The Caribbean?

Ok, final reflections on the semester spent with students and what was hardest to teach them about Latin America.

1) The Spaniards did not kill all the indigenous. Even the very Aymara girl sitting third row back could not convince some that the Spaniards did not "kill all the Indians." I'm here to report that the black legend is alive and well.

2) There were no Indians when the Spanish arrived. There were no Africans that came as slaves. The students expected total racial solidarity and a complete anti-white coalition coming out of the boats. Slaves and Indians, one insisted, where clearly just stupid because the didn't get together to overthrow the whites. *sigh*

3) The Caribbean is part of Latin America. Again, the Boricua sitting in the back saying how much more he understood Puerto Rico now that he had a Colonial course on Latin America didn't help one iota.

These were the hardest ideas to get across, but in the end, I think I had only one that came out thinking all the Indians were dumb, dead, and certainly not from the Caribbean. Out of eleven students, that's not a bad turn around.

So, in honor of Mr. Incredulous, here's a very merry Christmas ... 70's / 80's style.

Evo Morales: Ending Capitalism by Ending Luxury?

From Democracy Now:

AMY GOODMAN: How would you do that? How would you end capitalism?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] It’s changing economic policies, ending luxury, consumerism. It’s ending the struggle to—or this searching for living better. Living better is to exploit human beings. It’s plundering natural resources. It’s egoism and individualism. Therefore, in those promises of capitalism, there is no solidarity or complementarity. There’s no reciprocity. So that’s why we’re trying to think about other ways of living lives and living well, not living better. Not living better. Living better is always at someone else’s expense. Living better is at the expense of destroying the environment.

I've generally been a supporter of the Morales movement - a much needed retaking of Bolivia by the majority of the citizenry. However, Morales' climate summit speech and DN interview have me rolling my eyes? End luxury? End luxury and you end the entire export future of Bolivia, especially lithium. Define luxury, buck-o. Is luxury flying all the way to Copenhagen to complain about luxury for a few minutes? Pretty much. Come on, Evo, learn to ride the market and even moderate it ... don't try to put a bullet in its brain.

The export economies of South America demand a luxury market, and their subsequent failure to diversify the economy with the profits from those sales is glaring (cough cough - Chavez's Venezuela - cough cough). Text book after text book gives us enough single-export ppopulists to float a battleship. Diversify, democratize, distribute - the three words of the day for the Latin American economy.

Bolivia has potential to profit from "luxury" and use those profits for good. And the environment? If the market demands "green" then let the entrepeneurs of Bolivia profit from that demand.

Peru to Iglesia Catolica: Massacre Was Your Fault

Yesterday the head of the Peruvian Bishops Conference rejected accusations from a commission set up to investigate the June 5 violence near Bagua (1,000 KM NE of Lima) that the Church and people associated with the Church precipitated the violence. A nun sitting on the investigative commission has refused to sign the document, and the Bishops as well as activist organizations have condemned the report for ignoring the actual violence from the police. Amazon Watch and Democracy Now discuss a number of disappeared as well. Hidden, no doubt, in a cloister some where (Snark).

What I find interesting is a paraphrase of the report written up in Noticias de Prensa Latina that says:

El documento sostiene que que los nativos fueron engañados y manipulados por intereses extranjeros y sectores opositores, religiosos y organizaciones no gubernamentales, que les hicieron creer que los decretos en cuestión iba a privarlos de sus tierras.

This sounds like a page out of the cold war from Guatemala and El Slavador to Brazil and Chile. I knew Alan Garcia was old school, but who knew he was going to use form letter reports from the Cold War. Are these in a surplus "Operation Condor" file drawer somewhere? Outside agitators tricked the peasantry into thinking the central state, logging companies, mines, and oil companies didn't have their best interests at heart? Wow, that must have been a really hard line to sell to the Indians of the Peruvian Amazon. (Extra snark).

The liberation Church is alive and well in the Andes, and that includes not only Ecuador and Bolivia, but it seems Peru as well. It sounds like Garcia is ready to engage in a PR war against the Catholic Church, but I wonder how far he will push it.

Death threats are already being leveled against the Amazonas persecutor involved in investigating the case, Marleny Luz Rojas Méndez, says LivinginPeru. Would it be to far-fetched to imagine that threats will start appearing for religious agitators next? This situation is going nowhere good, fast.

La Chola

Priceless.

Celebrating the Virgin ... USA

It ain't just California and Texas any more, folks.

Fort Collins, Colorado



Miami Beach, Florida



Lombar, Illinois



Brooklyn, New York

La Pura Cotton Candy

Beyond religion I don't often make forays into Mexico and culture. There are a 101 Carlos Monsivais wannabes in the blogosphere to suffice any reader's desire. However, I did want to make a brief mention of the most recent Teleton in DF earlier this December in what seems to be my most Cotton Candy post (all fluff and sugar).

Fans in the capital "enjoyed" the appearance of a U.S. export named Selena. Not, unfortunately, the beautiful 23-year-old Texan that still makes many a young man from the nineties heart go bidi bidi bom bom, but the pre-pubescent American Girl doll (also from Texas) Selena Gomez who is (I am almost ashamed to admit I know this) named after the real Texas bomb shell, Selena Quintanilla. Perhaps my judgment is clouded by fond memories of sitting in papusarias and burrito places in El Monte, Baldwin Park, San Gabriel and East LA in the 90's slurping down horchatas and good food while listening to la reina - perhaps.

However, I submit for your comparison the two Selenas - and I think the South Texan wins.

The (mildly) Curious Case of The Judge and The Scholar

Mexican President Felipe Calderón appeared in Yucatan this week to assign awards to members of Mexican society important to that nation's development in science, art, and technology. On the list of award recipients was José Ramón Cossío Díaz, an associate justice of the Supreme court - the same supreme court that upheld the decriminalization of abortion in DF. While the wunderkind minister is a prodigious author as well as a known for allowing expert consultation in court matters, his prominence in the abortion decision is undeniable. The award was given for philosophy, history, and social sciences.

The other award winner in philosophy, history, and social sciences is yet another scholar in the thick of controversy - Enrique de la Garza Toledo. Not that Garza Toledo has been deeply involved with the electrical workers, but his work centeres on the sociology of labor. In particular, he asks about the nature of democracy within unions, their legitimacy, and the sort of systems of labor that exist in the "New" political Mexico of post-PRI domination. I do not know how influential he has been on Calderón policy in terms of labor. It is, however, a curious choice with curious timing.