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15 de octubre de 2001

TERRORISIMS IN PERSPECTIVE



After the events in the United States yesterday, I wrote some reflections that would like to share with you followed by the email of my good friend Karl Galle. Hope to hear your reactions.



I have been really shocked by the human suffering this attack cost to the American people. Some of my best friends are in and from that country. On the other hand, historically and politically speaking the episode deserves a more careful reading.



I do not share the view that this is one of the worse campaigns ever, although its characteristics has no precendents, but that is a matter of method. I do not believe either that this was a coward attack against a peaceful democracy. While I concede that it was coward, the last adjective that comes to my mind about the United States is "peaceful". This is the country that has the World full of military bases. It has bombed practically every country in the world, or has provided arms to other regimes to massacre their own or other peoples. The Kurds could tell us a lot about what the Turks did with the planes lend by the US.



In Yugoslavia, should we forget the massive coward air bombing campaign that killed if not more at least a similar number of civilians as the number killed yesterday in New York. It was to defend people from Milosevic, apologists could argue. However, one does not have to be a military expert to know that no war has been won without ground forces. In the case of guerrilla warfare, or a paramilitary campaign like the one conduced by Milosevic, that was evident. Yet NATO, namely the US and her followers, preferred not to put in jeopardy its troops (!) because that reminded Vietnam, another case to bear in mind from the Others' point of view. Instead they bombed civilians. The national television, an obvious civilian target, was blew up, not to mention what happened to the Chinese embassy (a colateral "error").



I would not dare to give figures regarding Iraq, a shameful military and economic war that is still going on against the Iraqi people and for which two UN commissioners have resigned from their posts in that country in protest.



All this against international law. Because none of these cases were approved by the United Nations. They were unilateral decisions taken at the Pentagon.



This of course do not justify the attack. Terrorism is an unacceptable, self-defeating political resort. However, these reminders may help us to see yesterday's events in a more just measure. It was a massacre, but not worse than those produced by the US government.



It has been magnified by concentration of technological gadgets in the US. The message is certainly more dramatic when we can see the TwinTowers collapsing, or hear on the radio that someone called from one of air plains minutes before the crash to tell her mother that she loved her so much. Hence the personal tragedy blur the political background and real meaning and significance of the attack. The public feels closer to the victims, and therefore, gets polarised also against those who did it. Even in Colombia people have reacted in dramatic tone, while none of the thousands of deaths in there have deserved any similar reaction. This is because we tend to identify ourselves more with a New Yorker than with a Chinese peasant, although the reality is that the average citizen of the world is more like the latter. And the images magnify this misrepresentation of the world.



But that is the point. Those who did it were fanatics, true. But they are not Waco-like maniacs. This is a reflection of a social problem at a global scale. This should ring an alarm over American people so that they start asking themselves why so many people hate the US so much. And try to go beyond the childish usual answer that it is because the rest of the world envy Americans. I, however, alas, doubt this debate is going to take place, and as we have seen, the public is claiming revenge, following the logic of Texas capital punishment. As if the retaliation could heal the hounds on the families of the victims. But a great nation deserves a less primitive reaction that just ask for "eye for eye".

Alexis de Greiff







Por un lado, eso que ayer fue pesadilla durante mucho tiempo había sido simple entretenimiento para miles de millones de ciudadanos del mundo a través de películas muy diversas cuyo común denominador era el derrumbe de

los edificios de Manhattan, ya fuera a causa de un gorila o de un ovni.

No se qué tanto tenga que ver, pero las imagenes de ayer eran demasiado hermosas y eso las hacía mil veces más siniestras, como de pesadilla de serie B de los años 50. Manhattan amaneció como una hermosa postal, el cielo azul, el Hudson azul, nada más chic que un 767 surcando un cielo

azul, nada más chic que el sol reflejado en la estructura de acero y cristal de las Torres Gemelas.

Era una recreación impecable e implacable de la estética que nos vende Hollywood.

Hollywood en su máxima expresión.

La explosión del segundo avión con ese telón de fondo azul celeste la habíamos visto mil veces, la habíamos financiado un millón de veces al hacer largas colas en el cine o al pagar suscripciones a la televisión por cable, hasta le habíamos dado ni idea cuántos premios Oscar al mejor efecto

especial.

Pero también está el otro lado del asunto.

CNN y Telemundo y demás hablan de "el símbolo del poder económico mundial" y "ataque al pueblo norteamericano".

Eso es cierto pero es incompleto. Nueva York es una ciudad que le pertenece al mundo entero. Es la ciudad que uno aprende a querer por muchas cosas:

desde la salsa y el merengue dominicano de Harlem y el Bronx hasta las reminicensias de infancia de Carl Sagan e Isaac Asimov en Brooklyn. Nueva York no sólo es Wall Street, es Aaron Copland, son los hermanos Marx, es

Leonard Bernsteion, es Gershwin, además es la ciudad donde vive alguien que uno conoce, es la ciudad que acogió a miles de refugiados de guerras y hambrunas, es la ciudad donde John Lennon quiso vivir como fuera, la ciudad

donde ocuren tanto las mejores como las más insoportables películas de Woody Allen.

Es la ciudad donde viven, conviven, sobreviven o intentan sobrevivir el musulmán, el católico, el hebreo... entre las víctimas de ayer ni idea cuántos musulmanes hayan caído víctimas de un ataque hecho a nombre de la religión verdadera. Entre las víctimas de ayer con toda seguiridad hay centenares de tercermundistas que sostenían a sus familias con la plata quen lograban ahorrar trabajando como vendedores de perros calientes,

lustrabotas o aseadores de Wall Street y alrededore.s Eso también me conmueve. Suena cínico decirlo, pero Nueva York no es Oklahoma City. Nueva York es planet earth a la lata y cualquier cosa que ocurra allá de alguna u otra manera afecta a Jamaica, Cabo Verde, Haití, Filipinas, Liberia, PuertoRico, Colombia...

Creo que esa combinación de escenario hollywoodense y matanza de ciudadanos de todo el mundo (más el cubrimiento de CNN, obvio) le da a lo de ayer cierto aire de tragedia familiar de la que, al menos yo, que sólo he estado

por allá un par de veces en mi vida y que no tengo ningún vínculo afectivo concreto, me siento incapaz de sustraerme.

P.S.

Sin hablar, claro está, de la fascinación morbosa que provoca el hecho de

saber que, salvo las vidas y el costo de los pasajes del puñado de militantes suicidas, todo lo financió y lo costeó Estados Unidos: los aviones, la gasolina, los rascacielos, la impotencia, el polvo, los escombros...

EDUARDO ARIAS