I just got a little precious book from Rius (Mexican cartoonist) a couple of days ago. It's title, in spanish, is "OSAMA TIOSAM: Por qué ama tanto el mundo a los Estados Unidos", which we could translate more or less like "UNCLESAM LOVESYOU: Why does the world loves so much the United States". It is clearly a word-game the all-caps part of the title: Osama goes for Loves you as well as a reminder for Bin Laden.
What is this book about? Well, it's not for your patriotic-minded U.S. citizen, for sure. It is a full chronicle of all the shit my Country's northern neighbor has been doing on everybody else: State terrorism.
Rius has been quite irreverent for the most part of his life, and has published quite a long list of books. Even if classified as "leftist" by most, he has written books that are not precisely the most kind for the left parties of the world. He goes for the facts, and explains stuff in the most down-to-earth way available: from the bible, to philosophy, to Marx or Israel. Elena Poniatowska, mexican writter, gave prises for him.
And with this little book, published after the "famous" 9/11 (11/S for the spanish world, as we put the dates day-month-year) Rius establishes for the dummies out there who have been truly deluded by the mass media arm of gringo´s (for lack of a better word) goverment into believing that their country is the world's salvation.
Mmm-- let's explain about usuing "gringo" in that phrase.
America IS NOT a country. That's stupid to even think. America goes from Alaska and Greenland, waaaay south 'till Patagonia. It's a continent, spawning dozens of countries with their own goverments.
"United States of America" is not quite a good name for a country that doesn't a) cover the whole extension of the American continent, or b) is the only country in America conformed by several, sovereign states in a confederation or republic.
Mexico, as my most handy example, has the official name of UNITED STATES OF MEXICO. So it covers the whole extension of land known as Mexico and is a federation of sovereign states, fullfiling the above requisites to stand for the name.
Then, based on the facts above, it would be understood that no Latin American citizen would call, on his/her 5 senses, "America" the country that presently has Mr Bush Jr. as president. And for that reason, we simply call that land the land of the Yanquis. Yankees, yes, to the horror of many non-Yankee up there. And to better not hurt any non-Yankee feelings, I prefered the other term: Gringo. Because we have developed that into a country-word, Gringolandia. Like Disneyland, Iceland... then it comes to Gingoland.
So sorry if I hurt some feelings. It was not in bad spirit. It's only because of a lack of a real word to call a country, and my un-willingness to back down a step on the cultural ground towards domination.
I will left you with a small quote for a scholar paper:
“Unknown as it is, and recognizing that this has been standard practice throughout colonialism, that is the record of the Western imperial centers of capital from 1945 to 1990... While mouthing peace, freedom, justice, rights, and majority rule, all over the world state-sponsored terrorists were overthrowing democratic governments, installing and protecting dictators, and preventing peace, freedom, justice, rights, and majority rule. Twelve to fifteen million mostly innocent people were slaughtered in that successful 45 year effort to suppress those breaks for economic freedom which were bursting out all over the world.
“... All [Western] intelligence agencies have been, and are still in, the business of destabilizing undeveloped countries to maintain their dependency and the flow of the world’s natural wealth to powerful nations’ industries at a low price and to provide markets for those industries at a high price, identical to those raiding parties who raided the countryside 800 to 1,000 years ago to destroy their capital, maintain their dependency, and force the countryside to sell their raw material to, and purchase the manufactured products from, the city. The defeated/impoverished former colonial world is the countryside for today’s wealthy imperial centers of capital. The military of today’s powerful nations are for the same purpose as those Middle Age raiding parties. Thus, with per capita natural wealth many times that of Europe, those defeated nations remain impoverished, as that wealth is continually siphoned to powerful imperial centers of capital.”
--Smith, J. W., ‘Simultaneously Suppressing the World’s Break for Freedom’, Economic Democracy: The Political Struggle of the Twenty-First Century, M. E. Sharpe, New York, Armonk, 2000. Excerpts of this study can be found at Institute for Economic Democracy, http://www.slonet.org/~ied