la lucha de lucho
But, you are all asking, what about Luis Eduardo Díaz? Look no further:
Diario de Noticias ¡Qué Mundo!, 26 April 2003
A Bogotan Parliament member launches a sexual campaign by undergoing vasectomy
A councilman and longtime shoeshiner in the Colombian capital announced that he would submit to a vasectomy in order to call attention to the lack of sex education and family planning campaigns, the local press reported yesterday. Luis Eduardo Díaz, elected to the Bogotá Legislature in the surprise of Colombia's 2000 regional and municipal polls, indicated that he will enter the operating room "as a gesture of support for women." Díaz, who has become famous not only for attaining the bench after decades as a shoeshiner on the city streets, but also for his longstanding predilection for alcoholic drinks, specified that the vasectomy would be performed the coming May 10.
New and old faces in Parliament
Luis Eduardo Díaz... offered to donate 70 percent of his salary to the indigent and deliver packing crates as part of his work. This year he presented resolutions for three projects: the change of the school day (on hold), the promotion of vasectomy, and the regulation of tattooing and piercing practices. He headed three debates of political control, one of which referred to the question of public space. According to the project "Parliament as We Go," his attendance at sessions is among the lowest: only 21.5 percent for the period August 2002 to June 2003.
El Espectador, 11 September 2003
Parliament member Luis Eduardo Díaz sanctioned
The president of Parliament, Fernando López Gutiérrez, sanctioned member Luis Eduardo Díaz with the suspension of right of speech for five sessions, without right of salary, owing to the acts recorded in the Plenary Session of Tuesday, 9 September 2003, when the aforesaid Parliament member took part in the proceedings in favor of vasectomy for Bogotans.
The President of Parliament thus brought into use the body's new Internal Regulation, which authorizes sanctions in response to violations of the moral and ethical principles of society. In this case "the acts committed by Díaz do not reflect a proper example of his status as a Parliament member."
The sanction against Díaz is effected by Resolution 15 of 10 September 2003, by application of Article 115 of the Parliamentary Regulations.
"The Parliament member committed an act of disrespect against the aforementioned invited officials, the councilmen, the parliamentary officials, and the citizens present, by exhibiting a replica of masculine genitals and presenting it as a gift to the District Secretary of Health, Doctor José Fernando Cardona," said Lópeaz.
Forced Silence
The shoeshiner councilman Luis Eduardo Díaz Chaparro yesterday paid his first day of sanction without right of salary or use of speech, for exhibiting in the Bogotá Parliament a masculine sexual organ in paraffin. "I feel impotent," the legislator sarcastically said.
El Espectador (opinion), 14 September 2003
Lucho, bravo!
The condemnation of Luis Eduardo Díaz, shoeshiner and councilman, is a mixture of sanctimoniousness, concealment, and, above all, incredible myopia.
Díaz proposed that the District promote the introduction of vasectomy programs. He said this in the language of a shoeshiner, as he ought. He explained this with a plastic penis in his hand, as teachers of surgery do.
Lucho's explanation was scientifically exact, and his proposal proper. He simply sought to allay men's reluctance to submit to vasectomy, which originates not only in the immediate fear of physical pain, but in the long-term terror of losing virility. His speech was not out of place; nor was the humorous air with which he explained certain physiological weakenings. If he had spoken of "erectile dysfunction," an affected and viscous expression, no one would have bothered him.
Popular language: yes. Vulgar: no. It would have been far worse to hear Lucho speaking in medical jargon. Or equally bad if the Secretary of Health, a doctor by profession, had used the slang of Bogotan street children.
Language, phallus and proposal coincide to form a seal of authenticity.
A second stated interest of Lucho's is responsible fatherhood. Here is a true jewel. A notable change that reaffirms a greater discovery: if the lower classes have been the most resistant to birth control techniques, Lucho shows that in Colombia a true demographic revolution has taken place. That is, on the popular level there is a completely rational acceptance of this matter.
And finally, what has colossal significance is his battle against machismo. What Lucho wants is for the responsibility of birth control to not fall exclusively to women. That well-spoken young men would want this seems a triumph of civilization and good judgment.
Those who complain about a plastic bonitico* belong to the line of those who wanted to castrate the "David" or put a brassiere on the Venus de Milo.
The Parliament, for its part, has suspended his right of speech when we most needed him to speak. It's an error. But it's something worse: some discredited councilmen have wrapped themselves in the cloak of bourgeois respectability, not to respond to a coarseness that did not exist, but to mask their own weaknesses.
Well done, Lucho!
*I have no idea how to translate this; it seems to be a Colombian thing. The suffix -ico is an affectionate diminutive, so it's something like "pretty little thing," but in slightly outdated, therefore campy, popular slang, it's a penis.
