Today is a beautiful sunny day in Madrid. It’s one of those days that so forceful that one forgets that there’s a season like winter. This would be a great day to go to the barber shop, I thought.

I walked into the first barber shop that I saw in the neighborhood of Salamanca, located pretty close to downtown Madrid. As I walked in an old man greeted me. He acted like the barber but I found out 10 minutes later that it was his daughter that was the one that was going to cut my hair.

“She’ll be right with you, señor,” the old barber said. “I can’t cut your hair because I’m retired. I’d get into a lot of trouble if an inspector caught me.”

The decor and feel inside the barber shop was almost like from the 1960s. All it needed was a portrait of former dictator Francisco Franco on the wall.

“How do you want your hair cut,” the woman barber says.

“Short.”

She started to do away with my hair with an electric razor in the same way as a harvester cuts wheat. I started to get worried.

As if we’d known each other for years, she started telling me about her intestinal problems and how she had to eat a restricted diet comprising of high-fiber vegetables and fruits.

After that she started to ramble on about how good the Republican Party was in the US and that Condi should run for president. The lady sounded like a neocon but a Spanish version of it, which is just as bad.

She didn’t have nice words for Spain’s socialist prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. “Es un hijo de puta (he’s a son of a bitch),” she said.

I was pretty happy that she was almost through cutting my hair, or should I say scalping it.

It’s the last time I’ll ever go to that barber!

For a person like me who grew up in Southern California, Spain in general and Madrid in particular have a special touch of home. Certainly if I’d want to get a good feel for the “European” Southern California I’d have to travel to Andalucia in southern Spain.

One of the matters that makes Spain such a special place is that it has developed socially in leaps and bounds during the past 40 years. It has a touch of Latin America but without the social problems. In many respects Madrid is a near-perfect city for me. I look forward to making this my new home.

Once I get an apartment and settled in, I’ll file some pictures of the city for everyone to feast their eyes.

Before I begin, I’d like to thank all the readers who have dropped by this blog even though I’ve been absorbed in work and writing my thesis. In the past very intense three months, I got a job offer to go to work for a Spanish newspaper in Madrid. So from February, I hope to start writing about life in Spain.

I used to live there with my family in 1996-1998. Having grown up in Southern California, southern Spain was very much like home but without the skyscrapers and the madness you’ll find in Los Angeles. It’s a quieter place in Europe and in Latin America at the same time.

If any of you are interested, my thesis was on a Finnish colony founded in subtropical Argentina in 1906. A wild place just like when the West was conquered by white Americans. In Misiones, located in northeast Argentina, there were very few Amerindians when the Finns and other Europeans colonized the region.

I’ll leave you with one of ten portraits that I exhibited recently in Finland. One of these exhibitions was at Kaapelitehdas in Helsinki (http://www.kaapelitehdas.fi/index.html?menuid=227&aid=1198)

This is the first of ten portraits of my photo exhibition called “Journey to Colonia Finlandesa.” The text is in Finnish. It tells about how the colony looked back in 1984. It was back then a very empty and poor place.

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.