#42: Cooperation: Gill replies to White

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: drgill <markgill@clas.net>

|          *****of course my statement is a generalization.....however,
your experience is also limited and you cannot assume a high level
of cooperation nation wide due to your experience......my statements
regarding cooperation come from a long period of interest in Haiti,
including study and living in-country and conversations too numerous
to mention on this very subject......in fact, i recall posts on this list
detailing problems in solving problems  due to people not being willing to
cooperate with each other..........let us hope, however, that
the "grassroots movements" will change this.....


| .  Whatever contribution, if any, marxism made to the 
|  failure of the Sandinista government must surely be seen as secondary to

|  the onslaught of the most powerful nation on earth using "all means 
|  short of war" to bring about this failure.
 
i think the Sandinistas had ample opportunity to install the wonders
of the marxist economic model, regardless of whether the US was
opposed to their rule or not......look at the record when they were in
power.....how much land reform actually occured?  you should go
to Nicaragua and see for yourself.....were the good lands that belonged to
the elites redistributed to the poor?  no......and, the Ortega boys lost
the elections in only a few years......

regardless of what happened to Ortega, the facts regarding liberation
theology are clear......a "shooting star of an idea".....went up quick
and fell just as quickly.....in fact, this form of theology has already
become "passe" among the intellectual classes in Central and South
America......and, i might add, this disillusionment with LT began before
the Soviet Union caved in.......

in fact, Nicaragua is not a good test for LT....in that the use of the
phraseology of LT by some within the Sandinista group was sham.....
the Ortega boys were never committed to this form of theology and
those priests who originally sided with Ortega were soon to leave when
Ortega came to power.......the priests were quickly shunted off
to unimportant positions......i mean, look, the story is public about all
this........

what still attracts people to LT is social justice.....Mr. Aristide, who
seems to still represent Ti Ligliz, does not, at least to my knowledge,
discuss marxist methods and i dont hear much about land reform.....

land reform under LT requires nothing more than tryanny.....forcing
whomever to give up ones lands.....in the name "of the people"....this is
the usual rethoric of authoritarianism.........so that, if one professes
the entire package of LT, one is actually saying that one is either
authoritarian or totalitarian.......

we need to at least be realistic about what LT actually means if it
were implemented......

Mark Gill