Having watched "The Battle of Algiers"...

... the movie directed by Gillo Pontecorvo (music by the great Enio Moricone), in 1966, amongst others, reminded me of Otto Rene Castillo - a Guatemalan revolutionary, guerilla fighter and poet. Here's one of his poems, "Satisfaction":

The most beautiful thing

for those who have fought a whole life

is to come to the end and say;

we believed in people and life,

and life and the people

never let us down.

Only in this way do men become men,

women become women,

fighting day and night

for people and for life.

And when these lives come to an end

the people open their deepest rivers

and they enter those waters forever.

And so they become, distant fires, living,

creating the heart of example

The most beautiful thing

for those who have fought a whole life

is to come to the end and say;

we believed in people and life,

and life and the people

never let us down.

Castillo, following the 1954 CIA-sponsored coup that overthrew the democratic Guatemalan Arbenz government, went into exile in El Salvador. He returned to Guatemala in 1964 and became active in the Workers Party, founded the Experimental Theater of the Capital City Municipality, and wrote and published numerous poems. That same year he was arrested but managed to escape, going into exile once again, this time in Europe. Later that year he went back to Guatemala secretly and joined one of the armed guerilla movements operating in the Zacapa mountains. In 1967, Castillo and other revolutionary fighters were captured; he, along with his comrades and some locals, were brutally tortured and then burned alive...

The film and the poem historically happening approximately at the same time, in the 1960s, are a soul searching to all who oppose and fight colonialism, oppression, repression and subjugation... and believe in the right of self determination and freedom of peoples...

As an endnote, here's an article on Algeria, the independence and what has followed, by Robert Fisk.

read "The tragedy of Algeria's 'disappeared'" here:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/the-tragedy-of-algerias-disappeared-2164859.html

And following the protests in Tunisia, only a few days ago, a very interesting article on EU's role in North Europe, from "Le Soir", Brussels, printed in "Presseurop":

http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/455961-tragedy-making

(Jan. 12, 2011)

Egypt is facing the "Tunisia spillover" effect... I wish the post-Mubarak transition goes smoothly and the people get to elect who they really want, without any foreign (read US-EU-Israeli) intervention!