I’m just a poor boy, from a poor family…
29 April 2009 ·
The Bolivian weirdness puts to shame anything that’s ever happened in Mexico. The closest parallel I can think of was William Walker’s ill-fated Republic of Sonora (an attempt by white supremacist invaders to create a breakwaway republic — which sounds like the Bolivian mess ) in 1853. Walker didn’t get bogged down in ideological fine points — it was openly white supremacist and all, but there was no attempt to dress it up as anything other than a grab for resources and land. It did have the novel feature of being self-financed: like so many other wannabe Mexican west coast realtors today, Walker sold properties he didn’t own, and hadn’t built on … but promised he would… as soon as the details were finalized).
The Republic of Sonora never managed to even include Sonora (they were laughed out of Sonora and Sinaloa), rechristened at some point “Republic of Lower Califonia” and reduced from a mercenary force to a couple of clueless gringos by the Mexican army.
Walker was only 29 when he invaded Sonora, and most of his mercenaries were a few years younger, but no one every referred to him as an “impressionable youth.” The United States Consul in La Paz, Baja California sprung Walker and his starving compatriots in 1853 by convincing the Mexican authorities they were dealing with a bunch of idiots, conmen, intriguers and filibustros, who would be dealt with severely in their own country (they weren’t — after eight minutes of deliberation, Walker was found not guilty of attacking a foreign country, and went on to attack other countries, until the Hondurans finally cut the crap and shot Walker and his band in 1860).
The Hungarian Ambassador in La Paz (Bolivia), however, is trying to make the unconvincing case that Elöd Tóasó, like Walker in 1853, a mere lade of 29, is only a “young adventurer…who made mistakes” and not even promising that his country will deal with it’s errant son. Tóasó, unlike his Irish cohort, 25 year old Michael Dwyer, screwed up when it comes to terrorist mercenaries, managing to be taken alive.
The Irish have been falling all over themselves to build sympathy for Dwyer, whose background as a “security guard” for a Shell Oil facility, and whose company looks to have recruited Dwyer and other Irish to work for the Bolivian fascist separatist organization, isn’t the most absurd part of this whole mess.
Here in Mexico, we’ve also had mercenaries in the pay of oil companies, and plots involving shadowy Masonic organizations… and fascist organizations, so that’s not what makes the Bolivian separatist movement so intriguing. Dwyer, and the other “adventurous youths” in this crusade for an Amazonian Reich were under the leadership of what has to be the U.S. wacko right wing’s greatest nightmare… or something dreamed up by satirist “General J.C. Christian” — a gay Islamocommiefascist terrorist. That, at least, is new.
Tóasó (L), trying to impress and Dwyer (R) impressed
Categories: Americas (outside U.S. and Mexico) · Baja Califonia Sur · Baja California · Bolivia · Evil-doers · Mercenaries · Mexican History 1824-1910 · Provincia · Sinaloa · Sonora · Terrorism
