Paraguay and Uruguay on my mind…
Long ago, mostly for personal reasons, not tourism, I visited the South American countries Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. We started in Buenos Aires. I’m not sure what the Peronistas and the future Pope Francis were doing there at the time, but, as has often been the case, our dollars went a long way because of the high inflation. We met a crazy taxi driver there (his idea of parallel parking was to get halfway into a space and then ram the rear car back out of the way), a nice porteno who agreed to haul us around the city, and even up to Asuncion and Montvideo, for a reasonable price. (Buses would probably have been more economical, but they would typically be filled with produce and poultry in addition to people. I saw this almost everywhere in Latin America. Just part of the local color!)
My lasting impressions of Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay? Fascism! Specifically, armed military in the streets, supposedly to maintain order, but often more dedicated to annoying people by interrogating them, checking IDs, and patting down the women. I repeat: Armed military! Regular people seemed to be chatty and friendly toward this “gringo grandote.”
Armed militia patrolled the streets, though, and they were often more numerous than the regular people who in general love to be out and about and are very friendly and sociable. I saw this in Italy too during the time when the military police patrolled the streets, airports, and bus terminals using the excuse that they were looking for Red Brigade members.
I also saw fascism on a train ride through East Berlin on my way to a conference in West Berlin: Stasi roamed the train’s aisles asking for papers from anyone who remotely looked a bit suspicious, and dog teams searched underneath the train cars for any East Germans trying to escape to the West. (Is it any wonder that my character Esther Brookstone was an MI6 spy during the Cold War, doing her part to take down that fascist government in East Germany? Note that I call these so-called communists fascists as well. There’s really no difference. Putin is a fascist, one-hundred percent! Always has been. Every Russian leader from Lenin on was a fascist.)
All this was a revelation for me: Fascism hadn’t ended with the Second World War with the defeat of Germany and Japan; it was still present in South America and Europe. Unfortunately, I’m seeing it now in Washington, DC—our nation’s capital!—and LA, both cities being places where I once lived or regularly visited without seeing fascist military patrolling the city streets.
Now, everywhere I look within the Trump administration, I’m reminded of those glimpses of evil fascism that I had long ago in Paraguay, Uruguay, and elsewhere. And now I’m fearing a fascist takeover in this country, our US, after seeing similar scenes here. Donald Jackass Trump is nothing but a puffed-up orange version of Mussolini and those Latin American fascists in the Southern Cone that the CIA once coddled. No wonder he supports Bolsonaro and loves Kim!
What can we do to stamp out this contagion that has threatened humanity for so long? I can only look for answers in my fiction…and still do! As Clancy stated, ficti0n has to seem real, and I realism now is that fascism is on the march here and abroad!
This is exactly why nearly all of my latest novels in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” and “Inspector Steve Morgan” contain the theme of fascism in some way. I battle fascism with my words, striking out against it in my prose. I suppose the fascist MAGA maniacs and members of the Fascist Party of America (once called the “Good Old Party” or GOP!—only a joke now!), if they can read at all (always questionable, especially our illiterate president!), aren’t readers of my books. Even in my very first published novel, Full Medical, you can see the approaching fascist fanaticism of RFK Jr. (And weren’t Putin and Chi talking about harvesting body parts to live forever? Cloning is just an extreme version of this!)
Authors of sci-fi thrillers, or even less futuristic standard mysteries and thrillers, are often fortune tellers describing the atrocities some fascist humans rain down on other humans. In that sense, we’re still in the Dark Ages. Or maybe we never left them?
***
Comments are always welcome! (Please follow the rules found on the “Join the Conversation” web page.)
Full Medical. This first novel in the prescient “Clones and Mutants” trilogy introduces the clones but also a fascist conspiracy. It takes place on a frightening future Earth that eventually leads to the Chaos portrayed in the novel Survivors of the Chaos (this novel is now only available in a second edition that’s the first novel in the Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection). It’s a lot scarier than any horror story because what’s portrayed here could really occur as fascism marches on in our country and the world.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
