Honoring Che? or Ghost in the Machine? You decide.
Link to a detailed article about the life of Che Guavara from a dependency theory standpoint. Think of this movement's context (the 'dependency theory' era of the 1960s; stalled modernization theory; stalled suggestions about import substitution development.)
6 comments:
1. SuJung, Kim
2. Protesters attack bars in Bolivia
3. Although it is not directly related, while I read this article, I thought it had similar situation in the book, "Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon".
Now I'm reading the part that people(they are all male)debate about wether theater and bars, etc spoil the village or not.
I wonder how things will turn out both in the book and in El Alto.
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Hundreds of angry residents have attacked bars and brothels in Bolivia for a second day amid reports they were selling alcohol to underage drinkers.
Protesters armed with sticks and stones smashed windows and set furniture ablaze in at least 20 bars in El Alto, on the edge of the capital, La Paz.
They want local government to pass laws banning pubs and brothels near schools.
Municipal council chairman Gustavo Morales told Spain's Efe news agency such regulations were in the pipeline.
'Neighbourhoods unsafe'
The protesters - mostly families mobilised by the El Alto Parents' Federation - say the establishments are making their neighbourhood unsafe.
Local newspaper reports said some bars had hidden areas for underage alcohol consumption.
"We want to end this, because our children are here, our husbands, our brothers-in-law, all the males in the family spend their time here," local resident Justina Mamani told The Associated Press news agency.
Mr Morales said the new laws would extend the minimum distance between brothels and schools from 300m to 500m (330 to 550 yards) and limit business hours for all nightlife venues.
El Alto is one of the poorest areas of Bolivia.
Many of its one million residents were instrumental in bringing down the government of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada amid violent protests in 2003.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7049155.stm
1.Kyung-hee, Kang
2.Energy Crunch Threatens South American Nations
3.Recently, rising of Latin America nations' macroeconomic indexes have excited many. But serious problems are there to be too happy about that. And this is one of them.
And the energy issue is significant varable for dynamics. See Venezuela and Columbia's recent closing relationship despite their political contradiction.
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By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: October 13, 2007
SANTIAGO, Chile — For Chile and Argentina, it was the frostiest of winters, and not just the reading on the thermometer.
During one of the coldest South American winters here in decades, neighboring Argentina cut at least 90 percent of the natural gas it sends to Chile 79 times along pipelines that connect the two countries.
Power plants and factories in this smoggy capital were forced to switch to diesel and fuel oil, which belch more air pollution and have nearly quadrupled the cost of producing electricity. Santiago reported its highest number of dangerous smog days in the past seven years.
Argentina’s actions have chilled relations between the two countries. But the impact of South America’s energy crisis is far broader. Across the region, concerns about energy are roiling national politics, generating tensions between neighbors and emerging as one of the biggest brakes to growth and integration.
Energy is the Achilles’ heel of the governments in Brazil, Argentina and Chile, which are struggling to maintain sufficient natural gas supplies after several years of strong economic growth.
“Bottlenecks in energy supply will be a critical policy concern in Latin America over the next two to five years,” said Christopher Garman, the Latin America director at Eurasia Group, a New York-based consulting firm.
Energy concerns are at the top of the agenda for the region’s incumbent leaders, most of whom have high popularity ratings, thanks mostly to buoyant economies riding a wave of higher commodity prices.
But the steady economic growth has only increased energy demand, while governments have failed for a decade to invest enough in natural gas exploration and new power plants to expand their energy supplies.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil is particularly preoccupied with the risk of power shortages that could occur as early as 2009, according to analysts. In an interview in September, he said the region’s gas woes were reason to support new hydroelectric power plants and projects to produce electricity from sugar cane. “I do not want to make Brazil dependent on gas,” he said.
The other alternative is to raise consumer prices or impose austerity measures, something politicians have been reluctant to do. History shows they can help sink a president.
When Brazil suffered an energy crunch in 2000, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso implored consumers to conserve, imposing penalties on those who did not. In the end, a major crisis was averted, but the government’s approval rating dropped by a third, and Mr. da Silva — not Mr. Cardoso’s chosen successor — was elected in 2002.
Néstor Kirchner, Argentina’s president, has steadfastly refused to raise his country’s gas and electricity prices, which are among the lowest in the world, ahead of the Oct. 28 election. Mr. Kirchner’s wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, is the leading candidate to succeed him.
Instead, his government placed winter energy-use restrictions on industries and cut off its neighbor to the west, Chile.
Mr. Kirchner’s strategy has satisfied voters and kept Argentina’s economy humming, for now. But the low gas and power prices have scared away needed foreign investment in energy development and raised fears of runaway inflation.
Argentina could be digging itself a bigger hole to crawl out of. While the government refuses to impose on residential consumers to cut back, Argentina’s energy demands are rising faster than supply.
Power plants have little or no spare capacity and are suffering from a lack of maintenance, increasing the chances of brownouts or blackouts, said Sylvie D’Apote, an analyst with Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
Argentina’s energy troubles began with the crushing economic crisis of 2001, when its currency, the peso, was devalued almost overnight by some 300 percent. In a panic, the government moved energy rates from dollars to pesos.
Suddenly Argentine natural gas was the cheapest in Latin America, and residential electricity rates were among the lowest in the world.
For Mrs. Kirchner, if she is elected, changing course would be risky. Raising energy prices would only worsen inflation and raise the ire of Argentine voters, potentially spoiling the Kirchners’ plans to tag-team the presidency for the next 12 years.
Argentina’s economy, which is expected to grow this year by about 8 percent for a fifth straight year, is struggling with rising inflation pegged by private economists at nearly 20 percent, more than double official government claims.
Mr. Kirchner has denied there is even an energy crisis, noting that residential consumers have yet to feel a pinch.
Instead, it is Chile that is being squeezed. With few energy resources of its own, Chile had come to rely on Argentina for natural gas. The neighbors signed contracts in 1994, giving Chile a cheap source of fuel and a way to help clean Santiago’s notoriously smoggy air.
Argentine officials say that the Argentine Congress never approved the energy accords, making them nonbinding. The Chileans call that claim ludicrous.
The energy crunch is already contributing to inflation in Chile. Chile’s inflation is expected to be 6.4 percent this year, nearly a third of which is attributable to the cost of energy and food, said Pablo Goldberg, chief economist for Latin America at Merrill Lynch.
Political problems have limited Chile’s energy options. Bolivia, which has the largest gas reserves in the region, has forbidden Argentina from re-exporting Bolivian gas to Chile because of a decades-old dispute over maritime access rights.
Analysts have doubts in any case about just how much natural gas Bolivia, which nationalized its gas sector last year, can extract without foreign investment.
With few options, Chile’s government, led by President Michelle Bachelet, is moving on several fronts to diversify its energy supplies.
Two liquefied natural gas terminals should be completed by the middle of 2009. Chile is also opening up some land for oil and gas exploration, though it historically has found little.
Ms. Bachelet received a government-financed study last week exploring the prospects for building nuclear power plants, which is likely to be a controversial decision for the next government.
“We can’t just wait with our arms crossed and hope for a miracle to happen,” said Antonio Baciagalupo, the chief executive of GNL Quintero, the consortium building the liquefied natural gas plant near Santiago.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/world/americas/13chile.html?pagewanted=1&ref=americas
Euna Lee
title: Chile repeats own Antarctic claim
Thoughts: The land grabbing season is here again! It was interesting how countries such as Chile and Argentina would claim some of the seabed of Antarctica--seduced by the massive amount of energy reserves supposedly under the melting continent. Global warming thus is no longer a threat to the ecosphere alone but to diplomatic ties between states.
The article also mentions the contentious rivalry between Britain and Argentina over the possession of the Falkland Islands or Malvinas. Land grabbing in Antarctica will only perpetuate further conflict between these two states, and thus there could be only one answer to resolving this problem: alternative energy?
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The Chilean government has reiterated its own claims to parts of Antarctic territory and waters.
Chile's comments come after the UK government this week announced plans to claim sovereignty over a large area of the seabed around British Antarctica.
The UK move could spark disputes with Chile and Argentina which both regard large areas of the region as theirs.
Countries have until May 2009 to ask the United Nations to consider their right to the seabed.
On Wednesday, the UK Foreign Office said the claim being prepared could extend Britain's stake for Antarctic waters by more than 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles) and was permitted under the Law of the Sea Convention.
A Foreign Office spokeswoman said that even if the claim were granted, Britain would not contravene the existing 1959 treaty that prohibits oil, gas and mineral exploitation in Antarctica.
The proposal, she said, was simply to safeguard British interests should the treaty be abolished.
A statement from the Chilean foreign ministry said it was confident Britain, together with all other signatories, would continue to respect the treaty.
The statement added that any British claim "will not affect our country's rights over the said territory and its maritime space".
The UK proposal also brought a response from Argentina.
The foreign minister, Jorge Taiana, speaking in Rome this week, said his country was preparing its own presentation to the UN, " in defence of our national interest and our legitimate sovereign rights".
Argentina's claim would include South Georgia and the Falkland Islands, called Malvinas by Argentina.
Currently, five-sixths of the Antarctic continent is claimed by seven countries and most of the existing British stake is also claimed by either Argentina or Chile.
The move by Britain to extend its territorial reach comes under a UN treaty that allows coastal countries to claim a continental shelf up to 350 nautical miles (640km) off their shores, and the right to explore for natural gas and oil.
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http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7052297.stm
1. Heaeum Cho
2. A little-known language survives in Colombia
3. This is an inspiring story of what began as tragic slavery beginning from a far off continent has become a source of historical and socio-cultural pride for the following generations of a little known indigenous group called the Palenqueros.
A folk community such as this; left untainted by the influence of the Spanish, modern industrialization and government intervention is an ideal setting for a culture to flourish. Yet the issue of poverty and unemployment must be addressed in a way that fits the needs of the community. A delicate balance is required for both the heritage of the Palenqueros and its future generations to be preserved while dealing wisely with the demands of the present in "catching up" with the rest of the world.
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By Simon Romero
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
SAN BASILIO DE PALENQUE, Colombia:
The residents of this village, founded almost three centuries ago by runaway slaves in the jungle of northern Colombia, eke out their survival from plots of manioc. Pigs wander through dirt roads. The occasional soldier on patrol peaks into houses made of straw, mud and cow dung.
On the surface, it resembles any other impoverished Colombian village. But when adults here speak with one another, their language draws inspiration from as far away as the Congo River Basin in Africa. This peculiar speech has astonished linguists since they began studying it several decades ago.
The language is known up and down Colombia's Caribbean coast as Palenquero and here simply as "lengua" - tongue. Theories about its origins vary, but one thing is certain: It survived for centuries in this small community, which is now struggling to keep it from perishing.
Today, fewer than half of the community's 3,000 residents actively speak Palenquero, although many children and young adults can understand it and pronounce some phrases.
"Palenge a senda tielan ngombe ri nduse i betuaya," Sebastián Salgado, 37, a teacher at the public school here, said before a classroom of teenage students on a recent Tuesday morning. (The sentence roughly translates into English as, "Palenque is the land of cattle, sweets and basic staples.")
Palenquero is thought to be the only Spanish-based Creole language in Latin America. But its grammar is so different that Spanish speakers can understand almost nothing of it. Its closest relative may be Papiamento, spoken on the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, which draws largely from Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch, linguists say.
The survival of Palenquero points to the extraordinary resilience of San Basilio de Palenque, part of whose very name - Palenque - is the Spanish word for a fortified village of runaway slaves. Different from dozens of other palenques that were vanquished, this community has successfully fended off threats to its existence to this day.
Colonial references to its origins are scarce, but historians say that San Basilio de Palenque was probably settled sometime after revolts led by Benkos Biohó, a 17th-century African resistance leader who organized guerrilla attacks on the nearby port of Cartagena with fighters armed with stolen blunderbusses.
And while English-, French- and Dutch-based Creole languages are found in the Caribbean, the survival of one in the interior of Colombia has led some scholars to theorize that Palenquero may be the last remnant of a Spanish-based Creole once used widely by slaves throughout Latin America.
Palenquero was strongly influenced by the Kikongo language of Congo and Angola, and by Portuguese, the language of traders who brought African slaves to Cartagena in the 17th century. Kikongo-derived words like ngombe (cattle) and ngubá (peanut) remain in use here today.
"There is nothing else like this language in the Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas," said Armin Schwegler, a linguist at the University of California, Irvine, who has researched Palenquero since the 1980s. "But it is in danger of disappearing."
Advocates for keeping Palenquero alive face an uphill struggle. The isolation that once shielded the language from the outside world has come to an end. Once three days by mule to the coast, the route to Cartagena now takes two hours by bus on a bumpy dirt road.
Electricity arrived in the 1970s as a government gift in recognition of Antonio Cervantes, better known as Kid Pambelé, a Colombian world boxing titleholder who was born here. With electricity came radio and television. The schoolhouse, named in honor of Biohó, has an Internet connection now.
But Palenqueros, as the community's residents call themselves, say the biggest threat to their language's survival comes from direct contact with outsiders. Many here have had to venture to nearby banana plantations or cities for work, and then found themselves ostracized because of the way they spoke.
"We were subject to scorn because of our tongue," said Concepción Hernández Navarro, 72, who survives by farming yams, peanuts and corn.
Only two of Hernández's eight children live here; five are in Cartagena and one moved as far away as Caracas, drawn by Venezuela's oil boom.
"We have always been poor here," she said in an interview in front of her modest house, "but our poverty has grown worse."
If there is one blessing to this impoverishment, it may be that Colombia's long internal war has largely been fought over spoils in other places, allowing teachers here to toil uninterrupted at reviving Palenquero since classes were introduced in the late 1980s.
Undaunted by the prospect of Palenquero disappearing after centuries of use, Rutsely Simarra Obeso, a linguist who was born here and lives in Cartagena, is compiling a lexicon. Others here are assembling a dictionary of Palenquero to be used in the school.
Bernardino Pérez, 38, a teacher trying to revive Palenquero, said these efforts were undertaken with little government assistance.
"The Spanish empire imposed its language on us, but we resisted," Pérez said. "We'll keep on resisting a while longer."
The fight to keep the language alive is taking place as other parts of Colombia, which by some measures has the largest black population in the Spanish-speaking world, finally takes interest in the community as it emerges as a mecca for anthropologists, historians, musicologists and linguists.
Ana Mercedes Hoyos, one of Colombia's most prominent painters, has made images of Palenque a central feature of her work. Newspapers from Bogotá have begun sending sports reporters here to inquire about a boxing renaissance in the stifling-hot gym where children dream of following in Kid Pambelé's footsteps.
The defenders of Palenquero view their struggle as a continuation of other battles.
"Our ancestors survived capture in Africa, the passage by ship to Cartagena and were strong enough to escape and live on their own for centuries," said Salgado, the schoolteacher.
"We are the strongest of the strongest," he continued. "No matter what happens, our language will live on within us."
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http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/17/asia/journal.php
1. Hyunji Ju
2. Castro speaks by telephone with Chevaz on TV
3. It seems Chevaz really want to get along with Castro or they already are the best friends. There is an interesting article though, that says a Che momument in Venezuela was destroyed saying he is not a good example of their kids. Could it be the sign of disagreement on some issues between the people and the government?
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CARACAS, Venezuela, Oct. 14 — Fidel Castro of Cuba chatted by telephone with Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, during a live television broadcast on Sunday, with the two leaders going over plans to strengthen economic and political ties.
Mr. Chávez’s weekly television program was broadcast from Santa Clara in central Cuba, where the remains of Che Guevara are kept, to mark the death 40 years ago this month of the iconic guerrilla leader. While Mr. Castro, who is 81, did not appear on the program, it was the first time Cubans were given broad access to a live broadcast of the Cuban leader since he went into seclusion for health reasons last year. The program was shown in Cuba and Venezuela.
With Mr. Castro’s appearances in the Cuban news media closely controlled, his inclusion in a Venezuelan program points to Mr. Chávez’s prominence in guiding the economic destiny of Cuba, which relies on subsidized imports of Venezuelan oil.
Mr. Chávez also showed a short video of a meeting held a day earlier in Havana, in which Mr. Castro, looking frail and speaking with a gravelly voice, accepted as a gift a painting done by Mr. Chávez in prison after the Venezuelan leader’s failed coup attempt in 1992.
In the telephone discussion on Sunday, the voice sounded clearer. “The conditions are more favorable than ever to spring forth the ideas and revolution of which Che spoke,” Mr. Castro said.
The audience in Santa Clara included Cuba’s vice president, Carlos Lage, dressed in a red polo shirt decorated with a Che logo, and Venezuela’s foreign minister, Nicolás Maduro. Notably absent was Cuba’s acting president and Mr. Castro’s brother, Raúl Castro.
Mr. Chávez did most of the talking, highlighting his plans to expand energy subsidies to Cuba to include natural gas exports.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/world/americas/15castro.html?_r=1&ref=americas
Yong Mie Jo
Chavez and Uribe open gas pipeline
This time, it is a bondage -against the US, or "the external influence and dependence"- in the name of 'money talk'.
It seems that Chvez is very apparently searching his way out for his country and for the whole Latin America(?) through appointing a great enemy -obviously, US- and bringing a single bondage out of many nations in Latin America with different characteristics and interst backgrounds.
This "Latin American brotherhood" and intimate alliance actually reminds me of one of many dictorial leadership's favorite political tacts. George Bush did the same before and after 9.11, and many Korean dictators in the past used a clear enemy 'the reds(North Korea)' as a justified means of national gathering and support for the govermment.
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The leaders of Venezuela and Colombia have inaugurated a natural gas pipeline between their countries and promised to push ahead with ambitious plans to boost regional energy ties.
The 224km undersea pipeline was opened in Ballenas, northern Colombia by Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's president and Alvaro Uribe, his Colombian counterpart.
Rafael Ramirez, Venezuela's energy and oil minister, said the pipeline had the capacity to pump 14 million cubic metres of natural gas a day between the two countries.
It will initially carry between 5.7 million and 8.5 million cubic metres of gas daily from Colombia to Venezuela.
Less dependent
In a speech after Friday's ceremony, which was also attended by Rafael Correa, Ecuador's president, Chavez defended his plan to extend a vast gas pipeline across South America.
He said: "Some say that I'm mad, that this gas pipeline is madness. Whoever says that should go and see the pipelines in Europe that run from Siberia to Portugal.
"Venezuela and Colombia are to study the possibility of extending the pipeline to Panama "and then to the rest of Central America," Ramirez said.
Chavez said such an extension would make Central American countries less dependent on outside sources such as the United States and reduce pressure for free-market policies.
Venezuelan officials said the pipeline will flow from Colombia to Venezuela until 2011, and then reverse course to carry gas from Venezuela's vast, largely untapped reserves to Colombia.
Chavez and Uribe agreed to build the pipeline between Colombia's La Guajira gas fields and Venezuela's Paraguana refining complex in 2005.
Paraguna is Venezuela's largest refinery and requires large amounts of natural gas for petroleum refining.
US counterweightIn a separate development, Uribe announced that Colombia would formally request to join a regional development bank backed by Chavez that is to launch next month in Caracas, Venezuela's capital.
Uribe, who is Washington's closest ally in the region, said: "Our entrance into the Bank of the South is not a rejection of the World Bank or the Inter-American bank but an expression of solidarity and loyalty with the South American brotherhood.
"Chavez has pushed the bank as a counterweight to US influence, especially the US-dominated World Bank, and as a path to economic independence for the region.
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