There have been a lot of huge demonstrations in Santiago recently. Most of them are focused on education—the government wants to begin charging for public secondary school and universities. Public education, higher education in particular, is often very cheap in much of Latin America. As a result, there are at least a few generations of very well educated folks. One piece of graffiti I saw on the street said, in rough translation, “If we had the copper, we wouldn’t have to pay.” I had to ask what this meant. Minerals in Chile are big business—part of the reason President Salvador Allende was toppled by the U.S. decades ago was because he nationalized the mines. And don’t forget the trapped Chilean miners from a few months ago. Anyway, the copper mines have been at least partially privatized after the Coldelco Law was passed in 1992, so the profits from them don’t go to the government. Much of those profits don’t even stay in Chile—they go to multinationals, as in many other parts of the world. Hence the wording of the graffiti, which ties together the privatization of the mines with the lack of a budget for education.
The demonstrators are incredibly creative here. They don’t just shout, make speeches and wave banners. One group organized thousands of people to dress as zombies and learn the choreography to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. The zombie image links to the education system, since they view it as dying and rotten. Here's a zombie/thriller demonstration link:
Local TV reported that there were three thousand students dancing. In the news clip below one can see a few of the ubiquitous Santiago dogs, lolling about as the zombies dance around them. The city seems to be filled with feral dogs. In India and elsewhere such dogs are usually small and fairly emaciated, but here they’re large Mastiff and German Shepherd blends. It’s a frightening sight if one is used to aggressive and crazy street dogs—crazy with hunger or abuse. However, these seem gentle—most simply lie around, peacefully. One tailed us for a bit. I saw a man in a black cape, a gaucho hat and ponytail reach down and pet one—something I’d never risk doing with a street dog, but maybe these have learned to be docile, and the locals treat them accordingly.
The other things the demonstrators do are what is called a ‘besaton’— a kissing marathon. Here’s a photo set. And they do a jogging thing, where they run circles around the palace.
Sally and I went out in the evening to a local fish restaurant. There is fairly abundant seafood in the Pacific coast of Chile, and the seafood menu is like a wine list. The fish are listed according to whether they are deepwater, shallow water, river fish or caught around a group of nearby islands.
The next morning we decided to go find out what a local breakfast is. Seems we picked the wrong time—Saturday morning. We made it all the way into the old city center and nothing was open, except a funky diner on Plaza des Armas. So that’s where we went. The waiter asked us which we wanted—brewed coffee or Nescafé. As we headed back to the hotel, and I to my tech check, a few places were beginning to put out chairs on the sidewalks for a brunch or lunch crowd.
The event was held in a spanking new cultural center called Centro Gabriela Mistral or GAM for short.
It has a story behind it—a political story, naturally. On this site was once a cafeteria that also served as a small cultural meeting place. When Allende took office, he made that cultural element official, and it was outfitted to be more accommodating as a cultural center for all classes of people. After he was overthrown by General Pinochet and the Americans, it was remade as a headquarters for Pinochet. Then, after a return to democracy, it burned down. Now, it has been returned to its previous incarnation, but much improved. A well known architect, Christian Fernandez, designed this new incarnation that houses multiple theaters, cinemas, rehearsal rooms, art exhibits (a show of photos of Neruda and his circle was up) and, of course, a cafeteria. The ministry of defense towers above and behind the cultural center—a not so subtle reminder.
The event was early, as it occurred on a Saturday. I got some laughs (good), and I have begun to incorporate more images of local initiatives that have transformed various Latin American cities. The incredible library that former mayor Sergio Fajardo had built in a poor barrio of Medellín, the super graphics that Hass & Hahn, the Dutch artists, did in some favelas in Rio (both of these were featured in the New Museum’s Festival of Ideas for the New City earlier this year). I plan to add more as I visit other cities along the tour—the rapid bus system in Quito, the libraries in Bogota (the inspiration for Fajardo’s initiatives) and other projects that generally improve the quality of life in various districts.
Patricio Fernández, a writer who is one of the founders of the magazine The Clinic spoke last, and both Bernardo and I found him very eloquent. The Clinic is a satirical magazine that began publication when Pinochet was captured—at a clinic in London, hence the title. It’s a cross between The Onion and Private Eye maybe—more on The Clinic later.
After the event, we took the metro (very clean and quiet) to a bike shop run by Claudio Olivares, one of the panel participants, to pick up loaners and find a place to have lunch. In the metro we saw a diorama of the first encounter between the Spanish and the indigenous Chileans.
Their last minutes of innocence:
A few minutes after picking up the bikes, we were off. I couldn't help thinking—are there bike lanes? How hard is it to ride here? I didn’t remember any lanes networking though the town proper from previous visits, though there are some that border the park alongside the river. There is a BRT (bus rapid transit system) here, which Loreto Araya, the organizer here, complained about—though it seems to be busy and there are lots of busses. We stopped for lunch in the Recoleta neighborhood—an area of low buildings that used to be a red light district, but is now filled with cool restaurants and sidewalk cafes. My lunch was a giant seafood stew, and Sally’s, a massive chicken strew. Delicious, but could have done with just one order and shared. A highway threatened this neighborhood not too long ago, but there was resistance from the residents and others. In the end, the big highway that runs through town is now buried and runs in tunnels alongside the river. Grassy lawns cover much of the top of it—FDR drive, take note.
After lunch, Sally and I took off on our own, roaming aimlessly though other parts of this neighborhood and past lots of Bavarian looking houses, but with tin roofs.
Then we wandered into another mostly residential neighborhood—Conchalí—that features other architectural styles that I can’t identify. How would one describe this style? Hobbit deco cottage?
Mental Maps No, not loony maps, or maps of how our brains function, but maps we construct in our heads as we become familiar with a place.
The Bavarian homes above might seem slightly incongruous looking here, and slightly puzzling, unless you know the immigration history. The Law of Selective Immigration of 1845 encouraged middle class Germans (and some Austrians and Swiss) to settle and colonize the ‘undeveloped’ southern parts of the country. They blended in after all those years, and many of the leading artists, musicians, business people and tennis players were of German descent. The British settled a little earlier, around Valparaíso, and one of the big avenues here is called O’Higgins. They got involved in saltpeter (used for gunpowder) and the Atacama mines.
Some of the Austrians who settled in Chile were fleeing Prussian persecution. Later, waves of German Jews were fleeing the Nazis, and only a year ago Paul Shaefer (not the Letterman guy) passed away. A former Nazi accused multiple times of child abuse, Shaefer founded a religious utopian community (Colonia Dignidad) with the blessing of Jorge Alessandri who was then president of Chile (1961). Shafer had abused two children at another religious ‘charity’ organization he founded in Germany. He disappeared from Colonia Diginidad after twenty-six kids accused him of abuse. He died in prison.
On a wall were plastered a grid of collages, like the ones that might be seen in a young person’s bedroom. But there they were, proudly displayed, someone’s private loves and obsessions, made totally public.
It was nice to have a chance to ride on the side streets and through the neighborhoods, as my past experiences of this city were almost exclusively of office buildings and generic, almost North American, looking edifices. The only structures I saw then that retained some character were downtown. I’m seeing more this time—even though it’s another quick visit. As was the case in Sao Paulo, I’m unconsciously forming a mental map of this place that is very different than what existed in my head previously—an expanded and more complete version than it was previously. The bikes help with that. Walking or cycling gives one a sense of the physical, visual and other relationships between the neighborhoods—how the river runs through the city and where the landmarks are. It’s amazing how fast that mapping process happens—how quickly one develops a sense of where neighborhoods and landmarks are, and how they connect to one another. After just two days I could almost get around Santiago without a physical map and just rely on the one that has appeared in my head.
Sally flew back to NY on Sunday morning and that night there was a dinner for the event participants and others at The Clinic. Not the magazine offices, (though that may be here too), but at a lounge, bar, and now a restaurant that has spun off from the magazine and is like nothing I’ve ever seen anywhere else in the world. It’s a really interesting mix of an obviously hip or fashionable club (no one dressed like what we might imagine as overly fashion oriented, though they did seem to all be wearing black), combined with the intellectual and political satire that the magazine is known for.
The walls are painted black, with blow ups of wittily captioned old B&W photos on the walls (a giant one of Allende), as well as humorous statements and collections of quotes from politicians and others painted in white type—a Joseph Kosuth installation turned into a bar, but funnier. Where else would one find this mixture?
Outside there was a blackboard with a 'quote of the day' scrawled across it.
When I left around 11pm, to walk back to the hotel, there was a line outside waiting to get in to the lounge on the ground floor. If it isn’t clear yet, it should be—politics is very much alive here. The trauma of the years of dictatorship, combined with the now relatively successful economy and high levels of education make for a potent mix. It’s manifested in the humor and politics of The Clinic and the Thriller dance as a creative form of protest. There’s an optimism and hope here that won’t be squashed—it keeps resurfacing over and over.
Speaking of creative protests, Chile isn’t alone there—the protesters in Belarus, one of the last truly repressive Eastern bloc dictatorships, have resorted to standing still (!), spontaneous clapping, strolling or arranging for their cell phone alarms to go off simultaneously. The government there has adopted new measures to enable them to throw folks in jail for protesting in this way.
Monday Morning I ate breakfast in the hotel and then went off for a quick ride around before my flight to Lima. Sally’s friend, Daniel, emailed her a list of spots in Santiago that he checked out when he came down for Lollapalooza here earlier this year. Maybe The Clinic hadn’t opened yet—as it was significantly absent from the list.
There’s a great farmers market alongside the river and the park adjacent to it. Look at the size of those stalks of celery!!
I rode on, through a relatively upscale neighborhood, with houses that could have been lifted from any North American suburb.
On to another zone of high-rise offices, with more of them on the way, and the Andes in the distance—a rare view, given the usual amount of pollution here.
The mountains are close to Santiago. There was a tremor the morning we arrived, somewhere near Valparaiso, on the coast. It registered around .6, so no one here paid any attention. Part of the protests concerns a proposal for a hydroelectric damn in a pristine area. Chileans are proud of their amazing countryside—the Andes, the Atacama Desert, the beaches. So, a giant damn with high-tension wires strung across the pristine landscape is a hot and very symbolic issue. It fucks with people’s image of what their country is, what it represents—even if they only see those pristine areas rarely and sporadically. In the U.S. it might be likened to building a damn in the Grand Canyon that caused the canyon to disappear, or building a lucrative casino around Old Faithful.
I biked back to the center of town, to Bellas Artes—the Beaux-arts style museum here (the contemporary museum is behind it). Free entrance. Some rooms of contemporary Latin artists and others filled with colonial portraits. Hardly anyone here (so I can take pictures!). A silent temple for contemplation. Here are some of those immigrants mentioned earlier:
Needless to say, this Japanese situation is causing a lot of countries to both examine the safety of their own reactors, and question the wisdom of nuclear power as an energy source. Germany shut their plant down in order to do full inspections. However, no matter what our local power companies or government representatives tell us, we know that our nuclear plants (though not actually manned by Homer Simpson) are probably not as tightly maintained as the those of the Japanese. Anyone who’s been to Japan can tell you that although there are a lot of communication quirks, things generally run well and incredibly smoothly. We look pretty backwards in comparison. So when they can’t get their nuclear plant under control, you know we definitely couldn’t under similar conditions.
As a recent NY Times article points out, more deaths occur yearly due to coal than to nuclear energy, including Chernobyl. That’s one way of measuring things—body counts. The other way of measuring cost was brought up in another article in that paper focusing on the cracked and leaking “sarcophagus” that encloses what’s left of Chernobyl, and how “the contaminated area is around the size of Switzerland,” and “will be affected for more than 300 years.” That doesn’t mean it will be clean in 300 years, but that it will be manageable. The 200 tons of melted nuclear stuff that has burned down into the earth inside the sarcophagus won’t be approachable for the foreseeable future. We don’t usually make things without a shelf life.
As that article says “the death of a nuclear reactor has a beginning… but it doesn’t have an end.” The comparison to the contaminated area being the size of Switzerland is sobering. Can you imagine suddenly Switzerland is gone? Contaminated? Off limits? Can you imagine lots of contaminated Switzerlands dotting the globe? Huge swaths of the oceans and lakes also off limits?
We know just enough to light these fires, but we don’t yet know how to put them out. Would you set something on fire in your house if you had no idea how to really, really put it out (you’re not allowed to toss it out the window in this analogy)? That mind-boggling scope of contamination and long timeframe is the difference between nuclear and coal. Though, realistically, coal is not the answer. It has been responsible for much of the climate change we are experiencing, and it is not a viable energy option going forward. Besides, it will run out. Quite a few environmentally aware folks have advocated re-approaching nuclear power, as it won’t cause the same kind of climate change that we know for certain coal is causing. I saw Bill Gates at TED last year make a presentation about small nuclear plants that re-use spent fuel. The idea of dealing with the fuel disposal issue seemed very smart, but now, after Japan, does any reactor seem like a safe, secure and viable way forward? There are just no guarantees with this stuff.
Some places are looking at alternatives, and some of them are working! Not just theories either. Portugal—little Portugal!—45% of its electricity will come from renewable sources this year (that’s up from 17% five years ago)! To get some perspective on that, Obama’s goal for the U.S. is to run on 20-25% renewable energy sources by 2025. Those renewable sources in Portugal are wind, hydropower, solar and ocean waves. Not all of those are right for everywhere in the U.S., I admit, but some of them are (the U.S. has geothermal as an option, as well).
This amazing change meant a big outlay for Portugal and her people—they pay plenty for electricity (though maybe that will level out after the initial capital outlays have been paid back). They were laughed at by Berlusconi, amongst others. Something tells me Berlusconi won’t be having the last laugh on much of anything these days. But Portugal’s case proves it CAN be done, and in a short time—five years! And they’re not exactly the richest country in Europe either.
The Swedish city of Kristainstad took a little longer—a decade, but they’ve made even more impressive progress. That city of 800,000 (the size of present day Detroit) uses NO fossil fuels to heat their homes, offices and businesses. No oil, no coal, no gas. 20 years ago all their heat came from fossil fuels (nuclear wasn’t an option, I guess). As it’s a farming region, they went for bio fuels, as opposed to wind or solar. Even many of the local cars run on fuel produced from bio fuels. All the city vehicles do.
This is a combined fuel and heating plant in that town. It was built with the help of a company, Fallon Consultants, in Victoria, British Columbia.
What do they use? Potato peelings, wood scraps, manure, used cooking oil, stale cookies and pig guts. Ugh—but it works. Truth be told, not every single amp and bit of fuel is produced this way in town (though all the heat is). But everything connected with the city itself uses this fuel, and the city is also trying to convince locals to convert their private cars to use this fuel as well. So, though they are not quite at zero carbon footprint, they are getting there.
Even the pretty conservative town of Salina, Kansas is converting to geothermal and other technologies and unplugging when they can. The government didn’t mandate those changes—they just want to save money.
Small African villages are using power sources that result in not being reliant on the national grid. The local sources are renewable and cheaper than the grid, too.
So, before we throw up our hands and say nuclear is our only option, maybe we should look at what these other places have already done. These are not just ideas and schemes that some pie-in-the-sky-green-advocate is pontificating about. This is what some practical-minded communities have already accomplished.
Maybe the Japanese tragedy will cause more folks to give these options a second glance.
Another Arab nation’s corrupt leadership is being toppled—first Tunisia, now Egypt, Yemen and Jordan are rising up as well. Though thousands have been beaten and arrested and probably tortured by those states’ security forces (the ruler of Yemen immediately offered a pay raise to the police—way to deal with your people’s problems!), what is heartening is that all-out civil war has not broken out in these countries. It has been peaceful, relatively speaking. The ouster of the Tunisian despot was done without the country descending into all-out civil war. Tell that to the folks who were beaten and tortured, I know, but compare it to El Salvador or Nicaragua, where the U.S. financed and supported wars to reinstall friendly dictators—instigating decades of massacres and armed conflict. So, though not exactly a Velvet Revolution (Czechoslovakia), or even People Power (Philippines), it’s not as bad as it could be—as far as bloodshed.
Wisely, the U.S. is at least refraining from continuing to back the bad guys in most of these uprisings—or so it seems (at least so far). The U.S. isn’t exactly supporting the protesters though; we espouse democracy, but let others make it happen. As some of the protesters said in an interview on Al Jazeera—they don’t need the U.S., they can do this themselves.
This from one of the demonstrators in Cairo—via Huffington Post:
The military made no attempt to disperse some 5,000 protesters gathered at Tahrir Square, a plaza in the heart of downtown that protesters have occupied since Friday afternoon. They have violated the curfew to call for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak's regime, which they blame for poverty, unemployment, widespread corruption and police brutality.
Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei appeared in the square around 7 p.m.
"You are the owners of this revolution. You are the future," he told the cheering crowd. "Our essential demand is the departure of the regime and the beginning of a new Egypt in which each Egyptian lives in virtue, freedom and dignity."
This guy’s sign says, “Game over.”
What is mentioned in every story over the last couple of weeks, is that the U.S. has been supporting and propping up these criminal dictators for decades (most of them have been in power for at least 30 years). The rationale for support is that these dictators are our allies in the battle against Islamic fundamentalism. The Egyptian president encourages fear regarding the Islamic Brotherhood and insures backing from the US as a result. The Islamic Brotherhood is not a terrorist organization, but given its name it is easily portrayed as one in the West.
In decades past, we backed monsters because they professed to be anti-Communist. Now the slightest lip service that they are anti-terrorist and they get weapons and excuses from Hillary Clinton (the latest in a very long line of excuse makers). This is truly counterproductive. Supporting repressive regimes is what gives rise not only to young advocates for reform, but also to the very organizations that are planting bombs and teaching hatred. Both the reformists and the radicals share a distrust for the U.S.—unfortunately a common bond. The people in those countries know that their rulers have been supported by the U.S.—they’re not ignorant, they know way more about it that most Americans.
Needless to say, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran aren’t in love with the U.S. either—the dominoes are falling. The whole region is changing political shape, and we should be encouraging reform, not funding its repression anymore. The principal oil states—Saudi Arabia, Russia and Nigeria—speak for themselves: corrupt oligarchies, monarchies or just plain corrupt. Even W knew we had to get off the oil tit ASAP. Instead of wasting billions making enemies, we should be investing those billions in our children’s future (education) and funding alternative energy models. Whole towns in Sweden have reduced their carbon footprint to zero—it can be done, it’s not a utopian pipe dream.
The amounts being spent for no positive results in Afghanistan and Iraq are mind-boggling—to believe that there is no connection between a nation with a growing level of mostly financial-based unrest (that’s the U.S.), and the money spent on illegal wars without end, is to not see history being remade. These U.S.-led wars are financed by money borrowed from China (who holds much of the U.S. debt)—any wonder the Chinese are zooming ahead? I suspect the Chinese will begin some serious arm twisting soon, as they’ll want to be sure their debts can be paid back. And if they see a nation in financial disarray that can’t pay its bills, the Chinese may start dictating how we get our house in order—as any bank would do to a loan holder in danger or default.
Anyway—exciting, thrilling days. Who would have expected all this to grow from a single street vendor who refused to pay bribes?
They have an art biennale here — doesn’t everyplace? Cindy has one of her new wallpaper pieces in the show, so we took advantage of the opportunity and came over and stayed a few extra days. The biennale, curated by Massimiliano Gioni, who has done other big surveys, featured, besides some well-known names, lots of stuff that some might not call art — period Korean advertising photos, minus text, by Hanyong Kim, and a promo film commissioned by a Japanese bicycle company done by an avant-garde film collective in the ’50s. There were pieces by Asian artists we’d never heard of (a Korean artist did paintings in an old Buddhist style, one of which was about women who’d had abortions suffering in hell), healing drawings by Swiss healer Emma Kunz (who died in 1963), and some vaguely outsiderish pieces (including incredible drawings by Chinese healer Guo Fengyi that she originally started doing to heal herself of ailments contracted due to factory work, and now does to “heal” others). Here’s one of her drawings:
It was great to see one of these biennale things loosen up a bit on their criteria regarding what to include. Too often they seem like sales conventions for successful galleries, with an idea tacked on to add a veneer of intellectual substance — a puppet government run by the lobbyists. This one actually seemed to be about a gathering of great stuff, no matter where it came from — some of which is shown in commercial galleries, and much that is not.
Here is a sample page from one of Shinro Ohtake’s books. He’s a musician/artist who is now in a band called JUKE/19 with Yamantaka Eye, of the more well-known Boredoms. An entire room was filled with these scrapbooks, opened to random pages. They seemed to be made of ephemera and then drawn and painted over — most pages were even more messy than this spread:
Not too many of the name artists were in attendance — I saw Maurizio Cattelan and Ai Weiwei at a lunch, but not a whole bunch of others. Other curators attended — Okwui Enwezor and Francesco Bonami showed up, checking out their co-curators’ work. It’s a long way to come for Americans and Europeans, though some westerners were making this part of an itinerary that included Beijing and other new art centers.
At the same time, almost next door to the biennale, which shows in two purpose-built buildings, there was the Gwangju art fair opening in the massive convention center. This was more of a hodgepodge — some kitschy stuff and some contemporary art from an alternative universe. Art has become a “thing” here, as it seems to be in China. It’s apparently something you have to have — every town should support it, and there are weird little galleries everywhere. Gwangju is proud of their biennale, as they should be, but what a choice for a town that on the surface seems fairly nondescript.
Gwangju, we were told, is a cultural town, and it is famous for being politically uppity too — there was a rebellion that the whole country remembers and celebrates. In 1980 the citizens of Gwangju rose up against the dictatorship that ruled Korea at that time (another that was aided and supported by the US), and were fired upon by the army. Citizens raided armories and essentially took control of the town before the uprising was brutally suppressed. On the face of things it’s a little hard to imagine — the town seems to be largely made of identical tower block apartments and love hotels. Chris Wiley, who wrote a lot about the artists in the biennale catalogue, called the apartments dystopian, but he added that the middle class here loves them. They prefer them to the funkier homes that used to fill this town. The tower blocks have gyms, pools and other mod cons, so the trade off might be understandable from a pragmatic point of view. When we arrived, I saw row after row and mile after mile of them and sort of began to get depressed, but then I was reminded that my reaction was based on the legacy, history and reputation of US and European housing projects, which is generally a story of vast neglect and of dangerous warrens for the urban poor. These, apparently, have none of that connotation, though it’s hard for us to shake our western biases and presumptions.
Here is what much of the town used to look like:
And here are some typical tower blocks. They stretch from one end of town to the other. You can identify your block by a number.
Most young folks don’t live alone before they’re married, so love hotels abound to fulfill the need of a private place to smooch. Typically the parking is indoors, and designed so that no one sees you coming or going, or sees your car parked out front. Here’s one that mixes the Statue of Liberty with neoclassical soft core — because that’s what liberty is all about.
A typhoon hit Seoul while we were in Gwangju, which may have affected biennale and art fair attendance — all flights from the capitol were suspended, trees were uprooted in Seoul and there were power outages.
We went for a walk to the old market, Yangdong. There are two markets split by a street — one side is for clothes and curtains and such, the other for food. Korean food is wonderful — spicy, pungent and mainly vegetarian. Fish and meat are used as flavorings more so than massive portions. Typical meals are accompanied by a host of pickled vegetable dishes, and few dishes are fried.
In the market there were lots of dried and fresh fish dealers, hundreds of kinds of kimchee, and beans and legumes galore. Here is a kind of pizza with greens, crab and sausage on a bean pancake. It makes a nice composition.
A vendor told us that the older folks continue to enjoy silkworm larvae, but the young folks don’t go for it so much now.
On the clothes-side of the market there were, aside from Nike and Adidas knock offs, aisle after aisle of traditional formal wear. It was hot that day, and by the time we arrived it was mid afternoon, so some of the sales personnel took advantage of the slowness and napped. We saw booth after booth of incredible, brightly-colored, formal clothes — with here and there a sleeping beauty fallen down among them.
Jeju Island
The island was recommended to us by a Korean American friend. It’s a volcanic island (though not active) about the size of Puerto Rico and lies off the southern coast of Korea. One large volcanic mountain dominates and there are hundreds of smaller cones scattered about the lush green landscape. An organization called Jeju Olle initiated the establishment of a series of trails that lie along the southern coast. The trails are divided into numbered sections, each about a 5-hour hike. Eventually they hope to have trails surrounding the whole island. This one used to be a honeymoon resort, but no longer — for a while tourism languished a bit, but now these trails have stimulated a kind of ecotourism as visitors collect hikes and compare experiences. It’s an admirable project in a place that has some local culture left (they speak a unique dialect). Unlike the theme parks and resorts that often get built in places like this, the trails are free — they foster an appreciation of the land and place (of a sort, see below) and leave no carbon footprint. The hotel suggested we try Number 7.
The first part of Number 7 is fairly mediated and built up. Along the path there are signs that show the exact locations used in historical TV dramas. There are also special tours of the island that focus entirely on former movie and TV locations — a different way of viewing a landscape. It’s landscape as a set — with accompanying nostalgic and emotional connections, if you happen to have seen the TV series.
Further on there is a baffling sign/billboard that depicts, in heightened colors, what lies directly behind the sign. Maybe it’s there to help you recognize the landscape as the real manifestation of a more iconic and familiar image: “Ah yes, that’s where we are! I’ve seen this image before.”
Further on the trail becomes more primitive, the signs are no more and one has to scamper over rocks at the base of some basalt cliffs that are honeycombed with indentations.
Then the trail leads along volcanic black rock beaches typical of this place, where women are bent over gathering seaweed that they dry on bushes or on the bike lane at the side of the road.
Koreans eat some seaweed with almost every meal — either in soup, dried as a garnish or pickled as a kind of kimchee. It’s delicious, healthy and judging by the huge piles of it these women accumulate all over the island, I assumed that Jeju might be a major seaweed source for all of Korea. I was told that no, what is gathered here is pretty much consumed here — the Korean peninsula is surrounded by water on 3 sides, so lots of seaweed is needed and it’s gathered everywhere.
Nearby these pungent piles are loads of tiny fish farms. There is abundant fresh water that pours down from the interior, which feeds these farms and is then dumped into the ocean, along with some fish that manage to escape.
We stop for a meal of fishtail stew and an amazing iced soup that is made of ground red pepper, sesame, cucumber, garlic and raw squid slices — and ice cubes. Nearby the local fishermen are bathing, naked, in a rocky pool where a river pours into the sea. Later some of them are having lunch in the restaurant, and they sprinkle a kind of acid on their dishes. It’s like super vinegar concentrate — 30% as opposed to the 5% in European vinegars — and the odor is like smelling salts or amyl nitrate. We were warned not to even smell it.
However, they do also make low acid vinegars — pomegranate, persimmon, garlic, apple and pepper — that are for drinking.
Lava Tubes
When the volcanoes in this island were erupting, the lava flowed down towards the sea, creating huge underground tubes as the outer layers of lava cooled and hardened. Subsequent lava flows took the same readymade routes, and we visited one where you can walk 1 km in. It goes on much further, 17 km I think. They’re not like limestone caves with stalagmites and stalactites, but more like a road, an abandoned subway tunnel. Water drips down everywhere and one imagines there are significant aquifers deep underground.
There are lava tubes elsewhere in the world — I went into one out west, in Utah I think it was. Those are more on the surface — one can see the overgrown snaking mounds stretching across a lava field that betray their presence, and fairly often a roof collapse allows one to clamber down into them. The tubes in Utah are smaller than those in Jeju, and in the one I climbed into there was no one around. I went in a ways, but without good lights I stopped and turned around, thinking one of the branching tributaries might be a perfect hibernating spot for a bear.
We’ve seen way too many articles recently about newspapers in financial trouble: closing bureaus, cutting back on commissioned pieces that require in-depth reporting, and erecting paywalls for their online editions in an attempt to reverse the exodus of subscribers expecting to get all their news for free. While the physical print model of news journals might disappear relatively soon — which will instantly eliminate any such news source from the 1/5 of Americans who rarely use or have access to the Internet, and don’t use smart phones — it doesn’t mean that what they do also needs to end. As the future of these institutions seems increasingly in peril, I recently began to notice some of the incredibly important things they do and have done.
In the midst of further research for Here Lies Love (someday it will see the light of day as a performance!), I read that it was the San Jose Mercury News that exposed the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth. (This would have been in the ’80s.) The Philippine press was, of course, heavily censored at the time, so they couldn’t research or write about such things. This story, which of course filtered back to the Philippines, wasn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back over there, but it was significant in opening the eyes of the Philippine populace to what was going on behind the curtain of the New Society.
In July there was a massive series in The Washington Post called “Top Secret America” (it sounds like a Team America sequel, but it’s real) detailing the massive spending and expansion of a big-beyond-belief series of agencies and outside contractors all engaged in “anti terrorist” activities. It’s hugely expensive, out of control and unaccountable. Also ineffective. It’s a huge exposé, and all the information was already public knowledge, though it required years of digging and organization to assemble a collection of coherent articles.
Just today The New York Times ran a piece about little Portugal managing to power 45% of its grid using sustainable energy after only 5 years of work (on solar, wind arrays and restructuring state utility companies). The obvious implication, to me — from the almost editorial-like nature of the article — was, “Why can’t we, the richest nation on earth, do this?” (Sustainable energy use in the US is barely 5%, and at present rate and with present policies might not catch up to Portugal in our lifetimes.) The article, as I see it, is a goad, a prod, a provocation — and proof that yes, it can be done. But not when you give oil companies massive tax breaks and offer them huge financial incentive programs; not when you don’t enforce the off shore drilling regulations that exist; and certainly not when oil guys were running the government.
These are just three examples. None of this information — or rather, the organized presentation of this information — would have come through other institutions. They simply don’t have the resources that print or TV have.
So, as we watch print media and the press struggle financially, I wonder what is to become of this segment of our democracy that is sometimes referred to as the fourth estate. This country and many others were founded on the idea that a free and open press constitutes, effectively, a separate wing of the government — keeping the other branches honest, and exposing stuff that the government, lobbyists, the military or large corporations would prefer to keep hidden. Checks and balances.
Not everyone agrees that the fourth estate is a positive force. Sometimes it’s likened to a mob, sometimes to a pack of gossips, muckrakers and scandal mongers who simply stir things up for their own pleasure, and throw their critical weight around as a way of exorcising personal psychological demons. As a performing artist I’ve had moments of agreeing with this latter assessment. But what if no one, no agency or medium, had enough popularity, readership or weight to expose situations or inform the public about some of this stuff? — never mind biased music writers. An ignorant public is a gullible public, a bunch of suckers, ripe for plucking.
The broadcast press — radio and TV — who could have picked up the slack have mostly imploded as far as serving this function. (NPR and PBS don’t have the budgets, and PBS was also under politically motivated attack.) The provocations and lies of Fox, and the celebrity focus and lack of investigation of most of the rest, render what could have been a real alternative to print invalid.
Where there used to be the occasional in-depth series on TV news shows, now there is rumormongering, inciting fear and outright lies. Most Americans get their news from TV, so we shouldn’t be surprised that they think all Muslims are somehow guilty for 9/11 or that Saddam Hussein was connected to al Qaeda.
Although we emphasize freedom of the press, shout about it and hold it up as something worth fighting for, that freedom is worthless and irrelevant if it’s rendered nearly invisible and virtually inaudible. As they used to say in Soviet Russia: when nothing was permitted, everything was important, and now that everything is permitted, nothing is important. In the Soviet days of samizdat pamphlets, “news” carried weight, and people met and talked about what they’d heard or read. But with Russia approaching Italy’s standing as a land of media awash in bimbos, game shows and corruption, most serious news that isn’t propaganda is next to invisible in the capitalist fog of anything for entertainment.
It’s not exactly true that everything is permitted anymore, what with Putin’s crew assassinating any dissenting politician or critical journalist, but you get the point: freedom of the press approaches meaninglessness as any serious work increasingly becomes discouraged because it doesn’t sell, and the lowest common denominator of journalism takes over. Dictators don’t need to take repressive measures to silence criticism, they just need to be more entertaining.
What about the Internet? Are there web institutions or investigative sites that will step in when print journalism can’t afford to fund years of investigation and research anymore? Drudge Report? The Smoking Gun? Wikileaks? Huffington? It’s a running joke to think that you might threaten someone who had wronged you or who was harming others by saying, “Beware the power of the blogosphere!” — though we know the blogosphere has indeed righted some wrongs and uncovered injustices. But it’s not as powerful and doesn’t have the resources that the press once had.
I’m glad these online institutions exist, and the Wikileak of the Afghan material will speed the end of an invasion whose plan and purpose was never thought out in the first place. But sometimes it’s not enough to leak, cull and aggregate. Research and analysis that takes time (and money) can have a larger effect on the public and their representatives than the biggest mountains of data.
Once again though, if 1/5 of the country doesn’t or can’t or won’t use the Internet, then when and if these online alternatives become the main source for news, those people will instantly be completely disenfranchised. They will be like serfs who aren’t taught to read because, well, why bother?
If one accepts that a democracy without an informed citizenry isn’t a democracy and shouldn’t refer to itself as one, then do we need to rethink how a democracy can work in our culture the near future? Some think the hive mind and self-regulating social networks are a model — that when everyone can speak and everyone is connected then the intelligence and the checks and balances will emerge all by themselves — but I’m not sure I’m ready to believe that millions of people with very little insight and almost no information can somehow magically turn into one smart collective entity.
That said, our cells don’t know what we (think we) know — individual cells don’t all “know” how to make a whole person, for example — but in a structural sense, actually, they do. The DNA for a whole person is contained in every cell, but it’s maybe less a complete blueprint than a small (relatively, for what it accomplishes) set of rules. Like swooping, flocking birds, fish or thousands of other creatures, the behavior of some groups appears to be intelligent, but it’s not. Not in the sense of being self-aware. Is that the model for a future society of “idiots” — a kind of emergent evolutionary structure? Everyone would be given a few basic rules to follow — as if instinctively — and then a whole society eventually emerges from that? It’s more like an ant colony than what we have now. It works for them. Do we want to be more like the ants?
A while back a friend told me that the Republican Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, was using the Talking Heads song “Road to Nowhere” in a campaign ad. He’s running for Senate.
Well, using a recording of a song, or even just using that song and not the original recording, in an advertisement without permission is illegal, unless the composition has gone into the public domain. It’s not just illegal because one is supposed to pay for such use and not paying is, well, theft — it’s also illegal because one has to ask permission, and that permission can be turned down.
Besides being theft, use of the song and my voice in a campaign ad implies that I, as writer and singer of the song, might have granted Crist permission to use it, and that I therefore endorse him and/or the Republican Party, of which he was a member until very, very recently. The general public might also think I simply license the use of my songs to anyone who will pay the going rate, but that’s not true either, as I have never licensed a song for use in an ad. I do license songs to commercial films and TV shows (if they pay the going rate), and to dance companies and student filmmakers mostly for free. But not to ads.
I’m a bit of a throwback that way, as I still believe songs occasionally mean something to people — they obviously mean something personal to the writer, and often to the listener as well. A personal and social meaning is diluted when that same song is used to sell a product (or a politician). If Crist and his campaign folks had asked to use the song, I would have said no — even if they had offered a lot of money, such as I have been offered in the past for ad use (though I’ve always turned these offers down).
I believe my audience is aware of this no-ad use policy of mine, and part of the respect I am accorded as an artist is due to my maintaining this policy. Needless to say, if they thought I’d licensed a song to a political campaign they might not respect me as much in the morning.
It might be pointed out that Republican campaign organizations have done this kind of thing before. John McCain’s campaign used the Jackson Browne song “Running on Empty” and Reagan’s folks used Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” Both were used illegally without permission, and in the case of the Jackson Browne song a lawsuit was brought. After the Republicans lost several motions attempting to dismiss Browne’s complaint, they settled with him. Part of the settlement said that the Republican National Committee promised to respect artists’ rights and to obtain licenses for the use of copyrighted works in the future. So, it’s not like they weren’t warned, or hadn’t been burned before.
Now, there is such a thing as fair use. Typically the type of free use that doesn’t require a permission might be a student quoting a passage in a book to make a point in a graduate paper, or someone using part (not all) of “Road to Nowhere” to identify, say, the marching groove in that song as a metaphor for the inexorable forward momentum of time, or some such notion. These uses are typically exempt from licensing, permission and fees. In this case, however, the use was not to comment on or explain something about “Road to Nowhere,” ’80s music in general, Talking Heads or Cajun accordion riffs — it was used solely to further Governor Crist’s advertising strategy in his Senate primary campaign… a campaign that has nothing to do with me or my music.
Another tactic the Republicans have used to justify this kind of thing is the right to political free speech. Their argument is that the song is integral to making a political point, and therefore falls under free speech. Well, that’s just crazy talk — the song has nothing to do with Crist’s political views. It simply has a title that is a handy catchphrase, as does the Jackson Browne song — but the content of the song itself doesn’t have any connection with the politician’s campaign or agenda.
So, my lawyers and I have filed a lawsuit — and we also hope the Republicans might not engage (again) in this kind of illegal behavior in the future.
I’ve just finished a press tour of London, Paris, Hamburg and Milano talking about the Here Lies Love project. It comes out in about a week over here. Norman (Fatboy Slim), my collaborator, would have joined me but he and his wife Zoe have just had a baby and have taken a holiday.
A tour like this consists of day after day of one interview after another. I was told that Ry Cooder once fell asleep in the middle of a phone interview. To be fair, in addition to fulfilling a publicity function, I also find out how the work is being perceived — if it’s confusing or if one aspect I hadn’t noticed seems important to people. For example, in this piece thus far, I don’t detail the Marcoses’ human rights and financial abuses. I allude to their nefarious behavior, but don’t list their nasty habits one by one. I often brought up this omission to the interviewers myself — saying I chose to intentionally focus on the psychological issues that drove Imelda… issues which, as I see them, manifested in more influential and sometimes tragic behavior later on — decisions that affected their whole nation.
I wrote in the HLL book that this whole project originated when I became fascinated reading the late Kapuscinski’s (now questionable) account of the court of Haile Selassie, and how theatrical it seemed to me. It was a theater of the absurd, stylized and in no way naturalistic — absolutely stagey, with proscribed movement and gesture, dialogue and ceremonial dress. I just now stumbled upon the phrase “political theater” in a book by Chris Hedges, in reference to contemporary TV reporters — they who often debate whether a pseudo event was convincing or not. Perfect. It’s already theater, I just needed to make it explicit.
I also mentioned that the piece might be an allegory for the human capability for evil. We see Imelda’s extravagant, ruthless and decadent behavior, which became especially prevalent after martial law was declared in the Philippines, becoming increasingly bold and widespread, as reporting of said behavior didn’t filter back much due to a censored press. When Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law, all opposition papers and TV were shut down; the populace only heard what the government wanted them to hear. (Hello, China and Italy!)
In the most inexcusable behavior I saw a manifestation of a common human trait — that when all restraints are removed, we tend to lose our moral compasses. I think it could happen to any of us. In the interviews I noted that, for example, I don’t think the soldiers at Abu Ghraib were particularly bad apples as was claimed, but that they were put in a situation where they were handed absolute power — and that kind of ultimate power corrupts absolutely. In a way, there are no evil people, but situations and contexts that allow the evil in all (or many) of us to come out. See the famous Milgram test regarding our capacity to inflict harm.
Granted, not every soldier at Abu Ghraib engaged in torture and disgusting behavior, but let’s put it this way — the leaked pictures that were proudly circulated were the whistleblowers, not the soldiers. The few bad apples rationale put forward by the administration acted in effect as an excuse for them, the higher ups — and let the poor grunts be the fall guys.
Lastly, I stated that the project is about understanding that the Marcos era is perceived, especially in the Philippines, in shades of gray, not as black and white, good vs. evil as we outsiders might tend to assume. While both Ferdinand and his wife brutally suppressed dissent and opposition, and sunk their country heavily in debt, there is in the Philippines a common perception that they, at least before martial law was declared, did some good too. They built rural schools and clinics, roads and higher education facilities that everyone there is proud of. Later, there were vast, expensive art centers built that were meant to impress foreigners and the elite, and self-commissioned monuments to the Marcos glory. Also, in the early days of their era, as a handsome couple, they represented their country on the world stage — flattering photo essays in LIFE magazine, etc. This was all something that hadn’t happened before. Of course, the good does not excuse the bad, but it makes any absolute judgment more complicated. One wishes that in this and other cases the bad could be fixed or dealt with in some way, though the most obvious — revenge and punishment — doesn’t really get us anywhere.
Looking for other gray examples, I asked a friend in London, “Did Margaret Thatcher do anything good?” Needless to say I’m no friend of Thatcherism. The answer was yes — one thing she did was to allow people living in public housing to buy their own dwellings. Developers and speculators weren’t allowed to do this, only the residents. So, eventually you had people, some of whom might have been living in squalid housing estates (projects, as they’re called in the US), beginning to take an interest in their homes, surroundings and neighborhoods. Does this mitigate the other stuff Thatcher did? (With an understanding that not everyone might agree that this housing policy was good.) Well, it humanizes the Iron Lady just a little bit; it adds a tiny diamond to the pile of brutal nastiness.
Maybe the South African Truth and Reconciliation system is a model for dealing with past crimes? If the perp comes clean, absolutely, and admits to every wrongdoing, then forgiveness can be granted in some cases, and healing begins. But if there is an insistence on excuses and an attempt to justify offense, and the plea is refused, it gets them a court prosecution. Maybe this is better than The Hague, which the US set up as a sort of legalized vengeance institution. In this process it seems it’s not about healing, it’s about punishment. But throwing one man in jail for slaughtering hundreds, or hanging another, doesn’t soothe the pain — it merely makes the object of hatred vanish.
A lot of the interviewers zeroed in on the statement in my written introduction in which I proposed that this package — with its thematically linked songs, DVD, 120-page book and 2 CDs — might be a response to the “death of the album.” I guess there are some record collectors out there who will miss that format. All, however, agreed that CDs, especially in their plastic jewel boxes with tiny booklets, are ugly. Most had trouble imagining what might happen in the near future. I suggested that multimedia packages (with links, text, video and images) might be perfect for smart phones and other new devices; they might be better than CDs in some ways, which have gotten increasingly stingy in their packaging and content, offering the consumer less and less for their buck.
Mega pop artists might, for example, just release a few singles and attention grabbing videos of those songs. Many more millions might be willing to spring for a couple of songs (or video downloads) than for a whole album from artists who typically fill out their CDs with less than stellar tunes.
Others will have to find some other format, which is only regrettable in the sense that there is an economy of scale in selling bundles of 12 tunes. It doesn’t cost a whole lot more to market a CD that contains 12 tunes than a single — but the income from the 12 song bundle is 10 times as much, or more. So, while mainstream pop artists might sell many more singles, the lower ends of that bell curve — the artists whose output will never sell millions of singles but does have an loyal audience — won’t find that model very sustainable.
Much of the personnel of the local Warner branch have been laid off not too long ago. Some actually got their notices very recently, and the day I arrived was their last day on the job. The woman who represents Italian artists to the world was let go. I saw her vanish down a hallway — she resembles the fashion mistress in The Incredibles.
I wonder who and what will be left of these regional offices in the next few years. Not much, I fear. I heard a story that one executive felt the obligation to visit Tori Amos and her husband at their home studio complex in Cornwall to assess or hear a record of hers. It’s a good four hours from London by train and car (I know because I went there to record her vocals on this project), so the exec took a helicopter. Those days are over.
While at the Warner offices in Milano, I was right in the midst of a series of interviews when a siren went off and everyone in the building evacuated. We trooped down the stairs, 7 flights, to the front driveway where many turned it into a smoke break. We walked over to the hotel and continued over there.
For lunch we went to a nearby vegetarian restaurant with a molecular cuisine slant — my entree was called “A stroll in the forest” and consisted of a bowl of two colored foams under which lay buried crispy and flavorful vegetables, each flavored with a different spice. As one of the Warner staff mentioned, “Each bite gives another flavor and another surprise.”
In case you think this meal is proof that helicopter-style extravagance hasn’t gone out of style, the set lunch here goes for 17 euros — not as low as a cheap slice or a gyro from a Halal cart, but not a helicopter either.
On lunch break in Paris I used the local press officer’s metro card to bum a ride on one of the Vélib' bikes. It’s a little bit confusing, all the swiping and button pushing necessary to release the bike, but then it’s easy. I went for a ride down along the Seine, over a pedestrian bridge by the Eiffel tower, and circled back to the hotel. It costs one euro for a 24-hour period (or you can buy a monthly or yearly pass), and within that period there is unlimited use as long as each individual ride doesn’t exceed 30 minutes. So, you could go to get groceries, or to the movies, or to meet friends for dinner or commute to work, if it’s not too far. As there are Vélib' stations all over town, you reinsert the bike in the nearest station-locking port to your destination, and the clock stops ticking. Then, at no additional charge, you pick up another one to get back home or to your next stop and the clock resets at zero again.
[Photo: Matthew Rankin]
One bike at the station had a flat tire, and its port flashed red, indicating it was not available for use. I was also advised to check the brakes and chains before removing a bike, as sometimes they’re not kept up. When I asked about the recent US news reports that the Vélib' bikes were getting vandalized and trashed, mostly by the immigrant population of the Parisian suburbs, I was told that it seemed like an anti-immigrant rumor and that the theft and vandalism rate is much lower than reported in that article.
The bike itself is heavy and has only three gears, so it’s fine for most of the town but riding up to Sacré-Coeur might be inadvisable.
Good news part one is that Sagmeister Inc. won a Grammy
yesterday for their design of the Everything
That Happens CD package. Enjoy your stay in LA, Stefan.
This from an e-mail he sent:
....the
night before at the nominee party, Tia Carrere asks me: "What
category are you nominated in?" "We
are up in the most significant and glorious category of them all: Packaging!" "Oh,
you are wrong dear, wrong. 'Best album notes' do KICK YOUR ASS."
In other news today, the NYC Design
Commission met—that’s the committee that “reviews
permanent works of art, architecture and landscape architecture proposed on or
over City-owned property” and determines what sort of public art can
become permanent additions to New York’s landscape. Part of their agenda was
deciding issues involving my bike racks. I
didn’t go. The upshot is they decided that the ones that are already up could
stay, but that, for example, the one I designed and that was approved by the
New Museum, can’t go up.
It’s a pretty tame design—basically a standard staple shape,
like regular bike racks, but slightly larger and with indentations in the
outline of their unique building:
The
other one I offered them—in the shape of a bottle of Thunderbird—was deemed to
be in bad taste by the museum (this one didn't go to the Design Commission for approval, just the building-shaped one):
According to someone who was there it seemed like it was mostly
a political decision and not an artistic (or even practical) one, though who
knows? The DOT, who put up my bike racks, is by law allowed to erect things and
make changes here and there without the Design Commission’s approval, with the
provision that they are not permanent additions to the city landscape. Such as placing
a geodesic dome (on loan from a gallery) on city property on the occasion
of an exhibit celebrating Fuller’s design work, or bringing in a
muralist to paint over an ugly and temporary wall. (See DOT’s Urban Art Program for more examples.) These things
go away after a while, and my bike racks were no exception. They were legally
allowed to be up for 364 days, but if they stayed up one day longer—if they
crossed that line—their continued presence would have to be voted on by this
committee of experts on cultural matters.
So, between my office, the New Museum and the DOT the
requisite applications were filled out and filed in the fall and then the wait
began—months later the day of reckoning arrived (that would be today) and the
cultural gatekeepers who would decide the matter were, it seems, mightily
pissed off. They were annoyed that the DOT had—in some of their eyes—encroached
onto their territory, and this effrontery would not stand. As a compromise they
would allow the existing—and can I say well-received?—bike
racks to stay, but as retribution for not going through said gatekeepers the DOT
(and the rest of us) would be punished by no more additional bike racks being
allowed. Well, not funny designed ones at least.
It was suggested by the gatekeepers that more artists and
Parsons and SVA students etc. etc. who had ideas for city projects should come
to them—maybe via Creative Time
or other organizations (with whom I have collaborated more than once)…I wonder
how many emerging artists would have the patience for the form-filling,
waiting, and political stupidity that is involved in going via the gatekeepers—not
many, I would think.
The DOT did in fact obey the rules, but in putting up
something a little artier than bollards or such they were perceived as making
cultural decisions and incursions—and that—in the view of the gatekeepers—was
intolerable, even if the work was practical and popular! So, no more bike racks
from me for NYC—unless a building or institution wants them on their own and
not on city property. Sorry folks, sometimes stupidity wins the day. (But at
least the ones that are up can stay.)
Went to a friend’s, Ford Wheeler’s, new house in Mérida (Yucatán) on the 27th through the New Year. Mérida is now a sizable town, but a bit of a backwater, and therefore its colonial center is more or less intact and there are few tourists — they all head west towards Chichén Itzá, Tulum and Cancún instead. I’d been here a few years ago and there are two blogentries on the ruins that are all around the area, the Maya and the collapse of their civilization. Now I wondered about the collapse of the massive European-based civilization that flourished here.
Mérida used to be one of the wealthiest cities in the New World. “For a brief period, around the turn of the 20th century, Mérida was said to house more millionaires than any other city in the world” [Link]. Who’d a thunk it? The money came from henequen — an agave-type plant that, when processed, could be made into rope and other durable products. It is sometimes known as sisal, after the Caribbean port town nearby where it was shipped off in massive quantities. Green gold, it was called.
I used to have a kind of carpet made of “sisal.” When nylon and other man-made products were created that could replace henequen, the Yucatán monopoly collapsed and the millions evaporated. This was the second collapse of a civilization in that peninsula, the first being the collapse of the Maya civilization, which had already begun, but proceeded more rapidly after the arrival of the Spanish, who claimed the city from the Maya in 1542. Because it was a pre-existing city, it is considered the oldest continually occupied city in the New World. That doesn’t mean there is an abundance of buildings that are 500 years old — but there are a few. Though the great Maya temples are now ruins, and their peninsula-spanning network of roads and cities has all but vanished, the people are still present, and much of their culture survives.
The Spanish, like the English in North America, instigated a feudal system when they arrived that was based on race — with the Spanish at the top, people of Spanish descent (Creoles) next, mestizos (mixed race people) in the middle and the Maya as slaves at the bottom. The Spanish built massive haciendas — huge plantations that were like self-supporting towns unto themselves.
Mexican insurgents fought for independence from Spain — a movement that started around 1800, ending with independence in 1821 — though it was hardly democracy. Agustín de Iturbide declared himself Emperor after victory. But Mexico was not the Yucatán. With independence from Spain, some here hoped that the brutal caste system would come to an end — but what happened was the Creoles simply took over from the Spanish as rulers and nothing much changed. Besides, the Yucatán wasn’t considered a part of Mexico proper — it was a separate country. Eventually, and not surprisingly, a war erupted — the Caste War.
The Caste War was long coming — private interests had been usurping Maya lands for some time — and it was the execution of three Maya that triggered the uprising. It continued for decades and by 1848 the Europeans had been driven from the entire peninsula, except for the cities of Mérida and Campeche… and the port of Sisal. The Maya had almost won, but then something strange happened.
Swarms of flying ants appeared, which we might interpret as some Biblical omen, but the Maya realized this meant it was the perfect time to begin planting their crops — so they abandoned the battlefield and walked away, not realizing that victory was close at hand.
The Creole Yucatáns, still a separate nation, offered sovereignty — their country! — to anyone who would help them defeat the Maya. Mexico answered the call and the Maya were pushed back — well, halfway. The “European” Mexicans controlled the northwest (Mérida, etc.), while the Maya controlled the jungle and the southeastern portion of the peninsula.
The Talking Cross
In 1850, an apparition appeared to the Maya — a Talking Cross — that urged them to continue their struggle. This was in the area called Chan Santa Cruz, which Britain recognized at this time as an independent nation (it was close to British Honduras — present-day Belize — which was British-controlled, and they traded with one another). But as years went by the British began trading more with Mexico, and the balance of power eventually shifted; by 1893 they signed a treaty recognizing Mexican sovereignty over the Maya-controlled region — and stopped all trade between Honduras (still their colony) and Chan Santa Cruz. The “rebels” had been isolated.
[Source]
Logan Hawkes attempted to find the Talking Cross. Here is an excerpt from his account:
Deep in the jungle…at the tiny straw-hut Maya community of Tixcacal Guardia, village elders fiercely guard what they swear is the authentic cross and will let no outsider near it. Kept within a 'city within the city', much like the Vatican, the talking, or speaking cross, is safely hidden away from all eyes except the Cruzob spiritual leaders - the head Shaman and a circle of Elders.
Down Highway 295 is the turnoff for Tixcacal Guardia, or Xcacal, religious and spiritual heart of the lower Maya world. It is home to the Maya who most fiercely defend their autonomy as keepers of the Cruz Parlante, or ‘talking cross’. The church in which the cross now rests is actually open to the public, but only on feast days, and even then the artifact is not on display – not even to the Maya themselves. It stands on an altar covered with veils in a blocked-off section of the church called La Gloria, and no one enters this inner sanctum. The cross is guarded day and night by armed Maya who hail from all across the region. [Source]
During the time when Chan Santa Cruz was an independent nation, non-Maya were forbidden to enter the region — they would be instantly killed — but after so many years of conflict, financial isolation, and the arrival of the Wrigley’s company looking for chicle (the sap that forms the basis of chewing gum!), the war was declared over in 1915. By then the world of the henequen barons was already collapsing.
So, that’s the story of what was once one of the wealthiest parts of the New World — and not so long ago either! Kind of puts things in perspective. There are decaying haciendas all over the peninsula, like this one with a chimney built to vent off the processing of the henequen, and many of them have been renovated as luxury resorts with swimming pools added.
I was told that a powerful rabbi based in Williamsburg objected strongly to the bike lanes that run alongside their ghetto on Bedford Ave. We were informed that the sight of hipster girls, their heads uncovered and sometimes their lower legs as well, is just too much to bear — though it’s winter now, and surely the gals are bundled up this time of year? Well, that was what, we were told, was the problem initially.
So, the powerful rabbi insisted to the DOT that the lanes had to go — and shortly thereafter they did.
Sure enough, some (Jewish) hipsters repainted the lane by hand, and the rabbi’s wrath was aroused once again — his neighborhood watch (vigilante) group detained the hipsters until the cops came. After no subsequent action against the perps was taken by the city, he demanded that the kids be re-apprehended, which they were — they voluntarily turned themselves in.
OK, on the face of it this is all pretty silly if you live in NY. Hasidic men are not supposed to see scantily clad women. (The man in the photo above has turned his head, but the gal is having a good long look.) In the past they’ve also complained about sexy billboards (ads for Sex and the City) on the BQE and elsewhere. How do they manage when they travel to Manhattan to deal diamonds and cameras? Are they blindfolded until they enter B&H? In addition, that corridor alongside the Hasidic ghetto is just about the only way to cycle from Williamsburg to Dumbo, Vinegar Hill or Brooklyn Heights. The stream of sexy cyclists will therefore continue, though at greater risk to their own safety. Maybe there could be a service offering wigs and wraps for cyclists passing through the No Skin zone.
Some on the blogosphere claim it’s actually not about immodest dress at all — that it’s a ruse, and the real idea is to keep the number of car lanes in the ghetto intact, and to reinstate parking spaces that were cannibalized for the bike lane. The need for plenty of parking is due to the fact that the Hasidim often don’t travel with the rest of us on subways and buses, but in their own vans and bus services — and local transport (food shopping, etc.) is mostly done by private car as well. School kids are dropped off in buses that park in what were, until recently, the bike lanes. This lifestyle requires plenty of parking — more than most other folks need. And I suspect that yes, at times some hipsters probably zoom a bit too carelessly and too close to the school kids. Well, bike lanes or no bike lanes, parking is scarce and getting scarcer in NY, so there may have to be some adjustments eventually. In Antwerp, the European center for Hasidic diamond dealing, the Hasidic kids ride bikes around town.
Although I might be expected to champion anything bike related, I think my problem with this situation is more general — how much do we allow ethnic and religious groups to not blend in and to not become part of the general social fabric, especially in a major metropolis? (We’re not talking about rural communes, where folks can wear what they like and be as freaky as they like on their own.) Multiculturalism, I gather, is the idea that we shouldn’t force outside cultures and immigrants to conform to the culture of the dominant ethnic group — we should respect the integrity of their beliefs and customs. More than just allowing halal or kosher butchers to move in, this idea implies that we might start to see things from the other’s point of view — and sometimes accommodate their wishes, even if they don’t conform to those of the majority. This idea has met its match since 9/11 — Europe, previously a bastion of Muslim enclaves and ghettos of various types and ethnicities, has in recent years pushed back against multiculturalism, and a more nuanced idea is taking hold — sometimes. Other times intolerance rears its ugly head.
Likewise, cyclists, thus far a minority, might be seen in the same light — as a fringe culture that mainstream culture accommodates and tolerates as long as the cyclists don’t insist that the dominant culture bend to their specific wishes. This, in a nutshell, is the argument that some NY communities have made when Janette Sadik-Kahn throws a bike lane in their hood. The argument might be valid, though often the local businesses discover that, for example, bike parking by their shop fronts brings in more customers, and there’s less of a chance that a van or truck will block the view of their windows. And in many cases, the complainers were outvoted by the rest of their own community.
Plus, in NYC, drivers and car owners might be in the minority — most of my friends who live here don’t own cars.
In Holland, the most tolerant place on the planet, it is becoming accepted that tolerance has to go both ways. In other words, the Muslim immigrants are increasingly expected, even by fellow Muslims in Amsterdam, to become “Dutch” in some respects. Which means they must accept that there is a long tradition of tolerance in Holland, especially in Amsterdam, and if one is to move to Holland one should expect to accept this typically Dutch way of thinking. The Muslim community, for example, has to get used to the fact that there is a district with sex shops and scantily dressed women in the windows, same-sex couples might kiss in public, and coffee shops selling hash are a common sight. The implicit agreement is that living in Holland means you accept such things, as tasteless as you may find them. The Dutch, of course, allow the local Muslim population to maintain their own customs as well — as long as they fit in and don’t make lots of demands.
This is a change from a provocative attitude that, a few years ago, resulted in the death of Theo van Gogh. He had made a film, one that deliberately goaded and incited the Dutch Muslim population, in collaboration with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who received death threats and is now protected by the government — and is involved with the American Enterprise Institute, a right wing US think tank. Their 10 minute film features a naked woman in a see-through chador, with Koranic verses justifying the submission of women written on her body. Like the Danish cartoons, this was viewed by Muslims as a deliberate provocation… and a crude one at that. One might view it as liberal fascism.
An image from the film — and van Gogh dead on the street.
Not that van Gogh deserved to die. The Dutch rallied and demonstrated after his death, and saw the killing as an attempt to stifle free speech — to imply that public expression and criticism has limits. Some free speech advocates insist that one be allowed to say and express anything, barring the encouragement of violence. Others saw the film as being offensively provocative — in a way, they viewed the incident as if the filmmakers were asking for it. Free speech advocates feel that it’s an absolute, and that people should be allowed to say anything, as it’s “only words.”
Ian Buruma, a writer of Dutch background, has written about this incident and the issues that arise from it. He argues that freedom of speech should not be considered absolute — and that thinking in absolutes always leads to disaster. He says we limit our own freedom of speech all the time — around family and relatives over the holidays, I am reminded — and we do it to get along, to allow society to function, for our own happiness and the happiness of others. It’s not necessarily a lie to not blurt out the ugly truth whenever you think it. During the holidays we don’t tease Uncle Harry about his comb-over because we know it would just make the get together more tense than it already is — and who would gain from such insensitive honesty? Stifling free speech just a little, with some subtle self-censorship, makes life pleasanter for everyone.
A few years ago, Mamie Manneh, a Staten Island woman, was arrested for importing 720 pounds of monkey meat, including limbs, skulls and torsos, from baboons and green monkeys in boxes labeled “African dresses and smoked fish” [Link]. She argued it was her Constitutional right to bring monkey meat into the United States. Her lawyers claimed she needed to eat monkey during certain religious ceremonies for her syncretic faith, which merges Christian and African traditions [Source].
In my opinion, besides being disgusting, eating bush meat isn’t actually linked to deep traditions — it emerged as a food source fairly recently, out of hunger and dire necessity. And yes, it crossed the line among some people and was considered an element of ritual. I would argue that it’s not actually a healthy or acceptable food source in Africa, and if you immigrate to Staten Island that might be one of the things you compromise in the move.
Then, on the other side, there’s the recent Swiss minaret ban. Unbelievable! — Zurich has decided to ban new construction of minarets. I foresee other countries banning steeples typical of Christian churches in retaliation. Tit for tat. The Swiss right wing reasoning, if you can call it reasoning, is that mosques are not Swiss, and when in Switzerland one must be Swiss. McDonald’s isn’t Swiss either, and neither are a lot of other easily recognizable branded forms of architecture and décor. Who knows, maybe they even have a panel of guys in funny alpine clothes who decide if contemporary buildings are “Swiss” or not. Presumably, all banks are Swiss — except the ones with Arabic decoration.
Historically, erasing the culture of immigrants or ethnic groups within one’s borders has been attempted over and over. The Soviet Union tried to make all the groups within its massive borders Russian. Stalin shipped ethnic groups from one side of the continent to the other, to thwart any future ethnic unity and uprising. I’ve seen pockets of distinctly Asian-looking Kazakhs in the part of Russia that borders Finland!
In Tajikistan they banned the Persian alphabet, erasing Tajiks’ literary history, and outlawed Islam. This intolerance often only partly succeeds — in many of those former republics, now no longer part of Russia, Islam and local pride have reasserted themselves with a vengeance. Ripping out people’s identities has frightening consequences. When Tajikistan became independent in 1991, the country soon became immersed in a bloody civil war.
One wishes for some kind of common sense to prevail. What harm does a minaret do to the neighborhood? Well, I guess some have a sense of Swiss purity — and purity seeking of any kind always raises a red flag. Some small Italian towns have banned new kebab shops — again, claiming they are not Italian. Hello? Neither were tomatoes! To me, this is all just as silly as the rabbi in Brooklyn claiming that the hipster babes must be discouraged from passing through his neighborhood. Prohibition would probably be preferable — though he doesn’t want to build a wall just yet…
When foreigners visit religious shrines, temples, mosques and churches in other lands, we — if we’re at all sensitive — abide by the local customs. And people from those lands can be expected to reciprocate when they are within our borders.
“My husband was at Starbucks enjoying a coffee and reading the paper when about eight people sat down, opened their Bibles and held a group prayer. Then one of them began a loud sermon that my husband found offensive for its content as well as its sheer volume. I say the group was within its rights. My husband says they made inappropriate use of the location. What do you say?”
(The advice columnist said the evangelicals were within their legal rights, but their lack of social empathy was disgusting.)
Like Rodney King said — Can we all just get along? Can we tolerate difference, without taking toleration to the extreme, where everyone is expected to accept insults and provocations? Tolerance shouldn’t mean we have to let anyone with a different lifestyle boss the rest of us around. It seems maybe there’s no absolute dividing line between what we tolerate and what we insist is unacceptable. The measure of how much we should tolerate is: does it help us get along? If it divides us further, then maybe it’s not a good idea. Granted we don’t want to have to compromise our own beliefs or ways of life — resentment will lie buried, festering, and will reassert itself in some form, later, maybe somewhere else seemingly completely unrelated. I don’t want to compromise my own activities, safety and way of life more than is reasonably necessary — but I can still accommodate somewhat. Where the line is might shift from time to time — it’s not fixed, or unchangeable forever. Adaptability and accommodation make us human. Absolutes are for machines and vengeful Gods. What we sometimes call common sense — not going by the book, whether that be the law or the Bible — might be how we survive. But being an ever-changing thing, it’s hard to define. It is learnt, I imagine, by living together, improvising, and innovating, not from a rulebook.
