Taking Note

Mark Fried
Latin America and the Caribbean have not escaped the shadow cast by the war against Iraq. One detects a sense of foreboding, the suspicion that the distance is illusory, that the world has taken a giant step backward, the fear that the Empire's fury will be unleashed on them next.

Intro

NACLA
We are soon to commemorate the five-hundredth anniversary of a momentous event that some people still call "the discovery of America." But as Eduardo Galeano reminds us in this issue, America was not "discovered.

Updates

Katherine Roberts Hite
The return to Chile is a mixed blessing for former exiles. Children often refer to it as the beginning of their own exile. Reintegration is testing the nation's political will and social fabric.
Alberto Flores Galindo
"There is a future for socialism in Latin America, if we are capable of imagining new scenarios," wrote the Peruvian historian just before his death last year. In this impassioned letter, he reflects on the mistakes and the promise of the Left.

Report

Verena Stolcke
The subjugation of native women began with rape and sexual humiliation. Over the centuries, men's control of women was linked to the elite's preoccupation with racial purity, setting patterns that linger to this day.
Luis Guillermo Lumbreras
By replacing native technology with Old World Systems and species ill-suited to the terrain, the conquistadors condemned Latin America to poverty and dependency. Native ways may offer answers to today's crisis.
Anibal Quijano
The communal traditions of America inspired the Enlightenment, even as Europe imposed its own anti-communal systems on most of the world. But the old traditions are being reborn in the struggles of the urban poor.
Miguel Rojas Mix
Since the early days of the colonies, the peoples of Spanish-speaking America have been trying to define themselves - by their Indian, African or European heritage - to establish a basis for unity.

Reviews

Article

Thomas Klubock
When General Augusto Pinoehet ar- rived in Valparaiso last March to hand over power to Christian Democrat Patri- cio Aylwin and a coalition of opposition parties, crowds lining the streets screamed "Murderer!" and threw eggs and toma- toes. For relatives of victims of human rights abuses, that moment was "like a liberation," according to one member of the Organization of Relatives of the De- tained and Disappeared (AFDD).
Eduardo Galeano
THE BLACK AND THE ROSE-COLORED LEGENDS -two extremes that leave us outside of history, out- side of reality. These interpretations of the conquest of America reveal a suspicious veneration of times past, of a re- splendent corpse whose'brilliance blinds us to the daily reality of our lands.
The Town That Raised Its Head Although news of army human rights violations in Guatemala raises few eyebrows anymore, the recent massacre in Santiago Atitlin (December 2, 1990) merits special attention. It is notewor- thy less for the event itself, than for the local and national response.
Eduardo Galeano
FINE WORDS AND PRETTY CEREMONIES ARE about to descend upon us: The five-hundredth anniversary of the so-called Discovery is approaching. I think Alejo Carpentier was right when he called this the greatest event in the history of humankind.