Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me - Marlon Brando [106]
As I’ve already mentioned, when I first heard about the UN’s technical-assistance program and America’s foreign aid, I had thought of them as wonderful examples of the haves helping the have-nots with compassion and charity. But when I visited Third World countries for UNICEF, I had realized that the policies of the industrialized nations were not only selfish, self-serving and misguided, but also weren’t working. In the name of all that was decent, the United States and companies like the United Fruit Company claimed the right to run the world; throughout Latin America and Asia the United States bankrolled any government, no matter how corrupt, that agreed to oppose communism and to favor American interests. But the populations of these countries were being alienated by us. The leaders of the so-called free world created dictatorships and propped up tyrants whose only indigenous support was among the wealthy elite, resisting ordinary citizens’ democratic dreams. Tolerating murder and corruption, the United States rationalized that it was better for a nation like the Philippines to have a tyrannical dictator like Ferdinand Marcos, who opposed communism, than a leader who would be responsive to peasants’ wanting a share of the prosperity that was concentrated in the hands of only 2 percent of the population. The CIA destabilized elected governments and intervened in other countries’ internal affairs. Our government created dictators who robbed, cheated and murdered their people with impunity, but as long as they were against communism, it let them get away with anything, including murder. Further, if we sent any aid to these countries, there were strings attached. It wasn’t because we wanted to fight starvation, ignorance, disease and poverty; it was because of self-interest, greed and the myths about communism.
When The Ugly American opened in Bangkok, Kukrit Pramoj, a former government minister of Thailand who in the movie played the prime minister of our fictional country, threw a party and invited Thailand’s entire diplomatic corps, I flew over for it and, as one of the guests of honor, was seated in a prominent position where everybody could see me. The principal entertainment was a formal Thai opera, which consisted of dancers in bare feet moving very slowly. It seemed to take them years to move their eyes from one side to the other and centuries to move their hands or feet. Before long, I couldn’t stay awake, and someone beside me had to keep poking me to keep me conscious. It would have been a terrible insult to fall asleep, because I was the guest of honor. Between acts, the music stopped and I had to get up and walk over to the players and, with appropriate gestures and greetings in Thai, tell them through a translator how wonderful they were. It was hard to make a sensible commentary about the wonders of the Thai opera, but I was told that in the next act the Monkey King would attack and there would be a fierce battle. At last, I thought, some action and excitement are coming up. It is difficult to credit, but this part of the opera was even slower than the others; the high point was some finger-wagging and eye movements that each took about a minute to complete. Fighting the two stevedores who were pulling my eyelids down, I overcompensated and must have looked like a zombie with my eyes frozen open.
I don’t know how I made it through the performance. Afterward I met all the diplomats and dignitaries at