Author: Migrant Tales

It was on a Saturday afternoon in April 1978 when I was locked up in a police cell in Buenos Aires for forgetting my ID at home. The other mistake I made was to accidentally point my camera at the US consul’s home. When I reached the corner, two undercover policemen ran from behind and stopped me pointing guns and yelling at the top of their voices.

One of the matters I thought of inside the cold and humid cell was President Jimmy Carter’s human rights foreign policy that had raised a lot of controversy in the region. At least it made a lot of sense to me locked up in a cell without the right to counsel and due process of law.

I was released in the evening. The police took mug shots and and a record of my fingerprints.

One of them warned: “If anything happens to the US consul, it’s your fault.”

That’s how a citizen of a country gets treated when an autocratic regime is in power and has no respect for human rights. I was lucky, though. Over 30,000 people vanished under similar circumstances during Argentina’s dirty war (1976-83).

Even if former and present US presidents cared less about human rights in Latin America and elsewhere, the 39th president did. Carter’s human rights policy sent an important message to despotic military regime’s that Washington wasn’t going to give carte blanche to de facto governments to murder and torture.

At a human rights conference in Dublin, Carter blasted President George W. Bush’s, Israel’s and the European Union’s decision as a mistake to reopen aid to Mahmoud Abbas’ West Bank while denying the same to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

He considered Bush’s decision not to accept Hammas’ 2006 election victory as “criminal.”

While Hammas’ refusal to renounce violence and recognize Israel is a mistake, it was a grave error by Washington not to recognize Hammas after it had won fair and democratic elections.

Washington’s refusal to recognize the radical Palestinian group sends the wrong message to other groups that believe violence is a more effective method for political change than the ballot box.

But possibly what’s behind the US’ mistaken Middle East policy in Palestine is intentional. Israel and Bush, who are obsessed with terrorism, care less for the Palestinians and the best way to rule that troubled region is by dividing and creating mayhem.

Did you know that one out of 35 people in the world is an immigrant, according to a 2004 United Nations study? In numbers, that translates to 175 million people (2.9% of the world’s population) versus 75 million (2.5%) in 1960.

In the United States, the number of immigrants total over 34 million, accounting for 12.4% of the population. The biggest national group are Hispanics at 17 million. In some states like California, the foreign population accounts for 27.2%.

Using simple math, it’s clear that the Hispanics are one of the most disfranchised national group in the U.S. The fact that Spanish hasn’t become an official language in states like California shows the minuscule rights Hispanics have.

If a country like the U.S. accepts and depends on immigrants for its economic growth and well-being, its legislation should reflect respect for those cultures and national groups that work in the country. Good examples for the US to follow are countries where more than one language is officially spoken. Some of these are Switzerland (French, Italian, German, Rumantsch), Canada (English and French) and Finland (Finnish and Swedish).

It’s incredible that as we’ve become more interdependent through globalization and can communicate with ease through the Internet, our perceptions of other cultures continue to be in the Pre-Cambrian Era. Even legislation reflects this antiquated stance. The difficulty of immigration reform in the US is a sad example of how some interest groups want the status quo to continue.

There are a myriad of reasons why immigrants continue to be disfranchised. But as long as we continue to teach our children in school that our country, our language and our culture is the best, we’ll never build a world that respects in earnest people from other countries and nationalities.

The tendency will be to disenfranchise as opposed to learn how to treat such people as true equals.

Some linguists warn that of the world’s 6,000-odd languages that are spoken today, about half will disappear by the end of the century. That means 300 languages become extinct in a year, or about six in a week.

A BBC documentary posed an interesting question: When does a language become extinct? Is it when the last person who speaks the language dies or is it the last survivor, who cannot converse with anyone in that language?

The culprits of the death of our global linguistic diversity are none other than “universal” languages like English, Spanish, Portugese, French, Russian, Mandarin and others.

While there’s a lot of concern about our environment and global warming, there appears to be less on how languages like English are steamrolling over smaller fragile ones.

The death of such languages is a bit like what’s happening to our planet’s biodiversity. There’s a lot of concern but not enough to take serious and effective action to stop such destruction.

How will languages evolve hundreds of years from now if humanity only speaks a handful of languages? Will it spark wars after all the smaller languages have been wiped off the face of the Earth?

Seen from The Americas, Europe looks like myriad of languages and religions with most of them having a score to settle for some injustice that took place recently or long time ago. In countries like Finland and the Baltic States, the main motive for independence was ethnic. The strife in the breakup of Yugoslavia is a recent tragic case of ethnic civil war.

Has Europe changed from the times when racism reached horrific proportions during Nazi Germany? Certainly it has but the seed of such hatred hasn’t been yet nipped from the bud.

Alfred Rosenberg, the Karl Marx of Nazi Germany’s mistaken race ideology, argued that Germany had become weak because religious groups like the Jews lived in the same country as the Germans. For Germany to regain its past greatness — he said — it had to banish the Jews and ensure that Aryans married their kind.

What a load of bologna! If that type of twisted reasoning is correct, then the US, Canada, Brazil, Australia have been undermined by hordes of migrants who adapted and became a part of such societies.

Europe, as opposed to The Americas, is still slow in realizing that a multicultural society is the way ahead. In some European Union countries, such a reality is still more of a theoretical treatise than a practical matter that government should enforce and encourage.

Possibly the UK is the most “tolerant” multicultural country in the EU with the least tolerant being the Baltic Republics.

High unemployment among foreigners in the EU and the treatment of some minorities are sad examples that Europe is still distant from creating a just and dynamic multicultural society.

Para personas como los finlandeses, quienes alguna vez fueron una tribu nómada, y terminaron estableciéndose en este rincón mágico de Europa, el ritual de la despedida sigue siendo una parte importante de nuestra herencia cultural.

Las despedidas se notan en todas partes de nuestra cultura. Hasta Väinämöinen, el mítico héroe barbudo blanco del Kalevala, parte en un bote para no regresar jamás. Hasta Jean Sibelius compuso un concierto llamado, ´´Buenas noches – Adiós´´.
Varios tipos de separaciones marcan la historia de Finlandia. Existe la despedida del migrante quien navegó a las Americas a fines del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX, y la del último beso de una joven esposa y esposo, o la de una madre a su amado hijo, quien pronto moriría en el frente de batalla.
Algunas de estas despedidas son tan intensas, que son recordadas y transmitidas de generación en generación. Mi madre una vez me contó de que manera mi abuela descubrió acerca de la muerte de su hijo , sirviendo a la ejército de EEUU, en el frente italiano en la 2da Guerra Mundial. Aunque haya pasado más de medio siglo, me sorprendí de lo claro que pudo describir el evento trágico. ´´Aino estaba horneando en la cocina´´, dijo ella. ´´Fue por la tarde cuando recibió el telegrama del departamento de estado de los EEUU. Colapsó al enterarse la noticia de la muerte de Leo´´.

La muerte, que no es más que un último adiós, es una imagen recurrente encontrada en las despedidas de los finlandeses. El poeta francés Edmond Haraucourt (1856-1941) creyó que la imagen de la muerte aparece siempre cuando dos humanos se separan. Escribió: partir c´est mourir un peu.Cést mourir a ce qu´on aime. ( El partir es morir un poco, es morir a lo que uno ama).

El fin de la 2da guerra Mundial, no conduce al final de las dolorosas despedidas. Por el contrario, cientos de miles de finlandeses comenzaron a mudarse a las ciudades dejando sus hogares en la campiña. En esas ciudades surgió un gran vacío porque esas personas que dejaron el campo fueron cubiertos de nostalgia ya que constantemente recordában sus hogares en la campiña y las despedidas que fueron las últimas imágenes.

Aún hoy en medio de lo moderno y relativamente barato del pasaje aéreo y de internet, nosotos los finlandese continuamos siendo forjados por un sentimiento de constante movimiento y por las pasadas, presentes y futuras despedidas.

Espero que los saltos tecnológicos y los grandes pasos que la humanidad de en éste milenio hagan obsoletas las despedidas. Posiblemente una nueva manera de viajar, a través de una dimensión como el ciber espacio, nos permita estar a miles de kilometros en varios lugares simultáneamente, sin movernos del cuarto en donde nos encontramos. Bajo semejantes circunstancias, no sería necesario despedirse porque podríamos estar con todas las personas que amamos y con los amigos que deseáramos.

Despedidas ´´light´´

Por muchos años, y casi subconcientemente, me he distanciado de las despedidas, especialmente aquellas que son profundas, largas y casi las ultimas. Es por eso que no disfruto ir a funerales ni despedirme de un buen amigo antes de un viaje largo.

El poeta alemán Rainer Maria Rilke una vez escribió: ´´Estate por delante de todas las despedidas, como si estuvieran por detrás de ti, como el viento que justo está partiendo.´´

La despedida más dificil que experimenté era cuando debía decirle adiós a los veranos que pasé con mis abuelos maternos en los bosques de Savo en Finlandia oriental.

Es una mentira pensar que la despedida con la naturaleza es un acto de un sentito.
Antes de la partida de Savo, podía sentir susuros tristes de adiós de los bosques acercándose a mí un poco antes de regresar al hormigón de las calurosas y asfaltadas calles de Los Angeles, California.

El ritual de la despedida era una experencia más traumática a comienzos del siglo pasado que hoy en día. En aquel entonces, las personas que no se volverían a ver nunca más, por el destino o la geogrefía, tuvieron que disfrazar las despedidas con grandes dósis de esperanza. Tuvieron que convencerse de que pronto se volverían a ver, aunque nunca lo hicieran.

¿Cómo millones de migrantes hubieran podido dejar a sus afectos si hubiesen sabido que no los volverían a ver nunca más? Posiblemente la historia de la humanidad se hubiese escrito diferente si hubiésemos tanido la habilidad de saber si nuestras despedidas eran las últimas.

I was very surprised to hear a while ago that the Argentinean government was breathing life back to the long-overdue Atucha II nuclear plant porject. Even if construction of the nuclear reactor began in 1981, Atucha II was never built. One of the reasons was its ungodly costs due mainly to delays.

In 1988, some analysts believed that the delay of 5-6 years in finishing construction of the then 743 MW nuclear reactor would end up costing $4.5 billion if built in the 1990s. If the plant would have been built on time, officials at the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA) believed that its final cost would have been about 1.5 billion dollars, if operational in 1987.

To deal with the gas and power crisis, President Nestor Kirchner’s government announced in May 2004 an ambitious energy program. One of the plans in the energy program is finishing construction of the the Atucha II plant.

Kfaftwerk Union Aktiengesellschaft of Germany was supposed to construct the original reactor of Atucha II. The German company built in 1974 the 357 MW Atucha I, Latin America’s first nuclear reactor.

Despite the government’s optimism over the project, I’d be surprised if the plant will ever be built.

One matter that I haven’t heard anything about is how much Atucha II continues to cost or what was its final price since its construction is today twenty years behind schedule.

One may correctly ask if it’s morally right for the government to move ahead with an expensive nuclear program when Argentina has prodigious hydrocarbons reserves and where poverty has become one of the greatest social ills of this once-rich nation.

As long as poverty is the rule as opposed to the exception, Argentina won’t build atoms for progress, but for underdevelopment.

Brazilian state-owned energy company Petrobras chief executive Sergio Gabrielli reiterated the need for greater investments in Bolivia to keep up with future export commitments.

While Brazil signed a 20-year agreement in 1999 and has the right to purchase up to 30 million cu m/d, the big challenge will be to supply Argentina from 2010 with 27.7 million cu m/d, compared with about 6 million cu m/d now. Another challenge of Bolivian authorities will be to satisfy burgeoning domestic gas demand.

Hydrocarbons association CBH has said that Bolivia needs upstream investments of $3 billion to satisfy future export commitments, with others claiming a higher figure of $3.5 billion.The possible scenario that Bolivia may not be able to meet its export commitments and supply demand at home strikes me a bit like Argentina during 2002-04. During that time, investment had fallen abruptly in Argentina because of a new economic emergency law passed by Congress in January 2002. The government blamed foreign companies for not investing enough and energy majors said that there were insufficient guarantees.

The debate ended abruptly in 2004 when Argentina’s higher economic growth fueled gas
consumption at home, forcing the country to scale back exports to Chile, Uruguay and Brazil.

Will a crisis like in Argentina awaken Bolivia to the reality that investments are needed pronto?

I once stared at death straight in the eyes in a place I’d never imagined. My first impression of it was its luring beauty mixed with finality. I stood in its domain only briefly, in a forest that had been clearcut a few afternoons ago. It was a special forest since it had seen me grow when I was a toddler.

The tall near-century old spruces and firs that looked over me were now felled, lying silent and cut in logs, immobile and ready to be sent to the paper mill. There they were, so still and having lost their ability to stand upright. The smell of death abounded as the trees bled resin.

Some of these trees may have taken about a century to grow but were felled in a matter of seconds by a harvester.

What a pity!

…this is an interesting quote. Possibly it explains why citizens and country are two different matters.

If people behaved in the way of nations do they would all be put in straightjackets.

Tennessee Williams (1911-83)

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Traveler

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If terrorism is war waged by renegade groups aiming to overthrow or destabilize a government or occupying force, then war waged by legitimate armies are only terrorists with suits.