I don’t even know who wrote the song “The Revolution won’t be televised” but it has stuck in my mind lately. Maybe it is due to what I’ve been thinking after the the announcement that Twitter would censor twits that are deemed illegal by the governments of the countries where they originate. The outrage after this announcement reverberated through the Internet. I think all of us who participate in this exchange fest of ideas and immediate updates via social media, do not recognize cyberspace as a parceled territory. It is a world into itself, a world without rules, a world of freedom and free flowing words: an almost idyllic democracy. Any restriction, any one who dares claim ownership or control over the waves on which our thoughts travel, offends our New World philosophy. And that is the way it should be. We should all be warriors of our freedom, of the freedom of these spaces to represent a global community that demands a set of rules other than those obsolete and worn out ones that have little to do with the needs and desires that so many of us have began to know and exercise.
It is however important to recognize that we cannot or should not take our cyber existence as a substitute for the real life we are in. The excitement over our ability to incite large mass demonstrations by activating the chatter and seduction of tweets and facebook pages or groups, does not lead to revolution. A revolution starts maybe with a show of willing hands, but it doesn’t stop there: it needs more. It needs a plan, a strategy, a course of action. It needs to know itself, not only in terms of how much anger or discontent it is able to show out in the streets, but of how much change it can really bring about. If we take out a tyrant -as was the case in Egypt- and have no alternative but to allow the military to take the reins- we have shown we can provoke changes, but we have also shown that we had no plan of action and that the changes, in the long run, have only been cosmetic. It is risky to incite large changes when one lacks long term objectives. This is the lesson of the last year, in my opinion. The enormous success that social media has had in political struggles demonstrates the triumph of a method: but the desired changes have to be laid and spelled out, and the energies that are unleashed should have a clear direction.
The learning curve has begun, the possibilities are open, but let’s not forget the need to pair illusion with reality.
Gioconda Belli
January 29th, 2012
On July 9th, 2010, Gioconda became the only woman to have won the prestigious Latinamerican Prize: La Otra Orilla (The other side), which carries a 100,000 dollars award. Her winning novel: A Women’s Country (El País de las Mujeres) is the story of five women who decide to create a party to make fun of power as exercised by men. Using terms like sweeping, washing, associated with domestic chores, they promise to do a “spring cleaning” of their country and to change it by applying a new kind of feminism that they call: happyism
They send men to “rest” for six months and take over the government. After a volcanic eruption which lays a cloud of toxic smoke over the entire country, men´s testosterone levels have plummeted, and so the women are able to do what they wish with little opposition. They set out to change the way everyday life is carried about. Child care centers are built everywhere, maternity is taught as an obligatory course for men and women in universities and high schools, motherhood becomes a social issue and women cease to be “penalized” for being mothers and having to choose between work and home. Nursing facilities and child care rooms re built into office buildings, and domestic violence is approached in a completely different manner.
Because of the revolutionary changes they bring about, the President, Viviana Sansón, becomes the victim of an assasination attempt that leaves her in a coma. While she is in a coma, she finds herself in a warehouse filled with every object she forgot in her life: umbrellas, dark glasses and what have you. Every time she picks up one of these objects she flashes back to a moment in her life, and that is how we find out the history of the Erotic Party and how it came to be. Meanwhile other characters deal with her absence and try to find the culprits of her assasination attempt.
Humorous, imaginative and truly original, these novel sets forth new ways of thinking about often overlooked social changes that can truly revolutionize the way we live.
El discurso de Obama
BITÁCORA DE GIOCONDA BELLI
11:41 – 08/06/2009
Tras siglos de iniquidad, ¿es posible comenzar de nuevo? ¿Puede la historia hacer borrón y cuenta nueva? Por mucho que uno quisiera creerlo, la experiencia nos habla de lo lento que cicatrizan los agravios en la piel de los pueblos. En los pueblos oprimidos, traicionados, casi que se viene al mundo genéticamente modificado para ser desconfiado y no creer en promesas. Si algún día, superada esa tendencia, se vuelve a creer, y reincide la desilusión, es difícil recuperar ya la fe y el optimismo. El que se quema con leche, no sólo la cuajada sopla, como decimos nosotros; el que se quema con leche, ve una vaca y llora, como dicen en Argentina. A pesar de esto hay que reconocer que la esperanza es testaruda. La humanidad ha creído en los cambios una y otra vez. Ha sido la convicción en su propia capacidad de transformar y transformarse la que la ha hecho remontar enormes tragedias. “Rellenamos el cráter de las bombas/Y de nuevo cantamos/Y de nuevo sembramos/ porque jamás la vida se declara vencida”, dice un poema anónimo vietnamita. Y es que la vida no florece en la desconfianza; se estanca. Es innegable que las trincheras cumplen una función, pero no se puede vivir eternamente atrincherado. Por mucho miedo que produzca la idea de dejar el refugio, uno tiene que atreverse a salir a la hora del cese al fuego y mirar de frente las oportunidades.
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