry was not perceived as elitist but as an art form with wide appeal. 

 

Eisner says that Chile has an extraordinary concentration of poets, of all levels of brilliance, per capita. Chile is still unique as a “nation of poets”. Chile is the only Latin American country to get two Nobel prizes for literature out of the total of six for the region. While the other Latino Nobel Laureates are novelists, the Chilean winners are both poets.  Gabriela Mistral, the Chilean poet, was the first ever Latin American Nobel laureate for literature when she won the prize in 1945. Neruda had met her and showed his poems to her when she was posted as headmistress of a school in his home town Temuco. She had encouraged him, impressed by his potential. 

 

Fortunately, Neruda died on 23 September within two weeks of Pinochet’s coup on 11 September. This spared him from humiliation and possibly torture and even killing by the dictatorship. The military ransacked and damaged his houses and also arrested, tortured and murdered his leftist friends.

 

Neruda and India

 

Neruda had visited India for the first time in 1928 during his consulship in Colombo. He attended a conference of the Indian National Congress in Calcutta, as a visitor. He met Gandhi and Nehru among others. He does not have much to say about India’s freedom struggle or the non-violent method pursued by Gandhi. He describes Gandhi’s ‘sharp profile like a very cunning fox’.

 

During his second visit in 1950 he met Prime Minister Nehru. But he was upset by the waiting in Nehru’s office and his cold and indifferent attitude during the meeting. Neruda was also agitated by the suspicious checking of his luggage and documents by the Indian Customs officers because of his credentials as a Communist. In protest, he cancelled his plan to visit Taj Mahal and preponed his trip back to Paris.

 

Neruda was caught in a controversy of ‘plagiarism’ by his critics who accused him of copying Tagore’s lines in one of his poems. Texts of the two poems were published side by side on the front page of the cultural magazine Pro’s November 1934 issue, under the title “El affaire Neruda-Tagore”.

 

Tagore: You are the evening cloud floating in the sky of my dreams. I paint you and fashion you ever with my love longings. You are my own, my own, Dweller in my endless dreams! Neruda: In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud and your color and form are as I love them. You are mine, you are mine, woman with sweet lips,

  

The rest of Neruda’s poem continues to be very similar to that of Tagore, who was one of Neruda’s favorite poets in his student days. In reaction to this accusation, Neruda said that yes, he had borrowed from Tagore, but he insisted that it wasn’t plagiarism but rather a “paraphrase” of Tagore’s poem. In the fifth edition of Twenty Love Poems, released in 1937, Neruda states at the beginning of the book that Poem XVI was, “for the most part, a paraphrase of Tagore’s ‘The Gardener’. He then writes, “This has always been known publicly”. 

 

It is odd that Neruda did not visit Shantiniketan nor mention Tagore during his 1928 visit to Calcutta, despite his self-admitted admiration for Tagore's poetry.

 

Neruda was indifferent to Indian as well as Asian culture, literature and philosophy. He never explored the Asian heritage during his stay in Rangoon, Colombo and Jakarta. He writes in his Memoirs ( which I have read), “ The orient struck me as a large hapless human family, leaving no room in my conscience for its rites and gods”

 

He mentions in his memoirs how he raped a Tamil woman servant of pariah caste in his house. He describes how she looked like one of the thousand-year-old sculptures from the south of India. He says it as a routine detail of his stay in Colombo, without hiding his racist attitude. Eisner, the biographer, has pointed out this contradiction in the context of Neruda’s embrace of the downtrodden and Latin American natives subjected to conquest and domination by the European colonisers.

 

During the visit of Chilean President Lagos to India in 2005, I (as Head of the Latin America Division in the Ministry of External Affairs} had quoted a poem of Pablo Neruda in the draft banquet speech of the Indian President. But the External Affairs Minister cut out the quotation. He disliked Neruda because of his unkind view of India. But this Indian experience should not diminish in any way the greatness of Neruda as a poet.