I recently had the pleasure of viewing a remarkable documentary on the 1973 Chilean Coup d'etat. Having lived there for two years I have a fondness for Chile and an acute interest in its histoy and people. My father also lived in Chile, only he lived there during the this Coup and was imprisoned briefly by the Pinochet regime. He was later released because they didn't know what to make of him as a foreigner speaking only of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Chile along with much of Latin America presents an intriguing paradox in what I would consider to be my personal ideology. As what some might consider a conservative, lover of freedom and capitalism, I am somewhat torn by my empathy for the socialists and even communists of the region. One might wonder why a person of my political preferences would read with an insatiable appetite all about the iconic Che Guevara. I don't play bongos, I don't smoke pot or listen to Bob Marley regularly, I own a didgeridoo, but it adorns my office and not often my lips, I do enjoy the occasional mate (South American herbal tea) I don't sing with the hippie peace choir, and yet I consider myself somehwhat of an expert on the man. So would our old friend Joe MacCarthy have sought me out had he lived in our day? Perhaps. I hope not to disappoint any of my conservative friends with the following declaration; I am a Latin American Commie. If I lived there, I would be the first to cry out against the injustice, disparity, corruption, and arbitrary rule that has prevailed there for so many years. If I had been born there I would erroneously see communism as the answer. I would lead the masses of proles armed to the hilt with blood spilling apparatus against anyone unlucky enough to be oppressing us. It has been the only choice. Alas I was born in America, where our founding fathers were brilliant enough to write a constitution that would create a world in which even the poorest trailer park dweller, working 20 hours a week, could sport an iphone and $5 Starbuck latte. A land in which the immigrant construction worker can afford to build himself one of the miniature palaces he labors on daily. America is the last country that should be drawn to socialism, and yet somehow, the Evil Empire we spent 60 years combating, has seemingly become the model society for our new regime. We need to rethink the way things are going with our government, we need to speak out and say we like the world we have worked so hard to create. Latin America longs for what we have, they just don't know how to get it. Our lowest of class has a far more wondrous life than many of the middle classes worldwide. We need to continue, to advance, to fail and to arise again, not create an equal but mediocre populous. That is not who we are, and it is someone we will never be, because unlike Latin America we need no remedy, no standardization of the classes, because if nothing else, here in America we have achieved the ability to achieve success according to ones will and desires. That will be the last thing to fall from the grasp of my cold, inanimate fingers.
