Teh Stupid
May 15th, 2009 by admin
- Slavery is alive and well in Santa Cruz.
[Teresa Barrio's] hamlet of 13 Guarani families - all workers on the plantations near the town of Camiri in Alto Parapeti region in the eastern province of Santa Cruz - built a school but ranchers destroyed it, she says.
“They didn’t want us to learn, they want things to be like they always have been,” Teresa’s granddaughter, Deisy, says.Eliane Capobianco of the rancher’s association Fegasacruz–in Santa Cruz, of course–defends the ranchers: “The fact that many workers ask employers to be their children’s godfathers is evidence of admiration not of dependency. These people are workers, not slaves.” O.K.?
- Pronto has some interesting tables regarding the December presidential elections in Bolivia. It’s a wonky, but fascinating look into not only Morales’s and MAS’s political futures, but also the future makeup of the Bolivian senate (but I can’t disagree enough with Pronto’s speculations regarding the terror-cell conspiracy in Santa Cruz; read, instead, the Bolivia Information Forum’s just-released report for a concise, well-researched summary of recent events–if you’re too lazy to read the posts here and over at Bina’s house).
- A rendering of that cool proposed tunnel from Bolivia to the Pacific Ocean.
- And teh stupid (and far from Bolivia): With only two weeks to go in her six-year-long house arrest, Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is in trouble with the nasty military junta leaders–because a stupid U.S. citizen thought it would be fun to swim over to her compound. Just astounding:
Supporters fear the Burmese authorities will prolong her detention indefinitely, exploiting the fact that John William Yettaw – a middle-aged American described by one of her staff as “a nutty fellow” – was allowed to stay for two days at the villa after pleading exhaustion from his mile-long swim.
Suu Kyi’s chief lawyer, Kyi Win, said: “Everyone is very angry with this wretched American. He is the cause of all these problems. He’s a fool.”
And an asshole, all of Burma must be thinking.
Godparentship isn’t necessarily an indication of affection. It’s well-documented that people in indigenous Andean cultures, which could be stretched to include Guarani people, approach the powerful and influential to be compadres - it’s always tended to be an asymmetric relationship. The people who are working as peons and approach the estate owner to be their compadre are trying to mediate an exploitative and ugly relationship in a slightly more benign way - in other words, to resist and to improve things for themselves by drawing the owner/compadre into a relationship of obligation as well as one of exploitation. It doesn’t mean they’re all fuzzy good pals.
Thanks for the comment. I thought that the exploiter/exploitee relationship was so obvious that it didn’t need my comment, although I do appreciate your laying it out so well. I absolutely agree.