El Gran Dictador!

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: WORLD DEMOCRACY

Nicaragua: El Gran Dictador

 

He promised prosperity for all

He delivered a police state

His adversaries are in jail

He has stolen their land

He has taken their citizenship

He has sent them into exile

 

Yet his people live in poverty

The poor and the elderly

And condemned to the streets

The physically and mentally challenged

Have lost all support

The government controls everything

From religious institutions

To social gatherings

They control the military

They control the police

They control the judiciary

They control the media

The economy is crippled

His servants are corrupt

 

Once they were revolutionaries

They fought against Samoza

Now they become what they opposed

The oppressors

The abusers

The lost

 

Ortega is the new Samoza

The great dictator

El Gran Dictador

The Price of Freedom

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: WORLD DEMOCRACY

The Price of Freedom

 

In El Salvador they have no freedom

They traded it for order

Not long ago gangs ruled the streets

Drugs and human trafficking

Freely crossed the border

Murder rape and mayhem

The people fled in droves

Escaping a state of anarchy

To where nobody knows

 

They elected a hardnosed autocrat

On a promise of establishing law

He eliminated the opposition

Replaced justices with his own

He cracked down on honest journalists

Denied the right to protest

Free speech and the right to assemble

Imprisoned gangs without a trial

 

Nayib Bukele is no friend to democracy

But he kept his solemn promise

A land of chaos became a land of order

People are safer within their border

They may live without fear

 

There is a lesson and a warning here

For all democratic nations

When the people are not safe

When the police are on the take

When the government is corrupt

When there is no sense of hope

The people will sacrifice their freedom

They will abandon democracy

And democracy, once sacrificed

Is not easily returned

 

Maduro's Betrayal

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL POLITICS

Maduro’s Betrayal

 

Simon Bolivar was a great man

Leader of the people’s revolution

Father of Latin American democracy

He dreamed of a free continent

Where the poor were poor no more

Where the power served the people

And the people served themselves

 

After decades of betrayal

By the drivers of western wealth

The rubber, fruit and oil barons

The ones who stole their resources

And left behind a poisoned land

A leader rose in Venezuela

His name was Hugo Chavez

He held forth a dream and a promise

A revival of the Bolivarian revolution

A return of power to the people

An end to soul-crushing poverty

An embrace of true democracy

In Venezuela and beyond

 

He delivered on that dream

In some measure for a while

He delivered food and health care

He gave rise to people’s hopes

But the power of the privileged class

Forced him to compromise

He lost hold of the dream

He lost hold of his principles

He lost hold of his pride

 

The nation he handed to his successor

Was a shadow of what it was

No longer a vibrant growing country

No longer one of promise or of hope

Nicolas Maduro took the reins and

Drove the nation off a cliff

He chose the way of power

He chose the way of wealth

 

Now the people of Venezuela suffer

In hunger and desperation

Poverty of spirit and of wealth

They flee in masses to the north

Where life can be no harder than it is

 

Nicolas Maduro: Let go of your power

Let go of your wealth

Retain some semblance of your pride

Until democracy is restored

There is no hope

And the Bolivarian revolution

Is but a dream

 

Venezuelan Tragedy

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: WORLD DEMOCRACY

Venezuelan Tragedy

 

We remember Hugo Chavez

The leader of the working class

A man of the people

The Bolivarian revolution

Many times the capitalist forces

The imperialist forces

Led by the CIA

Tried and failed to depose him

Despite all their efforts to discredit him

Chavez had the support of the people

 

He handed his reign to Nicolas Maduro

And for a time it seemed to hold

But the forces of corruption overwhelmed

He became what Chavez would not

A corrupt leader who no longer cared

For the welfare of the poor

Whose love of power became him

Whose commitment to democracy waned

 

Maduro lost the recent election

He covered up the fraud

When the Carter Center turns against you

Your cause is lost

When the people turn against you

You must go

 

The Bolivarian revolution may rise again

We pray that it is so

But it will not be led by Maduro

The people have said no

 

Kenyans in Haiti

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: WORLD DEMOCRACY

Kenyans in Haiti

 

Haiti descends into madness

A lawless, chaotic society

A society of thugs and criminals

Gangs and gangsters

Roaming the hungry streets

Marking the neighborhood territories

Like wild dogs on the prowl

Guns are more plentiful than drinking water

Thousands killed and thousands displaced

A self-imposed genocide

 

The Spanish, French and Americans failed

Now Kenya leads a multinational force

A force of two thousand five hundred police

Charged with dismantling the rule of anarchy

Charged with imposing order on chaos

Charged with displacing the mob

 

As Henry said to Eleanor:

Do you think there’s any chance of it?

Eleanor only laughed *

 

The world shares the failure in Haiti

The world must take responsibility

 

* From The Lion in Winter