Alive Again in Pátzcuaro (With Photos)

Ah, historic Pátzcuaro! Promoted by the tourism secretariat as a Pueblo Mágico, it is a magical place, with a long history going back to the early 1300s, when the local indigenous people, the purépechas, founded it a couple hundred years before the Spaniards arrived in 1522.

While Jamie has known Pátzcuaro since 1969, the two of us first came here together in the spring of 1993. We had been traveling together as friends on a Big Mexican Adventure in an old Volkswagen van when we first came here. On that first visit, we met some people with whom we have remained good friends throughout the years; and despite Jamie announcing to me, one afternoon on an exploratory drive around the lake, that he was “done with women!” (at the tender age of forty-six), something about this place caused us to begin falling in love…

A Way-Too-Short Visit to Bogotá, Colombia (With Photos)

During the wee hours of 21 April, 2016, Jamie and I flew LAN from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Bogotá, Colombia, with a short stopover in Lima, Peru, arriving to a lovely day in the Colombian capital, all snuggled up against a line of intensely green mountains to the east, around noon.  Following a minor adventure in which we ended up way out in the parking lot with all our baggage falling off the cart after Jamie’s doubts about going farther and farther away from the taxi lineup won the day and we told the guy pushing our cart that we were going back, our taxi ride across town gave us an impression of a surprisingly clean large city with many green spaces – parks, paths, and bike lanes teaming people out enjoying them.

When we arrived at our little apart-hotel, the Viaggio Virrey, I was exhausted, having been up since 6:00 the previous day frenziedly cleaning, tying up loose ends, and then executing the first stage of our migration back to the Northern Hemisphere with just a few little naps on the plane rides across the South American continent. But we had an hour until check-in, and we had eaten nothing but ham and cheese sandwiches ever since the bus terminal in La Paloma, so we decided to get a bite to eat and see if we could find a grocery store. Happily, there was a big, fancy, upscale store close by, and it had a cafeteria-style restaurant upstairs called La Terraza. Well, La Terraza was very busy, and in our discombobulated state of being, we were trying to figure out how the system worked when the woman we were asking suggested we try a plate of rice mixed with multiple types of meat, beans, veggies, and corn that also came with an arepa and a piece of pork skin… I think – comida colombiana. Melting into putty in her hands, we let her serve us each way too much of the rice plate filled with unknown meats, then Jamie needed help finding the right Colombian bills to pay at the register (the exchange was around 2,900 Colombian pesos per US dollar). The place was really noisy (we got up and moved after identifying the nearby soda refrigerator as the source of one of the loud noises), the meat and beans were way overcooked and dried out, and we were too tired to mess around with trying to figure out what it was about the little cornmeal cakes and the pork skins that had the woman so enthused, so we just shoveled down what we could and then headed downstairs to check out the grocery store. And, oh man, what a store! We would be back later to peruse the aisles and bask in the glory of having so many choices available, from the beer selection to the wall of coffee to the array of herbs and spices from around the world to the wonderful variety of beautiful produce.

Joaquín Torres García vs. Ayn Rand: A Unique Profile of the Uruguayan National Character

Introductory Note

Another year has passed, during which I, unfortunately, have been too busy making the money I need to survive to engage in what I really love to do. Don’t get me wrong—I enjoy my current writing and editing work, and I am very thankful to have the opportunity to do it. But it takes up all my energy. Perhaps the new year will bring me to a place where I can once again do the writing that truly moves my spirit and feeds my soul.

Overcoming Inertia

Note: This article was written a few weeks ago, but due to some engrossing assignments, I didn’t have time to clean it up and post it until now. So please accept my apologies for lagging a bit behind in the national conversation. I feel that the main ideas discussed are important, despite this. Thanks to all my readers, Julie

Pre-script: So this commentary is not so out of the loop after all: 
US Aids Honduran Police Despite Death Squad Fears

A report published 30 January 2013 by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that during fiscal years 2008 through 2011, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Aid spent $97 million of the allocated $350 million in support of the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), a spinoff of the 2007 Mérida Initiative that was aimed at fighting drug crime in Mexico and Central America. The funds were funneled through four foreign assistance accounts into programs to “strengthen law enforcement and maritime interdiction capabilities, support capacity building and training programs, and deter and detect border criminal activity,” according to the GAO.

Can President Santos Bring Peace to Colombia? or, Let the Wars be of Words

This week, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced that his government has begun engaging in peace talks with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolutionarias de Colombia (FARC). In a nationally televised speech on Monday, 27 August, he acknowledged that "exploratory talks" had been taking place since February in Cuba, and now, the stage is set for dialogue to be formally launched in Oslo in October that will continue in Havana. Reporting on Colombian media reports, Mercopress states:

The agenda of the dialogue will include issues such as “integral agrarian development policy”, “political participation”, “end of the conflict”, “solution to the problem of illicit drugs”, “victims” and “implementation, verification and ratification” of the agreement.

Correa and Assange: Contradictions and Convolution as Antiheroes Align

Ah, the poignant poetry, the rich wrinkling, the incising irony, the heartbreaking hypocrisy, the contradictory clusterfuckery, the alluring alliteration!

Correa and Assange: a match made in someplace decidedly unheavenly, a place where hormones betray heroes and authoritarians rally righteously upon their duplicitous daises.

On their blog, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) begins their analysis of this bizarre matchup like so:

Ode To Gore Vidal: On The Archetypal Hero

A hero’s passing is one of life’s most difficult coincidences. These are people who are not everyday participants in one’s life – not in the same way that friends and family might be. Their reasons for being heroes, of course, will outlast their physical being far into the future, and this part of them might be a daily presence – comforting, inspiring, reminding us of what greatness looks like. But the passing of their person, or rather, the news of their passing, strikes a sustained and resonating tone, within the chamber of the heart, that sings of the mortality of more than life; it is the transience of ideas, of ways of perceiving, of bygone eras. The ending of someone who was bigger than life, by virtue of their effects on so many other lives, is calamitous to the collective soul of humanity.

Adrift in a Sea of Military Exportation

Rachel Maddow, via Wikipedia

In my previous post, I discovered the strange but true nature of the military mindset, that dreamy, quixotic, incurable optimism that has been perceived and discussed by such realists as Rory Stewart and Howard Zinn. What an amazing set of realizations – that it is members of the armed forces who are regularly deluding themselves about what can and cannot be, with Rory Stewart focusing on over-ambition and the failure-is-not-an-option determination, while Howard Zinn’s take pinpoints the inevitable overconfidence in the military’s ability to tame chaos and unpredictability.

Dreaming of Mole

Today’s illustration of connectivity might make you hungry. It’s about mole. Mmm – mole.

McClatchy News ran a story about this amazing sauce about a week ago, where they were unable to resist the temptation to use the title, Holy mole!, then this week, they report that United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has designated Mexican cuisine to be an “intangible cultural heritage of humanity in an article titled, Move over France: Mexican food now a world-class cuisine. And to that, I say ¡Órale!

On Lies That Divide Us



Excerpt from
No Stranger To Strange Lands:

A Journey Through Strange Coincidences, Connective Thoughts, And Far Flung Places

Part I: Movements About the Northern Hemisphere

Strange Coincidences

My birthday had come and gone in unspectacular fashion. I almost forgot about it. My husband, Jamie, and I were in a holding pattern in the early part of that summer of 2006, holding on to what little funds we had, holed up with our two dogs in the air conditioning of a tiny apartment north of Tampa, Florida, along the Pithlachascotee River, spending money only on the basic necessities – food and beer. I was depressed. The Iraq Occupation was tragically dragging on, and the rumblings of an attack on Iran were beginning to grow in amplitude, as reported by the amazing Seymour M. Hersh in an article in The New Yorker, titled, “The Iran Plans,” rumblings which were following an alarmingly similar pattern, with whisper campaigns and unsubstantiated rumors of nuclear mushroom clouds and evil demagogues all over again. So I picked up the Kurt Vonnegut book I had seen in our book bin to cheer myself up. That always works. There are a few things in life that pick me up when I am down: moving art, music, dance, encountering really interesting people and places, my dogs, Jamie’s grasp of the bigger picture, and a Kurt Vonnegut or Tom Robbins book. A Tom Robbins book once literally – and I mean literally – saved my life. I had come to a point where I felt that the human race was doomed to continue to commit acts of war, environmental destruction, and horrible injustice, and I was on the verge of suicide because I thought that we should know better – that being “civilized” actually entails being civil. But then Mr. Robbins’ Skinny Legs and All gave me hope through comedy and unique perspective, and I decided to stick around and try to counteract all those forces that I felt were so barbaric. And now this Vonnegut book, Hocus Pocus, didn’t fail, either. In fact, something amazing happened while I was reading it. In it, the protagonist reads a science fiction story in a porno magazine, a fun little literary device through which Vonnegut injects a bit of science fiction into an otherwise only slightly futuristic setting. It is an outrageously satirical commentary about how full of ourselves human beings tend to be. Very clever – I enjoyed the story very much.

Restore Sanity vs Keep Fear Alive: Brazil

Well, this is interesting. Check this article by Mark Weisbrot in the Guardian, titled Brazil wins with Dilma Rousseff. Here is how he begins:

"Like the rally led by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central that brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets of Washington, DC on Saturday, Brazil's election on Sunday was a contest of "Restore Sanity" versus "Keep Fear Alive" – but with the fate of millions of Brazilians seriously at stake."

Good stuff, coming from a Brit. But for more on the significance of this election, here is some commentary coming from closer to the action. This is a translation of an article by the Uruguayan researcher of social movements, Raúl Zibechi: Toward the Continuation of Lulismo.

The world will be watching Brazil very carefully, and hopefully, learning a thing or two.

Opposite Directions



Springtime Flowers in Patagonia

In my recent post at Because the World is Round..., while reporting on two big news stories that might have been drown out by the histrionic midterm elections in the States, I marvel at how reversed the directions of movement are between the northern and southern hemispheres of America. While the death of Ex-President Néstor Kirchner opens up all kinds of speculation about Argentina’s future, the most likely path will continue toward the breaking down of cultural barriers in favor of human rights, following in the footsteps of the recent legalization of same-sex marriage – and this, in a nation that not so long ago was constitutionally linked to the Pope. Whatever opportunistic political games the Kirchners might have played, both Néstor and his wife and presidential successor, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, they have undoubtedly been responsible for decreasing the power of both the military and the Catholic Church in Argentina.