noticías de latino america
>> Thursday, April 23, 2009
"when it's truly alive, memory doesn't contemplate history, it invites us to make it... ...up until a few centuries ago, the spanish word for "remember" also meant "wake up" and it's still used in that sense in some rural parts of latin america. a memory that's awake is contradictory, like us... ...it was born not to be an anchor but a catapult."
i was reminded of eduardo and (one of) his great books recently by the storm over hugo chavez handing barack obama one of his books. i read it during john jota leaños's AMAZING class, "technomythologia" at carnegie mellon university. "upside down" is chock full of facts and stories, blurbs and boxes, pictures and power. it takes on the odd (upside down) relationship between the latino/latina/chicano/chicanas in the south and the gringos of the u.s. it tells tragic tales, but his writing has a humanity and humor and respect it think is crucial to actually make the truth digestable and inspirational.
things could be said to be going a little better in latin america, what with hugo chavez and evo morales and michele bachelet and christina fernández de krichner in power, but there are still sketchy things going on, with help from america. of course there is plan colombia, but did you know about the ILEA(international law enforcement academy)?
"Though lack of transparency makes it impossible to know the content of courses, the conduct of the Salvadoran police—who compose 25 percent of the academy’s graduates—has shown an alarming turn for the worse since the ILEA was inaugurated. In early May 2007, the Archbishop’s Legal Aid and Human Rights Defense Office (Tutela Legal) released a report implicating the Salvadoran National Police (PNC) in eight death squad–style assassinations in 2006 alone. Meanwhile, the Salvadoran Human Rights Defense Office has also published reports connecting the PNC to death squads and repeated cases of corruption and misconduct. While US interest in ILEAs is to ensure an environment that protects free trade and US economic interests, the PNC has played an active role in a crackdown against civil liberties, aimed at curbing both crime and social protest."
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