Friday, March 12, 2004

 Spain, tonight


This morning I did not get the magnitude of the disaster that struck Madrid in the morning rush hour. I must pay penance tonight as I realize the horror of almost 200 people killed in a series of dastardly explosions that rocked into oblivion the sleepy heads of the morning commuters.

This blog deliberately does not talk about other matters than Venezuela. Not that the rest of the world is uninteresting, but simply because there is not enough time to try to bring a minimum of dedication to more topics than Venezuela. But tonight we are talking of "La Madre Patria", the motherland, the land we are reminded of when we look at our flag where the blue band symbolizes the ocean that separates us from our forbearers, even for those of us that came from elsewhere, or were already here. We all inherited for better or worse the culture and the language that gave us El Quixote or One Hundred Years of Solitude. We all have some soft spot somewhere for turron, paella or a gypsy romance.

Tonight I saw Mexico's Fox on CNN sending his sentiment to the Spanish people, Mexico a country that for yeas had no diplomatic relations with Spain. But there was also Colombia's Uribe or Chile's Lagos. Chavez just sent his foreign minister.

Indeed.

It is regimes with divisive discourses, unkept promises, and with constant mockery of its citizens that create conditions where terrorism can flourish. Once terrorism is there, it is near impossible to eradicate. It does not matter if terrorist are ETA or Al Qaeda, IRA or
FARC. It does not matter. Ask Colombia. Ask Spain.

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