66.
   Boris ushered us in and opened a bottle of wine. He sat us down under yet another portrait of Pablo Neruda. Claudia contemplated a glass of wine in her hand. “Boris, Oliver is on a journey of illumination. He has heard a great deal of our sad story but now he needs a rest.”

   Boris looked into my eyes with sad resignation. “I’m afraid there is no time for you to rest, Oliver. There is no time for any of us to rest. The horror that tortured our continent is stronger and more insidious than ever. What was once a vicious, covert army has grown into a voracious institution that picks at the bones of the poor and the helpless. Its tentacles reach across the world wrenching countries from their citizens and enslaving them. It is taking your country away from you, Oliver and it is enslaving your people.”
   Boris stood up and pointed to the portrait above him. “Claudia has told you about the great Chilean poet, I have no doubt, a soldier in the blood bath of South America. In 1954 another soldier tried to throw off Corporate America’s colonial yoke in Guatemala. 90% of the land was owned by a few families and the United Fruit Company. Jacobo Arbenz, the democratically elected president enacted his own Homestead Act, opening only unused land to the peasants and compensating its owners according to the land’s worth. For this, the CIA overthrew him. For the next thirty years, CIA installed dictators murdered 100,000 Guatemalans. The ferocity of these murderous rampages inspired a new concept of permanent dominance.”
   Oh God, more of the same, I thought, swallowing my glass of wine and pouring another.