Crusted Blood of the Moon

Now, we wonder how our vineyard doors were locked.

How did the light fade from the roofs and trees?

Who dares tell why half are found beneath the soil,

the other half locked in iron...

On the threshing floors where one night the brave ones danced

the olive pits remain

and the crusted blood of the moon

and the epic fifteen syllables of their guns.

The Cypress remains. And the laurel. --from Romiossini   by Yiannis Ritsos

IT IS A country of few people, sprung from a harsh red earth that has nurtured pure beauty in twisted forms for eons. The Greek land is adamantine and you might expect it to be forbidding. But you are startled as you walk over stone and dry earth carpeted with pungent herb, faded green leaves and bleached purple flowers, because the land exhales the tolerance and beauty of what endures. Little rain falls, the earth is riddled with rocks that men have been heaving into meandering low walls for generations; the olive trees are strong and timeless but can't escape the battering winds and sigh and hunch towards the ground. Still there are cypress that tower slender in clans of two or three, and there is sweet honey in the hives that range the mountains. Greek people honor the simplicity of their land--they build white houses with pure geometric lines and they accept the bread and wine and olives it offers with pleasure, and respect.

The country is old and proud. You finds dignity compressed in the ancient marble of a limbless torso; you gaze at the opaque eyes of a statue and know its vision penetrates eternity, and remember tales of heroes. There is suffering etched deep in the skin of an old woman's face. Even a child's eyes seem to recall the glory and struggle of centuries past. You ache to think that people so fiercely proud and persistent are being brutally trampled underfoot. For now the heels of marching boots crush a people against the hard earth of their fathers.

* * *

NEITHER TIME NOR PLACE binds the struggle that wracks Greece, although it might seem remote and local to Americans. The conflict is actually of a very general nature: It is an instance of opposition between a will for freedom and a force of mindless suppression. On April 21, 1967, Greece was seized by a military junta. In the first hours of the morning, Brigadier General Stylianos Pattakos maneuvered tanks--Sherman and Patton M-47's, supplied to NATO countries by the United States--into the streets of Athens. The same night, Colonel John Ladas was commanding an operation called "Arrests of Dangerous Elements;" over 10,000 Athenians were awakened and transported by trucks to "reception centers" where the uncharged captives were beaten, and several killed.

The coup installed Colonel George Papadopoulos as premier of Greece only a month before the national elections scheduled for May 28. His reason for stymieing the elections echoed a familiar sort of paranoia--he was simply trying to remove the "communist threat." Oddly enough, contemporary polls predicted that the political Left would control only 10 per cent of the vote; it was the Center Union party, led by liberal former Prime Minister George Papandreou, which seemed on the verge of an easy victory. Three years later, Papadopoulos betrayed his own rationale in an interview with a British journalist, who reported that the premier "made the interesting admission that in the years before his seizure of power, democracy in Greece had not been in danger of being overthrown through the direct activities of Communism."

In April of 1967 the American State Department was one of the few organs willing to lend credence to Papadopoulos's fears, While most countries reacted to the news of impending communist revolution disdainfully, Turkey and Portugal were the only NATO nations that viewed matters from the same perspective as the U.S. The United States claimed to be interested in the security of NATO. Yet NATO is ostensibly designed to safeguard freedom and democracy, concepts that didn't jibe with the interests of a totalitarian regime. The coup violated both NATO's humanitarian principles and its strategic military commitments. The defense of its Mediterranean wing certainly wasn't bolstered in 1967, when one fourth of the Greek armed forces was purged by the Colonels.

Papadopoulos lasted six years, until last November, when the stifled anguish and outrage of the Greek people finally exploded, ending his tyranny. On November 14, several people were convicted of "resistance to authority" and "public mischief" during a memorial service held ten days earlier for George Papandreou. That night 5000 students occupied the Polytechnic School in Athens. The next day by 6 p.m. about 40,000 demonstrators battled armed police with fists and planks torn from nearby construction sites.

IT'S EASY ENOUGH to read all this--the words are startling, yet they're only black marks on paper; they won't wound you or make you cry out in pain. These events in Greece seem remote to us, who know them from the news, but some people know them from the streets. A friend wrote me a letter, and he tells the story better than dates or numbers. His name is Petros:

It's two o'clock in the morning and I can't sleep. My mind is full of thoughts that puzzle me and drive me crazy. What happened here in Greece last November really shocked me. All those years I participated to all the manifestations down town. I saw policemen running after us and hitting us violently. But that was not so tragic. After all I knew that we lived under a junta and that does not mean peace and easy life. I knew we were not free. But I didn't really feel it.

In the Polytechnic school I felt great and strong in a way. I had some responsibilities and I was running around shouting and encouraging my compatriots. I saw people, thousands of people in the streets shouting with us, bringing us food, throwing cigarettes, candy, chocolates and whatever we asked in the yard. I was proud of those people, proud of myself. I knew I was fighting for a certain goal. I knew that I might suffer if I was arrested, but that was all. I was not aware of the danger we were all in. Suddenly the scenery changed. Friday night. A few hundred people left outside after the armed cars invaded the area. We heard shooting. It was about nine or ten....And then I realized that we were not risking only a little pain from a club. We were risking our lives. Tear bombs filled the area, policemen were shooting at the few hundred people that were left in front of the Polytechnic School. What we heard was the continuous shooting the tear bombs falling, us shouting for freedom and bleeding or dying people shouting from pain and despair. That scene really blinded my mind and I didn't care about my life anymore. I was running around distributing vaseline (which helped against the tear gas), explaining to everyone I saw what he had to do to avoid gas, etc. From nine o'clock we knew that the soldiers would break in. We knew that if we managed to keep them away until the morning it would be very difficult for them to act. Five minutes seemed to us an hour as we heard our radio shouting for help and doctors until, at three thirty in the morning a tank broke in through iron and flesh. We went out, as many of us as were able to. Policemen and soldiers everywhere with machine guns in hand running after us, hitting, crippling unarmed children. Most of us found shelter in the surrounding buildings either as guests of the people living there or hiding under the stairs.

Well I came through all that safe, without loosing courage, not for a second. I did not lose courage because I had forbidden myself to think. I only asked him to fight. But when all that was over, when I had time to think, then that shock I told you about came. I could not stand what the Junta said (the army took out the few Communists without a single drop of blood.--The Communists are guilty of $30,000,000 damage in the Polytechnic!). It was the first time in my life I witnessed such a raw violence between people. Since I was born I'm hearing and reading about wars, about violence. But it was all in my unexperienced imagination, I never had the opportunity to realize what all that meant.

Now I think, 'Is that true? Is that not a bad dream? Is it possible that man has reached to such a point where in a "civilized" country people have to get killed in order to require their stolen freedom?'...

PETROS ESCAPED unhurt, but he has to live with the torment of others gnawing at him. At least 400 people died in Athens, Patras, Salonika; the regime admits to arresting 866 people, 475 of whom were listed as workers. Many of these people are being held in more than 250 detention and torture facilities that scatter the countryside for the first time since Nazi German occupation. Every little town and village has one; there are well known camps on the islands of Laros and Yiaros; six such facilities are tucked into the streets of Athens.

The new array of officers holding top government positions in Greece--Ioannides, Androutsopoulos, Gizikis--were all trained in the U.S. Tom Pappas of Boston, a Greek-American businessman, was instrumental in assuring Androutsopoulos his position as the new premier. Pappas is the largest single investor in Greek enterprise, and controls a bloc of industry with a clout like ITT's in the States. During an interview with the Greek newspaper Apogevmatini in 1968, he was asked whether it was true that he belonged to the CIA. His blunt reply reads, "Of course it is. And I am very proud of it."

More than one American entrepreneur has befriended the Greek military regime, and industrialists reap large profits at the expense of Greek laborers. Multi-national corporations, including Exxon, Coca-Cola (both represented by Pappas), Dow Chemical and Alcoa, are exempt from a variety of taxes and duties. This is specified in the Greek constitution. Trade unions have been scrapped or stripped of power by the government, in order to maintain the low wages that attract foreign monopolists. Such economic tactics have driven about 250,000 workers to seek jobs in West Germany.

Not only have Americans fomented economic repression in Greece, but they have imported repressive instruments of a more disturbing nature as well. Reports leaked from political prisoners claim that bicycles, patrol wagons, iron wreaths used to squeeze skulls, wire whips, and blankets at the camps are marked "made in USA" or "U.S."

There is a saying in Greece about the current situation: "In front the precipice, behind the torrential current." Repression grips the nation and will be hard to shake off. Yet the people have risen in anger once, and they won't forget their tragedy. My friend writes: "Do we that hate violence have to use violence in order not to be violated?... It seems we are going to wait for ages. That's our problem. To fight or not to fight? TO FIGHT!"