Taking Note
MF
Dukakis, Kennedy and El Che DOZENS OF LATIN AMERICA'S POLITICIANS made their quadrennial pilgrimage to the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta this past July. They hoped to shake the right...
...Only Che Guevara, dead 21 years this October, is as widely revered...
...Che's vision and daring still inspire Latin America, particularly its young people, to make the enormous sacrifice of struggling for socialism...
...As a multi-class party it must appeal to interests which are fundamentally contradictory...
...Human rights were promoted, multilateral solutions sought, and military options kept on the back burner...
...Mike was a tireless advocate for the rights of Haitian refugees...
...Harvard intellectuals fill the Democratic camp, with their "lofty ideals" and "fresh approaches...
...Following eight years of reactionary Republicanism, the Boston-Austin axis-a young son of Massachusetts coupled with an older, wealthy Texan-takes on the symbols of corporate continuity...
...The days when this was feasible are of course long gone (which is why Republicans win elections), but the ideological thrust remains: For the Democrats, domestic liberalism must be accompanied by hawkishness abroad, or the Republicans will hound them from office...
...A president may pursue a more efficient means of control, but never can he question it...
...Or so one might have thought in 1960...
...Lyndon Johnson's invasion of Santo Domingo, covert war in Guatemala, overthrow of Goulart in Brazil and continuing harassment of Cuba-not to mention Vietnam-fall into a convenient historical parenthesis...
...After eight years of Reagan, even the darker side of the Democratic legacy in Latin America seems bright...
...The groundwork of institutional commitment to a major U.S...
...president recognized that all was not right with the "free world" and spoke out in favor of change...
...His passing is a loss for all of us, and a special loss for the Haitian community he loved so dearly...
...JFK, through reformist progress under U.S...
...The candidate rails against Republican reliance on nuclear weapons to protect U.S...
...tutelage...
...Moreover, Michael Dukakis speaks fluent Spanish, has lived in Latin America and claims to take the region as a reference point for understanding the world...
...Advisers are in place, escalation imminent...
...control...
...For the first time in many years a U.S...
...This year there was more than the usual politicking...
...Will Dukakis' Conventional Defense Initiative become the ALPRO of the 1990s...
...For many Latin Americans, both men came to symbolize the potential for change: El Che, through a complete break with the capitalist system responsible for so much suffering...
...Jimmy Carter certainly learned that lesson...
...A curious couple, the bearded revolutionary peering over the horizon of history, and the smiling president comfortably wielding the power of empire, each killed in the heat of battle...
...Dukakis' concerted efforts to compare himself with John F. Kennedy add much to the mystique...
...Superprofits abroad funded social programs at home...
...Electing a Democrat could save thousands of lives...
...One is the nature of the Democratic Party itself...
...policy: "There is neither friendship, nor relations, nor commitments--just the system's national interest and that is all...
...Noriega said recently of U.S...
...Should Latin America be blessed with another round of Democratic reformism, perhaps the Duke's portrait will hang alongside JFK's...
...They hoped to shake the right hands hard enough to be remembered sometime down the road when they or their parties come to power...
...As Panama's Gen...
...Kennedy also inspires, not sacrifice, but hope, the belief that somehow the overbearing power of the United States can be used to relieve oppression, rather than reinforce it...
...interests, and promotes in its stead expanded preparation for conventional warfare in the Third World...
...The Carter presidency confirmed the instincts of Latin America's faithful, and his rehabilitation in Atlanta was cause for much optimism...
...JUYAGT i98 T HE PARALLELS BETWEEN DUKAKIS AND Kennedy are indeed eerie...
...More likely, El Che will stand alone on the altar of the continent's faithful...
...The destabilization of Michael Manley's government in Jamaica or the anti-Cuba diatribes of Carter's final years were hardly reason to lose heart...
...November will mark a quarter-century since Kennedy's death, yet the portrait of this country's first Catholic president still adorns many an altar in homes throughout Latin America...
...That ALPRO also served as a cover for training security forces in the brutal techniques of counterinsurgency-which tortured and murdered Che Guevara and so many of those he inspired-hardly tarnished Kennedy's saintly image...
...MICHAEL S. HOOPER, AUTHOR OF NACLA's Report on Haiti published last year, died September 9 of cancer...
...Yet hope springs eternal whenever a Democrat has a shot at the Oval Office...
...war has been laid by the Republicans (yesterday Vietnam, today El Salvador...
...Kennedy implemented the formula by which the Democrats could defend both the corporations and the poor: empire...
...The forces that turned Kennedy's Alliance for Progress into the nightmare of counterinsurgency still operate today...
...Kennedy's Alliance for Progress first sowed the faith in the Democratic Party which pervades broad sectors of Latin American society...
...The other more fundamental force undermining even a mildly progressive foreign policy is the institutional imperative: Everything rests on the maintenance of U.S...
...the hope was palpable...
Vol. 22 • July 1988 • No. 4
