The US's Magical Realism show in Venezuela

What has happened in Venezuela is not a surprise to those who have read the Magical Realism stories of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the other famous Latin American writers. In this signature genre of Latin American literature, the writers blur the line between fantasy and facts, weaving magic into reality.

Machado is Magic…

Rodriguez is Realism..in the ongoing Magical Realism show of Venezuela choreographed by the US.

Maria Corina Machado, the Nobel Prize winner, had the Fantasy of flying in an American magic carpet  and land on the Miraflores Presidential palace in Caracas after the kidnapping of President Maduro by the American forces. Machado has been a relentless democratic activist fighting the Chavista dictatorship in the last two decades. She wanted to wipe out the Chavistas with the military help of US. But the Fact is that Delcy Rodrigues from the ruling Chavista (followers of Hugo Chavez who was President from 1998 till his death in 2013) regime has moved into the Presidential palace. Machado has got a reality check from President Trump who ruled her out "as not having enough support or respect within Venezuela”. He chose to let Delcy Rodriguez, the Vice President under Maduro, to continue as Acting President. Rodriguez is better for Tump to get oil and other benefits. Machado’s take over of power would have resulted in violent clashes between her party cadres and the Chavistas resulting in bloodshed and instability. This would have complicated Trump’s agenda which was focussed on oil and not restoration of democracy, as imagined by Machado.

This was not the first American Magical Realism Show in Venezuela.

In 2019, the US had recognized Juan Guaido, another opposition leader, as the Real President of Venezuela between January 2019 and January 2023. The US refused to recognize Maduro as President accusing that the 2018 election was rigged. Over fifty countries followed the US dictat (some willingly and some under force) and recognized Juan Guaido as the legitimate President.  Guaido assumed the role of President seriously, appointing cabinet ministers and ambassadors. He and his appointees as well as his American lawyers and collaborators swindled and spent hundreds of millions of dollars of Venezuelan government funds seized by the US government. Eventually, Guaido succumbed to the scandals and he was dropped as a useless luggage. But despite derecognition of President Maduro, the US and other western governments continued to have official dealings with the government of President Maduro. The devious Brits refused to hand over the Venezuelan gold in their Bank of England when Maduro wanted it back. The excuse was that UK had not recognized Maduro as the President. The Brits continued to deal with President Maduro officially and shamelessly and are holding on to the Venezuelan gold even now.

There was a brief Magical Realism show in May 2020.  A group of ex-marine mercenaries of US hatched a plan code named “Operation Gideon”. They attempted a sea borne raid through boats to land in Venezuela, capture President Maduro, take him to the US and claim the 15 million dollar bounty which was the going rate announced by Washington DC at that time. The mercenaries were caught and some were killed and others jailed by Venezuelan authorities. While the US  administration claimed that it was not an official operation, they had got these criminals released through quiet negotiations and got them back to the US in 2023. 

Who stole the Venezuelan election

Maduro claimed to be the winner of 2024 election. Trump and Machado claimed that Edmundo Gonzalez was the winner and accused Maduro of stealing the election. Now Trump has ditched Gonzalez and Machado while jailing Maduro.. Trump says he will run Venezuela. He has appointed himself as the " Acting President of Venezuela" in his social media post.

So, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the real thief who has stolen the election is Trump..He refuses to give a timeline for election or transition and says that it would take years. Restoration of democracy is not Trump’s priority. 

Trump says that the the interim government of Venezuela is “giving us everything that we feel is necessary.  They’re treating us with great respect. We’re getting along very well with the administration that is there right now". 

The fable of a Monkey and two cats

Once upon a time, two cats were fighting over a piece of bread. Each wanted more than the other. A monkey saw this and offered a solution. It brought a weighing scale and broke the bread in two unequal pieces deliberately and put on each side of the weighing scale. When one side weighed heavier it took a bite from that and put the rest in the scale. Then the other side was heavier and the monkey took a bite from the other side. Eventually the monkey finished the pieces on both the sides and the foolish cats were left hungry. Trump has done the Monkey trick to the Maduro and Machado cats.

Trump has announced that he would extract Venezuelan oil from its huge reserves for years. He has already begun to make money for the United States by taking oil that has been under sanctions. He says that the US would obtain 30 to 50 million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil in the near future. He talks of a deal with the Venezuelan authorities whereby America would market all Venezuelan oil “indefinitely”. The proceeds “will be disbursed for the benefit of the American people and the Venezuelan people at the discretion of the US government”.  Trump adds that all the goods purchased for Venezuela in this way would be American.

Maduro was not a dictator in the classical sense

Maduro was not a classical dictator like Pinochet of Chile or Noriega of Panama. He did not have absolute powers and control over others in the regime. He was a just a public face of the collective leadership of the post-Chavez regime. He had less power than Diosdado Cabello, the Interior Minister or Padrino Lopez, the Defense Minister and Army Chief or the Rodriguez siblings Delcy Rodrigues, the Vice President and her brother Jorge Rodriguez, the President of the National Assembly. He could not take any major decisions without the approval of the other four.

Maduro did not have the charisma or grassroots support or any personal vision or agenda, unlike Chavez. Even in speeches, he tried simply to imitate the style and rhetoric of Chavez. The other four powerful figures let him appear in the TV, sing and dance. This was a clever move which paved the way for his being portrayed in the western media as a dictator responsible for rigging of elections and economic collapse. 

The Cuba angle

Maduro was not the prime candidate to succeed Chavez. It was Diosdado Cabello, the interior minister, who was expected to inherit the mantle of Chavez. He had better credentials as the second strongest man after Chave. But the Cubans had influenced Chavez to appoint Maduro as successor during the last days of Chavez in a Cuban hospital. The Cubans did not warm to Cabello who was independent and did not share Chavez’s or Maduro’s admiration for Cuba. After the coup against him in 2002 (in which a few dissident Generals joined), Chavez took on Cuban advisors for personal protection and intelligence services. This system continued for Maduro also. Since he had less power than the other quartet of power, Maduro relied even more on his Cuban advisors. This was resented by the others. That’s why they let the Americans kill 32 Cubans during the raid.

Chavez considered Fidel Castro as his role model and mentor. He gave free and subsidized oil besides monetary and other support to Cuba which was helpless after the withdrawal of Soviet assistance in 1991. Maduro continued Chavez's policy of supporting Cuba with oil and money. This was not to the liking of the other Chavista factions. 

The Americans have instructed Delcy Rodriguez to end the support to Cuba, which will become even more vulnerable and easier game for US. This has pleased the Cuban-origin Secretary of State Marco Rubio who has been dreaming of liberating Cuba from Communism and claiming the properties owned by his family. Rubio has already warned that the Cuban regime should be afraid.

The capture and kidnap was just a stage-managed event

The so called capture and kidnapping of Maduro was a stage-managed event. Delcy Rodriguez and company had willingly offered the head of Maduro to appease the deities of Washington DC in return for the Americans allowing thousands of Chavistas to continue with their heads on their bodies.  There is bounty of 25 million dollars on interior minister Diosdado Cabello and 15m on defense minister Padrino Lopez.  Plus some more millions on other heads. Trump is not pursuing them despite the trumped up charges and US court convictions against them. If Machado/ Gonzalez had taken over power, they would have happily handed over hundreds of Chavista heads to the Americans. 

Delcy Rodriguez has been in touch with the Americans through Chevron which still operates in Venezuela. As the minister in charge of oil sector, she had the excuse to deal with the Americans. She is more pragmatic and better skilled in negotiations than Cabello or Lopez. So, She was chosen by both the sides to do the deal of offering Maduro’s head and lot of oil to the Americans. Even Maduro was willing to give oil and other things except his head. But Trump wanted a trophy and a spectacular power display of his macho MAGA image. Rodriguez agreed and let the Americans display the power of airforce jets, helicopters, high-tech weapons and skills of special forces. It was all prearranged.

It was not a Regime Change but a Regime Reset

So what has happened in Venezuela is not a Regime Change but a simple Regime Reconfiguration minus Maduro but plus Trump. This arrangement suits the US better than letting Machado/ Gonzalez to take over the country. If that was the case, the Chavistas (with their armed forces and militias) would have fought with the Machado government fiercely to save their heads and positions of power. There would have been bloodshed. Machado would not have been able to manage the situation and the American ground forces would have become necessary. Having learnt from the mistakes made in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Americans did not want a repeat. In any case Trump’s priority was not restoration of democracy. 

Trump’s priority is oil, not democracy

Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves of over 300 billion barrels. It was the American companies who had discovered the oil in 1914 and produced till the nationalization in 1975 by President Carlos Andres Perez. He had paid them compensation through negotiations and after approval by the Venezuelan Congress. In the 1990s the Venezuelan government had invited foreign companies back into the oil sector. Some companies such as Chevron, Exxon Mobile and Conoco Philps went back. But when President Chavez came to power in 1998, he wanted these companies to form joint ventures with PDVSA, the national oil company holding majority shares. Except Chevron, the other companies refused the terms and exited. They claimed compensation but the amounts were exorbitant. So they went to courts and arbitration. These claims, with interest, now amount to 22 billion dollars. The American companies would certainly plan to take Venezuelan oil against the dues, claimed by them.

Despite the dispute over compensation disputes, Chevron has been operating in Venezuela all these years. When the Americans imposed sanctions on Venezuela in 2019, Chevron got a special license to operate in the country. It has been operating with repeated renewal of sanctions. 

In the meeting with President Trump on 9 January, the oil companies asked for change of Venezuelan laws on regulations as well as investment guarantees in order to go back to the country. Because of sanctions, PDVSA’s production capacity has been crippled due to shortage of equipments and materials needed for repairs and modernization. Billions of dollars would need to be invested to restore production to the pre-sanction level of over 3 million barrels per day.

Oil is a resource curse for Venezuela

The country has so much of fertile agricultural land, mineral resources including gold and diamond, hydroelectric potential, beautiful beaches and pleasant climate. These resources are sufficient to be a prosperous nation, even without oil. But when the easy money from oil started coming, the Venezuelans abandoned all the other resources and started living exclusively on oil income. 

The problems of Venezuela started when oil was discovered in 1914.  In just a decade, the country had undergone a rapid transformation from an obscure agricultural backwater somewhere in the Andes to the world’s largest oil exporter and the second-largest oil producer after the United States. 

 Since then, the Venezuelans have been infected incurably by the Dutch disease and resource curse. Oil has spoiled both the rulers and the ruled. The politicians stole and misspent the petrodollars during the high oil prices and let the economy slide into crisis when the prices went down. The businessmen gave up productive industries and went into imports and quick ways of making fast buck. Farmers neglected agriculture and moved into cities to share the luxury life style spawned by the oil boom. 

By 1930, while the world struggled with the Great Depression, Venezuelans began to enjoy enormous riches. Venezuela became a key supplier of the oil that fueled the Allied effort during World War II. The flood of oil revenue caused their currency bolivar to appreciate against the dollar.  The strong currency was a boon for Venezuelan consumers, who could suddenly afford to import what they used, wore, and ate every day. Caracas became expensive. A US diplomat earning 2000 dollars in Washington DC needed 5000 dollars to live in Caracas. 

Venezuela’s days of economic plenty did not last. World War II disrupted global trade and pushed the import-dependent nation into economic disarray, plagued by product shortages. Venezuela quickly went from a nation with enough purchasing power to import fine wines to a place where people struggled to find car tires.

Venezuela had increased its oil revenue thanks to a smart Venezuelan, Pérez Alfonzo, the Minister of Development, appointed by the military rulers after the 1945 coup. He changed the game of negotiations with the foreign oil companies. He pushed them for fifty-fifty share in the profits the multinational oil companies derived from the sale of crude oil as well as refining, transportation, and sale of fuel. He educated the sheikhs in the Middle East and helped them to get a similar arrangement with the foreign oil firms. Pérez Alfonzo worked with the representatives of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran and signed the agreement to create the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC. From that point on, oil companies would have to consult with exporter countries before setting oil prices.

In the period 1950-57 Venezuela accumulated huge foreign exchange reserves, thanks to the hike in oil prices after the coup in Iran and closure of Suez Canal. In 1963, the country churned out 3.5 million barrels of oil a day. The country’s per capita income was the highest in Latin America, and the currency bolivar remained one of the world’s strongest currencies. Sears Roebuck had opened eleven stores in Venezuela.

After the Arab oil embargo in 1973, Venezuela’s petrodollars tripled. The flow of dollars from oil was too much for Venezuela’s economy causing a form of economic indigestion. The newly elected president Carlos Andrés Pérez asked congress for special powers to better handle the avalanche of money. Venezuela was in a state of emergency because it had too much cash.

Venezuelans wasted no time in developing a taste for the finer things in life. The country became known for having the best French and Italian restaurants in Latin America, many of them run by famed chefs. Venezuela became one of the largest importers of premium alcohol, like whiskey and champagne, as well as luxury vehicles, like the Cadillac El Dorado. Caracas became such a chic destination that Air France’s Concorde supersonic jet opened a Paris–Caracas flight in 1976. The per capita income of Venezuelans rivaled that of West Germany. 

Chavez was a creation of the situation created by the Venezuelan oligarchs

In the 1980s, Venezuela faced a crisis after the fall in prices due to a global oil glut and lower demand.  Since Venezuelans had grown accustomed to generous governments, politicians continued to spend even in the face of less money coming in. The country’s economy in 1989 went into its worst recession ever, with gross domestic product contracting nearly 9 percent. Venezuela was forced to seek a financial lifeline from the International Monetary Fund and asked the U.S. government’s help to renegotiate and reduce its outstanding debts. People got frustrated with the austerity program of the government and took to the streets by the thousands to protest, riot, and loot for ten days. Protesters set fire to cars and buses, and they clashed with the military. When it was all over, the uprising that became known as El Caracazo had left three hundred people dead and material losses in the millions of dollars. During the eight years ending in 1989, poverty had increased tenfold. Inflation topped 100 percent in 1996. 

It was at this time that Chavez entered politics as an outsider challenging the two established political parties (AD and COPEI) run by oligarchs. He asked a simple question to the audience during his election campaign; “ Venezuela is a rich country with the largest reserves of oil. Why then 44% of the people are poor?”. The masses voted for him overwhelmingly.  He won the subsequent elections and a constitutional referendum overwhelmingly. He did not need to rig them.  Chavez started implementing his pro-poor and other socialistic policies. He wanted PDVSA, which was a state within the state to reduce overdependence on US and diversify other markets. 

Overthrow of Chavez in a coup 

The two oligarchic political parties, who were wiped out in the elections, realized that they could not beat Chavez electorally. So they went to Uncle Sam and organized a coup in April 2002 and overthrew Chavez with the help of a few dissident elements from the army.  The PDVSA employees went on a strike and crippled oil production, exports and even internal distribution. There was severe shortage of gasoline. Chavez was sent to jail in a remote island. But the oligarchs started fighting against each other for spoils and refused to give any share to the generals. So the generals freed Chavez and restored him as President after two days. As Ambassador of India to Venezuela, I saw the coup and its aftermath.

Chavez wanted to teach a lesson to those who were involved in and supported the coup. He sacked 15,000 employees of PDVSA and put the company under the control of Chavistas. He started destroying the business and industry of the oligarchs systematically. He imposed strict controls on foreign exchange and business licenses. He took over some factories and put the army in charge of distribution of essential supplies and some business. He let the army commanders and militant followers to make money through corruption. He brought democratic institutions, judiciary and the election tribunal under his control. Since the opposition parties had become insignificant, he assumed more powers and became authoritarian.  This is how the country became a Chavista dictatorship which mismanaged the economy. Inflation and devaluation of currency reached five digits. The GDP contracted for several years. This was the system inherited by Maduro when he was appointed as the successor after Chavez’s death in 2013. The system worsened under Maduro who could not control the others involved in corruption and mismanagement. He did not have the power or competency to arrest the deterioration.

The US, with its bounties and sanctions, became the obstacle for free and fair elections

The American sanctions starting from 2006 worsened the Venezuelan situation. The sanctions on oil exports, started and intensified since 2017,  crippled the Venezuelan economy. Shortage of foreign exchange meant  scarcity of essential items, more control, crime and corruption. This triggered economic emigration of several million Venezuelans. 

Maduro and the Chavista party PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) would have definitely been voted out in the 2024 elections. The people were angry and frustrated with the misery of daily life. But Maduro was forced to rig the elections because of the fear of American bounties. 

The US had imposed bounties of 50 million dollars on the head of President Maduro, 25 million on Interior Minister Cabello and 15 m on Defense Minister Lopez besides several more millions on others. This meant that if the pro-American opposition came to power, they would have sent all of the top Chavista leadership  to American jails. So, the Chavista regime could not hold free and fair elections which would have been their death warrant. They had no option but to rig the elections to prevent the opposition from coming to power. Thus, the US became the obstacle for free and fair elections in Venezuela. 

The political parties of Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay restored democracy in the 1980s by internal protests, guerrilla warfare and eventually negotiations with the military dictatorships who were supported by the US.  The political leaders offered amnesty to the perpetrators of human rights crimes only after which the Generals agreed to hand over power. But Machado forgot this history of Latin America. She made a dangerous move when she openly sought US military intervention. She did not realize that it would come at a price. Trump says he will run the country. He finds that the Chavista regime is better suited for him to get oil and other benefits. He is not going to allow elections in the near future, since he fears that Machado will come to power and complicate his agenda. Thus, the US has again become the obstacle for restoration of democracy. 

American serial wars on Latin America

Machado has caused a dangerous problem for the Latin American region by her open invitation for US military intervention and the success of 'Operation Absolute Resolve’.  She has whetted the appetite of US for further adventures in Cuba, Colombia and Mexico. 

The history of Latin America is filled with American invasions, occupations, military coups and destabilizations. It is like a Netflix serial. Location shootings and subtitles change. But the main plot through the episodes is the same; regime change to remove leftist governments and install pro-US regimes to promote American business and hegemony. The wars are given different titles such as war on communism, war on drugs, war on terrorism and war on corruption. The last one was used to bring down the government of the Workers’ Party in Brazil and some leftist presidents in the region. In the current campaign to oust President Maduro, the Americans started with the title “war on drugs” but changed it to 'war on terrorism’ and combined the two later to “ War on Narco-terrorism” to get more bang for the buck. Venezuela and Maduro were not significant sources of drugs nor were they terrorist threats to the US. 

War on Drugs

The US has accused Maduro and his colleagues of involvement in drug trafficking to the US. This is a false accusation. Even according to American official sources, Venezuela accounts for an insignificant portion of drugs which go to the US. 

Secondly, drug is not a supply side problem. Drug is a demand and consumer-driven multibillion dollar US business. Out of every drug dollar, only 20 cents go outside US to the producers and traffickers, while 80 cents remain within the US. Millions of Americans pay top dollars willingly and happily to get high on drugs from wherever they can get them. Some years back, an American firm, Purdue Pharma, had aggressively marketed its opioid Oxycontin and made billion of dollars while thousands of Americans became addicts and ended up dead. The DEA did not do a drug war against the company. The Justice Department did a deal with it and the company got away with some fines. As long American consumers continue to demand and pay for the drugs, the business will go on. The drug consumption in US has not decreased after the killing of Pablo Escobar or the arrest of Chapo Guzman. Drug is simply and clearly an American domestic issue. But the US has created a false and malicious narrative blaming other countries and the Hollywood has propagated this falsehood through films and the Netflix serial “Narcos”.

There is a flip side to the drug issue. The Latin American cartels have been empowered by illegally supplied American guns. US is the main source of illegal  guns to the cartels. Mexico has only two gun shops for the whole country. These are run by the Mexican military which has rigorous checking and control procedures. But there are nearly 10,000 (yes, Ten Thousand) American gun shops in the border with Mexico. About 200,000 American guns are supplied illegally to Mexico every year. These guns cause more Latin American deaths than the drugs in the US. While the drug is consumed by the user, the guns stay around for many years to kill lot of people. The Americans refuse to recognize this issue and do not take any action to stop the gun trafficking.

Simon Bolivar’s prophecy

Simon Bolivar, the Venezuelan independence hero and Liberator of South America, wrote in a private letter dated August 5, 1829, addressed to British diplomat Patrick Campbell, "The United States appear to be destined by providence to plague Latin America with misery in the name of liberty”.  Venezuela is the latest example of misery caused by US in the name of liberty. The Donroe Doctrine will cause only more misery to the Latin Americans in future.

The article was published by The Wire magazine on 12 January 2026

https://thewire.in/world/the-uss-magical-realism-show-in-venezuela

"The Tree Within: The Mexican Nobel Laureate writer Octavio Paz’s Years in India" - Book by Indranil Chakravarty

The Mexican writer Octavio Paz was the most prominent Latin American to understand, analyze, interpret and promote India intellectually and culturally  from a Latin American perspective in the twentieth century. He had first hand experience of India as a diplomat posted in New Delhi for seven years. He has written numerous poems and articles on India. His book "Vislumbres de la India" (In the light of India) is regarded as one of the best introductions to India among Latin American thinkers.  Some cultural visitors from the Spanish-speaking world travel around the country with Paz’s book as an ‘intimate guide’. They see India through his eyes, trying to grasp the immense complexity of India. 

Author Indranil Chakravarty has given a comprehensive account of Paz’s years in India and his writings on India. He has done extensive research including declassified diplomatic files and personal letters. He has interviewed many Indians and Latin Americans as well their offsprings and close associates who had interacted with Paz. With his knowledge of Latin America and Spanish literature as well as his fluency in Spanish language he has put Paz’s works on India in a larger perspective including in the context of Mexico’s cultural connections with India before Paz.

Paz’s first experience with India was negative. He was unhappy when he was posted as a junior diplomat in the newly opened Mexican embassy in Delhi in 1951. He was disappointed with the "atrocious and immense Indian reality” of the early fifties struggling with poverty and post-partition reconciliation. During this first stay for six months in India, he hardly made any friends, lived largely within the confines of his hotel, and did not like either Delhi or the people he met. Later, he reassessed his responses as partly a projection of his own unhappiness and partly the impact of deep-rooted Western prejudices he unconsciously carried within himself.

Delhi posting was a stark contrast to his colorful cultural life in Paris from where he was transferred to Delhi, against his will. At that time, Paz was enjoying his emergence as a budding celebrity poet in Paris where he was posted in the Mexican embassy. He did not want to leave his large circle of European and Latin American artists and writers in Paris. As a lowly diplomat in Delhi, Paz missed the Parisian charms and  excitement of conversations in its cafes. 

Later, Paz came to India as ambassador in 1962 and stayed in the post till 1968. As ambassador, Paz had a different and transforming experience. As ambassador he had privileged status and access as well as the facility to travel extensively. His relationships with figures such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi allowed him to engage actively in the country’s political and cultural history. When Paz left India in1968, Indira Gandhi organised a party at her residence. Paz had forged lasting friendships with many of India's leading artists and writers. His large house in Prithviraj road became a meeting point for Indian artists, writers, and thinkers. He had invited Latin American visitors to stay in his house and took them around India. He got married under the neem tree of the house with Maria Jose, his second wife. 

Paz has repeatedly characterized his years in India as momentous: ‘It was a second birth’, a phrase that evokes the Hindu idea of dvija, the twice-born, suggesting an awakening of the self.  Paz has said, “ India has been my sentimental, artistic and spiritual education. Its influence can be seen in my poems, prose texts and in my life itself.”  His creative output during his second stay in India, between 1962 and 1968, was astounding. It was the most bountiful period of an unimaginably productive life. Paz has written poems on variety of Indian subjects such as Lodhi garden, Vrindavan, Madurai and painter Swaminathan.

Paz immersed himself in India’s contemplative traditions, history, philosophy, art and literature. He understood the complexity and contradictions of India based on his own analysis. This is evident from his statement: The centrifugal forces of India are old and powerful: they have not destroyed the country because, without intending to, they have neutralised one another. He referred to Varanasi as incarnating ‘the sacred in all its incredible banality’. He had discovered India through his Mexican eyes and perspectives. He found resonance in India as a spiritual home to his complex and labyrinthine Mexican identity. He said, “The strangeness of India brought to mind that other strangeness: my own country”. 

Paz’s experiences in India are palpable in two collections of poetry often considered among his finest, a genre-defying philosophical reflection on his journey through Rajasthan, two volumes of essays and a memoir, his final book written three decades after leaving India. Drawing parallels with his own country, Paz once said that he understood what it meant to be an Indian precisely because he was Mexican. He insisted that the country entered his life not merely through his intellect but viscerally, through all his senses. In India, where the erotic and the sacred blend in ecstatic union—unlike in the West, where the two are scrupulously kept apart—he saw the possibility of a new synthesis through the dissolution of dualities. Paz was under the spell of Buddhism more than anything else. He immersed himself in the works of the philosopher-poets Nagarjuna, Dharmakirti and Bhartrihari, bringing them within a comparative framework of reference that included the West and Mesoamerican cultures. 

Paz said, "East Slope” (Ladera Leste) was 'a response to the accidents, the circumstances, the stimuli of my life in India. Circumstances sometimes external, sometimes intimate. There are many poems with a loving, erotic tone; many others in which I talked about landscapes, monuments, gods. It can also be seen as a kind of discontinuous diary of a poet in India'.

Paz had planted ‘India’ in the minds of many Latin American artists and thinkers. His passion for India has left a certain impact on Spanish–American literature. His writings became a bridge between continents, blending Eastern and Western sensibilities in ways that enriched the literary landscapes of both. He hosted the visits of Latin American writers and artists such as Julio Cortázar  and the Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo. Cuban writer Severo Sarduy (1937–1993), one of the most outrageous and baroque of the Latin American ‘Boom’ writers of the sixties and seventies wrote, ‘Octavio Paz gave me India, the most extraordinary gift that anyone can give'. In their struggle for identity, the Latin Americans  often saw in the ‘Orient’ a reflection of their own selves waiting to be discovered and celebrated. 

Paz touched the lives of leading Indian artists, journalists and writers who visited Paz’s house often, sometimes uninvited and enjoyed Paz’s hospitality and intellectual and cultural conversations. As a junior diplomat in 1951, he had identified Satish Gujral’s artistic promise and selected him for a scholarship to Mexico, going against the decision of the other members of the selection committee. Paz shaped  Satish Gujral’s  development as an artist by inserting Gujral among the maestros of the Mexican mural movement. The influence of the Mexican mural movement on modern Indian art through Gujral would not have been possible without Octavio Paz’s decision to send him to Mexico. 

Paz took on the role of a mentor to some young Indian painters, helping them to get international scholarships and introducing them to leading European and Latin American artists. After his return to Mexico in 1971, Paz was delighted to receive Swaminathan, Krishen Khanna, Vivan Sundaram and Himmat Shah among other Indians at his home in Mexico City.

Why the title “ The Tree Within”?

In his poem Cuento de dos jardines (‘A Tale of Two Gardens’), Paz imagined his life as bookended by two gardens, primal in their association. One was the fig tree of his childhood home in Mexico whose branches seemed to reach out to him through the window; the other was a sumptuous and evergreen neem tree at his ambassadorial house in New Delhi under whose shadow he took his marital vows with the woman of his life.

The fig tree is native to India and is considered sacred. Buddha had attained enlightenment under this Bodhi tree,  Paz’s poetry is replete with arboreal references. He admired their silent tenacity, the pain of roots and broken limbs, their fierce stubbornness even as the storm threatens to uproot them. Even though trees are quiet and rooted, like ideas, they grow within. Here is Paz’s poem:

A tree grew inside my head, 

It grew inward. 

Its roots are veins, 

its branches nerves, 

thoughts its confused foliage. 

Your glances light it up 

and its fruits of shade 

are oranges of blood, 

are pomegranates of fire. 

                                             Day breaks 

in the night of the body. 

There, within, inside my head, 

the tree speaks. 

                          Come closer, do you hear it? 

There are already a number of articles and some publications on Paz’s passion for India. Indranil Chakravarti’s book is a valuable addition with new information and perspectives. The book has just been (31 October 2025) published and is available in Amazon.

Nicaragua, the “Republic of Poets” has become a “Republic of Clandestine Poets.”

 Nicaragua, the “Republic of Poets” has become a “Republic of Clandestine Poets.”

" There are poets and writers in every street of Nicaragua;  everybody is considered to be a poet until proved to the contrary¨- says Salman Rushdie in his book 'The jaguar smile',

The Sandinista revolution was a revolution of poets: Ernesto Cardenal, Mejía Godoy, Sergio Ramírez, Gioconda Belli, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. 

One of the martyred heroes of the Sandinista revolution is Leonel Rugama, the young poet who died in combat at the age of 20. His poem "The Earth is a satellite of the Moon " has been considered by critics as one of the most widely distributed poems in Latin American poetry. It was a poet, Rigoberto Lopez Perez, who assassinated the first Somoza, at a ball in 1956, and was himself beaten and shot to death on the dance floor.

Poetry writing, reading, and recitals are not restricted to the esoteric world of urban literary societies. Shopkeepers, farmers and common people write, read and enjoy poetry. The revolutionaries and common people find solace and expression in poetry for survival and inspiration during the volcanic eruptions of revolutions, war and struggles. When novelist and poet Sergio Ramirez returned from Spain after receiving the prestigious Cervantes literary prize, people lined the streets to cheer him as he rode from the Managua airport to his home.

Nicaraguan newspapers used to feature literary supplements filled with poems from both luminaries and unknowns. Leading poets could be spotted, like movie stars, in certain cafes in the cities. In the university town of Leon, busts of Nicaraguan poets and plaques with quotations from their work fill the “Park of Poets,” while the main street, Calle Ruben Dario, is named for the country’s preeminent poet. 

Ruben Dario, the poet and writer of Nicaragua is the most well-known in the world. He is considered as the father of the Modernist Movement in Spanish literature in the twentieth century. His book Azul (1888) is said to be the inaugural book of Hispanic-American modernism. He was a precocious poet and published his poem in a newspaper at the age of thirteen.

Dario is remembered for the following prophetic poem in which he anticipated US as an invader.

Eres los Estados Unidos,
eres el futuro invasor

You are the United States
you are the future invader

Nicaragua was one of the worst victims of US interventions. The US had occupied Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933 to protect American business interests. The US had supported and nurtured the Somoza dictatorship for four decades. Later, the US unleashed a deadly counter-revolutionary war to bleed the elected Sandinista government from 1979 to 1989 with mercenaries recruited from other Central American countries.

An American mercenary adventurer William Walker maneuvered to appoint himself as President of Nicaragua in 1856 and ruled for a year and even made English as the official language. Walker recruited about a thousand American and European mercenaries to invade the other four Central American nations: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Costa Rica. This was supported by the American tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt who had business interests in the region. Fortunately the invasion failed and Walker was later executed.

President Daniel Ortega is a poet, as is his wife, Rosario Murillo. When Ortega was a political prisoner from 1968 (at the age of 23) to 1974 during the dictatorship of Somoza, he wrote many poems, including the famous one titled “I never saw Managua when miniskirts were in fashion.” While in jail he received visits from Rosario Murillo, a poet. The prisoner and visitor fell in love; Murillo became Ortega's wife. She has published several books of poems. One of them is called as ¨Amar es combatir ¨- to love is to combat. 

After the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship in 1979, the victorious Sandinistas named one of the country’s most famous poets, Ernesto Cardenal, as minister of culture. He brought poets to all corners of the country to teach people to read and write poetry at a time when Nicaragua suffered a 70 to 95 percent illiteracy rate. It is still possible in villages to find people who are unable to read or write but can recite Dario’s poetry by heart. Poetry was used as a tool for political literacy, consolidating the country as a "Republic of Poets.”

Some of the ministers in the initial years of President Ortega's cabinet were poets and writers. Notable among these is Sergio Ramirez, Gioconda Belli and Ernesto Cardinal. 

Since his reelection as President in 2007, Daniel Ortega has become authoritarian and has rigged the elections and the constitution to continue as president indefinitely. His wife Rosario Murillo has now become the Co-President after having been Vice-President for some years. The couple have betrayed the noble ideals of the Sandinista revolution and have created a corrupt family dictatorship, similiar to the Somoza dynastic dictatorship which had ruled for 42 years. Most of the writers and intellectuals who had nurtured the revolution eventually left the Sandinista party and started fighting against the dictatorial regime. They used poetry to fight back, just like they did during the revolutionary era against the Somoza dictatorship.  The Ortegas have suppressed dissent and persecuted poets, intellectuals and journalists besides political leaders who resisted their dictatorship. The regime has imprisoned or exiled some of the dissidents, stripped their citizenship and even seized their assets and houses. The regime has become harsher after the large scale public protests in 2018. Many exiled poets and writes live in Costa Rica and Spain. The exiled poets include Sergio Ramírez, Gioconda Belli and Freddy Quezada. The regime has shut down thousands of NGOs and independent media outlets, including PEN Nicaragua and the Nicaraguan Academy of Language. One of the hardest blows to Nicaraguan literary culture came in 2022 with the cancellation of the Granada International Poetry Festival, created in 2005, which once brought together more than 1,200 poets from 120 countries. The regime revoked the legal status of the NGO that funded it, leading to its cancellation.

While accepting the Cervantes Prize for literature in April 2018, Ramírez dedicated his award to the young people then protesting Ortega’s government and to the memory of Nicaraguans who had recently “been murdered on the streets after demanding justice and democracy.”

The Ortega-Murillo dictatorship has driven the poetry underground. The poets hide themselves and their poems from the repressive regime which has been ruthlessly censoring literature and news. The poets write clandestinely expressing their frustration and resistance. The "Republic of Poets" has now become the "Republic of Clandestine Poets". 

Crooked plow- Brazilian novel by Itamar Vieira Junior

Itamar Vieira is a young and upcoming Brazilian writer. Crooked Plow (Torto Arado) is his first novel. He has earlier written a short story collection.

Although Itamar Vieira is a new author, the theme and characters of his novel are familiar to me. They are similar to those of my favorite Brazilian writer Jorge Amado whose famous novels include titles such as “Dona Flor and her two husbands” and "Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon”.

Crooked Plow is the story of struggle and misery of the subsistence farmers in the rural areas of Bahia, the northeastern part of Brazil, poor in development but rich in culture. The main characters are the seven and six years old sisters Bibiana and Belonisia.  They find a knife in the old suitcase of their grandmother. Bibiana puts the knife in her mouth trying to taste the glittering metal. Belonisia  pulls out the knife violently from her sister’s mouth in order to taste it herself. In this childish fight,  Bibiana loses her tongue while the other’s is hurt badly. After this, the sisters become the voice of each other with a muted bond. Here is how the author describes, "When they interacted, one of them would need to become more perceptive, read more attentively the sister’s eyes and gestures. They would become one. The sister who lent her voice studied the body language of the sister who was mute. The sister who was mute transmitted, through elaborate gestures and subtle movements, what she wanted to communicate. For this symbiosis to occur and endure, their differences had to be put aside. They devoted their time to gaining a new understanding of each other’s bodies. At first, it was hard for both, very hard—the constant repetition of words, picking up objects, pointing here and there so that one sister might grasp the other’s intention. As the years passed, this shared body language became an extension of their individual expressions until each of them almost became the other, but without losing herself. Sometimes one would get annoyed with the other, but the pressing need for one sister to communicate something, and for the other to translate it, made it so that they would both forget what had annoyed them in the first place”. The silenced sister symbolizes the voiceless poor Afro-Brazilians.

Later,  the sisters would fight with each other over a boyfriend. Bibiana used the same knife once to save a woman from her drunken husband and at another time to kill the owner of their estate who tries to evict the tenants and sell the land.

Itamar Vieira narrates in detail the struggles of the tenant farmers in the rural estates called as Fazendas in Portuguese.  "They could build houses of mud, but not brick, nothing enduring to mark how long a family had been on the land. They could cultivate a small plot of squashes, beans, and okra, but nothing that would distract them from the owner’s crops because, after all, working for the owner was what enabled them to live on this land. They could bring their women and children; the more the merrier, in fact, because eventually the children would grow up and replace whoever was too old to work. The owner of the plantation would have confidence in them, trust them; they’d be his godchildren. Money, there’d be none of that, but there’d be food on the table. The workers could make their home on the plantation with no problem, without being harassed. They just had to follow the rules”.

The tenant farmers are forced to buy necessities from the overpriced estate shop which make the tenants perpetually in debt. Their children join the workforce to pay off the debt. They are expected to be grateful to the estate owners for letting them a place to live. When a young rebellious farmer tries to ask for more rights he is killed by the hired assassins of the owner. The police close the case alleging falsely that the farmer was growing marijuana and got killed in a fight with drug traffickers.

The subsistent farmers would smile and some would even jump with joy when they noticed rain clouds finally looming, and from the land rose a freshness that farmers liked to call a bit of “luck.” They said you could dig a little into the dry mud and actually feel the moisture arriving, feel that the earth was a bit cooler, a sign the drought was coming to an end. The women would put empty buckets out to catch the rain. The plantation would resound with the old songs of the local women bringing their laundry down to the widening river or carrying their hoes to clear their small plots and do some slash-and-burn farming. The men could join the women only after they’d cleared the vast fields for planting the landowners’ crops.

The tongueless sister did not like the teaching in the new school opened in the estate. She preferred to "immerse herself in the woods, walking up and down the trails, learning all about herbs and roots. She learned about clouds, too, how they’d foretell rain, all the secret changes of sky and earth. She learned that everything is in motion—quite different from the lifeless things taught in school.  She walked with her father watching the movement of animals, insects, and plants. Her father couldn’t read or do sums, but he knew the phases of the moon. He knew that under a full moon you could plant almost anything, although manioc, banana, and other fruits liked to be sown under a new moon; under a waning moon, it wasn’t time for planting but for clearing the land. He knew that for a plant to grow strong, you needed to weed around each one every day, reducing the risk of pests. You had to be vigilant, protecting the stalks, making small mounds of soil and watering carefully so they’d flourish. Whenever he encountered some problem in the fields, he would lie on the ground, his ear attuned to what was deep in the earth, before deciding what tools to use and what to do, where to advance and where to retreat. Like a doctor listening to a heartbeat".

The father of the girls, Zeca Chapeu Grande, is a tenant farmer and a healer for the community. He would use local herbs to heal physical wounds and African ceremonies to heal the souls. Most of the people here are of African origin. They practice their ancient rituals and religious practices. They are used to seeing stoically their neighbors going mad, teenage girls getting pregnant by estate officials, drunken husbands beating up wife and kids, broken families, orphaned children and hopeless existence. Their precarious lives are made worse by periodic droughts, floods and natural calamities. During these times, they survive by faith in their African gods and rituals, and offerings to please them. They would mix up their African gods and rituals sometimes with the Christian faith imposed by the Catholic Church. 

This novel has won several literary prizes and was shortlisted for 2024 International Booker prize. In an interview, the author says, “ For me, to write is an experience of surprise. I never know in advance the path my story will take”. He is already into writing of his next novel.

The novel is available in English translation.

"Small Earthquakes: A Journey Through Lost British History in South America” - book by Shafik Meghji

While the Spanish and Portuguese colonized Latin America, the British have played a significant role in slavery, wars of independence, politics, lending, investment, railways and football in the region. These have been brought out by the author of the book who has done extensive research and travelled through the South American countries which had been impacted by the British. 

Under the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, Spain granted Britain a license to transport African slaves to its Latin American colonies. The London-based South Sea Company bought the contract from the British government for £9.5 million. Under the agreement, the firm could transport 4,800 enslaved Africans a year for the next three decades to Latin American ports. Working with the Royal African Company and protected by the Royal Navy, the South Sea Company trafficked about 42,000 Africans—7,000 of whom died en route.

The defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815 left Britain awash with unemployed soldiers—as many as half a million, according to some estimates. Thousands of them decided to fight for the aspirant nations in Spanish-controlled South America. Many were simply mercenaries; others sought adventure or a sense of purpose; and some regarded themselves as freedom fighters. In 1817, a representative of Simón Bolívar, known as the Liberator of South America "(El Libertador) visited London on a recruitment drive. Over the following two years, more than 6,000 men sailed from Britain to fight in Bolivar’s army. They carried supplies of arms and military equipment provided on credit by British merchants.

Bernardo O’Higgins, the Chilean independence leader and the first Head of State, was of Irish origin from his father’s side. He had studied in London and wanted “to make Chile the England of South America”, and he advocated English and Irish immigration as the best guarantee of progressive political institutions in South America.’ O’Higgins championed the adoption of a British-style constitutional system but was ousted in 1823, after a controversial £1 million loan he secured from the British government that came—predictably enough—with decidedly unfavourable repayment terms. He set sail from Valparaíso on a British ship, spending the rest of his days in exile in Peru.

Admiral Thomas was a British naval officer who  accepted the invitation to found Chile’s first navy and command it against Spanish forces. The nascent Chilean fleet was modelled on the Royal Navy and heavily staffed with British officers and sailors. 

Officially, Britain was neutral during the wars of independence but nevertheless sought to prevent other European nations from militarily aiding Spain. The British government was quick to recognise the independence of the new nations and signed commercial treaties with them to advance British business interests. 

In the 1850s, the British South American missionary society set up the first European settlement in Ushuaia to convert the local Yagan tribes into christianity. They had even brought some young members of the tribe to England to teach them English and the local culture and sent them back to their tribes to spread their new faith. The missionaries studied local languages and published dictionaries and books. The Argentine naval ships came much later to Ushuaia in 1884 to claim the region as part of their country.

In the 1880s, Argentina attracted 40–50 per cent of British foreign investment, most of which went into railways, ports, utilities, meat packing and trading. Between 1857 and 1920, more than 60,000 people from Britain came to Argentina. By the 1910s, British railway firms dominated the sector and were among the most valuable companies in Argentina. Opening in 1915, Retiro station in Buenos Aires city was once the hub of the biggest railway network in South America, extending across more than 27,000 miles of track at its peak in the 1940s. The Anglo-Argentine Tramways company built in 1913 Subte, the oldest underground railway in Latin America in Buenos Aires city. But many Argentines regarded railway companies as agents of imperialism and believed the country was being drawn into Britain’s ‘informal empire’. 

The first overseas branch of Harrods opened in Buenos Aires in 1914 and once virtually spanned an entire block. It was subsequently sold to a local retailer but retained the iconic name;  It closed in 1998, blighted by debts. Despite various attempts to re-open it over the years since, and the occasional temporary exhibition, it remains closed and near derelict. 

The British firm Barings gave an exploitative £1 million loan in 1824 to the government in Buenos Aires to operate the city’s water and sewage system, which was originally designed by engineers from Ireland and Britain. The company was later criticized for political and economic meddling, scheming to topple governors and even promoting the 1864–70 War of the Triple Alliance, a devastating conflict between Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay on one side and Paraguay on the other.

Alexander Watson Hutton, brought over the first footballs to Argentina, created the country’s first football pitch and encouraged his pupils to play the game. In 1893, he founded the Argentine Football Association (AFA), one of the oldest in the world outside of the UK. Hutton is called as the father of Argentine football. Many of the early players were British and the country's numerous clubs that exist today had British or Anglo-Argentine founder. The British also introduced Polo, Rugby and even cricket in Argentina.

Today, around 50,000 to 70,000 people in Chubut province of Argentina, have Welsh heritage. As many as 6,000 of these speak the Welsh language.

British banks had partly financed the independence wars of Peru, Bolivia and Chile. Later, the banks used these debts to help British companies to take over local business including nitrate mines and guano trading. The British companies and government had roles in the Pacific war in which Chile grabbed large territories of Bolivia and Peru. This benefitted British robber-baron firms such as Antony Gibbs & Sons, which dominated the nitrate industry for the next forty years.

When the Chilean President José Manuel Balmaceda nationalized the concessions of Liverpool Nitrate Company ( owned by John Thomas North), the British government, along with the British companies intervened and incited a civil war in 1891. The president committed suicide after he was overthrown.

In his epic poetry collection Canto General, Neruda wrote about North, the ‘powerful gringo’, and his dealings with Balmaceda:

The smooth sterling pounds

weave like golden spiders

an English cloth, legitimate,

for my people, a suit tailored

with blood, gunpowder and misery.

Atacama in Chile was one of the most valuable places on earth because of nitrate which accounted for as much as 80 per cent of Chile’s exports. But while the world war prompted a short-term profit surge, it also triggered the collapse of the industry. Germany’s nitrate supplies were cut-off by a British-led blockade during the conflict, which forced the country to seek out alternatives. German Chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch subsequently developed an industrial process that combined nitrogen in the air with hydrogen to produce ammonia, launching the era of artificial fertilisers. After the war, this method proved to be a cheaper and quicker way to supply farmers and arms manufacturers in Europe. This ended the nitrate fortunes of Atacama.  

In 1973, the Conservative government of Edward Heath welcomed the Pinochet coup, with Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home writing: ‘For British interests … there is no doubt that Chile under the junta is a better prospect than Allende’s chaotic road to socialism, our investments should do better, our loans may be successfully rescheduled, and export credits later resumed.’ Pinochet became a close ally of Margaret Thatcher, allowing a British surveillance team to use a Chilean military base in Punta Arenas to monitor Argentine air force operations during the Falklands War while also supplying crucial intelligence reports.

Britain had played a crucial role in the creation of an independent Uruguay in 1828. Britain was eager to create a buffer state between the two large warring nations of Brazil and Argentina in order to boost free trade, which, of course, would benefit Britain above all. A British envoy Lord Ponsonby, brokered the peace deal. 

The British moved quickly into the independent Uruguay with lending and investment in railways, meat industry and trading. The British also introduced football in Uruguay.