WikiLeaks

The WikiLeaks “Cable Gate” is a milestone in history. We, the citizens of the world, always analyzed and spied upon by democratic or authoritarian governments, can now see without barriers all of the cables of the most powerful country on the planet: its analysis, its methods, its ways of wielding power.

The unethical ones in this story are not the WikiLeaks team and Julian Assange, like Washington says and various colleagues repeat, but rather the United States’ practices, like spying on the general secretary of the UN, pressuring favorably for genetically modified products, obtaining information on Paraguayan candidates or silencing journalists like Assange. Now they convert him into a rapist, and Biden accuses him of being a terrorist. What difference is there between this and when China or Russia accuses its citizens and journalists of being terrorists when they ask for more democracy and more transparency?

What WikiLeaks does is tell us citizens are secrets that the United States government knows and hides from us. When we understand how power functions, we are better prepared to survive it, to influence it, to administrate it and to live alongside it. This, in the end, achieves what the United States tries on occasion: empowering citizens relative to governments.

An aside: Advisor Blakeney’s analysis of Sandra Torres seemed balanced to me, although some points about her dark friends and enemies were missing — likewise Ambassador McFarland’s comment describing the country.

Back on topic, many of us get accustomed to the idea of living with restricted privacy. Tapped cell phones, emails that can be read by more people than just the addressees, cameras that can see with whom one speaks in the street, hidden microphones … power without ethical limits. It is because of that that I don’t think WikiLeaks is a scandal, but rather a demand of the people. It is pure journalism: the revealing of secrets so that public opinion knows them.

If we only had the cables detailing the coups or the experiments with humans that the United States did here, or what the U.S. did to pressure to accelerate or slowdown the democratization process and what it does to promote human rights, or to know who are lawbreakers and lost their visas. God willing, we can understand better how the real power in our country functions.

Assange, in an interview with El País, describes how power works in this moment as it is hounded. “I don't mean to say that there is a chain of command from Hillary Clinton right down to a journalist who works for The Guardian. That would be ridiculous; things don't work like that in the real world, which is much more interesting and subtle. Power creates an atmosphere in which individuals practically feed off what they think power wants.

“In each group or organization there might be direct instructions, but each individual or group acts in a way that it feels maximizes its own interests. Careerism, fame, creating and maintaining alliances, doing favors, favors to friends, relatives, between members of the same party... doing things out of fear, without even being asked to do them.” It would be good for us Guatemalans read this again and reflect on how we act. Don’t you think?

P.S. Mayor Vivar and the ultraconservative citizens of Antigua continue with the campaign to take Antigua away from us. Now we will not be able to celebrate the New Year under the arch, “due to the risk of stampedes.” At 10, everybody must go to bed, as if we were 12-year-olds in the 19th century or as if there were a curfew as in other parts of the country. What could those who decided upon it and those who support it be thinking? Go to www.MartinRodriguqezPellecer.com