Taking Over (The Soccer War pg.115-135)

Are you afraid of people taking over a country?
I think it is amazing that Kapuscinski wrote this book because this way I have been able to get to know real life conflicts involving politics in different countries. I have seen throughout the first two chapters that taking over the government was really popular in those times. It says, "During the course of the military takeover that I was about to witness, I did not see a single armed soldier. This distinguished the present coup from that of October 1963,when the army used weapons..." I have always thought about the day when a colombian president takes over the country, or when someone takes the place of the president without voting. Kapuscinski writes about these events as he witness each of them, but he does not describe how people feel or act, he makes it look as if everyone was terrified, and he only describes how the army check the cars, bags etc... My real question is, how has this affected those countries? Do these things happen only in third world countries? Are these countries all in Africa? Hopefully, as I read ahead I get the answers of this questions because they are really confusing my comprehension of the book.

However, I did find interesting the idea about thinking what would happen if someone took over Colombia, or better yet the current president; Alvaro Uribe. It has been a real shock to most colombians that Uribe has been elected to be the president of Colombia for four more years! Although most colombians did vote for him, I am feeling afraid that he is going to stay as president for a very long time. This happened to Venezuela, and Chavez is not seen in a good way around the world, especially in the United States. I believe that presidents that are in charge for a very long time become power mongers and slowly start to take over without concerning for the people. I found a quotation in The Soccer War that describes an event that I do not want to see happening in Colombia, "Mobutu had arrested President Kasavubu and named himself president for five years. The most characteristic thing about Mobutu's speech was the precision of the decree that he would be president 'for five years'." I do not want to see this happen, because developing countries have very naive people that get conviced over anything. For example, if someone arrests Uribe, and takes over for five years, he will probably say and promise things that benefit the lower class, therefore, the lower class will love him or her, and therefore he or she can stay in control for a very long time until he takes over and bring disadvantages to our country. I believe this novel will give us some idea of different situations in different countries that will enrich our knowledge and will bring a lot of topics to discuss.