The Narco News Bulletin

Five Years Old, and We Want to Keep Going

A Letter from Luis Gómez as Narco News' Birthday Approaches

By Luis A. Gómez
Acting Publisher

April 6, 2005
This report appears on the internet at http://www.narconews.com/Issue36/article1250.html

Dear readers, colleagues, brothers and sisters:

A poet said long ago that April is the cruelest month. Nevertheless, in the midst of the nothingness of the world we must live in, Al Giordano chose this month five years ago to launch The Narco News Bulletin into the four winds... in the midst of cruelty and rage, our dear comandante decided that the time had come to sow something new. And he began to drop seeds loaded with dynamite, with the devoted patience of a Vietnamese guerrilla and the firm tenderness of a Zapatista.

And so pages with black petals and letters of red, white, and yellow began to bloom. Giordano, along with just a laptop and his strength, created us all taking flesh and blood from his fingertips. The sharp edge of the petals of each rose that Al collected from this earth, signed by a few brave authentic journalists, began breaking down, little by little, that brick and barbed-wire fence that the big commercial media put up around the badly-named "war on drugs."

And journalist Alberto Giordano was sued, and he bore his cross down the entire road, where finally the hands appeared that helped him to hold it, the voices that lifted up his work. Not even the richest banker in Mexico, not death, not the dogs barking at his feet could hold him back... because at some point along the way he was no longer alone, and friends and comrades appeared in the comandante's land to help with the first harvest...

Five years, kind readers, five tremendous and loving years in which I have seen the bread and the fish multiply in the hands of the people. Five years in which we have harvested joy here, for you, from Brazil, from Venezuela, from Ecuador, from Mexico, and from Bolivia... five years of alarms, of cries and courage, the courage of entire peoples who fight today for true democracy, against impositions from above, against the imbeciles in Washington and their lackeys.

Here among the Narco News staff, where every step forward is deeply felt as a triumph for all, we thank all of you for having walked with us for all this time. We got here together, and together we press on, as far as you want to go. Congratulations to all of you!

In all this time, we have published thousands of articles, we have had three sessions of the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism, and the more than one hundred honest journalists across our América are the fruit of those sessions. And we want more, more of all of this, because this war they have waged against the ordinary working people of Latin America is just getting started. We aren't going to leave the responsibility for telling the world about it in the hands of the professional simulators, because they always get the story wrong, and because we take as our duty to tell that story from within, without fear.

This anniversary month we have several nice surprises for all within our pages, and we hope, as always, that you continue to be the true protagonists of this new history that breaks with the march of time, which builds with blows of imagination a new house for this young humanity that we are...

Or do you no longer want us among you? Is there no one out there that wants to hear of the great spirit of the Venezuelan people as they build another world? Are there still people in our América interested in the long struggle of the Aymara people to build their own future, or of the coca growers for the dignity and legalization of the coca leaf in Bolivia? Do you want to go on hearing the good news from Brazil, of the honest people who struggle for a more just drug policy in that country? Do you want to keep reading? Those in favor please raise their hands... remember that you are the ones eho command, that we are the messenger that doesn't want to die.

Today more than ever we are sending out this invitation to the masses of people who read Narco News every month. Because we need you to define our own path, to keep on walking... because once it again it is time to open your hearts. Without your contributions and your thoughts we are nothing, so please, consider making a donation, to keep supporting our cause. Did I forget to say that we are sure this cause belongs to everyone?

Five years can't just end with nothing, and this authentic newspaper that lives among the Andes is sure that you know this. The force begun by our beloved comandante Al Giordano can't just hang in the air, without your support. That's why I ask that you stay with us, making a donation through the Fund for Authentic Journalism, directed by Lord Andrew Grice (ah, such a fine buccaneer always deserves applause):

http://www.authenticjournalism.org

Or, if you prefer, send your check or money order to:

The Fund for Authentic Journalism
P.O. Box 71051
Madison Heights, MI 48071 USA

We therefore declare this anniversary assembly open, in which we thank you for the privilege of having allowed us to create and to believe in the people of our hemisphere. We now turn the floor over to you, confident in your solidarity, in your strength. La lucha sigue - the struggle continues.

From somewhere in a country called América,

Luis A. Gómez
Acting Publisher
The Narco News Bulletin