Letters
Solidarity and the Democracts Van Gosse's article, "Active Engagement: The Legacy of Central America Solidarity" [March/April, 1995] contains tremendous illusions about the Democratic Party...
...As always, the arpilleristas portray Chilean reality-the bad and the good-on their tapestries...
...I am aware of the exhibits sponsored by Lira's organization...
...Letters can be sent by e-mail to: NACLA @igc.apc.org...
...Others depict the oppressive conditions of the poor...
...The FMLN and the Sandinistas at least understood that revolution, and victory of any sort, was no simple matter...
...I might add that they parade their impunity in the press and on television, mocking the rights of their victims and relatives, and deriding the incapacity of the courts and the present government to insure that justice prevails...
...military aid in the world, behind that sent to Israel and Egypt...
...The Party is an historic bloc of various powerful fractions of capital and numerous other sectors...
...A recent one that I visited in New York displayed arpilleras with no political themes, showing a deceptively peaceful country...
...Near success, at the risk of stating the obvious, is failure-for which Gosse may be able to find mitigating factors...
...The interesting thing to me is that under particular circumstances, the Democratic Party occasionally finds itself having to respond to the wishes of its subaltern elements...
...They are my only source...
...The women who make arpilleras are independent and free-spirited, but without church support they woutd never have been able to market their work...
...That they did not do likewise in order to halt the U.S.organized carnage against the peoples of Central America-compared to which Watergate was the teddy bear's picnic-speaks volumes...
...They have never belonged to the government, the Church, or the foundation...
...For Gosse to call the Boland Amendment, which banned all military aid for the purpose of overthrowing the Nicaraguan governReaders are invited to address letters to The Editors, NACLA Report on the Americas, 475 Riverside Drive, Suite 454, New York, NY 10115...
...Felipe C. Cabello, M.D...
...I have no doubt that arpilleras are made in Chile but those made by the mothers of the disappeared are not supported...
...The Contra war," writes Gosse, "nearly provoked an impeachment crisis at home" (my emphasis...
...The Reagan Administration did not respond to the amendment by throwing up its arms in defeat and agreeing to coexist peacefully with Nicaragua...
...Does he really think that the only real "fights" in this country are all-or-nothing affairs, with doughty workers ever ready to rally under red flags and each "party of U.S...
...Assets ranging from private houses to works of art, which were illegally confiscated from individuals, institutions and political parties during the dictatorship, remain in the hands of their illegitimate owners, despite the sanctity assigned to private property by the dictatorship's own constitution...
...This is in part due to the fact noted by Agosin that Chile is a "controlled democracy," where the inability of the executive, congressional and judiciary branches of government to initiate and facilitate the investigation of these crimes is guaranteed by the veiled but omnipresent might of the military...
...The only "tremendous illusions" at work here are those of Webber concerning how politics actually functions in the United States...
...Still others demand justice for the victims of the dictatorship...
...Webber evidently would prefer to silence even the question itself...
...If Reagan had decided to send in the Marines, dissident State Department and CIA officials acknowledged, he could have claimed that the way had been prepared for him by Carter...
...imperialism a little of what he'd been doing-with bipartisan support-to the left and the antiwar, black and women's movements for years...
...Unfortunately, Agosin is correct when she says that Chilean "perpetrators of human rights abuses enjoy freedom and impunity...
...Who knows what deviations might follow, after all...
...Some celebrate the arrival of Chilean democracy with rainbows...
...There was a bit more Democratic opposition to the war against Nicaragua, partly because of the potential for superpower confrontation at the time of the Cold War, and partly because overthrowing a government is more difficult than propping one up...
...I am afraid Rosenfeld misjudges the situation when she labels Agosin's concerns for the country's historical memory "nostalgic...
...It would be like Germany reconstructing its devastated social and economic institutions after World War II with a civilian government answering to the requirements of Herren Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler...
...We all know this, but far too many prefer to dodge it as a fact of life not worth mentioning...
...This is why they were given a room at the headquarters of the Methodist Church...
...Legacy of the Dictatorship A s a visitor from Chile, I was interested in the exchange between Stephanie Rosenfeld and Marjorie Agosin [Letters, March/April, 1995] over human rights in my country...
...Women arpilleristas have always been the owners of these workshops, and they are the only ones who can decide on their future...
...In El Salvador, it is no secret that U.S...
...The unending legislative turf wars over Central America emerged from one of those instances...
...The lack of recognition of the barbaric practices of the dictatorship can only have a corrosive effect on the social development and collective psyche of the country...
...Solidarity and the Democracts Van Gosse's article, "Active Engagement: The Legacy of Central America Solidarity" [March/April, 1995] contains tremendous illusions about the Democratic Party that can't help but be harmful to solidarity movements, and to Latin American liberation forces that seek to base any kind of policy upon them...
...Webber knows full well that the complex and indeed subtle strategies of the U.S...
...intervention was undertaken under the Carter Administration...
...For my part, I can find none...
...My information comes directly from the women themselves...
...Our foundation receives and delivers a large number of arpilleras made by many of the same 200 women who initiated this work...
...It never stopped Congress from sending the Salvadoran butchers the third-largest shipment of U.S...
...imperialism" vying with the other to snuff out the people's struggle...
...Memorial monuments and public funerals notwithstanding, the fact remains that most of the murders by the dictatorship remain unresolved...
...If this is "failure," let's have more of it...
...That is the question I suggest needs more investigation...
...In Santiago, I was told over and over again that the Vicarate of Solidarity which once supported the workshop had ceased to provide working space and a distribution market for the arpilleras...
...Why...
...I also have great respect for Lira and recognize her pioneering efforts in building the original workshop, but it seems we have different sources of information...
...I remain deeply appreciative of how they performed the "war of maneuver" in the field while perfecting the "war of position" here in the metropole...
...The original groups have been isolated, and women without a political history now make arpilleras for export...
...Hundreds of thousands of workers and students dismissed from their jobs and expelled from their schools-many detained, tortured and exiled without a cause-still await the recognition of the injustice done to them, and the redress to which they are entitled by the brutal interruption of the course of their lives...
...It simply continued aiding the Contras, claiming that the aid was still legal under the amendment because it was being used to cut off alleged Nicaraguan arms shipments to the FMLN-despite the fact that it was being given to forces openly committed to overthrowing the Nicaraguan government...
...solidarity movement sprang directly from its interaction with the Central American revolutionary movements, and the latter's appreciation of how to work the fissures of North America's political culture...
...Some Democrats did occasionally wonder out loud whether maybe too much emphasis was being given to military rather than political solutions...
...Those sections of my article that provoked Webber's ire were an attempt to acknowledge the unavoidable fact that nearly all of the U.S...
...Valhalla, NY...
...Winnie Lira Santiago de Chile Marjorie Agosin responds: W inni Lira's letter saddens me, and confirms that democracy in Chile is both frail and ambiguous...
...According to Gosse, "the Democrats never stopped fighting with Reagan over Central America...
...Again, this opposition can hardly be called a fight...
...This is either a misprint or the result of a massively downgraded estimate of what constitutes a "fight...
...It is a mistake to think that the government or anyone else might have closed the workshops...
...Regarding the "challenges of constructing civil society in democracy" mentioned by Rosenfeld, I am afraid that in spite of her optimism this worthy goal may prove unattainable if the current environment in Chile persists...
...The Democrats were ready, willing and able to actually provoke an impeachment crisis over the Watergate burglary in which Nixon was caught doing to the rival party of U.S...
...Arpilleras in Chile A s the director of Fundaci6n Solidaridad, an organization that defended human rights during the Chilean dictatorship and supported the work of the women who opposed the dictatorship by weaving powerful political arpilleras, I would like to take issue with Marjorie Agosin's claim ["Patchwork of Memory," May/ June, 1994] that the arpillera movement has disappeared...
...left finds itself dealing with and within the arcane political world of the Democratic Party...
...Nick Webber Aylesbury, England Van Gosse responds: am struck by the sentimental optimism displayed by Nick Webber's letter...
...They are the arpilleras of a Chile that refuses to acknowledge its past...
...That was basically the extent of their "fight...
...Now, how nearly is nearly-and should any surviving victim of Contra terror or Salvadoran army death squads be expected to feel grateful for this alleged near success...
...ment, one of "the great victories for the left in recent history" is wishful thinking...
...Among those other sectors are the women's movement, gays, African Americans, organized labor, and other progressive groups...
Vol. 29 • September 1995 • No. 2
