Are The Democrats Different?
UnpublishedSeptember/October
1984
Volume:
18
Number:
5
Report
THE SPIRIT OF TORQUEMADA,THE FIF- teenth century friar who headed the Spanish In- quisition, has returned to haunt the politics of 1984. Ronald Reagan's extraordinary assertion that the Democrats have moved "so far left, they've left America" is only one example of the new inquisito- rial style in politics, which includes only the radical Right in the acceptable patriotic spectrum.
Article
Today, when the word has gone round That these people are bankrupt We on the other continents (which are indeed bankrupt as well) See many things differently and, so we think, more clearly. -Bertolt Brecht "Late Lamented Fame of the Giant City of New York" ' T HE 1984 ELECTION IS ONE OF THE MOST important of this generation.
Anne Nelson
On July 25, 1978 two young inde- pendentistas were killed by police on a hilltop in southern Puerto Rico. At the time, the response to the killings broke down along predictable political lines.
Berkeley Demonstrators Maltreated Thanks for the reminder to renew. I wouldn't want to be without NACLA.
"THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, ITS INTEL- lectuals, idea brokers and activists are in total disarray, a situation that has in fact been under- way for years," wrote Walter Dean Burnham in 1982. ' The week after the July 1984 Democratic Convention, Business Week was emphatic: "The Democratic Party that Mondale is leading into battle is badly split along generational and racial lines and this growing factionalism is making it difficult for the party to come up with the fresh approaches all sides agree it will need to defeat the Republicans in 1984 and beyond.
Jane Slaughter
The Guatemalan labor movement is showing signs of recovery after the in- tense repression of the last half dozen years. Being a union officer is still a high-risk job.
Tony Jenkins
Nicaragua's ruling Sandinista Front has never harbored many illusions that the general and presidential elections scheduled for November 4 would bring peace to the country. As Interior Minister Tomis Borge puts it, "What- ever we do Reagan will find an excuse to attack us.
Washington's Useful Fools AN UNACCUSTOMED SPOTLIGHT FALLS this month on Costa Rica. In recent weeks, talk of the "Switzerland of Central America" has given way to speculation that Costa Rica is being "Honduranized.
IN 1980 VOTERS IN THE UNITED STATES elected the most conservative president since Herbert Hoover. At the time, polls showed that only 11% of voters chose Reagan because he was a con- servative; 38% said that "it was time for a change.
A MAJOR CRISIS AFFLICTS THE UNITED States today. Touching on every aspect of life-political, economic, social and cultural-it has been worsening annually for almost 20 years.
Holly Sklar
"The terrain is more rugged than I imagined," Secretary of State George Shultz bluntly declared in a February visit to recolonized Grenada, "but it is certainly a lovely piece of real es- tate." The Grenada invasion sent shockwaves throughout the trilateral alliance and the world.