The international organization Human Rights Watch insisted Thursday that the authorities in Honduras and the United States clarify the circumstances in which four people were killed during a joint military operation in La Mosquito.

“The US and Honduran authorities must ensure that they will launch an impartial and exhaustive investigation into the joint operation against drug traffickers in Mosquita region of Honduras”, said the organization in Washington.

Human Rights Watch extolled both governments to establish during their investigation whether the use of lethal force during the police and militaryaction was justified.

“It is fundamental that the honduran and us authorities adopt measures to ensure that these deaths will be investigated rigourously”, underlined José Miguel Vivanco, director of human rights watch for the americas.

In the case that the evidence shows that the security forced violated international standards, “then we must respond to the situation”, he added.

Worldwide regulations allows the use of lethal force on the part of the public security official only in the narrow case in which it is to protect a life, to defend one’s self, or to defend a third party who is in imminent danger of death of serious injury or when less extreme means would not be sufficient.

Contradictory accounts have been given of the events of may 11 in the community of Ahuás and Patuca, in the department of Gracias a Dios, in the east of Honduras.

The director of the National Police, Ricardo Ramírez del Cid, said that during the operation in which a shipment of cocaine was seized, the helicopter crew opened fire after being fired upon from men on the ground.

The US Embassy in Honduras said the same thing while confirmation the participation of DEA agents in the operation.

However, the mayor of Ahuas, Vaquedano Lucio said that “innocent people unrelated to the problem of drugs being transported in an ordinary fishing boat … were machine gunned from the air.”

Because of the incident, the people in La Mosquitia are demanding that the DEA agents leave the area.

date: 17 May 2012

translated from: http://www.elheraldo.hn/Secciones-Principales/Pais/Human-Rights-Watch-pide-investigacion-exhaustiva-sobre-operativo-en-La-Mosquitia

Deaths in Mosquitia were not Narcos said the Authorities

The four persons that died and an equal number injured in an drug raid operation were not drug traffickers, rather they were humble and honest citizens, yesterday said congressman Wood Grawell Maylo and the major of the city of Ahuas, Lucio Baquedao.

The events occured in the dawn last friday when a helicopter with Honduran and American DEA agents opened fire on a boat in the Patuca river in a place known as “Paplaya” believing they were shooting at drug traffickers. Killed were the youths Emersen Martínez, Chalo Brock Wood, as well as the pregnant women Canderlaria Tratt Nelson and Juana Banegas. Also injured were Hilda Lezama de Eulopio, Wilmer López, Lucio Adán and Melanio Eulopio.

According to the mayor, the boat came under attack heading out in the dawn in front of the sand bar of El Patuca in the direction of the town of Ahuas to drop off scuba divers.

Baquedano explained that as the boat turned around and headed back they came across another boat which was being chased by the National Police and American DEA agents..  ”The drug traffickers boat had no lights while the other boat had lights making it the only visible target to the agents firing from the helicopter,” he said.

The drug traffickers abandoned their craft and fled in the direction of the El Patuca. The inhabitants of El Patuca burned down four houses believing that the authorities in Ahuas and Mosquitia had called on the helicopter.  ”This operation was put together in an irresponsible manner.  One would suppose that people who are participating in this would act upon drug traffickers and not innocent people,” he said.

He said they are alarmed because they now there is the looming threat that operations will kill poor people as well as drug traffickers and the agents will  want to operate freely. ”We ask that you investigate the case thoroughly because it killed four people including two pregnant women,” said Baquedano. For his part, Deputy Grawell Maylo Wood, explained that those operations are unfortunate because they were implemented irresponsibly.

“I heard with great indignation the police chief, Jose Ricardo Ramirez Del Cid, say that the operation was successful because two drug traffickers were killed in the attack which also killed simple citizens,” he said. The congressman introduced in yesterday’s session of Congress a motion to clarify the facts for which we are now led to believe that the dead and injured were involved in drug trafficking, which congressman denies. The military spokesman, Jeremiah Arevalo said the military was not involved in the operation of the Mosquito because it was an operation by the police.

According to the authority, la Mosquitia is one of the most widely used areas for drug trafficking for the many rivers, streams, and creeks there.

Tiempo newspaper sent an email to the USA embassy for comment but at the publication date of this article there has been no response.

Dateline: TEGUCIGALPA. 14 May 2012.

Translated from :  http://www.tiempo.hn/index.php/honduras/10766-muertos-en-la-mosquitia-no-eran-narcos-dicen-autoridades

George Allen

As one would expect given its location, most of the museum is dedicated to Chile’s history of human rights violations. Through video, news clippings, and testimonials, the second and third floors tell the story of the tumultuous period leading up to the coup in 1973 and the dark years that followed. For those who don’t know, Salvador Allende won the 1970 election by a narrow margin, and proceeded to implement economic changes such as nationalizing copper and banks and land reform.  Allende’s reforms and Marxist ties were unpopular particularly in Washington, where President Nixon reportedly called him a “son of a bitch.” Without a majority in the congress, Allende lost control of the economy in 1973 after a series of strikes–encouraged by Kissinger and the CIA–and then lost the support of the military. Led by Army General Augusto Pinochet, Chilean troops launched a coup bombing the capital building, capturing prominent Allende-friendly politicians, and taking full control of the country with in a week.

Pinochet proceeded to establish a brutal dictatorship and reign of terror, killing thousands of Chileans and foreign leftists in the first months. Walking through the museum, one cannot help be reminded of the horrors committed by so many other Latin American despots and the complicit role played by the United States in creating, supporting, or ignoring them.

As Greg Grandin argues in his recent book, “Empire’s Workshop” there are intimate links between US foreign policy tactics in Latin America and those now in use in many countries in the Middle East. According to Grandin, the supposed innovation of the Bush administration to view the world as “a crisis-ridden world that justifies the use of unilateral and brutal American military power nor their utopian vision of the same world made whole and happy by that power is new. Both have been fully in operation in Washington’s approach to Latin America for over a century. The history of the US in Latin America is cluttered with ‘preemptive’ interventions that even the most stalwart champions of US hegemony have trouble defending”.

As if attempting to highlight this connection, a selection of Francisco Botero’s “Abu Ghraib” paintings and drawings are on display at the Museum this fall. As the name suggests, Botero’s exposition depicts the torture of Iraqis that occurred at US-run Iraqi prison Abu Ghraib in 2003-04. The exhibit indignantly echoes the particular and the universal of human rights abuses, and calls for profound reflection about what it means to make another human suffer. Further, seen at a museum dedicated to remembering the staging ground for one of Latin America’s most brutal dictators, Botero’s exhibit also emphasizes the relation between current and former US foreign policy abroad.

Best known for his almost comically voluptuous statues like “Caballo” in Santiago’s Parque Forestal, Botero’s “Abu Ghraib” paintings were a departure from the Colombian-born artist’s typical artistic endeavors. Botero’s artwork often evokes social themes, but few are as direct as the “Abu Ghraib” exposition, which he says he started drawing on an airplane after he learned–along with the rest of the world–what was occurring in Iraq. Botero writes, “I like everyone else, was shocked by the barbarity, especially because the US is supposed to be the model of compassion…These works are the result of the indignation that the violations in Iraq produced in me and the rest of the world.”

Though Botero claims not to have based his portraits on the infamous photographs of Lynndie England and Charles Graner, the paintings echo the horror of those particular photos. In his characteristic gigantism style, Botero depicts figures strung up in cells by their wrists wearing women’s underwear, sodomized by broom sticks, bitten by dogs, and urinated on by prison guards.

Botero’s tortured figures dominate, and nearly overflow their boundaries. In the largest colored portraits, levianathic men writhe in transfixed agony at the hands of teal-gloved disembodied torturers. The upturned faces of torment painted in Medieval-style color evoke Christ-like suffering. On first glance the Christian imagery appears to frame the torture and suffering of Iraqi prisoners too comfortably. Doesn’t it seem insulting to view the Abu Ghraib human rights violations through the lens of the dominant ideology of the torturers?

Yet, at the same time the familiar imagery invites the viewer to identify with the suffering of the individual in Christian terms, it points to the hypocrisy of religious rhetoric that pervaded the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Looking at these portraits it’s hard not to think of militant American ideologues evoking the Christian moral high-ground as the justification for the invasion, occupation, and torture of Iraqi civilians.

The heaviness in “Abu Ghraib” also encourages the viewer to reflect beyond the singularity of these human rights offenses to the universality of man’s tendency to harm his fellow man. Botero’s immense, fleshy figures are almost too large for the canvas, emphasizing the enormity of the violation, and highlighting the physicality involved in the act of torture.

This heaviness, though verging on the extreme, also lends dignity to these characters. It emphasizes gravity–not just moral gravity–but the physical force common to all humanity. In this way, Botero’s portraits change Iraqi prisoners from individual cases into the “everyman” of human suffering. Viewed in light of the initial US government explanation of Abu Ghraib–essentially the “just a few bad eggs” theory–Botero’s “everyman” symbolizes the counter-narrative. As we now know, it was not “just a few bad eggs” that perpetrated the human rights abuses in Abu Ghraib, but a system and a culture that encouraged such acts, beginning at the very top of the hierarchy. These portraits connect Abu Ghraib to the painfully long history of human on human violence reminding us of the part we all play in this history. They make us ask, how did I react when I heard about Abu Ghraib? What did I do? How should I have reacted?

It’s unlikely that those truly responsible for ordering torture–Bush and his cabinet–will ever be brought to justice, but these portraits make us look beyond Bush to our own role in the incident. Would it be enough to bring the Bush cabinet to justice? It’s certainly an important step, but it can’t be enough. Botero’s “Abu Ghraib” seeks to expand the circle of complicity, of guilt, and ultimately of reflection. This is both the strength and the weakness of the exhibit. Reflection and admitting mistakes are vital, but perhaps “reflection” has been tainted in the USA. After admonishing me for apologizing too profusely, a friend pointed out that Americans are constantly apologizing for things. “Sorry to bother you”, “Sorry I can’t make it”, etc, are so common they’ve been emptied of all meaning. Of course these can be sincere expressions of regret, but we might do well to question what it means to really apologize. In other words to reflect upon the act of reflecting.

There is always a danger of insincere reflection. Movies “based on real life” make us feel we understand the real event; we see documentaries or investigative reports about repressed people and feel we understand them. The refrain, “your enemy is only someone whose story you haven’t heard” sets a dangerous precedent, and goes unchallenged too often. Who tells the story is just as important as the story that gets told.

Though obviously well-intentioned, the danger of Botero’s exhibit is that it allows us to reflect from our secure towers of educated, liberal, democratic citizenship–instead of challenging our pre-conceived notions about what we should feel about Abu Ghraib, it risks reinforcing them. Perhaps there’s no way out of this circle of deceptive self-reflection, but looking at Botero’s gigantic portraits I found myself thinking about the first pictures I’d seen from Abu Ghraib. The picture of Lynndie England smoking a cigarette while holding a naked prisoner on a leash; England and Graner throwing up a peace sign behind a pyramid of naked prisoners; or the hooded prisoner atop a wooden crate attached to electrical wires. Those pictures were so jarring because they felt revelatory, like a phantom of the unconscious, frightening but true. As I left the exhibit I found myself thinking that we should still be talking about those terrifying photos, not an artistic interpretation. Though no fault of his own, Botero’s portraits pale in comparison. Art, in this case, is no substitute for the real.

Julia Hones

If history repeats itself reading ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ can help you understand the effects of the current world financial crisis. This essay is a historical document about the lives of homeless men in the early thirties during the aftermath of the 1929 Wall Street crash. What makes it so compelling and real is that George Orwell does not write about poverty from a distance or as a result of some kind of research; his writing is based on his own personal experience as he himself suffered the consequences of starvation and social ostracism.

The book begins with some interesting real sketches of scenes in the slums of Paris. Orwell’s troubles start when he discovers that he only has 450 francs left and beyond this nothing but thirty-six francs a week which he earns by giving English lessons. He uses 200 to pay his month’s rent in advance, and so he plans to use the remaining 250 francs to live for a month and find a job during that period. His plans, however, are shattered when somebody steals all the money he left in his room except for forty-seven francs that he kept in his pocket. To make matters worse, his students desert him and so do the thirty-six francs a week he was counting on. This is the beginning of his hardship.

“You discover what it is like to be hungry. With bread and margarine in your belly, you go out and look into the shop windows. Everywhere there is food insulting you in huge, wasteful piles, whole dead pigs, baskets of hot loaves, great yellow blocks of butter, strings of sausages, mountains of potatoes, vast Gruyere cheese like grindstones. A sniveling self-pity comes over you at the sight of so much food. You plan to grab a loaf and run, swallowing it before they catch you; and you refrain from pure funk.

“You discover the boredom which is inseparable from poverty; the times when you have nothing to do and, being underfed, can interest yourself in nothing.”

During these desperate times the narrator remembers an old friend of his, a Russian refugee called Boris. Hoping that Boris can help him find a job he contacts him. To his dismay, he finds that Boris’s misery is even greater than his: he had lost his job after being in hospital, spent all his money and pawned all his clothes. He is now living on two francs a day and sleeps on the floor- two francs a day are just enough to buy a bowl of coffee and six rolls.

Together, the two men try to find a job that will rescue them from their hopeless situation. They undergo different challenging experiences but they find nothing except swindles that take away the little money they have. The way they support each other through this terrible period of suffering and starvation is touching.

Eventually Boris finds jobs for both in the Hotel X. They start working as ‘plongeurs’. ‘Plongeurs’ have to work in the restaurant by washing, cleaning and assisting the waiters to serve the food. They have the lowest position, work under intense pressure, and are insulted on a regular basis. In spite of working long hours, their wages are extremely low and they cannot save anything. Orwell states that they are like slaves.

The Hotel X was one of the dozen most expensive hotels in Paris and the customers paid startling prices. If a customer had a title, or was reputed to be a millionaire, all his charges went up automatically. However, this ‘luxury’ was a sham if we consider the filthy handling of the food and the dirtiness of the place where they worked.

“The dirt in the Hotel X, as soon as one penetrated into the service quarters, was revolting. Our cafeteria had year-old filth in all the dark corners, and the bread-bin was infested with cockcroaches. Once I suggested killing these beasts to Mario. ‘Why kill the poor animals?’ he said reproachfully. The others laughed when I wanted to wash my hands before touching the butter. Yet we were clean where we recognized cleanliness as part of the boulot. We scrubbed the tables and polished the brasswork regularly, because we had orders to do that; but we had no orders to be genuinely clean, and in any case we had no time for it. We were simply carrying out our duties; and as our first duty was punctuality, we saved time by being dirty.”

Paradoxically, Orwell points out that the more you pay for the food, the more sweat and spittle one is obliged to eat with it. He explains with striking details how they handle the food in Hotel X: “In the kitchen the dirt was worse. It is not a figure of speech, it is a mere statement of fact to say that a French cook will spit in the soup- that is if he is not going to drink it himself. He is an artist, but his art is not cleanliness. To a certain extent he is even dirty because he is an artist, for food, to look smart, needs dirty treatment. When a steak, for instance, is brought up for the head cook’s inspection, he does not handle it with a fork. He picks it up in his fingers and slaps it down, runs his thumb round the dish and licks it to taste the gravy, runs it round and licks again, then steps back and contemplates the piece of meat like an artist judging a picture, then presses it lovingly into place with his flat, pink fingers, every one of which he has licked a hundred times that morning. When he is satisfied, he takes a cloth and wipes his fingerprints from the dish, and hands it to the waiter. And the waiter, of course, dips his fingers into the gravy-his nasty, greasy fingers which he is for ever running through his brilliantined hair.” This nasty manipulation of the food does not happen in cheap restaurants.

After six weeks of making a living as ‘plongeurs’ in Hotel X, Boris and the narrator start working for a Russian restaurant. Their jobs here turn out to be much worse than those in Hotel X, so Orwell manages to find a post in London but by the time he gets there the employer has changed his mind and he is poor and homeless again.
Being homeless in London is more challenging than in Paris where you can sit on the pavement freely; in London it costs money to sit down and you could end up in prison for doing so. Hence, the narrator is forced to wander around, helplessly, while he lives on a few slices of bread and margarine provided by charity. We also learn about the dreadful conditions in which they sleep and what the potential chances of finding accommodation are. Life is an endless depressing struggle to survive- even a couple of slices of bread and margarine can become the trigger for a fight between two men.

Interestingly, Orwell tries to give some constructive suggestions on what to do about the homeless whom he calls ‘tramps’. ‘Tramps’, he says, are cut off from marriage and home life and are a dead loss to the community. He proposes that they should run small farms to produce their own food. “For the question is, ‘what to do with men who are underfed and idle’ and the answer –to make them grow their own food – imposes itself automatically”. He debunks the prejudice that ‘tramps’ are lazy people not just through interesting reflections but also by delving deeply into the intimate fabric of their lives. “Tramps” are unfortunate human beings, victims of unexpected circumstances, who’d rather not be in that terrible situation. George Orwell’s style, uncluttered and straightforward, captivates the reader.
The flaw of this book is in some comments Orwell made against certain ethnic groups. “The doorkeeper played similar tricks on any employee who was fool enough to be taken in. He called himself a Greek, but in reality he was an Armenian. After knowing him I saw the force of the proverb ‘Trust a snake before a Jew and a Jew before a Greek, but don’t trust an Armenian’.”  I find this statement very disturbing and unfair.

All in all, this is a book that dredges up, with raw honesty, what the homeless had to go through in the early thirties in Paris and London, and it reveals the dynamics of societies plagued by swindles and shams, so you will find it of great relevance in today’s world.

Walker Rowe

Most people know George Orwell for his novels 1984 and Animal farm (reviewed here) because they have been for many years required reading in the USA as a parable against the dangers of communism. But these are only two of Orwell’s novels and perhaps not even the most interesting. Orwell was a wit as clever as Oscar Wilde who waded bodily into the issues of British colonial rule, poverty, and of course the Spanish Civil war where his on-the-field style of journalism cost him a bullet in the neck. He was gonzo journalist long before Hunter S. Thompson albeit without the hallucinogenic drugs.

The common theme running through Orwell’s lesser known novels is poverty and how it impacts people’s lives. He has a keen eye for irony and even when writing about people in direct straights he is at times laugh out funny. Look at these lines from his novel “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”:

His legs were of normal length, but the top half of his body was so short that his buttocks semmed to sprout almost below his shoulder blades. This gave him, in walking, a resemblance to a pair of scissors.

In “Burmese Days” Orwell writes sort of an autobiographical novel since he was worked as a policeman in the British Raj. (In one of his more famous essays Orwell the policeman writes of killing an elephant when it had broke lose and become dangerous in the village.) In Burma the young and virile protagonist takes up with what he called in keeping with the times his “black” mistress. She is unceremoniously kicked out of the house when his fair skinned English girlfriends arrives.  There is humor as there always is when two women are fighting over one man.

In “Down and Out in Paris and London” Orwell takes works in a Parisian restaurant as a plongeur (dishwasher) before he takes of with a tramp to live as a beggar in London. In the rigid hierarchy of the French kitchen the plongeur is at the bottom–somewhat above the ordinary kitchen rat except the plongeur receives wages albeit scarcely enough to feed the rodent. Orwell’s friends devise a scheme to defraud a rich Jew by selling him cocaine. They pile up the white powder on the table and the Jew marvels at its size and value. Orwell’s character is not in on the swindle so he and the Jew are terrified when the police bust down the door. The police proud of their bust are aghast to find the cocaine is ordinary flour.

A Clergyman’s Daughter

Anyone who teaches school should be compelled to read Orwell’s “A Clergyman’s Daughter”. This novel is about how gossip can ruin another person’s life, how poverty takes away one’s self esteem, and how educational innovation is thwarted by the educational status quo.

Dorothy is the daughter of a rector in the church whose advancing age threatens her with spinsterhood. Of that Orwell writes, “Women who don’t marry wither up–they wither like aspidistras (a type of flower) in black-parlour windows.” She dotingly goes from one parish house to another carrying on the work of the church. As a single woman in the town she meets up with an older widower. Then Dorothy disappears haven fallen into amnesia and rumors abound that she has taken up with the gentleman. This scandal is made worse by the village gossips.

Having forgotten her identity she ends up with a petty thieves do wells who wander the countryside begging and robbing as they go. Orwell says, “The pious and immoral drift naturally together”. But then Dorotohy frees herself from this plight and faced with the need to feed herself she finds a job teaching.  She cannot go home because her father will not see her and the pious gossips have driven her into exile.

The miserly old hag who runs the school where she finds work is so tight with her money she will not give Dorothy jam to go with the bread which she herself eats for dinner right in front of Dorothy. She turns on the heat when parents arrive and turns it off when they leave.  The stoic young teacher in spite of this misery finds solace in teaching the dull-witted children who heretofore have only been taught simple sums and handwriting. Having first entered the classroom Dorothy sees that, “there were no maps, no pictures, nor even, as far as Dorothy could see, any books.” The children, “could only gape in a sort of dull bewilderment when asked to think for themselves.” Orwell writes, “These children came from bookless homes and from parents who would have laughed at the notion that the past has any meaning for the present.” What makes this part of the novel interesting and fraught with tension is Dorothy genuinely tries to teach these kids something and is inspired when they begin to learn, but then Dorothy is humiliated when she runs afoul of expectations of low expectations and when the headmistress throws her to the dogs (the parents).

Keep the Aspidistra Flying

The theme of Keep the Aspidistra Flying is money or rather the lack thereof. Orwell says without money one is not civilized, one cannot marry. Yet with money one is a clog in the capitalist machinery which grinds us all down.

As with “The Clergyman’s Daughter” and “Down and Out in Paris and London”, Orwell in “Keep the Aspidistra Flying” writes about poverty. In a non-fiction work called “On The Road to Wigham Pier” he chronicles to the pound, pence, and shilling how poorly the coal miners working in England are paid. And of course his going to join the civil war in Spain was another testament to his view that some type of socialism, namely Trotskyism, was preferable to the capitalism which wears down the downtrodden.

In “Keep the Aspidistra Flying,” Gordon Comstock is a poet who works in a bookstore. Orwell writes, “He was nearly thirty and had accomplished nothing; only his miserable book of poems that had fallen flatter than any pancake.”

Gordon is like Tolstoy having sworn off any type of wealth and capitalism but unlike Tolstoy, Gordon has not wealth to forswear. Gordon has a girlfriend who like Dorothy in “A Clergyman’s Daughter” at 30 years of age is on the edge of becoming a spinster so she is eager to marry. Gordon has not the means to support her and will not let her pay for their outings. Gordon in an attempt at respectability and to stave off hunger takes a job writing copy for an advertising firm. But this runs counter to his idea to jettison capitalism so he quits and falls back into poverty.  The tension in the novel comes when Gordon must chose between the ideal life apart from capitalism and supporting the woman he loves.

In this book you find spelled out in plain language what Orwell thought of capitalism and the daily grind. He writes, “In a country like England you can no more be cultured without money that you can join the Cavalry Club”. And then “Money, once again: all is money. All human relationships must be purchased with money. If you have no money, men won’t care for you, women won’t love you.” And finally, “You can’t be friendly, you can’t even be civil, when you have no money in your pocket.”

Lets hope that students of literature will read beyond 1984 and Animal Farm and learn of Orwell’s other works. His language is blunt and to the point. His economy of works is a style to be copied. His books are not too long and not at all complicated so they should be presented to a new generation of readers.

Robert Joe Stout

Tourists are funny creatures. (Funny strange, not funny ha-ha.) Having decided on a Mexican vacation they pack clothes they’d never dream of wearing at home: floppy hats, outlandish shorts, sandals that put blisters on their feet. They load their suitcases with all kinds of unnecessary accessories (ibuprofen, sunscreen, stationery, swimming goggles) as though drugstores, WalMart and Office Depot don’t exist south of the border. They buy out-of-date Quick Guides to the Spanish Language that don’t contain the words most frequently used (guey, chingada, lana) and bumble stupidly trying to reply in Spanish to a hotel bellboy who spent six years working in the United States and who just asked, “So wear duh y’guys hail frum?”

We Mexicans (even immigrants like me) hate tourists but put up with them because they spend money and money is good for the economy. When we’re forced into contact with them we often pretend we don’t speak or understand English. I once saw a restaurant owner that I know stand, hands folded, in front of a somewhat belligerent couple whose voices rose to a nearly unbearable shout as they questioned a menu item. He shrugged and shook his head to each barrage until, fuming, they stomped towards the door. Then, with mock politeness he said in English, “Next time don’t shout. I’m as intelligent as you are.”

Tourists drink more instead of less, pay for tours they’re not interested in taking and pretend to be fascinated by archeology, Diego Rivera murals and migrating whales. They shudder seeing fresh lettuce, strawberries or tomatoes on a plate in front of them even though they come from the same fields as the lettuce, strawberries and tomatoes they buy in their country at Safeway and Food-4-Less.

In their funny hats and baggy shorts they charge expensive tickets on their credit cards to sit in modern auditoriums to watch “authentic” folk dances that have been choreographed for professional performers from Mexican universities. They haggle over the prices asked for “artesanias” (many of which are mass-produced in China) even though they probably could buy the same trinkets at U.S. garage sales. To appear “more Mexican” they wear hand-brocaded tunics from vendors wearing Levis, Chicago Cubs sweatshirts and Adidas.

Tourists are blind–and encouraged to be so by the Mexican government and business entrepreneurs who want their money, not their appraisals of economy, politics or drug cartels. They refuse to give a beggar a peso or two (eight to fifteen cents U.S.) because they think generosity only encourages them to beg instead of seeking employment even though the beggar’s rural shack was ploughed under by a transnational corporation planting eucalyptus for pulpwood. They believe myths about Aztec bravery and nobility but avoid passing through indigena villages as impoverished as any that exist in Africa or India.

Not that all tourists are bad. Or insensitive. Most of them have worked hard for their vacations and want to get their money’s worth. They want Mexico to be what the tourist posters proclaim: pristine beaches, beautiful señoritas in flowery skirts, mustached caballeros wearing ornamental sombreros. They want mariachis and marimbas, not heavy metal and rap; they want tree-shaded boulevards and eighteenth century architecture not aggressive commuters and endless slums; they want charros on horseback and glistening Mayan palaces and marlin pirouetting above lucent waves not military convoys, Food Depot parking lots, oil drenched pelicans and gulls.

Among ourselves we Mexicans ridicule what tourists do and say, the way they walk as though half asleep, the way they clog street corners trying to make what they see agree with guidebook propaganda. We take bets on how many photographs they’ll take between one intersection and the next and we give directions that send them in the opposite way they want to go. We imitate the ways they juggle backpacks and purified water and sunglasses that they don’t need and snicker when one says she’s embarazada which means she’s pregnant and reply, “Well, lady, that’s your problem, not mine.”

We also envy them because they have so much, because their lives compared to ours seem so easy, blissful, prosperous. We envy their clean homes and clean streets and being able in their country to go wherever they want and feel safe, secure. That they have money and we don’t, that their children can go to school, that they have hopes for their futures and we have only the present and fear the future because it might be worse than the little we now have.
We hate them because we would like to be like them—or how we imagine them to be.

Robert Joe Stout lives in Mexico after a career as a magazine editor and newspaper reporter, editor and columnist. Algora Press brought out his The Blood of the Serpent: Mexican Lives, a mosaic of Mexican faces, places and experiences, and his book about immigration, Why Immigrants Come to America came out in 2008 from Praeger.

Maria Angélica Urbina Herlitz

Me detengo
ante cortinas de lluvia,
que anuncian una fachada solitaria
flotando por follajes salpicados de cielo.

La cubierta
inclinada en agudo despegue
rompe viento y cordillera.
Una boca de madera entreabierta
destila luz a mis ensueños.

Y me sumerjo
entre piedras
y desnudos de granito
que acarician vientos nuevos.

Emanan de la hierba
palomas vestidas de sombra;
Pintan de canciones
las paredes de ladrillo y musgo.

Mis pies
atravesados de charcos y lloviznas,
se han posado en el umbral
de la blanca garganta,
enrojecida de flores.

Una virgen me sonríe.
derrama lluvias
en la quietud de un alma nueva.

del libro: “A todo trapo”1998
y “Antología de la Lluvia, 2007

She opened the inside door cautiously. He was waiting on the stoop, beyond the locked screen, in the bright, breezy, unseasonable warmth of the afternoon. The man’s pale skin was translucent, taut against his face; the chalk-white bone beneath was clear. He was old, wrinkled, his gray hair severely cut. Still, tall, lean and unbent, he stood like a late autumn birch flailed by years of winter storms. In his light tan linen suit and narrow black tie, he looked like an ancient villager in a travel brochure advertising the Mexico of her girlhood: a celebrant, perhaps, of El Día de los Muertos, calm and welcoming, dressed in his Sunday best for visitors who had come to explore a mysterious and magical ritual, in a mysterious and magical province of which he was a mysterious and magical elder statesman.

Below a pencil-thin black mustache, he had thin lips and perfect white teeth that revealed themselves with the warm smile which spread even to his coaly eyes. Save for those eyes, he looked so like her shy, dear Oaxacan father! (who, like her bold Parisian mother, had been dead many years; today, especially, the second day of November, she remembered them). She touched the mesh of the screen door between them, but did not unlock it.

“Senorita Amalina Tesoro?” he asked in a rich baritone, the “r”s rumbling from his tongue like tiny thunderclaps.

“Yes,” she answered hesitantly. She had never been comfortable talking to strangers and, at 36, she preferred to ignore her unmarried state. Maman would have understood, but not approved. Maman had been red-haired and Irish-green eyed, fiery as her appearance. Amalina had acquired Papá’s features — her hair was the brown of damp sand, like his in his youth, and her eyes a paler blue — and his temperament: He accepted life, as it was: Life simply is, he told her, still with a smile, just before he died. It slips by like a water lily on a calm pond.

Maman had admired Man’s creations; Papá admired Nature’s. He and Amalina had wandered together among wildflowers, and the hummingbirds and butterflies that frequented them. Once, when she was ten, just months before they left Mexico to seek treatment for Jericho in what Papá called the New World (and its denizens, New Worlders), a green and yellow swallowtail had lifted itself gracefully from a brilliant-crimson zinnia, hovered in the air, then landed on Papá’s fingertip, resting there, it seemed, to look at them with the same curiosity and wonder as they had for it.

¿Qué usted ve? Papá whispered to the butterfly.

What do you see?

The butterfly did not answer. It flapped, once, twice, then flew away, leaving a soft wake of fine white dust from its wings.

Papá’s life had rarely been troubled; there was only the occasional-but-terrible storm, like Jericho’s death, to disturb it. Hers, too was undisturbed, except for the three deaths. It was slipping by on her own calm pond. She did not mind: Death would return her to Papá, and Maman, and Jericho. Perhaps even to Sancho. Life simply is. Death simply is. Accept them both.

Accept being what you are: alone.

Amalina did not like being alone, but she did not dislike it, either: It was how she felt about most things. She spent her days in a partitioned cubicle at a publishing house, computing the royalties that were the reward for other people who had dreamed, then shared what they dreamt. Her nights were spent at home among the books and familiar music and photographs of her long-ago, in the living room she had brought from their home and recreated in hers. Her past intrigued her as the present, with all its helter-skelter possibilities, could not.

As a girl she had tossed caution into the great canyon of childhood and scrambled energetically through the possibilities, brown and white-spotted Sancho at her careless heels. She climbed tall lush trees, or stood on rocky hilltops and turned in slow circles to see the entire rest of the universe, a universe that was wide and deep. And endless as her dreams.

Then.

Now, she was cautious. In her bed with only the moonlight around her, Amalina dreamt and tried to look at it again, aching to see its entirety laid forth before her like an endless living mural. But the visible universe had narrowed to a darkened hallway too slender to allow her passage. At its distant end, she could sometimes see a burnished hand, with long fine fingers, open and held out to her.

On each finger sat a green and yellow butterfly.

But those were her dreams. Her life was a quiet one that had its comforts. Though she sometimes thought about the comforts she lacked — a husband, a child and the responsibilities and rewards that came with them — she did not miss those. She did miss her family. The past was, often, her present. Memory was a lovely, placid place where she felt at home; and she felt far from it in the riot of the world in which she was compelled to move. She slipped between them adeptly but reluctantly.

The old man seemed a part of neither.

He continued to smile warmly, and lifted a brown-paper-wrapped, square-cornered package, perhaps two feet long, a foot wide, just a few inches deep. “Esto está para usted,” he said, and offered it.

“For me?” she asked, beset by wonder: Who would send her a package? Who was this man?

“Yes. For you. ¡Por supuesto para usted!”

Señorita. Esto está para usted. So, perhaps, he too was of an old world. Like hers. The people she knew now were all New Worlders. She had lived among them, from the time she was 11 and Jericho only eight — sick even then with the tuberculosis he would die from two years later. But Amalina had always found them strange: always looking for something inexpressible. Another New World, perhaps. What was around the next corner. While she wanted, often and dearly, to revisit those beautiful corners she had long ago turned: the quiet afternoons in their curtained living room, sunlight seeping through the white chintz, dots of dust dancing in the beams, the music coming from the radio, the susurrus of Maman and Papá’s conversation while they prepared dinner in the kitchen, Jericho’s calls of “fetch” and Sancho’s answering barks from the yard.

Of course for her?

The old man’s face, crisp and dry as parchment, did not change; the long, flat package rested on his wrists and forearms, revealing the extended palms of his long, fine hands. The palms were unlined, smooth as if they were a newborn’s. I do not understand, she thought.

“Please,” he said. “You will enjoy it.”

But what was it? What could it be? A puzzle.

The visitor’s eyes brightened. “You will enjoy it,” he repeated. “I am certain of that.”

Still she hesitated. “But – why?” she asked. “Why for me?”

“I do not know, Señorita. Truly.” He tilted his head rakishly and his voice dropped to a whisper, to speak a confidence only she should ever hear. “But it is what you have always wanted.”

What she wanted? Amalina did not know what she wanted, so how could this odd old man. “What is that?” she asked timidly.

He looked about, saw no one, and leaned toward her. “I know only this: It is a box of beautifuls” he confided. “Very rare. Very unusual. Please.” He offered it to her yet again.

The paper had no address, hers or a return, just her name written ornately, perhaps calligraphed, by a careful hand in indigo ink. She debated; these days you could be sure of nothing, but she couldn’t think why someone would wish her harm: She’d done little in her life that had been of consequence to anyone. But a gift? There was no occasion.
She looked at the wrapping. The paper’s plain brown surface appeared coarse but pristine, as though any wrinkles had been smoothed skillfully; the ends were sealed in perfectly matching folds, the seam that ran its length was sealed as well. But there was no tape! Except that it was the kind of paper in which things like stacks of old magazines and boxes containing plastic beach sandals might be sent, it could well have been the product of a professional, hired to glorify holiday and birthday presents in ways that their purchasers could only envy and the recipients would hold in awe, even hesitating, to admire, before they ripped the package open.

“It is nice, si?”

Amalina nodded. “Es bonito.”

The old man grinned. “Then…?”

She unlocked the screen door. The latch clicked, but the old man did not move. He waited, only blinking and breathing through his grin, while she examined him again. A green and yellow swallowtail appeared, startling her. She gasped and brought a hand to her mouth. It flew past his face and lit on his shoulder. The butterfly fluttered its wings once, twice, then it too remained still, as if, like him, it were watching, waiting for her.

The world, still bright with afternoon sunlight, grew suddenly quiet, and the breeze stopped. Boughs did not wave, leaves did not shake. Amalina looked past the visitors, to the street. There, she saw a still life: A boy on a bicycle, stopped, his left foot poised above a pedal, about to push it forward; a girl, airborne as she hopped from one space to the next in a gleeful game of hopscotch. Cars and trucks and a bus stationary along the road, all filled with unmoving people. And all silent. She did not understand. She had heard all of it, all of life, moments ago, with the screen door locked. What she heard now was the steady breathing of the old man.

His chest continued to rise and fall, and he blinked. The swallowtail’s antennae trembled. Otherwise neither moved as she slowly opened the door.

The door creaked.

The butterfly spread its wings when she touched the package, freeing motes of fine white powder from them to the air. They hovered there, still in the windless space between her and the old man.

She looked again at the wrapped package, at the white mist, at the man and the butterfly. Again its wings fluttered; then, in what seemed measured flight, it rose from the old man’s shoulder, glided to her face and, resting first on one eyebrow, then the other, brushed each lash with its tails. Tiny bits of powder drifted down, a trail of miniscule white snowdrops, leaving a cooling prickle on her face where they landed. Then the swallowtail dipped between her face and the old man’s, slipping among the motes as a dancer among tiny orchids.

She had not seen it come, she did not see it fly away. It merely vanished.

The old man sighed. “¿Es hermosa, sí?”

“Muy.”

“Like this.” He lifted the package. “You will see, Senorita.”

What do you see? she asked silently.

She reached for it, one hand, the other, until she had gripped it firmly between them. She lifted it. It weighed little. Uneasily, she brought it toward her.

“Do not be afraid,” he said. His voice was clear, soft. “There is nothing to fear. Not in Life, not in Death. ¿Sí?”
Amalina pressed the package to her body. It was warm, pleasantly warm, like the last embers on a winter hearth. “Sí,” she said.

“Thank you.” The old man tipped his head. She nodded. He smiled and his black eyes glowed, he bowed and left, turned the corner and, without looking back, vanished like the butterfly, leaving her standing, the package in her arms.
The boy, the girl, the traffic all began to move, and the mid-afternoon cacophony returned. She locked the screen door, then the inner door, and stepped inside.

In the house, thin rays of light slipped through the drawn curtains. Amalina sat on the aged sofa of her childhood, the package in her lap. She stared at it and, one by one, at the photographs that surrounded her: Papá, Maman, Jericho, Sancho. She listened to the clock’s tick.

¡Por supuesto para usted! Of course.

She tore one end of the paper, slowly, cautiously. Beneath was a side of an oak box, lacquered and polished to a glossy finish. She peeled the rest away, with a patience that would have maddened Maman but that Papá would have relished for the anticipation it brought. When the entire box was revealed, she folded the paper, set it beside her and ran her hands over the smooth, glistening wood.

It was, all, the plain white oak. The top was emblazoned with a wood-burned circle of Catrinas surrounded by a square of calaveras: dolls and skulls, symbols of this day, of El Día de los Muertos. A brass pin, inserted through a brass hasp, held the top closed. She touched the pin. Nothing happened. She withdrew it and lifted the hasp, and heard a slight sigh, as if there had been breath inside the box waiting to be freed. The top rose, just enough that Amalina felt the breath escape.

She felt her heart race, closed her eyes and took a breath herself. Do not be afraid. There is nothing to fear. Not in Life, not in Death. Accept.

She opened her eyes, and the lid, and gasped.

Inside, there was a kind of screen. Across it, she saw her childhood dance, one wondrous moment, one beauteous day, after another. There were her beloved parents, her brother, their little brown and white dog, all alive, vital. They smiled, they waved. Sancho wagged his tail. She closed her eyes again; this could not be – true. She opened them. It was.

Amalina sat, staring into the box of beautifuls. The days continued to flow past, a smooth stream carrying the sounds of joyful laughter and music and the wonderful smells of food cooking, and the faces of her family looking at her as they had not for so long, their hands reaching toward her, to the screen, almost, it seemed, touching it.
Outside, darkness fell. She glanced at it, then back to the bright days upon the screen. A green and yellow butterfly flew across it, and disappeared. A moment later there was another, this time above the screen. It landed on her hand and stood there, flapping it wings. Once, twice. Then it rose, flew, and landed again, on the screen itself. It slipped slowly into its surface, flew across it and disappeared. Her Papá watched, as she did, then turned to her and smiled. He held out the long, fine fingers of his hand. They did not quite touch the screen.

She touched it. The screen was warm, damp: Her fingers felt like water lilies floating on a pond the summer morning after a rain. Amalina pressed gently; her fingertips sank into the surface, but the world continued to flow around them, undistorted and undisturbed. She withdrew them and looked at them. They were dry, and looked no different. The screen looked no different. The people moving across it looked — different. Their smiles had widened, they were more energetic, Sancho leaped up and down as if trying to jump through the smooth surface and into her arms.
Amalina laid her whole hand on the screen and pressed again. It slipped through; she added her wrist and forearm. Her arm looked now as though it ended at the elbow, yet she had not reached the bottom of the box. Did it have a bottom?
She felt a rough tingle at her fingers. She looked down. In the still-moving screen, her hand was moving as well, floating like a water lily. Sancho was chasing it, lapping at her fingertips with his tongue. It – tickled! She giggled and closed her eyes. Slowly, Amalina pressed the rest of the arm into the screen, then her other, took a deep breath, and dived. She felt her body glide through the calm pond of its surface and into a waiting warmth that simply was. She accepted it, and opened her eyes.

When she looked around her, it was at the room she remembered. Sunlight streamed through the chintz curtains and flowed across her face. From the kitchen there was clattering, of plates and forks and knives and voices. The radio played, familiar music, and outside, she heard the clamor. She rose from the new sofa they’d bought, only yesterday, and went to the door, unlatched it. Sancho and Jericho sat on the stoop. Sancho barked. Amalina smiled and told them it was time for dinner.

Evan Guilford-Blake’s stories have appeared online, and in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Wet Ink and Soundings Review, and have won 15 awards. He is also the author of 20 published plays for children and adults. He and his wife (and inspiration) Roxanna live in the Atlanta area. More information: www.guilford-blake.com/evan.

Ute Carson

On her wedding day my daughter turned to me and said,
“Thank you for giving me a grandmother.”

Through tranquility and turmoil
grandparents bridge the decades
as the oil in their lamps burns low,
their lives no longer in constant motion,
and time is measured by the fleeting seasons.
Grandparents have ears like conch shells
echoing the wishes and woes of the young.
With hearts galvanized by patience and necessity,
they try to protect the next generation
from their own youthful follies.

Grandchildren waste time
as if they had a thousand years.
But the young are free to claim the old.
Together they can peer at the man in the moon,
weave dreams on a magic carpet,
buy the bra that can’t yet be filled,
welcome the strangely attired boyfriend,
and use those ready-made laps as safe perches
when thunder claps and lightning strikes.

Grandparents sing songs
they have stored up inside them
so that their beloved grandchildren can dance.

Julia Hones

1984

‘1984’ is a dystopian novel about a country called “Oceania” that is constantly at war, but its citizens do not know why it is at war. They do support it, though, because anybody who is not a supporter is considered a traitor. Hatred and rage fuel the support of this endless war.

Anyone who dares to oppose the dictator’s principles or think differently is vilified and will disappear. Those who work for the party are instructed to manipulate the truth as needed. In fact, nobody really knows the truth and nobody should care to reflect on it because their lives would be at stake if they did. Physical movements and facial expressions are closely monitored by telescreens in people’s homes, political prisoners are treated worse than criminals and love does not exist; hatred and fear condition everybody’s behavior. Blind obedience to Big Brother is what matters. Torture and starvation await anybody who dares to challenge the system in any way.

Another strategy of the ruling Party is to destroy words. “We’re cutting the language down to the bone. Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” “There will be no thought as we understand it now. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

Winston is a thirty-nine year-old man who works for the Ministry of Truth. He helps to change the historical facts but, in reality, he is a free thinking person who would like to sabotage Big Brother’s dictatorship. He falls in love with a woman, Julia, and they both challenge the system by loving each other and having secret encounters that they must plan in advance.

When Winston becomes a political prisoner a member of the inner Party confesses to him, “Our civilization is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy–everything. Already we have destroyed the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power”.

Animal Farm

‘Animal Farm’ is a satire about a group of farm animals that is oppressed by their owner, Mr. Jones. They work long hours, are ill-treated, and when they no longer serve their master’s purpose they are slaughtered. The critical situation in which they live is followed by a revolution organized by the pigs to set all the animals free and lead a peaceful existence in which everybody gets their fair share as a result of their work. Pig Napoleon and Snowball lead the revolution. Eventually, however, there is a conflict between these two leaders and Napoleon wins the battle.

At the beginning everybody enjoys the outcome of the revolution, but the benefits of it do not last long. Paradoxically, when Napoleon takes over the farm the animals become oppressed once again: they work long hours and get very little in return, while the powerful pigs enjoy unique privileges that are not allowed to the rest of the animals. This time, however, all the animals accept their situation and do not confront Napoleon who is considered to be “always right”. The truth is distorted to meet the leader’s interests, and conformity becomes the rule.
Both ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘1984’ are grounded on conformist societies that are designed to disregard critical thinking and to believe blindly in their infallible leaders. In both cases lies become systematized and statistical data are falsified to keep the leader in power. The authority is not to be questioned, and those who dare do it are punished and labeled as “traitors”. George Orwell portrays the dynamics of these societies with striking details.
Their political leaders’ strategies are characterized by:

-Fanatism
-Repetitive slogans
-The destruction of language
-Use of songs and ceremonies to venerate the leaders.
-Patriotism.

Another interesting similarity between the two stories is that the dictators always project the collective anger on a specific enemy in order to distract the masses and become more powerful themselves. The enemy is used as a “scapegoat” by the political leader. In ‘Animal Farm’, Mr Jones is always mentioned when pig Napoleon needs support to violate the rules that were set as part of the revolution and, subsequently, Snowball and other neighboring farms become the enemies to be despised and attacked. In ‘1984’ Goldstein is the enemy who wants to sabotage the system created by Big Brother, and Oceania is always at war with either Eastasia or Eurasia.

In both stories the past is mutable. It only exists in the minds of the citizens, and the government can manipulate their minds by rewriting the historical facts and changing the data to keep the dictator in power. The omnipotence of the dictator can only be preserved through lies.

In Oceania the proletarians–also called “the proles”- are the majority of the population. The Party claimed to have liberated the proles from bondage. Before the Revolution they had been hideously oppressed by the capitalists, they had been starved and flogged, women had been forced to work in the coal mines, (women still did work in the coal mines) children had been sold into the factories at the age of six. But Big Brother taught the proles that they were inferior beings who must be kept in subjection. It was not necessary to learn much about the proles. “So long as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern”. “All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations”.

Contradictions and ambiguity are at the heart of these stories. In ‘1984’ the Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture, and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. In ‘Animal Farm’ the seven commandments that made up the foundation of the revolution were all violated by pig Napoleon.

Even though Orwell carried the features of these societies to the extreme, the reader may find them familiar. The question that lingers in my mind is whether these totalitarian leaders succeed because of the ignorance of the masses or the conformism of the intellectuals. I think it is a combination of both. As Albert Einstein said, “Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”