[Different once-autonomous areas integrated into the Incan Empire]
1. Mark Whitaker
2. Incan Mummy Evidence Highlights Food Hierarchy in Incan Society
3. This story neatly connects with some of the lecture material this week about the Inca. That image is not a model. It is the actual perfectly preserved mummy.
[nearly perfect condition. The mummy "La Doncella" or "The Maiden" sits on display at the High Mountain Archeological Museum in Salta, Argentina, Thursday, Sept. 6, 2007. "The Maiden," who is on display for the first time since her discovery in 1999, was approximately 15-years-old when she and two younger children died as human sacrifices to Gods by the Incas more than 500 years ago.]
Incan Sacrifices May Have Been Drugged
Children Appear To Have Been "Fattened Up" In Yearlong Ritual, Then Left To Die
WASHINGTON, Oct. 2, 2007
(AP) Children sacrificed by the Inca appear to have been "fattened up" in a yearlong ritual, new research suggests.
Researchers studied hair from the heads and in small bags accompanying four mummies of children sacrificed in Inca rituals. Their findings are reported in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The children's hair had been cut first a year and then six months before they were killed. By studying the chemicals preserved in the hair researchers can calculate the diet of the children.
The Inca lived in the area that is now Peru and were conquered by the invading Spanish in the early 1500s.
The children's diet was initially focused on vegetables such as the potato, but in the last year of their lives it was enriched with corn, an elite food, and protein probably from llama meat, according to the researchers led by Andrew Wilson of the University of Bradford in England.
"Given the surprising change in their diets and the symbolic cutting of their hair, it appears that various events were staged in which the status of the children was raised," Wilson said in a statement. "In effect, their countdown to sacrifice had begun some considerable time prior to death."
Changes in the hair samples indicate that in their last 3-to-4 months the children began their pilgrimage to the mountains, probably from Cuzco, the Inca capital.
The scientists are not certain how the children died, but think they were given maize beer and coca leaves.
"It looks to us as though the children were led up to the summit shrine in the culmination of a yearlong rite, drugged and then left to succumb to exposure," said co-author Timothy Taylor, also of the University of Bradford.
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/02/tech/main3319052.shtml
Source: Wellcome Trust
Date: October 2, 2007
More on:
Early Climate, Fossils, Cultures, Lost Treasures, Origin of Life, Anthropology
Inca Children Were Fattened-up Before Sacrifice, Hair Samples Show
Science Daily — Hair samples from naturally preserved child mummies discovered at the world's highest archaeological site in the Andes have provided a startling insight into the lives of the children chosen for sacrifice. Researchers funded by the Wellcome Trust used DNA and stable isotope analysis to show how children as young as 6-years old were "fattened up" and taken on a pilgrimage to their death.
A team of scientists led by Dr Andrew Wilson at the University of Bradford analysed hair samples taken from the heads and from small accompanying bags of four mummies found in the Andes. These included the 15-year old "Llullaillaco Maiden" and the 7-year old "Llullaillaco Boy" whose frozen remains were found in 1999 at a shrine 25m from the summit of Mount Llullaillaco, a 6,739m volcano on the border of Argentina and Chile. The Maiden, described as a "perfect mummy" went on display for the first time last month in Salta, northwest Argentina.
Dr Wilson and colleagues studied DNA and stable light isotopes from the hair samples to offer insight into the lives of these children. Unlike samples of bone collagen and dental enamel, which give an average reading over time, hair growth allows scientists to capture a unique snapshot at different intervals over time, helping build up a picture of how the children were prepared for sacrifice over a period of months.
"By examining hair samples from these unfortunate children, a chilling story has started to emerge of how the children were 'fattened up' for sacrifice," says Dr Wilson, a Wellcome Trust Bioarchaeology Fellow.
It is believed that sons and daughters of local rulers and local communities were chosen for sacrifice, possibly as a way for the ruling Incas to use fear to govern their people. Some girls, know as acllas, were selected from around the age of four and placed under the guardianship of priestesses; some would later be offered as wives to local nobles, others consecrated as priestesses and others offered as human sacrifices.
By analysing stable isotopes found in the hair samples, Dr Wilson and colleagues were able to see that for much of the time prior to sacrifice, the children were fed a diet of vegetables such as potato, suggesting that they came from a peasant background. Stable isotopes of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen from an individual's diet are deposited in their hair where they can remain unchanged over thousands of years.
However, in the twelve months prior to sacrifice, the isotopic evidence shows that the Maiden's diet changed markedly to one that was enriched with plants such as maize, considered an "elite" food, and protein, likely to have come from charki (dried llama meat).
"Given the surprising change in their diets and the symbolic cutting of their hair, it appears that various events were staged in which the status of the children was raised" says Dr Wilson. "In effect, their countdown to sacrifice had begun some considerable time prior to death."
Changes in the isotopes in the hair sample in the final 3-4 months suggest that the children then began their pilgrimage to the mountains, likely from Cuzco, the Inca capital. Whilst scientists cannot be certain how the children died, it is believed that they were first given maize beer (chicha) and coca leaves, possibly to alleviate the symptoms of altitude sickness and also to inure them to their fate. This theory is supported by evidence of coca metabolites that the researchers found in the victims' hair, and in particularly high concentrations in the Maiden's.
"It looks to us as though the children were led up to the summit shrine in the culmination of a year-long rite, drugged and then left to succumb to exposure," says co-author Dr Timothy Taylor, also of the University of Bradford. "Although some may wish to view these grim deaths within the context of indigenous belief systems, we should not forget that the Inca were imperialists too, and the treatment of such peasant children may have served to instil fear and facilitate social control over remote mountain areas."
Previous research has shown that Llullaillaco Boy appears to have met a particularly horrific end. His clothes were covered in vomit and diarrhoea, features indicative of a state of terror. The vomit was stained red by the hallucinogenic drug achiote, traces of which were also found in his stomach and faeces. However, his death was likely caused by suffocation, his body apparently having been crushed by his textile wrapping having been drawn so tight that his ribs were crushed and his pelvis dislocated.
This research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Note: This story has been adapted from material provided by Wellcome Trust.
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071001172756.htm
Other South American preserved mummies (Learn about Chinchorro mummies found preserved on the very arid Western coast of South America).
8 comments:
1. SuJung, Kim
2. Che: The icon and the ad
3. This article is about a famous image of Che Guevara. This image gave fierce impression to me when I saw this image. I was 17 at that time, almost 5 years ago but I still remember it clearly.
This article explain when and how this image was made, and the meaning of the image. It was interesting to me, especially the part which says Hugo Chavez often appears wearing Che T-shirt!
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Che Guevara, his eyes framed by heavy brows, a single-starred beret pulled over his unruly hair, stares out of the shot with glowering intensity.
It's now 40 years since the Argentine-born rebel was shot dead, so any young radicals who cheered on his revolutionary struggles in Cuba and Bolivia are well into middle age.
But the image has been infinitely repeated - emblazoned on T-shirts and sprayed on to walls, transformed into pop art and used to wrap ice-creams and sell cigarettes - and its appeal has not faded.
"There is no other image like it. What other image has been sustained in this way?" asks Trisha Ziff, the curator of a touring exhibition on the iconography of Che.
"Che Guevara has become a brand. And the brand's logo is the image, which represents change.
It has becomes the icon of the outside thinker, at whatever level - whether it is anti-war, pro-green or anti-globalisation," she says.
Its presence - everywhere from walls in the Palestinian territories to Parisian boutiques - makes it an image that is "out of control", she adds.
"It has become a corporation, an empire, at this point."
The unchecked proliferation of the picture - based on a photograph by Alberto Korda in 1960 - is partly due to a political choice by Korda and others not to demand payment for non-commercial use of the image.
Birth of an icon
Jim Fitzpatrick, who produced the ubiquitous high-contrast drawing in the late 1960s as a young graphic artist, told the BBC News website he actively wanted his art to be disseminated.
"I deliberately designed it to breed like rabbits," he says of his image, which removes the original photograph's shadows and volume to create a stark and emblematic graphic portrait.
"The way they killed him, there was to be no memorial, no place of pilgrimage, nothing. I was determined that the image should receive the broadest possible circulation," he adds.
"His image will never die, his name will never die."
For Ms Ziff, Che Guevara's murder also marks the beginning of the mythical image.
"The birth of the image happens at the death of Che in October 1967," she says.
"He was good-looking, he was young, but more than that, he died for his ideals, so he automatically becomes an icon."
The story of the original photograph, of how it left Cuba and was carried by admirers to Europe before being reinterpreted in Mr Fitzpatrick's iconic drawing, is a fascinating journey in its own right.
Alberto Korda captured his famous frame on 5 March 1960 during a mass funeral in Havana.
A day earlier, a French cargo ship loaded with ammunition had exploded in the city's harbour, killing some 80 Cubans - an act Fidel Castro blamed on the US.
Korda, Fidel Castro's official photographer, describes Che's expression in the picture, which he labelled "Guerrillero Heroico" (the heroic fighter), as "encabronadao y dolente" - angry and sad.
The picture was one of only two frames taken. The original shot includes palm fronds and a man facing Che, both subsequently cropped out.
Unpublished for a year, the picture was seen only by those who passed through Korda's studio, where it hung on a wall.
Poster boy
One man who brought the image to Europe was the leftist Italian publisher and intellectual, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, who distributed posters across Italy in 1967.
After that, Korda's photograph made an appearance in several European magazines. Mr Fitzpatrick first came across it in the German weekly, Stern.
"One of the images was Korda's but it was so tiny that when I blew it up all I got was a dot matrix pattern. From this I did a quasi-psychedelic, sea-weedy version of Che," he said.
Only months later, when he finally got his hands on a larger version of the photograph, was he able to produce the image that has such universal appeal.
"I'd got an original copy of the image sent to me by a guy involved with a group of Dutch anarchists, called the Provo."
This underground movement was in turn rumoured to have been given the image by French philosopher and radical Jean-Paul Sartre, who was present at the Havana funeral when it was taken.
Capitalism and Catholicism
After Che Guevara's death, an outraged Mr Fitzpatrick furiously reprinted originals of the poster and sent it to left-wing political activist groups across Europe.
Part of his anger stemmed from vivid memories working behind a bar in Ireland as a teenager, and seeing Che walk in.
The revolutionary was briefly exploring the homeland of his Irish ancestors - the full family name was Guevara-Lynch - during a stopover on a flight to Moscow.
"I must have been around 16 or 17," Mr Fitzpatrick remembers. "It was a bright, sunny morning and light was streaming into the windows of the bar. I knew immediately who he was. He was an immensely charming man - likeable, roguish, good fun and very proud of being Irish."
Mr Fitzpatrick's version of Che arrived on the continent as many countries were in a state of flux, says Ms Ziff.
"His death was followed by demonstrations, first in Milan and then elsewhere. Very soon afterwards there was the Prague Spring and May '68 in France. Europe was in turmoil. People wanted change, disruption and rebellion and he became a symbol of that change."
As time went on, the meaning and the man represented by the image became separated in the western context, Ms Ziff explains.
It began to be used as a decoration for products from tissues to underwear. Unilever even brought out a Che version of the Magnum ice cream in Australia - flavoured with cherry and guava.
"There is a theory that an image can only exist for a certain amount of time before capitalism appropriates it. But capitalism only wants to appropriate images if they retain some sense of danger," Ms Ziff says.
But in Latin America, she points out, Che Guevara's face remains a symbol of armed revolution and indigenous struggle.
Indeed, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez often appears wearing a Che T-shirt and visitors to the offices of Bolivia's leader, Evo Morales, are reportedly greeted with a version of the iconic image fashioned from coca leaves.
Combining capitalism and commerce, religion and revolution, the icon remains unchallenged, Ms Ziff says.
"There is no other image that remotely takes us to all these different places."
A film produced by Trisha Ziff on the iconography of Che Guevara, Chevolution, is expected to be released in early 2008. Her exhibition is due to open at Barcelona's Palacio Virreina museum on 25 October 2007.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7028598.stm
Euna Lee
Cuba’s Revolution Now Under Two Masters
Cuban’s surrogate leader Raul Castro seems to be stuck between wanting to improve the country’s impoverished economy by opening some of its closed economic policies, and being subdued by the shadow of his predecessor and big brother Fidel. The problem appears to be that he is neither bringing about enough change to please the public, nor is he charismatic enough to match Fidel’s popularity and public support. Perhaps, as the article infers, the only way things will change is either if Fidel gives up his position completely, or if he dies.
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July 27, 2007
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
CAMAGÜEY, Cuba, July 26 — For the first time, Raúl Castro, the acting president, gave the traditional revolutionary speech during Cuba’s most important national holiday on Thursday, deepening the widespread feeling that his brother Fidel has slipped into semi-retirement and is unlikely to return. Yet Cuba continues to live in a kind of limbo, with neither brother fully in control of the one-party Socialist state.
Last year, Fidel Castro, the once all-powerful leader, led thousands of Communist Party faithful in cheers to celebrate the guerrilla attacks on army barracks that set off his revolution a half century ago. It was the last time he was seen in public.
That night, after two long speeches, the gaunt Mr. Castro, now 80, suffered an acute infection and bleeding in his colon from which he has yet to recover. Five days later, he handed over power to his brother Raúl, now 76, and a small group of cabinet officials on a temporary basis.
Since then, Cubans have lived under two masters, the elder Castro, ailing but still very much alive, and his younger brother, the longtime defense minister, who is not yet free to make significant changes.
“The question is why hasn’t there been more dramatic changes,” said Manuel Cuesta Morúa, a moderate opposition leader. “The answer is Fidel Castro continues to govern.”
Since the Communist Party has yet to officially replace Fidel Castro as the head of state, his presence in the wings and his towering history here continue to exert a strong influence in Cuban politics. That has made it difficult for Raúl Castro to shake up the island’s centralized Soviet-style economy, experts on Cuban politics said, though Raúl’s public remarks on Thursday made it clear he would like to.
He scolded the nation for having to import food when it possessed an abundance of rich land and vowed to increase agricultural production. He also said Cuba was seeking ways to secure more foreign investment, without abandoning Socialism.
“No one, no individual or country, can afford to spend more than what they have,” he said. “It seems elementary, but we do not always think and act in accordance with this inescapable reality. To have more we have to begin producing more.”
Mr. Castro spoke before a subdued crowd of about 100,000 people. The holiday commemorates the July 26, 1953, attack by the Castros and a ragtag group of guerrillas on the Moncada army barracks in Santiago de Cuba. The attack ended in disaster, but it was the birth of the rebellion that eventually ousted Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
Raúl Castro’s hourlong speech was studded with references to his charismatic brother’s sayings. He ended the talk with one of Fidel Castro’s more famous quotations about the nature of a Socialist revolution, a passage the crowd mumbled along with him, like a prayer.
Indeed, at times, it seemed almost as if Mr. Castro were eulogizing his brother. “Not even during the most serious moments of his illness did he fail to bring his wisdom and experience to each problem and essential decision,” he said. “These have truly been very difficult months, although with the opposite effect that our enemies expected, those who dreamed chaos would erupt and Cuban Socialism would end up collapsing.”
Since Fidel Castro fell ill, he has had several operations and has said that at least one went badly. He will be 81 next month and gives no sign that he is in a hurry to return to office.
Cuban authorities periodically have released photos and videos showing Mr. Castro looking first gaunt, then later more robust. The last of the images appeared on Cuban television in early June.
Mr. Castro spends most of his time writing essays for the Communist Party newspaper on a variety of topics, from the Iraq war to the defection of Cuban boxers during the Pan-American Games in Brazil this month. He recently blamed the use of dollars and remittances from Cubans in the United States for “irritating inequalities and privileges.”
The columns are rambling and sometimes humorous. “I don’t have time now for films and photos that require me to constantly cut my hair, beard and mustache and get spruced up every day,” he grumbled in one of his essays, titled “Reflections of the Commander in Chief.”
Raúl Castro has taken several small but meaningful steps over the last year that suggest that he wants to open up Cuban society and perhaps move to a market-driven system, without ceding one-party control, not unlike what has happened in China. During the 1990s, he supported limited private enterprise and foreign investment, reforms his brother reversed four years ago.
Since becoming acting president, the younger Mr. Castro has twice offered to enter negotiations with the United States to end a half-century of enmity and sanctions. He repeated that stand on Thursday, noting that President Bush would soon be leaving office “along with his erratic and dangerous administration.”
“The new administration will have to decide whether it will maintain the absurd, illegal and failed policy against Cuba or if it will accept the olive branch that we offered,” he said. Mr. Castro has taken other small steps away from the rigid Communist line his brother follows. Fewer dissidents have been arrested this year than in the past and cadres of party militants have stopped harassing critics, Mr. Cuesta Morúa, the opposition leader, said.
On the economic front, Raúl Castro has allowed the importation of televisions and video disc players. He has told the police to let pirate taxis operate without interference. He pledged to spend millions to refurbish hotels, marinas and golf courses. He even ordered one of the state newspapers to investigate the poor quality of service at state-controlled bakeries and other stores.
Perhaps his most important step, however, was to pay the debts the state owed to private farmers and to raise the prices the state pays for milk and meat. Cubans still live on rations and cope with chronic shortages of staples like beef. Salaries average about $12 a month, and most people spend three-quarters of their income on food, according to a study by Armando Nova González, an economist at the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy in Havana.
“What a person makes is not enough to live on,” said Jorge, a museum guard who asked that his last name not be used because he feared persecution. “You have to resort to the black market to get along. No, not just to get along, to survive.” He said he and his wife together made about $30 a month, just enough to support their family of four.
But Raúl Castro has disappointed many Cubans who had expected significant changes once he took power. He has always deferred to his brother, and he seems to lack the political power to take major actions until Fidel either gives up total control or dies, experts on Cuba said.
“I would say what is remarkable over the last year is how little has changed,” said Robert A. Pastor, a former aide to President Jimmy Carter and a political scientist at American University. “People have been calm, but of course, big brother has been watching.”
Fidel Castro’s influence extends beyond his new role as columnist in chief. Even as Raúl Castro appears headed toward consolidating his rule, leaders seem reluctant to roll back the elder Mr. Castro’s decision in 2003 to centralize the economy again and restrict the small-scale private enterprises that emerged in the 1990s after the fail of the Soviet Union, several economists and political scientists say.
Fidel Castro’s “main impact on Cuba is not his writings but that he’s alive, and it means Raúl and the others are reluctant to take major initiatives,” said Jorge I. Dominguez, a Harvard professor and Cuba expert.
In his speech, Raúl Castro acknowledged the stubborn problem of low wages and the lack of productivity, saying the economic problems were eating away at the social fabric. He urged Cubans to be patient.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/27/world/americas/27cuba.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Kyung-hee, Kang
Latin leftists use New York stage to polish image
While Venezuela is eagerly endeavoring to get a seat on UN security council, other Latin American top politicians, who can be said that Venezuela-sided or such, have made appearnces before US public.
As we've addressed in class before, there're some practically favorable points for Venezuela of getting UN security council seat which include promoting and improving its image to world's public and getting emotional support of public. Those general or abstract sympathy could offer some pressure that might result in actual achievements.
It also is interesting that those countries whose presidents are promoting generally stand against US goverment, or Bush administration and try to get hopitality from US public.
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Presidents seek out the spotlight during U.N. visit
By PABLO BACHELET
McClatchy-Tribune
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UNITED NATIONS — President Evo Morales played a soccer match with his fellow Bolivians, appeared on the Jon Stewart comedy show, and addressed scores of admirers at a historic venue here.
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, a U.S. educated economist, talked to investment bankers. He wore a dark suit with a shirt with indigenous markings and no collar or tie.
Morales and Correa were among half a dozen left-wing Latin American presidents in New York this week for the U.N. General Assembly.
But their activities within the United Nations and outside showed how Latin American leaders use the New York stage to polish their international images, set a tone for their relations with Washington, and send messages to audiences at home and abroad.
Chavez was a no-show
During visits last year, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez lambasted President Bush in his speeches, and visited the Bronx and Harlem to highlight Venezuela's discounted heating oil program for the U.S. poor.
Chavez didn't come this year, but the convening of the General Assembly attracted a large contingent of left-of-center Latin American leaders, many of them elected within the past two years.
They came with a common thread: a pledge to make the fight against inequality a central issue of their governments.
The most forceful was Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, the head of the Marxist-leaning Sandinista party that ruled the country in the 1980s. The old U.S. foe who won an election this year acted as if the Cold War had never ended. He told the U.N. audience that the U.S. was the "most gigantic and impressive dictatorship that has existed in the history of humanity."
Meeting between U.S. foes
He met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for more than an hour, and the two parted with a warm embrace as cameras flashed. Afterward, Ortega told journalists his nation and Iran would form an unspecified "front for the fight of peace."
Others were less confrontational, however.
In his election campaign, Ecuador's Correa, an ally of Chavez, called Bush a fool and blasted the "neo-liberal" economic model — which in Latin America is usually associated with free trade and a hands-off government.
Correa reiterated those criticisms in New York but nevertheless agreed to address a skeptical audience at the pro-business Council of the Americas on New York's Park Avenue, donning his indigenous shirt. He criticized Ecuador's use of the U.S. dollar as its currency but promised not to do anything rash to end it.
He told reporters that relations with the U.S. were very good and that "we respect this great nation."
Still, Correa refused to utter a word in English in his public appearances, even though he has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois.
Time off from campaign
Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, an Argentine senator who according to most polls is set to win the presidential election there Oct. 28, accompanied her president-husband, Nestor Kirchner, to the U.N. instead of campaigning at home.
She gave interviews to U.S. reporters, basked in praise as she received a human rights award from New York University School of Law, and met with Argentine scientists, promising them that, if elected, she would promote more research work. She also addressed a Wall Street audience at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel's Starlight Roof.
Her husband sometimes has had a contentious relationship with the Bush administration and foreign investors, but Fernandez delivered a mostly soothing 38-minute speech in which she touted Argentina's recent economic accomplishments.
Meanwhile, Morales played a soccer match against a team of Bolivian expatriates on Sunday. He botched a penalty kick, but his squad won, 3-2.
Friendly audience
On Monday he recounted his political career before an audience of nearly 1,000 who filled the Great Hall of The Cooper Union in Manhattan. Morales was cheered when he praised Fidel Castro and dubbed capitalism "the worst enemy of humanity."
He said U.S. aid programs were undermining his government and drew chuckles from his audience as he narrated how he recently summoned the U.S. ambassador in Bolivia, Philip Goldberg, to a 5 a.m. meeting at the presidential palace to discuss visa, immigration and other difficulties.
Last year, Morales made a splash when he brandished a coca leaf as he addressed the General Assembly as part of a campaign to decriminalize the plant that indigenous communities consider part of tradition.
This year he toned down his mentions of the coca leaf and addressed his bad-boy image.
"Please don't consider me the axis of evil," he joked with Jon Stewart.
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/world/5175286.html
1. HyunJi Ju
2. Pope Benedict tells addicts drug dealers will face God's judgment
3. The Pope visited a rehabilitation certer for drug addicted in Brazil and told addicts as it is written in the title; the dealers will face God's judgment.
I thought this means something big because most of latin american countries are cathilic. Their national religion is Catholic and a great number of people actually believe in God. People pray whenever they pass by the cathedrals and attend the meth regularly.
And the Pope-the most powerful person in catholic world, officially said drug dealing is so ruining people and the dealers will be punished by the God.
I don't think the dealrs will stop selling drugs because the pope said so, however people will affected somehow.
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GUARATINGUETA, Brazil (CNS) – In a meeting with recovering Brazilian drug addicts, Pope Benedict XVI said drug dealers will face God's judgment for the damage they have inflicted on individuals and society.
POPE CELEBRATES CANONIZATION MASS – Pope Benedict XVI celebrates a canonization Mass at the Campo de Marte Airport in Sao Paulo, Brazil, May 11. The pope canonized 18th-century Franciscan Father Antonio Galvao, known for his charity to the poor and his legacy of miraculous healings. (CNS/Reuters)
The pope made the remarks during a visit May 12 to Fazenda da Esperanca, or Farm of Hope, a church-run drug rehabilitation center in rural Brazil.
After listening to emotional testimonials from young men and women who have struggled to break free of drug and alcohol dependency, the pope urged those helped by the center to become "ambassadors of hope" to other addicts.
The pope said the statistics on drug abuse in Brazil were alarming and that the rest of Latin America is not far behind.
"I therefore urge the drug dealers to reflect on the grave harm they are inflicting on countless young people and on adults from every level of society," he said.
"God will call you to account for your deeds. Human dignity cannot be trampled upon in this way," he said.
The pope spoke from a thatch-roofed platform to about 3,000 people who gathered on the grounds of the 40-acre farm, where residents grow vegetables and raise livestock.
The pontiff arrived after a long drive deep into the heart of the southern Brazil countryside, where rich valleys alternated with wooded hills. Farmsteads along the route decorated their driveways in yellow and white, the Vatican colors.
The Farm of Hope was founded in 1983 by a German Franciscan, Father Hans Stapel. Today, it is a movement with 33 centers around the world, helping drug addicts, unwed mothers, homeless and young people infected with HIV.
The main center near the Brazilian city of Guaratingueta ministers to about 100 addicts. Many of them arrive there after trying and failing with other rehab treatments.
Filipe Kenji Diniz, a 27-year-old from Curitiba who sat near the papal stage, said he tried for 12 years to kick his drug habit, which began with alcohol and ended with crack cocaine. He entered three hospital programs and took substitute chemicals, but it did not work, he said.
He had heard about Farm of Hope, so he decided to try it.
"Here the method was different," he said.
"I learned to talk to God -- to pray. And when I talked to God, I found that I stayed very calm, and I didn't need the drugs anymore," he said.
Five men and women stood before the pope and read testimonials about their experience at the farm. Antonio Eleuterio Neto described how his drug addiction since age 12 was broken when he was offered friendship and trust and was able to discover the importance of God in his life.
After the young man spoke, the pope gave him a hug.
Sylvia Hartwich, a 20-year German immigrant, cried when describing her struggle with drugs and anorexia, which she overcame after being approached by three members of Farm of Hope.
Today, she works as a volunteer in a German branch of the movement.
Ricardo Correa Ribeirinha, the son of a prostitute, told of his personal experiences of sniffing glue, taking cocaine and smoking crack, and of the devastation caused society by the drug trade and the violence that surrounds it.
People thought he would end up in jail or in an early grave, but he broke free after joining Farm of Hope, he said.
In his talk, Pope Benedict praised the center's approach of combining medical and psychological assistance with prayer, manual work and personal discipline. When dealing with addiction, he said, it was important to treat the soul as well as the body.
The personnel at the center, he emphasized, are carrying out a work of conversion as well as rehabilitation.
Farm of Hope says its success rate with addict rehabilitation is more than 80 percent, far better than other similar programs in Brazil.
Before leaving, the pope gave a gift of $100,000 to the center.
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http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=24068
Yong Mie Jo
Venezuela's magic mountain
This article is a travel record of Will Hide that fascinated me.
This article helped my visualization process of Latin America’s landscape setting, in which the Mayans Incans and Aztecs would have once resided and brought up their civilization, for real. (You may be able to read between the lines, but I had been having trouble grasping real sense of pre-conquest world of Latin America, which is turning out to be far more exotic and something very opposite of what I had previously known for my entire life. Almost feeling sorry for misunderstanding the people who had definitely existed with their whole heart put into the land and environment.)
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It's not often something stops you in your tracks, makes you pull the car over, get out and stand there, gawping. But then I had never seen a tepui before. Let alone thought about climbing one.
In the far southeast of Venezuela, the grasslands of La Gran Sabana stretch across an area the size of Belgium, accessed by only one road and home to the Pemón people. The Angel Falls tumble 979m (3,212ft) to earth from one tepui, making it the world’s tallest waterfall. And across the landscape, rising almost mythically out of early morning mists, are more of the huge, flat-topped table mountains, the tallest of which, Roraima, inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to write The Lost World.
These mountains are the remnants of a thick layer of sediment laid down two billion years ago when the Americas and Africa were one land mass. Over time erosion left behind only the more resilient rock structures and now the 25 or so main tepuis have a wealth of endemic flora and fauna – frogs that don’t hop and bypass the tadpole stage, and small, red carnivorous plants, for example.
From a distance, Roraima’s sheer 800m rock walls, poking up from a layer of dense forest, make it look impossible to scale, but in 1884 the British explorer Everard Ferdinand Im Thurn discovered a thickly wooded natural ramp up the side and scaled its peak. Now I was to follow in his footsteps accompanied by my local guide, Ricardo Brassington, and Pemón porters carrying tents and cooking gear for the five-day trek.
The first two days were gentle walks across open grassland, occasionally fording rivers, on the lookout for armadillos and giant anteaters, avoiding hairy caterpillars the length of a finger, angry-looking ants the size of a thumbnail and (more difficult to escape) the puri puri sand flies, which must rank among the world’s most devious, sneaky and impervious to insect repellent. In the evenings Ricardo whipped up dishes inspired by his childhood in nearby Guyana – “cook up” (rice and peas) and curries.
The four-hour assault on the top came on the third day – a sweaty, tiring, fascinating scramble up steep paths, along streams, over boulders and around thick tree trunks. From ground level we passed through cloud forest and under waterfalls until we emerged on the lunar landscape of the summit, looking towards the neighbouring and equally majestic tepui of Kukenán.
“This is my 55th climb up Roraima,” Ricardo said, “but each time I feel like it’s my first. Each time is amazing.”
I looked around, but initially found it difficult to share his enthusiasm. The tepuis create their own micro-climates, and cloud and mist swirled around me. I was cold, wet and exhausted.
“Let’s explore,” said Ricardo enthusiastically. I sat shivering in my tent, clutching a hot chocolate laced with rum, and tried to find some clothes in my backpack that weren’t soaking wet. “Let’s see if the weather improves,” I replied, less enthusiastically, retreating to the depths of my sleeping bag, before spending a cold night feeling rather sorry for myself.
But the next morning was a stunning revelation. I unzipped the fly-sheet and poked my head out, expecting to be faced with more depressing fog. Instead the sun was already high in the sky, illuminating a scene that would surely have justified Conan Doyle’s wild imagination. With Ricardo and one of the porters, I explored for several hours away from camp, like a small child continually fascinated by new discoveries; along sandy paths to small pools of water and the little black frogs that lurked within; gleaming quartz rocks (there are diamonds up here, too); spiky tufts of grass and stumpy, wind-gnarled trees. Mist covered us at a moment’s notice, then blew away as quickly as it came – not the most comforting sensation with sheer drops near by.
The luxurious feeling of solitude was immense and overwhelming. In the far distance we could faintly hear the voices of some Venezuelan students, but other than that we were alone. It really was a lost world.
The climb down later that day was tougher than the ascent. But the valley floor was a welcome return to warmth. At the campsite we celebrated with rum and passionfruit juice and I chatted to two Australians who were on a five-month expedition across the continent and had also descended from Roraima.
“It’s one of the most special places we’ve seen so far in South America. The landscape and plant life up there are awesome,” said Matthew Rafty, from Perth.
After our two-day walk back to the base village of Paraitepui, Ricardo and I sat in a small café eating grilled chicken, watching the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, on television greeting his Iranian pal Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Caracas. President Bush appeared saying goodness-knows-what in dubbed Spanish, although I understood the word “Iraq”. Pictures showed marchers being shot on the streets of Rangoon. Roraima isn’t just a haven for small black frogs and insect-eating plants. It’s also a brief, beautiful refuge of sanity for those looking to hit the pause button in our rather shabby modern world.
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http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/travel/destinations/latin_america/article2595157.ece
Heaeum Cho
Drug cartels in Mexico turn to their compatriots
This article is once again a tragic reminder of how the usage of drugs can ruin people's lives with the temptation greater than the remedy to overcome it. Mexico has not only become a growing exporter of methamphetamine but its citizens have also resorted itself to a vicious cycle of drug abuse, violence and crime at large. The government's social system and civil society groups have an important task to begin a grass roots approach in providing a way out of this destructive pattern of drug abuse.
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ZAMORA, Mexico: When she gets her high, Lupita Diaz says she enters a sweet illusion of peace, a respite from her pain and self-loathing. She lies on her back in a meadow on the edge of town here with other addicts, looks up at the stars and plays aimlessly on a battered blue harmonica.
Sunrise brings a crashing sensation. Her joints ache. Her mouth goes dry. She has cold sweats, jumps at shadows, hears voices in her head. She is willing, once again, to prostitute herself to get $5 for another hit of crack cocaine or crystal methamphetamine. She has been an addict for years, and her slight body is nearly worn out. She gave away her two children to others to raise.
"There is nothing nice about being here," she said, slurring her words and covering her watery eyes with pink sunglasses. "It feels ugly not to be with your children. Feels awful. It's not what I want. It's not what I like. But when I have money, I want the drugs."
Diaz's story of addiction is common enough in most of America's big cities, but until a few years ago it was rare in central Mexico. That has changed. Today Mexico is no longer just a transit country for drugs bound for the United States. It is a country of drug users as well.
As Mexican drug cartels have grown in power, they have begun to open up local markets for cheap forms of highly addictive drugs like crack and ice, as methamphetamine is known. Now even midsize towns like Zamora have large and growing populations of addicts, along with a rise in violent crime.
"Ten or 15 years ago we didn't even see powdered cocaine, just marijuana," said Commander Juan Carlos Espinosa of the Zamora Police Department. "Then about three years ago we started to see a lot of signs of ice, crack and heroin."
The trend has alarmed Mexican officials. In July, President Felipe Calderón set in motion a program to test all high school students for drugs. The attorney general, Eduardo Medina Mora, has repeatedly raised a red flag in recent months.
"It's a phenomenon - one must say clearly - not attended to in recent decades in this country, and now we have to turn to deal with what is a reality: that we are also a country of consumers," Medina Mora recently told the newspaper El Universal.
One measure of the trend is the number of people who have checked into state drug rehabilitation centers. The number of crack addicts seeking treatment nationwide has tripled since 2001; the number seeking help for methamphetamine addiction has doubled.
The health minister, José Ángel Córdova Villalobos, acknowledged in July that the government lacked the clinics, hospital beds and resources to deal with the wave of addiction.
About 20,000 beds are available, he said, and only 120 of those are in public clinics.
In Zamora, a community of 170,000 people in Michoacán in southwestern Mexico, the evidence of addiction is everywhere. Ragged people sleep in vacant lots and on the street. Street crime is common.
Some streets have become drug bazaars, with crack houses interspersed among corner grocery stores and video arcades.
Private drug rehabilitation centers have sprouted up in nearly every poor neighborhood, a cottage industry of sorts. Most of them are tiny, squalid houses where addicts are locked up for three months and given a short course on the 12-step program developed by Alcoholics Anonymous.
In interviews, addicts in various stages of recovery described how their dependence on methamphetamine or crack cocaine turned them into dealers, prostitutes and thieves. Most of them described a similar fall from grace. Experimenting with the drugs led to insatiable addiction that drove them to sell everything and, eventually, to commit crimes.
Typical of the two dozen private rehabilitation centers in Zamora is La Esperanza, a shelter on Matamoros Street. It is a single-family home that houses more than 30 addicts, who sleep on bunks and share a single malodorous bathroom.
The doors are locked all day, and sheet metal is welded over the windows. Families paid $100 to place their relatives here.
Among the residents was Aurora Victoria Gomez, a 28-year-old woman who ran away, became hooked on methamphetamine and became a prostitute at age 13. She has three children she never sees.
"For me, it was a lost life, sad, walking the streets, rejected, humiliated," she said. "Truth is, I never had a happy moment."
Some older addicts said they hardly recognized their town these days.
Joaquin Antonio Gutierrez, 39, said he became addicted to methamphetamine in 1988 when he was working illegally as a gardener in San Diego. Soon he took to selling the drug to finance his habit. He spent two stints in California prisons before he was deported. Once back in Zamora, he said, he was surprised to find that methamphetamine and crack had taken root in his hometown.
"When I was a kid, you almost never saw any drugs," he said.
"But now in whatever street you go down you see people selling."
Two years ago, Gutierrez finally kicked his habit at a federal outpatient clinic here, known as the Center for Juvenile Integration, with the help of antidepressants and psychotherapy. The clinic is the only one of its kind in the state of Michoacán.
José Francisco Gil Cerda, a psychologist who runs the clinic, said crack cocaine and methamphetamine addicts tended to be aggressive, violent and paranoid. Most of them start out using the drug as a form of speed, trying to stay awake to work longer. After a short time, however, the drug robs them of sleep, eliminates their appetite and eats away at their organs, including the brain.
Domingo Castro, 33, a street vendor now in the clinic, said he tried to beat his father to death and raped a close friend of his mother's. Methamphetamine nearly killed him, he said.
"The ice, man, you are like a God," he said. "Everything is yours. Everything belongs to you. But it destroys your system. You are fooling yourself."
On the other side of town, a group of 33 cocaine and methamphetamine addicts struggle with their demons in an unassuming two-story green building belonging to Drug Addicts Anonymous. The addicts bake and sell bread to support the center.
Typical of the younger addicts is a 24-year-old who did not want to be identified by name. He started using methamphetamine when he was 15 in the town of Apatzingan, the headquarters of the reputed Valencia drug cartel.
Quickly addicted, he ran away from home and lived on the street, stealing money from his relatives. At 18, he tried joining the army to straighten himself out, but found that drug use was rampant among the troops as well.
So he deserted after two years and returned to the street, living in an abandoned house and mugging people. Each dose of the drug cost about $5, and sometimes he had to rob two or three people to get enough. He was rail-thin, filthy, with a matted beard.
"There comes a time when you need it and if you don't get it, you start to sweat and despair," he said. "You hear things that don't exist. You can see a shadow and think it's someone who wants to kill you."
Finally, on Jan. 1, 2004, his paranoia and fear of the police had grown to the point that he was afraid to leave the ruined building he lived in. He crept back to his father's house and asked for help. His father took him to a clinic in Morelia. Since then, it has been a daily struggle with the silent call of the drug.
"There is a fear," he said, turning worried eyes toward the street outside the clinic. "Out there in the world it is easier that temptation will win you over."
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http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/03/america/mexico.php
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