Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Everyone's Excommunicated Now!

Colombia Catholic Church Bishop Bans Those Involved in Girl's Abortion
"The Catholic Church in Colombia has excommunicated anyone directly or indirectly involved with approving or doing the first legal abortion in the nation since the South American country's top court legalized it in some cases [rape, incest, serious threat to the mother's life] in May. The abortion occurred on a rape victim who was 11 years old."

[Question: can you belong to a religion that does things you despise? And if so, for how long? And why? What I get out of church has zero to do with a bunch of rich bishops thinking they have the right to make decisions about anyone else's body or rights, especially when we're talking an 11 year old girl raped by her stepfather. What I get out of church will continue to exist, but I don't have to be Catholic to get it, just human. Which is more than I can say for the Catholic hierarchy here. I went to mass on Good Friday only to be so repulsed by the priest's sermon, which included slams on gays, politicians who aren't overtly Christ-centric "good" Christians, and anyone who disagrees with the church's positions on abortion that I walked out. First time I've done that. It was strange...he gave 50% of one of the best sermons I've ever heard, all about the power of love to change the world, then launched into a diatribe against 90% of the most vulnerable groups in Colombia. I didn't understand then and I hope I never will. Still, there are some brave and good souls in the priesthood, but they are susceptible to extreme repression from the higher-ups, just like everyone else in Colombia.]


Liquid Insecurity

from the Guardian.com
"ANDEAN glaciers are melting so fast that some are expected to disappear within 15 to 25 years, denying cities water supplies and putting populations and food supplies at risk in Colombia, Peru, Chile, Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia. Some glaciers in Colombia are now less than 20 per cent of the mass recorded in 1850 and Ecuador could lose half its most important glaciers within 20 years."

"The rate of glacier retreat has shocked scientists, says a report on the effects of global warming in Latin America by 20 British-based environment and development groups that have drawn on national scientific assessments. Their study says climate change is accelerating the deglaciation phenomenon. [The] report, Up in Smoke, says snow and rainfall patterns in South America and the Caribbean are becoming less predictable and more extreme. The report proposes that Latin American governments do not repeat the mistakes made by North American and European governments. "

"Several countries in the region are planning a new generation of mega dams that would displace thousands more people and destroy vast areas of the Brazilian Amazon." from Cities in Peril from Glacier Meltdown

What we need to do is privatize all the water tables. That way at least the rich will always be able to buy $20 bottles of water.

Lying Around

My roommate is taking a modern dance class. It's so nice to be right...my suspicions about modern dance are being proven correct; it is mostly lying around on the floor. Every day she has class, she comes home and lies around on the floor for a while so I can learn, too.

I love Rob Brezsny's horoscopes...read yours here.

Mine for the month: TAURUS (April 20-May 20): "In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts," wrote American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. "They come back to us with a certain alienated majesty." The first part of your assignment, Taurus, is to identify other people's brilliant creations that remind you of good ideas of your own that you've failed to develop. The second part of your assignment is to do something--anything!--to correct for your neglect. Get started on your own masterpiece.

Today I made a phone call. Usually difficult for me but not quite rising to the level of accomplishment, but today I called the foremost expert in participatory planning in Colombia. We'd met briefly at a conference on Bogota and human rights several months ago, and I was reassured that he remembered who I was, "ah, the Fulbright."

Also today I saw a job opening at the Carter Center...working under one of the people who helped with my Fulbright application, the director of the Americas Project and a political science professor at Georgia State! The position lasts for 12 months, which would allow me to readjust to life in the states while keeping one eye on Colombia. My degree is not exactly what they're looking for, and I'm not sure I have the necessary experience, but I'm going to apply anyway.

Sunday, August 27, 2006

a whole lotta nothing is sometimes something

Today was Sunday. Not much happened - I missed the am meeting when I couldn't find the Alcaldia of the Candelaria and no one else knew where it was either, so I watched the Aguila girls shimmy past in the "Solidarity Parade" (if they'd really wanted to be in solidarity, there would have been significantly more cellulite on display...), ducked into the Septima flea market where I heard my name called, a nice feeling when you're thousands of miles and four months from home (Sundays alone are, well, lonely). An artisan I met yesterday remembered me! We chatted for a bit, I saw her goods and met her brother and sister. Bought some smelly plants, came home and took a nap.

Tonight, talked with my fiancee (that word making its first appearance here!) and my folks, and got encouraged about some things (weddings in the woods with children wearing Halloween costumes!) and discouraged about others.

That's the something, the stuff that comes up when you have nothing to do but sit around in an empty apartment, missing people and talking to your plants. Wow, that sounded pitiful. It didn't feel as bad as it sounds. There's something attractively melancholy about times like that, especially when you know they won't last forever. And my plants are truly good company. They grow and live and get greener every day - they've almost fully recovered from that scary time spent with Aimee and Trish (wonderful people, not so great at watering plants). Then Eli got back from Medellin, and just in time. Attractively melancholy has a way of turning into just plain lonely on a Sunday night. Why is it that Sunday nights are always so sad?

Anyway, I've not had the easiest time deciding "what to do with my life" [that phrase just doesn't invite insight, does it? In fact, it practically slams the door on it, heart beating a bit faster than before the doorbell rang.] Tonight talking with my folks, my dad apparently heard for the first time my plan of getting a teaching degree, a masters in teaching ESOL. He said something about it being an awful idea. I've tried teaching before and it was not a happy time -- I remember lots of migraines and frustration. But I was responsible for Spanish in two schools, pre-K through 8th grade, no books, no curriculum, and no clue what I was doing. And it wasn't all bad -- the moment of getting through is magical, when it happens.

I think part of my problem in answering that big question is feeling the desire to do something big, since the world's problems are so damn big, and being faced with personal smallness. So what is the answer? I'm just not sure research is going to do it for me. It fills some of what I'm looking for, but a very limited part, that part of me whose favorite question is still, "but why?" But the part of me that needs to feel useful in the world, the part that is currently going empty much of the time, that part it doesn't touch. And when I look at the careers of even academics I admire, it still seems to be missing. I can't go through my whole life without that, without feeling useful to a larger community besides my family, to whom I am of limited, occasional use, and sometimes just plain obnoxious.

I've been flirting with the idea and act of teaching for so long, and I keep coming back to it. I loved the idea of being a city planner, and think I'd do a good job, but it's not my passion. It's a technical pursuit, when what I'm looking for is building community. I also believe that anyone who wants to change something should first understand the status quo. People who work in education policy but have never taught in public schools? Makes zero sense to me.

So tonight I'm feeling a bit like a rock, small and round and maybe, just maybe, the perfect size and shape for something that will pick me, instead of me choosing it.

Saturday, August 26, 2006

on a lighter note...

Yesterday I was calling around, trying to find out when the series of meetings started, but people find me hard to understand over the phone in Spanish. Not being as used to foreigners here, they tend to say things like, "Where are you from, I can't understand anything you're saying..." then answering the question I just asked in my supposedly unintelligible Spanish. And my Spanish is pretty good - I'll never get rid of my accent completely, but people who know me find it possible to conduct entire conversations with me. Colombians just seem to get personal very quickly. Another example, in my mind anyway, is the sign I saw on a dress shop: "Dresses for fatties arriving soon." ("Vestidos para Gorditas llegaran pronto!") I kid you not.
I wonder what motivates people to move to Colombia to work as human rights observers and activists. Purpose. I keep hearing people talking about purpose. Then I hear other people saying life would be better if we just existed, peacefully, on our own, purpose-free, like cats. Cats are nothing if not purpose-less.

Tonight, Aimee's despedida. A chiminea, loads of lasagna, no wine until I went out for some, in boxes that gushed cheap wine everywhere, and a house full of peace workers. Incredible people to a one. Heard a story tonight, of a police state, our fucked up drug policy, fumigation, torture, and a group of people from around the world who care enough to come to Colombia to see the worst and tell it back home. She took a delegation to visit the manual eradicators working to pull up all the coca in Colombia. Said most of them were demobilized p's who wore their former employment on their faces, missing fingers, burnt skin and bent noses. Torture being a mark of induction into their ranks.

Most importantly, the woman telling the story spoke with such passion of what she sees as the Colombian community, celebrating what they can, thumbing their nose at violence, despair, and utter destruction. If I take nothing else back, not Ciclovia nor trinkets nor bus lore, I want to learn this.

I'm starting to feel awfully constricted, stuck here by fear, whether reasonable or not, in the capital city. I need to get out of town, see the rest of this gorgeously messed up place. We're planning a trip to Cali in a few weeks, but I want to see some of the reality my friends work with every day. Just not sure how.
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Tomorrow I'm attending the first set of public meetings to decide local social spending. I'm hoping to compare the results among richer and poorer localities to see how "strata," a special Colombian formulation of socioeconomic status designed to reflect housing and infrastucture but which has become a proxy for social standing, affects the participatory process. Good clean city-loving nerd fun.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

A Chosen Place

Atlanta! Today's New York Times has an article about Katrina evacuees and how the places they ended up have shaped their lives. "Storm's Escape Routes: One Forced, One Chosen." That Atlanta is the chosen place makes my heart glad.
Atlanta’s evacuees, more likely to have left New Orleans before the flooding, often express enthusiasm for starting over in a place where even dishwashers start at $7 an hour. It is not unusual to hear people here declare the hurricane a net positive in their lives. In Houston, a city that offers similar economic opportunity, the mood lies on the far side of resignation, closer to homesickness and despair.

...many evacuees felt more at home with, even inspired by, Atlanta’s long tradition of black leadership and success.

At our church, Our Lady of Lourdes, near the MLK tomb, the congregation welcomed maybe a dozen people from New Orleans. My mom stopped on the highway once to help a couple whose van had broken down and it turned out they were from New Orleans. One of the people living in my house while I'm away this year was a refugee from the hurricane's economic impact on the city's film industry. Dear family friends of ours live in New Orleans and the son moved to Atlanta for a time to live with his sister. On the other hand, when helping a friend look for apartments soon after the hurricane, one apartment owner warned us to "Be careful...there are lots of New Orleans people here, walking around, causing trouble."

There are so many New Orleans/Atlanta connections, and the cities have much in common on both sides of the equation: lots of heart, especially in black and diverse communities, but lots of entrenched poverty and racism as well. Power structures are also quite similar, I'd wager, but Atlanta has gotten the greener side of the fence economically, although we can't wave a stick at New Orleans culture.

Culturally, then, I'd say Atlanta is going to see a long-term net benefit from the exodus. We were lucky to be chosen, rather than a city of last resort. It's a sad observation, but one I hope we appreciate, as many of the "New Orleans people" put down roots and make a new home in the Capital of the South, the "No South," our adopted hometown, for better or for worse.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Headlines


Today I went by the local mayor's office in Chapinero, where I signed up for the series of assemblies in which each neighborhood will decide its priorities for social spending over the next two years. I'm so excited about this! I finally found an instance of participatory planning to study. Nerd party at my house tonight! Oh wait, I'm home alone reading articles. So appropriate.
Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Lourdes in the heart of Chapinero (from Wikipedia)

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

CJ

Tonight I started my first (and last, and only) law class: Community Justice. As soon as he walked in the door, the professor zoomed in on me and asked me to tell the class what I knew about community justice. I said, I have no idea what it is, then I muttered something about how I didn't know whether the US had a tradition of community justice...he gently asked, are there indigenous peoples in the states? Well then!

I went home tonight and googled a few things, and not only does the US have a tradition of CJ, especially in San Francisco, Atlanta has its very own community justice program:
In September 2005, the Bureau of Justice Assistance of the U.S. Department of Justice funded ten demonstration projects under its new Community-Based Problem-Solving Criminal Justice Initiative. The following edited excerpt was taken from Atlanta’s winning proposal.

In late 2000, the City of Atlanta’s Municipal Court created a community court, which has evolved into a comprehensive problem-solving court. Currently, the Court is operating two neighborhood Restorative Boards, both in inner-city neighborhoods where poverty rates are high. Under its problem-solving initiative, Atlanta proposes to expand and enhance its Restorative Board program into four additional Atlanta neighborhoods. The Restorative Boards have proven to be especially effective by bringing an offender back to a neighborhood for sanctioning and restoration and giving a meaningful voice to community members in the justice process.

The boards seek to close the gap between the courts and community. Defendants, often young and first-time offenders, are identified by court staff as appropriate candidates for diversion to the boards. Staff recruit board members from the neighborhood where the board is established. After extensive training in the principles of restorative justice and the policies of the board, members are sworn into service by the judge of Community Court. When a defendant appears before the board, together they discuss the nature of the offense and its negative consequences for the victim, community and offender. An agreement is reached on a course of action that the defendant will take to “right the wrong” his/her actions have created. Activities are also identified for the offender to pursue in order to reduce the likelihood that he/she will offend again. Examples include GED completion, job search skills training, anger-management and conflict resolution classes, parenting classes, etc. Board members meet several times with offenders to monitor their progress and offer congratulations upon success.

I felt kind of silly, but it was such a great class, and the professor so genuinely excited about the topic that it was worth it. I'm happy to be made to feel silly any day if someone is going to get so worked up during socratic style lecture that he is actually out of breath! I tried to get out of doing a research project and presentation and some other things I'm not sure I understood, but my explanation may have been too elegant, and I'm on the hook. ("No quiero castigar la clase con mi espanol inventado...") My own fault for getting fancy with my stumblings.

I was secretly pleased, though, since I so rarely get to talk in front of groups here, and find it addictive. Must come from being from a big family where no one listens. When people are forced to pay attention to me I figure I'd better make the most of it while it lasts. I may have expounded, just a bit, when asked today in the extension class, on the elements of capoeira, my poor knees and back, what sports I played in high school...getting put on the spot tonight was probably payback.

Capoeira Lessons

photo from www.hapkido.it

The first class today was mostly a history of capoeira. The instructor is a graduate of UN in philosophy, and mentioned the difficulty he's had trying to understand the essence of what he finally realized was a genre all to itself; it's neither dance nor sport nor martial art, nor anthropology, nor religion, but includes elements of all of these. I found a few aspects of the introduction especially intriguing. Here's what I took with me as we all walked out of class with a little extra spring in our step:

By falling you win. Falling teaches in a way that staying upright does not. If someone can fell you and chooses not to, this is actually harder to take than actually being knocked down (applies to other life situations, not just capoeira.)

Western people spend almost all of their time standing or sitting upright. We hardly ever bend over in a way that lengthens the spine. Put your hands to the floor, the ground, the dirt. Think of all the religions in the world that include this element: Islam, Buddhism, many indigenous beliefs. There's something about it that connects us to what came before.

Breakdance and capoeira spring from the same well of enslaved and marginalized peoples, and include many of the same elements. They both represent the exercise of freedom under difficult circumstances.

Capoeira on Wikipedia
Capoeira.com

But my favorite lesson from class today was the realization that at the very least, I'm not as awkward or self-conscious as I was at 18, or at 20, or at 22 (all median-ish ages of my classmates...), no matter how self-conscious I occasionally feel, especially being the strange bird I am here. That's something we should tell younger people at any age: it does get better, easier, and simpler. You worry less about how you are perceived, and care less about overheard comments directed at you. As time starts getting shorter, these things get filed under "useless time-wasting shit." That folder has been getting fat on my shelf lately.

Monday, August 21, 2006

UN Chemistry Department press release condeming bomb found in department

COMUNICADO DE LOS PROFESORES DEL DEPARTAMENTO DE QUÍMICA

Los profesores de química, condenamos de manera enérgica el atentado ocurrido el pasado 14 de agosto en nuestro edificio. Este hecho demencial ha herido de manera profunda la armonía, el equilibrio y la estabilidad que nacen de las ideas, del quehacer investigativo y de la interacción con nuestros estudiantes. Dicho atentado, más que poner en peligro la integridad física de estudiantes, trabajadores y profesores y de destruir un espacio físico, constituye una seria amenaza contra la institución y la comunidad que de ella hace parte. Lo ocurrido es una muestra de la existencia de intereses oscuros que pretenden sumir a la UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL en un caos e inestabilidad. Atentados como el ocurrido no pueden tener cabida en el ámbito universitario, este tipo de hechos no pueden repetirse al interior de nuestro Campus. Por otra parte, creemos que dicho acto terrorista es totalmente ajeno a las diferentes posturas que se tienen en torno al proceso de reforma académica ya que ésta se ha dado en medio de discusiones y argumentación.
Bogotá, Agosto 16 de 2006

Foto: AP (in El Tiempo today)
Installation in the south of Bogotá
A woman cries next to the bricks symbolizing the tombs of 600 people killed in the last five years in Ciudad Bolivar.

Scientists, Journalists, and other Subversives

from "Colombian journalists face terror at home"
Colombia is a democracy, but one bristling with powerful paramilitary forces in the provinces, international drug syndicates, leftist guerrillas and underworld organizations that hold sway over scores of politicians. Against all of those horrors is a passionate press corps that works under circumstances so dangerous I think the average U.S. journalist would consider a career in insurance.

``You can go to Bogota and feel like you are in Paris,'' Coronell said. ``Drive 40 minutes to the south and you think you are in Iraq.''

In one of the most dangerous countries for journalists, 33 have died in the past decade, Coronell said. Self-censorship has become the mode of survival for those in the rural provinces where paramilitary and guerrillas operate.

Coronell's friend, journalist Jaime Garzón, was killed in 1999 after receiving threats. ``He told me, he told you, he told everybody,'' Coronell said to his wife, María Cristina. ``And they killed him,'' she said grimly.

Coronell's recent problems began after critical coverage of the president's demobilization compacts with paramilitary groups tied to drug lords. When he received threats last spring, Coronell enlisted eight reporters and a computer specialist to track some of the e-mailed threats sent to his associates. Coronell discovered some were coming from an IP address in a mansion occupied by Carlos Nader-Simmonds, a powerful cattleman, popular in Colombia's high-society circles, and friend of the president.

Culture of impunity

His resulting article, ``Unmasking the Executioner,'' caused a firestorm in Colombia. Despite the evidence, the government has made little progress investigating the case, but Nader-Simmonds' defamation suit against Coronell tore through the courts in the dead of Christmas in time for Coronell to receive a court citation Jan. 2 for early settlement. That sent a message about where true power lies to journalists throughout Colombia.

``If the government can't protect Daniel Coronell, who is one of the best-known and highly regarded journalists, it certainly can't protect them,'' said Joel Simon, who met with President Uribe as deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

``Many journalists live with these threats,'' Coronell said. ``I've had periods of threats in my career, almost as partners,'' but with a family to think about, it is so much harder.

The spring term ends soon and Uribe will undoubtedly be re-elected in May. And the Coronells will return to family and jobs in Colombia. They don't have a choice.

``Information is a treasure for our people,'' Coronell said. ``The promise of the journalist is not with popularity. It is with the truth.''

Even if the truth is awful.

from "Death Threats against Colombian researchers"

Colombian researchers have expressed concern about security at public universities amid rising reports of death threats and violence.

In recent weeks, a mathematician was assassinated and a geneticist went into exile.

Moisés Wasserman, president of the National University of Colombia in Bogotá, says it is not the first time it has happened but that little is known about the current threats.

The university is organising a campaign to express anger at the situation.

According to the Colombian Association of University Students, in 2004 and 2005 there were dozens of cases of threats, violence and attempted kidnappings against university staff and students, as well as three murders.

The association blames paramilitary groups, which it says have infiltrated state university campuses.

The problem has existed for many years but appears to be getting worse.

Geneticist Hugo Vega fled the country this month after receiving repeated death threats that accused him of being part of a guerrilla group. Other members of his research group at the National University were also threatened, leading them to disband in April.

In June, mathematics professor Gustavo Loaiza from the University of Antioquia in Medellín was murdered.

Sergio Caramagna, head of the Organization of American States (OAS) mission in support of the Colombian peace process says his office has received information about threats in public universities in Antioquia, Bogotá, Nariño and North Santander.

Caramagna told SciDev.Net that he has asked OAS's regional delegates to investigate, although he concedes that the investigation will depend on the openness of the people affected, and access to their testimonies.

No matter where they come from, the threats are to be condemned, he added.

Vega told SciDev.Net that the threats he received came in response to his team's success at publishing a study in the high-profile journal Nature Genetics in April 2005.

He believes that one of his colleagues paid a paramilitary group to force him "out of my job, my research group and my country, under the pretext that I am a member of a guerrilla group".

from Kentucky to Georgia

I bookmarked this artist on Pandora before I knew anything about him, just heard this song: Beautiful Me. Then I read (see bio and review below) that he was born in Lexington and raised in Atlanta.
The smooth style of modern day soul singer Donnie is comparable to such other similar sounding artists as Macy Gray, Jill Scott, Seal, and Maxwell. Born in Lexington, Kentucky during the mid '70s, Donnie was raised in Atlanta, Georgia, and came from a very religious family (both of his parents were ministers). Singing for a choir at an early age, Donnie soon expanded his musical horizons, as he became influenced equally by such gospel artists as Walter Hawkins and Mahalia Jackson plus such soul/R n' B masters as Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Aretha Franklin. By the early 21st century, Donnie was signed to the Giant Step label, and issuing such singles and EP's as Holiday, Masterplan, Do You Know?, Excerpts from the Colored Section, and Our New National Anthem. The singer's anticipated full-length debut, the Colored Section, was released in November 2002. ~ Greg Prato
What a marvelously audacious introduction The Colored Section is. Emerging from the same Jazz Café-centered alternative Atlanta soul scene that nourished and nurtured fellow hippie-soul singer/songwriters like Joi and India.Arie all the way into the public consciousness, Donnie's first LP is a topical, unapologetically conscientious, and even righteously stinging declaration that, yes, can only be likened to the classic sociopolitical masterworks of spiritual heirs Donny Hathaway and especially Stevie Wonder. Songs like "Cloud 9" and "Wildlife," in fact, may be too indebted to genius-era Wonder -- the former with its wah-wah guitar and warm gusts of squelchy synth vibrato, the latter with its prominent clavinet and crisp harmonica ad-libs -- but are such stunning vintage impersonations that both easily could have slipped somewhere onto Innervisions.

Saturday, August 19, 2006

An ancient crop, a modern addiction, and the machines of war

Colombia’s Coca Survives U.S. Plan to Uproot It
A $4.7 billion effort to slash Colombia’s coca crop has left the availability of cocaine on U.S. streets unchanged.
US Continues Assistance to Colombia Aerial Drug Interdiction
Washington -- President Bush has authorized the US Department of State to continue assistance to Colombia... in carrying out an Airbridge Denial (ABD) Program...
WHY WE FIGHT
The new film by Eugene Jarecki which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival is an unflinching look at the anatomy of the American war machine, weaving unforgettable personal stories with commentary by a “who’s who” of military and beltway insiders. Featuring John McCain, William Kristol, Chalmers Johnson, Gore Vidal, Richard Perle and others, WHY WE FIGHT launches a bipartisan inquiry into the workings of the military industrial complex and the rise of the American Empire.

I had forgotten that Eisenhower coined the term "military industrial complex" in warning us against its impact on all of society "economically, politically, even spiritually" -- the clip of his farewell speech on the film's website is chiling. Right now I'm finishing War is a force that gives us meaning, an equally chilling book by war correspondent Chris Hedges:
I learned early on that war forms its own culture. The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug, one I injested for many years. It is peddled by mythmakers -- historians, war correspondents, filmmakers, novelists, and the state -- all of whom endow it with qualities it often does possess: excitement, exoticism, power, chances to rise above our small stations in life, and a bizarre and fantastic universe that has a grotesque and dark beauty. It dominates culture, distorts memory, corrupts language, and infects everything around it, even humor, which becomes preoccupied with the grim perversities of smut and death. Fundamental questions about the meaning, or meaninglessness, of our place on the planet are laid bare when we watch those around us sink to the lowest depths.


Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Your tax dollars at work fumigating Colombian parks

"U.S.-supplied planes spray coca at Colombian park, amid doubts over strategy" (Mainichi News)
BOGOTA, Colombia -- Colombian authorities have for the first time used U.S.-supplied planes to spray a pristine national park used by leftist rebels to grow coca -- the raw ingredient for cocaine -- despite environmental concerns.

A turning point? Perhaps, and not the good kind. Take your pick: public health problems for the people living nearby, environmental problems, the sticky issue of US involvement...
Washington has long urged Uribe to extend spraying to parks and provided the glyphosate herbicide, as well as Black Hawk helicopters used for protection, during the missions. (Mainichi News)

This latest twist came about because the past six months of efforts to remove the coca plants manually were met with guerilla violence against the workers; poor, hard-up for a job workers to a man.
A total of 32 workers, soldiers, and police have died since the government started a program in January of manual erradication under the protection of 3,000 soldiers. Even so, some 200 erradicators quit because of fear of the guerillas (El Nuevo Herald article in Spanish).
(Mainichi News)
Those who think fumigating La Macarena, and perhaps other parks, will wipe out coca production are wrong," the normally pro-government newspaper El Tiempo said last week. "Instead, there will be more coca, and less park, as rebels destroy more forests, deeper inside the park, to continue planting.

Critics say that the anti-narcotic program known as Plan Colombia -- which has cost American taxpayers more than US$4 billion since 2000 -- is falling well short of its goal of halving coca production in five years.

misc

9 Chickweed Lane is brilliant, my new favorite comic.

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In today's Bogota bus news, not a single bus in entire the city is ready for the new environmental laws going into effect September 1st...

Spanish here, English here (the google translation of the headline is particularly great: Nor a bus has fulfilled the proceedings to implant the “Tip and environmental Plate”).

Monday, August 14, 2006

Bombs over La Nacho




La Universidad Nacional closed early today. People on campus were evenly divided between panicky trying to leave, panicky trying to push their way in, and way too busy making out to notice anything unusual. Apparently someone heard a Molotov cocktail, or a rocket, or a firecracker, or something.

We knew it either was something truly out of the ordinary or nothing atall, because La Nacional students NEVER plan protests for Mondays. Or Fridays, for that matter. Tuesdays are pretty much out too. But Wednesdays, gotta watch out for Wednesdays. And Thursdays it's pretty much guaranteed that if the headkerchief-wearing element is upset about something, rocks will be thrown. And tanks, in a perfectly lopsided response, will be deployed. My favorite image is of the soldiers, many of them about the same age as the students, wearing body armour and sitting at a nearby playground watching the afternoon soccer game while they wait for the protests to begin. Nothing says summer like that.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Sleep? Someday.

Across the street, mere feet away from my window, a great social experiment is taking place. Right now, at five minutes to midnight, on a Wednesday. They've played the song twice already tonight, but this time, the magical third time, perhaps it will come out different. Let's all scream until we're hoarse and find out. Really, I should be grateful for the chance to just experience this. It's probably my own fault for agreeing with Aimee's boyfriend today about how wonderful, simply marvelous it is to live so close to such a center of ideas, how UNAL students are so studious, thoughtful, and serious, how the energy just lifts us up into clouds and on and on and on.

Today was a good day though. Had class finally, "Ciudad y Poder." I feel really lucky to be in a class with some very important people on campus -- five of them had to take cellphone calls in the middle of class. The prof was unmoved and kept lecturing. I'm getting used to it as well, but it was a new high when someone who got to class 45 minutes late (to be fair, it started 30 minutes past the scheduled time -- does that make him 15 minutes late or just smarter than me?), asked me loudly to "catch him up," then took a call that lasted until class was 10 minutes from ending. He promptly organized those of us lucky enough to be seated near him into a group for the field trips. Lucky us. All three of us did get out of having lunch with him though. Thanks, Aimee! Mental note to always have lunch plans on Wednesdays...

Then I met Aimee's boyfriend, who is gleefully weird and weirdly gleeful. They seem like a great match, and I didn't want to leave, but I had a 3 pm appointment with two women who lead an artisan's cooperative for displaced women. I arrived a few minutes late to the offices on loan to them for meetings, and the more talkative one immediately launched into a spiel about what they needed, what they'd done, what they could do. The other woman, who I'd met at a march previously, leaves more of an impression on me every time I see her -- she's straightforward yet reticent, with a sadness impossible to ignore.

These are women without computers, without degrees or "names" (in the Colombian sense of being well-connected) or even permanent places to live. They have lived through unspeakable things, things I didn't ask them to tell. Of me they asked questions like, "what do you think about the conflict? do you understand it?" that I didn't know how to answer. And they have a board of directors, a mission statement and a vision, and a somewhat elaborate year-long project they propose to complete next summer, if they can get the funding. That's where I come in.

As artisans, they all do beautiful work, but their goals were much far-reaching than just earning money for the cooperative. They have their eyes on training women to not just know their rights, but demand them. Displaced women should have access to government funds, but in practice it's nearly impossible to get them.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

A Peace Mandate?

Yesterday was strange -- most streets were vacant, few buses ran, and for the most part people stayed home, but there were 10,000 additional troops on the streets.

Colombia Adds Troops to Bogota Streets as Uribe Begins 2nd Term
Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Colombia deployed 10,000 extra troops to Bogota streets to protect against rebel attacks today as President Alvaro Uribe becomes the first leader in almost two centuries to start a second consecutive term.

Bombings killed 23 people last week in three separate attacks in Bogota and around the country, and authorities found 300 kilograms (661 pounds) of explosives in the city in the past 15 days.


En discurso de posesion, Uribe manifesto su dilema: ¿Seguridad o paz? (El Tiempo)
"No nos frena el miedo para negociar la paz. Confieso que me preocupa algo diferente: el riesgo de no llegar a la paz y retroceder en seguridad", dijo el Mandatario.

"We won't be held back by fear from negotiating for peace. But I admit something worries me: the risk of not achieving peace and taking a step back on security," said the president. So security is achieved through violence (repression, paramilitaries, more military funding, etc) and peace (talking with the enemy) threatens it. This is why so many people see Bush/Uribe as two heads on the same monster: endless war.

Then again, the last serious round of peace talks was a disaster, and then-president Pastrana is almost universally seen as being responsible for their dramatic ineffectiveness (good summary by the BBC here). No politician wants to risk failure on that magnitude.

But at least to my (possibly quite naive) eyes, conflicts like Colombia's call for statesmen, not politicians. As Garrison Keillor is fond of saying, "Live as boldly as you can today and a little more boldly tomorrow." Fine advice for an individual; could it work for a country?

I hope Uribe follows through on his new stated focus on support for the poor in the form of education spending, healthcare, and small business loans. True political participation, poverty reduction, opportunity and education -- these are the standards by which a rebellion sparked by gross inequalities can one day be dissolved.

Human Rights Watch summary of Colombia HERE.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Changing places

Cities grow up, and some see sprawl: good article about vertical sprawl, an issue some see in Wayne Mason's high rise towers near Piedmont Park.

In Georgia, immigrants unsettle old sense of place
(and add new sense, I might add).

Sunday, August 06, 2006

how we choose to live

I wrote about the happiness index and Colombia a while back, but it's interesting to hear it leaking into the North American discourse on how we choose to live. Even more interesting because the boy and I had a conversation about that very thing last night, and then I woke up and he'd sent me this link: Dave Pollard on Colombia and happiness.

How we choose to live here can be problematic. Our meagre by US standards salaries allow us to live comfortably -- I never worry about money here, while in the states it's just about the only thing I worry about. And I'm not a person who is motivated particularly by money or who wants to make lots of it, just that I have bills to pay and the Westside shack to maintain, and no dollars to speak of to take care of those responsibilities. So I worry sometimes. But in Colombia, in a capital city in which half the population lives below the poverty line, we never worry about having enough money. So we are living a reality apart from that of most of the people around us. On the other hand, some of us are living in rich neighborhoods surrounded by the country's elite, which raises a different sort of existential dilemna.

At the same time, as Americans from an uber-scheduled society, we can learn a lot from how people live here, which I think is Pollard's point. Here's what I see as the main difference: when you spend time with friends or family, you don't have a schedule. You just enjoy. That's not to say that people don't work hard, because I've seen it, and they do. But there is a much stronger differentiation between work and play that we are learning to appreciate.

At the central park yesterday, we stayed for hours, playing ultimate frisbee, kicking the many stray soccerballs that came our way back to their owners, watching kids fly hundreds of kites, and just soaking in the sunny day.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Disparando Cameras

Today I tagged along with Porter on a site visit to a Colombia ONG, Disparando Cameras para la Paz. The fact that a Fulbright grantee started the organization really emphasized the feeling I've had since I got here that I'm simply not doing enough. There are probably people who are better suited to being productive in environments with no oversight, no guidance, and no requirements than I am. It's not that I don't like to work (okay, maybe that's not entirely true...) but I have a hard time pushing myself to go out and talk with the right people. I question everything, and people who question everything rarely find answers that don't simply lead to more questions.

But once the director started talking I realized, yet again, that things are not always as they seem. Sometimes people who try to do too much end up stepping on toes and reinforcing existing power structures. I know I don't want to do that - so my question remains, how to be useful in this life without being arrogant?

Tonight I successfully called someone I have only met once. It's ridiculous how much prodding I need to do such simple things - I've been meaning to call this woman for months, literally MONTHS, and haven't because I wasn't sure what to say, or what I hoped to accomplish, or what I have to offer her organization, a group of displaced Afro-Colombian women. But I did call (with some online assistance, thanks baby!) and she asked me to come to their offices next Wednesday.

Right now I should be filling out my midterm report. I've been in Colombia for six months, and haven't accomplished half of what I set out to do. My initial proposal sounds crazy to me now, ridiculously, even aggresively ambitious. I claim I'm going to write a book! When in reality it took me six months just to have the tiniest, tinniest understanding of what it means to live here, what it means to participate in anything even vaguely political, what a huge risk and brave move it is to be involved in public life in Colombia.

The director of Disparando Cameras was refreshingly committed to his organization's very specific goals: to teach kids living in really tough circumstances to take and develop photos, in a way that dignifies their experience instead of patting them on the head and giving them candy, or shoes or something needed and useful but not lasting. I want that kind of clarity: to have a vision for what I want to accomplish and the discipline not to be sidetracked by good intentions that don't serve the purpose.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

A strange bird

On campus today at the national university, a pair of hummingbirds nearly flew right into my forehead. I was on my way home after an afternoon wandering around looking at posters for upcoming events, trying to figure out my classes, and getting literature at the student fair. At the fair, I stopped to listen to a group of impassioned students explaining why the proposed and soon to be implemented academic reforms are baaaaaad. From their explanation and what I've heard before, and if one accepts the premise that the education currently being dispensed at UN is quite good, even exceptional, I'd have to agree. But when I intitiated a conversation with one of the organizers, I got a very quizzical look and very little in the way of information. This is nothing new -- for some reason I'd been getting that look all day. It was "who the hell are you?" and "what are you doing here?" rolled into one. Must be a new semester at the non-blond university.