Chavismo
A few years ago I would have tentatively called myself a Hugo Chávez supporter. Specifically I respected (and was excited by) a democratically-elected president who spoke out against centuries of repressive imperialist policy in Latin America (specifically the U.S. government and U.S. and European multinationals, increasingly in the 1900's). I still respect that aspect of Chávez's politcs . I still respect his call for bilateral unity in improving Latin America's social, economic, and political condition. However, rather than helping to unify a movement that had so much potential just two or three years ago with a growing trend of democratically-elected left presidents in the region, the result of his actions as its default leader has been the opposite. Flush with gazillions of petrodollars, he's handed out billions and billions of dollars to countries all over Latin America while simultaneously handcuffing them to his agenda and isolating them from developing foreign and business relations with a growing list of countries (and even companies from those countries) which might be Chávez adversaries (most recently threating to nationalize several multinational banks operating in Venezuela if the Spains's king doesn't apologize for telling him shut up the other week; the reason being that they are of Spanish origin. That's a dangerous way of thinking). He's exercising his economic might, converting it into political might the same way the U.S. government has done with such awful ends in Latin America. And now that he's just a few days from essentially formalizing his dictatorship, a throwback movement to Simón Bolívar's panamericanismo that was so promising not too long ago, looks ever more distant, its leader looking to go out the same way Bolívar went, an idealist hero for the masses turned disillusioned dictator.

Wrote while listening to 'Malamarismo' by Mala Rodríguez, who is of Spanish origin.

Update: In a very close referendum last Sunday, Venezuelan voters decided 51% to 49% against Chávez's proposals. I doubt this is the last of his attempts to Castrize himself president for life.

Monday at the office

We’re experiencing increased levels of productivity today here at the bedroom-office over on Gorriti. Believed sources of such elevated efficiency are thought to be related to an usually strong batch of French pressed café from Just Coffee, Jorge Ben’s 1976 samba-rock classic África Brasil blasting out the little laptop speakers on loud, and an endorphin high from a late-morning Spinning workout.

And in related news, Alan’s shoes (which have been drying out on the terrace for more than a week) finally seem to be dry after an extended period of no rain.

Top three band names of all time:
3 – Billy Ray’s Pirates (later known only as BRP, which is whack!)
2 – The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir (the better half of the band took his songs and now leads the fantastic, but admittedly less ambitiously named Brighton, MA)
1 - Sports! (although I never heard them, they were apparently a group of nerds playing around Asheville, North Carolina)

Finally, I've recently made my foray into Spanish-language blogging over at my friend Carlos' frequently updated arts/cinema/music blog, La vida en stereo. Check it out if you know that language; they're on top of all the newest, illest villiany.

Open spaces

After spending much of the last year living in high population density areas between Quito, Ecuador (5,190 people/km²) and Buenos Aires, Argentina (13,679.6/km²), coming back to the U.S. last month, the first thing I noticed walking out of the tunnel into Dulles Int’l Airport in D.C, of course, was that obese women eating from one of those clear plastic dishes divided into two parts – one for overly salty tortilla chips and the other, a dedicated reservoir for that plastic nacho cheese that we all love and hate – dipping away to her heart’s content. The classic ‘first thing you’ll notice back in the States are all the fat people’ line so famous with young, expatriates manifesting itself right before my very eyes. Maybe it was that I was just anticipating such an observation and that poor women back in D.C. became an ad hoc unknowing accomplice, but it was - ya know - true in a way. Us Americans, we’re all fat warmongers (ask any non-American). I was glad to be back home.

Fat Americans are not what I’ve intended to write about (that’s a topic better left to this guy (or this boludo)); that was just my wordy introduction about the first thing I noticed - which it was, but the second thing I noticed and continued to affect me more than anything for the next handful of days during the equally celebrated culture shock-transitional-phase was open spaces. America is full of that shit.

There is more space - on an aggregate level – between your bed and your toilet, between your front door and the street, refrigerator and grocery store, and you and the next closest person (can you touch someone else right now?! I can, but I don’t think this guy next to me in the coffee shop would appreciate it) than so much of the rest of the world. And this is not just a phenomenon of small and mid-size cities in America. The fact that many people here even have yards in big cities, such as Los Angeles and Chicago, is impressive coming back from South America. Even New York City, this country’s most dense urban area (10,456/km²), is less so when comparing it to most of the other megacities on this planet. The consequences of this? A lot more green space – more trees, grass between the sidewalk and street, and neighborhood parks with grass under the benches instead of cement. But it also means a lot more travel between places. It’s no wonder Americans are always so pressed for time. We spend twice as much time – again, to reiterate – getting to the toilet in the morning, later to the breakfast table (past the bathroom, down the hallway, down the stairs, and to the right), and after that, to work. And that means we consume more energy – more food calories if we’re walking and more petro calories if we’re driving. I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing; we could use the exercise (see first paragraph).

In a special shout out to my pictorial hometown, Middleton, WI (754.5 people/km²), congratulations for alledgedly being the Best Place to Live in America™, and hence, the world. After a disappointing seventh place ranking in 2005, we pulled through this year for the numero uno spot. Next stop, that coveted nomination for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

Buenos Aires, Argentina

I've been living in Palermo Viejo for two months now. It's part of Buenos Aires' largest neighborhood and is loaded with connotations, both good and bad. Too be sure, and I might as well mention this only because I'm paying the premium rent, I live in Palermo Soho. That's the new, rich, hip, fashion (mostly bad and uninventive), and restaurant part of the larger neighborhood, which I bet once upon a time was actually a really authentic working class 6x20 block area.

On a typical day I get up at noon, read (old newspapers, a rare book in English) and eat breakfast for an hour or two, (until recently) find an internet cafe (the bane of my existence) to check my email, etc, etc, wander over to a coffee shop and read, chat, and drink bad coffee, while planning the rest of my day (it's already 5pm?!), and head home to make a quick snack. Then I may or may not go for a bike ride through the expansive Bosques de Palermo, may or may not study a bit of Portuguese or write a tad in my journal, or eat some facturas with my mate. Later on, I'll likely make dinner or go out for dinner and sometime around 11pm or midnite find myself in one of a gazillion bars around the neighborhood. On a good day (there are more of these than not), I won't find myself at a boliche when the next morning roles around.

That was an exaggerated typical day. I must have forgot to mention that I likely spent 30 minutes (maybe more) on Wikipedia, brushed my teeth twice, flossed once, stretched for 15 minutes upon waking, played soccer from 10:30pm-1am (if on a Monday), and another 15 to 20 replying to text messages (the other bane of my existence).

If Buenos Aires sounds too typical for a well-hyped European city in an oh-so-latin South America (the Paris of the South! (good riddance!)), that may be because I also forgot to mention the fantastic residential neighborhoods of Belgrano, Villa Crespo, and hell, even my very own Palermo, the massive (and pretentious) converted lofts of Puerto Madero looking out onto a Calatrava bridge, the classy and fresh restaurants of Las Canitas, the unnecessarily wide Avenide 9 de Julio(145 only slightly exaggerated steps across), the rickety and wooden subway trains from another era on the A line of the Subte, the great (and touristy) antiques market of San Telmo, the essential Barrio Chino, the also requisite literary tradition, old men in white aprons serving up pizza specials with a cold mug of beer just about everywhere, and a moutain of great! little bars and food places.

If it sounds like a whimsical place you are dying to live in without question for an indefinite amount of time, take a scratch piece of paper, write down the ten most important things in your life, scratch off 6 or 8 of them, and if you still have the itch, click here.

Wow, this blogger thing is awfully overdue for an update. Hum. Since the last post, I´ve been to three countries: Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. I´m in Mendoza, Arg. - the most pleasant city I´ve encounterd so far in my time here in South America (as a plus you can actually drink the tap water and the showers are always hot. How civilized!) - and from here I think I´m going back to Chile - starting with Santiago, the capital. I´ve got nothing to really write about at this exact moment...topic searching....ahh, yes, but of course. Auto safety in South America.

Topic: Auto safety in South America.

It´s odd. Back home in the lovely United Stateseur it would be uncommon to go, say a week without seeing some car accident of some sort. Once last year at the intersection of Park Street and University Avenue (where Grainger Hall is) I saw a kid on a bike get hit by a car walking to class going one way. On the way back I saw another kid laying in the road whose lower leg somehow got run over by a bus. In one hour. In South America I can only recall seeing two car accidents like the ones so common in the U.S.: One in Quito where a car and a truck smashed each other and one women seemed to have broke some bones. And another the other day in Salta, Argentina. A taxi and another car, but no real damage. In America of the South, rather, buses seem to be the thing to crash. Doing a search of Argentina before I came, a news item from a few years ago came up. A bus in the Argentine Andes had flown off a cliff and an innumerable count of people died. A few days later, having my homepage set at yahoo.com, a Chilean bus had done the same that very day. Great I thought. A few weeks after arriving in Ecuador, a chartered school bus for a family reunion lost its purchase on the road and stumbled down a 40 foot escarpment. In pictures that circulated the news for a few days, the bus was half its orginal height and the bodies they pulled out were...awful. Like 35 people died. This type of thing would be commonplace in the headlines for the next four months. A girl from Minnesota who studied at my Ecuadorian university through Boston College died in a bus accident in a snow storm in Chile while travelling after last spring semester. Maybe it was the same one I read about online, but I doubt it. And it probably goes without saying that the hundreds of feet cliffs that I would pass twice a day, five times a week going to and from my university sort of freaked me out, as have a good deal of the nausea-inducing drops I´ve seen just a few feet past the windows I´ve peeked out during the hundred of hours I´ve logged passing through the mountains in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and now Argentina.

The first bus accident I actually saw was in Papallacta, about 30 minutes outside of Quito, only a few kilometers from where the school bus went down. I was coming back from a trip to the Amazon with my pal Felipe in his jeep when we passed a big orange Transportes Baños bus 15 feet down an embankment. It had seemingly just happened because no medical support had arrived, just about 4 passenger vehicles had stopped. Two people died in that accident and some 16 were injured.

The next accident I saw was leaving Ecuador a few weeks later just south of Loja. Bus upside down, 10 feet into a ravine.

Number 3 happened to pass last month on my way from Arequipa to Puno in the highland deserts of southern Peru. Similar to number two.

Two days later, coming back from these wicked funerary towers near Puno on a tourist bus, we passed a bus tipped over on its side in the ditch. No one was badly injured in that case, so the bus continued on its way.

It could make sense that there would be so many horrible bus accidents on this side of the continent. The Andes mountain range stretches from near the top to near the bottom, meandering through countries who don´t always have the best roads, buses with the best brakes, or drivers driving on the best sleep.

On a funny note, the first thing I really saw when I entered Bolivia was a car - I shit you all (the one or two people who might be reading this (my parents)) not - in the middle of a shallow, muddy river, not with anyone trying to get it out, but rather, with all the doors and trunk open, and a guy in jeans and no shirt....washing the fucking windows.

Nature and mankind in harmony? Couldn't be.

Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.


Cusco - Capital of the Inca Empire

I'm working in the bar at Loki Hostel in Cusco right now. I pretend to work and they give me room and board. The owners are some Irish and Kiwi backpackers. The whole staff international and great. They just opened one in Lima (Coolville) and will open another in La Paz, Bolivia on St. Patrick's Day.

I'm supposed to leave soon to go see more places, but I kind of just want to stay for a bit more. The city is enchanting, built on the foundations of Incaico architecture. It's a perfect example of a word that starts with a p and which means building modern structures on ancient ones. Cusco was the capital of the Inca empire, the largest (and socialist) of the precolumbian Americas. Now it's the backpackers capital of the two continents. People get stuck here. Avi, one of the managers of Loki, who is from England, came here four years ago and has never really left. He and his girlfriend have a hand-made garments shop called Hilo, which is the next door over. He's designing a sick, sick, sick! jacket for me for 200 soles - sixty bucks. Tomorrow morning we're going to find the fabric to use.

I spent two weeks with my best bud, Everette. Now I'm solo again. I hear great things from everyone about Buenos Aires...this town is full of mate drinking porteños at the moment. The pass all day drinking that drink on the steps of the fountain in the Plaza de Armas. Mate and thermos. Do they all do that? Time will tell.

Border crossings

I left Quito on Monday morning quite the same as when I entered it in August, in a plane, but this time it was a familiar site. I regonized places in the early morning darkness - the park where I sometimes played ultimate frisbee, el Panecillo, la Basilica, the Olympic stadium, and my old house three blocks from there. I would have loved the shed a tear, but nothing came out.

Fifteen minutes later we flew over Chimborazo, an inactive volcano; the peak off which is the point on Earth closest to the Sun (that's because it's relatively tall and near the equator). The base and moutain we're shrouded in gray clouds, but the tip, tip top was glistening in the sun! Cool, cool, view and I felt so close to outerspace.

I landed in Loja an hour later, saving 15 in a bus and took a cab with two Londoners the 20 miles to Loja. The city is small, and the loveliest that I visited in Ecuador. I spent the morning there and took the one o'clock bus to the Peruvian border. First time at a land border crossing, I almost forgot to register again on the other side.

¡Bienvenidos a Peru!
I walked 100 feet across a bridge and was in a new country. The food vendors were selling different street food (Don Kong?!) - a departure from my favorite cheese empanadas. The climate change from the freakishly lime green rolling foothills of southern Ecuador to dry shrubs almost instantly. It felt very Wild West-esque, even more so when we (the people in the bus) passed by people sitting around fires a little way off the side of the road, and then they put on a movie to top it off - 'The Quick and the Dead', some crappy western movie starring Sharon Stone and a young Leonardo DeCaprio.

Arrived in Piura, Peru at 10pm and spent the next nerve-racking hour trying to find a bus to Trujillo. With no luck, a nice French guy, Jean something, and I payed a "taxi" driver $9 each to take us two and a half hours to another city to catch the bus. And we did. 24 hours after leaving Quito, I grabbed a hostel and sleeped for two hours and then headed off on foot, in vans, and buses, circling the city and visiting two wickedly cool archaeological sites: Las Huacas del Sol y la Luna and Chan Chan, the biggest mud city in the world.

I'll be leaving Trujillo, which has a great cafe in it's main square, La Plaza de Armas, tonight at 10pm and should arrive in Lima in the morning.