drolgalazinandrei.files.wordpress.com file · Web viewMore on diversity of cultures in...

More on diversity of cultures in Transylvania: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Transylvania

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_history_of_Maramure%C5%9F#Antiquity

I finally had the chance to leave the country when an execution squad shot Nicolae C. in 1989.

Obtaining visas to western countries was extremely hard in 1990, right after Ceausescu was shot. I convinced my then-husband Valerian Pipas to come

with me to Bucharest and arrange for visas for France. I also needed transit visas through Austria

“Ceaușescu” is the non-modern spelling of the name.

This Empire existed between 1867 and 1918.

As in the case of Oceania always being threatened by eternal war alternating between Eurasia or East Asia,

Portrayed in George Orwell’s 1984.Cf. my article “Orwell’s 1984 and the Case Studies of Stalin and Ceausescu

” in Elitelore Varieties (Edited by James Wilkie et al.): http://elitelore.org/Capitulos/cap16_elitelore.pdf

COMECON (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) dates from the January 1949 communiqué agreed upon in

Moscow by the USSR to lead the CMEA.

This Empire existed between 1867 and 1918.

Upon Ceausescu’s death, the Patriarch Pipas mysteriously became the Museum’s “owner” and

then transferred title to his son Valerian Pipas. The family died out in 2016 of alcoholism.

“Czechia” is rarely used in English because native English speakers too often do not know intuitively know how to

pronounce

it. The name Czechia has arisen as the short name for the Czech Republic, which emerged with the breakup of

“Czechoslovakia” in 1992.

Jim soon arranged for the contract to be paid from his grant funds from U.S. foundations deposited for his projects at

UCLA.1

http://elitelore.org/Capitulos/cap16_elitelore.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_history_of_Maramure%C5%9F#Antiquity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Transylvania

See (A) my 2001 Decentralized Globalization: Free Markets, U.S. Foundations, and the Rise of Civil and Civic Society from Rockefeller’s Rise in Latin America

Eastern Europe (Los Angeles: UCLA Classic Doctoral Thesis) at http://www.profmex.org/webjournal_listedbyvoldat.html

(B) Olga Magdalena Lazín, La Globalización Se Descentraliza: Libre Mercado, Fundaciones, Sociedad Cívica y Gobierno Civil en las Regiones del Mundo, Prólogo

or James W. Wilkie (Guadalajara y Los Ángeles: Universidad de Guadalajara, UCLA Program on Mexico, PROFMEX/World, Casa Juan Pablos Centro Cultural, 2007).

James W. Wilkie y Olga Magdalena Lazín, La globalización Se Amplia: Claroscuros de los Nexos Globales (Guadalajara, Los Ángeles, México:Guadalajara,

UCLA Program on Mexico, PROFMEX/World, Casa Juan Pablos Centro Cultural, 2011:

http://www.profmex.org/mexicoandtheworld/volume17/2spring2012/Laglobalizacionseamplia.pdf

Readers should be aware of a key acronym used when this paper reaches

the 1990s: NPPO stands for Not-for-Private Profit Organization (usually

a Foundation) which differs from the more familiar (Non-Profit

Organization (NPO). Outside the United States, the latter term tends to

be wrongly understood to mean no profit be accumulated and the NPO must

show a zero balance at year end. The former term (NPPO) is developed

here to stress that profits may be accumulated and invested to fund

future activities, as long as expenditures do not benefit private parties

(except for salaries, travel, and other justified expenses as provided in,

say, a Foundation’s by-laws.) See: http://www.profmex.org/mexicoandtheworld/volume12/1winter07/prologoporjameswilkieOLbook.html

Mexico’s National Lottery is a Government-run Public Charity and funder of new research.

The Lottery grants to PROFMEX totaled $100,000 dollars. Jim Wilkie’s statement here is quoted from my formal Interview with him, September 17, 1992, in

Transylvania, based upon his experience as Consultant to the U.S. Council on Foundations. See:

From the Romanian Gulag to Old and New Cultures - Memoirs

By Dr Olga M. Lazin

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http://www.profmex.org/mexicoandtheworld/volume12/1winter07/prologoporjameswilkieOLbook.html

http://profmex.org/mexicoandtheworld/volume17/2spring2012/laglobalizacionseamplia.html

http://www.profmex.org/webjournal_listedbyvoldat.html

How the University Really Worked in Romania

In 1963 when I was born in Transylvania, the “golden age” of socialism was in full “progress”.

A mythical space, Transylvania is the place that gave me my roots and brains. In 1963, the Northern part of Romania.

Magdalena has given birth to me in one of the most pristine, oxygenated part of town, the beautiful Satu-Mare. The city of Satu Mare

was undergoing catastrophic transformations, as it was forcefully modernized, and people from the villages were forced to work in

huge, socialistic factories. Along the Somes river, the tiny village of Vetis, where my ancestors on my father’s side were born, is now a

heavily populated colorful and diverse grew into a lovely place. On my mother’s side, Bixad, in the Oas region of Romania is still a

beautiful traditional village, with houses spread far apart, not all jammed together. My mother was “osanca”, as they would ethnically

distinguish her in the old days.

I was born to a family of middle-class folks Eugene and Magdalena. I was the first child,

and right after me came my brother, Alexandru in 1965. I remember being happy having

a brother. At age three, my mother Magdalena was transferred by her employer

(The Logging Company in Viseul de Sus, Maramures County) to Sighet, in Maramures

County. Thus, my parents and I moved to the Transylvanian town of Sighet, where I grew

up like Alice in Wooden land, in a pristine region behind the mountain of Gutinul.

Transylvania was an ancient forest, where vampires and wolverines were lurking at the

cover of the dark and cold winter nights.

I never feared the unknown, as I was already accustomed to “strigoi,” and

vampire stories ever since I was a baby! All these weird mythological animals were part of

my ecosystem, so to say. I grew up fearless with my brother, Alex, whom

I felt I had to constantly protect from other belligerent boys in the neighborhood of Zahana,

as it was called the cluster of houses built by in the sixties and seventies, in Hungarian style.

Sighet was surrounded by beautiful green mountains, and three rivers: Mara, Tisa and Iza.

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On the one hand, I was friends with the children of intellectuals, as well as also lovely Romanian, Hungarian, and Gipsy children to

whom I taught the Romanian language as early

We were Ruthenians; that is a strong gene pool made up of Ukrainian, Romanian and Hungarian

Genes.

On the other hand, my family had a difficult life because my parents were always working until

late hours at night. My younger brother Alex and I read while waiting for mother, Magdalena,

to turn off our lights even as she continued into the wee hours her accounting work

at home. She was compounding the lengths and width of the wooden logs that were being

exported to Russia year by year.

During the day, Magdalena let us play all day long to our heart’s content. So unique,

and we felt so free exploring nature in Sighet. When I entered primary school, I learned

that Sighet was officially named Sighetu Marmației (on Romania’s northwest border facing

Ukraine’s southwestern border with Romania and Hungary).

Transylvania belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary (Transylvania) as part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire[.After World War I, in

1918 Transylvania became part of Romania again. In 1940 Northern Transylvania reverted to Hungary as a result of the Second

Vienna Award, but Romanian queen Maria reclaimed it after the end of World War II.

All of Romania was seized for its oil by Nazi Germany (1940-1944), “liberated” by the “Soviet Union” (1944-1947), and “re-

liberated” to become the Popular republic of Romania (under USSR remote control) as the Cold War was beginning to freeze the Iron

Curtain into to place.

The first “president,” Gheorghiu-Dej (1965) ruled as puppet of Moscow, but when he died, his Sec Gen of the Communist Party of

Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, was elected as the second “president” (1965-1989), shifting his savage dictatorship into a harsher

“nationalistic Gulag” than known in the USSR. At the end of 1994 the Russian military organized “presidential” elections of

“people’s committees” in the region. The end of the war occupied some formerly Romanian northeastern territories occupied by the

Soviet Union, with Red Army units stationed on Romanian soil. In 1947 Romania forcibly became a People's Republic (1947–1965).

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My parents in 1963: Eugen & Magda: she was pregnant with me here.

For two decades I neither understood the dimensions of tragic situation of Transylvania (located in northeast Romania on the

Ukrainian border), nor did I understand that I would have to escape the Gulag of Romania by the skin of my teeth.

I had to risk my life to leave my country. Generals and sports Olympians were defecting.

Nadia Comaneci has left in 1988, one year before Ceausescu was toppled.

Opposition to the regime was building up painstakingly slow, and communist idiots

wanted Ceausescu replaced. The Russian KGB school at work, soviet agents like Iliescu

were ready to take his place. Now these were the vampires coming out like vermins to

manipulate the population into believing they were “change”.

The Front of national salvation was building up to substitute the dictator’s fascist clique.

For peoples of the world Transylvania seems to be a far-away place, where most people know the werewolves and vampires have been

rumored to roam & lurk in nature. In the imagination of people everywhere, whose beliefs are soaked in mystical folklore, even today

it is hardly possible to have a rational conversation on any subject matter. Most occupying forces never understood either the culture of

the Romanian people or the distinct culture of Transylvania. The immense diversity of the ethnicities and cultures.

Naturally I am a bi-national citizen, but without belonging to any of the two countries. My Ruthenian roots are strong, and I rejoice

every time I am remembering the pretty pristine landscapes of Sighet and Satu Mare where I was born.

Summoning my unconsciousness to write this autobiographical piece, I need to re-accustom myself to thinking of the distinct cultures

of the region.

Once in general school I excelled in Romanian and American Languages.

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I had to choose between English and Russian, and I opted for English in the 5th grade.

The population consisted of Romanians, Hungarians (particularly Székelys), Ukrainians, and Germans. Even the Securitate, the

eminence grey of Transylvania, had to learn several languages in order to surveil people on the phones, etc. These people were

educated by the Soviets in Russian surveillance techniques and bloody procedures.

All these languages are still being spoken on the Territory of Maramures County, including Rroma, or the Gypsy language, Hungarian,

Ukrainian, and Ruthenian.

I always liked and loved the Romanian language, so I decided to become a Professor of Romanian Language and Literature.

As I have previously mentioned, n 1973, at age 10 as a fifth grader, I had to make a fateful decision about my choice of foreign-

language study: Russian or English. The pressure was on

us to take up Russian, this proving that we were all students loyal to the Dictator Nicole Ceausescu’s “Socialist” Government (read

Romanian Communist Government allied with Moscow), but consciously I detested the whole Romanian system and its alliance with

the Russians.

I never liked the Russian language; even today it rings hollow to me, reminds me of the

barking of a toothless dog.

Although I wanted to learn English in my early years, I did not then know how fateful that

choice would be until 1991, when at almost 27 years of age, I met Jim Wilkie who had been advised by his brother Richard to include

my town of Sighet in his journey to assess the how Eastern Europe was faring after the fall of the “Berlin Wall,” short for the long wall

that kept

the people of Communist countries locked and unable to escape.

In the meantime, growing up in Sighet with a population of only 30,000 people, we were proud to recognize Ely Wiesel (born 1928) as

our most prominent citizen long before he won the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. He helped us get past the terrible history of Sighet

Communist Prison where “enemies of the state” were confined until “death due to natural cause.” The Jewish population has been

decimated in Sighet in the fifties.

In my early years I had a hard time understanding how the green and flowered valley of Sighet (elevation 1,000 feet, on the Tisa River

at the foot of our forested Carpathian Mountains) could be so beautiful, yet we lived under the terribly cruel eye of the Securitate to

protect the wretched Dictator Nicolae “Ceausescu,” is the modern spelling of the Dictator’s name; and he ruled from 1965 to his

execution in 1989 as the harshest leader of all the countries behind Russia’s Wall against Western Europe.

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Oddly enough, in the Transylvania of the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, supposedly I was living the “Golden Age of Romanian

Socialism,” but even to myself as a young student; I could see that the promised “full progress” was clearly a lie. Most adults agreed

but feared to speak so bluntly. Repetitive folk songs were praising the father and the mother of the nation, and on TV, we could only

watch the first couple running around in China, Russia, and other socialist countries to make alliances, and keep up appearances for 40

years! In Northern Transylvania we had only one TV Channel, and that was the norm. The Hungarian channel was completely blocked

out by the government, so that no real news reaches our ears.

In the meantime, without rarely granted permission, we were forbidden to meet and visit with foreigners, especially those who spoke

English and who wanted to hear from us about Sighet

and its nearby wooden hamlets of the Maramures Province, where I have my first memories.

The region is ethnically diverse, with a stimulating climate ranging from very hot summers and very cold winters. Geographically, we

lived in the valleys and Mountains of Gutinul through which the rivers of Iza and Tisa flow. Geographically, the beautiful forested

Tisa River is the natural border with Southern Ukraine.

As folklore has it in the West, vampires are native to Transylvania. We had vampires, werewolves, and wolverines, but all the

mythological characters were actually members of the Communist Party, which everyone had to join--except for me because with my

knowledge, I was considered a security risk!

Fortunately, when in 1982 I entered the University Babes Boljay, in Cluj-Napoca, to earn my

M.A. in 1990, for my sociology classes, I decided to conduct my field research project into the rural life of the North of Romania,

recording the folklore (especially myths) invented and

passed down by rural folks (including small merchants, farmers, fisherman, loggers) had had

used that lore to help them survive for centuries.

Further, much of my research conducted among the outlying farmers, delved deeply into Transylvania Folklore, which prepared me

well to understand Communist Party Lore.

Thus, for the second time, my fateful choice of a field research project, the Elitelore project

had further prepared me, unknowingly, for my future with Jim Wilkie.

We were constantly studying the elites, and were interviewing them on everything

they were doing. Revolutionaries, Professors, civic society leaders were the best subjects

of our research.

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Once I had been admitted to the Babes Bolyai University, which was called “the heart and brain of Transylvania,” I also further

expanded and deepened deep studies in American language and literature. Also, I studied Romanian language and literature in the

Department of Philology. The Bolyai University Is considered the best University in Transylvania.

Upon beginning my mentoring for other students, I was happy to find a sense of freedom. Reading and writing comprehension were

my forté during my four years at Cluj. I had always dreamt of being a professor and a writer and seemed to be off to a great start.

But I soon realized that our professors opened the day by reading the mounds of new Decrees just signed by Ceausescu. Thus, I began

laughing, and other students join me in mocking the wooden language of Central Planning’s attempt to befuddle us with words from a

wooden language, totally bent toward twisting our brains into confused submission. Professors and Securitate officers were acting as

sweaty bureaucrats trying to teach us how to sharpen our mental images. Not one professor asked us, “What do each of you really

think of all this Ceausescu propaganda of decrees harming the educational process?”

Professors had their favorite students and made sure they pointed this out in class, stifling any competition as they show openly their

favoritism or nepotism.

When I reached the age of 22 in1985, I started to be argumentative, criticizing professors, especially the history professor who only

knew only the History of the Romanian Communist Party.

The Russians, via the KGB, had been directing Romanian politicians since 1945, and pressured Romanian students to dig useless

trenches as well forced women-students to shot Russian weapons, and learn to disassemble and assemble the AK47.

Meanwhile in my University Cluj the atmosphere was dreadful in classes. Restrictions were plentiful and absurd. Speech was not free;

one couldn’t discuss issues freely in class, or make any real analysis or debate. One had to regurgitate what the professors were telling

us. Modern economics led by and read whatever was there in the old books stacked in the communist library. Until I escaped Romania

in 1992, I learned that the so-called economics classes we took taught nothing about money, credit, and such terms as GDP. The

Marxian economics involved only fuzzy nonsensical slogans such as

“We Romanians have to fight-off the ‘running dogs of capitalism,” without the word “capitalism” ever being defined except in

unrealistic theory laced with epithets.

Even as an English major, I was not permitted to speak with foreigners in English --answering one question was a crime, according to

the tendentious Security Decrees. Abortion was a crime punishable for up to 20 years in prison. Doctors performing it ended up in jail,

and so did the pregnant women. Punishments were ridiculous—the Anti-Abortion Law lasted for 40 years, until 1990.

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Furthermore, if my uncle from Canada visited us, we were all under surveillance, the entire family. Even today, in 2017 one has to

report to the police to declare if any visitor of family comes from the USA (or Canada, for some bizarre security reason). Well, after 25

years, not much has changed in poor Romania.

THE INFLUENCE OF RECENT ROMANIAN HISTORY

In the meantime, the History of Transylvania weighed heavily on population of Romania,

with constant change in the emerging political map always have left “citizens” always lost

about who was really in charge.

Thus, Transylvania was originally part of the Dacia Kingdom between 82 BC until the Roman conquest in 106 AD. The capital of

Dacia was destroyed by the Romans, so that a new as

capital would serve the Roman Province of Dacia, which lasted until 350 ADS, by which time

the Romans felt so hated that it behooved them withdraw back to Rome.

During the late 9th century, western Transylvania was conquered by the Hungarian Army to later become part of the Kingdom of

Hungary and in 1570 to devolve into the Principality of Transylvania. During most of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Principality

became an Ottoman Empire vassal state, confusingly also governed by the Habsburg Empire. After 1711

Transylvania was consolidated solely into the Hapsburg Empire and Transylvanian princes were replaced with Habsburg imperial

governors. After 1867, Transylvania ceased to have separate status and was incorporated into the Kingdom of Hungary as part of the

Austro-Hungarian Empire. After World War I, Transylvania reverted in 1918 to be part of Romania. In 1940 Northern Transylvania

again became governed by Hungary and then Germany, but Romanian queen Maria successfully reclaimed it after the end of World

War II.

The year 1940 was important for Romania because if was seized for its oil by Nazi Germany (1940-1944), “liberated” by the “Soviet

Union” (1944-1947), and finally “re-liberated” to

become the Popular republic of Romania (under USSR remote control), as the Cold War was beginning to freeze the Iron Curtain into

place.

At the end of World War II while the USSR and its Red Army were the occupying powers in

all Romania, in 1947 Romania forcibly and ironically became a “People’s Republic”

(1947–1989), after the rise of the Iron Curtain.

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The first “president,” Gheorghiu-Dej (1947) ruled as puppet of Moscow, but when he died, his Secretary General of the Communist

Party of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, was elected as the second “president” (1965-1989), shifting his savage dictatorship into a

harsher Romanian

“Gulag” than known in the USSR. Thousands of Romanians have vanished overnight.

For two decades, I neither understood the dimensions of tragic history of Transylvania, nor

did I yet realize that I would have to escape the Gulag of Romania, even if by the “skin of my teeth.”

For peoples of the world Transylvania seems to be a faraway place, where most people know

the werewolves and vampires have been “seen” to in the imagination of Transylvanians, whose

beliefs was soaked in mystical folklore. Even today it is hardly possible to have a rational conversation with most the Transylvanian

folk on any subject without recourse to try to

understand where their distorted imagination has befuddled them.

The population has consisted of Romanians, Hungarians, Germans, and some Ukrainians. These languages are still being

spoken in Romania’s Maramures province, but because I always liked and loved Romanian language, I decided to become a Professor

of Romanian Language

and Literature. I also precociously fell in love with my English Professor, Spaczai.

MY BACKDROP TO THE FALL OF CEAUSESCU

I later told Jim how I had been admitted in 1982 to the Babes-Bolyai University, in Cluj-Napoca at the heart of Transylvania, I focused

especially on Linguistics. Unfortunately, there I found that the professors, who were under the control of sweaty-stinking Securitate

officers, had to read dozens of new Decrees issued every day as they sought to control every one of our daily actions—all in the name

of protecting the Ceausescu government—which was selling the country’s food supplies to Russia in order to pay down Roman’s

official debt with exports. Those Securitate officers ate well and ominously watched us virtually starve. They said, be calm, like your

parents in the face of their starvation. Secu’ officers were the vampires and the wolverines that I was talking about in my first

paragraph. They are surveillance officers, and this is what they do: inform on innocent people, place all types of microphones under

people’s tables and beds, and that have fun as perverted this may sound in almost every home in Sighet, Maramures County. They

report on you, and this earns them a living.

Thus, I furiously called out in my classes that our very existence was being compromised by Ceausescu's abandonment of the

population, which was ordered to, as Lenin famously said, “work, work, and work.”

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To protect myself as best I could, I turned to humor, seeking to ridicule Ceausescu’s “national paradise.” But when I encouraged my

classmates to laugh at the propaganda embedded in the wooden language of the national bureaucracy, I soon fell under the heavy

scrutiny of university authorities, who were furious that I trying to expose the fact that all classes had been organized to befuddle the

student body into confused submission. Indeed, each professor had favorite students to help drown out legitimate questions and stifle

any competing analysis—the university lived under nepotism, favoritism, the threat of rape (virtual and real) by the Securitate officers,

and open bribery by the professors--choose your garden variety.

My 1986 Attempt To Flee The Jail Named Romania

By 1986, at age 23, I had decided to flee Romania—an illegal act because Ceausescu did not

want anyone (especially women of child-bearing age) to escape his plan to building his “ideal socialist industries” on farms and

ranches as well as in the cities. In June, I made my way to

the border of Yugoslavia and paid a smuggler to evade the Romanian security forces that were preventing the “nations workers” from

escaping. The smuggler, who took me across the border, turned out to be working for Romanian Border Police. Thus, soon after

crossing into

Yugoslavia, he turned his wagon around and I was again in Romania again when I realized

what had happened too late. I had been “sold” to Ceausescu’s minions for a wagonload of

salt and 20 Liters of gasoline.

Iosif Broztito had this type of deal with Ceausescu in the1980s.

Thousands were returned for this kind of draconian exchange.

That failed escape from Romania led me to a 10-month prison sentence in Timisoara Prison, wherein the block cells were maintained

so cold (supposedly to eliminate bacteria and viruses) that it made all of us inmates sick with the cold and the flu.

Bed blankets in the were less warming than one Kleenex tissue. Moreover, there were no

pillows, and the concrete slab where inmates slept was a “back-breaker.” The lights were on 24 hours a day, blinding all of us, and

there was constant observation. Every hour one was a

wakened to be counted for, and sneaking up on people, under the guise of watching out for suicides. But everyone could be clearly

seen by the guards, and there was no need to

sleep-deprive inmates. There was also someone in the higher echelon ripping off the

food budget to siphon money to themselves while serving inmates only baby carrots and spicy beans.

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Almost every family in Romanian civil society had at least one member who had been

imprisoned for trying to open the political system by denouncing the Ceausescu dictatorship. These inmates were openly called

“Political Prisoners,” and I was one of them.

Political Prisoners were not permitted to work outside the prison walls in the fields because

our crime had been the political decision to repudiate Ceausescu’s “vampiristic system.”

“CHANGE IN THE AIR”

Once free in 1987, I could return to my University to finally complete my M.A. in 1990.

Further in 1987, at the age of 24, I met the Family patriarch Nicolae Pipas, who directed for the Communist government the walled

Regional Art Museum in a quiet part of Sighet. When he realized that I was a Professor of the English and Romania Languages, and

one of the few university’s highly educated persons in the region, I began to serve as interpreter/guide to visiting foreign Ambassadors

permitted to travel in Romania. They wanted to see the Museum with its magnificent collection of paintings, sculptures, and rare

historical pottery and coins. Thus,

I soon found myself interpreting and translating for visiting English-Speaking Ambassadors

from many countries who wished to know Transylvania, especially my village Sighet and its

Merry Cemetery famous worldwide for it tombstones in the form of wood sculpture of

the butcher, the baker, candlestick maker, and all professions.

Although my first languages were Romanian and Hungarian, I could also translate into French

and Italian. Indeed, at that time I was teaching Latin in the Rural School System of my Maramures Province.

Ceausescu and his clique has starved us to death, and all food was rationalized.

A piece of bread for each individual, an d1 liter of oil per month, as well as salami was

distributed to the people ligned up for days in front of the empty-shelved stores. And the time

for distributing food was also set arbitrarily by the communist Party.

By 1989, Ceausescu realized that his end was near, and he sought to gain support by pardoning his political prisoners (such as myself)

who had tried to escape the horrendous conditions in the country. Hence, university students and some labor unions joined forces and

quite quickly after the fall of the Berlin Wall forced Ceausescu and his draconian wife Elena to flee. They were caught and executed

on Christmas Day, 1989, by the military that at the last moment joined the Revolution.

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‘As my friends and I (along with most of the population) cheered the fall of the failed, rotten Romanian “dictatorship of the

proletariat,” my dear mother acted differently. She was so

confused by the propaganda of the only “leader” she knew much about that she wept for Ceausescu, not fully realizing that he was the

one who had wrongly had be arrested and put me

in prison.

The students started a rebellion in Bucharest. People in Timisoara started the revolution via civil disobedience. For a week and so there

were bloody fights in Bucharest and Timisoara, young

People trying to get rid of Ceausescu’s regime. So finally, Iliescu another monster took over

and under the pretext of filling the vacuum of power he self-appointed himself president.

He stole the revolution with his acolytes, and over 1000 people were dead in the streets.

With Ceausescu gone, in 1990 I was able to secure a passport to ready myself to leave Romania by gaining visas for Germany and

France. The question remained, how to get there by land without a visa to Austria—my region had no air connection to the outside

world.

There was only one airport in the country, in Bucharest.

I decided toleave with Professor jim Wilkie and Jim Platler in September 17, 1990.

Jim has filled out all the paperwork to hire me, and I gratefully accepted to work for

PROFMEX.

Thus, we set out on that September 18th to visit one of the most socially and economically interesting and beautiful parts of Romania

by going up thought the green forested Carpathian Mountains via the beautiful Prislop Pass, stopping to visit small farming families in

their folkloric clothing of which they were justifiably proud to wear on a daily basis. Farther east in Romania, on the scenic roads, we

visited the monasteries of Moldova, the town of Cimpulung Moldovenesc, Suceava, and then the Monasteries in Sucevita and Agapia.

The gorgeous forested mountain road eventually led to Lacul Rosu and the lake country. Then we took the long scenic mountain road

to Cluj Napoca to visit my prestigious University.

As I briefed Jim about Romania, he was briefing me about factors in comparing national economies. For example, he told me about

how he had reunited in Prague on September 15th with Richard Beesen, his former UCLA student and friend, to hear about his role in

London as Manager of Deutsche Bank’s New Accounts in Russia and Eastern Europe. Richard had become famous for inviting

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Banking Officials and national Treasury Ministries to deposit their financial reserves on deposit in his bank in London. But because his

clients did not understand anything about “interest payments” on deposited funds, they did not ask for nor did they gain any interest

payments. Also, because most Western Banks were not sure that these new “capitalists” could be “fully trusted” for correct

management of their deposits, his Deutsche Bank collected large fees (and paid no interest to keep the Eastern Europe “bank reserves

safe.” This was all very eye opening for me.

Jim and I had realized early on that we had a close affinity as we analyzed the situation of Romania, and he said, “Call me Jim.” (In

contrast I called Professor James Platler “JP.”) As we traveled to observe the situation of the people in different parts of the country,

Jim and I formed a deep bond of observing and analyzing; thus, both of us realized this brief interlude had to continue for the long

term in order to achieve our goals.

NEXT STOPS, BUDAPEST, SALZBURG, MUNICH,

BORDEAUX (FOR ME), AND LOS ANGELES (FOR JIM)

As a Romanian, I had the right to enter Hungary, and we did so bypassing the miles of vehicles waiting to cross the border for

the long drive to Budapest. There Prof. James Platler finally relaxed after the long drives and often poor hotels and hotels—he said that

he finally found unbroken civilization again.

Once we arrived in Budapest, Professor James Platler, who had told Jim privately that from the outset of our trip that he thought that

I was a “Spy” (planted on us by the Romanian Securitate to monitor our many “foreign” inquiries during our travel through Romania’s

north country), announced that his concern about me had vanished as we realized the extent of my knowledge and research abilities.

In his mind, I had to be a Spy because I had obtained access to special private dining rooms and quarter in some fine hotels, as well as

invitations for wonderful lunches at some Monasteries, where miraculously I made immediate friends with each Mother Superior. But

by the time we reached Budapest, he realized that at my University I had learned the Elite skills needed to survive safely and

comfortably in Eastern Europe.

My problem was to enter Austria, where I had no visa. But Jim passed his UCLA business card through to the Consul General of

Austria in Budapest, and quickly we found ourselves whisked from the back of the long line to the front and right into a meeting with

the Consul General himself. He was pleased to hear about the research of our UCLA Team, but said that I did have a visa. Jim then

told them that I only needed a three-day transit visa to reach Germany, the visa for which he could see in my passport.

With entry to Austria solved, we were on the road to the Hotel Kobentzl and Graz, which overlook Salzburg, all the way analyzing the

comparative economic and social situations of Austria, Hungary, and Romania.

14

We spent most of our time down the mountain from Kobentzl to the valley, before returning to our sweeping Hotel view of Salzburg

City. Meanwhile I was deepening my questions about capital is leveraged to undertake big private projects. As we took photos over

from on high looking down on the many bridges of Salzburg and Jim was explaining how the developed world operated by using

finances, credit, and interest to help economies grow.

Finally, we left Salzburg to enter Germany and Munich, where our quick look into Oktoberfest found us among nasty drunken louts

each of whom seemingly had hand four hands: one to chug-a-lug beer; one to smoke foul smelling cigarettes; one to quaff horrible-

bleeding-raw sausages; and one to punch someone in the face. From what we saw, Oktoberfest was a place for nasty males seeking to

“get smashed on beer” and then smash another male to break his nose. Thus, we fled for our lives as the brutes began to threaten

anyone who looked at them.

Even though the “English-Speaking USA” had been supposedly always threatening to invade Romania, I continued to study

English language and literature. That I chose to study English even though the act alone brought suspicion on me because all society

was taught to believe since 1945 that we were fighting off the Great USA. America was officially seen as

a threat to Romania and its allies under Russia’s COMECON, all of which I became only fully aware as I grew older and had to buy

the English Course textbooks on the risky, expensive Black Market, in Timisoara, 4 hours drive from Cluj.

In the meantime, without rarely granted permission, we were forbidden to meet and visit with foreigners, especially those who spoke

English and who wanted to hear from us about Sighet

and its nearby wooden hamlets of the Maramures Province, where I have my first memories.

The region is ethnically diverse, with a stimulating climate ranging from very hot summers

and very cold winters. Geographically, we lived in the valleys and Mountains of Gutinul

through which the rivers of Iza and Tisa flow. Geographically, the beautiful forested Tisa

River is the natural border with Southern Ukraine. Mara is another river I explored in my

Youth with my brother, Alex.

My mother Magdalena decided, when I was 3, to move from Satu-Mare to the Sighet, Maramures county. For me this change was

welcome, and I grew up in the Maramures region, where I have I have my first memories. The region was much nicer, ethnically more

diverse, better climate, and more geographic diversity, with the Mountains of Gutinul and the rivers of Iza and Tisa, as Tisa was the

natural border with the Ukraine.

15


mythological characters were actually members of the Communist Party and infamous security officers, which everyone had to join--

except for me because with my knowledge, I was considered a security risk! I actually refused to join the bloody red party, and so did

one of my girl colleagues, Michaela Pascu-Arvedson, who lives in Malmo, Sweden now. Non-alignment meant we were the black

sheep of the class.

Fortunately, when in 1982 I entered the University Babes Boljay, in Cluj-Napoca, to earn my

M.A. in 1990, for my sociology classes, I decided to conduct my field research project into the rural life of the North of Romania,

recording the folklore (especially myths) invented and

passed down by rural folks (including small merchants, farmers, fisherman, loggers) had had

used that lore to help them survive for centuries.


well to understand Communist Party Lore, and unjustified secret security surveillance.

Thus, for the second time, my fateful choice of a field research project had further prepared me, unknowingly, for my future with Jim

Wilkie.

Once I had been admitted to the Babes Boljay University, which was called “the heart and brain of Transylvania,” I also further

expanded and deepened deep studies in American

language and literature. Also, I had studied Romanian language and literature in the Department of Philology. The Bolyai University is

still considered to this day

the best University in Transylvania.






sweaty bureaucrats trying to teach us how to sharpen our mental images. Not one professor asked us, “What do each of you really

think of all this Ceausescu propaganda of decrees harming the educational process?”

16











Marxian economics involved only fuzzy nonsensical slogans such as “We Romanians have to fight-off the ‘running dogs of

capitalism,” without the word “capitalism” ever being defined except in unrealistic theory laced with epithets.

Even as an English major, I not permitted to speak with foreigners in English --answering one question was a crime, according to the

tendentious Security Decrees. Abortion was a crime punishable for up to 20 years in prison. Doctors performing it ended up in jail, and

so did the pregnant women. Punishments were ridiculous—the Anti-Abortion Law lasted for 40 years, until 1990.




As I said previously, my childhood was marked by fights as I had to protect my little brother Alexandru. In high school, I was known

as the student-poet, the class poet, and I won some pretty prizes for my poems in General School, coordinated closely with Ileana

Zubascu Cristescu; my Romanian Language Professor. I am still in touch with her to this day.

I had another flashback coming to me. The academia was infested with egregious communists.

I was admitted to the University in Cluj in 1982, in the heart of Transylvania, namely the American Language and Literature and

Romanian Language And Literature Department of Philology. The professors, started reading the mounds of new Decrees every day,

which made me laugh, and staff of the university was suspicious of me not believing their “expose” in the classrooms. Professors were

17

trying to befuddle us with words from a wooden language, totally bent toward twisting our brains into confused submission. During

my college years, Professors, and Securitate officers were acting as sweaty bureaucrats, uneducated idiots trying to tell us what to

think. Not one professor asked us, “What do you really think, all of you?” Each professor had their favorite students and made sure

they pointed it out in class, stifling any competition, and showed openly their favoritism or nepotism.

When I reached 22 years, I started being argumentative, and started criticizing professors, esp. the history professor. I was getting so

sick at academics yelling at us, and being forced to do the military service as a woman in the academia. After all, Americans were

coming to take away our socialist country.

We couldn’t t buy books in English, and I was an English major.

We couldn’t talk to foreigners, and the atmosphere was dreadful in classes. Speech was not free; one couldn’t argue in class, or make

any real analysis or debate. You had to regurgitate what they were telling you, and read whatever was there in the old books stacked in

the communist library. I was an English major, but could not get the books in English necessary for the Exams. They did not exist.

Talking to foreigners in English or answering one question was a crime, according to a stupid decree. Abortion was a crime for 20

years. Doctors performing it ended up in jail, and so did the pregnant women. 5 years jail for an abortion. If my uncle from Canada

visited us, we were all under surveillance, the entire family. Even today, in 2014 one has to go and declare if you have family visiting

from the USA or CANADA for some bizarre security reasons. Well even after 26 years, not much has changed in poor Romania. The

Securitate is still doing surveillances of Romania’s “enemies” and even ramped up surveillance now using NATO funds to control

people in key positions of government, be it local, municipal, or at federal level.

Now, writing this, it all came back to my mind’s eye: I was a professor of Romanian and English in Sighetu Marmatiei, Maramures

County, at School #2 for 6 years. Teaching English and American languages and grammar was my favorite thing, and my goal was to

move to the West. So I settled in Tisa with my then-husband, Valerian Pipas.

It was very exacting commuting all the time from Tisa where I lived in our private Museum (Pipas Museum of Art) to Sighet by bus. I

also taught Latin and English to people just to make ends meet. Salaries were dismal for intellectuals. So, finally I had it, and decided

to leave in 1986. We were caught on the border and sent back in 1984. Ceausescu, the “father” of the nation pardoned all border

violations in 1983, as prisons were full with civil society activists.

The jail was so cold in Timisoara to keep the bacterias and viruses that it made everybody sick internally with the cold and the flue.

Most of civil society was imprisoned, for trying to open the system, and denounce the Ceausescu dictatorship. The blanket was as

warm as a kleenex tissue. Moreover there were no pillows, and the concrete slab where inmates slept was a back-breaker. The lights

18

were on 24 hours a day, blinding all of us, and there was constant observation. Every hour one was awakened to be counted. All under

the guise of watching out for suicides. But everyone could be clearly seen by the guards, and there was no need to sleep-deprive

inmates, as they were doing. There was also someone in the higher echelon ripping off the food bill. They served only baby carrots,

and spicy beans. Prisoners were forced to labor in the fields and sorting out what was left of pigs to be

Exported, to pay off Romania’s debt to the IMF. Yes, that was Ceausescu’s dream. Famishing the

Nation, sacrificing entire generations of people, just to pay off the debt. I remember studying with

no lights, only a candle for exams, and not having eggs or meat for years. In 1984 my father sold his house for a pig. Peasants had to

give up parts of their products to the state. Taxes were paid in food.

The sadest years of my life: 1984 to 89.

My poor mother Magdalena, was so confused by the propaganda, that she started crying when I was freed from jail, additionally she

was feeling very emotional after the death of the nation’s father, Ceausescu. Nicolae together with Elena were shot execution style by

his opponent, socialist, KGB educated Ion Iliescu, who stole the revolution from the young people of the University Square in

Bucharest.

My endurance had limits. Fed up with all the restrictions, and full of frustrations, I hit the border with Yugoslavia.

I have been unfairly jailed as I tried to leave the country in 1986.

I was ready to give up my life, just to escape people in an impossible country, with impossible leadership.

It has become unlivable for many people. In 1989, Ceausescu finally pardoned everybody who tried to escape the horrendous

conditions in the country.

The first act of freedom I have performed it was to secure a passport for myself. And got married to Valerian Pipas, a famous violinist

from Virismort, Tisa in Maramures county. Otherwise the consulate would not have given me the visas. Conditions were one had to be

married, and own a house. Truly I enjoyed being married to a musician; he played the violin and I danced tango and Csardas in

weekends.}

I have been teaching English in Sighet, Tisa, and Giulesti, as well as Camara for another 10 years. Conditions were absolutely horrific;

no heating in schools, no teaching material, and constant harassment from colleagues of being informed on.

19

After I finally left Romania, when an execution squad shot Ceausescu in December 26, 1989 for Christmas. Nice gift to the Romanian

people.

When the regime changed in 1990, I was free to get a passport, and Organized Conferences and Seminars at the University of Babes-

Bolyai, in the heart of Transylvania. I was mostly writing on destatification and privatization of Romanian companies. 51% of

MARA, the textiles company I researched was finally sold to the Germans. The opening up of Romani has finally begun.

It was on a rainy September 17th day, in Sighet. Shortly after, I have met American professors from UCLA, who were doing a study

on the effects of the Cold War in post-socialist countries. My observations were very valuable to Dr Wilkie who then asked me to

guide the academic group through Eastern Europe. They were traveling in a German Opel (a U.S. made car). I took them to the

Museum of my friend, D-ra Mihaly de Apsa, in my hometown, Sighet.

She was the last descendant of a fine lineage of Romanian revolutionaries fighting for the unification of Romania in 1918; Mihaly de

Apsa. James was enchanted to have met her, alive in her pretty museum of “Pasoptisti.”

Together, we went to the Merry Cemetery, and it was dusk by the time Dr James Wilkie from the University of Los Angeles,

California, arrived in Sighet at the Marmatia Hotel. His book was about cycles of statism in Socialist countries. He has written over 30

books on economic development.

I’ll start by explaining the places I went in 1991, on one of the most beautiful part of Romania, through Pasul Prislop. We went

Around Romania, visited the monasteries of Moldova, C-lung Moldovenesc, Suceava, Sucevita and Agapia monasteries. Then we

went to Lacul Rosu. We took the scenic road to Cluj Napoca, where I was trying to get the plane in order to fly out to Paris, in France.

I had all the visas. But there was no flight. No airport and I was not going to go through Bucharest, but via HUNGARY.

Nobody took credit cards, so Jim had to take out a lot of cash, so that we can travel safely.

Seeing how The Professor cared, I fell in love with Jim Wilkie.

I was deeply in love with James Wilkie, whom has hired me as a guide.

He said: “call me Jim”. We finally left for Budapest after the airport visit in Cluj Napoca.

We got through Budapest, finally, and then got out towards Austria and Germany.

20

Our colleague, Dr James Platler was worried that I was a spy, as we received special private rooms, and great Hotel deals, plus good

lunches at the Monastery, where I was a good friend with Mother Superior.

I was just happy to be a guide in many countries.


mythological characters were actually members of the Communist Party, which everyone had to join--except for me because with my

knowledge, I was considered a security risk!

Fortunately, when in 1982 I entered the University Babes Boljay, in Cluj-Napoca, to earn my M.A. in 1990, for my sociology classes, I

decided to conduct my field research project into the rural life of the North of Romania, recording the folklore (especially myths)

invented and passed down by rural folks (including small merchants, farmers, fisherman, loggers) had had used that lore to help them

survive for centuries.


well to understand Communist Party Lore.

Thus, for the second time, my fateful choice of a field research project had further prepared me, unknowingly, for my future with Jim

Wilkie.

Once I had been admitted to the Babes Boljay University, which was called “the heart and brain of Transylvania,” I also further

expanded and deepened deep studies in American language and literature. Also I studied Romanian language and literature in the

Department of Philology. The Bolyai University Is considered the best University in Transylvania.






sweaty bureaucrats trying to teach us how to sharpen our mental images. Not one professor asked us,

“What do each of you really think of all this Ceausescu propaganda of decrees harming the educational process?”

21











Marxian economics involved only fuzzy nonsensical slogans such as “We Romanians have to fight-off the ‘running dogs of

capitalism,” without the word “capitalism” ever being defined except in unrealistic theory laced with epithets.

Even as an English major, I not permitted to speak with foreigners in English --answering one’s question was a crime, according to

the tendentious Security Decrees. Abortion was a crime punishable for up to 5 years in prison. Doctors caught performing it ended up

in jail, and so did the pregnant women. Over 10.000 women died trying to perform abortions on themselves, or botched it, not knowing

how to escape having children that they had no means to raise in a country rife with complete hunger.

Even today, Romania has the highest rate of orphans in the whole world.

Punishments were ridiculous—the Anti-Abortion Law lasted for 40 years, until 1990.




With Ceausescu finally gone, after 40 years of dictatorship, in 1990 I was able to secure a passport in order to ready myself to leave

Romania by gaining visas for Germany and France. I had a lovely family in Bordeaux, namely Saint-Denise-de-Pile, who invited me

over to

22

Bordeaux, the Godrie family, so I pursued this wonderful opportunity, and decided to visit them in Saint-Denis-De-Pile. I spoke

impeccable French. I corresponded for years with Muguette Godrie, my beloved friend who sponsored my stay in France.

Meanwhile, the question remained, how to get there by land without a visa to Austria— as my isolated region of Transylvania had no

air connection to the outside world til late in 1990.

I succeeded to finally extract myself from that virtual prison, and we had to do it by car. Pumped up and having all the visas in my

passport, I took off with Jim on September 16, 1990 in an Opel, which remains my favorite car to this day. They ended manufacturing

of the Opel in 1990.

THE INFLUENCE OF RECENT ROMANIAN HISTORY

In the meantime, the History of Transylvania weighed heavily on population of Romania, with constant change in the emerging

political map always have left “citizens” always lost about who was really in charge.

Thus, Transylvania was originally part of the Dacia Kingdom between 82 BC until the Roman conquest in 106 AD. The capital of

Dacia was destroyed by the Romans, so that a new as capital would serve the Roman Province of Dacia, which lasted until 350 AD, by

which time the Romans felt so hated that it behooved them to withdraw back to Rome.

During the late 9th century, western Transylvania was conquered by the Hungarian Army to later become part of the Kingdom of

Hungary and in 1570 to devolve into the Principality of Transylvania. During most of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Principality

became an Ottoman Empire vassal state, confusingly also governed by the Habsburg Empire. After 1711 Transylvania was

consolidated solely into the Hapsburg Empire and Transylvanian princes were replaced with Habsburg imperial governors. After 1867,

Transylvania ceased to have separate status and was incorporated into the Kingdom of Hungary as part of the Austro-Hungarian

Empire. After World War I, Transylvania reverted in 1918 to be part of Romania. In 1940 Northern Transylvania again became

governed by Hungary and then Germany, but Romanian queen Maria successfully reclaimed it after the end of World War II.

23

The year 1940 was important for Romania because if was seized for its oil by Nazi Germany (1940-1944), “liberated” by the “Soviet

Union” (1944-1947), and finally “re-liberated” to become the Popular republic of Romania (under USSR remote control), as the Cold

War was beginning to freeze the Iron Curtain into place.

At the end of World War II while the USSR and its Red Army were the occupying powers in all Romania, in 1947 Romania forcibly

and ironically became a “People’s Republic” (1947–1989), after the rise of the Iron Curtain.

The first “president,” Gheorghiu-Dej (1947) ruled as puppet of Moscow, but when he died, his Secretary General of the Communist

Party of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, was elected as the second “president” (1965-1989), shifting his savage dictatorship into a

harsher Romanian “Gulag” than known in the USSR.

For two decades I neither understood the dimensions of tragic history of Transylvania, nor did I yet realize that I would have to escape

the Gulag of Romania, even if by the “skin of my teeth.”

For peoples of the world Transylvania seems to be a far-away place, where most people know the werewolves and vampires have been

“seen” to in the imagination of Transylvanians, whose beliefs was soaked in mystical folklore. Even today it is hardly possible to have

a rational conversation with most the Transylvanian folk on any subject without recourse to try to understand where their distorted

imagination has befuddled them.

The population has consisted of Romanians, Hungarians, Germans, and some Ukrainians. These languages are still being

spoken in Romania’s Maramures province, but because I always liked and loved the Romanian language, I decided to become a

Professor of Romanian Language and Literature, as well as American Language and Civilization.

MY BACKDROP TO THE FALL OF CEAUSESCU

I later told Jim how I had been admitted in 1982 to the Babes-Bolyai University, in Cluj-Napoca at the heart of Transylvania, I focused

especially on Linguistics. Unfortunately, there I found that the professors, who were under the control of sweaty-stinking Securitate

officers, had to read dozens of new Decrees issued every day as they sought to control every one of our daily actions—all in the name

of protecting the Ceausescu government—which was selling the country’s food supplies to Russia in order to pay down Roman’s

official debt with exports. Those Securitate officers ate well and ominously watched us virtually starve. They said, be calm, like your

parents in the face of their starvation.

Thus, I furiously called out in my classes that our very existence was being compromised by Ceausescu's abandonment of the

population, which was ordered to, as Lenin famously said, “work, work, and work.”

To protect myself as best I could, I turned to humor, seeking to ridicule Ceausescu’s “national paradise.” But when I encouraged my

classmates to laugh at the propaganda embedded in the wooden language of the national bureaucracy, I soon fell under the heavy

24

scrutiny of university authorities, who were furious that I trying to expose the fact that all classes had been organized to befuddle the

student body into confused submission. Indeed, each professor had favorite students to help drown out legitimate questions and stifle

any competing analysis—the university lived under nepotism, favoritism, the threat of rape (virtual and real) by the Securitate officers,

and open bribery by the professors--choose your garden variety.

Knowing My Real value And Having A Spine

By 1986, at age 23, I had decided to flee Romania—an illegal act because Ceausescu did not want anyone (especially women of child-

bearing age) to escape his plan to building his “ideal socialist industries” on farms and ranches as well as in the cities. In June I made

my way to the border of Yugoslavia and paid a smuggler to evade the Romanian security forces that were preventing the “nations

workers” from escaping. The smuggler, who took me across the border, turned out to be working for Romanian Border Police. Thus,

soon after crossing into Yugoslavia, he turned his wagon around and I was again in Romania again when I realized what had happened

too late. I had been “sold” to Ceausescu’s minions for a wagonload of salt and 20 Liters of gasoline. Thousands were returned for this

kind of draconian exchange.

That failed escape from Romania led me to a 10-month prison sentence in Timisoara Prison, wherein the block cells were maintained

so cold (supposedly to eliminate bacteria and viruses) that it made all of us inmates sick with the cold and the flu.

Bed blankets in the were less warming than one Kleenex tissue. Moreover, there were no pillows, and the concrete slab where inmates

slept was a “back-breaker.” The lights were on 24 hours a day, blinding all of us, and there was constant observation. Every hour one

was awakened to be counted for, and sneaking up on people, under the guise of watching out for suicides. But everyone could be

clearly seen by the guards, and there was no need to sleep-deprive inmates. There was also someone in the higher echelon ripping off

the food budget to siphon money to themselves while serving inmates only baby carrots and spicy beans.

Almost every family in Romanian civil society had at least one member who had been imprisoned for trying to open the political

system by denouncing the Ceausescu dictatorship. These inmates were openly called “Political Prisoners,” and I was one of them.

Political Prisoners were not permitted to work outside the prison walls in the fields because our crime had been the political decision to

repudiate Ceausescu’s “fantastic system.”

25

OUT OF PRISON IN 1987 TO FIND ROMANIA FACING DISASTER And FAMINE

“CHANGE IN THE AIR”

Once free in 1987, I could return to my University to finally complete my M.A. in 1990.

Further in 1987, at the age of 24, I met the Family patriarch Nicolae Pipas, who directed for the Communist government the walled

Regional Art Museum in a quiet part of Sighet. When he realized that I was a Professor of the English and Romania Languages, and

one of the few university’s highly educated persons in the region, I began to serve as interpreter/guide to visiting foreign Ambassadors

permitted to travel in Romania. They wanted to see the Museum with its magnificent collection of paintings, sculptures, and rare

historical pottery and coins. Thus, I soon found myself interpreting and translating for visiting English-Speaking Ambassadors from

many countries who wished to know Transylvania, especially my village Sighet and its Merry Cemetery famous worldwide for it

tombstones in the form of wood sculpture of the butcher, the baker, candlestick maker, and all professions.

Although my first languages were Romanian and Hungarian, I could also translate into French and Italian. Indeed at that time I was

teaching Latin in the Rural School System of my Maramures Province.

By 1989, Ceausescu realized that his end was near, and he sought to gain support by pardoning his political prisoners (such as myself)

who had tried to escape the horrendous conditions in the country. Hence, university students and some labor unions joined forces and

quite quickly after the fall of the Berlin Wall forced Ceausescu and his draconian wife Elena to flee. They were caught and executed

on Christmas Day, 1989, by the military that at the last moment joined the Revolution.

‘As my friends and I (along with most of the population) cheered the fall of the failed, rotten Romanian “dictatorship of the

proletariat,” my dear mother acted differently. She was so confused by the

26

propaganda of the only “leader” she knew much about that she wept for Ceausescu, not fully realizing that he was the one who had

wrongly had be arrested and put me in prison.

With Ceausescu gone, in 1990 I was able to secure a passport to ready myself to leave Romania by gaining visas for Germany and

France. The question remained, how to get there by land without a visa to Austria—my region had no air connection to the outside

world.

MY FATEFUL 1991 MEETING IN SIGHET WITH JIM WILKIE

Almost age 27 in 1991, I was in the right place at the right time when UCLA Professor Jim Wilkie arrived in Sighet September 17th,

1990, together with Professor James Platler (his friend and driver). They came as part of their trip to assess the impact of the 1989 Fall

of Iron Curtain--which had imprisoned all Romanians and made it a crime to try to escape from Romania. The two Americans had

already visited “East” Germany, Czechia, and Slovakia (soon to break their union, each becoming independent), and Poland, where

English speakers could provide guidance.

In Romania the UCLA Team found itself at a loss as few of the people who they encountered could speak English and none of them

could analyze or articulate how the System of Government and society functioned before and after 1989.

When we met, Jim immediately contracted with me to advise them as well as guide them through Eastern Europe. They were

pleased to hear the my outline of Transylvanian and Romanian history (see above), with which I explained how constant national

boundary change meant that Transylvanians and Romanians were never able to develop either honest civil government or active civic

society. Little did I know that the concepts of “Civic” and “Civil” Society were of utmost importance to Jim? As I would find out later,

Jim and I had been conducting compatible research for years and would lead me to my

PHD Dissertation and two books written with Jim. All these works distinguish between the concepts of Civil Society (which

represents national and local governmental activity) and Civic Society (which involves active private citizens (who organize non-

governmental initiatives to develop model projects

beyond the ability of official bureaucrats to even comprehend, including the influence needed to monitor and expose the failures and

successes of governmental activity).

27

But before we left in September 18, 1991, to visit Romania and Hungary, I had to find a substitute for my new class teaching

American English and History in Sighet—I left a friend, Johnny Popescu, to become my permanent substitute. Only then could our

newly expanded Team set off under my guidance.

Thus, we set out on that September 18th to visit one of the most socially and economically interesting and beautiful parts of Romania

by going up thought the green forested Carpathian Mountains via the beautiful Prislop Pass, stopping to visit small farming families in

their folkloric clothing of which they were justifiably proud to wear on a daily basis. Farther east in Romania, on the scenic roads, we

visited the monasteries of Moldova, the town of Cimpulung Moldovenesc, Suceava, and then the Monasteries in Sucevita and Agapia.

The gorgeous forested mountain road eventually led to Lacul Rosu and the lake country. Then we took the long scenic mountain road

to Cluj Napoca to visit my prestigious University.

As I briefed Jim about Romania, he was briefing me about factors in comparing national economies. For example, he told me about

how he had reunited in Prague on September 15th with Richard Beesen, his former UCLA student and friend, to hear about his role in

London as Manager of Deutsche Bank’s New Accounts in Russia and Eastern Europe. Richard had become famous for inviting

Banking Officials and national Treasury Ministries to deposit their financial reserves on deposit in his bank in London. But

because his clients did not understand anything about “interest payments” on deposited funds, they did not ask for nor did they gain

any interest payments. Also, because most Western Banks were not sure that

these new “capitalists” could be “fully trusted” for correct management of their deposits, his Deutsche Bank collected large fees (and

paid no interest to keep the Eastern Europe “bank reserves safe.” This was all very eye opening for me.

Jim and I had realized early on that we had a close affinity as we analyzed the situation of Romania, and he said, “Call me Jim.” (In

contrast I called Professor James Platler “JP.”) As we traveled to observe the situation of the people in different parts of the country,

Jim and I formed a deep bond of observing and analyzing; thus both of us realized this brief interlude had to continue for the long term

in order to achieve our goals.

NEXT STOPS, BUDAPEST, SALZBURG, MUNICH,

BORDEAUX (FOR ME), AND LOS ANGELES (FOR JIM)

As a Romanian, I had the right to enter Hungary, and we did so bypassing the miles of vehicles waiting to cross the border for

the long drive to Budapest. There Prof. James Platler finally relaxed after the long drives and often poor hotels and monasteries —he

28

said that he finally found unbroken civilization again. I was astounded to hear that. I made everything possible for them to have the

best lodging and food in Moldova and Maramures county. Obviously, my friends had different standards than us, Romanians.

Once we arrived in Budapest, Professor James Platler, who had told Jim privately that from the outset of our trip that he thought that

I was a “Spy” (planted on us by the Romanian Securitate to monitor our many “foreign” inquiries during our travel through Romania’s

north country), announced that his concern about me had vanished as we realized the extent of my knowledge and research abilities.

In his mind, I had to be a Spy because I had obtained access to special private dining rooms and quarter in some fine hotels, as well as

invitations for wonderful lunches at some Monasteries, where miraculously I made immediate friends with each Mother Superior. But

by the time we reached Budapest, he realized that at my University I had learned the Elite skills needed to survive safely and

comfortably in Eastern Europe.

My problem was to enter Austria, where I had no visa. But Jim passed his UCLA business card through to the Consul General of

Austria in Budapest, and quickly we found ourselves whisked from the back of the long line to the front and right into a meeting with

the Consul General himself. He was pleased to hear about the research of our UCLA Team, but said that I did have a visa. Jim then

told them that I only needed a three-day transit visa to reach Germany, the visa for which he could see in my passport.

With entry to Austria solved, we were on the road to the Hotel Kobentzl and Graz, which overlook Salzburg, all the way analyzing the

comparative economic and social situations of Austria, Hungary, and Romania.

We spent most of our time down the mountain from Kobentzl to the valley, before returning to our sweeping Hotel view of Salzburg

City. Meanwhile I was deepening my questions about capital is leveraged to undertake big private projects. As we took photos over

from on high looking down on the many bridges of Salzburg and Jim was explaining how the developed world operated by using

finances, credit, and interest to help economies grow.

Finally we left Salzburg to enter Germany and Munich, where our quick look into Oktoberfest found us among nasty drunken louts

each of whom seemingly had hand four hands: one to chug-a-lug beer; one to smoke foul smelling cigarettes; one to quaff horrible-

bleeding-raw sausages; and one to punch someone in the face. From what we saw, Oktoberfest was a place for nasty males seeking to

“get smashed on beer” and then smash another male to break his nose. Thus, we fled for our lives as the brutes began to threaten

anyone who looked at them.

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Then on September 30th, I took the plane from Munich to Paris to take a bus to Bordeaux to meet the French family, the daughter of

which, in her visit in 1990 to the Museum in Sighet, had invited me to obtain a French visa and move to stay with her on the lovely

family farm outside Bordeaux.

Jim (and JP) also left the same day for Jim to arrive in time to go from the airplane to open and begin teaching his Fall Quarter class at

UCLA. But he promised to call daily and return to join me again in ten weeks.

In the meantime, I made a trip to Paris to request political asylum in France, but a grey-faced judge rejected my request, saying that the

petitioner must file with the help of a lawyer.

To complicate matters in Bordeaux, the French Security Agent there was investigating me, a lone woman, as a possible spy sent by

Romania to “monitor activities at the Port of Bordeaux. When he told that, if I pleased him in unmentionable ways, he would not

deport me to Romania but arrange my legal status in France so that I could live him. I immediately told Jim on his next telephone call.

To resolve the above problem, Jim called his Paris friend Gérard Chaliand, a former visiting professor at UCLA, whose real job

involved traveling the world for French Security to report on his professorial travels that took him to all continents. Gérard

immediately called French Security to report on the illegal approach to me by their Agent in Bordeaux. That same day the Agent came

to apologize profusely to me in the best manner that he could muster in his pitiful condition. He begged me not to have him fired for

his proposition to me. I could see him looking at me in truly puzzled way that implicitly said: “Who are you? How did I make such a

grave mistake in deciding that you, a lone Romanian woman, could not have any power to reach my bosses in Paris?” I took pity on

him and told him that if he minded manners and watched from affair to be sure that I was always safe, he would not be fired.

JIM RETURNS TO EUROPE IN DECEMBER, 1991:

HIS PLAN FOR ADVISING EASTERN EUROPEAN CIVIC SOCIETY ABOUT HOW TO GAIN GRANTS FROM U.S.

FOUNDATIONS (NPPOs), WHICH HOLD THE WORLD’S LARGEST POOL OF NGO DEVELOPMENT FUNDS

Even though it was December 11, 1991, when Jim returned, France was in the midst what some in America call an “Indian Fall,”

warm with colorful fall leaves still on the trees. It was a beautifully bright

“fall day” when we left Bordeaux the next day to spend some days visiting the Loire River with its many castles and incredible views.

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Even during our photography of the Loire region, Jim began to outline his New Plan (now our plan) to wit: PROFMEX Plan to Help

Eastern European “Foundations”

Therefore, some Romanian and Mexican NGOs become legally eligible to gain grants from U.S. Tax Exempt Foundations

following our advice on how to do it, best practices we could teach other leaders about: and so The U.S. Model for Philanthropy was

born.

“The U.S.-Mexico Model for Philanthropy.”

Indeed, Jim told me that recently when he had been in Mexico City, he received an invitation to meet with Manuel Alonso Muñoz,

Executive Director of Mexico’s National Lottery, who, when he heard about Jim’s U.S.-Mexico Model, invited him to meet at the

Lottery’s historically famous ornate building. After an extended briefing by Jim, Manuel told him that he had already called his own

good friend Ronald G. Hellman, Professor of Sociology in the Graduate School at the City University of New York, to ask him for an

evaluation of Jim and his Mexico-U.S. Model for Philanthropy. Ironically, it was only then when he realized that Ron was (and is

today) Jim’s PROFMEX Vice-President for Strategic Planning. With that news and Jim’s stellar briefing, Lic. Alonso asked if the

Lottery could make a series of generous grants to PROFMEX in order to help fund the expansion of Jim’s Model to Eastern Europe,

putting Mexico into an innovative new light.

Mexico And The World, I got the idea! Evrika, so the brilliant idea to bring together experts from all the world to Mexico, to have a

debate was born. The Conference I was always dreaming about was beginning to shape up, and soon things all lined up for us to

organize a bi-lateral Conference in Morelia, the State of Michoacán. The Governor was more than happy to receive us in Michoacán.

So we worked together with Manuel Alonso to get people down there. The hardest part was to get the financing for it.

Manuel Alonso was appreciative of the fact that Jim, while serving as Consultant to the U.S. Council on Foundations, had become

involved since 1990 with his Model for helping Mexican Foundations (including, for example, charities, human rights organizations,

hospitals, universities, biospheres, etc.) to help them re-write their constitution and by-laws to be compatible with the U.S. tax

requirement that they mirror U.S. Not-for-Private Profit Organizations (NPPOs).

The question of “mirroring” involved Jim’s explanation that:

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As NPPOs, U.S. Foundations are legally responsible for controlling expenditure of funds granted to organizations that do not mirror

the U.S. foundations do not want to be involved in the day-to-day activities of its grantees. Indeed, “ they want to transfer expenditure

responsibility” (including misuse or illegal use of grant funds) to the recipient foundation to which they grant funds but can only do so

if the grant recipient organization is deemed to have an “equivalent” legal structure to that of the U.S. donor foundation.

Here is the background, according to Jim: “In order to facilitate the U.S. philanthropic activity needed during the 1970s and 1980s to

help speed world development, the U.S. Secretary of Treasury and the IRS formulated provisions that resulted in changing and/or

interpreting the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) to freely permit U.S. foundations to grant funds abroad, if they meet the following

special proviso:

U.S. NPPOs can themselves make a legal “determination” that the foreign organization receiving the U.S. grant be “determined” to be

“equivalent” to an NPPO described in Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code.”

Further, Jim pointed out that, “while this proviso has worked well for big U.S. grant-making foundations that place costly

offices and staff around the world (such as Rockefeller and Ford Foundations), it has worked less well for foundations that have had to

send their lawyers to meet with their legal counterparts in prospective ‘equivalent organizations, the legal cost of making such a

determination often reaching $25,000 [or, by 2016, much, much more] for each new organization to

receive funds from the U.S. NPPO. If that determination is favorable, the U.S. NPPO can transfer funds to the equivalent organization,

just as it can to any other approved U.S. NPPO, and along with the transfer of funds to the recipient organization goes the transfer of

responsibility over how the funds are spent.”

Transfer of ‘Expenditure Responsibility’ from the

U.S. Donor NPPO to the Foreign Recipient NPPO.

The ability of U.S. NPPOs to avoid costly expenditure responsibility, as Jim told, is one of the factors that have helped make American

grant-making foundations so important in the world. Thus, U.S. NPPOs have been enabled to avoid becoming ensnarled in accounting

processes and audits, which are better done by the foreign organization that receives and administers the U.S. NPPO grant of funds.

In this manner, said Jim, the U.S. NPPO is free to focus its energy on evaluating the substance of its grant programs. The ability of

grant-making foundations to transfer Expenditure Responsibility to other NPPOs is the main reason that they generally prefer (and

require) that their funds be granted only to approved organizations rather than to individuals or to non-approved organizations.

The above views, Jim said, do not mean that U.S. NPPOs are unable to grant funds to an organization that is not equivalent to a U.S.

NPPO (or make grants to individual scholars, artists, or writers either at home or abroad), but to do so adds a complication to the grant-

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making process. Rather than passing on the Expenditure Responsibility (as the U.S. NPPO does when it makes grants to another NPPO

or U.S. equivalent), the Expenditure Responsibility remains with the donor NPPO when it makes a grant to an organization that is not

an NPPO (or its U.S. equivalent) or to an individual.

In the unlikely case where the donor NPPO retains Expenditure Responsibility, then, Jim told me in my interview with him

on September 17, 1991, the donor foundation has to concern itself with costly financial oversight involved, which may problematic

whether of in or outside the USA.

ON TO PARIS AND THE WORLD TO MEET WITH NPPO LEADERS ABOUT NEW

FOUNDATIONS

Jim and I arrived in Paris on December 15, 1991, to meet with Jim’s contacts at the American Embassy, who heard about

our research and suggested that Jim meet also with their counterparts at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. They agreed to help begin

to our new Plan to expand to Eastern Europe and Russia Jim’s successful Model for Tax-Free Flow of Nonprofit Funds, the example

being what he negotiated (with the U.S. Council on Foundations and the U.S. and Mexican Treasury Departments), as analyzed above.

It is important for me to say here that George Soros and his decentralized donations to his 41 semi-autonomous “national foundations”

(exemplified in Romania, Hungary, and Russia) have been built following the IRS proviso and regulations discussed above. Also,

Soros’ “National Foundations” require that national Government charter the independent role as NGOs.

In contrast, the flowering of thousands of small independent “Foundations” in Eastern Europe since 1989 has grown from

groups looking for funds from the many U.S. Foundations that do not have the Soros/New York link with its Foundations in many

nations, all of which operate in Soros’ closed loop. Few of these new Foundations have the Soros knowledge and financial resources to

set up the By-Laws and Legal Status needed for the thousands of Foundations desiring to tap into funding by the U.S. Foundations.

However, since 2013, Soros’ has organized an office to work with shared Global Funds (for food, migration, etc.) outside the non-

Soros frameworks to help poor areas and countries to stave off crises. Recently, in 2013, George Soros has been discredited by the

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Hungarian PM, Orban who has aggressively made anti-Soros advertisement on buses in Hungary, claiming that the Hungarian

American wanted Arabs, and Palestinians to “invade” Hungary. The anti-Soros rhetoric has become increasingly nationalistic, and this

is what FIDESZ, the ruling party is preaching

Before we left Paris on December 19, 1991, we met with Gérard Chaliand to personally thank him for having made the Bordeaux

Security agent reexamine his whole approach to his life.

Further, with Gérard, we worked out a plan to arrange for me to become a U.S. resident and obtain U.S. citizenship nine years after my

arrival in Los Angeles, October 1992. He recommended that my case by handled in In Los Angeles by one of America’s most

knowledgeable and effective Migration Attorneys—Cynthia Juárez Lange, today Managing Partner, Northern California, for the

Fragomen Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP Legal Office located in San Francisco. Cynthia is herself an academic and personable

genius.

Meanwhile in my travels with Jim in December 1991 and from March to June 1992 we met NPPO leaders in the European Union to

better understand how foundations work under unique laws in each county rather than in any rational manner for the whole EU, we

went to Marseilles, Nice, Villfranche-sur-Mer, Cap-Ferrat, Monaco, La Rochelle, Andorra, Sevilla, Madrid, Trujillo, El Escorial, Avila

(a magnificent fortress city), and Segovia.

On September 3. 1992, we arrived at the U.S. Consulate in Paris, where the U.S Consulate in Mexico had arranged with Jim for my

U.S. eligibility for residence to be issued. Also, the Mexican Consulate General in Paris issued me my residence papers to enter and

leave Mexico freely, as arranged by Jim with the Mexican Consular Head Office in Mexico City.

Before we left Europe for the USA in October 1991, we returned to Sighet on September 7, 1992, for meetings with Romanian Civic

Activists. (Thus, I finally returned to Sighet after having “escaped” with Jim to France in December 1991).

From March to June 1993, we met with NPPO leaders in Budapest, Sighet, and Varna (Bulgaria), Bucharest, and St. Petersburg.

In Moscow (June 21-14, 1993), Jim appointed Professor Boris Koval (Director of the Latin American Institute of the Russian

Academy of Sciences), to be PROFMEX Representative in Russia. Koval had invited us to Moscow and introduced us to his own

Security Chief to be our translator and guide. This Security Chief was a fascinating person who had been former head of the KGB

Office in Iraq, 1979-1989.

Jim, who always wore his Mexican guayabera shirt with or without a suit, was seen to be “authentically Mexican” in our meetings and

discussions about NPPOs.

Some of our interviews focused on the successes of Soros Open Society Foundation--Russia (1987-2002). Other meetings with civic

society followed as we learn the details about the problems of the Soros

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Foundations--Russia since 2003, when, under reactionary Government pressure, he was phasing out of operation active programs.

According to the Soros Foundation—Russia:

“When on November 30, 2015, Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office classified the Soros Open Society Foundation as an

“undesirable” organization, it closed the possibility of Russian individuals and institutions from having anything to do with any Soros

initiative or programs… [Because it constituted] a threat to the foundations of Russia’s Constitutional order and national security….

“Prosecutors [then] launched a probe into Soros Foundation

activities…. [and in July 2015], after Russian senators approved

the so-called “patriotic stop-list” of 12 groups that required

immediate attention over their supposed anti-Russian activities, [the

following U.S. organizations] realized that they would soon be

banned in Russia: [the U.S.] National Endowment for Democracy; the

International Republican Institute; the National Democratic

Institute; the MacArthur Foundation, and Freedom House. Now in

2017, all Eastern European countries want Soros foundations closed

in their countries, especially the Hungarian PM, Orban Viktor, who

went so far as to describe him as a dangerous politician mixing in his

domestic “dictatorial” affairs.

The American hedge-funds mogul George Soros issued from London the following Press Release

on November 30, 2015:

“Contrary to the Russian prosecutor’s allegations, the Open Society Foundations have, for more than a quarter-century, helped to

strengthen the rule of law in Russia and protect the rights of all. In the past, Russian officials and citizens have welcomed our efforts,

and we regret the changes that have led the government to reject our support to Russian civil society and ignore the aspirations of the

Russian people.

“Since 1987, Open Society has provided support to countless individuals and civil society organizations, including in the fields of

science, education, and public health. Open Society has helped finance a network of internet centers in 33 universities around the

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country, helped Russian scholars to travel and study abroad, developed curricula for early childhood education, and created a network

of contemporary art centers that are still in operation.

“This record speaks for itself. We are honored to have worked alongside pioneering citizens, educators, and civil society organizations

that embody Russian creativity, commitment, and hope.

“We are confident that this move is a temporary aberration; the aspirations of the Russian people for a better future cannot be

suppressed and will ultimately succeed,” said George Soros, founder and chairman of the Open Society Foundations.) Despite all

efforts made by Soros and his organizations, he has been banned from Russia.

“Once with the reset of the Cold War, in 2012, when Putin was reelected as Russia’s President, Putin’s first movement was to ban all

Soros organizations which were impeding his expansion onto Crimea.”

Catching up on Soros, he most recent assertion is that civil society is being endangered by nostalgia for communism. Read:

by Jacob Grandstaff

1 COMMENTS

Read Part One of “George Soros’ says in Romanian Ghosts.” Part Two explains how Soros-funded NGOs and their Western allies in

government push for revolution in Eastern Europe. Part Three shows how Romanian activist “ghosts” became a threat to civil liberties

and undermined their nation’s sovereignty.

Back in Mexico City for the 1994 PROFMEX Event featuring Eastern Europeans interested in the U.S.-Mexico Model for NPPOs,

we convened, July 28-29, for our meeting on “Development of Mexico as seen from the World,” Co-sponsored by UCLA and

Mexico’s Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología.

This Conference was held at Mexico City’s María Isabel Sheraton, with 70 participants from Mexico and the United States, and

which I co-organized with Jim

The following invitees from Eastern Europe came from

Hungary

Zoltan Karpati, Professor of Sociology

Romania Mihai Coman, University Dean

Roman Romulus, Consul General in Mexico

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Alexandru Lazín, PROFMEX-- England and Romania

Lia Stan, Investor from Bristol, England.

Highlights of the event came frequently as we turned our gaze from Salón A with his all-window view from the top floor to

discuss the anti-government protest marches up and down Reforma Avenue past the Angel Monument below.

Further, our group enjoyed the invitation of Mexico’s Attorney General, Jorge Madrazo Cuéllar to visit him at his headquarters

where we personally discussed and raised questions about the street blockages of political protest in front of our María Isabel Sheraton

Hotel.

In December 1997, we continued to invite world scholars especially interested in economic matters, as well as in the U.S.-Mexico

NPPO Model to participate with us at the:

IX PROFMEX-ANUIES Conference

Hosted by Governor Víctor Manuel Tinoco Rubí

Morelia, Michoacán, México

México y el Mundo Or Mexico and the World, in December 8-13, 1997

With hundreds of participants and Attendees from all continents,

Special Guests were invited from Russia: Boris Koval, who recalled with excitement

the visit of Jim and I to Moscow in June 1993.

From China: Sengen Zhang

Hongzhu Huang

Korea: Kap-Young Jeong

Japan: Soichi Shinohara

Osamu Nishimura

Yasuoki Takagi

Indonesia: Lepi T. Tarmidi

Argentina: Eugenio O. Valenciano

Bolivia: Antonio J. Cisneros

---------

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Jim and I have been involved with many academic activities, but those are beyond the scope of my analysis here of our role in

extending PROFMEX around the globe, especially to Europe and Russia.

My courses at UCLA taken under Jim and Professors Carlos Alberto Torres, Richard Weiss, and Ivan T. Berend led me to my

M.A. in History and Latin American Studies (1996) at Unieversity of California, Los Angeles.

And my Ph.D. in History (2001) at UCLA, and Post-Doctoral Research in the Education and Information Department

for 8 years. I completed this Fellowship in 2017.

Here is title of my first book’s author: http://www.DecentralizedGlobalization.com 2017 March 10.

The second book, La globalización se descentraliza:Libre mercado, fundaciones, sociedad cívica y gobierno civil en las regiones del

mundo (2007) Olga Magdalena Lazín. With a Prologue by James W. Wilkie.

My third book, co-authored with James W. Wilkie, contains images that reflect my travels with Jim:

La globalización se amplia (2011), or Globalization Amplifies, Olga Magdalena Lazín & James W., Preface de Rafael Rodríguez

Castañeda, was published by UCLA, in 2011 in Spanish.

These books, including Decentralized Globalization show how U.S. Tax Exempt Organization (TEO) law has evolved to become the

most important in the world owing to its flexibility. Where the laws of most countries require prior legal authorization to launch in a

new direction, the United States TEO law recognizes no such limit.

Thus, U.S. TEO law, unlike most other countries, is never trying to make legal what is already underway and working in the world.

For the USA and now Mexico, both Treasury Ministries together have signed the first collaborative agreement that stands as the

blueprint for global NPPOs.

With Professor Jim Wilkie, I know that much researching and writing awaits us in our projects around the world….

Olga and Jim, Guadalajara, Mexico, International Airport, December 7, 2016 @olgalazin

Later on, Richard Beeson, who headed up Deutsche bank, London office, where he represented all EE countries, had convinced EE

countries Central banks to deposit their golden cash at Deutsche Bank, London office. He reunited with JW in Prague, and Cracow,

where the horrible polluted air blinded him.

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In Budapest I obtained the Austrian visa, where I needed a transit visa.

Then we travelled to Kobentzl, overlooking Salzburg, talking about the global economy.

We even spent most of our time down Salzburg city, taking pictures, and JW was teaching me economics, how the world of

development worked: finances, credit, interest. JP had more faith in me than ever.

We continued our journey to Munich, where we celebrated Oktoberfest with the locals in Frankfurt.

Next, I took the plane to Paris, from Munich, to fly out to Bordeaux to meet the family, which invited me to France. Jim had to go

back to Los Angeles to teach Fall Quarter, as always. He promised he would return for me soon.

After ten weeks in Bordeaux, Jim came to visit me.

We met in Paris, and I was refused asylum in France. The national security Bureau headed by a Gris guy (security officer) was asking

me weekly why was I keeping in touch with “The American”, I quote.

Finally, Jim returned for me. It was a very wonderful fall, I Bordeaux, so we drove to see all the castles along the Loire River.

The 1st trip was to and along the river of LOIRE; we left in September, and came back in December. Then we went to Paris, and

visited the Versailles, Champs Elysee, the Montmartre, and Montparnasse. We had everything to ourselves, and then we went to

Marseille, listening to the Pastorales, and day-dreaming through the beautiful green lands of France.

In Marseille we stayed at the Sofitel, JW was overlooking the Bay, into the icy cold town. And we went to the COTE Azure. We

stayed at Hotel Welcome. Then rode over the serpentined Cornish roads, overlooking the Mediterranean, Cap Ferrat, and Monaco.

Then JW had to fly out to teach again, and I flew back to Bordeaux, where I took numerous courses in European Union Regulations

for the environment, and sustainability.

In Cancún, at the tiny Iguana conservationist group

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Life In Bordeaux France, 1991

Life with the nuns in Bordeaux, France, in the city of Red Wines, was finally very healing and I was in excellent health. The mother

superior took me to Toulouse Lautrec’s castle, and we swam in the Atlantic ocean. I cooked for myself and studied Elitelore and

Folklore at Université De Michelle de Montaigne, one block away from my Doctrine Chretiéne.

I was feeling very safe with the Nuns. Jim was calling me daily, checking up on me and my health. Then I flew to meet Jim in NICE,

in 1992.

It was now another beautiful stay at WELCOME hotel overlooking the ocean, in a stupendous pictorial town called Beaulieu sur Mer.

At the Welcome Hotel, right across from the ocean scene, I saw the boats coming up and down to the port.

Jim came back 10 weeks later. The second time we travelled to Carcassonne, a fortified city, through Andorra (a gambling center, in

the Pyrenees’). The Principality of Andorra was rich and ostentatious with baroque buildings. And La Rochelle, a beautiful Bay,

nested in the mountains.

Then entered into Spain, toward Madrid, and stayed at Hotel Paris for a week, in the center of Madrid.

Here we enjoyed eating the charales in the main plaza. Best snack I ever had in Spain, tiny delicious fish would make us feel satiety in

a few minutes. We found charales in Morelia later in 1995.

We visited stupendous Toledo, the town of knives, which we left behind in late September, and then headed to the town of Trujillo. In

Trujillo we went and took pictures while walking on the red roofs of houses, perfectly lined up for me to walk. I took great that I was

free and nobody minded my business. Jim and I, we were only taking care of one another.

We went up to the Devil’s Throat (a town deep in a canyon, tucked into the mountains where a monastery is nested) to continue up in

the mountains, and then went down to a walled town of Avila, to Trujillo, and continued to Madrid. We stayed at Paris Hotel in the

heart of the capital, and listened to the powerful bells of the Catholic church in front of us. The sounds of the Church bell were strong,

and it reverberated in my vertebrae.

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Then we headed toward El Escorial, the monastery, and then JW flew out of Madrid. I took the plane to France, and in Bordeaux I

joined the nuns again, and continued my studies of Folklore at the University of Bordeaux, where I was writing about the mythical

Lilith.

To paint it in a picture of words, I am flashing out the pageant, of that most extraordinary beautiful Catholic Church, as we went down

from La Rochelle, along the clean river, where we called to make reservations in a pretty tiny hotel, ahead and we found a room with a

high ceiling warm and cozy.

Out of many, Switzerland is my favorite European country; the majestic mountains and the rivers impressed me.

Monte Rosa’s Peak and Matterhorn were absolutely fabulous, left us breathless, and the chalet Michabell was looking down onto Italy.

The view out of the window was that of Matterhorn mountain in Zermatt, a pretty town.

We then went out to Monte Rosa, a majestic chain of snow-covered Mountain of rare beauty.

I enjoyed the lovely scenery in Luzern, and Interlaken, with the beautiful lake with little bridges leading up to the center, all dressed up

in geranium flowers. Multicolored geraniums flowers were hanging out from each houses’ window. The beautiful trip is to go up on a

chairlift (telefericul) to wheel you up over the meadows, seeing cattle and, magnificent glorious view of the Swiss Mountains, and the

peaks. It is a very gentle and slow trip.

At the base of the Matterhorn, in July 1994 we stayed at the very top, at the Gornergrat Hotel, in a very solitary beautiful hotel. What a

trip that was; and it gave me the perspective to figure out my future plans.

The beauty of nature and overdose of oxygen gave me clarity of mind.

I had in my mind’s eye, planned out all my life during this lovely trip. I knew I exactly what I wanted. I envisioned myself making

research and taking my Doctoral degree at UCLA, in Los Angeles in History.

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We were moving ahead with our travels and research. I decided I want to go to America with Jim. In 1991 in summer I left France for

the United States, more specifically to Los Angeles that is to UCLA, where I wanted to get my master’s degree in History.

In L.A. I witnessed the 1992 riots. I was reading feverishly on how people have started burning buses and cabs in East Los Angeles, as

well as attacking and beating up white people in the streets. The smoke and foul air was moving towards me in Marina del Rey.

We found a lovely hotel, Marina Del Rey, in Marina del Rey, where I stayed for a week, and we looked for a place to live.

I have finally escaped from the bad world into the good world. We loved each other so deeply.

I moved into Westwood and enrolled into the UCLA’s Master program in summer 2004. I graduated soon after in 2005, but no family

was present, as my mother died of a heart attack, and could never travel by plane.

I understood that I never had good communication with anyone.

I was sensitive and creative; and only Jim could appreciate me. These were my thoughts then when I was 40.

Before enrolling at UCLA, I had to visit my uncle Nicholas Lazin, who has fled to Hungary in 1947, after the Wall was raised between

the East and the West in Europe, and settled down in Oshawa, Canada. He invited me many times to visit, Oshawa, in Toronto,

Canada. This trip I took in 1993, it was wintertime in Canada, and it was a harsh experience staying there and getting accustomed

again to cold weather. Coming out of cold winters I spent in Transylvania, I was filled with rheumatism and arthritis.

Cold weather just does not work with me, it was as simple as that. I decided I never leave Los Angeles ever again. My precious warm,

sunny Los Angeles I have fallen in love with.

Discovering new Places And Peoples

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It was a good feeling escaping Ceausescu’s tyranny and discovering the hidden side of the word. I realized how we lived in the dark

and isolation from the world, and that there was better climate in Mexico than in Romania; and one does not be the prisoner of their

own thoughts and limited spirit of the others, living the same nightmare, as I did back in Romania.

I know the nuns in Bordeaux were free spirits and happy women, with a great sense of humor especially the Mother Superior. We even

visited Toulouse Lautrec’s castle, and spent time on the beach where the Atlantic Ocean met the Pacific Ocean. I had spent

unforgettable moments of discovery, and fraternization with the nuns.

Because I have entered the Mexican state, in order to see the pyramids first, I tried to find a place to live also in Mexico, and I have

selected a place called El Bosque del Secreto, but it did not work out. The air is too polluted in Teotihuacan, and around Mexico D.F.

that I only visited the Pyramid of the Sun, and the pyramid of the Moon, and hurried to find a nice place. When I finally found the

house surrounded by beautiful red bougambillas, I realized it was too isolated from town, without a car, far from the market, in one

word, I felt it was not really feasible.

As all ironies are happening, when I arrived to L.A., the riots were in progress.

I was settling in marina del Rey. Then I left again to Toronto to see my uncle Nicholas, and cousin Caroline Lazin. I started teaching

History pretty soon, when I returned to UCLA.

After 2 years in the Doctoral Program in History at UCLA, I graduated in 2001, in January. After graduation I have published my

Doctoral thesis, and a second book on the bright and dark sides of

Globalization with Dr James W Wilkie, Professor at UCLA. Our books are widely read around the world and are used to teach

Courses at College and University levels.

After 9/11 the whole world has changed. And this will be the topic for another book. A book in which I will investigate what has

changed exactly in these 22 years in Los Angeles, and how change has impacted us. Why are we missing those good things of the past,

as a collective. That is the collective memory I garnered.

http://www.profmex.org

43

OR

http://www.olgalazin.com


changed exactly in these 22 years, and how. Why are we missing those things, customs of the region of Transylvania, as a collective.

That is the collective memory I cherish most.

At UCLA, with my students in History, 2014

Source: http://www.scribd.com/doc/203836679/Escaping-From-Transylvania-30-FebTRANSYL?

post_id=2538457_10103066199638166#_=_

Copyrighted © Dr Olga M. Lazin-Andrei 2014 Escape to the West

___________ ©_________//___________________________________

Written on a E mail; [email protected]

On Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+OLGALAZINDr

Twitter: olgamlazin

Facebook: Olga Lazin

Blog: http://olgaandrassy.blogspot.com

http://drolgalazin.blogactiv.eu

44

http://olgalazin.wordpress.com

http://drolgalazinandrei.wordpress.com

E-rated: http://erated.me/p/drolga-lazin/

Titles by the same author: http://www.olgalazin.com/books.html

Academic http://calstatela.academia.edu/DROLGALAZIN

Biography in Romanian: http://www.scribd.com/doc/40129327/Biografie-Dr-Olga-Lazin

March 15, 2014, A Crucial Year for My Career

After 2 years in the Doctoral Program in History at UCLA, I graduated in 2001, in January. After graduation I have published my

Doctoral thesis, and a second book on the bright and dark sides of Globalization with Dr James W Wilkie, Professor at UCLA. Our

books are widely read around the world and are used to teach Courses at College and University levels. To get the books we have

written together with James Wilkie, download them form:


changed exactly in these 22 years in Los Angeles, and how change has impacted us. Why are we missing those good things of the past,

as a collective. That is the collective memory.

45

Doing Yoga, in Cancun.

I have volunteered 200 hours with MADD in 2015.

After volunteering at MADD, for 200 hours, I started working with Edward Olmos

(film-director in Hollywood)

The Russians, having been directing Romanian politicians since 1945, pressured the Romanians to dig useless trenches as

well as learn to disassemble and assemble the AK47! The atmosphere was dreadful in classes. Restrictions were plentiful and absurd.

Speech was not free; one couldn’t discuss issues freely in class, or make any real analysis or debate. One had to regurgitate what the

professors were telling us. Modern economics led by and read whatever was there in the old books stacked in the communist library.

Until I escaped Romania in 1992, I learned that the so-called economics classes we took taught nothing about money, credit, and such

terms as GDP. The Marxist economics involved only fuzzy nonsensical slogans such as “We Romanians have to fight-off the ‘running

dogs of capitalism,” without the word “capitalism” ever being defined except in unrealistic theory laced with epithets

Even as an English major, I could not speak with to foreigners in English --answering one question was a crime, according to the

tendentious Security Decrees. Abortion was a crime punishable for up to 20 years in prison. Doctors performing it ended up in jail, and

so did the pregnant women. Punishments were ridiculous—the Anti-Abortion Law lasted for 40 years, until 1990. Furthermore if my

uncle from Canada visited us, we were all under surveillance, the entire family. Even today, in 2016 one has to report to the police to

declare if any visitor of family comes from the USA (or Canada, for some bizarre security reason). Well after 25 years, not much has

changed in poor Romania. The influence of recent Romanian history.

In the meantime, the History of Transylvania weighed heavily on population of Romania, with constant change in the emerging

political map always have left “citizens” always lost about who was really in charge. Thus, Transylvania was originally part of the

46

Dacia Kingdom between 82 BC until the Roman conquest in 106 AD. The capital of Dacia was destroyed by the Romans, so that a

new capital would serve the Roman Province of Dacia, which lasted until 350 AD, by which time the Romans felt so hated that it

behooved them withdraw back to Rome. During the late 9th century, western Transylvania was conquered by the Hungarian Army to

later become part of the Kingdom of Hungary and in 1570 to devolve into the Principality of Transylvania. During most of the 16th

and 17th centuries, the Principality became an Ottoman Empire vassal state, confusingly also governed by the Habsburg Empire. After

1711 Transylvania was consolidated solely into the Olga Magdalena Lazín & Wilkie: (see historia, economía y elitelore

227 )Habsburg Empire and Transylvanian princes were replaced with Habsburg imperial governors. After 1867, Transylvania ceased

to have separate status and was incorporated into the Kingdom of Hungary as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.6 After World War

I, Transylvania reverted in 1918 to be part of Romania. In 1940 Northern Transylvania again became governed by Hungary and then

Germany, but Romanian queen Maria successfully reclaimed it after the end of World War II. The year 1940 was important for

Romania because if was seized for its oil by Nazi Germany (1940-1944), “liberated” by the “Soviet Union” (1944-1947), and finally

“re-liberated” to become the Popular republic of Romania (under USSR remote control), as the Cold War was beginning to freeze the

Iron Curtain into place. At the end of World War II while the USSR and its Red Army were the occupying powers in all Romania, in

1947 Romania forcibly and ironically became a “People’s Republic” (1947–1989), after the rise of the Iron Curtain. The first

“president,” Gheorghiu-Dej (1947) ruled as puppet of Moscow, but when he died, his Secretary General of the Communist Party of

Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, was elected as the second “president” (1965-1989), shifting his savage dictatorship into a harsher

Romanian “Gulag” than known in the USSR. For two decades I neither understood the dimensions of tragic history of Transylvania,

did I understand that I would have to escape the Gulag of Romania by the “skin of my teeth.” For peoples of the world Transylvania

seems to be a far away place, where most people know the werewolves and vampires have been “seen” to in the imagination of

Transylvanians, whose beliefs was soaked in mystical folklore. Even today it is hardly possible to have a rational 6 This Empire

existed between 1867 and 1918. Olga Magdalena Lazín Wilkie: historia, economía y elitelore 228 conversation with most the

Transylvanian folk on any subject without recourse to try to understand where their distorted imagination has befuddled them. The

population has consisted of Romanians, Hungarians, Germans, and some Ukrainians. These languages are still being spoken in

Romania’s Maramures province, but because I always liked and loved the Romanian language, I decided to become a Professor of

Romanian Language and Literature. My backdrop to the fall of CEAUSESCU I later told Jim how I had been admitted in 1982 to the

BabesBolyai University, in Cluj-Napoca at the heart of Transylvania, I focused especially on Linguistics. Unfortunately, there I found

that the professors, who were under the control of sweaty Securitate officers, had to read dozens of new Decrees issued every day as

they sought to control every one of our daily actions—all in the name of protecting the Ceausescu government—which was selling the

47

country’s food supplies to Russia in order to pay down Roman’s official debt at our experts. Those Securitate officers ate well and

ominously watched us virtually starve.

They said, be calm like your parents in the face of starvation. Thus, I furiously called out in my classes that our very existence was

being compromised by Ceausescu's abandonment of the population, which was ordered to, as Lenin famously said, “work, work, and

work.” To protect myself as best I could, I turned to humor, seeking to ridicule Ceausescu’s “national paradise.” But when I

encouraged my classmates to laugh at the propaganda embedded in the wooden language of the national bureaucracy, I soon fell under

the heavy scrutiny of university authorities, who were furious that I trying to expose the fact Olga Magdalena Lazín Wilkie: historia,

economía y elitelore 229 that all classes had been organized to befuddle the student body into confused submission. Indeed, each

professor had favorite students to help drown out legitimate questions and stifle any competing analysis—the university lived under

nepotism, favoritism, the threat of rape (virtual and real) by the Securitate officers, and open bribery--choose your garden variety. My

1986 flight from Romania backfires by 1986, at age 23, I had decided to flee Romania—an illegal act because Ceausescu did not want

anyone (especially women of childbearing age) to escape his plan to building his “ideal socialist industries” on farms and ranches as

well as in the cities. In June I made my way to the border of Yugoslavia and paid a smuggler to evade the Romanian security forces

that were preventing the “nations workers” from escaping. The smuggler, who took me across the border, turned out to be working for

Romanian Border Police. Thus, soon after crossing into Yugoslavia, he turned his wagon around and I was again in Romania again

when I realized what had happened too late. I had been “sold” to Ceausescu’s minions for a wagonload of salt. That failed escape from

Romania led me to a 10-month prison sentence in Timisoara Prison, wherein the block cells were maintained so cold (supposedly to

eliminate bacteria and viruses) that it made all of us inmates sick with the cold and the flu. Cell bed blankets were less warm than one

Kleenex tissue. Moreover there were no pillow, and the concrete slab where inmates slept was a back-breaker. The lights were on 24

hours a day, blinding all of us, and there was constant observation. Every hour one was awakened to be counted for, and sneaking up

on people, under the guise of watching out Olga Magdalena Lazín Wilkie: historia, economía y elitelore 230 for suicides. But everyone

could be clearly seen by the guards, and there was no need to sleep-deprive inmates. There was also someone in the higher echelon

ripping off the food budget to siphon money to themselves while serving inmates only baby carrots and spicy beans. Almost every

family in Romanian civil society had at least one member who had been imprisoned for trying to open the political system by

denouncing the Ceausescu dictatorship. These inmates were openly called “Political Prisoners,” and I was one of them. Political

Prisoners were not permitted to work outside the prison walls in the fields because our crime had been the political decision to

repudiate Ceausescu’s “fantastic system.” Out of prison in 1987 and open to change in the air Once free in 1987, I could return to my

48

University to finally complete my M.A. in 1990. Further in 1987, at the age of 24, I met the Family patriarch Nicolae Pipas,7 who

directed for the Communist government the walled Regional Art Museum in a quiet part of Sighet. Being one of the few highly

educated persons who spoke English in the region, I began to serve as interpreter/guide to visiting foreign Ambassadors permitted to

travel in Romania. They wanted to see the Museum with its magnificent collection of paintings, sculptures, and rare historical pottery

and coins. Thus, I soon found myself translating for visiting English-Speaking Ambassadors from many countries who wished to know

Transylvania, especially my village Sighet and its Merry Cemetery famous worldwide 7 Upon Ceausescu’s death, the Patriarch Pipas

mysteriously became the Museum’s “owner” and then transferred title to his son Valerian Pipas, the regions most famous violinist.

Olga Magdalena Lazín Wilkie: historia, economía y elitelore 231 for it tombstones in the form of wood sculpture of the butcher, the

baker, candlestick maker, and all professions. Although my first languages were Romanian and Hungarian, I could also translate into

French and Italian. Indeed at that time I was teaching Latin in the Rural School System of my Maramures Province. By 1989,

Ceausescu realized that his end was near, and he sought to gain support by pardoning his political prisoners (such as myself) who had

tried to escape the horrendous conditions in the country. Hence, university students and some labor unions joined forces and quite

quickly after the fall of the Berlin Wall forced Ceausescu and his draconian wife Elena to flee. They were caught and executed on

Christmas Day, 1989, by the military that at the last moment joined the Revolution. As my friends and I (along with most of the

population) cheered the fall of the failed, rotten Romanian “dictatorship of the proletariat,” my dear mother acted differently. She was

so confused by the propaganda of the only “leader” she knew much about that she wept for Ceausescu, not fully realizing that he was

the one who had wrongly had be arrested and put me in prison.

My book cover conceived in 1991. Caring for the environment.

Before we left Paris on December 19, 1991, we met with Gérard Chaliand to personally thank him for having made the Bordeaux

Security agent reexamine his whole approach to his life. Further, with Gérard, we worked out a plan to arrange for me to become a

49

U.S. reident and obtain U.S. citizenship nine years after my arrival in Los Angeles, in October 1992. He recommended that my case

be handled in In Los Angeles by one of America’s most knowledgeable and effective Migration Attorneys—Cynthia Juárez Lange,

today Managing Partner, Northern California, for the Fragomen Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP Legal Office located in

San Francisco. Cynthia is a personable genius. In our travels in December 1991 and from March to June 1992 we met NPPO

leaders in the European Union to better understand how foundations work under unique laws in each county rather than in

any rational manner for the whole EU, we went to Marseilles, Nice, Villfranche-sur-Mer, Cap-Ferrat, Monaco, La Rochelle,

Andorra, Sevilla,

Madrid, Trujillo, El Escorial, Avila, Navarro, and Segovia. On September 3. 1992, we arrived at the U.S. Consulate in Paris,

where the U.S Consulate in Mexico had arranged with Jim for my U.S. eligibility for residence to be issued. Also, the Mexican

Consulate General in Paris issued me my residence papers to enter and leave Mexico freely, as arranged by Jim with the

Mexican Consular Office in Mexico City. his profits ($13 billon) for their activities, his personal wealth in 2016 estimated

to be $25 billion. See https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/about/expenditures Also, for the details of Soros $930.7

million dollar Open Society Foundations 2016 Budget, which can be found by searching online for this title.

50

By September 7, 1992, we were in Romania for meetings with Civic Activists in Sighet (where I finally returned after “escaped”

with Jim in December 1991). From March to June 1993, we met with NPPO leaders in Budapest, Sighet, and Varna (Bulgaria),

Bucharest, and St. Petersburg. In Moscow (June 21-14, 1993), Jim appointed Professor Boris Koval (Director of the Latin

American Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences), to be PROFMEX Representative in Russia. Koval had invited us to

Moscow and introduced us to his own Security Chief to be our translator and guide. Thus the freaking Security Chief

was a fascinating person who had been former head of the KGB Office in Iran, 1979-1989.

Jim, who always wore his Mexican guayabera shirt with or without a suit, was seen to be “authentically Mexican”.

Starting in 2012, the soviet KGB agent, Putin has reset the Cold War with the United States. Now I am finally enjoying some

Distancing from Eastern Europe and realize freedom was worth all the risks I took, to establish myself and live in the United States,

where I have found safety.

Our Books and work has shown how U.S. Tax Exempt Organization (TEO) Iaw has evolved to become the most important in the

World owing to its flexibility. Where the laws of most countries require prior legal authorization to launch in a new direction,

U.S. TEO law recognizes no such limit. Thus, U.S. TEO law, unlike most other countries, is never trying to make legal what is already

51

underway in the world.

In developing a way to translate the U.S. legal framework in a standard way for this era of Globalization, I hope that this work offers a

basis for others to advance their own analysis of the issues presented here.

The work is organized to examine the traditional U.S. Centralized Model as developed for world philanthropy by the Rockefeller

foundation early this century. The most important variation is the Decentralized Model established under U.S. Tax lax by the

Hungarian-

born George Soros, who has set up National Boards to direct their own destiny in 31 countries.

Recently three new models have surfaced, and they are examined briefly in the other book, in this series: Dr Olgas Dream Come True.

P.S. Vampirism continues anabashed in Maramures County. Good Romanians are trying to root out co-

rruption every day. The same scenario is going on here in the United States with Trumpism; the voyage continues.

Currently on January 2018, I am working together with Carlos on a big project;: border violence, and

Narco gangs between U.S. and Mexico.

post-PHD research is now expanding his thesis into a cogent two-volume series:

52

The Tijuana-San Diego “Drug” Link (1911) to Mexico City’s National Links (1932) and to

Wars Between and Among Cartels/ Police/ Military (since 1985)

Vol. 1 Narcomundo: Narcotraficantes Gain Sway in Northern and Central Mexico, 1911-1985.

Vol. 2 Mexico’s Complex Drug Wars Expand to all Mexico and also are Contested Electronically

by U.S. Agents Since 1985.

To his distinctive credit, Carlos’s research, teaching, and other academic roles are based upon

his fluency in Spanish and English as well as cultural knowledge of his birth-country Mexico and

his having become in his UCLA years a U.S. citizen.

His binational experience has enabled him to avoid potential problems in conducting research on a sensitive topic. With

his understated, nonthreatening, knowledge, he is not seen a threat by any side in Mexico’s Drug Wars.

(a)has taught at the university level with excellence in Mexico as well as in the United States;

(b)has organized the roles of scholarly Mexicanists who are members of PROFMEX (Worldwide

Consortium for Research on Mexico) at Inter-National Conferences in Canada, China, Costa

Rica, England, European Union, Japan, Mexico, Russia, and South America.

Further, as Head Teaching Assistant at UCLA History, Carlos was so effective that our History Faculty named him

Faculty Advisor for Professorial Improvement of Lecturing—he advised our professors on how to develop their lectures

53

and how to include computer presentations with data in meaningful tables and graphs, In short, Carlos began the

process of helping our UCLA History professors to modernize their instruction to foster student learning.

Because of Carlos’ ability to teach UCLA Professors and Teaching Assistants,

he won a year-long UCLA Graduate Division Award to spread his knowledge approaches to Departments and

disciplines across the entire campus.

But let me take up Carlos’ academic works in the order of the four categories of Evaluation listed at the outset

above.

I. Carlos’s Research and Publication Agenda

The two volume series that Carlos is developing is rooted in his UCLA doctoral dissertation (Narco-mundo: How

Narcotraficantes Gained Control of Northern Mexico, 1945-1985). It is situated within the context the history of

corruption in Mexico, the rise of the Mexican “Permanent” Revolution 1911-1970, the Cold War in which Mexico

participated 1947-1988, and continues in relation to attempts to block South American Drugs entering Mexico and the

USA since the mid-1980s.

Vol 1.

A: In his Preface to the Series and Vol 1, Carlos analyzes the type of corruption shared by

Pre-Colonial Indigenous Mexico and the Colonial Spanish system that replaced it. Both collected the famous

“tributes” that have characterized Mexico’s Political, economic, and cultural activity for more than at least

seven centuries to instill the tradition of “bribes” being paid from the less powerful to the more powerful.

54

B: Carlos examines the origins of Mexico’s Drug Conflict and how it developed at the U.S-Mexican Border in

Tijuana and San Diego between 1911 and 1920. Carlos argues that the opium trade in Baja California Norte

became organized under Governor Esteban Cantú (1915-20), as emerging in order to pay the police and the

military to keep him in power as he enriched himself. He distracted public attention by fostering a strong

xenophobic sentiment against Chinese immigrants for the drug trade in the region, who he blame of the drug

trade in the region. (Baja was a territory controlled by the Federal Government and did not become a in

Mexico until 1952.)

C: Gen. Abelardo L. Rodrîguez (ALR) arrival on the Baja leadership scene in 1921 is seen by Carlos as

crucial to the major thread of Vol. 1. As Military Commander (1921-1929) and Governor 1923-1930), ALR

was the key figure in “indirectly” continuing and expanding the Baja Model of Drug Trading. During his period

of “impeccable” governance, he took advantage of his “modern” ideas to legalize prostitution and gambling to

help fight the economic crisis by attracting American tourists. His actions were viewed favorably by the Federal

Government in Mexico City.

D: Carlos traces ALR’s 1932 move to Mexico City, where he was rewarded for having built the Baja Model. He

was slated for Mexico’s highest political office, but first had himself named to two major posts where he

inserted members of his own team to back him. In January 1932 he became Mexico’s Minister of Economy, and

in August shifted to become Minister of National Defense. Finally, on September 4, 1932, at the bottom of

Mexico’s economic collapse during the World Depression, ALR became Interim President of Mexico until

November 30, 1934. He had had replaced the President was force to resign from office for having been too

weak to manage Mexico’s famous corruption—but that is beyond the scope of this study.

55

Carlos makes the case successfully that only ALR had the knowledge and power of his Baja Model to have used

it to encourage police and military leaders in all parts of Mexico to gain more funds for their units as well as for

themselves. Thus, the explicit rise of Federal tolerance of and work to protect Cartel leaders spread to all parts

of Mexico, federal, state. At all levels, the police and military knew implicitly that it was (and is now even

more) a fact of life—corruption is exemplified by the fact that traditionally most Mexican police have to pay for

their own bullets, hence the aversion to shooting their own guns.

Meanwhile, Carlos traces the consolidation and metamorphosis of Drug Trafficking Organizations in Northwest

Mexico.

E: Carlos begins analysis of all of Mexico’s border-smuggling problems as the “nick-named” War on Drugs

(1945-1960) to explore the connection between U.S. East Coast based Mafia and their incursion and eventual

control of the drug trade and organized crime in the West Coast. Also, Carlos examines early crop eradication

campaigns carried out by Mexican authorities, as well as the response from the ue proto-drug trafficking

organizations.

Thus, Carlos analyzes links between “Bugsy” Siegel and his alleged control of the drug trade in Southern

California, which stretched all the way to Tijuana.

F. For the 1960s, Carlos scrutinizes the emergence of the Transborder War on Drugs, analyzing Nixon’s

official promulgation of the War on Drugs from the perspective of the United States Government, as well as the

most notorious and infamous unilateral measure, Operation Intercept. This chapter also analyzes the response

of Mexican society in the form of its own Operation Dignity (Operacion Dignidad).

56

G: For the period from 1965 to 1985, Carlos investigates the War on Drugs as well as the “hidden dirty-war”

against political dissidents and peasants in rural Mexico demanding land and water. Under the pretext of

eradicating drug production by narcocultivadores or narcogrowers, Mexican authorities also launched an

offensive against dissident groups interested in readdressing the land issue in rural Mexico, effectively

eradicating dissidence, but not drugs.

H: Carlos here examines the CIA-Contra-Drug Trafficking connection from the Mexican perspective. By the

early 1980s, The Mexican journalist Manuel Buendía had begun to explore the link between the CIA-Contra-

Drug Trafficking, and he hypothesized that it needed the complicity of corrupt Mexican and law enforcement

officials. In addition, Buendía also uncovered the participation of other state actors, such as the Mexico Secret

Police (DFS) and the CIA. Buendía was murdered in 1984.

I: Carlos helps us understand why his Vol. 1 ends with all the drug issues between the Governments of Mexico

and the USA coming together in the 1985 abduction by a Cartel and torture-murder of DEA Agent Enrique

“Kiki” Camarena, in and near Guadalajara. To unwind this complicated issue, Carlos analyzes the official and

unofficial versions about this major transnational crisis. The Mexican Government came under great pressure to

take drastic action to help U.S. agents that had flooded Mexico to find the killers.

Vol II

J. Carlos covers the complex rise of full-scale “turf wars between drug lords, and between the drug lords and the

military/police. This research leads into President Calderón’s “War on Drug Lords” (2006-2012), which in

reality had already gotten underway in 2003and continues since 2012.

57

K. The changing kaleidoscope of Cartel leaders and ever-expanding territory includes: Morelia,

Tijuana, state of Sonora.

Thank you for reading my book.

Copyrighted by Olga Magdalen Lazin, 2018

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