When I was young I had a friend named Lenin. This was his first name;
his full name was Lenin Antonio Restrepo
Barca.
Lenin's parents were fervent communists. They spent their time in party
meetings, sticking pamphlets on neighborhood walls with slogans about the
proletarian revolution, attacking imperialism, and praising the achievements of
socialism (such as "this month Soviet production of truck axles rose 22%
").
As we all know, children tend to
follow their parents’ footsteps regarding diet, religion and politics. This means my friend Lenin had an ordinary
diet, was atheist and had been a good communist since the moment he could walk.
I’m a pretty big guy. But I started
school at four because my grandfather had taught me to read and write that summer. Lenin
was older, but he was short and skinny. I was the
youngest and Lenin was the shortest. This made us the class midgets. And because we looked different to the others
(and looking more or less the same is very important in first grade), we
suffered the other boys’ abuses together and became close friends.
Another thing that united us was my
tendency to get into books as if I were a termite, and Lenin’s character,
because he liked to hear me describe everything I read, especially the stories of
the Tiger of Malaysia fighting against British imperialism and how to prepare
explosive mixtures using household materials.
But Lenin also listened and learned
from his parents. This gave him big ideas that he tried to explain would improve
society. For example, the school grades idea:
Lenin came up with the suggestion
that the whole class’ grades should be averaged and everyone would end up with
the group average. This, according to him, would give the best a strong
incentive to help the worst students in the class.
I had good grades. I was either 1st or 2nd in the class, always competing with a girl named Alina, a blonde I really
disliked when we were in first grade but had become my imaginary girlfriend by the time I was in sixth grade. So when Lenin presented
the idea it didn’t go over very well with me. I got very worried and thought that, if Lenin could
convince the teacher to go along with this plan, I would have to move and
change schools. Being forced to change schools and
not having Alina to compete with really bugged me. But I wanted to be an
engineer and I thought the class average wasn’t going to get me into a good undergraduate
nuclear engineering program. Thank goodness the teacher was not revolutionary. She laughed when Lenin suggested it, and that
was it.
Lenin and I continued hanging out
together for a long time. And as I grew up I saw him develop into a devoted communist.
When we were in high school he spent all the time talking about the destruction of society, which he said was necessary
to build the socialist world. This apparently
included having a revolution to put his father in charge of the police, so he could lead
a firing squad and shoot the rich.
Eventually we graduated from high
school. Lenin was an expert at throwing stones, making pamphlets and organizing
fun student demonstrations demanding an end to war and imperialism. Lenin was also an expert in the
number of Soviet space launches, and enjoyed counting the medals obtained by the
Soviet Union in the Olympics, because he believed that if they had more medals this
meant Soviets lived well and were really tough.
I happen to think the
achievements of athletes from other countries are important only if they lose
against our guys, or if they do something amazing. Like the time a woman ran the marathon, and entered
the stadium so dehydrated she was tottering, but kept making step after step
while the people cheered and wept with emotion.
Meanwhile I kept dreaming of
building nuclear reactors, thinking I would build a car with an atomic engine
that would go at super speed and could take off and fly up when traffic was
heavy (this idea came from reading Popular Mechanics).
So when we graduated from High School
he went to study political science at
the junior college on the outskirts of
town, and I went head to study engineering, which wouldn't let us hang around together much.
But occasionally we did go out
together, and he kept talking about his ideas, which he explained with passion.
One night we were standing outside a bar, completely broke and watching people go
in and come out. Lenin told me that if
you walked into a bar you should have the right to drive back home without having
to worry about the cops, so it was better to install a blue light on car roofs.
This blue light would be turned on when the driver was drunk so people could be
warned and get out of the way. This didn't seem like a good idea to me, but
Lenin stubbornly insisted that I had rejected it because I had a capitalist
mind, and I couldn’t accept revolutionary changes.
I kept apart Lenin’s personality as
my friend, and his ridiculous communist ideas. But eventually I began to get
tired of the whole thing. This reached a peak when he mentioned he was
going to start distributing pamphlets asking for gasoline price controls. At that time gasoline prices were very high on
account of Iran. Their government had fallen in the hands of an Ayatollah
Khomeini, and somehow he had managed to cut oil production. On top of that he caused a huge mess when he ordered an
invasion of the U.S. Embassy in Teheran. This was shown in Ben Afleck’s movie “Argo” (I
have to mention that Affleck bugs me as an actor ever since he made the movie
with Matt Damon about God being an old man with amnesia, but he is a darned good
director).
To me, gasoline price controls
sounded like a really dumb idea. It was evident that gasoline price controls would eventually cause a gasoline shortage. But to my surprise many people agreed with Lenin,
and began to demonstrate in front of the gas station asking the government to intervene
and keep prices low “for the people"
The fools didn’t realize those who spend
more on fuel are the rich because they drive Cadillacs and Mercedes Benz and jumbos
with rocket tails. I had to read a lot when I was in college, but the
public bus was so full all the time I had
to stand and read as best I could, and people complained when I stuck a book in their faces. From
my point of view it was better to raise the price so people would drive less, and
then use the tax to give us better public transport with more frequent service.
So this was how Lenin and I started
to come apart. Eventually he got into a group of people who called themselves internationalists
and left the country. The last I heard, he is in southeastern Venezuela preaching
communism to the Pemon Indians. I don’t think he will do well, because the
Pemon Indians have their own ideas about communism. What they seem to want most is to have a
gold mine, to earn some money and send their children to school to be doctors, or
engineers, so they can leave the jungle and build a house with real furniture
and everything.
The Pemon, you see, have been communists for a long time, and now they want to move forward a bit, to study hard, and become good capitalists. They are like the Chinese, and other
peoples who have been communist. They tend to dream of being capitalists and
getting rich.
