international relations

Book Seven for 2024: “After Eden, A Short History of the World”, John Charles Chasteen

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Want to learn a lot in less than 400 pages? Read this book. Published this year, it is the most recent book by a prominent Latin American scholar and historian. After humans learned agriculture and built cities, most of the population of the world became increasingly patriarchal and warlike. The divide between rich and poor increased. Egalitarian foragers and wandering hunters existed only in more remote areas. A few still exist in those remote and less modern corners of the world, often places where few others want to even go. This quote says a lot about the current state of affairs:

“Our civilization has thousands of years practice making war. We have almost NO practice making global peace, but without it we are doomed. Today’s pervasive nationalism and rearmament is unlikely to help us make global peace.”

And a page later:

“Only a true unanimous global effort has any chance to preserve our common home.”

He notes that saving Earth will take huge social transformations, including curbing the excessive consumer capitalism that currently pervades plus overcoming a world wide history where half of humanity mistreated the other half, a practice that still continues.

One Book a Week-51: “The Watch”, Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya

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I could not stop reading this book. The setting is a US military outpost during the Afghan war in the middle of nowhere in the mountains of Kandahar. The weather is brutal–extremes of cold and heat, sand storms, heavy fog early in the mornings. Suddenly, after a brutal battle where they lose some soldiers, a young Afghan woman, Antigone, with stumps for legs shows up pulling a cart. Her brother, who the soldiers think was part of the Taliban, was killed in the battle; she wants her brother’s body for a proper Muslim burial. The soldiers do not know whether she is who she says she is or a suicide bomber. It confuses them even more when she plays hauntingly beautiful music on her rubab every night. All this leads to a lot of confusion over and raises many questions about morality and duty. Each chapter is from a different viewpoint, the young woman and various soldiers in the outpost.

Note: The rubab is a traditional Pashtun 12 string guitar-like instrument. You can find recordings on YouTube.

One Book a Week-46: “Road Fever”, Tim Cahill

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After reading two intense, somewhat depressing novels, I decided to read a lighter non-fiction work. An article I read mentioned a tale of two guys, Tim Cahill and Garry Sowerby, who drove a GMC Sierra pickup truck from Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska in less than 25 days. I like adventures and the best vehicle I ever owned was a Sierra 4 by 4 Off Road. I sold it to a former student when I moved. It was still going strong at over 300,000 miles.

In order to follow along on their adventure, I dug out my atlas and followed their trip through 13 countries, finding cities, little towns, rivers, mountains. When they traveled in 1987, the only place with no road was the Darien Gap on the border between Colombia and Panama–today still no road and now famous for all the migrants who labor through this dangerous, swampy, jungle area on foot on their way north. Since no road there, Tim and Garry had to load the truck onto a container ship in Cartagena and unload it in Panama. They also rode on the ship as passengers. This lead to their meeting some of the most colorful characters on their trip.

Along the way, they meet all sorts of people, e.g. sadistic police, kind employees of international GMC, a weird consulate employee, and helpful women, describe them and the landscape in detail. Procuring the right documents and proceeding across borders is sometimes easy and sometimes grueling, again described in detail. Of course, political leaders, ease of travel, etc. have changed in many places–I’ve been to or lived in five of the countries they traverse.

Want to explore new places, meet all sorts of folks?? Then this is the book for you and a fun read.

One Book a Week-42: “Where There Is Fire”, John Manuel Arias

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Before and since my two trips to Costa Rica, I thought Costa Rica had miraculously escaped the Banana Republic fate of many other Central American countries. This historical novel enlightened me to just how wrong I’ve been and how some of this continues today–huge US agricultural corporations controlling much of the agriculture.

In the 1960s, large US corporations invaded Costa Rica and controlled large blocks of land to raise bananas and cause havoc among large segments of the population. To increase yields the American Fruit Company doused their giant, lucrative, banana plantations with Nemagon, a pesticide that causes cancer and sterility. The novel includes letters indicating that both this company and Dow, the producer of the pesticide, knew this, did nothing about it, did not inform workers (until they had no choice), and continued its use.

The novel contains the story of one family’s history who lived near the largest plantation, the father and grandfather who worked there, a devastating fire, and the effects of this company’s policies on several generations.

Note: As recently as last year, the BBC reported on the use of this pesticide and its effects on workers and people living near plantations where it is still being used. Online you can find numerous articles about how these practices (the American Fruit Company is now Chiquita) fueled neocolonial exploitation and drug cartels.

One Book a Week-23: “The Devil’s Highway”, Luis Alberto Urrea

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Even though the events described in this non-fiction work occurred exactly 22 years ago in May in southern Arizona, not much has changed except the nationality of the immigrants. Few Mexicans try walking across the Arizona desert these days. Now it’s mostly people from certain Central American countries, Venezuela, and various other countries, generally places where the climate of the Sonoran Desert is unknown.

In 2001, a group of men, mostly from the state of Veracruz, tried it. More than half died and the coyote who led them remains in prison. This book tells their story. It also describes in detail the networks that lure immigrants to attempt the long journey to the US border, who benefits, who gets paid, the geography and climate of the desert–a true tale of deceit, disillusion, desperation, and loss.

4000 migrants have died in the last two decades trying to cross the Arizona desert. This number equals bodies found; many tell tales of others whose bodies remain lost. 2021 saw a record number of deaths. 2022 data is not yet published.

Note: I like Urrea’s books and have read most of his novels. I recommend starting with “The Hummingbird’s Daughter”.

One Book a Week-13: Blue Desert, Celia Jeffries

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As an ardent reader who prefers what are usually referred to as literary novels and serious non-fiction, few books impact me deeply and emotionally like this one has. As soon as I finished it, I reread parts of it several times, then sat silently stunned.

After her family moves to North Africa for her father’s work, an 18 year old British girl, rescued by a Taureg leader, is believed dead by her family until she resurfaces years later at a Catholic “home” run by nuns in North Africa. She re-enters British society, marries, leads a relatively “normal” life while keeping a secret for decades. When she receives a telegram, “Abu is dead”, everything changes. Her past comes rushing back in unexpected ways.

The White Supremacist History of Tear Gas

/ Juliana Lightle / 4 Comments

One hundred years ago, a racist US General, Amos Fries, transformed tear gas from a wartime chemical into use against protestors. He loved war gases and saw them as the ultimate in US technology.  He advocated the use of tear gas against any form of civil disorder.  As head of US Chemical Warfare Services, he pedaled his favorite gas to private security firms, police departments, and the National Guard.  According to him, tear gas in the hands of the “White man can quell any uprising.”  He went on to talk about how White men are set apart from the Negro, Gurkha, and the Moroccan. In his effects were letters from the women of the Ku Klux Klan praising his efforts.

Today the tear gas he loved is used all over the world by tyrannical governments to control their people.

“All Children Are Our Children” by Carol P. Christ

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This is a rather long read the gist of which is this: what if “we were taught to love and nurture and be generous to others” and these were the primary values in the world rather than the current values. “What if we were taught to open our hearts to the world? Would domination, violence, and war be possible?”

Carol P. Christ's avatarFeminism and Religion

Carol P. Christ by Michael Bakas high resoultion“All children are our children.” As I was posting my recent blog about the shooting of black men by the police, these words came into my mind with the force of revelation. At the time I was looking at a photograph of Philando Castile, taken at his place of work. Yes, I thought, my heart opening: “he is my child too.” This widening of the heart is at the center of the maternal values of ancient and contemporary matriarchal cultures around the world. It is a feeling some of us who were mothered well enough or who mothered children—including children not our own—carry within us. Is this the healing balm our world needs today?

Maternal  values?  So many of us turn up our noses at such a “gendered” term. Perhaps we were not mothered enough in our families of origin. Perhaps we still feel un-mothered. Perhaps we don’t want…

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The WT Swimming Pool, Stereotypes, and Africa

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This afternoon I took three children aged eight and ten to the WTAMU (a local university) swimming pool, found myself a comfortable chair, opened my book, and proceeded to read.  When I looked up I saw this:

“This isn’t a democracy anymore.

It’s a Ricktatorship.”

These words boldly stood out in white on a black T-shirt.  For those not from Texas, the Rick to whom the statement refers is the governor of Texas where I live.  Between the two sentences was a photo of a cop with a gun pointed directly at me, the reader of the quotation.  Looking at the woman, young, unkept, no makeup, pimpled, overweight, I never would have expected her to adorn herself with this particular shirt especially in this intensely Republican part of Texas.  Then it hit me; I was stereotyping. I felt a bit horrified with myself.  How can you tell by the appearance of a person whether they are liberal, moderate, or conservative.  You can’t.

 

I went back to reading which was perhaps a mistake.  When it first became a rather famous book, I purchased Say You’re One Of Them by Uwem Akpan, a Nigerian writer-he is originally from Nigeria.  It contains five stories some quite short and some of novella length.  Why has it taken me so very long to get through this book?  These are not stories one can sit down and casually read.  This volume of searing, well written stories tells of immense horrors. The settings of the stories include various countries in West Africa, including Nigeria, and Rwanda, Kenya, and Ethiopia.  Today, I finally got around to reading the story from which the book gets its title.  Now I wonder how I can sleep tonight.  All the stories describe the lives of individuals brutalized by war, modern slavery, and ethnic and religious hatred.  All the stories are from the viewpoint of a child, the oldest of whom is sixteen.  Today’s story, the longest in the book, takes place in modern times in Nigeria.  If you do not already have some inkling as to Nigerian politics, the whys and wherefores of Boka Haram, the violence in the oil fields in the south, and the intensity of the rivalries and hatreds among the various tribal factions and Muslims and Christians, this story will both enlighten and horrify you.  The sixteen year old young man in the story is fleeing the north with many other refugees.  Although he is Muslim, his Muslim friends turn against him even though he had his hand chopped off for stealing a goat.  They think he is too moderate and does not hate Christians sufficiently.  The Christians with whom he is a refugee turn against him because he is Muslim.  His story is not uncommon.  Look at Syria, Iraq, the Congo.  The rest of the world needs to know.  Hatred and violence can occur anywhere.  What happens in a distant corner of our planet affects each and every one of us.