CLINTON ST. QUARTERLY U*N*D*E»B T*H*E V*O»L*C*A*N*O “Before him, the volcanoes, precipitous, seemed to have drawn nearer. They towered up over the jungle into the lowering sky — massive interests moving up in the background.” Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry We are now living under the volcano — not the one we always thought was the one, but that conical mountain to the north that I daresay many Portland residents couldn’t have identified two weeks ago. Did you really know which was Mt. Adams? Do you now? A rend in the earth’s firmament quickly becomes news, easily digestible and disposable, we are lulled to sleep, there is business as usual on the morn. Eighty to 100 quakes per day rock the volcano, but our 50-mile remove keeps us calm. An intense earthquake occurs 300 miles southwest, on the heels of St. Helens’ first rumblings, yet it is termed unrelated. This is such a raw and recent volcanic region that Indian legends describe the battles of the mountains. Lava flowed and molten material was thrown immense distances. Yet from a slight distance; our region becomes a small point on the globe. Today’s incredible technology lets us see the earth’s skin from the moon, from Mars, from any distance . . . that cracked parchment, as crisscrossed with veins, fissures and evidence of chaotic history as the back of your own hand. Our beloved Trojan — clearly a disposable commodity — lies on multiple fault lines and some 35 miles away from St. Helens, yet it is not shut down. Anything that might happen there would be unrelated. Who’s kidding whom? We’ve become so bound to the present that even Vietnam’s lesson has been forgotten. Nicaragua, Iran, South Africa erupt . . . crisis . . . sabre rattling . . . people saying, “ Where the hell is that?” and “ Let’s get ’em!” . . . our lives bandied about in war game scenarios, electioneering, and the search for a cure for our national malaise and the latest recession. Our history, so proudly hailed, so little examined, tells of prolonged U.S. occupation of Nicaragua since the 1850s, of U.S. and British involvement in Iran and South Africa that far predates the present personalities, however despicable they may be or seem. We momentarily need to look past the criminal behavior of a Pinochet, a Kissinger, or an Idi Amin. The dominant New World, Eastern and Western cultures, have been relentlessly imperialistic and colonialist. And all overextended themselves perilously as new forces came into play. Greed knows no limits. The frontier colonies bore the brunt of oppression and thus were all the more ready to revolt as opportunities arose. Cortez’ conquest of Tenochtitlan was only accomplished with the aid of thousands of flatlanders eager to unseat their Aztec overlords. The British Empire was as far reaching as any in history, though relatively short-lived, compared to its noteworthy predecessors . . . the sun never sets clearly couched in the present tense. Seen today as civilized and vaguely noble, it was plundering, viciously racist, and was overthrown everywhere local forces could rise to the occasion. As the heir apparent, a fate sealed by the A-bomb, we extended our New World duchy into the far corners of the globe, screaming all the time about Soviet aggrandizement. We stumbled into unimagined power and drew on our Latin American experience to develop the repressive apparatus necessary to ensure the flow of raw materials and those tropical commodities (i.e ., coffee, bananas, cocaine and cocoa) we’ve come to expect and demand. -We seated and unseated military men (Somoza, Park, the Greek generals), dynastic pretenders (the Shah, Hussein) and a string of cheap hustlers (Marcos, Batista) who could temporarily withstand the infrequent press and congressional scrutiny incumbent with the jobs they played for us. As years and decades passed, their link to the people from which they sprang — we always sought local talent — became more tenuous, the repressive apparatus more apparent and local resistance inevitable. The violence endemic in the Shah’s Iran or under the “ democratically elected” military regime in Guatemala, with over 1,000 political deaths annually for the past 15 years, becomes a crisis, and thus newsworthy, only when U.S. interests are threatened or the local government is close to toppling. Our freedoms and standard of living have been resting overlong on the shoulders of oppressed people worldwide. Unless the military and corporate foreign policy the U.S. has long pursued is checked and modified, no “ leader” can save us from a decline like that of the empires who’ve gone before us. Let’s learn more of the volcanoes that surround us before the eruptions . . . they’re “ moving up .” A lexis Duprosis THE CATBIRD SEAT 1231 SWWASHINGTON PORTLAND. OR 97205 OPB4 222-5817 9 30-9 30 MON - FRI 10:00-5 30 SAT BOOKS FOR THE 1200-5 00 SUN OMNIVOROUS READER THIS AD GOOD FOR 20% OFF ON ANY BOOK NO DISCOUNT ON TEXTBOOKS, MAGAZINES. OR SPECIAL ORDERS 4118 N.E. 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