Stop and Wonder

I first went to Costa Rica about four years ago and it was at that time that many Costa Ricans were protesting the possible privatization of their communications company, at the same time teachers were protesting their pension fund being slashed. Apart from the graffiti I didn't actually come face to face with the demonstrations until several days before I left on my six week trip. The teachers were marching from the capitol to another city nearly 20km away and I was on a bus that going that same way. Well, needless to say it was a hot 30-45 minutes on the bus until we got around them. It didn't occur to me that they were intentionally blocking the highway.

The last day on my way to the airport I learned that blocking the highway wasn't just something that they happened to do while marching it was a tactic in and of itself. As we actually had a flight to catch it was more than just a little frustrating for us. Luckily we had a resourceful bus driver who ducked around off ramps to get around the protest and get us to the airport in time. I remember thinking at the time that it seemed like a good way to turn people against your cause.

Yesterday the group that Christine works for organized a protest against the dams the government is building, among other things like mining and water privatization. Basically, we blocked off an entire lane of the Pan American highway at a major intersection, effectively blocking another major road.

I'll get into the techniques and my list of things that would make it significantly more effective in a minute but I think it's more important to discuss what exactly they were protesting. The government has plans to build at least two new major dams on top of the two they already have. These new dams would flood quite a large area of land and displace an untold number of people. Considering that El Salvador has the population density of Japan but instead of living in cities they all live in the country side, especially along rivers, it could be a lot of people.

The other two dams are used to generate electricity for the country, which I'm not against really. I think that if it were done properly a lot of people could use the stored water behind the dam during the rainy season to irrigate their crops. That's really the best time to grow stuff because it's so sunny. However, I don't think they use the stored water that way and really they ought to be using solar power, we're in the tropics for pete's sake.

In my opinion the main issue here is recompensation. The poor displaced people will be getting nothing or very little in return for their lost land. The issue is that after the civil war the government was supposed to give out parcels of land to the poor. However, ARENA, the military side's party, has been in charge of the federal government since then and has been quick to dole out the parcels to its supporters and completely halted giving land titles to the FMLN supporters. Thus the government won’t have to pay those people for their flooded land.

The other issues at hand were the gold mining companies being given free reign and no pollution restrictions. The rivers that they are dredging are quickly being contaminated with mercury and other nasty things that the poor have no choice but to drink. One of the things that strikes you when you're here in El Salvador is how many deformed people there are. You'll probably see more in one day than months or even years in the U.S. Of course, a lot of those effects are from the unregulated use of DDT for so many years, but the mercury poisoning is going to start having an effect in the form of Minamata disease.

I haven't heard any hard details about the water privatization. That's really one of the frustrating things about the protesters here. They don't do much if any research on the things that they're protesting. That's why I can't tell you exactly what the dam will be used for, how many people will be displaced, who is going to benefit, etc. The leaders just seemed to be assuming that every major government project was evil, which isn't that terrible of an assumption here. It's also probably the reason their only chants were, “No to the dams, No mining, No to water privatization!”

When Christine and I got there we immediately wanted to help so we set about handing out the flyers they'd printed to the stopped traffic. Most of them didn't seem too thrilled about the whole thing. I think that's the effect sitting in 30 minutes of traffic because of you does to people. We probably handed out a thousand or so before the whole protest ran out. We could easily have handed out 10 times as many.

The flyers were pretty ridiculous it was a half sheet of paper printed on both sides in size 12 font. There was one heading that may have been in 14 point font. The problem is most people here, if they can read, can't see very well and are intimidated by that much writing. The other thing is that actual text of the flyer was all about Jesus and how he would be against the dams and would want the people to keep their land. It had nothing really informative about the facts of what was going on with the dams, arguments for and against, etc.

They had the same problem with the banners they had made. They tried to fit 3 sentences on a banner, which were so cluttered I couldn't even read them from 10 feet away. On top of that they were holding them parallel to the single lane we had open so unless people could read them in the instant they were driving by, they might as well have been blank.

One other problem I had with the whole thing was that they drove in a big truck to carry these large speakers, a gas generator all to amplify their voice when a simple megaphone would have done the trick and actually been of better quality probably as the microphone kept cutting in and out.

Anyway, that was a lot of criticism but I really do think they're doing the right thing. I just want them to be more effective at it. Pissing off thousands of people and not effectively telling them why you're wasting their time seems counter productive. Christine mentioned that it would be better to spread out around a big city at stop lights, I think she's on to something. Of course they would be missing out on the solidarity building that the centralized speaking provides, but there's no reason not to do both.

Posted by Tao at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday morning I sold out. I decided to put Google Ads on my blog in hopes that it might be able to pay the hosting costs every year. Yesterday afternoon we had the longest earthquake I've ever felt here or anywhere. The ground steadily shook for about 20 seconds. The water jugs were shaking, the fan was wobbling, trees were shaking, etc. If that weren't a big enough sign, my web server went down and when it came back it had been replaced with an old backup before I put the ads up so they were effectively erased. Today I tempt the fates and put them back.

The earthquake turned out to be a 6.8 magnitude one off the coast of Guatemala near El Salvador. I was kind of surprised to find out it was that far away. Normally our earthquakes are local to the volcano here. Yesterday afternoon Christine and I went for a walk up this pretty road along the volcano and saw some fairly large fallen rocks but nothing much besides that.

Most earthquakes here happen during the rainy season when the ground is a lot heavier. It also makes it much worse when they hit because it causes massive mudslides and such. Luckily it hadn't rained heavily here for a couple days. The people in the high risk areas are still living at the church. The word on the street is that they're building temporary housing for them until the rainy season ends. Then they can go home and rebuild their houses to be destroyed next rainy season.

Anyway, if another natural disaster happens today I'll take down the ads. In the meantime, if you don't mind clicking on some of them that interest you from time to time to help support the site I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

Posted by Tao at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Last Wednesday the city held an Earth Day parade. It was really a march for action to do more about protecting Berlin from disasters, specifically landslides. I was pretty impressed that people were marching with signs saying "Protect the Environment" and wearing costumes as flowers, armadillos, whatever they could think of. It all seemed very out of character as I've never lived in a place where the people take their environment as much for granted. Sure, the U.S. has its problems but people value their parks and are at least mildly informed and concerned about the environment. Needless to say it was refreshing to see here.

The parade went all the way up to Brisas Del Sol(Sun Breezes), the little community where the most of the damage and deaths occurred. We marched into the provisional hospital area set up at the school where several speakers delivered their calls to action. Mostly they said that the government isn't doing its job to protect them and its an outrage.

The most interesting part was when Don Tomas, the english teacher at the girls' school and also a member of the city hall, read an update on the situation and a letter they were sending to the President and the Congress. Currently the death count is at 5 with 1 still missing, but theres not any real hope for the missing person. There were 9 homes totally destroyed and another 60 with partial damage. There are around 60 people still living in the Catholic church and they're looking at building provisional housing for them until the rainy season is over. At which point I suppose they'll go back and rebuild their homes where they can get wiped out next season.

The letter was an exercise in absurdity to me. You see, the ARENA party has the presidency and a few more seats than the FMLN in congress. Last year Berlin elected an FMLN mayor and its no secret that ARENA doesn't equally divide up the funds among the municipalities. Nonetheless, the letter went on to rail against the president and DEMAND that they do something or anyone else who gets hurt or dies is their fault. They then went on to say that they want $2 million dollars to fix the problem although they aren't even sure what they are going to do to solve the problem.

I've heard that they brought in an engineer to look at the situation and he said there was nothing that could be done. So they've been drafting up plans to buy a whole new piece of land and build all new houses for these people. There are probably 80 houses in this community, and I guarantee someone else would just move into them if they were abandoned. The other thing is that anyone with a little common sense can see that there are a number of relatively small things that could be done to make the situation much better and decrease the chances of major damage and deaths.

First of all, the drainage is ridiculous. They built a solid cement "bridge" that blocks the natural path of the water. That caused the water to push around it and come into peoples houses and was almost certainly the direct cause of the destroyed house and killed father and son that I posted a picture of in the last entry. They simply need to dig out the quebrada and make it easier for the water to come through in a controlled manner. That simple and would cost nowhere near $2 million. The other thing they could do, apart from abandoning the entire community, is abandon the first row of houses closest to where the land rises dramatically and landslides would be the most harmful. Then demolish them and build a barrier out of the rubble. Thats a couple days work on a bulldozer, simple enough. Anyway, thats what I'd do if I were mayor.

Interestingly enough, the current mayor was the one who bought this plot of land for the homeless people that were living in shacks along one of the roads into town. He helped bring in NGOs which then built them cinder block homes. Of course, now they blame him for putting them in harms way. My opinion is that I'm sure the mayor didn't put them there with that intention and it seems very callous and ungrateful to think that way. The same guy is now trying everything he can think of to help them.

Posted by Tao at 02:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

I had been planning a blog entry about how we ate sushi in the capitol a few days ago, and how beautifully ironic the heavily graffitied Sherwin-Williams plant is, and how I'm learning this fantastic web framework that's going to enable me to make some incredible sites, but then something actually blog-worthy comes along and makes that all seem meaningless.

Christine and I went for a jog/walk for the first time in awhile last evening. We made it back just before the rain rolled in, but had left our key in the house. I Spider-Manned my way across the neighbors roof and slid down a post in our backyard fireman style. Within minutes it was torrential downpour.

We've gotten into the habit of downloading movies that are subtitled during the rainy season because of the deafening roar of the rain on our aluminum sheet metal roof. We cuddled up and watched the single most boring movie I've ever seen this side of Warhol's 8 hour fly on the wall video. It was called "Taste of Cherry" in case you care to avoid it.

At one point it started to rain really heavy and I paused the movie to pull up a satellite weather image. Right after it loaded the power went out. We finished the movie on battery power and laid down to go to sleep and then someone knocked on the door. As I was walking up to the door I felt the mud squeezing between my toes and already knew what they were coming to tell me.

Our neighbors had a pile of rocks and rubble about 20 feet "up-stream" from our house which is now gone. Some of those rocks managed to make their way in front of our door and then start catching dirt, by the time I saw it the silt was up to our door. The mud inside the house covered the majority of the main living room, closet room, and part of the kitchen. Luckily we don't have many things on the floor in living room and closet room.

The rain had let up and there wasn't much we could do without light so we just went to sleep. In the morning we got to see the fallout. Mud and debris were everywhere, especially in the blocks around our house. Water apparently pours down the same way from the surrounding hills during every major storm and that just happens to pass in front of our house. There's actually a law in El Salvador that you can't build within 50 meters of a "quebrada" or water break, but it was obviously ignored in Berlin's case. This is the same water pathway that was hit hard by hurricane Mitch in 1998 and wiped out the high school. Fortunately, they've built a big wall since then and were spared this time around.

This storm was also similar to Mitch in that several people died in rock slides. The death toll is currently at 3 with several children still missing. I've put up a bunch of pictures in the photo gallery here. Theres also a larger picture of what's left of the house where 2 of the people died you can see on the left here.

One thing that's been impressive has been the response. Within a few hours there were bulldozers in the streets clearing them out, although sometimes incompetently. A medical clinic was set up in the school nearest the hardest hit zone higher up the hill. The church is taking care of about 60 people who's houses were destroyed.

The only thing is I wish they did more preventative work, rather than just being good at dealing with it after it happens. So many things happen on a personal level here, when they ought to happen on a professional one, like telling someone not to build their house in an overflow ditch, they just don't. People are scared everyone will hate them if they do something unpopular even if its in the people's best interest.

Posted by Tao at 02:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

I was just looking at the news today and I saw something that indirectly had to do with me. I found this article called Crawford Peace House Hit by Strife. You see back in 2005 I was going to UT and I had to do a report on a protest. So I went up to Crawford where some people were protesting Ariel Sharon meeting with Bush on his ranch. I ended up making "The Crawford Report" mini-documentary you can find in my video portfolio instead of a written report. After the protest the Peace House asked if anyone could volunteer to be their web designer. I felt like I could help them out so I volunteered.

I didn't do much for them, mainly because they only asked me to update the page a couple times. That is until Cindy Sheehan busted onto the scene and started protesting in front of Bush's ranch. They e-mailed me and asked me to set-up a PayPal donation link on the site. So I got it all set up and stuff and my jaw basically hit the floor when I looked in the PayPal account. Almost immediately there were several thousand dollars in there. Every time I hit refresh there were a couple hundred more. It continued like that and the next day it was up to $40,000+. I called the guy in this article they're basically accusing of embezzling some of the $285,000 that was donated, John Wolf, to be like, have you SEEN this? He seemed really weird and was curt with me.

The next day I got an e-mail from a woman at the Peace House saying they were going to hire a web designer for the site. I told them, well, ok, but I don't mind doing it for free. They said they were going to hire someone anyway. I was fairly annoyed at this, I mean, they get a little donated money and they just start spending on stuff that they don't have to. The other thing was that they seemed fairly rude about the whole thing, and I had gotten a creepy vibe from the short conversation I had with that John Wolf guy.

Anyway, I'm not that surprised about these allegations that the money has disappeared. As soon as they realized I could see the amount in the bank account I was axed. It makes me sick. They were so humble before, but the second they get the slightest bit of power, i.e. money, they're corrupted almost immediately. You would hope that people fighting for the things they believe in would have a little more scruples.

Posted by Tao at 04:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

   First of all, Merry Christmas! It doesn't feel much like Christmas here what with it being in the mid-70's every day. I think it was actually colder when we first got here in May. You may notice a underwater theme for our tree: yellow submarines, sea horses, and pineapples...they make good underwater housing I hear. We'll be spending Christmas here in Berlin and I thought I might feel homesick, but it just hasn't happened. It might be that my family is coming to down to see me right after Christmas that makes it so easily bareable. In fact, we'll be going scuba diving for new year's, which is one of the reasons for the tree decoration. That said, this will probably be my last real post before we leave on the 26th. I do plan on posting a neat video slideshow I made for Christine's life skills class before then though.

   So every morning I wake up and the first thing I do is sit down at the computer and go to www.thehungersite.com and click on all of the tabs to donate food, books, child healthcare, animal food, several square feet of rainforest, and even mammograms from the money the sites generate off of advertising. I often stop and think about that bowl of food or wonder what book it is that I've managed to donate to some child somewhere. It's a ritual, a habit, but a good one. Where rituals go wrong is when those participating have forgotten why they are doing them.

   I've never been a religious person. I find things awe-inspiring and beautiful, and I don't need or want someone to explain it to me. I believe that morals are not something that has to be carved into stone and taught. People know how they feel and also have the ability to empathize and know how they would feel in another person's place. I believe thats all that is required for natural morality.

   It seems the reason most people are religious is out of an inherent desire to do good, because simply put, doing good things, making others happy, relieving suffering, those things make us feel good. It's a win/win situation. Religion is just an organized way of doing that, because teamwork allows us to accomplish greater things than could ever be done individually. Of course there are other reasons for being religious, simply the need to be accepted by a group of people, but I like to think that inherent desire is at the root.

   A little over a week ago El Salvador and many latin countries celebrated the day of the virgin of Guadalupe. I had assumed that all of these virgins I'd seen were all just THE virgin, but I've been wrong this entire time. The virgin of Guadalupe was a virgin that appeared to a boy on a hill in Mexico, how he knew she was a virgin I can't say. This was around the time the spaniards were raping and pilaging and the virgin gave this boy a message, she said that everyone should accept the europeans and accept Catholicism. The virgin by the way was an indigenous woman, although you wouldn't guess it from her pale statues. Anyway, the message was miraculously spread far and wide and helped the spaniards convert much of latin america.

   The 20th of December is not the actual day the virgin appeared, but the day that she stomped the devil back down to hell. The night before everyone lights fires outside and sets of fireworks, which down here are basically small chunks of dynamite and gunpowder. Incidentally, firework production is a booming business for child labor here, who else could fit their tiny little fingers in them to pack down the powder for 40 cents a day. It was pretty enjoyable, although I had to wonder if the virgin would approve of the tire fires in her honor.

   The next day people dress up "indigenously" to honor her. Mainly they just dress up the children because I think the adults are too embarassed for the most part. However, another part of it which I find really sad is that I don't think they even understand what indigenous is to them anymore. I'd seen little boys dressed up with white clothes with patches on them before but I'd basically assumed they were dressing up as clowns. The girls put on way way too much make-up and wear bright spanish-style dresses. I know their hearts are in the right places but I feel like it's just another sad reminder of the successful cultural invasion thats taken place.

   Anyway, I was tricked into attending a mass at the Catholic church in town. I had been told we were just going to the park for a celebration. While we sat there and I tried to understand what was being said through the horribly distorted loudspeakers I got gradually more and more frustrated. I could tell that everyone was simply repeating the same rituals mindlessly. I thought of the hundreds of people spending their time on these rituals that had lost all meaning. I have no doubt that it's like that around the world. The incredible waste of time and energy that could actually be used to resolve the problems that these people were coming to church for.

   So these people mill about day after day, say their prayers, obediently listen and sing along, when all of that time they could be building houses for the poor(themselves) or schools, or teaching each other better ways to farm, or doing any number of things that would take actual steps toward relieving suffering and all of those inherently good things that lie at the root of their religion. I'd have a lot more respect for religion and religious leaders if there was a lot less praying and a lot more action.

   I guess the point I'm making is that it's easy just to do things because you've been doing it that way for so long. We have to be vigilant in asking ourselves why we do the things we do. Curiosity and questioning are the things that keep our eyes open and we have to make that the ritual. Amen.

   I'm done with preaching, it's time for some sacrifices. This wouldn't be any kind of a post if I made a play on ritual killings and didn't produce, so here's some blood-letting for you. The neighbors slaughter a pig every week or two and Christine asked to kill it, don't ask me why. I used to be somewhat squeamish around stuff like this, but that's almost completely faded now. It's obviousy nowhere in the picture for Christine. In a way I feel stronger now that it's gone, but I also don't know that I like being accustomed to it either. Sorry for the sideways video, it's too big of a pain to turn it.

   Christine has also started a new soccer career. A couple of the girls from the ecology youth group asked her to play on their all-girl intramural team and man did she kick butt. It was an all-ages league and apart from her they had youngest team. She only played in the last 3 games and they won 2 of them, but didn't quite make it to the finals. However, she made an impression on some of the other women who invited her to play on the girl's team for the whole city.

   From left to right is Dinora, who needs to learn to pass and guard, Fatima, who needs to quit kicking the ball so hard, Raquel their top notch goalie, her baby, Christine, and Clara bella. You may have noticed that at 15 Raquel is somewhat young to have a 2 year old baby. If you knew her step-father you might also notice that the baby bears a striking resemblance. It's one of the tragic and disgusting things about this country. The repressed sexuality leads to a horribly high rate of child molestation and outright rape. The even more horrible part of the story is that the step-father still lives with them and her mother acts like nothing happened. It's shocking to me how far people will go to avoid conflict in this country. Once again, I imagine it stems from the war, but that's no excuse.

   Anyway, I'd like to leave you on a less depressing note and since no post is complete without the ambiguously gay duo on their favorite perch, here you are.

Posted by Tao at 08:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBacks (0)

I may not have a tv but some of the news sites and blogs I regularly visit put up clips and I've just recently discovered an anchor on MSNBC named Keith Olbermann. His comments are so eloquent and well thought out that it makes me feel like it's the first actual journalist I may have ever seen on tv before. I recently watched the movie 'Good Night and Good Luck' and I have to say that Olbermann really does remind me of Edward R. Murrow.

Incidentally he has the same time slot as O'Reilly who Olbermann refers to as "the Big Giant Head" who often make his "worst person in the world" list along with "Coultergeist". I realize this doesn't sound very professional, but most of what I've heard him say is objective and still passionate. It'd be a news show that I'd actually set aside time for, up until now that honor would only have gone to the Daily Show. If you're at all interested you can get clips of his show here.

Posted by Tao at 01:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

   I've got a bunch of stuff to write about, but I'm not going to do it right now. Probably in the next day or two. It'll include pictures. I just wanted to post a quick thing about this right wing conservative "docudrama" that ABC is going to air on the 9/11 anniversary. It really makes me sick that they'd stoop to this kind of level, but not surprised anymore. If you're interested in how ABC/Disney is selling whatever soul it had to the right then read this article about it or this one on Alternet about the whole situation. Anyway, if you click on the graphic below you can fill out a form to send ABC a letter asking them not to air it or to change the inaccuracies. It basically blames Clinton for 9/11 with bogus facts and then pats Bush on the back. I changed the subject and a little bit of the content of mine. I like to make it look a little more personal, I hope it carries more weight.

Posted by Tao at 03:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (0)