An Open Letter From Don Juan de Marco

Reductio ad Absurdum has learned that Don Juan de Marco has been on the US State Department payroll for the last thirty years, and was stationed in Venezuela approximately two years ago. After repeated complaints of sexual harassment from covert CIA agents in Caracas, his classified assignment was terminated.  Requests for comment from the State Department were not immediately returned.  It is further rumored that Don Juan attended the lectures of  neoliberal economist Milton Friedman while in Chile during the Pinochet years.

To the Editor: 

I am writing this plea for assistance, not on behalf of an aging burlador like myself, but in the name of the people of Latin America. As an international man of romance, I have consummated as many relationships as there are countries in a world traveled ten times over. Throughout history, my hands have been as invisible as the ones of which Adam Smith dreamt.

Some say I am promiscuous. But if a lover loses interest in his companion or finds another more lucrative, he of course flees. From this I have learned that capital, like passion, profits from mobility. I thus see myself as a man of both free love and free trade. Just as the lover that pursues greener pastures leaves behind a broken heart, capital flight may leave behind a broken economy.  Nonetheless, I find swapping lovers as agreeable as debt to equity swaps.  Lovemaking, like money-making, is a private affair, and government has no business interfering in it.

Recently, the freedom of Latin America finds itself threatened by the nationalization of resources instigated by the governments of Morales and Chavez. In response, I have founded Instituto por Amor. The purpose of this establishment is to encourage the study of the link between free love, free markets and free peoples. I am thus dumfounded as to why the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID have not provided me with any grants.

The United States has had a long history of promoting the democratic values and virtues of capitalism by sponsoring a variety of associations across the continent, like Coordinadora Democratica and Via Civica.  In Venezuela alone, the NED has been so supportive of other groups, such as the Iniciativa para la construccion de confianza, Development Alternatives Incorporated and the National Democratic Institute.

Therefore, I write seeking your donations for what is currently my institute’s small endowment. By sponsoring the institute, you can ensure that a new generation will learn to capitulate to the seduction of structural adjustment programs. In the spirit of nature itself, please give to the Instituto por Amor.

El burlador de Seville,
Don Juan