Ahem. Make that SKA-punked. A Spanish anarcho-socialist bandleader learned how to see through the media lies, and now he’s a Bolivarian. Aporrea has the story:
Translation mine; MP3 of the song at the link (give it a listen, it’s good).Pulpul goes on to say that he still doesn’t believe in leaders, but “when there is a good leader, you have to recognize him.” Like many other Spanish leftist punkers, he’s linked to the anarchist movement, which has much in common with the socialists but doesn’t believe in vertical hierarchies of power. Venezuelan anarchists, on the other hand, largely support the Boliviarian Revolution, because it has enabled them to create their own non-hierarchical communities. (Yeah, find a REAL dictator who not only WON’T crack down on anarchists, but actually aids and abets them, ye oafish oppos.)Here’s the band playing one of their hits, “El Vals del Obrero” (The Workers’ Waltz):“Yes sir, yes sir, we are the revolution, your enemy is the boss.”The program “Skaravan, the Caravan of Ska”, broadcast on RNV Activa, Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., interviewed Pulpul, the leader of the band Ska-P, who was in Switzerland on tour supporting the band’s latest CD, “Lágrimas y Gozos”. Ska-P will be coming to Venezuela to give a concert in Caracas on Saturday the 15th, and in Valencia on Sunday the 16th, along with the “Caravan of Happiness” which the youth wing of the PSUV is staging in advance of the regional elections.The leader of the Spanish ska-punk band, whose lyrics are profoundly socialistic and libertarian, said that he wrote the song “El Libertador” in honor of the revolutionary process, after having researched Hugo Chávez and his revolution on the Internet.Interviewed by Freddy Clark, Pulpul said, “Here in Spain, Chávez is seen as a dictator who is generating poverty. I started to investigate a bit, and got into more depth on the Bolivarian Revolution thanks to a friend of mine, a Frenchman, who told me that I had to look to the Internet, which is the only information source that could show me the truth.” He added, “I started to read, saw the work of the missions and how they got rid of illiteracy in only two years, the agrarian reform, the Lands Law, the distribution of land to peasants. I got to know more and more, and saw that this demon they were selling us was not such a demon. I told the rest of the band about what was happening over there, and together we investigated, got into more depth, and decided to write a song in honor of this process, which is so important to all the people of the left in the world. It might be the most improtant revolutionary movement of the century.”
Have you noticed you have some new readers? Some of them in places I wouldn’t have expected:
One in Chile (probably Santiago)
One in Punjab (India; the one in Calcutta is a regular, but that’s not surprising because they have a Communist local govt. there)
One in Iran!!!!!(looks like Tehran)
Keep it up!
Actually what I thought was Punjab could also be New Delhi (I am not sure how precise these maps are …)
I’m not sure either. There are some big spots that could cover a lot of territory; for instance, one of them looks like it could be anywhere from southernmost Sweden to northern Germany. (They’re separated by water, which doesn’t help either.)
I wish the maps had a zoom feature, or at least something you could click or roll over to get the name of the city where a dot originates, but so far they haven’t got one.
What really mystifies me is the one from Israel. I’ve written very little about that country. Could the Mossad be tracking me, I wonder? LOL…
Ya know what, I was thinking about that 🙂 I have two hypotheses: (i) it’s some Argentine (there are many of them there, they tend to be leftwing) (ii) there are some Aymara in Israel (some Rabbis claimed that they were part of a lost Jewish tribe, and then took them to Israel and put them in the occupied territories)
Interesting, Bina.
It amazes me how capitalist media renders grotesque caricatures that turn the expansion of citizen participation and ‘democracy’ into ‘dictatorship’.
Of course, Venezuela has a long way to go–but doesn’t every country.
Chavez has many faults–but being an anti-democratic dictator is not among them.
Ten years of propaganda has only convinced the servant-monkey’s in the managerial class, the folks that need to construct a caricature as part of their self-delusion.
Good for these young artists that they are willing to research and obtain a more complex picture of what is happening in the world.
The Franco fascists are still alive and thriving in Spain.
I am an Indian, lived in the US for a long time and now live in Spain (Vitoria). The Spanish media’s coverage of Venezuela and Bolivia are really terrible, much worse than the US (if you believe that’s even possible): in fact, the press here is almost like Venezuela’s opposition press. (There’s only one publication, a new national newspaper called Público that has anywhere half-decent coverage of Lat Am). The local Basque press is somewhat better, though. It’s really scary.
Ah, so YOU’re the big spot from northern Spain. Mystery solved! LOL.
Thanks to Aporrea, I’m aware of what’s wrong with the Spanish media. Most of it is commercial, and very conservative, and rah-rah for all the stupidities that have got the US in a world of hurt right now. They are hugely at odds with the Spanish people, who were something like 90% opposed to the war in Iraq! Some of their TV is even worse dreck than what comes out of the US, and that’s really saying something. A damn shame, but hardly surprising considering they’ve only been out from under Franco’s thumb for maybe 3 decades now, and are still shaking off the vestiges of that ugly fascism. During Franco’s day the newspapers and magazines used to have retouchers whose job it was to paint tank tops on photos of bare-chested boxers! So I can well imagine that the Spanish media still has its head in its large intestine regarding those uppity lefties of LatAm, especially the big one the king told to shut up. That sort of thing is very hard to uproot.
What is heartening is the fact that they have plenty of active socialists and anarchists in Spain still, even if they don’t have a large-scale free press to represent them (yet). Franco tried to kill their radical ideas by massacring people, but he didn’t succeed–that gives me huge hope. Democratic republican Spain will have a renaissance yet, and I hope I live to see it.
A pity I can’t understand Basque. It’s a really peculiar language–seems to have no relation to any other Indo-European language group. I’m struck by how many people of Basque descent live in South America, and how many are also active leftists.
BTW, did you know that George Orwell fought alongside the POUM anarchist militia in Catalonia during the Civil War? And that he was nearly killed by a bullet through the neck, but through some strange luck, it missed any vital structures, and he lived to become the great writer we know today?
Well, Basque is what we linguists call an “isolate”: it is not genetically related to any other language (except for the usual contact business). Actually the percentage of people who actually speak Basque is rather small: only one of the 3 Basque provinces has a substantial number of speakers, and Alava (the province where I live) has the fewest. There are also some Basque speakers in the neighboring “Comunidad Autonoma”; Navarra (about one fourth). The upshot, you mostly hear Spanish here. (This is unlike Catalunya, where there is a much more substantial Catalan speaking population).
As to Orwell, yes indeed. (I wouldn’t mind moving to Barcelona, it’s a lovely city actually, a little too touristy in some parts, but still, there’s life: many more immigrants too). The famous telephone exchange that you find mentioned in Orwell’s book still exists, and there’s also a plaza named after Andreu Nin, the POUM leader.
Public attitudes in Spain are actually a more complex matter: they were overwhelmingly opposed to the Iraq War, but generally people here are not terribly well informed about things. Racism against Latin Americans is quite high actually, and there is a very pervasively patronising attitude towards them (this is not just TV). The Basque Country and Catalunya are the most progressive parts of the country, if you look at popular attitudes.