Las Palabras de…
From PhD Comics (love them!):
What would it look like if we dissected a graduate seminar or a small undergrad course? Who looks straight on to the professor? Who sits to the prof’s side? Who sits by the door and always comes in 5 minutes late?
In other news, I’m starting to feel the light at the end of tunnel–the dissertation tunnel, that is. I promise that soon, very soon, I will dedicate more time to my blogging.
What if we designed an environmental label or report that could be placed on the products that we purchase? Much like the nutrition labels already on our food packaging, we could have an environmental label that details what is in the product–or rather, what natural resources are used to produce what we buy. We already have environmental labels regarding whether the product is recyclable, organic, or tested on animals, but I’m calling for a detailed report. I want to know how much pollution resulted from the production of a particular item. I want to know how much energy was used to produce it, too. How much water did it take to produce that item? I think it would push companies to regulate their resource use because of consumer demand for more environmentally friendly products. We would be able to visibly see the difference between brands and products. This should also take into consideration packaging and the distance an item travels to get to our local market.
Is there a nicer way to relax from the claustrophobic world of dissertating than to see a live concert of Lila Downs?! Her songs represent an eclectic mix of Mexican, Brazilian, Argentinian, and Cuban melodies. Her band is amazing which also represents talents from around the world—and her harpist is amazing!! I can’t wait for her new CD and the release of The Minimum Wage song–a beautifully political song about crossing the border to work for minimum wage. Below is one of my favorite songs of hers: La Cumbia del Mole. It is all about the wonderfulness of mole and Oaxaca. Now I miss Oaxaca even more.
I’m sorry for not posting something earlier about the murder of two women who worked at a Oaxacan radio station.
Oaxaca’s Radio Wars
By Charles Mostoller
Despite assassinations, community radio is spreading throughout southern Mexico“Some people think that we are too young to be informed, but what they should know is that we are too young to die.”
These were the fateful words of Felicitas Martinez Sanchez and Teresa Bautista Merino, two indigenous Triqui radio broadcasters who were assassinated in southern Oaxaca on April 7th.
The two girls, aged 20 and 24, had worked for the recently inaugurated Radio Triqui, “The Voice that Breaks the Silence”, in the autonomous Triqui municipality of San Juan Copala.
San Juan Copala declared autonomy from the state government in January of 2007, unifying more than half of the 24,000 Triqui indigenous peoples into a single municipality, and has faced many obstacles—often violent—in its quest for self-determination.
The community is governed by usos y costumbres, the traditional indigenous form of government which is based around the popular assembly, and has thrown out all of the corrupt political organizations that had been dividing and arming the community.
As part of the community process to start the radio—which began transmitting in January—Martinez and Bautista had been elected by their community to serve as broadcasters.
The National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH, in its Spanish initials) and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations have recently condemned their assassinations and called for a thorough investigation into their deaths.
However, the Attorney General’s Office (PGJ) of Oaxaca has already concluded its investigation, saying that the gunmen had been trying to kill the driver of the vehicle, Faustino Vasquez Martinez, rather than the young radio hosts. Community authorities and other members of Radio Triqui have rejected this finding, blaming the government and local political bosses.
Both Vasquez and family members of the two girls have received death threats and warnings not to speak to the press, and it is unlikely that the gunmen—who Vasquez recognized as fellow Triquis—will be brought to justice.
But despite the threats and the girls murders, Radio Triqui vows to continue its work informing and organizing the residents of San Juan Copala.
The news has shed well-needed international light on the plight of journalists in Mexico, as well as on the difficult and violent political turmoil that consumes the Triqui region. But little attention has been focused on what has become a veritable revolution in Oaxaca: community radio.
Since the popular uprising that shook the state in 2006, when 14 commercial radio stations and one TV network were taken over by the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), the radio has taken on a key role in community organizing.
Although the state government and it’s armed thugs violently took back the occupied radio stations, effectively ending what some leftist thinkers had called the “Oaxaca Commune” and the “first revolution of the 21st century”, indigenous communities all over Oaxaca have created their own radio stations in an attempt to become more autonomous from the tyrannical state government.
Diego Lopez is a 26 year old indigenous Mixe who has helped organize the creation of 17 community radio stations in Oaxaca—including Radio Triqui. He believes that community radio is an essential tool for indigenous communities that are struggling for autonomy.
“The radio offers a community the opportunity to become more informed, for the people to discover their rights,” he said. “It offers an opportunity for them to create their own spaces, which leads the community towards autonomy.”
“I’ve been involved in the creation of many radios, and the results have been very real, very concrete,” he added. “You see how the radio impacts and fights for justice in a community. In the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the radio has helped to stop some of the mega-projects that are part of the Plan Puebla-Panama, like the construction of the Trans-Isthmus super-highway.”
Maria Rivera Aguilar, a 17 year old host for Radio Tezoatlan, “Liberating the Word”, in the Mixteca region, helped teach the two Triqui girls how to use radio equipment. She believes that community radios play a key role in organizing indigenous communities by informing the people of their rights.
“The radio is a way for us to support our communities, for them to get to know their rights, and offers a space where they can express themselves freely,” she said.
“We want things to change, to get better”, added Rivera. “We want to help the population see things how they really are.”
The majority of the community radios that have started up in Oaxaca—few have more than a year on the air—broadcast primarily in indigenous languages, have very simple equipment and weak antennae, and are staffed by the youths of the community—especially young women.
Machismo is deeply ingrained in many communities, and the young female radio hosts have tried to empower other women in their communities by inviting doctors onto the radio to talk about sexual health and sexuality.
Community radio stations also focus on reviving and maintaining indigenous culture, by broadcasting information on the traditions of the community and by playing indigenous music. They have also formed internet broadcasts so that migrants in the U.S.—Oaxaca has more migrants in the U.S. than any other Mexican state—can listen in and keep up on the goings on in their communities.
However, Lopez believes that the most important contribution of community radio is its ability to politicize indigenous pueblos.
“I think the most important benefit is the political impact of the radio. It can divide and it can unify at the same time,” he said. “But the radio is not subversive. We don’t say ‘go get guns and start a revolution’. We inform, we give the community a voice, we give them power and knowledge with what we broadcast, which is always backed up by factual information.”
However, the creating of a community radio station is a difficult and often dangerous endeavor.
“I’ve received various threats, been harassed and persecuted,” said Lopez. “When we began to transmit in Copala, for example, people called the station telling us to ‘shut up’ and threatening us. But these are the threats of people who are afraid that the community learns the truth, because they are the ones who will be pointed out.”
Local and national media, as well as the government, have attacked community radio stations in an effort to present them as criminal operations. It is true that community radio stations do not have legal permits to operate, which are extremely expensive and difficult to obtain, but they have found loopholes in the laws which permit them to operate.
“Ours is a struggle against the system. If we tried to do everything legally, it’s a very difficult process. The government has been promoting a law, along with the major communications companies like TV Azteca and Televisa, that says that indigenous communities do not have the right to operate their own radios. They say that we are pirate radios, but we’re not. They say we are illegal, but we are not operating illegally,” said Lopez.
In fact, during the popular uprising in Oaxaca, when the APPO was in control of most of the radios in the state capital, the state government formed an illegal, pirate radio station called “Citizen Radio” that broadcast the names and addresses of APPO members and incited people to go out and kill them.
The recent deaths of Martinez and Bautista, however, have only created more solidarity among community radios in the Oaxaca, and those involved have vowed to work harder for social justice.
“Their deaths do make me feel threatened,” said Rivera. “But now I’m going to put in more effort so that this doesn’t happen again. There must be justice.”
“The government wants to intimidate us, but we’re only going to work harder,” said Lopez.
“When a community makes the decision to form a radio, here in Mexico, it makes them very vulnerable to violence by the government,” he added. “But I don’t think the communities are going to back down. Once they’ve started the process of creating autonomy, sooner or later they will finish it.”
This is a great short documentary about a friend and colleague of mine who is a military wife and anti-war activist. Even though I’ve known Lisa for more than a few years now, my respect for her has increased even more after viewing this…
I had no idea it was going to get this bad…I was probably being naive. But it did get bad. It is a horrible example of plagiarism and the privileging of certain voices over others. I’m personally upset because I’ve lost one of my favorite blogs (especially while I was distracted and neglecting the blogging world). But much bigger than that, bigger than my own needs, are the broader implications. If you have not been keeping up, you can read here La Chola’s/WOC/brownfemipower’s final blog post. Others here and here and here discuss the background of the controversy. It is difficult for me to read BFP’s denouncement of feminism, but I’m not super surprised. Certain voices are privileged and the feminist scholarly and blogging world is not immune to this problem. Sadly, this has ended with BFP’s removal of her blog. I’ve looked up to her year’s of work and writing regarding women of color issues and I was especially fond (obviously) of her postings on Oaxaca during the uprising. I thank her for her support and work—I hope she’ll come back to us soon.
Something sad and thoughtful for Easter: Interview with Leonardo Boff.
Two disturbing things brought up by La Chola: Photoshopping at the New Republic and Rape on a schoolbus.
Heather Tirado Gilligan’s thirdspace article on race, grad school, legitimacy, and wine and cheese parties. Emailed to me by a friend, this article reminds us of our early days of graduate school, fitting in, and dealing with race and class issues.
Belle Lettre’s discussion on the issue of facebooking with students.
Something that hits too close to home: Top 10 Things NOT To Ask Your Girlfriend While She’s Writing Her Dissertation
Fun Comics: Garfield Minus Garfield and the horribly familiar PhD Comics
The books on my left that I should be reading:
Diversity on the Farm: how traditional crops around the world help to feed us all, and how we should reward the people who grown them. by Charles C. Mann.
When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846. by Ramon A. Gutierrez.
And in the end, all of this distraction was a success because I discovered I can download Mann’s publication online. Yeah!
Tariq Ali reflects on the protests of the 60’s.
In 1968, fury at the Vietnam war sparked protests and uprisings across the world: from Paris and Prague to Mexico. Tariq Ali considers the legacy 40 years on
* Tariq Ali
* The Guardian,
* Saturday March 22 2008A storm swept the world in 1968. It started in Vietnam, then blew across Asia, crossing the sea and the mountains to Europe and beyond. A brutal war waged by the US against a poor south-east Asian country was seen every night on television. The cumulative impact of watching the bombs drop, villages on fire and a country being doused with napalm and Agent Orange triggered a wave of global revolts not seen on such a scale before or since.
If the Vietnamese were defeating the world’s most powerful state, surely we, too, could defeat our own rulers: that was the dominant mood among the more radical of the 60s generation.
In February 1968, the Vietnamese communists launched their famous Tet offensive, attacking US troops in every major South Vietnamese city. The grand finale was the sight of Vietnamese guerrillas occupying the US embassy in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and raising their flag from its roof. It was undoubtedly a suicide mission, but incredibly courageous. The impact was immediate. For the first time a majority of US citizens realised that the war was unwinnable. The poorer among them brought Vietnam home that same summer in a revolt against poverty and discrimination as black ghettoes exploded in every major US city, with returned black GIs playing a prominent part.
The single spark set the world alight. In March 1968, students at Nanterre University in France came out on to the streets and the 22 March Movement was born, with two Daniels (Cohn-Bendit and Bensaid, Nanterre students then, and both still involved in green or leftist politics) challenging the French lion: Charles de Gaulle, the aloof, monarchical president of the Fifth Republic who, in a puerile outburst, would later describe as chie-en-lit - “shit in the bed” - the events in France that came close to toppling him. The students began by demanding university reforms and moved on to revolution.
That same month in London, a demonstration against the Vietnam war marched to the US embassy in Grosvenor Square. It turned violent. Like the Vietnamese, we wanted to occupy the embassy, but mounted police were deployed to protect the citadel. Clashes occurred and the US senator Eugene McCarthy watching the images demanded an end to a war that had led, among other things, to “our embassy in Europe’s friendliest capital” being constantly besieged. Compared with the ferment elsewhere, Britain was a sideshow (”…in sleepy London Town there’s just no place for a street fighting man,” Mick Jagger sang later that year): university occupations and riots in Grosvenor Square did not pose any real threat to the Labour government, which backed the US but refused to send troops to Vietnam.
In France, the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was at the peak of his influence. Contrary to Stalinist apologists, he argued that there was no reason to prepare for happiness tomorrow at the price of injustice, oppression or misery today. What was required was improvement now.
By May, the Nanterre students’ uprising had spread to Paris and to the trade unions. We were preparing the first issue of The Black Dwarf as the French capital erupted on May 10. Jean-Jacques Lebel, our teargassed Paris correspondent, was ringing in reports every few hours. He told us: “A well-known French football commentator is sent to the Latin Quarter to cover the night’s events and reported, ‘Now the CRS [riot police] are charging, they’re storming the barricade - oh my God! There’s a battle raging. The students are counter-attacking, you can hear the noise - the CRS are retreating. Now they’re regrouping, getting ready to charge again. The inhabitants are throwing things from their windows at the CRS - oh! The police are retaliating, shooting grenades into the windows of apartments…’ The producer interrupts: ‘This can’t be true, the CRS don’t do things like that!’ Continue reading ‘Words from Tariq Ali’
In this interview with Tewolde Berhan Egziabher, he speaks of a future with a weakened WTO and an emergent new world order. He also explains nicely some of the problems with TRIPs, patents, and genetic modification.
”Plan by TNCs to Control Seeds Bound to Fail”
Interview with Tewolde Berhan Egziabher
NEW DELHI, Mar 3 (IPS) - An attempt by a handful of developed countries and trans-national corporations (TNCs) to monopolise and control the world’s seeds is doomed to failure, says Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher, director-general of Ethiopia’s Environment Protection Agency, and a formidable negotiator at biodiversity-related fora.
Tewolde, who won the Right Livelihood Award in 2000 for ”exemplary work to safeguard biodiversity and the traditional rights of farmers and communities to their genetic resources’’, explained to IPS correspondent Ranjit Devraj why ”the attempt to reduce the world’s farmers to serfs of a different kind” is doomed.
IPS: What gives you grounds for such optimism? After all in major agricultural countries like India we have been seeing steady inroads made into the farming sector by such TNCs as Monsanto.
Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher: First of all the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which made the control over seeds by TNCs possible through its Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) mechanism is slowly getting paralysed — especially after Doha. As WTO weakens, the controls that have been creeping in will automatically disappear.
IPS: What about the bilateral agreements outside the WTO?
TBGE: These bilateral agreements favoured by the United States and the European Union, and also other countries, have only served to create greater uncertainty. They have certainly undermined the hope that the MNCs once harboured, that the WTO would become an instrument with which to subjugate the world.
IPS: What do you foresee?
TBGE: Well, we seem to be heading back, briefly, to the chaotic world that existed before World War II when a handful of colonial powers were able to exert their influence on the world. But, this will be a temporary stage because the Western world did not earlier have to contend with the emergence on the world stage of such countries as India, China and Brazil.
IPS: How exactly will the emergence of such countries as India, China, Brazil and South Africa help?
TBGE: To start with there will be greater room for manoeuvring. This can lead to a better global system than the one that exists in which countries that emerged victorious at the end of World War II have for too long continued to dictate the agenda. If you look at China’s investments and involvement in Africa you will see that they steer clear away from interfering in what is not their business. So the tone is already being set for a new world order.
IPS: What are the worst results of TRIPS impinging on agriculture?
TBGE: Without doubt the idea that the patenting of mechanical inventions — that began in the city-state of Venice — can be transferred to plants, animals and microorganisms is misconceived. Most farmers are illiterate and living in countries that are not developed but are vulnerable to pressure with WTO members creating conditions ideal for TNCs to patent seeds. This is an unbelievable distortion of justice. And it becomes truly absurd when the onus falls on farmers to prove that they have not been using seeds without a license from the TNC that claims to own them. What can farmers do in the event of natural pollination? Call in the birds and the wind as witnesses?
IPS: What about genetically modified organisms and genetically engineered crops — especially those that are claimed to help increase the production of biofuels?
TBGE: Firstly the deployment of genetically engineered organisms or crops must be resorted to only after they have been rigorously tested for safety. Many developed countries, especially those in the EU, are already wary of genetic engineering products. As for production of biofuels they can be useful in reclaiming land that is unsuitable for agriculture, but if they are dependent on fertilisers that go back to fossil fuels what is the benefit to the environment? What I say is that there should be no hasty action when it comes to adopting genetically engineered crops.
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