Author: Migrant Tales

My apologies to all for the dry spell in writing. I’ve been busy writing my thesis, which I hope to finish in December. It has robbed all of my time.

Right now, however, I’m surrounded by sub-arctic winter. Like a lover claiming your heart, another magical season has descended — darkness and silence are sometimes so thick in these parts that you can almost lean against them without falling.

Winter can get very cold these parts as well. It may in such cases attempt to tuck you into bed and when this happens you are in a trance induced by darkness and winter. Normally in such cases you awake in spring by the vivid sounds of singing birds atop of budding trees.

There was a bit of sad news: Our dog Rosa, a boxer, was put to eternal sleep Nov. 22 at about 2:45PM. She was about 11 years old. Even if she’s no longer with me, I miss her a lot.

Rosa passed away on Nov. 22.

A nice saying my father told me: One must never be an egoist but with time you have to.

I’d like to share with you a postcard that I got from a friend when I left Argentina in 1978. It’s one of the most important postcards I ever got and cherish it a lot. In its few sentences it reveals who I once was and where I’m partly from. Back in 1978, Argentina was still ruled by a ruthless military regime that was responsible, among a long list of other atrocities, for the disappearance of over 30,000 people.

Casa de Gobierno/Government House by Anikó Szabo.

Here’s the writing on the back:

The aim of this postcard is that you’ll never forget these distance parts, located almost at the END of the Earth, but so loved by all of us. The day will come when the sun will shine for real for all of those who live here. The thing is to continue to be as we are and to form and educate the people so that they’ll understand and begin to awaken, open their eyes.

Claudia

In Spanish:

Esta tarjeta es en realidad para que siempre te recuerdes de estos pagos tan lejanos, practicamente en el FIN del mundo pero que es tan querido por nosotros. Ya va a llegar un día en que el sol saldrá realmente para todos en estas latitudes, el asunto es seguir siendo como somos y formar a la gente, educarla para que comprenda y comience a despertar, a abrir sus ojos.

Claudia

By condoning the use of torture we inflict more
damage on our institutions than on our enemies.

I’m still awed that some columnists in the US continue to be surprised about the US condoning torture. One of these columnists is Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post.

He writes:

How the United States became associated with torture is not just a matter of historical interest. And that’s all the more clear today, with the publication of a major New York Times story describing the Bush administration’s ongoing circumvention of national and international prohibitions against barbaric interrogation practices.

In other words: It continues.

It still continues?! Yes, and for many decades under many US administrations.

One has only to look south of the border. Some of the outlandish matters that the CIA taught security forces in Latin America was training and the infrastructure for torture.

When we look at the colossal mistake by the US for invading and remaining in Iraq, why doesn’t anyone mention what happened to the Shah of Iran?

The autocratic leader, who was put in power by the CIA in 1941, was ousted in 1979 by a zealous anti-Western religious cleric called Ayatollah Khomeini.

Many of the torture measures used throughout Latin America were encouraged by the US and executed by the CIA. In Argentina “waterboarding” is known as el submarino, the submarine. There are many other torture methods as well: the electric prod, simulated executions with chalk bullets, deprivations of the unimaginable kind.

The US must not look at only this disgraceful period under President George W. Bush as the blackest in our history, it must take a closer look at the administrations of presidents like Richard Nixon, which used the CIA like a private army to topple democratically elected governments and instill a reign of terror and coercion through torture methods mastered at Langley, Virgina.

Torture condoned by the US has happened a long time ago. It’s not something that the Bush administration invented.

I once visited in 1987 as a reporter the far-flung village of La Higuera in Bolivia, where the famous guerrilla icon Ernesto Che Guevara was killed at the hands of a drunk sergeant. Even if twenty years have passed since my trip and 40 years on October 9 when he was killed, I can still recall details of that journey.

There’s an odd story today in the Bolivian government-run news agency ABI about Che Guevara’s assassin, an NCO called Mario Terán. Thanks to some Cuban medics, the article reports that the NCO had recovered his eyesight.

If the NCO is the same person, I was offered by the brother of Gary Prado, the Bolivian officer that captured Che Guevara, an exclusive interview with Terán for $1,000. I didn’t accept the offer.

One of the matters that surprised me most about the journey to La Higuera was how the village of 50 inhabitants had been spoiled by journalists. My guide told me that nobody would talk to you if you didn’t flash a few greenbacks.

I was, however, able to speak for free to the teacher of the school where Che Guevara was killed. She was one of the last people to speak to him before he was killed.

“It was a big mistake killing Che Guevara,” she said. “After his death we found out that he wasn’t a bandit but a man who died for us, the poor.”

Che Guevara’s military campaign in Bolivia lasted 11 months and eight days. As one villager in nearby Pucará told me: “When the sergeant [Terán] crashed in Che Gevara’s room [drunk after drinking 6 liters of beer], he [Guevara] stood up and said: Point your machine gun well and don’t forget who you’re shooting.”

Final note: After I reached the village of La Higuera on horseback, I wanted to visit as rapidly as possible the school where Che Guevara was killed. It was a very surreal experience to walk to that school with the backdrop of the majestic Andes all around you.

It was as if his life’s journey ended at the school but didn’t end at all.

I visited a week ago one of my favorite spots near Mikkeli in eastern Finland. While the lake water looks tempting, it’s pretty cold to take a dip. Water temperatures in this part of the world reach their zenith (about 75F/24C) at the end of July/early August and then begin to drop abruptly to temperatures where you’re flirting with hypothermia.

For those of you who have got to know me through this blog, know that I love this time of the season. It’s just like that famous song by the Zombies:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc7b62El_fk]

It’s the time of the season
When the love runs high
In this time, give it to me easy
And let me try
With pleasured hands

To take you and the sun to
Promised lands
To show you every one
It’s the time of the season for loving…

In fall skies are restless and on fire.

The reaction of the military regime in Myanmar against tens of thousands of protesters in the capital Yangon shows how much blood the government has on its hands.

Already nine protesters have been killed and some 11 wounded. One of the pastimes of the regime has been beating monks, arresting over 100 and raiding monasteries.

If anyone has ever had the chance to watch Myanmar TV understands how out of touch with the world the de facto government is. On the main news program, the announcer will throw in a cooking recipe before reading the main headlines, which are nothing more than a pile of propaganda.

Here’s some more stuff they write about on their website:

BLA BLA BLA Member of Mawlamyine Township Women’s Affairs Organization Daw San San Win said Myanmar Women Affairs Federation was set up in 2003 to ward off the groundless accusations of some countries and organizations against Myanmar. ILO, some western counties, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also accused Myanmar of forced labour and human rights violations. At the same time, some big nations are putting pressure on the government for the puppet government to come to power. They used ILO to interfere in the internal affairs of Myanmar. AND BLA BLA BLA BLA.

If there is a regime that lives in a political bubble it’s from Myanmar. I for one hope the people in that troubled nation succeed at overthrowing and putting behind bars their despots.

I went mushroom picking Saturday just outside of Mikkeli in eastern Finland. I ran into some really good mushrooms like the Yellow Foot (Cantharellus lutescens). It belongs to the same family like the tasty Chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius) and Horn of Plenty (Craterellus cornucopioides).

While most mushrooms die when there’s frost, the Yellow Foot is very resistant. It disappears when it gets buried under snow.

These mushrooms are not like the deadly Destroying Angel (Amanita virosa).

Two pictures of the Yellow Foot mushroom. Don’t pick wild mushrooms
based on pictures. Go with a person who has picked them before so you’ll
learn to recognize them in the wild.

Yellow Foots grow in groups.

If I recall, a reporter had once asked an Argentinean general to describe the war it had waged against its enemies during one of Latin America’s most repressive dictatorships during 1976-83.

The general answered by stating it was “a dirty war.” That’s how the name of Argentina’s civil war was baptized.

During the dirty war, over 30,000 Argentineans and non-Argentineans were abducted and murdered. Not only did they lose their lives but sometimes even their property like apartments were confiscated by their captors.

It was back then when I wrote the first sentences that had some meaning to me. I was a conscript in the Argentinean army but refused to kill anyone.

During those times I’d stay up at nights in front of my typewriter and try to write everything I’d hear about the dirty war. We didn’t torture at our base but it was a commonly known and widespread practice.

Here’s one of the hitherto unknown and unpublished stories I heard from a major in 1977.

“Sometimes we shot innocent victims like the time when we were driving a military truck full of soldiers on the street. The site of the truck made some drivers behind us nervous. If a person acted suspiciously we’d shoot first and ask questions later. One driver reached for an object next to his seat and we shot him dead. We found out later that it was a comb.”

What is most incredible about this account thirty years on is that it was a “normal” conversation at the base. The major said that the soldiers hadn’t done anything wrong in killing the man because it was a time of war. You shot anyone suspicious first and asked question later.

The name “dirty war” is a too clean word to describe the atrocities that happened back then. Possibly “filthy war” is a better term.

Is fall so candid because it has an unwanted job, namely getting ready for winter the full-bloom landscapes that summer worked so hard at building? The mysticism you’ll find in the sub-arctic is therefore the only present that autumn offers to those that watch as it toils.So fall’s mystery can be summed up by its chilly full-moon nights timidly exposing sleepy rolling pastures and woods accompanied by Northern Lights dancing in the vast sky. When pitch-darkness leaves the moon and Northern Lights temporarily unemployed, darkness is so thick that you can almost lean against it.

But don’t be fooled: not everything in the woods appear as what they seem…

Or better they’re like something that Anaïs Niin once said: We don’t see thing as they are. We see things as we are.

This may sound like a joke but it’s not. I visited two years Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories in Canada, and discovered by chance that there is a street called Ragged Ass Road, which means “dirt poor.”

On a map of the city you’ll find the street in what Yellowknifers call the Old Town, located on a peninsula. Just follow 50th Avenue until you reach the corner of Hamilton Drive, where you turn right drive two blocks and presto!

I asked a taxi driver from Ghana to drive me to Ragged Ass Road so I could take a picture of the famous street sign. My comment made him suspicious.

“There’s no such place in Yellowknife.”

“But there is,” I responded.

“I’ll take you there if you show me where it is on the map.”

I showed it to him on the map.

“Wow,” he said, “you learn something new every day.”