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Chaos erupted in Ecuador yesterday as members of the police and military protested budget cuts proposed by the government. 150 troops occupied Quito (Ecuador’s capital) airport to contest the move made by Congress, but it was when President Correa became involved that things truly got ugly. At an address to the disgruntled police and troops outside the Presidential Palace, a volley of tear gas canisters were fired at the President’s entourage, and members of the police were caught on video attempting to assault him. Clearly struggling to breathe from behind his gas mask, the President was bundled from the scene to a nearby hospital, where he was treated for tear gas inhalation. He immediately responded to what many have commented on as the early tremors of a coup attempt:
PRES. RAFAEL CORREA (VOICEOVER TRANSLATION): If you want to kill the president, here I am. Kill me. Kill me if you’re not happy. Kill me if you’re brave. But we will continue with one policy, one of justice, dignity, and we will not take one step backwards.
Thankfully, Ecuador didn’t follow Honduras’s lead (for more on the 2010 military coup that ousted President Zelaya, visit the Honduras page) as one of the top military chiefs has come out in defense of Correa. Let’s hope he doesn’t go the same way as Chilean Army Chief of Staff Rene Schneider, who was murdered in a bungled kidnapping attempt co-sponsored by the CIA for standing behind Chilean President Salvador Allende. His death led the way for Augusto Pinochet to take the reins and lead the now infamous coup that plunged Chile into a military dictatorship. To read that story in comics form, click here. For an interesting debate on the US’s level of involvement, read this post from Foreign Affairs.
Courtesy of SOAW (School of the Americas Watch):
In his radio address the President did talk about this being a Coup attempt lead by the Police, Military close to an ex-President, but also by the Opposition and the ex-President Lucio Gutierrez. He stated that there is an attempt to destabilize the democratic citizen revolution that has happened in Ecuador. At this moment, the pro-democracy movement is gathering in the thousands in the capital but in all the plazas across the country. There are also people marching to the hospital to protect the President.
For more on the story, check out Narco News’s coverage here.
Roy Bourgeois, SOAW founder, at the NW Latin American Solidarity Conference on April 9
The Honduran comic made its printed debut at the NW Latin American Conference on Friday, where it was excitedly picked up by NGO leaders and activists from around the US, as well as by Archcomix hero Roy Bourgeois, founder of the School of the Americas Watch (see left). If you haven’t seen it already, check out the online documentary Father Roy: Inside the School of Assassins here. Thanks to Bruce Wilkinson for his support in organizing the event and getting me involved. A fundraiser in Washington DC to get more comics out to Honduras is also in the pipeline. I’ll keep you posted.
Now that I’m deep into the research stage of my upcoming comic on the Israeli lobby, I’ve been mulling over the creation of a visual database that would contextualize a number of seemingly disparate individuals (all of them influential and wealthy) within the various power-broking industries they belong to. A sort of yellow pages of power that would let readers see the connections between lobbying groups, political parties and multinationals on a personal level. Along the lines of transparency advocacy sites such as Open Secrets and Transparency International, but functioning at the level of the individual. With a sprinkling of interactivity thrown in for good measure. I’m delighted to say that the folks over at Muckety have beaten me to it – go there now (well, after you’ve read this, at least), enter a name into their search bar, and you’re instantly able to interactively explore their business, political and financial connections. Granted, it’s not an exhaustive directory, but it’s a fantastic tool for getting a sense of affiliations and influence.
Staying with that same goal of making websites easier to navigate and peruse information, you’ll notice I’ve re-organized this site’s pages to categorise the ever-expanding directory of comics into relevant topics, as well as added some new pages from recent projects. One of which is my recent collaboration with underground comics legend Harvey Pekar on a 55-page graphic history of Yiddish literature and culture. More about that on the Social Histories page.
UPDATE: Scroll down if you haven’t read today’s post for the backstory on Oscar Romero’s assassination, 30 years ago today. For those of you that have, check out this video from the Daily Show’s recent segment on the Texas board of education members who are essentially in charge of dictating the national curriculum, given that their state orders the most copies of school textbooks. The worrying part involving Oscar Romero begins at 2:50, and shows Patrica Hardy from the Texas State Board of Education arguing that Romero should be omitted from text books…because no one knows who he is.
Today marks the 30th anniversary of the murder of Salvadorean Archbishop Oscar Romero, murdered by paramilitary troops at the altar as he celebrated mass, and commemorated in the above snippet from my comic that featured in the latest issue of Presente! To read the comic, click back to the Archcomix archive here, or order your copy of the Honduran Coup: A graphic history using the button on the right sidebar. Here’s the report from the BBC.
Many have linked Romero’s murder to the work of Roberto D’Aubuisson, far-rightist national guardsman who is alleged to have led deathsquads during El Salvador’s bloody civil war, apparently earning him the nickname ‘blowtorch bob’. Here’s his obituary from the NYTimes, which quotes former Salvadorean President Cristiani as labelling D’Aubuisson, “a fighter to open political spaces and look for a democratic path in the country”. Is ‘opening political spaces’ a diplomatic term for “leading a deathsquad”? Use your readerly judgement. Either way, it’s better than “a pathological killer”, which was US Ambassador Robert E. White’s epithet for him. One thing that is undeniable is D’Aubuisson’s links to the School of the Americas (now WHINSEC), placing him in the company of a veritable who’s-who of Latin American military top brass who had a similarly proactive attitude towards “opening political spaces”. Visit the School of the Americas Watch to find out more and get involved.
Below is footage from multiple witnesses of the shooting, eerily chronicling the turn of events from both the shooters’ and the congregation’s perspectives. Thanks to Tim’s ElSalvador Blog for the video.
In case you missed it, voting is still open for your favourite cover design of the four that I posted on Friday – scroll down to view them, then leave a comment or vote using this here link.
The School of the Americas comic is now in print as the full-colour centrefold (now then) of the latest issue of Presente!, the School of the Americas Watch newsletter. Here it is in all its tactile glory on my desk. Order your free copy and find out more about the SOAW here.
And in case you’ve had your head in the sand the last few days, or are an ardent global warming naysayer (not that there’s much of a difference, admittedly), spare a thought for the poor souls in Chile, who are reeling from one of the strongest earthquakes in recorded history that has destroyed 1.5 million homes and left 700 dead, with the toll expected to rise. It turns out that the strongest ever earthquake (a massive 9.5 on the Richter scale) also hit Chile, some 50 years ago, making it the go-to place for seismologists to conduct research. So thankfully, emergency procedures and containment plans for recovering from such a disaster were already in place and no doubt saved a large number of lives. More on this from the BBC here.
Naturally, comparisons have immediately been drawn between the devastation in Haiti and Chile. Despite Chile’s quake being 5 times stronger, the damage is considerably less than January’s quake, largely due not only to the fact that the epicentre of the Haitian quake was much closer to the surface, but also to the far more advanced construction of Chilean buildings (for reasons outlined above). Another point also worth bearing in mind is the rapid, efficient response of Chilean President Michele Bachelet to the disaster: she held off immediate foreign aid for fear of complications; ordered police to allow victims free access to essential supplies from supermarkets; and was soon offering minute-by-minute updates on the recovery efforts. A far cry from the debacle in Haiti, where international efforts were complicated by the US unilateral takeover of the main airport and subsequent diversion of non-US approved flights, plus the worrying number of US troops (reportedly around 10,000) who were deployed ‘for security purposes’. Surely emergency disaster relief is the UN’s chief role? So it would seem on their website.
Saddest of all is the ‘satire’ of Pat Robertson’s now legendary diatribe against Haiti, which some eager blogger cut and pasted to fit the latest Chilean disaster. Sadder still is that so many in the blogosphere fell for it (here’s the full summary), taking it as a real report. Staying with Chile, below is a comic from the archive that I put together about the US involvement in the 1973 Chilean coup that ousted Salvador Allende. My thoughts, condolences and best wishes go out to those affected in Chile.
[GALLERY=2]
Thanks to all of you who’ve posted comments, tweets, or links to my graphic history of the Honduran coup (the above image is p2 of 7), the rest of which is posted here at Alternet. It was picked up by Boing Boing here and is also over at www.presente.org and The Daily Kos so check out the links and please boost the story up the ranking at Daily Kos so more people see it. It’s great to see it stimulating debate about the situation in Tegucigalpa, and we’re working on getting the sources up on at Alternet. If they’re not posted by tomorrow I’ll stick them up here.
For those of you new to the site, check out the COMIX page for an archive of my other journalistic work. And thanks to those of you who stopped by the Center for Cartoon Studies table at San Francisco’s Alternative Press Expo, where me and my mate Sam Carbaugh were hawking our wares. If you missed the chance to get your hands on copies of our comix, check out the STORE section above or visit Sam’s site here.
