Dreams do come true

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
10/10/2007



Mario Terán was a poor, wretched, old man living on a meager Bolivian soldier’s pension; he couldn’t even afford cataract operations to restore his sight. Then, Mario Terán’s life changed forthe better. Ironically, it was thanks to a man he killed on October 8, 1967 on orders of his higher officers. That man was Ernesto Che Guevara, revolutionary and visionary of South American liberation, who Terán shot inside the tiny school of La Higuera in Bolivia. Forty years later, Terán eyesight is restored by Che Guevara’s dream of South American emancipation - given flesh by social development programs of his fellow revolutionaries and dreamers Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.

In 2004, Cuban President Fidel Castro launched a continental humanitarian campaign called Operation Milagro, supported by Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, which treat for free the poor of South America suffering cataract and other eye diseases. In 30 months about 600,000 people, including US citizens, recovered their sight thanks to the altruism of the Cuban doctors and Venezuela’s fraternal sharing of its oil blessings. By 2016 the program intends to operate on six million people. Bolivia has deposed the past US-military dictators who hunted the revolutionaries and now elected indigenous President Evo Morales taking Bolivia down the path of independent, nationalist development.

South America is now harvesting the fruits of revolutionary vision, dedication, struggle and sacrifice. Over and above the material boon, a historical revolution of the World’s four hundred year old colonial power structure is happening. With the blossoming of the national-democratic revolution in South America it world is one step higher in democratization upon the crumbling edifice of global oligarchic rule. With China, India and Russia, the South American states are building the pillars of a new world, democratic order where not only the incorrigibly-imperialist West decides in a controlled UN Security Council but a council of nations genuinely working in concert for global peace and prosperity.

October 8 was proclaimed the Day of Heroic Guerilla by Fidel Castro to honor the death anniversary of Che Guevara. The Philippine-Cuba Cultural & Friendship Association (PhilCuba) led celebrations here with former UP President Dodong Nemenzo, Cuban Ambassador Jorge Rey Jimenez and Venezuelan Ambassador Manolo Iturbe. The theme was “Viva Che! Free the Cuban 5 Heroes!” - Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González, falsely accused by the U.S. government of espionage against the United States, serving four life sentences and 75 years collectively, wrongly convicted in U.S. federal court in Miami, on June 8, 2001.

The Five Cubans were involved in monitoring the actions of Miami-based terrorist groups, in order to prevent terrorist attacks on their country of Cuba. The Five’s actions were never directed at the U.S. government. More than 3,000 Cubans have died as a result of terrorists’ attacks from the Terrorist Miami groups like Comandos F4 and Brothers to the Rescue operating from within the United States to attack Cuba. Terrorism by Miami-based expat Cubans has a long history and a particularly heinous character named Luis Posadas Carilles, who bombed a Cuban civilian airliner that took off from Venezuela, killing seventy-three, including gold medal Cuban athletes. Venezuelan authorities has been demanding the extradition of Carilles who’s coddled by U.S. intelligence agencies. Carilles is implicated in a range of criminal cases, from the Bay of Pigs incident to involvement in President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. The Miami-based Cuban community, legacy of the crime syndicates that fled Cuba after the revolution, harbors dregs that the CIA uses for all sorts of covert operations.

The lesson from the October 8 Che Guevara death commemoration is seeing how a vision and a struggle come into fruition to become beneficent reality. Visionaries are frequently perceived as quixotic dreamers and their advocacies “pies in the sky”; but when vision, effort and the fruit come together as we see in Mario Terán and Che Guevara’s engagement, we gain a powerful insight. Che and Terán’s paths converged tragically at the first instance; then they meet again forty years later again, one from the grave and the other in lonely penury, paradoxically brought together by beneficent social programs that we once just dreams of a visionary. Dreams do become reality, and all men are truly brothers.

For those of us here whose arms weaken in carrying the struggle for the dreams and aspirations of the Filipino nation, inspiration can be drawn from the life and struggle, death and triumph of Che Guevara and his vision. Che too, I am sure, drew inspiration from others who walked the same visionary path and suffered before him, like Simon Bolivar. We, in this country, are in the thick of the fight to clear this land of the jungle thickets and thorns of exploitation, oppression, corruption and mendicancy. It’s often a seemingly never ending war with intractable enemies, but the triumph of others in even more difficult struggles help light up our way.

Rizal, Bonifacio and Mabini’s sowed the dreams of liberation and prosperity for this richly endowed islands and seas; others have followed such as our Bagong Katipuneros and the February 2006 heroes. Our struggle here has only been a little over a hundred years, the Bolivarian dream that Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez are making into reality was at least a hundred years earlier. Venceremos!

(Tune in to 1098AM, M-W-F, 6-7pm)