Hola y feliz 2022! This is Barbara with some interesting topics about Spanish-speaking cultures. 2022 will be a politically important year for Colombia with its presidential elections on May 29th. I have a podcast episode with Adam Isaacson for you that frames the current political situation of the country quite well. Furthermore, I’d like to introduce you to a young Spanish poet: Begoña M. Rueda. And finally, Latino artists collaborated with Google to create a collection of themes to honour the diverse Latino heritage of life in the United States. ¡ Mira! Let's go.
Adam Isaacson on the Colombia Calling podcast, episode #400
Adam Isaacson works for the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and is very well known among those interested in the current affairs of Colombia. He has worked on defense, security, and peacebuilding in Latin America since 1994. He travelled with congressman Jim McGovern to Colombia when the travel restrictions got lifted in 2021 and shared his recent experiences with Richard McColl from the Colombia Calling podcast. It’s worth listening to his observations and sometimes grim outlook.
Isaacson also wrote a report on the urgent status of Colombia’s peace accord for WOLA. November 24th marked the five-year anniversary of a peace accord between the Colombian government and the FARC that ended a half a century of fighting in the country. Let’s assess the situation in Isaacson’s own words:
Five years later, the window is closing. Implementing the peace accord has gone more poorly than anticipated. A new report from the Washington Office on Latin America, “A Long Way to Go,” examines the experience of the past five years, presenting a wealth of data about each of the 2016 accord’s six chapters. While there are some positive developments, WOLA finds, Colombia is well behind where it should be.
Here’s a list of facts from the report:
1. As of March 2021, Colombia was 29 percent of the way into the peace accord’s implementation timetable, but had spent just 15 percent of what implementation is expected to cost.
2. One third of the way into the implementation process, the PDETs—the vital plans to bring the government into historically conflictive areas—are only one-seventh funded, and that’s according to the most optimistic estimate.
3. A nationwide mapping of landholdings, expected to be complete by 2023, was only 15 percent done as of March 2021.
4. 2021 is on pace to be Colombia’s worst year for homicides since 2013, and worst year for massacres since 2011.
5. Analysts’ estimates coincide in finding significantly less than 10 percent of demobilised ex-FARC members taking up arms again. “Dissident” groups’ membership is mostly new recruits.
6. Estimates of the number of social leaders murdered in 2020 range from 133 to 310. But the justice system only managed 20 convictions of social leaders’ killers that year, while the Interior Minister argued that “more people die here from cell phone thefts than for being human rights defenders.”
7. Of coca-growing families who signed up for a “two-year” package of crop substitution assistance three or more years ago, just 1 percent had received a complete package of payments by the end of 2020.
8. If the transitional justice tribunal is correct, half of the Colombian military’s claimed combat killings between 2002 and 2008 may have been civilians whom soldiers executed and then falsely claimed were members of armed groups.
9. 20 of the transitional justice tribunal’s 38 magistrates are women. 4 of 11 Truth Commissioners are women.
10. Since accord implementation began in fiscal 2017, U.S. assistance to Colombia has totalled about US$3.1 billion, roughly half of it for the military and police.
WOLA has not published this report to blame and punish the current conservative government, but expects to motivate the new government to increase efforts to implement the contents of the peace accord fully.
Begoña M. Rueda: Washing linen, ironing souls
Thanks to a review in El Pais about Spanish poetry in 2021 I learned about a very interesting young Spanish poet. Begoña Moreno Rueda was born in the Andalusian city of Jaén in 1992. She studied Hispanic Philology at the University of Jaén. In 2019, she had to leave her university studies and hometown because she needed money. She moved to Algeciras, where she began working in the laundry of the Hospital Punta de Europa. It is fascinating how she transforms her experiences in the hospital during the Covid pandemic into beautiful and stirring poems. For the collection of her poems Servicio de lavandería (2021, Laundry service) she won the prestigious Premio Hiperión for poets under 35. The aim of the poems is to make the readers feel what Rueda encounters in the laundry as a person and as a member of the working class – and to provide a record of the pandemic. This book is not her first success. All her previous six books got critical acclaim, too.
The Guardian had a very informative and insightful portrait about her in English. They also include a translation of an extract from one of her poems that I’d like to share with you.
23 March 2020, The Shrouds Are Piling Up in Cardboard Boxes
The shrouds are piling up in cardboard boxes
by the bathroom doorThey’re the only hospital linen
that isn’t washed after useLike everything else these days
they come in plastic,
ready to meet death like factory-baked goods,
wrapped and straight to the voidYou wonder who makes the shrouds
what cold machine sews and packs them
ready to cover any of the bodies that lie in the morgueFor my shroud I’d like my mother’s hands, to die before her
and to lie once more in her womb,
to be a little girl again and have no idea
that in hospital laundries
death piles up in cardboard boxes
next to the toilets.(Begoña M. Rueda, Servicio de lavandería, 2021)
Here’s the Spanish original as quoted from Zenda libros:
A 23 de marzo de 2020
Los sudarios se apilan en cajas de cartón
junto a la puerta del cuarto de baño.
Son las únicas prendas del hospital
que no se lavan después de darles uso.
Como todo en nuestra época
también vienen dentro de un plástico,
encontrándose la muerte como la bollería industrial,
envasada y directa al vacío.
Una se pregunta quién fabrica los sudarios,
qué fría máquina los cose y los empaqueta
listos para cubrir cualquier cuerpo
que yazca mudo en la morgue.
Yo por sudario quisiera las manos de mi madre,
morir antes que ella
y engendrarme de nuevo en su vientre,
volver a ser niña y no tener ni idea
de que en las lavanderías de los hospitales
la muerte se apila en cajas de cartón
junto a los inodoros.
That’s pretty tough stuff and I guess we have to hear and read more about that part of the pandemic. I like her dissecting view that allows for empathy and compassion. That’s awe-inspiring. Her poems reminded me of another book that we recently discussed on the Mikroökonomen podcast (in German): The young writer Luna Al-Mousli from Vienna portrays systems heroes of the pandemic in her book Klatschen reicht nicht (2021, Clapping is not enough). Too many care about the economy, only a few care about all the grief and those invisible people that tirelessly work the pandemic every day. I have ordered her book. It costs 10 Euros.
Your daily Latino art
After this dark side of our current lives, I’d like to end this volume on a colourful note. Did you know that you can choose Latino art as background for your Chrome browser? To pay tribute to the generations of Latinos who have positively influenced and enriched society, arts, culture and science in the United States, Google has partnered with Latino and Latina artists and created a collection of themes.
Below you find an example from Dallas-based visual artist Arturo Torres. The title of his piece of art is «¡Mira! Let's go.» 😃
If you wish to know how to change your Chrome background, see here for a step-by-step instruction: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-backgrounds?r=US&IR=T
That’s all for this week. I’ll get back to you with interesting news in about two weeks. If you’d like to share some cultural topics with me, please, let me know. I will happily include them in my Tertulia. Un anyo dulse i alegre a todos i todas.