What do cities and towns like Viirpuri, Käkisalmi, Hiitola, Kivennapa, Sortavala and Terijoki have in common? They were all once a part of Finland, before the Karelian Isthmus was ceded to the former Soviet Union after the end of what Finnish historians call the Continuation War (1941-44).

Even though my knowledge of Finnish geography was pretty rudimentary in the 1960s, when I was growing up in Los Angeles, the name Karelia had a special ring to it. It sounded like a mysterious land that wasn’t on any modern maps but was out there refusing to accept what it has become.

People like my grandfather, who fought in the Winter and Continuation War, never forgot the names of those former Finnish cities that once dotted the Karelian Isthmus. The hope of visiting those places one day expressed themselves in lachrymose songs and tales such as Karjalan Kunnaillan.

Even in the Jaeger March (Jääkärinmarssi) there is special mention of that part of Finland: …Häme, Karelia, land and beaches of Viena… Viena is the northern half of ceded Karelia.

My grandfather was originally from the eastern Finnish town of Savonlinna, which is about 65 miles from the shores of Lake Ladoga. He lived for a short while as a young man in Viipuri, one of Finland’s most important cities at the time.

Those that were forced to witness war and were quickly humbled by its brutality rarely gave details about those gruesome times. The war, the loss of Karelia and near-interminable suffering always followed them as ghosts, even if hostilities had ended decades ago.

There was something unique about the tales and songs they sang about from those times. Now I understand that they were purposely inconclusive so that new generations could give the stories and songs a better ending. They did this in order not to smother hope.

What did they hope for? They secretly wished with all their hearts and mights that one day Karelia would be rejoined.

I asked a Finnish writer called Eeva Kilpi in the late-1980s what should the government’s stance be on Karelia. Of all the proposals I’ve heard throughout the years, Kilpi’s was the most sensible. She proposed turning the Karelian Isthmus into a (bi)national park administrated by Finland and Russia.

Taking into account Finland’s careful official foreign policy line that continues to this date despite the demise of the Soviet Union, it’s doubtful that the present or any near-future government will throw a lifesaver to the region.

Karelia will unfortunately continue to decay from lack of Finnish attention. But that is now — tomorrow may be a totally different story.

See Part II posted June 28.

Prior to Finland’s entry into European Union in 1995, there was little written in the English-language media about the Nordic country. Apart from news agencies like Reuters and the Associated Press, a handful like the Financial Times wrote regularly about Finland as well. When I wrote for the FT in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I’d file on average two stories per week on the country.

Undoubtedly the Soviet angle was was one of the most intriguing aspects of being a foreign correspondent in Helsinki. The first front-page story I ever wrote was published in 1985. It was a story about Soviet authorities asking Finnish customs officials to keep secret the price of natural gas that Finland imported from the USSR.

If you wrote critical stories on a regular basis about Finnish-Soviet relations, you were placed under close scrutiny by Soviet Embassy and even Finnish Foreign Ministry officials. I was told by one Finnish diplomat based in Madrid in the mid-1980’s that I would be blacklisted if I didn’t stop writing stories that ran against to “the official” foreign policy line.

The diplomat was annoyed by a story I had written in Cambio 16, one of Spain’s largest newsmagazines, on the contraband of Bibles from Finland to the Soviet Union.

Writing lame stories about Finland during the Cold War-era meant not writing about human rights issues, refugee from the USSR nor questioning sensitive geopolitical agreements like the treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Understanding (FCMA).

How much censorship or self-censorship existed in Finland before the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s? Part of the answer can be found in the editorials of the country’s major newspapers.

Were such editorials ever outspoken about Finnish-Soviet relations? Did they openly question the government’s foreign policy stance with the former USSR? What did Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s leading daily, write the next day after Soviet troops marched into Czechoslovakia in 1968? Why didn’t the Finnish press ever question why the country granted only once political asylum to a Soviet citizen?

We cannot change the past but we can understand it well enough so we’ll never fall pray to the trap of censorship and self-censorship.

As the US administration debates the closing down of the Guantánamo Bay prison, the stigma of opening such a detention center for enemy combatants, a concept conjured to detain anyone without due process indefinitely, will live on.

Erasing the damage to US prestige abroad as a beacon of hope for the word’s oppressed will take time. Time will reveal as well ever-detailed horror stories from the detention center. Gitmo will reach the same notoriety like the gulags in the former Soviet Union and of the internment camps where Japanese Americans were sent during World War II.

The lid on the excesses at Gitmo has come to the public light for sometime now. An army officer, who served at the US enclave in Cuba, says in an AP story that tribunal members relied on flawed evidence.

Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a California lawyer who has served 26 years in the army, said that evidence against detainees didn’t hold up to the most basic legal challenges.

One of the basis of US democracy are checks and balances. There is no such oversight at illegal detention centers like Gitmo.

AP reports:

“What were purported to be specific statements of fact lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence,” Abraham said in the affidavit submitted on behalf of a Kuwaiti detainee, Fawzi al-Odah, who is challenging his classification as an “enemy combatant.”

Abraham’s affidavit “proves what we all suspected, which is that the CSRTs (Combat Status Review Tribunals) were a complete sham,” said a lawyer for al-Odah, David Cynamon.

The sooner Gitmo, and other illegal detention centers operated by the US are closed, the better. It’s one of the first important steps in ridding the world from a treacherous legacy that will haunt us well after George W. Bush’s mandate ends in 2008.

Possibly one of the interesting matters about the multicultural society debate in Europe is that some don’t grasp what it means or implies.

If we look at the etymology of the word, everyone knows that multi derives from the word multus, meaning many or much. Defining culture is a bit more complex. For the sake of simplicity, let’s define it as anything learned.

What is multiculturalism, then? A good definition is provided by countries that aim to promote multiculturalism, like Canada:

Canadian multiculturalism is fundamental to our belief that all citizens are equal. Multiculturalism ensures that all citizens can keep their identities, can take pride in their ancestry and have a sense of belonging. Acceptance gives Canadians a feeling of security and self-confidence, making them more open to, and accepting of, diverse cultures. The Canadian experience has shown that multiculturalism encourages racial and ethnic harmony and cross-cultural understanding, and discourages ghettoization, hatred, discrimination and violence.

Through multiculturalism, Canada recognizes the potential of all Canadians, encouraging them to integrate into their society and take an active part in its social, cultural, economic and political affairs.

While such a definition gives the impression that we live in “cultural compartments” and meet in some neutral place like equals, the interesting question to ask is if it’s possible to create a just multicultural society where all are respected as equals?

Possibly we should, however, pose the following question to seek an answer: What kind of a society would we build if we didn’t uphold such values and instead promoted racism, segregation and ghtettoization?

Answer: We’d build a pretty lousy nation.

Here’s a snapshot of the sublime landscapes that accompany us north of the 60th parallel. Witnessing such a sunset is magical. It’s like being nowhere but between two great frontiers that meet briefly at a special moment. Those two frontiers are Space and Earth.

Here’s wishing everyone a wonderful midsummer if relevant to your region.

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.