The Age of Barbaria

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The Age of Barbaria

Jorge Majfud

In the year of Barbaria began the annual trips to the year 33. That year was selected because, according to surveys, Christ’s crucifixion drew the attention of most Westerners, and this social sector was important for economic reasons, since trips to the past were not organized, much less financed, by the government of any country, as had once happened with the first trips into space, but by a private company. The financial group that made possible the marvel of traveling through time was Axa, at the request of the High Chief of Technology, who suggested infinite profits through the offering of “tourism services,” as it was called in its moment. From then on, various groups of 30 people traveled to the year 33 in order to witness the death of the Nazarene, much as the tourist commoners used to do long ago when at each equinox they would gather at the foot of the pyramid of Chitchen-Itzá, in order to witness the formation of the serpent from the shadows cast down by the pyramid upon itself.

The greatest inconvenience encountered by Axa was the limited number of tourists who were able to attent the event at a time, which did not generate profits in accordance with the millions expected by the investors, for which reason that original number was gradually raised to 45, at the risk of attracting the attention of the ancient residents of Jerusalem. Then the figure was maintained, at the request of one of the company’s principal stock-holders who argued, reasonably, that the conservation of that historic deed in its original state was the basis for the trips, and that if each group produced alterations in the facts, that could result in an abandonment of general interest in carrying out this kind of travel.

With time it was proven that each historical alteration of the facts, no matter how small, was nearly impossible to repair. Which occurred whenever one of the travelers did not respect the rules of the game and attempted to take away some memento of the place. As was the most well-known case of Adam Parcker who, with incredible dexterity, was able to cut out a triangular piece of the Nazarene’s red tunic, probably at the moment the latter collapses from fatigue. The theft did not signify any change in the Holy Scriptures, but it served to make Parcker rich and famous, since the tiny piece of canvas came to be worth a fortune and not a few of the travelers who took on the trouble and expense of going back thousands of years did so to see where the Nazarene was missing “Parcker’s Triangle.”

A few had posed objections to this kind of travel which, they insist, will end up destroying history without us being able to notice. In effect, so it is: for each change that is introduced on a given day, infinite changes are derived from it, century after century, gradually diluting or multiplying its effects. In order to notice a minimal change in the year 33 it would be useless to turn to the Holy Scriptures, because all of the editions, equally, would reflect the blow and completely forget the original fact. There might be a possibility of tracing each change by projecting other trips to years prior to the year of Barbaria, but nobody would be interested in such a project and there would be no way of financing it.

The discussion about whether history should remain as it is or can be legitimately modified also no longer matters. But the latter is, in any case, dangerous, since it is impossible to foresee the resulting changes that would be produced by any particular alteration. We know that any change could potentially not be catastrophic for the human species, but would be catastrophic for individuals: we might not be the ones who are alive now, but someone else instead.

The most radical religious groups find themselves on opposing sides. Barbaria’s information services have recently discovered that a group of evangelists, belonging to the True Church of God, of Sao Pablo, will make a trip to the year 33. Thanks to the charity of its faithful, the group has managed to gather together the sum of several million that Axa charges per ticket. What no one has yet been able to confirm are the group’s intentions. It has been said that they intend to blow up Golgotha and set fire to Jerusalem at the moment of the Crucifixion, so that we thus arrive at the greatly anticipated End Times. All of history would disappear; the whole world, including the Jews, would recognize their error, they would turn to Christianity in the year 33 and the entire world would live in the Kingdom of God, just as descrived in the Gospels. Which is disputed by other people.

Others do not understand how the travelers can witness the crucifixion without trying to prevent it. The theological answer is obvious, which is why those least interested in preventing the martyrdom of the Messiah are his own followers. But or the rest, who are the majority, Axa has decreed its own ethical rules: “In the same manner in which we do not prevent the death of the slave between the claws of a lion, when we travel to Africa, neither must we prevent the apparent injustices that are committed with the Nazarene. Our moral duty is to conserve nature and history as they are.” The crucifixion is the common heritage of Humanity, but, above all, its rights have been acquired totally by Axa.

In fact,the changes will be increasingly inevitable. After six years of trips to the year 33, one can see, at the foot of the cross, bottle caps and magic marker graffiti on the main beam, some of which pray: “I have faith in my lord,” and others just limit themselves to the name of who was there, along with the date of departure, so that future generations of travelers will remember them. Of course, the company also began to yield in the face of pressure from dissatisfied clients, leading to a radical improvement in services. For example, Barbaria just sent a technical representative to the year 26 to request the production of five thousand cubic meters of asphalt and to negotiate with Pontius Pilate the construction of a more comfortable corridor for the Via Dolorosa, which will make less tiresome the travelers’ route and, besides, would be a gesture of compassion for the Nazarene, who more than once broke his feet on stones that he did not see in his path. It has been calculated that the improvement will not mean changes in the Holy Scriptures, since there is no special concern demonstrated there for the urbanism of the city.

With these measures, Axa hopes to shelter itself from the storm of complaints it has received due to alleged inadequacies in service, having to confront recently very costly law suits brought by client who have spent a fortune and have not returned satisfied. The cause of these complaints is not always the intense heat of Jerusalem, or the congestion in which the city is entrapped on the day of the crucifixion. Above all the cause is the unsatisfied expectations of the travelers. The company defends itself by saying that the Holy Scriptures were not written under its quality control, but instead are only historical documents and, therefore, are exaggerated. There where the Nazarene really dies, instead of there being a deep and horrifying night the sky is barely darkened by an excessive concentration of clouds, and nothing more. The Catholics have declared that this fact, like all those referenced in the Gospels, should be understood in its symbolic meaning and not merely descriptively. But most people were satisfied neither by Axa’s response nor by that of Pope John XXV, who came out in defense of the multinational corporation, thanks to which people can now be closer to God.

Translated by Bruce Campbell

Bruce Campbell is an Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN, where he is chair of the Latino/Latin American Studies program. He is the author of Mexican Murals in Times of Crisis (University of Arizona, 2003); his scholarship centers on art, culture and politics in Latin America, and his work has appeared in publications such as the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies and XCP: Cross-cultural Poetics. He serves as translator/editor for the «Southern Voices» project at www.americas.org, through which Spanish- and Portuguese-language opinion essays by Latin American authors are made available in English for the first time.

The Imperfect Sex. Why Is Sor Juana Not a Saint?

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El sexo imperfecto. ¿Por qué sor Juana no puede ser santa?

Monthly Review

The Imperfect Sex.

Why Is Sor Juana Not a Saint?

Dr. Jorge Majfud

Lincoln University

Every hegemonic power in every historical period establishes the limits of what is normal and, consequently, of what is natural. Thus, the power that ordered patriarchal society reserved for itself (reserves for itself) the unquestionable right to define what was a man and what was a woman. Every time some exalted person takes recourse to the mediocre argument that “things have been like this since the beginning of the world,” he situates the origin of the world in a recent period of the history of humanity.

Like any system, patriarchy fulfilled an organizing function. Probably, at some moment, it was an order convenient to the majority of society, including women. I don’t believe that oppression arises from patriarchy, but instead when the latter attempts to perpetuate itself by imposing itself on processes that range from the survival to the liberation of human kind. If patriarchy was once a logical system of values for an agricultural system of production and survival, today it no longer means anything more than an oppressive, and for some time now, hypocritical tradition.

In 1583, the revered Fray Luis de León wrote La perfecta casada (The Perfect Wife) as a book of useful advice for marriage. There, as with any other text of the tradition, it is understood that an exceptionally virtuous woman is a manly woman. “What here we call woman of principle; and we might say manly woman (…) means virtue of spirit and strength of heart, industry and wealth and power.” Then: “in the man to be gifted with understanding and reason, does not make him worthy of praise, because having this is his own nature (…) If the truth be told, it is a bouquet of dishonesties for the chaste woman to think she could not be so, or that in being so she does something for which she should be thanked.” Then: “God, when he decided to marry man by giving him woman, said: ‘Let us make for him a help mate’ (Gen. 2); from whence it is understood that the natural place of woman and the end for which God created her, is for her to be a helper to her husband.” A hundred years before Sor Juana would be condemned for speaking too much and for defending her right to speak, the nature of woman was well defined: “it is right for [women] to pride themselves on being silent, both those for whom it is convenient to cover up their lack of knowledge, and those who might shamelessly reveal what they know, because in all of them it is not only an agreeable condition, but a proper virtue, to speak little and be silent.” Then: “because, just as nature, as we have said and will say, made women to remain in the home as its keepers, so also it obliged them to keep their mouths closed. (…) Just as the good and honest woman was not made by nature for the study of the sciences nor for negotiation of hardships, but for a simple and domestic profession, it also limited their understanding, and therefore it rationed their words and reason.” But the moralizer of the day was not lacking in tenderness: “do not think that God created them and gave them to man only for them to keep the home, but also to console him and give him joy. So that in her the tired and angry husband might find rest, and the children love, and the family piety, and all of them generally an agreeable refuge.”

By the next century, Francisco Cascales believed that woman had to struggle against her nature, which was not only determined but evil or defective besides: “The needle and the distaff – wrote the military man and university professor, in 1653 – are the woman’s weapons, and so strong, that armed with them she will resist the most prideful enemy to tempt her.” Which amounted to saying that the distaff was the weapon of an oppressive system.

Juan de Zabaleta, notable figure of the Spanish Golden Age, declared in 1653 that “in poetry there is no substance; nor in the understanding of a woman.” And later: “woman is naturally gossipy,” the woman poet “adds more madness to her madness (…) The woman poet is the most imperfect and abhorrent animal formed by nature (…) If it were permitted of me, I would burn her alive. He who celebrates a woman for being a poet, God should give her to him as a wife, so that he might know what he celebrates.” In his following book, the lawyer wrote: “the word wife means comfort more than anything, pleasure the least.” Nonetheless, man “by adoring a woman takes adoration away from the Creator.” Zabaleta at times goes so far as to create metaphors with a certain aesthetic value: the woman in church “with her fan in hand enlivens with its air the fire that encircles her.” (1654)

In 1575,the physician Juan Huarte informed us that the testicles affirm the temperament more than the heart, while in the woman “the organ that is most gripped by the alterations of the uterus, according to all the physicians, is the brain, although there may be no grounds on which to base this correspondence.” Hippocrates, Galeno, Sigmund Freud and the most fanatical supporters of the Boca Juniors soccer team would all agree. The wise and ingenious man, according to the Spanish physician, has a son with contrary traits when the woman’s seed predominates, and no wise child can come from a woman. For this reason, when the man predominates, even when he is brutish and stupid a clever son results.

In his book about Fernando (a.k.a. the Catholic Monarch Ferdinand), another renowned moralist, Baltasar Gracián, dedicates some final lines to Queen Isabel. “What most aided Fernando – wrote the Jesuit – [was] doña Isabel his Catholic consort, that great princess who, even though a woman, exceeded the limits of a man.” Although there were noteworthy women, “commonly in this sex the passions reign in such a way that they leave no room for counsel, for patience, for prudence, essential parts of government, and with power their tyranny is augmented. (…) Ordinarily, manly women were very prudent.” Later: “In Spain manly females have always endured a position for males, and in the house of Austria they have always been respected and employed.” (1641)

I believe that the idea of the manly woman as virtuous woman is consistent with the tolerance of lesbianism by the same patriarchal system of values that condemned masculine homosexuality to burn at the stake, whether in the Middle East, in Europe or among the imperial Incas. Where there was a greater predominance for matriarchy, neither the virginity of the woman nor the homosexuality of men was watched over with such fervor.

A famous woman – beatified, sainted and given a doctorate by the Catholic Church – Saint Teresa, wrote in 1578: “Weakness is natural and it is very weak, especially in women.” Recommending an extreme discipline with the nuns, the future saint argued: “I do not believe there is anything in the world that could damage a prelate more than to not be feared, and for his subjects to think they may deal with him as with an equal, especially for women, for once understanding that there is in the prelate such softness… governing them will be difficult.” But this deficient nature impeded not only the proper social order but mystical achievement as well. Just like Buddha, in her famous book Las moradas the same saint recognized the natural “stupidity of women” that made it difficult for them to reach the center of the divine mystery.

It is perfectly understandable that a woman at the service of the patriarchal order, like Saint Teresa, would have been beatified, while another religious woman who openly opposed this structure would never have been recognized as such. I would sum up Saint Teresa’s slogan in just one word: obedience, above all social obedience.

Saint Teresa died an old woman and without the martyrdom proper to the saints. Sor Juana, in contrast, was made to suffer psychological, moral and, finally, physical torture until she died at the age of fourty-four, serving her fellow man in the epidemic of 1695. But none of that matters for canonizing her as a saint when “the worst of all women” committed the sin of questioning authority. Why not propose, then, Saint Juana Inés de la Cruz, patron saint of oppressed women?

Those who reject Sor Juana’s religious merits adduce a political value in her figure, when not merely a literary one. In another essay we already noted the political value of the life and death of Jesus, a value historically denied. The political and the aesthetic in Santa Teresa – the “patron saint of writers” – fill her works and thoughts as much as the religious and the mystical do. Nonetheless, a hegemonic political position is an invisible politics: it is omnipresent. Only that politics which resists the hegemony, which contests the dominant discourse becomes visible.

When I kiss my wife on the mouth in a public square, I am exercising a hegemonic sexuality, which is the heterosexual one. If two women or two men do the same thing they are not only exercising their homosexuality but also a challenge to the hegemonic order which rewards some and punishes others. Each time a man goes out on the street dressed as a traditional woman, inevitably he is making a – visible – political statement. I also make a political statement when I go out on the street dressed as a (traditional) man, but my declaration coincides with the hegemonic politics, is transparent, invisible, appears apolitical, neutral. It is for this reason that the act of the marginalized becomes a visible politics.

We can understand in the same way the political and religious factor in two women as different as Saint Teresa and Sor Juana. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for which one of them has been repeatedly honored by the religious tradition and the other reduced to the literary circle or to the Mexican two-hundred peso notes, symbol of the material world, abstraction of sin.

Translated by

Dr. Bruce Campbell

St. John’s University

Dr. Jorge Majfud was born in Tacuarembó, Uruguay in 1969. He majored in Architecture and in 1996 graduated from the Universidad de la República in Montevideo. He travelled extensively to gather material that would later become part of his novels and essays, and was a professor at the Universidad Hispanoamericana de Costa Rica and at Escuela Técnica del Uruguay, where he taught mathematics and art. He received his PhD degree at the University of Georgia. He currently teaches Latin American Literature at Lincoln University of Pennsylvania. His publications include: Hacia qué patrias del silencio / memorias de un desaparecido (novel, 1996); Crítica de la pasión pura (essays, 1998); La reina de América (novel, 2001); La narración de lo invisible / Significados ideológicos de América Latina (essays, 2006); Perdona nuestros pecados (short stories, 2007) and La ciudad de la Luna (novel, 2008). His stories and essays have been translated into Portuguese, French, English, German, Italian and Greek.

Dr. Bruce Campbell is an Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN, where he is chair of the Latino/Latin American Studies program. He is the author of Mexican Murals in Times of Crisis (University of Arizona, 2003) and ¡Viva la historieta! Mexican Comics, NAFTA, and the Politics of Globalization (University Press of Mississippi, 2009).

Crisis for the Rich, Via Crucis for the Poor

Crisis de los ricos, via crucis de los pobres

Crisis for the Rich, Via Crucis for the Poor

Theories of evolution after Darwin assume a dynamic of divergences. Two species can derive from one in common; every now and then, these variations can disappear gradually or abruptly, but two species never end up flowing together into one. There is no mixing except within a given species. In the long view, a hen and a man are distant relatives, descendants of some reptile, and each one represents a successful response by life in its struggle for survival.

In other words, diversity is the form in which life expands and adapts to diverse environments and conditions. Diversity and life are synonymous for the biosphere. Vital processes tend toward diversity but at the same time they are the expression of a unity, the biosphere, Gaia, the exuberance of life in permanent struggle for the survival of its own miracle in hostile surroundings.

For the same reason, cultural diversity is a condition for the life of humanity. That is to say, and even though it might be motive enough in itself, diversity is not limited merely to avoiding the boredom of monotony but instead is, besides, part of our vital survival as humanity.

Nevertheless, we humans are the only species that has replaced the natural and discrete loss of species with an artificial and threatening extermination, with industrial depredation and with the pollution of consumerism. Those of us who insist on a possible though not inevitable “progress of history” based on knowledge and the exercise of equal-liberty, can see that humanity, so often placing itself in danger of extinction, has achieved some advances that have allowed it to survive and abide its growing muscular power. And even so, we have added nothing good to the rest of nature. In many respects, perhaps in that natural process of trial and error, we have regressed or our errors have become exponentially more dangerous.

Consumerism is one of those errors. That insatiable appetite has little or nothing to do with progress toward a possible and yet improbable post-scarcity, hunger-free era, and everything to do with the more primitive era of greed and gluttony. Let’s not say with an animal instinct, because not even lions monopolize the savanna or practice systematic extermination of their victims, and because even pigs are sated sometimes.

The culture of consumerism has erred in several ways. First, it has contradicted the aforementioned condition, passing over cultural diversities, substituting them for its universal trinkets or creating a pseudo-diversity where a Japanese laborer or German office worker can enjoy for two days a piece of traditional Peruvian craftwork made in China, or for five days the most beautiful Venetian curtains imported from Taiwan, before they fall apart from use. Second, because it also has threatened the ecological balance with its unlimited extractions and its returns in the form of immortal garbage.

We can observe concrete examples all around us. We might say that it is good fortune that a worker could enjoy commodities that previously were reserved only for the upper classes, the unproductive classes, the consumer classes. Nonetheless, that consumption – induced by cultural and ideological pressure – often has been turned into the very purpose of the worker and an instrument of the economy. Which logically means that the individual-as-tool has been turned into a means of the economy as individual-as-consumer.

In almost all of the developed countries, or those following that “model of development,” the furniture that invades the markets is intended to last only a few years. Or a few months. The furniture items are pretty, they look good just like almost everything in the culture of consumption, but if we look closely they are scratched, missing a screw or our out of square. That preoccupation of my family of carpenters with improving the design of a chair so that it might last a hundred years turns out to be exotic now. But the new disposable furniture does not worry us too much because we know that it costs little and that, in two or three years we are going to buy some more new stuff, which happens to provide more interest and variation in the decoration of our homes and offices and above all stimulates the world economy. According to the current theory, what we throw away here aids the industrial development of some poor country. Thus we are good, because we are consumers.

And yet, those furniture items, even the cheapest ones, have consumed trees and burned up fuel in their long journey from China or from Malaysia. The logic of “dispose of it after use,” which is most reasonable for a plastic syringe, becomes a necessary law for stimulating the economy and maintaining the perpetual growth of GDP, with its respective crises and phobias whenever its fall provokes a recession of two percent. In order to escape the recession one must increase the dosage of the drug. The United States alone, for example, dedicates billions of dollars so that its residents might continue to consume, to spend, in order to escape the madness of the recession and thus allow the world to continue to turn, consuming and discarding.

But those discards, as cheap as they may be – consumerism is based on cheap, disposable merchandise that makes the recycling of durable products almost inaccessible – possess bits of wood, plastic, batteries, steel pipe, screws, glass and more plastic. In the United States all of that and more goes into the garbage – even in this time of what is called “great crisis” for the wrong reasons – and in the poor countries, the poor go out looking for that garbage. Over the long term, the one who ends up consuming all the garbage is nature, while humanity continues to suspend its changes of habit in order to get out of the recession first and in order to sustain the growth of the economy later.

But what is the meaning of “growth of the economy,” that two or three per cent with which the whole world is obsessed, from North to South and East to West?

The world is convinced that it finds itself in a terrible crisis. But the world was already in crisis. Now the crisis is defined as worldwide because 1) it proceeds from and affects the economy of the wealthiest; 2) the simplified paradigm of development has radiated its hysteria out to the rest of the world, undermining its legitimacy. But in the United States people are still flooding the stores and restaurants and their cut backs never involve hunger, even in the gravest cases of the millions of workers without jobs. In our peripheral countries a crisis means children begging in the streets. In the United States it tends to mean consumers consuming a little less while they await the next government check.

In order to get out of that “crisis,” the experts squeeze their brains and the solution is always the same: increase consumption. Ironically, increasing consumption by lending regular people their own money through the big private banks that receive rescue aid from the government. It’s not only a matter of saving a few banks, but, above all, of saving an ideology and culture that cannot survive on their own without frequent ad hoc injections: financial stimulus, wars that promote industry and control popular participation, drugs and entertainment that stimulate, tranquilize and anaesthetize in the name of the common good.

Will we have really emerged from the crisis when the world returns to a five percent growth rate through the stimulation of consumption in the wealthy countries? Will we not be laying the ground for the next crisis, a real – human and ecological – crisis and not an artificial crisis like the one we have now? Will we truly realize that this one is not truly a crisis but just a warning, which is to say, an opportunity for changing our habits?

Every day is a crisis because every day we choose a road. But there are crises that are a long via crucis and others that are critical because, for oppressed and oppressors alike, it means a double possibility: the confirmation of a system or its annihilation. So far it has been the first because of a lack of alternatives to the second. But one must never underestimate history. Nobody could have ever foreseen an alternative to medieval feudalism or to the system of slavery. Or almost nobody. The history of the most recent millennia demonstrates that utopians usually foresee the future with an exaggerated precision. But like today, the utopians have always had a bad reputation. Because mockery and disrepute are the form that every dominant system has always used to avoid the proliferation of people with too much imagination.

Dr. Jorge Majfud

Febrero, 2009

Lincoln University

Political Affairs (USA)

Translated by Dr. Bruce Campbell. St. John’s University

https://gara.naiz.eus/paperezkoa/20090307/125818/es/Crisis-ricos-via-crucis-pobres?Hizk=fr

Crisis de los ricos, vía crucis de los pobres

The Walled Society

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The Walled Society

The Walled Society

With the passing of the years, and thanks to attentive observation of his clients, Doctor Salvador Uriburu had discovered that the majority of the population of Calataid lacked the European origin of which it boasted. In its eyes, in its hands, persisted the African slaves who repaired the walls in the nineteenth century, and surely the older slaves who built the wells in the times of Garama. In its ritual gestures persisted the followers of Kahina, the priestess of the African desert who converted to Judaism before the arrival of Islam. Within the white minority, diversity was also noteworthy, but this had been suspended while they were busy considering themselves the representative (and founding) class of the town. The same blue eyes could be found behind Russian eyelids or behind other Irish ones; the same blonde hair could cover a German cranium or another, Gallegan one. How is it possible, Salvador Uriburu had written, that such a diverse town could be so racist and, at the same time, so overflowing with patriotism, with so much fanatical love for one and the same flag? How can the whole be worshiped and at the same time the parts that comprise it disdained? It can’t. Unless patriotic reverence is nothing more than the necessary lie nourished by one part in order to use the other parts for its own benefit.

In one of his final public appearances, in May of 1967 in the hall of notables of the Liberty Club, Doctor Uriburu had attempted an exercise that bothered the new traditionalists, once they were able to decipher how it questioned things. Salvador Uriburu had drawn, on a blackboard, a series of at least fifteen triangles, circles and squares. When he asked those present how many kinds of drawings they saw there, everyone agreed that they saw three. When he asked that they select one of those three types, everyone chose the group of triangles and the doctor asked them again how many groups they saw in the group of triangles. Everyone said that there were at least two groups: a group of isosceles triangles and a group of right triangles.

“More or less isosceles and more or less right-angled” said one discerningly, noticing that the drawings were not perfect.

“The figures aren’t perfect,” confirmed Salvador Uriburu, “just like human beings.” And like human beings everyone saw first the differences, those that made the figures different, before seeing what they had in common.

“That’s not true,” said someone, “the triangles have something in common among themselves. Each one has three sides, three angles.”

“The circles and the squares also have something in common: they are all geometrical figures. But nobody observed that there was also one unique group of drawings, the group of geometrical figures.”

Salvador Uriburu neither made accusations nor clarified the example, as was his custom. But after months of arguing about the strange and pedantic exposition of the doctor’s little figures, the pastor George Ruth Guerrero arrived at the conclusion that this kind of thinking came to the little doctor from the sect of humanists and, most certainly, the Illuminati.

“The group of geometrical figures,” concluded the pastor with his index finger in the air, “represented humanity and each group of figures represented a race, a religion, a deviation and so on and so forth. The humanists would like to make us believe that the truth does not exist; that the faith of the Moors and of the Jews is the same as the true faith of the Christians, the race of the chosen ones and the race of the sinners, the morality of our fathers and the sodomy of the moderns, the garments of our women and the indecent nudity of the Nigerians.”

They accused the doctor of being a gnostic. It was known, by rumors and magazines from France, that the Heterodox one had conquered the rest of Europe with an extraordinary belief: the truth did not exist; any heresy could be taken as a substitute for the true faith and logical reason. And it was said that someone was trying to introduce all of that in Calataid.

The allusion was direct, but Doctor Uriburu did not respond. The last time he entered the hall of notables, in August of 1967, it was expected that he would say that he was for or against this superstition, that he would define, once and for all, which side he was on. Instead, he came out with another of his figures that had nothing to do with his profession as a scientist, much less as a believer, which demonstrated his irremediable descent into mysticism, into the sect of the Illuminati who, it was said, assembled every Thursday in an unknown chamber of the old cisterns.

“Once there was a man who climbed a mountain of sand,” he said, “and upon arriving at the peak he decided it was the only mountain in the desert. Nevertheless, right away he realized that others had done the same, from other peaks. Then he said that his mountain, the one beneath his feet, was the true one. Then the man, or perhaps it was a woman, decided to come down from his dune and he climbed another one and then another, until he understood (perhaps from atop the highest dune) that there were many dunes, an infinite number relative to his strength. Then, tired, he said that the desert was not one sand dune in particular, but all of the dunes together. He said that there were some tall dunes and other smaller ones, and that just one fistful of sand from any of them didn’t represent one dune in particular but the entire desert, and that nobody, like none of the dunes, was the desert, completely. He also said that the dunes moved, that the true dune which allowed the unique perspective of the desert and of itself changed again and again in size and place, and that to ignore that was to deny an inseparable part of any unique truth.

“Unlike another exhausted traveler, this discovery did not lead him to deny the existence of all of the dunes, only the arbitrary pretense that there was just one in the immensity of the desert. He denied that a handful of sand had less value and less permanence than that arbitrary and pretentious dune. That is to say, he denied some ideas and affirmed others; he was not indifferent to the eternal search for truth. And for that reason he was equally persecuted in the name of the desert, until a sand storm put an end to the dispute.”

An indescribable silence followed the doctor’s new enigma. Then a repressed murmur filled the hall. Someone stood to announce the end of the meeting and reminded everyone of the date of the next one. The bell sounded; everyone rose and left without acknowledging him. He knew that they were also bothered that he would doubt the tolerance and freedom of Calataid, making use of metaphors as if he were a victim of the inquisition or living in the times of the barbarous Nero.

Uriburu remained seated, watching through the window the old men and young lads who rode by on their bicycles and could not see him, with his hands in the pockets of his suit coat, playing with a handful of sand. He lost his mind twenty days later. A strange diagnosis, written in his own hand, concluded that Calataid suffered from “social autism.” Autism, according to the books, is a product of the accelerated growth of the brain which, instead of increasing intelligence reduces it or renders it useless due to the pressure of the encephalic mass against the walls of the craneum. For Doctor Uriburu, who was more concerned with architecture than with biology, the walls of Calataid had provoked the same effect with the growth in the population’s pride. Therefore, it was useless to pretend to cure individuals if the society was sick. In fact, to suppose that society and individuals are two different things is an artifice of the view and of the medicine that identifies bodies, not spirits. And Calataid was incapable of relating two different facts with a common explanation. Even more: it was incapable of recognizing its own memory, engraved scandalously on the stones, in the dank voids of its interiors, and denied or covered over by the most recent invention of a tradition.

Jorge Majfud is a Uruguayan writer who received his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia, and who currently teaches at Lincoln University of Pennsylvania. His essays, story collections, and several novels have been translated into Portuguese, French, English, German, Italian, and Greek. His latest novel is The City of the Moon (Baile del Sol, 2008).

Eduardo Galeano: The Open Eyes of Latin America

Cover of Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone

Eduardo Galeano:

The Open Eyes of Latin America

On Mirrors, Stories of Almost Everyone

Jorge Majfud

Lincoln University

There are very few cases of writers who maintain total indifference toward the ethics of their work. There are not so few who have understood that in the practice of literature it is possible to separate ethics from aesthetics. Jorge Luis Borges, not without mastery, practiced a kind of politics of aesthetic neutrality and was perhaps convinced this was possible. Thus, the universalism of Borges’ precocious postmodernism was nothing more than the very eurocentrism of the Modern Age nuanced with the exoticism proper to an empire that, much like the British empire, held closely to the old decadent nostalgia for the mysteries of a colonized India and for Arabian nights removed from the dangers of history. It was not recognition of diversity—of equal freedom—but confirmation of the superiority of the European canon adorned with the souvenirs and booty of war.

Perhaps there was a time in which truth, ethics and aesthetics were one and the same. Perhaps those were the times of myth. This also has been characteristic of what we call committed literature. Not a literature made for politics but an integral literature, where the text and the author, ethics and aesthetics, go together; where literature and metaliterarure are the same thing. The marketing thought of postmodernity has been different, strategically fragmented without possible connections. Legitimated by this cultural fashion, critics of the establishment dedicated themselves to rejecting any political, ethical or epistemological value for a literary text. For this kind of superstition, the author, the author’s context, the author’s prejudices and the prejudices of the readers remained outside the pure text, distilled from all human contamination. But, what would remain of a text is we took away from it all of its metaliterary qualities? Why must marble, velvet or sex repeated until void of meaning be more literary than eroticism, a social drama or the struggle for historical truth? Rodolfo Walsh said that a typewriter could be a fan or a pistol. Has this fragmentation and later distillation not been a critical strategy for turning writing into an innocent game, into more of a tranquilizer than an instrument of inquiry against the musculature of power?

In his new book, Eduardo Galeano responds to these questions with unmistakable style—Borges would recognize: with kind contempt—without concerning himself with them. Like his previous books, since Days and Nights of Love and War (1978), Mirrors is organized with the postmodern fragmentation of the brief capsule narrative. Nevertheless the entire book, like the rest of his work, evinces an unbreakable unity. His aesthetics and his ethical convictions as well. Even in the midst of the most violent ideological storms that shook recent history, this ship has not broken up.

Mirrors expands to other continents from the geographical area of Latin America that had characterized for decades Eduardo Galeano’s main interest. His narrative technique is the same as in the trilogy Memory of Fire (1982-1986): with an impersonal narrator who fulfills the purpose of approaching the anonymous and plural voice of “the others” and avoiding personal anecdote, with a thematic order at times and almost always with a chronological order, the book begins with the cosmogonic myths and culminates in our times. Each brief text is an ethical reflection, almost always revealing a painful reality and with the invaluable consolation of a beautiful narration. Perhaps the principle of Greek tragedy is none other than this: lesson and commotion, hope and resignation or the greater lesson of failure. As in his previous books, the paradigm of the committed Latin American writer, and above all the paradigm of Eduardo Galeano, seems to be reconstructed once again: history can progress, but that ethical-aesthetical progress has mythical origin for its utopian destination and memory and awareness of oppression for its instruments. Progress consists of regeneration, of the recreation of humanity in the same manner as the wisest, most just and most vulnerable of the Amerindian gods, the man-god Quetzalcóatl, would have done it.

If we were to remove the ethical code with which each text is read, Mirrors would shatter into brilliant fragments; but it would reflect nothing. If we were to remove the aesthetic mastery with which this book was written it would cease to be memorable. Like myths, like the mythical thought redeemed by the author, there is no way of separating one part from the whole without altering the sacred order of the cosmos. Each part is not only an alienated fragment but a tiny object that has been unearthed by a principled archeologist. The tiny object is valuable in its own right, but much is more valuable due to the other fragments that have been organized around it, and these latter become even more valuable due to those fragments that have been lost and that are now revealed in the empty spaces that have been formed, revealing an urn, an entire civilization buried by wind and barbarism.

The first law of the narrator, to not be boring, is respected. The first law of the committed intellectual as well: never does entertainment become a narcotic instead of a lucid aesthetic pleasure.

Mirrors has been published this year simultaneously in Spain, Mexico, and Argentina by Siglo XXI, and in Uruguay by Ediciones del Chanchito. The latter continues an already classic collection of black cover books which has reached number 15, represented meaningfully with the Spanish letter ñ. The texts are accompanied with illustrations in the manner of little vignettes that recall the careful art of book publishing in the Renaissance, in addition to the author’s drawings as a young man. Even though his conception of the world leads him to think structurally, it is difficult to imagine Eduardo Galeano skipping over any detail. Like a good jeweler of the word who polishes in search of every one of his different reflections, he is equally careful in the publication of his books as works of art. The English edition, Mirrors, Stories of Almost Everyone, translated by Mark Fried, will be published by Nation Books.

With each new contribution, this icon of Latin American literature confirms for us that additional formal prizes, like the Cervantes Prize, should not be long in coming.

Translated by Bruce Campbell

Do You Believe in God? Yes or No.

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Do You Believe in God? Yes or No.

Jorge Majfud

Lincoln University

Someone asks me whether I believe in God and indicates that a one sentence answer will do. Two at the most. It’s easy, yes or no.

I’m sorry, but why do you insist on subjecting me to the tyranny of such a question? If you are truly interested in my response, you will have to hear me out. If not, good day to you. Nothing is lost.

The question, like so many others, is tricky. It demands of me a clear yes or a clear no. I would have one of those very clear answers if the god about which I am being asked were so clear and well-defined. Do you like Santiago? Excuse me, which Santiago? Santiago de Compostela in Spain or Santiago, Chile? Santiago del Estero in Argentina or Santiago Matamoros?

Okay, look, my greatest desire is for God to exist. It’s the only thing I ask of him. But not just any god. It seems like almost everyone agrees that there is only one God, but if that is true then one must recognize that this is a god with multiple personalities, from multiple religions and with mutual hatred for one another.

The truth is that I cannot believe in a god who inflames the heart for war and who inspires such fear that nobody is capable of making even the slightest change. Which is why dying and killing for that lie is common practice; questioning it a rare heresy. I cannot believe, and much less support, a god who orders people massacred, who is made to the measure and convenience of some nations above others, of some social classes above others, of some genders above others, of some races above others. A god who for his own entertainment has created some men to be condemned from birth and others to be the select few until death, and a god who, at the same time, is praised for his universality and infinite love.

How does one believe in such a selfish, such a mean-spirited god? A criminal god who condemns greed and the accumulation of money and rewards the chosen greedy ones with greater material wealth. How does one believe in a god of neckties on Sunday, who shouts and swells with blood condemning those who don’t believe in such an apparatus of war and domination? How does one believe in a god who instead of liberating subjugates, punishes, and condemns? How does one believe in a small-minded god who needs the minor politics of a few of the faithful in order to gain votes? How does one believe in a mediocre god who must use bureaucracy on Earth to administer his business in Heaven? How does one believe in a god who allows himself to be manipulated like a child frightened in the night and who every day serves the most repugnant interests on Earth? How does one believe in a god who draws mysterious images on dank walls in order to announce to humanity that we are living in a time of hatreds and wars? How does one believe in a god who communicates through street-corner charlatans who promise Heaven and threaten Hell to passersby, as if they were real estate agents?

Which god are we talking about when we talk about the One and All Powerful God? Is this the same God who sends fanatics to immolate themselves in a market, the same God who sends planes to discharge Hell on children and innocents in his name? Perhaps so. Then, I don’t believe in that god. Rather, I don’t want to believe that such a criminal could be a supernatural force. Because we already have our hands full with our own human wickedness. It’s just that human evil would not be so hypocritical if it were to focus on oppressing and killing in its own name and not in the name of a kind and creative god.

A God who allows his manipulators – who have no peace in their hearts – to speak of the infinite peace of God while they go around condemning those without faith. Condemning those who have no faith in that tragic madness attributed every day to God. Men and women without peace who claim to be chosen by God and who go around proclaiming this because it’s not enough for them that God would have chosen them for their doubtful virtues. Those terrorists of the soul who go about threatening with Hell – sometimes softly and sometimes shouting – anybody who dares to doubt so much madness.

A God, creator of the Universe, who must fit between the narrow walls of consecrated homes and buildings uncursed by man, not so that God has a place but so that God can be put in a place. In a proper place, which is to say, privatized, controlled, circumscribed to a few ideas, a few paragraphs, and at the service of a sect of the self-chosen.

Of course, the classic accusation, established by tradition, for all those who would doubt the real attributes of God is arrogance. The furious preachers, in contrast, do not stop for an instant to reflect upon the infinite arrogance of their claim to belong to, and even guide and administer, the select club of those chosen by the Creator.

The only thing I ask of God is that he exist. But every time I see these celestial hordes I am reminded of the story, true or fictitious, of the indigenous chieftain Hatuey, condemned to be burned alive by the governor of Cuba, Diego Velásquez. According to father Bartolomé de las Casas, a priest was present for Hatuey’s final hours, offering him Heaven if he converted to Christianity. The chieftain asked if white men could be found there. “Yes,” responded the priest, “because they believe in God.” Which was sufficient reason for the rebel chief to refuse to accept the new truth.

Then, if God is that being who walks behind his followers in a trance, in all truthfulness, I cannot believe in him. Why would the Creator confer critical reason on his creatures and then demand of them blind obedience, hallucinatory trembling, uncontrollable hatreds? Why would God prefer believers to thinkers? Why would enlightenment mean the loss of consciousness? Could it be that innocence and obedience get along well?

By Their Methods You Shall Know Them

Honduras II: Por sus métodos los conocerás

Honduras Against History

By Their Methods You Shall Know Them

Jorge Majfud

The Bible relates the story of how the teachers of the law brought before Jesus an adulterous woman. They intended to stone her to death, as they were required to do by the law of God, which at the time was said to be the law of men as well. The teachers and Pharisees wanted to test Jesus, from which one can induce that Jesus was already well known for his lack of orthodoxy with respect to the most ancient laws. Jesus suggested that whoever was free of sin should cast the first stone. Thus nobody was able to execute the strict law.

In this way, and in many others, the Bible itself has continued transforming itself, despite being a collection of books inspired by God. Religions have always been considered to be great conservative forces which, faced with reformers, became great reactionary forces. The paradox is rooted in the fact that all religion, all sects, have been founded by some subersive, by some rebel or revolutionary. It is not for nothing that history teems with those martyred, persecuted, tortured and assassinated by the political powers of the moment.

The men who were persecuting the adulteress retreated, recognizing in the turn of events their own sins. But over the course of history the result has been different. The men who oppress, kill and assassinate the alleged sinners always do so with the justification of some law, some right and in the name of some morality. This, more universal, rule was the one applied in Jesus’s own execution. In his time he was not the only rebel who fought against the Roman Empire. Not coincidentally, he was crucified together with two other prisoners. By association, this was intended to signify that he was just another prisoner being executed. Not even a religious dissident. Not even a political dissident. Invoking other laws, they eliminated the suberversive who had questioned the Pax Romana and the collaborationism of the aristocracy and of the religious hierarchies of his own people. Everything was carried out according to the laws. But history recognizes them today by their methods.

George Bush’s government gave us plenty of examples, and on a large scale. All of the wars and violations of national and international law were committed in defense of the law and sovereign right. By its sectarian interests, history will judge it. By its methods, its interests shall be known.

In Latin America, the role of the Catholic Church has almost always been the role of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who condemned Jesus in defense of the dominant classes. There has never been a military dictatorship of oligarchical origin that didn’t receive the blessing of bishops and influential priests, thereby legitimizing the censorship, the opression of the mass murder of the supposed sinners.

Now, in the 21st century, the method and the discourses are repeated in Honduras like a crack of the whip from the past.

By their methods we know them. The patriotic discourse, the complacency of an upper class trained in the domination of the poor who have no formal education. A class that owns the methods of popular education, which is what the main communication media are. Censorship; the use of the army to carry out their plans; repression of the popular demonstrations; the expulsion of journalists; the expulsion by force of a government elected by democratic vote, its later demand before Interpol, its threat to jail dissidents if they return and its later denial by force of their return.

In order to better see this reactionary phenomenon let’s divide human history into four grand periods:

1) The collective power of the tribe concentrated in one strong member of a family, generally a man.

2) A period of agricultural expansion unified by a totem (something akin to a conquering surname) and later a pharoah or emperor. During this time wars emerge and primitive armies are consolidated, not so much for defense as for the conquest of new productive territories and for state administration of its own people’s surplus production and the oppression of its people’s slaves. This stage continues with variations up until the absolutist kings of Europe, passing through the feudal era. In all of these regimes, religion is a central element of cohesion as well as coercion.

3) In the modern era we have a renaissance and a radicalization of the Greek experiment in representative democracy. But in the modern period humanist thought includes the idea of universality, of the implicit equality of every human being, the idea of history as a process of reaching toward perfection instead of inevitable corruption, and the concept of morality as a human product relative to a determined historical time. And perhaps the most important idea, from the Arab philosopher Averroes: political power not as the pure will of God but as the result of social interests, class interests, etc. Liberalism and Marxism are two radicalizations (opposed in their means) of this same current of thought, which also includes Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. This period of representative democracy was the most practical form for bringing together the voices of millions of men and women in one house, the Congress or Parlament. If Humanism pre-exists the techniques for popularizing culture, it is also empowered by them. The printing press, the paperback book, the low-price newspapers of the 19th century, the necessary literacy training of future workers were decisive steps toward democratization. Nonetheless, at the same time the reactionary forces, the dominant forces of the previous period, rapidly conquered these media. Thus, if it was no longer possible to further delay the arrival of representative democracy, it was possible to dominate its instruments. The medieval sermons in the churches, functional in great measure for the princes and dukes, were reformulated in the media of information and in the media of the new popular culture, like rade, film and television.

4) Despite this, the democratic wave continued on, frequently bathed in blood by successive reactionary coups. In the 21st century the renaissance humanist wave continues. And with it continue the instruments to make it possible. Like the Internet, for example. But so too the contrary forces, the reactions of the powers constituted by the previous stages. And in the process of struggle they learn to use and dominate the new instruments. While representative democracy has not yet matured, already one see emerging the ideas and instruments necessary for passing on to a stage of direct democracy, participatory and radical.

In some countries, as today in Honduras, the reaction is not against this latest stage but the previous one. A kind of late reaction. Even though in appearance it suggests a smaller scale, it has Latin American and universal significance. First because it represents a calling to attention of the recent democratic complacency of the continent; and second because it stimulates the modus operandi of those reactionaries who have always sailed against the currents of history.

Earlier we noted the proof of why the deposed president of Honduras had not violated the law or the constitution. Now we can see that his proposal of a non-binding popular referendum was a method of transition from a representative democracy toward a direct democracy. Those who interrupted this process reversed it toward the prior stage.

The fourth stage was intolerable for a Banana republic mentality that can be recognized by its methods.

Translated by Bruce Campbell

The Illegitimate Constitution

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Honduras IV: La constitución ilegítima

The Illegitimate Constitution

Jorge Majfud

The dialectical dispute over the legality of the violent process of removal from office and expulsion from the country of the president of Honduras has not reached closure. Months ago we explained our point of view, according to which there was no violation of the constitution on the part of president Zelaya at the moment of calling for a non-binding poll on the question of a constituent assembly. But at base this discussion is moot and rooted in a different problem: resistance by a social class and mentality that created the institutions of its own Banana Republic and seeks desperately to identify change of any kind with chaos, at the same time that it imposes repression on its people and on the communication media that oppose it.

The main argument of the authors of the coup in Honduras is rooted in the fact that the 1982 Constitution does not allow changes in its wording (articles 239 and 374) and establishes the removal from power of those who promote such changes. The Law of Citizen Participation of 2006, which promotes popular consultations, was never accused of being unconstitutional. On the contrary, popular participation is prescribed by the very same constitution (article 45). All of which reveals the scholastic spirit of its drafters, nuanced with a humanistic language.

No norm, no law can stand above a country’s constitution. Nonetheless, no modern constitution has been dictated by God, but by human beings for their own benefit. Which is to say, no constitution can stand above a natural law like a people’s freedom to change.

A constitution that establishes its own immutability is confusing its human and precarious origins with a divine origin; or it is attempting to establish the dictatorship of one generation over all generations to come. If this principle of immutability made any sense, we would have to suppose that before the constitution of Honduras could be modified Honduras must first disappear as a country. Otherwise, for a thousand years that country would have to be ruled by the same wording.

The orthodox religious have tried to avoid changes in the Koran and in the Bible by counting the number of words. When societies and their values change but a sacred text cannot be altered, the text is salvaged by interpreting it in favor of the new values. This is clearly demonstrated by the proliferation of sects, isms and new religions that arise from the same text. But in a sacred text the prohibition against change, even though impossible, is more easily justified, since no man can ammend God’s word.

These pretensions of eternity and perfection were not rare in the Iberoamerican constitutions which in the 19th century attempted to invent republics, instead of allowing the people to invent their own republics and constitutions to their own measure and according to the pulse of history. If in the United States the constitution of 1787 is still in force, it is due to its great flexibility and its many amendments. Otherwise, this country would have today three fifths of a man in the presidency, a quasi-human. “That ignorant little black man,” as the now former de facto Honduran foreign minister Enrique Ortez Colindres called him. As if that weren’t enough, article I of the famous constitution of the United States originally prohibited any change in constitutional status with reference to slaves.

The result of a constitution like that of Honduras is none other that its own death, preceded sooner or later by the spilling of blood. Those who claim to defend it will have to do so with force of arms and with the narrow logic of a collection of norms that violate one of the most basic and undeniable natural rights.

For centuries, the philosophers who imagined and articulated the utopias that today are called Democracy, State and Human Rights said so explicitly: no law exists above these natural rights. And if such a thing were attempted, disobedience is justified. Violence does not originate from disobedience but from he who violates a fundamental right. Politics is for everything else. Negotiation is the concession of the weak. A convenient concession, inevitable, but in the long term always insufficient.

A mature democracy implies a culture and an institutional system that prevent breaks from the rules of the game. But at the same time, and for that same reason, a democracy is defined by allowing and facilitating the inevitable changes that come with a new generation, with the greater historical consciousness of a society.

A constitution that impedes change is illegitimate in the face of the inalienable right to freedom (to change) and equality (to determine change). It is paper, it is a fraudulent contract that one generation imposes upon another in the name of a nation that no longer exists.

Translated by Bruce Campbell

The Devils in Haiti

Haiti and the Greater Antilles (NASA, Internat...

Image by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center via Flickr

Los demonios de Haití

The Devils in Haiti

Jorge Majfud

After Haiti’s great earthquake, several theories appeared about the causes. According to Haiti’s consul in Brazil, George Samuel Antoine, the fault lay with macumba, or African spiritism, and the race: “The African himself is damned. Every place where there are Africans is screwed.” [“O africano em si tem maldição. Todo lugar que tem africano tá foda.”]

The influential televangelist Pat Robertson asserted that the misfortune was owed to the fact that the Haitian people had a pact with the devil. A secret pact. Perhaps so secret that, with the exception of Pat Robertson, not even God knew about it. Otherwise the infinite love of the Creator would certainly have averted the deaths of thousands of innocent children as a result of this cosmic plot. Or he knew about it and allowed it to happen, not out of weakness but due to his well-known policy of non-intervention.

Another theory, widely held and distributed by thousands of editors, bloggers, and presidents like Hugo Chávez states that the earthquake that wiped the country’s capital off the map and killed more than a hundred thousand people was caused by the United States in order to destabilize the regime in Iran. Which demonstrates the tremendous technological power of the United States, capable moving the tectonic plates which sustain the oceans and entire countries.

Although secular, the theory retains a lot of the theological tradition according to which God is in the habit of laying waste to entire peoples in order to keep the corner grocer from being unfaithful to his wife.

Other presidents and columnists claim that U.S. aid in reality constitutes an invasion, in order to pillage Haiti’s wealth and achieve a strategic position in the Caribbean, close to Cuba. Further evidence that U.S. intelligence agencies are not paying attention, since everyone knows that Haiti is the poorest country in the hemisphere and that Guantánamo is closer to Cuba, so it’s possible that the United States will therefore invade Guantánamo as well.

Or one might have to wonder whether this kind of anti-U.S. theory is not itself the product of some perverse U.S. agency. Because there is no better way of discrediting any anti-imperialist critique than with anti-American stupidities.

At this rate, the day will soon arrive when few will believe that Truman was the president who ordered that two nuclear bombs be dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. An action which, thanks to the heroic sacrifice of tens of thousands of innocent children, probably avoided the death of tens of thousands of innocent children.

* * *

While every ideological group makes the argumentative most of Haiti’s earthquake, thousands of children continue to suffer and die hopelessly.

But all of our best words are going to die there where a child dies.

All of our best thoughts are going to die there where a child’s tears are stopped by hunger, pain and injustice he does not understand.

All of our best ideas and our best speeches become a handful of sterile soil there where a mother places flowers on a small grave.

If any one of our words of horror and of indignation was capable of averting the death of a single child in the world, it would deserve to live. Which is to say, there is no such word.

If our words were to accompany our acts the way joy accompanies a child’s smile, the way a country’s wealth accompanies the value of its currency, perhaps then our words would have some value.

Our words would then be something more than cowardly symbols, empty speeches, pretty flowers that serve to perfume the bed of the lazy indignant.

And despite everything, perhaps words still matter when they mobilize. We give them value and meaning when we are moved to act by them.

There, words that move emotionally and do not mobilize are useless.

Let’s start by giving something. For those children, a glass of water is worth more than a thousand words.

Translated by Bruce Campbell

Dr. Bruce Campbell teaches Hispanic Studies at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University in Minnesota, and is the author of Mexican Murals in Times of Crisis (University of Arizona, 2003) and the forthcoming ¡Viva la historieta! Mexican Comics, NAFTA, and the Politics of Globalization (University Press of Mississippi).

Puppets, Puppet Masters, and Closet Liberations

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Títeres y titiriteros (Spanish)

Puppets, Puppet Masters, and Closet Liberations

Jorge Majfud

On April 5, 2010, a survey by the globally influential Time magazine revealed that for its readers Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, also known as Lady Gaga, was the most influential person in the world. According to journalist Robert Paul Reyes, the singer without a doubt “perfectly captures the times.”

On April 21, 2010, the investment bank Goldman Sachs reported in a triumphal tone a net profit of more than three billion dollars in the previous quarter.

On April 22, in a speech at Cooper Union, near Wall Street and with the purpose of convincing the public about his regulatory proposals for the financial system, president Barack Obama attempted to defend himself from the emerging groups on the extreme right who accuse him of being a Marxist, asserted that he still believes in the positive power of the market. Nevertheless, “a free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it.” Appealing to his populist discourse, according to the followers of Sarah Palin, Obama charged that “some on Wall Street forgot that behind every dollar traded or leveraged there’s a family looking to buy a house, or pay for an education, open a business, save for retirement.”

On Friday April 23, a Securities and Exchange Commission inspector general’s memo drafted for the United States Senate and reported by ABC News, charged that during the great financial crisis of the United States which left more than eight million people jobless in 2008, several SEC inspectors who should have been controlling Wall Street were investing their labor time instead in downloading and looking at pornography. One of them achieved the record by spending eight hours a day in this activity. While only a minority of employees dedicated their work hours to pornography, more than a dozen of them were senior staffers with important responsibilities.

Meanwhile, in Gotham City, according to a United States Senate commission, the managers of the investment megabank Goldman Sachs were betting on the collapse of the real estate sector that left thousands of families homeless.

According to the Reuters news agency, the New York Times and every one of the major daily newspapers in the United States, some managers of the Goldman Sachs Group saw a chance to make some good money in the midst of the credit crisis and shortly before the mortgage collapse.

“Sounds like we will make some serious money,” Donald Mullen, one of Goldman’s executives, wrote in an email. Another executive, Lloyd Blankfein, faced with accusations of fraud brought by the government in a hostile reform-minded context, claimed that the company had lost money during the crisis. In September of 2008 the company received $25 billion dollars of taxpayers’ money in the form of a financial bailout.

According to Democratic Senator Carl Levin, the uncovered emails show that, “in reality, Goldman made a lot of money by betting against the mortgage market.” In November of 2007, according to Goldman Sachs’ Chief Financial Officer David A. Viniar, the company made more than $50 million dollars in just one day by betting that mortgage securities would sink. According to the Washington Post, Goldman’s game consisted in convincing people to invest in the real estate market at the same time that the company itself was betting in the opposite direction.

In any case the main instrument consists of promoting desire and punishing pleasure. Toward this end the social order and the hegemonic culture make use of their bankers and their religions, of their artists and their prostitutes, of their discourse about heroic and exemplary liberations from closets and dressing rooms.

Hence the importance of the populist culture and the innocence of the market for sex, of pornography conveniently called art, and of “authentic personal expressions” that claim to have nothing to do with politics.

Except in the perverse minds of radical critics.

Perhaps the readers of Time magazine are right. In a gaga society, in a planetary order dominated by superficiality and meaningless narcissism perhaps an irrelevant personality like Lady Gaga really is one of the most influential people in the world.

Translated by Bruce Campbell

Ο δεκάλογος κατά του ανθρωπισμού

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Diez azotes contra el humanismo (Spanish)

Monthly Review
MR II

Ο δεκάλογος κατά του ανθρωπισμού

Translated by Eleni Alexopoulou

του ΧΟΡΧΕ ΜΑΧΦΟΥΝΤ*
Χόρχε Μαχφούντ
Τεύχος Νο 30
Αρχική Δημοσίευση: MRZine, 6 Μαρτίου 2007

Μετάφραση: Νίκος Παπαπολύζος

Μια δευτερεύουσα παράδοση στη συντηρητική σκέψη είναι ο ορισμός του διαλεκτικού αντιπάλου ως πνευματικά ανεπαρκούς και ηθικά επιλήψιμου. Καθώς αυτό ποτέ δεν συγκροτεί επιχείρημα, το ξέσπασμα συγκαλύπτεται από κάποια ανακόλουθη και ταυτολογική συλλογιστική, ίδιον της μεταμοντέρνας σκέψης στην πολιτική προπαγάνδα. Δεν είναι τυχαίο που στη Λατινική Αμερική άλλοι συγγραφείς αναπαράγουν το παράδειγμα των ΗΠΑ με βιβλία όπως το Manual del perfecto idiota latinoamericano [Εγχειρίδιο για τον τέλειο Λατινοαμερικανό ηλίθιο] (1996) ή καταρτίζοντας λίστες σχετικά με τους «Los diez estúpidos más estúpidos de América Latina» [Οι δέκα πιο βλάκες από τους βλάκες της Λατινικής Αμερικής]. Λίστες που συνήθως έχουν στην κορυφή τον φίλο μας, τον φοίνικα Εντουάρδο Γκαλεάνο, ο οποίος απαντά με αβρή αδιαφορία• τον έχουν σκοτώσει τόσες πολλές φορές που έχει συνηθίσει να ξαναγεννιέται.

Κατά κανόνα, οι λίστες των δέκα βλακωδέστερων ανθρώπων στις Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες τείνουν να φιλοξενούν στην κορυφή διανοούμενους. Η εξήγηση για αυτή την ιδιοτυπία δόθηκε κάμποσο καιρό πριν από έναν αξιωματικό του στρατού της τελευταίας αργεντινής δικτατορίας (1976–1983), ο οποίος παραπονέθηκε στις τηλεοπτικές κάμερες για τους διαδηλωτές που έκαναν πορεία στους δρόμους του Μπουένος Άιρες: «Δεν υποπτεύομαι τους εργαζόμενους, γιατί είναι πάντα απασχολημένοι με τη δουλειά τους. Υποπτεύομαι τους φοιτητές γιατί, έχοντας τόσο πολύ ελεύθερο χρόνο, τον καταναλώνουν στη σκέψη. Και όπως γνωρίζετε, κε δημοσιογράφε, η υπερβολική σκέψη είναι επικίνδυνη». Κάτι που ήταν συνεπές προς το προηγούμενο εγχείρημα του στρατηγού Ονγκανία[1] (1966–1970): την εκδίωξη όλων των διανοουμένων ώστε να λυθούν τα προβλήματα της Αργεντινής.

Σχετικά πρόσφατα, ο Νταγκ Χάγκιν, στο διάσημο τηλεοπτικό πρόγραμμα Dave’s Top Ten, παρασκεύασε τη δική του λίστα των Δέκα Πιο Βλακωδών Αριστερών Ιδεωδών. Αν προσπαθήσουμε να δούμε το πρόβλημα χωρίς την απλούστευση που προσφέρει η πολιτική ετικέτα, θα αντιληφθούμε ότι κάθε κατηγορία ενάντια στους λεγόμενους αριστερούς των ΗΠΑ στην πραγματικότητα αποτελεί επίθεση σε διάφορες ανθρωπιστικές αρχές.

10. Περιβαλλοντισμός.

Σύμφωνα με τον συγγραφέα, οι αριστεροί δεν σταματούν σε ένα λογικό επίπεδο προστασίας του περιβάλλοντος.

Προφανώς ο ορισμός του τι είναι ή δεν είναι λογικό εξαρτάται από τα οικονομικά συμφέροντα της στιγμής. Όπως κάθε συντηρητικός, ασπάζεται την ιδέα ότι η θεωρία της παγκόσμιας υπερθέρμανσης είναι μόνο μια θεωρία, όπως η θεωρία της εξέλιξης: δεν υπάρχουν αποδείξεις ότι ο Θεός δεν δημιούργησε τους σκελετούς των δεινοσαύρων και των άλλων ειδών και μετά τους σκόρπισε τριγύρω, απλά για να συγχύσει τους επιστήμονες και να δοκιμάσει την πίστη τους. Η συντηρητική νοοτροπία, ηρωικά αμετακίνητη, αδυνατεί να φανταστεί ότι οι ωκεανοί μπορεί να υπόκεινται στην εξέλιξη, πέρα από ένα λογικό επίπεδο.

9. Για να μεγαλώσεις ένα παιδί χρειάζεσαι μια κοινότητα.

Ο συγγραφέας το αρνείται: το πρόβλημα είναι ότι οι αριστεροί πάντοτε σκέφτονταν συλλογικά. Εφόσον δεν πιστεύουν στον ατομικισμό, θεωρούν ότι η εκπαίδευση των παιδιών πρέπει να λαμβάνει χώρα μέσα στην κοινωνία.

Αντιθέτως, η αντιδραστική σκέψη πιστεύει περισσότερο στη μονάδα, στον κοινωνικό αυτισμό, παρά στον ύποπτο ανθρωπισμό. Κατά το σκεπτικό μεσαιωνικού αριστοκράτη, ένας πλούσιος άνθρωπος μπορεί να είναι πλούσιος εν μέσω εξαθλίωσης, ένα παιδί μπορεί να γίνει ηθικός άνθρωπος και να εισέλθει στον παράδεισο χωρίς να μολυνθεί από τις αμαρτίες της κοινωνίας. Η κοινωνία, οι μάζες, χρησιμεύουν μόνο για να επιτρέψουν στον ηθικό άνθρωπο να επιδείξει τη συμπόνια του δωρίζοντας στους έχοντες ανάγκη αυτά που του περίσσεψαν – αφαιρώντας τα από τους φόρους του.

8. Τα παιδιά δεν μπορούν να χειριστούν το στρες. Εξού και δεν πρέπει να τα διορθώνουν οι δάσκαλοι με κόκκινο μελάνι, ή δεν πρέπει να έρχονται αντιμέτωπα με τις ωμότητες της ιστορίας.

Ο συγγραφέας σωστά παρατηρεί ότι το να δουν κάτι δυσάρεστο ως νήπια προετοιμάζει τα παιδιά για ένα κόσμο που δεν είναι ευχάριστος. Παρ’ όλα αυτά, κάποιοι συμπονετικοί συντηρητικοί υπερβάλλουν λίγο όταν ντύνουν τα παιδιά τους με στρατιωτικές στολές και τους δίνουν παιχνίδια που, αν και ρίχνουν μόνο ακτίνες λέιζερ, μοιάζουν πάρα πολύ με όπλα ακτίνων λέιζερ που ρίχνουν άλλου είδους βλήματα σε παρόμοιους στόχους (και σε μαύρους ανθρώπους).
7. Ο ανταγωνισμός είναι κακός.

Για τον συγγραφέα, όχι: το γεγονός ότι κάποιοι κερδίζουν σημαίνει ότι άλλοι χάνουν, όμως αυτή η δυναμική μάς οδηγεί στη μεγαλοσύνη.

Δεν εξηγεί κατά πόσο υφίσταται εδώ το «λογικό όριο» για το οποίο μίλησε πριν, ή κατά πόσο αναφέρεται στη μισητή ιστορία της εξέλιξης, που θέλει τον ισχυρότερο να επιβιώνει στον πρωτόγονο κόσμο. Ούτε και ξεκαθαρίζει σε ποια μεγαλοσύνη αναφέρεται – σε αυτή του σκλάβου στην ευημερούσα βαμβακοφυτεία ή στο μέγεθος της φυτείας; Δεν λαμβάνει υπόψη, φυσικά, κανένα είδος κοινωνίας που να βασίζεται στην αλληλεγγύη, να έχει απελευθερωθεί από τη νεύρωση του ανταγωνισμού.

6. Η υγεία είναι δικαίωμα του πολίτη.

Όχι για τον συγγραφέα: η υγεία αποτελεί προσωπική ευθύνη.

Σε αυτό το επιχείρημα αρέσκονται όσοι αρνούνται την ανάγκη για καθολικό σύστημα υγείας, αλλά την ίδια στιγμή δεν προτείνουν ιδιωτικοποίηση της αστυνομίας και ακόμη περισσότερο του στρατού. Κανείς δεν πληρώνει την αστυνομία μόλις καλέσει το 100, κάτι που είναι λογικό. Αν κάποιος μας επιτεθεί και μας πυροβολήσει στο κεφάλι, δεν θα πληρώσουμε τίποτα για τη σύλληψή του, όμως αν είμαστε φτωχοί, και θέλουμε οι γιατροί να μας σώσουν τη ζωή, θα καταλήξουμε χρεοκοπημένοι. Συμπεραίνει κανείς ότι, σύμφωνα με αυτή τη λογική, ένας κλέφτης που ληστεύει ένα σπίτι αντιπροσωπεύει μια κοινωνική ασθένεια, αλλά μια επιδημία δεν είναι τίποτα περισσότερο από ένα μάτσο ανεύθυνα άτομα που δεν επηρεάζουν την υπόλοιπη κοινωνία. Ποτέ βεβαίως δεν λαμβάνεται υπόψη ότι η συλλογική αλληλεγγύη είναι μια από τις υψηλότερες μορφές ατομικής ευθύνης.

5. Ο πλούτος είναι βδέλυγμα.

Σύμφωνα με τον συγγραφέα, οι αριστεροί θέλουν να ποινικοποιήσουν την επιτυχία των πλουσίων και να τους επιβάλουν φόρους, ούτως ώστε να δώσουν τον πλούτο τους στην ομοσπονδιακή κυβέρνηση για να τον χρησιμοποιήσει ανεύθυνα, βοηθώντας αυτούς που δεν είναι τόσο επιτυχημένοι.

Με άλλα λόγια, οι εργαζόμενοι οφείλουν το καθημερινό ψωμί τους στους πλούσιους. Το να κερδίζεις τα προς το ζην με τον ιδρώτα του προσώπου σου είναι η τιμωρία σου από αυτούς τους επιτυχημένους ανθρώπους που δεν έχουν ανάγκη να εργαστούν. Υπάρχει λόγος που η σωματική ομορφιά έχει ιστορικά συσχετιστεί με τις μεταβαλλόμενες, αλλά πάντοτε νωχελικές, συνήθειες της αριστοκρατίας. Υπάρχει λόγος που στον ευτυχισμένο κόσμο του Ουώλτ Ντίσνεϋ δεν υπάρχουν εργαζόμενοι. Η ευτυχία είναι κρυμμένη σε κάποιο σεντούκι με χρυσά νομίσματα. Για τον ίδιο λόγο, είναι αναγκαίο να μην χαραμίζονται λεφτά από φόρους στην εκπαίδευση και την υγεία. Τα εκατομμύρια που ξοδεύονται σε στρατούς ανά τον κόσμο δεν μας προβληματίζουν επειδή αποτελούν μέρος των επενδύσεων που τα κράτη κάνουν με υπευθυνότητα, για να διατηρήσουν την επιτυχία των πλουσίων και το όνειρο των φτωχών για δόξα.

4. Υπάρχει αχαλίνωτος ρατσισμός που θα διορθωθεί μόνο με την ανεκτικότητα.

Όχι: οι αριστεροί βλέπουν τις φυλετικές σχέσεις μέσα από το πρίσμα του πεσιμισμού. Όμως το θέμα της φυλής δεν απασχολεί τους περισσότερους από εμάς, απασχολεί μόνον εκείνους.

Σαν να λέμε δηλαδή, όπως με το εφεύρημα της παγκόσμιας υπερθέρμανσης, ότι αν ένας συντηρητικός δεν έχει στο μυαλό του κάτι ή κάποιον, αυτό το κάτι ή ο κάποιος δεν υπάρχουν. Οι Δε Λας Κάσας, Λίνκολν και Μάρτιν Λούθερ Κινγκ πολέμησαν ενάντια στο ρατσισμό γιατί ήταν αδαείς. Αν οι ανθρωπιστές σταματούσαν να σκέφτονται τον κόσμο θα ήμασταν ευτυχέστεροι, επειδή ο πόνος των άλλων δεν θα υπήρχε, ούτε θα υπήρχαν άκαρδοι ληστές που κλέβουν από τους συμπονετικούς πλούσιους.

3. Έκτρωση.

Για να αποφύγουν την προσωπική ευθύνη, οι αριστεροί υποστηρίζουν την ιδέα της φόνευσης του αγέννητου.

Ο μαζικός φόνος των ήδη γεννημένων αποτελεί επίσης μέρος της ατομικής ευθύνης, σύμφωνα με την τηλεοπτικά μεταδιδόμενη δεξιά σκέψη, αν και κάποιες φορές αποκαλείται ηρωισμός και πατριωτισμός. Μόνο όταν ωφελεί το σπίτι μας. Αν κάνουμε λάθος που καταπιέζουμε ένα λαό, αποφεύγουμε την ευθύνη μιλώντας για την έκτρωση. Ένα διπλό ηθικό παζάρι, βασισμένο σε ηθική δύο μέτρων και δύο σταθμών.

2. Τα όπλα είναι φαύλα.

Οι αριστεροί μισούν τα όπλα και μισούν όσους θέλουν να αυτοπροστατευθούν. Σε αντίθεση, οι αριστεροί πιστεύουν ότι αυτή την προστασία θα έπρεπε να την παρέχει το κράτος. Και πάλι, δεν θέλουν να αναλάβουν ευθύνη για τον εαυτό τους.

Σαν να λέμε, οι βιαιοπραγούντες, οι ανήλικοι συμμορίτες, οι μαθητές που πυροβολούν στα λύκεια, οι έμποροι ναρκωτικών και οι λοιποί γκάγκστερ ασκούν το δικαίωμά τους να υπερασπίζονται το συμφέρον τους, το ατομικό και επιχειρηματικό. Κανείς άλλωστε δεν αμφισβητεί το κράτος και δεν πιστεύει στη δική του ευθύνη περισσότερο από αυτούς. Εξυπακούεται λοιπόν ότι οι στρατοί, σύμφωνα με το παραπάνω σκεπτικό, αποτελούν το βασικό στοιχείο της υπεύθυνης άμυνας που διεξάγεται από το ανεύθυνο κράτος.

1. Ο κατευνασμός του κακού εξασφαλίζει την ειρήνη.

Οι αριστεροί πάντοτε θέλησαν να κατευνάσουν τους Ναζί, τους δικτάτορες και τους τρομοκράτες.

Η σοφία του συγγραφέα δεν φτάνει στο σημείο να λάβει υπόψη ότι πολλοί αριστεροί ήταν συνειδητά υπέρ της βίας, και ως παράδειγμα θα αρκούσε να θυμηθούμε τον Ερνέστο Τσε Γκεβάρα – μολονότι αντιπροσωπεύει τη βία του σκλάβου μάλλον, παρά του αφέντη. Είναι αλήθεια, οι συντηρητικοί δεν έχουν κατευνάσει δικτάτορες: στη Λατινική Αμερική τουλάχιστον, τους εξέθρεψαν. Στην τελική, οι δικτάτορες υπήρξαν πάντοτε φίλοι των όπλων και μάλιστα έκλειναν πολύ καλές συμφωνίες στο όνομα της ασφάλειας. Οι Ναζί, οι δικτάτορες και οι τρομοκράτες κάθε είδους, έτσι όπως ρέπουν προς την ιδεολογική υπεραπλούστευση, θα συμφωνούσαν επίσης με το τελευταίο κομμάτι στη συλλογιστική της λίστας: «Οι αριστεροί δεν καταλαβαίνουν ότι κάποιες φορές η βία είναι η μόνη λύση. Το Κακό υπάρχει και πρέπει να εξαρθρωθεί». Και, τέλος: «Θα το σκοτώσουμε [το Κακό], ή αυτό θα σκοτώσει εμάς, είναι τόσο απλό. Θα σκοτώσουμε το Κακό, ή το Κακό θα σκοτώσει εμάς. Το μόνο πράγμα που είναι πιο απλουστευτικό από αυτό είναι η αριστερή σκέψη».

Άμπρα κατάμπρα!

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* Ο Χόρχε Μαχφούντ γεννήθηκε στο Τακουαρεμπό της Ουρουγουάης το 1969. Διδάσκει λατινοαμερικανική λογοτεχνία στο Πανεπιστήμιο της Τζώρτζια. Έχει επισκεφτεί περισσότερες από σαράντα χώρες, και οι ταξιδιωτικές του εντυπώσεις περιλήφθηκαν στα μυθιστορήματα και τα δοκίμιά του. Έχει εκδώσει, μεταξύ άλλων, τα μυθιστορήματα Hacia qué patrias del silencio (memorias de un desaparecido) (1996), La reina de América (2002) και Perdona nuestros pecados (2007), καθώς και τα δοκίμια Crítica de la pasión pura (1998). Έργα του έχουν μεταφραστεί στα αγγλικά και τα πορτογαλικά. Ιστορίες και άρθρα του έχουν κυκλοφορήσει σε διάφορες εφημερίδες και περιοδικά όπως οι El País και La República του Μοντεβιδέο, Página/12 του Μπουένος Άιρες, Milenio του Μεξικού καθώς και τα Rebelión και Hispanic Culture Review του Πανεπιστημίου George Mason. Είναι ιδρυτής και εκδότης του περιοδικού SigloXXI – reflexiones sobre nuestro tiempo, και τακτικός συνεργάτης της εβδομαδιαίας έκδοσης της República, Bitácora.

[1] Στις 29 Ιουλίου 1966, κατόπιν διαταγών του δικτάτορα μόλις από την προηγουμένη Juan Carlos Onganía, η αστυνομία εισέβαλε στο Πανεπιστήμιο του Μπουένος Άιρες, ξυλοκόπησε και συνέλαβε τους ενάντιους στη δικτατορία φοιτητές και καθηγητές, και κατέστρεψε εργαστήρια και βιβλιοθήκες. Η πανεπιστημιακή αυτονομία καταλύθηκε και πάρα πολλοί καθηγητές απολύθηκαν ή αυτοεξορίστηκαν. Το περιστατικό είναι γνωστό ως «νύχτα των κλομπ» (La Noche de los Bastones Largos). (Σ.τ.Ε.)

The Age of Barbaria

Originally published in The Humanist (2008)

Translated by Bruce Campbell

Bruce Campbell is an Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN, where he is chair of the Latino/Latin American Studies program. He is the author of Mexican Murals in Times of Crisis (University of Arizona, 2003); his scholarship centers on art, culture and politics in Latin America, and his work has appeared in publications such as the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies and XCP: Cross-cultural Poetics. He serves as translator/editor for the «Southern Voices» project at http://www.americas.org, through which Spanish- and Portuguese-language opinion essays by Latin American authors are made available in English for the first time.

The Humanist (USA)

The Humanist 2 (USA)

L’ era della Barbarie

La Era de Barbaria (Spanish)

The Age of Barbaria (English)

L’ era della Barbarie

Nell’ era della Barbarie cominciarono i viaggi a ritroso nel tempo all’anno trentatre. Venne scelto quell’anno perché, secondo le statistiche, la Crocifissione di Cristo attraeva l’attenzione di più gente dall’Occidente, e si pensò a questo settore sociale per ragioni economiche, giacché i viaggi, nel passato, non erano stati né diretti né tanto meno finanziati dal governo di nessun paese come in altri tempi era successo per i primi viaggi nello spazio, ma da un’ azienda privata. Il gruppo finanziario che rese possibile la meraviglia di viaggiare nel tempo fu l’Axa, sotto richiesta del maggior cervellone delle Tecnologie Blue, che fece intravedere infiniti profitti per la prestazione di “servizi turistici”, come vennero chiamati in quel momento. Da allora vari gruppi di trenta persone hanno viaggiato all’anno trentatre per presenziare alla morte del Nazareno, come facevano anticamente i turisti comuni quando, ad ogni equinozio, si concentravano ai piedi della piramide di Chitchen-Itzá per presenziare alla formazione del serpente data dalle ombre che la piramide gettava su se stessa.

Il maggior inconveniente che ebbe l’Axa fu il numero ridotto di turisti che potevano assistere all’evento di volta in volta, cosa che determinava profitti che non erano concordi con le aspettative milionarie dell’investimento, motivo per cui, di lì a poco, venne alzato questo numero fino alla cifra di quarantacinque, con il rischio di attirare l’attenzione degli antichi abitanti di Gerusalemme. Poi la cifra venne mantenuta senza alterazioni, su richiesta di uno dei principali azionisti dell’impresa che argomentò, ragionevolmente, che la conservazione di questo fatto storico allo stato originale era la condizione basilare che giustificava i viaggi e che se ogni gruppo avesse prodotto alterazioni nei fatti, la cosa si sarebbe ripercossa portando ad un abbandono dell’interesse generale nel realizzare questo tipo di viaggi.

Con il tempo si capì che ogni alterazione storica dei fatti, per minima che fosse, era quasi impossibile da riparare. Questo succedeva quando qualcuno dei viaggiatori non rispettava le regole del gioco e pretendeva di portarsi a casa qualche souvenir. Il caso più famoso fu quello di Adam Parcker che, con incredibile destrezza, riuscì a ritagliare un pezzetto triangolare della tunica rossa del Nazareno, probabilmente nel momento in cui questi cadde stravolto dalla fatica. Il furto non causò nessuna alterazione delle Sacre Scritture, ma servì a Parcker per diventare ricco e famoso, giacché il minuscolo pezzetto di tela venne valutato una fortuna e non pochi viaggiatori tra quelli che si erano scomodati ad arrivare fino a lì e avevano pagato per andare indietro nel tempo di più di mille anni, lo avevano fatto per vedere da dove mancasse al Nazareno il “Triangolo di Parcker”.

Qualcuno ha fatto obiezioni su questo tipo di viaggi che, assicurano, finiranno per distruggere la storia senza che ce ne possiamo rendere conto. E difatti è così: per ogni cambiamento che si introduce in un giorno qualunque, infiniti cambiamenti deriveranno, secolo dopo secolo, diluendosi a poco a poco o moltiplicandosi nei propri effetti. Per percepire il minimo cambiamento nell’anno trentatre sarebbe inutile ricorrere alle Sacre Scritture, perché tutte le edizioni, allo stesso modo, assorbirebbero il colpo facendo dimenticare completamente il fatto originale. Ci sarebbe la possibilità di rastrellare ogni cambiamento inviando altri viaggiatori ad anni anteriori a quello della Barbarie, ma a nessuno importerebbe un progetto così e non ci sarebbe nessun modo per finanziarlo.

Ormai non importa nemmeno il dibattito sul fatto che la storia debba rimanere come sta o se è lecito modificarla. Quest’ ultima opzione, ad ogni modo, è pericolosa, giacché è possibile prevedere i cambiamenti risultanti che potrebbero essere prodotti da qualsiasi alterazione. Sappiamo che qualsiasi cambiamento potrebbe non essere catastrofico per la specie umana, ma potrebbe esserlo per gli individui: non saremmo più noi quelli che stanno vivendo adesso, ma un altro qualsiasi.

Su una posizione contraria si trovano i gruppi religiosi più radicali. I servizi di informazione di Barbarie hanno scoperto recentemente che un gruppo di Evangelisti, appartenenti alla Chiesa Vera di Dio, di San Paolo, farà il viaggio verso l’ anno trentatre. Grazie alle offerte dei propri fedeli, il gruppo è riuscito a mettere insieme la somma più che milionaria che richiede l’Axa per il biglietto. Quello che ancora non è stato possibile confermare sono le intenzioni del gruppo. Si dice che vogliano far saltare il Golgota e incendiare Gerusalemme nel momento della Crocifissione, perché si arrivi in questa maniera, alla tanto attesa Fine dei Tempi. Tutta la storia scomparirebbe; tutti, compresi gli ebrei, riconoscerebbero l’errore, si convertirebbero al cristianesimo nell’anno trentatre e il mondo intero vivrebbe nel regno di Dio, così come era descritto nei Vangeli. Tutto questo è molto dibattuto da altre persone.

Altri ancora non si spiegano come i viaggiatori possano presenziare alla Crocifissione senza cercare di evitarla. La risposta teologica e ovvia, per cui i meno interessati ad evitare il martirio del Messia sono i suoi stessi proseliti. Ma per gli altri, che sono la maggioranza, Axa ha decretato le sue regole etiche: “Allo stesso modo in cui non evitiamo la morte di un cervo tra le fauci di un leone quando facciamo un viaggio in Africa, così non dobbiamo nemmeno evitare le apparenti ingiustizie che si commettono contro il Nazareno. Il nostro dovere morale è quello di conservare la natura e la storia così come sono”. La Crocifissione è patrimonio dell’Umanità, ma soprattutto, i suoi diritti sono stati acquistati completamente dall’Axa.

Di fatto, i cambiamenti saranno sempre più inevitabili. Già dopo sei anni di viaggi all’anno trentatre, si possono vedere ai piedi della croce, tappi di bibite e scritte con il pennarello sul palo portante, alcune delle quali recitano: “Ho fiducia nel mio signore”, altre si limitano solo al nome di chi è stato lì, insieme alla data di partenza, perché le generazioni future di viaggiatori lo ricordino. Ovviamente anche l’azienda comincia a cedere davanti alla pressione dei clienti insoddisfatti, che chiedono un miglioramento radicale nei servizi. Per esempio Barbarie ha appena inviato un rappresentante tecnico all’anno ventisei per ottenere la produzione di cinquemila metri cubi di asfalto e per negoziare con Pilato la costruzione di un corridoio più comodo per la Via Crucis, cosa che renderà meno faticoso il percorso dei viaggiatori e rappresenterebbe, inoltre, un gesto misericordioso per il Nazareno che più di una volta si è rotto i piedi con i sassi che non vedeva lungo il suo cammino. Si è calcolato che la miglioria non apporterà cambiamenti alle Sacre Scritture, dato che in queste non vi è una particolare preoccupazione per l’ urbanistica della città.

Con queste misure Axa vuole mettersi al sicuro dalla pioggia di reclami che sta subendo a causa di ipotetiche insufficienze del servizio, dovendo far fronte ultimamente a cause molto costose di clienti che hanno speso una fortuna e non sono tornati soddisfatti. Il motivo dei reclami non è sempre causato dal gran caldo di Gerusalemme, o dalla congestione nella quale si trova intrappolata la città il giorno della Crocifissione. Si deve soprattutto alle aspettative non soddisfatte dei viaggiatori. L’azienda si difende dicendo che le Sacre Scritture non sono state scritte sotto il loro controllo di qualità, ma che sono solo documenti storici e quindi esagerati. Lì dove muore il Nazareno invece di esserci una notte profonda e straziante c’è un cielo appena appena un po’ più scuro a causa dell’eccessiva concentrazione di nuvole e niente più. I cattolici hanno dichiarato che questo fatto, come tutti quelli riferiti ai Vangeli, deve prendersi nel suo valore simbolico e non meramente descrittivo. Ma la maggior parte della gente non è stata soddisfatta dalla risposta di Axa e nemmeno di quella di Papa Giovanni XXV che si è schierato in difesa della multinazionale, grazie alla quale la gente ora può essere più vicina a Dio.

Jorge Majfud

Revista Que Tal

Milano, 2008

Traduzione: Francesca Sammartino

Tout le poids de la loi

Odpusti Naše Grehe (Slovenian)Image by Hilarywho via Flickr

Odpusti Naše Grehe (Slovenian)

Tout le poids de la loi

Dans la matinée du 27 juillet, les journaux et la télévision donnèrent la nouvelle d’un rare crime commis à Sayago. Deux indigents avaient donné la mort à un troisième, possiblement dans la nuit du jour précédent. Quoique sans arriver à inquiéter, la nouvelle en a surpris plusieurs. Ce qui est raisonnable et, ce qui est plus habituel, c’est de tuer pour de l’argent, par orgueil ou pour quelque passion familiale. Et rien de cela ne pouvait avoir un pygmée vivant dans les décharges de la ville.

Jamais on ne sut exactement le motif de l’agression; et alors personne ne voulût en savoir plus lorsque le juge donna aux assassins dix années de prison. Mais moi, le juge, jamais je n’oublierai le cas et, quelques années plus tard, je visitai les prisonniers dans leur cellule. Je le fis en secret, comme d’habitude, parce que les gens se plaisent à dire que j’avais une préférence pour les criminels plutôt que pour les victimes. Maintenant si je devais dicter une sentence de nouveau, je leurs donnerais dix autres années supplémentaires; non par justice, mais par compassion. Je crois que je peux m’expliquer.

L’indigent assassiné était le docteur Enriquez, celui qui avait porté cette vie sans toit pendant les derniers six mois. Eusebio Enriquez était un chirurgien et avait perdu sa fille aînée dans une salle d’opération le 24 janvier, où lui–même prétendait la soulager d’une maladie incurable. Le chirurgien n’avait aucune raison de se sentir coupable, mais peu importe les raisons parce que, subitement, il devint fou et s’en fût de sa maison. Il traversa la ville sous une pluie de janvier et s’abandonna du côté des voies ferrées, à Sayago. Il se laissa pousser la barbe, devint sale et négligea ses vêtements; il maigrit rapidement et son visage se fit plus obscur et creusé, ce qui lui donna une apparence méconnaissable de sannyasin hindou. Il se rendit si en marge de la société qu’il cessa d’exister pour le gouvernement et pour le monde, et pour cette raison personne ne put le retrouver. Peu de temps après, il rencontra Facundo et Barbarroja, les deux hommes qui plus tard le tueraient à coup de barre de fer. Ni Facundo ni Barbarroja n’étaient des criminels, mais les gens en avaient peur ou, pour mieux dire, les fuyaient, comme si la pauvreté était contagieuse. Tandis qu’il y avait des gens qui croyaient en Dieu ou à l’Enfer et qui leurs donnaient des aumônes. Mais, peu à peu, la bonne conscience et les subsides décrûrent, et ces misérables en vinrent à intégrer l’inconscient national, la honte dissimulée d’une économie prospère ou prétentieuse.

Les deux hommes traînaient une vie presque nomade. Ils habitaient tous ou certains des recoins de la vieille station de chemin de fer, évitaient toujours que le gardien les découvre dormant dans quelque wagon abandonné, ou dans le dépôt de fer où ils se réfugiaient par temps de pluie. “Cet endroit est triste» se disait Enriquez, “tant mieux s’ils ne s’en rendent pas compte.”

Mais, je le répète, aucun des deux n’était capable de tuer un oiseau. Aussi il est vrai que pendant les six mois que dura cette convivialité, Enriquez ne leurs adressa la parole qu’une seule fois. Malgré tout, les mendiants ne lui gardèrent aucune rancœur. Ils savaient qu’il était un pauvre fou qui, autrefois, avait vécu comme les gens ordinaires, qu’il avait eu une maison et une auto et, jusqu’à une famille, parce qu’ils l’avaient vu fuir une femme élégante portant une robe propre. Ils avaient appris à cohabiter avec lui comme en famille, et paraissait muet ou handicapé. Certaines fois, lorsque le froid devenait intolérable et que ses mâchoires commençaient à trembler, ils lui donnaient une boîte de conserve replie d’herbes bouillantes. Et lui ne la repoussait pas.

Mais cet hiver fut l’un des pires dont se souviendront les mendiants. Les températures tombaient en dessous de zéro; les mares commençaient à geler et les pâturages devenaient blancs. Il était chaque fois plus difficile sinon impossible de se procurer des bouteilles de verre et encore plus de les vendre. Parce que les gens s’éloignaient de ces hommes qui, chaque année, dépérissaient toujours plus, négligeant leur barbe et leurs vêtements. Et ainsi, peu à peu, ils perdirent le peu de contact oral qui les réunissait au monde.

Barbarroja tomba malade de faim et Facundo commença à se plaindre toute la nuit de rhumatisme ou de quelqu’autre chose d’indéchiffrable. Les maladies et les souffrances crûrent jusqu’à se confondre en un unique enfer. Cependant, les deux mendiants continuaient d’espérer le printemps et la chaleur de l’été qui chaque jour paraissaient plus lointain.

Enriquez le savait. Il savait que cela pouvait être le dernier hiver de ses compagnons. Ils avaient les pieds gonflés et violets, leurs visages étaient pâles et renfoncés, leurs mains inutilisables. Seul les aidait un optimisme déprimant, selon lui.

Un matin, Enriquez ouvrit la bouche pour leurs dire la sentence de leur mort. Ce jour fut l’unique fois qu’ils parlèrent tous les trois et ils parlèrent durant des heures. Facundo et Barbarroja s’informèrent de qui était le fou et cela confirma presque tout ce qu’ils avaient imaginé. En réalité, le fou était ou avait été un homme riche. Un petit bourgeois, pour ses connaissances, mais un homme riche pour ces marginalisés.

La conversation se termina par un proposition du fou. “Il viendra plus de froid” leur dit-il, et “vous-mêmes mourrez. Déjà vous n’avez plus de défenses et vos corps agonisent. Ils endureront la souffrance jusqu’en septembre. Ou, dans le pire des cas, jusqu’en octobre. Mais vous mourrez. Et si vous avez la chance de survivre cette année, vous mourrez l’année prochaine, à la suite d’avoir souffert le double de ce que vous souffrirez cet hiver. Mais vous être si pauvre que vous n’avez ni même d’idées. Vous ne saurez pas comment sortir de cet enfer. Ni même de la façon la plus facile. Vous êtes si pauvre que vous n’avez même pas pensé à aller en prison où les gens jouissent d’un lit avec des couvertures et un toit, où ils mangent presque tous les jours. Vous êtes si pauvres que vous n’avez même pas les forces suffisantes pour voler dans un marché, parce que si vous l’essayeriez, ils vous sortiraient à coup de pommes de terre et vous en termineriez sur le pavé avec le front ensanglanté. Et s’ils vous emprisonnaient pour vol, ils vous remettraient à la rue au bout de deux jours parce que les prisons sont pleines, et parce que même le juge aurait pitié de deux misérables affamés. Mais, comme je suis médecin, je vais vous dire quoi faire pour vous en sortir.”

Les mendiants se regardèrent pour se consulter. Ils ne savaient guère quoi en penser. Ils commençaient même à douter de l’histoire qu’il leurs avait racontée au début, au sujet de sa famille et de sa vie antérieure.

“Pour aller en prison, pour plusieurs années, vous devez me tuer. Ne me regardez pas ainsi comme des idiots. Dissimulez cette stupidité honnête qui vous fait puer dans vos vêtements.”

Facundo et Barbarroja surent ou imaginèrent qu’en ce jour le fou était pire que jamais. Mais il continuait d’insister, avec un réalisme fanatique, sur la convenance de sacrifier un des trois.

– “Dieu nous punira” dit Barbarroja.
– “Dieu déjà vous a punis. Peut-être imaginez-vous un Enfer pire que celui-ci ? Voyez–vous ce que je vous dit ? Vous êtes si pauvres que vous n’avez pas d’idées. Déjà vous ne raisonnez plus. Dois-je venir pour vous dire ce que vous avez à faire ? De plus, pourquoi Dieu aurait-il à punir quelqu’un qui tue un assassin ? La Bible ne dit-elle pas « œil pour œil, dent pour dent » ? J’ai tué une enfant, ma propre fille. Auriez-vous de la compassion pour moi ?”

Les mendiants se levèrent et se retirèrent craintifs. Le fou commençait à leur faire peur pour de vrai. Le temps passa, une semaine ou deux, et ils n’en reparlèrent plus. Ni même ne l’approchaient et allaient jusqu’à éviter de le regarder. La journée du 24, il plût intensément. Facundo et Barbarroja emménagèrent dans le hangar de la station. Comme je l’ai dit auparavant, ils allaient là seulement les jours de pluie, parce que cela ennuierait le gardien de les trouver là. D’autre part, je crois qu’ils préféraient le wagon sans toit, parce qu’il était plus discret et que le vide noir de la hauteur de ce dépôt ne les dérangeait pas. (Malgré qu’ils vivent dans la rue et que je découvris qu’ils souffraient d’une forme rare d’agoraphobie).

Durant ce jour, le fou n’entra pas dans le hangar. Il demeurait sous la pluie toute la nuit comme un fantôme les mains dans les poches et regardait souvent dans le ciel les éclairs que la pluie obscure effaçait.

La journée du 25, le fou, épuisé par la faim et le peu d’envie de vivre, tomba inconscient. La journée du 26, les mendiants se décidèrent à lui apporter une tisane d’herbes bouillies. Mais il ne réagissait déjà plus. Son regard était perdu et à peine pouvait-il bouger les paupières. La peau était blanche et froide, il n’avait ni réaction ni sensibilité d’aucun type. Facundo appuya son oreille sur la poitrine du fou et constata qu’elle ne remuait presque plus. Pendant toute la nuit les deux hommes contrôlèrent en silence les quasis imperceptibles coups que rendait le cœur du fou. Ils attendirent et en prirent soin avec crainte et anxiété. Barbarroja commença à trembler comme jamais auparavant, les épaules contractées et sans pouvoir contrôler les lèvres qui paraissaient réciter un discours sans voix.

La journée du 27, le cœur du fou maintenant ne s’entendait plus et, à la nuit, ils le crurent mort. Mais il ne l’était pas. Par conséquent, la conclusion du médecin légiste était correcte : Eusebio Enriquez n’était pas mort de froid ni de faim, il fut assassiné de coups donnés par deux délinquants qui reconnurent le délit et qui se sauvèrent d’un lynchage certain à la sortie du procès, parce que la police les entraîna jusqu’à une camionnette où ils furent déposés comme déchets.

Jorge Majfud
Uruguay, 1998

Traduit de l’espagnol par:
Pierre Trottier, mai 2006
Trois–Rivières, Québec, Canada

Bianco x Nero = Nero

Autore: Jorge Majfud

The University of Georgia

Tradotto da Giorgia Guidi

Il centro dei dibattiti all’interno del partito Democratico degli Stati Uniti è un caso interessante e, qualunque sia il risultato, significherà un cambiamento relativo. Non è una sorpresa per coloro che lo hanno visto da una prospettiva storica. Senza dubbio, la più probabile vittoria di Hillary Clinton non sarà così significativa come può esserlo quella di Obama. Non li separa tanto il genere o la razza, ma un divario generazionale. Una, rappresentante di un passato egemonico; l’altro, rappresentante di una gioventù un po’ più critica e disillusa. Una generazione, credo, che opererà cambiamenti importanti nel prossimo decennio.

Ciononostante, in fondo in fondo, quello che ancora non è cambiato radicalmente sono i vecchi problemi razziali e di genere. Il centro, e soprattutto, l’essenza dei dibattiti sono stati: gender or race, mentre si afferma il contrario. È significativo che nel mezzo di una crisi economica e di timori di recessione, le discussioni più accalorate non siano sull’economia, ma sul genere e sulla razza. Nella potenza economica che, dovuto alla sua economia, ha dominato o influito sulla vita di quasi tutti i paesi del mondo, l’economia non è stato quasi mai il tema centrale come può esserlo in paesi come quelli latinoamericani. Forse capisco che il disinteresse per la politica sia proprio della popolazione di una potenza politica di livello mondiale. Quando ci sono un deficit fiscale o delle cadute del PIL o l’indebolimento del dollaro, i più conservatori hanno sempre tirato fuori i loro temi preferiti: la minaccia esterna, la guerra di turno, la difesa della famiglia, la negoziazione di diritti civili alle coppie dello stesso sesso e, in generale, la difesa dei “valori”; questo è, i valori morali secondo le loro interpretazioni e i loro profitti. Ma adesso le più recenti indagini indicano che l’economia è diventata uno dei temi principali di attenzione per la popolazione. Questo succede ogni volta che il macchinario economico si avvicina a una recessione. Ciononostante, i candidati alla presidenza temono di staccarsi troppo dal discorso conservatore. Forse Obama è andato un po’ troppo lontano in questo distacco, criticando l’abuso della religione e un certo tipo di patriottismo mentre Hillary ha riscattato il breve ed efficace ritornello del suo sposo che nel 1992, nel mezzo della recessione della presidenza di George W. Bush, lo ha portato alla vittoria: “it’s the economy, stupid”. Il suo facile consumo si deve a questa semplicità che capisce la generazione McDonald.

Hillary Clinton è figlia di un uomo e di una donna ma, malgrado quello che possa dire la psicoanalisi, tutti la vedono come una donna, and period. Barack Obama è figlio di una bianca e di un nero, ma è nero punto e basta. Quest’ultimo si deduce da tutto il linguaggio che viene impiegato nei mezzi di comunicazione e all’interno della popolazione. Nessuno ha osservato qualcosa di tanto ovvio come il fatto che possa essere considerato tanto bianco quanto nero, se si ammettono quelle categorie arbitrarie. Ciò rappresenta la stessa difficoltà che si ha nel vedere la mescolanza di culture nel famoso “melting pot”: gli elementi vengono mescolati, ma non si mescolano. Dalla fusione di rame e stagno non nasce il bronzo, ma rame e stagno. Si è bianco o si è nero. Si è ispano-americano o si è asiatico. Chi ne è danneggiato è John Edwards, un talentuoso uomo bianco che è venuto fuori dalla povertà e sembra non averla dimenticata, ma non ha nulla di politicamente corretto per essere affascinante. Non è neppure brutto o maleducato, qualcosa che possa muovere un pubblico compassionevole.

Ma le parole possono e in politica quasi sempre lo fanno, creano la realtà opposta: Hillry Clinton ha detto pochi giorni fa, in Carolina del Sud, che amava queste primarie perché sembra che verrà nominato un afro-americano o una donna e nessuno perderà neppure un solo voto a causa del suo genere, qui si evita la parola “sesso”, o della sua razza (“I love this primary because it looks like we are going to nominate an African-American man or a woman and they aren’t going to lose any votes because of their race or gender”). Ragione per la quale Obama parla alle donne e Hillary agli afro-americani. Ragione per la quale, la Florida e la California, due degli stati più ispano-americani dell’Unione faranno resistenza ad appoggiare Obama, il rappresentante dell’altra minoranza.

Così, mentre abitudinariamente si è passati a disprezzare la qualifica di “politicamente corretto”, nessuno vuole smettere di esserlo. I dibattiti delle elezioni 2008 mi ricordano la Scatoletta Felice di McDonald. Tanto spreco di allegria, felicità, sorrisi allegri non necessariamente significano salute. La Segretaria di Stato della più grande potenza mondiale è una donna nera. Da tempo, una donna afro-americana ha più influenza su vasti paesi di milioni di uomini bianchi. Ciononostante, la popolazione nera degli Stati Uniti, come quella di molti paesi latinoamericani, non è ancora proporzionalmente rappresentata all’ interno delle classi alte, nelle università e nei parlamenti mentre la sua rappresentanza è eccessiva nei quartieri più poveri e nelle carceri dove competono a morte con gli ispano-americani a causa dell’egemonia di questo dubbioso regno.

Jorge Majfud

L’ era della Barbarie

Jorge Majfud

Translated by Francesca Sammartino

La vita umana come effetto collaterale

Jorge Majfud

Lincoln University of Pennsylvania

Tradotto da Giorgia Guidi

(Queste riflessioni sono state pubblicate sul giornale La República di Montevideo, nel giugno del 2003. In modo deplorevole, le posso pubblicare oggi come se fossero state scritte ieri. Jorge Majfud).

Per decine di anni, Río de la Plata è stato un fiume di immigrati. Milioni di uomini e donne sono scesi dalle barche su quella terra sconosciuta per piantarvi la loro razza e i loro costumi. Per la stragrande maggioranza erano europei, rappresentanti orgogliosi di una cultura avanzata, di una storia piena di grandi imperi e ominose dominazioni, che molte volte è stata confusa con una razza inesistente: la razza bianca. Ciò nonostante, i nostri nonni che erano scesi dalle barche erano in gran parte analfabeti, vittime delle più oscene persecuzioni o delinquenti comuni. In generale, gente che non aveva molte ragioni per essere orgogliosa. Non perché fossero poveri e analfabeti, ma perché venivano da un’Europa malata, guerriera e puritana, la maggior parte delle volte trascinando con sé profondi pregiudizi, inutili rigori morali che somigliavano di più all’inumanità e alla menzogna che alla sapienza.

Un minuscolo fatto accaduto nel porto di Buenos Aires ritratta con una perfetta povertà alcuni di quei conquistatori che non hanno mancato di virtù ma che, a causa della regola generale, hanno fatto tutto il possibile per dimenticare i loro difetti, quegli stessi difetti che l’antropologia ha cercato di dissimulare nei libri. Il miracolo me lo ha trasmesso mio zio Caíto Albernaz, un contadino senza università ma con molti libri accanto all’aratro e un’intelligenza troppo etica per essere ascoltata senza seccature, distrutto già da molti anni dalla dittatura militare. Io ero ancora un bambino e l’ho ascoltato raccontare, con la stessa concisione, mentre ascoltavamo il canto o la lamentela di un uccello notturno, non ubicabile nell’esteso orizzonte del tramonto: “Ancora con le valigie in mano, un gruppo di immigrati si era incrociato con un altro gruppo di un’altra nazionalità, probabilmente di qualche paese periferico dell’Europa. Allora, uno aveva detto all’altro:’ La nostra lingua è meglio perché si capisce ‘”.

Con il tempo, questa folgorazione dell’ignoranza si andava nascondendo sotto un mantello di cultura. Ciò nonostante, nel più profondo del nostro cuore occidentale, ancora sopravvive l’atteggiamento primitivo che considera la nostra lingua la migliore lingua, la nostra morale la migliore morale e, nonostante ci faccia male, i nostri morti le uniche vittime. E per rendersi conto di questo non c’è bisogno di un’università, ma della sensibilità di quel contadino che sapeva ascoltare gli uccelli.

Durante tutto il XX secolo, uno dei principi etici che ha giustificato ogni genocidio e ogni mattanza, in massa o su piccola scala, è stato quello nel quale si stabiliva che “il fine giustifica i mezzi”. Come c’era da aspettarsi, i fini nobili non sono mai arrivati e, quindi, i mezzi hanno finito con il perpetuarsi. Cioè, i mezzi si sono imposti come fini. (Di solito accade questo con le Cause quando diventano ideologie, o con la Fede quando diventa dogma). Cosa che è doppiamente logica, poichè se uno pretende di difendere la vita con la morte, l’uso di quest’ultimo mezzo rende impossibile la riuscita perseguita. A meno che la riuscita non sia la resurrezione indiscriminata.

Con il passare del tempo, le retoriche e le ideologie sono cambiate poco a poco. Sono solamente cambiate poco a poco; non sono sparite in nessun momento. Infatti, il precetto secondo cui “il fine giustifica i mezzi”si trova ad essere così vigente così come sarebbe potuto esserlo ai tempi di Stalin o di Nerone. Adesso, in modo più tecnico e meno filosofico, si intende lo stesso concetto con l’espressione “effetti collaterali”.

Vediamolo un po’ più da vicino. Negli ultimi cinquanta anni si sono verificati interventi militari, da parte delle maggiori potenze mondiali, con l’obiettivo di mantenere l’Ordine, la Pace, la Libertà e la Democrazia. Non lo andiamo a mettere in dubbio-questo complicherebbe l’analisi già dal principio-In ognuno di questi interventi in difesa della vita ci sono stati morti, certamente. A differenza delle antiche guerre, i morti raramente sono militari (ciò fa di questo mestiere uno dei più sicuri del mondo, più sicuro del mestiere di giornalista, di medico o di operaio delle costruzioni) e non sono mai i promotori di queste imprese rischiose. Per regola comune, i nuovi morti sono sempre civili, qualche vecchio che non ha potuto correre in tempo, qualche giovane che non è stato consultato, senza voce né voto, qualche donna incinta, qualche feto abortito.

Guardiamo per un momento questi morti che non ci toccano né ci compromettono. Sono morti imprevisti? Credo di no. Nessuno può essere sorpreso dal fatto che durante un attacco militare ci siano dei morti. I morti e le guerre possiedono lacci storici, così come le guerre e gli interessi corporativi. Sono così prevedibili questi morti che sono stati definiti, in blocco, come “effetti collaterali”. Non è vero che le “bombe intelligenti” sono stupide; persino un genio sbaglia, questo lo sappiamo tutti. Adesso, il problema etico sorge quando si accetta senza discussioni che questi “effetti collaterali” siano, in qualsiasi modo, inevitabili e che non arrestino mai l’azione che li produce. Perché? Perché ci sono cose più importanti degli “effetti collaterali”, cioè, ci sono cose più importanti della vita umana. O per lo meno di alcuni tipi di vita umana.

E quì c’è il secondo problema etico. Accettare che in un bombardamento la morte di centinaia di innocenti, uomini, bambini e donne, possano essere definiti come “effetti collaterali”, è accettare che esistano vite umane di “valore collaterale”. Adesso, se esistono vite umane di valore collaterale, perché si comincia un’azione di questo tipo in difesa della vita? La ragione e l’intuizione ci dice che il precetto porta con sé implicita un’idea, non discussa, che esistono vite umane di “valore capitale”.

Un attimo. Davanti a questa così grottesca conclusione, dobbiamo chiederci se non abbiamo errato nel nostro ragionamento. Per fare ciò, dobbiamo fare un esercizio mentale di verifica. Facciamo l’esperimento. Chiediamoci che sarebbe successo se per ogni cinque bambini neri o gialli distrutti da un “effetto collaterale” fossero morti uno o due bambini bianchi, con nomi e cognomi, con una residenza leggibile, con un passato e una cultura comune a quella di quei piloti che hanno lanciato le bombe? Che sarebbe accaduto se per ogni inevitabile “effetto collaterale” fossero morti nostri vicini? Che sarebbe accaduto se per “liberare”un paese lontano avessimo dovuto sacrificare cento bambini nella nostra stessa città, come un inevitabile “effetto collaterale”? Sarebbe stato diverso? Ma come, come può essere diversa la morte di una bambina, lontana e sconosciuta, innocente e dalla faccia sporca, dalla morte di un bambino che vive vicino a noi e parla la nostra stessa lingua? Ma quale morte è più orribile? Quale morte è più giusta e quale è più ingiusta? Quale dei due innocenti meritava di più di vivere?

Sicuramente quasi tutti saranno d’accordo sul fatto che ambedue gli innocenti avevano lo stesso diritto alla vita. Né più né meno. Allora, perché alcuni innocenti morti sono “effetti collaterali” e gli altri potrebbero cambiare qualsiasi piano militare e, soprattutto, qualsiasi risultato elettorale?

Sebbene sembri del tutto lecito che, davanti a un’aggressione, un paese inizi azioni militari di difesa, forse è ugualmente lecito ammazzare innocenti estranei in difesa dei propri innocenti, ancora sotto la logica degli “effetti collaterali”. È lecito, forse, condannare l’assassinio di innocenti propri e promuovere, allo stesso tempo, un’azione che finisca con la vita di innocenti estranei, in nome di qualcosa di meglio e di più nobile?

Un po’ più in quà, che sarebbe successo se i vermi avessero smesso di mangiare bambini poveri e avessero cominciato a mangiare bambini ricchi? Che succederebbe se a causa di una negligenza amministrativa cominciassero a morire bambini della nostra eroica e imprescindibile well to do class?

Una “pulizia etica” dovrebbe cominciare da una pulizia semantica: dovremmo depennare l’aggettivo “collaterale” e sottolineare il sostantivo “effetto”. Perché gli innocenti distrutti dalla violenza economica o armata sono il più puro e diretto effetto dell’azione, così, senza attenuanti eufemistiche. A qualsiasi persona faccia male. Tutto il resto è discutibile.

Questo atteggiamento cieco della Società della Conoscenza somiglia in tutto all’orgogliosa considerazione “la nostra lingua è meglio perché si capisce”. Soltanto che con un’intensità del tutto tragica, che si potrebbe tradurre così: i nostri morti sono veri perché fanno male.

Crisi dei ricchi, via crucis dei poveri

Le teorie dell’evoluzione dopo Darwin assumono una dinamica divergente. Due specie possono discendere da una comune; ogni tanto, le specie stesse possono scomparire in forma graduale o drastica, ma mai due specie finiscono con il confluire in una sola. Non esiste meticciato se non all’interno della stessa specie. Nel lungo periodo, una gallina e un’uomo sono parenti lontani, discendenti di un qualche rettile ed entrambi rappresentano una risposta positiva della vita nella lotta per la sopravvivenza.

Cioé, la diversità è la forma in cui la vita si espande e si adatta ai diversi ambienti e alle diverse condizioni. Diversità e vita sono sinonimi per la biosfera. I processi vitali tendono alla diversità ma allo stesso tempo sono espressione di una unità, la biosfera, Gaia, l’esuberanza della vita nella sua permanente lotta per sopravvivere in ambienti ostili al suo stesso miracolo.

Per la stessa ragione la diversità culturale è un requisito per la vita dell’umanità. Ovvero, e comunque potrebbe essere una ragione sufficiente, la diversità non si limita solo a evitarci la noia della monotonia ma, inoltre, è parte della nostra sopravvivenza vitale come umanità.

Nonostante ciò, siamo stati noi esseri umani la unica specie che ha sostituito la naturale e prudente sostituzione di specie con un artificiale e minaccioso sterminio, con il saccheggio industriale e con la contaminazione del consumismo. Coloro tra noi che sostengono un possibile ma non inevitabile “progresso della storia” basato sulla conoscenza e l’esercizio dell’eguale-libertà, possono vedere che l’umanità, tante volte posta in pericolo di estinzione da se stessa, ha ottenuto alcuni successi che le hanno permesso di sopravvivere e di convivere con la propria crescente forza muscolare. E nonostante ciò, non abbiamo aggiunto niente di buono al resto della natura. In molti aspetti, in questo naturale processo di prove ed errori, forse siamo andati indietro o i nostri errori sono diventati esponenzialmente più pericolosi.

Il consumismo è uno di questi errori. Questo appetito insaziabile ha poco o niente a che fare con il progresso verso una possibile e comunque improbabile era senza-fame, post-scarsità, piuttosto ha a che vedere con una più primitiva era della gola e dell’avidità. Non diciamo che ha a che fare con un istinto animale, perchè nemmeno i leoni monopolizzano la savana né praticano lo sterminio sistematico delle proprie vittime, e perchè perfino i maiali si saziano solo di tanto in tanto.

La cultura del consumismo ha mostrato i suoi limiti in vari aspetti. Primo, ha contraddetto la condizione prima segnalata, superando le diversità culturali, sostituendole con i suoi ninnoli universali o creando una pseudo diversità dove un operaio giapponese o una meccanica tedesca possono utilizzare per due giorni un oggetto di artigianato peruviano fatto in Cina o possono godere cinque giorni della più bella tendina veneziana importata da Taiwan prima che si rompano per l’uso eccessivo. Secondo, perchè ha anche minacciato l’equilibrio ecologico con le sue estrazioni illimitate e le sue restituzioni sotto forma di spazzatura immortale.

Esempi concreti possiamo osservarli attorno a noi. Potremmo dire che è una fortuna che un operaio possa apprezzare le comodità che prima erano riservate solo alle classi agiate, le classi improduttive, le classi consumatrici. Nonostante ciò, questo consumo –indotto dalla pressione culturale e ideologica- si è convertito molte volte nella finalità del lavoratore e in uno strumento dell’economia. Il che, a rigor di logica, significa che l’individuo-strumento si è convertito in un mezzo dell’economia in quanto individuo-consumatore.

In quasi tutti i paesi sviluppati o in via di questo “modello di sviluppo”, i mobili che invadono i mercati sono pensati per durare pochi anni. O pochi mesi. Sono carini, hanno un bell’aspetto come quasi tutto nella cultura del consumo, ma se li fissiamo a lungo si rigano, perdono una vite o sono squadrati. Ogni giorno di più risulta esotica la preocupazione della mia familia di carpentieri per migliorare il disegno di una sedia perchè durasse cent’anni. Dei nuovi mobili usa-e-getta non ci si preoccupa molto perchè sappiamo che sono costati poco e che, in due o tre anni ne compreremo degli altri nuovi, il che comporta maggior interesse e trasformazione nella decorazione delle nostre case e dei nostri uffici e soprattutto stimola l’economia mondiale. Secondo la teoria in corso, ciò che buttiamo qui aiuta lo sviluppo industriale in qualche paese povero. Per questo ci sentiamo buoni, perchè siamo consumatori.

Ma questi mobili, anche quelli più economici, hanno consumato alberi, hanno bruciato combustibile nel loro lungo viaggio dalla Cina o dalla Malesia. La logia del “butto dopo aver usato”, che è la cosa più ragionevole per una siringa di plastica, diventa una legge necessaria per stimolare l’economia e mantenere il PIL in perpetua crescita, con le sue rispettive crisi e fobie quando la caduta provoca una recessione del due per cento. Per uscire dalla crisi bisogna aumentare la droga. I soli Stati Uniti, per esempio, destinano milioni di dollari perchè i suoi abitanti ritornino a consumare ed a spendere, destinano milioni di dollari per uscire dalla disperazione della recessione in modo che così il mondo possa continuare a girare, consumare e buttare.

Ma questi rifiuti, pur economici che siano –il consumismo è basato su della mercanzia economica, usa-e-getta, che rende quasi impossibile il riciclaggio di prodotti durevoli- possiedono pezzi di legno, plastica, batterie, canne di ferro, viti, vetro e ancora plastica. Negli Stati Uniti tutto ciò e anche di più va nella spazzatura –anche in questo tempo chiamato per ragioni equivoche “di grande crisi” – mentre nei paesi poveri, i poveri vanno alla ricerca della stessa spazzatura. Alla lunga, chi finisce con il consumare tutta la spazzatura è la natura mentre l’umanità continua a sospendere i cambiamenti nel proprio stile di vita al fine di uscire dalla recessione e al fine di sostenere la crescita dell’economia.

Ma cosa significa “crescita economica”, cosa significa questo due o tre per cento che ossessionano tutto il mondo, da Nord a Sud da Est a Ovest?

Il mondo è convinto che si trova in una terribile crisi. Ma il mondo è sempre stato in crisi. Ora la crisi è definita come mondiale perché (1) avanza e colpisce l’economia dei più ricchi; (2) il semplificato paradigma dello sviluppo ha diffuso la propria isteria al resto del mondo, contribuendo a darle legittimità. Ma negli Stati Uniti le persone continuano ad innondare i negozi e i ristoranti e i loro tagli non implicano mai la fame, sebbene siano in una situazione di gravità in cui milioni di lavoratori si trovano senza lavoro. Nei nostri paesi periferici una crisi significa bambini per la strada a chiedere elemosina. Negli Stati Uniti vuol dire consumatori che consumano un po’ meno mentre aspettano il prossimo ticket del governo.

Per uscire da questa “crisi”, gli specialisti si strizzano il cervello e la soluzione risulta sempre la stessa: aumentare il consumo. Ironicamente, aumentare il consumo prestando alla gente comune il suo stesso denaro attraverso le grandi banche private che ricevono l’aiuto salvifico del governo. Non si tratta solo di salvare alcune banche, ma, soprattutto, di salvare una ideologia e una cultura che da sole non sopravviverebbero se non ricevessero frequenti iniezioni ad hoc: stimoli finanziari, guerre che promuovono l’industria e controllano la partecipazione popolare, droghe e diversioni che stimolano, tranquillizzano e anestetizzano in nome di un bene comune.

Usciremo veramente dalla crisi quando il mondo ricomincerà una crescita del cinque per cento attraverso lo stimolo del consumo nei paesi ricchi? Non staremo preparando la prossima crisi?, una crisi reale –umana ed ecologica- e non una crisi artificiale come quella che subiamo oggi? Quando ci renderemo conto che questa non è veramente una crisi ma solo un’avvertenza, ovvero una opportunità per cambiare le nostre abitudini?

Ogni giorno rappresenta una crisi perchè ogni giorno scegliamo un percorso. Ma ci sono crisi che sono una lunga via crucis e altre che sono critiche perchè, sia per gli oppressi che per gli oppressori comportano una doppia possibilità: la conferma di un sistema o il suo annichilimento. Finora la prima ha prevalso sul secondo per mancanza di alternative. Ma non bisogna mai sottostimare la storia. Nessuno avrebbe mai pensato ad una alternativa al feudalesimo medioevale o al sistema schiavista. O quasi nessuno. La storia degli ultimi millenni dimostra che gli utopici l’avevano previsto con una precisione esagerata. Ma, come ai giorni nostri, gli utopici hanno sempre goduto di una cattiva fama. Perchè sono la denigrazione e il discredito le forme che ciascun sistema dominante ha sempre avuto per evitare la proliferazione di gente con troppa immaginazione.

di Jorge Majfud

Lincoln University

Febbraio 2009

Traduzione di Ruggero Fornoni

Capitale intellettuale

Jorge Majfud, Lincoln University.

Tradotto da Maria Rubini

Nel 1970 lo sciopero dei lavoratori della General Motors ha ridotto il PIL entro il 4 per cento e si stima che siano stato questo il motivo della scarsa crescita del 2 per cento che il paese ha sperimentato negli anni successivi.

Oggi il declino di tutte le industrie automobilistiche USA colpisce un solo punto percentuale. Quasi tutto del PIL è nei servizi, nel settore terziario. In questo settore, la produzione intellettuale derivante dalla formazione è in aumento. Per non parlare che nulla quasi oggi viene prodotto senza l’intervento diretto delle invenzioni più recenti, dal computer del mondo accademico, dalla produzione agricola nei paesi che esportano verso l’industria pesante, soprattutto nei paesi in via di nota come emergenti o in via di sviluppo.

Per la maggior parte le città del ventesimo secolo, come Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, fiorirono come centri industriali. Riccha e città sporca come è stata l’eredità della rivoluzione industriale. Oggi è una città pulita che vive ed è conosciuta per la sua università.

L’anno scorso, il corridoio “ricerca” del Michigan (Consorzio sono l’Università del Michigan e Michigan State University) ha contribuito per 14 miliardi di dollari allo Stato solo per i benefici diretti generati dalle loro invenzioni, brevetti e ricerca. Questi benefici sono cresciuti nel corso dell’ultimo anno e ancora di più in proporzione in uno stato che era la casa delle grandi auto del XX secolo che oggi sono in declino. Il che è, una parte dei benefici diretti derivanti dalla produzione di “capitale intellettuale” di una università al 27 ° posto e una classifica a livello nazionale in 71 degli Stati Uniti in una somma anno equivalente allo stesso capitale moneta prodotto da un paese come l’Honduras.Questo fattore spiega la produzione intellettuale, in gran parte, perché solo l’economia di New York e la sua area metropolitana è equivalente a tutta l’economia dell’India (in termini nominali internazionale, non di acquisto sul mercato interno) di un paese di oltre un miliardo di abitanti e una forte crescita economica a causa della sua produzione industriale.

Il 90 per cento di oggi del PIL è derivato dalla proprietà “non” prodotto “. Il valore monetario del capitale intellettuale è di 5 miliardi di dollari, quasi il 40 per cento del totale del PIL, il che equivale di per sé a tutti gli elementi insieme dell’economia dinamica cinese.

Se l’impero americano, come tutti gli imperi hanno sostenuto e, direttamente o indirettamente, ha violato le materie prime provenienti da altri paesi, resta il fatto che per lungo tempo e soprattutto oggi i paesi emergenti e grandi emergenti adottano la pirateria e parte dei diritti d’autore delle invenzioni americane. Per non parlare del marchio solo negli Stati Uniti la contraffazione sottrae dai prodotti originali $ 200 miliardi l’anno, che supera di gran lunga il totale del PIL dei paesi come il Cile.

Guardando a questa realtà, possiamo prevedere che l’aumento del rischio di paesi emergenti è a riposo l’attuale sviluppo delle esportazioni di materie prime, il secondo di fiducia prosperità industriale. Se i paesi emergenti non si occupano di investire massicciamente nella produzione intellettuale forse in un decennio o due, la divisione internazionale del lavoro che hanno sostenuto e che ha generato grandi disparità economiche nei secoli XIX e XX, rimarrà tale in futuro.

Ora è di moda proclamare, per i media di tutto il mondo, che l’America è finita, che è a tre passi dalla disintegrazione in quattro paesi, a due passi dalla rovina.

Ho l’impressione che la metodologia di analisi non è del tutto esatta perché, come criticò l’Ernesto Che Guevara lo stesso che ha elogiato l’efficacia della produzione industriale a capitalismo socialista, hanno confuso il desiderio con la realtà. Guevara si lamentava che la passione alla critica oggettiva impedisce di vedere che il suo obiettivo non era semplicemente l’aumento della produzione di cose.

Quando si effettuano le previsioni per il 2025 o il 2050 è previsto in gran parte in questo futuro, il sottovalutare le innovazioni radicali che anche uno status quo prolungato può produrre. Nei primi anni ‘70 gli analisti e presidenti come Richard Nixon erano convinti che la nascita e il successo finale dell’Unione Sovietica contro gli Stati Uniti sarebbe stato inevitabile. Gli anni ‘70 furono anni di recensione e sconfitte politiche e militari per l’impero americano.

Penso che dalla fine del secolo scorso, eravamo tutti d’accordo che questo sarebbe stato un secolo di grandi equilibri internazionali. Non necessariamente più stabile, forse il contrario. Sarà un bene per il popolo americano e soprattutto per l’umanità che questo paese smetta di esercitare il potere arrogante che ha esercitato per gran parte della sua storia. Ha molti altri meriti, a cui far riferimento per impegnarsi, come dimostra la storia, è un paese di inventori professionisti e dilettanti, di premi Nobel, di eccellenti sistemi universitarii e di una classe di intellettuali che ha aperto vie in diverse discipline, dalla umanistiche alle scienze.

Il drammatico aumento della disoccupazione in America è la sua migliore occasione per accelerare questa trasformazione. In tutte le classifiche internazionali le università americane occupano la maggior parte dei primi cinquanta posti. Questo monopolio non può essere eterno, a è lì che si trova la sua risorsa principale.

Jorge Majfud, Lincoln University.

Tradotto da Maria Rubini

Honduras: La costituzione illegittima

Image via Wikipedia

La costituzione illegittima

Dr. Jorge Majfud, Lincoln University.

Tradotto da Maria Rubini

La disputa dialettica sulla legittimità dell’espusione del presidente Zelaya in Honduras non è chiusa. Mesi fa abbiamo esposto il nostro punto di vista, secondo cui non vi è stata alcuna violazione della Costituzione da parte del Presidente Zelaya nel richiamare un sondaggio non vincolante su una assemblea costituente. Ma in fondo questa discussione è inutile perchè si nasconde un altro problema alla radice: la resistenza di una classe e di una mentalità che hanno plasmato la terra della repubblica delle banane, nella disperata ricerca di individuare quali potessero essere eventuali cambiamenti, imponendo la repressione al popolo e ai media che si dimostrassero negativi.

L’argomento principale del colpo di stato in Honduras è che la Costituzione del 1982 non consente la modificha dell’ artt. 239 e 374 e prevede la rimozione dalla carica coloro che la promuovono.La partecipazione dei cittadini Act del 2006, che promuove le consultazioni popolari, non è mai stato accusato di incostituzionalità. Per contro, la partecipazione popolare è un requisito della Costituzione stessa (articolo 45). Tutto ciò rivela lo spirito scolastico dei suoi autori, temperato con un linguaggio umanistico.

Nessuna regola o legge può essere al di sopra della costituzione di un paese. Tuttavia, nessuna costituzione moderna è stata rivelata da Dio, ma da esseri umani a scopo di lucro. Cioè, nessuna costituzione può essere al di sopra del diritto naturale, della libertà del popolo di modificarla.

Una Costituzione che stabilisce la propria immutabilità è confusa e precaria, confonde l’ origine umana con l’origine divina e tenta di instaurare la dittatura di una generazione su tutte le generazioni a venire.

L’ortodissia religiosa voleva evitare i cambiamenti nel Corano e nella Bibbia contando il numero di parole. Non è possibile modificare un testo sacro, il testo viene salvato per interpretare i nuovi valori.Ciò è dimostrato dalla proliferazione delle sette e delle nuove religioni e ismi derivanti dal testo stesso.

Ma il divieto della modifica di un testo sacro, è meglio giustificato, dal momento che nessun uomo può modificare la parola di Dio.

Queste affermazioni di eternità e di perfezione, non erano rare nelle costituzioni latino-americane nel XIX secolo che hanno tentato di inventare repubbliche, piuttosto che inventare le loro repubbliche e costituzioni a misura del loro popolo e secondo il corso della storia.Se negli Stati Uniti è ancora in vigore la Costituzione del 1787 ciò è dovuto alla sua flessibilità e a molti suoi emendamenti. In caso contrario, in questo Paese oggi sarebbe alla presidenza un uomo per tre-quarti umano (un semi-Dio). Come se non bastasse, l’articolo V della famosa Costituzione vieta qualsiasi modifica dello status costituzionale agli schiavi.

Il risultato di una costituzione come quella dell’ Honduras non è altro che la sua morte, con spargimento di sangue, prima o poi.

Coloro che sostengono di difenderla, devono farlo con la forza delle armi e con la logica stretta di una serie di norme che violano uno dei più fondamentali e naturali diritti inalienabili.

Per secoli, i filosofi che scrivevano di utopie immaginate e che ora si chiamano democrazia, dello Stato e dei diritti umani, hanno detto esplicitamente: nessuna legge è al di sopra di questi diritti naturali.

E se fosse destinato, la disobbedienza è giustificata. La violenza non viene dalla disobbedienza, ma dalla violazione un diritto fondamentale.

Tutto il resto è politica. La negoziazione è la concessione che rendono i deboli. Un premio del caso, inevitabile, ma a lungo termine sempre insufficiente.

Una democrazia matura implica una cultura e un sistema istituzionale volto a prevenire le violazioni delle norme. Ma allo stesso tempo, e per la stessa ragione, la democrazia è definita da consentire e facilitare gli inevitabili cambiamenti che vengono con una nuova generazione, con una maggiore coscienza storica di una società.

Una Costituzione che impedisce il diritto inalienabile alla libertà (per cambiare) e l’uguaglianza (di decidere) non è legittima. E la carta, è un contratto fraudolento che si impone da una generazione a un’altra, a nome di un popolo che non esiste più.

	majfud en 1976: Rebeldes conservadores
	Antonio de los Santo… en 1976: Rebeldes conservadores
	majfud en La libertad de los de arr…
	Antonio de los Santo… en La libertad de los de arr…
	Antonio de los Santo… en Democracias imperiales, dictad…

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Bianco x Nero = Nero

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L’ era della Barbarie

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La vita umana come effetto collaterale

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Crisi dei ricchi, via crucis dei poveri

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Capitale intellettuale

Jorge Majfud, Lincoln University.

Tradotto da Maria Rubini

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La costituzione illegittima

Dr. Jorge Majfud, Lincoln University.

Tradotto da Maria Rubini

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