It's My TV….It's My Peanut Butter

Kristy: Yeah. Though, and I’m not positive why I think this, I think coffee would probably be a quiet affair. He always sort of struck me as the strong silent one out of the Mexican Revolutionary generation. Maybe it’s all those images of him sitting soberly next to a laughing Pancho Villa. He also seems to be one of the revolutionary leaders least tainted by corruption–possibly because he died so early. So I’d like to have coffee with him just to see if my mythologized version is remotely close to the actual thing. I’d also like to ask him a few questions: what does he think of the end result of the Revolution? Is he satisfied with the reforms they instituted or does he think they failed? How does he feel about the problems currently facing Mexico?

Cammy: I’m not entirely sure yet…on the one hand, it’s coffee with a revolutionary, and, well, that in and of itself is interesting.  On the other hand, it’s coffee with a revolutionary, and that’s also kind of intimidating (and I’m not totally convinced it would be a quiet affair myself).  Like Kristy, I really want to hear what he’d have to say about Mexico’s current situation (I’m half expecting that we’d hear something to the tune of, “Well, no duh they have problems.  They STILL haven’t ever completely enacted my plan for land reforms!”).  I might have a better idea of what else to quiz him on once I watch one of the movies about him (procured mostly because it’s a chance to watch a costume drama in Spanish and partly because it has someone from the telenovela I’ve been watching), although I guess that alone begs the question of how he feels being mythologized….

Would we drink coffee with Simon Bolivar?

Kristy:  Sure.  I have a weakness for revolutionaries.  And as revolutionaries go, Simon was kind of an overachiever.  Most freedom fighters are contented with liberating one country, but no, this man had to liberate the greater part of a continent.  On the other hand, he proved largely ineffective at governing.  Perhaps meeting him face to face would shed some light on that?  I’d be interested to hear what he thinks of later political developments in Latin America and maybe even elsewhere.  Mostly I’d just like to meet him to put a fleshed out face with the name.  You can’t study Latin America without coming across the name again and again, and I’d like to know what the real man was like.  Also… you know… they say he was skilled at liberating countries from the Spanish and women from their corsets.

Cammy:  Well, given that Kristy and I once conjured up a mythical Trek franchise focused on the Federation Starship Bolivar (the top Starfleet Academy grads wind up on the Enterprise.  Where do the slackers at the bottom go?  The Bolivar.  What we lack in accomplishment, we make up for in wacky hijinks, Foosball excellence and managing to accidentally save the Universe), I feel I ought to at least meet the man who originated the name. Beyond that, I know he admired my boy Thomas Jefferson, but clearly he didn’t subscribe slavishly to the TJ view of the world, otherwise I don’t think he would have gone in for that whole life-long presidency thing in Bolivia.  He also apparently didn’t think the political environment in South America would sustain a US style democracy, which is fodder for some serious debate and conversation right there (during which I think Kristy would be more adept than I).  But the real reason I want to meet him?  To check and see if he’s anything like he appears in this Hark! A Vagrant comic strip*.

*If you are not reading Hark!  A Vagrant by Kate Beaton, you are missing out big time.  Speaking of people we ought to have coffee with….