Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Meltdown 1992: the Spanish fruits of "egosocialism?"

Highlights of Seville's Universal Exposition!
[All material from same source, cited below, end notes omitted]


Page 141. "Cronyism, factionalism, graft, backstabbing, unchecked personal ambitions, greed, envy, secret deals, and unspoken agreements were pretty much assumed to be the order of the day."

"As one Sevillano said when I asked him how the preparations for the Expo were going,

Hombre, es nada más que un choque ... una pelea ... una cosa política...Man, it's nothing but a collision .. a fight .. a political thing...

Then came the protests, as opening day 1992 drew near....plus a resulting crackdown on any and all dissent, period.

Page 148. "Respect for the letter of the law, including perhaps basic civil rights, was not, however at the top of the list of official priorities at the moment. In short order, the courts freed about twenty Spanish youths, sentenced a handful of others to lengthy jail terms, and directed that about fifty foreign detainees be interrogated by the authorities and then expelled from Spain.

"Moreover, the protesters' complaints about official distortion of the facts and violations of civil rights had little effect on what the authorities were saying, on what the press chose to to emphasize, or on what the public seemed to accept as true.

"On the contrary, legitimate forms of protest were effectively tainted by being associated with random 'Punk' violence, which was in turn linked to terrorist plots and conspiracies. Editorialists in the local press chimed in by characterizing those under arrest as outsiders, barbarians, savages, and huns and by depicting local peaceful resisters as if they were the dupes of foreign agitators and terrorists.

"Just so no one would harbor doubts about who the true defenders of civilization and natural decency were, one editorialist observed that:

[T]he Indian may cultivate his myths, may protest, [and] may do what he wishes, but he must let others have their fiesta in peace...

"So much for the Expo that promised something for everyone. So much for the free movement of people and ideas in a Europe without borders. So much for cosmopolitan pluralism and openess. Invocations of an intimate communiy of local citizens and ordinary Expo visitors who shared common values and desires were used to circle the wagons around the Expo and to exclude undesirable outsiders, even though quite a large number of these outsiders happened, in fact to be Andulusians and other Spanish citizens. And so much as well for open resistance to the Expo. The calm of the Expo was never seriously disturbed again. As local activists readily admitted, they were intimidated because the authorities had made it clear that there was quite literally no place for radical dissent at the Expo or in Seville in 1992."

Source: Maddox, Richard. "Intimacy and Hegemony in the New Europe: The Politics of Culture at Seville's Universal Exposition." Shryock, editor. Off Stage On Display: Intimacy and Ethnography in the Age of Public Culture. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2004.

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