Friday, November 5, 2004

To my friends, new and old, in several countries, who have been feeling terrible since Tuesday, I'd like to take you exactly 22 years back to another election year, 1972. Nixon had been reelected by a big margin, even with Vietnam and the first sniffs of Watergate. His majority of 520 to 17 in the Electoral College was built by exploiting racial, cultural, and political fears. The Cold War was becoming warm and very scary through proxy wars. I don't remember November 4, 1972 in much detail, but I know where I was and how grim the situation seemed. Portugal's dictator Salazar had died in 1970. His appointed successor Marcelo Caetano was clamping down after a feeble attempt at a softening of the regime. Portugal's losing colonial wars in Africa were increasingly bloody. All male students were drafted as soon as they concluded their degrees. Those who opposed the regime actively were expelled from school and immediately drafted to the most dangerous units. Many were fleeing the country to exile. Student demonstrations and strikes against the war that had started in October were repressed with increasing violence. A student had been shot dead in a demonstration in October 12. The United nations had just recognized the legitimacy of the armed struggle of colonial peoples against Portugal. Yet, just a few years later, Nixon had resigned in disgrace. The war in Vietnam was finally over. And courageous captains in the Portuguese Army, career military men who we students knew little about and had all reasons to mistrust, had overthrown the dictatorship in an an bloodless coup, closing down the colonial war and starting the country toward democracy. The happiness and new freedom that 1974 and 1975 brought to so many of us in Portugal, Spain, and Greece were tempered by the new horrors of military takeovers in Chile and Argentina. Progress is not monotonic. But there are still many reasons to hope. And Chile and Argentina, after their nightmares, are again free, if deeply wounded. One of the few benefits of age is some perspective on the ups and downs of history. It can get worse, but it can also get better, sometimes much faster than we expected. 12:41:17 AM