In a word: inspirational. In a few more: moody, heartbreaking, revelatory, jubilant.
Some of the New and Old World’s finest political writers illuminate the many facets of Mexico’s Zapatista revolutionary movement—in a collection assembled by veteran activist and former California state senator Hayden (Irish on the Inside, 2001, etc.).
The ragtag indigenous army of Zapatistas, who from the impoverished region of Chiapas openly and vibrantly challenged the government of Mexico, captured the international imagination. And if “the seas of ink which darken our newspapers at first produced an intellectual tickle [but now] provoke an invincible yawn” (as Octavio Paz puts it), those seas have washed up some mighty fine material over the eight years since the Zapatistas’ Christmas Day uprising in 1993. Hayden has pulled together much excellent writing, including a splendid collection of the powerful communiqués and reflections produced by the Zapatistas themselves. He culls material from both likely and unlikely sources. It wasn't much of a stretch to reprint Gabriel García Márquez's interview with Subcomandante Marcos, or one of Alma Guillermoprieto’s New Yorker pieces, which paint Latin America with superb expressionistic swipes similar to Ryszard Kapuscinski’s writings on Africa. But Hayden has also dug deep into the small-press world and come back with gold: Regis Debray waxing (as he is entitled) on Marcos as a revolutionary figure; Daniel Nugent explaining why the Zapatistas are not the postmodernist darlings some northern intellectuals would like; John Berger fashioning a puzzle to illustrate the nature of the revolt; Naomi Klein, deeply suspicious of the press images, detailing the importance of outsider status. Best of all, these writers depict the future as a riddle, not a certainty, and show the Zapatistas—an indigenous, open, and popular force—busily engaging those riddles with their minds, not just guns. “The military man is an absurdity,” says Marcos, “because he must always rely on weapons.”
In a word: inspirational. In a few more: moody, heartbreaking, revelatory, jubilant.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-56025-335-5
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Nation Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2002
The candid, fast-moving memoir of a significant member of the Warsaw Ghetto's fighting underground. This is a marked contrast to Yitzhak Zuckerman's recent A Surplus of Memory (1993), also translated by Harshav. Although they worked together in the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), the personalities of ``Antek'' and ``Kazik,'' to use their noms de guerre, could not have been more different. The older Antek (Zuckerman), head of the ZOB, was a consummate organizer, diplomat, and archivist, while the younger Kazik (Rotem) was a lover and fighter. Never hesitating to lead dangerous street-level missions dressed as a Gestapo collaborator or to venture through the vast Warsaw sewer system, Kazik ``argued bitterly'' with Antek against saving piles of records from the burning ghetto: ``And why endanger ourselves? For papers? For `history'?'' Because he looked enough like a member of the Polish gentile working class among whom he had grown up, Kazik operated as a tough member of the Polish resistance who could intimidate uncooperative Jews and gentiles. After the ghetto was systematically destroyed, Kazik, in fact, didn't hesitate to join the anti-Semitic Armia Krajowa Polish underground in its short-lived uprising against the Germans. His chutzpah is at its best when he cajoles these partisans into keeping up the fight so as not to be shamed by the superior resistance of the city's underfed and undersupplied Jews. He had the sensitivity to feel guilty when gorging on a farmer's banquet while his family and friends starved in their bunkers, but this guileless man of action wasn't one to pass up a good meal, an opportunity for revenge, or a love affair. Such qualities color this memoir with the personal, so that it transcends a historical document. The record of these desperate, brave days is enriched by the injection of Kazik's salty, active personality. (4 pages photos, not seen).
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-300-05797-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
There's a double entendre, likely intended, in the title. Thompson (The Heavy Dancers, 1985, etc.), who died in 1993, was a leading Marxist historian and a major figure of the British left. Many of his academic colleagues felt that they were making history in the sense that Shelly had in mind when he spoke of poets being the legislators of the world. This collection boasted the more confident title People and Polemics when it was originally published in the UK. Thompson was a man of wide interests, who could write with enthusiasm about Mary Wollstonecraft, Romantic poets, the differences between the disciplines of history and anthropology, and nuclear disarmament. Still, the last essay in the book, ``Agenda for Radical History,'' finds him writing: ``I have to say honestly, without any sense of particular criticism, or of any large theoretical statement, that I'm less and less interested in Marxism as a Theoretical System.'' The overriding inclination of Thompson's thinking is empirical, not systematic. This renders him an effective tonic against the self-satisfaction of those who believe that Communism fell because Capitalism, or the West, represents the best of all possible worlds. If it's true that history is written by the victors, Thompson should be read before his voice is drowned out by crass triumphalism. *justify no* There's a double entendre, likely intended, in the title. Thompson (The Heavy Dancers, 1985, etc.), who died in 1993, was a leading Marxist historian and a major figure of the British left. Many of his academic colleagues felt that they were making history in the sense that Shelly had in mind when he spoke of poets being the legislators of the world. This collection boasted the more confident title People and Polemics when it was originally published in the UK. Thompson was a man of wide interests, who could write with enthusiasm about Mary Wollstonecraft, Romantic poets, the differences between the disciplines of history and anthropology, and nuclear disarmament. Still, the last essay in the book, ``Agenda for Radical History,'' finds him writing: ``I have to say honestly, without any sense of particular criticism, or of any large theoretical statement, that I'm less and less interested in Marxism as a Theoretical System.'' The overriding inclination of Thompson's thinking is empirical, not systematic. This renders him an effective tonic against the self-satisfaction of those who believe that Communism fell because Capitalism, or the West, represents the best of all possible worlds. If it's true that history is written by the victors, Thompson should be read before his voice is drowned out by crass triumphalism. *justify no* There's a double entendre, likely intended, in the title. Thompson (The Heavy Dancers, 1985, etc.), who died in 1993, was a leading Marxist historian and a major figure of the British left. Many of his academic colleagues felt that they were making history in the sense that Shelly had in mind when he spoke of poets being the legislators of the world. This collection boasted the more confident title People and Polemics when it was originally published in the UK. Thompson was a man of wide interests, who could write with enthusiasm about Mary Wollstonecraft, Romantic poets, the differences between the disciplines of history and anthropology, and nuclear disarmament. Still, the last essay in the book, ``Agenda for Radical History,'' finds him writing: ``I have to say honestly, without any sense of particular criticism, or of any large theoretical statement, that I'm less and less interested in Marxism as a Theoretical System.'' The overriding inclination of Thompson's thinking is empirical, not systematic. This renders him an effective tonic against the self-satisfaction of those who believe that Communism fell because Capitalism, or the West, represents the best of all possible worlds. If it's true that history is written by the victors, Thompson should be read before his voice is drowned ou
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-56584-216-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
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