September 23, 1999
Dear President Clinton:
When it comes to our principles, we tend to be fairly clear. There are ideals for which we would demonstrate, even go to jail or prison. I faced such a situation as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. But when others' principles come in conflict with our interests we tend to be less understanding. So let me put it this way:
Say, you still live in Arkansas. The official language is Russian, but because economic conditions forced you to leave school (where classes are taught in Russian) at an early age, what little Russian you do speak is heavily accented with a Southern drawl.
There are Russian military bases everywhere. For the last hundred years there have been innumerable incidents of rape of Southern women by Russian soldiers and sailors; few have been officially reported, let alone prosecuted and punished.
As more and more Russians move into Arkansas, and more and more Arkansans move to affluent Russia in hopes of bettering their lives, only to live in virtual ghettos and be treated as second-class citizens, horrifying tales emerge from the neighborhoods: Arkansas women go into hospitals for routine examinations and come away having been sterilized without their knowledge or consent. Sympathetic nurses confirm the truth of the stories, that the Russian government is deliberately reducing the native population, an action tantamount to genocide.
As much as you would like the Russians to grant your country self-determination, you are afraid that your economically depressed state cannot survive without Russian assistance. In fact, more than half of your population is on government aid. The meager wages you earn do not go far: almost all of your crops are exported so that produce has to be imported at a high cost from Mexico and South America. The price of goods manufactured in Russia from Arkansas-grown materials reflect their import status.
You enjoy fishing, but you have to be careful about eating what you catch. Multi-national chemical and pharmaceutical companies pollute the streams and lakes with impunity. Environmental regulations, while improving, do little to change decades of abuse. The Russian government encourages these companies by allowing them to operate tax-free. They, in turn, are very friendly to the Russian government.A woman you knew from childhood, and who had moved to Moscow, then to St. Petersburg, started a school, and then a day care center to better educate and care for Arkansan children living there. She is happily married to a clergyman whose family came from Hope, Arkansas, who speaks very little Russian, and whose congregation is almost entirely English-speaking. Their son-in-law, a member of a clandestine independence group called the Arkansas Liberation Front In Exile (ALFIE), was sought in connection with the bombing of a corporate building in St. Petersburg. Your friend was interrogated as to her daughter's husband's whereabouts. Though herself uninvolved in any violent activities, she is sympathetic to the cause of Arkansas independence and refuses to divulge any information she has even if she indeed has any, and so is arrested and charged with "seditious conspiracy to overthrow the Russian government through force of arms." She refuses to recognize the Russian court system and so will not even participate in her own defense. The only crisis of conscience she has is whether to consider herself a political prisoner or a prisoner-of-war in the struggle to liberate Arkansas from Russian colonial rule.Because of her intelligence, articulation, passion, and her popularity in the St. Petersburg Arkansan community she is considered dangerous by the Russian government. She is imprisoned in what is referred to as a "mind-control" unit in Minsk where for a year she is subjected to sensory deprivation, 24-hour video surveillance, and never allowed more than fifteen minutes of continuous sleep. She is only transferred to a less harsh facility when the unit is shut down due to international pressure.Friends of yours who have visited her are amazed by the joyful spirit she displays, despite the torture she has undergone. And she has been re-united with her son, William, who was secreted to friends in (Soviet) Georgia for fear of his being taken away from her by the Russian authorities and raised without knowledge of his true parentage, even given a different name.You have met her kind and soft-spoken husband, who writes love letters to her every week. She is 53 and her husband is 65. She has served sixteen years of a thirty-five-year sentence. Other Arkansan patriots are serving sentences of up to ninety-five years. Convicted murderers serve a fraction of that time.And now Yeltsin is offering her her freedom under the condition that she serve probation, that she inform the government of her whereabouts and travel plans, that she never see or talk with her comrades because to consort with convicted felons would land her back in the slammer. And those are just the high points. If she admits that she is a criminal, that she is guilty of the charges leveled against her, that the Russian occupation of Arkansas is legitimate and that the Russian legal system has proper authority over Arkansans, that she is contrite and sorry for her felonious misdeeds (of not informing on her daughter's husband), then she can go free. Sort of.
Mr. President, are you a patriot? If faced with that choice, would you renounce your homeland, become a toady to the Russian authorities? Would you acquiesce to their outrageous demands? Would you not be insulted? Would you not wish to spit in their eye?Do you think I am making this up? Do you think that Alejandrina Torres, whom my mother and I have talked and joked with and embraced, whose daughter we have met and have attended services led by her husband, affectionately known as "Viejo", is a creation of my admittedly fertile imagination?
I have visited the lovely island nation of Borinquen (called Puerto Rico.) Their racial makeup is Taino Indian, African and Spanish (tragically, pure Tainos no longer exist.) Their language is Spanish, their cultural heritage unique to their part of the Caribbean. Their natural geo-political affiliation is Caribbean, their partner in solidarity, Cuba, with whom they share an association going back over a century (they are referred to as "two wings of the same bird.") Do you see a single Anglo-American element anywhere in there? Is there not something absurdly wrong with this picture? What business have we there, aside from taking a bully's advantage of their militarily strategic position? What right did we have to invade them in 1898 after they had been granted autonomy from Spain by the Treaty of Versailles?
A few years ago you had the courage to apologize to the Hawaiian people for having invaded and colonized their islands over a hundred years ago.Have you the courage to apologize to the ten Puerto Rican political prisoners and prisoners-of-war, to their comrades, and to the Puerto Rican people for the insulting offer you tendered, and grant them and their comrades unconditional amnesty?
Are you not a patriot? Would you not wish that the Russian government free your fellow Arkansans and grant Arkansas self-determination? Or do you feel that your own people are incapable of governing themselves? And even if they prefer the Russian yoke to fending for themselves, do you ask a slave if she wishes to be free? For what is colonialism, but a form of slavery. Do you really want your fellow Arkansans to remain Negroes to the White Russians?Listen to your conscience. You will do the right thing.
Respectfully yours,
Daniel Beck Zwickel-Wicks
[For a neat little capsule history of Puerto Rico's struggle for independence, here's a link to an article by Carlos Rovira reprinted from the Workers World Newspaper. You will find it edifying. –D.B.Z-W.]
[Photo courtesy of www.corbis.com; used with permission.A teenage boy wears a Puerto Rican flag draped over
his shoulders at a celebration of Grito de Lares Day,
a day commemorating Puerto Rico's uprising on
September 23, 1868.]
