BOLIVIAN HAWK Above is an image of a Harris' Hawk, found in Eastern Bolivia. Taken with permission from www.lureofthefalcon.blogspot.com
Friday, April 30, 2010
Harpy seeks a meal
BOLIVIAN EAGLEHere is another image of a Bolivian bird, the Harpy Eagle, which is the world's most powerful raptor. It is seen here hunting a curassow, species of which also live in Bolivia. Used with kind permission of www.lureofthefalcon.blogspot.com
Monday, April 26, 2010
Seriama
TAKING A SNAKE FROM THE GRASS
This bird, which is found in Eastern Bolivia, is the the Red-legged Seriema (Seriema cristata); it has just bagged lunch, a Smooth Machete Savane (Chironius scurrulus). The snake's genus is endemic to South America, as is the bird's; however, one might note some similarities to the Houbara (Chlamydotis undulata) and other bustards. That is because they are in fact in the same order, the Gruiformes, along with rails. Credit for this goes to http://www.lureofthefalcon.blogspot.com/, used with kind permission.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Tale of Two Cities: New York and La Paz on Earth Day, 2010
On Earth Day, 22 April 2010, there was much going on in La Paz and New York. The former had some 15,000 visitors to hear talks on melting glaciers and capitalism, whilst in the latter great crowds tuned in to hear about capitalism and, er, capitalism. POTUS turned up, to the chagrin of the Big Apple's biggest billionaire, who was not informed ahead of time about the visit. The billionaire happens also to be the mayor, so it is protocol to do so, but when you are a novice politician, protocol is often lacking; just look at the pictures of POTUS at a seder without a kippa, or yarmulke as it is better known in New York. The novice, who also happens to be a millionaire, was in NY to address Wall Street, which was worried that he might do something to regulate them, especially after the latest scandal with bankers putting together idiotic deals and then betting against them; the buyers lost a billion, the bankers made a billion. Many millionaires are now ex-millionaires. But the billionaire was not going to let the loss of a mere billion serve as an argument for regulation. His argument ran something along the lines that if you regulate them, NY might lose out - kind of like asking the government not to enforce the law on the mob, as it makes money and without mob money NY might lose out... The Amigos de Bolivia crowd, however, had a better speaker to listen to, even if he wasn't a billionaire or even a millionaire; someone who could talk about credit upgrades, best GDP in the region status, and increased social spending, rather than stock market swindles. The speaker was Luis Alberto Arce Catacora, Minister of Economics and Public Finance. He spoke at Columbia University, flanked by the Bolivian Consul, Marco Medrano, and his aides.
Arce mentioned Bolivia's vast mineral resources - no talk on Bolivian economics would be complete without that - and said one very good thing: that Bolivia was not going to just count on these to get by, but was going to create businesses that would be sustainable for the future; he mentioned eco-tourism, paper mills and agriculture.Of the first, there was not much detailed discussion, Bolivia has always lagged behind on this, whilst Ecuador, Peru and Costa Rica are the leaders in the field. Bolivia has greater biodiversity than any of them, with 1448 species of birds and well over 1200 species of orchids. But this market will have to be tapped; there needs to be more scientific papers and publicity about what is there, with the museums and other institutions working to alongside this industry. Amigos de Bolivia members offered their help on this and we shall see. As to paper, Arce qualified what materials were used by saying that the mills were all for recycling; much room for improvement exists here if new fibres can be sourced, either grown for paper, or, in the case of hemp and banana, the fibres that are generally thrown away can be used. Hemp is the oldest paper fibre in the world, and banana is a relative of Manila hemp, used for making rope, so both are excellent choices and can grow in Bolivia.
As to agriculture, Arce noted there are two kinds of crops: those known in the West, such as maize, rice, sugar, etc., and those endemic to the Andes, such as quinoa and maca; a student added stevia to that list. Then of course there is wine (grown in 6 departamentos, mostly in Tarija), coffee, and coco. Arable land, however, is not abundant in Bolivia, it comprises only 4.5% of the country; by contrast, 56% of India is arable land. Thus agriculture needs to be both diversified and focused on those plants which would make the country competitive.
World attention is turning to Bolivia more and more, so expect to hear more about it. My guess is that the mineral resources will ultimately prove lucrative, but not without struggle, and that in the meantime, and for the future, the best bet is to develop sustainable industries such as Senor Arce mentioned.
Arce mentioned Bolivia's vast mineral resources - no talk on Bolivian economics would be complete without that - and said one very good thing: that Bolivia was not going to just count on these to get by, but was going to create businesses that would be sustainable for the future; he mentioned eco-tourism, paper mills and agriculture.Of the first, there was not much detailed discussion, Bolivia has always lagged behind on this, whilst Ecuador, Peru and Costa Rica are the leaders in the field. Bolivia has greater biodiversity than any of them, with 1448 species of birds and well over 1200 species of orchids. But this market will have to be tapped; there needs to be more scientific papers and publicity about what is there, with the museums and other institutions working to alongside this industry. Amigos de Bolivia members offered their help on this and we shall see. As to paper, Arce qualified what materials were used by saying that the mills were all for recycling; much room for improvement exists here if new fibres can be sourced, either grown for paper, or, in the case of hemp and banana, the fibres that are generally thrown away can be used. Hemp is the oldest paper fibre in the world, and banana is a relative of Manila hemp, used for making rope, so both are excellent choices and can grow in Bolivia.
As to agriculture, Arce noted there are two kinds of crops: those known in the West, such as maize, rice, sugar, etc., and those endemic to the Andes, such as quinoa and maca; a student added stevia to that list. Then of course there is wine (grown in 6 departamentos, mostly in Tarija), coffee, and coco. Arable land, however, is not abundant in Bolivia, it comprises only 4.5% of the country; by contrast, 56% of India is arable land. Thus agriculture needs to be both diversified and focused on those plants which would make the country competitive.
World attention is turning to Bolivia more and more, so expect to hear more about it. My guess is that the mineral resources will ultimately prove lucrative, but not without struggle, and that in the meantime, and for the future, the best bet is to develop sustainable industries such as Senor Arce mentioned.
Earth Day in Bolivia
This is a nice piece I pinched from http://www.itsgettinghotinhere.org/
It was funny that none of the major papers in New York ran anything on this...
So here is a really great article by Joshua Kahn Russell, posted to their site on 22 April.
This morning my email inbox was full of advocacy groups commemorating the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. As the ecological systems that support life are reaching their brink, there is certainly a good reason to use this opportunity to shine a spotlight on a range of issues and challenges. But activist organizations aren’t alone in commemorating today.
Today I was struck even more by corporations trying to capitalize on Earth Day to green their images. As Becky Tarbotton observed in the Huffington Post, the New York Times summarized the situation well: “So strong was the antibusiness sentiment for the first Earth Day in 1970 that organizers took no money from corporations and held teach-ins ‘to challenge corporate and government leaders’… Forty years later, the day has turned into a premier marketing platform for selling a variety of goods and services, like office products, Greek yogurt and eco-dentistry.”
Against this backdrop, World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba today is a breath of fresh air.
The Indigenous Environmental Network celebrated today by explaining that “this morning Bolivian President Evo Morales was joined by representatives of 90 governments and several Heads of State to receive the findings of the conference on topics such as a Climate Tribunal, Climate Debt, just finance for mitigation and adaptation, agriculture, and forests. The working group on forests held one of the more hotly contested negotiations of the summit, but with the leadership of Indigenous Peoples, a consensus was reached to reject REDD and call for wide-scale grassroots reforestation programs.”
Jason Negrón-Gonzales of Movement Generation elaborated on how they do Earth Day in Cochabamba: “…from now I’ll be talking to my children and 2010 will be remembered as the year that Earth Day took on new meaning. It will be the year that humanity turned a corner in our relationship to Mother Earth and began struggling along a new course…more than politics, the conference in Cochabamba brought to the table humanity’s relationship with Pachamama. This question, raised most pointedly by the Indigenous communities present, was reflected in the project of creating a declaration of Mother Earth Rights, but also went way beyond it. Can we really reach a sustainable relationship with the Earth unless we stop looking at it as something to be conquered or fixed that is outside of us? How would it change our lives and our struggles if we thought, as Leonardo Boff of Brazil said, ‘Todo lo que existe merece existir, y todo lo que vive merece vivir (Everything that exists deserves to exist, and everything that lives deserves to live)’? Or if we understood the Earth as a living thing that we are a part of and that, ‘La vida es un momento de la tierra, y la vida humana un momento de la vida (Life is a moment of the earth, and the human life is a moment of life)’?”
And the politics do matter. The cross-pollination of grassroots social movements in Bolivia are charting a course and global program that articulates both an analysis of the state of play of the United Nations negotiations as well as a set of solutions moving forward. Jason helped outline the core points of the ABC’s of the Climate Negotiations distilled from analysis coming out of the Cochabamba conference:
1. The key question (aside from decreasing emissions) in negotiations is how to divide up the atmospheric space left for emissions given that the US and other developed countries already used up most of the space that there was for greenhouse gas emissions. This then leads to the obvious follow-up question of whether or not the same countries that overused already should get the overwhelming share of what’s left. The obvious answer that most children would tell you is that no – that isn’t fair, or for that matter, just or equitable. Yet when a country like the US says it can’t or won’t cut emissions to the level it demands of others, that’s what happens.
2. Many countries in the Global South, and certainly the Bolivian government, believe that when developed countries like the US need to decrease their emissions that we should do it domestically, in US industries and the US economy, instead of creating carbon markets that let the US pollute away while paying someone else to decrease for them. This makes sense because history has shown that the projects that are supposed to “offset” emissions in the US or EU are often dubious, or might have happened anyway, or cause other problems for the people who live where they are happening (like with dams).
3. Regardless of the above points, the rich nations pushing the current arena of international negotiations are not seeking to get industrialized countries to decrease their own emissions by their fare share. Right now there are two competing options for a global framework to address climate change– a backroom deal the US is trying to move called the Copenhagen Accord, and the continuation of the international negotiations that have been happening according to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process since the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997. You read that right. The US-backed “Copenhagen Accord” has no relationship to the ongoing global negotiations process. As Angelica Navarro, one of the UN climate negotiators from Bolivia told the story, “It (the Copenhagen Accord) was given to us and we were told we had an hour to decide if we would support it enough. How are we supposed to make a decision about the future of the earth in an hour?”
4. The Kyoto Protocol, adopted through the UNFCCC as the global plan to set targets and mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in 1997 has lots of well documented problems: a carbon market has allowed developed countries to avoid making real reductions to their emissions, a “clean development mechanism” which has spurred all kinds of destructive projects in the Global South, and the use of offsets which lead to continued pollution in communities of color in industrialized countries while paying projects elsewhere to cut their real or planned emissions. However, on the positive side Kyoto has: shared legal limits on emissions that are (at least prospectively) based on science; the concept of “common but differentiated responsibilities” meaning that those who have polluted the most should have a different burden than those who haven’t; exceptions for Global South countries with the intent of not restricting their development; and an enforcement mechanism if targets aren’t met.
5. The Copenhagen Accord, on the other hand, has: voluntary limits set by each country, no process to reconcile or pressure countries that offer less regardless of responsibility, no enforcement, continued carbon markets with offsets, etc., and an overall target set not by what science says in necessary, but only representing the total of what all the countries offer up. A study done by the EU estimated that if the Copenhagen Accord was approved with the existing commitments by countries it would optimistically only decrease emissions by 2%, probably locking us into a 3.9 degree Celsius temperature increase globally (this comes from a recent MIT study) – which would be a serious disaster.
Just as companies are using Earth Day to green their images, the Copenhagen Accord was an attempt to pretend a lot more is being done than it really is. It gets worse. This Earth Day comes on the heels of the leaked U.S. Government document trying to “Reinforce the perception that the US is constructively engaged in UN negotiations in an effort to produce a global regime to combat climate change,” “managing expectations” of the UN Climate talks in order to undercut critics. Though the story has predictably gotten little attention in the U.S., the 40th anniversary of Earth Day is framed by extremes filling my email inbox: the predatory opportunism of corporations and some governments on one side, and real solutions proposed by Indigenous groups and other front-line communities on the other. Today, I’m grateful for the 15,000 people making history down south.
It was funny that none of the major papers in New York ran anything on this...
So here is a really great article by Joshua Kahn Russell, posted to their site on 22 April.
This morning my email inbox was full of advocacy groups commemorating the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. As the ecological systems that support life are reaching their brink, there is certainly a good reason to use this opportunity to shine a spotlight on a range of issues and challenges. But activist organizations aren’t alone in commemorating today.
Today I was struck even more by corporations trying to capitalize on Earth Day to green their images. As Becky Tarbotton observed in the Huffington Post, the New York Times summarized the situation well: “So strong was the antibusiness sentiment for the first Earth Day in 1970 that organizers took no money from corporations and held teach-ins ‘to challenge corporate and government leaders’… Forty years later, the day has turned into a premier marketing platform for selling a variety of goods and services, like office products, Greek yogurt and eco-dentistry.”
Against this backdrop, World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba today is a breath of fresh air.
The Indigenous Environmental Network celebrated today by explaining that “this morning Bolivian President Evo Morales was joined by representatives of 90 governments and several Heads of State to receive the findings of the conference on topics such as a Climate Tribunal, Climate Debt, just finance for mitigation and adaptation, agriculture, and forests. The working group on forests held one of the more hotly contested negotiations of the summit, but with the leadership of Indigenous Peoples, a consensus was reached to reject REDD and call for wide-scale grassroots reforestation programs.”
Jason Negrón-Gonzales of Movement Generation elaborated on how they do Earth Day in Cochabamba: “…from now I’ll be talking to my children and 2010 will be remembered as the year that Earth Day took on new meaning. It will be the year that humanity turned a corner in our relationship to Mother Earth and began struggling along a new course…more than politics, the conference in Cochabamba brought to the table humanity’s relationship with Pachamama. This question, raised most pointedly by the Indigenous communities present, was reflected in the project of creating a declaration of Mother Earth Rights, but also went way beyond it. Can we really reach a sustainable relationship with the Earth unless we stop looking at it as something to be conquered or fixed that is outside of us? How would it change our lives and our struggles if we thought, as Leonardo Boff of Brazil said, ‘Todo lo que existe merece existir, y todo lo que vive merece vivir (Everything that exists deserves to exist, and everything that lives deserves to live)’? Or if we understood the Earth as a living thing that we are a part of and that, ‘La vida es un momento de la tierra, y la vida humana un momento de la vida (Life is a moment of the earth, and the human life is a moment of life)’?”
And the politics do matter. The cross-pollination of grassroots social movements in Bolivia are charting a course and global program that articulates both an analysis of the state of play of the United Nations negotiations as well as a set of solutions moving forward. Jason helped outline the core points of the ABC’s of the Climate Negotiations distilled from analysis coming out of the Cochabamba conference:
1. The key question (aside from decreasing emissions) in negotiations is how to divide up the atmospheric space left for emissions given that the US and other developed countries already used up most of the space that there was for greenhouse gas emissions. This then leads to the obvious follow-up question of whether or not the same countries that overused already should get the overwhelming share of what’s left. The obvious answer that most children would tell you is that no – that isn’t fair, or for that matter, just or equitable. Yet when a country like the US says it can’t or won’t cut emissions to the level it demands of others, that’s what happens.
2. Many countries in the Global South, and certainly the Bolivian government, believe that when developed countries like the US need to decrease their emissions that we should do it domestically, in US industries and the US economy, instead of creating carbon markets that let the US pollute away while paying someone else to decrease for them. This makes sense because history has shown that the projects that are supposed to “offset” emissions in the US or EU are often dubious, or might have happened anyway, or cause other problems for the people who live where they are happening (like with dams).
3. Regardless of the above points, the rich nations pushing the current arena of international negotiations are not seeking to get industrialized countries to decrease their own emissions by their fare share. Right now there are two competing options for a global framework to address climate change– a backroom deal the US is trying to move called the Copenhagen Accord, and the continuation of the international negotiations that have been happening according to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process since the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997. You read that right. The US-backed “Copenhagen Accord” has no relationship to the ongoing global negotiations process. As Angelica Navarro, one of the UN climate negotiators from Bolivia told the story, “It (the Copenhagen Accord) was given to us and we were told we had an hour to decide if we would support it enough. How are we supposed to make a decision about the future of the earth in an hour?”
4. The Kyoto Protocol, adopted through the UNFCCC as the global plan to set targets and mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in 1997 has lots of well documented problems: a carbon market has allowed developed countries to avoid making real reductions to their emissions, a “clean development mechanism” which has spurred all kinds of destructive projects in the Global South, and the use of offsets which lead to continued pollution in communities of color in industrialized countries while paying projects elsewhere to cut their real or planned emissions. However, on the positive side Kyoto has: shared legal limits on emissions that are (at least prospectively) based on science; the concept of “common but differentiated responsibilities” meaning that those who have polluted the most should have a different burden than those who haven’t; exceptions for Global South countries with the intent of not restricting their development; and an enforcement mechanism if targets aren’t met.
5. The Copenhagen Accord, on the other hand, has: voluntary limits set by each country, no process to reconcile or pressure countries that offer less regardless of responsibility, no enforcement, continued carbon markets with offsets, etc., and an overall target set not by what science says in necessary, but only representing the total of what all the countries offer up. A study done by the EU estimated that if the Copenhagen Accord was approved with the existing commitments by countries it would optimistically only decrease emissions by 2%, probably locking us into a 3.9 degree Celsius temperature increase globally (this comes from a recent MIT study) – which would be a serious disaster.
Just as companies are using Earth Day to green their images, the Copenhagen Accord was an attempt to pretend a lot more is being done than it really is. It gets worse. This Earth Day comes on the heels of the leaked U.S. Government document trying to “Reinforce the perception that the US is constructively engaged in UN negotiations in an effort to produce a global regime to combat climate change,” “managing expectations” of the UN Climate talks in order to undercut critics. Though the story has predictably gotten little attention in the U.S., the 40th anniversary of Earth Day is framed by extremes filling my email inbox: the predatory opportunism of corporations and some governments on one side, and real solutions proposed by Indigenous groups and other front-line communities on the other. Today, I’m grateful for the 15,000 people making history down south.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Revolution and Education in Bolivia
In New York, Amigos de Bolivia members have been gearing up for events later in the year to promote their favourite Andean state. It has been a topic of discussion also at New York University, where CLACS, the Center for Latin American and Carribbean Studies has been sponsoring lectures by visiting professors, presented by Sinclair Thomson and Carmen Medeiros of NYU.
But wait a minute, is this not the alma mater of one Jose Brechner, that ex-politician whose shrill rants against the mestizos (the indigenous population) and the collas in particular (the Aymara and Quechua) make him sound like the Fuhrer on a bad day? Most people outside of Bolivia have never heard of this clown, though he writes for a number of large dailies including Ha'aretz (maybe they need token nazi). His reputation, however, is not much bigger even in his own backyard, no matter how much he pisses in it with his rants. At the latest events, neither Marisol de le Cadena nor Bret Gustafson had heard of him. Brechner's stomping ground is the right wing Santa Cruz, which also happens to be Gustafon's residence these days.
But, moving on from the likes of Herr Brechner, of whom Melvyn Kohn writes more on the Jewish Chronicle site, let me throw a more positive light on the work of de la Cadena and Gustafson; the former is based in Davis, where she teaches at University of California, and the latter in St. Louis (when not in Santa Cruz) - where he teaches at the University of Washington. The UC instructor gave a talk on 29 March titled "Indigenous Politics: Beyond politics as usual", in which she held forth on the ontological pluralisation of politics in regards to the conjuring of non-human beings, i.e. mountains, water, soil, etc., as beings to be regarded in the making of laws, mostly in regards to mining. She being a Peruvian, this had more to do with Peru than Bolivia, but touched on both. Gustafon's speech, titled "Epistemic Rupture, Affirmative Action or 'Reverse Racism'?: Decolonizing Knowledge in Evo's Bolivia", was almost entirely limited to Bolivia, with a focus on the province of Santa Cruz, the large and wealthy southeast departamento. He is the author of New Languages of the State: Indigenous Resurgence and the Politics of Knowledge in Bolivia (Duke, 2009) and is presently working with Niki Fabricant on Remapping Bolivia: Territory and Resources in a Plurinational State.
But wait a minute, is this not the alma mater of one Jose Brechner, that ex-politician whose shrill rants against the mestizos (the indigenous population) and the collas in particular (the Aymara and Quechua) make him sound like the Fuhrer on a bad day? Most people outside of Bolivia have never heard of this clown, though he writes for a number of large dailies including Ha'aretz (maybe they need token nazi). His reputation, however, is not much bigger even in his own backyard, no matter how much he pisses in it with his rants. At the latest events, neither Marisol de le Cadena nor Bret Gustafson had heard of him. Brechner's stomping ground is the right wing Santa Cruz, which also happens to be Gustafon's residence these days.
But, moving on from the likes of Herr Brechner, of whom Melvyn Kohn writes more on the Jewish Chronicle site, let me throw a more positive light on the work of de la Cadena and Gustafson; the former is based in Davis, where she teaches at University of California, and the latter in St. Louis (when not in Santa Cruz) - where he teaches at the University of Washington. The UC instructor gave a talk on 29 March titled "Indigenous Politics: Beyond politics as usual", in which she held forth on the ontological pluralisation of politics in regards to the conjuring of non-human beings, i.e. mountains, water, soil, etc., as beings to be regarded in the making of laws, mostly in regards to mining. She being a Peruvian, this had more to do with Peru than Bolivia, but touched on both. Gustafon's speech, titled "Epistemic Rupture, Affirmative Action or 'Reverse Racism'?: Decolonizing Knowledge in Evo's Bolivia", was almost entirely limited to Bolivia, with a focus on the province of Santa Cruz, the large and wealthy southeast departamento. He is the author of New Languages of the State: Indigenous Resurgence and the Politics of Knowledge in Bolivia (Duke, 2009) and is presently working with Niki Fabricant on Remapping Bolivia: Territory and Resources in a Plurinational State.
His talk included much of his own memories of education in Bolivia, starting with the policies of the mid-'90s, the heyday of neo-liberalism under Losada; these for some reason were backed by the World Bank, and some say it was with the intention of weakening the teachers' union. The more recent talks about education reform entail what Gustafson calls a "distinct shift from the neo-liberal period", adding that the "neo-liberalism of the '90s saw indigenous language as a problem to be addressed." The present movement has attracted "violent right-wing opposition", he notes, to the surprise of no one familiar with the situation. Some of the proposed changes in education include the teaching not only of indigenous languages, but of local rituals as well - such as the uta chana - a ceremony for homebuilding/starting a new family.
Education ministers have tended to move at a speed reminiscent of the Blair government in the UK - MAS is onto its fourth. The first was Felix Patzi, who was virulently anti-ecclesiastical, and is now doing jail time, or penance if you will, for drunk driving - a crime Morales has cracked down to the protests of drunk drivers. However ridiculous that sounds, that is exactly what happened - there were road blocks and other forms of protests against the new laws designed to improve road safety - and needless to say the protestors were not in favour; MADD would certainly have loved MAS that day. Most of Bolivia certainly did and told the drunks to shut up and get out of the way.
Patzi's successor was from the teachers' union, who in turn was succeeded by one of the leading Catholics, who in turn was succeeded by a criollo who some call an elitist, Roberto Aguilar; so not only have the faces changed in this ministry, but so have the outlooks and backgrounds of the head educators. The Catholic Church is not the only religious entity in Bolivia to have some influence on education, there has been a steady flow of Protestant missionaries, and these founded the Summer Institute of Linguistics back in the '50s or '60s. Many chefs in the kitchen, much simmering debate, and some real hotheads screaming that Morales is making a "pact between the devil and Fidel Castro to take over Bolivian children." Western journalists, often lacking insight into the minutae (how many of them bother to travel to the country?), labeled the whole thing as affirmative action, and indeed when Morales opened three new schools for the indigenous in their municipalities, many expected them to be lefty campuses full of Trotskyites and hippies; no such luck, they were all technical schools featuring nuts and bolts courses on veterinary medicine, improved crop yields and gas drilling.
Gustafson pointed out that Morales is not acting as a left wing extremist at all, but even looks a bit conservative at times; we hear more recycled factoids by journalists who cut and paste from the fax machine, as Guardian journalists Nick Davies explained in his 2009 book Flat Earth News; click here for a review and excerpts. So this is not a country turning into a radical revolutionary experiment; nor are there murderous Indians running around extracting vengeance on the criollos. Brechner take note - there is evidence of a peaceful change, and not a lot of separatism as was expected. Out of 315 municipal areas where a referendum for autonomy was put forward or could have been, only 10 voted for it; two of them in Santa Cruz. Gustafson remarked: "We don't see emerging radical ethno-territoriality of the state...what we see are fragmented differences."Of the problems in Santa Cruz it was noted in the round table discussion that the violence that we are heaing about is not necessarily new there, it is just being brought into the public discourse at this time. Included in any discourse on violence in that departamento would be the plot to assassinate Morales, which Gustafson, perhaps in deference to certain copies of an AP report which cast doubt on the government story, noted as "alleged." Conspiracy theories abounded but were soon debunked, as the plotters had gone so far as to make a video tape of themselves discussing such activities - but rather than enter at large upon this here, Melvyn Kohn's essay on Harry's Place will give the inquisitive some facts; and I might add that there is yet more to the story that Kohn is holding back at this time.
Physical assassins were followed by character assassins; the twain often meet up, especially where there is a prize to steal, and I am referring to resources - Merrill Lynch called Bolivia the "Saudi Arabia of Lithium", and that metal is not the only one under the surface of Bolivia's soil; gold, silver, uranium, zinc, tin, iron, and many others. External conflict related to it all is to be expected, but there are internal conflicts as well, as opposition to mining exists in some of the very indigenous groups that put MAS in office. Morales is holding up well with this, balancing environmentalism and local spirituality with the reality of having to feed some 10 million people. The president at one point drew the line and told some that they could not stand in the way of the good of the nation. This week Bolivia is hosting an international summit on the environment to be held on Earth Day, and Gustafson notes that James Cameron is already in Cochabamba. Forgive me for a note of cynicism here, but I expect lots of grandstanding from rich movie star types and not sure they will make any lasting contribution. That has to come from the Bolivians and their committed allies; lots of limelight grabbers will hug trees, but their hypocrisy is easily seen when they admit they can't be bothered to wear one thread of hemp. They wear cotton and write on tree pulp paper - destroying entire forests to get their names into magazines and newspapers for this or that, and going green is the latest way to get attention. Hopefully their time spent in Bolivia will humble them and they will take away some reality to bring back to the world of virtual non-reality we call the West.
So we shall see. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk greatly improved Turkey in the 1920s with his education reform - so much so that a friend of mine spent one year in school there and was put three years ahead in a New York school - and the same seems to be happening in Bolivia, which, it might be recalled, is noted for having already produced 'America's best teacher', the late Jaime Escalante. There is a lot to learn here and I expect it to be good.
Patzi's successor was from the teachers' union, who in turn was succeeded by one of the leading Catholics, who in turn was succeeded by a criollo who some call an elitist, Roberto Aguilar; so not only have the faces changed in this ministry, but so have the outlooks and backgrounds of the head educators. The Catholic Church is not the only religious entity in Bolivia to have some influence on education, there has been a steady flow of Protestant missionaries, and these founded the Summer Institute of Linguistics back in the '50s or '60s. Many chefs in the kitchen, much simmering debate, and some real hotheads screaming that Morales is making a "pact between the devil and Fidel Castro to take over Bolivian children." Western journalists, often lacking insight into the minutae (how many of them bother to travel to the country?), labeled the whole thing as affirmative action, and indeed when Morales opened three new schools for the indigenous in their municipalities, many expected them to be lefty campuses full of Trotskyites and hippies; no such luck, they were all technical schools featuring nuts and bolts courses on veterinary medicine, improved crop yields and gas drilling.
Gustafson pointed out that Morales is not acting as a left wing extremist at all, but even looks a bit conservative at times; we hear more recycled factoids by journalists who cut and paste from the fax machine, as Guardian journalists Nick Davies explained in his 2009 book Flat Earth News; click here for a review and excerpts. So this is not a country turning into a radical revolutionary experiment; nor are there murderous Indians running around extracting vengeance on the criollos. Brechner take note - there is evidence of a peaceful change, and not a lot of separatism as was expected. Out of 315 municipal areas where a referendum for autonomy was put forward or could have been, only 10 voted for it; two of them in Santa Cruz. Gustafson remarked: "We don't see emerging radical ethno-territoriality of the state...what we see are fragmented differences."Of the problems in Santa Cruz it was noted in the round table discussion that the violence that we are heaing about is not necessarily new there, it is just being brought into the public discourse at this time. Included in any discourse on violence in that departamento would be the plot to assassinate Morales, which Gustafson, perhaps in deference to certain copies of an AP report which cast doubt on the government story, noted as "alleged." Conspiracy theories abounded but were soon debunked, as the plotters had gone so far as to make a video tape of themselves discussing such activities - but rather than enter at large upon this here, Melvyn Kohn's essay on Harry's Place will give the inquisitive some facts; and I might add that there is yet more to the story that Kohn is holding back at this time.
Physical assassins were followed by character assassins; the twain often meet up, especially where there is a prize to steal, and I am referring to resources - Merrill Lynch called Bolivia the "Saudi Arabia of Lithium", and that metal is not the only one under the surface of Bolivia's soil; gold, silver, uranium, zinc, tin, iron, and many others. External conflict related to it all is to be expected, but there are internal conflicts as well, as opposition to mining exists in some of the very indigenous groups that put MAS in office. Morales is holding up well with this, balancing environmentalism and local spirituality with the reality of having to feed some 10 million people. The president at one point drew the line and told some that they could not stand in the way of the good of the nation. This week Bolivia is hosting an international summit on the environment to be held on Earth Day, and Gustafson notes that James Cameron is already in Cochabamba. Forgive me for a note of cynicism here, but I expect lots of grandstanding from rich movie star types and not sure they will make any lasting contribution. That has to come from the Bolivians and their committed allies; lots of limelight grabbers will hug trees, but their hypocrisy is easily seen when they admit they can't be bothered to wear one thread of hemp. They wear cotton and write on tree pulp paper - destroying entire forests to get their names into magazines and newspapers for this or that, and going green is the latest way to get attention. Hopefully their time spent in Bolivia will humble them and they will take away some reality to bring back to the world of virtual non-reality we call the West.
So we shall see. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk greatly improved Turkey in the 1920s with his education reform - so much so that a friend of mine spent one year in school there and was put three years ahead in a New York school - and the same seems to be happening in Bolivia, which, it might be recalled, is noted for having already produced 'America's best teacher', the late Jaime Escalante. There is a lot to learn here and I expect it to be good.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Birds endemic to Bolivia
The following is a list of all the known endemic Bolivian birds. The country has a total of 1448 species, but as many parts of it are unexplored, there may well be 100 more to go. The Latin name appears first, followed by the English and then any local names if known.
Ara rubrogenys Red-fronted Macaw Least known of all macaws.
Habitat: Restricted to a small semi-desert mountainous area. It is highly endangered, and there may only be 150 or so birds left in the wild; the least known of all South American parrots. Red list.
Aglaeactis pamela Black-hooded Sunbeam
Habitat: Subtropical or tropical moist montanes and subtropical or tropical high-altitude shrubland. Red list.
Discosura letitiae Coppery Thorntail
Habitat: Known only from two old male specimens. Red list.
Simoxenops striatus Bolivian Recurvebill
Habitat: Subtropical or tropical dry forests and subtropical or tropical moist montane forests. It is becoming rare due to habitat loss. Red list.
Oreopsar bolivianus Bolivian Blackbird
Habitat: Subtropical or tropical high-altitude shrubland and pastureland. Red list.
Compsospiza garleppi Cochabamba Mountain Finch
Habitat: Between 9,000 and 12,000ft in semi-arid valleys containing Polylepis spp., Alnus spp. and other associated small trees and shrubs. Red list.
Myrmethorula grisea Yungas Antwren Hormiguerito grisante
Habitat: Subtropical or tropical dry forests and subtropical or tropical moist montane forests. It is becoming rare due to habitat loss. Red list.
Grallaria erythrotus Rufous-faced Antpitta Chululu cara colorado
Habitat: Subtropical or tropical moist montane forests and heavily degraded former forest. Red list.
Schizoaeca harterti Black-throated Thistletail
Habitat: Subtropical or tropical moist montanes and subtropical or tropical high-altitude grassland. Red list.
Cranioleuca henricæ Inquisivi Spinetail Curutie de Inquisivi
Habitat: Discovered in 1993; subtropical or tropical dry forests and plantations . It is threatened by habitat loss. Red list.
Scytalopus zimmeri Zimmer's Tapaculo Churrin de Zimmer
Habitat: An edemic which prefers subtropical or tropical moist montanes to subtropical or tropical high-altitude shrubland and rocky areas. It is named after the American ornithologist John Todd Zimmer, who wrote on neo-tropical birds for the American Museum of Natural History. Red list.
Tarphonomus harterti Bolivian Earthcreeper Bandurrita boliviana
Habitat: Subtropical or tropical high-altitude shrubland. Red list.
Asthenes berlepschi Berlepsch's Canastero Canastero de Berlepsch
Habitat: An endemic which lives in subtropical or tropical high-altitude shrubland and rural gardens. It is threatened by habitat loss. Red list.
Turdus haplochrous Unicoloured Thrush Zurzal
Habitat: Subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests. Red list. Hemitriccus spodiops Yungas Tody-Tyrant Habitat: Subtropical or tropical moist montanes. Red list.
Ara rubrogenys Red-fronted Macaw Least known of all macaws.
Habitat: Restricted to a small semi-desert mountainous area. It is highly endangered, and there may only be 150 or so birds left in the wild; the least known of all South American parrots. Red list.
Aglaeactis pamela Black-hooded Sunbeam
Habitat: Subtropical or tropical moist montanes and subtropical or tropical high-altitude shrubland. Red list.
Discosura letitiae Coppery Thorntail
Habitat: Known only from two old male specimens. Red list.
Simoxenops striatus Bolivian Recurvebill
Habitat: Subtropical or tropical dry forests and subtropical or tropical moist montane forests. It is becoming rare due to habitat loss. Red list.
Oreopsar bolivianus Bolivian Blackbird
Habitat: Subtropical or tropical high-altitude shrubland and pastureland. Red list.
Compsospiza garleppi Cochabamba Mountain Finch
Habitat: Between 9,000 and 12,000ft in semi-arid valleys containing Polylepis spp., Alnus spp. and other associated small trees and shrubs. Red list.
Myrmethorula grisea Yungas Antwren Hormiguerito grisante
Habitat: Subtropical or tropical dry forests and subtropical or tropical moist montane forests. It is becoming rare due to habitat loss. Red list.
Grallaria erythrotus Rufous-faced Antpitta Chululu cara colorado
Habitat: Subtropical or tropical moist montane forests and heavily degraded former forest. Red list.
Schizoaeca harterti Black-throated Thistletail
Habitat: Subtropical or tropical moist montanes and subtropical or tropical high-altitude grassland. Red list.
Cranioleuca henricæ Inquisivi Spinetail Curutie de Inquisivi
Habitat: Discovered in 1993; subtropical or tropical dry forests and plantations . It is threatened by habitat loss. Red list.
Scytalopus zimmeri Zimmer's Tapaculo Churrin de Zimmer
Habitat: An edemic which prefers subtropical or tropical moist montanes to subtropical or tropical high-altitude shrubland and rocky areas. It is named after the American ornithologist John Todd Zimmer, who wrote on neo-tropical birds for the American Museum of Natural History. Red list.
Tarphonomus harterti Bolivian Earthcreeper Bandurrita boliviana
Habitat: Subtropical or tropical high-altitude shrubland. Red list.
Asthenes berlepschi Berlepsch's Canastero Canastero de Berlepsch
Habitat: An endemic which lives in subtropical or tropical high-altitude shrubland and rural gardens. It is threatened by habitat loss. Red list.
Turdus haplochrous Unicoloured Thrush Zurzal
Habitat: Subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests. Red list. Hemitriccus spodiops Yungas Tody-Tyrant Habitat: Subtropical or tropical moist montanes. Red list.
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