My Personal History Collides with Egypt

When Mubarak's supporters attacked Egyptian protesters with sticks and knives, I felt an unwelcome kinship. Most of the pro-government demonstrators are probably goons from the security services; my mother's family was high up in similar institutions in Venezuela when Juan Vicente Gomez was military dictator (1908 to 1935). When Gomez died in 1935 (of natural causes), my Great Uncle Velasco, Governor of Caracas, delayed news of Gomez's death by 24 hours. He needed time to load a gunboat with all his valuables, so he could flee to Costa Rica.
My grandfather was not so foresighted. When he was Gomez's governor in Estado Falcon, he invested in land; when Gomez died, he lost it all.

Velasco was known for a particular form of torture, so it's likely that his appointees' main job was regime security. My mother's father, and almost all his brothers, worked for Velasco. My uncles were probably counterparts to the Cairenes deploying the police goons in mufti, today--not the men wielding sticks and knives, or riding horses and camels into Tahrir Square, but the ones who sent them.

My sympathies go out to the anti-government protesters, who defended themselves with stones.

Deploying the pro-government goons would be something Gomez might have done, but Gomez was always careful to tightly control his military. It was not a conscript army. In Egypt it is, dividing the army into elite officers and civilian soldiers.

The chaos and violence precipitated by Mubarak's followers is probably a tactic for bringing the army over to the President's side. The officers revere order, and order is now being visibly disrupted--by the President's men.

There have been extraordinary stories in both Tunisia and Cairo of the demonstrators/protesters policing themselves; there were even TV scenes of young men cleaning up the trash in Tahrir Square. Other stories told of young men protecting neighborhoods from looting, and of the elaborate but self-deputized efforts of the protesters to screen newcomers, preventing them from bringing weapons into Tahrir Square.

And then on Wednesday, the army let in the pro-Mubarak demonstrators with knives, clubs, and even a few guns.

Either the army still feels constrained when faced by security forces, or it prefers a passive role: letting the protesters protest, and letting the counter-protesters into the square--until it tries to separate them with armored cars. Maybe the army sees itself as Egypt's arbitrator.

The people recruited for the pro-Mubarak demonstrations are like the people who worked for my mother's family. Now, in Venezuela, my cousins are united in their disgust for Chavez.

But it was the people who won for Chavez in Venezuela, after he was toppled in a coup. The Egyptian people can win, too; I hope they have better luck in leaders.

Their triumph will mark another important step in the decline of the American Empire.