The radical-right blog V-DARE finally responded to my attempts at clarifying their smears and misrepresentation of my novel, America Libre. Not surprisingly, it was with a fresh set of fabrications. Responding for the blog was James Fulford. (The author of the original article distorting my book, Brenda Walker, is inexplicably silent on the matter.)
Here is Mr. Fulford’s justification for characterizing America Libre as a “Marxican Insurgency Imagined":
“Actually most of the revolutionaries in the book are Mexican, and Mexican political culture still contains a large dose of Marxism. (They celebrates [sic] the Anniversary Of The Nationalization of The Petroleum Industry as a public holiday.) He actually includes a blonde Guatemalan girl as [sic] leading revolutionary, but all that means is you get a bankable actress to play her in the movie.”
Now get this logic: Mexico celebrates the nationalization of the petroleum industry, ergo, Mexico has a Marxist political culture. Wow. I bet that comes as news to Mexico’s new president Felipe Calderon, a member of the right-of-center PAN party whose conservative ideals were praised by none other than George W. Bush after Calderon’s election last December.
But the fabrications don’t stop there. Mr. Fulford, says the book includes “a blonde Guatemalan girl.” Insults to women aside, (the “girl” is in her thirties), the character is actually from Uruguay. I realize that in Mr. Fulford’s world view, all Latin American countries are pretty much the same. But just for the record, Mr. Fulford, Guatemala and Uruguay are 3,800 miles apart and on two different continents.
Oh, yes, and Mr. Fulford gloatingly points out that I misspelled “nativist” in my article. Well, maybe Mr. Fulford should step out of that particular glass house. V-DARE is replete with grammatical errors—including two in the quote above alone. A spelling error is easy enough to change. But you cannot as easily change the truth, Mr. Fulford—although V-DARE seems to make a habit out of trying.
I must concede this, however: V-DARE did spell my name right this time.Raul Ramos y Sanchez
