Myself with Others: Selected Essays

NOTES

* In the winter of 1979, Kundera was deprived of his citizenship by the Prague government. He now resides in Paris, where he teaches at the Sorbonne.

* In 1985, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and Uruguay formed a support group to the original Contadora Four. These eight nations account for 80 percent of the resources, population, and territory of Latin America. Yet their efforts toward a concerted negotiation of peace in Central America have been constantly thwarted by the Reagan Administration’s unique obsession with unseating the revolutionary government in Managua through a mercenary group totally dependent on U.S. support and direction. Contadora’s diplomatic proposals have not been given a chance. Basically, they consist in reaching agreements on security of borders and the interdiction of passage of arms, foreign military bases and advisers, and support for guerrilla groups. The ideal of a neutral, demilitarized Central America is a possibility; but you have to start somewhere. A policy of disregard for inter-American and international law (mining of Nicaraguan harbors, printing booklets with homicidal instructions for use by the contras, terrorism inside Nicaragua, deviation of funds to the contras from arms sales to Iran, etc.) means starting from nowhere and ending in a regional conflagration that can only spell destabilization for Third countries: exactly what U.S. security interests should try to avoid. The Reagan Administration prefers to manipulate its contras than to listen to the continental majority. This scornful attitude has added insult to injury: as the Reagan government went into decline, inter-American relations were in a shambles. We must start thinking of a new, constructive agenda for relations between the U.S. and Latin America, beyond 1988 and into the twenty-first century. — February 1987.