Turns out that some of the voters in several precincts of the regional elections in Peru were unhappy with the results. So they took the votes they didn't like, ripped them up, or burned them in huge bonfires in the city center, like in Paucartambo.
Some news commentators suggested this was another tactic of intimidation..that the losers hired the people in the crowds to make a fuss, and therefore nullify the results.
In the largely Aymaran district of Puno, Humala's far more militant brother Antauro won. I've read Antauro's newspaper and interviewed his etnocacerista followers. Most of them are really into their Indian roots. But one guy told me they also admired Hitler. "He did for the German race what we are trying to do for the descendants of the Incans here." Everyone in the office, a small group of about ten, nodded their heads. And the Jews? I asked. "Oh well, Hitler had to do what he did because the Jews were controlling the economy."
I see, I said, trying my keep my impartial journalist face from slipping.
Actually, there are parallels between the Incan descendants and the Germans post World War I. The lost empire, a sense of humiliation. Etcetera, etcetera. A dangerous combination, as the etnocaceristas have shown.
How quickly we stupid humans forget our own errors.
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Great Moments in Journalism
Still in Quillabamba. I expected to spend just a few days here, since I'd been told in Cusco that it was rainy season here and impossible to travel by boat to the interior.
But what do they know in Cusco? Apparantly not enough, because everyone here tells me the river, and the famous Pongo de Manique waterfall, is still passable. So I'll be going there tomorrow, and visiting some Machiguenga communities.
So what have I been doing, in this high jungle town of heat and flowers?
Lots of nothing. Some interviews. Ex presidential candidate Ollanta Humala came to town and people swarmed around him with beaming faces, mostly campesinos. He was much more likeable in person than in his newspaper photos. I guess that says something about how he was portrayed in the media. So I took a few pictures on my own, and he made a point of reaching over and giving me some large pats on the back and a big smile. I'm not sure if he was doing this because I seemed to be the only media person welcoming him, or because I am the only gringa in town.
Being the only gringa in town is actually somewhat refreshing, after the Cusco deluge of tourists and the constant flow of vendors and other folks trying to wheedle nonexistent money out of me. This town is large enough so that people pretty much leave me alone, don't necessarily want to know what I'm doing here, though the little kids and even some of the adolescents stare at me like I was an extraterrestrial.
Until Sunday, the town was blooming with political banners, chants and speeches by loudspeaker, truckloads of youngmen yelling political slogans as they drove through town. Now the regional and municipal elections have ended..it seems more than anything that Peruvians voted for change. Hardly any incumbents were re-elected.
I've had to wait for various things to happen here in Quillabamba in order to continue with the articles I'm writing, and most of them didn't happen. People I was supposed to talk to never showed up, etcetera etcetera. Working freelance in South America, at least the kind of stories I do, is very different than working in an office in the States, where you can get so much information by just picking up the phone. Here, even local phone calls are relatively expensive, and in some places, there are no phones. So you go there.
But some of the best stuff that has happened to me--and the most amusing--has been stuff that never got into any of the articles. Like the time, just a few weeks ago, when I was introduced to a leader of an indigenous organization in Puerto Maldonado who I was going to interview and as I went to shake his hand my pen went flying out of my hand right into his eye. Ouch.
If I had been able to say something in English, I could have attempted something cute like "Heh, Heh, let's have a stab at this interview now, shall we?"
But in Spanish all I was able to muster was a dumb apologetic laugh and "Wow, great first impression, huh?"
At any rate, of all the people I spoke to in that particular organization, he is the one who is still sends me emails and wants to know how I'm doing. I guess he was impressed with my aim.
But what do they know in Cusco? Apparantly not enough, because everyone here tells me the river, and the famous Pongo de Manique waterfall, is still passable. So I'll be going there tomorrow, and visiting some Machiguenga communities.
So what have I been doing, in this high jungle town of heat and flowers?
Lots of nothing. Some interviews. Ex presidential candidate Ollanta Humala came to town and people swarmed around him with beaming faces, mostly campesinos. He was much more likeable in person than in his newspaper photos. I guess that says something about how he was portrayed in the media. So I took a few pictures on my own, and he made a point of reaching over and giving me some large pats on the back and a big smile. I'm not sure if he was doing this because I seemed to be the only media person welcoming him, or because I am the only gringa in town.
Being the only gringa in town is actually somewhat refreshing, after the Cusco deluge of tourists and the constant flow of vendors and other folks trying to wheedle nonexistent money out of me. This town is large enough so that people pretty much leave me alone, don't necessarily want to know what I'm doing here, though the little kids and even some of the adolescents stare at me like I was an extraterrestrial.
Until Sunday, the town was blooming with political banners, chants and speeches by loudspeaker, truckloads of youngmen yelling political slogans as they drove through town. Now the regional and municipal elections have ended..it seems more than anything that Peruvians voted for change. Hardly any incumbents were re-elected.
I've had to wait for various things to happen here in Quillabamba in order to continue with the articles I'm writing, and most of them didn't happen. People I was supposed to talk to never showed up, etcetera etcetera. Working freelance in South America, at least the kind of stories I do, is very different than working in an office in the States, where you can get so much information by just picking up the phone. Here, even local phone calls are relatively expensive, and in some places, there are no phones. So you go there.
But some of the best stuff that has happened to me--and the most amusing--has been stuff that never got into any of the articles. Like the time, just a few weeks ago, when I was introduced to a leader of an indigenous organization in Puerto Maldonado who I was going to interview and as I went to shake his hand my pen went flying out of my hand right into his eye. Ouch.
If I had been able to say something in English, I could have attempted something cute like "Heh, Heh, let's have a stab at this interview now, shall we?"
But in Spanish all I was able to muster was a dumb apologetic laugh and "Wow, great first impression, huh?"
At any rate, of all the people I spoke to in that particular organization, he is the one who is still sends me emails and wants to know how I'm doing. I guess he was impressed with my aim.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
From Quillabamba
I seem to be living too hard and fast these days to do as much blogging as I thought I'd be doing. Since my last entry, I attended the continental indigenous conference in Bolivia, then came back to Cusco, where I got together with friends to try one more time to say goodbye to Cusco. The big joke everyone has is "Are you really leaving this time?" And I say, "Yes." And then something comes up to keep me in the Cusco area.
This time it's my desire to visit the region where the Camisea gas project is. Lots has already been written on this project, which has been filled with disaster from the very beginning...badly constructed pipes, ruptures, negative effects on environment. What hasn't been written about much are the social effects on indigenous people here of the project, or the "hush money" that seems to get liberally spread around to local politicians, journalists. and other leaders..and of course is difficult to prove. So I'll say it here in this blog, in the event that I can't say it in a forthcoming article.
The other thing I will say is that I don't understand why the majority of internet cafes in Latin America are also trying to be discoteques, with, like the one I'm in now, blaring hip hop or reggaeton music. Another reason why I don't blog much...I think I'm too old or too Northern to think straight with so much noise.
Later.
This time it's my desire to visit the region where the Camisea gas project is. Lots has already been written on this project, which has been filled with disaster from the very beginning...badly constructed pipes, ruptures, negative effects on environment. What hasn't been written about much are the social effects on indigenous people here of the project, or the "hush money" that seems to get liberally spread around to local politicians, journalists. and other leaders..and of course is difficult to prove. So I'll say it here in this blog, in the event that I can't say it in a forthcoming article.
The other thing I will say is that I don't understand why the majority of internet cafes in Latin America are also trying to be discoteques, with, like the one I'm in now, blaring hip hop or reggaeton music. Another reason why I don't blog much...I think I'm too old or too Northern to think straight with so much noise.
Later.
Friday, September 15, 2006
From Pilcopata: Hello Kitty
Jaguars and tigers here in the jungle are like bears in Alaska. Everybody has a story.
Walking back to town from my campsite, I met a woman who had hiked five hours from her community, Guadeloupe. She said there was a tiger, black and red and white, that was killing cows in her community.
One day she saw it, facing her about six feet away on the road.
"Hello Mr. Kitty," she said. " Pretty Mr.Kitty."
The tiger stared back.
They faced each other for about a half an hour, she said. It may have only been five minutes, but I'm sure to her it seemed like a half an hour.
Eventually Mr. Kitty turned around and sauntered down the road in front of the woman for about another half an hour, she walking a respectful distance behind him. Finally he ran off.
Bravery is like that. Ordinary. Staring into the unknown moment and speaking to it in a voice that may hold fear, but also tenderness and strength.
And maybe just a little bit of bullshit.
I understood the woman's encounter with the tiger because I had had a similar one with a rattlesnake that had risen to meet me on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, California.
I admired the woman and her bravery. I will probably never meet her on the road again, but her tiger story will always walk with me.
Walking back to town from my campsite, I met a woman who had hiked five hours from her community, Guadeloupe. She said there was a tiger, black and red and white, that was killing cows in her community.
One day she saw it, facing her about six feet away on the road.
"Hello Mr. Kitty," she said. " Pretty Mr.Kitty."
The tiger stared back.
They faced each other for about a half an hour, she said. It may have only been five minutes, but I'm sure to her it seemed like a half an hour.
Eventually Mr. Kitty turned around and sauntered down the road in front of the woman for about another half an hour, she walking a respectful distance behind him. Finally he ran off.
Bravery is like that. Ordinary. Staring into the unknown moment and speaking to it in a voice that may hold fear, but also tenderness and strength.
And maybe just a little bit of bullshit.
I understood the woman's encounter with the tiger because I had had a similar one with a rattlesnake that had risen to meet me on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, California.
I admired the woman and her bravery. I will probably never meet her on the road again, but her tiger story will always walk with me.
Sleeping With The Jaguar
Near the town of Pilcopata, Peru, I slept for four nights alone in a tent in the jungle.
By day, I watched bugs drill holes in the ground to catch other bugs, chased butterflies with my camera, swam in the river. At night, I fell asleep listening to the symphony of frogs, crickets, and the occasional caw-caw-caw of a bird calling in the dark.
Down by the river, I found some tracks that were distinctively feline in appearance, and bigger than a cat´s. Still, they didn't look all THAT big, so I didn't think too much about it. They simply looked like they belonged there, just as I for the moment belonged in the tent above the river.
After I returned to the village of Pilcopata, people told me about the jaguar that had been roaming the area I had been sleeping in. It had killed seven goats, and surprised a fisherman at night by the river.
I don´t know if the tracks I saw belonged to the jaguar, or one of its cousins. But I was glad that the people in the village told me this story after my four days and nights alone in the jungle. The human word is powerful, perhaps more powerful than jaguar tracks. If I had listened to the story beforehand, I might have lay awake at night and let fear interfere with the noises in the night. Instead, we simply left each other alone, I in my place and he in his.
By day, I watched bugs drill holes in the ground to catch other bugs, chased butterflies with my camera, swam in the river. At night, I fell asleep listening to the symphony of frogs, crickets, and the occasional caw-caw-caw of a bird calling in the dark.
Down by the river, I found some tracks that were distinctively feline in appearance, and bigger than a cat´s. Still, they didn't look all THAT big, so I didn't think too much about it. They simply looked like they belonged there, just as I for the moment belonged in the tent above the river.
After I returned to the village of Pilcopata, people told me about the jaguar that had been roaming the area I had been sleeping in. It had killed seven goats, and surprised a fisherman at night by the river.
I don´t know if the tracks I saw belonged to the jaguar, or one of its cousins. But I was glad that the people in the village told me this story after my four days and nights alone in the jungle. The human word is powerful, perhaps more powerful than jaguar tracks. If I had listened to the story beforehand, I might have lay awake at night and let fear interfere with the noises in the night. Instead, we simply left each other alone, I in my place and he in his.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
To Salvation and Back
Out of Cusco, into the jungle with bugs the size of your hand flapping and sizzling against flimsy screen doors, orange and blue butterflies flocked in small crowds on the banks of the river, waterfalls, lush and bountiful plant life, sun rising in the morning through the trees as I bathe in the river, a beautiful 12 year old Machigenga girl named Juana with her nose pierced with the traditional red bead and her stiff grey schoolgirl uniform, standing shyly outside my tent, wanting to talk in the way that you talk when you are both in the jungle, silently, watching the miracle of it all, bugs, trees, water, earth, light, listening.
Yes one of the jungle towns is actually called Salvacion, and nobody seems to know why. Some say it¡s because a group of people were almost lost in the river and then miraculously saved, some say it's because of a local plant colloquially called Salvacion. At any rate, it's a pretty little town, quiet and calm.
Nearby is the Aramkbut community of Shintuya, where I spoke to some of the community leaders and watched a group of energetic boys and girls play a tough game of barefoot soccer on a grassy field. People in this area are nervous about petroleum development, which is planned for the area of the Native reserve and some of the surrounding region. The company proposing this development--Hunt Oil--does not have a great reputation in Peru, being one of the companies involved in the disastrous Camisea project further north. And the older folks complain that none of the younger people want to learn the Native languages. A grandfather and grandmother talked of a time fifty years ago, when whole families were wiped out by smallpox brought by contact with the outside world.
It used to be, the old man said, that fish were bountiful here, but not any more. Logging and mining have taken care of that. He's a skinny bright eyed man with a wealth of memories and a nagging pain in his chest.
For lunch, I ate macaroni soup with his family, then fell asleep in the humid heat of the afternoon. In the morning, there were no eggs in town, so I ate bananas, rice and papaya at the home of another neighbor, Victoria. She proudly told me of the time just a few months back when the entire community of Shintuya tore town a sign that the government had put on their land saying "Manu National Park." "We are not a national park, we are a community," she said.
The government wanted to put the entire community, all 250 people, in jail for their "vandalism", but the community won, and now the sign is gone.
Yes one of the jungle towns is actually called Salvacion, and nobody seems to know why. Some say it¡s because a group of people were almost lost in the river and then miraculously saved, some say it's because of a local plant colloquially called Salvacion. At any rate, it's a pretty little town, quiet and calm.
Nearby is the Aramkbut community of Shintuya, where I spoke to some of the community leaders and watched a group of energetic boys and girls play a tough game of barefoot soccer on a grassy field. People in this area are nervous about petroleum development, which is planned for the area of the Native reserve and some of the surrounding region. The company proposing this development--Hunt Oil--does not have a great reputation in Peru, being one of the companies involved in the disastrous Camisea project further north. And the older folks complain that none of the younger people want to learn the Native languages. A grandfather and grandmother talked of a time fifty years ago, when whole families were wiped out by smallpox brought by contact with the outside world.
It used to be, the old man said, that fish were bountiful here, but not any more. Logging and mining have taken care of that. He's a skinny bright eyed man with a wealth of memories and a nagging pain in his chest.
For lunch, I ate macaroni soup with his family, then fell asleep in the humid heat of the afternoon. In the morning, there were no eggs in town, so I ate bananas, rice and papaya at the home of another neighbor, Victoria. She proudly told me of the time just a few months back when the entire community of Shintuya tore town a sign that the government had put on their land saying "Manu National Park." "We are not a national park, we are a community," she said.
The government wanted to put the entire community, all 250 people, in jail for their "vandalism", but the community won, and now the sign is gone.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Israel, Lebanon and the Jews
It's hard not to be shaken by what is happening in Israel and Lebanon, no matter where you are.
What has impressed me is the widening rift between both sides. Even most of the Israeli left is supporting the war in Lebanon, while the entire world reacts in horror to photos and stories of civilian carnage in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Hizbollah is being seen as a heroic force by an increasing number of people in the Arab world.
This widening rift was captured for me by two articles. One from a self proclaimed "cappucino drinking Yuppie" in Lebanon who now considers himself a terrorist because of Israel's bombing, and one about a woman who opposed Israel's first Lebanon war but supports this one, because basically, the world, historically, doesn't give a damn about Jews and therefore Israel's only recourse is to aggressively defend itself. Both sides feel that they have no choice but to pursue war.
I support Israel's right to defend itself, but think its choice of military strategy in this war has been both morally and strategically wrong. What's the point of "destroying" Hizbollah if you create a thousand other Hizbollahs in Arab states throughout the mideast?
With this current strategy, and the civilian deaths it is causing, Israel is only providing more ammunition for world outrage. And the world has been quick to blame Israel, and Jews--for all the world's ills.
Here in the Andes, I have found anti-semitism to be thick, and nearly impossible to argue with.
We're not talking anti-zionism, or disagreement with Israeli policies. We're talking old fashioned statements about Jews controlling the world and its finances and Jews being too secretive and refusing to help dying Christians on the Sabbath. .One guy even told me he didn't blame the US for any of its policies because it was really the Jews who were controlling things. He even swore up and down that the problem with George Bush was that he was really Jewish.
Some of these statements have come from locals, others from European tourists.
This is the part I have a problem with when it comes to criticism of Israel or of Israelis. Despite the egregious acts committed in various countries by my own government, most people are quick to separate the American government from the American people. Yet people will actually try to convince me I'm wrong when I point out that Jews in both Israel and the United States have widely different opinions about Palestine. People here seem to feel that they know more about Jews than I do, even though I am a bonafide Jew being Jewish on my mother's side and many of them have only seen Jews in the cartoons waved at street demonstrations or published in newspapers. Because to many I don't "look Jewish" (whatever that means) I have the dubious privilege of listening to all sorts of anti-semitic comments.
Okay so I'm ranting again. I'm ranting because in truth, the entire situation in the middle east fills me with horror and despair, and at times I wish it were simpler and I wish I could jump on the finger pointing bandwagon like so many people on the left who seem to feel that all the world's ills would disappear if Israel would just politely pack up its bags and cease existing, or the people on the right who are convinced its all an Islamofacist plot.
The threads of the current situation in Lebanon are far deeper and more tangled than many of us want to own up to. There are historical reasons for Israeli paranoia and aggression that many Europeans seem to conveniently forget when they start waving their Star of David equals Swastika flags, or make blithe comments like one leftist American friend who said "all the Israelis should just be shipped to New York". (Kind of like the Iranian presidents remark that Israel should be moved to Europe.) And Israelis and Arabs both, blinded by their own historical and ancestral wounds, can only lash out against the other side, in the mistaken belief that by destroying the other, they will have destroyed their enemy.
What has impressed me is the widening rift between both sides. Even most of the Israeli left is supporting the war in Lebanon, while the entire world reacts in horror to photos and stories of civilian carnage in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Hizbollah is being seen as a heroic force by an increasing number of people in the Arab world.
This widening rift was captured for me by two articles. One from a self proclaimed "cappucino drinking Yuppie" in Lebanon who now considers himself a terrorist because of Israel's bombing, and one about a woman who opposed Israel's first Lebanon war but supports this one, because basically, the world, historically, doesn't give a damn about Jews and therefore Israel's only recourse is to aggressively defend itself. Both sides feel that they have no choice but to pursue war.
I support Israel's right to defend itself, but think its choice of military strategy in this war has been both morally and strategically wrong. What's the point of "destroying" Hizbollah if you create a thousand other Hizbollahs in Arab states throughout the mideast?
With this current strategy, and the civilian deaths it is causing, Israel is only providing more ammunition for world outrage. And the world has been quick to blame Israel, and Jews--for all the world's ills.
Here in the Andes, I have found anti-semitism to be thick, and nearly impossible to argue with.
We're not talking anti-zionism, or disagreement with Israeli policies. We're talking old fashioned statements about Jews controlling the world and its finances and Jews being too secretive and refusing to help dying Christians on the Sabbath. .One guy even told me he didn't blame the US for any of its policies because it was really the Jews who were controlling things. He even swore up and down that the problem with George Bush was that he was really Jewish.
Some of these statements have come from locals, others from European tourists.
This is the part I have a problem with when it comes to criticism of Israel or of Israelis. Despite the egregious acts committed in various countries by my own government, most people are quick to separate the American government from the American people. Yet people will actually try to convince me I'm wrong when I point out that Jews in both Israel and the United States have widely different opinions about Palestine. People here seem to feel that they know more about Jews than I do, even though I am a bonafide Jew being Jewish on my mother's side and many of them have only seen Jews in the cartoons waved at street demonstrations or published in newspapers. Because to many I don't "look Jewish" (whatever that means) I have the dubious privilege of listening to all sorts of anti-semitic comments.
Okay so I'm ranting again. I'm ranting because in truth, the entire situation in the middle east fills me with horror and despair, and at times I wish it were simpler and I wish I could jump on the finger pointing bandwagon like so many people on the left who seem to feel that all the world's ills would disappear if Israel would just politely pack up its bags and cease existing, or the people on the right who are convinced its all an Islamofacist plot.
The threads of the current situation in Lebanon are far deeper and more tangled than many of us want to own up to. There are historical reasons for Israeli paranoia and aggression that many Europeans seem to conveniently forget when they start waving their Star of David equals Swastika flags, or make blithe comments like one leftist American friend who said "all the Israelis should just be shipped to New York". (Kind of like the Iranian presidents remark that Israel should be moved to Europe.) And Israelis and Arabs both, blinded by their own historical and ancestral wounds, can only lash out against the other side, in the mistaken belief that by destroying the other, they will have destroyed their enemy.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
With the Q'ero: Emptiness and Laughter
After having talked about it for awhile, I finally hauled myself up the mountains to visit the Q'ero, a remote and traditional nation that live in stone huts at 17,000 feet high. Until the 1950's, the Q'ero were pretty much left alone, except for the criollo hacenderos, or land-owners, who somehow managed to find them, give them Spanish names, cut their hair, and of course, put them to work in less than favorable conditions. The story that I had heard until my visit was that the Q'ero were the "Last of the Incas", untouched by "modern" civilization, but it's not clear to me just how remote they were if the hacenderos managed to get to them.
Recently, the Q'ero have been made famous by books by Alberto Villoldo and other writers, who have described their healing techniques and connected them to Europeans and North Americans. This has had some effect on the communities, with community members competing with each other for the tourist dollar and unqualified people offering "despachos", or ceremonies, to tourists. But despite this, the Q'ero people that I met still have a remarkable depth and openness, very refreshing in the commercialized hustle that Cusco has become. The very thin mountain air was also refreshing, even though three of the four of us who went to the communities from Cusco managed to get sick with some kind of stomach thing.
The trip was two days by car and horse to the first village, and then another day to the second.
While I was suffering from the stomach stuff, a local pampa misoyoq, or curandero , did a despacho for me, but I was too out of it to really see what was going on. The next day I began to feel better. A few days later, two other pampa misoyoq did one despacho each for three of us.
Very powerful work. That night I "dreamed" that the energy of the apu had entered and cleansed me. It was four o'clock in the morning, we're all lying in our sleeping bags in the stone hut of one of the curanderos. The apu told me in the dream to raise my hands to receive the energy, which I did. Afterwards, I had this almost irresistible urge to laugh out loud. This is what it feels like to be healed, I thought: emptiness, happiness, laughter.
Since my return I have managed to hold onto a new feeling of balance and clarity, even amidst the tug and pull of Cusco. Añay, Bernadino. Añay, Modesto, Añay, Lorenzo. Añay los apus.
Thank you.
Recently, the Q'ero have been made famous by books by Alberto Villoldo and other writers, who have described their healing techniques and connected them to Europeans and North Americans. This has had some effect on the communities, with community members competing with each other for the tourist dollar and unqualified people offering "despachos", or ceremonies, to tourists. But despite this, the Q'ero people that I met still have a remarkable depth and openness, very refreshing in the commercialized hustle that Cusco has become. The very thin mountain air was also refreshing, even though three of the four of us who went to the communities from Cusco managed to get sick with some kind of stomach thing.
The trip was two days by car and horse to the first village, and then another day to the second.
While I was suffering from the stomach stuff, a local pampa misoyoq, or curandero , did a despacho for me, but I was too out of it to really see what was going on. The next day I began to feel better. A few days later, two other pampa misoyoq did one despacho each for three of us.
Very powerful work. That night I "dreamed" that the energy of the apu had entered and cleansed me. It was four o'clock in the morning, we're all lying in our sleeping bags in the stone hut of one of the curanderos. The apu told me in the dream to raise my hands to receive the energy, which I did. Afterwards, I had this almost irresistible urge to laugh out loud. This is what it feels like to be healed, I thought: emptiness, happiness, laughter.
Since my return I have managed to hold onto a new feeling of balance and clarity, even amidst the tug and pull of Cusco. Añay, Bernadino. Añay, Modesto, Añay, Lorenzo. Añay los apus.
Thank you.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
From Cocha to Cuzco
Okay so now I'm feeling guilty that I've let so much time elapse between the last blog in Cocha and this one. Especially since in between Cochabamba and Cuzco there were celebrations with Evo Morales in cocalero country and in his home town near Oruru, as well as the impressive inauguration ceremony at Tiwakanu. The visit to cocalero country was especially moving, with campesinos spontaneously coming up to me, tears in their eyes, putting their arms around me and saying "We´ve waited so long to have our own president." There were more tears when I interviewed Morales sister and first lady, Ester Morales, who spoke of her fear for her brother's safety now that he was president. And in the small altiplano town near Oruru, where Morales was born, everyone from the local villages showed up with traditional music and food, though Morales himself looked a little exhausted by then with all the celebrating. For a good photographic account of all this, I recommend my friend and fellow journalist Guillermo Guille's webzine for the Bolivian community in Argentina, Renacer. http://www.renacerbol.com.ar/ Go to "fotoreportajes."
So now I'm in Cuzco, on the eve of the Peruvian election, and I, like a lot of Peruvians, am less than excited about the candidates who will compete for the presidency on April 9. On the right, you have your basic rightwing neoliberal empresario, Lourdes Flores. And on the left, you have Ollanta Humala, a nationalistic caudillo with a shady military past and even shadier family members (Mom Humala says all homosexuals should be shot) and Alan Garcia, a recycled center leftist whose been here before and doesn´t seem to have a lot of new stuff to offer. Sorry guys, I know one of you is going to win, and I sincerely hope that I and my Peruvian friends are wrong in our cynicism.
So why, given the cynicism, am I in Cuzco? I guess I have to blame the apus, or mountain spirits, for that. They say that Cuzco either wants you here or it doesn't. And it seems that Cuzco wants me to stick around here for awhile and do some healing work, both with myself and with some of the people who live here or are just passing through, so that's what I'm doing. I have made friends with many of the residents and visitors, as well as with the narrow winding cobblestoned streets and the local Incan ruins, like Temple of The Moon, and Qenco. And now I can even manage a few words of Quechua, important stuff like what are you doing and where's the food?
I'll post again after the Peruvian elections. Promise I will. Tupunanchiskama. (See you later.)
So now I'm in Cuzco, on the eve of the Peruvian election, and I, like a lot of Peruvians, am less than excited about the candidates who will compete for the presidency on April 9. On the right, you have your basic rightwing neoliberal empresario, Lourdes Flores. And on the left, you have Ollanta Humala, a nationalistic caudillo with a shady military past and even shadier family members (Mom Humala says all homosexuals should be shot) and Alan Garcia, a recycled center leftist whose been here before and doesn´t seem to have a lot of new stuff to offer. Sorry guys, I know one of you is going to win, and I sincerely hope that I and my Peruvian friends are wrong in our cynicism.
So why, given the cynicism, am I in Cuzco? I guess I have to blame the apus, or mountain spirits, for that. They say that Cuzco either wants you here or it doesn't. And it seems that Cuzco wants me to stick around here for awhile and do some healing work, both with myself and with some of the people who live here or are just passing through, so that's what I'm doing. I have made friends with many of the residents and visitors, as well as with the narrow winding cobblestoned streets and the local Incan ruins, like Temple of The Moon, and Qenco. And now I can even manage a few words of Quechua, important stuff like what are you doing and where's the food?
I'll post again after the Peruvian elections. Promise I will. Tupunanchiskama. (See you later.)
Monday, December 19, 2005
From The Streets of Cochabamba, Bolivia
Fireworks and dancing in the streets erupted last night in Cochabamba as Evo Morales won the presidency of Bolivia by over 50%.The election was a historic first in two ways--it was the first time any presidential candidate in Bolivia won an abolute majority, and it was the first time an indigenous candidate gained the presidency of this predominately indigenous country.
The fireworks, dancing and shouts of EVO EVO EVO came after an eerie day of stillness here in Cochabamba, where rain fell on streets that were largely deserted, escept for occasionaly bicyclists and families returning from their walk to the polls. Cars are forbidden on election day, so the streets literally belonged to the people.
I had been told that Cochabamba was Evo's territory, so I expected to hear a lot of support for Evo on the day before the election. Cochabamba was where, just a few years ago, people took to the streets and successfully blocked the privatization of water by Bechtel after it insisted on enormous hikes in water rates, and asked residents to install meters on their own backyard wells.
But surprisingly, out of a random series of interviews with ten people on the streets of Cochabamba, I only found one who showed any real enthusiasm for Evo. Many of the others showed fear, suspicion, doubt, skepticism, and despair. "All the politicians are the same," several people told me. "They're all corrupt. Nothing will really change."
One couple, undecided until the last minute ,said, "We found ourselves between a rock and a hard place. If we voted for Evo, Bolivia would collapse economically because the US and foreign investors will pull out. But if we voted for Tuto ( Evo's main rival) , Evo's party would create road blockades.¨"
When I asked people why I wasn't finding more support for Evo in Cochabamba, they told me it was because Evo's base was largely the campesinos. City people, they said, were more affected by the road blockades and less supportive of Evo.
So maybe I asked the wrong ten people. I should have gone to the smaller villages in the coca-producing Chapare, where Morales´base is.
Here, I've been hearing a lot of paranoia, mainly from the middle class. Some Bolivians of European ancestry tell me point blank that they are afraid of the vengeance of ¨"The Indians" after 500 years of oppression. One man told me he was afraid of losing his three houses. Another man told me that the US and Chile, Bolivia's age old enemy, were waiting to destroy Bolivia. An indigenous man told me he thought Evo was making a mistake by being too strident, that his government would fail and everyone would say "You see, those Indians don't know how to run the country."
"We have 500 years of fear here," another woman said, it's in our ancestry, in our bones. It's going to take a while for things to change."
But with a clear majority mandate for the 46 year old Aymara candidate who herded llamas as a boy, Bolivia has clearly stated it's ready for a change. Evo Morales has his work cut out for him. The more radical organizations in El Alto have given him three months to nationalize the country's resources, the US has already begun its meddling (for an excellent investigation of this see Reed Lindsay´s piece for NACLA) and the right will undoubtedly continue to spread rumors of Bolivia's impending economic collapse, despite Joseph Stieglitz assurances to the contrary.
Evo has promises to keep--nationalize the country´s resources, help create a constitutional assembly that will rewrite the country´s constitution, giving Bolivia's indigenous peoples more representation, and create a state that is genuinely intercultural, ending 500 years of neocolonialism.
It's not going to be easy. But in La Paz, people have told me that Evo as an individual is not really that important--that this change that is happening is genuinely the will of the Bolivian people, and it is up to the people of Bolivia to make sure Evo follows through on his promises. With or without fear.
The fireworks, dancing and shouts of EVO EVO EVO came after an eerie day of stillness here in Cochabamba, where rain fell on streets that were largely deserted, escept for occasionaly bicyclists and families returning from their walk to the polls. Cars are forbidden on election day, so the streets literally belonged to the people.
I had been told that Cochabamba was Evo's territory, so I expected to hear a lot of support for Evo on the day before the election. Cochabamba was where, just a few years ago, people took to the streets and successfully blocked the privatization of water by Bechtel after it insisted on enormous hikes in water rates, and asked residents to install meters on their own backyard wells.
But surprisingly, out of a random series of interviews with ten people on the streets of Cochabamba, I only found one who showed any real enthusiasm for Evo. Many of the others showed fear, suspicion, doubt, skepticism, and despair. "All the politicians are the same," several people told me. "They're all corrupt. Nothing will really change."
One couple, undecided until the last minute ,said, "We found ourselves between a rock and a hard place. If we voted for Evo, Bolivia would collapse economically because the US and foreign investors will pull out. But if we voted for Tuto ( Evo's main rival) , Evo's party would create road blockades.¨"
When I asked people why I wasn't finding more support for Evo in Cochabamba, they told me it was because Evo's base was largely the campesinos. City people, they said, were more affected by the road blockades and less supportive of Evo.
So maybe I asked the wrong ten people. I should have gone to the smaller villages in the coca-producing Chapare, where Morales´base is.
Here, I've been hearing a lot of paranoia, mainly from the middle class. Some Bolivians of European ancestry tell me point blank that they are afraid of the vengeance of ¨"The Indians" after 500 years of oppression. One man told me he was afraid of losing his three houses. Another man told me that the US and Chile, Bolivia's age old enemy, were waiting to destroy Bolivia. An indigenous man told me he thought Evo was making a mistake by being too strident, that his government would fail and everyone would say "You see, those Indians don't know how to run the country."
"We have 500 years of fear here," another woman said, it's in our ancestry, in our bones. It's going to take a while for things to change."
But with a clear majority mandate for the 46 year old Aymara candidate who herded llamas as a boy, Bolivia has clearly stated it's ready for a change. Evo Morales has his work cut out for him. The more radical organizations in El Alto have given him three months to nationalize the country's resources, the US has already begun its meddling (for an excellent investigation of this see Reed Lindsay´s piece for NACLA) and the right will undoubtedly continue to spread rumors of Bolivia's impending economic collapse, despite Joseph Stieglitz assurances to the contrary.
Evo has promises to keep--nationalize the country´s resources, help create a constitutional assembly that will rewrite the country´s constitution, giving Bolivia's indigenous peoples more representation, and create a state that is genuinely intercultural, ending 500 years of neocolonialism.
It's not going to be easy. But in La Paz, people have told me that Evo as an individual is not really that important--that this change that is happening is genuinely the will of the Bolivian people, and it is up to the people of Bolivia to make sure Evo follows through on his promises. With or without fear.
Sunday, October 09, 2005
In the Alaskan Bush
So I did it. I quit my day job and went and spent six weeks in Alaska with my high school friend Tanya, two weeks in Fairbanks and a month in the Alaska bush on the Kantishna river.
Imagine this: two middle aged women living in a two room cabin together for one month in the Alaskan bush, after barely seeing each other for thirty-years.
Yes, we survived it. Tanya has evolved into THE quintessential survivor, now solidly packed with not only life experience but all sorts of wisdom you can only obtain in the Alaskan bush: how to manage and clean a chain saw, how to maintain generators and battery packs, how to whip up delicious oatmeal cookies on a wood stove, how to clear a path in the woods, how to fell and limb a tree for firewood, then chop the wood neatly in two so it will fit into the stove, how to shoot a bear when it comes after your chickens, then feed the bear to the chickens and can the rest.
And me? Utterly useless. Despite my camping forays into the California Sierras and the desert, I am basically a city girl, and years of city living has made me soft. So, okay, I limbed a few trees, learned how to clean a chainsaw, went on long walks in the forest, feet bouncing on the spongy rockless ground, observed explosions of mushrooms push through the ground from one day to the next, watched the birch leaves turn from green to yellow to blazing gold then fall away to leave the white birches standing naked among the green spruce, listened to the wolves howl near our cabin at night, stared across the river at a fat and sassy moose, made friends with the sled dogs Gusto and Buddy, stood in awe as thousands of cranes filled the sky on the day that we left, heading south. And of course did what I do in the city--sat in front of my computer and played with words.
No cell phones. No internet. No telephone. Only a CB for communication between the cabins on the banks of the Kantishna, and a Christian radio station for receiving messages from people outside the Bush. Splendid isolation.
I also met a few of The Bush People, homesteaders like Tanya who have given up city life on a full or part-time basis, and live entirely off the land in the remote Alaskan Bush. People like Mike, a grizzled trapper in his sixties and his forty-something wife Fran, who could rival Martha Stewart with what she's done with just a small cabin and a chunk of land.
In the fall, the homesteaders get in their boats and visit one another, and some of the moose hunters from the city also drop by. I introduced Argentine mate as well as the film Hope in Hard Times to a bunch of these folk, hopefully linking a bit of the Far South with a bit of the Far North.
Tanya, who is part Tlingit, thought it would be a good idea if the indigenous people of the continent could form a kind of network, a thought echoed by Quechua and Aymara friends that I have in the Southern Hemisphere, so we talked about how that might happen.
We also talked a lot about religion, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Bahai, Native traditions, New Age thought--it's easy to feel the presence of god in remote places like the Alaskan bush, and interesting how that presence has been interpreted over the years.
Tanya wrote about her experience with me in the Alaskan Bush in her comment in my previous post. I'm glad she thinks of me as still golden despite all the grey I see in the mirror. Regardless of how well armored she may think she is, I still see her and will always love her. We have, over the years, passed a kind of poem back and forth between each other. This was another verse.
For my 2016 visit to Tanya at the same location, and some photos, go here:
Monday, June 20, 2005
Smoking Pumpkins
I've been trying to decide whether to join the swarm of journalists now in Bolivia or go to Alaska and chill with my friend Tanya from high school. Probably I will do both.
But Alaska first.
I have been promising Tanya for centuries that I will come and visit her and her land in the wilderness.
Tanya and I used to sneak into the bathroom at Sehome High School in Bellingham Washington and smoke cigarettes. Like just about everyone else. Only we went to the boys' bathroom, blowing smoke blithely into the air while these poor males would come in, go 'huh' and leave, figuring they were in the wrong bathroom. Her with her round shy face and her big Alaskan pumpkin-colored jacket and me in some kind of LA coordinated green miniskirt thing that allowed me to freeze my ass off in the snowpacked Bellingham winter.
We spent most of that year staging strange and random events like this, eating bad food in the cafeteria while we spoke in invented languages no one else understood, sitting under the school desks instead of "at" them, leading demonstrations of six of our friends against high school functions that seemed perfectly acceptable to everyone else. I guess we thought these were revolutionary acts.
Later that year I got kicked out of school for spending all my time organizing events and never going to class and Tanya went to a foster home.
A psychic told her she and I would be friends for life, that we would be old ladies together.
Well honey, I said last night on the phone, we have to admit that we're getting there. Maybe I better move my butt up to Alaska to visit you while I can still move it.
We had a lot to talk about last night. Downing Street memos. Torture. Despair. Why isn’t Bush impeached yet. Why are Americans so numb. How can we take all these layers of numbness off.
You eventually got rid of your big pumpkin jacket, I said, maybe there’s a way.
Yeah right, she laughed, but you never learned that you can’t wear miniskirts in the snow.
My cell phone cut off right about then, because I had exhausted the long distance minutes I had paid for. So I put some more money into my account and then when I called back discovered that I had eighteen dollars more than I had put in.
Money appears from nowhere when you really need it. Like rain, old friends, and small and spontaneous revolutionary acts.
Saturday, June 04, 2005
I Guess It's Time to Say Something
Here I was just fooling around amusing myself last night with this idea of creating a blog and already someone has posted a comment!
I'm wondering how Janinsanfran even FOUND my blog, with the amount of blogs being created on a daily basis, ricocheting out there into cyberspace.
Truly, we are becoming beehive cells in one giant mind ...
So, Jan, you've forced me to actually START blogging, when here I thought I could get away with just posting a few links and mumbling incoherently to myself as part of my efforts at managing this one little beehive cell.
Tonight I went to a showing of the film about Argentina, Hope in Hard Times, which was playing in the basement of a Methodist Church in San Rafael. This is a film my friends Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young (www.movingimages.org) made when I was living and working as a journalist and teacher during the Argentine uprising and social movements of 2001-2003. Because I introduced them to some of my Argentine activist friends and offered some creative feedback on the film while they were making it, they were kind enough to list me as associate producer. So I spoke a bit after the film about the Argentina I had lived in two years ago, and Andres Conteris, another filmmaker and
director of Nonviolencia Internacional spoke about what's happening in Uruguay with the election of the Frente Amplio and a lot of former revolutionaries,ex Tupamaros, to the government.
It is a good thing, we all agreed, that George W Bush has been so preocupied with Iraq, leaving South America much more to its own devices than the US is usually capable of doing. As Conteris said, if not for Saddam, Chavez would have been out of Venezuela. Forget about attempted coups. He would have been outta there.
Meanwhile in Bolivia the bees are busy uniting their
powerful beehive cells into one giant Aymara mind, cascading down from El Alto and the hills and filling the streets of several different cities,waving the multi-colored Wiphala flag, and calling out Basta!
The bees are tired of the honey being sucked dry by multinationals while the bees themselves don't get any. In this case, it's Bolivian natural gas. In Uruguay, they have declared water a "constitutional right" in their referendum. They have learned from the Argentines who lost most of their natural resources to privatization in the 90's, and from the South Africanswho sometimes have not been able to afford their own drinking water.
The Mapuche in Chile and Argentina, whose water had been poisoned by oil drilling when I visited them in 2003, now have their own newspaper. The written word, as they say in their online newspaper,
is another tool, another weapon.
I guess it's time to say something.
I'm wondering how Janinsanfran even FOUND my blog, with the amount of blogs being created on a daily basis, ricocheting out there into cyberspace.
Truly, we are becoming beehive cells in one giant mind ...
So, Jan, you've forced me to actually START blogging, when here I thought I could get away with just posting a few links and mumbling incoherently to myself as part of my efforts at managing this one little beehive cell.
Tonight I went to a showing of the film about Argentina, Hope in Hard Times, which was playing in the basement of a Methodist Church in San Rafael. This is a film my friends Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young (www.movingimages.org) made when I was living and working as a journalist and teacher during the Argentine uprising and social movements of 2001-2003. Because I introduced them to some of my Argentine activist friends and offered some creative feedback on the film while they were making it, they were kind enough to list me as associate producer. So I spoke a bit after the film about the Argentina I had lived in two years ago, and Andres Conteris, another filmmaker and
director of Nonviolencia Internacional spoke about what's happening in Uruguay with the election of the Frente Amplio and a lot of former revolutionaries,ex Tupamaros, to the government.
It is a good thing, we all agreed, that George W Bush has been so preocupied with Iraq, leaving South America much more to its own devices than the US is usually capable of doing. As Conteris said, if not for Saddam, Chavez would have been out of Venezuela. Forget about attempted coups. He would have been outta there.
Meanwhile in Bolivia the bees are busy uniting their
powerful beehive cells into one giant Aymara mind, cascading down from El Alto and the hills and filling the streets of several different cities,waving the multi-colored Wiphala flag, and calling out Basta!
The bees are tired of the honey being sucked dry by multinationals while the bees themselves don't get any. In this case, it's Bolivian natural gas. In Uruguay, they have declared water a "constitutional right" in their referendum. They have learned from the Argentines who lost most of their natural resources to privatization in the 90's, and from the South Africanswho sometimes have not been able to afford their own drinking water.
The Mapuche in Chile and Argentina, whose water had been poisoned by oil drilling when I visited them in 2003, now have their own newspaper. The written word, as they say in their online newspaper,
is another tool, another weapon.
I guess it's time to say something.
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Watch This Spot
Watch this spot for soon to be written words.
In the meantime, check out some words already written in the links on the left.
In the meantime, check out some words already written in the links on the left.
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