EXPOSED TO POLITICS

The Bolivar Square, the site where I studied many nights for my quarterly and final tests when I was in Night School in the early 60's


The school I was attending, as I have said before, was a school for adults, and I was only a kid, a little kid in the middle of grownups with all the virtues and vices inherent to their ages and social status, but, in all honesty, most of them were fine people, hard working guys and gals who were elongating their days to attend secondary school and be able to improve their possibilities in the future, through education. They were all men and women of a lower middle class group, they were all conscious that they were individuals who could in one way or another, transform their lives for the better though their own personal effort and that was I admired the most in these people.

Many of these students were prime targets for political motivation, they were fertile ground for political activists, members of the communist Party, who were talking about “the need for a revolution to transform the unjust Ecuadorian society into a society where everybody would be treated with justice and equality”, a rhetoric that sounded like music to the ears of many of my classmates. These were the times when the Cuban revolution headed by Fidel Castro was in vogue, the bearded guerrilla leader had just deposed Fulgencio Batista, a corrupt dictator, after a bloody guerrilla war in the Cuban Sierra Maestra, and he, as a subservient pawn of the soviets, was adamant to spread the revolution through Latin America, where he saw fertile ground for his ideas and methods. Little did we know that over fifty years later, Castro and his brother, who have perpetuated themselves as the bosses in Cuba, have converted that beautiful island into a mass prison from which nine of every ten people would like to leave but are not allowed to.

Fidel Castro was just what the communist leaders in the Kremlin needed to make a nice and easy beach landing in Latin America, where until then, their political advances had been limited to a small intellectual elite and a few blue collar workers; therefore, the USSR was generously funding the political activities of the promoters of a revolution “Cuba and Fidel style”. Young members of the Communist party, who were our classmates, were openly dedicated to recruiting new party members in our school; prime targets were students with good academic records. The bite they used was the possibility of obtaining a scholarship for the Patrice Lumumba University, in Moscow, founded by the Kremlin in the late fifties (honoring the Congo guerrilla leader who was killed by the Belgium Army in the late 50’s), specifically to provide communist indoctrination (disguised as education) to young Latin American and other third world countries’ students who, when returned to their homelands, will be in charge of spreading Communism.

Many of my schoolmates were caught in this net and went to Moscow after graduating from high school. It wasn’t until after several years, when these young men and women returned from Moscow and were unable to find a decently paid job in the market, that they realized they had been used and abused by the communist party and the Kremlin, but, by then, they had been so much indoctrinated that they had no choice but to remain, in one way or another, as agents of their patrons in Moscow and Havana.

In many occasions I was personally and politely invited by Vicente Riofrio, a classmate of mine and member of the communist party, to attend meetings of the Communist Youth. He insisted that I would not be obligated to join but would be welcome to listen to political dissertations from well known political figures, including legislators and labor leaders, adding that it would be good for me to get involved in the national political process. I declined the invitations very politely in every occasion by saying that my full time job and my full time school schedule were taking all my available time and I, therefore, would not be able to seriously dedicate my time to other activities. I was sometimes inclined to accept his invitations, but, just as I felt about smoking pot, I always got away from it untouched.

The year 1960 was one of a tremendous political activity in the country, the presidential elections were taking place in June of that year and, the best known political leader of the previous 30 years in Ecuadorian politics, Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra was one of the candidates. He was a brand name in the Ecuadorian political processes; he had been president already three times, in 1937, 1944 and in 1952. In only one occasion he completed the term for which he was elected, the other two he had been deposed by the military once the disenchanted masses pulled their support for their leader. A highly controversial political leader, he was a populist and had a tremendous capacity to gather multitudes around him, thanks to his highly demagogic political speeches through which he would offer solutions for every need of the people, including building bridges where there were no rivers, only to fail delivering once he got to power. This time, he was coming back from self exile in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he used to fly away when deposed. His political motto was “allow me to speak from a balcony in every town”. Those were the times when TV did not exist in Ecuador, so what he meant with his motto was: “with my speeches from a balcony in every town I visit, I will convince the masses to vote for me”, and, much to the disgrace of the country, he was right, he always convinced the masses to vote for him and he was elected.

Velasco Ibarra was returning from exile to Guayaquil, his political stronghold, where his political sponsors and financiers were preparing a massive welcome to their leader. I was personally against this candidate in spite of him being almost a political idol for my father, because I was convinced that his previous three administrations had been a calamity for the country.

I had planned to attend this mass meeting as a passive bystander, only to be able to criticize the meeting itself and the candidate´s speech and demagoguery thereon, in discussions with my classmates and friends. Far from my intention was to go there and cheer for this man who I had already decided I was not going to vote for. At 18, I was a young man very much interested in the whole political process going on in the country, and wanted to be an active participant in the political campaign in those days, together with classmates that were much older than me, and who were veterans of past political campaigns, but also, as a result of the influence my father had on my formation as an individual and as a citizen. I wanted to be an active player in this process, and, as such, I thought I should listen, analyze and discuss every possible alternative before I made up my mind as to who to vote for in the upcoming presidential and congressional elections

With this idea in mind, we decided (together with a couple of other students in my class), to attend the mass meeting welcoming Velasco Ibarra.


In my next posting: THE BITE OF POLITICS