Strongly-Worded Letter to the Embassy of Peru, Attn: Pablo Rojas (The Prominent Peruvian Human Rights Activist)

4 July 2007,


Embassy of Peru
1700 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington D.C. 20036
USA

Attn: Pablo Rojas (the prominent Peruvian human rights activist)

What I have to say is simple and there is nothing I would like to do more than to get straight to the point but before doing so I feel it necessary to briefly touch upon the reported events in your country of June of this year.

It was reported that during a generally very well received visit to Peru, Cameron Diaz (and I’ll give it to you, here and now, that she is one of the most dismissible Hollywood actresses the United States must hesitatingly call its own) was seen and photographed wearing a green handbag with a red star and the Maoist political slogan (one of Mao’s favorite) “Serve the People” (printed in Chinese). Diaz’s worthlessness is of course not the subject of this missive. The report, put out by the AP via Yahoo(!?), went on to say:

A prominent Peruvian human rights activist said the star of There's Something About Mary should have been a little more aware of local sensitivities when picking her accessories. "It alludes to a concept that did so much damage to Peru, that brought about so many victims," said Pablo Rojas about the bag's slogan. "I don't think she should have used that bag where the followers of that ideology" did so much damage.

Indeed, your country, at the hands of the Maoist Guerilla Sendero Luminoso, and his Shining Path insurgency, was brought to the edge of chaos in the 1980s and early 1990s with a campaign of massacres, assassinations, and bombings that took the lives of nearly 70,000 people, and you are right, as a “prominent human rights activist” to point out to the politico-historical negligence of Americans in general and Diaz specifically (she is quite the twit isn’t she?).

What I don’t understand, and perhaps, Mr. Rojas, you can help me, is how you can appear so surprised? And, if you were indeed surprised by Diaz’s actions, I find this very troubling given your country’s current politico-economic path. It is unfortunately true that half of Peru’s population lives in poverty and as a “prominent human rights activist” I’m sure you're actively pursuing all the things that will make it possible for your county’s people to live more like Americans, that is to say, with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of property (happiness). Indeed your country’s constitutional republic has already taken many steps in the long and hard process toward liberalization which has already put an end to price controls, discarded protectionism, eliminated restrictions on foreign direct investment and privatized most state companies. Such reforms have given your country sustained economic growth since 1993. These things I’m sure, as “prominent human rights activist,” you’re well aware of. But, what seems to have gotten past you is that in a society that's on it’s way to being governed not by Mao’s definition of the ‘people,’ nor your constitutional republic’s definition of the ‘people,’ but by the interests of the few people who turn the switches and knobs to the global free market economy, there is no meaning to the market of symbolic exchange, “why does a stupid American actress wear the new Maoist-red-star-handbag?” “Because it’s cool, that’s why.” There is no room for petty cultural/historical scars; there’s no crying in capitalism (unless of course you can find a way to fetch a price for your tears [try eBay]). Indeed those people who want to join in the fun of a, or rather, the capitalist market—fantasizing about frolicking between the rows and rows of surplus commodities that appear to speak to each man (or woman) made consumer and to each other on the shelves—must check their memory-cards at the door in exchange for their object of desire, their very own property, that is to say, happiness.

Forgetting already why I wrote to you,

/s/

Curt Bozif