Word: peasant
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...bodies dropping all around him. The Czechs celebrate the apparently obtuse Good Soldier Schweik, whereas in terms of plot Voltaire's Candide might have been a Gump pilot. Yet Schweik is not so much a defense of dumb optimism as an argument against militarism and a celebration of sly peasant smarts. And Candide may be literature's most ferocious send-up of cheeriness in the face of the world's cruelties. By its end, its battered hero has abandoned his opening premise that everything happens for the best in this best of all possible worlds...
Constant understands the political power of Haiti's peasant religion. He often treats journalists to late-night voodoo rituals and trips to the sacred waterfall at Saut d'Eau as he calls for help from his loa, the warrior god who represents St. George. This Sunday, Constant is intent on communing with his loa at a temple in the valley north of Gonaives. By the time he arrives at the site -- a concrete hovel -- darkness has fallen. Inside is an altar topped with white lace, a cross and a merry christmas sign. At its base are rum bottles and skulls...
...military's campaign of violence against political opponents, meanwhile, has been revived with new viciousness. Nowhere is this more evident than the coffee-rich area in the Bourg Mountains, where some 300 soldiers have spent the past four months hunting down peasant supporters of exiled President Aristide. Those who have escaped the region claim the army has conducted a scorched-earth policy in an attempt to deprive Aristide's allies of their food and livelihood. "They took everything we possessed," says Wilna Nelta Joseph, whose home in the town of Petit-Bourg was looted in April. "They left me with...
...figure is the first of the Sibylline crones who would keep turning up in his later work. He does Fauve blotches -- Mediterranean with measles, after Matisse and Derain -- and combines them with elements of the classicizing movement which, in Catalunya, was known as noucentisme (20th century-ism), with "timeless" peasant figures, olive trees and old arches...
Manuel Camacho Solis, the chief negotiator for the Mexican government with peasant rebels in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, resigned after accusing the government of trying to sabotage his efforts to find a settlement with the mostly Mayan Indians. Five days earlier, the rebels rejected the peace settlement he had proposed. The trouble in the peace talks could affect the Mexican presidential election, which will take place...