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Politics : About that Cuban boy, Elian -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (6861)	6/2/2000 12:36:00 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9127

For a white guy, it would just be a question of anteing up the dough, and a relatively small amount of it. And if you end up in the can, somebody will come and get you out. For a local, especially a poor one, it is much, much, uglier. There are jails in this country where the wives and daughters of prisoners languishing in jail, eternally awaiting trial, are forced to service the local constables and their clients to prevent their fathers and husbands from being beaten, or starved. It is very difficult to control the corruption, because it is SO pervasive. To survive here, unless you are independently rich (almost impossible for those on the outside), you have to have a patron, a protector. You become the bata of an amo, someone you run to for help or protection when you are desperate. You get just enough to survive, and you have to, by utang ng loob ("inner debt"), repay this with absolute loyalty and obedience. Your amo, in turn, has an amo of his own, up to the top dogs, who have connections in every corner, and are pretty thoroughly immune. Like the mafia cubed. Then cubed again. And it is entrenched to a point that is hard for an American to believe. I was about to start telling stories again. But I won't. With regard to moving toward communism, and the suggestion it might be beneficial for the people in order to clean house so-to-speak. I'll have to give that one some more thought. My well honed mental models against communism, immediately generated a visceral negative reaction. But I'll have to give it much more thought as to why. There are good reasons why, the first being that once in, a communist regime might take 50 or 100 years to get out. But the peasant or the laborer in mire of sub-subsistence living, and filled with an anger, hate, and bitterness that are hard for us to grasp (you don't see it when you see those smiling brown faces, but believe me, it's there) might not think of that. And even if they did, they might think that 50 or 100 years would be a price worth paying to see those who have oppressed them for centuries get their due. Tough choices, all around. I'm not sure that a strong leader is the answer. It's a change that needs to happen at the bottom, not the top. But then I've a bit of a phobia about the strong leader syndrome, having seen where it can lead.

To: greenspirit who wrote (6861)	6/2/2000 4:18:00 AM
From: marcos	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9127

"America was lucky to have leaders such as Washington." Well, yes, i think they were ... But, the story of participatory democracy started long before that ... Washington was transplanted english, second generation i believe, right? ... the frame of his view of the rights of man went back through the traditions of english yeomanry, through the Magna Carta, back to ancient roots .... the american revolucion, like the french and the russian and the mexican, like all revolutions likely, was like a mushroom - the greater part was out of sight, and built over time - what we see as the fruiting body is only the apparently sudden visible manifestation of a long process ... like the fall of the Berlin Wall ... that took many years, and then it fell in one night, without bloodshed ... the opening of Cuba could be like that, i think.