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El Laberinto, 1971-1987
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-15- [2 emblems; one down left side & one down right side] TO THE MEN AND WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT Walking home from the Huerta speech last week, and afterwards, having to listen to her again at the reception, I thought to myself all that blind allegiance to an organization and to one man, it can't do. I can't believe in it. No matter what it has meant before, and amounts to today, I do better to "stay in the condition of things." It has its own power. I have come of age in the seventies. I never knew, but through the fog of earliest childhood, the vanquishments of power by men who wielded a silent, more frightening rule over human lives than those they toppled. The Malcom X's, Kennedy's, King's, thought they achieved a great many things, often beneficial to the poor and weak, were destroyed because they remained men of power. And there have been many men of power. Cortez, Mao, Castro, Nixon. All down the line, all through history. The Ahabs, Porfirio Diazes--men who were incapable of responding unagressively to experience--conquerors. It is true that they wrought some "good" in their life time, but they were men of great egos, limiting, estranging that reality and any one of us has to take a stance against. When I look at Cesar Chavez, a terrible doubt arises. Setting out in the early sixties to build a union of farm workers in this country where they would have the same rights as all other workers, and dignity in their lives as human beings, Chavez had put across nearly two decades el grito el "la Huelga," the cry of a whole movement to unite Chicanos. In a man where one could see almost anything he looked for--a Gandhi, Benito Juarez, or revolutionary--Chave, along with many though less known men and women, the striking campesinos, led the struggle of "La Causa," spiritually if not physically. But for all the good Chavez has done, his dictatorial rule of the UFW--dismissing union organizers because they refused to support a governor's re-election campaign, purging leftists and dissenters--this has created a serious doubt about Chavez's leadership. And in many minds, about his sense of power. The pain of looking at ourselves (all of us who would be the inheritors of the struggle, the movement, the revolution) in full acknowledgement of our vulnerability, backwardness, despair, must be assented, by all. And it can be assuaged by the strength discovered in the act of distantly yet honestly looking at ourselves. There may be self-deception on any level of admission (not confession!) but there always must be acknowledgement of our flaws. The men of power, on the other hand, admit nothing. Up there, among the hustings of the Divine Inert, they still climb and kill, reaching after all fact and reason. Widening the void between a human universe and a dad one. As I walk through this world, the true power, for me, is the journey through mystery doubt confusion. It has its own power. Andy Rodriguez [emblem]
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-15- [2 emblems; one down left side & one down right side] TO THE MEN AND WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT Walking home from the Huerta speech last week, and afterwards, having to listen to her again at the reception, I thought to myself all that blind allegiance to an organization and to one man, it can't do. I can't believe in it. No matter what it has meant before, and amounts to today, I do better to "stay in the condition of things." It has its own power. I have come of age in the seventies. I never knew, but through the fog of earliest childhood, the vanquishments of power by men who wielded a silent, more frightening rule over human lives than those they toppled. The Malcom X's, Kennedy's, King's, thought they achieved a great many things, often beneficial to the poor and weak, were destroyed because they remained men of power. And there have been many men of power. Cortez, Mao, Castro, Nixon. All down the line, all through history. The Ahabs, Porfirio Diazes--men who were incapable of responding unagressively to experience--conquerors. It is true that they wrought some "good" in their life time, but they were men of great egos, limiting, estranging that reality and any one of us has to take a stance against. When I look at Cesar Chavez, a terrible doubt arises. Setting out in the early sixties to build a union of farm workers in this country where they would have the same rights as all other workers, and dignity in their lives as human beings, Chavez had put across nearly two decades el grito el "la Huelga," the cry of a whole movement to unite Chicanos. In a man where one could see almost anything he looked for--a Gandhi, Benito Juarez, or revolutionary--Chave, along with many though less known men and women, the striking campesinos, led the struggle of "La Causa," spiritually if not physically. But for all the good Chavez has done, his dictatorial rule of the UFW--dismissing union organizers because they refused to support a governor's re-election campaign, purging leftists and dissenters--this has created a serious doubt about Chavez's leadership. And in many minds, about his sense of power. The pain of looking at ourselves (all of us who would be the inheritors of the struggle, the movement, the revolution) in full acknowledgement of our vulnerability, backwardness, despair, must be assented, by all. And it can be assuaged by the strength discovered in the act of distantly yet honestly looking at ourselves. There may be self-deception on any level of admission (not confession!) but there always must be acknowledgement of our flaws. The men of power, on the other hand, admit nothing. Up there, among the hustings of the Divine Inert, they still climb and kill, reaching after all fact and reason. Widening the void between a human universe and a dad one. As I walk through this world, the true power, for me, is the journey through mystery doubt confusion. It has its own power. Andy Rodriguez [emblem]
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