The Great Repetition (Blog Post #10)

The people who had fallen victim to the Great Depression were naïve and led to believe they could trust the banks with their money and that their government was protecting them. As a result, the market crashed, the banks failed, the people had everything taken from them, and government couldn’t do a single thing to help. Now unemployed and without money, they were left to survive on their own.

The damages of the Great Depression taught us, as a country, many valuable lessons. Unfortunately, the people today have grown naïve and dependent on their governments’ protection. Before we repeat the same mistake, the Occupy movement has organized themselves to proclaim their message, and remind the people that we cannot, and will not fall victim to the corrupt banks and our bought government.

In the glass house of the mural lie hundreds of people, probably unemployed or homeless, sleeping and being overseen by a policeman. This image can easily resemble the protestors, the 99%, that occupy cities and are being overseen, and at times disassembled by police. The people in the subways represent the lower and middle class workers who are the foundation of this country and economy, and are still victims of modern day slavery. In the bank are a few wealthy people, who can be translated as the 1% of today, that have heavy influence on the banks, the government, and the rest of the country.

When I look at “Frozen Assets” by Diego Rivera, I cannot help but to feel as if it was a warning for the people of present day. “Do not repeat this history,” he’s exclaiming to us. As much as it is a depiction of the darker times during the Great Depression, it ironically and clearly holds the same truth for us today during the Great Recession.

"Patria o Muerte" (Blog Post #9)

Let’s imagine a world where the homeless, the starving, and the uneducated do not live in our societies because these misfortunes do not exist. This “perfect” world is what Ernesto “Che” Guevara dedicated his life to.  He sacrificed more than what any average man was willing to, in order to give complete strangers their equal rights; rights that we normally take for granted. Regardless of all the enemies he encountered, he was a man who had a vision and acted on it. He was my superhero. He was Che.

                I first learned about Che Guevara when I asked my father who the man on all these bumper stickers and t-shirts was. I was immediately drawn to him by the way my father would describe him in his common exaggerative fashion. He made it clear that he was an incredible soldier but an even more incredible human being. He told me that Che suffered from severe asthma but still managed to fight wars in several countries and trained thousands of troops. He exercised his medical expertise on people that could never afford it or who suffered from medical conditions that no doctors would even bother to treat. After hearing my father’s anecdotes, I started doing my own research and I began to read more than I ever had before.

Knowing that an ordinary man can accomplish extraordinary achievements was what attracted me to Che the most. I became so inspired by Che that I wanted to become a doctor, I wanted to discover the world and fight for those who needed to be defended. Although today I am merely an average student with enormous ambitions, I still plan on impacting the world as Che did. I do not support Communism, but I do believe that everyone in this world deserves equal treatment. Che Guevara’s dream still lives on today. It lives through his idolizers, like me and many others around the world whom he inspired. In life he was the flamed torch that led a revolution, and in death he is the spark that will ignite the flame of future leaders who will change the world.