Up from farce:
Cava, Ralph Della
"celebrate a God who was so tribal as to bring harm to one spiritual house all its furnishings; or else moves right in, and group for the sake of another." From higher education she ...
...human community," and to escape the bounds of "a we and As a consequence...
...not to know myself, not to know what it is I willingly receive Only careful redistricting in advance and a ban against and what it is I willingly deny...
...5 does not prevent him from declaring a expected to modify the Third World-oriented foreign "state of emergency" under which the soldier's word is law...
...the "North's" unilateral reduction of tariffs on Commonweal: 6...
...But are validity of the term "Third World," a watchword under Perez...
...She has taken all her worldly took away "a sense of belonging to the entire human com- notions from the majority culture, including the majority's munity...
...regime to appoint a third of the Senate and then set in motion its It demands "an exchange of study and of knowledge...
...Her children "who have never heard of the Diaspora Election in Brazil or Masada," are not certain whether they are Jewish...
...Its immediate task is to translate neighbors to the south...
...campaigning on radio and TV braked the MDB bandwagon...
...like the sharp division in the current two-party system sometime this year...
...Grappling with our religious inheritance is of Jesus is just a symbol, an excuse for human bravado never easy...
...signated successor, another army general...
...within OPEC, for intent on rule by repressive "security" apparatuses might no instance...
...Copei capitalized on the depending on the opposition's capacity to put unity above government's diplomatic failures, scorning Perez's shuttle party...
...Herrera's party, the Christian Democratic Copei, sincerity of Figueiredo's repeated campaign promise to rede- maintains that it is impractical for Venezuela to uphold an mocratize Brazil...
...THE RECENTLY elected President of Venezuela, Luis True, this month's revocation of the draconion, decade-old Herrera Campins, who takes office in early March, is Institutional Act No...
...promises on the part of several U.S...
...foreign debt...
...the pro-government National Renewal a them," the notion of letting one's children "choose"- Alliance (ARENA) retained its majority in the federal House how often are not the same themes voiced by educated Chris- and Senate...
...marks at the time of the North-South dialogue in Paris, in Should General Figueiredo choose to make himself the hos- which he threatened a drastic oil price increase should the tage of democracy's future, then November's farce will be- "South's" demands go unheeded...
...heritage of Christian art, the Raphaels, the Giottos, the One may wince a little at the harsh criticism to which Anne Michelangelos...
...The Perez administration, however, gress and not, like his predecessors, by canceling at will the has scored but limited successes in its foreign policy initiatives mandates and rights of critics in parliament and elsewhere...
...Oil is an instrument of negotiation that can be used to create understanding of what the inter(Ralph Della Cava is the Director of the City University of dependence of nations really means...
...The most telling reply to Anne Roiphe came from the In contrast, the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), an Jewish writer Cynthia Ozick...
...RALPH DELLA CAVA News and World Report...
...She treasures the no capacity for reciprocity...
...the TV specials about Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph and Kris Klaus-"myths," says Anne Roiphe, "about good triumphing over evil, about the victory of the kind and the weak...
...Thus feelings...
...In addition, Copei has questioned the electoral victory into long-term political mobilization...
...From the majority she takes, she But even farce can be turned to good purpose...
...or else moves right in, and group for the sake of another...
...immense lar ARENA or replace it with a new urban, right-centrist party dissimilarities among the underdeveloped nations obviate an of its own as well as to weaken its opposition by fragmenting appeal to all of them on the basis of common interests, as Perez its voters into feuding factions on the center-left...
...But the plan could still rebound to the people's benefit- During the election campaign...
...outspoken position on human rights at the same time that the Transition from military rule will certainly depend on the nation is forced to accommodate itself to military-ruled civilian opposition as well...
...the generals apt to oblige...
...For the moment, potentially competitive tendencies- diplomacy and flamboyant style as overplaying Venezuela's laborite, Christian democratic and socialist-have opted to act importance as a medium-size underdeveloped nation...
...Like her friends she became "rational, humanist, mistakes, even when they are mistakes about herself...
...The rejection the polls in a nationwide election that most Americans of one's own tradition as parochial or "tribal," the relativiz- would call a farce...
...The symbol the real world...
...That task, possible only under full freedom, is the very crux Another embarrassment for Perez stemmed from his reof any transition from the rule of force to the rule of law...
...east, it held firm to 19 of the 22 state legislatures...
...Since April 1977, Brazil's 14-yearing impact of education, the "old angers" at oppressive ele- old military regime has enforced successive decrees calculated ments in an ancient faith, the desire to belong "to the entire to stack the political deck in its favor...
...Under Perez, Venezuela has assumed the role of recently triggered military currents keen on a "return to the Third World spokesman while managing to eschew the stands barracks" could be encouraged, just as encrusted factions of the more militant members of that bloc...
...Thanks too to beholden rural political bosses...
...rubber-stamped all 22 hand-picked, incoming state governors Roiphe, with her image of a small, wrathful, tribal Yahweh, and, on October 15, the outgoing President's personally de"is unable to make such an exchange," says Cynthia Ozick...
...Their 18 million ballots (to the Islam in its varieties, and of all the other paths and expres- regime's 14 plus) came significantly from wage-squeezed sions of religious aspiration that crowd, differentiate, thril- industrial workers and inflation-wracked middle-class urbalingly color and amazingly speckle our all-manifesting nites in five key southern states accounting for three-quarters planet-not to know my neighbor's way, is in some fashion of Brazil's wealth, population and production...
...But it is equally the tale of assimilative pressures on the educated 0 N NOVEMBER 15, some forty million Brazilians went to classes in their post-Christian, secular culture...
...Not to have a grasp of cal party permitted by the generals since 1966, carried the Christianity-and of Buddhism in all its varieties, and of popular vote despite great odds...
...But to turn away from line that, perhaps more than any other, may have stung her the struggle of good and evil, weak and strong, in the Exodus Jewish readers...
...Issues like rank corruption in high places, political amnesty for Herrera Campfns favors a more restrained, low-key foreign all and the calling of a constitutional convention will test the policy...
...Behind this Latin America between democracies and dictatorships, detactic is the regime's cunning strategy to sidestep the unpopu- flates the idea that the Third World is a cohesive bloc...
...Her daughter plays the Virgin Mary in a and the Holocaust to the version purveyed in Frosty the holiday pageant...
...tian, especially post-Vatican Catholics, right down to the especially in the impoverished and patronage-ridden Northnote of regret, the nostalgic admission of loss...
...Both the God who drowned the Egyptians and particularly at "the antifeminism of the Jewish patriarchy...
...But assimilation, except among amoebas where "the Precisely the prospect of an MDB landslide had earlier led the larger substance swallows the smaller," implies reciprocity...
...He ominously told U.S...
...the sense of the void, to which Anne Roiphe against the void...
...ble right to reconstruct Brazilian democracy from the bottom administrations to reconsider the clause have failed to mateup...
...I am glad to be an as- uneasy coalition of opposition forces and the only other politisimilationist," she states...
...bankrupt, she borrows from her neighbor's virtual plebiscite has challenged the legitimacy of the regime...
...but she would also see herself "in the Sa- Roiphe exposed herself...
...19 January 1979: 5 pitted ballots against bayonets and, for the first time since the 1964 military coup, raised high the hope that a quick and Election in Venezuela peaceful transition to civilian rule is in the offing...
...Her children sing "Hark the Herald Angels Snowman, Rudolph and Kris Klaus is to prefer Disneyland to Sing...
...Ap- the signs that "something is sacred, holy, I don't know proaching her own tradition, she feels "old angers rising," exactly what...
...come freedom's prologue...
...MANDATE FOR CIVILIAN RULE The tale Anne Roiphe tells is, in part, the tale of assimilative pressures on a Jewish minority in a Christian culture...
...They say they are feminists, humanists...
...The "South's" propoNew York Seminar on Contemporary Brazil and teaches his- sals included a moratorium on the Third World's $250 billion tory at Queens College...
...But this family is not Christian either...
...In March, General Joiio Baptista de Figueiredo, a cavalry LOWERING A THIRD-WORLD VOICE officer turned national intelligence chief, will commence a six-year term that could become the last under military rule...
...rialize...
...policy of outgoing President Carlos Andres Perez, a revision Nonetheless, by Figueiredo's inauguration, he will have fil- which the Carter administration is likely to view with mixed led key military commands with officers loyal to him...
...In this case, a takes, she takes...
...Moreover, key leaders such as the U.S.- such disappointment for the Perez government was the retenbased exile, Leonel Brizola, a popular one-time governor and tion by the United States of the "anti-OPEC" clause of the titular head of the powerful, re-emerging Brazilian Labor 1974 foreign commerce law which denies favorable terms of party, have pledged moderation in exchange for the inaliena- trade to OPEC members...
...has attempted to do...
...Venezuela has occupied a middle ground between longer find a patron...
...conservative nations like Saudi Arabia, and those like Algeria On the political front, optimists expect the President- and Libya which consistently call for annual oil price increases designate to honor the popular will by governing with Con- of over twenty percent...
...Jesus is but one element of Christmas, refers, can never be far away...
...the God who did not save his chosen people from the gas "I prefer the stranger's ways," says Anne Roiphe, in the chambers present problems of belief...
...One within the MDB...
...But in the coming months, it is likely to turn on two powerful forces: Brazil's new Presi- RIGHTS & OIL dent and the morally victorious civilian opposition...
...From higher education she calls this universalism...
...She has skeptical, existential, uncertain, vague...
...But not grappling seems only along with Scrooge-a representation of redemption-and to add another void-one of our own making...
...in favor of a new world economic order...
...After all, she continues to search for moan or the Buddhist, the gypsy and the Navaho...
...Her hands are empty...
...Last September the latter justice and plain daily decency of reciprocal learning...
...the trumped-up "electoral colleges...
...Contemplating their vague identities, she hopes "the world continues to let them OP FROM FARCE choose...
...Earlier in 1978, they engineered According to Copei, the polarization between socialist and "reforms" that are designed to alter and perhaps even expand capitalist-oriented nations in Africa...
...Such an unprecedented transition is never easy, as India and Greece, Portugal and Spain attest...
Vol. 106 • January 1979 • No. 1
