joeh@sun.uucp (Joe Heinrich) (09/10/86)
Now, we all know there's a revolution going on down
south of us. Below the hemisphere. Tom Sloane and Jeff
Myers have been bugging us for months to stop whining and go
on down there and see it for ourselves.
So we did.
We called up TecNICA and got it all straightened out
and paid our money and took a plane down there.
These are our experiences.
Now I know, reading them you're gonna say,
``Bullstuff.'' You're gonna say, ``There ain't no place
like that. Some island who knows what out there in the
Caribbean there. Bullstuff.'' That's what you're going to
say.
And you'd be right.
Because there is no place such as the island of
Puerto Feliz, 200 miles south of Jamaica. Huh uh. You
don't believe me, ask Tom Sloane [(415)486-5954]. He's
never heard of it. Ask TecNICA. They've never heard of it
either. Neither have they heard of any right-wing dictator
named Sir Edwin Peery (O.B.E. 1956). Because he never
existed either. And there's no such body as Michael Bur-
roughs working in an intelligence capacity for the govern-
ment, nor any nurse named Sandra, nor any Lutheran minis-
ters. Nope, nope, nope. It's all fiction.
This understood, these are our third-person experi-
ences.
AFTER THE REVOLUTION
After the despot Sir Edward Peery was
overthrown, people all over the world arrived in
Puerto Feliz to examine this newest of social
experiments. Built on Progressivist principles as
exemplified by the nineteenth century revolution-
ary Petro', the ``Petroli'stas'' (as they were
called) were building a high profile amongst south
and central Americans.
Michael Burroughs decided to travel to
Puerto Feliz to see it. Mike had had friends in
Intelligence who had worked down there when it had
been a right-wing dictatorship under Peery, in
fact a good friend of his--Paul Halley--had been
murdered attempting to cover the Revolution. Mike
tried not to think about this. Of course, his
cover would be embassorial in the event of a prob-
lem, but Mike's surface affiliation was with a
Berkeley, California, Petrolista support group
called Petrole'o en Paci'fica--Peace through
Petrolism. This support group was responsible for
smoothing the way for visitors--especially sym-
pathetic U.S. citizens--into Puerto Feliz, in
order that they might see for themselves what van-
guard socialism was really like.
In order to be allotted a visa from the
new Puerto Feliz consulate, Mike had first to
write an essay on the historical inevitability of
socialism (as exemplified, of course, by the
Petrolist experiment) in the Third World. Mike
copied a bunch of junk word for word out of pam-
phlets he grabbed from a pile on the floor inside
the Puerto Feliz consulate, then mailed it in. He
wondered if they would notice--but they had been
quite impressed, commenting favorably on the
``revolutionary synchronicity'' of his essay.
Mike felt a little disgusted; as if he'd cheated
unnecessarily on a midterm.
After being allocated (awarded was more
the impression Mike had) his visa, he boarded an
Aero Feliz cargo plane that took him and 46 other
curious people from Berkeley to their first
stopover--Miami. Many of his fellow travellers
were affiliated with various denominations in the
World Council of Churches, a group notoriously
sympathetic to the new socialist regime and
crammed full of the evangelically revolutionary;
Mike himself was vaguely attributed as a business-
man who specialized in electronics--djoo know,
computers mon?
The Group of forty-seven travellers spent
a week in Florida before travelling on to Puerto
Feliz, a week in which they toured Miami slums
``in order to discover for themselves the reality
of poverty and injustice in the capitalistic
State.'' ``People think there is no hunger or
oppression in America!'' their guide jabbed his
finger at clots of blacks in front of liquor
stores with chain-mesh windows. ``They better
think again!'' Mike was shown graphs and other
proofs of the discontinuity of basic justice for
the colored races in Dade County; he was then
asked to ``examine the root causes of capitalistic
oppression'' through conversation with local col-
lege professors, human rights advocates, even
members of that self-nominated group of clergy
known as ``liberation theologians.'' Understand-
ably, Mike discovered somewhat a conformity of
view.
After this were regular ``periods of com-
munal reflection'' during which the Group was
urged to ``share its feelings'' about the basic
causes of the United State's economic and politi-
cal ``ills.'' Under a blazing Miami sky, half a
city away from brown lean bodies lying prone on
white swept sands, the Group made lists of the
endemic evils of capitalism as they sat sweating
in an un-airconditioned ``classroom.'' They were
invited to share feelings of guilt over the United
States' historical dominance of South and Central
America.
At the end of this week they were con-
sidered ready. Trundled onto a throbbing cargo
plane, they were flown to their next stop:
Jamaica. Jamaica was a notorious capitalist
failure, lying two hundred miles north of Puerto
Feliz. The group trooped through the hideous
slums of Kingston, huddling in a tight pack
against the hostile stare of stoned Rastafarians.
Next morning they flew south.
Following this sweltering week of sleeping
on cots and eating gruel in the Miami quonset was
the comparative week in Puerto Feliz. The program
had been designed to provide a contrast between
the the two countries. After landing, the Group
was put up at a hotel reserved for foreign visi-
tors (modelled, Mike realized ironically, on
Intourist in Moscow).
Upon their arrival in the capitol city of
Revoluci'on (formerly Peerytown), everything was
done communally. No more travelling alone. No
more cooking alone. No more sleeping--well, they
were all to sleep on cots in a big room (segre-
gated by a hanging wall of blankets) in what used
to be the gymnasium of a Peery-era high school.
Next morning after a revolutionary breakfast they
all clambered aboard a school bus and headed for
their first stop.
It was a prison.
[Next--Revolutionary Re-education!]
--
--jnuke@GroundZerocampbell@sauron.UUCP (Mark Campbell) (09/19/86)
Excellent. Please continue. -- Mark Campbell Phone: (803)-791-6697 E-Mail: !ncsu!ncrcae!sauron!campbell