Lolita Lebron ataca el Congreso 1954
From Street Visuals:
Lolita Lebron, a Puerto Rican independence activist who spent 25 years in prison for participating in a gun attack on the U.S. Congress a half-century ago, died Sunday. She was 89. Lebron died at a hospital in San Juan of complications from respiratory disease, said Francisco Torres, president of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico. She had been hospitalized repeatedly in recent months for her ailments. Lebron was a leading figure in the small but passionate nationalist movement in this U.S. territory. "Lolita was the mother of the independence movement. This is an insurmountable loss," said Maria de Lourdes Santiago, a member of the Caribbean island's Senate from the Puerto Rican Independence Party. Lebron was born Nov. 19, 1920, in Lares, in southwestern Puerto Rico, and moved as a young adult to New York, part of a mass migration from the island to the United States during the 1940s. There she developed her nationalist views and became a follower of movement leader Pedro Albizu Campos. In 1954, she and three other nationalists entered the U.S. Capitol with automatic pistols and opened fire from an upstairs spectators' gallery onto the crowded floor of the House, firing nearly 30 shots. They unfurled a Puerto Rican flag and Lebron shouted "Viva Puerto Rico libre!" No one died in the attack but five U.S. representatives were wounded, including one congressman who was shot in the chest. Lebron later said that she never intended to kill anyone and that all four nationalists expected to be killed in the assault. She and the others — Rafael Cancel Miranda, Irving Flores and Andres Figueroa Cordero — received lengthy prison sentences. President Jimmy Carter granted them clemency in 1979 and they were released. "We didn't do anything that we should regret," Lebron said upon her release. "Everyone has the right to defend their right to freedom that God gave them." Back in Puerto Rico, Lebron continued to attend political rallies on the island, where the independence movement holds little sway with voters. The vast majority of people in Puerto Rico favor either becoming a U.S. state or maintaining the semiautonomous status they have now. Lebron was arrested in 2001 at age 81 when she and five other people cut through a fence on the neighboring island of Vieques to protest the 1999 death of a civilian security guard killed by an errant bomb dropped during a U.S. Navy training exercise. The U.S. has since closed the Vieques bombing range. She was sentenced to 60 days in jail for trespassing. In recent years, Lebron tempered her support for violent struggle. "I think times have changed, and there is no need now to kill for freedom," she told El Mundo newspaper in 1998. "I would not take up arms nowadays, but I acknowledge that the people have a right to use any means available to free themselves."
August 02, 2010 in History | Permalink | Comments (0)
Clambering through Paris
Hopscotch is not as widely read today as some similarly brilliant works from the ’60s, but its impact, like the now eroded, obscured craters left behind by comets that collided with the Earth millennia ago, can be easily discerned by those who know what to look for. Cortazar’s idea of including tertiary information in a novel (and sending readers to a special section in back to find it) is reflected today in the zest for footnotes and endnotes in novels. As with Cortazar’s expendable chapters, the endnotes of novels like Infinite Jest contain information that, although arguably tangential, can help unlock a novel and push readers toward finding greater mysteries within it. Although Cortazar was onto it decades ago, the idea that crucial information can be found in the extraneous, where it is just as likely to be ignored, remains potent today.
Too Cortazar’s experiments with typography and with making a page physically embody an idea or feeling are reproduced by many of today’s novelists (some of whom also show an interest in footnoting and endnoting their work). The cute typesetting and novelty pages of today (like those that are blank or filled with such dense type as to be black) harken back to Hopsctoch but, more often than not, show none of Cortazar’s skill or restraint. In this regard many may have followed in his footsteps, but few seem to be interested (as Cortazar was) in subordinating these elements to the task of revealing ideas and feelings that language alone cannot express.
Celebrating Hopscotch’s visionary innovations is one way of arguing that this book holds an unassailable place in literature, but it is better to make the same argument simply by pointing to the universal themes that Cortazar so skillfully engages. In an interview Cortazar explained that he wrote Hopscotch for people of his generation, the aging bohemians who, like Oliveira, were being forced to face difficult facts about their lives. But, he continued, he was surprised to find that the next generation of twentysomethings related to the book even better than his intended audience. Oliveira’s existential angst is something that transcends age, as well as many other categories, and it is something that Cortazar has captured in both the words and the form of his amazing book. Hopscotch is one of those experiences that no bibliophile worthy of the name should be without.
February 26, 2009 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0)
