Amauta

Aún recuerdo el entusiasmo que sentí cuando me dijeron que ya era lo suficientemente mayor como para ayunar en el mes de Ramadán. Mis sentimientos tenían poco que ver con el hecho de abstenerme de comer y beber entre el amanecer y la puesta de sol de cada día. Para un niño, supone una gran [...]

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Cuando uno no ve, no siente. Cuando uno no quiere ver, tal vez sea porque no quiere sentir. No queremos sentir el dolor salvo que sea en la ficción, salvo que sepamos que ese dolor, que ese sufrimiento, tiene un final cercano, aunque no necesariamente bueno, con que sea cercano, nos vale. No aguantamos mucho [...]

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El balance que hago de 2010 va a ser diferente. Pongo énfasis en un dato poco señalado en los análisis: el inmenso sufrimiento humano, la desestructuración subjetiva, especialmente de los asalariados, debido a la reorganización económico-financiera mundial.
Hace mucho que se operó la «gran transformación» (Polanyi), colocando la economía como el eje articulador de toda la [...]

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Haiti is a reminder of a lesson we in New Orleans got after Hurricane Katrina and the broken levees: the capacity of humanity to survive, sustain culture, and create joy – no matter the external circumstances – is without limit. That capacity is unsinkable, like trying to keep a cork underwater.
Ronal Toussaint, who sometimes takes [...]

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Hoy hace un año murió mi perra. Se llamaba Luna. Tenía un año y medio. Yo la maté.
No lo hice a propósito, pero sí fue mi culpa. Por más que mi familia y amigos lo nieguen, yo pude haber evitado su muerte.
La dejé suelta mientras caminabamos, como lo había hecho muchas veces anteriormente, para que [...]

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Cuba está llena de problemas, de contradicciones; si queremos ser más duros incluso: de mezquindades y flaquezas. Pero si la imposibilidad de caminar tranquilas (sin violación sexual a la vista) y tranquilos por la calle es el gran déficit de las sociedades actuales –de las de América Latina en especial, pero no sólo, pues el fenómeno va expandiéndose en forma global–, si andar de noche pasó a ser un drama de proporciones gigantescas dada la inseguridad reinante, si en cualquier esquina nos pueden asaltar o sabemos que no tenemos que entrar en “zonas rojas” (rojas, no por socialistas…, valga la aclaración) porque una mara ya no nos dejará salir en paz, si gastamos tantos recursos en seguridad, si todo eso es el principal problema de nuestros días, la “dictadura” cubana no lo presenta. Una dictadura que cuida a su gente… ¡Vaya dictadura!, ¿no?

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Carlos Arredondo, a native Costa Rican, began to collect items that memorialized his son’s life, a Marine killed in Iraq in 2004. He tacked them to his truck. He has traveled throughout the country presenting to the public a visual expression of death and grief. He has placed some of his son’s favorite childhood toys and belongings in the coffin. The power of his images, which force onlookers to confront the fact that the essence of war is death, has angered some who prefer to keep war sanitized and wrapped in the patriotic slogans of glory, honor and heroism.
“This is what happens every week to some family in America,” says Carlos. “This is what war does. And this is the grief and pain the government does not want people to see.”

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Writers often romanticize their subjects. At times they even manipulate their readers. A book – or any piece of writing for that matter – is meant to provide a sense of completion. Sociological explanations are offered to offset the confusion caused by apparent inconsistency in human behavior. At times a reader is asked to take a stance, or choose sides.

This is especially true in writings which deal with compelling human experiences. In Behind the Wall: Life, Love and Struggle in Palestine (Potomac Books, 2010), Rich Wiles undoubtedly directs his readers, although implicitly, towards taking a stance. But he is unabashed about his moral priorities and makes no attempt to disguise his objectives.

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Time is running out for Israel. And the Israeli government knows it. The Jewish Diaspora, especially the young, has a waning emotional and ideological investment in Israel. The demographic boom means that Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories will soon outnumber Jews. And Israel’s increasing status as a pariah nation means that informal and eventually formal state sanctions against the country are probably inevitable. Desperate Israeli politicians, watching opposition to their apartheid state mount, have proposed a perverted form of what they term “the one-state solution.”

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Chris Hedges: “It is we who openly proclaim our compassion and demand justice for those who suffer in Gaza. We are not afraid to name our names. We are not afraid to name our beliefs. And we know something you perhaps sense with a kind of dread. As Martin Luther King said, the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice, and that arc is descending with a righteous fury that is thundering down upon the Israeli government.

You may have the bulldozers, planes and helicopters that smash houses to rubble, the commandos who descend from ropes on ships and kill unarmed civilians on the high seas as well as in Gaza, the vast power of the state behind you. We have only our hands and our hearts and our voices. But note this. Note this well. It is you who are afraid of us. We are not afraid of you.”

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