North Star

A Memoir

Peter Camejo

• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781931859929
• eBook ISBN: 9781608460137
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"Peter was a friend, colleague and politically courageous champion of the downtrodden and mistreated of the entire Western Hemisphere."—Ralph Nader

This is the autobiography of a remarkable life. As The New York Times wrote, "A first generation Venezuelan-American... Mr. Camejo [spoke] out against the Vietnam War and for the rights of migrant workers. He marched in Selma, Alabama, with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King."

Peter Camejo (1939-2008) founded the California Green Party, won 360, 000 votes in his run for governor in 2002, and ran as Ralph Nader's vice presidential candidate in 2004.

CHAPTER 1

MIRACLE IN CALI

It was June 12, 1979. The day was beautiful and mild. A light breeze swept through usually humid and hot Cali, Colombia. Two Colombian friends were driving me to the airport, where I had a flight to catch to Cartagena, on the northern coast. I was wearing a bright yellow tee shirt, which—as it turned out—was rather significant.

Cartagena was the next stop on my speaking tour of Colombian cities. In my speeches I was addressing the latest developments in the overthrow of the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. I was looking forward to the trip to Cartagena, one of the most beautiful places I had ever been. For very little money I could stay at an oceanfront hotel and swim on one of the world’s most beautiful beaches. After Colombia I planned to go on to Peru to support the presidential candidacy of Hugo Blanco, leader of the peasant uprisings of the 1960s and hero among the Peruvian people.

Little did I know that at the Cali airport Colombian secret police from the Administrative Department for Security (DAS¹) were waiting to arrest me on orders from the CIA. To be arrested in Colombia is very dangerous—the rule of law is not one of Colombia’s traditions.

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I arrived at the airport with my two friends and the three of us walked in. The airport was small, just a short walk from the entrance to the check-in counter. I handed my ticket to a young woman behind the counter, who did two peculiar things. In those days the check-in agent had a printed list of passengers and he or she circled the corresponding name as each passenger checked in. Instead of circling my name, this young woman made a circle in the air above the paper. I took notice of that but didn’t recognize that something larger was under way. Next she took my small bag and instead of placing it onto the conveyor belt she hid it under the counter. Then she said, “Go pay your exit visa.” My flight to Cartagena was, of course, a domestic flight so I responded, “I’m not leaving the country.” She looked right into my eyes, really hard, and repeated, “Go pay your exit visa.”

The exit visa was only one dollar so I thought … okay. As it turns out the secret police knew that I was wearing a yellow tee shirt. But my paying an exit visa would convey to the secret police, who were in the airport somewhere watching my yellow shirt, that I must not be the person they were seeking because they knew that Peter Camejo wasn’t leaving the country. In fact, as I walked away to pay the exit visa, two police agents went up to the young woman and asked, “Is that him?” She told them, “No.”

As I came up to the exit visa stand the man behind the counter turned and quickly walked into a back office. I could tell something was “off,” but was unaware of what was actually happening: the airport workers had put into action a plot to save me. These workers were risking their jobs and possibly more to keep me out of the hands of the political police. As I stood at the counter waiting, a woman sitting nearby said, “Go upstairs. Your wife is waiting for you.” I leaned over and said, “I’m not married.” She repeated impatiently, “Go upstairs. They’re waiting for you.” One of my Colombian friends said, “Pedro, maybe someone knows you and wants to talk to you. Let’s go find out. You have time.”

A man was selling lottery tickets in the stairwell. I had a ticket I had bought for fifty cents somewhere and showed it to him to see if I had won. He said no. My friends and I continued up the stairs. The stairs turned left and we came to a door. Having no idea what else to do, I knocked. A woman stepped out and asked, “Are you Camejo?” I said yes. She responded, “Quick, come in here.” We stepped into a room where flights were announced. Several workers in the room whispered, “Stay silent!”

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Then it hit me. No one had to say a word. The three of us stood still. Between announcements of flights the employees filled in some of the details. The woman from the check-in counter explained that the secret police had said I was a drug dealer and was to be arrested, and that I would be wearing a yellow shirt. The airport workers told me they would wait until my flight to Cartagena took off, and then they would check to see if the secret police had left the airport.

After about twenty minutes word came from the airport director’s secretary that she had overheard a conversation between the DAS police and the airport director. Apparently the secret police had determined that I had to be in the building and they were going to conduct a search. The bad news hit us hard. The airport workers said to me, “We can’t hide you. But we’ll take you to our union office so at least when they arrest you they won’t beat you.”

The union headquarters in the airport was a one-room office with two people inside. They greeted me, very friendly, and apologized, not knowing what else to do. I asked my two Colombian friends to remain in the airport but to stay far away from me so they wouldn’t also get arrested. I gave them the telephone number of a good friend in New York so that efforts could be made to defend me.

The main thought that kept crossing my mind was to be thankful my companion, Gloria Najar, wasn’t with me on that trip. The fear that something might happen to her was frighteningly strong in those days when the two of us traveled in Latin America. My other primary thought was that I would probably be in the same clothes for a long time, maybe weeks.

I asked the union leaders if there was a bathroom nearby. (Who knows when you’ll be able to go once the secret police grab you?) “There’s a bathroom right here,” they said. I walked in and began urinating. I’m sure it could be heard clear as day in the main room. At that moment the two secret service police came into the office. They must have known the union leaders from working the airport beat. The men greeted each other in typical Latino macho style with some sort of joke. I paid little attention until I heard one of the DAS officers ask, “Who’s in the bathroom?” One union leader responded, “Oh, so the queer wants to take a peek?” The secret service policeman made his own derogatory joke, denying any interest, and walked out.

To this day I am bewildered by the incompetence of the secret police and the influence of homophobia on their actions—that they would prefer to let a suspect escape rather than compromise their “masculinity.” I rationalized later that maybe they assumed the noise was being made by another union member, since if a suspect were hiding in a bathroom, he probably shouldn’t be urinating.

When I stepped out of the bathroom the union leaders held their fingers to their lips. One whispered, “There is a small chance. Your friends have driven their car to the door downstairs. When I tell you, run down the stairs and take off.” Amazingly, the search was being conducted by just the two police officers, with no backup watching the stairs or the doors. As soon as they entered the next office, I was down the stairs in a second, out of the building, and into the car. We pulled away from the curb. I said, “Attract no attention, drive slowly.” I lay down in the back seat. Within minutes we were away from the airport.

Hiding Out in Colombia

All the left groups in Colombia, as in the United States, are penetrated by police informers. My Colombian friends said the safest way to hide me was to put me up in a secret location. One of them knew a young professional who had a tiny apartment out of town.

In a diary that I kept at that time I refer to the person who lent me the apartment as Enrique. (For security reasons, I did not use last names in my diary and sometimes even the first names were fake.) Arrangements were made quickly, and once again cooperation was automatic. The sympathy and support I was receiving continued to amaze me—how these people kept stepping forward to save an American they didn’t even know.

I was left alone in a tiny apartment. There was no food. I had no car or means of communicating with anyone. I fell asleep that night thinking of what steps I should take. First, I decided to try to call my father in Venezuela. The president of Venezuela at that time was a relative of my family by marriage—my father’s sister, my Aunt Clara, was married to Humberto Campíns, a first cousin of Venezuelan president Luis Herrera Campíns.

We had never met. Some time earlier I had been invited by my Campíns cousins to meet the president, but I told them I would not meet with him while he supported the dictatorship in El Salvador. He sent me a message, delivered in a friendly inner-family way, that for his part he was waiting for me to stop supporting the “communist” guerrillas in El Salvador. My first hope was to see if my father could talk to President Campíns, and whether he might intervene for me.

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The next morning my Colombian friends picked me up. We went out to eat and they said they had reached my friend Gus Horowitz in New York. Gus, one of the most brilliant people I have ever met, was my roommate at MIT. He went to work immediately to try to help me. I set out to call Venezuela and, as happens often, all the lines were down and I couldn’t get through. At the time, I was unaware of what began to transpire in the United States. Meanwhile, Gus reached my mother, who entered the act with her usual energy to rescue me.

As soon as my mother learned of my predicament in Colombia she called my stepfather, Robert Ratner, who at the time was president of the U.S. branch of the United Nations Association, headquartered in New York. The call got through to Robert while he happened to be in a meeting with Cyrus Vance, then secretary of state under President Jimmy Carter.

The phone was handed to my stepfather right in front of Secretary Vance. My stepfather was so visibly disturbed as he spoke to my mother that finally Vance asked him, “What’s wrong, Bob?” Robert explained, “I have a stepson who ran for president as a socialist and they are trying to arrest him in Colombia. He’s hiding out.”

Without hesitating Cyrus Vance told an assistant, “Get the Colombian government on the phone right now and ask them why they are trying to arrest Peter Camejo.” That call must have shaken up the Colombians, to have the secretary of state of the United States, in the span of one day, calling Colombia on my behalf. They must have thought the CIA had made a mistake, or maybe that I was a high-level double agent or something like that. Whatever they thought, they weren’t going to risk a confrontation with the United States. So the order for my arrest was lifted in Colombia. Of course, I didn’t know that.

Not being able to get through to Venezuela I couldn’t decide what to do. Going to the U.S. consulate would be ridiculous, since that would be the same as turning myself in to the CIA. I thought my only chance was to contact the Venezuelan consulate in the hope that Venezuela wouldn’t hand me over. So I called the local consulate. The consul, Colonel Tomás Pimentel D’Alta, got on the line with me and said, “I know who you are. I know your dad. My cousin worked with him in Puerto La Cruz.” Colonel D’Alta told me to come to his office, assuring me of protection.

At the consulate the excitement over my situation was palpable. Everyone wanted to hear what had happened. Then the Venezuelans started brainstorming how to get me out of Colombia. One consulate employee suggested getting an airplane and flying below the radar to Venezuela. Once again I was astonished at how, without hesitation, people stepped forward to help me.

The colonel came up with an interesting proposition. He said, “I’ll make you an employee of Venezuela so they would be violating protocol to arrest you.” Right then and there they knocked out a document, had me sign it, and with that I was a diplomatic employee of Venezuela.

Then the colonel announced that he would call the head of the Colombian secret service in Cali to find out what was happening. I was opposed to the idea, since that would reveal my whereabouts and seemed too dangerous. The colonel reassured me that he would not disclose my location. He made the call right in front of me. Immediately we were informed that the arrest order had been rescinded. The government of Colombia wanted to apologize to me for the “mistake.” The head of the secret service asked if the consul could arrange for me to visit him so he could express his regrets personally and assure me of safe passage anywhere in Colombia.

At first I worried that this was just a ploy to arrest me. The colonel assured me that, given the normal relations between Venezuela and Colombia, it would be next to impossible for the Colombians to be openly lying in this case. With great trepidation I agreed. The colonel said goodbye and good luck.

My two Colombian friends drove to the secret service headquarters. When we reached the office I walked in slowly. The receptionist said I could go right in to see the director, Alberto Romero. As I walked down a hallway I passed a group of secret police, standing around so they could see what I looked like. I sensed that this was their way of letting me know they might not be taking me today, but they would be ready to go if the orders changed.

The secret service director looked a movie villain in charge of torturing people. He spoke calmly, saying, “A mistake was made. We apologize. You will not be arrested or bothered in any way. You are free to travel anywhere in Colombia.” I thanked him and wished him a good day, turned, and slowly walked out. The agents were still there in the hallway, motionless, with no expression on their faces.

That evening at a coffee shop I met up with the young woman from the check-in counter who had saved my life. She returned my suitcase and told me that the CIA had released my passport photo to all the airports in Colombia in order to facilitate my arrest. Knowing who I was, she had recognized me at the counter and spread the word to the other employees, who set out to help me escape. We laughed over the fact I hadn’t picked up on all the signals she had tried to give me. I suggested that perhaps I was so stupid it kept me from acting nervous and attracting attention. She told me to stop being so stupid and to be more careful. I thanked her profusely and asked her to thank all the others. “No, we thank you for what you are doing,” she replied. Fortunately there had been no repercussions for any of the workers and they were all pleased I had escaped. When we said goodbye it was difficult not knowing what I could ever do for these hard-working people who risked their jobs to protect me.

So why would the CIA put out the completely fallacious story that I was a dope dealer and start a nationwide dragnet that could have gotten me killed? The reason, it finally emerged, was that the CIA was upset about my plans to go to Peru in support of Hugo Blanco’s presidential campaign. At the time, amazingly, Blanco was polling about 25 percent, and the CIA was trying to prevent the left in Peru from unifying behind Blanco. I knew Blanco well and was known myself among some of the left leaders in Peru. To prevent my reaching Peru, the CIA decided to frame me and imprison me in Colombia.²

I will forever be thankful to Cyrus Vance for having intervened to protect me. But there is a lingering question. Did he order an investigation? Did he try to find out why the CIA was trying to arrest an innocent citizen of the United States? I suspect not. Or if he did, chances are the CIA got out of it as they always do, being an agency often exposed for its misdeeds but above the law when it comes to prosecution.

Having eluded the frame-up, I resumed my tour of Colombia as planned, continuing on to beautiful Cartagena. I stayed at the Hotel San Felipe. The day of my arrival, after a couple of relatively brief meetings, I was on a bus where a young person was listening to music from a small radio. As a sign of the times, suddenly the music was interrupted for an announcement: “This morning a guerrilla band attacked police, killing two and wounding four.” The report described the guerrillas as belonging to one of the leftist groups in Colombia. To my surprise the entire bus began applauding.

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CHAPTER 2

MY FAMILY AND MY EARLY YEARS

I was born December 31, 1939, at 8:00 a.m. in Queens, New York. My name on my birth certificate is Pedro Miguel Camejo Guanche. At that time my family was living in Caracas, Venezuela, but my mother had experienced difficulties with the birth of her first child, my brother Daniel, and decided to have me in the United States.³

My mother’s decision made it possible for me to run for president in 1976 and for vice president with Ralph Nader in 2004. During the campaigns I joked that my mother was psychic for having given birth to me in the United States.

My Grandmother Wins the Cinco y Seis

The other major reason my mother chose New York, aside from its excellent hospitals, was that her parents lived in New York and she had attended high school there. My mother’s maiden name was Elvia Guanche. Her family had gone into exile during the Juan Vicente Gómez dictatorship in Venezuela (1908-1935). My mother’s parents, Miguel and Adela Guanche, spoke out against the dictatorship and were forced to leave the country. When they emigrated to America they lost everything. My grandmother worked as a seamstress in the New York garment district, while my grandfather, who had been a judge in Venezuela, became a bank teller.

Miguel and Adela did not return to Venezuela until near the end of the 1940s. They were still very poor. Then something marvelous happened. In Venezuela there was a long-running weekly tradition of betting on the horses in the Cinco y Seis (Five and Six). Six horse races were run, and to win the Cinco y Seis you had to pick all six victors; if no one hit all six horses, the winnings went to those who got five of the six correct. All week long people discussed the horses competing, the jockeys, and who were the odds-on favorites. On Sunday the results aired on the radio (later, on television) and the whole country t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Dedication
• PUBLISHER’S NOTE
• CHAPTER 1 - MIRACLE IN CALI
• CHAPTER 2 - MY FAMILY AND MY EARLY YEARS
• CHAPTER 3 - POLITICS AND PEOPLE DURING MY TEENS AND EARLY TWENTIES
• CHAPTER 4 - I MOVE TO BERKELEY
• CHAPTER 5 - THE BATTLE FOR TELEGRAPH AVENUE
• CHAPTER 6 - FELONY CHARGES, A TRIP TO CUBA, AND PEOPLE’S PARK
• CHAPTER 7 - THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT
• CHAPTER 8 - THE SWP AND THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
• CHAPTER 9 - THE 1970 CAMPAIGN FOR SENATE AND THE 1976 CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT
• CHAPTER 10 - SAN ANTONIO NATIONAL IMMIGRATION CONFERENCE
• CHAPTER 11 - INTERNATIONAL WORK: HUGO BLANCO; NICARAGUA
• CHAPTER 12 - WORK AND THE LEFT IN THE EARLY 1980S
• CHAPTER 13 - MORELLA ANZOLA
• CHAPTER 14 - PROGRESSIVE ASSET MANAGEMENT, INC.
• CHAPTER 15 - POLITICAL ACTIVITY DURING THE 1990S
• CHAPTER 16 - RALPH NADER—THE END OF THE ICE AGE
• CHAPTER 17 - RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR
• CHAPTER 18 - MATT GONZALEZ: THE 2003 RACE FOR MAYOR OF SAN FRANCISCO
• CHAPTER 19 - THE 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS AND THE GREAT CAPITULATION
• CHAPTER 20 - 2006 DEMONSTRATIONS AND ELECTIONS
• CHAPTER 21 - THE NORTH STAR
• APPENDIX 1: - GUS HOROWITZ ON STUDENT DAYS WITH PETER CAMEJO
• APPENDIX 2: - MATT GONZALEZ’S CONCESSION SPEECH IN THE 2003 SAN FRANCISCO ...
• APPENDIX 3: - THE AVOCADO DECLARATION
• APPENDIX 4 - ORIGINS OF THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM
• INDEX
• ALSO FROM HAYMARKET BOOKS
• ABOUT HAYMARKET BOOKS
• Copyright Page