Musings on society

World Aids Day

2009-12-01T19:21:00.001-06:00

Hurricane Mitch: Part III

2008-09-02T12:04:00.002-06:00

Returning to the zone with relief workers

I went back to Chinandega with the next group of relief workers leaving Managua. It was a mixed group from the Mexican, Costa Rican and Nicaraguan Red Cross organisations. By this time international aid was coming to Nicaragua from many countries in forms of personnel, and monetary and material aid.

The road was in slightly better condition this time and people were busy building larger bridges and repairing the worst damaged sections of pavement. There were still large line ups and again we passed them by with people calling out in solidarity. This time I noticed dead animals off to the side and in some places, a horrible smell of decay.

After unloading we spent the night sleeping on tables in the garage of the Chinandega Red Cross. The next day we travelled out to bring aid to the communities located along the volcano that had been isolated by the mudslides. We drove through canyons, at times 10 meters deep, which had not existed weeks beforehand. They had been carved out by the force of water crashing down the mountain. The sun beat down on us as we pushed our vehicles when they became trapped in the loose dirt. In places we could see black oily smoke rising into the sky. The burning teams were out searching for bodies.

We came across a group of people that had left their village and come down in search of food. We left them supplies and took information about the numbers left alive and dead. We then continued farther up the volcano to the next community. A distribution centre was set up at one house and food, water, and clothes were delivered by a number of groups and organisations. People were on hand to give medical aid and immunizations were distributed.

We walked down the road that once had lead to a nearby village. I noticed how beautiful the countryside was; its greenness stretching above me and far down below. The road passed through trees and then they stopped. There were no trees. There was no road. There was nothing but mud as far as I could see. There was one house, set into the trees - untouched. A few meters over, nothing was left. Walking out on the mud I could find a shoe or a roofing tile if I looked closely, but other than that, there was no sign that people had been living there.

One side of the volcano had crashed down destroying everything in its path. The mud went on for kilometres. People who saw it happen said it had come like a wave and crashed over top of the houses.

When I returned to Managua, foreign interest in Nicaragua had dropped off. The news was no longer spectacular. Now it was simply hundreds of thousands of people trying to rebuild in the face of disease and hunger. There was not much left for me to do in the office.

Leaving the Red Cross

I decided to walk home after my last day at the Red Cross office. It was a beautiful afternoon and I was feeling good about myself and the work I had done. Suddenly a pain burst through my body and I found myself on my knees unable to breathe. Someone had whipped a corn cob at me from a passing bus and its end had smashed into my ribs. For the following month it was difficult for me to take a deep breath. Someone saw a rich gringo walking through the wrong part of the city and released their anger.

What it did was remind me what I had forgotten in the face of the disaster and popular mobilisation to help those in need: Nicaragua is a poor country where many people lack even the most basic necessities and with this poverty comes the problems and social resentment that it creates. Life is difficult in Nicaragua, and for many in the wake of the hurricane, it will be much harder.

Bluefields, December, 1998

Hurricane Mitch: Part II

2008-09-02T12:02:00.000-06:00

In the zone with reporters

It is strange to travel with reporters. They are there to see and get the best story, not to give immediate help. What they do is vitally important, but it gave me an odd feeling in the face of such need for immediate help.

We are off to look and point and stare and marvel at Nature, naked in its fury. We are on the tour to see human misery, the eco-tour of desolation. We are going to visit the land of the dead.

- Personal Diary, November 6, 1998

All the bridges along the route had been washed out and the military had thrown up provisional bridges to allow passage. There were line ups for kilometres of trucks and cars, carrying aid and merchandise, trying to get in and to get out. One truck driver, at the front of the first line, had been waiting since seven the morning before. Beside the mass of vehicles, the destruction around the riverbeds was humbling. Roads dropped off into nothing. If parts of bridges did exist, they were jammed full of wrecked trees. Houses that had once lined the rivers were gone or half buried in mud. People were digging to try to find the remains of their families.

We went to a school that had been converted into a shelter and to a hospital filled with people injured by the mudslides and flooding. We talked to people who had survived but now had nothing – children who had watched their families swept away. In the hospital, people sat by the badly wounded and waved cloths over them to keep the flies away. What struck me was the calmness with which they recounted their stories. One young woman waiting for the television crews to leave a hospital room so she could visit her sister, told what had just happened and in the same tone told about how her father was killed in Honduras during the contra war. This is not the first tragedy Nicaraguans have faced.

Hurricane Mitch: Part I

2008-09-02T11:54:00.003-06:00

I just came across a document I wrote about my experiences during hurricane Mitch in 1998. As hurricanes roll through the carribean, I thought I would post it here.

What follows is an account of my experiences in Nicaragua during and after Hurricane Mitch, which devastated parts of Central America in October 1998. I found this difficult to write. I can not find the words that will capture what I saw and experienced. The words I have seem clichéd and flat; empty descriptions of the disaster that swept through Nicaragua.

I distrust summaries, any kind of gliding through time, any too great a claim that one is in control of what one recounts; I think someone who claims to understand but is obviously calm, someone who claims to write with emotion recollected in tranquillity is a fool and a liar. To understand is to tremble. To recollect is to re-enter and be riven.

- Harold Brodkey, ‘Manipulations”

The oncoming storm

I was about to leave the capital, Managua, for the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua when I was asked to wait. There was a tropical storm in the region and it seemed better to stay until it passed. The storm turned into Hurricane Mitch, swept north and then back south through Honduras and north-western Nicaragua.

I was frustrated and trapped. I couldn’t start working and it was raining – all day, every day. Then news reports started coming in: 7 dead, 100 dead, people trapped on their roofs waiting for rescue. My frustration changed. Its basis was still that I was doing nothing, but now I knew that terrible things were happening while I was sitting around.

Managua has become an island. Hurricane Mitch has flooded the rest of the pacific Coast. People are dying, people are hungry, people are cold and I am just sitting here.

- Personal Diary, October 31, 1998

The Nicaraguan Red Cross put out a desperate call for donations. I went to see if there was any way that I could help. I spent a day sorting clothes and the next day I returned to see if I could join a brigade to go help in an affected zone. Instead I was asked to work in the office of Public Relations. People were calling that only spoke English and there was no one to talk to them.

In the office of the Nicaraguan Red Cross

From doing nothing I was thrown into a whirlwind of activity. Reporters were coming in to find out what was going on outside of Managua. People were coming in to find out what had happened to their families. They were desperate but there were no answers for them. The phones were continually ringing. Suddenly I was giving information to reporters and organisations calling from around the world. I was giving interviews for papers, radio and television. I was in the office for ten to twelve hours a day and then would have an interview with BBC News at one in the morning, or an early appointment for a live shot with Good Morning America. When I was not on the phone, I was translating documents or listening to the most recent information that had come in.

Each day the news was more horrific. There were mud slides with thousands missing and most presumed to be dead. People were trapped in the mud alive. There were rivers filled with floating livestock. Large areas were inaccessible and out of communication. Some places could not even be reached by helicopter for fear of more mudslides. There were teams of relief workers sent out with midwives to help pregnant women. Reports came in from shelters that were overcrowded – 25 thousand people were staying in 60 shelters in the region of Chinandega. Many of these shelters were simply plastic tarps put up to keep people dry. There were shortages of food and medicine and there was a fear that diseases would be spread in the shelters which, despite efforts of those working there, had terrible hygienic and sanitary conditions.

Relief workers came back with their own stories. There were shortages for them too and they were working without masks or gloves. They were wading to rescue people, through mud which came up to their waists. They had to decide from afar if a person was dead or alive by the amount of the body that was buried.

Animals were eating the decaying bodies and people were eating the animals. There was fear that diseases would turn epidemic. There were people surrounded by water but with none of it safe to drink. Adding to people’s uncertainties, the volcanic chain appeared to be showing signs of increased activity. Land mines, 70 thousand of them, had moved with the rains and flooding and now no one knew where they were.

I was describing events and situations of which I had only heard, or perhaps glimpsed on television. I had horrific images in my mind, but nothing real with which to connect them. I felt disconnected in the air conditioned office where they brought us food as we worked.

We were told that the road to Chinandega (the zone where the mudslides had been) was about to open. The Nicaraguan Red Cross was going to send a brigade of relief workers, a truckload of aid and a mini-van of reporters. I was invited to go with the reporters.

The road to Waslala

2008-07-09T14:30:00.002-06:00

Here is a news report about the state of the roads to Waslala after three weeks of rain, and two close passing hurricanes.

Photos of Waslala

2007-11-07T12:29:00.000-06:00

I came across this on You Tube. It is a slide show of photographs of Waslala.

Terrorizing critical sociology in Germany

2007-11-02T18:36:00.000-06:00

German police used anti "terror" laws to arrest an urban sociologist from the Department for Sociology, Humboldt University Berlin. He was arrested because he writes on gentrification, a term used by a militant group that set fire to military vehicles, and he has met several suspected members during public meetings in which urban policy is discussed and criticized. Although the warrant was finally rejected by the courts, the anti terrorist law is still in effect and the threat to critical intellectuals has been made clear. Read more at ozean blogs.

This is a world-wide problem. In the past I have written about the use of anti-terrorist laws and surveillence in England and El Salvador. Up to what point are people willing to give up their civil liberities in the name of security?

Beware of using dangerous terms like "gentrification"

Revolutionary Comics

2007-10-10T10:38:00.000-06:00

For all the fans of revolutionary comics, take the time to visit Monuments are for Pigeons and read the issues of Revolutionary Misfits that Victor Serge has created. You will find funny, ironic and biting dialog that satirizes different currents of leftist thought through the mouths of your favorite superheroes while at the same time it dealing with current world issues (like Iraq in the above sample).

Free Burma

2007-10-07T17:25:00.000-06:00

This comes a little late, but then I did not have Internet access on the fourth. While I do not think that putting an image on a blog or even a million blogs will bring changes to Burm / Myanmar, it may help raise and maintain interest in the topic around the world. I am afraid that the country will fade into the background as the news networks find new and more interesting topics to raise their ratings and earnings (like perhaps the bombing of Iran which some groups seem to be rather intent on pushing through).

In any case, you can reach the site in charge of the Free Burma campaign here.

Monks battered and killed in Myanmar / Burma

2007-10-01T11:06:00.000-06:00

I am reposting this from Ko Htike's blog.

Sunday, 30 September 2007

We just got phone call with our sister living in Yangon about a few hours ago.

We saw on BBC world, saying that 200 monks were arrested. The true picture is far worse!!!!!!!!!

For one instance, the monastery at an obscure neighborhood of Yangon, called Ngwe Kyar Yan (on Wei-za-yan-tar Road, Yangon) had been raided early this morning.

A troop of lone-tein (riot police comprised of paid thugs) protected by the military trucks, raided the monastery with 200 studying monks. They systematically ordered all the monks to line up and banged and crushed each one's head against the brick wall of the monastery. One by one, the peaceful, non resisting monks, fell to the ground, screaming in pain. Then, they tore off the red robes and threw them all in the military trucks (like rice bags) and took the bodies away.

The head monk of the monastery, was tied up in the middle of the monastery, tortured , bludgeoned, and later died the same day, today. Tens of thousands of people gathered outside the monastery, warded off by troops with bayoneted rifles, unable to help their helpless monks being slaughtered inside the monastery. Their every try to forge ahead was met with the bayonets.

When all is done, only 10 out of 200 remained alive, hiding in the monastery. Blood stained everywhere on the walls and floors of the monastery.

Please tell your audience of the full extent of the fate of the monks please please !!!!!!!!!!!!

'Arrested' is not enough expression. They have been bludgeoned to death !!!!!!

Bloggers in Myanmar / Burma

2007-09-30T14:00:00.000-06:00

The violence continues in Myanmar / Burma, you can read accounts from Dawn, an office worker who writes in English was she sees and hears happening on her blog. You can also see some photographs and some English text about the struggle at the ko-ktike blogspot. You can also look at the Blog of Nyein Chan Yar, or a translation of a post by Mizzima. Ko Hla writes comments with links to photos in a comment box. Yan Aung does not write in English, but you can find photos and videos on his blog.

Bombs for Iran and selective memories

2007-09-30T12:13:00.000-06:00

The Guardian came out with an article today quoting John Bolton, former US ambassador to the United Nations, and presently a fellow at the conservative thinktank, the American Enterprise Institute. In the article he gives his opinion that the US and the UK should bomb Iran.

"Because life is about choices, I think we have to consider the use of military force. I think we have to look at a limited strike against their nuclear facilities."

He added that any strike should be followed by an attempt to remove the "source of the problem", Mr Ahmadinejad.

"If we were to strike Iran it should be accompanied by an effort at regime change ... The US once had the capability to engineer the clandestine overthrow of governments. I wish we could get it back."

That he should says this does not come as much of a surprise. It is similar to the calls to destroy the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. What does continue to amaze me is how many people of the right-wing general population angrily deny that the US has been actively involved in engineering “the clandestine overthrow of governments” as Mr. Bolton so boldly affirms. In a recent debate on the blog Renegade Eye we were told that these are the “paranoid ravings” of the left and reminded that there is an “Uncle Sam boogeyman hiding under every commie's bed.”

It is hard to tell which is worse: the thinking Right that want to bomb and kill because it suits their purposes and can not subversively engineer the clandestine overthrow of governments, or the reactionary right supports the bombing and killing because the enemy is “bad” (whomever the enemy happens to be today) and refuses to acknowledge that there has ever been any engineering. There is a popular saying on the radio these days, “I cover one eye. I cover the other. Nothing to see.”

Monks on the march in Myanmar

2007-09-25T15:38:00.000-06:00

Tens of thousands of Buddist monks are protesting in Rangoon, Myanmar/Burma. Crowds of over a hundred thousand have turned out in the streets. Some 50 thousand soldiers have been called out but there is no reported violence, yet. See the Gardian's report on it.

_______
UPDATE 28/09/07

Reports are that the army has fired against protesters, closed temples, killed some 200 people including a Japonese journalist.

Aid for victims of Hurricane Felix: The good and the ugly

2007-09-19T12:18:00.002-06:00

I just talked to a member of the government of the Autonomous Region of the North Atlantic of Nicaragua. This person told me that there are problems with the aid being sent to the region. There has been an outpouring of good will and solidarity, and even in Waslala, one of the poorest municipalities of Nicaragua, we have gathered several truckloads of donations. However, I was told that each organization is distributing its aid independently to the communities that they work with. As a result, some communities have received no aid at all and are facing serious problems. Hopefully the Atlantic Coast will organize and this will get worked out soon. It reminds me once again how much of a “natural” disaster is really “human” disaster.

Stealing the Amazon?

2007-09-18T09:37:00.000-06:00

Through e-mail, I received the following image of an American geography text-book. I was shocked and disturbed. I knew that the idea of Internationalizing the Amazons existed (for a Brazilian rebuttle to this idea by Cristóvão Buarque, then the Workers Party governor of the Federal District of Brasilia and currently Brazil’s minister of education, read this). However, it is something else to see a text book that says that:

"Since the middle 80's the most important rain forest of the world was passed to the responsability of the United States and the United Nations" and that the reserve was "surrounded by irresponsable, cruel and authoritary countries. It was part of eight different and strange countries, which are in the majority of cases, kingdoms of violence, drug trade, illiteracy and a unintelligent and primitive people."

However, I decided to search for it in Internet and found that the US State Department had a page on the supposed Text and pointed out that it is a forgery. Here is a little of what it says:

Since 2000, a forgery has circulated falsely claiming that the United States and the United Nations have assumed control of the Amazon rainforest in order to safeguard its treasures for all mankind.

The forgery, pictured below, purports to be page 76 of a U.S. sixth grade textbook titled An Introduction to Geography by David Norman. There is no indication that such a book exists. The U.S. Library of Congress, with more than 29 million books and other printed materials, has no record of it. The Online Computer Learning Center's WorldCat database, the world's largest database of bibliographic information with more than 47 million books, has no record of the book. Nor can such a book be found in Internet searches on amazon.com or Google.

In addition, the text uses an inappropriate tone and contains many other grammatical and word usage errors.

Text of Forgery

An Introduction to Geography South America

in the northern section of South America, forming a land of more than 3.000 square miles.

3.5-5 -- THE FORMER INT'L RESERVE OF AMAZON FOREST

Since the middle 80's the most important rain forest of the world was passed to the responsability of the United States and the United Nations. It is named as FINRAF (Former International Reserve of the Amazon Forest) and its foundation was due to the fact that the Amazon is located in South America, one of the poorest regions on earth and surrounded by irresponsable, cruel and authoritary countries. It was part of eight different and strange countries, which are in the majority of cases, kingdoms of violence, drug trade, illiteracy and a unintelligent and primitive people.

The creation of FINRAF were supported by all nations of G-23 and was really a special mission of our country and a gift of all the world, since the possession of these valuable lands to such primitive countries and people should condemn the lungs of the world to disappearance and full destroying in few years.

We can consider that this area has the most biodiversity in the planet, with a vast number of species of all types of animals and vegetals. The value of this area is unable to calcule, but the planet can be cert that The United States won't let these Latin American countries explorate and destroy this real ownership of all humanity.

FINRAF is like an international park, with very severe rules of exploration.

[Map Caption] Map 3.5-5.1 -- We can see the location of the International Reserve. It took area of eight South America's countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and F. Guyana. Some of the poorest and miserable countries of the world.

Walking through the countryside after Hurricane Felix

2007-09-17T16:43:00.000-06:00

Yesterday we hiked out to the farm (without a camera). Quite a few trees have fallen over, and a cornfield we had planted was destroyed. It makes me wonder just how much damage is done by hurricanes that is never reported and never taken into account.

Photos of Hurricane Felix

2007-09-11T20:45:00.000-06:00

A few photographs taken by a friend in the aftected area on the Atlantic Coast.

After Hurricane Felix

2007-09-07T12:09:00.000-06:00

The sun is shining again. Electricity has returned to Waslala (although not Internet, the server has been taken away for repairs).

In Waslala, some corn fields were damaged and a few houses. What it did do was make us aware of where we are vulnerable should we be hit a little harder. The new ‘old age home’ gets flooded out by a nearby stream, as do dwellings built in old river beds, many houses are built on hills composed of loose dirt that will wash away and take houses down with them and bury others. We really need a process of analysis, training and planning to reduce future tragedies.

The latest news is that there are nearly a hundred dead on the Atlantic Coast. Crop damage, flooding and thousands of houses damaged or destroyed. Bilwi, Sandy Bay and Sasha are among the hardest hit. Palm trees are flung across the ground like match sticks. The process of rehabilitation y rebuilding is starting as is the process of mouring.

Hurricane Felix hits Waslala

2007-09-05T20:22:00.000-06:00

At four in the morning, Hurricane Felix smashed into the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua. With heavy rains and winds over two hundred and sixty kilometers and hour, it tore down and damaged thousands of houses, damaged electrical lines and left four people dead.

In Waslala, the rains started at eight in the morning and slowly gather force throughout the day and into the night. By the time it reached us, the winds had mostly died down. We lost electricity at about midday. One precarious dwelling on our street was damaged and one side of our neighbour’s latrine fell over.

The streets were eerily empty. Most of public transport did not leave, school was cancelled, and most people stayed at home to stay out of the cold rains and listen to the radio.

The rain still continues and the rivers are swollen. There will be flooding down river for a few days and there is still the possibility of mudslides.

Big Brother is watching you

2007-08-22T15:35:00.000-06:00

I finished reading Orwell's 1984. It is a disturbing books that stays with you, but not as disturbing as I had feared it would be. Orwell is a good writer. What was interesting was perhaps not so much what the books says, but how it eerily shadows the world in which you live. Call it paranioa, but as I read the book, the Guardian informed us of new police spy drones that can silently watch and record protesters and potential criminals. In the near future they hope to be able to spray tracing liquids onto individuals for later pick ups.

Where do we draw the line between the loss of privacy to protect us against nefarious antisocial elements, and Orwell's thought police who watch and analyse (or could be watching and analysing which amounts to the same thing) everything you do to catch you in some antipatriotic reflection?

Superheroes of the CIA in Venezuela

2007-08-20T02:20:00.000-06:00

Globovision, a television station in Venezuela, in conflict with the government, created this cartoon after RCTV lost its license. In the cartoon the League of Marvel Superheroes (Batman, Robin, Superman and Wonderwoman) are CIA agents, looking to discover why they can not find any independent television channels. They discover the monster emitting Bolivarian Revolutionary Signals and attack it. Above, a ship carrying government members attack as they "must destroy the imperialists".

I wonder if Marvel will sue for copywrite infringement ...

Theoretical Trading Cards

2007-08-20T00:52:00.000-06:00

We used to play with baseball cards, later within certain groups, Magic cards became the rage, then there were the Irak-Most-Wanted cards to see if the person you just shot was worth some money...

Iraq's Most Wanted Playing cards

Magic the Gathering cards

... and now there are Theory Trading Cards.

I can see it now: "I'll trade you two Foucaults and a Weber for your bell hooks."

Or perhaps it could be a card game:

"I use my Marx to raise class consciousness and incite a workers revolt causing you 10 points of damage!"

"Wait a second! I use my postmodernists to convince the workers that there are no more metanarratives and they each need to find their own identities and accept the differences that exist between each person. I take no damage and you can not use your Marx card for three more turns!"

The Lord of Death or of Peace?

2007-08-15T21:04:00.001-06:00

This is not a trailer for the Lord of the Rings or Eragon or any other fantasy movie. This is a call to christian warriors (I found it posted and critizied on the blog Breathe). I found it very disturbing. In fact it sent shivers down my spine.

I remember when the war against Iraq started, I heard an evangelical preacher form the States on international radio. She was thrilled with it. She shouted out the joy that she felt when she saw all the bombs and guns on the television. How can there be peace when they do not know the Prince of Peace, she said.

Religious tolerance is obviously a thing of the past. The Pope warns Europe against the dangers of Muslim immigrants and offends Latin American indigenous people.

I believe that the great majority of people with religious beliefs, whatever beliefs they are, are not violent and hateful. Unfortunately they do not always get to influence what their leaders say.

Blog procrastination

2007-08-11T11:21:00.000-06:00

It is amazing the amount of useless things you can do while procrastinating. After a few online quizes I have discovered the following revelations:

You Are Merlot

Smooth, confident, and popular - you're the type most likely to order wine for the whole group.
You seem to breeze through life on your intuition and wit. And no one seems to mind!
You're comfortable in any social situation you find yourself in, and you never feel outclassed.
And while you live a charmed life, you never let it go to your head. You are truly down to earth and a great friend.

Deep down you are: Balanced and mature

Your partying style: Surprisingly wild... when you let loose, you really let loose

What Kind of Wine Are You?

And here is Pablo Neruda's "Puedo escribir los versos más tristes está noche"

All said and done, I should get back to work ...

British Police to use terror laws on protesters

2007-08-11T09:57:00.000-06:00

To paraphrase Tom Robbins: We once had a rat problem. So we imported mongooses to control the rats. Now we have a mongoose problem. Mongooses are known to attack pets, small children, lawnmowers and moving bicycles.

Here we have a population afraid of terrorists, so we give the police, secret service and military powers to legally abuse civil and human rights. Now they use it against the general population.

In England, after using their new stop and search powers on the random members of the general population, the Guardian reports that they plan to use the anti terrorist laws against global warming protesters. El Salvador has already beaten them it to by using its terror law to imprison protesters against the privatization of water services.

"Let them eat cake"

2007-08-08T13:14:00.001-06:00

Last night Lula arrived in Nicaragua. Yesterday in Honduras he stated that instead calling for "Liberty and Democracy" the new cry should be for "bread" for the world's poor. His argument is that Colonization and the Cold War are over, and the focus should be on world hunger and not national sovereignty. While I agree that the nationalist call is also off target, I wonder how free and democratic we really are in the world. Hunger is a symptom of oppression in a global system that concentrates the wealth of the world, not the principal problem. It is as if to say "They say there is no liberty and democracy left. Then let them eat bread."

"Qu'ils mangent de la brioche"

Harry Potter and the Dreaded Copy write Infringement

2007-08-07T17:38:00.000-06:00

Harry Potter leaps into Latin America to face his most insidious foe yet ... Copywrite Infringement. Hispanic fans, furious that they would have to wait until 2008 to read the latest and last Potter book joined together on a blog called Spanish Hallows to translate the book chapter by chapter from English to Spanish. In three days the book, "Harry Potter y las reliquias de la muerte", was complete, and is now available in PDF form complete with pictures. Over four million visitors have been to the site.

What will the response be? J. K. Rowling, now the richest woman in England, richer than the Queen, does not need the money (I should assume at least) and the act was done by fans out of love rather than as a commercial venture. The publishers, of course, must do something. Corporations have to maximize their profits, and it would be a bad precedent. However, how do they respond to anonymous bloggers around the world writing on to a public site? I imagine that the blog will be short lived unless it moves to some exotic location ... but what else can they do? Gnash their teeth and wish they knew a little magic of their own.

Fotos of Waslala: A day at work

2007-08-05T23:32:00.001-06:00

I took the digital camera to work and decided to put up a few pictures. The raining season is here in force, the roads get muddy and then impassable, but the views are beautiful.

Fully airconditioned luxury transporte

A few Howler Monkies shouting in the rain (and at me)

Clouds below the mountains along the road to Los Chiles

Walking through the clouds

I think they'd better think it out again.

2007-06-24T19:42:00.000-06:00

The basic liberal argument in support of globalization is that if individuals are free to follow their selfish goals within the structure of a market, the force of competition will organize production in the most efficient way. Producers will try to maximize their profits, while consumers will look to minimize their costs. If consumers are concerned about the ethical conditions of production, than producers will be forced by competition to do so as well, or lose market-share. Nations will benefit from their comparative advantage, producing what they produce best and poorer regions of the world will be the greatest winners as they gain access to the large markets of richer regions. Capital will flow from the global north to the global south. Sounds like one big happy family.

Capitalists, the brave defenders of social good through the market. Or is there something wrong with the picture?

However, in reality things do not turn out quite the way that this theory says it out to. First of all, within the same liberal logic, the actual process of globalization has not meant complete free trade. Countries of the global north are highly protective of parts of their economies such as agriculture, the principal source of exports of many of the poorest countries. Secondly, markets are not the ideal free markets exposed by liberal theory. Monopolies, corruption, political influence, price fixing and other imperfections exist in the race to accumulate capital. In small economies, this tends to be the norm rather than the exception. Thirdly, not all export goods have the same demand elasticity. As incomes rise, technological and service exports of richer countries have greater demand than the primary goods exported by poorer countries, increasing disparity. Added to that, poor nations compete with each other to sell the same primary goods and gain foreign direct investment through their maquilas, offering ever lower salaries, environmental and labour regulation and ever longer tax holidays. Finally, the market does not value public goods such as environmental costs, social investment and social stability that are essential for long term economic growth. To misquote Faigan in musical version of Dickens Oliver Twist, “I think they’d better think it out again.”

"I think I'd better think it out again"

Biofuel

2007-06-24T12:09:00.000-06:00

There is an interesting article on biofuel in Argentina at Latin American Activism.

In Nicaragua, the government has vocally supported Chavez's position against BioFuel, however it has also started conversations with Brazil on the subject and there has been some heavy investment to reactivate an old Palm Oil plantation and processing plant in the Atlantic Coast.

Palm reading to tell the future?

The energy crisis (in Nicaragua we now have blackouts throughout the country every day, athough that is only partially a product of international oil prices) will continue to worsen as oil reserves run out. We need to look not only for technological answers, but also changes in the global system of production and consumption. Any proposal for an alternative economic model to capitalism will have to take this into account. Biofuel, cheap oil through ALBA, scraping the tar pits of Canada are only short term solutions to a problem that will continue grow in severity.

A quote

2007-06-24T11:19:00.000-06:00

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension and not in another, unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present and future mingle and pull us backward, forward or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations … Life is a process of becoming, a combination of starts we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.

Anais Nin

Face Change

2007-05-03T10:52:00.000-06:00

I have changed my image. It used to be the Chinese symbol for conflict. I choose it because I was in the process of trying to learn Mandarin (and I will again when my life becomes less occupied with other concerns), and I felt that "conflict" seemed like an appropriate representation for the world. I found the image here.

My new image is of the macho raton of the güegüense. It is from an indigenous play written during the Spanish colony and it represents resistance against domination through wit and misinterpretation. The photograph is from a mural painted on a wall in Managua.

Internationalization of the Amazonia

2007-04-11T14:36:00.000-06:00

Octobre 23, 2000, during a debate in a US university, a US ecologist asked Cristóvão Buarque, then the Workers Party governor of the Federal District of Brasilia and currently Brazil’s minister of education, about his ideas on internationalizing the Amazonia, the “lung of humanity.” The young man asked Buarque to answer as a humanist rather than as a Brazilian. This was his response.

“From a humanist perspective...”

“As a Brazilian I would always argue against internationalizing the Amazon Rain Forest. Even though our government has not given this patrimony the care that it deserves, it is still ours. As a humanist who fears the risks posed by the environmental degradation the Amazon is suffering, I could imagine its internationalization, just as I could imagine the internationalization of everything else of importance to humanity.

If, from a humanist perspective, the Amazon must be internationalized, we should also internationalize the world’s petroleum reserves. Oil is as important for the well being of humanity as the Amazon is for our future. The owners of the reserves, however, feel that they have the right to increase or decrease the amount of oil production, as well as increase or lower the price per barrel. The wealthy of the world feel they have the right to burn up this immense patrimony of humanity.

In much the same way, the wealthy countries’ financial capital should be internationalized. Since the Amazon Rain Forest is a reserve for all human beings, no owner or country must be allowed to burn it up. The burning of the Amazon is as serious a problem as the unemployment caused by the arbitrary decisions made by global speculators. We cannot permit the use of financial reserves to burn entire countries in the frenzy of speculation.

Before we internationalize the Amazon, I would like to see the internationalization of all the world’s great museums. The Louvre should not belong merely to France. The world’s museums are guardians of the most beautiful pieces of art produced by the human genius. We cannot let this cultural patrimony, like the natural patrimony of the Amazon, be manipulated and destroyed by the whims of an owner or a country. A short time ago, a Japanese millionaire decided to be buried with a painting by a great artist. That painting should have been internationalized before this could happen.

The United Nations is holding the Millennium Summit parallel to this meeting, but some Presidents ohad difficulties attending due to U.S. border-crossing constraints. Because of this, I think that New York, as the headquarters of the United Nations, should be internationalized. At least Manhattan should belong to all humanity, as should Paris, Venice, Rome, London, Río de Janeiro, Brasilia, Recife... Each city, with its unique beauty and its history, should belong to the entire world, to all of humanity.

If the United States wants to internationalize the Amazon Rain Forest to minimize the risk of leaving it in the hands of Brazilians, we should internationalize its nuclear arsenals, if only because the country has already demonstrated it is capable of using these arms, causing destruction thousands of times greater than the deplorable burnings done in the forests of Brazil.

In their debates, the US presidential candidates have defended the idea of internationalizing the world’s forest reserves in exchange for debt relief. We should begin by using this debt to guarantee that each child in the world has the opportunity to go to school. We should internationalize the children, treating them, all of them, no matter their country of birth, as patrimony that deserves to be cared for by the entire world. Even more than the Amazon deserves to be cared for. When the world’s leaders begin to treat the poor children of the world as a patrimony of humanity, they will not let them work when they should be studying, die when they should be living.

As a humanist, I agree to defend the internationalization of the world. But, as long as the world treats me as a Brazilian, I will fight for the Amazonia to remain ours. Ours alone.”

Sociology In Nicaragua: A Web Page

2007-03-21T15:51:00.000-06:00

There is a new webpage (in Spanish) for anyone interested in the state of Sociology in Nicaragua.

Sociología en Nicaragua

The snake, the pig and the duck: electoral propaganda for preschoolers

2007-01-22T17:51:00.000-06:00

I found this example of electoral propaganda on YouTube. It was put on TV by the US supported Liberal split-off party ALN "Alianza Liberal Nicaragüense". The snake is supposed to be Daniel Ortega of the FSLN, the Pig is ex-president Arnoldo Aleman, leader of the right-wing PLC "Partido Liberal Constitucionalista" and the duck is his presidential candidate José Rizo. Even if you do not speak Spanish, you will be able to observe the high level of political debate that surrounded the elections, dealing with the concrete problems that face one of Latin America's poorest countries. It is also worth mentioning that it is homophobic as "pato" (duck) is slang for gay and used to offend.

Cleaning the Streets for the Party

2007-01-10T10:38:00.000-06:00

Today the streets of Managua are full of police. At every intersection and under every tree there is another group. Patrol trucks and police motorcycles drive around while riot police swagger around in groups like ancient warriors looking for a fight. The army controls the road from the airport and has men armed with antiaircraft missiles on the hill of Tiscapa, beside the statue of Sandino.

The street kids, beggars and water sellers have disappeared from the major intersections. All for the celebration of Daniel Ortega receiving the presidency. Aside from the abundance of assault riffles, there are other symbols for today’s celebrations. The ceremony was changed from the Plaza de la Fe, built for the Pope’s visit, to the Plaza of the Non-Aligned Countries. The silhouette of Sandino has reappeared on the old Banco de las Americas building after a sixteen year absence.

16 presidents are coming to the party. Chavez and Morales are flying in from Venezuela after celebrating Hugo’s victory there.

The president of Taiwan is coming with hundreds of businessmen “ready to invest in Nicaragua” in an attempt to maintain Nicaragua’s support in UN. Continental China has showed its disapproval of the visit.

Buses and trucks have been brining in caravans of people from all around the country. Close to a thousand people were expected to leave Waslala at two in the morning. It will be the largest celebration of a new president ever held in Nicaragua.

Preliminary Electoral Results: A Sandinista Victory

2006-11-06T10:51:00.000-06:00

Fireworks and music have been filling the air since midnight. Preliminary results of the National Election give the victory to Daniel Ortega, candidate for the FSLN. It is still possible that the candidate for the right wing ALN, Harvard trained banker Eduardo Montealegre, will close the gap and cause the elections to go to a second round. Should this happen the currently divided anti-sandinistas will unite under one candidate and defeat the FSLN, but at this point of time it seems unlikely that there will be a second round.

From what I have seen and heard up to this point of time, the elections have been the cleanest and most orderly in the last sixteen years. Everything has been calm, and even with the preliminary results giving the sandinistas a victory, there has been no violence that I know of.

Will a sandinista victory be as wonderful as some hope or as terrible as some fear? It is not very likely. Although they will win the presidency, they will have a minority in National Assembly. That means that they will have to negotiate with one of the two right wing parties to pass any laws or even the national budget. Should the right unite against them in the legislature; it will be very hard for a sandinista government to do much of anything. They will also have to work within a legal framework restricted by neoliberal laws, a free trade agreement and within IMF conditions.

I will write more when I have a chance.

"Armados" in Chilamate

2006-09-27T11:07:00.000-05:00

An armed group of is terrorizing the community of Chilamate Kum. At least one of the members of this group previously was a volunteer policeman and had severely beaten a youth who was the nephew of a local religious leader. Two months ago they tracked down the same youth and killed him. They dress in camouflage carry assault rifles. They have threatened to kill anyone who denounces them.

If the police do decide to try to capture them, and if they do succeed in doing so, it is most likely that the perpetrators will be free with a few days and then return to the community looking for vengeance. The lack of institutional justice is always frustrating, but it is tragic when you know the people involved.

A Quote II

2006-08-22T17:27:00.000-05:00

"This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angle would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress."

Benjamin of the Frankfurt School, cited in Perry Anderson (1979) Considerations on Western Marxism. Redwood Burn Ltd,: London, p 90. For a discussion on Anderson’s book, see Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3.

Political Swinging in Nicaragua

2006-07-27T19:07:00.000-05:00

An article by Andrés Pérez Baltodano appeared in the Opinions section of El Nuevo Diario today. In it he quotes Jaime Morales Carazo’s acceptance speech from when Morales became the official vice-presidential candidate for the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN). Morales has long been a member of the right-wing Liberal Party and was one of the principle advisors for the ex-president Dr. Arnoldo Aleman, currently under house-arrest after being convicted for corruption. In his speech, Morales explains his new political vision:

I confess with an open and modern mentality that I do not locate myself – not to the right, nor to the left, nor to the centre – because I have been convinced by a long process of real deeds that to generate economic progress and social advancement for all, with reconciliation, stability and peace, the pendulum of times and movements of societies and history oscillates from the right to the left, necessarily passing through the centre. It does not stay in the extremes nor immobilize itself in middle. Were it that way, time would not be dynamic.

So now will the FSLN, Nicaragua’s traditional left, spend its time ‘swinging’ from right to left with it’s new ex-right vice-presidential candidate?

Morales: a Political Swinger?

Rain in Waslala

2006-07-26T12:36:00.000-05:00

After a month of rain, the northern road to Siuna has become impassible. The current problem is a hill just leaving Waslala that has become a mud bath. Vehicles can neither go up or down. Everyone – old, young, pregnant, sick, rich or poor – have to trudge and slip about a kilometer up and down the hill, carrying sacks or paying the young boys that gather around to carry them. The road south to the capital is still passable, but there are several parts that are in bad shape and if it continues to rain will also be impassible.

Death and life

2006-07-11T18:53:00.000-05:00

Water drips to the songs of frogs and distant dogs, quiet, after the violent drums of unrestrained torrents of water falling upon the zinc roof.

Both harsh and soft, brutal fury and gentle beauty.

Life is everywhere, but last night a young nurse died,

because her blood tests came out wrong

(We are not even sure that the place she had her tests done has a trained lab tech)

because the local hospital has no blood bank

(Even if they did, we are spending more time without electricity than with it as the newly privatized electricity company, the government and consumers' rights organizations fight and oil prices soar to the rhythm of bombs in the Middle-East and capitalist growth)

because the new ambulance is broken and being repaired

(After years of fighting to get an ambulance, we received two and now both need repairs. The National Constitution states that access to health care is a right, however the spending on health per capita keeps on going down as the governments of turn promote private health care.)

because the road to Matagalpa is in such bad condition that it takes four hours to cover the 116 km to the nearest hospital that does have conditions,

because later the doctors did not risk a blood transfusion without tests, and by that time there was no electricity.

She was twenty-one years old, and her daughter, husband, parents and friends grieve on the other side of Nicaragua.

Symbolic Interactionism

2006-07-11T13:05:00.000-05:00

I have been trying to get my head around microsociology. One of the branches, Symbolic Interactionism looks at the interaction between the internal thoughts and emotions (symbols) of a person and his or her social conduct. It breaks away from the mechanistic ideas of Structural Functionalism and Structural Marxism which see people acting according to social norms laid out by the social structures to which they belong. It centers on the idea of “self” continually formed by both social and auto interaction. When we interact with others, before we act we always have a quick ‘conversation’ with ourselves in which we interpret the situation, the possible actions and the possible reactions. When we act, the other person tries to interpret the significance that we are giving to the symbols we are using to communicate (words, actions, movements, etc), analyzes the possible reactions, and our reactions to his or her reactions, and then responds, and we immediately interpret their response and adjust what it is that we are doing.

It claims to recognize the importance of social structures (roles, status, institutions, society) but sees them as an interlaced continuum of interactions

The methodology used analyze the interior course of action is the following:

Look for the interior experience that is behind the conduct.
Understand the values, visions, significations and definitions that the individual applies to the situations in which he or she acts, and to him or herself.
Clarify how the imaginative processes work.
The explication comes from empirical data that emerge from the process through which the individual describes his or her world from within and at the same time defines his or her own objective reality.

It is a flexible exploration, a direct naturalist examination of the social world. It uses direct observation, interviews, listens to conversations, radio, and television and revises life histories, letters and public archives. Instead of definitive concepts, it uses sensibilizing concepts that simply suggest where to orient the search.

Okay ... I can understand the importance of trying to understand the person to person mechanics of how we create and reproduce the social reality in which we live; however if we only focus on day to day interactions of individuals, then power relations, the state, structures of domination, multinationals, poverty and imperialism all disappear into an interior conversation we have with ourselves based upon our valuations and interpretations of the symbols that others communicate to us. It just feels empty …

International politics: an interior conversation with myself, or an external social structure?

A Quote

2006-06-12T17:04:00.001-05:00

‘Commerce is not a sin. Trading with emerging countries is not a sin. Trade helps them to emerge as a matter of fact. It makes reforms possible. The kind of reforms we all want. It brings them into the modern world. It enables us to help them. How can we help a poor country if we’re not rich ourselves?’

‘Bullshit.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘[…] Look around you. Trade isn’t making the poor rich. Profits don’t buy reforms. They buy corrupt government officials and Swiss bank accounts.’

John le Carré (2005) The Constant Gardener, Penguin Canada: Toronto, p 61.

Censorship: Power Struggles and the Limits of Freedom

2006-03-20T13:59:00.000-06:00

At first glance, it appears very simple to argue the case against censorship by talking about universal morals and individual human rights. Unfortunately, the issue is somewhat more complicated than it first appears. Although the principal social actors are the state, mass media corporations and interest groups, it is a topic that runs through the entire society, affecting each family and every individual. This is because censorship is but a small part of the ideological struggle for our thoughts and minds. It is part of a struggle between those who want to maintain social relations more or less as they are, and those who challenge the status quo. It is also a question of where the limits to freedom are, and how they in turn depend on power relations. The decision to support or reject censorship is thus neither moral nor ethical. It is instead a question of where one’s interests lie in any particular case where censorship is used.

The principal actors involved on a national scale are the mass media corporations, the state and interest groups. In cases like the Iraq war, the American mass media corporations and the state worked very closely together. Reporters were imbedded with soldiers and received only authorized information. Hand in hand, they censored the reality that would be fed to the world. However, in the age of globalised technology, independent news chains such as Al Jazeera showed another side of the war and forced US television open up slightly. In Venezuela, for example, the relationship is very different. The government of Hugo Chávez has been facing an unending publicity battle with the media corporations. The media refuses to say anything good about their president, and they actively promoted the attempted coup in 2002 (Bartley & O’Brian, 2003). As a response, Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl states that the Venezuelan government has passed a law that makes it illegal to say things contrary to national security (2005). In other cases of censorship, the state is not involved at all. After the attacks of September 11^th 2001, the largest owner of radio stations in the United States, Clear Channel Communications, sent a list of songs that it suggested be removed from the play lists of the company’s more than a thousand stations. The list consisted of well over a hundred songs, including highly subversive and violent songs such as the following: Alanis Morissette’s "Ironic," The Beatles’ "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "Obla Di, Obla Da," Louis Armstrong’s "What A Wonderful World," The Rolling Stones’ "Ruby Tuesday," and of course, "99 Luft Balloons/99 Red Balloons" (Nuzum, 2003). Leaving aside the corporations, NBC reporter Peter Arnett was fired during the offensive against Iraq because of public outcry after he gave an interview stating that he believed the US war plan had failed (Kovacs, 2003). On a smaller scale, white supremacist groups complain of censorship when their Internet hate-sites are shut down. Even within each household, parents choose which TV programs, books and magazines they want their children to be exposed to. In each case, we have different social actors exercising different forms of censorship.

To understand how all these different social actors relate and are involved in censorship of one form or another, we have to understand what censorship is used for. If we use the Gramscian term of hegemony, we have the general acceptance of the dominant class’s vision of the world. This worldview is propagated through social institutions in civil society such as the church, mass media, the family and the education system. Hegemony crosses the barriers of class, race and gender, and it occurs when people believe that the way things are now is the way they have to be. They accept as natural the current social system. However, as it is simply a belief, people can stop believing it too. Groups looking for change try to show the inequalities in the system and to create the belief that another world is possible. In times of economic, social, political and military crisis, it becomes more probable that people start to question the ways things are. The end of the Vietnam War is a good example of the creation of a counter hegemony that rejects the status quo. However, when hegemony is fully accepted, social actors self-censor themselves, as occurred with the song list after 9/11. When hegemony is strong, deviants are socially censored, as in the case of the NBC reporter. When hegemony is weak, or there exists potentially damaging information, censorship is enforced, as occurred in Venezuela and during the Iraq invasion. In each case, there are relations of power between those who benefit from the hegemony and censorship and those who suffer because of them.

The relationships of power bring us to one of the most difficult parts of the debate on censorship: at what point does one’s freedom impinge upon someone else’s? An example is that of the white supremacist groups. Along with racist hate literature, we can also find violent pornography and sexual harassment. The social actors involved in these all claim the right to free expression, yet they are taking away freedom from others.
On the other side, anarchists call out slogans like “Eat the rich!,” and socialists call for an end to private property and capitalist exploitation. Feminists look for an end to patriarchy. These groups also impinge on the freedoms of others. We obviously cannot take an all or nothing view of censorship nor individual rights. Once again, we have to look at the power relations that are occurring. Discrimination is a form of oppression and must be strongly confronted even if censorship is required. At the same time, oppressed groups looking for social change and equality should be defended from the censorship of the ruling class with its twin arms of the coercive state and hegemonic civil society.

Do they have the right to spread hate?

Censorship is about power relations among social actors in a continual struggle between order and change. It is an issue that actively involves everyone, from the state, to the media, to the individual. It is used overtly only where hegemony has failed, although it can also be used to defend against discrimination. Even if we do not notice it, it is part of our daily lives, be it self-censorship, social censorship or information that is never shown to us. We cannot say it is good or bad; rather we must look at the power relationships involved, recognize the worldview being formed through censorship, and decide if we want change to the current social order or maintain it.

References

Bartley, K. & O’Brian, D. (Directors). (2003). The Revolution Will Not Be Televised [Film]. Caracas, Venezuela: The Irish Film Board.

Dile, J. (2005, March 28). Chavez's Censorship. The Washington Post. p. A17, Retrieved January 28, 2006 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/
A5755-2005Mar27?language=printer.

Kovacs, J. (2003, March 31). NBC's Peter Arnett: War plan has failed. World Net Daily. Retrieved January 28, 2006 from http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31798.

Nuzum, E. (2002). Crash Into Me, Baby: America’s implicit music censorship in the wake of September 11th. Retrieved January 28, 2006 from http:// ericnuzum.com/banned/articles/paper_wcmc.html.

The Meaning of .... Democracy

2006-03-06T12:25:00.000-06:00

At the end of this year, 2006, Nicaraguans will once more elect the person that will lead the country for the next five years along with the people that will represent them in the legislature. The term democracy will once again swing into fashion as every candidate tries to convince voters that only he or she truly embodies the great democratic principles. The question is, what exactly is meant by democracy?

Shortly before the last national elections, I asked a few people from a rural community in the north-eastern mountains of Nicaragua what they thought democracy was. Much to my surprise, they told me that democracy was having a strong leader that “did things” and was not corrupt. What they considered democratic sounded to me as though it leaned more towards authoritarianism, and it was very far from the old Greek ideal where ‘the people’ ruled. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, just a few words above demolish, defines democracy as “government by the people […] rule of the majority […] a government in which supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usu. [sic] involving periodically held free elections” (Webster’s New Collegiate, 1977, p. 302). The comments of the people from the rural community may not have matched the dictionary’s definition; however, they did reflect the ongoing verbal battles between national political parties.

By going back to newspaper articles from that pre-election time, we can see that the political forces use the word democracy in different ways to meet short-term political goals. In each case, democracy is referred to as something positive and related to elections. The rest is variable. It can mean Christian faith, honesty and power sharing, or simply choosing to vote for the friends of the United States of America.

The first example of the use of term democracy is by Dr. Arnoldo Aleman, the then president of the Republic of Nicaragua and leader of the Constitutional Liberal Party. In a talk with evangelical youth, he called upon them to pray to God so that in the elections democracy would “vanquish” his atheist opponents that were “enemies of God and peace” (Sandoval, 2001b, para. 2, 4)[i]. Suddenly, democracy becomes a religious issue between believers and non believers, where divine powers are invited to intercede to make one party win over another. It is also interesting that the electoral process is not represented as part of a democratic process, but rather that democracy will “vanquish” through the electoral process. Democracy becomes synonymous with the Liberal Party, or at least becomes its private property.

Daniel Ortega, leader of the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN for its initials in Spanish) and president of Nicaragua during the eighties also talked about democracy in his pre-election speeches. Since the Liberal government had been wracked by charges of corruption, Ortega promised an honest government with lower salaries for state functionaries. He also proposed a transfer of powers from the Executive to the population in what he called participative democracy (Ruiz, 2001). Ortega associates democracy with honesty and lower salaries. He speaks about a transfer of powers from the government to the population, yet his does not specify what powers or the mechanisms he would use. We are left with the message that democracy is the contrary of the other party, and that only the Sandinistas will bring this new profound yet undefined democracy.

Daniel Ortega, Nicaraguan President during the 1980's and current presidential candidate for the FSLN.

The third major actor in the 1991 Nicaraguan elections was the government of the United States of America. Different American functionaries spoke to let people know their version of democracy. After the September 11^th attack on New York, the messages became more belligerent. The US embassy in Nicaragua put out a news release, in which they affirmed that the “interest of the United States is that Nicaragua has fair elections […] which show the will of Nicaraguan voters and that our programs help in the strengthening of the democratic institutions in the long run” (Sandoval, 2001a, para. 4). The State Department assured Nicaraguans that they would respect the results of free and fair elections; however, at the same time, they also said that they had “serious reserves” about the FLSN, since the Sandinistas had violated democratic principles and basic human rights and sheltered terrorists. The State Department continued by stating that “there exists no intermediate point between those who oppose terrorism and those who support it” (Chamorro, 2001, Section II, para. 5). Democratic senator Bob Graham and Republican senators DeWine y Jesse Helms wrote a proposal to Congress asking the US president to modify U.S. policy towards Nicaragua if the Sandinistas won. They claimed it was necessary because the Sandinistas had historic ties to “terrorist” states such as Cuba and Iraq, and the absence of free and fair elections in Nicaragua would constitute a serious reverse for the people of Nicaragua and for the democracy in the hemisphere (Briones, 2001). The logic seems quite clear. Democracy means free and fair elections. Free and fair elections means voting for the candidates the U.S. government promotes. Should the population choose not to do so, the country will be labelled a terrorist threat like Afghanistan and Iraq and treated accordingly.

Quickly looking through a few newspaper articles from the 1991 election period shows what messages Nicaraguans received about democracy from the major political forces in the country. In each case, democracy means voting for the speaker’s party and not the other. Aside from that, they have very little in common. One type of democracy is divine retribution against the unbelievers. Another type is honesty and some undefined participation of the population in the state. For the U.S. government, it is apparently voting for whom they tell people to, or face the same fate as all the other “terrorist” nations that failed to have “free and fair elections.” Each political force uses the term democracy in the way they feel best suites them. They cash in on its positive image and use it to forward their own agenda. In the end, this makes the word empty, simply referring to elections and little more. Instead of bringing “supreme power” to the people, it leaves them powerless. They are allowed to vote under dire threats and choose between candidates that they have not chosen, who will represent them on issues that have not been publicly debated, and they will not be taken into account for another five years when the circus starts up again. As we start a new election year, we will have to wait and see how many new and inventive meanings the political leaders give to the word democracy. However, this year, people may stand up and take back the word that should, by all rights, be theirs. As the Creole poet from the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua wrote in his poem “Tell dem fa mi”:

Dem a talk bout democracy, dem styla way

wen dem yusta go wit wi banana an wi lomba

wi gold an wi labsta, wi fish an so fort

dem was happy, tings was good, fa dem do.

[…]

But tel dem fa mi, wi da billup owa democracy

Ina owa styla way statin fram wi roots.

[…]

Dem-a-crazy[ii]

(Hurtubise, 1995, p. 50)

References

Briones Loáisiga, W. (2001, November 2). Senadores de EE.UU. proponen modificar política si gana el FSLN. La Prensa. Retrived January 26, 2006 from http://www-ni.laprensa.com.ni/cronologico/2001/noviembre
/02/politica/politica-20011102-14.html.

Chamorro, X. (2001, October 6). EE.UU. sacude al Frente. La Prensa. Retrived January 26, 2006 from http://www-ni.laprensa.com.ni/cronologico/2001/octubre/
06/ nacionales/nacionales-20011006-05.html.

Hurtubise, Josef. (1995). Poesía en Ingles Criollo Nicaragüense. WANI Revista de la Costa Caribe de Nicaragua, 6, 43-56.

Ruiz López, N. (2001, July 20). Ortega ofrece cambiar sistema político actual. La Prensa. Retrieved January 26, 2006 from http://www.laprensa.com.ni/cronologico/ 2001/julio/20/politica/politica-20010720-03.html.

Sandoval, C. (2001a, January 27). Estados Unidos espera “elecciones sin fraude”. La Prensa. Retrieved January 26, 2006 from http://www-ni.laprensa.com.ni/ cronologico/2001/enero/27/politica/politica-20010127-03
.html.

Sandoval, C. (2001b, July 1). Presidente Alemán ora por la democracia. La Prensa. Retrieved January 26, 2006 from http://www-ni.laprensa.com.ni/ cronologico/2001/julio/01/politica/politica-20010701-02
.html.

[i] All quotations except for those from the Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary and the Creole poem are my translations from the originals in Spanish.

[ii] With Standard English spelling the poem would read as follows: Them talk about democracy, them style way/ when them used to go with we banana and we lumber/ we gold and we lobster, we fish and so forth/ them was happy, things was good for them. […] But tell them for me, we will build-up our own democracy/ in our own style way starting from we roots. […] They-are-crazy [or democracy].

Waslala and the Fear of Losing a Legend

2006-02-06T12:23:00.000-06:00

Waslala is more of a myth than reality to most Nicaraguans. It was in these breathtakingly beautiful and isolated mountains of northern Nicaragua that guerrillas struggled against the dictator’s National Guard in the seventies. Carlos Fonseca, the young intellectual leader of the Sandinistas, was killed in combat here shortly before the triumph of the revolution.

In the eighties, it became one of the centers of heavy fighting during the civil war. After the war ended and throughout the nineties, political and bandit armed groups continued to roam its forests. The combination of struggle, resistance and violence has made this distant municipality well known through out the country.

I can still remember when I first traveled to this mythical place nearly a decade ago. The world became more beautiful as we advanced through the serpentine mountain roads. I caught glimpses of waterfalls between the trees, and majestic views of lush valleys spread out below us. As we drove around one particularly tight corner, we encountered another pickup truck racing towards us. It swung back onto its side of the road, but in the sudden movement, a woman flew out of the back. The man driving us managed to break before running over her, but she was badly injured from the fall. From where we were, it was a three-hour drive over rough roads to the nearest health center. That is how I first found Waslala: both beautiful and terrible. As the years have gone by, Waslala has changed. It has become slightly less isolated, its population has grown and the local economy has transformed.

When I arrived in the municipality of Waslala, it was isolated physically from the outside world. Its communities were distant and dispersed, and there were no communication services. The road to Matagalpa, the closest city, was at least six hours away in a four-wheel drive vehicle over bad roads. The first time I drove was to carry two patients to Rancho Grande, a neighbouring municipality, to find an ambulance. I was taking a woman in precardiac condition and another with a baby that had been born with its internal organs outside of its ribcage. We left at seven o’clock at night under torrential rains. Even with four-wheel drive traction, we slithered up and down muddy roads until we found the road before us blocked. A cargo truck had flipped over blocking the entire road, and two buses had slid sideways, slightly further up the hill where one had nearly fallen into a ravine. After two hours under the rain, we managed to pull the truck out of the way, and we continued onwards. When we arrived at the health center in Rancho Grande, we were told that the headlights of the ambulance were not working and we would have to continue on to La Dalia, the next municipality. At two in the morning, we finally arrived. The patients were taken by the ambulance the rest of the way to Matagalpa, and I returned alone to Waslala. One the way back, I came a few meters away from sliding into a canyon and into the river below. The road has gotten better since then. A small part has been paved, and it removes two to three hours off the trip. Although the road gets completely cut off at some place at least once every two years, it is generally in better conditions than it was. We also managed to get an ambulance in Waslala a year and a half ago.

The majority of people in Waslala live in the close to a hundred rural communities that cover the municipality. Many were ten to twelve-hour treks by horseback through the tropical forest covered mountains and by dugout canoes to cross the rivers. Although that is still the only way to reach some communities, five new roads have been built within the municipality, and this reduces most travel times in half, if people can pay the fare. Waslala now also has six telephones that occasionally work, Internet service that often functions, three radio stations, cable TV and, as I write, a cellular telephone tower is being installed. Waslala is becoming more open to the world and the world more accessible to Waslala.

The population has grown immensely. There is continual migration from other parts of the country to Waslala as the agricultural frontier moves farther east. All the communities are growing in size, and along the roads, villages are beginning to form. Waslala itself has grown from eight to twelve neighbourhoods, and there are several housing projects in process near Waslala and near the larger villages. This massive influx of people has caused several changes. The forests are quickly disappearing. The land is cleared for agricultural purposes, for cattle farming, or for firewood. At the same time, the strong community bonds and sense of solidarity seem to be weakening. Whereas once everybody in a community knew everyone else, now many communities are becoming very large, and the number of people changes the social dynamics.

Although the changes in accessibility and population growth have been significant, the economic changes are perhaps the most obvious visually. The streets of the town are now lined with new shops selling clothes, jewellery, pirated DVDs and construction supplies. New concrete houses are being built all throughout town, and there are two PlayStation arcades. Whereas once there were very few vehicles in the streets, now taxis, trucks, buses, pickups and motorcycles seem to be everywhere. Four microfinance organizations exist where before there was only one. Cooperatives and NGOs train producers in new agricultural techniques and help them sell organic coffee and coco. Cattle farmers send off truck loads of cows to Managua and ship cheese to El Salvador. The economy appears to be doing well and getting better. However, the majority of the population lives by growing basic grains, and from their point of view, the future does not look very bright. Agriculture is always precarious. It depends on normal weather to obtain a good harvest. Weather changing phenomena like El Niño and La Niña bring rain, or lack of rain, at the wrong times and destroy an entire year’s harvest. Aside from natural causes, subsidized American grains drive down local prices making it more difficult each year to make ends meet. The newly signed free trade agreement with the United States promises to make things even more difficult. The local economy has changed. With a quickly growing population, commerce, transport and a few other sectors are prospering; however, for the majority, life is becoming more difficult.

Since I first arrived here, Waslala has changed in accessibility, size and economic composition. It is no longer as difficult to reach or to communicate from. The population has grown quickly, and that in turn has affected the sense of community and the existing forests. Economically, it has improved for sectors such as commerce, while becoming worse for the small grain farmers. These changes bring benefits and disadvantages. Waslala is still a beautiful place and has wonderful people, and it is still difficult in many ways. As I get ready to send this off by email, however, I cannot help feeling that a little bit of the myth, of the legend I arrived in nearly a decade ago, is slowly slipping away.

The greatest show on the road.

2006-01-13T13:33:00.000-06:00

In a comment to my last entry, Victor Serge
pointed out that Free Trade Agreements are
part of American Imperialism.  By a strange
coincidence, I immediately afterwards received
an email with a copy of Harold Pinter's 
acceptance speech for the 2005 Nobel Prize
in Literature titled “Art, Truth & Politics”.  
Pinter spends much of his speech reflecting
on how the US has maintained its international
hegemony through violence and then letting
everyone forget about it.  It is, Pinter affirms,
“the greatest show on the road.” 
I quote a rather large section of the speech,
and you can find the original at
http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html

As every single person here knows, the justification for
the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous
body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45
minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We wereassured that was
true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a
relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity
in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true.
It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the
world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.  

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the
United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past,
by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War.
I believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some kind of
even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will allow here.

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe
during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities,
the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully
documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been
superficially recorded,let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone
recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth
has considerable bearing on where the world stands now.Although constrained, to
a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions
throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to
do what it liked.



Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured
method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity
conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower
than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect
the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the
gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the
same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit
comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has
prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I
refer.

The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here
as a potent example of America's view of its role in the world, both then and now.

I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s. The
United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the
Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a
delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of
this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was
Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself).
Father Metcalf said: 'Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua.
My parishioners built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived
in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed
everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped
nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They
behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support
from this shocking terrorist activity.'

Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly
sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened,
paused and then spoke with some gravity. 'Father,' he said, 'let me tell you
something. In war, innocent people always suffer.' There was a frozen silence.
We stared at him. He did not flinch.

Innocent people, indeed, always suffer. Finally somebody said: 'But in this case
"innocent people" were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidised by your
government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further
atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your government
not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the
citizens of a sovereign state?' Seitz was imperturbable. 'I don't agree that the
facts as presented support your assertions,' he said.

As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my plays. I did
not reply. I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the
following statement: 'The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding
Fathers.'

The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over
40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 
1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.

The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and
their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they
were intelligent, rational and civilised. They set out to establish a stable,
decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands
of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families
were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable
literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh.
Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was
reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.

 The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion.
In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua
was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was
allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social
unity and national self respect, neighbouring countries would ask the same
questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce
resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.

I spoke earlier about 'a tapestry of lies' which surrounds us. President Reagan
commonly described Nicaragua as a 'totalitarian dungeon'. This was taken generally
by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair
comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista
government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic
or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua.
There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll
missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador
and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected
government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people
had been victims of successive military dictatorships.

Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the
Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the
Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave
man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that
75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed
a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately
qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status
quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which
had been their birthright.

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some
years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and
30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were
exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the
country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a
vengeance. 'Democracy' had prevailed.

But this 'policy' was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted
throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.

The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing
military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer
to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines,
Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States
inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they
take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The
answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign
policy. But you wouldn't know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't
happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United
States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people
have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised
a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force
for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road.
Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever.
As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love.
It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the
American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to
pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American
people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of
the American people.'

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at
bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of
reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion
may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very
comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below
the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag
of prisons, which extends across the US.

 © THE NOBEL FOUNDATION 2005

Does Nicaragua Benefit from Free Trade with the United States?

2006-01-11T10:38:00.000-06:00

The Dominican Republic and Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) with the United Status of America was approved by American Congress on July 2005 and by the Nicaraguan National Assembly in October of the same year. Within Nicaragua it has been a fiercely debate topic for close to two years. The proponents of DR-CAFTA in Nicaragua claim that access to the world’s largest market will attract more foreign investment, increase exportations, and in this way create more jobs and stimulate the economy. However, its opponents state that the cheap imports will destroy small national industries and the internal market, and in this way close jobs. In areas of Nicaragua dedicates to agriculture, people fear that it will be impossible to compete with highly subsidized agricultural products from the United States. According to the organization SIMAS in Nicaragua, farmers in the U.S. receive an average of twenty one thousand dollars each in subsidies each year, without including the benefits of good roads, communication systems, electricity and education. Although it is true that many Nicaraguan products will no longer face tax barriers to enter the American market, it is questionable how many will be able to compete there. With DR-CAFTA in Nicaragua, there will be winners and losers. The few large producers of products such as sugar and rum will benefit, as will consumers of import items. However, the size of the group to benefit is rather small, since according to Oxfam, half of the population lives in poverty and nearly one in five in extreme poverty. The small national industries will suffer as will small farmers or campesinos. They will be obliged face hunger or move from where they live to work in the newly opening maquila-style sweat shops that are the new face of foreign investment. It is most like that free trade with the United States will bring investment and new jobs, but it will do so at the cost of current jobs and increased hardships for much of the population of Nicaragua.

Works cited:

SIMAS (2005). El Tigre se los Comió, Managua, Nicaragua: Servicio de Información Mesoamericana sobre Agricultura Sostenible.

Abella, Tomás (2006). Nicaragua, Intermon Oxfam. Retrieved 10 January 2006, from http://www.intermonoxfam.org/page.asp?id=904&idioma=1.

Waslala: Strength in the Face of Adversity

2006-01-02T19:48:00.000-06:00

Waslala is both beautiful and terrible; bearing the burden of decades of violence and extreme poverty, the inhabitants maintain a positive outlook on life. The municipality is composed of a small town and close to a hundred small communities dispersed throughout the jungle-covered mountains of northern Nicaragua. The people who live here have suffered through three decades of political violence. They suffered the repression of the dictator’s National Guard, renowned for throwing prisoners into active volcanoes or out of flying helicopters. The inhabitants of Waslala suffered the civil war between the Sandinista government and the US-backed Contra-revolutionaries while both sides reined terror upon the countryside. Although the war officially ended in 1990, combatants of both sides continued to fight against the new government and against each other. The last political armed group in the vicinity of Waslala was destroyed by the army only three short years ago. Even with the end of overtly political violence, poverty plagues the countryside. A third of the children are malnourished, and many people die from easily preventable or curable diseases. Despite the hardships of life, people are caring, supportive and hopeful for the future, and the communities have impressive and inspiring levels of organization. Volunteers dedicate their lives to improving the health and education of their communities. Neither victims nor angels, the people of Waslala have shown their strength through adversity.