Author: Migrant Tales

If you have any interesting stories to tell about the experience of living in a foreign country, please tell us about it.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged Asian nation to do more to defeat a global terrorist threat. One of the most remarkable statements he made at the annual Shangri-la conference on international security in Singapore was that enough isn’t being done to address the causes of terrorism. Gates couldn’t say whether the cause of terrorism was despotism or poverty. “The danger [of terrorism] remains very great,” he said.

If we take a closer look at Gates’ arguments, we’ll find some of the roots of terrorism. One of them is using such a term to picture the enemy. Governments that call their enemies terrorists do so because it gives them immense power and flexibility to undermine civil rights.

In the face of many other suggestions I could make to “nip terrorism in the bud,” undoubtedly the most effective one is doing away with George W. Bush’s administration. That administration is so inept in its “war on terror” that it’s the US that looks more like the “terrorist” than the “terrorists” themselves.

Viajar es casi como hablar con aquellos de otros siglos.
René Descartes (1596-1650)

La declaración del filósofo y matemático francés, puede proveer alguna respuesta de por qué algunos de nosotros somos inquietos viajeros.

Cuando nos trasladamos a una ciudad o a un país nuevo, posiblmente seguimos en contacto con los paisajes que formaron nuestra niñez. Esto explica por qué, luego de muchas generaciones, algunos de nosotros en tierras extranjeras nos adherimos a países como Italia, España o Finlandia.

Posiblemente, el hecho es mas complejo ¿somos algunos de nosotros nada más que antiguos recolectores de cultura, la cual decora los estantes de nuestras almas? Si alguno de ustedes tuviera la chance de ver mi alma, vería estantes extendiéndose tan lejos como los ojos pueden ver, con adornos de cultura italiana, española y finlandesa recogiendo polvo de alma.

Sigo sin entenerla bien, pero hay algo encantador que las calles de tiempos pasados. Hay grandes riquezas que abundan: ¿Es un sueño perdido?¿Un apasionado deseo? Un eterno presentimiento que la riqueza material y espiritual está a la vuelta de la esquina? O vamos a encontrar a nuestros parientes en tales calles y tener la oportunidad de preguntarles la pregunta de todas las preguntas: ¿qué han estado buscando tan arduamente?

¿Qué es lo que buscan?

Desde que Argentina ha estado otra vez en las primeras páginas de los principales diarios del mundo, con su permiso, viajaremos momentáneamente desde Finlandia, país donde vivo, a las calles de ese tormentoso país, donde mis bisabuelos paternos italianos emigraron alrededor de 1898.

Como EE.UU., Canadá y Australia, millones de inmigrantes también en el siglo xix y principios del xx, inmigrarorn a la Argentina. La mayoría de ellos eran italianos y españoles. Un pequeño grupo de finlandeses fundó en 1906 una colonia en las selvas subtropicales del noreste de la Argentina.

En el censo de 1914 el 30% de la población argentina estaba compuesta por extranjeros, en su capital, Buenos Aires, la cifra llegaba al 49%, adhieren a este porcentaje los hijos de estos inmigrantes y los anteriormente mencionados extranjeros se volvieron más solemnes.

Si visitas un vecindario residencial de Buenos Aires como Flores, donde mis abuelos vivieron, encontrarás en sus antiguas calles adornadas de árboles las casas el estilo parisino de principos del siglo 20. Posiblemente es allí donde encontrarás todo lo bueno y malo de la Argentina.

Muchos de los más antiguos residentes de Flores desprecian el tiempo porque los distancia de aquellos que aman, gente de tierras lejanas de Europa. Los habitantes tienen ingeniosos métodos de parar el tiempo: en frente de sus casa estacionan autos como un Ford de los años 30. Algunos aún tienen retratos de importantes figuras antiguas como el rey Victorio Emmanuel II de Italia, Francisco Franco de España, el mariscal finlandés Carl Mannerheim o el Zar Nicolás II colgando de las paredes de sus casas.

El testarudo que intenta adherirse al pasado mantiene una esperanza, un ideal vivo. Retardando el paso del tiempo, los residentes de Flores intentan proteger los ideales y sueños que sus parientes inmigrantes trajeron a esas distantes costas. Aún así, el tiempo siempre tiene la última palabra. No es nada raro que él mismo se transforma – como hemos visto muchas veces en la historia de la Argentina — en el peor ogro devorando todo lo que esté a su vista.

Un tío mío llamado Horacio, que vivió en Flores, me regañaría si llevase a su casa un objeto moderno como una calculadora de bolsillo: -¡ ´´Estás loco´´! me diría, -´´¡Sacá esa cosa contemporánea fuera de acá pronto! No queremos apurar el paso del tiempo ¿no?´´

La casa de mi tío era como un museo. Los únicos aparatos modernos eran un televisor y una heladera que al menos tenían 10 o 20 años. Cuando era chico a menudo me hablaba sobre viajar a Africa y hacer un safari, aunque en su vida nunca había salido de Buenos Aires.

Un día Horacio me dijo por qué habia silenciado a todos los relojes de la casa.

´´Para los inmigrantes, el tiempo es nuestro peor enemigo, porque nos distancia de quienes éramos y nos obliga a adaptarnos a los nuevos países y circunstancias,´´ dijo. ´´Todavía sigo esperanzado de que si el pasado y el presente estuviesen perfectamente balanceados, la respuesta que mis padres inmigrantes buscaron en este lugar caería en mi regaso como una hoja de oro inscripta con sabiduría´´

Nunca supe si Horacio descubrió el gran secreto, el tono de su voz y su aspecto desolado cuando hablé con él la última vez me dio la impresión de que no había tenido suerte. Era mas el rasgo de un hombre que sabía que la muerte se le iba acercando. Como hitos en el camino de la vida, la amargura traída por la hiperinflación política y económica — las mismas imágens vistas de Argentina este año – terminaron con él.

Mundos del crepúsculo

Inmigrar a un nuevo país, es como entrar a un mundo descubierto por el crepúsculo. Las situaciones se vuelven más definidas mientras te familiarizás con el espíritu y las nuevas formas de los paisajes de tu nuevo país. Cuando las cosas se ven confusas, da lugar para muchas esperanzas y libera energías.

Elegir un país es tan importante como elegir la correcta mujer o el correcto marido. Estoy convencido que, dependiendo de la persona, algunos países son mejores que otros. La desición que nuestros parientes tomaron de emigrar a un país, nos afecta por muchas generaciones. Muchos de nosotros somos nativos de naciones lejanas de Finlandia porque un padre o un bisabuelo tomó una desición importante.

Pero volvamos la pregunta principal: ¿qué buscaban tan árduamente nuestros antepasados inmigrantes? ¿Era oportunidad, aventura, amor, libertad, supervivencia?

¿O era sólo un deseo de hablar con aquellos de otros siglos?

Children are all foreigners.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82)

If each member of the human race was once a foreigner as the 19th century writer and poet suggests, why isn’t it possible to make the switch from foreigner to native when we’re adults?

Possibly the root of the problem lies in two culprit words: native and non-native, or “us” and “them.” What would happen if we did away with the term native and no longer reveal information like place of birth in passports and other documents?

Would such a bold step put in peril the very cultural foundations of our society? What would it mean for multicultural countries like the US and Australia? Would it speed up manifold the process of cultural acceptance and tolerance ?

Apart from permitting non-natives to become presidents of a country, nobody would have to carry any longer the stigma of birthplace with him. A person would have total freedom to choose whether he or she wants to be a “native” or “foreigner.”

Even if developed nations are leaders in telecommunications research and most of us have access to the Internet, many of our institutions and history hinges on seeing other nations and cultures as in the Dark Ages.

While the majority of humanity can’t log on and doesn’t own a mobile phone, it’s incredible that those of us that do – like governments – don’t use such telecommunications tools to further our knowledge of other cultures, even if the Internet is still a kind of samizdat.

A case in point is Iraq, where cultural, geopolitical ignorance and differences have forced the people of that tormented nation to live in violence, fear and squalor.

If the most powerful nation on Earth can get it so wrong culturally never mind politically, what does it tell about humanity’s ability to forge world peace and justice?

Does it all boil down to one simple fact: since we teach our children to become “good natives” at the cost of never trusting other societies and cultures, are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes that have hounded humankind ever since the Stone Age?

It is a tragic paradox that in this era of fast-lane globalization, where cultures are supposed to get nearer to each other, we’ve created conditions for the effective annihilation of smaller languages and cultures.

Just like vanishing biodiversity, much of the world’s linguistic diversity is on the same path of doom.

The challenge to globalization is how to tear down cultural and trade barriers without destroying everything on its path and avoid turning the world’s urban centers into Wal-Marts.

 

 

With the world in dire need of a tourniquet to halt the hemorrhaging caused by George W. Bush’s so-called “war on terror” and our insatiable greed that is bringing climate change on us hard and fast, one question we can ask is what can be done?

To simplify things, the world could be seen like the ten players (the G8 + 2) on a basketball court with two referees (the US/Nato and China/Russia) and onlookers (the world).

Certainly the refs can make as many bad calls as they wish. They have the power to do so. However, as they make poor calls the players and the crowd start to get rowdier. In the end the refs lose control of the game and all hell breaks loose.

This is exactly what is happening in the Middle East thanks to Iraq and Israel’s untenable policy in the region.

Might isn’t right. It isn’t a sustainable foreign policy.

One area where migrants are at a clear disadvantage is in speaking and writing the language of the host country. While speaking and writing a language properly is desired because communication works, language can be used to disenfranchise ethnic groups from participating in society. In light of these challenges, I’ve made up the following quote:

I’d rather not know how to write and have something to say than know how to write and have nothing to say.

Why is “being” from somewhere so important? Do you think we can be from many places and countries simultaneously?

A Journey Long Time Ago

To Aino Ida Kaakinen*

Some journeys can take years, even a lifetime to complete.

I was about fourteen years old when I got a National Geographic atlas for Christmas. The atlas had lots of detailed maps of countries but one of these caught my attention. I was amazed by the hugeness of Canada and how sparsely populated it was.

I had recently read Jack London’s The Call of the Wild

With the help of the summers I spent in eastern Finland and London’s book, I tried to visualize what those small towns and landscapes of northern Canada looked like from my home in Los Angeles, California.

Did they bare any resemblance to the sublime, Sub-Arctic landscapes of Finland since they were located north of the 60th parallel? Was northern Canada like Finland? After acquainting myself with the map of , my eyes traveled east. I must have noted a conspicuous body of water called the Great Slave Lake.

Over thirty-five years ago, towns on the shore of the huge lake like Yellowknife (population of 3,741!), Rae, Hay River and the former mining hamlet of Pine Point were the only ones connected by a highway from Edmonton.

Years come…

As the years appeared and slowly turned me into a man, my fascination with northern Canada never ceased. The same questions that awoke my interest as an adolescent continued to fascinate me: How is it possible that the Northwest Territories, which is about the size of Continental Europe, only housed 25,000 souls?

Who could live amid such far-flung isolation? Such people must have been a brave group to defy desolateness, I thought.

Certainly gold and hopes of attaining riches brought in1896-99 tens of thousands of people and a handful of Finns to Dawson City, the heart of the Klondike.

Canadian historian Pierre Berton writes in Klondike a short tale told by a miner: “All my life,” he said, “I have searched for the treasure. I have sought it in the high places and in the narrow. I have sought it in deep jungles, and at the ends of rivers, and in dark caverns – and yet have not found it.”

“Instead, at the end of every trail, I have found you awaiting me. And now you have become familiar to me, though I cannot say I know you well. Who are you?”

And the stranger answered: “Thyself.”

…and go

While DawsonCity shrunk from a city of about 40,000 inhabitants during the gold rush days to about 2,000 today, what had lured such a few souls to the Northwest Territories?

I’d never know the answer to that question if I didn’t visit the region.

An opportunity came in summer. I was invited to give a talk at a FinnFling festival at Thunder Bay, Ontario. If I didn’t take advantage of this chance, I knew I’d have to wait many years, possibly forever, to visit Canada’s north.

When the plane from Vancouver began its slow descent on Whitehorse, the spectacular barren scenery below revealed itself in full splendor.

There they were: the towering so silent mountain wilderness, untouched specks of spruces and snow-fed pristine rivers and lakes inhabited by the ghosts of London’s tales. As the airplane circled over Whitehorse, the city appeared like a flat spread-out oasis hugged by wilderness and the mighty Yukon River running next to it like a liquid superhighway.

Southern Yukon is mountainous and covered by abundant black spruce forests without any granite formations. For these reasons, the scenery doesn’t resemble Finland.

Of all the towns I visited in the Yukon, Dawson City is the most impressive. In its gravel streets you not only commonly brush shoulder to shoulder with the famous gold rush days but may discover a secret about ourselves on its gravel streets: We die penniless no matter how much material wealth we accumulate.

Even Buck, London’s famous imaginary dog, must have died “old and poor” after finding its lost freedom with the wolves of the wild.

Northwest Territories

After brief stops at Old Crow and Inuvik, I eventually made it to Yellowknife by plane. The capital city of the Northwest Territories was a disappointment. It had grown since the 1960s to about 20,000 inhabitants and looked like any modern urban center of southern Canada.

I did find some parts around, with birches, alders and red granite, which looked like Helsinki.

While I experienced the same friendliness from Yellowknifers that I had witnessed elsewhere on my journey, I understood that I’d have to travel hundreds of kilometers to find the magic that had lured me for so long to the Northwest Territories.

The 550-kilometer journey by car to Hay River from Yellowknife did the job.

It was late in the evening when I arrived with a friend from Thunder Bay to the small town of 3,500 people. We lodged at a campground six kilometres away. A beautiful sunset greeted us gleaming distantly like a surreal blanket over the Great Slave Lake.

The following morning the awesome scenery revealed itself with the sound of soft waves splashing on the shore. We visited a fisherman’s market and got acquainted with the town. We even had the opportunity to see a fastball game and a First Nations (Amerindian) council meeting.

It was one of the most memorable journeys I had ever made, even if it began a long time ago.

* A wooden board nailed to an old tree at the Dawson City cemetery caught my attention: In loving memory of Aino Ida Kaakinen, born October 24, 1904, died September 1, 1905.

It was the only grave I found that had a Finnish name. Records show that the baby died of “pernicious malarial fever.” I couldn’t find much about the baby except that her parents were Finns. Her father’s name was Emil, a miner, and her mother Ida owned a restaurant on 519 Craig Street, today Second Avenue.

Life on the front

Enrique Tessieri

I still have vivid memories of Colombia, even if I moved over six years ago back to Europe from the world’s most violent country.

The Finnish community in Colombia was made up of about 35 souls. When my wife, three children and I moved to the capital Bogotá, the Finnish community grew by 10%. That’s how few Finns live in that South American country.

Considering the few thousands of Finns that migrated to countries like Argentina and the Dominican Republic in the last century, it’s a mystery why so few Finns ever moved to Colombia.

Certainly the country’s pleasant weather and coffee would have been strong lures. Finns consume the most coffee in the world, or about 25 lbs per inhabitant annually.

You can imagine the surprise I felt when I discovered by accident on a map of Colombia a small town called Filandia spelled without an “n.” Filandia is located about 120 miles west of Bogotá.

Did Finns establish a lost colony in the western coffee-growing region of the country that nobody had yet discovered? Was the town named after a Finn who owned a large coffee plantation? Was the original name of Filandia, Finlandia?

The only way I’d ever know was by paying a visiting to the town.

Possibly the reason why my memories of Colombia refuse to leave me has something to do with the so-called U.S.-led global “war on terror.”

Prior to moving to Bogotá, I knew everything that a foreign correspondent should know about the place. I understood that it had the highest homicide rate in the world – in some regions of the country it reaches 800 per 100,000 people! I knew about the lucrative drug trade, over forty-year-old civil war, high kidnapping rates…

No matter what I reported to the world from that country, the ogre of violence always appeared in almost all the stories I wrote about the country.

One of the first big stories I reported was when the ELN guerrillas had bombed an oil pipeline in the northwest of the country.

Even if it was common for left-wing guerrilla groups to bomb oil pipelines, the attack had devastating consequences on a nearby village. The explosion of the line, which took place after midnight, had set alight the village burning alive some 50 people.

I can still hear vividly the pain, panic and despair behind the medic’s voice on the phone at the hospital as he reported to me the latest body count. But that must be a small insignificant number of people suffering compared to Iraq.

There were many other deaths I reported to the world from that troubled South American country. So many, in fact, that I lost count. Some were of people I spoke regularly by phone like Javier Suárez.

Suárez was a truckers’ union leader, who was shot dead in front of his home about a week after I spoke to him by phone.

Even if countries, terrorists and governments give the impression that war is always new because there is a new cause or reason for going to battle, the truth is that it is the same war that has raged ever since the first primate killed another one in battle.

The present war against al-Qaeda and other fanatical religious groups has affected countries like Finland.

Many images raced in my mind as we drove closer to Filandia in Colombia. One of these was of blonde and blue-eyed northern Europeans toiling in the fields like I had seen in subtropical Argentina.

The first matter you notice upon driving into Filandia is that it’s a typical southern Spanish Andalusian town. It has an imposing plaza and is located on a hilltop, overseeing beautiful rolling green pastures with patches of planted pine forests.

I walked to the town hall and met Mayor Jorge Antonio Hoyos, who was kind enough to step out of a meeting to greet me.

He told me that no Finns had ever lived in Filandia. “The word ‘Filandia’ comes from Latin meaning ‘son of the Andes,’” he said. “People who write letters to this town normally spell Filandia on the envelope with an ‘n.’”

I didn’t feel disappointed by the mayor’s answer, even if I had traveled so far to visit the town.

Like the bloody civil war in Colombia, which appeared to take a momentary breather on that afternoon, I wondered how long it would take for the destruction and death to end.

As the car drove farther away from Filandia, I felt silence had shot a bullet in my heart.