Word: var
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Although North Americans revere Simón Bolívar as South America's great Liberator, not many are aware how far to the right his political views veered in his last years. Last week those authoritarian views were again a hot political issue in Colombia...
Nearly 126 years ago, Bolívar tried to get Colombians to accept the new constitution he had written for the Republic of Bolivia. As a republican charter, it was a shocker; among other things, it called for a powerful President elected for life, drastic limitation of voting rights, and a three-chamber Congress, including a strong Chamber of Censors-also chosen for life. Colombians rejected the Liberator's plan, went along instead with the local-rights doctrines of Bolívar's estranged lieutenant, Francisco de Paula Santander, father of Colombia's Liberal Party...
...newspaper El Siglo, mouthpiece of ailing President Laureano Gómez, praised Bolivar's idea of rule by an elite. In editorials supposedly written by Gómez himself, El Siglo echoed Bolívar's dictum that "elections are the scourge of all republics," and upheld the Liberator's aristocratic approach to politics. Said El Siglo: "If the law is abnormal or inconvenient, push it to one side . . . Retain elasticity . . . though procedure may not always be strictly legal. The letter kills; the spirit gives life...
...Varèse: Intègrales, Density 21.5, lonization, etc. (Rene Le Roy, flute; New York Wind Ensemble, Juilliard Percussion Orchestra, Frederic Waldman conducting; Elaine Music Shop, 2 sides LP). Percussionist Edgard Varèse is a Buck Rogers of music whose drummings, thumpings, clangings and shrillings make the compositions of such modernists as Stravinsky seem old-fashioned arid conventional. Here is a full sampling for the hardy. Recording: good...
LUCIEN LEUWEN (BOOK ONE: THE GREEN HUNTSMAN) (388 pp.) - Henri Beyle [Stendhal]-Translated by Louise Varése-New Directions...