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Marcos and Galeano: Latin America, Politics, and Resistance

More than a decade after launching an armed rebellion that captivated millions across the world, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, or EZLN launched their new campaign earlier this year. They have been calling it “La Otra Campana,” or “The Other Campaign.” The Other Campaign is an attempt to mobilize the millions of disenfranchised indigenous and working class people in Mexico to abandon the country’s political parties and take matters into their own hands. Marcos, the charismatic Subcommandante of the EZLN began a journey through all 31 states and the federal district of Mexico City this year.

[Adapted from John Gibler’s “On the Trail of ‘The Other Campaign'”, Jan 18, 2006.]

FSRN’s Aura Bogado had an exclusive interview with Marcos this March in Vera Cruz, which we played for you on Uprising. The interview transcript will be published in a new book from City Lights Publishers this month, called “The Other Campaign: The Zapatista Call for Change from Below.”

2 Hour Special – Eduardo Galeano on “Voices of Time : A Life in Stories”

Eduardo Galeano is a world renowned Uruguayan journalist and writer whose books have been published into many languages. During the 1973 military coup in Uruguay, Galeano was imprisoned and later was forced to flee. He settled in Argentina where he founded the cultural magazine, Crisis. In 1976, when the Videla regime took power in Argentina in a bloody military coup, Galeano’s name was added to the lists of the death squads, and he fled again; this time to Spain, where he wrote his famous trilogy: Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire). He is best known for his book, Las venas abiertas de América Latina (The Open Veins of Latin America), which is a powerful indictment of the exploitation of Latin America by foreign powers from the 15th century onwards. But Eduardo Galeano says he is a writer, not a historian. In his own words, “I’m a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.”

And for all your soccer fans out there, Galeano is also an avid soccer fan, and in 1995, he wrote a review of the history of the game called “Soccer in Sun and Shadow.” His latest book is “Voices of Time : A Life in Stories.”

Eduardo Galeano recently toured the US with his book. He was in Oakland just a few weeks ago and today we bring you excerpts of his readings of the book.

“Voices of Time: A Life in Stories” is a kaleidoscope of reflections on his childhood to love, music, plants, fear, indignity, and indignation. Galeano offers a rich, wry history of his life and times that is both calmly philosophical and fiercely political.