Our South African friend Dominic has sent me links to two important articles about the MSM’s atrociously poor– both negligent and biased– handling of some of the important stories out of Latin America.
The first was this May 1 piece by Mark Weisbrot, about the recent re-election of Ecuador’s left-leaning President Rafael Correa.
The second is this piece by Dan Beeton about the failure of the MSM to give anything like adequate coverage to the threats that Bolivia’s indigenous-culture Pres. Evo Morales faces from noticeably racist (settlerist) rightwingers in some parts of the country.
I wish I had time to write more. But thanks, Dominic, for sending me these pieces.
Category: Latin America
Mayan Priests, Bush, Dobson, & St. Newt
Holy Chakotay! (irony alert)
Maybe it’s my native American side, but I rather think these Guatemalan Mayan Priests are on to something. According to the AP, they’ve announced plans to “purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate “bad spirits” after President Bush visits next week.”
“That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture,” Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.”
The Mayans likely will not stop Bush’s visit to the Iximche archaeological site on Guatemala’s high western plateau. However, the
“spirit guides of the Mayan community decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of ‘bad spirits’ after Bush’s visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace…. [T]he rites — which entail chanting and burning incense, herbs and candles – would prepare the site for the third summit of Latin American Indians March 26-30.
Imagine the visuals! I sure hope CNN or at least SciFi covers this ritual cleansing.
Speaking of surreal, how “faith-based” can this Bush tour of Latin America get? Oh sure, he’ll be there to promote trade, listen, and go fishing in Uruguay — while Baghdad burns.
He’s also in Brazil in pursuit of cheap ethanol – albeit with a 54% tariff on it to protect US sugar barons. Whatever happened to promoting free trade? And how much more of the Amazon rain forest must we clear to replace Middle Eastern oil?
We’re also told that he’s in Latin America, in part, to counter radicalism and support democracy.
Ah yes. And his next tour of Arab countries will include Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt — from whence to preach the good news of demcracy for Iran.
For now, the Bushistas are complaining that the Latin protest rallies against Bush are being orchestrated and funded by radicals like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. And this from the Administration that until recently loved to put the President before military base crowds — all of them “volunteering” their enthusiasm too. If the President wants friendly crowds, why not a visit to Australia and get Murdoch media to manage the crowds. Snow-jobs melt there.
Back to our theme of “priests” with chutzpah, America’s favorite evangelical shrink, Dr. James Dobson, has been hosting fess-up sessions on national radio with Newt Gingrich. On Thursday, the broadcast focused on “Rediscovering America’s Spiritual Heritage.” (More on that in another post.)
On Friday’s program, Gingrich pontificates about the monstrous “gathering threat” of Islam as a preface (cover?) to addressing “tough questions” about his moral failings “of the past.”
Newt’s moral credentials include dumping his first wife amid her battle with cervical cancer and then cheating on his second wife at the very time he was orchestrating the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
Dobson “appreciated” Gingrich for confessing his indiscretion, and seems to absolve him.
Besides, Gingrich is helping Christians focus on the real enemy – Islam. Lest you think I overstretch that point, I’ve often wondered why Christian social conservatives refuse to consider that they should have considerable common cause with their Muslim neighbors, precisely on family issues. Explanation – the eschatalogical focus within “Christian Likudism” on Israel trumps all.
In any case, Gingrich says he didn’t criticize Clinton for having an extramarital affair, but for perjuring himself before a grand jury. (never mind that Clinton was accused of lying about an affair) Now who is parsing his words?
So how low will Dobson go? Are Dobson & his “focused on the family” audience seriously contemplating support for Saint Newt, the family man, if he runs for President….? G*wd almighty indeed.
And speaking of, if you will, strange bedfellows, I learned yesterday that Pat Robertson’s Regent University will have Mitt Romney – the Mormon Governor – as its commencement speaker on May 7th. I suspect this will go down “hard” among the muzzled faculty and student body there. And this will be after Rudi Guliani – another maritally-challenged Presidential candidate, but staunch Israel defender – returns to Regent on April 17th.
Odd ball prediction: if these “leading lights” from the “Christian-Likudnik” right keep compromising their own principles in the service of an increasingly narrow agenda (Israel and sometimes “the family”), they may energize a backlash of political disbelief from their own followers.
They might even be inclined to take a page out of the Mayan playbook, and “sit out the next two years” while purifying the church’s moral core.
No, I don’t yet see another “great reversal” or “exile” back into the pews. Yet the building “sit-out” threat should be a warning both to the Republicans who have long taken them for granted – and to their own political bishops.
This whole subject has me pondering my Sunday School lessons from long ago on the separationist principles of Roger Williams, the Rhode Island Baptist pioneer and fellow seeker.
The 2008 faith and politics show is just beginning. Keep your “spirit guides” handy.
Evo Morales and new waves in Latin America
Over the past 500 years, colonizing powers of European heritage have used their military might to impose their will on all continents of the world, committing countless large-scale crimes of humanity against the indigenous peoples of those other lands.How wonderful, therefore, that 513 years after Christopher Columbus’s flotilla arrived off the coast of the Americas, in Bolivia an indigenous person, head of an indigenous-based political movement, has been elected President.
I know I should have written about Evo Morales and his Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) before now.
Dominic Tweedie kindly sent me this link, which is to the text (in English) of an important address Evo made on December 24. In it, he builds on his own remarkable experience of organizing the people of his home district, and says:
- When we speak of the “defense of humanity,” as we do at this event, I think that this only happens by eliminating neoliberalism and imperialism. But I think that in this we are not so alone, because we see, every day that anti-imperialist thinking is spreading, especially after Bush’s bloody “intervention” policy in Iraq. Our way of organizing and uniting against the system, against the empire’s aggression towards our people, is spreading, as are the strategies for creating and strengthening the power of the people.
I believe only in the power of the people. That was my experience in my own region, a single province–the importance of local power. And now, with all that has happened in Bolivia, I have seen the importance of the power of a whole people, of a whole nation. For those of us who believe it important to defend humanity, the best contribution we can make is to help create that popular power…
Evo’s inauguration later this month is bound to be a huge fiesta for all his supporters. They include many of the deeply impoverished indigeños and indigeñas of Bolivia, a country that actually has a lot of natural-resources wealth. But even before being inaugurated, Evo has been making a “victory lap” to various countries around the world, including Cuba, Venezuela, Spain, France (where he now is), and South Africa. In all these countries he is able to meet both both heads of government and representatives of popular movements with whom he has already built ties through his involvement over past years in various counter-globalization movements.
Evo’s election, which was achieved on a fairly strongly anti-Washington platform, reminds us that Washington’s influence in Latin America has been waning for quite some time– and most particularly since 9/11. In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, Peter Hakim, the President of a DC-based organization called the Inter-American Dialogue, writes:
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