An August 28 of 47 Years Ago

All day I have been contemplating a post on this despicable appropriation of what might be called a U.S. Civil Rights "site of memory." However, I think that posting on it, especially now, will only end up attracting unwelcome visitors and their comments. Also, posting on "it," even in this minuscule, unknown corner of internet space, is offering a gift to those people whose "ideas" I wish to deflect. Instead, for now, I will post this reminder of August 28, 1963. We need to contemplate why persons such as those mentioned in the NYT article have decided to descend on the Lincoln Memorial on precisely this day. Post-racial society? I think not.



Read full text of speech here

"Destroy this Memory" - Hurricane Katrina and Grafitti

"Destroy this Memory," photo by Richard Misrach

Someone sent me a link to this story on NPR. I was captivated by the photo on the left, which also is the title of a book of photographs (see below) on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. There are so many layers to this one image -- the loss of memories inside this intimate space (what was lived there, the house intact); the manner in which the memory of Hurricane Katrina has in itself been covered over; and of course, the fact that the picture resists the grafitti's command.

Richard Misrach's Destroy This Memory is an affecting reminder of the physical and psychological impact of Hurricane Katrina. Rather than simply surveying the damage, Misrach—who has photographed the region regularly since the 1970s, most notably for his ongoing Cancer Alley project—found himself drawn to the hurricane-inspired graffiti: messages scrawled in spray paint, crayons, chalk, or whatever materials happened to be on hand. At turns threatening, desperate, clinical, and even darkly humorous, the phrases he captured—the only text that appears in the book—offer unique and revealing human perspectives on the devastation and shock left in the wake of this disaster.

Destroy This Memory presents previously unpublished and starkly compelling material, all of which Misrach shot with his 4 MP pocket camera. Created between October and December 2005, this haunting series of images serves as a potent, unalloyed document of the raw experiences of those left to fend for themselves in the aftermath of Katrina.

Artist's royalties for this project are being donated to the Make It Right Foundation, which is currently rebuilding the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

Richard Misrach (born in Los Angeles, 1949) is credited with helping pioneer the renaissance of color photography and large-scale presentation in the 1970s. He has exhibited extensively, and his work is held in the permanent collections of prestigious institutions. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship. Misrach is represented by Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco; Pace-MacGill Gallery, New York; and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Click here to see more photos from the book

New Publication: "Memorial Mania"

Erika Doss
Memorial Mania. Public Feeling in America
488 pages © 2010

In the past few decades, thousands of new memorials to executed witches, victims of terrorism, and dead astronauts, along with those that pay tribute to civil rights, organ donors, and the end of Communism have dotted the American landscape. Equally ubiquitous, though until now less the subject of serious inquiry, are temporary memorials: spontaneous offerings of flowers and candles that materialize at sites of tragic and traumatic death. In Memorial Mania, Erika Doss argues that these memorials underscore our obsession with issues of memory and history, and the urgent desire to express—and claim—those issues in visibly public contexts.

Doss shows how this desire to memorialize the past disposes itself to individual anniversaries and personal grievances, to stories of tragedy and trauma, and to the social and political agendas of diverse numbers of Americans. By offering a framework for understanding these sites, Doss engages the larger issues behind our culture of commemoration. Driven by heated struggles over identity and the politics of representation, Memorial Mania is a testament to the fevered pitch of public feelings in America today.

Seen on: University of Chicago Press

Call for Papers: Memory and Collective Identity in Comparative Literature

From UPenn CFP

Memory and Collective Identity in Comparative Literature and Others
full name / name of organization:
452ºF Journal of Comparative Literature
contact email:
redaccion@452f.com

On July 31st 2010, we start the CFP for the fourth issue of 452ºF Journal
of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature.This CFP is open and
addressed to anyone that wishes to and that holds at least a BA degree.

The bidding terms, which are exposed below and that regulate the reception
and publication of the different articles are subject to the content of
the Peer review System, the Style-sheet and the Legal Notice. These can be
consulted in the Procedures area of the web page.

- The deadline is on September 30th 2010, all articles received after this
date will be rejected.
- The number of articles corresponding to this fourth issue will be
between 12 and 16. 40% of these will be reserved to researchers without
PhDs, and the Editorial board can only represent 20% of the total.
- The articles will be placed, according to their field of interest, in
the corresponding section of the journal (monographic or miscellaneous).

- The monographic part will be restricted to 6 to 8 articles and, in this
fourth issue, will approach the relations between Memory and Collective
Identity in Comparative Literature, with the following possible research
approaches:

a. –Relations between cultural production, memory discourses and the
construction of collective identities.
b. –Studies on testimonial literature. Relations between individual and
collective memory.
c. –The fluctuant nature of identity: transformation of the perspective of
memory according to the social-historical context.
d. –Relations between narrative strategies and the ideological load of
memory.
e. –Analysis of the politic capitalization of cultural productions around
memory.

The journal commits itself to organize a thematic bibliography of the
available studies on the topic, following the perspective proposed in the
Monographic section of the web page.

- All other articles will constitute the miscellaneous section and, placed
within the margins of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature, the
choice of the theme and approach is free.
- The articles must be sent to redaccion@452f.com . The “subject” of the
email should state what section the article belongs to (“monographic” or
“miscellaneous”), the name of the author and the title of the article.

Memory and Collective Identity in Comparative Literature

Memory has lately become a central concern in contemporary culture and
politics of all societies in a global scale. This “memory boom”,
originated in socio-historical, political, cultural, technological and
market-oriented reasons, is articulated around a certain “memory
industry”, which in turn generates identity discourses. Cultural products
play a fundamental role in the formation and consolidation of these
discourses.

On the one hand, the rehabilitation of the memory of wars, dictatorships,
killings and genocides tries to rescue from oblivion a traumatic past.
There is also a willingness of discursive democratization (represented by
the promotion of testimonial literature), looking to break through that
version of history written by the winning side. Also, the need to look
towards the past as a means of understanding the present is often
emphasized, to increase the new generations’ awareness of the need to
avoid the repetition of the same atrocities. Therefore, new
historiographic methodologies have vindicated the incorporation of new and
different perspectives that had traditionally been excluded from the
construction of discourses.

Nevertheless, the notion of discursive elaboration of memories, together
with the fact that discourses about the past are always filtered by the
interests and beliefs of the present, make it necessary for this new
historiography to be constantly under scrutiny by a critical analysis.
This would reveal possible “abuses of memory” (term coined by Todorov in
the text with the same title) denounced by many authors, politicians,
journalists and human rights activists. It is particularly interesting as
well as complex to work on the relationship that can be established
between the constant re-writing of the past and the construction of
collective identities. As Halbwachs explains, collective memory puts
together the past and the present, as well as the individual and the
social group. It is in this sense that we are also interested in the
different discursive strategies that several authors have developed to
reconstruct their memories from a subjective vision of the present. This
also allows us to establish a link between certain forms of narration and
the different underlying ideological intentions. One of the
characteristics that make memory studies difficult is the specificity of
each political vindication, and also their fluctuating character in
relation to present-day socio-political factors. However, at the same
time, in a global world of linked identities and politics, “different
discourses on historical memory are intertwined and overlap each other all
throughout the world, trespassing frontiers and bouncing against each
other, sometimes hiding and forgetting their own historical memory,
sometimes reinforcing it", as claimed by Huyssen in an interview for
Metropolis magazine.

Taking as starting point, then, the fact that the restoration of the past
is subject to the ideologies of the present; and also that memory studies
are not only a tool for analysis, but also for the transformation of
contemporary contexts, we want to vindicate a critical role that can
distinguish between the "obligation of memory” (which introduces an
ethical evaluation of its own look towards the past, as pointed out by
Lozano Aguilar inDecir, contar, pensar la guerra), and the possible
political abuses that derivate from these vindications. We also believe
that a fundamental role of criticism is to suggest, as long as it is
possible, new strategies to go beyond militaristic discourses. We propose
therefore the following lines of research for this monographic issue:

a. –Relations between cultural production, memory discourses and the
construction of collective identities.
b. –Studies on testimonial literature. Relations between individual and
collective memory.
c. –The fluctuant nature of identity: transformation of the perspective of
memory according to the social-historical context.
d. –Relations between narrative strategies and the ideology of memories.
e. –Analysis of the political capitalization of cultural productions on
memory.
f. –Strategies to overcome memory discourses.
g. –Memory discourses as trans-border political discourses. Analysis,
through cultural products, of the influence of different discourses on
different geographical areas.

Call for Papers: Representing the Holocaust in an Age of Globalization

From UPenn CFP:

Representing the Holocaust in an Age of Globalization (abstract deadline 9/1/2010)

Rick Crownshaw (Department of English and Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths, University of London)
contact email:
r.crownshaw@gold.ac.uk

The Memory and Narrative series, currently published by Transaction (based at Rutgers University), emerged from the highly acclaimed International Yearbook for Oral History and Life Stories. To date, the series comprises 14 volumes, constituting an interdisciplinary forum that stimulates debate on a wide range of theoretical and methodological issues relating to memory and narrative. 


The series editors invite proposals for a forthcoming volume entitled Representing the Holocaust in an Age of Globalization

Representing the Holocaust in an Age of Globalization

In academic study the Holocaust has been wrested from arguments as to its incomparability. For example, recent groundbreaking work in historiography has sought to remove the ‘conceptual blockages’ (Moses, Stone) in comparing modern atrocities, moving beyond conceptualizations of the Holocaust’s uniqueness that might inscribe a hierarchy of suffering across modernity. Such a comparative approach elicits the structural continuities and discontinuities between atrocious events – between, for example, genocide and colonial atrocity. In memory studies, related, current work has focused on the ‘cosmopolitan’ nature of Holocaust memory, arguing the ways that national, collective memory registers the transnational flux of remembrance, and how the global shapes the local and vice versa (Levy and Sznaider). However, in such models does the nation, no matter how ‘glocalised’, remain too coherent a structure for modeling the centrifugal dynamics of memory? Is the deterritorialization and reterritorialization of Holocaust memory still too centripetal a dynamic? And in such models, does the Holocaust eclipse other events with which it is compared or contiguous? So, a spatial approach to modernity’s extremes and the correspondent ideas of race, nation and empire that allowed them to happen, together with the increasing difficulty of discretely locating history and memory, suggests a necessary reorientation of Holocaust Studies. More recently, Holocaust memory has been theorised as ‘multidirectional’ and its proximity with the memories of other traumas, no matter how competitive and screening, rethought as the means by which Holocaust memory, protean by nature, can, in an age of decolonization, be adapted, appropriated and entered into dialogue with memories of modernity’s other atrocities (Rothberg). This proposed volume asks, among other things, how might we extend the archive of ‘multidirectional’ memory that Rothberg has so fruitfully begun to explore. What are the implications of ‘multidirectionality’ for the writing of Holocaust history as well as for the study of Holocaust memory? How might memory practitioners and activists use the ‘multidirectional’ archive, and the concept itself, in politically and juridically transformative ways to effect transnational justice? Put another way, how can we move from an ethics of history and memory to material, political and juridical effects? And what of the very definition of memory itself in an age of globalization? As media technologies facilitate the ways that Holocaust memories become unmoored from groups and individuals that lay claim to them, to be shared and inflected by others on a global stage, do definitions of memory (secondary, shared, post, prosthetic) become even more attenuated? Do the itineraries of representations of the Holocaust call for a rethinking of the relationship between history and memory, their definitions and disciplinary boundaries?

The editors invite submissions from across the disciplines, at both a meta-level, exploring the state of Holocaust Studies, and as well as at the level of individual case studies of the transculturation, transnationalisation and globalization of Holocaust memory.

Submissions might address but are not limited to the following themes:

• The changing nature of the archive in a digital age as resource for Holocaust history and memory;
• Global memory and history as a basis for transnational justice and reparations claims, and what serves as legitimate and authoritative evidence, what satisfies claims for recognition and restitution;
• The limits of concepts of transcultural, transnational and global memory and history;
• Globalization and methodological change in historiography, oral historiography, and literary and testimony studies; new comparative methodologies;
• Global inflections in Holocaust museum, memorial and monument practice; commemorative forms used to remember the Holocaust and how they might shape memories of other atrocities around the world;
• Postmodern philosophies of Holocaust representation;
• Theories of ‘secondary witnessing’ (Apel), ‘postmemory’ (Hirsch), ‘prosthetic memory’ (Landsberg), and ‘fantasies’ of witnessing (Weissman) in an age of global memory;
• Citizenship, migration and the uses of Holocaust history and memory.
• ‘Screen’ and political memory;
• Comparative approaches to the Holocaust, slavery and colonialism

Please send a 500-word abstract, along with a short C.V., to the editors of this proposed volume, Rick Crownshaw (r.crownshaw@gold.ac.uk) and Albert Lichtblau (Albert.Lichtblau@sbg.ac.at), by September 1, 2010. Contributors chosen on the basis of their abstracts will be asked to submit essays (approximately 6,000 words), for further consideration, by March 1, 2010.

Memory and Narrative Series Editors:
Prof. S. Leydesdorff (S.Leijdesdorff@uva.nl)
Prof. A. Lichtblau (Albert.Lichtblau@sbg.ac.at)
Dr. R. Crownshaw (R.Crownshaw@gold.ac.uk)
Dr. N. Adler (N.Adler@Niod.knaw.nl)
Dr. Adam Brown (adb2004@med.cornell.edu)
Yifat Gutman (gutmy472@newschool.edu)

My Visit to Ground Zero

In May 2000, I made my first trip to New York City. I was attending a wedding between a Japanese woman and an American man, and the couple had arranged a tour of the city for some of their guests. It was an ideal first time experience, and I was lucky to be a part of it, essentially for free. We did many of the typical tourist excursions -- the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Little Italy and Chinatown, a boat tour along the skyline. And, we also stopped outside the Twin Towers, just long enough to get out of our shuttle and shoot several photographs. I really had no understanding of what occurred inside those buildings or in the surrounding area. But I did recall the 1993 bombing and knew that the towers had been, at one time, the tallest buildings in the world. Mainly, my recollection of the towers is limited to the one or two images left behind by my point-and-shoot camera: massive, institutional gray structures that blocked the sun and sky, making it seem like night on the street below. Because it was impossible to capture the buildings in their entirety, most of us tried to catch the top of the towers in our lens (see my photo below, from May 9, 2000). Maybe I am wrong, but I also recall sitting or kneeling on the sidewalk out in front in order to get the best view. And then it was time to board the shuttle again with the remainder of the gawkers, most of whom had never been in the city before.

personal photo, taken May 9, 2000

Since 2000, I've returned to NYC three times; however, because I usually spend time in other areas of the city, I had never gone to Ground Zero until a week or so ago. There were several factors that motivated me to visit the area this time around. First, after the memory course I taught last semester, I thought it was essential that I be able to talk about my direct impressions of the site, particularly since several of my students had already visited Ground Zero and the visitors' center. There is no substitute for being there. Waiting until now has also allowed me to have a more informed encounter with the site; I benefited from studying memory and traumatic events for many years prior to my visit, because I was able to observe and evaluate the scene differently than had I gone with say, only the TV images of planes crashing into the buildings. Finally, the fact that the site is under construction also compelled me to see it now, before the new tower goes up. The traumatic landscape is unstable and in the process of being transformed (though perhaps "transformed" is too strong a word because it signals something final, and I mean to indicate more of an evolution).

I made the trip to Ground Zero with a person who grew up just outside the city. At one time, he had worked briefly in Manhattan. He had last visited the site in December 2001, when the area was heavily protected by chain link fences still peppered with photographs of loved ones, letters, poems and other personal items. He experienced 9-11 while living in the Midwest -- actually, in what some call the "buckle of the Bible Belt," a phrase that to me, has always encompassed multiple points on the U.S. map -- and he had felt, early on, that New York's 9-11 had been "co-opted" by the rest of the country. Yes, of couse 9-11 was a national, collective event. But to him, it was as if suddenly, New York mattered in the Midwest. More than just the stereotypical image of rude people, insane taxi drivers and crime, New York suddenly became "ours," with the flood of "United We Stand" and "God Bless America" bumper stickers soon to come, followed by the yellow ribbon car magnets ("Support the Troops"). In other words, where he lived, the experience of 9-11 seemed to become political quicker than elsewhere. Revolting expressions of nationalism had not only (re-)surfaced, but taken over the entire landscape. Everyone's patriotism was questionable. If you didn't have an American flag in your yard, you were probably "the enemy." This was the logical mindset spawned by the "you are either with us or against us" mentality of the post 9-11 world. In his own words, he writes:

it was odd for New York, or at least certain very specific aspects of New York being embraced suddenly as "our America."  New York has always been regarded, especially in the rural midwest, as essentially "foreign" --- in ethnicity, values, politics, etc.  It felt manipulative and disingenuous the way very specific New Yorkers (Cops, Firemen, First Responders, Rudy Giuliani) were suddenly---it seemed---granted temporary status as exemplary Americans.  It was always and without fail these New Yorkers who were celebrated, not the ordinary citizens---not the Hasidic Jews and the Somali cab drivers and the Puerto Rican restaurant workers, etc.

Then came the 2004 GOP Convention in New York, which took this manipulation to new heights.  911 memories and Ground Zero  was a kind of conquered "Red State territory" in the heart of the enemy.

It is difficult to be at Ground Zero and concentrate on the terror of 9-11 without also reflecting on the way 9-11 was used -- and continues to be used -- politically (a perfect recent example is the debate over whether a mosque should be permitted near the site). While the Ground Zero landscape is about the catastrophic loss of human lives, it is subsequently about other wars (Iraq, Afghanistan); about imperialism and capitalism; about religious freedom and (in)tolerance; about memorialization and urban landscapes. My visit to the site was relatively brief -- maybe 15 minutes -- because, truthfully, there is not that much to see, but a lot upon which we can reflect later on.

We took the subway to Ground Zero, and even though my companion thought the stop for the WTC had been eliminated, we later discovered it still exists, but on a different train than the one we were on. Even if we hadn't known which direction to head when getting off the subway, it would have become quickly apparent by the long line of tourists on the sidewalk and an enormous construction site at the end of the street. We bypassed the tourist line, which was gazing at a bronze-colored wall sculpture commemorating "first responders," and stood at the edge of the sidewalk across the street from the construction area.

The first thing I noticed was the amount of people with cameras out. I told my companion, "I feel guilty taking photographs," but at the same time, it seemed a necessary, important thing to do, as long as it was done in a respectful, unobtrusive way. This is the first photo I took:

I am not positive, but I believe that what we are looking at in the center of the photo is the beginning of the new building, "One World Trade Center," which is scheduled to open in 2013. While looking at this site, I was struck by the emptiness of the landscape, and the fact that the sky is visible. When I stood in front of the Twin Towers in 2000, what I recall is the shadow they produced, and the sliver of sky between them. What's interesting is that the view of this traumatic site of memory is also now obstructed by fences and gates and screens of all kinds. I don't know how much of this has to do with security, and how much is just a regular part of safety on any construction job site, but it certainly adds a sense of secrecy to the whole operation, despite the large banners designed to help viewers understand what the site will look like upon completion (see photos 3 and 4).

Photo 1

Photo 2

Photo 3

Photo 4

Although it was important to contemplate the construction site, to take in the cramped quarters of the nearby streets and to imagine what the devastation must have been like, I found it more interesting to turn my gaze to the sidewalk area. I think I may have been anticipating a larger, public memorial on the street. But all that was there was this makeshift memorial:

This memorial, to NYC firefighters lost on 9-11 (see large poster), is also a place for people to leave fire and police uniform insignia from all over the world. The fluorescent uniform item in the lower right-hand corner is that of a police officer from Móstoles, just outside Madrid. If one looks carefully, above this memorial is a handwritten sign taped to a building window:

"Vendors are not allowed to sell near or around firehouse (photos/pamphlets/booklets/etc. Please do not purchase in these areas and report them to police. Thanks."

Just around the corner from the sign above, one finds the Tribute WTC Visitor Center, open 10-6 on most days, with a $10 admission fee. We did not go in. For some reason, to do so felt wrong. I had learned enough on the street outside. Nonetheless, I did pick up a pamphlet, and am intrigued by this description of the center:

Tribute Center Tour Guides are intimately connected to the events of September 11, 2001 as survivors, family members who lost loved ones, rescue workers, civilian volunteers, police, firefighters and Lower Manhattan residents and workers. Guides share their personal experience of loss, healing and survival with a factual description of the events, providing the visitor with an unparalleled opportunity to connect with history firsthand.

I am glad I made this visit to Ground Zero, though I must admit I am in opposition to the construction of a new building at this site. I can understand and respect the argument that sees construction as proof of strength and perseverance in the face of tragedy, as well as what comes "natural" to New York. However, the entire reconstruction process has already been marred by design polemics, and to me, there is something very American about the need to rebuild bigger and better and not just let it be. I do like the plans for the actual memorial, but I am resistant to that new memorial being located alongside more commerce and power. Perhaps, when I view the site in coming years, my impressions will change. Also, I should recognize that my Midwestern upbringing also probably colors my perspective on this site and what ought to be done with it.

Documentary Film: "La isla," directed by Uli Stelzner

La isla is a documentary film on the Guatemalan Civil War, directed by Uli Stelzner. I first read about this film yesterday, in a very personal review on the blog CineSobreTodo.

The film's description on SilverDocs reads:

In this artfully rendered film, Guatemala’s violent history of repression at the hands of extremist political regimes is laid bare following the discovery of a vast archive of secret police documents. Found near the site of La Isla—a notorious extrajudicial prison—the cache details with chilling specificity the surveillance, torture and killing of thousands of civilians targeted by the country’s succession of fanatical right-wing governments. As a team of dedicated forensic specialists undertakes the arduous task of sorting through the files, the voices of the disappeared rise again to challenge the culture of impunity that has plagued this troubled nation.

New Book of Short Stories - "Memory Wall"

I am on the lookout for this new book of short stories, which I read about twice in the NYT this past week. Here is a brief synopsis from Amazon.com's reviewer:

Books made of linked stories, like recent award-winning favorites Olive Kitteridge and Let the Great World Spin, are usually connected by shared places and people. The tender and lyrical stories in Anthony Doerr's Memory Wall are linked no less strongly, but, as if Oliver Sacks had turned to fiction, by a neurological theme. Set as far apart as South Africa and the Korean DMZ, Doerr's stories circle around the central pull of memory, both the struggle against memory's loss and the weight of memories that remain. In the long and brilliantly intricate title story, as memories fade from an aging white woman in suburban Cape Town, they are stored for her (and for anyone else with compatible ports installed in their head) in replayable cartridges. In the final story, "Afterworld," girls from a Jewish orphanage who were murdered by Nazis survive decades later as ghosts in the visionary epileptic seizures of the one girl who survived them. If memories in these tales are like the Yangtze River town in "Village 113," threatened with the forced forgetfulness of a man-made flood, they are also like the legendary sturgeon in "The River Nemunas," which surfaces with an ancient, armor-covered dignity years after it was thought to have vanished. --Tom Nissley

Read review here

Read article here in Books of the Times

Read book excerpt here 

Uruguayan Documentary: "Las manos en la tierra"

One of the blogs I read regularly is Memoriando, a documentary film blog based in Colombia. The blogger, who goes only by "Vica," has an unbelievable ability to track down documentaries -- mostly contemporary, but not always -- from all over the world. I am addicted to reading Memoriando, because I always discover films I've never heard of. Today's post is on an Uruguayan documentary, "Las manos en la tierra" ("Hands in the Earth"), directed by Virginia Martínez.

Martínez's documentary focuses on the disappeared of Uruguay's military dictatorship (1973-85), and, in the words of the synopsis on the official website, sees itself as "an arqueological thriller" that "marks a before and after in the history of the country." I cannot think of any other documentary on the case of the Uruguay, which tends to get overlooked when we speak of the Southern Cone dictatorships of the 70s and 80s.

Reading about this film reminds me of a conversation I once had with an Uruguayan friend who told me, almost as if she were embarrassed, "I mean, what happened in Uruguay is nothing like Chile or Argentina, but it was still bad."

I look forward to reading more about this film.

Bolívar Exhumation Continues to Cause Stir

In a post last month I wrote briefly about Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's decision to exhume Simón Bolívar's remains. This bizarre action continues to draw the attention of international press. Late last night, the New York Times featured the story on the front page of the online edition, and cited several possible reasons for the exhumation:

The exhumation could serve multiple purposes. If Mr. Chávez can say Bolívar was murdered in Colombia, he could try to use that against Colombia’s current government, with which Venezuela’s relations are cold, while reinforcing his longstanding claims that Colombians and others are plotting to assassinate him.

It would also allow Mr. Chávez to rewrite a major aspect of Venezuela’s history. The president already closely identifies himself and his political movement with Bolívar, renaming the country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, his espionage agency the Bolivarian Intelligence Service and so on. Portraits of Bolívar hang alongside Mr. Chávez’s in federal government offices.

This country’s intelligentsia fixates on Bolívar’s legacy and the use of Bolívar not just by Mr. Chávez but by rulers stretching back to the 19th century. (go to original article here)

Like the above quote, the following cartoon, published on July 24, 2010 in the Spanish paper El País, also references Chávez's increasing obsession with Colombia:

The cartoon description reads: "After breaking ties with Colombia, Hugo Chávez seeks advice from his mentor Fidel Castro:"

Hugo Chávez (left): "Hey Fidel, how have you managed to stay in power so long?"
Fidel Castro (right): "I didn't unbury Martí."

Cartoon Artist: Erlich

Of course, the cartoon Castro is referring to José Martí, one of Cuba's national heroes. It appears the cartoonist believes Chávez's move may backfire -- if it hasn't already.

This ongoing controversy reminds me of the book Death of the Father: an anthropology of the end of political authority, edited by John Borneman. The book looks at Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and East European Communism, and offers a compelling discussion on the death of political leaders and how that death is represented (think of the embalming of Lenin, for example, or the execution of  Mussolini and his lover).

I am sure we will continue to hear a lot about Colombian-Venezuelan relations, as well as Hugo Chávez, especially with the release of "South of the Border," the new Oliver Stone documentary on leftist Latin American leaders.