col 49: who's mad?

[Dave Monroe]

"'You remember everything,' Oedipa said, 'Jesus; even
tourists.  How is your CIA?'  Standing not for the
agency you think, but for a clandestine Mexican outfit
known as the Conjuracion de los Insurgentes
Anarquistas, traceable back to the time of the Flores
Magnon brothers and later briefly allied with Zapata."
(Lot 49, Ch. 5, p. 119)

Pace David Morris, from Charles Hollander, "Pynchon,
JFK and the CIA: Magic Eye Views and The Crying of Lot
49," Pynchon Notes 40-41 (Spring-Fall 1997), pp.
61-106 ...

"Even if calling the group the CIA is a joke,
mentioning the Flores Magnon brothers and Emiliano
Zapata opens another can of historical worms, and is
no joke.  The Flores Magnon brothers published
anti-government broadsides, were clapped into prison,
and eventually fled to the U.S.  Zapata was an Indian
land-reformer ....  A populist during the early
decades of [the twentieth] century, Zapata was
betrayed and killed in 1919.  In a curious mixture of
religion and politics, mexicans venerate his grave as
a holy place to this day.  How ironic--or cynical--it
was, then, that George Bush named his CIA-front oil
company Zapata petroleum ...." (p. 93)

But, of course, to Hollander, calling the group the
CIA isn't necessarily a joke ...

--- wood jim <jim33wood at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> In CL49 there is LSD but no CIA.

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