Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id GAA09690 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 26 Sep 2001 06:13:14 +0100 Message-ID: <001301c14648$e9917c20$b724f4d8@teddace> From: "Dace" <edace@earthlink.net> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> References: <20010923105544.56878.qmail@web20009.mail.yahoo.com> Subject: Re: state of memes Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 22:05:49 -0700 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Sender: fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
It wasn't just the Palestinians. What happened two weeks ago was much like
the climactic scene of The Wizard of Oz, when the Wicked Witch of the West
melts into a pool of water, and her servants rejoice at their sudden and
previously unthinkable liberation.
Here's the view from Mexico, by correspondent John Ross:
Many Mexicans clearly do not display the same compassion as [President] Fox
and [Foreign Minister] Castaneda for their nearest neighbors to the north, a
world power that has repeatedly invaded, annexed, and vexed Mexico for
centuries. For many Mexicans, despite the North American Free Trade
Agreement and the Fox-Bush embraces, the United States of North America
remains the Great Satan.
Chilangos (Mexico City residents) followed closely the malignant events of
Black Tuesday step by step as the two monopoly TV networks transmitted CNN
saturation coverage with Mexican anchormen and women providing local color.
Some of the commentators, such as Televisa's Joaquin Lopez Doriga
unsuccessfully sought to conceal their glee as the twin towers crumpled to
earth, burying thousands. "The symbol of world economic power is no more,"
Doriga yapped excitedly over and over again as the re-runs reiterated the
destruction on an endless tape loop.
Later, the star newscaster would boast that prior to this terrorist Pearl
Harbor, only Mexico had ever had the audacity to attack the United States on
its own turf (Pancho Villa invaded Columbus, New Mexico for a few hours in
March of 1916.)
[...]
I sat at my desk in the old quarter of Mexico City, staring in horror at the
fuzzy black and whites of the destruction. Suddenly, a banda de guerra
(brass band) from impoverished Oaxaca state began to aggressively blast away
beneath my balcony. Joy was in the air.
One activist got so giddy that he went to the U.S. embassy on Reforma
Boulevard and handed out a list of Yanqui Imperialist war crimes that
included Hiroshima and the genocide of North American Indians. In the new
spirit of Mexican democracy, he was promptly hauled off by the police.
I ran into Pepe G. in the Vascona panaderia (a local bread store.) I know
Pepe from years of covering demonstrations in the great Zocalo plaza a few
blocks away, in which he often participates. "Que Padre!" he was grinning
from ear to ear. "How beautiful!" Pepe did not mean the roscas and the
pineapple tarts and the creampuffs. "What balls the pilots had!" the small
brown man raved on, "Que Chingones!"
I have been covering social strife in Latin America for many years. I am
tall and white and often distrusted and disliked by the small brown people
whose story I am telling, as the gringo enemy. Indeed, when the companeros
are friendly, I get suspicious. Such resentment, part historical, part
class and race, is understandable and always a subtext to my reportage.
Whenever Tio Sam stomps his seven league boots on the corpus delecti of
Latin America, the hatred runs white hot. I watched my back during Playa
Giron (1961) which the Yanquis fittingly tag the Bay of Pigs, or when the
CIA and Bolivia's current ambassador to Mexico, Gary Prado, captured and
executed Che Guevara in the Bolivian outback Oct. 8th 1967. When a lame
news boy hobbled aboard a Cuzco-bound train in 1986 hawking a paper whose
headline read "Yanks Kill Quadaffi's Baby!" the hatred in my
fellow-passengers' eyes was unmistakable. And there was a lot of tension
around the counter at the Cafe La Blanca on the morning the first George
Bush took it upon himself to invade Panama (1989).
This September 11th, George W. Bush was much too preoccupied to reflect upon
the fact that the terrorist attack on the U.S. took place on exactly the
same date as the 1973 overthrow of the legally elected Allende government in
Chile by Henry Kissinger and the CIA, an event that was accompanied by a
loss of life similar in numbers to the World Trade Center and Pentagon
bombings.
Terrorist revenge for perceived U.S. crimes against the rest of the world,
and the unbelievable loss of life that accompanied it, is a catastrophic
x-ray of the empire's vulnerability, and it is going to change Mexican-U.S.
relations very quickly...
[end of excerpt]
This was written a few days after the event, when its tangible ramifications
were being exaggerrated everywhere. Its real importance was more symbolic
than substantial. For a moment we could see the reality submerged under the
Pax Americana. Then the movie ended, and it was back to work.
Ted
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