Sunday 10pm Apr 30 1972 Santiago Just got in and intended to read some of Capital for a class tomorrow but had a few beers on an empty stomach and can’t quite make sense out of the damn book Thanks in advance for the newspapers No I hadn’t heard anything of the kind about the Republican Convention Guess things must be ruff if they think they’ll prefer black folks to white college students Think all the thin air flying back and forth between Peking and Moscow has affected Kissinger’s head … Tomorrow is May day – Imagine To be in a country where May 1st is one of the biggest holidays Huge worker’s marches planned… one of the headlines in a paper today said “Remember the Chicago Anarchists ” Haymarket Chile’s really screwed up in a lot of ways though Maybe the few paragraphs I wrote the parents helped a little If you had read some Marx or Lenin or Gramsi or some of those other people most of those in the U S movement have never even heard about it would be a lot easier to write about Being down here is the best thing that could have happened to me as far as my political formation I’m with revolutionaries from all over the continent and learning theory and practice in a way that is probably not available anywhere in the States For instance even though in the U S I knew damn well that Marxist theory was more than reading Mao – I didn’t read it And even if I had read it I would have known few people who really knew how to practice it … Even with the little I’ve learned the U S movement is beginning to look very different I read the movement papers with some sort of criteria now and am beginning to see some of the mistakes being made In retrospect I didn’t know as much about the U S as I thought I did At first when people asked me about the panthers or the weathermen or Angela Davis I was proud to have a chance to give my rap But now I’m shutting up a bit reading like crazy and trying to find out what’s really happening I had my head full of facts and some good ideas about imperialism and what the pigs were up to but what were we up to My head was full of crazy slogans contradictory tactics vague feelings and lots of desire to SMASH THE STATE I knew the working class was important and so were students but how do they really fit together In one of my classes I started to read what Lenin wrote before the Russian revolution how he analyzed the situation took each class apart to see what made it tick saw where it came from where it was going – how it was always changing And because he made a good analysis correct analysis – he knew what to do … That’s it for now – still got to do some studyin’ LOVE POWER May the Spirit of Vietnam be with you Frank