Hey everybody, sorry this is coming at you so late in the day, but I thought you might want to get to know this lady:
Her name is Ana Olivera. She’s the newly inaugurated mayor of Montevideo, the federal district of Uruguay. Her priorities are public transport and making sure the garbage is cleaned up around town. She also vows to work with muncipal mayors on key issues. Her inauguration ceremony was attended by Uruguayan president Pepe Mujica, and her counterpart from across the Río de la Plata, the mayor of Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri. In her speech, she said, “This is an historic day, not only for my gender, but because we have fulfilled a dream 200 years old. Today, we have elected local governments.” (They used to be appointed by state governors.)So far, so boring, you say? Wait. I have yet to get to the good part. She’s with the Frente Amplio, the broad-based party of the Uruguayan left, which was suppressed during the Dirty War Era. And just like her presidential comrade, who’s a former Tupamaro guerrilla, she is one of those whom the US State Dept. tried very hard in those days to eradicate, and failed. She’s a……wait for it……drumroll, please……a Communist.EEK EEK SHRIEK SHRIEK ZOMG THE SKY IS FALLING!!!1111ATHOUSANDELVENTYONE!!!Srsly, though–see what happens when you let people vote for whomever they want? A commie gets elected, and democracy still mysteriously manages to survive. And in Uruguay, it’s now working just fine at the local level, too, for the first time in the 200 years since that beautiful little country’s independence from Spain.Congratulations, Montevideo–and good luck, Ana.
hi Bina…Uruguay is a magical little country. It brought in medicare and other social services, as well as free education, thirty years before Canada did. It is also absolutely secular. Every Saints holiday has been replaced by a secular title. Xmas for example is called Dia de la Familia. It’s a beautiful place, I can’t wait to visit it again, and it’s great to see how far it has come since the dark days of the Dirty War. Needless to say I was pulling for them to win the World Cup… 🙂
Gee, Now Simon Romero will have someone else to make shit up about. This should be very interesting. I wonder when Hugo and Evo will make a pilgrimage to Montevideo to welcome a fellow believer. Sort of.
I am not surprised Terry Savage cannot stand to see kids offering free lemonade. I have read her column from time to time but never very often because I quickly learned she is a blood from a stone type.
The free lemonade is a nice thing to do and I doubt the kids offering it are so without parental guidance they will grow up believing money grows on trees. It may also prove to be financially rewarding in the long run. It sounds like it took place in a nice neighborhood that would interest potential home buyers, renters and businesses but Terry Savage cannot think beyond any immediate flow of dollars.
I had fun making a few pennies here and there when I was kid selling lemonade. I still see kids selling it once in a while but not as often as they did when I was young. I am too much of a hypochondriac to buy any of it from the kids and perhaps too many others are just like me.
🙂