Poverty, illiteracy, hunger, death . . .

LATIN AMERICA IN IY ’79

By TOM MORRIS

*“‘What is Latin America
like?’’, I was asked. ‘‘What do
you remember most?”’

“The children,” I replied im-
mediately, “hundreds of them
_ sleeping under Chile’s bridges,

some as young as three. It was
‘children who ran at us on the
streets of Rio de Janeiro with their
arms outstretched and the beg-

in Lima and Mexico who
asked for pennies, food — any-
_thing — that sticks in my mind.”’

That was almost 15 years ago.

I’m writing this today as I read
press reports of Pope John Paul’s

- remarks in Mexico and because it

is International Year of the Child

— a fact the pontiff overlooked in

a land swarming with destitute
_ children. :

And Mexico is only the tip of
the iceberg, a hint of what Latin
America is like 500 years after the
plunder began. The reality of
poverty, malnutrition, premature

death, needless illness and dis-

ease is a reality faced by the

overwhelming majority of its
oples.

But it is the children who mirror

* this horror most vividly. It is they

who feel the full fury of their le-
gacy long before they even under-
stand why.

I remember talking to people in
1962 following a visit to Cuba and
being asked what the Revolution
had accomplished. “‘All the chil-
dren have shoes,’’ I once
answered a Canadian friend. ‘‘So
what?’’, came the response.

It showed -a lack of under-
standing of a land where, only
three years earlier, 95% of rural
children were affected by para-
sites, 70% had no teachers and the
infant mortality rate matched the
rest of the continent.

And we must wonder in this
Year of the Child what Canadians
understand about such things to-
day. The fact is, with the excep-
tion of socialist Cuba, the life of
Latin America’s children has be-
come harsher. The plunder of this
rich, beautiful continent goes on
with its corresponding toll in
human lives.

Statistics are available, and we
should ask why our daily press
avoids them.

The Bolivian child opens his
eyes to a land where 60.7% of the

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national

“Mayibuye” writes:

moment of glory.

The African National Congress (South Africa) has declared 1979
“Year of the Spear” — and calls on the South African people to
double their efforts to smash the hated apartheid system.

This year has special significance for it falls on the 100th an-
_ niversary of the victory of King Cetshwayo’s people’s army over
the pride of the British colonial forces at the battle of Isandiwana in
1879. There, armed with spears, the anti-colonial forces defeated
a force possessing superior weapons and marked a magnificent
victory for the people of South Africa. ;

In an editorial marking Isandiwana, the journal of the ANC

“Isandiwana has left us with a heritage whose spirit of no sur-
render, sacrifice and discipline inspires and guides our whole
nation in the battles to come... . It was for the spear of our people a

“Today, 100 years later, let us salute this great weapon. :. letus
make 1979 a year in which every man and woman and all our youth
and children will learn the true meaning of the great tradition of
isandiwana and the other battles fought by our people in the
_ decade and centuries of resistance ...

“Let us go forward in rising levels of intensity of struggle, tothe —
Year of the Freedom Charter, 1980.”

country’s riches belongs to 20%
of the population. The infant mor-
tality rate is 143 per 1,000 — a
figure surpassed only by Haiti —
and this death rate climbs to 250
deaths per 1,000 in Bolivia's min-
ing regions. (Canada’s infant
death rate in 1974 was 15 per
1,000.). Fifty per cent of Bolivian
children under five suffer from
malnutrition. Some 3,000 doctors
are available for a population of
5.5 million. Only 25% of its chil-
dren attend school and Bolivia’s
illiteracy rate runs at anincredible
43%,

In Ecuador more than 47% of
child deaths are caused by parasi-
tic and infectious disease, a direct
result of poor diet and poor medi-
cal attention. Twenty out of 1,000
such victims are under 28 days
old; 70 out-of 1,000 less than one
year old.

In Peru 115 of every 1,000,chil-
dren die at birth mainly from mal-
nutrition and infectious diseases.

Endemic malnutrition affects
80 of every 100 Guatemalan chil-
dren. And a recent report on ris-
ing living costs reveals a consid-
erable reduction in the already
deficient diet of children under
five years of age. Add to that the
fact that most of Guatemala’s
population has access to one doc-
tor per 23,000 people.

In relatively industrialized
Uruguay the infant mortality rate
is 45 per 1,000 live births. But in
this fascist country all education
is controlled by the military Gen-
eral Staff and, since children
begin school at five, they im-
mediately come under military
Tule. In over 500 rural schools a
single teacher is in charge of an
entire six year primary cycle.
Child labor in the country is also
rising sharply.

Thirty per cent of Chile’s chil-
dren are affected by malnutrition
and the figure is increasing due to
rising living costs and unemploy-
ment.

Similar figures can be found for
many other Latin American na-
tions — Colombia, Paraguay,
Honduras, Mexico, Panama,
Nicaragua — statistics that reflect
the wreckage left in the train of
the multi-nationals’ rape of the
economy.

It’s hard to know exactly what
Pope John Paul meant when he
said to the Mexican peasants:
“Thank you, peasants, for your
valuable contribution to social
welfare. Humanity owes you a

other is that in this continent of
more than 200 million human be-
ings ... in this continent of semi-
colonies, there die of hunger, of
curable diseases or of premature
old age some four persons per mi-
nute, some 5,500 per day, 2 mil-
lion per year, 10 million each five
years.

‘*These deaths could be av-
erted, but they continue ...
Meanwhile there flows from Latin
America to the United States a
torrent of money: some $4,000
per minute, $5-million per day, ~
$2-billion per year, $10-billion
each five years.

‘*For each $1,000 which leaves
us, one dead body remains.
$1,000 per death. That is the price
of what we call imperialism.
$1,000 per death, four deaths
every minute ...”

by imperialism in the more than
16 years since. Imagine the toll of
children.

International Children’s Year
1979, toward which the Canadian
Government so generously allo-
cated $1-million, must also be
seen in terms of the massive in-
equality in today’s world, the first
victims of which are children.

In Latin America, where the
Pope insults the poor by con-
gratulating them, and where our
multi-nationals grab their scraps
of profits like the Canadian hyena
following the American lion, the
cost in lives cannot be forgotten.

IYC ’79 for Canadians should
be more than pretty postcards and
government ads boasting about
its accomplishments. Rather, it
should be a time to comprehend
the way many of the world’s chil-
dren live — and die. And it should
be a time to more and more place
the responsibility where it be-
longs. ;

“The hour of vindication is
striking,’’ said Castro in his pow-
erful speech, “‘the hour they
themselves have chosen. The -

~

gl

great deal. You can feel proud of [mam

your contribution to the common
good ...”

Cuba’s Fidel Castro put the
matter more clearly and correctly
years before:

‘‘What can be hoped for by

these vast masses who produce
the wealth, who create the value,

who help bring forth a new world 3

everywhere? What can they ex-
pect from imperialism — that in-
Satiable mouth, that insatiable
grasp — what immediate horizons
are there for them other than mis-
ery, more absolute destitution,
cold death, unrecorded, unsung?

Yee hs 3

1979 International
Year of the Child

@

Profits flow out of Latin America
to the U.S. like a-torrent, and for
each $1,000 that leaves, one dead

. body remains ... that is the price

of what we call imperialism...
$1,000 per death, four deaths
every minute.

signals are clear from one end of
the Continent to the other. Now
the anonymous masses, the Latin
Americans of color, sombre,
taciturn, whose singing through-
out the Continent echoes grief
and reproach — these masses are
beginning to inscribe the pages of
history with their own blood to
suffer and die ... to seize those
rights of which they have been
deprived for almost 500 years.

‘* They are rising from the fields
and mountains, from the slopes of
the sierras, from the plains and
the forests, from isolation and
from the cities’ traffic ...

‘*They can be seen on the roads
on any day marching endlessly for
hundreds of miles to storm the
governing ‘heavens’ to obtain
their rights. For that great human-

ity has cried ‘Enough!’ and has

begun to move...”

‘4 eee The Bolivian child opens his eyes to a land where 60.7% of the coun-
The summary of this night- try’s riches belong to 20% of the population . . . where the infant mortality
mare which torments Latin rate is 143 per 1,000, this climbs to 250 per 1,000 in.the mining regions

America from one end to the and where 50% of the children suffer from matinutrition.
PACIFIC TRIBUNE— MARCH 2, 1979— Page $