Word: n
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Some 150,000 Czechs, including Film Directors Miloš Forman, Ivan Passer and Ján Kádár, have fled to the West. In reprisal for supporting the attempted Dubček liberalization, thousands of professionals and technicians who stayed behind were forced into menial jobs. What remains of the once flourishing Czechoslovak culture is a wasteland of agitprop that French Poet Louis Aragon has called a "Biafra of the spirit...
...P.R.D.). They thronged the streets, tooting auto horns and shouting political slogans: "Ya ya Balaguer se va. ¿Que felicidad!" (Balaguer is going. What happiness!). After twelve years in office, the defeated Joaquin Balaguer, now 70 and nearly blind, was departing in favor of Politician-Farmer Antonio Guzmán, 67, a Social Democrat. It was the first time in this century that a freely elected President of the Dominican Republic had succeeded another such freely elected President-and it had almost not happened...
Last week the U.S. President made sure that they remembered it. He sent a 27-member delegation to Guzmán's inauguration. Heading the group were Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young. But the most important symbolic presence was that of Lieut. General Dennis McAuliffe, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Southern Command based in the Panama Canal Zone. He was dispatched to Santo Domingo as a reminder to the Dominican generals, who have little love for Guzmán, that the U.S. supported his election and expected them to do the same...
...failings are a function of Rice's libretto, which never aspires to much more than a comic-book version of history. The author dutifully chronicles Evita's impoverished youth, her Buenos Aires radio career and her rise to power once married to Colonel Juan Perón (Joss Ackland). But Rice's point of view on his heroine is pure show biz; he's so agog he might as well be describing the career of Judy Garland. By the time Evita dies of cancer at age 33, we know she's a "legend...
Almost as offensive as the show's characterization of Evita is its use of Che Guevara (David Essex) as narrator. Though Argentine-born, Guevara had no prominent involvement in the history of his country during the Perón era and did not know Evita. Why Rice has included him is a mystery, since the writer seems to know little about him. In Evita, Che is a bland, almost apolitical character who, his guerrilla garb aside, might just as aptly be called the Stage Manager or, for that matter, Nick Carraway...