December 11, and were

The Soviet Union made space history last week as four Soviet
cosmosnauts completed the first double-docking of two space craft
with a space station. Soyuz-26 commander Yuri Romanenko and
flight engineer Georgy Grechko, shown here in simulated docking
exercises in a hydrobasin, linked up with the Salyut-6 space station

joined by
Dzhanibekov and Oleg Makarov Jan. 11 when their craft Soyuz-27
successfully made the docking. The historic three-vehicle docking
had been preceded by “extensive and hard work by many research,
design and production collectives,” 5

cosmonauts Vladimir

Chodos book on Caribbean
marred by faulty analysis

ate CARI BB EAN
CONNECTION. By Robert
Chodos. James Lorimer and

Company, Toronto, 1977. Paper,
$7.95.

Tass news agency reported.

Early tickets advised
for Parra’s concert

Tickets for the January 29
concert for the outstanding Chilean
anti-fascist singer Angel Parra are
going quickly, the Canadians for

Democracy in Chile reported this:

week, and people are advised to
reserve their tickets immediately.

The concert is scheduled for 8
p.m. in the Queen Elizabeth
Theatre in Vancouver and tickets
are available. at the Co-op
Bookstore, 353 West Pender St., the
Pacific Tribune office or by

phoning 254-9797. The price is $4
although people are asked to pay $6
if they can afford it as concert
costs are high.

Parra, one of the outstanding
leaders of the Chilean New Song
Movement which flourished during
the years of Popular Unity, was
imprisoned for a year following the
fascist coup.

His performance in Vancouver
marks his first appearance in this
province.

Bethune series continues

The Norman Bethune Marxist
Classroom Series is continuing in
Vancouver, with three of the six
classes remaining.

On Wednesday, July 25, Fred
Wilson will discuss the theoretical
and political questions surrounding
the debate on ‘Freedom in the
Socialist World.”

The following Wednesday,
February 1, Tribune editor Sean
Griffin will look at the problems of
capitalist mass culture and offer
some alternatives for a people’s
culture.

The last of the Bethune Series
will be Wednesday, Feb. 8, when

Communist Party labor secretary
Jack Phillips will analyze trends in
the trade union movement.

All of the classes being at 8 p.m.
and are held in the library,
Britannia Community Services
Centre, Napier Street at Com-
mercial Drive, Vancouver.

The Bethune Series are held in
New Westminster as well, with
each class repeating on the
following Sunday. The New
Westminster classes start at 7 p.m.
and are held in room 308-D at
Douglas College, 8th Avenue and
McBride Boulevard.

For Canadians who have given
more than passing consideration to
the question of our economic and
political relations with countries in
the Caribbean, two recent events
demonstrate the contradictions of
Canadian policy. On the one side,
in 1974, there was Ottawa’s
remarkable stand in backing up
the manufacturing firm of MLW-
Worthington when it wanted to sell
railway engines to Cuba despite
the protest of its U.S. parent
company which had sought to
invoke the U.S. Trading with the

Enemy Act in order to prevent the -

sale.

On the other side, there was the
news filtering out of the Jamaican
election campaign of 1976 which
clearly implicated a Canadian
multinational company, Alcan, in
the CIA-style ‘‘destabilization’’
campaign aimed at unseating the
government of progressive prime
minister Michael Manley.

That: “‘double-edged’’ Canadian
presence in the Caribbean —
seemingly at odds with American
domination while exerting a
domination of its own — is, in fact,

the subject of a new book by Robert .

Chodos entitled, appropriately
enough, The Caribbean Con-
nection. :

Many who were impressed with
an earlier work of Chodos’ The
CPR, may find The Caribbean
Connection lacking the same hard-
hitting approach and incisive
analysis but this new work, like its
predecessor, is immensely
readable and highly informative.

As the cover notes state, the
author spent a year “exploring
every side of the Caribbean con-
nection” and his account combines
considerable research with a
journalist’s impressions, gathered
during three visits to various
countries in the Caribbean.

As Chodos points out, the
“Caribbean connection’? was
begun initially by the British in the
19th century as they sought to
squeeze the newly-independent
United States out of the West Indies
trade and forge closer links instead

_between British North America

JAMAICAN BILLBOARD ...

and the British colonies in the
Caribbean. Since that time, but
especially since World War II,
Canadian interest in the area has
grown to substantial proportions
and Canadian corporations —
Alcan, Bata Shoes and Air Canada
among them — exercise more than
a little influence over the countries
in which they operate.

Above all, Canadian chartered

banks — many of which had their ©

start in that 19th century trade —
are of such significance in the
Caribbean that Canada is con-
sidered ‘‘the most important
banking country”’ in the region.

With that economic penetration
and domination go the inevitable
consequences: lopsided economies
in which tourism has been sub-
stituted for agriculture and
primary resource extraction for
independent industrial develop-
ment; federal government aid
programs which are structured so
as to increase economic depen-
dency on Canada; and missionary
programs which help to foster and
perpetuate racial and cultural
divisions.

The only country which is free
from that dependency is Cuba
which, as Chodos notes, ‘has
achieved a degree of independence
never before attained in the
Caribbean.”

Yet for all the careful
documentation of the impact of
Canadian companies on the
Caribbean economies, Chodos
work is flawed — and the flaw,
unfortunately, falls in a critical
place, as he attempts to charac-
terize Canada’s economic and
political role.

‘How can Canada be an imperial
power if it doesn’t even run its own

signs of Canadian economic penetration:

show?”’ Chodos asks, in opening his
chapter on the subject. In ai
swering his own question, he
quickly glosses over the various
definitions that.have been used t0
define Canada’s role and col
cludes: ‘“‘There ... is little t
suggest that it (Canada) is al
imperial power on its own.” Latel
he acknowledges that Canada may
be “part of a wider imperial
system, with certain activities
allocated to it’? but the concept is
so confused with notions about
Canada also being ‘“‘a privileged
colony” as to be virtually beyond
understanding.

Strangely enough, the very
material that he presents;
outlining the operations o

Canadian finance capital in the
Caribbean, and detailing thé
functions of various federa

government agencies in guaral

teeing investments and insuring
export markets, underlines)
Canada’s role as an imperialist”
power. But because Canada seems |
to lack the repressive state ap
paratus to maintain its im
vestments abroad, and becausé

Canada is itself dominated by the

leading imperialist power — the
U.S. — he looks for other answers
and consequently, his analysis

suffers.
Still, The Caribbean Connectiol
does pose some important

questions and presents some
valuable, _well-documente
material on a subject that has not
been widely discussed. And if $7.99
for the paperback edition is not tod
inflated a price to pay, it’ s
available from the People’s Co-op
Bookstore, 353 West Pender St. in}
Vancouver.

ee

—Sean Griffin, |

Robert De Niro as Alfredo Berlinghieri in

1900—an epic disappointment

Five years in the making, $9 million in
the spending plus another million or so in
exploitation, the long-heralded, supposed
masterpiece of Bertolucci has finally
arrived. Except perhaps to his most fer-
vent admirers (I ceased being numbered
among them with The Last Tango) this
film will be seen as something between a
disappointment and a disaster.

From the first it becomes obvious that a
dramatist was necessary; calling it an
epic cannot hide that need. If Tolstoy’s
War and Peace, a true dramatic -epic,
could be filmed in three or so hours, the
material that is dramatic in this tale could
be presented in 110 minutes.

With the exception of some magnificent
views of the Italian countryside, credit for
which must go to the man _ who
photographed them, Vittorio Storaro, this
film can be designated ‘‘epic’’ only in the
sense of the period of time it covers —
approximately half a century.

There are, to be sure, scenes of
recognizable social realities, notably the

peasantry oppressed by the padrones, who

look upon their hungry workers with less
concern than they have for their livestock.

But the main story, that of two boys, one
the son of a peasant and the other of the

1900. Screenplay by Bernardo and
Guiseppe Bertolucci and Franco Arcalli.
Directed: by Bernardo Bertolucci. At
Denman Place Theatre, Vancouver.

padrone, who grow up friends, is as pallid
as it is predictable. The peasant (played
competently enough by Gerard Depar-:
dieu) upon reaching manhood becomes a
leader of the rebellious peasants. The son
of the padrone is Robert De Niro, who,
unlike some of today’s actors who have but
one expression, seems to have none.

Despite the ideological and bitter con-
flicts that rise with the coming of fascism,
the ties of childhood keep alive their
friendship.

It is during this period of the story that
Donald Sutherland enters as the foreman
of the peasants and a maniacal fascist,
giving a fine performance and bringing
sudden life to the film.

The time lapses are too many to be
recounted here, but World War II comes
and goes. DeNiro’s father has used his
influence to keep his son from getting into
active service, while the peasant has been
in the army, or with the partisans, or both
— it is not clear.

destroy the power of the.padrones. The
Hammer and Sickle is prominent on all the
red flags in the village and the local
fascists are routed from their hiding
places, beaten and killed. All but one —
Robert DeNiro, padrone of the village and
surrounding lands is saved by his boyhood
friend, the peasant leader.

This is accomplished by the smoothest
sophistry ever used to hoodwink the
militant peasants, and utterly out of
character for a leader of the radical far-
mers.

Why does he save his life? For the most
grotesquely ‘‘political” reason. Because,
he argues, the padrone system is dead, and
this man shall be the living monument to
its death.

Then the next scene shows the two
boyhood friends years later, now very old
men, the padrone being forcibly led by the
peasant in a never-ending struggle. The
symbolism seems to be saying: the class
struggle will live as long as man himself ©
does.

If that was the intent of the film, it is
quite a strange concept. And to take four
and one-half hours to say it.

\. Bernardo Bertolucci’s film 1900.

With the end of the war, the peasants

—Lester Cole People’s World / !

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JANUARY 20, 1978—Page 6