Mom and dad had a new friend, a Texan Maoist - at least he was in those days. He was a young man in his early twenties called Hank Chase, who came to see us at the Upanga flats at the flat we had taken over from Augustino Neto the future president of Angola and his wife Maria Eugénia. Hank wore close cut drainpipe jeans with boots and an open collar red checked shirt. At that point we were studying at the American School in Dar-es-Salaam. To my shock, the next day he appeared in my geography lesson and drawled away in his Texan accent: "I'm supposed to be teaching you about geography, but I am not going to do that. Instead I am going to tell you how the United States stole Texas from Mexico." And he proceeded to tell us about the traitor Santa Anna and how the Alamo was merely the death of a few obnoxious colonial adventurists and how the treaty ceding Texas was forced out of Santa Anna at gunpoint in 1836. According to Hank the US had messed with both Mexico and Texas. I...
Left wing commentary from the heart and the head