Ayacucho es una región con una población de 612 mil habitantes. Es decir, alberga apenas el 2% de la población del país según el último censo. Las vigorosas cifras de reducción de la pobreza que alientan las políticas de apertura comercial no le alcanzan todavía a Ayacucho para salir de la estrechez económica, porque la sierra rural (aunque esta región cuenta dentro de su geografía con una porción de selva vinculada al valle de los ríos Apurímac y Ene) sigue excediendo el 60% de pobreza. Hace un par de meses, los pobladores de Huanta y Huamanga, se vieron sorprendidos con la presencia de personas uniformadas con trajes militares extranjeros desplazándose  por sus calles y conviviendo con ellos en un ambiente de relativa tranquilidad pero algo de suspicacia. Un destacamento militar estadounidense, con la aprobación del Congreso y la autorización del Ministerio de Defensa, ha llegado a esta región para cumplir, según lo expresado en las normas, labores de acción humanitaria entre las que se encuentran construir aulas escolares, pozas de agua y brindar atención médica a sus ciudadanos.
Read the rest of this article »

También en español: Culpemos a EEUU primero

Ayacucho is a region with a population of 612,000 people. That means it is home to barely 2 per cent of the Peruvian population, according to the last census.
The strong poverty reduction figures, fed by market-opening policies, haven’t reached Ayacucho yet to take it out of its economic tightness - the rural sierra (although this region includes a section of jungle connected to the Apurímac and Ene rivers in its geography) continues to exceed 60 per cent poverty.
A couple of months ago, the communities of Huanta and Hamanga were surprised by the presence of people in uniform, with foreign military clothes, in their streets and living with them in a relatively calm – but somewhat suspicious – environment.
A US military deployment, with the approval of Congress and the authorisation of the Ministry of Defence, had arrived in the region to carry out, according to the rules, humanitarian work which includes building classrooms, wells, and giving medical attention to the citizens.

Read the rest of this article »

I saw a great film on Saturday. It wasn’t Lions for Lambs. No. While Robert Redford’s War on Terror film touched some interesting ideas – political discourse, the role of the media, and where your average Joe America fits into the big picture – it treated them in an insultingly facile manner.
If you’re interested in these themes, you will have thought about them beyond what this film shows you. Flick on the news and you can see that politicians are smarmy and calculating, that big television networks consider that reading out government press releases constitutes broadcasting news, and that despite its billions spent on defence the US ain’t making much progress in Afghanistan.
And if you’re not interested in these ideas… well then you’re probably not about to run out and see the film, are you?

In compensation for Redford’s film being so disappointingly weak, we headed for FNAC in search of Michael Mann’s The Insider. It took a while to track it down – over here they call it El Dilema – but it was worth the wait. I recommend you hire the DVD, and leave Lions for Lambs till it comes out on free-to-air TV and you can be bothered taking the time to set the video.

Bisher al-Rawi was a UK-based informant for the MI5. As a way of saying thanks for all the hard work he put into liaising with and providing information on people under watch, the agency forwarded incorrect information to the CIA, and al-Rawi was kidnapped, put in nappies and a blindfold, strapped to a stretcher, and flown to Guantánamo bay. For a bit of variety the CIA threw in a three month stopover in a “Dark Prison” in Afghanistan where the only light he saw was the occasional dim beam from the guard’s torch and it was so cold he could feel ice crystals forming in his drinks.

We’ve heard about the horrors of Guantánamo Bay and the CIA’s black sites, but the level of official complicity seen in al-Rawi’s case is astounding. al-Rawi’s arrest was due to the MI5 deliberately passing on completely false information to the CIA, according to the Observer article which broke the story on Sunday. Read the rest of this article »

If a terrorist tries to kill himself, should you stop him? A mass murderer of the ETA variety came close to comatose recently, after spending months on a hunger strike in protest against his latest conviction. Yesterday the government agreed to let him serve the rest of his sentence under house arrest in order to make him eat. “The difference between us democrats and those terrorists is that we care about life,” says the Minister of Internal Affairs, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba.

This is a complicated case, “a lotta ins, a lotta outs”. But at the crux of it is the use of violence as a negotiating tool, in this case violence against oneself. And it worked. Read the rest of this article »

The “11-M” hearing kicked off today: the trial for 29 people accused of involvement in Spain’s worst terrorist attack ever. On the 11^th of March 2004 a series of bombs went off in rush-hour commuter trains in different parts of Madrid, killing nearly 200 people and wounding ten times that many. The worst carnage occurred disconcertingly close to where I live; there is a placard outside my local swimming pool to remember the use of the complex as a makeshift emergency hospital on the morning of the attacks.

In the media excitement leading up to the trial the focus has centred on the logistics of the hearing and the veracity of a conspiracy theory linking local terrorists ETA with the bombings. Personally, I’m more concerned with the fairness of the trial itself. I know, I know: how much more pinko-bleeding-heart-liberal can you get than worrying about a bunch of terrorists getting a fair trial?

Read the rest of this article »

Three young Ecuadorians unfurl a hand painted yellow banner on Madrid’s metro. “The Ecuadorian people support the victims of ETA,” one reads aloud as the whistle sounds and the train pulls out of the station. Next to the slogan the banner carries photos of Ecuadorians Diego Armando Estacio and Carlos Alonso Palate, the latest victims of Spanish terrorist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA). Along with 200,000 other residents of Madrid, these three are on their way to march against ETA’s violence.

Read the rest of this article »

Official tape blocked the main exit from the arrivals hall when I got back to Madrid, sending jet-lagged arrivers like myself into confusion as we wheeled our trolleys around looking for an alternative way out. The tape was due to ETA’s New Year’s Eve Eve fireworks: the dormant terrorist group set off a car bomb in the airport carpark on the 30^th of December which killed two people and the shaky ceasefire-based peace negotiations. Read the rest of this article »

It’s stories like this one, about the National Party’s Associate Health Spokesman being hosted by British American Tobacco that make me worry. Clearly, it disturbs me that the person responsible for health matters in the major opposition party is being pampered by huge international drug companies.

But it worries me more that, had it not been for the fact that Jonathon Coleman was punched, it’s likely that we never would have known that he was treated to a corporate box at the U2 concert. What else do we not know about?

Read the rest of this article »

As well as taking Spanish classes three times a week, I have just started a course at a university here on Political Violence in Cinema. There are about 30 of us in the class, mainly political studies students from the uni, and each week we watch a film that deals with political violence and then sit around and discuss it. It’s just my thing, I’m finding it very interesting and also pretty challenging. In the first class, we watched “Estado de Sitio”, which is a docudrama about the kidnapping of a US, erm, political operative, shall we say, in Uruguay in the early 1970s.

Read the rest of this article »