Oscar Guardiola-Rivera

Such obsessive antinomian attitude and constraint, which I have provocatively termed armed struggle in the way to (rather than as the opposite of) peace, present as spirit, collective effervescence, combat, or phantasm in institutionalizing or constitutive rituals (exemplified by the oath by sceptre episode in classical literature, and often imagined as an original contract authorized by a generic will that legitimates law in modern literature), is represented under the political economy of the industrial-colonial regime in a state of suspension or emergency. In this respect, as suggested above, the state of emergency that according to Benjamin has become the rule isnt the consequence of violence. On the contrary, its the attempt to suspend combat, to externally impose upon peoples a fictive unity (the unity of their needs) and to extract from peoples their ability to use force as well as do battle against the sovereign.

On 11 September 1973, President Salvador Allende of Chile, Latin America''s first democratically elected Marxist president, was deposed in a violent coup d''état. Early that morning the phone lines to Allende''s office were cut, army officers loyal to the republic were arrested and shortly afterwards bombs from four British-made Hawker Hunter jets began slamming into the presidential palace. Allende refused to leave his post, making broadcasts to encourage the Chilean people until the last pro-government radio station was silenced. Later that morning he was found dead, with an AK-47 that had been a gift from Fidel Castro by his side.The coup had been planned for months, even years before it actually happened. In fact, from the moment Allende''s electoral victory in 1970 became a possibility, business leaders in Chile, extreme right-wing groups, high-ranking officers in the Chilean military and the US administration and the CIA worked together to secure a prompt and dramatic end to his progressive social programme.Why Allende seemed such a threat in the political and economic context of the time and how the coup was engineered is the story Oscar Guardiola-Rivera tells, drawing on a wide range of sources, including phone transcripts and documents released as recently as 2008. It is a radical retelling of a moment in history that even at the height of Cold War paranoia - a time when Henry Kissinger described Chile as ''a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica'' -shocked the world and which continues to resonate today. As the uprisings of the Arab Spring and the global protests at austerity measures introduced since the crash of 2008 show, the world is struggling to deal with the economic and political dilemmas Allende faced at the time.

La tesis de este libro inspirador es simple: debemos aprender de figuras ejemplares como John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King y Salvador Allende, quienes con firmeza se rehusaron a ceder ante la tentacion de la violencia desatada. Pero tambien de quienes, como los caribeños Frantz Fanon y Gabriel Garcia Marquez o Julio Cortazar, nos enseñan que alli donde persiste la injusticia la lucha por realizar la justicia continua. Sobre todo, debemos aprender de quienes distinguen entre una paz negativa, atenta solo a una version muy reducida de las libertades, de otra que Guardiola llama positiva y constructiva. Una de las voces colombianas mas leidas en el exterior sueña con la paz de Colombia, ¿que colombiano sensato no lo hace? Todos hemos sido marcados por la violencia de nuestro pais. Pero hoy hay una generacion que se levanta decidida a no tolerar un dia mas de guerra. Su ejemplo y este libro nos inspiran al invitarnos a desenterrar nuestras raices, en el presente, en nuestras memorias, desdichas y esperanzas para reinventarnos e inventar un pais, una nacion, un continente en una tierra al alcance de los sueños de nuestros hijos.

Actualmente, existe una forma de globalización que parece querer demoler todo el planeta. A ella se enfrentan las comunidades originarias de America, los jóvenes de Chile y Colombia, y los gobiernos rebeldes o progresistas que han tomado el poder en Latinoamerica. Y son ellos los que alientan a preguntarse: ¿y si Latinoamerica gobernase el mundo? Para dar respuesta a esta pregunta el autor nos relata la historia de la globalizacion en tres episodios. Mientras nos embarcamos en el viaje que nos llevara al tercer episodio de la historia de la globalizacion y al proximo siglo, Latinoamerica esta haciendo historia universal y parece lista para guiar al mundo hacia el siglo XXII.