THE 500th Anniversary of the "discovery" of the Americas by Christopher Columbus was fittingly celebrated in the Dominican Republic. ANDY BROCK
H EAVILY armed soldiers were
placed at every street corner and all the police forces were on the alert to prevent any assembly or demonstration. Traffic was periodically held up to permit various civilian, military and religious dignitaries to pass down empty streets. Street traders and beggars were rounded up and deposited onto the streets of a provincial town. Such was the "wall of shame" constructed around the Columbus lighthouse.
It was here, in the Dominican Republic, that Pope John Paul II chose to relaunch his mission to bring the word to Latin America. Just like 500 years ago the violence of ruffians accompanied the conquest of souls.
Many Catholics and priests asked themselves how the Pope could accept such circumstances to call together the fourth conference of the Latin American bishops.
### Balaguer celebrates
Christian West
It was surely not due to ignorance. Dominican president Balaguer had made clear his approach to the 500th anniversary years ago. Not for him any reference to the genocide of the native population, slavery and colonial pillage or even the vapid seen their purchasing power decline over the past 20 years and officials have few concerns apart from feathering their own nests. Some 110,000 people became "boat people" in 1991, about 11,000 of whom died at sea. Tens of thousands of women have left the country to sell their bodies or feed the tourist boom.
The drug networks run by the Dominican military are tied up with the US mafia and the Haitian putschists. Finally, we should note that the DR devotes all of 1.3% of its budget to education.
Balaguer wished to closely associate the Catholic church with his great colonial celebration, and, despite many appeals from both inside and outside the church,
The man he obliged was a faithful servant for decades of the tyrant Trujillo architect of the massacre of 17.000 Haitians in 1937, and a puppet replaced in power in 1967 by the United States army. He remains in power today thanks to US support, electoral fraud and the discredit of the social democratic opposition, which spent its spell in power (1978-86) feeding hungrily at the trough of corruption.
In the preceding months popular organizations made clear their refusal to have group of children on a march by the Continental 500 years of Native, Black and Popular Resistance Campaign. A demonstrator was also killed in Azua as well as dozens of wounded and hundreds of arrests throughout the country.
None of the heads of state expected for the opening of the Columbus lighthouse arrived; the tourists also failed to turn up Only the Pope and his bishops were there to launch their mission. However even the mass in front of the lighthouse was only attended by some 30,000.
### Marxist, feminist and ecologist plot
The religious enthusiasm and the big crowds that greeted the Pope on previous visits were absent this year. For months the Cardinal Primate of the Americas, the Dominican Nicolas de Jesus Lopez, has been denouncing the campaign against the 500th Anniversary celebrations as a Marxist, feminist and ecologist plot. But it seems that the Dominican people themselves were less than wildly enthusiastic
The Pope left on October 14 and it is too early to analyze the results of the bishops' conference. However the tone was already set a year ago in neighbouring Haiti: the Vatican is the only state to have immediately recognized the government produced by the military coup against radical priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide and remains alone.*
Guatemalan Indian leader wins Nobel Prize
"meeting of two worlds" version preferred by social democrats.
THIS year's winner of the Nobel Peace Prize was Rigoberta Menchu, a
The 86-year old Balaguer intended to leader of Guatemala's native peoples. For the past ten years she has crown his career with a great celebration of the Christian West, and of the 500th
Asked her reaction to the award, she explained: "it is a big responanniversary of the "Discovery and Conversibility because I represent many people who have suffered much"
The Guatemalan government was obviously less than delighted by
This required a monument to the glory this award. On the eve of its announcement the country's foreign of Columbus. This consists of a horizontal minister declared that "she is associated with certain groups that concrete and rose marble cross which have done grave harm to Guatemala" (El Pais, October 17, 1992). The throws up laser beams to draw another next day, however, Guatemala's president Jorge Serrano had discovecross in the sky. Thousands had to be evicred that the Nobel prize was "a recognition of the efforts by all the ted and $70m spent to build this Mussolini native communities to improve their living conditions" (Ibid).
style monstrosity.
In fact under Serrano's presidency 398 assassinations took place
Meanwhile, Dominicans have had to put in Guatemala in 1992 according to figures from the Guatemalan up with power cuts, the sick have died in hospital for lack of oxygen, antibiotics,
Rigoberta's award represents a recognition of the past history of seringes or even cotton wool and the barbarous repression of Guatemala's native peoples. But above all it streets have been littered with refuse.
represents the hundreds of thousands of native people, peasants,
Some 45,000 here are HIV positive, with an attendant increase in tuberculosis which affects some 300,000 in the capital alone.
Ninety percent of the population have lived in exile in Mexico.
Human Rights Commission.
Martinez Flores *
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
27 # 238 International Viewpoin