Cold War to be revisited at Tahoe college conference

INCLINE VILLAGE - Eight high-level veteran Marxist revolutionaries and cold warriors will face-off over the war on terror in the culminating event of a two-day public conference "Once We Were Enemies" Friday and Saturday in Patterson Hall at Sierra Nevada College.

Organized by The Diplomatic Academy at Tahoe, a nascent undergraduate program at Sierra Nevada College, the panel discussion will be Friday from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., and is sponsored by Myths and Mountains Travel.

It will be followed by book signings by members of the panel.

The face-off will be moderated by Col. Jerry Bussell, Nevada's director for Homeland Security.

According to the academy, the discussion promises to be a spirited exchange between veterans with decades of personal hands-on experience on both sides of violent political movements.

It will cover lessons they learned during their careers that can be applied to today's war on terrorism.

On one side will be four former Marxist revolutionaries: Alcibiades Hidalgo, former deputy foreign minister of Cuba, Cuban ambassador to the United Nations, chief of staff to Raul Castro and veteran of the Cuban Missile Crisis; Rafael Del Pino, commanding general of the Cuban Air Force, veteran of the Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis and North Vietnam forces during the Vietnam War; Domingo Amuchastegui, a top-level Cuban intelligence official with America's Department of Cuban Intelligence and interlocutor with Saddam Hussein; and Dr. Elizabeth Burgos, Venezuelan revolutionary, comrade of Che Guevara and co-author of "I, Rigoberto" which won the Nobel Peace Prize for Guatemalan Maya woman activist Rigoberto Menchu.

On the other side, the four cold warriors include Timothy Brown, a professional diplomat and fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; William Ratliff, also a Hoover fellow; and diplomats John Penfold and Richard Ganzel, former director of the International Program at the University of Nevada, Reno.

The group forms the core faculty of the Diplomatic Academy at Tahoe.

In preparation for the face-off, the public is invited to participate in conversational workshops led by the distinguished former revolutionaries, also to be in Patterson Hall.