Esmeralda Should be Greeted With Constructive Protest

From 6/23/76  Inquisitor   Bayshore Independent

In 1976 a good part of the bicentennial action was at the Jersey shore.  This episode unfolded in Keyport, home of the Independent and one of the places marked for celebration.  A Chilean training vessel The Esmeralda was scheduled for a stop in Keyport, with a reception to follow.  Here’s Lee’s take on how it should have been handled.

Ever since poor President Allende committed suicide by machine-gunning himself in the back, the Republic of Chile has been a pesthole of tyranny.

The latest reminder of the tyranny was a column by Jack Anderson which labelled the training vessel Esmeralda as a “torture ship”.  The column was especially upsetting in Keyport, where a little party for the ship’s crew had been planned as part of Operation Sail.

The Keyport Yacht Club is going ahead with its obligation as a host.  Mayor William Ralph and the Borough Council are boycotting the crew’s reception.  And former Democratic municipal chairman William Friedrich is organizing a campaign to keep the Esmeralda out of Keyport harbor.

What is really needed is a constructive protest, but it won’t be easy to come up with one.  It never is.

On one hand there is a lot of apathy to be overcome.  Ever since the Watergate story first broke, people have been hearing enough bad news to make the cold war era look like a pastoral interlude.  They don’t want to hear any more.

On the other hand, people sometimes get so worked up over injustices that they lose their ability to think rationally.  That was the theme of the late 1960s–if you didn’t like the war in Vietnam, you started throwing rocks and breaking store windows in Backwoods, Idaho (if that was where you happened to live).

The apathy is certainly understandable.  Who wants to be reminded incessantly of horrors and injustices he can’t do anything about?  The deluge of embarrassing disclosures about Nixon, the CIA, the FBI, Vietnam and now Congress have made many Americans so familiar with sleazy politics and high-handed abuses of power that they accept corruption as the normal state of affairs.

One can sympathize with the Yacht Club’s position.  The luck of the draw gave them Chile instead of a “nice” country like the Netherlands or Norway, and they made the arrangements well before Anderson’s column was published.  Now the Esmeralda is turning into an albatross around the club’s neck.

The club doesn’t want to get political, but that’s wishful thinking.  Like it or not, they’re involved in a political issue and they can’t bury their heads in the sand.

All they wanted was a harmless and enjoyable evening of international good will, as one group of sailors to another–but now they can’t have it.

Friedrich’s position also has its merits.

Who can really disagree with him?  The military dictatorship of Chile is a two-bit political sham; torture is not only as morally wrong as anything can be, but backward and contemptible. to boot; and the participation of a torture ship in an event linked to the Bicentennial of a country that supposedly stands for human rights and dignity is not only inappropriate, but hypocritical.

However, if Keyport were to ban the Esmeralda from its waters, Friedrich would lose the chance to make his point in a more powerful and constructive manner.

The mayor and council are also missing the boat.  Boycotting the reception for the Esmeralda’s crew is the easy way out.  It will make Friedrich and his backer happy without doing anything to offend people who think the ship’s dubious reputation should be ignored.

One should hate the sin and not the sinner.  If we disapprove of what the Chileans do, fine; but if we treat them with open hostility and disrespect, why should the listen to us?

Keyport should throw the party, the mayor and council should attend, and Friedrich and his supporters should also be present to lodge, the protest.

Refusing to host the Chilean sailors won’t prevent their government from treating its citizens like voodoo dolls.  But carrying out the reception could have positive effects.  Extremely small effects, to be sure; maybe no effect at all; but it’s better than nothing.

Let the Chilean sailors–some of whom will be young naval cadets who probably haven’t tortured anybody yet–see what the American people  think of a government that rules by fear and brutality.  Let them see Friedrich’s petition; let them see picket signs; let them talk to Americans.  It may be the only chance they’ll get to be exposed to another viewpoint.

If Mayor Ralph feels strongly against the Chilean dictatorship’s policies, let him go to the reception and say so.  He won’t have to give a fire-and-brimstone speech and make the cadets feel two inches tall, and he doesn’t have to tell them to go back home and start a revolution.  But it may be a very instructive experience for the young sailors to see a local official freely speaking his mind without everything going to pieces.  They may not have thought such a thing was possible.

It will be uncomfortable for the Chileans to see American citizens openly criticizing their government, but it may do them good.  Considering the suppression of information common to most dictatorships, they may learn a lot if someone shows them Anderson’s column.

The Yacht Club’s role should be exactly as its members conceive it to be, that of the friendly host.  It would be unfair to take out our disgust for Chile’s injustices on 30 cadets, and we must not give them the impression that we are doing this.

The visit of the Esmeralda is a political issue, and nobody ever successfully handled a political issue by turning his back on it and hoping it would go away.  If Keyport presents its protest in a constructive way, at least 30 young Chileans and perhaps some of the older sailors, may learn some important lessons about the right of free speech.

And that’s more than they could learn in Chile.