An elderly professor of political science visits a South American university to try and teach the virtues of rational debate to his class of angry student revolutionaries, who have formed a terrorist cell, to assassinate their hated dictator.
One of them sends him a cutting from a flowering vine that has sprung from the tomb of a popular martyr (Fuentes), and has proved impossible to destroy, however often it is cut down. By touching the 'Blood Flower', the professor becomes possessed by it, and turns into the ghost of Fuentes, making rabble-rousing speeches (though he does not seem to 'possess' a very convincing Spanish accent!).
It turns out that one of the students has been bribed into betraying the group, and the dictator has altered his schedule, but here the story gets confused, and we mustn't spoil the dramatic ending anyway.
With a rare display of scepticism, our host John Newland admits that 'possessed' doesn't strictly mean anything, but hopes we agree with him that it's a fascinating idea, all the same. Standing beside the luxuriant plant, he says "Freedom has flourished here, ever since the death of the dictator." In South America, that just means a new marxist regime, bristling with just as many weapons, torture-cells, police spies and secret listening devices as the other lot.
One of them sends him a cutting from a flowering vine that has sprung from the tomb of a popular martyr (Fuentes), and has proved impossible to destroy, however often it is cut down. By touching the 'Blood Flower', the professor becomes possessed by it, and turns into the ghost of Fuentes, making rabble-rousing speeches (though he does not seem to 'possess' a very convincing Spanish accent!).
It turns out that one of the students has been bribed into betraying the group, and the dictator has altered his schedule, but here the story gets confused, and we mustn't spoil the dramatic ending anyway.
With a rare display of scepticism, our host John Newland admits that 'possessed' doesn't strictly mean anything, but hopes we agree with him that it's a fascinating idea, all the same. Standing beside the luxuriant plant, he says "Freedom has flourished here, ever since the death of the dictator." In South America, that just means a new marxist regime, bristling with just as many weapons, torture-cells, police spies and secret listening devices as the other lot.
