2010/01/17
Haiti’s Environment and Social Justice
I didn't know this. It's important, to help us know how to direct aid resources. Thanks to Dennis Hidalgo for posting. Professor of History: Haiti’s Environment and Social Justice
2010/01/16
If I were a Haitian…
… I no doubt would be desperately worried about family, friends, and neighbors. But there are times when one can do nothing -- if I'm on the scene, the rubble is too heavy to lift, or I'm desperately trying to get there but I'm stuck in an airport, or in a distant country, Spain let's say, and can't get any news by telephone or email of my sister, or my spouse, or my parents. And I know I have to do something to keep from going crazy.
And if I were a certain kind of Haitian, one with some experience of other countries and their history and politics -- like some of the people around President Préval, or active in other groups, or academics in or out of Haiti -- in those moments when I could think beyond survival for the next few hours or days, I would have go back to thinking about the same issue that Haitian intellectuals had been debating for long before this earthquake: What can be done to make that country safer, more stable, prosperous?
For some, the answer may seem to be, "Nothing!" Like Bolívar in his dispirited last days, they'll say, "The only thing to do in América [he meant what we call "Latin" America] is emigrate." But there are and will be some Haitians who have a dream. Aristide was one of them, and whatever we think of the specifics of how he tried to realize that dream, he demonstrated that it is possible to inspire people to great effort to overcome enormous odds.
I am not a Haitian, and cannot presume to answer the question. But I'm pretty sure that Haitian dreamers will be working on it. And that they will be very wary of becoming a protectorate again, whether of the U.S., or of some combination of powers as Sarkozy seems to be urging -- even though the country cannot afford to refuse aid now.
Everything now will have to be rebuilt: buildings and roads and ports, police and fire forces, all forms of economic activity, and maybe even the system of governance. And some Haitians, surely, will see this disaster as an unavoidable opportunity to start things on a better path. Despite the poverty, the country does have resources, especially the energy of its people. Let's watch and listen for those new voices, and be ready to respond when asked -- even if what they ask is that we just stay out of their way.
BBC News - The long history of troubled ties between Haiti and the US
Tomorrow: My scheduled weekly essay on Spain. But today, Haiti was more urgent.
And if I were a certain kind of Haitian, one with some experience of other countries and their history and politics -- like some of the people around President Préval, or active in other groups, or academics in or out of Haiti -- in those moments when I could think beyond survival for the next few hours or days, I would have go back to thinking about the same issue that Haitian intellectuals had been debating for long before this earthquake: What can be done to make that country safer, more stable, prosperous?
For some, the answer may seem to be, "Nothing!" Like Bolívar in his dispirited last days, they'll say, "The only thing to do in América [he meant what we call "Latin" America] is emigrate." But there are and will be some Haitians who have a dream. Aristide was one of them, and whatever we think of the specifics of how he tried to realize that dream, he demonstrated that it is possible to inspire people to great effort to overcome enormous odds.
I am not a Haitian, and cannot presume to answer the question. But I'm pretty sure that Haitian dreamers will be working on it. And that they will be very wary of becoming a protectorate again, whether of the U.S., or of some combination of powers as Sarkozy seems to be urging -- even though the country cannot afford to refuse aid now.
Everything now will have to be rebuilt: buildings and roads and ports, police and fire forces, all forms of economic activity, and maybe even the system of governance. And some Haitians, surely, will see this disaster as an unavoidable opportunity to start things on a better path. Despite the poverty, the country does have resources, especially the energy of its people. Let's watch and listen for those new voices, and be ready to respond when asked -- even if what they ask is that we just stay out of their way.
BBC News - The long history of troubled ties between Haiti and the US
Tomorrow: My scheduled weekly essay on Spain. But today, Haiti was more urgent.
2010/01/11
Spanish contradictions
Out of curiosity and to practice my French, I picked up a copy of Le Monde on Tuesday (29 December) to read on the flight from Almería to Madrid, and I was surpised to find a very good wrap-up of some of the current problems of Spain. In his "Lettre d'Espagne", Jean-Jacques Bozonnet picks a day "at random," 15 December, to observe "the puzzle of a country politically cut in two between right and left, then chopped up finer into seventeen unequal portions which are the autonomous communities."
He could have added that the 17 comunidades autónomas are further divided into 50 provinces, and so on down to the municipalities, which play on conflicts at the upper levels (between province and community or community and central government) to avoid acting on laws or judicial decisions that inconvenience them -- e.g., to protect the environment from land speculators.
But back to the headlines on the one typical day that Bozonnet uses. Item 1: in the Basque Country (one of the 17 comunidades autónomas, comprising three provinces), 85 of the 110 priests in San Sebastián signed a statement of "disapproval" of the Church's choice of a new bishop -- because the man chosen (a notorious conservative even within the very conservative Spanish Catholic Church) is not Basque and is not at all friendly to "nationalism", meaning in this case the pro-independence demands of a sizable minority of the Basque Country population. Item 2: The education chief of the Valencia comunidad (also three provinces) refuses to distribute laptop computers provided by the central government to schoolchildren because, he claims, the small screens will cause myopia. No reputable scientist agrees with him, but no matter, anything provided by the Socialists in power in Madrid must be bad for people (because Valencia is currently governed by the Right).
Bozonnet lists other conflicts, over illegalizing bullfighting in Catalonia and whether a nationalist, pro-ETA party in the Basque Country should be permitted to participate in elections, the resurgence of a nutty conspiracy theory that the Socialist Party was somehow complicit in the 2001 bombing of the central Madrid railroad station, and the huge embarrassment of the head of the association of Spain's corporate chiefs, because his own biggest corporation, Air Comet, is in such default that a British judge embargoed the planes, leaving thousands stranded on the eve of the holidays, and because his other corporations are also in trouble and because he has just been discovered to have defrauded the big savings bank Caja Madrid, of which he is a board member -- but he still won't quit, and the employers association continues to back him.
But back to the problem of political fragmentation. Spain is neither a unitary, centralized state nor a federation, but a mess of jurisdictions competing and conflicting with one another. Centralization has been the goal of Spanish conservatives at least since the Catholic Monarchs, Isabel I (we know her as "Isabella") of Castile and Fernando ("Ferdinand") of Aragon back in the 15th century. Meanwhile, regional autonomy (freedom from the center) has been the goal of almost everybody else, especially in those regions with different languages and customs. The dispute has provoked repeated civil wars, most recently 1936-39. The victory of Francisco Franco seemed to settle the issue in favor of a tightly controlled, expremely centralized state, with no tolerance of minority languages or other deviances. But the victory was only temporary, and the central state began falling apart almost immediately upon the death of Franco in 1975. The 1978 Constitution is a compromise document full of ambiguities, in an attempt to placate such fiercely oposing forces as the franquista military hierarchy and the Catholic Church (both strongly centralist), the Catalonian, Basque and Galician nationalists (strongly "autonomist"), and the Communist and Socialist Parties (each of which was capable of mobilizing masses of workers, even despite the years of repression). The Constitution thus establishes central institutions (national parliament, a complicated combination of higher courts, etc.) alongside "autonomous regional" governments, without clarifying the exact boundaries of authority. Who determines education policy, including whether religious instruction is obligatory (as it was under Franco) and the language of instruction? And who is control of natural resources, including rivers that run through more than one autonomous region, such as the Ebro?
Beginning this year, a disunited Spain presides over the disunited European Union. But the main issues for Spain are internal, and of these, the most pressing is how much autonomy the "Spanish" (Castilian)-speaking parts are willing to grant to the two richest and most industrialized autonomous regions, the Basque Country and Catalonia. Will the nationalists in Madrid (who want all of Spain to be a monolingual "nation") permit the nationalists in Barcelona and other parts of Catalonia to even call themselves a "nation"? And will the Basque nationalists succeed in separating themselves from ETA terrorism, which has made it impossible for them to use Spain's democratic mechanisms to advance their cause?
(To be continued: tune in next week.)
Sources:
Constitución española de 1978 - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
Cataluña - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
Idioma español - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
Historia de Cataluña - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
He could have added that the 17 comunidades autónomas are further divided into 50 provinces, and so on down to the municipalities, which play on conflicts at the upper levels (between province and community or community and central government) to avoid acting on laws or judicial decisions that inconvenience them -- e.g., to protect the environment from land speculators.
But back to the headlines on the one typical day that Bozonnet uses. Item 1: in the Basque Country (one of the 17 comunidades autónomas, comprising three provinces), 85 of the 110 priests in San Sebastián signed a statement of "disapproval" of the Church's choice of a new bishop -- because the man chosen (a notorious conservative even within the very conservative Spanish Catholic Church) is not Basque and is not at all friendly to "nationalism", meaning in this case the pro-independence demands of a sizable minority of the Basque Country population. Item 2: The education chief of the Valencia comunidad (also three provinces) refuses to distribute laptop computers provided by the central government to schoolchildren because, he claims, the small screens will cause myopia. No reputable scientist agrees with him, but no matter, anything provided by the Socialists in power in Madrid must be bad for people (because Valencia is currently governed by the Right).
Bozonnet lists other conflicts, over illegalizing bullfighting in Catalonia and whether a nationalist, pro-ETA party in the Basque Country should be permitted to participate in elections, the resurgence of a nutty conspiracy theory that the Socialist Party was somehow complicit in the 2001 bombing of the central Madrid railroad station, and the huge embarrassment of the head of the association of Spain's corporate chiefs, because his own biggest corporation, Air Comet, is in such default that a British judge embargoed the planes, leaving thousands stranded on the eve of the holidays, and because his other corporations are also in trouble and because he has just been discovered to have defrauded the big savings bank Caja Madrid, of which he is a board member -- but he still won't quit, and the employers association continues to back him.
But back to the problem of political fragmentation. Spain is neither a unitary, centralized state nor a federation, but a mess of jurisdictions competing and conflicting with one another. Centralization has been the goal of Spanish conservatives at least since the Catholic Monarchs, Isabel I (we know her as "Isabella") of Castile and Fernando ("Ferdinand") of Aragon back in the 15th century. Meanwhile, regional autonomy (freedom from the center) has been the goal of almost everybody else, especially in those regions with different languages and customs. The dispute has provoked repeated civil wars, most recently 1936-39. The victory of Francisco Franco seemed to settle the issue in favor of a tightly controlled, expremely centralized state, with no tolerance of minority languages or other deviances. But the victory was only temporary, and the central state began falling apart almost immediately upon the death of Franco in 1975. The 1978 Constitution is a compromise document full of ambiguities, in an attempt to placate such fiercely oposing forces as the franquista military hierarchy and the Catholic Church (both strongly centralist), the Catalonian, Basque and Galician nationalists (strongly "autonomist"), and the Communist and Socialist Parties (each of which was capable of mobilizing masses of workers, even despite the years of repression). The Constitution thus establishes central institutions (national parliament, a complicated combination of higher courts, etc.) alongside "autonomous regional" governments, without clarifying the exact boundaries of authority. Who determines education policy, including whether religious instruction is obligatory (as it was under Franco) and the language of instruction? And who is control of natural resources, including rivers that run through more than one autonomous region, such as the Ebro?
Beginning this year, a disunited Spain presides over the disunited European Union. But the main issues for Spain are internal, and of these, the most pressing is how much autonomy the "Spanish" (Castilian)-speaking parts are willing to grant to the two richest and most industrialized autonomous regions, the Basque Country and Catalonia. Will the nationalists in Madrid (who want all of Spain to be a monolingual "nation") permit the nationalists in Barcelona and other parts of Catalonia to even call themselves a "nation"? And will the Basque nationalists succeed in separating themselves from ETA terrorism, which has made it impossible for them to use Spain's democratic mechanisms to advance their cause?
(To be continued: tune in next week.)
Sources:
Constitución española de 1978 - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
Cataluña - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
Idioma español - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
Historia de Cataluña - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
2010/01/06
2010: Resolutions
As promised, my resolutions for this year 2010.
Writing:
1. History of architecture and urbanism in Latin America: Complete draft of Part II, the colonial period, 1492 to 1810 or 1820 (or in the case of Brazil, to 1822), and the rest of it soon after. (Draft of Part I, pre-columbian cities and architecture, has already been turned in to the publisher.)
2. Novel, A Gift for the Sultan: publish before the end of February, in two editions: a print and a free electronic version.
3. Spanish contradictions: a series of essays to appear on this blog. Focus will be on contemporary (post-Franco) Spain, but taking into account the legacies of the civil war and earlier conflicts to explain such puzzling features as the unresolved territorial organization and powers (so that Catalonia, the Basque Country and even Galicia and Navarra are neither integrated nor subdued), causes and consequences of the corruption scandals, the struggles over sexuality and gender, etc. I propose to post these essays weekly, beginning next Sunday, 17 January.
4. Some new short stories.
Blowing my own horn:Besides my presence on this blog and other sites (FaceBook, Twitter, the Red Room, etc.), I plan to make more of my previously published stories more accessible. I've already started to do this, with stories and essays on Scribd and BookRix (where I just posted a little book today).
Personal projects:
More fluent French, at least minimal conversational and reading ability in German, better guitar-playing (got to get those fingers to move faster and more surely)
In short, you'll be able to read more of me, and I should be able to speak to more people and maybe even entertain a crowd on guitar (though that's probably the most challenging thing on my list -- it doesn't come easily, which is part of why I do it).Photo of hornblower in Congress Park, Saratoga Springs, by MIKECNY.
Happy 3 Kings Day!
Apologies for my long absence. Been busy, here in Madrid for Old Year Night (Noche Vieja) and New Year's, with shows, friends, and a splendid New Year's Eve dinner at the Café de la Ópera, four course meal with wine, champagne and arias -- a joy to hear such strong sopranos, tenors and two baritones singing right next to your table. And last night with a good Madrid friend, we watched (as well as we could, over the heads of the big crowd) Madrid's spectacular Cabalgata de los Reyes, the Three Kings' Parade. Melchor, Gaspar and Baltasar (the three Reyes Magos, or magician kings) steal into the houses at night, with their camels (they're magicians, after all) to leave toys in the shoes of good girls and boys, or lumps of coal for those who have been bad. We grownups just get a virtual hug and a virtual lick from the rough tongue of a royal camel.
But as my gift for you, I leave you Two Stories from Naples: Italica, by Geoffrey Fox. I hope you enjoy them. They're at least better than lumps of coal. Or a camel-lick either, for that matter. See you later, and have a great year! I'll be back soon, later today I hope, to share with you my New Year's resolutions.
But as my gift for you, I leave you Two Stories from Naples: Italica, by Geoffrey Fox. I hope you enjoy them. They're at least better than lumps of coal. Or a camel-lick either, for that matter. See you later, and have a great year! I'll be back soon, later today I hope, to share with you my New Year's resolutions.
2009/12/27
Christmas peña
Every year, exactly at midnight on December 24, the Christ child is reborn everywhere in Spain, an event that is celebrated even by atheists -- because in Spain, the atheists are all Catholics. And for all those in the Catholic tradition, whether atheists or believers or agnostics, the celebration requires smiles, giving of gifts, singing of songs and the consumption of lots of sweets and liquors. Really getting into the spirit of things, two of our local atheists (he is named for the Archangel Michael and she for the immaculate conception, but they don't let that trouble them) hosted a special peña, or flamenco song-fest, in the chilly room where we usually gather on Friday nights for a peña and (some of us) on Saturdays for lessons on flamenco guitar. But only one of us, a sturdy, mustachioed gitano Domingo, was up to vocal performance, while Rubén, our young guitar teacher, kept the flourishes and compás. Cante jondo ("deep song") explodes from the chest, whistles through the throat, cries out with an intensity that shakes the room, when someone like Domingo is al cante. The lyrics are never easy to make out, at least for us payos (non-Gypsies), but from what I could make out, the songs weren't about the Christ-child. Mostly they were extended sexist jokes, not meant to be taken seriously, with clever rhymes.It was great fun, livelier than gatherings I remember back in the Midwest. I think that's because in the U.S. (where there are no atheists), all the Catholics, Jews and Muslims are Calvinists.
We've been lucky in Carboneras. While the rest of Spain was suffering terrible weather (record snowfall in the north, disastrous floods in other parts of Andalucía), we had sun on Christmas day, then heavy rain on Boxing Day, but sun and warmth today. As we watch the news and the TV reviews of all the disasters of this past year, we feel strange to be so privileged, and aware of how precarious anybody's well-being is. Because I wanted to hear a voice that contemplated disaster without succumbing to despair, I just read (or maybe reread -- I must have read at least a version of it in high school) this little novel: Candide, ou l'Optimisme. It was in a way reassuring to see that the world's injustices, including slavery, abuse of women, terrorism, war and theft are no worse today than back in 1759, when the young German idealist from Thunder-ten-tronckh in Westphalia began his adventures in most of the known world.
Image source: Instituto Cervantes de Múnich
2009/12/18
2009/12/08
Spain, Morocco, Sahara and Haidar
The desperate state of Aminatu Haidar (her given name is spelled various ways), who is near death in her hunger strike in the Lanzarote (Canary Islands) airport, has driven Spain's perennial big stories -- corruption and climate change -- from the front pages. Why has such a personal act by a woman who is not a political leader or even a Spanish national got the country in such a tizzy?
She is from Western Sahara, which was a Spanish possession from 1885 until 1976. Before that it had been part of the very large, amorphous and lightly governed kingdom of Morocco, its population (sparse) of Berber, Arab and/or Moorish (Mauritanian) origin. In those 90 years of Spanish control, peninsular Spaniards migrated to administer the territory and exploit its resources, and the native population was to some degree Hispanicized -- schooled (the lucky few who got to school) in Spanish, ruled by Spanish law, some of the people converted to Catholicism. In 1956, the Kingdom of Morocco gained its independence from France and Spain, but Spain held on to Western Sahara for 20 more years against military pressure and a "Green March" (a large civilian mobilization) organized by Morocco. Mauritania and Algeria were also eager to share in the decolonized region, which was especially attractive to Algeria because of its Atlantic coast. But when Spain finally pulled out, Moroccan troops defeated Mauritania and the Algerian-backed Polisario movement and took control. The Polisario guerrillas and many civilians fled into the neighboring desert wasteland of Algeria, where they set up refugee camps which still persist. Some of those Saharans who did not flee have actively opposed Moroccan rule, some -- including, we presume, Aminetu Haidar -- by peaceful means.
All of this complicated history has left Spaniards feeling that they have some obligation to their former subjects. They are aware of the terrible conditions in the refugee camps and hold Spain to some extent responsible for accepting Moroccan occupation of Sahara. Friends of ours in Carboneras are among the many Spaniards who travel regularly to the camps and bring children to spend a summer or longer in their homes, where they have access to far better education and health services than in the Sahara. So when Haidar, a Saharan independence activist of long standing, accuses Spain of complicity with the king of Morocco because it permitted the kingdom to expel her and for her plane to land in Lanzarote, the charge resonates. She had written "Sahara" instead of "Morocco" as her homeland on the form when she was returning to El Aaiún from Spain, and that was the pretext for expelling her.
As Juan Goytisolo points out in today's El País, Western Sahara is a very different place from what it was 30 years ago. There are now many more Moroccans from the north, who have no interest in independence and have no special relation to the Spanish language or culture -- they are more likely to speak French, along with Arabic and Berber. What would probably be best for all the people there would be greater autonomy and respect for local traditions, but not independence, he argues. But such a loosening of control from Rabat seems unlikely without continued pressure of the sort that Aminetu Haidar has been exerting.
If the Moroccan authorities had simply ignored her marks on the form and let her go home, nobody would even have noticed that little act of defiance. But they decided to make an example of her and expelled her, and now she is Spain's problem. Spain needs Morocco's cooperation to control immigration and the drug trade, and is reluctant to pressure King Mohammed VI -- but Morocco also needs the good-will of Spain and of the rest of Europe. This little woman from El Aaiún has thus also created a big problem for Mohammed VI, who is too stubborn to give in but who will be under increasing pressure to allow reforms because of her actions.
She is from Western Sahara, which was a Spanish possession from 1885 until 1976. Before that it had been part of the very large, amorphous and lightly governed kingdom of Morocco, its population (sparse) of Berber, Arab and/or Moorish (Mauritanian) origin. In those 90 years of Spanish control, peninsular Spaniards migrated to administer the territory and exploit its resources, and the native population was to some degree Hispanicized -- schooled (the lucky few who got to school) in Spanish, ruled by Spanish law, some of the people converted to Catholicism. In 1956, the Kingdom of Morocco gained its independence from France and Spain, but Spain held on to Western Sahara for 20 more years against military pressure and a "Green March" (a large civilian mobilization) organized by Morocco. Mauritania and Algeria were also eager to share in the decolonized region, which was especially attractive to Algeria because of its Atlantic coast. But when Spain finally pulled out, Moroccan troops defeated Mauritania and the Algerian-backed Polisario movement and took control. The Polisario guerrillas and many civilians fled into the neighboring desert wasteland of Algeria, where they set up refugee camps which still persist. Some of those Saharans who did not flee have actively opposed Moroccan rule, some -- including, we presume, Aminetu Haidar -- by peaceful means.
All of this complicated history has left Spaniards feeling that they have some obligation to their former subjects. They are aware of the terrible conditions in the refugee camps and hold Spain to some extent responsible for accepting Moroccan occupation of Sahara. Friends of ours in Carboneras are among the many Spaniards who travel regularly to the camps and bring children to spend a summer or longer in their homes, where they have access to far better education and health services than in the Sahara. So when Haidar, a Saharan independence activist of long standing, accuses Spain of complicity with the king of Morocco because it permitted the kingdom to expel her and for her plane to land in Lanzarote, the charge resonates. She had written "Sahara" instead of "Morocco" as her homeland on the form when she was returning to El Aaiún from Spain, and that was the pretext for expelling her.
As Juan Goytisolo points out in today's El País, Western Sahara is a very different place from what it was 30 years ago. There are now many more Moroccans from the north, who have no interest in independence and have no special relation to the Spanish language or culture -- they are more likely to speak French, along with Arabic and Berber. What would probably be best for all the people there would be greater autonomy and respect for local traditions, but not independence, he argues. But such a loosening of control from Rabat seems unlikely without continued pressure of the sort that Aminetu Haidar has been exerting.
If the Moroccan authorities had simply ignored her marks on the form and let her go home, nobody would even have noticed that little act of defiance. But they decided to make an example of her and expelled her, and now she is Spain's problem. Spain needs Morocco's cooperation to control immigration and the drug trade, and is reluctant to pressure King Mohammed VI -- but Morocco also needs the good-will of Spain and of the rest of Europe. This little woman from El Aaiún has thus also created a big problem for Mohammed VI, who is too stubborn to give in but who will be under increasing pressure to allow reforms because of her actions.
2009/12/07
À la recherche de la langue perdue
Susana and I have a date in Paris in June (a reading and presentation of Above Ground), so I'm working to recover my lost facility in French, the first foreign language I ever studied. With this idea I picked up a book I'd had for a long time but had never read, where I discovered a treasure of rich, comical, coarse slang along with many sociological observations of poverty in France cerca 1987. To get all the jokes, I had frequent recourse to Le Dictionnaire, very good on argot, and then checked my pronunciation on this other terrific site, SWAC. Finally I put myself to a real test: writing my summary and comment on the book in French. Go ahead, you French speakers, read it and laugh! And if you will be so gentille, send me your corrections. Here it is: Bernard Pouchèle, L'étoile et le vagabond.
2009/11/29
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