Solidarity and the Democracts Van Gosse's article, "Active Engagement: The Legacy of Central America Solidarity" [March/April, 1995] contains tremendous illusions about the Democratic Party that can't help but be harmful to solidarity move- ments, and to Latin American liber- ation forces that seek to base any kind of policy upon them. Ac- cording to Gosse, "the Democrats never stopped fighting with Reagan over Central America." This is either a misprint or the result of a massively downgraded estimate of what constitutes a "fight." In El Salvador, it is no secret that U.S. intervention was undertaken under the Carter Administration. If Reagan had decided to send in the Marines, dissident State Depart- ment and CIA officials acknowl- edged, he could have claimed that the way had been prepared for him by Carter. Some Democrats did occasionally wonder out loud whether maybe too much emphasis was being given to military rather than political solutions. That was basically the extent of their "fight." It never stopped Congress from sending the Salvadoran butchers the third-largest shipment of U.S. military aid in the world, behind that sent to Israel and Egypt. There was a bit more Democratic opposition to the war against Nicaragua, partly because of the potential for superpower confronta- tion at the time of the Cold War, and partly because overthrowing a government is more difficult than propping one up. Again, this oppo- sition can hardly be called a fight. For Gosse to call the Boland Amendment, which banned all mil- itary aid for the purpose of over- throwing the Nicaraguan govern- Readers are invited to address letters to The Editors, NACLA Report on the Americas, 475 Riverside Drive, Suite 454, New York, NY 10115. Letters can be sent by e-mail to: NACLA @igc.apc.org. ment, one of "the great victories for the left in recent history" is wishful thinking. The Reagan Admin- istration did not respond to the amendment by throwing up its arms in defeat and agreeing to coexist peacefully with Nicaragua. It simply continued aiding the Contras, claiming that the aid was still legal under the amendment because it was being used to cut off alleged Nicaraguan arms shipments to the FMLN-despite the fact that it was being given to forces openly committed to overthrowing the Nicaraguan government. "The Contra war," writes Gosse, "nearly provoked an impeachment crisis at home" (my emphasis). Now, how nearly is nearly-and should any surviving victim of Contra terror or Salvadoran army death squads be expected to feel grateful for this alleged near suc- cess? Near success, at the risk of stating the obvious, is failure-for which Gosse may be able to find mitigating factors. For my part, I can find none. The Democrats were ready, willing and able to actually provoke an impeachment crisis over the Watergate burglary in which Nixon was caught doing to the rival party of U.S. imperialism a little of what he'd been doing-with bipar- tisan support-to the left and the antiwar, black and women's move- ments for years. That they did not do likewise in order to halt the U.S.- organized carnage against the peo- ples of Central America-compared to which Watergate was the teddy bear's picnic-speaks volumes. Nick Webber Aylesbury, England Van Gosse responds: am struck by the sentimental optimism displayed by Nick Webber's letter. The only "tremen- dous illusions" at work here are those of Webber concerning how politics actually functions in the United States. Does he really think that the only real "fights" in this country are all-or-nothing affairs, with doughty workers ever ready to rally under red flags and each "party of U.S. imperialism" vying with the other to snuff out the peo- ple's struggle? Those sections of my article that provoked Webber's ire were an attempt to acknowledge the un- avoidable fact that nearly all of the U.S. left finds itself dealing with and within the arcane political world of the Democratic Party. The Party is an historic bloc of various powerful fractions of capital and numerous other sectors. Among those other sectors are the women's movement, gays, African Americans, organized labor, and other progressive groups. We all know this, but far too many prefer to dodge it as a fact of life not worth mentioning. The interesting thing to me is that under particular circumstances, the Democratic Party occasionally finds itself having to respond to the wishes of its subal- tern elements. The unending legisla- tive turf wars over Central America emerged from one of those instances. Why? That is the question I sug- gest needs more investigation. Webber evidently would prefer to silence even the question itself. Who knows what deviations might follow, after all! Webber knows full well that the complex and indeed subtle strategies of the U.S. solidar- ity movement sprang directly from its interaction with the Central American revolutionary move- ments, and the latter's appreciation of how to work the fissures of North America's political culture. The FMLN and the Sandinistas at least understood that revolution, and victory of any sort, was no sim- ple matter. I remain deeply appre- ciative of how they performed the "war of maneuver" in the field while perfecting the "war of posi- tion" here in the metropole. If this is "failure," let's have more of it. Arpilleras in Chile A s the director of Fundaci6n Solidaridad, an organization that defended human rights during the Chilean dictatorship and sup- ported the work of the women who opposed the dictatorship by weav- ing powerful political arpilleras, I would like to take issue with Marjorie Agosin's claim ["Patchwork of Memory," May/ June, 1994] that the arpillera movement has disap- peared. Our foundation receives and delivers a large number of arpilleras made by many of the same 200 women who initiated this work. As always, the arpilleristas portray Chilean reality-the bad and the good-on their tapestries. Some celebrate the arrival of Chilean democracy with rainbows. Others depict the oppressive condi- tions of the poor. Still others demand justice for the victims of the dictatorship. It is a mistake to think that the government or anyone else might have closed the workshops. They have never belonged to the govern- ment, the Church, or the foundation. Women arpilleristas have always been the owners of these work- shops, and they are the only ones who can decide on their future. Winnie Lira Santiago de Chile Marjorie Agosin responds: W inni Lira's letter saddens me, and confirms that democracy in Chile is both frail and ambigu- ous. I have no doubt that arpilleras are made in Chile but those made by the mothers of the disappeared are not supported. In Santiago, I was told over and over again that the Vicarate of Solidarity which once supported the workshop had ceased to provide working space and a distribution market for the arpilleras. This is why they were given a room at the headquarters of the Methodist Church. I also have great respect for Lira and recognize her pioneering efforts in building the original workshop, but it seems we have dif- ferent sources of information. My information comes directly from the women themselves. They are my only source. I am aware of the exhibits sponsored by Lira's orga- nization. A recent one that I visited in New York displayed arpilleras with no political themes, showing a deceptively peaceful country. The women who make arpilleras are independent and free-spirited, but without church support they woutd never have been able to mar- ket their work. The original groups have been isolated, and women without a political history now make arpilleras for export. They are the arpilleras of a Chile that refuses to acknowledge its past. Legacy of the Dictatorship A s a visitor from Chile, I was interested in the exchange between Stephanie Rosenfeld and Marjorie Agosin [Letters, March/April, 1995] over human rights in my country. Unfortunately, Agosin is correct when she says that Chilean "perpetrators of human rights abuses enjoy freedom and impunity." I might add that they parade their impunity in the press and on television, mocking the rights of their victims and relatives, and deriding the incapacity of the courts and the present government to insure that justice prevails. Memorial monuments and public funerals notwithstanding, the fact remains that most of the murders by the dictatorship remain unresolved. This is in part due to the fact noted by Agosin that Chile is a "con- trolled democracy," where the inability of the executive, congres- sional and judiciary branches of government to initiate and facilitate the investigation of these crimes is guaranteed by the veiled but omnipresent might of the military. Hundreds of thousands of workers and students dismissed from their jobs and expelled from their schools-many detained, tortured and exiled without a cause-still await the recognition of the injus- tice done to them, and the redress to which they are entitled by the bru- tal interruption of the course of their lives. Assets ranging from pri- vate houses to works of art, which were illegally confiscated from individuals, institutions and politi- cal parties during the dictatorship, remain in the hands of their illegit- imate owners, despite the sanctity assigned to private property by the dictatorship's own constitution. Regarding the "challenges of constructing civil society in democ- racy" mentioned by Rosenfeld, I am afraid that in spite of her opti- mism this worthy goal may prove unattainable if the current environ- ment in Chile persists. It would be like Germany reconstructing its devastated social and economic institutions after World War II with a civilian government answering to the requirements of Herren Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler. I am afraid Rosenfeld misjudges the sit- uation when she labels Agosin's concerns for the country's histori- cal memory "nostalgic." The lack of recognition of the barbaric prac- tices of the dictatorship can only have a corrosive effect on the social development and collective psyche of the country. Felipe C. Cabello, M.D. Valhalla, NY
