Reply #2: Where the People Voted Against Fear [View All]

[Say_What]

Galeano is such a great writer.

<clips>

Where the People Voted Against Fear
by Eduardo Galeano

From the January 2005 issue of The Progressive . . .

A few days before the election of the President of the planet in North America, in South America elections and a plebiscite were held in a little-known, almost secret country called Uruguay. In these elections, for the first time in the country's history, the left won. And in the plebiscite, for the first time in world history, the privatization of water was rejected by popular vote, asserting that water is the right of all people.

The movement headed by President-elect Tabare Vazquez ended the monopoly of the two traditional parties--the Blanco and the Colorado parties--which governed Uruguay since the creation of the universe.

And after each election you would hear this exclamation: ''I thought that we Blancos won but it turns out we Colorados did"--or the other way around. Out of opportunism, yes, but also because after so many years of ruling together, the two parties had fused into one, disguised as two.

Tired of being cheated, this time the people made use of that little-used instrument, common sense. The people asked, Why do they promise change yet ask us to chose between the same and the same? Why didn't they make any of these changes in the eternity they have been in power?

Never had the abyss between the real country and electioneering rhetoric been so evident. In the real country, badly wounded, where the only growth is in the number of emigrants and beggars, the majority chose to cover their ears to block out the oratory of these Martians competing for the government of Jupiter with highfalutin words imported from the moon.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1113-20.htm