Exile and the Prophetic: Romney’s (Romero) blood money

This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.

Just when you think students aren’t paying attention to you or Romero, they prove you wrong.  One of my American students sent me a link to a Huffington Post article by Ryan Grim and Cole Stangler on Romney and his ties to the Salvadoran thugs who financed the death squads and Romero’s assassination:

The Salaverria family, whose fortune came from producing cotton and coffee, had deep connections to the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), a political party that death-squad leader Roberto D’Aubuisson founded in the fall of 1981. The year before, El Salvador’s government had pushed through land reforms and nationalized the coffee trade, moves that threatened a ruling class whose financial and political dominance was built in large part on growing coffee. ARENA controlled and directed death squads during its early years.

On March 24, 1980, Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador and an advocate of the poor, was celebrating Mass at a chapel in a small hospital when he was assassinated on D’Aubuisson’s orders, according to a person involved in the murder who later came forward.

The day before, Romero, an immensely popular figure, had called on the country’s soldiers to refuse the government’s orders to attack fellow Salvadorans.

“Before another killing order is given,” he advised in his sermon, “the law of God must prevail: Thou shalt not kill.”

But for profit, why not kill?  A future Presidential bid might be on the line.  So much hidden stuff, or not so hidden, is swept under the Presidential sweepstakes rug.  Even if we knew everything, it wouldn’t change the overall vote.  This means, too, that Romney’s recent hobnobbing with the wealthy in Jerusalem is just another Presidential sweepstakes rug.  The Western Wall will be swept underneath it, too.

How far we have come when Republicans court the Jewish vote.  Unheard of when I was a kid.  Israel changed the American Jewish voting landscape. True, there are more Republican votes from Jews, but the main deal is still with the Democrats who are more pro-Israel than some of our Jewish brothers and sisters.  If the Democrats hadn’t played ball with their Jewish constituency, would the Republicans be getting a majority of Jewish voted or would Jews have had to bite the Israel bullet and see where it was all going? 

On the political front who cares if the world goes to hell in a hand basket, just promote your career.  Hint that the American embassy will be moved to Jerusalem, thendenigrate the Palestinians and any movement toward justice.  Take money from death squads politicians from another country to make your fortune.  Bury any misgivings. Just do it.

Israel’s connections with Roberto D’Aubuisson and all he represented.  Dollars in the bank. Political capital.  Assisting themselves and the US, which assisted them again.  Arms sales circle completed.  Dollars/Aid/Protection/Prestige.  Help yourself and your main benefactor.  Ethics and, heart can’t figure into that equation.It’s too dangerous on the political front.

Of course, the practical can turn around in a New York moment, then where would Israel be?  This isn’t on the horizon I know but one can’t be sure of the future yet to be born.  My Palestinian student certainly doesn’t have much hope.  She thinks my idea of revolutionary forgiveness is stillborn.  As do I.  She’s writing her paper on the different versions proposed for peace but says she knows that none of them will come into being.  Asked by my Israeli student to suggest the solution she wants, my Palestinian student is defiant.  Says she won’t.  Why give away her hand when nothing is in the offing?

Also talked with my Israeli student.  American background as well.  Farewell meeting.  Good stuff.  We went through how she wouldn’t live in Israel for any length of time again – hasn’t lived there except for short stays for the last ten years – and how her identity will be assaulted more and more in the coming years.  I told her she has a choice to stay away from Israel and deflect the questions she has or delve right into them and hope for the best. 

Israel is unstable, as Jews are, I don’t think any more or less.  It’s part of our (prophetic) fate which a Jewish state can’t change.  The dream of normalization for Jews is just that – a dream.  Pursued too intensely the dream becomes a nightmare.  Call it the (Jewish) normalization nightmare.

There’s a huge difference between a hard and soft exile.  If you have experienced both like I have, you’ll identify the difference.  So, too with the dream and nightmare of the normalization of the Jewish condition.  Whichever side of the normalization divide you’re on determines the kind of fidelity necessary.  Context isn’t everything, to be sure, but it helps shape our lives in small and large ways.  I told my Israeli student that we have to give everything we have to the present to see if we can land on the soft side of the Jewish normalization divide.  She was listening intently.  But what to do in real life?

Another Jewish divide.  Like the empire divide, where we are and where we can land is important to figure out.  Since stability for Jews is out of the picture, the illusion of stability is essential to demystify.  With the illusion out of the way, we move into deeper realms of thought and some practical politics as well.  Both are necessary now.

Last session today, then my afternoon class is walking to a nearby pub for some Austrian beer.  All has gone well, considering the difficulties involved.  The students are involved in other matters as well, including who will sleep with who this night and the next.  Living intensely is loving intensely.  Perhaps.

Life goes on in this neck of the Austrian Alps.  Tomorrow in Innsbruck, I’ll take a cable car up the mountain for a mountain top view.  I’m not much into cable cars – not by a long shot – but, hey, when you’re in Austria do as the tourists do. 

Also a good meal or two.  Went by the hotel I’ll be staying out.  It’s old and kitschy, with a solid state crucified Jesus surrounded by mounted animal heads in the stairwell.  Quite a scene.

How better to end my Austrian visit.  Soon I’ll be leaving on a (Nazi-German) jet plane.  I don’t know when I’ll be back again.

But before I leave, I’ve been following the latest from the Wagner festival site in Bayreuth.  You know the one Hitler hung out at and has been the center of Wagner’s music ever since.  The Russian bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin had to withdraw from his upcoming appearance because of swastika tattoos that were etched into his chest some years ago when he was in Heavy Metal band.  Over the past days his story has changed.  Instead of the swastika, the tattoo in question might be Scandinavian runes that were co-opted as SS symbols during World War II.  The report is as inconclusive as Nikitin seems to be.

On the Nazi past, or, better, the pre-Nazi past of Wagner and his festival, the report in the International Herald–Tribune is clear:  “Proto-Nazi ideals of racism, rabid nationalism and ethnic cleansing were at the core of Wagner’s Bayreuth, a conception carried through with intense loyalty by his family after his death in 1883.”  The addition of an exhibit – “Silent Voices” – which seeks to question some of Wagner’s ideals, while welcomed, does not diminish his initial impulse:  “To view ‘Silent Voices’ and then look up at the proud, implacable Festival Theatre is to feel only sadness and revulsion, to question whether the wounds can – or should – ever heal.”

This describes Austria and Germany for me, even as I know it is unfair.  To look up at the proud nations that once – well my feeling are evident. Count it as generational baggage.

Leaving Austria soon with the (same?) question my Palestinian student implied when she refused to speculate on a future that isn’t going to happen.  Thus the case at hand: to look at the proud history of the Jewish people today is to “feel only sadness and revulsion, to question whether the wounds can – or should – ever heal.”

No comparisons.  Only sadness.