Thursday, 20 December 2007
Fascists and Indians
Things have reached a new climate in Bolivia from where extremist factions are on the rise. On the one side a group called the ‘Ponchos Rojos’ seeking Indian insurrection, were recently seen on TV decapitating the heads of dogs as warning to the opposition. To the other, rekindled Fascists, using Nazi symbolism, have begun firing arms at manifestations. As steps towards a newly-thought indigenous constitution are realized, up to what point will talk of ‘imminent civil war’ come to, as the country divides even further?
Evo Morales, Bolivia's first Indian president, says that the changes in the country’s constitution will redress centuries of discrimination by a political class dominated by a European-descended elite. Proposals there range from rechristening Bolivia with an indigenous name, Qollasuyo, to that of land reform and allowing Morales consecutive presidential terms.
The country is at an unstable situation, in which poor and well-organized sectors of society have managed to take control of the government, but have not actually taken control of power. The power, as such, still resides with the government’s main political enemies based in Santa Cruz, Sucre and Cochabamba, the country’s economical bastions.
The leaders of opposition say they want greater autonomy from the capitol La Paz. Some, a radical minority, want full independence. They complain that they generate Bolivia's wealth and do not see why they should subsidize the poor in the mountains. Many wealthy landowners also oppose government measures to redistribute land to peasant farmers and limit the size of properties.
The story is of a disillusioned people who, with the great responsibility of constructing Bolivia for the new century, remain divided, in conflict, without a firm ideology of unity and of constructing a more just social order. As such the youth and the poor become the ‘cannon fodder’ for extremists capitalizing on the disarray.
One such group is the Falange Socialista Boliviana, a far right movement founded in the late thirties, whose voice, though silenced for the past thirty years, now regathers emphasis. Their talk of arms and radical change is seen by some in the East and South as the only firm solution. Curiously they are seen bearing Nazi symbols which leads one to think their rhetoric is openly racist.
Strongly affiliated are the ‘juventudes cruceñas’, young demonstrators from Santa Cruz said to now be arming themselves under slogans of “defending the patria”. They have already attacked shop keepers and vandilised in and around districts where there are MAS supporters (Movement Toward Socialism – Evo Morales’ party).
A counterpart on the left is the Ponchos Rojos, indigenous activists from the high plains who recently slit the throats of two dogs before television cameras shouting the names of the two leading opposition leaders, Branko Marinkovic and Rubén Costas. An Ayamara ancestral organization, composed of men over 50, it assures 100,000 members in their files. It has also converted itself in one of Morales’ main strike forces. Their leader Ruperto Quispe now threatens to take the lands of Santa Cruz “immediately” if the Constitution fails. They are also allied to hardened miners loyal to Morales, who explode small dynamite charges occasionally to intimidate any potential anti-assembly protesters.
All of the pieces seem to be in place for a civil war – a general climate of discontent and resentment after a long history of colonial oppression; a concentrated campaign aimed at stirring up fear, hatred, and racial/ethnic and regional divisions; the aggressive use of the media in promulgating violent conflict; the near-total silence of international observers regarding these same trends. Bolivia has always been an unstable pocket within the southern continent. But the intensity of the present cloud of instability could bring it closer than ever to a full eruption.
Evo Morales, Bolivia's first Indian president, says that the changes in the country’s constitution will redress centuries of discrimination by a political class dominated by a European-descended elite. Proposals there range from rechristening Bolivia with an indigenous name, Qollasuyo, to that of land reform and allowing Morales consecutive presidential terms.
The country is at an unstable situation, in which poor and well-organized sectors of society have managed to take control of the government, but have not actually taken control of power. The power, as such, still resides with the government’s main political enemies based in Santa Cruz, Sucre and Cochabamba, the country’s economical bastions.
The leaders of opposition say they want greater autonomy from the capitol La Paz. Some, a radical minority, want full independence. They complain that they generate Bolivia's wealth and do not see why they should subsidize the poor in the mountains. Many wealthy landowners also oppose government measures to redistribute land to peasant farmers and limit the size of properties.
The story is of a disillusioned people who, with the great responsibility of constructing Bolivia for the new century, remain divided, in conflict, without a firm ideology of unity and of constructing a more just social order. As such the youth and the poor become the ‘cannon fodder’ for extremists capitalizing on the disarray.
One such group is the Falange Socialista Boliviana, a far right movement founded in the late thirties, whose voice, though silenced for the past thirty years, now regathers emphasis. Their talk of arms and radical change is seen by some in the East and South as the only firm solution. Curiously they are seen bearing Nazi symbols which leads one to think their rhetoric is openly racist.
Strongly affiliated are the ‘juventudes cruceñas’, young demonstrators from Santa Cruz said to now be arming themselves under slogans of “defending the patria”. They have already attacked shop keepers and vandilised in and around districts where there are MAS supporters (Movement Toward Socialism – Evo Morales’ party).
A counterpart on the left is the Ponchos Rojos, indigenous activists from the high plains who recently slit the throats of two dogs before television cameras shouting the names of the two leading opposition leaders, Branko Marinkovic and Rubén Costas. An Ayamara ancestral organization, composed of men over 50, it assures 100,000 members in their files. It has also converted itself in one of Morales’ main strike forces. Their leader Ruperto Quispe now threatens to take the lands of Santa Cruz “immediately” if the Constitution fails. They are also allied to hardened miners loyal to Morales, who explode small dynamite charges occasionally to intimidate any potential anti-assembly protesters.
All of the pieces seem to be in place for a civil war – a general climate of discontent and resentment after a long history of colonial oppression; a concentrated campaign aimed at stirring up fear, hatred, and racial/ethnic and regional divisions; the aggressive use of the media in promulgating violent conflict; the near-total silence of international observers regarding these same trends. Bolivia has always been an unstable pocket within the southern continent. But the intensity of the present cloud of instability could bring it closer than ever to a full eruption.
Saturday, 15 December 2007
PADRE ARANA INTERVIEW
At first instances Father Marco Arana, 43, comes across as a mild mannered man. It’s hard to picture him as the outspoken figure he is associated with. He is courteous and open about all the contentious events surrounding mining company Newmont/Buenventura, and of the stories which inadvertently involve him and of the NGO he founded GRUFIDES.
Concerning Newmont/Buenaventura, owners Yanacocha and of many other mining ventures across Cajamarca, he directly implicated them on several wrongdoings of which the most violent are three murders:
1. Lingal Edmundo, Nov 04, killed in the province of Santa Cruz, a peasant standing up to water contamination caused by the mine La Sanja. Arana asserts he was killed by a group of peasants contracted by Newmont/B. There is apparent proof the rifles were given by the company.
2. Isidro Llanos Chevarria, Aug 06, killed at the manifestations of Combayo, by three contracted police men. Chevaria had been standing up to an expansion of Maqui Maqui Carachugo 2 sought by Newmont/B. The REPUBLICA has investigated this matter.
3. Esmundo Becerra Cotrina, Nov 06, shot 17 times by ‘sicarios’ (assassins) in the area of Yanacanchilla Baja. He had been given several death threats months before, for his stance against the digging of the San Cirilo Hill. It is an area from where several lake pockets would be depleted. Cotrina -a prestigious community leader- was the only one in his community to have gone to university. The project was by Newmont/B.
Arana then went on to add that from November 2006, for four months, there was a whole series of espionage tactics carried out by N/B on his person and of the personnel at GRUFIDES. He says he was followed everywhere, from the country to Lima. Calls were made to female employees threatening rape, as well as death threats to GRUFIDES employees’ family members. LA REPUBLICA has largely investigated this, from where a conclusion was made that a certain figure Aldo Schwarz, an ex Marine Commander, (pseudonym Pato!) was paid by FORZA, the cooperative security firm contracted by N/B.
There are said to 600-700 FORZA security guards at Yanacocha alone. The information is reserved but has been divulged by the guards themselves. In times of civil unrest mine companies are allowed to contract police to defend their interests. Police are gathered from other states which have no involvement with such provinces. Up to 400 policemen can be brought in. Their orders are often to repel -by whatever means- the disturbances which most often are in the form of road blocks. Added to this there are certain laws of impunity where it is hard to accuse a policeman for having carried out an action while on duty.
Arana says many in the community are wary of the press as often it has been through these means that many have been identified and then victimized.
There still has not been a systematic study of the current water contamination taking place in the several provinces of Cajamarca. In 2003 an external body was brought in, STRATUS, paid by N/B to make a study. Not much progress has been made since.
Trout are still dying, the waters are still poisoned. The problems between the mines and the communities are deteriorating.
Friday, 2 November 2007
tape I
I sleep in the maid's quarters. Nothing special about this. I don't even pay a cent. I eat avocado mainly and walk the dog that acompanies my early rises. When we are in the park, other dogs smell him; he attacks the littlest. I meant to swim today but I didn't.
Days scar. Days weigh. I land and think between parrallels. This here now versus that over there. I wonder if my brothers are annihilating themselves? How sweet it would be to feel cohesion. Here I am saying I'm going to write when I am still imprisoned. I nearly broke through that mist at one point. Caught a glimpse. It was me in different forms. Now and again I trawl through like some dazed cow. I can't even deal with synonyms.
There was a bird cage with ten small kittens. Each one a string. Each one over the other. A man brings a chicken head. The blood trickles. He drops it in the cage. A head for ten small mouths. They scratch the shit out of eachother, using their back legs. The sound of little hells under wire.
The kid is a little brat who when seated at the table stands up on his chair and shouts like a small Mussolini. At six he has too much intelligence. He is racist already, disrespects the maid in her outfit. He dares not even look at me though he gets me silenced. I eat quietly, prompting idle conversation. "So do you like computers? What games do you play." He tells me of one where you buy slots at six dollars a pop. They build their own virtual worlds and compare it to others.
Mother's neck is so elegant I flip her hair to view it often. Mother's scent is of rose and milk. She smiles and leaves me displaced for a weekend. Her own mother is a bitch and doesn't want me even in the sitting room. She is Catholic. I speak only when spoken to. When I have the chance to jest I trapeze I say silly things. I imagine Im a medallion borne Venezuelan or a hitman going to Iquitos. She says noone will ever understand another one. I say that makes things better. She has a way of looking into your eyes that feels like every wall you ever made rumbles at the fault lines. Am I to run loose on this or weigh with the weighted.
Tape II
The night is blue.
I cannot sleep.
I enjoy a cigarette on the patio.
The night grows bluer and bluer. It is dawn. Or almost. Most of October has been grey. Now the fogs and sea winds have stopped the glints of sun will arise. The dawn is blue,
like it is when you come out of dodgy dive and walk through Dalston market.
Titman runs naked.
I let the dog sleep on my bed.
Perhaps by dint of dictating onto this machine and repeating what it says aloud, I shall end up articulating my cause. I've cleared my mind. At times some random grime tune comes into my head. No doubt soon I'll make a cup of tea. When I come back I'll be someone else.
I slide between the ditchwater water and the pick-ax. My memory falters in blips, all I ask for is a small bit of your attention, listen her - if the scope, I mean capacity to think is conditioned by a long list of conditions, how am I meant to dismember them? Is but my way of returning to the root but another form of entrapment influenced by my contemporary age? A sort of neo-ruralist endevour with snakes dripping from the 'ether'. And yet here I am impelled to search for root, for a sense of honesty. The same thing as always - to hit the bone. I want to know how far down I can reach, El Man would say. El Man that little lost guy on his bike, a ghost walker in London. Is it a sense of nothing and complete alienation I seek. I know very well that if El Man wasn't the way he is he'd be a Titan. He is a but a little Napolean hidden within. I am also aware that speaking so highly of him, I in turn, become a deciple and perhaps as wretched as he is. How can I define for you the thin line between magnanimaty and putridness.
Tape III
It takes almost a day or two for Synthos to get in sequence. For the escalations to descend. For cognitive switch boards to unhawl. Synthos swears to credence, to Celeste and to the mount of habits he adorns. I speak not from the belly - nor through my teeth - but through my claws. Directly swiggering scopes with cinders on my nose. This table is broken. This table lacks a leg.
We sat in the Chinese. She stayed silent. the words for her difficult. The whole moment pacified by a telenovela in the background - a latin american soap - of hiperboles and idiot tragedies and my own now surrounded by monotony. 'I can't stand this. I've lost my appetite.' When we walk again it was again in silence. 'Why the fuck are you following me? Didn't you tell me it was over.' She backtracks.Ok, she says, and walks away. What I hadn't noticed was that she had left her car infront of where I am staying. She came around the corner. To think there might have been something else to say. Her silence again so loud the neighbours should have seen it.
I beat the dog. You have a bad day, beat the dog. He spends his time whimpering, wishing he could smell bum, a bit of violence won't make a difference.
Turned out she misses some fat guy who illustrates and does well in the Lima circles. Always the same shit in the end. No tormented love blowing up your innards, love from Russia burning to be together thing. Funny thing is, the further the miles the closer we felt. Then I suddenly came, all bare, expecting assistance. Turned out shit's always the same. So what had become of that time when we would go out into the streets and laugh like a couple of kids. Never when I came back did we remake and unmake, just dull love we made. This girl, who became my password on all internet sites.
Titman drew from his pocket a couple of rhymes he had written. One was a finished verse, the other was work in progress. Let me spit you a verse he said. His arms as frantic as they were misplaced. Out of his back pocket he pulls out another scrap instead."Like a twitch in the back of ones head, desperation takes place as theres turbulence on the plane. A full weight of vengeful metal on cement. And to die like little green earthlings half awake".
I sleep in the maid's quarters. Nothing special about this. I don't even pay a cent. I eat avocado mainly and walk the dog that acompanies my early rises. When we are in the park, other dogs smell him; he attacks the littlest. I meant to swim today but I didn't.
Days scar. Days weigh. I land and think between parrallels. This here now versus that over there. I wonder if my brothers are annihilating themselves? How sweet it would be to feel cohesion. Here I am saying I'm going to write when I am still imprisoned. I nearly broke through that mist at one point. Caught a glimpse. It was me in different forms. Now and again I trawl through like some dazed cow. I can't even deal with synonyms.
There was a bird cage with ten small kittens. Each one a string. Each one over the other. A man brings a chicken head. The blood trickles. He drops it in the cage. A head for ten small mouths. They scratch the shit out of eachother, using their back legs. The sound of little hells under wire.
The kid is a little brat who when seated at the table stands up on his chair and shouts like a small Mussolini. At six he has too much intelligence. He is racist already, disrespects the maid in her outfit. He dares not even look at me though he gets me silenced. I eat quietly, prompting idle conversation. "So do you like computers? What games do you play." He tells me of one where you buy slots at six dollars a pop. They build their own virtual worlds and compare it to others.
Mother's neck is so elegant I flip her hair to view it often. Mother's scent is of rose and milk. She smiles and leaves me displaced for a weekend. Her own mother is a bitch and doesn't want me even in the sitting room. She is Catholic. I speak only when spoken to. When I have the chance to jest I trapeze I say silly things. I imagine Im a medallion borne Venezuelan or a hitman going to Iquitos. She says noone will ever understand another one. I say that makes things better. She has a way of looking into your eyes that feels like every wall you ever made rumbles at the fault lines. Am I to run loose on this or weigh with the weighted.
Tape II
The night is blue.
I cannot sleep.
I enjoy a cigarette on the patio.
The night grows bluer and bluer. It is dawn. Or almost. Most of October has been grey. Now the fogs and sea winds have stopped the glints of sun will arise. The dawn is blue,
like it is when you come out of dodgy dive and walk through Dalston market.
Titman runs naked.
I let the dog sleep on my bed.
Perhaps by dint of dictating onto this machine and repeating what it says aloud, I shall end up articulating my cause. I've cleared my mind. At times some random grime tune comes into my head. No doubt soon I'll make a cup of tea. When I come back I'll be someone else.
I slide between the ditchwater water and the pick-ax. My memory falters in blips, all I ask for is a small bit of your attention, listen her - if the scope, I mean capacity to think is conditioned by a long list of conditions, how am I meant to dismember them? Is but my way of returning to the root but another form of entrapment influenced by my contemporary age? A sort of neo-ruralist endevour with snakes dripping from the 'ether'. And yet here I am impelled to search for root, for a sense of honesty. The same thing as always - to hit the bone. I want to know how far down I can reach, El Man would say. El Man that little lost guy on his bike, a ghost walker in London. Is it a sense of nothing and complete alienation I seek. I know very well that if El Man wasn't the way he is he'd be a Titan. He is a but a little Napolean hidden within. I am also aware that speaking so highly of him, I in turn, become a deciple and perhaps as wretched as he is. How can I define for you the thin line between magnanimaty and putridness.
Tape III
It takes almost a day or two for Synthos to get in sequence. For the escalations to descend. For cognitive switch boards to unhawl. Synthos swears to credence, to Celeste and to the mount of habits he adorns. I speak not from the belly - nor through my teeth - but through my claws. Directly swiggering scopes with cinders on my nose. This table is broken. This table lacks a leg.
We sat in the Chinese. She stayed silent. the words for her difficult. The whole moment pacified by a telenovela in the background - a latin american soap - of hiperboles and idiot tragedies and my own now surrounded by monotony. 'I can't stand this. I've lost my appetite.' When we walk again it was again in silence. 'Why the fuck are you following me? Didn't you tell me it was over.' She backtracks.Ok, she says, and walks away. What I hadn't noticed was that she had left her car infront of where I am staying. She came around the corner. To think there might have been something else to say. Her silence again so loud the neighbours should have seen it.
I beat the dog. You have a bad day, beat the dog. He spends his time whimpering, wishing he could smell bum, a bit of violence won't make a difference.
Turned out she misses some fat guy who illustrates and does well in the Lima circles. Always the same shit in the end. No tormented love blowing up your innards, love from Russia burning to be together thing. Funny thing is, the further the miles the closer we felt. Then I suddenly came, all bare, expecting assistance. Turned out shit's always the same. So what had become of that time when we would go out into the streets and laugh like a couple of kids. Never when I came back did we remake and unmake, just dull love we made. This girl, who became my password on all internet sites.
Titman drew from his pocket a couple of rhymes he had written. One was a finished verse, the other was work in progress. Let me spit you a verse he said. His arms as frantic as they were misplaced. Out of his back pocket he pulls out another scrap instead."Like a twitch in the back of ones head, desperation takes place as theres turbulence on the plane. A full weight of vengeful metal on cement. And to die like little green earthlings half awake".
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
Caucato - Re-buidling after the Earthquake
The wall was made of adobe, fifty years old, easily lifted as gratifying as picking black heads. You wouldn't imagine the things that sprang out of the falling wall. Cockroaches, scorpions and mice. The locals stepped on the mice as though they were cockroaches and picked up the scorpions, slitting off their needles from where they became play-things to put on your face. In this small village called Caucato, where 30 families were left unhoused, living in their own ruins, after the 7.9 earthquake.
'Un techo para mi pais'(a roof for my country)serve to help those in need of houses. The foundation started ten years ago, funded by private enterprises and now running in nine latin american countries. The 'voluntarios' are all mainly university students, or anybody between the ages of 18-29.
Caucato, 3km from the port Pisco in the province of Ica, from where the old hacienda of the Montero family stood, whose land was taken away by 1973 reformation of General Velasco. The remains of the hacienda sit on a small hill overlooking the rest of the village from which only rubble and bits of the years-old scratched out graffiti are left. The community there of around 30 families resemble any other possible village, with each character with his/her own role, from the troublesome teenager walking like a badman with his personal stereo to the mad woman most of them ignore. There was even the town's very own historian who elagantly told stories of the past and of its mythology. One of the stories being that the original Montero made a pact with the devil so that his field may reap rewards. He somehow beat the devil at his own game and kept his soul as well becoming the local land owner.
I went along as a journalist/photographer helping a student crew with a documentary. This aided me to momentarily intrude. Half the people we interviewed cried in front of camera. A strange disposition came over them where they all felt they had spill all the evil done onto them. The state does nothing really other than to give them tents. So meanwhile the demagogue president Alan Garcia speaks with oral flowers nothing much is done. It is thanks to these organisations that any sense of normality can arise. After feeling like I was intruding I felt my efforts would of much better use helping with the mass house building. When it came to lunch all the women in the village prepared giant broths, chicken and rice. As moving orchestrated gesture each future-owner would bring the plates of food to their workers.
I can say with all honesty, I don't think I have ever done something as enriching. Laying the beast which is ambition aside and giving for giving sake. What is reciprocated is something money can never emulate. And I don't mean this in any cheesy sense, it truly is something awe inspiring.
In total over 600 people died and 4,000 were seriously injured during the earthquake in Ica that happened in waves from 18:41 on a Sunday. Had it been at night it would have been much worse. There are many stories. The most awful one is of the church in Pisco that sunk in itself and killed 200 worshippers as they ran to the exit. 80% of Pisco's buildings will now have to be demolished as most of the structures are at risk.
'Un techo para mi pais'(a roof for my country)serve to help those in need of houses. The foundation started ten years ago, funded by private enterprises and now running in nine latin american countries. The 'voluntarios' are all mainly university students, or anybody between the ages of 18-29.
Caucato, 3km from the port Pisco in the province of Ica, from where the old hacienda of the Montero family stood, whose land was taken away by 1973 reformation of General Velasco. The remains of the hacienda sit on a small hill overlooking the rest of the village from which only rubble and bits of the years-old scratched out graffiti are left. The community there of around 30 families resemble any other possible village, with each character with his/her own role, from the troublesome teenager walking like a badman with his personal stereo to the mad woman most of them ignore. There was even the town's very own historian who elagantly told stories of the past and of its mythology. One of the stories being that the original Montero made a pact with the devil so that his field may reap rewards. He somehow beat the devil at his own game and kept his soul as well becoming the local land owner.
I went along as a journalist/photographer helping a student crew with a documentary. This aided me to momentarily intrude. Half the people we interviewed cried in front of camera. A strange disposition came over them where they all felt they had spill all the evil done onto them. The state does nothing really other than to give them tents. So meanwhile the demagogue president Alan Garcia speaks with oral flowers nothing much is done. It is thanks to these organisations that any sense of normality can arise. After feeling like I was intruding I felt my efforts would of much better use helping with the mass house building. When it came to lunch all the women in the village prepared giant broths, chicken and rice. As moving orchestrated gesture each future-owner would bring the plates of food to their workers.
I can say with all honesty, I don't think I have ever done something as enriching. Laying the beast which is ambition aside and giving for giving sake. What is reciprocated is something money can never emulate. And I don't mean this in any cheesy sense, it truly is something awe inspiring.
In total over 600 people died and 4,000 were seriously injured during the earthquake in Ica that happened in waves from 18:41 on a Sunday. Had it been at night it would have been much worse. There are many stories. The most awful one is of the church in Pisco that sunk in itself and killed 200 worshippers as they ran to the exit. 80% of Pisco's buildings will now have to be demolished as most of the structures are at risk.
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