On the other side, the bourgeois press has only emphasized the fact that the people killed the mayor of the city. The news about this incident has spread around the world. But one must first ask, “What really lies behind these events?”

The town of Ilave is a small impoverished urban center surrounded by a number of organized peasant communities, where the farms and cattle ranches are abandoned and depressed. This town demanded that the mayor deliver on the promises he made during the election campaign: paving a road, repairing a nearby bridge, and paying the residents from revenue in the municipal budget.

The municipal authorities rejected their demands. The government of Alejandro Toledo has branded the townspeople as smugglers and drug traffickers.

The people of Ilave organized to fight back. They blocked the roads, defied the police, called an indefinite strike, executed the mayor, and occupied the municipal building. They also demanded their own mayor, Miguel Angel Flores Chamba, who is not recognized by the government of president Alejandro Toledo, and rejected Ramón Arias, the mayor appointed by the national board of elections.

These struggles continue to mobilize the majority of the population of Ilave, more than 15,000 residents who form part of the Aymará nationality, an oppressed nationality of the Andean region of Peru. The majority of residents of Ilave speak Aymará. Spanish is their second language.

This is what the big business press has omitted from the news it has reported worldwide. An oppressed people in the Peruvian Andes are standing up and fighting to win a road and a bridge—the mediums of communication that modern life calls for in order to escape backwardness and marginalization—and they are setting an example.

This is the real explanation for this social explosion, and not the way the bourgeois press wants to present it: “a town in the Peruvian mountains that simply killed its mayor.”
 
Juan Sebastián León Roca
Lima, Peru
 
 
‘Farenheit 9/11’ I
Having just seen the new Michael Moore film Farenheit 9/11 it struck me that this would be an important movie for the Militant to review. Because of its controversial subject matter, its recent film awards, and its difficulty in finding a distributor, this movie has had lots of publicity. Tens of thousands of folks are heading to the theaters to see it, and I have been told that many of the shows are sold out and end with standing ovations and sustained applause. Unusual for any movie, let alone a documentary. Would love to see a clear analysis in the Militant, if possible.

Barbara Greenway
Frederick, Maryland
 
 
‘Farenheit 9/11’ II
I expected Michael Moore’s film Farenheit 9/11 to be a somewhat shrill argument for voting Democrat this fall. It was. But it was also crudely racist. He bristles at the information that “Saudis” own 6 percent of “our” economy. And is indignant at the fact that the Saudi ambassador was welcomed by the Bush family as a supper guest a few days after 9/11. He treads common ground with Noam Chomsky in the assumption that terrorism does need to be combated—but that the rulers don’t do it properly because they’re too rich. Just thought those readers who don’t have time or money to squander on the outrageous price of movie tickets might be able to use these observations in discussions over the coming weeks as you explain why the Militant trumps Moore every time.

Katy LeRougetel
Toronto, Ontario

The letters column is an open forum for all viewpoints on subjects of interest to working people.

Please keep your letters brief. Where necessary they will be abridged. Please indicate if you prefer that your initials be used rather than your full name.  
 
 
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