Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Tuesday, April 17. We return to the lagoons.
In these villages, where little farming is done,
the peasants live off coconut palms.
Even the bark is used.
It's soaked for six months,
then beaten and separated into fibers,
which the women untangle and spin on primitive wheels.
It's not a first-rate raw material,
but it serves for string and rough mats.
To take advantage of this archaic industry, one of their main resources,
certain villages have joined together in cooperatives,
a collective society in embryonic form.
But here, like just about everywhere,
production is controlled by the landowners and merchants,
who own the coconut palms and to whom the peasants are indebted.
This tropical paradise is also a hell on earth.
Nonetheless, these poor and exploited peasants
are the most advanced in India, and the best educated.
Kerala's literacy rate is the highest in the country.
So it's hardly surprising that they're also the most politically aware.
It's here, and in Bengal,
that the largest Communist parties in India are found.
The prime minister of Kerala is a Communist.
I had a lot of doubts about the Indian Communists.
Throughout our journey, I interviewed party leaders
on their true strength in the country, their tactics,
their separation into two large rival parties,
which, oddly, are called "Left Communists"and "Right Communists. "