20/08/2010
Even if—like me, you live in North America and only have basic cable, the chances are pretty good you’ll find what can broadly be described as a ‘cop drama’ any night of the week. Off the top of my head: Bones, Law & Order (three of them?), Cold Case, Dexter, Criminal Minds, CSI (three of them?), Flashpoint, the Mentalist, NCIS, Southland, then of course there’s the non-fiction of COPS and America’s Most Wanted—and popular shows that went off the air fairly recently—the Shield, the Wire.
What is the North American obsession?
I’m sure there are psychological and sociological studies offering a plethora of explanations, but a comment my sister made the other night was enough to get me thinking.
I don’t remember what we were watching, but when it started to get fairly gruesome, she said: “Now that I have kids, I can’t watch these shows anymore.”
And I thought—really? This is pretty tame—even by primetime standards.
I started to wonder if I’d become so desensitized to the violence (I hate even having to write that) that I no longer appreciated how gruesome it all was.
Stab—yawn, blood—yawn, boring. But just when I was worried I was turning into Patrick Bateman, I read about Marleny Alejandra Galdámez and wanted to vomit.
Last week in Ciudad Arce, El Salvador, six-year-old Marleny was on her way to school when she was kidnapped by a group of men, tortured, decapitated, and dumped 500 metres from her house.
(http://www.elsalvador.com/mediacenter/show_gallery.aspx?idr=4332)
According to her mother, the motive was extortion: $US50—El Salvador having dollarized in 2001, the gangs or maras now extort exclusively in greenback.
In San Salvador, where in many neighborhoods extortion is commonplace for those doing something as innocuous as trying to take the bus, the nauseating details of the crime might not have provoked the same collective nausea—but this didn’t happen in the gratuitously violent capital—it happened in the Salvadorian version of the small town.
There’s a reason these cop dramas take place in Los Angeles and New York as opposed to Irvine or Binghamton.
“We haven’t marked this off as a gang area, but it appears gangs foreign to the area have appeared in the past few days,” said Jaime Granados Umaña, police chief in the zone known as La Libertad, the zone in which Ciudad Arce is located.
Even in a country as violent as El Salvador, which often has one of the highest homicide rates in Latin America, many still find solace in the belief there are pockets of relative safety. Marleny’s death has done a great deal to undermine that fragile optimism.
The Archbishop of San Salvador’s recent lament will surely draw some attention, and the Catholic Church—for all its faults—has experienced its own significant losses in its attempt to better the country: the murders in the 80s of the Maryknoll missionary nuns and Óscar Romero are the first who come to mind, though there are obviously more recent examples.
In this case, however, the Archbishop’s statement will only pressure the government into more ineffectual policy.
El Salvador, like President Calderón’s government in Mexico, is at its wit’s end. And as Salvadorians have learned, and as Mexicans surely will should they choose to return the PRI to power, new government won’t change tired solutions. When Antonio Saca and his right-wing ARENA party threw money and bodies at the problem, nothing improved; now current President Maurico Funes of the leftwing FMLN is using 1/3 of the army to support police efforts; the greatest achievement they can boast so far is a decrease in the July murder daily murder rate from 11 to 9.
The country only has 6 million people.
I have no policy suggestion of my own, and I don’t intend to proselytize, but I do know we’ve seen enough examples of violence begetting more violence through ‘crackdowns’ to know that bloody retribution won’t prevent another Marleny from a form of savagery that, tragically, is now deeply engrained.
I’ll come home from work, tired, watch any one of the shows I mentioned and continue to dismiss primetime’s murders as unrealistic. Having found his beautiful little girl in pieces, Marleny’s father might argue the only implausible part is the location.
What’s a potosí worth?
13/08/2010
There is fairly ubiquitous Spanish expression used when there’s a need to describe something of great value; it’s said that something is worth a “potosí”. Unlike many other sayings of which the origins remain unknown or debated, in this particular case the etymology is straightforward: tons of silver were once extracted for the Spanish monarchy from its mines, and today foreign companies fill the void.
That the expression isn’t in any way ironic or tongue-in-cheek reveals how little the human cost of this extraction was and is acknowledged, because today to say something is worth a “potosí” would more appropriately be used when describing the complete opposite.
The southwestern department is Bolivia’s poorest. Four out of ten children suffer from malnutrition, infant mortality is at a rate of 101 per thousand births, and the streets of the capital of the same name are filled with Potosians in line for basic provisions. But whereas history has had them begrudgingly accept their subjugation and exploitation, their patience has finally worn out—making the Aymara man in whom they found a sense of hope for indigenous solidarity, now just another disappointment.
Evo Morales’ election in 2005 was argued by some to be the first time an indigenous person was fairly elected as the leader of a Latin American country. Though the veracity of this claim was also disputed by many as a form of populist manipulation, its accuracy is less relevant when you compare Morales to his fellow leaders in the region: a coca growers union leader, a man who didn’t graduate from high school, a bachelor who eschews traditional presidential attire, his features that remind the world Bolivia was and still is a predominantly indigenous country, and most significantly— his promises to create a more equitable situation for that majority.
He kept these promises with his 2009 referendum victory, which among many other changes allowed 36 indigenous groups the right to claim territory, language rights, a form of community justice, and limit the size of landholdings.
It was predictably rejected by the eastern departments (Pando, Beni, Santa Cruz, Tarija) known as the media luna (half moon) in which the high concentration of white and mestizo populations have virulently opposed any encroachment on their autonomy—essentially a combination of sharing their massive reserves of natural gas and an inherited superiority complex. If you want to see an example of the latter, I suggest watching a documentary called “Bolivian Voices”. Though it’s been a while since I last saw it, I still vividly remember a white Bolivian hurling racist epithets at Evo in Santa Cruz. This was prior to his election—making subsequent unrest there an obvious development.
That this current crisis would unfold in one of the western departments, and one as historically symbolic as Potosí, has to be disheartening for Morales and his MAS (Movimiento Al Socialismo) party. Access to the city of Potosí has been blocked and many—including Governor Felix Gonzalez, himself a member of MAS— are carrying out public hunger strikes, all in order to force the government to respond to their six demands.
These demands include resolving a border dispute with the neighboring Oruro department over land rich in limestone, connected to which is a demand for a cement factory, the preservation of the Cerro Rico—which mining activity has destroyed, the construction of a multiple metals mining complex in Karachipampa, and an international airport.
In other words, they want investment in the region.
Just yesterday, mining companies Glencore International AG and Coeur d’Alene Mines Corp. suspended operations, which in addition to Sumitomo Corp. closing the world’s third largest silver mine at San Cristobal, has put Morales in unfamiliar territory. At the moment President Morales is aloof and his Minister of Autonomy, Carlos Romero, is trying to explain the government’s predicament: “if someone summons you and awaits your arrival with a club, there aren’t conditions for dialogue.”
As a department that’s been exploited for centuries awaits resolution to a conflict with one of their own, they do so with the sadness typical of internecine disputes. Poor, indigenous Bolivians elected a man who stood with them in opposition to the privatization and resulting privation of their water supply, who marched with them in the 2005 gas conflict, who won them revolutionary, constitutionally enshrined rights, but who when given the opportunity to lead them, has shown that populism is no panacea; because when it’s used to inspire, the corresponding expectations can all too easily turn into burdens, with locals constantly reminded that a “potosí” doesn’t seem to be worth all that much these days.
There is fairly ubiquitous Spanish expression used when there’s a need to describe something of great value; it’s said that something is worth a “potosí”. Unlike many other sayings of which the origins remain unknown or debated, in this particular case the etymology is straightforward: tons of silver were once extracted for the Spanish monarchy from its mines, and today foreign companies fill the void.
That the expression isn’t in any way ironic or tongue-in-cheek reveals how little the human cost of this extraction was and is acknowledged, because today to say something is worth a “potosí” would more appropriately be used when describing the complete opposite.
The southwestern department is Bolivia’s poorest. Four out of ten children suffer from malnutrition, infant mortality is at a rate of 101 per thousand births, and the streets of the capital of the same name are filled with Potosians in line for basic provisions. But whereas history has had them begrudgingly accept their subjugation and exploitation, their patience has finally worn out—making the Aymara man in whom they found a sense of hope for indigenous solidarity, now just another disappointment.
Evo Morales’ election in 2005 was argued by some to be the first time an indigenous person was fairly elected as the leader of a Latin American country. Though the veracity of this claim was also disputed by many as a form of populist manipulation, its accuracy is less relevant when you compare Morales to his fellow leaders in the region: a coca growers union leader, a man who didn’t graduate from high school, a bachelor who eschews traditional presidential attire, his features that remind the world Bolivia was and still is a predominantly indigenous country, and most significantly— his promises to create a more equitable situation for that majority.
He kept these promises with his 2009 referendum victory, which among many other changes allowed 36 indigenous groups the right to claim territory, language rights, a form of community justice, and limit the size of landholdings.
It was predictably rejected by the eastern departments (Pando, Beni, Santa Cruz, Tarija) known as the media luna (half moon) in which the high concentration of white and mestizo populations have virulently opposed any encroachment on their autonomy—essentially a combination of sharing their massive reserves of natural gas and an inherited superiority complex. If you want to see an example of the latter, I suggest watching a documentary called “Bolivian Voices”. Though it’s been a while since I last saw it, I still vividly remember a white Bolivian hurling racist epithets at Evo in Santa Cruz. This was prior to his election—making subsequent unrest there an obvious development.
That this current crisis would unfold in one of the western departments, and one as historically symbolic as Potosí, has to be disheartening for Morales and his MAS (Movimiento Al Socialismo) party. Access to the city of Potosí has been blocked and many—including Governor Felix Gonzalez, himself a member of MAS— are carrying out public hunger strikes, all in order to force the government to respond to their six demands.
These demands include resolving a border dispute with the neighboring Oruro department over land rich in limestone, connected to which is a demand for a cement factory, the preservation of the Cerro Rico—which mining activity has destroyed, the construction of a multiple metals mining complex in Karachipampa, and an international airport.
In other words, they want investment in the region.
Just yesterday, mining companies Glencore International AG and Coeur d’Alene Mines Corp. suspended operations, which in addition to Sumitomo Corp. closing the world’s third largest silver mine at San Cristobal, has put Morales in unfamiliar territory. At the moment President Morales is aloof and his Minister of Autonomy, Carlos Romero, is trying to explain the government’s predicament: “if someone summons you and awaits your arrival with a club, there aren’t conditions for dialogue.”
As a department that’s been exploited for centuries awaits resolution to a conflict with one of their own, they do so with the sadness typical of internecine disputes. Poor, indigenous Bolivians elected a man who stood with them in opposition to the privatization and resulting privation of their water supply, who marched with them in the 2005 gas conflict, who won them revolutionary, constitutionally enshrined rights, but who when given the opportunity to lead them, has shown that populism is no panacea; because when it’s used to inspire, the corresponding expectations can all too easily turn into burdens, with locals constantly reminded that a “potosí” doesn’t seem to be worth all that much these days.
Cuba’s Bobby Sands
09/08/2010
Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.
Nobody goes to Belfast for the weather.
When I had the good fortune to get there a few years back with my sister and her husband, we all acknowledged the morbid curiosity that brought us to Northern Ireland’s volatile capital. That conspicuous hatred and division, which we were led to believe disappeared after American envoy George Mitchell helped broker the Good Friday Agreement, was manifest everywhere.
That we equate a lack of media coverage with improvement is nothing new; and nowhere is this currently greater evidenced than in Haiti. Even apolitical Haitians are apparently singing Wyclef songs on the streets of Port-Au-Prince in anticipation, not of the prodigal son rescuing them from the ineffective government of René Préval, but of refocusing our ephemeral attention span on their plight in a way sometimes only celebrity can; they’ve learned the hard way that our well-intentioned promises are often forgotten when the cameras shut off.
Returning for a moment to Belfast—of the many memories still fresh in my mind, the mural of Bobby Sands remains one of the most poignant—not as a piece of art, but because his now widely cited words seemed to mean more there in the environment in which they were inspired. Michael Fassbender’s portrayal in Steve McQueen’s Hunger has since not only made seeing the mural less essential, but added the gory details and removed any romantic notion of what it’s actually like to starve yourself to death.
But while Bobby Sands has been immortalized through art, Orlando Zapata has yet to become a household name like his Irish predecessor. In my opinion, Zapata’s death in February got very little attention. Aside from brief mentions in the mainstream media, there was hardly any polemic aside from the always vocal Cuban Diaspora and—obviously—Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Of course it was universally denounced, but politicians everywhere will only go as far their constituents demand, and outside of Florida those demands appeared to be few and far between.
There are some who argue the international pressure Zapata’s death inspired directly resulted in the release of other political prisoners—notably those from the Group of 75 unjustly imprisoned in 2003; that argument, though, as Mario Vargas Llosa pointed out in his July 25 column in El País—is quite the spin.
Should we really be celebrating as progress the release of men whose crimes were signing petitions and owning typewriters?
I do think Llosa went a bit far in describing President Zapatero’s abandonment of the E.U. Common Position on Cuba as a political ruse to remind their Spanish supporters the PSOE is more than just nominally socialist, but at the same time, playing good cop with the Castro brothers right now is analogous to pardoning a bank robber who gives back some of the stolen money.
It’s a moot point that Zapata sacrificed his life for his fellow prisoners, but I can’t imagine he’d see increased releases as anything more than an extremely minor victory, or as the leader of Havana’s Damas de Blanco (White Ladies) (Cuba’s version of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo) Laura Pollán put it, ‘a little light’.
We all know how eagerly Fidel’s death is anticipated, and of the 638 Ways to Kill Castro, many are still incredulous it could be natural causes that finally do him in. Some see the day that happens as the day Cuba will finally stop seeing Batista era cacharros on its roads; though if his return to the National Assembly this week is any indication, that day might not be as soon as previously thought.
Nonetheless, whenever that inevitable event does occur, would it not be wiser to be in the position to definitively put Cuban communism out of its misery and release the long-repressed Cuban ingenuity ready to explode for their and the world’s benefit? Or do we appease a dying regime, reward their half-hearted benevolence and allow Zapata to become the next Pedro Luis Boitel?—a man perhaps more deserving of the title of Cuba’s Bobby Sands. Remembered by some, but forgotten by most.
Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.
Nobody goes to Belfast for the weather.
When I had the good fortune to get there a few years back with my sister and her husband, we all acknowledged the morbid curiosity that brought us to Northern Ireland’s volatile capital. That conspicuous hatred and division, which we were led to believe disappeared after American envoy George Mitchell helped broker the Good Friday Agreement, was manifest everywhere.
That we equate a lack of media coverage with improvement is nothing new; and nowhere is this currently greater evidenced than in Haiti. Even apolitical Haitians are apparently singing Wyclef songs on the streets of Port-Au-Prince in anticipation, not of the prodigal son rescuing them from the ineffective government of René Préval, but of refocusing our ephemeral attention span on their plight in a way sometimes only celebrity can; they’ve learned the hard way that our well-intentioned promises are often forgotten when the cameras shut off.
Returning for a moment to Belfast—of the many memories still fresh in my mind, the mural of Bobby Sands remains one of the most poignant—not as a piece of art, but because his now widely cited words seemed to mean more there in the environment in which they were inspired. Michael Fassbender’s portrayal in Steve McQueen’s Hunger has since not only made seeing the mural less essential, but added the gory details and removed any romantic notion of what it’s actually like to starve yourself to death.
But while Bobby Sands has been immortalized through art, Orlando Zapata has yet to become a household name like his Irish predecessor. In my opinion, Zapata’s death in February got very little attention. Aside from brief mentions in the mainstream media, there was hardly any polemic aside from the always vocal Cuban Diaspora and—obviously—Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Of course it was universally denounced, but politicians everywhere will only go as far their constituents demand, and outside of Florida those demands appeared to be few and far between.
There are some who argue the international pressure Zapata’s death inspired directly resulted in the release of other political prisoners—notably those from the Group of 75 unjustly imprisoned in 2003; that argument, though, as Mario Vargas Llosa pointed out in his July 25 column in El País—is quite the spin.
Should we really be celebrating as progress the release of men whose crimes were signing petitions and owning typewriters?
I do think Llosa went a bit far in describing President Zapatero’s abandonment of the E.U. Common Position on Cuba as a political ruse to remind their Spanish supporters the PSOE is more than just nominally socialist, but at the same time, playing good cop with the Castro brothers right now is analogous to pardoning a bank robber who gives back some of the stolen money.
It’s a moot point that Zapata sacrificed his life for his fellow prisoners, but I can’t imagine he’d see increased releases as anything more than an extremely minor victory, or as the leader of Havana’s Damas de Blanco (White Ladies) (Cuba’s version of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo) Laura Pollán put it, ‘a little light’.
We all know how eagerly Fidel’s death is anticipated, and of the 638 Ways to Kill Castro, many are still incredulous it could be natural causes that finally do him in. Some see the day that happens as the day Cuba will finally stop seeing Batista era cacharros on its roads; though if his return to the National Assembly this week is any indication, that day might not be as soon as previously thought.
Nonetheless, whenever that inevitable event does occur, would it not be wiser to be in the position to definitively put Cuban communism out of its misery and release the long-repressed Cuban ingenuity ready to explode for their and the world’s benefit? Or do we appease a dying regime, reward their half-hearted benevolence and allow Zapata to become the next Pedro Luis Boitel?—a man perhaps more deserving of the title of Cuba’s Bobby Sands. Remembered by some, but forgotten by most.
The United States as a champion of labor rights in Guatemala?
03/08/2010
This past July 22 I was given the opportunity to see United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk speak before a small but influential audience at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa. I, like many others in the audience, expected innocuous statements about increased regulatory cooperation and a ‘fair and ambitious conclusion of the Doha Round.’ To be sure there were the obvious diplomatic exigencies, but his selective criticism of China was nonetheless surprising.
It wasn’t that currency manipulation harangue currently fashionable in Washington, but concern that the American humanitarian approach to trade in Africa (African Growth and Opportunity Act) is being overshadowed by an amoral, conscious-less Chinese resource grab. Though Kirk’s observation was accurate, there was a slight hint of sanctimony—if only because the history of American foreign policy obliges a massive grain of salt when it comes to altruism.
But while it might be easier to let sanctimony slide when it comes to Africa, Kirk’s announcement on Friday that the Administration “is filing a case against Guatemala under the US-Central America Free Trade Agreement for its failure to enforce its labor laws” is a little too much swallow.
I actually spit out my coffee.
I tried to rationalize it, especially since the event I had in mind took place before the current leaders were even born, but I couldn’t shake my frustration. Someone must be compelled to have at least a little sense of history.
Eduardo Galeano once called Guatemala “the key to Latin America,” and from the standpoint of 20th century Latin American history, the CIA coup of 1954 was the watershed moment for overt American involvement in the region. The expropriation of unused land belonging to the United Fruit Company, for whom Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, had been lawyers, led directly to the end of the freely and fairly elected Presidency of Jacobo Arbenz and the subsequent deaths of up to 200,000 people. This, like the Bay of Pigs, isn’t disputed, so to go into further detail would be redundant.
Suffice it to say it’s pretty laughable to think that a country upon which the United States singlehandedly bestowed decade after decade of civil war is now being chosen as the first to reap the rewards of a new enlightened American trade policy—this being the first time the United States has pursued a free-trade partner for labor violations.
As Ambassador Kirk said, “With this case, we are sending a strong message that our trading partners must protect their own workers...”
A noble cause, no doubt. But let’s call a spade a spade.
Though the well-being of Guatemalan workers is the ostensible reason for the financial penalties that may be imposed, the truth is the Obama administration is kowtowing to the anti-free trade unions to which they’re beholden—it being an election year and all; in this case, it’s the AFL.-CIO.
There are labor violations in Guatemala? They’re discovering this now? What about the other sixteen countries with which the U.S. has FTAs? Will they now be subject to the new stringent American trading regime? Or will that only happen if they can make cheaper t-shirts?
If strengthening respect for the rule of law and the treatment of workers is really the goal, the United States should do everything it can to contribute to the success of the fragile International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). Punishing Guatemalan exporters won’t help workers who, once they lose their jobs, will be forced to return to the informal economy and a daily struggle against criminals they know will never be punished.
The recent resignation of Carlos Castresana as the director of the CICIG due to links between Attorney General Conrado Reyes and organized crime, and the subsequent removal of Reyes, has left a gaping hole in the Guatemalan judicial system. If the Americans truly want to help, they’ll do it by helping repair the legacy of their intervention, not by pretending their protectionism is genuine concern.
This past July 22 I was given the opportunity to see United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk speak before a small but influential audience at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa. I, like many others in the audience, expected innocuous statements about increased regulatory cooperation and a ‘fair and ambitious conclusion of the Doha Round.’ To be sure there were the obvious diplomatic exigencies, but his selective criticism of China was nonetheless surprising.
It wasn’t that currency manipulation harangue currently fashionable in Washington, but concern that the American humanitarian approach to trade in Africa (African Growth and Opportunity Act) is being overshadowed by an amoral, conscious-less Chinese resource grab. Though Kirk’s observation was accurate, there was a slight hint of sanctimony—if only because the history of American foreign policy obliges a massive grain of salt when it comes to altruism.
But while it might be easier to let sanctimony slide when it comes to Africa, Kirk’s announcement on Friday that the Administration “is filing a case against Guatemala under the US-Central America Free Trade Agreement for its failure to enforce its labor laws” is a little too much swallow.
I actually spit out my coffee.
I tried to rationalize it, especially since the event I had in mind took place before the current leaders were even born, but I couldn’t shake my frustration. Someone must be compelled to have at least a little sense of history.
Eduardo Galeano once called Guatemala “the key to Latin America,” and from the standpoint of 20th century Latin American history, the CIA coup of 1954 was the watershed moment for overt American involvement in the region. The expropriation of unused land belonging to the United Fruit Company, for whom Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, had been lawyers, led directly to the end of the freely and fairly elected Presidency of Jacobo Arbenz and the subsequent deaths of up to 200,000 people. This, like the Bay of Pigs, isn’t disputed, so to go into further detail would be redundant.
Suffice it to say it’s pretty laughable to think that a country upon which the United States singlehandedly bestowed decade after decade of civil war is now being chosen as the first to reap the rewards of a new enlightened American trade policy—this being the first time the United States has pursued a free-trade partner for labor violations.
As Ambassador Kirk said, “With this case, we are sending a strong message that our trading partners must protect their own workers...”
A noble cause, no doubt. But let’s call a spade a spade.
Though the well-being of Guatemalan workers is the ostensible reason for the financial penalties that may be imposed, the truth is the Obama administration is kowtowing to the anti-free trade unions to which they’re beholden—it being an election year and all; in this case, it’s the AFL.-CIO.
There are labor violations in Guatemala? They’re discovering this now? What about the other sixteen countries with which the U.S. has FTAs? Will they now be subject to the new stringent American trading regime? Or will that only happen if they can make cheaper t-shirts?
If strengthening respect for the rule of law and the treatment of workers is really the goal, the United States should do everything it can to contribute to the success of the fragile International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). Punishing Guatemalan exporters won’t help workers who, once they lose their jobs, will be forced to return to the informal economy and a daily struggle against criminals they know will never be punished.
The recent resignation of Carlos Castresana as the director of the CICIG due to links between Attorney General Conrado Reyes and organized crime, and the subsequent removal of Reyes, has left a gaping hole in the Guatemalan judicial system. If the Americans truly want to help, they’ll do it by helping repair the legacy of their intervention, not by pretending their protectionism is genuine concern.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)