Word: onely
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...one who has been intensely interested in Latin American political and economic affairs for several years, I had considered joining COCA before coming to Harvard. I read with interest COCA's description of itself as an organization devoted to proclaiming and preserving the sovereignty of the legitimate governments of Central America. Yet after attending its introductory meeting during my first week here and reading some of its literature, I gradually came to the realization that COCA was no such thing...
What I had originally envisioned as an organization devoted to championing the democratic vision of some of the region's leaders (President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica and former Argentine President Raul Alfonsin), was in fact one devoted to spreading the propaganda of its Marxist ideologues, Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega...
NEVER have I heard COCA unconditionally denounce the Sandinista government for its human rights abuses or for its reliance on the military assistance of the Cubans and the Soviets, which began, one may recall, during the Carter years--that is, before the U.S. decided to fund the contra rebels. Never have I heard COCA question the legitimacy of a Nicaraguan government that prohibits independent polling of its citizens and has done everything it could to squash the free speech of the opposition, as the editors of La Prensa would attest...
...course, the fact that COCA seems not to have weighed such moral ambiguities and complexities in their superficial analysis of the ongoing crises in Central America should come as a surprise to no one. After all, its existence, like that of most other activist organizations on this campus, relies less on reasoned discourse between its members than on lock-step conformity to a single viewpoint and the drowning out of opposing beliefs...
Maybe if COCA members would mention one word concerning the hypocrisy of trying to terrify Harvard students into thinking that they may have to fight in a war which, were it to actually occur, would almost certainly never involve them, I could have some respect for their strategy. Maybe if they would be as outspoken in their condemnation of human rights abuses perpetrated by the left as they are of those committed by the right, I could admire what they did last week. But they haven...