Ebbing radicalism in Cambridge. Left behind

[Ian David]

Left behind
By ADAM REILLY
July 25, 2007 4:33:45 PM

When conservatives obsess over the People’s Republic of Cambridge, this is the kind of thing they have in mind. The place: the Women’s Center on Pleasant Street, a fragrance-free, man-free (usually) spot whose walls boast fliers for female drum circles and LGBT support groups. The event: a press conference by one Walda Barrios, a candidate for the Guatemalan vice-presidency who’s running on the ticket of URNG-MAIZ, a leftist political party with revolutionary roots.

To National Review types, it’s a scenario that oozes menace: a female Che drumming up support for her perfidious cause amid fellow radicals . . . right here in the United States. But this grim vision doesn’t quite square with Barrios’s visit to the Women’s Center this past Monday — which, simultaneously, was a major snooze fest and a compelling piece of evidence that Cambridge leftism isn’t what it used to be.

A few minutes after the designated 11 am start time, Barrios, a kind-looking woman clad in an URNG-MAIZ halter top (message in Spanish: My heart is on the left!) and clunky red jewelry, was chatting up a local Spanish-language journalist. Ten or so people milled around waiting for the main event: Barrios’s handlers, a couple reporters, some Women’s Center staffers. Rene Van Rompay, a former Catholic missionary who runs Boston’s Guatemala Solidarity Committee, approached this reporter and spoke about Barrios’s politics and the recent rise of the Latin American left. Then, after a few minutes, he segued into a wistful remembrance of the good old days. “At one time, we had an umbrella organization called CASA, with a small office in Harvard Square,” he recalled. “For a couple years, we had for Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba . . . ” No more: Van Rompay’s group still meets in Cambridge, but the other groups and the Harvard Square office are long gone.

More:
http://thephoenix.com/article_ektid44423.aspx