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The Week That Was - Bolivian Blogs

Bolivia can breathe a sigh of relief. Presidential elections have been rescheduled for December 18 after weeks of uncertainty. President Eduardo Rodriguez emitted a Presidential decree that redistributed the highly disputed Congressional seats and as a result, determined that the elections would take place two weeks after the original fixed date.

Most of the Bolivian blogosphere had been rather quiet about the debate over these seats that were eventually redistributed in close accordance to the current population census. Only Alvaro Ruiz-Navajas discussed the various proposals and their constitutionality in his blog Off Topic.

The main reason why the redistribution of seats was necessary was because of the change of Bolivia’s population due to internal migration. Alexey sums up why many people, especially from the Departments of Potosí and Oruro, are moving to Santa Cruz: more jobs.

Miguel Buitrago from MABB posted a translation of a controversial interview with Movimiento Indígena Pachacuti (MIP) Presidential candidate Felipe Quispe, who had some interesting things to say about his future plans and his opinions on the leading candidate Evo Morales.

Scarcity of gas used for cooking was partially alleviated with the introduction of an additional 80,000 canisters to La Paz and El Alto. However, Antonio Saravia speculates that these extra canisters will allow those involved with contraband to greatly profit. He suggests in his blog The Economist en su Laberinto that Bolivia should eliminate gas subsidies. Nick Buxton from Open Veins was on the receiving end of some suspicion by a Bolivian woman who saw him taking pictures of gas canisters. Later, she realized he was not a “shameless tourist.”

One blogger who seldom expresses his personal thoughts on his site Bolivia … Lo Mejor Que Tenemos posted a rarely seen opinion on the recent Congressional crisis. Normally, Danny scours the foreign press, especially from Argentina and Chile, posting articles without the commentary, about Bolivia from the viewpoint of these neighboring countries. However, this week Danny wrote:

“As a Paceño (from the city of La Paz), but most of all, as a Bolivian, I stand in solidarity with the determination of the Cruceño (from the city of Santa Cruz) Parlimentary Brigade to return to its region if the Congressional seats are not given to them in accordance with the law”

Finally, Halloween has reached Bolivia. Jim Shultz from the Democracy Center’s blog hopes that there will be a way to preserve the Bolivian traditions of Todos Santos while allowing for the holiday from the North. However, Grillo Villegas says in his blog Almaqueloide that he has never attended a Halloween party, much less visited a cemetery with the traditional tantawawas.

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Mexico: Día de los Muertos

David Sasaki · 21:57 · Americas

November 1st and 2nd mark Mexico's holiday, Día de los Muertos, or “Day of the Dead.” Calypso Mexico describes celebrating the days in a small colonia in Vera Cruz, emphasizing that “Dia de los Muertos is about remembering your loved ones that have passed from this world. It is NOT about ghouls and goblins and witchcraft, quite the contrary. It is about a father or mother, uncle or aunt, sons or daughters or a grandparent – family that has died.”

Enigmatario has, by far, the most thorough and reflective post this year about the celebration and how its rites evolved from a mixture of Spanish and Aztec customs [ES]:

It's common to see families go to the cemeteries to clean the tomb of their dad or mom, turning the visit almost into a celebration. They bring cleaning materials and food, buy the favorite flowers of the deceased or, keeping the special significance of the date is the “cempasúchil,” [a type of flower pictured above] with its bright orange color that acts as a guide for the spirits from the altar, tomb, and this world.

(more…)

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Travels in the Kurdish Blogosphere

Deborah Ann Dilley · 13:46 · Middle East & North Africa

New in Kurdish cyberspace is the announcement of a new Kurdish news agency called Firat News, while there is some critism from some Kurds, as it is currently published in Turkish, it still is an exciting venture for those in Northern Kurdistan (Southeast Turkey). Plans for news in Kurdish are underway for the site. Also Kurdish Lily has posted an announcement of a new Kurdish forum called the Kurdish Youth Center.

Massoud Barzani, President of the Kurdistan regional government of Iraq, recently visited President Bush and wrote a column for the Washington Post, in which he supported the recent U.S.-led operation in Iraq on behalf of the Kurdish and Iraqi peoples. Kurdish reaction has been uniformedly a time-will-tell type attitude. However, in Barzani's meeting with President Bush, the president referred to Northern Iraq as Kurdistan which many Kurds see as a small victory.

Even while the positive press from the Barzani meeting has pleased Kurds, there is still an alarming amount of mis-information about the situation(s) in Kurdistan. Recently the Washington Post was critisized for publishing articles with an anti-Kurd bias. Hiwa from Hiwa Hopes posted a letter that he wrote to a University professor who had published an article on a University webpage that was unfair in its protrayal of the Kurds, accusing them of having a “visceral hatred” for Arabs. Other items in the news that Kurdish supporters have been trying to illustrate the misinformation within are: a Russian researcher stating that there is no oppression of Kurds in Syria, and elaborating on further unrest in Iranian Kurdistan; which have been provided to us from Vladimir of From Holland to Kurdistan. Also there has been some statements made recently from the Arab League that they have never understood Kurdish aspirations of sovereignty, which to those that follow not only the politics of the Arab League but also of the Kurdish peoples comes as no surprise.

Despite the political concerns of the Kurdish peoples that have graced the headlines recently, nothing is more moving than the stories that come from the Kurds themselves. Piling of the Kurdistan Bloggers Union recently posted a personal account of displaced Kurds within Turkey.

“This husband of mine who doesn’t speak anymore was arrested and tortured several times. I don’t know what the charges were. There is always something. Soon after his last arrest, the soldiers came to the village. They brought us all together in the village yard. They asked whether we would finally agree to become guards. We said no. So they burnt down all our houses and forced us to leave. We went from village to village, from one kinsmen’s house to the other. No one took us for more than a couple of days. We came here. Look at the barren walls, the barren rooms. There is nothing. We have nothing. We are nothing. And my husband can’t speak, nor work, nor go out. Possibly, because of torture. “

Displacement of Kurds within Turkey is a serious problem and there is an estimated 4000 villages that have been destroyed within the last decade as part of the Turkish government's policy of “relocation”. Since the Kurds are displaced internally there is not an international law mechanism for institutions like the United Nations to intervene.

There has also been a new addition to the Kurdish blogs this week, a blog entitled Pearls of Iraq, which is written by a woman named Miriam who is working on various non-profit infrastructure programs in the Northern Iraq/Southern Kurdistan region. This blog will be an interesting one to follow in the coming months.

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Grand Ayatollah Reads Blogs

Hossein Derakhshan · 09:15 · Iran

Last week something extraordinary happened in the Persian blogging community. Mohammad Abtahi, a former vice-president of Iran and an enthusiastic blogger was visiting the eighty-something dissident Grand Ayatollah Montazeri in Qom, a religious city south of Tehran.

“How is Mr Abtahi's blog doing,” the Grand Ayatollah jokingly asks during a pause in a small gathering, while sitting on his special teaching chair which is higher than usual chairs.

According to a post on Abtahi's blog, the Ayatollah later tells him that he reads his blogs and asks him about its readership and the time he spends on it everyday. Like many, the Ayatollah is also angry about his website being filtered and provides the blogger cleric with a new unblocked web address for his website.

Any time you have party-animal teenagers and dissident old Ayatollahs doing the same thing, you must know it's a popular thing.

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