Executives and the Executive

Following Efraín Ríos Montt's announcement last Wednesday that he plans to run for Congress this year in Guatemala, Amnesty International once again called for him to either face trial in Guatemala (for genocide, torture, terrorism and illegal detention) or be extradited to Spain, a country which specialises in prosecuting other countries' right-wing human rights violators rather than its own.

Meanwhile Guatemalan cops are reportedly chasing seventeen former executives of the failed Bancafe, as well as those of the more recently collapsed Banco de Comercio. Late last Thursday night, arrest warrants were issued for Bancafe founder Manuel Eduardo Gonzalez and for his son Eduardo Gonzalez, until recently President Oscar Berger's executive secretary. Charges of fraud and money-laundering are likely to be issued.

Trancers

Chucking shapes on the fabulous white sand dance floor at the rear of the Blue Parrot in Playa. (Newsweek once selected this as one of the ten best bars in the world.)

I tried to upload this clip to Revver but they kept rejecting it for copyright reasons. A pity because the quality of the conversion on YouTube was too poor to share, but this version on Metacafe ended up just about ok, though still much darker than the original.

I have in a way created my own mix here as the five clips in the compilation were originally shot at various stages in the evening when the DJs were playing different tracks. The gringa hopping around artlessly in the background amused V.


Trancers At The Blue Parrot - video powered by Metacafe

The Sheltering Sky

This novel is a feast of rich, thought-laden prose, but the problem I have with it is that the Moresbys are just so un-likeable. You quickly find yourself willing them on over the edge - and out of view - as quickly as possible.

Bowles was possibly aware of this defect as he appears to compensate for it by shadowing his jaded American couple with the Lyles, an exaggeratedly loathsome Anglo-Australian mother and son duo, that Port himself acknowledges are little more than living caricatures.

Whilst Port does retain some interest as a representative of a certain post-war intellectual type, his close-to-estranged wife Kit was never pyschologically convincing for me. I guess I lost interest in her the moment Bowles mishandles the establishment of her persona with a passge revealing her curious obsession with omens.

The way Kit's subsequently gets in touch with her primitive nature appears altogether too contrived to support Bowles' stated intention of telling the story of two parallel journeys here, one into the abrasive Sahara of swirling sand, the other into the abrasive Sahara of the civilised mind.

One other criticism I'd have to level would be that there seem to be only so many ways to describe the comings and goings of the sun and moon and in north Africa. It occurred to me last week that in Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy handles the interposition of atmospheric effects in the desert rather better than Bowles did, but a hundred or so pages further on and I am starting to mutter "get on with it" to myself as I work my way through that densely-packed narrative too. Bowles captures much of what he has to say in terms of the educated man's encounter with the insidious landscape and its exotic culture early on when Port is led to Marhnia's tent. After that the set-piece explorations of the main theme tend to feel a bit repetitive.

When the novel was first published Tennessee Williams found he also had to use weather-based similies to pinpoint the way it manifests its deeper meanings: "Above that surface is the aura that I spoke of, intangible and powerful, bringing to mind one of those clouds that you have seen in summer, close to the horizon and dark in color and now and then silently pulsing with interior flashes of fire."

Doubleday look more than a bit foolish now to have turned down Bowles' work as "not a novel," but I can see what they might have been getting at. There's really a work of non-fiction at the heart of this particular onion, and it is that underlying aspect of its discourse that most distinguishes it in my view. I find it hard to agree with Williams that this is a "startling adventure", but then in the last half century mainstream culture has become altogether more startling.

Two of the more interesting themes in the novel are that of the difference between tourists and travelers, and the (clearly autobiographical) conundrum surrounding the restlessness of the creative consciousness in the desert. Port reports finding it very hard to get into right sort of reflective mood out there. His earlier assertion that travelers, unlike tourists, don't need to go home, shows how he is already underestimating the force that is irresistibly pulling him and Kit further and further away from 'home'. Seeking one kind of liberation they are swallowed up by another kind altogether.

I have been meaning to read this author-composer's fiction for some time after learning how he took the (very good) Guatemalan writer Rodrigo Rey Rosas under his wing in Tangier. Bowles had visited Guatemala in the 50s and set his last novel, Above the World, in an unnamed Central American country. It too features a doomed American couple.

And so onto the film...

La Virgen de la O

Every year on Christmas Day this little procession makes its way across Antigua from the colonia Candelario to the Escuela de Cristo. Aside from the umpteen fajas tossed on the cobbles in its path, the entry of the Virgen de la O into the church is marked by a lively, if somewhat uncoordinated firing of morteros. This is how they looked in their box before the procession arrived. And this is how they looked after their fuses were lit:



Just under a week ago on January 15th, many thousands of pilgrims from around the region made their way to the Guatemalan town of Esquipulas, proclaimed by the last Pope "the spiritual centre of Central America". The focus of the annual pilgrimage, the Black Christ carved from dark balsam, dates to March 1595 when it was presented to the mayor by Portuguese sculptor Quirio Catano.

Yzquipulas was the name of the local Indian chieftain that surrendered to the Spanish captains Juan Pérez Dardón, Sancho de Barahona y Bartolomé Becerra in 1525, apparently without a fight. The area already housed an important pre-Colombian shrine (perhaps associated with the then abandoned ceremonial centre of Copán) and ancient Maya devotion featured 'black' deities such as Ek Ahau, "the black captain", God of War, and Ek'Chuach, protector of merchants.

In 1934 Aldous Huxley wrote that "what draws worshippers is probably less the saintliness of the historic Jesus than the magical sootiness of his image. Numinosity is in inverse ratio to luminosity."

Scott and I recently debated whether it was Huxley that (originally) observed that Atitlán is "the most beautiful lake in the world". The remark is sometimes attributed to Hemingway (amongst others) but we're not sure that that particular author ever came to the Guatemalan highlands.

Can we please get real?

Trevor Philips, Chairman of the Equality commission, is on the Beeb right now voicing the opinion that racism starts the moment one starts talking about someone in terms of their group identity; in this specific instance when "she" becomes "they". That's crap Trevor.

He also described as racist an incident when the man at the gate at BBC Television Centre asked him who he had come to pick up. (So when someone once approached me in Borders and asked for my help finding a book that was racist too? )

Rudeness, ignorance and all kinds of bizarre assumptions are part and parcel of social interactions and whatever the Archbishop of York and Tessa Jowell may think, very hard to regulate.

Society is an eclectic mix of individual and group identities and stereotyping is very much part of our evolved psychology. I find it more than a bit dubious that the dangerously emotive term 'racism' is being deployed whenever a bias occurs across a social or cultural divide where there is also an ethnic component. (Trevor Phillips thinks it is completely irrelevant that Jade herself is of mixed race, but I'm not so sure.)

Last week's goings on in the BB house were a long way from representing the ugliest side of grass-roots prejudice in this country, and to outside eyes it is the collective fear of looking bad they have revealed, that must in fact look particularly bad in this instance.

If what happened to Trevor Phillips on his way to the TV studio were the very worst aspect of bigotry in the modern world, then we would have cause indeed to celebrate. Let's hope the week that starts tomorrow has some real news. Good news of course.

Walking with Amy in Jardines

Blood Diamond

Whether or not Africa itself deserves to be described as a little bit OTT this flick certainly does.

And at first it seems to lack the underlying sympathy for the plight of the continent that marks out other recent films that have successfully evoked its heart of darkness, such as Hotel Rwanda and The Constant Gardener. Instead it appears to be assuming a combination of the perspectives of its two white protagonists, the one cynical the other voyeuristic. Yet there's also more humour in this bloodbath, and as the story and its key characters fill out, it becomes more moving and disturbing, while the tension winds up very nicely.

De Caprio is superb. Like Brosnan in Matador, his performance is often the most engrossing thing on view. He's one actor I would not have expected to be so convincing in an action role. There's something unequivocably real about his ruthlessness. Bond may shoot to kill, but when have we seen him put a second bullet in the back of the prone body of the goon he's just taken down?

Jennifer Connelly plays the American reporter who "gives a shit", though not apparently about her press pack colleagues who are mowed down all around her without provoking a single word of sympathy or regret.

If certain aspects of the plotting are unsubtle, at the level of dialogue the script is deceptively good. And I particularly liked the way Hounsou's character Solomon Vandy is carefully held back, a quieter brooding presence a step or so behind the others, that is only properly unfurled in the final act.

Blood Diamond doesn't manage to shake off all of its contradictions, and those who stop to consider its most obvious public information messages are likely to end up a little confused. Does it really want to stop grooms and gangstas buying those big rocks? (Or is it more concerned about child soldiers?)

The civil war in Sierra Leone belongs to an earlier era − just − and a good deal has changed in the way diamonds are sourced and marketed since then. Yet although the conflict is now over we are told at the end, the onus is still on the consumer to steer clear of the conflict diamonds. And against the grain of the pervasive didactic intent, Jennifer Connelly's character at one stage seems to be pushing the message that no amount of awareness-raising in the rich world's media is ever going to make much of a lasting difference.

Nevertheless, such as it is, this film will probably reach and influence a far bigger audience than a more serious and consistently well-meaning one might have done. Not bad at all.

A crime of bias

This week in the UK we have suffered both the biggest storm in 17 years and the biggest storm in a teacup since God knows when.

The bating of one stuck up woman by three rather extremely stuck down ones in the Big Brother house has caused an international diplomatic crisis, and has today prompted our future PM to exort the British electorate to spend their half-quids on evicting this (undoubtedly ugly) stain on our national reputation for conditioned politeness.

Now I've been called rosbif before by some frogs in Southern Spain and I didn't at the time think it was a racist slur (just a bit rude!), but apparently calling an Indian woman poppadum is beyond the pale.

My mother, herself periodically prone to a bit of bigotry, snobbery and cultural prejudice, reliably informs me that the problem here is one of class, not of race. Certainly in a TV format that actively seeks the lowest, common-as-muck denominator, the participation of a rich and successful person from a country where mass poverty is known to prevail surely poses something of a provocation risk. Just how much though, is something the Channel Four executives that were burnt in effigy this week clearly hadn't given enough thought to.

Yesterday the New York Times revealed that crimes in LA motivated by racial, religious or sexual orientation increased 34% in 2005 over the previous year. This was put down to "demographics in transition" and power-politics between different ethnic groups, especially blacks and latinos. Interestingly, these crimes are being referred to as "bias crimes".

This is one indication that instead of clarifying what an irrational prejudice like racism actually is, it is proving easier to make the description of this mindset less specific. Here in Britain we can't decide if Jade Goody is an overt racist, but biased she most certainly is.

Kroutish

Great tourist promo video for Guatemala (in German). Last year Guatemala had a record 1.5 million foreign visitors, with overall income from tourism exceeding $1bn. This represents a 70% rise compared to 2003 and authorities expect further increase this year due to important international events: in 2007 Guatemala is to host the annual convention of the Inter-American Development Bank, the General Assembly of the International Olympic Committee and a cruise line convention.

Yo no puedo tia...

Boys perhaps ought to be better at this kind of thing than girls, but V's niece Amy puts her two city-soft cousins to shame. She has quite a bit of V's all-terrain agility and general fearlessness:

Gaucho

Is the new, slightly more self-important moniker for what used to be known as the Gaucho Grill.

"At Gaucho we pride ourselves on the basic philosophy of provenance. To us this means authenticity, assurance and rigorous attention to obtain the finest quality ingredients at source."

Which means you can't order a steak these days without being treated to a little lecture about all the different cuts and the best way to cook each of them, and you will be sternly corrected every time you use herd-speak words like sirloin: "Chorizo...sir"

Indeed our waiter last night was the over-attentive sort that usually drives my father up the wall. (Though not as bad as his equivalents next door at Awana where you are afraid to put your wine glass down on the table because each time you do several black suited loiterers practically trip over each other in their mad rush to refill it.)

Anyway, the point of this post was not a restaurant review, but to comment on the range of ceviches now on offer at this chain. Few would be recognisable as such to your average chapin.

I picked the Fire and Ice: "Tuna cured in a coconut, lime and citrus sauce with red onion, jalapeño, coriander and shaved coconut."

My mother told me that she would normally have asked for a mouthful but as they had only served me one, she'd let me keep it. It came in the sort of cocktail glass that hobbits might use to drink vodka martinis. In spite of the downsized, tight-fisted Argie nature of the portion it was so delicious and delicate that it did take a while to spoon down (and the spoon provided was halfling sized too.) I might try to make this at home.

This bit of copy on the website got a grin out of me. Since when was Sloane Avenue "one of the coolest avenues in London, if not Europe". (Ok, there's the Conran shop in the fabulous old Michelin House, but the only other landmarks of note are a Texaco garage, dreary-old Nell Gwyn House and a dirty brick C of E primary school. )

The wine we drank was lovely.

Non-paying critics

In the end Mel Gibson reversed his decision not to attend the Mexican premiere of Apocalypto.

He had planned a boycott as he claimed to be too hurt by all the derogatory comments made by the Central American viewers of (pirated copies of) his movie.

Nevertheless Maya activist and bootleg-DVD enthusiast Amadeo Cool May was reportedly impressed with the prophetic speech made early on in the movie by a Maya child: "That was really Maya. Her monlogue was well done". (Other cast members were less easy to understand. This might however have been due to the quality of the fake DVD being viewed.)

Mexican film director Juan Mora Catlett has claimed that Gibson has borrowed visual elements from his 1990 film Return to Aztlan, such as the inclusion of a group of natives in full-body white make-up. He doesn't plan to sue though. (Not that well-timed eclipses, waterfall jumps and quick sand struggles are all that original either, but they are all part of the immense fun of this film.)

Mint condition

To help solve the prevailing seasonal glitch in the state of Guatemalan happiness the Central Bank has announced that a new shipment of currency has arrived from foreign mints. (Canada, England, Germany and France all print Quetzales.) $20m has already turned up with a further $100m due by the end of this week.

The Central Bank had earlier apologised for forgetting to order new notes to replace those it had earlier destroyed. The resulting cash crisis provoked a major capital flight, exacerbated by the collapse of Bancafe.

Telediario reports today that the Superintendencia de Bancos is investigating the role of a "ghost company" in the collapse last week of the Banco de Comercio.

Que seas feliz, feliz, feliiiz

A Pew research centre poll has found that people living in Guatemala are the happiest in the world. (Strange, I thought they were a bunch of inveterate gripers.)

The research found that 71% of Guatemalans were happy with their life in general. The study covered 44 countries including Germany, Canada and the US. No surprises that the world's most miserable gits reside in Bulgaria, and that in Latin America the Argies are the least happy, with 98% saying their situation is "really bad".

Smoking peak

More volcanic belching action from Fuego as we walk the dog in Jardines.

Take-off

Over on the left the volcano sits within a loop of cloud. You get a fairly good impression of Guatemala City's extravagant topology from this short clip too.

Kukulkán

How many reviews of Apocalypto have I both read − and listened to − that refer to the Maya sacrificing people to their "sun god".

Watch the film maties; nowhere is a sun god mentioned. All these rolling heads are in fact accidental decapitations resulting from fully dignified, non-sectarian executions, dedicated in fact to Kukulkán, Maya God of the headless chicken. (Illustrated).

In seriousness, the Maya sun god was known as Ahau-Kin, "Lord of the Sun Face". Between sunset and sunrise he doubled up as the Jaguar god, a lord of the Underworld, for at those hours he journeyed from west to east through the lower regions of the world. Itzamna, the great god of knowledge was also associated with the sun, but not human sacrifice.

Kukulkán was the Toltec-Maya equivalent of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god. Human sacrifice to this deity, as depicted in Mel Gibson's movie did indeed occur, though animal sacrifice was more common. The great temple at Chichén Itzá, known to the Spanish as El Castillo, was a centre of quite visceral devotion to Kukulkán.

The Mexica ('Aztecs') sacrificed on a monumental scale to their gods of war, night, fire and rain. The tribal deity Huitzilopochtli did however have some associations with the sun.

One day someone will make the movie of the conquest of Mexico-Tenochtitlán . It's frankly amazing that it's never been done. I'd like to try to develop a script myself. It's actually really more mini-series material because there are distinct phases and the audience would need to appreciate the passage of time. There would be some amazing set pieces. The Pizarros in Peru would make a natural sequel! (I guess that the only way to include a significant female role would be through La Malinche, recently the subject of a novel by Mexican authoress Laura Esquivel.)

It strikes me that the late-classic Maya would have been more likely to sacrifice to their gods of corn or of rain (Chaac), than their sun god, whose prominence in the western re-imagination of pre-Colombian cultures owes a great deal to the Incas. Gibson's eclipse at the temple scene has antecedents in Tintin and the Picaros and several B movies before that.

As ever, Wikipedia has the low-down on Mayan mythology.

The Last King of Scotland

No question that this is an immensely powerful, and certainly very scary performance from Forest Whitaker as Amin. He has not only captured the menace and malice, but also the unavoidable charisma of the man. This film is to be highly recommended.

Yet does it provide any deeper insights into the psychology of tyrrany? Not really. In fact the interesting characterisation in this story ought to be that of the fictional composite Dr Nicholas Garrigan, whose mis-judgements are its dramatic engine.

You don't come across them as often as the do-gooders that are only really interested in the raw deprivation, but alienated, nascent sociopaths, mouths open basking for adventure in all its available forms, are hardly that unusual out in the developing world. I recognise the outline of the type in myself, but have come across it in far purer concentration in others.

The trouble is that aside from Dr Garrigan himself and Idi Amin, the other protagonists in the story are comparatively thin, leaving the young doctor with the screen-filling dictator as his primary interlocutor. He functions well enough as a suitable witness to the murderous Ugandan President's dialogue (actually mostly monologue), but he needs some more of his own to better manifest his inner turmoil and transformation. The moments where he floats in water flashing back to key scenes earlier in the film don't really cut it.

Chanchuyeros!

Alexandra organises twice-weekly games of kickball in her garden, gathering a pool of players from all the ages, sexes and classes in the neighbourhood. If you have ever played a competitive team sport with Guatemalans, you will be aware how nine tenths of available playtime is habitually lost to argument and general histrionics:



Immense fun though. It always takes me a week to feel physically comfortable in Antigua because of the altitude. The first time we played on December 24 I sprained a finger on my right hand quite badly. The thights hurt like mad from kicking at the end of our second session. I was just reaching the full match fitness when it was time to go!

Danger man

This fine looking fellow, was one of two 'dangerous' mareros captured in Guatemala City's Zona 18 on Friday morning.

The report I read speaks of this individual's "multiple entries" into Guatemala's penitentiary system, though makes no reference to what must also have been his multiple exits from the same.

He is also said to have participated in the riot at Pavoncito.