Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site utcsri.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utcsri!vassos
From: vassos@utcsri.UUCP (Vassos Hadzilacos)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: re: Contras as an army of national liberation
Message-ID: <2296@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 9-Mar-86 14:02:06 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsri.2296
Posted: Sun Mar  9 14:02:06 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Mar-86 14:20:29 EST
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 78

In <1716@bbncca.ARPA> Ron Rizzo had written (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.

To which I replied:

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

To which RR then replied (in <1734@bbncca.ARPA>):

> 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.

To which I now reply:

Restraint from racist and chauvinist statements is not a matter
of adherence to "the conventions of political etiquette". It is
a matter of civility and political maturity.

So much for the above quoted evasions. On to the substance of the
debate: Is RR's statement racist and chauvinist? Yes, I suggest:
It is because it brands violent, backward and nasty all Central
Americans ("revolutionaries, moderates and reactionaries alike"). 
[Strictly speaking, I should not have called the statement racist --
it is "merely" chauvinist.]

RR denies that his statement is what I called it. His evidence is:

> 	[Central America's] "primitive political culture" (according to
>	Arturo Cruz, Jr.)

Brilliant! A Central American politician (one, mind you, you miserably
failed in mustering any kind of popular support in Nicaragua) says that
the region has "primitive political culture". Ergo, the region has
primitive political culture. QED.

> 	the murderous violence endemic to [Central America] since at least
>	the early 19th century [...]
>
> 	[Central America's] often brutal race relations: "Spaniard" vs.
>	mestizo vs. (highland vs. lowland) Indian.

There is "murderous violence" endemic to US society. It goes way before
the 19th century and is as alive and well today as it has ever been. It is
not usually political in nature (though it has been than, too -- eg Civil
War) but violent and murderous it surely is.

As for racial relations, whatever brutality exists in the race relations
in Central America pales in comparison to what prevails in US race relations.

Is RR prepared to conclude that all Americans ("revolutionaries, moderates
and reactionaries alike") are "violent, backward and even nasty"? I hope not.

> 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.

Which real facts? That there exist violence, backwardness and nastiness in
Central America? Of course there are. Is there *any* place in the world
that's free of these vices?

What I am taking issue with, quite clearly, is not such a blindingly
obvious truth -- but RR's contention that these (violence, backwardness
and nastiness) are features particularly characteristic of the Central
American peoples. Singling out those peoples on the basis of facts that
have been true of all parts of the world at all times of known history
(the way RR's statement does) *is* chauvinist.

Such is the sad price one has to pay for the political acrobatics one
must perform to proclaim the contras an "army of national liberation".

--Vassos Hadzilacos.