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From: rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: re: Contras as an army of national liberation
Message-ID: <1734@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 4-Mar-86 17:49:41 EST
Article-I.D.: bbncca.1734
Posted: Tue Mar  4 17:49:41 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Mar-86 19:24:17 EST
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 45


Vassos Hadzilacos writes:

> In <1716@bbncca.ARPA> Ron Rizzo writes (among other things):
>
>> Still, partisanship over Nicaragua carries a risk of getting be-
>> smirched by too close an identification with one side or another,
>> given the violent, backward and even nasty character of the region
>> and its history, features embodied by revolutionaries, moderates,
>> and reactionaries alike.

> The vicious racism and chauvinism of this statement is nauseating.

Oh, please! Gimme a break.  Spare me political correctitude masquerading
as moral indignation.  There's a point beyond which the conventions of
political etiquette cease to function only as barriers to prejudice
and seriously blind one to common facts.

Anyone with an ability to read or travel can easily recognize the pro-
nounced backwardness of Central America, one that goes far beyond the
merely material:

	its "primitive political culture" (according to Arturo Cruz, Jr.)

	the murderous violence endemic to it since at least the early
		19th century, excessive even for Latin America, a
		continent+ whose societies have discovered how to absorb
		large amounts of routine violence & physical anarchy
		without jeopardizing social order

	its often brutal race relations: "Spaniard" vs. mestizo vs.
		(highland vs. lowland) Indian.

And these common facts have real effects.  To deny this, to pretend
not to see them, is not resistance to prejudice or simply good form,
but self-delusion.

As for political causes of nausea, there are many and they're probably
a matter of individual taste.  I for one become whoozey when leftists
wax hot over "imperialism" then shift to cool detachment and a fussy
demand for rigor when evidence of mass atrocities by "progressive"
governments comes to light.

					Urp!
					Ron Rizzo