Letters

...However, it is still difficult to believe that the trials, which lasted only a few days and resulted in sentences of up to 28 years, were conducted with any kind of due process...

...left during the Cold War was the ignoring of human rights violations perpetrated by socialist governments...

...Furthermore, progressives and left intellectuals must speak out against rights abuses regardless of the government involved...

...imperialism and hegemony may be radical, it doesn't make it incomprehensible...

...Oxhorn invokes Allende's legacy in order to measure the "new left," dividing it into committed, genuine democrats and those less democratic, false leaders...

...that the sentences were "excessive" and that the executions were "outrageous and worthy of condemnation...

...This trend, in which progressives and left intellectuals in the United States and elsewhere unconditionally accept and propagate what the forces of reaction, war and colonialism use as ideological weapons to confuse and neutralize the forces of peace and solidarity, leads one to ask: Who really are the true friends of the people struggling for their liberation...

...Allende's Legacy In the article, "From Allende to Lula" (July/August) it seems that Philip Oxhom's reason for including ChAvez as part of the "new left" of Latin American leaders is purely to exalt Lula and to divide the "progressive pedigree" into good and bad camps...

...Leech responds: In "The Crackdowns in Cuba and Colombia," I clearly pointed out that the Cuban government's crackdowns occurred within the context of the ongoing aggression directed against Cuba by the U.S...

...I believe that regardless of the threat, the government, whether in Washington or Havana, has a responsibility to protect human rights...

...Cristobal Valencia R. Austin, Texas Crackdown in Cuba In 'The Crackdowns in Cuba and Colombia" (July/August), I find it troubling that Garry Leech utilizes some of the same arguments against the Cuban government that the superpower intent on overthrowing it utilizes as a weapon in its counterrevolutionary plans...

...Luis Cruz G.M...

...that there was "an apparent lack of due process...

...It would also be hypocritical to use the U.S...

...Just because a united Latin American bloc that can counter U.S...

...embargo as justification for acts of repression by the Cuban government, while at the same time condemning the Bush administration for restricting civil liberties following 9/11...

...It is unfortunate that he places ChAvez, a democratic president who continues to survive an opposition committed to undemocratic overthrow, in the latter camp...

...Secondly, Oxhorn accuses the Bolivarian Circles of being armed and violent community organizations that support Chdvez, but he does not provide any evidence for this claim...

...government...

...I cringe at academia's acceptance of this misrepresentation of ChAvez supporters...

...One of the shortcomings of the U.S...

...And since I am opposed to the death penalty, I cannot accept the execution of the three hijackers as legitimate justice...

...government...

...The Bolivarian Circles are very welldefined neighborhood organizations and only one part of Chivez's civil support...

...First, he refers to Chdvez's Bolivarian discourse as "obscure and obtuse...

...Leech, for example, accepts as true that the trials were "closed and brief...

...Such a selective waving of the human rights banner delegitimizes the left, because it exhibits the same hypocrisy used by the Bush administration with regards to Cuba and Colombia, which was the principal point of my article...

...It is ironic that propaganda directed primarily at the less conscious elements of society is now being used by some of its more conscious members to condemn the actions taken by a country that has been under constant pressure from the U.S...

...The origins and decades of political struggle of Bolivarianismo should merit the respect Oxhorn gives Allende and Lula...