On Mon, 8 Jan 1996, Alan Horowitz wrote:
Thanks for that lovely peice about the Chiapas uprising. I'm saving it to disk. It's so archtypal of the turgid prose of graduates of Moscow's Patrice Lumumba University. How wondrous that leftists-without-a-home can find a cause to latch onto and keep their rhetorical skills in practice.
Carlos Fuentes calls the rebellion the first "post-Communist" revolution. They specifically reject the rhetoric you set up as a straw-man. If you want to actually become informed about reality down there (I lived in Chiapas 2 winters, Guatemala 4), please subscribe to the mailing list that the NY Times says has prevented more Mexican Army massacres: To subscribe to the chiapas-l list send a message to: majordomo@profmexis.dgsca.unam.mx with these words in the body of the message: subscribe chiapas-l Your-Email-Adress and leave the subject line empty. You will receive a welcome message with info on the group *and on how to unsubscribe*. You should save this message for future reference. You can expect several messages per day.
Want to come with me tomorrow? I'm going down to the library to re-read the history of the Indians of Meso-America. I like the part about the hundreds of thousands of peasants who had their hearts cut out without anesthesia, so that the Emperor could collect lots of taxes on an abundant harvest. Damn shame that the Spaniards came along and destroyed a culture, ya know?
Having lived with Mayans for 6 winters I still have my heart and suggest you don't hold the campesinos responsible for their "emperor's" actions of centuries ago. Stop fighting the cold war and against the past and transcend virtual reality and see how others really live and act. Or is your ignorance such bliss? My Mayan friends are some of the finest I have. Evan Ravitz, director, VOTING BY PHONE FOUNDATION: evanr@vote.org Electronic democracy! From the directors of the U.S. National Science Foundation's 1974 Televote trials and Boulder's 1993 ballot initiative: http://www.vote.org/v A FUTURE PASTURES PRESENTATION. We sell voting systems "What government is best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves." -Goethe