Here's a fascinating book by a French brain scientist who is elegantly articulate in English. The language is important, because he uses the peculiarities of English spelling, and the consequent difficulties of inexperienced readers to interpret it, to demonstrate how many different areas of the brain must be activated to interpret something as simple as the sentence you have just read.
Stanislas Dehaene, Reading in the brain : the science and evolution of a human invention. (Viking, 2009)
When we begin to read a page of text, we don't take in the whole page or even a whole line, but visualize clearly only a very small section at a time, moving our eyes in rapid saccades. Reading requires rapid and successive interpretations of small sets of visual marks (in alphabetic writing, no more than 5-7 letters per saccade) by neurons from several regions of the brain, interrogating the symbols until the most likely hypothesis of their meaning is established. The very first operation in each saccade is to recognize the symbols as letters (rather than corporate logos, or numbers, or something else) and attribute possible sounds to them. If the symbols invariably represent a single sound (as in Italian or German), it is quickly recognized by the phonics neurons. If they may represent several possible sounds (e.g., the letters "ough" in English), other neurons from other parts of the brain must apply grammatical rules while others evaluate context (the symbols seen in previous saccades) to narrow the possible interpetations.
Recognition of symbols as letters (or phonemes or characters in nonalphabetic systems) occurs in all humans, regardless of culture or writing system, in approximately the same section of the left brain hemisphere (Dehaene calls it the "letter box"), but requires activation of other brain sections to interpret them. Recognition of simplified symbols, or "proto letters", evolved millions of years before the invention of writing, inspired by common forms seen in nature: L, Y, T etc. Even apes recognize such symbols. What humans have been able to do that apes cannot is to learn to give different interpretations to the symbols, that is, to invent writing.
"…over time, scribes developed increasingly efficient notations that fitted the organization of our brains. In brief, our cortex did not specifically evolve for writing. Rather, writing evolved to fit the cortex." Thus all writing systems in all cultures, even Chinese or the many Indian scripts, share common features: combinations of symbols of no more than 4 strokes, arranged in straight, regular lines. All (even Chinese) include some signal of sound. Those writing systems that correspond most closely to spoken sounds (e.g., Finnish, Italian, German) are the quickest for children to learn, English is the most difficult of the European languages and reading Chinese takes much longer. Phonics teaching is far superior to "whole word" approach for enabling the learner to read unfamiliar words.
There is much more to this book, including diagrams of brains and brain activity, a capsule history of the probable history of writing (how the first symbols were invented and how they evolved), anecdotes from the history of reading-brain research, an impassioned discussion of pedagogy, and chapters on dyslexia and mirror writing. It's a very complex subject, but Dehaene is a graceful writer and makes it about as clear as it can be for us non-neuroscientists.
For more on this author, see Overview - Experimental Cognitive Psychology - Stanislas Dehaene - Collège de France
2010/01/31
2010/01/27
Haiti’s glory and poverty
How was the richest country in the Western Hemisphere turned into the poorest?
To understand and to confront the terrible disaster that has just occurred in Haiti, it is vital to understand how wealth was destroyed and poverty constructed in that country. Otherwise we are likely to assume that the massive overcrowding of Port-au-Prince, the flimsiness of the shacks of the poor, and the deforestation and consequent impoverishment of the soil are all the fault of the people who live there.
And as long as we believe that, we will assume that the only salvation must come from us, smarter or better people from outside. And if we act on that premise, we will continue to squash the promise of that proud little country that has had so much determination and ingenuity that they defeated Napoleon, 8 years before Wellington finally stopped his career at Waterloo.
Haitians, in the western part of Hispaniola, won victory in their revolution in 1804, just 8 years after the 13 North American colonies started theirs. They financed and armed Simón Bolívar, enabling him to carry the national liberation struggle to and through South America. Their power was such that they invaded and conquered the eastern part of the island, driving the Spaniards from Santo Domingo. But then, beginning in the mid 19th century, too many forces began to conspire against them, a combination far more powerful even than Napoleon's expeditionary army. I don't yet know the full story as well as I should, but it is clear that French bankers, Arkansas rice growers, U.S. timber interests and much else was involved in destroying the national wealth. And for Haitians to regain some of it, they are going to have to free themselves of those and similar outside interventions. Aristide tried it, and made some progress before he was whisked out of the country by a frightened U.S. military. Others will try and will get further if given a chance. The poverty is reversible, I am convinced, and only the Haitians can do it.
But the starting point for understanding the country's tragic history, including hurricanes, civil wars and invasions by U.S. Marines as well as brutal exploitation of the natural and human resources, has to be the amazing revolution 200 years ago. The most stirring account I ever read is James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. New York: Vintage, 1963. But if you don't have that handy, this is also good to read:
FRANKLIN W. KNIGHT | The Haitian Revolution | The American Historical Review, 105.1 | The History Cooperative
To understand and to confront the terrible disaster that has just occurred in Haiti, it is vital to understand how wealth was destroyed and poverty constructed in that country. Otherwise we are likely to assume that the massive overcrowding of Port-au-Prince, the flimsiness of the shacks of the poor, and the deforestation and consequent impoverishment of the soil are all the fault of the people who live there.
And as long as we believe that, we will assume that the only salvation must come from us, smarter or better people from outside. And if we act on that premise, we will continue to squash the promise of that proud little country that has had so much determination and ingenuity that they defeated Napoleon, 8 years before Wellington finally stopped his career at Waterloo.
Haitians, in the western part of Hispaniola, won victory in their revolution in 1804, just 8 years after the 13 North American colonies started theirs. They financed and armed Simón Bolívar, enabling him to carry the national liberation struggle to and through South America. Their power was such that they invaded and conquered the eastern part of the island, driving the Spaniards from Santo Domingo. But then, beginning in the mid 19th century, too many forces began to conspire against them, a combination far more powerful even than Napoleon's expeditionary army. I don't yet know the full story as well as I should, but it is clear that French bankers, Arkansas rice growers, U.S. timber interests and much else was involved in destroying the national wealth. And for Haitians to regain some of it, they are going to have to free themselves of those and similar outside interventions. Aristide tried it, and made some progress before he was whisked out of the country by a frightened U.S. military. Others will try and will get further if given a chance. The poverty is reversible, I am convinced, and only the Haitians can do it.
But the starting point for understanding the country's tragic history, including hurricanes, civil wars and invasions by U.S. Marines as well as brutal exploitation of the natural and human resources, has to be the amazing revolution 200 years ago. The most stirring account I ever read is James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. New York: Vintage, 1963. But if you don't have that handy, this is also good to read:
FRANKLIN W. KNIGHT | The Haitian Revolution | The American Historical Review, 105.1 | The History Cooperative
2010/01/26
Spain's conflicted immigration policies
The incoherence and contradictions of Spanish immigration practices are among the more serious consequences of the disunity of Spain that I've been describing here lately, the multiplicity of governmental authorities with overlapping powers and conflicting agendas.
For the past 15 years and up until recently, almost all those goverment authorities, from the national ministries of social services and foreign relations down to municipal mayors and town councils were doing everything they could to encourage immigration, for different but convergent reasons. The local authorities were in many cases pressured by local builders and agriculturalists who wanted cheap man- or womanpower, to build homes or pick olives and strawberries. The lefties in the Socialist party exulted in Spain's ever greater diversity, and the righties -- the same folks making money on the cheap labor -- enjoyed making a display of their Christian generosity toward the newcomers.
But then, just a few months ago, the bottom fell out of the housing market. No more demand for cheap unskilled labor. Fewer buyers for industrial goods, and thus fewer jobs. And the local governments, which had been financing themselves mainly by licencing construction projects and collecting tax on rising real estate values, were suddenly strapped. The immigrants were the first to be "let go", but there they were, still needing to eat, their kids needing school, all of them needing medical services at least occasionally.
To qualify for public services in any town in Spain, all you need is proof that you live there. You do this by showing your national ID if you are a citizen or your passport and proof of residence, such as a light bill, if you are not. The process is called empadronamiento, registration in the municipal padrón or registry. This according to a 1997 law signed by the then Minister of Social Services, Mariano Rajoy.
But lately the mayors of some towns have invented new requirements for empadronamiento -- such as proving that you have more than 20 square meters of living space per member of your family, or (in one town) that you are not here on a tourist visa (which is the way many immigrants start out, until they can find a job and get more settled). Their rhetoric is obfuscatory, involving peculiar (perverse) interpretations of clauses in the law, but they appear to believe they can save money by denying school and medical services to immigrants. But they also lose money, because the central government gives financing to municipalities according to their registered (empadronado) population, regardless of immigration status. The net result is just to make life a lot more difficult for immigrant families, already in bad straits with no jobs.
A lot of this anti-empadronamiento agitation is coming from mayors and even regional presidents of the opposition Popular Party, whose head is that very same Mariano Rajoy -- who deals with the contradiction by not dealing with it, saying vague things about guaranteeing everybody basic education and medical rights "just for being human beings" and at the same time that probably the law on immigration ought to be changed in some unspecified, but presumably more restrictive fashion.
For generations Spain, impoverished after the loss of the remnants of empire in 1898 (Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines), then torn by civil war (1936-39) and finally suffocated by a dictatorship that was both oppressive and economically stagnant, was a net exporter of people -- until the 1973 petroleum crisis wiped out jobs in the countries they'd been migrating to, slowing the outflow almost to nil. Finally, the death of Franco and the dismemberment of his system, the reforms begun by his successor Suárez and carried further and with greater energy by the Socialist government of Felipe González turned Spain into a country to come to, not one to flee from. By the year 2000, Spain's rapid economic growth and reputation for civil liberties turned this fountain of emigration into one of the countries with the highest rate of immigration anywhere -- 8 times greater than neighboring France, which was where so many Spaniards had been looking for work in earlier decades.
France and other industrialized countries already had a large proportion of immigrants, but Spain's post-2000 rate of attraction has been so great that it has now surpassed France in percentage of foreign born: 12% of Spain's 47 million people (as compared to 8% in France).
More than 36% of these come from the 20+ countries of "Iberoamerica," mostly Ecuador (11.13%) and Colombia (6.40%), though we also know several Argentinians and Uruguayans and Peruvians. About as many (nearly 35%) come from other countries in the European Union, including nearly 10% from Rumania (where the language is distantly related to Spanish). Others face a far greater linguistic and cultural hurdle, including the nearly 15% from North Africa (mostly Morocco) and another 4% from Sub-Saharan Africa; the ones we know here in Carboneras are mostly from Senegal or Mali.
Now that the housing boom is over and unemployment in almost all industries is at record highs, Spain is no longer so welcoming. But conditions in the source countries of most of those immigrants continue to be even worse, and Spain (as well as other countries of Western Europe) are going to be increasingly dependent on young foreign-born to take care of their aging native populations and to do the jobs that have to be done.
Las claves del empadronamiento de 'sin papeles' -- ELPAÍS.com
Inmigración en España - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
EUROPA: Inmigrantes entre la expulsión y la muerte - IPS ipsnoticias.net
Immigration en France - Wikipédia
For the past 15 years and up until recently, almost all those goverment authorities, from the national ministries of social services and foreign relations down to municipal mayors and town councils were doing everything they could to encourage immigration, for different but convergent reasons. The local authorities were in many cases pressured by local builders and agriculturalists who wanted cheap man- or womanpower, to build homes or pick olives and strawberries. The lefties in the Socialist party exulted in Spain's ever greater diversity, and the righties -- the same folks making money on the cheap labor -- enjoyed making a display of their Christian generosity toward the newcomers.
But then, just a few months ago, the bottom fell out of the housing market. No more demand for cheap unskilled labor. Fewer buyers for industrial goods, and thus fewer jobs. And the local governments, which had been financing themselves mainly by licencing construction projects and collecting tax on rising real estate values, were suddenly strapped. The immigrants were the first to be "let go", but there they were, still needing to eat, their kids needing school, all of them needing medical services at least occasionally.
To qualify for public services in any town in Spain, all you need is proof that you live there. You do this by showing your national ID if you are a citizen or your passport and proof of residence, such as a light bill, if you are not. The process is called empadronamiento, registration in the municipal padrón or registry. This according to a 1997 law signed by the then Minister of Social Services, Mariano Rajoy.
But lately the mayors of some towns have invented new requirements for empadronamiento -- such as proving that you have more than 20 square meters of living space per member of your family, or (in one town) that you are not here on a tourist visa (which is the way many immigrants start out, until they can find a job and get more settled). Their rhetoric is obfuscatory, involving peculiar (perverse) interpretations of clauses in the law, but they appear to believe they can save money by denying school and medical services to immigrants. But they also lose money, because the central government gives financing to municipalities according to their registered (empadronado) population, regardless of immigration status. The net result is just to make life a lot more difficult for immigrant families, already in bad straits with no jobs.
A lot of this anti-empadronamiento agitation is coming from mayors and even regional presidents of the opposition Popular Party, whose head is that very same Mariano Rajoy -- who deals with the contradiction by not dealing with it, saying vague things about guaranteeing everybody basic education and medical rights "just for being human beings" and at the same time that probably the law on immigration ought to be changed in some unspecified, but presumably more restrictive fashion.
For generations Spain, impoverished after the loss of the remnants of empire in 1898 (Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines), then torn by civil war (1936-39) and finally suffocated by a dictatorship that was both oppressive and economically stagnant, was a net exporter of people -- until the 1973 petroleum crisis wiped out jobs in the countries they'd been migrating to, slowing the outflow almost to nil. Finally, the death of Franco and the dismemberment of his system, the reforms begun by his successor Suárez and carried further and with greater energy by the Socialist government of Felipe González turned Spain into a country to come to, not one to flee from. By the year 2000, Spain's rapid economic growth and reputation for civil liberties turned this fountain of emigration into one of the countries with the highest rate of immigration anywhere -- 8 times greater than neighboring France, which was where so many Spaniards had been looking for work in earlier decades.
France and other industrialized countries already had a large proportion of immigrants, but Spain's post-2000 rate of attraction has been so great that it has now surpassed France in percentage of foreign born: 12% of Spain's 47 million people (as compared to 8% in France).
More than 36% of these come from the 20+ countries of "Iberoamerica," mostly Ecuador (11.13%) and Colombia (6.40%), though we also know several Argentinians and Uruguayans and Peruvians. About as many (nearly 35%) come from other countries in the European Union, including nearly 10% from Rumania (where the language is distantly related to Spanish). Others face a far greater linguistic and cultural hurdle, including the nearly 15% from North Africa (mostly Morocco) and another 4% from Sub-Saharan Africa; the ones we know here in Carboneras are mostly from Senegal or Mali.
Now that the housing boom is over and unemployment in almost all industries is at record highs, Spain is no longer so welcoming. But conditions in the source countries of most of those immigrants continue to be even worse, and Spain (as well as other countries of Western Europe) are going to be increasingly dependent on young foreign-born to take care of their aging native populations and to do the jobs that have to be done.
Las claves del empadronamiento de 'sin papeles' -- ELPAÍS.com
Inmigración en España - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
EUROPA: Inmigrantes entre la expulsión y la muerte - IPS ipsnoticias.net
Immigration en France - Wikipédia
2010/01/25
España mañana, folks
Apologies. My weekly commentary on Spain, scheduled to appear on Sunday (preferably) or Monday (if necessary), will have to wait yet another day. I want to discuss the ticklish problem of immigration policy, as hot a button here as it is in the U.S. or many other countries. But this weekend and today, Monday, have been consumed by a business trip to Murcia (not the most exciting town in Spain, but business is business). So, hasta mañana, amigos lectores.
2010/01/17
Many Spains
The image of a fratricidal Spain divided in two irreconcilable camps goes back at least to the Carlista wars of the 1830s, but it was Antonio Machado (1875-1939) who gave it its most memorable expression :
(There is a Spaniard now who wants/ to live and begins to live,/ between a Spain that is dying / and another Spain that yawns. / Little Spaniard coming /into the world, may God protect you. / One of the two Spains / is destined to freeze your heart.)
The poem is quoted endlessly, perhaps most effectively in the voice of Joan Manuel Serrat. For the little Spaniard coming into the world, there is a Spain that is tolerant, optimistic and progressive, and for these reasons also too trusting and vulnerable. There is another Spain that is cynical, authoritarian, pessimistic and intolerant. The second one has always done all it could to kill the first one, and by the end of the 1936-39 war, its proponents, led by Generalísimo Francisco Franco, were confident that they had succeeded, and that unwavering and hierarchical authority, merciless policing, and strict Catholicism in the schools and family law, would ensure forever one united Spain with only one way of thinking, one loyalty, one faith.
But tolerant, optimistic and progressive little Spaniards continued to be born, and in the years since Franco's death they and allies abroad, now less naïve, have constructed a wider space for themselves and for many Spains.
Too many, perhaps, to create a coherent government. Seventeen autonomous regions, as I mentioned last week. And though the democratic institutions appear far less vulnerable to antidemocratic forces than in the Second Republic (the one that was destroyed by the 1936 military uprising), the multiplicity of autonomous regions, along with other linguistic divisions, create gaps for the authoritarian, antidemocratic Spain to assert itself. An especially outrageous example occurred this past week: The Supreme Court permitted the Falange, the party behind the massacres and repression of the Franco forces, to sue the judge who began (finally, many years after the events) to investigate the crimes of Franco! Judge Baltasar Garzón became known outside Spain for his prosecution of the criminal generals of Argentina and Chile, and other places. But when, under great pressure from Spaniards whose families had suffered under Franco, he began investigating similar outrages in this country, he gets accused of "abuse of authority" (prevaricación is the Spanish legal term), as though the decisions of that 40-year dictatorship could not be questioned by a mere judge. We'll be watching this case closely; it is a test not only of Garzón (who has been under enormous pressure also because of his investigation of political corruption by the rightwing Partido Popular), but of the entire legal system.
Also to be closely watched: The equally outrageous decision of the courts to fine and jail two prominent journalists for publishing accurate and important political information -- the same as had already been published in print -- on the web.
But it's late here, and we'll need to develop these thoughts in coming notes. Coming soon: a discussion of how language plays into questions of identity and regional conflict. Because the many Spains don't all speak the same tongue, or at least not at the same time.
(For earlier notes on Spain, click on keyword "Spain" below.)
Some sources:
Ya hay un español que quiere
vivir y a vivir empieza,
entre una España que muere
y otra España que bosteza.
Españolito que vienes
al mundo, te guarde Dios.
Una de las dos Españas
ha de helarte el corazón.
(There is a Spaniard now who wants/ to live and begins to live,/ between a Spain that is dying / and another Spain that yawns. / Little Spaniard coming /into the world, may God protect you. / One of the two Spains / is destined to freeze your heart.)
The poem is quoted endlessly, perhaps most effectively in the voice of Joan Manuel Serrat. For the little Spaniard coming into the world, there is a Spain that is tolerant, optimistic and progressive, and for these reasons also too trusting and vulnerable. There is another Spain that is cynical, authoritarian, pessimistic and intolerant. The second one has always done all it could to kill the first one, and by the end of the 1936-39 war, its proponents, led by Generalísimo Francisco Franco, were confident that they had succeeded, and that unwavering and hierarchical authority, merciless policing, and strict Catholicism in the schools and family law, would ensure forever one united Spain with only one way of thinking, one loyalty, one faith.
But tolerant, optimistic and progressive little Spaniards continued to be born, and in the years since Franco's death they and allies abroad, now less naïve, have constructed a wider space for themselves and for many Spains.
Too many, perhaps, to create a coherent government. Seventeen autonomous regions, as I mentioned last week. And though the democratic institutions appear far less vulnerable to antidemocratic forces than in the Second Republic (the one that was destroyed by the 1936 military uprising), the multiplicity of autonomous regions, along with other linguistic divisions, create gaps for the authoritarian, antidemocratic Spain to assert itself. An especially outrageous example occurred this past week: The Supreme Court permitted the Falange, the party behind the massacres and repression of the Franco forces, to sue the judge who began (finally, many years after the events) to investigate the crimes of Franco! Judge Baltasar Garzón became known outside Spain for his prosecution of the criminal generals of Argentina and Chile, and other places. But when, under great pressure from Spaniards whose families had suffered under Franco, he began investigating similar outrages in this country, he gets accused of "abuse of authority" (prevaricación is the Spanish legal term), as though the decisions of that 40-year dictatorship could not be questioned by a mere judge. We'll be watching this case closely; it is a test not only of Garzón (who has been under enormous pressure also because of his investigation of political corruption by the rightwing Partido Popular), but of the entire legal system.
Also to be closely watched: The equally outrageous decision of the courts to fine and jail two prominent journalists for publishing accurate and important political information -- the same as had already been published in print -- on the web.
But it's late here, and we'll need to develop these thoughts in coming notes. Coming soon: a discussion of how language plays into questions of identity and regional conflict. Because the many Spains don't all speak the same tongue, or at least not at the same time.
(For earlier notes on Spain, click on keyword "Spain" below.)
Some sources:
Comunidad autónoma - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
Idiomas de España - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
Ser de España - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
Manuel Castells, El poder de la identidad (nacionalismo), El País, 18 Febrero 2003
YouTube - Cantares - Serrat canta a Machado
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.
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