Images from Guatemala

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MULA NURLANDE EGILMI 1. DUA JU BOX L1/ Cathedral Finance ruget sounu SucIxusI wesı virginla socialist Action 14 SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1984 Boston Socialist Action P.O. Box 1046 GMF Boston, MA 02205 Ruffaln Sncialict Artinn P.O. Box 275 Buffalo, N.Y. 14207 SOCiALSt WHEKE IU Chicago Socialist Action Box 80 B 2520 N. Linco Chicago, IL 60614 (312) 248-1094 Cincinnati Socialist Action DA Da. 2^22 Cincinnati, OH 45201 (513) 242-9043 Cleveland Socialist Action P.O. Box 6151 Cleveland, OH 44101 (216) 429-2167 Houston Socialist Action University of Houston Box 551, 4800 Calhoun Houston, TX 77004 (713) 643-2030 Los Angeles Socialist Action 18653 Ventura Blyd Los Angeles, CA 91356 (213) 343-4511 Michigan Socialist Action P.O. Box 4523 Ann Arbor, MI 48106 Minneapolis Socialist Actio P.O. Box 14087 Dinkytown Station Minneapolis, MN 55414 New York Socialist Action P.O. Box 20209 693 Columbus Ave New York, NY 10025 Tomorrow Triumphant, Selected Poems of Otto Rene Castillo, Bilingual ed., Night Horn Books, San Francisco, 1984, 135 pp., $6.95.

On March 19, 1967, a young poet named Otto Rene Castillo was burned at the stake after being tortured by the Guatemalan army. Castillo met his death as a participant in the guerrilla struggle in the remote highlands of Guatemala.

Hope and optimism are central to Castillo's poetry. He juxtaposes the life and death struggle of the common peoPOETRY REVIEW ple to the despairing, escapist, dissolving world view of bourgeois art and consciousness.

However, the selections lack personal intimacy. Castillo's heart is in the right place, but he tends to idealize the workers; they are not quite real. The love and exile poems likewise are very moving, Phoenix Socialist Action P.O. Box 5161 Phoenix, AZ 85010 (602) 894-0055 Pittsburgh Socialist P.O. Box 10769 Pittsburgh, PA 15203 P.O. Box 2903 Olympia, WA 98507 but quite abstract. Left out is the learning process. In one poem, for example, "apolitical intellectuals" are confronted after the revolution by "the humble people":

What did you do when the poor suffered, when tenderness and life were dangerously burning out in them?...A vulture of silence will eat your guts. Your own misery will gnaw at your souls. And you will be mute in your shame.

The passage is powerful, but why didn't Castillo give us a real apolitical intellectual? He must have known a few. He could have given us a real person grappling with the question of taking a stand, so the reader could come to his own conclusions.

Yet, I recommend Castillo's poetry. It relates with passion to the ongoing struggle in Latin America. It shows the future to those who will be the artists and poets of the post-revolutionary world. Castillo confronted a harsh reality that, in a sense, imposed artistic limitations upon him. But he is not afraid to be polemical or abstract—or even defective in terms of bourgeois esthetic criteria. He strives to arouse the consciences of those who do not understand, who do not see things as he does.

San Francisco Socialist Action 3435 Army Street, Rm. 308 San Francisco, CA 94110 (415) 821-0458 Washington Socialist Action P.O. Box 3467 Washington, D.C. 20010 (202) 232-1481 P.O. Box 701 Fairmont, WV 26555-0701

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Once again during the Oct. 21 debates Ronald Reagan announced his support for the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. Reagan said, "I think that we're better off...trying to retain our friendship and help them right the wrongs we see rather than throwing them to the wolves and then facing a Communist This masterpiece of understatement covers up the arrests of over 70,000 Filipinos-students, teachers, clergy, workers, and peasants—since the declaration of martial law. 12 years ago. Thousands more have been "salvaged" —kidnapped and killed.

Mila Aguilar is only one recent victim of the Marcos repression. Aguilar, a journalist, writer, and teacher, was arrested on Aug. 6, 1984, and charged with "subversion and conspiracy to commit Responding to worldwide pressure, the civilian court ordered her release. But the military circumvented the court by obtaining a Preventive Detention Action. She can now be detained indefiMila Aguilar is currently in solitary confinement. Her cell has no windows. She is not provided with enough food or clothing.

To help secure her release and prevent torture, demand that the military heed the order of the civilian court. Write or cable: President Ferdinand Marcos, Malacanang Palace, Manila, or Ambassador Stephen W. Bosworth, U.S. Embassy, Roxas Boulevard, Manila. For more information write the Committee to Free Mila Who would know more about atomic bombs than the folks who make 'em? That's what we asked when we heard that the Lawrence Livermore Radiation Laboratory has spent $175,000 of your tax money to find out what factory workers should do to survive a nuclear war. Their conclusion? Jump into a swimming pool What if your factory doesn't have a swimming pool? You might duck the blast by wrapping yourself in a "wet, opaque blanket, the Rad Lab suggests. Besides, swimming pools aren't always saniNervous Nellies menace the brave new world of genetic engineering. This was the theme relayed to the annual convention of the Industrial Biotechnology Association, which took place last month in San Francisco. "It would not surprise me to see some of the anti-nuclear negativists extend their negativism to genetic engineering,, Professor Harold Green doublespoke to the biotechnocrats. Dreams of cashing in quickly on the test-tube baby boom are threatened by the use of measures such as the National Environmental Policy Act—an ancient law from the 1960s that Professor Green scientifically categorizes as "an instrument of the Laundry rooms and chicken coops all over South Africa have been converted to the production of Kubus, a get-rich-quick concoction produced mainly from spoiled milk. White suburban "farmers" pay $495 to a parent company for mysterious "activator microorganisms" to curdle their milk, and thus produce Kubus-which they can sell back to the company for profit. A Kubus spokesman points out patriotically that Kubus kits are not sold to Black people because "They would earn too much money and stop working, and this would damage South Africa's econ"It was like picking up gold or diamonds straight off the ground," a clerk for one Kubus company confided to the Los Angeles Times. "Now people are losing faith, and without faith Actually, nobody seems quite sure just what all that spoiled milk is supposed to accomplish-except make millions for the companies. Nevertheless, one firm plans to market Kubus worldwide in the form of a beauty cream called "Cleopatra's Secret."

Dethroned Miss America, Vanessa Williams, is talking to publishers about writing her autobiography—a book that will tell all, according to her literary agent. But Williams has been beaten to the cash register by the man that Forbes Magazine called "the sex This month, Chrysler Corporation's hairy-chested Lee lacocca will embark on a no-nonsense campaign to sell 300,000 copies of his new book about himself. Sorry, no center-fold photo in this P.S.—it's Christmas buying time again! And remember, it's not too early to start saving up for Christmas 1985, either. Those of you who can afford it will want to purchase Cornelia Guest's "The It comes out in better book stores next autumn, a helpful rep advises. "Just in time for that winter's deb season." power in the Pacific."

Earlier in the debate Reagan had admitted that "things...do not look good to us from the standpoint right now of democratic rights." rebellion."

nitely. Letters to editor 1933-1984 Dear editor:

Aguilar, 5A Durham Street, Somerville, MA 02143.

In the main lines of his analysis, Charles Post Inside out_ ("Lesser evil won't work this time either, September 1984) is undoubtedly right. It is unquestionably a mistake to A dippy defense believe that the Democrats are any less committed to the maintenance of American capitalism than the Republicans are; both parties are our enemies.

That said, however, it does not follow that we must sit out their election. For Post insists on a false alternative: either wearing "as much clothing as possible." disperse OUT "meager"

resources in a useless attempt to defeat Reagan, or "dig in for the long haul and patiently tary. construct mass-action-oriRented" organizations. In fact it is possible to do both. We can vote against Reagan (i.e. "for" Mondale), and we can construct mass organizations.

To cast a vote entails no dispersal of resources; you can do it on the way to a rally.

You not only can, but you should. Four more years of the present regime could seriDevil."

Mously impair our ability to organize by eroding our legal rights. Imagine, for example, a Reagan equivalent of the Palmer Raids. Imagine also what Reagan's government will do in Nicaragua. In Reagan (as your cartoons admit!) we are confronting another Hitler. If we take that omy." comparison seriously-and we Fought to-then we ought also to remember Trotsky's words to the German communists in 1932: the whole Kubus industry will fail." "Is it correct that in order to destroy unemployment and They'll test it out in California, natch.

symbol of this year's recovery."

one.

Debutante's Guide to Life." COMMISS 10N REPORT THE ASSASSINATION OF misery it is first necessary to destroy capitalism? It is correct. But only the biggest blockhead can conclude from all this that we do not have to fight this very day, with all of our forces, against the measures with whose aid capitalism is increasing the misery of the workers.... When one of my enemies sets before me small daily portions of poison and the second, on the other hand, is about to shoot straight at me, then I will first knock the revolver out of the hand of my second enemy, for this gives me an opportunity to get rid of my first enemy."

By contrast, Socialist Action has been taking a line awfully similar to that of the Stalinist Comintern: Both parties are "social fascists," so don't help either of them. That line led to we know what disaster. Let's not repeat it.

William McCarthy Ames, Iowa Jesse Jackson Dear editor:

I'd like to commend you for the "plague on both your houses" position you have taken toward the Democrats and Republicans in this election. At a time when most of the U.S. left is shamelessly rushing onto the Democratic bandwagon, Socialist Action is among the handful of organizations holding out for anti-capitalist electoral politics.

It's clear that Jesse Jackson's candidacy played a large part in softening up the left and "progressives" for MonSOCIALIST ACTION AUTH dale this year, in part by refostering the illusion that the Democrats are "reformable" by virtue of Jackson's presence within the party. I was therefore glad that your article on Jackson's candidacy undertook to dispel that illusion.

Still, you could have gone farther with an examination of Jackson's positions on the issues. I think this would have made it clearer why Jackson is trying to "reform" the Dems. It would •have shown how much he is one of them: pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist, and anti-radical to the core....

Given all this, why did leftists so passionately endorse this man for president? Panic in the face of "Reaganism" is part of the reason, but not all.

There's something • else involved: Racism, the liberal variety that views Blacks as an undifferentiated mass, politically homogenous, and unvaryingly "progressive" and right-on in any course they choose. Jesse Jackson is Black, he is oppressed; therefore, to liberal leftists, he is somehow fundamentally different-and better-than the rest of the Democrats. This is skin-color politics, supposedly anathema to the left.

Left support for Jackson and the Dems is all the more horrifying in light of the tremendous opportunities for independent political action. The Rainbow Coalition is an exciting idea, which was stolen by Jackson in order to seduce a potentially radical constituency into the Democrats' camp.

We need a real Rainbow Coalition, i.e., unity among the racially and sexually oppressed in a labor party. That's the key to winning independence from Reaganism, the Democrats, and the reformism that has so far helped to keep the two-party system afloat-amidst the carcasses of movements gutted of leadership and militancy on their way to "acceptance" in the bourgeois electoral arena.

Robert Crisman Freedom Socialist Party Seattle, Wash.

We welcome letters from our readers. Please keep them brief. Where necessary they will be abridged.

NOVEMBER 1984 15

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- Sylvia Weinstein.for S.F. board of supervisors: ACTiON

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