tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89260399684343534962024-03-13T08:15:22.045-07:00This is Not a Travel BlogRogerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03159868506889188534noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-47716275898592746782008-07-30T08:38:00.000-07:002008-07-30T08:40:24.261-07:00UPDATE: The Battle for BoliviaThe D.C.-based progressive think thank <a href="http://www.cepr.net/">C.E.P.R.</a> has released <a href="http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/the-distribution-of-bolivia-s-most-important-natural-resources-and-the-autonomy-conflicts/">a report</a> that supports many of my assertions related to my post <a href="http://thisisnotatravelblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/battle-for-bolivia.html">The Battle for Bolivia</a>.Todd A.http://www.blogger.com/profile/18227432349012130007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-43427409790426119202008-03-29T03:22:00.000-07:002008-03-29T03:50:12.022-07:00A Jordanian Wedding<a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/JordanianWedding/photo#5183112033370222162"><img src="http://lh6.google.com/rgoldfinger/R-4c7twVrlI/AAAAAAAABc4/cu5-MA7Jyu4/s400/03283637.jpg" /></a><br />For wealthy Jordanians, a wedding at a nice hotel (like this one, at the Hyatt) is both a status symbol, and a way to mingle outside of the social norms that demand conservative dress and behavior in almost any other public setting. It wasn’t a very traditional wedding, but it was classy and a good time. <br /><br /><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/JordanianWedding/photo#5183112162219241074"><img src="http://lh4.google.com/rgoldfinger/R-4dDNwVrnI/AAAAAAAABdI/-xquqEC_Zi4/s400/03273466.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/JordanianWedding/photo#5183112084909829730"><img src="http://lh6.google.com/rgoldfinger/R-4c-twVrmI/AAAAAAAABdA/VV2mxF7PC10/s400/03283625_2.jpg" /></a>Rogerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03159868506889188534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-40037030565582100872008-01-09T12:20:00.000-08:002008-01-10T15:26:17.182-08:00The Battle for Bolivia<a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2882630990093725021uWiLKw"><img src="http://inlinethumb13.webshots.com/38924/2882630990093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="Battlelines"></a><br /><br />When I arrived to the sleepy town that Sucre was in the first week of November, before the deaths and the political power struggles and the displays of street power, I couldn’t imagine that we’d be where we are now. In reality, though, none of this is really all that surprising in light of the history of the tactics pursued by MAS, President Evo Morales’ party, and its oligarchy-led opposition.<br /><br />Let’s be clear on what point we’re actually at right now. On December 9th the Constitutional Assembly, assigned to create a new Magna Carta for Bolivia which would recognize full rights of citizenship and cultural autonomy for the majority indigenous population for the first time in the nation’s history, met without the presence of the PODEMOS asembleistas, the oligarchy’s pet political party and the main opposition party, and approved a MAS-drafted Political Constitution of the State (CPE). That constitution must now be ratified by a simple majority of the nation’s populace. Throughout the week leading to December 15th, each of the prefects of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando, and Tarija (the lowland tropical and semi-tropical provinces, together known as the <em>media luna </em>for their combined similarity to a half moon) had unilaterally declared themselves “autonomous” from the national government, purportedly retaining full rights to the assignment and distribution of the natural resources in their lands, in particular proclaiming invalid any attempts by the national government to redistribute oil wealth or land ownership, with that Saturday the 15th to be the official “division day” in which these pronouncements took effect. With over a month of civic disruption and violence sweeping across the county, calls from the international community to cease the escalating political confrontations and return to negotiations, and nearly every national media outlet (if not dinner table) asking the question “are we headed for civil war?”, the nation arrived on that fateful weekend with much apprehension and quite a bit of fear. Then, despite nearly all expectations, MAS-dominated La Paz and the pro-autonomous groups in the <em>media luna</em>, rather than devolving into street combat, instead celebrated their perceived respective victories in day-long fiestas that are now known as the “marcha de los pueblos.”<br /><br />But let’s back up a little bit, to get some perspective on how this came to be. <br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2767709070093725021RCrTnk"><img src="http://inlinethumb24.webshots.com/40471/2767709070093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="Santa Cruz"></a><br /><br /><em><a href="http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20071207_006113/nota_249_516975.htm">A Political Duel Between the Past and the Future—Juan Ramón Quintana, Minister of the Presidency </a></em><br /><br />The above quote might carry just a bit of irony, as those of us paying attention will remember him as a graduate of the prestigious <a href="http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20070908_006023/nota_247_477349.htm">School of the Americas (SOA)</a>, and as an “assessor” under Defense Minister Fernando Keiffer in <a href="http://www.redbolivia.com/noticias/Pol%C3%ADtica/57752.html?SID=ce0424489dc045710bc57fa5b8b59d0e">Hugo Banzar’s infamous dictatorship</a>. But irony notwithstanding, as a member of the center-left MAS’s current government he has managed to characterize an important historical aspect of the current crisis. <br /><br />Bolivia’s history has always been one of contested resources. The territory named after Simon Bolivar was nearly double its current size at independence, with border wars successively leaning that fat baby up over time as neighboring states gradually encroached on her; Brazil into the rubber-rich Amazonian lands, Paraguay into the fossil fuel-rich Chaco, and of course that infamous incident with Chile and the Pacific coast. Internally Bolivia saw the same inter-regional violence; with the civil war between trade-rich La Paz and Sucre yeah neigh a century ago over the seat off effective government. <br /><br />The ascent of Santa Cruz de la Sierra came with the explosion in the international price of coca leaf starting in the late 1960s, when North Americans discovered cocaine as the drug of choice in the urban discos. The Santa Cruz elite invested heavily in the cocaine industry, becoming the center of production in the 1970s and generating unparalleled wealth and growth. The Santa Cruz elite poured their almost unbelievable wealth from the drug trade into investments in land and real estate, fueling further economic growth in the licit economy. <br /><br />The rapid economic growth drew immigration from around the world, including Japanese rice farmers, German-speaking Mennonites from Canada and Mexico, and a much-welcomed group of fugitive Nazis. The Bolivian government at the time was very much interested in the arrival of these less-dark additions to what they perceived to be a culture too drenched in indigenous, and encouraged their arrivals. One method of encouraging this was tolerance of highly questionable methods of land acquisition from the broken and depressed indigenous that were already living (or surviving, perhaps) on them. In one instance the government went so far as to offer South African and Rhodesian white farmers indigenous-occupied lands, calling it an and offer of “empty” lands (the offer was declined). <br /><br />Due to these race-based affirmative action policies and the cocaine profits invested in legitimate businesses, Santa Cruz quadrupled its size between 1950 and 2001, with current estimates hovering around 1.5 million people, making it the largest metropolitan center in modern Bolivia (El Alto and La Paz, each with about 800,000 people, are technically considered separate cities despite being functionally one economic center). However, 60% of these current inhabitants are migrants from less economically productive parts of Bolivia, and La Paz remains the principal market for <em>Cruceña </em>(those from Santa Cruz) goods, so the appearance of cultural and economic <a href="http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20071213_006119/nota_244_519615.htm">mono-polarity is not borne out by reality</a>. <br /><br />In other words, the land reforms which the liberal Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR) had inadvertently started in the Quecha and Aymara lands higher up in the Andes (by arming the peasants and miners during the National Revolution, which is much more difficult than un-arming them), actually saw an inverse occurrence in the eastern lowlands, with white elites taking more and more land from the relatively docile indigenous (when compared to those in the highlands). <br /><br /><em>The Hope of a Nation</em><br /><br />Fast forward a few decades to the ascent of the Movement towards Socialism (MAS). After decades of organizing in the campo, this coalition of cocaleros, miners, urban syndicalists, Aymara migrants who split their seasons between working in the altiplano and El Alto (which is the peri-urban sprawl spreading out from the altiplano lip towering above La Paz) and the various indigenous social movements was expanding out of the road blocks and into formal politics. After numerous victories, Water War ’00, Gas War ’02, the ousting of ex-President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada <a href="http://www.cidob.org/es/documentacion/biografias_lideres_politicos/america_del_sur/bolivia/gonzalo_sanchez_de_lozada#8">(“Goni,” amongst friends)</a> , MAS and its allies won the 2005 elections with 54% of the vote, the highest in Bolivian history. <br /><br />MAS and its allies in the formerly repressed sectors of society viewed this as a mandate to radically change the structure of Bolivian society through the rewriting of the constitution, a longtime goal of the disparate movements under the MAS umbrella. One of the main objectives of the new constitution was to extend the land reforms into the lowlands, bringing new hope to indigenous there. <br /><br />This latter objective, however, runs directly in opposition to the interests of the Santa Cruz elites by threatening their hard-stolen gains from the dark-skinned originarios, won through the drug trade and racist policies of the past half century. Thus the issues of who has authority over land reform and the legally defined size of latifundio (a Latin American concept of land ownership signifying something like “illegally large and unjust landholding”) have become a few of the most heavily contest issues of the new constitution. <br /><br />Beyond the issues of land reform and resource control, ideological differences also sharply divide the two sides in the current crisis. The elites embraced neoliberalism during the 1980s and 90s, at least in part for its implicit acceptance of the quasi-legal methods of their economic dominance. On the other hand, the social movements making up MAS’s base would prefer to see a formal recognition of the highly communalized political and social organizations which they have continued to live in since even before the Incan Empire enslaved their ancestor, as well as a return to national political control of the nation’s resources which they feel have been sold to international investors for both too low a price and in counter to their worldviews.<br /><br />In short, everyone knew there was going to be a fight, they just didn’t know how big it was going to be.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20071216_006122/nota_249_520844.htm "><em>We’re already beginning to savor liberty...No one should decide to invade us nor militarize us—Rubén Costas, Prefect of Santa Cruz<br /><br />Más Ruido que Nueces (more noise than substance)—Alfredo Rada, Minister of Government </em></a><br /><br />Rallying behind PODEMOS, the opposition gained allies in the other lowland states (Beni, Pando, and Tarija), where similar land-ownership structures and resource ownership oligarchies felt similarly threatened by the MAS’s promise to redistribute the nation’s wealth to the historically oppressed. MAS, perhaps sensing the coming fight, or perhaps not trusting (or desiring) to see political power split outside of the party structure, responded by solidifying the pro-constitution movement under its banner. The result is that the original idea of a constitutional assembly (CA) elected directly from communities and indigenous groups was scrapped in favor of a political party-based assembly, with MAS and PODEMOS basically constituting the opposing sides. This disappointed not a few of the social movements and urban middle-class voters who had supported MAS in the original election. But the battle lines were drawn and it was apparently too late for aspirational details.<br /><br />Coinciding with the election on July 2nd, 2006, for the assembly members, or asembleistias, the <em>media luna </em>enacted a national referendum for departmental autonomy. It’s important to note, however, that the question put to vote was formulated as being in light of the national constitutional process. While the resolution failed nationally, with “no” gaining 57.6% of the populous, the <em>media luna</em> departments all won a “yes” with overwhelming majorities; Santa Cruz and Tarija each saw “yes” votes reach over 70% of the departmental population. Despite the fact that the wording of the question explicitly subordinates departmental autonomy to the authority of the CPE, when it comes, the government quickly denounced the vote because, while expressing legitimate demands for greater decentralization of the national State, they perceived the influence of “certain sectors of cruceña society” harboring separatist interests. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20071010_006055/nota_244_491382.htm">Particularly it asked</a>: “Are you in agreement, in line with the outline of national unity, with giving to the Constitutional Assembly a binding mandate to establish a regime of departmental autonomy, applicable immediately after the promulgation of a new Political Constitutional of the State in those departments where this Referendum has a majority such that their authorities…receive from the National State those executive competencies, administrative rule-making attributes and those economic-financial resources assigned to them by the new Political Constitution of the State and the laws of the Nation?” <br /><br />PODEMOS, knowing it didn’t have enough votes in the CA to swing the text of the new constitution in their favor (which could basically get no better than the status quo for them), rapidly took the offensive using practically every trick it had to block the progress of the assembly, using stalling tactics and battles over technical details to prevent much pretty much anything from happening. Some of these arguments, of course, were based on valid democratic principles that attracted less opposed minority parties to the PODEMOS cause, and succeeded in achieving a measure of compromise. Subsequent to this the CA entered a fairly productive period. And then the opposition struck oro.<br /><br /><em>Capitalia, or “How to Stall a Constitutional Assembly 101”</em><br /><br />Sucre is a beautiful little white-washed town that also still happened to be the constitutional capital under the old constitution (the new one, just passed, declines to explicitly name a capital, for reasons that will soon become apparent). The hundred year-old war which saw the legislative and executive branches incarcerated in La Paz, however, never really died in the hearts of some Sucreños (those from Sucre), and when the constitutional assembly was brought to Sucre (partly to avoid interference from the kind of street demonstrations that had defined Paceña (those from La Paz) politics since the fall of the military dictatorship), these Sucreños saw this as their opportunity to press their issue. Rally under the banner of Capitalia, the Sucre elite and romantically nostalgic petitioned to get the question of just where the capital should be under the new constitution. The La Paz (by way of El Alto)-heavy MAS basically took a “are you kidding me” attitude to the prospect of uprooting a hundred year-old capital and restoring it several hundred kilometers to the south-east, and passes a resolution taking removing Capitalia as a subject for debate on in the CA on August 15th, 2007. <a href="http://democracyctr.org/bolivia/documents/ssi/assembly_brief2.htm">See Re-Founding Bolivia: A Nation's Struggle Over Constitutional Reform, published by the Democracy Center (2007)</a>.<br /><br />Smelling opportunity, the opposition quickly took up Capitalia, riling up Sucreño populist sentiment and jamming CA proceedings with the cause. The Sucre elite did its part by repeatedly calling general strikes, arranging marches, calling upon the local university to preach the cause and force students to march (according to what a student told a friend of mine in Sucre), and arranging impassioned seminars filled with intellectuals making the argument that all this overkill was justified and valid. The marches turned into protests, and the protests turned into burning tires in the streets and threats to the assembly members and their families, to the point where the assembly called a recess for fear of their lives, in the hopes that they could try again later in a more sane environment.<br /><br />Thus, seven months into the CA, effectively nothing had been accomplished. With the December 14 deadline to have a draft ready for popular referendum approaching and over 300 individual articles each requiring a 2/3rds majority to pass, the nation entered the month of November with a lot of skepticism, doubt and apprehension about both the effectiveness and desirability of the current process.<br /><br />But no one was ready for what would come next.<br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2862405170093725021NCbJJN"><img src="http://inlinethumb42.webshots.com/41257/2862405170093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="Siege"></a><br /><br /><em>Black November</em><br /><br />The first week of the reopening of the assembly was extremely tame in comparison to the previous months, and thus when I left the city I hadn’t seen anything more than the typical Bolivian tradition of the firecracker-accompanied march. But two weeks later when I arrived in La Paz the news had changed. My friends were telling me that they were witnessing the same burning-tires-and-tear-gas dance between rioting students and counter-offensive police that they had seen months ago, only this time things seemed to be escalating rapidly. Apparently someone had put the lid on the pot and turned up the heat. They told me students were reporting professors ordering them to join in the mayhem, and they didn’t seem to balk at the opportunity for a little fun. MAS responded by removing the embattled assembly to a military college a little outside town that had a better security posture. <br /><br />By this time, the social movements had about had it with what they were calling a right-wing counter-revolutionary offensive to stop a necessary social change. But they were also about fed up with the MAS’s power play and party politics, and so decided to take matters into their own hands. Thus, what the privately-owned and opposition-aligned television and print media called a “<em>campesino </em>circus” gathered around the military college to prevent any further interruption in the constitutional process. As a sign of how extreme the sentiment was among the social movements, the <em>ponchos rojos </em>(the militant wing of the Aymara social movement) marched en masse upon Sucre to confront the students from across the <em>altiplano</em>, on the way there beheading two dogs before a camera as a warning to the students involved in the offensive as to what their intentions would be when they arrived. They provided <a href="http://www.lostiempos.com/noticias/23-11-07/23_11_07_ultimas_nac5.php">the video </a>to the media to ensure their message got across, sparking wide-spread outrage amongst the urban middle classes. <br /><br />Inside the besieged military college, the MAS assembly was fed up. PODEMOS claimed that the “<em>campesino </em>circus” had gone violent and thus had prevented their entrance. In their absence the MAS-dominated assembly made the unprecedented, unexpected, and unprocedural move of simply putting up for a final vote, in full, of a draft constitution which they, and only they, had written. <br /><br />This pushed the Sucre students into overdrive, who decided to plunge their own city into an orgy of violence. Over the bloody weekend of 24-26 November the students laid siege to the military college and police positions around the city in a 72 -hour battle, laying waste to the White City of the Americas. Amid reports of <a href="http://www.ubnoticias.org/en/article/death-and-sedition-in-bolivia">independent press</a>, such as <a href="http://abi.bo/index.php?i=noticias_texto_paleta&j=20071125190920">the Catholic-church run Erbol</a>, being shut down by the roaming mob, news eventually made it to the outside world that people were dying. <br /><br />The other news that shocked the nation was the retreat of the police, in the face of overwhelming force, to nearby Potosí. Students burned three police buildings and the local taxation office, and all the public property inside. In the absence of guards, 160 incarcerated prisoners simply walked out. The roaming mob was setting fire to every official vehicle that drove across their path, making some city streets a fiery hell of twisted metal and burning rubber. When eventually the police’s absence and lack of targets finally hit home, the students finally began to calm, so when the Sucre leaders finally made official calls for calm, they were ready to hear it. Luckily people were able to make it work or school Monday morning, with a job well done over the weekend.<br /><br />Immediately, emails and local newspapers were circulated depicting the level of the violence, and decrying the repressive actions of the government and the police. Putting aside the irony of a <em>conquering force </em>whining about repression, this also came across as pretty disingenuous to me. Students attacked police with overwhelming force, and once the police reacted with counter-force (after all, this is what police are for; maintaining the state’s monopoly of violence, right?) you start screaming about repression. My sister used to pull the same thing all the time when we were younger; she’d hit me first and then start screaming for mom almost immediately. And when the photos have fires, bloodied faces and broken bodies, well, that’s all the more effective. Unfortunately, this I think was the essence of the Sucre offensive; the <em>Sucreños</em>, and especially the students, were manipulated into a frenzy by the constant speeches and general strikes, emboldened by the constant claims of support from civic committee of Santa Cruz, and once the shit hit the fan it was Sucre’s streets and buildings and children (after all, even the police the students attacked grew up in Sucre too) who burned, broke and bled. Santa Cruz got its (failed) filibuster, but did Sucre really gain anything? After a period of effective autonomy when the national government retreated from the city, Sucre was basically in the same place as it was before the riots, 4 people and several buildings short. <br /><br /><em>The Chaos Spreads</em><br /><br />The filibuster failed, but things really couldn’t have turned out better for the opposition. At no fault for not being present to block the ramming-through of the MAS-only constitution, they could now simply reject the entire thing as illegal and illegitimate. And that’s just what they did. The four <em>media luna </em>provinces and Cochabamba went into immediate revolt through a staggered week of general strikes against the “murderous, undemocratic socialist-fascist Evo” (and there were usually a few more racist and homophobic adjectives added in, just for good measure).<br /><br />The violence spread immediately to Santa Cruz where MAS officials and their homes have been repeatedly attacked, with the most recent incident being a molotov cocktail being thrown into a child’s bedroom (luckily it bounced back out to no effect). Beni saw a day of violence in the capital after the opposition-aligned Prefect fired up his supporters, who promptly attacked a rival column of protesting <em>campesino </em>and indigenous. In Cochabamba, Prefect Manfred Reyes Villa had his notorious gangs patrolling the city looking to enforce his general strike, and hey, while you’re out there why not stick it to those dirty MAS-supporters; according to Bolivia commentator Jim Shultz’, at one point a motorcycle gang was positioned to ride over a line of police just so they could get their crack at some <em>campesino </em>protestors, “<a href="http://www.democracyctr.org/blog/2007/11/notes-on-general-strike.html">Mad Max-style</a>.” <br /><br />The spiraling violence started to affect even those not known to have cool heads. President Evo Morales, while still maintaining that the Sucre vote of the constitution “in full” was a victory and valid, reined in his party and appealed to the opposition by demanding that the CA reconvene to pass each and every article “in detail.” Jorge Tuto Quiroga, PODEMOS boss, former president and one-time leader of the right-wing party founded by Hugo Banzer, went on the air to express his party’s strategy, which was sane, responsible, admirable and entirely unrelated to anything his party had done, was doing or would do.<br /><br /><em>The March to Civil War?</em><br /><br />Apparently impressed with how easy taking shortcuts around democratic and constitutional processes makes political life, MAS engaged in a quick furry of unilateral decisions that basically erased opposed concerns from the government’s agenda. First, in order to pass an extremely controversial change to the IDH law (the payout from the contract renegotiation which President Morales successfully negotiated during <a href="http://democracyctr.org/bolivia/investigations/gas/oilgas.htm">his first few months in office</a>) , which would reduce the share sent through the Provincial offices in order to create a national pension program, President Morales led a march from El Alto to Plaza Murillo in order to surround Congress and ensure that the reform succeeds. Claiming that the crowd was hostile and threatening, the opposition refused to enter the building, leaving just MAS <a href="http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20071128_006104/nota_249_512640.htm">to pass the bill unanimously but unilaterally</a>. Legitimately, MAS and President Morales do have a lot to explain for here, as just last September in New York he was proclaiming a budget surplus for the first time in Bilovian history; where did the money go that he needed to cut the Provinces’ budgets for education and infrastructure? <a href="http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20071128_006104/nota_249_512640.htm">Almost as an afterthought </a>in the same session, Congress approved a change that made moving the CA from Sucre to MAS-friendly Oruro legal. <br /><br />Second, President Morales’ sent a proposal for a law of revocation in which referendum elections will be held to determine whether the current regime should continue in office, stating “I propose to the conservative and non-conservative prefects that we submit, together, to a revocatory referendum. <a href="http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20071206_006112/nota_249_516353.htm">Let the people decide</a>.” Congress should be expected to vote on this when it reconvenes in the New Year. This would affect not only the highest offices of power at the national level, including President Morales and his vice president, but also all the provincial prefects, including all Morales’ opposition in the eastern lowlands. This move has sparked criticism, appearing to abhor respect for the constitutionally mandates electoral processes. In effect, this is Morales throwing the gauntlet on the ground. This law basically boils down to a high school popularity contest; which of us do you guys like the most? But it’s also the democratic solution to the current crisis in which the people will determine the fate of the nation. <br /><br />Finally, once the CA reconvened in Oruro MAS made sure that the city was filled with its supporters. Miners, <em>alteños </em>(those from El Alto), <em>cocaleros</em>, and indigenous from around the <em>altiplano </em>flooded the city, blocking exit from the building in which the CA was convened. Inside, the assembly rushed through the proceedings in a process characterized by little or no debate, rapidly-called votes, marathon voting that didn’t recess until all the votes on all 400-plus articles where completed, and the absence of the PODEMOS opposition, who stood at the back of the assembly yelling “Illegal! Illegal! ” and “this constitution is stained with blood” for 15 minutes before leaving, <a href="http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20071209_006115/nota_249_517719.htm">claiming</a> that they were afraid of suffering aggression from MAS supporters. Other opposition party representatives, who did chose to participate, reported that the “multitude” outside barred their exit from the building, with one representative claiming that, when he tried to leave the building past midnight, the crowd forced him back inside yelling “Lazy! Lazy! Get to work!” In all, the assembly was convened for less than 16 hours before it passed all but one articles of the “in detail” version of the new <a href="http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20071210_006116/nota_249_517962.htm"><em>Magna Carta</em></a>. This article, of course, dealt with the legally defined size of <em>latifundio</em>. <br /><br />With the opposition leaders appearing all over the private media screaming bloody murder over this apparent display of authoritarian power and howling about the blatant illegality of these unilateral actions, you’d think that this was all really bad for the opposition. But a few things put this in doubt. First, when I walked past Plaza Murillo the day that the IDH revision was passed, the “violent <em>campesino </em>circus” that I saw looked more like elderly people sitting on the ground chewing coca and a lonely drummer keeping time; but who am I to judge the fear response mechanisms of the opposition? In any event, the “circus” didn’t impede the entrance of other opposition congress members. More importantly, the importance of entering if the opposition really wanted to kill the new CPE, it simply had to join in the proceedings and vote “no,” which would block the 2/3rds of the present sitting members voting requirement. The fact that they instead chose to wipe their hands clean of the assembly process by boycotting the voting is very telling. They knew that if this version of the CPE was killed in assembly the most likely result would be another round of the process, not the end of the constitutional project. And they knew that the unilateral actions of the government in the recent weeks can justifiably be characterized as procedurally illegal. Rather, what seems to be very obvious once you put yourself in their shoes is that the decision to boycott the national government’s agenda in full, including the IDH law and all other controversial bills, would get them much more political currency than standing and fighting in the voting halls.<br /><br /><embed src="http://p.webshots.com/flash/smallplayer.swf?videoFile=http://videoserve.webshots.com/video/19882/3084114750093725021KkHhNC_v_0.flv&audio=on&displayImagePreview=http://videothumb03.webshots.com/thumb/19882/3084114750093725021KkHhNCstill_002_0.jpg&videoPageUrl=http://good-times.webshots.com/video/3084114750093725021KkHhNC&autoPlay=false&shareLink=http://cards.webshots.com/ecard/personalize?photoId=3084114750093725021%26source=v" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350" quality="best" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed><br/><br/><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/video/3084114750093725021KkHhNC">Autonomia</a><br /><br /><em>Division Day</em><br /><br />Seen from this perspective, the next major event was not very shocking at all. With the government and its supporters celebrating what seemed to an early Christmas, the <em>media luna</em>’s provincial authorities simultaneously met to pass resolutions unilaterally declaring themselves “autonomous” from the national government. While the new CPE does contain sections allowing for autonomy of political departments as well as of indigenous communities, of municipalities and of regions, the autonomy statutes passed by the provinces go far beyond what is legally provided for. <br /><br />The new CPE allows for autonomy in order to bring a measure of decentralization to the Bolivian political structure, allowing for the devolution of some government functions to departmental and community levels. But the CPE is also premised on the concept of returning to the <em>originarios </em>the collective right to land, territory and sovereignty, meaning that key natural resources should be the province <a href="http://www.cedib.org/pcedib/?module=displaystory&story_id=20572&format=html">of the people collectively</a>. Thus, articles 273, 278 and 306, providing for the autonomy of departments, grants direct elections of officials and legislative power over departmental norms “in the ambit of their exclusively assigned competencies,” meaning that the national government reserves certain powers of economic and social regulation to itself. Thus, for example, articles 373 and 378 reserve exclusive authority of regulation of hydrocarbons and the production, transportation and distribution of energy to the national government. Further, articles 320 and 378 prioritize national investment over foreign investment and limit private interests and the ability to grant concessions for the exploitation of hydrocarbons. The autonomy statutes of Santa Cruz and Tarija explicitly purport to devolve authority over the exploitation and commercialization of hydrocarbons in their departments. This is in clear violation of the new CPE. <br /><br />A similar analysis follows for the authority over “social property” and “national resources” (art. 357) and over mineral resources (art. 369). The Oruro “en detail” CA was unable to achieve a 2/3rds vote for article 398, which would determine the limit to the amount of land which would be considered <em>latifundio</em>, and thus the two options offered will now go before popular vote along with the rest of the constitution. But both options would clearly establish that the authority for land reform measures would be reserved for the national government. <br /><br />The Santa Cruz statute explicitly violates both the spirit and character of these articles. Thus, 4 out of Bolivia’s 9 provinces have declared autonomous in a manner explicitly in violation of the character of the agreements reached just days before, in the absence of their representative’s votes. The government has taken this to be a separatist call for independence, and of a seditionist character. The opposition has refuted this claim by arguing that they’re simply exerting their rights to autonomous governance and giving assurances that they’re attempting anything of a separatist character. But in other criticisms of the MAS government they have made clear they consider it corrupt, inefficient, and authoritarian of the same character as communist one-party states of the past century, making constant references to Morales’ ties to the Chavez and Castro governments (assumed to be obvious examples of failed states caused by “outdated socialist ideologies”). <br /><br />In light of their near-absolute opposition to just about anything the MAS government has done or is attempting to do, and in light of their explicit disregard for the constitution that might become binding law early next year, it’s hard to believe that the <em>media luna </em>isn’t just a little interested in separating themselves from at least certain aspects of the “new Bolivia.” Clearly, defeating the national push for land reforms and social (or at least state) control of hydrocarbons and other national resources, blocking redistribution efforts, and ensuring their freedom to deal with international investors in the exploitation of the resources found within their borders is of utmost importance. But the fact that Santa Cruz is introducing ID cards defining a citizenship distinct from the national one, and refuting the authority of the national police within the department, strongly suggests they’re interested in a fairly sweeping separation.<br /><br />If they succeed in achieving the level of autonomy they’ve declared, the opposition’s tactic of stall-riot-and-boycott should be viewed as an unlikely success; they’ve managed to make the MAS government look ineffective and repressive, sustain a moral high ground by not compromising, and finally achieving everything they wanted. <br /><br />In any event, the radical nature of both side’s actions leading up to December 15th, the “marcha de los pueblos,” made the peaceful and festive atmosphere that day quite surprising. Perhaps everyone was just ready for Christmas.<br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2910363710093725021PcadfM"><img src="http://inlinethumb49.webshots.com/40048/2910363710093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="Tarija Protest"></a><br /><br /><em>Fidel Asesora, Chavez Ordena, Evo Cumple—Tarijeño Protest Banner</em><br /><br />Many of the criticisms leveled at the MAS government by the opposition are not unfair, at least from the perspective of many Bolivians. President Morales’ combative language in his political duels with, amongst others, the leaders of Tarija, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz has done much to alienate large groups of former supporters in those departments; his repeated scapegoating of the U.S. Embassy and other foreign interests (the claims that Brazilians were present in the uprising in Beni is an example of this) has alienated much of the middle classes that fear international isolation; the MAS’s decision to reduce the legislature to a unicameral body (which would function to bolster the communities that most strongly constitute the party), as well as its actions increasing it’s power at the expense of direct representation in government across all communities, have alienated much of the indigenous and social movement base that made the 2005 and 2006 elections such an overwhelming victory. The urban classes complain often of corruption and widely of inefficiency and technical incapacity by many of the political appointees. Many highly-educated, especially the youth with opportunities for employment outside of Bolivian borders and those employed in businesses with ties to international markets, are disturbed by the moves towards state control of certain industries and the moves towards socialism, for fears this will adversely effect employment opportunities (though the new CPE defines Bolivia as a mixed economy, guaranteeing many forms of property, including communal and private). And the increased influence of Venezuelan President Chavez is seen by many to be an unwarranted influence by an external force, whatever the intentions might be. In short, there are many reasons why MAS, and particularly Morales’, popularity has diminished since the beginning of the constitutional process.<br /><br />However, a great number of the criticisms are widely far of the mark. The relationship between Chavez and Morales is very complicated, but it appears to be based mainly on genuine ideological agreement and the fact that Venezuela’s offer of conditionality-free sovereign loans enables Bolivia to reject the undesirable influence of Washington and the international creditor cartel embodied by the IMF and the World Bank. <a href="http://www.cepr.net/content/view/374/">See Mark Weisbrot, Latin America: The End of An Era, Center for Economic Policy and Research (2006)</a>. In any event, Chavez is not the “authoritarian threat to democracy” in his own country that he’s depicted to be in the international media, and so it’s hard to see why he would lead Morales to become one. See <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/200711210001">Mark Weisbrot, Venezuela: Still a Democracy, New Statesman (November 21, 2007)</a>, and <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071224/weisbrot">Progressive Change in Venezuela, The Nation (December 6, 2007)</a>.<br /><br />The recent unilateral moves by MAS are certainly a little disturbing. Whether or not the “campesino circuses” have actually blocked PODEMOS members from entering any buildings, under threat of violence, or whether this is just a pleasant excuse facilitating the opposition’s boycott tactic, it’s certainly not very diplomatic of MAS and President Morales to mobilize “multitudes” every time they want to get something done. But to call this evidence of authoritarianism, as the opposition has been quick to claim, seems a bit of a stretch. When the MAS representatives passed the “in full” version from their beseiged position in Sucre, they phrased their actions as “turning over to the people” the responsibility for approving or rejecting the new CPE. This seemed more a sign of desperation than of Stalinist machinations. As <a href="http://www.democracyctr.org/blog/2007/11/constitutional-reform-in-boliviaand-now.html">Jim Shultz reminded us</a>, if the MAS had desired to simply pass their version unilaterally all along, they could have easily done so a year ago without going through the difficult turmoil of the CA. Rather, it’s quite obvious they were interested in genuine compromise. The recent actions are obvious the result of frustration and desperation after over a year of political gridlock at the hands of a small elite.<br /><br />More fundamentally, the claim of authoritarianism falls short because it simply does not accurately characterize the nature of MAS. Recall that MAS is a coalition party made up principally of syndicalistas; people raised in agriculture-based unions and radical social movements. In this culture the primary virtues are stick with your allies and take care of your comrades, because any weakness in your unity will be exploited by the opposition and the State to your downfall. If there are problems you deal with it in the group, not in public forum.<br /><br />This is precisely the essence of MAS’s tactics; mobile and stick together for a unified front against the movement’s enemies. This explains the manipulation of the court system to prevent its use against MAS and its objectives. This also explains the reluctance to pursue legal action against cocaleros in the street battles that occurred in Cochabamba in January of this year. They are not state-authoritarians at all, but rather syndicalistas caught in a delicate balance between staying true to the membership of their base and dealing with the demands of being the government.<br /><br />However this is also precisely the source of the problems for the MAS. This is all well and good for a movement, but it’s not really what you want an elected regime doing. First off, if it’s all about us and them, how are you ever going to get anything done in a setting where your currently eroded electoral base hovered at barely over 50%? But more importantly, the political wing of a movement is supposed to be pushed by the movement on the ground, not using it as a political weapon every time it needs to put some pressure on the other side. In this regard, MAS and Morales are morally equivalent with the Machiavellian oligarchs who have manipulated both their own bases and the <em>Sucreño </em>students into racist and sub-nationalist frenzies. And it is this more than anything else that could lead to the collapse of popular support for their government.<br /><br /><em>2008: the Year of Referendums</em><br /><br />What’s next for Bolivia? This year we’re going to see a frenzy of elections: the vote for the CPE; the (possible) revocatory referendum determining which of the current leadership at both national and departmental levels gets to stay and who has to go; and the departmental autonomy votes to determine whether they are accepted by the people. <br /><br />The political landscape is uncertain. The Morales government has faced a number of defeats and has alienated much of the middle classes and lost support from some of its former base. But it has delivered on many of the most important issues which led to its success in 2005. On the other hand the opposition stands stronger than ever, fresh from its moral victory boycotting the votes over the CPE, enabling it to reject as invalid and illegal the entire project of the national government and, based on this argument, declare a level of autonomy which would otherwise be impossible. <br /><br />While commentators have so far maintained that actual civil war and political division in the form of secession is <a href="http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20071213_006119/nota_244_519615.htm">impossible</a>, and the meeting between the departmental prefects and the central leadership of the national government appears to have significantly calmed both sides, giving them space to <a href="http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20080109_006146/nota_249_530597.htm">find middle ground and compromise</a>, the possibility that the political battle could escalate once again into violent street confrontations as both sides in the struggle flex their street muscle is still very likely. While Santa Cruz has been belligerent in its claims about the weakness of the Morales government and its inability to prevent their autonomy movements, the government has been just as adamant in their intolerance of any movement purporting to divide the newly-remade nation.<br /><br />Though the recent dialogue achieved an agreement in which the government made the concession to “combatibalize” the CPE with the autonomy statutes, <a href="http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20080109_006146/nota_249_530596.htm">Vice President Álvaro García Linera assured</a> that any such changes would be “small” and would mostly consist of “correcting errors.” This could be taken to refer to the difference between the government and the opposition’s policies with respect to natural resources and land<br /><br />The wild card, then, is the reaction of the indigenous, especially those in the eastern lowlands, and whether they decide to align with a constitution that would bring return lands long-stolen from them, or reject a party focused perhaps too-heavily on it’s own political success, rather than those of its supporters. Most likely the formerly marginalized will side with the MAS, recognizing that “if the government fails, the process will also be frustrated.” See Froilán Laime Ajacopa, Las criticas no deben socavar este proceso,” Pukara (Dec. 2007—Jan. 2008), pg. 3, arguing that the indigenous must “distinguish between the principal enemy (the right and colonialism) and the secondary enemy (the lukewarm government), which is more or less aligned” with their interests. The historic march to overcome 500 years of indigenous domination, under the banner of an equal and plurinational Bolivia, hangs in the balance.Todd A.http://www.blogger.com/profile/18227432349012130007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-78941847205895622222007-11-14T16:09:00.000-08:002007-11-14T18:10:32.672-08:00The Southern Altiplano: Glimpse of our Future in a Mirror of the Past<a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2990956320093725021bZogBE"><img src="http://inlinethumb04.webshots.com/29635/2990956320093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg1387"></a><br /><br />A visit to Bolivia’s southern altiplano (the stoic highlands that lies between the eastern and western chains of the Andes) can be an unnerving experience. At an average of 3700m above sea level and filled with freezing winds, <a href="http://inlinethumb44.webshots.com/29099/2502251880093725021S425x425Q85.jpg">half-dead volcanoes</a>, chemical-stained lakes too toxic to support most forms of animal life, <a href="http://inlinethumb01.webshots.com/29824/2851321210093725021S425x425Q85.jpg">twisted rocks </a>deformed by the violent erosive powers of the unforgiving wind into shapes reminiscent of something from a Salvador Dali painting, <a href="http://inlinethumb40.webshots.com/29415/2750167280093725021S425x425Q85.jpg">roaming herds of wooly llamas </a>and other creatures that somehow find a way to survive at altitudes most animals would balk at, and the rare colony of hardy Aymara who scratch their living growing <em>quinoa </em>and herding llamas or through more creative methods at the higher altitudes at which even those forms of flora and fauna cannot survive.<br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2263849330093725021UKfRSt"><img src="http://inlinethumb54.webshots.com/28789/2263849330093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg1376"></a><br /><br />The chemical-stained lakes are the result of the peculiar geology of the Altiplano, which was formed millions of years ago when the Andes were pushed up from the pacific basin rim in a violent climb from seabed to sky. The <em>cordilleras Oriental </em>and <em>Occidental </em>(east and west mountain ranges of the Andes) rose together and the sediment that fell from each between them created a closed basin that was only slightly lower in altitude. Thus was born the altiplano. As a basin, what little rain that does fall in it gets trapped, never to make it to the ocean. Instead, rainfall settles in lakes and <em>lagunas </em>where it slowly evaporates over eons, eventually giving birth to the phenomena of mineral-sediment imbalance that paints the waters a stunning array of different colors. Blue-green arsenic, stark-white borax, sickened-yellow sulfur. Algae of some kind stains some of them a rustic red that the refection of the sun’s rays turns quite brilliant. And of course there is the amazing <em>Salar de Uyuni</em>, the world’s largest salt lake.<br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2287883340093725021rWpmVh"><img src="http://inlinethumb53.webshots.com/29556/2287883340093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg1443"></a><br /><br />At over 12,000 square kilometers, the <em>Salar </em>is by far the largest salt lake in the world, creating a giant and overpowering expanse of pure white that stretches to seemingly-endless horizon where the vague haze of distant mountains reminds one of the real world’s presence, so foreign to the alien landscape over the salt. The salt, at several meters of thickness at most spots, is strong enough to support the weight of 4WD Land cruisers throughout, and the occasional flatbed truck that has come to exploit the natural mineral wealth.<br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2252008370093725021kivYDy"><img src="http://inlinethumb35.webshots.com/27810/2252008370093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg1490"></a><br /><br />The rugged Aymara who live in small communities throughout the altiplano are an example of the resilience of those humans that happen to have been on the losing side of history’s resource wars and population migrations, making the most of the little natural resources that they happen to encounter through some form of unintended consequence-turned-good (or mixed) fortune. For example, mineral extraction from the lakes and <em>lagunas </em>is actually a large form of income for the surrounding Aymara communities that settled in the altiplano long before the Inca sent his armies to conquer them there, and an eternity before the Spanish rounded them under the mita system of forced labor to go die in <a href="http://thisisnotatravelblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/potos-y-cerro-rico.html">the silver mines of Potosí</a>. While at lower altitudes the option of cultivating <em>quinoa </em>(a highly nutritious native grain) and other forms of barely above-subsistence poor-soil and altitude-resistant crops remains, at around 4500m this option turns moot. Llama herding is also a common method of surviving, but even these rugged animals refuse to settle at the 5000m marks. What remains for the Aymara, pushed to these lands from thousands of years of retreat from successive encroachments, is the extraction of the frozen mineral sediments. Thus, many of the Aymara communities have organized themselves into cooperatives in order to facilitate the exploitation and shipment of the different mineral deposits for their use in the modern cities that lie far below in the more habitable lands. Borax and other bases for detergents, salt for food processing and commercial sale, and lithium.<br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2882085640093725021yjtKia"><img src="http://inlinethumb50.webshots.com/29169/2882085640093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg1497"></a><br /><br />It is rumored that the <em>Salar </em>contains the world’s largest lithium reserve in the world, something like 70% of the total extractable lithium on the planet. However, since the Salar is a nationally protected reserve under Bolivian law, the lithium that lies underneath its icy waters is not available for extraction. This doesn’t mean that Bolivians will remain without exploitable lithium, however, as manmade environmental change has unearthed another sizeable deposit. <em>Lagos Uru Uru </em>and <em>Poopó </em>are fed by the <em>Río Desaguadero </em>coming from <em>Lago Titicaca</em>, but in recent decades campesino and other marginalized communities have redirected the river’s stream to provide the water which they cannot get through state- or aid-funded projects. The result is that the twins lakes are drying up, creating a smaller man-made version of the <em>Salar</em>, along with matching latent lithium deposits. Since this relatively recent development is not natural in the legal sense of the word, the area is not protected as a national reserve, meaning the lithium is fair game. So, making the best of a man-made ecological disaster, the lithium is now being exploited as a development project. <br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2075911280093725021ozKvXB"><img src="http://inlinethumb48.webshots.com/29551/2075911280093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg1445"></a><br /><br />And in this way there’s something oddly familiar about the surreal and stark environment of the southern altiplano, almost like a future-memory passed back through the strange particles that permeate the air, or a warning from the Aymara earth-goddess <em>pachamama </em>of what a future Bolivia might look like in the absence of any checks on man’s interference in its ecology. Or perhaps the apocalyptical feel of the area is a precognitive glimpse from our species’ shared future. For the sense of a land used-up, over-spent and age-worn bears an odd resemblance to the vision of <a href="http://www.mindfully.org/Air/2003/Pentagon-Climate-Change1oct03.htm">the planets future </a>expounded by those scientists (only around 95%+ or so) who maintain that our planet has reached <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1200273,00.html">a critical point </a>in terms of the long-term sustainability of current human standards of living.<br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2482735580093725021yQLiwb"><img src="http://inlinethumb55.webshots.com/29238/2482735580093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg1360"></a><br /><br />Indeed, the southern altiplano offers some interesting lessons of what such a future might look like for both the winners and the losers of this dystopian future earth. For we should remember that, just as there were winners and losers from Incan and Spanish colonization, there <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200704/global-warming">will be winners as well as losers </a>from any coming <a href="http://www.nplusonemag.com/globalwarming.html">ecocides</a>. The winners are easy to identify, and their lifestyles are easy to predict: they will look pretty much the same as the gated-community “winners” of globalization today, living in armed suburban <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/82790/tomdispatch_interview_mike_davis_green_zones_and_slum_cities">“green zones”</a> amidst <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/82655/tomdispatch_interview_mike_davis_turning_a_planet_into_a_slum">the chaos of de-industrialized urban wastelands and teeming peri-urban slums</a>. But when we think of what the winners will look like, we should remember the words of award-winning BBC journalist Greg Palast, <a href="http://www.gregpalast.com/burn-baby-burnthe-california-celebrity-fires/">in the context of the recent California fires</a>, when he reminded us that “disaster response is class war by other means.” Indeed, ecocide for many of the world’s poor and marginalized (and increasingly for the world’s middle classes as well) could mean a life similar in many ways to the bare existence visited in the freezing winds above the brightly colored lakes and salt flats of the southern altiplano: scratching a living amidst the chemical-stained ruins of a former green earth, extracting the unintended consequences of man-made ecological changes to sell to the rich “chosen ones” living in their militarized urban fantasy lands. Indeed, rather than being sinners or non-believers, the real identity of those who will be “left behind” by any coming ecocide will be those not lucky enough to be on the winning side of today’s patterns of global development.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Cited:</span> <br />James Read, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Rough Guide to Bolivia</span>, (August 2002).<br /><br />Samuelo, <em>Tupiza Tours</em>, (November, 2007).Todd A.http://www.blogger.com/profile/18227432349012130007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-58769732103166696902007-11-05T12:24:00.000-08:002007-11-06T07:38:59.525-08:00Baghdad Dreams<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">My work at the UNHCR has so far been unrelated to Iraqis, although the crowd of them downstairs every day means that they are never far away. Instead, I get to determine whether the Sudanese and Somalis who somehow made it to Jordan are entitled to refugee status. Since Jordan, like most countries that border Isreal, isn't a signatory to the refugee convention, getting refugee status here means very little. Jordan doesn't want them here, and so they aren't allowed to work, receive microfinance, or government benefits. Instead they survive on charity after their money runs out (if they somehow arrived with some), and hope that they can be resettled to a western country, the odds of which are pretty bad. But all of which is still better than returning to Somalia, which is in the midst of the worst fighting since the fall of Siad Barre in 1991, and has the distinction of being the only country in the world right now with more refugees than Iraq. What little government there is has resorted to indiscriminately shelling parts of the capital for days on end in its efforts to fight of the Islamists, who briefly led the only stable government that Somalia has seen in 17 years, as well as the only peace time.<br /><br />The UNHCR can do about as little for the 750,000 Iraqi's in Jordan (bringing the country's population to about 6.5 million). And since they can't work, many find that they have to go <a href="http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iwPnbxjzoENTjHlYL5cz4t4epfCwD8SCF57O0">back home</a>. Of course some people take it as a <a href="http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gkx-3oYeFwuWKCusr2jrojs98w8wD8SMC1HG0">good sign</a>.<br /><br /><br />After being in South Africa, where you're generally better off if you never have to talk to the police, Jordan is refreshing in that the police, like most people, are ridiculously nice to westerners. I was trying to find a restaurant the other day, and so I asked a cop. He ignored my question, and insisted that we become friends. We talked, in a mix of my extremely broken arabic and his mostly broken english, about all the important things - where we were from, if we're married, what we like to do for fun, etc. - for a good 15 minutes, before I realized that I was late, and again brought up the subject of the restaurant. After asking a few people, he took my arm, as friends do, and lead me there, where we exchanged phone numbers and I promised to call him. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> In the interest of keeping this a non-travel blog, I won't ramble at great length about Syria, but I will mention a few things.</span><br /><ul style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><li> We waited at the border for almost 10 hours. Which gave us lots of time to do fun things like look at this sign:<a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/Eid/photo#5129453588019145890"><img src="http://lh3.google.com/rgoldfinger/Ry963H277KI/AAAAAAAABWo/3UDsP6xulGY/s400/0A110674_2.JPG" /></a></li></ul><ul style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><li> The people are ridiculously friendly. Well, to foreigners. Although probably not to <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/08/MNAMREOQ22.DTL">Iraqis</a>.<br /></li></ul><ul style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><li> Syrian men hold hands. Full-on, fingers intertwined, holding hands. It's amusing, until some does tries it with you, and then it's a little weird. They're very touchy everywhere, even in the baths, where friends wash each other. I saw one guy slap his friend's ass to tell him he was done scrubbing.</li></ul><ul style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><li> Boys play with guns. A lot. Even in mosques:<a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/Eid/photo#5129453592314113202"><img src="http://lh4.google.com/rgoldfinger/Ry963X277LI/AAAAAAAABWw/pEsJ4J3wsAY/s400/0A130914.JPG" /></a></li></ul><ul style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><li> The president is everywhere. But people refuse to talk about him, except to say that the love him. And how could you not love this face? <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/Eid/photo#5123653948870208930"><img src="http://lh4.google.com/rgoldfinger/RxrgHsZvraI/AAAAAAAABLc/WvTSWOiv1fI/s400/0A120794.jpg" /></a></li></ul>Rogerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03159868506889188534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-83911141600606927152007-10-29T09:42:00.000-07:002008-07-08T05:36:04.132-07:00ALCA and the Chocolate Factory<a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2998494120093725021ikKAUh"><img src="http://inlinethumb55.webshots.com/24886/2998494120093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg1215"></a><br /><br />Sureños are extremely proud of their city, the "true" capital of Bolivia. "Sucre, Captial Plena" stickers can be seen on every street corner and every other car you see driving the streets, and it's almost as if by some magic that every street festival turns into a pro-capitalia march, with at least the majority of the audience chanting quaint and profane slogans ("¡Sucre se respeta, carrajo!"). This pride applies equally to Sucre's proud history, which includes (amongst other things) the distinction as being the first (though ill-fated) liberty cry in the Americas, as well as its local chocolate shops.<br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2106334140093725021EjqYqX"><img src="http://inlinethumb20.webshots.com/26003/2106334140093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg1211"></a><br /><br />And there are quite a few things to be proud of in those chocolate shops, and not just in how great they taste (some of my friends here who fall more on the female side of the gender ledger have developed a bit of an addiction to them). Shops like <span style="font-style:italic;">Para Ti</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Taboada </span>are an important part of the local economy, and a nearly ubiquitous symbol of life in Sucre, up there with Salteñas, coca leaves, artisanal rugs, and really cheap quality imported plastic goods.<br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2562313910093725021GkHYIa"><img src="http://inlinethumb15.webshots.com/25806/2562313910093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg1177"></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Para Ti</span> is a brilliant example of Bolivian pride and practicality at work. Just outside the main city bowl you'll find the Para Ti Chocolate factory, from which Sureños (and a small export market) receive their weekly (or more frequent) fix of sweet milk chocolate. <span style="font-style:italic;">Para Ti</span>, a privately-owned joint venture between two of the old aristocratic families in Sucre, runs under a business model that reflects Sureño hard work and pride in their community and their country. Over seventy percent of the factory's employees are female, working in two seven-hour shifts five days a week, with two three-hour shifts on Sunday. The result of this hard work is the production of over two tons of the typically sweet chocolate every month. <br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2340938090093725021qeaQBO"><img src="http://inlinethumb58.webshots.com/26745/2340938090093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg1149"></a><br /><br />Two tons a month might not sound like a lot until you realize that the majority of the work done at Para Ti is <span style="font-style:italic;">done by hand</span>, making scale-economies somewhat of an uphill battle. Think egyptian slaves carrying large blocks of rock up the sides of in-progress pyramids and you start to get an idea. <br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2978439670093725021WHHRuF"><img src="http://inlinethumb26.webshots.com/26777/2978439670093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg1150"></a><br /><br />Even more impressive is the fact that <span style="font-style:italic;">Para Ti</span>, with the exception of some packing and mixing materials not readily available in the domestic market, sources practically all of its inputs from local producers in the domestic Bolivian market. Thus, with every chocolate you purchase from <span style="font-style:italic;">Para Ti</span>, you have the added pleasure of knowing that a large portion of the relative-high price you paid (in comparison to industrially produced chocolates imported from whichever country can supply a given good at the lowest possible cost) stays in the hands and mouths of Bolivia's farmers and primary producers (and both their children).<br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2478918370093725021scYFQh"><img src="http://inlinethumb23.webshots.com/26902/2478918370093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg1212"></a><br /><br />But price is also a problem. Artisanal production methods and local sourcing sound romantic, and they suggest the element of endogenous economic growth that attracted economists like Keynes, JK Galbraith and Raúl Prebisch, only without the emphasis on industrial development. But it also means that your product are going to be too expensive to compete on the international markets, which are dominated by firms producing industrially, meaning scientific management and increasingly larger scales, which drives down production costs well below what artisans who buy their inputs in the local economy can compete with. Think those same egyptian slaves competing with a Kellog, Brown & Root and you start to get an idea.<br /><br />The problem of costs is endemic to Bolivian producers, which has struggled to industrialize during the course of its economic history. In fact, production techniques for many of Bolivia's goods have not changed much in the past hundred years or so, making the artisanal production methods of <span style="font-style:italic;">Para Ti </span>less of anomaly among and more of a analogy for the state of Bolivian producers in the global marketplace.<br /><br />All this places Bolivia in a difficult policy dilemma. The country can either seek to reduce trade barriers, so as to allow low priced industrially produced goods from abroad to make it into the hands of Bolivian consumers, making their already-low incomes go farther. However, the problem with this solution is that it is likely to devastate local producers, further decreasing the already-low national income. Many economists, especially those likely to find employment at multilateral credit agencies, would argue that such short-run costs will be more than balanced out in the long run, as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand">"invisible hand"</a> of production and trade based on <a href="http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=4962">"comparative advantage"</a> replaces arbitrary government policy based on rent-seeking by special interest groups. This policy stance is often equated with support for trade agreements such as the US-conceived Área de Libre Comercio de las Américas (ALCA), though this is largely inaccurate, as most US-backed “free” trade agreements are anything but, imposing protectionist barriers to trade on certain sectors (particularly intellectual property and medical patents) that <a href="http://www.cepr.net/content/view/1320/45/">outstrip the savings accrued by liberalizing manufacturing or IT services</a>. In any event, the promise that such an “initial shock” will be worth it in the long-run <a href="http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=112">simply hasn’t been borne out in practice</a>. <br /><br />On the other hand, by not signing onto trade agreements like ALCA, the default trade policy stance would mean maintaining the current set of bi- and multilateral agreements. This would maintain preferences for artisan and local producers, but would not do much in the way of creating an industrial development policy, either based on trade and foreign investment (see above) or based on some version of <a href="http://www.paecon.net/PAEtexts/Chang1.htm">“infant industry” protection</a>. Protecting non-value added, low scale production is not necessarily bad in and of itself, since it can be seen as a form of social-welfare program where the domestic economy pays a “tax” directly to the local producers in the form of higher prices for goods, without first having that tax filter through government bureaucracy before being distributed to said producers. However, most economists would consider this program less efficient than an economy-wide (and thus non-market-distorting) income tax-and-spend program (assuming, of course, that the deadweight loss from government corruption is negligible—probably not the most sound assumption in Bolivia). Further, if this sort of protection is all you’re really doing then you shouldn’t expect your economy to develop, in any sense of the term. Rather, such <a href="http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue30/Reinert30.htm">“Malthusian cronyism”</a> seems more a recipe for stagnation.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://galizacig.com/imxact/2006/01/20060122la_paz_hugo_chavez_evo_morales.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://galizacig.com/imxact/2006/01/20060122la_paz_hugo_chavez_evo_morales.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />For all these reasons, Bolivia is seeking alternatives to current economic paradigms. President Evo Morales has sought alternative trade relations to those epitomized by ALCA, joining the Alternativa Bolivariana para las Américas (ALBA), which was created by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to oppose what he considers “imperialism” and “neocolonialism” implicit in the US-led ALCA. But politics aside, the size of an ALBA market is vastly inferior to what an ALCA-type agreement would achieve access to, and thus the appeal of the latter to industrialists and export-oriented industries in Bolivia remains great. And it's unclear whether a regional agreement based on ALBA-style "cooperation" would really be that much different for Bolivia's small-scale and primary producers if it meant that they'd be pitted against the industries of countries like Venezuela or Chile, which are significantly more industrialized and able to produce at much larger scales than those in Bolivia.<br /> <br />So far President Morales has tried to maintain a balance between the interests of the campesinos and indigenous, which formed his electoral base, and the traditional elites that have traded rule amongst one another since Bolivia’s independence, which still dominate most of the appointed positions in the Morales government. Thus there is a vast uncertainty as to where Bolivia’s future lies, and what this future will entail for the artisans that comprise such a large percentage of Bolivia’s population. At the least, I pray that's Sucre's delicious chocolate continues to flow.Todd A.http://www.blogger.com/profile/18227432349012130007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-8503925525522342202007-10-15T08:26:00.000-07:002007-10-30T10:00:11.650-07:00Potosí y Cerro Rico<a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2331670930093725021nEpvSi"><img src="http://inlinethumb07.webshots.com/23366/2331670930093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg1032"></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I am rich Potosí, treasure of the world, king of the mountains, envy of kings.</span><br /><br />Potosí is a testament, more than anything, to Bolivia’s dependency and vulnerability to economic forces external to it; first marked by outright imperial and colonial control, but subsequently and currently defined by imperatives set by the international markets. Continuing to this day, the place has the overwhelming feeling of being a “company town,” with the original “company” being a dynamic joint venture between the Spanish Imperial Crown and the Catholic Church. Legend has it that the Old Gods intervened when the Andean Empire (what is somewhat problematically referred to as the “Incas”) discovered silver in the place prior to the Spanish invasion, telling Inca Huayna Capac that the deposits were meant for others. While the interpretation is usually a variation on your bread-and-butter imperialist manifest destiny, another reading could reasonably conclude that the Gods were warning the Inca against the unforeseen consequences that would accompany exploitation of the vast reserves of precious minerals hidden just below the surface of what the Spanish eventually termed Cerro Rico. <br /><br /><embed src="http://p.webshots.com/flash/smallplayer.swf?videoFile=http://videoserve.webshots.com/video/17356/3073301800093725021ejAakA_v_0.flv&audio=on&displayImagePreview=http://videothumb37.webshots.com/thumb/17356/3073301800093725021ejAakAstill_002_0.jpg&videoPageUrl=http://good-times.webshots.com/video/3073301800093725021ejAakA&autoPlay=false&shareLink=http://cards.webshots.com/ecard/personalize?photoId=3073301800093725021%26source=v" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350" quality="best" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed><br/><br/><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/video/3073301800093725021ejAakA">cimg0994.avi</a><br /><br />Cerro Rico towers above Potosí as though a sovereign, and indeed the economic history of the city (perhaps all of Bolivia) suggests that the analogy might be more than just poetic symbolism. Since the beginning of colonial rule in the Andean region, Potosí’s seemingly endless silver deposits become a central aspect of imperial policy, fuelling the long-term growth of the Spanish empire and funding its many wars, as well as financing trade relations between Europe and Asia. The Spanish colonial empire cherished the silver deposits in Potosí so much that while most Catholic churches face west, all of those in Potosí face South directly towards Cerro Rico, so that the silver mines could be blessed from their alters through open doors. The Crown celebrated the wealth of the mines by literally paving the streets with silver at one time.<br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2467460580093725021uKekrj"><img src="http://inlinethumb47.webshots.com/22958/2467460580093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg1018"></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The mountain that eats men alive.</span><br /><br />For the native Bolivians, all of this meant radical social change. In order to continue exploitation of the mine’s wealth, the authorities of Alto Peru (a colonial administrative province spanning Peru, Bolivia, and much of northern Argentina) reinstituted the Andean Empire’s mita, a system of cross-regional forced labor, and implemented the importation of thousands of Black Africans through the international slave trade. The dangerous conditions in the mines meant near-certain death for most of these workers, with death rates estimated at seven out of every 10. Total estimates for the number of indigenous deaths occurring in the mines run as high as 9 million over the period of colonial rule, suggesting that Cerro Rico alone maintains bragging rights for a significant role in the long-term decline in the Alto Peru indigenous population. While the Spanish empire formally prohibited religious syncretism (the mixing of pre-columbian and Christian forms of worship), the Crown did not dare venture inside the mines where worship in El Tío, a cross between old mountain deities and the Catholic devil, helped preserve the mitayo soul against the inhumanly brutal realities of life in Cerro Rico.<br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2727864190093725021YtGwkG"><img src="http://inlinethumb41.webshots.com/24488/2727864190093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg1000"></a><br /><br />The miners’ lots never really improved, even after the end of formal imperialism, as the fate of the industry was still dependent upon the international market price for mineral extracts. While the nationalizations that occurred after independence allowed the development of a strong miner’s union as a political force in the nation, corruption in the state-owned enterprise, inefficiency compared to international competition and increasingly northern-focused politics led to the privatization of the state-owned mining industry, effectively ending organized bargaining over prices and mining conditions. Whatever protections remained died with the crash in the international price of Tin in 1985 (which had replaced Silver as the main mineral extract of Cerro Rico after a century-long production decline), when even private ownership of mineral extraction was liquidated.<br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2756707890093725021IIeruI"><img src="http://inlinethumb35.webshots.com/23650/2756707890093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg0999"></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Where do you think the metal for your digital camera comes from?</span><br /><br />However, this did not mean the end of exploitation of Cerro Rico’s rich veins, nor of the workers that eked a living inside them. After the “crisis” of mineral prices in the 1980s, formal ownership of the mines was transferred to existing workers and their families through the break-up of the quasi-statal private enterprises, creating a system of small- to medium-scale “traditional cooperatives.” However, these are not reflective of what one would normally think of as a cooperative. Rather, the cooperatives function by informalizing the system of labor in the mines, where the workers organize themselves and work either independently or in small- to relatively large- groups. Membership in a cooperative, however, merely means that the product of your labor accrues to the group’s total output, in exchange for a share of the market value of the minerals extracted, which is sold in tonnes to the privately operated refineries, which are freed of the labor costs associated with mineral extraction. In this way, the cooperative system functions similarly to what we in the U.S. would associate with an “independent contractor” system of informal labor, whereby a single agent is hired through contract by an employer, who is then freed from any further involvement in the subcontracting process organizing the division of labor. Similarly, the miners in Cerro Rico all work under the auspices of the “socios” of the cooperative, who retain the benefits of much of the group’s labor product themselves, in the form of life and health insurance which are unavailable to non-socios (socios receive a larger share of the market value of the extract output, and are also the only ones who pay taxes). And since it takes around 15 years of membership in a given cooperative to become a socio, this means that the majority of workers in Cerro Rico live according the luck of the mineral draw, whereby “quality and quantity” times the price set on the international market (London) determines his (no females work in the mines) standard of living. The inadequacy of this system’s ability to provide a sufficient standard of living is reflected in the high rates of child and female labor (outside the home) in Potosí.<br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2278292020093725021xTmWWO"><img src="http://inlinethumb25.webshots.com/21848/2278292020093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg1020"></a><br /><br />The international price for the minerals drawn from Cerro Rico (Silver, Gold, and Tin are among the majors) is currently high, and this has led to an increase in the number of workers, both adults and children (some claim the number of the latter to be as high as 8000 kids or more, ages 11-18). Coupled with historically slow growth rates in most of Bolivia, this goes a long way towards explaining the sustained popularity of working in the mines. For example, one study reported a full 94% of miners responding that their main reason for working in the mines was a lack of alternative employment. “Tradition” was the second most frequent response. “I like it” was a distant third, and this was attributed mainly to the child workers, who compare mine labor not to the fantastical concept of a childhood spent in school, but against the prospects of working in the city, where earnings are lower and the romantic conception of doing a “man’s work” is absent. <br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2100668710093725021BOhwDm"><img src="http://inlinethumb45.webshots.com/24172/2100668710093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg1027"></a><br /><br />However, the market price of precious minerals could fall at any time, and while Bolivia’s overall growth rate under President Morales has been <a href="http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1271&Itemid=8">impressive</a>, it remains uncertain whether this growth rate will be extended evenly across the county. In the foreseeable future Cerro Rico remains the destination for an increasing number of Bolivia’s poorest.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Cited:</span> <br />James Read, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Rough Guide to Bolivia</span>, (August 2002).<br /><br />Pedro Negro, <span style="font-style:italic;">Koala Tours-Potosí</span>, (October, 2007).<br /><br /><a href="http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1271&Itemid=8">Mark Weisbrot & Luis Sandoval, <span style="font-style:italic;">Bolivia's Economy -An Update</span>, (August 2007).</a>Todd A.http://www.blogger.com/profile/18227432349012130007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-13270241138994656662007-10-10T09:31:00.000-07:002007-10-10T10:15:30.023-07:00It's almost عيدFriday is the holy day here, which means the day off of school, and a welcome break from the noisy trucks that patrol the neighborhood: the Junk truck, who's shouts into the megaphone letting people know he will pick up their junk (although it sounds like he's ranting about government conspiracies); and the gas truck, which advertises tanks of gas with a 4 note tune, like an ice cream truck, only it sounds more like something from a Final Fantasy game. <br /><br />Without real weekends, I don't have much of a chance to travel, but Jordan is small enough that I can get to most places in the country in a few hours, and cheaply. Last friday I went with a Japanese woman in my class, her husband, and some Japanese kids my age, to Petra, the 2000 year old city in the desert best known for it's appearance in Indiana Jones. The place was enormous, with countless caves and carved out rooms and decorations and facades. The Treasury, below, is the first part of the city, which you approach through a mile long canyon.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/Petra/photo#5118205475726850674"><img src="http://lh3.google.com/rgoldfinger/RweEw0QoenI/AAAAAAAAA-A/4AsLeeCJmTw/s400/0A040484.JPG" /></a><br /><br />The end of Ramadan is finally here, and it means our one and only break from school. I'm taking full advantage, and going to Syria and Lebanon for the week. Due to the fact that Syria is in the AXIS OF EVIL, I will apparently have some difficulties getting across the border, and will have to wait several hours, or all day, to get a visa, while the australians and british that I'm traveling with can sail through. At least I'll be with some other Americans, and I haven't been to Israel yet – if there is any indication in my passport that I've spent time in “occupied Palestine,” there's no way I'm getting in. <br /><br />After I get back I'll start working at the UNHCR, where I got a job doing refugee status determinations for, apparently, everybody but Iraqis. It should be interesting, and after the backlog in this department goes away (which is only 30 at this point) I'll be able to find other projects to work on.Rogerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03159868506889188534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-60605206246551498782007-10-08T11:53:00.000-07:002007-10-28T15:22:30.640-07:00Saludos desde Sucre, la ciudad blanca de las americas, y la Fiesta de la Virgen de Guadaloupe<a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2468059830093725021PtoFSZ"><img src="http://inlinethumb25.webshots.com/22168/2468059830093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg0892"></a><br /><br />Sucre is my first destination on my leave of absence from law school, and a very interesting city. Despite having less than a few hundred thousand people, it's managed to hold onto one of the three branches of national power in Bolivia. And that's not all, it's demanding more.<br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2032909200093725021UPPgNM"><img src="http://inlinethumb03.webshots.com/21762/2032909200093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg0899"></a><br /><br />The movement towards "capitalia" is asking that the entire capital be "returned" to Sucre, being the center of colonial power for "Alto Peru" and the site of the national capital after independence, but La Paz took two of its branches of national power during a civil war between the cities a while back. The sureñas (Sucre-ites) want them back, and they're willing to take to the streets to get it. Protests, like those that led to miner's blasting caps and police teargas in the streets of this beautiful colonial town <a href="http://www.democracyctr.org/blog/2007/09/capitol-capers.html">a few weeks back, </a>are expected to start again this week as the Constitutional Assembly reconvenes, but the word from the family I'm staying with is that they're expected to be much more peaceful this time.<br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2665917900093725021ZzEmTh"><img src="http://inlinethumb22.webshots.com/22933/2665917900093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg0895"></a><br /><br />As I said, Sucre is beautiful, the White City of the Americas, filled with white-washed colonial architecture.<br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2260565140093725021kBkhGQ"><img src="http://inlinethumb29.webshots.com/22236/2260565140093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg0908"></a><br /><br />These streets were recently filled with dancers from different fraternities (different meaning here, btw) in Sucre and the surrounding provinces for the two-day-long Fiesta de la Virgen de Guadaloupe, a two-day-long parade and massive public display of debauchery that left the city so está de ch'aqui (a quecha-spanish combo meaning "hungover") that the crowds in the saltañerias (shops that sell Bolivia's delicious version of the empanada) couldn't muster their usual enthusiastic morning cacaphony.<br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2243687370093725021MtzccR"><img src="http://inlinethumb33.webshots.com/20832/2243687370093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg0960"></a><br /><br />The festival is a major event, the biggest party of the year. In it, fraternities from all over Chuquisaca (Sucre's province) and Potosi come together to dance on a route that lasts nearly 3 hours before terminating in the main plaza in Sucre.<br /><br /><embed src="http://p.webshots.com/flash/smallplayer.swf?videoFile=http://videoserve.webshots.com/video/16860/3005822990093725021HGQkeG_v_0.flv&audio=on&displayImagePreview=http://videothumb21.webshots.com/thumb/16860/3005822990093725021HGQkeGstill_002_0.jpg&videoPageUrl=http://good-times.webshots.com/video/3005822990093725021HGQkeG&autoPlay=false&shareLink=http://cards.webshots.com/ecard/personalize?photoId=3005822990093725021%26source=v" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350" quality="best" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed><br/><br/><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/video/3005822990093725021HGQkeG">cimg0938.avi</a><br /><br />So far, Sucre seems like a very pleasant and idyllic start to my Bolivian adventure.<br /><br /><a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2860672650093725021wGsDPW"><img src="http://inlinethumb26.webshots.com/20697/2860672650093725021S425x425Q85.jpg" alt="cimg0965"></a>Todd A.http://www.blogger.com/profile/18227432349012130007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-33697715559757574952007-09-26T08:43:00.000-07:002007-09-27T07:49:44.300-07:00DistractionSchool is moving along quickly. After two days of learning the alphabet, we were somehow expected to be able to read a page of text, and after a week, to be able to to recite a page from memory. I was able to, eventually, but it took a few minutes and lots of correcting. Tonight, I have to memorize the numbers, days of the week, how to conjugate for the past tense, and the possessives. Which is why I finally decided to post.<br /><br />Although the school as a whole is at least half devout Muslims, the rest are Americans, and most are in college. I ended up in a class with two American girls who are taking a year off before college, two Japanese women whose husbands are here for the Iraqi reconstruction effort (I wished them good luck), and a Spanish woman. It's too bad, I think, that there aren't any Muslims (aside from the teachers) in my class, because I think I could have learned a lot from them.<br /><br /><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/Amman/photo#5114889301412837410"><img src="http://lh4.google.com/rgoldfinger/Rvu8uEQoeCI/AAAAAAAAA1s/7PEQxkfbSVQ/s400/09220237.JPG" /></a><br /><br />It's been Ramadan since I arrived, which means that I've gotten used to the absurd schedule, and it's going to be weird when it goes back to “normal.” The work day starts later, and ends at 2 or 3, when everyone goes home (and the traffic is a mess), where they sleep or cook until the sun goes down and it's time to eat. Shops are intermittently open during the day, and all restaurants are closed by law, but everything opens up after people have eaten, and stays open until 12 or 1 or so. And aside from the handful of places (like large hotels) with a tourist license, it's illegal to sell alcohol, so all the bars are closed.<br /><br />Aside from that, I really can't say enough about how normal this city is. West Amman, which contains the middle class suburbs is generally pretty nice, with a few newer and swanky neighborhoods scattered around. Like everywhere else there are mall, some of which are a hodgepodge collection of cheap shops and supermarkets, others are filled with upscale boutiques and international brands, and are priced accordingly. I even found the local equivalent of a Wal-Mart, which was just like home, except for the Arabic signs and only the occasional group dressed in traditional white headdress and thob. Most people in the upper class areas, and especially the younger generations, are westernized, wearing normal clothes, and speak English, even amongst themselves.<br /><br /><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/Amman/photo#5114889310002772018"><img src="http://lh6.google.com/rgoldfinger/Rvu8ukQoeDI/AAAAAAAAA10/oFX6Hgb0nns/s400/09220287.JPG" /></a>Rogerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03159868506889188534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-65508923022034006342007-09-15T06:40:00.000-07:002007-09-15T07:20:32.620-07:00Orientation, ReduxThe next act in my non-travels has me in Amman, Jordan, where things have been so easy that it's hard to believe I'm in the heart of the Middle East. Much to my surprise, everything was taken care of when I arrived, as the school picked me up from the airport and took me to temporary housing. By the end of the next day I had found a place to live, I moved in the day after, and so now I find myself, on the third day, settled in for the long haul.<br /><table style="width: auto;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/Amman/photo#5110426925595789714"><img src="http://lh4.google.com/rgoldfinger/RuviNm66iZI/AAAAAAAAA0c/xaXoBTCjpxA/s400/P1010032.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: right;">From <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/Amman">Amman</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />Amman seems, like Johannesburg, to be a great place to live, but perhaps not to visit because its appeal lies in getting to know the place rather than passing through. I've found none of the stereotypes I associated with the Middle East – narrow streets, markets, shouting vendors, pushy restaurateurs – but rather a modern, friendly city with white apartment and office buildings built across hills and valleys, scattered with shopping streets, coffee shops and malls, and extremely friendly and helpful people. It's striking in how tame it is, how easy people are to deal with, how few stares I get, and how calm it all seems. The call to prayers throughout the day were eerie at first, but have started to seem more normal.<br /><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/Amman/photo#5110426921300822402"><img src="http://lh3.google.com/rgoldfinger/RuviNW66iYI/AAAAAAAAA0U/TDImUviyglY/s400/P1010030.JPG" /></a><br /><br />Ramadan (which started the day after I arrived) has been an interesting wrinkle in exploring the country. Since most people spend a lot of time with their families, most restaurants are closed during the day, and empty at night, not to mention that the bars are all closed for the month. like everyone else here, I've been fasting (although cheating by drinking water). I don't have a lot of energy to go explore, but there's nothing quite like breaking the fast with fresh, bright yellow dates, followed by a big meal. For someone who likes to eat his way into a new place, only being able to fantasize about what goodies are served in the sweets shops and take aways has been a little frustrating. What I've had though – fresh fruit juices, fresh, soft pita filled with meats and pickles, chicken on rice, yoghurt milk – has been amazing, and cheap.<br /><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/Amman/photo#5110425409472334146"><img src="http://lh3.google.com/rgoldfinger/Ruvg1W66iUI/AAAAAAAAAzc/ULnWzj1-0m8/s400/09150104.JPG" /></a><br /><br />School starts tomorrow (Sunday being the beginning of the week, apparently), and although I barely know 10 words of Arabic and am still struggling to figure out the alphabet, I'm hoping to be able to pick it up soon. Most people don't speak much English, which I think will make learning easier, and I'm looking forward to talking to talking to people once I get the basics down.<br /><br />More as I explore.Rogerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03159868506889188534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-46481262257920388492007-05-09T05:42:00.000-07:002007-05-10T12:06:47.949-07:00While waiting in line at the post office today, I saw a woman go up to the teller, and calmly and collectedly tell her that she, and the entire post office, was racist. “As an older white women in the country, I am discriminated against. You helped a black man with my same problem last week, but no one has helped me.” The teller, who, like almost everyone else working there, was black, patiently and without raising her voice explained to her that this had nothing to do with race: “I'm sorry that your dog chewed up your packet slip, but if we can't read the numbers on it we can't help you.” “But everyone went out of their way to help the black man last week, but because I'm white, you're not helping me. You are all racists.” The conversation continued along these lines until I left; completely civil, but not going anywhere.<br /><br />While I've never heard someone voice their complaints so explicitly, in many ways this was a completly normal attitude for a white South African to have. Non-blacks complain all the time about government favoritism, like Black Economic Empowerment (BEE - or Black Idiot Empowerment, as one friend's mom put it), and how increasingly marginalized non-blacks are in society. There is a lot of resentment about how poorly Blacks are perceived to be running the country. While lack of education is certainly a huge factor in why many employees are usually incompetent, nepotism also runs rampant, making it even harder for the lucky few with education to get a job, or promotion. There's a sense among non-blacks that the blacks abandoned socialist policies after taking power in favor of enriching themselves. Any some blacks are getting very rich - but disproportionately so: while there has suddenly emerged a black middle and upper class, overall poverty and inequality has increased. No wonder that the Zulu term for white man now also refers to rich blacks.<br /><br />With this perception of their country, it's no surprise that so many white South Africans are leaving. Those who are getting an education are getting out. Two percent a year, I was told by a South African who moved to Arizona 6 years ago, and was bragging about moving his Mom. “Less crime,” he said when asked why he liked the US so much, “and more white people.”<br /><br />I, on the other hand, can't understand why anyone would want to leave such a beautiful place.<br /><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/Joburg/photo#5060684074972050850"><img src="http://lh5.google.com/image/rgoldfinger/RjspWoEvdaI/AAAAAAAAAks/vBZfjAuaIOs/s400/CIMG1497.JPG" /></a></div>Rogerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03159868506889188534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-54887876196157636252007-04-13T04:05:00.000-07:002007-04-14T06:05:01.612-07:00"It's not like that here anymore..."<span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;"> "You're probably safer in here than we are out there."</span><br /><br />Such is what the Street Law assistant professor said to an 8-year inmate in Joburg prison when we visited it as part of our service program. The words go a long way to summing up the views of a large majority of South Africans; crime is rampant all over the country, but especially in Joburg. Explanations are not hard to come by; opinions ranging from racist attributions of inherent criminality to more sophisticated ones that attribute the crime rates to deep poverty, vast divides in inequality, legacies of violence from the apartheid struggle, and the influx of traumatized and criminalized refugees from nearby and war-torn African nations. But the disturbing certainty about it is not the <span style="font-style: italic;">amount </span>of crime, but rather the <span style="font-style: italic;">extremity </span>of it; violent crimes have become so common that they often don't even make it into the news.<br /><br />This goes hand in hand with high levels of death all around here; whether by HIV/AIDs, chaotic and nearly lawless roads (over easter weekend over 140 deaths occurred due to vehicle accidents; a third of which were <span style="font-style: italic;">pedestrians</span>), or what often seems like random violent crime, there is a growing suspicion that human life just holds less value here.<br /><br /> <span style="font-style: italic;">"All I know is that I'm getting my degree and then fucking OFF."</span><br /><br />The phrase '2010', referring to the date of the next World Cup for Futbol taking place in SA, gets a lot of talk time in SA; will it be a boon? will it be a bust? what will it actually do for SA? But the biggest upcoming crunch will not be the tourist influx, but rather the outflux of the country's rising "professionals." It's been common occurrence in SA since at least Apartheid (and this is not just concerning the exiles) for SAicans to travel/study/work abroad for a significant portion of their youth, so it's not surprising that so many people are or know someone who's leaving for a long time. Couple this with the fact that, due to the high cost of nice housing, most people can't afford to live on their own without some form of subsidy until well into their 20's, so moving abroad is often the best way for the youth to attain some level of independence from their parents. But the worry is that the outflux will not be met by a coincident return by those leaving, and that the rising black "middle class" (more accurately, the small elite benefiting from current ANC economic neoliberal policies) will not continue to grow in pace to replace this loss (or even that they themselves will start their own version of "white flight"). The result would be the same sort of "brain drain" that India has been agonizing about over it's highly educated professionals.<br /><br />The combination of these two problems could be disastrous for SA; the poor communities imploding into bloody chaos, and the beneficiaries of the State's investment in education and human capital (those theoretically most qualified to maintain the proper functioning of the State in the future) fleeing from the mess and stagnation of the broken nation, resulting in a disastrous downward spiral whereby the hope of 1994 is forever lost.<br /><br /> <span style="font-style: italic;">The "Two Nations" Dilemma</span><br /><br />Thabo Mbeki shocked the nation a few years back by talking about how SA was really "two nations"; the rich white and the poor black (also the majority). This speech was problematic for a number of reasons (not least of which for ignoring the significant Indian and Coloured communities), but it hit the nail on the head in terms of explaining what the true failure has been and what the challenge will be. The fleeing of the rising bourgeoisie overseas and the privatized revolt of the poor in the form of consumerism and crime can both be attributed at least in part to one common thread; the inequality which has increased since the end of apartheid.<br /><br />The ANC, especially under Mbeki, has favored economic and social policies that have favored globalization- and export-led development, mostly within the framework which became known as "neoliberal" in the 1990s, including a nearly complete absence of redistribution in order to correct for apartheid ghettoization and impoverishment policies. The result has been the creation of a global elite, a rising black "middle class" that is largely disconnected from the larger township communities that they likely left in their upward mobility, and the stagnation of the rest of the nation in much the same state they were in through 1994. The old Marxist academic term "uneven development" is fairly accurate as a description of present-day SA.<br /><br />Roger accurately summed up the dilemma; "this whole society was built on the availability of cheap and replaceable labor; no one wants to give that, and it's hard to blame them since it has made life here so easy. But they have to give that up if they want to develop."<br /><br />Ironically, it was Mbeki himself, in 1996, who said that "true reconciliation can only take place if we succeed in our objective of social transformation." This social transformation, for whatever reason, has not yet come to fruition. Perhaps it is for this reason, because the shades of the past remain, that the deformity of formal apartheid's "two nations" has been replaced by a racial and class-based <span style="font-style: italic;">de facto</span> economic apartheid, that South Africa still bleeds today.<br /></span>Todd A.http://www.blogger.com/profile/18227432349012130007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-25264661574384648622007-03-26T04:48:00.000-07:002007-03-26T05:01:08.510-07:00We're still here. Been busy though.<table style="width:auto;"><tr><td><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/Drakensburg/photo#5044709551715835746"><img src="http://lh4.google.com/image/rgoldfinger/RgJom_kK32I/AAAAAAAAAQA/2KA2ugFFsQU/s400/CIMG0833.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><tr><td style="font-family:arial,sans-serif; font-size:11px; text-align:right">From <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/Drakensburg">Drakensburg</a></td></tr></table>Rogerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03159868506889188534noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-65741958473169165282007-03-02T06:08:00.000-08:002007-03-02T06:16:09.585-08:00DisorientationWhen I first arrived, I was surprised, even disappointed to find that I had traveled 11,000 miles to visit what seemed like suburbia. Most of the rich (white) people here lead remarkably western, even American way of life. I wasn't expecting lions and monkey servants, but I had no idea that shopping in decadent malls would be just as much of a competitive sport, and a part of life, as the in the US. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.africangamesafari.com/mandela_square.jpg"><img dragover="true" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://www.africangamesafari.com/mandela_square.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>As we're becoming more integrated into the community, we're hearing more and more how much this way of life is an illusion available to those who can afford it. With 25% of the country unemployed (down from 40% a few years ago) and the upper income bracket beginning at R150,000 (about $22,000), the security and comforts of the mall centered existence are available to only a few. So it seems more than perverse that one of the largest, most expensive, and opulent malls in the city is dedicated to Nelson Mandela, complete with a giant bronze statute.<br /><br />While racism certainly still exists, I can't help but think that the enormous class disparities are at play when people tell me that the country is on the verge of civil war. Although the new government has been incredibly successful in many areas, to the extent that social mobility has proven impossible for many, while whites continue to get richer, it's no surprise that many would feel tricked and betrayed.<br /><br /><table style="width: auto;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/Joburg/photo#5035448409016815810"><img src="http://lh4.google.com/image/rgoldfinger/ReGBpihA0MI/AAAAAAAAAE4/P9Bw3OpCCZY/s288/CIMG0691.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 66%; text-align: right;">From <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/Joburg">Joburg</a></td></tr></tbody></table>Rogerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03159868506889188534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-1111956403930496912007-03-02T05:46:00.000-08:002007-03-02T05:49:39.131-08:00It comes down to thisSeeing as how we are law students, it was inevitable that we would eventually have to learn something about South African law. In short, it is a hybrid of civil and common law, owing to the fact that this is both a Dutch and British colony. Procedure (criminal, civil, evidence, etc) follows the common law tradition, while the laws themselves are taken from civil law pre-codification (I'm not sure what this means, but it sounded important). There are exceptions, and some bodies of law such as corporations follows English law. Delict (dee-lickt) is essentially torts, but with an entirely different set of rules. Rather than following the negligence standard, the judge (there are no juries here, even for criminal cases) has a “smorgasbord” of liability rules to choose from, depending, it seems, on what they feel like. For example, the judge could choose the last person who could have avoided the harm to be “wrongful,” and they will have to pay the “quantum” the judge decides is appropriate. What makes the least sense is the traffic accident system. Rather than suing the person who injured you (who is off the hook, maybe why drivers here are so crazy), you have to sue a government fund for accidents, which is limited by statute to pay out up to R25,000 (about $3,500). <br /><br />Now if only I could figure out how to research cases. 1995 (3) SA 786 (CC) anyone?Rogerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03159868506889188534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-9248289018831080932007-02-20T06:31:00.000-08:002007-02-20T07:27:00.356-08:00Crime and the GolfOne of our first impressions of the local whites was their extreme paranoia. You can see it quite regularly in the international press: "whites fear land reform in South Africa", "whites fear rising crime rates." Now, clearly most of the crime takes place in the communities which breed the criminals, and the gated, barbed-wired and electrically-fenced tree-covered northern suburbs, filled with the city's ex-winners from apartheid are typically not the communities (if one can call them that) which breed crime. So while whites do face crime, I would warrant that they don't even face the worst brunts of it, or at least not the rich whites whose opinions fill the international press. And as for the land reform, once you realize that the majority of land (70+%) is commercial agricultural land (read 'white owned land'), well, it makes you at least a little more sceptical about the extent to which white paranoia here is based in reality, rather than being a reaction to loss of the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Utopian</span> near-absolute security they faced under apartheid.<br /><br />Indeed, the whites here are going quite literally crazy with fear. An <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Afrikaner</span> friend told me that some old <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Boer</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">guerrilla</span> communities are re-organizing to create "anti-crime" militias, which almost certainly must mean vigilante justice and possibly anti-black retaliatory assaults at the worst.<br /><br />That said, crime is indeed a problem. Our car was broken into <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Saturday</span> night, for example, and they fucked up the wiring and starter, but were unable to steal the vehicle as a whole (thank god, since we're as yet unregistered and w/out insurance...). The parking guard (a single poor black guy with a reflective vest) was literally no deterrent against the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">vandalization</span>; either the perpetrators paid him, threatened him, or knew him (this is what most people here suspect; complete complicity from these private security guys), but the most he did was tell us as we're returning to the car that "hey, your window's down". Well, thanks so much! A police car drove by as we're trying to get it started, and I had to run up and tap on the car to get them to stop. they proceeded to threaten me for failing to respect them and made a number of menacing comments until I <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">apologized</span> and let them drive away.<br /><br />In short, crime is a problem and while statistically the worst affected are the other poor, the vast majority of whom are black, it is the formerly safe (under apartheid) whites who are most upset about it. They feel "<span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">abandoned</span> in their own homes, and where else do we have to go, since I'm not FROM anywhere else? Where else in the world do they speak Afrikaans?" The lack of legal and official recourse is breeding a massive white <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">proto</span>-fascist revolt which, if it is allowed to happen, will certainly end in bloodshed and worse. The poor, economically marginalized, blacks here will not, I think, be the source of the next South African revolution, but the poor and middle-class whites, politically and economically marginalized and increasingly nationalist, funded by the rich <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Afrikaner</span> aristocrats of the last century.Todd A.http://www.blogger.com/profile/18227432349012130007noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-74764951497446594112007-02-20T06:27:00.000-08:002007-02-20T07:25:19.524-08:00SchoolAfter the ordeal of registering for classes and two weeks of waiting to hear whether or not we would be allowed into the Clinic, we were pretty thrilled to find out last Friday that not only were we in, but that we had been given the assignments that we wanted. Kate (one of the two Wisconsin law students) and I were assigned to the refugee clinic, and when we showed up to clinical hours on Monday, they told us to find a cubicle and go get a client from the waiting room. Not that we knew the first thing about South African refugee law, or even South African law. After being reassured that we only needed to figure out what the client's problem was, and a supervisor would do the actual advising, we got out first clients. The couple was from the PRC; the husband had obtained refugee status some years ago; after their recent marriage the wife moved here and was hoping to get permission to say in the country through her husband's status. After getting the gist of their story, we were waiting for the supervisor to show up and overheard them speaking in French. Kate, who is fluent in french, and I, who can understand about every other word, were able to get the rest of their story in french. Although we weren't able to give them the answer they wanted (she would have to apply separately for refugee status), it was a great start to the year. <br /><br />Naturally, this morning we found out that we hadn't really been assigned to our first choice, and only one of us would be able to do the refugee clinic. Some of the clinic admins even thought that us Americans were trying to barge our way in by just showing up uninvited, even though we had been told to go there. Oh well.Rogerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03159868506889188534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-14843774474064920082007-02-10T07:26:00.000-08:002007-01-30T07:08:20.075-08:00Movin' on up<table style="width:auto;"><tr><td><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/Joburg/photo#5029927939963342418"><img src="http://lh4.google.com/image/rgoldfinger/Rc3kz8tTzlI/AAAAAAAAACE/IEYtBUq3aME/s288/CIMG0607.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family:arial,sans-serif; font-size:66%; text-align:right">From <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/Joburg">Joburg</a></td></tr></table><br /><br />While the autotaxis are a fascinating system, where the person who happens to sit next to the driver handles all the cash and makes sure everyone has paid, since they don't run at night, are nearly impossible to catch during rush hour, and only provide transportation in two directions (in and out from the city), we figured it's time that we stop asking other people for rides, suck it up, and learn to drive on the wrong side of the road. Most white people are shocked (Shocked!) that we've been brave, or stupid enough to use them, but it was good to see how most of the city gets around. After paying someone else to do our paperwork, we own a car, and the endless tree lined streets filled with houses surrounded by high walls and electric fences, and the occasional robot, are ours for exploring. <br /><br /><table style="width:auto;"><tr><td><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/Joburg/photo#5029927849769029186"><img src="http://lh3.google.com/image/rgoldfinger/Rc3kustTzkI/AAAAAAAAACs/vKri79J-F5g/s288/CIMG0606.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family:arial,sans-serif; font-size:66%; text-align:right">From <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/rgoldfinger/Joburg">Joburg</a></td></tr></table>Rogerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03159868506889188534noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8926039968434353496.post-48320911571044025512007-01-28T01:00:00.000-08:002007-01-30T07:03:25.973-08:00Orientation<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/taxi_joburg_2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 224px; height: 176px;" src="http://www.affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/taxi_joburg_2.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />This is not a travel blog. I'd like to avoid the rantings on life and the world that make most of these things unreadable; but also, I finished traveling almost a week ago, when we arrived. I'm here for the long haul, and this blog will intermittently document my successes and failures, trials and tribulations in adapting to life on the other side of the world. Which I've found so far to be both uncomfortably close, and fascinatingly far from home.<br /><br />Taxis, above, run to and from a parking garage in the center of the city on set routes - meaning that unless your destination lies between you and the center, you'll have to go downtown and transfer. To ensure that all 15 passengers pay their fare, the driver collects the money by rows - about 80c a person.<br /><br />More familiar are the endless suburbs and shopping malls. I don't think this requires any explanation - it's just like home. Only with more fast food.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.icte.org/Shopping_Area_in_Joburg_2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://www.icte.org/Shopping_Area_in_Joburg_2.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />More in a few days, as we venture out of suburbia, and into the wilds of africa.Rogerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03159868506889188534noreply@blogger.com2