The existence of committees against the celebration of the five hundredth anniversary of the conquest has therefore begun to upset the triumphal veneer that the Spanish government has erected.
In December 1990, the Spanish State Committee Against the Five Hundredth Anniversary Celebration was founded with the participation of local committees from throughout the country. It has as its slogan "500 years of aggression, 500 years of resistance, for the emancipation of the peoples". The campaign is focusing on 1992 and is preparing an alternative coun ter summit and a popular forum. The first is planned for Madrid at the time of the Second Iberian-American summit. It is attempting to give a platform to voices from Latin American that will certainly not be heard at the official summit. The forum itself will have a popular character.
The Puerto Real summit
From October 9-12, 1992, artists, intellectuals, women, leaders of social movements and indigenous Latin Americans, as well as solidarity activists from the Spanish state and Europe, will gather in the small town of Puerto Real in the Cadiz region to discuss the reality of the problems of Latin America. A majority of the Puerto Real municipal government has lent its support, after organizing an open debate to decide on the character of the town's participation; 17 out of 22 municipal councilors voted in favor of city participation in the event.
Though they have not yet begun, these initiatives have already found an important echo. The majority of letters expressing solidarity with these events have come from individuals and organizations in Latin America and Europe who understand that these counter-celebrations represent solidarity with the Third World in general and Latin America in particular. This message is the antithesis of the official message of the five hundredth anniversary, the Seville Exposition, as well as that of the new capitalist Europe.
Another campaign is underway in the Spanish state under the title "Let's Unmask 1992". Its organizers have launched an appeal to respond to the costs of European unification and to the projects that the Spanish government is preparing in this framework. However coordination of activities against the five hundredth anniversary is, however, limited and the existence of the two committees has already caused confusion.
The April 20 demonstration against the Seville Exposition showed the problems. This demonstration was organized by the
SPANISH STATE "Lets Unmask 1992" campaign. it was supposed to be held with the participants of an international camp organized by this same committee near Seville. Local pressure including an enormous police presence would have dissuaded the organizations from marching but some of the participants in the camp did not hear about plans to cancel the march and around 400 people marched anyway.
The police version of the events is totally false. They claim that the demonstrators were organized provocateurs who intended to sabotage the inaugaration of the Exposition.! In any event, the right to demonstrate and protest must not be restricted, certainly not by the police.
A period of lower solidarity
Beyond the Seville incidents there have been difficulties tied to the current situation. We are living in a period of lower solidarity. In a poll conducted in1991, the majority of people interviewed knew very little about the five hundredth anniversary but were familiar with the Exposition or the Olympic games. Therefore, part of the offical message has been absorbed by the population: the five hundredth anniversary is being celebrated by looking to a technological future and turning our backs on a past full only of misery and unhappy
The government and the mainstream parties have made a big effort in this direction. The commemorations of the five hundredth anniversary have become a matter of state. In his Christmas speech King Juan Carlos I made a passing reference to this unhappy past when he said that the "discovery" must be celebrated "without complexes", which of course indicates that such "complexes" really do
In spite of the efforts of the government the mask is beginning to fall and many have seen what is hidden behind it. The bullets fired by the police have contributed to this. The PSOE's convergence plan also allows some of the costs of this project to be perceived. Many in Latin America have for their part denounced for a long time the
·92 celebrations of the five hundredth anniversary. During his speech inaugurating the Seville Exposition, Felipe Gonzalez cited the supposed successes of the Exposition and of the government. Latin
America which is supposed to be the great protagonist of this event was not mentioned once.
Sooner or later there will be a reaction to this duplicity, cupidity and the repression it inevitably
11 entails. *
1. See El Mundo, April 21, 1992.
May 25, 1992
cantonization of
International Viewpoint # 229 • May 25, 1992 grade came onto the streets to demand democratization, Milosevic decided to up the stakes. Top priority was now given to the "salvation" of the Serb communities in Croatia and thereafter in BH. However the war with Croatia did not quieten down the protests in Serbia, where the regime
Bosnia-Herzegovina remains under the permanent and increasing pressure of the Serb nationalist leaders in Croatia and BH and the federal army.
ACCORDING to an official provisional estimate published on May 10, 1,320 people have now died since the outbreak of hostilities in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BH), while another
6,700 have been wounded. Croatia's President Tudjman and his Serbian counterpart Milosevic want to partition the republic, and since they cannot achieve this aim by peaceful means, they are using soldiers and volunteer militia. The European Community's support for the division of Bosnia-Herzegovina into ethnic cantons has done nothing to stem the violence - quite the contrary.
CHRISTIAN PROMITZER*
HE antiwar demonstration of tens
T of thousands on April 6, 1992 in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo was the last attempt to stem the slide to war. The peace movement in Bosnia-Herzegovina was the strongest in the former Yugoslavia, and it was clear from the start that any war there would be very bloody. None of the three ethnic groups, the Serbs, Croats and Muslims, has an absolute majority.
No influential political force supported the demonstrators, on the march one could see old Yugoslav flags with the red star, flags of the Yugoslav League of Communists, dissolved in 1990 and even portraits of Tito. No less symbolic was the end of the demonstration, when the marchers were shot at through the windows of the
Holiday Inn by Serb guards. This was the nerve centre of the Serb Democratic Party
(SDS), under its leader Radovan Karadzic.
Afterwards some of the demonstrators occupied the parliament building, initiated a "People's parliament" whose proceedings were televised and set up a 25 person strong Committee of National Salvation, but that was the end of their activities. The following day the demonstrators went home as the war broke out all around
Since the struggle broke out in Croatia and the self-appointed leaders of the Serb enclaves there declared the "Autonomous
Serbian Republic of Krajina", corresponding aspirations have been expressed for the Serb-populated areas in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The SDS' strategy is to push forward the division of Bosnia-Herzegovina
12 into ethnic cantons. The Croatian Democratic Association (HDZ), an offshoot of Tudjman's ruling party, is pursuing a similar goal with respect to the Croat areas in Western Herzegovina.
### Secret talks
The background to these efforts lies in the dependence on the various nationalist elites on their "fatherlands". Already, in the middle of last year, secret talks took place between the Croatian president Franjo Tudjman and his Serb counterpart Slobodan Milosevic concerning agreement on the division of Bosnia-Herzegovina; the cantonization plan would be merely a first step towards partition. The recent negotiations under EC auspices did not come out of the blue.