Jarh L. Rodriguez’s Reviews > The Wretched of the Earth > Status Update

Language's endeavor to confuse is a mask behind which looms an even greater undertaking to this process. The intention is to strip the people of their possessions as well as their sovereignty. You can explain anything to the people provided you really want them to understand

But If we speak in plain language, if we are not obsessed with a perverse determination to confuse the issues and exclude the people, then it will be clear that the masses comprehend all the finer points and every artifice.

Of course if we choose to use a language comprehensible only to law and economics graduates, it will be easy to prove that the masses need to have their life run for them.

The former metropolis therefore governs indirectly through both the bourgeoisie it nurtures and the national army, which is trained and supervised by its experts to transfix, immobilize, and terrorize the people

We now know that the short-sighted fascism that has triumphed for half a century in Latin America is the dialectical result of the semi-colonial state which has prevailed since independence

Favors abound, corruption triumphs, and morals decline. Today the vultures are too numerous and too greedy, considering the meagerness of the national spoils. The Party, which has become a genuine instrument of power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, reinforces the state apparatus and determines the containment and immobilization of the people. It is increasingly an instrument of coercion and clearly anti-democratic

Because it is lacking in ideas, because it is inward-looking, cut off from the people served by its congenital incapacity to evaluate issues on the basis of the nation as a whole, the national bourgeoisie assumes the role of manager for the companies of the West and turns this country virtually into a bordello for Europe

In its decadent aspect the national bourgeoisie gets considerable help from the western bourgeoisies who happen to be tourists enamored of exoticism, hunting, and casinos. The national bourgeoisie establishes holiday resorts and playgrounds for entertaining the Western bourgeoisie. This sector goes by the name of tourism and becomes a national industry for this very purpose. The ex-colonized turns party organizer.

The dynamic, pioneering aspect, the inventive, discoverer-of-new-worlds aspect common to every national bourgeoisie is here lamentably absent

The national bourgeoisie, with no misgivings and with great pride, revels in the role of agent in its dealings with the Western bourgeoisie. This lucrative role, this function as small-time racketeer, this narrow-mindedness and lack of ambition are symptomatic of the incapacity of the national bourgeoisie to fulfill its role as bourgeoisie