CAUSES, REAL AND VIRTUAL - Sergio Ramirez Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit CAUSES, REAL AND VIRTUAL by Sergio Ramirez Managua--First day in Berlin. The journalist Karl Boehme of the "Tagaespiegel" asks me in an interview about the demands that keep falling on the head of the present Foreign Affairs Minister of Germany, Oskar Fischer, to ask forgiveness for his past. In his past, as a rebellious student, Fischer faced the police in the streets protesting against NATO, the war in Vietnam, the proliferation of atomic weapons and many other causes that concerned the youth of those glorious Sixties; some even say he threw Molotov cocktails. I tell the young journalist that those were the same days of my youth in Berlin, years of healthy rebelliousness, when the waves of exiles began to arrive in Germany after the coup of Pinochet in Chile, who were taken in with benevolence. I add that we protested in the streets, in large marches along Kurfurstendamm to Nollendorfplatz -- not only against the dictatorship in Chile, but also against the Greek military dictatorship Costa-Gavras depicted in the film "Viva Zapata!" and we celebrated the Carnation Revolution of Portugal. There is no way of repenting the past. I returned to Nicaragua from Berlin to become a protagonist in a revolution that was destined to shake history, to change reality from the roots and transform it forever. Unfortunately, things didn't quite turn out that way and my youthful project was shattered to pieces along the way. Today, however, if were I the same age as then, I tell the young journalist, I would do exactly the same thing, even if the devil Doctor Faustus showed me a mirror-image of the future in flames, with all its heavy frustrations and bitter disenchantment. In the past, I was happy changing the world. Every epoch has its own virtues and today Fischer the rebel is part of a political coalition between social democrats and ecologists (Greens) who govern Germany; he is a key piece in the successful coalition headed by Gerhard Schroeder. Of course, those who demand a mea culpaoe for his past, in addition to wanting to embarrass Fischer politically, only want him to acknowledge that the causes for which he fought then never were just or worthwhile. Because the causes have been dismantled and any sign of protest is seen today as an archaic flower of a greenhouse in ruins. It is the times. During the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century, young people protested in the streets for causes that were real, that could be touched and that affected the lives of millions of people -- bloody dictatorships, the war in Vietnam, the civil rights of blacks in the United States, the danger of nuclear holocaust, the archaic system of the universities. There was an intoxicating scent of utopia in the air. Professor Samuel Noumoff of McGill University said in an interview for the Montreal Gazette that each generation has its own touchstone that is the key to defining its social conscience. Today, for this generation, the subject of globalization has become that touchstone, as is obvious from the massive protests against the free trade conference in Seattle, the meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Prague and now against the Americas Summit in Quebec. But in contrast to the great causes of the past, when Oskar Fischer marched in the streets, globalization is too abstract to deeply capture the imagination. Philip Resnick, professor of political science at the University of British Columbia, agrees that the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization and the World Bank are too amorphous as targets. Resnick remembers when he took to the streets to protest the war in Vietnam. He says that back then, ending the war was not the only subject of protest. Young people wanted to change the world completely -- to turn reality upside down. They did not want only to prevent a McDonald's on every corner of the universe. I too am sure of that. A future path will have to turn from the virtual to the real. Perhaps this is yet only a moment of testing, and the great causes at the base of the struggle against globalization, causes that are a social and not only cultural phenomenon, are at this moment awakening the consciences of the younger generation. Not only the homogenization of culture and customs, the uniformity of fashion, of eating habits, of architectural environment -- but also the destruction of the ozone layer. And the slave trade in children in the Ivory Coast, because the price of cacao has hit bottom and Cadbury chocolates are made with raw materials that need cheaper hand labor. Or the servitude of millions of women who manufacture Guess and Benetton clothing in different parts of the world. Perhaps then, boredom will not be the only catalyst; perhaps injustice will become a detonator for revolution. And the word "cause" will have a real ethical meaning again, far from the virtual landscapes in which the world multiplies infinitely. Then no one will dare to say that it is necessary to ask forgiveness for having once wanted a different world. [Sergio Ramirez is the former vice president of Nicaragua.] (c) 2001 Prensa Latina, NY Transfer News. All rights reserved. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-06.02.01-20:16:13-24818