From the Hum of the Indians, from the Black River those who came later, from Uruguay, from my heart: Congratulations to all in 2011
Happy New Year these days in this part of the world, which is not - even though often we forget - The whole world, a decision rule of cultural and human well-Gregorian to be specific, we are giving off a scheduled time and measured by the cultural tool that is the calendar. It governs our lives to an extent and size really without us too has not only traversed in its entirety, but also largely built. Within the scope of our will and free will. And out of them. It's part of our social contract, determines our strategies and keeps them, the search new solutions to new problems. Who have been mostly wrong. They have been the successes that have enabled the species maintain and increase its niche resourcing.
We are here and now in a new expression of the hunting and gathering strategies. of our ancestors. With new ways to manifest. In a highly globalized world of instant time ago and finite distances, at least on the surface of our little star vehicle, also huge problems threaten, attack and injure the species, everywhere. elites that since the emergence of surplus had to exist to administer, are not wise enough to give us all, that atavistic being who bring essential needs met.
live in a world of mass consumption and destruction of resources almost irrational and stupid and insensitive handling of the meaning of life and nature, the planet itself feels and suffers, and their changes and alterations are always on and the measure of man, acts as a cosmic force is human power, immeasurable and unmanageable.
Friends, all this talk, written from the shores of a beautiful river, whose waters enjoyed my childhood and now adult, whenever I can come, the Black River in Uruguay, at the height of Paso de los Toros, city girl great people, noble and stubborn, often flooded, completely evacuated thousands of inhabitants in 1959 - me and my family including his bed-tamed by dams installed hydropower generation in its channel promised honey and wine their coastal and today are huge concrete monsters, almost obsolete for modern efficiency standards. They are there, subjecting a happy water at other times in their cycles of nature and rich in its range of food resources.
For those who eat every day and those who do not. For those who dig the earth to produce food and those who scavenge garbage to collect any edible organic thing that will one day away from death.
For those who feel sounds of rockets and fireworks in the middle of speech of happiness and joy in big cities rich and those who feel like sounds of missiles, bombs and planes flying over their villages terrifying while bringing death and sadness.
World Migrants Day. The hard work of living is forbidden to forbid
December 18
On 4 December 2000 the General Assembly of the United Nations, taking into account that there is a significant number of immigrants in the world, and that number continues to increase, proclaimed International Migrants Day (resolution 55/93). On that day, in 1990, the Assembly adopted the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (resolution 45/158).
Currently, it is estimated that the number of international migrants between 185 and 192 million. This figure represents three percent of world population and is comparable to the population of Brazil. Almost all countries are affected by the phenomenon of international migration, either as countries of emigration, immigration, transit, or even all three at once.
international migration has become an intrinsic feature of globalization.
This reminder of the International Day of Migrants in Anthropology of the everyday, aiming to follow the idea, the efforts and sacrifices of so many people that seeks a just stubborn, and he, in particular the day on which they were honored, where migrants and of course any person, discriminated against because of their sex, race, color, language, religion or belief, political or otherwise, because of their national, ethnic or cultural background, nationality, age, economic status, material wealth, marital status, birth or other status. A world that understands and accepts as normal migration that takes place in a context where apply the norms and universal standards of human rights for all migrants and members of their families. We know the daily press reports in daily abundance, which is in reality far from a situation. Cable
Agency December 17, 2010
Geneva, Switzerland .- Experts from the United Nations Organization (UNO) on the rights of migrants today expressed concern that this year has increased the tendency to criminalize irregular migration. This was expressed by the UN rapporteur on the rights of migrants, Jorge
Bustamante, and the president of the UN Committee on Migrant Workers, Abdelhamid El Jamri
, under the
Migrants Day, to be held on Saturday. "This criminalization causes irregular migrants face discrimination , exclusion, exploitation and abuse at all stages of the migration process "experts assessed.
"key is a day marked by disturbing trends regarding the situation of migrants, both those in regular and irregular situation in the world," he said in a statement.
"We are concerned before the rise of xenophobia, racism and intolerance against migrants and their communities, which sometimes manifests itself in acts of extreme violence against migrants in transit and those in destination countries, "they said.
noted that migrants can easily be prey to smugglers and traffickers. Their illegal status makes these men, women and children are afraid or unable to seek protection and support of the authorities.
"We regret that insufficient progress has been made to fully integrate human rights in the governance of migration," they said.
added that "we want to remind all those involved that migration is a component of development and prosperity of the countries of destination, transit and origin in all regions of the world," he said. reminded "migrants died at sea trying to reach remote destinations despite the inherent dangers of such crossings, under the 20 th anniversary of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and their families.
regretted that the opportunity to be celebrating the successful adaptation migrants to their new environment, enriching their new societies with their cultures, ideas, technologies, skills, and the diversity they bring, is a way to renew efforts to tackle effectively the challenges of migration.
UN experts called on the states that have not done so to accede or ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.
Those states are:
United States, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain and other European Union countries, among others.
Brief anthropological and personal reflections
this complex issue is whether there is, as all they do to achieve balance between often conflicting interests if not antagonistic. Migration processes accompanied the lovable old hominids throughout its evolution in the old patient and warm African cradle of the species. Homo made his mobility and ability to discover and cultivate new ecological niches, the main cause their success in survival and evolution. Americans well know. Hunting bands, Homo sapiens sapiens and then crossed Berhing for food and arrived and settled in a wasteland of human. Perhaps something like a millennium later, watched as the Antarctic ice and hunting the local fauna so rich in necessary proteins.
The global world has globalized debt also important food in the world population, energy shortages and that, in the heart of low world market and merchandise, means less work. It also means poverty and hunger. The people exhausted from all the continents look at the countries considered rich in their excess goods and destroying them and thither, like our ancestors are addressed in eager young warriors and hopefully hunt. The risks, uncertainties and probabilities of success and food, between prehistory and today that does not differ too much to pause in careful analysis and reflection.
share with you the following material that serves a really very close to the Latin American and very close to universal man, sensitive to others and solidarity with any misfortune to anyone else.
Mexican actor Gael García Bernal made to Amnesty International, with director Marc Silver, a series of four documentaries on the problems of Central American migrants in Mexico.
Each year, tens of thousands of people trying to get from Central America. Many of them work through nearly 3,000 kilometers between the southern and northern borders of Mexico. Only six months of 2009, the NGO claimed that 10,000 migrants were abducted along the route.
's odyssey began in southern Mexico, including Oaxaca and Chiapas. To arrive there, every day, hundreds of Central American immigrants to the U.S. way. They wait in shelters staffed by volunteers, the arrival and departure of
Beast: a slow freight train that weaves and stops every now and then, along a route of more than five thousand kilometers.
On their journey, migrants are at the mercy of gangs
, the narco - the 72 men killed in Tamaulipas in August was immigrants - and even of actual corrupt law enforcement.
But maybe his biggest enemy is indifference. No one seems to care about their fate.
are socially invisible.
Hence the title of the short documentary producer and Mexican actor Gael García Bernal
and filmmaker Marc Silver
.
Says the actor:
authorities Mexican migrants must protect our country. The law should protect everyone, citizens or foreigners. It is essential that Mexico is a good example for the way it treats migrants
Spain ails you! The Catalan city of Lleida has been a pioneer in banning the Islamic headscarf integral - the burqa - in local and municipal venues.
The ban comes into force today, December 9 in July after it passed legislation in this regard, ratified in October and later endorsed by the courts. The move affects about 130 local and municipal areas, from community centers to swimming pools in this city, where about 10,000 registered Muslims of different nationalities, half of them Moroccans.
"I think the burqa and the hijab, and similar garments that completely cover a face undermine the sense of equality between man and woman, violates the dignity of women" told AFP the mayor of Lleida, Ángel Ros.
"I also believe that equality is something that in our society have fought for many years and there can be no reason, or religious, or cultural-that goes against this basic principle "said Ros.
The new policy states that you can limit access to "persons who bear the full veil, hoods, hats or other clothing or accessories that prevent or hinder the identification and visual communication people ". While
the use of these items is not common in the city but from time to time, the city decided the ban Lleida after a vote of the major local parties in power to defend the rights of women.
The Watani Islamic Association per the Llibertat i la Justicia appealed to the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia, the decision arguing that it violates fundamental rights and requested the freezing of its implementation.
The court "had not yet delivered," he told AFP the president of Watani, Murad the Buduhi, because "the council expected to provide documentation justifying the measure." "The only association has appealed the action is the minority group that exists within the Islamic community in the municipality," said the mayor instead.
in Lleida city of some 120,000 residents, have registered most of the Muslims in the region, dedicated to the fruit farm, which requires large immigrant workforce, it said. The court, "for now has ruled that the interim suspension does not requested in the application and the ordinance comes into force" and "will be decided later on its legality or not, "said Ros.
In terms of implementation, Ros said," be warned first and then will look fine if recidivism. "" I feel sorry for have to make this legislation but I have pride in being the first city established a "letter of citizenship 'which includes duties and rights to all inhabitants, especially those who have joined lately," he said.
My thoughts
principle, by social anthropologist by simple man of this world, I deny any and all as full of ethnocentrism. just as irrational. This episode one of them. A beautiful sad example. Begin and remain authoritarian imposing bans. This news coming from Spain is much more sexist and patriarchal that want to protect rather than pretentious. Male gaze, probably and surely Christian West. Infantilizing the Other. Respect the Other in their culture. Learn to look and see it in that context. Do not forbid you do not understand. Gulliver has a lot left to travel. Do not be proud. Let diversity is expressed. Culture is often almost unintelligible in canals and incommensurable with the translation for those who do not belong to it. Dwell on this issue because as Americans we should know as well that is the white European and Christian who are different. While we accept both long history of cultural trait contrary to ours.
little more than 500 years have passed since the English arrived in this land of conquest and superb air of discovery. Then the woman's nakedness meant their native wildness and an inability to qualify for human and animals become suitable and available only to fornication manu militare and sword in hand.
Volume of Todorov and the problem of the Other, the next episode happened and what is worse, told with grace and in favor of impunity, on the occasion of Columbus' second voyage to the land, a story made in a letter to a friend in the Motherland, for a gentleman, a fellow of the current and advocate for women undergoing severe Mr. Mayor of Lerida:
"Women: while Columbus is only interested in them as a naturalist, do not forget this is not the For other members of the expedition Read this story that does the same Michele de Cuneo, a nobleman of Savona, an episode occurred during the second trip, a story of a thousand, but has the advantage that is told by its protagonist.
"While in the boat, I a beautiful woman captive Caribbean, that the aforesaid Admiral gave to me, and after that I had taken my cabin, and while she was naked as usual, I felt like idling with it. I wanted to fulfill my desire but she would not consent to such treatment and gave me their nails would have preferred not to have started ever. But watching this (and to tell you everything until the end) I took a rope and gave him the lashes, after which began a loud cry, such that you would not have believed your ears. Finally we get to be so much in agreement that I can tell you that seemed to have been raised in a school for whores. "
Bravo by Western Christian white male! Humiliated by a woman dressed in brown or even saw, however save the trance and honor, English gentleman finally pure speech and vile scourge the subject as a person and rapes a woman. Just ; beast to tame and teach to satisfy lust of conquest. Of course. Even when the procedure should apply lashes or so. That does not matter.
will not do further analysis. I shall not arguments. Because it should not be necessary. And met all recently, where ban was the way to control where the handling time against each other, kept the old principle of divide and power. I do not know what the Catalan public opinion on the issue. I believe that they will not feel threatened by the hidden body of some Muslim women passing the quiet streets of his village. I feel sorry that intolerance still equipped so rigidly the human mind.
sometimes disgusts me and unfortunately many such hypocrisy chokes. I imagine the scandal that would arm the mayor's good if the Koran in response beautiful women make you taste, take off their burkas and stroll, as of old Caribbean women, naked, peaceful and free at last now if forever, the peaceful and quiet streets and avenues of Lleida.
For all those who in one way or another we know about potatoes and Gregory, but also for those living in the cultural diversity that has enriched the species: Jews, Aymara, Chinese, Inuit, Nuer, Vietnamese , Quechua, Toba and Mapuche, Navajo and ceol, Taino and Kaigang, Palestinians and Persians, Hindus and Buddhists, Amish and Muslims, for blacks and whites, all that wealth Asia's ethnic and cultural depth. 
