Archive for May 2008

New Tribe "Found" in Brazil: An Opportunity to Be a Bit Creepy & Colonialist

The news has broken across major news sources this morning: a new, uncontacted tribe has been found in Brazil, on the Amazonian border with Peru. Obviously this tribe has been in contact with its tribal neighbors since, like, forever (it's human nature wander around and explore), but as far as Brazil, Europe, and anthropologists are concerned, this is a new discovery.


The BBC has placed helpful tags to label these people, who apparently didn't appreciate the interruption of the aircraft flying overhead to examine them and take pictures. Something about the gaze of the viewer (overhead, safe from any threat from arrows, invisible) and the way we can see the Indians (below, toy-soldier-like in size, nearly nude, waving a laughable threat at our faces, unable to hide or protect themselves from us) is troubling.


There are between 50 and 100 similar groups living without contact with the rest of the world. The dangers groups like this face upon a situation of first contact? Disease (remember the case in Peru where a reality TV show spread an epidemic?). Destruction of their habitat. Removal from their lands. I think it's important to note that these are people who've delved deeper into the Amazon in order to avoid contact with the western world as a survival strategy.

Brazil is trying to take a new tack in its relationship to indigenous groups in the Amazon: prevent their destruction. These photos have been released not just to indulge human curiosity, but to bring international attention to this situation and thereby put pressure on officials to not allow loggers, rubber traders, farmers, and ranchers to go in and take over the land (remember when that US nun was assassinated in Brazil for standing up for the poor when loggers and ranchers tried to take their land?).

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"Conservatives" On the Sanctuary Movement? Undocumented Migrants and the Church in the US

Some time ago, I happened to meet one of the chief organizers of the Sanctuary Movement in New York City. This is a grassroots movement within an ecumenical slice of the church in the United States (catholic and protestant) seeking to create safe places for undocumented migrants who have received increased per/prosecution because of their status following the adoption of post 9-11 legislation.

Undocumented immigration to the United States is a testy electoral issue and it happens to divide conservatives in the United States. While the GOP tends to tow a stricter line regarding amnesty or rights for undocumented migrants, the importance of this issue to the US' growing latin@ population means that the Republican party risks alienating them.

Take a look at the discussion about Sanctuary on Michelle Malkin's conservative blog.

While these comments seem to address some of the concerns in the debate on this issue:
Take away the tax exempt status of the Church for breaking laws and playing politics. That should end their law breaking.
Certainly not the first time that people have used religion to their advantage. There’s a reason that one of the more powerful combatants on a chess board is a bishop…

I'm not sure what this story contributes:

.... I was watching ‘mystery diagnosis’ on discovery health yesterday, and they had a case of an orthodox jewish boy having seizures. he had a spot in his brain that turned out to be a trichinosis tape worm, that you could only get from eating pork. but he never ate pork. turned out his family hired a ‘central american’ (probably illegal) alien to be their maid, and she had worms, and passed it by not washing her hands.

In this case they deserved it. but not in yours, may God have mercy on your daughter….

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Brazenness 101: Taking Money from Government Coffers (Itaipu)

photo via abc.com.py

Remember Itaipu Binacional? That's the large hydroelectric plant shared by Brazil and Paraguay--the world's largest. These cats and other public officials like them have a practice of using money from the Tesai Foundation (created to distribute Itaipu wealth to address social needs, including things like the people displaced by the dam, etc) for "medical" expenditures (none of them with receipts). These medical expenditures require some elected officials to dip into Tesai an average of once every four days.

Tesai has the kind of fiscal management that it has no trace of a US$2.4million lump sum transfer from Itaipu from a year ago. They know they got the money, they just can't figure out where it went. Millions and millions of dollars go missing into the pockets of officials and friends of government elites while the country struggles to buy basic necessities and there are children living on the street. Oh, and there are regular blackouts-- Itaipu should be able to provide 95% of Paraguay's energy needs with the remaining surplus a hefty amount that could be sold.

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Indiana Jones and Plenty of H2O

It's a bit too easy to rant about the errors/inaccuracies abounding in Indy 4 ("Mayan" spoken in Peru? Central American pyramids built in the Amazon? Mexican Mariachis playing in the streets of Cuzco? Crazy blowdart touting natives wearing monkey outfits?). Raiders is still the best Indy, by far.

Aside from popularizing the "extraterrestrial origin of Mesoamerican culture" theory, it'll also introduce Iguazu Falls to many. Unlike the monkeys with 1950's greaser haircuts, these aren't computer-generated fictions and they are much more impressive in person. Iguazu (in Guaraní it's "yguazu"--the "y" is water, "guazu" is big)...

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A week's worth of food, around the world.

Here is a project I wish I'd done. Photographer Peter Menzel and writer Faith D'Aluisio's new book, Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, examines food and the effects of globalization.

Though the photos themselves speak volumes about hunger and injustice and wealth, I love that the families in them are smiling and welcoming the viewer into their homes. Also interesting to note: the presence of Coca Cola, processed foods, whole grains, the absence of protein and fat, the context of home versus refugee camp, and the size of families.

What does a weeks worth of food look like around the world?
Japan: The Ukita family of Kodaira City
Food expenditure for one week: 37,699 Yen or $317.25



Italy: The Manzo family of Sicily
Food expenditure for one week: 214.36 Euros or $260.11



Germany: The Melander family of Bargteheide
Food expenditure for one week: 375.39 Euros or $500.07



United States: The Revis family of North Carolina
Food expenditure for one week: $341.98



Mexico: The Casales family of Cuernavaca
Food expenditure for one week: 1,862.78 Mexican Pesos or $189.09



Poland: The Sobczynscy family of Konstancin-Jeziorna
Food expenditure for one week: 582.48 Zlotys or $151.27



Egypt: The Ahmed family of Cairo
Food expenditure for one week: 387.85 Egyptian Pounds or $68.53


Ecuador: The Ayme family of Tingo
Food expenditure for one week: $31.55



Bhutan: The Namgay family of Shingkhey Village
Food expenditure for one week: 224.93 ngultrum or $5.03



Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp
Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23

See here for a few more photos and to read comments.

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El Pais connects Chavez, the FARC, and Belarussian Weapons

(Yup, this photo is from El Pais)

I'm not sure why this isn't front page news in the U.S. yet, but it's all over the Spanish language press. El Pais, the newspaper of record in Spain, somehow got ahold of some documents from that came from the laptop that was in the possession of Raúl Reyes (the FARC leader that was killed in Ecuador by Colombian troops a little while back, setting off a "crisis" in South America). Colombian officials found files on one laptop that seemed to imply that Chavez was financing weapons for the FARC. Chavez said this a lie fabricated by Colombia and Colombia appealed to Interpol to investigate the mystery of the computer. El Pais' report is apparently based on Interpol's verification of the legitimacy of those documents.

El Pais is now running a series of articles, revealing the contents of those documents. Here's a brief summary of the key points from the first article: While the FARC was meeting with Chavez to negotiate the release of some of its hostages in November 2007, it made the secret request for Chavez to help them get some weaponry. He agreed and put the resources of the Venezuelan state to work on it: the military and the country's oil wealth (giving them oil to sell on the black market). FARC folk, with the backing of Venezuelan money, were to go "somewhere in the Middle East" to meet with some shady characters who'd procure arms from Belarus (one of those former Soviet republics whose store of weaponry has vanished). In the article, the FARC show their geopolitical savvy: they want help from Chavez but without exposing him as a supporter in order to shore up his reputation as leader of South America (since the EU recently put FARC on the list of terrorist organizations, being seen as an active supporter of the group would compromise his legitimacy internationally).

Here (as translated by me) are some key lines from the article:

The Venezuelan president "agreed, without batting an eye, to the request" of 300 million USD [194 million Euro] made by the Marxist guerrilla. In addition, he devised a plan to receive, in the Venezuelan region of the Orinoco, the arms sent to the FARC by two Australian traffickers and set in motion a coordinating mechanism between the guerrilla and the Venezuelan military, at the highest level.

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Colonial Documents Are Pretty//Worm-Eaten


So, I spent a few days at the National Archives in Asunción, looking up 17th century documents on yerba mate (one of my few obsessions) and drinking tereré (yerba mate made with cold water... very typical of Paraguay) with the archive directors. I was very careful not to, you know, spill the beverage onto irreplaceable documents.

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Food Riots: About Price, Not Starvation

Because the price of food has skyrocketed in the past few years (due in part to the rising transportation costs of fuel and the increased demand on staple grains that make for good biofuels as well as the increased demand for arable land), we've seen widespread food riots. In Haiti, they recently toppled a government--this is also how Baby Doc was finally forced from power in the 80s (see this exceptional work by Michel-Rolph Trouillot for more on how Duvalierism was not entirely exceptional). And things are quite bad in Somalia, though Ethiopia begs to differ.

Though we might think that food riots are about hunger and starvation, Charles Tilly's analysis of modern Europe showed that food riots are about prices and not just food scarcity. He relates stories of people taking over ships of grain and, rather than stealing it, selling it for what they think are fair prices. If we read the news items on the unrest of the past few months, while there clearly is the danger of starvation, we see repeatedly that the riots also are about rising prices and, in Somalia's case, the unwillingness of merchants to accept local currency as payment. So, there's food. It's just that the people who need it can't get it.

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