Amazon with Pruce Parry

In scenes reminiscent of a northern English town after closing time on Friday night, part two saw Parry joining the Achuar Indians of the Peruvian Amazon in one of their regular communal vomiting sessions. (Non-UK readers may instead recall the puking puppet in Team America.)

V joked that these 'vomitindios' were probably all drinking sweet papaya juice while the poor unwanted gringo was made to down four litres of the 'piss one chango' recipe for Ayahuasca...para que no le quedan ganas de regresar!

While the programme is revealing of the potential impact of globalised business - legal and illegal - on Amazonian communities, it also attests to a somewhat hypocritical streak of prejudice against modern life in general. Parry, making use of planes, choppers and all sorts of outboard motors on his journey 'from source to sea', at one stage describes a puddle of crude oil oozing from a drilling facility as "really not great stuff". 

Nor, once he had come down off the Andes, did we get to see much of the extraordinarily diverse wildlife that Parry has periodically mentioned - in fact in this week's episode, the only evidence of the great river's fauna were a barbecued monkey and some hapless catfish that the Achuar extract from the river by deoxygenating it using local leaves. This poisoning of the river is impermanent and fully sustainable Parry reassured us, unlike of course, the over-keen harvesting activities of the outsiders. 

And this perhaps is the problem I have with this kind of British TV  documentary - when a white American man dances with a snake, he is a figure of ridicule, but when it's a member of one of these museum communities, a rather phoney reverence for tribal superstitions of all kinds kicks in. 

I like my travellers to be a bit more judgmental, with a sense of what they could teach as well as learn. Parry however follows the mold of other affable BBC nomads like Michael Palin and Louis Theroux - though of course the irony with the latter's films is that he affects his own brand of receptive relativism, convincing his hosts of his fascination for their sub-cultures while discreetly holding them up to the most acrid and knowing kind of mockery. 

Passing another Achuar township further down Parry noted that this lot had been less wary of commercial intrusion and thus now benefitted from jobs, electricity and TV. "But what had they lost..?" Don't you just hate it when presenters toss that little rhetorical question into the mix and then make little effort to answer it.  

Nobody really wants an L-Dopa-style of development for these indigenous peoples - the kind familiar from the history of the United Fruit Company elsewhere in the hemisphere - bonanza followed by devastating burn-out. Nevertheless, who are we to say that the Achuar would be wrong to aspire to a life with more to it than war, wife-beating, fish suffocation and serial chundering? Some sort of long-term exposure to the globalised world and its values is surely inevitable and in a sense desirable. It should however be based on an exchange which emulates intercourse not violation - consensual sex rather than rape. 

Half Nelson

Ryan Gosling fully deserved an Oscar nomination for his remarkably truthful portrayal of Dan Dunne, a crack-addicted white history teacher circling the plughole in a Brooklyn public school.

As a character study Half Nelson is entirely convincing - Dunne could easily have been fodder for another of those Alexander Payne movies...yet unlike Miles in Sideways or Mr McAllister in Election, his story hasn't been furnished with the kind of plot structure that would make this particular tour of loser-dom meaningful beyond these particular circumstances.

Instead what we get are a set of variably memorable incidents, most of which emerge out of his relationship with 13-year-old Drey, one of his students and an all-too-classic case of latchkey kid. This kind of cross-generational, complementary loneliness which plays out against a rather listless narrative will be familiar to anyone who wholeheartedly enjoyed Lost in Translation....myself not included. Still, an interesting movie. 

I have a bracelet too...

My guess is that many amongst the 'undecided' will have found the first televised debate between McCain and Obama rather inconclusive.

The pronounced contrast in styles can shoulder some of the blame, but then I think McCain set out to stylistically ambush his opponent, adopting a chummier persona whilst addressing the audience more obviously than he did Obama ("HE doesn't understand..."). The latter had a cold start but soon looked the more eager to turn this discussion into an actual debate, and I grew quite weary of McCain's homeliness which started to bring back memories of Reagan. (And who cares how many political dinosaurs McCain can count amongst his most intimate compadres?) 

Both appeared to have a very simplistic grasp of the state of Iraq, though only Obama could possibly have been deliberately dumbing down. On the other hand his babble about Russia and Georgia didn't offer me any more insight than I could have gleaned from a quality newspaper. He also admonished Venezuela for acting like a rogue state, before backing up his enthusiasm for the Bin Laden chase in Afghanistan with some dubious contentions about Al Qaeda expansionism in America's back yard. 

In a proper debate however, Obama would have been allowed to make more of his key insight that US behaviour in Iraq has contributed to the rabidisation of Iran.  Neither was forced to address the issue of how much of a long-term ally a Shia-led Iraq will be unless America can patch things up a bit with the nutters next door. 

McCain struggled with the name of the new president of Pakistan, but then Obama called McCain 'Jim'...and anything has to be better than "General". 

Both duly trotted out their over-familiar back-stories: POW / Scion of bright-eyed Kenyan student, though Obama cleverly allowed McCain to take the lead on all the corny stuff. 

Palin v Biden should be much more entertaining. 

Tropic Thunder

There are various types of humour at work here, some sophisticated others pretty basic, so I guess enough kinds of people will find this movie utterly hilarious in enough patches to turn it into one of those runaway word-of-mouth successes.

The script for what is part movie spoof part Hollywood satire is the work of Ben Stiller, along with Ethan Cohn and Justin Theroux. I personally found the talkier parts of the movie funnier, but it also has to be said that some of the biggest laughs derive from gesture - such as the way Stiller unloads his gun into the jungle, or the manner that the pigmentally-adjusted Robert Downey JR complements his "Chicken George shit" with appropriately comical movements.

There has been some controversy surrounding some of the gags here, but as Senator Barack Obama should know by now, when you are at least partly targeting the lowest common-denominator, someone is bound to get offended when you start coming over all clever and ironic.

Wanted

For twenty minutes or so this was little more than a diverting juvenile fantasy, most likely I presumed to have been dreamed up by men around my own age who had spent the best part of the 90s sitting in their cubicles after work playing Unreal Tournament, Half Life and Doom, pausing only to tell each other how awesome The Matrix was.

In fact it's the same 3-man team of hardware festishists that brought us other enjoyable examples of dumb fun like 2Fast 2Furious. But in this flick the dumb fun quickly becomes significantly less harmless, drifting into distastefully amoral territory, before trying less than successfully to return to dubiously sympathetic ground as the plot is doubled back on itself.

"Six months ago I was ordinary and pathetic, just like you," muses our 'hero' Wesley Allan Gibson on his lifestyle change. As if possession of a firearm and a remit to shoot strangers is the true path to a meaningful existence.  A decade or so or go this kind of scurrilous nonsense could have featured desperate C-list talent - or maybe even Jean-Claude Van Damme - but now, mysteriously, major thesps are drawn to it. 

Jungle Capitalists (1)

Historians can be just as guilty of churnalism as journos. Us bloggers on the other hand can surely be forgiven our predeliction for apocrypha.

One of those stories I've seen 'churned' out in various forms by more serious commentators than I will ever profess to be is that of the collaboration between the CIA and the United Fruit Company in bringing about the 1954 coup that curtailed democracy in Guatemala for three decades.

I was however encouraged to discover that Peter Chapman, author of Jungle Capitalists, had knocked up a thesis about UFC whilst studying at Sussex University and was therefore more likely to be au fait with the more primary kind of material available on this subject.

What I found especially interesting was his account of the role of some of the pioneers of the American PR industry in this seminal piece of regime change.

United Fruit had long been making use of the services of Edward Bernays - 'the father of spin' - a nephew of Sigmund Freud whose magnum opus Propaganda spoke of the 'group mind' and 'invisible government' whilst establishing his own profession as the 'unseen mechanism of society'.

Bernays had famously repositioned cigarettes as 'lights of freedom' in a 1929 campaign targeted at women, so it is unsurprising that United Fruit would contract him to re-brand Central America as Middle America (and to help them set up the 'Middle American Information Bureau'.)

The soon-to-be-displaced government of Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán in Guatemala was causing offence to all lovers of Carmen Miranda and Señorita Chiquita Banana with his land redistribution policies, which involved handing over UFC's fallow estates to poor Indians and then paying the company compensation at book value, and in bonds withal.

The brother of United Fruit's former CEO was in charge of Latin American affairs at the State Department and duly sent the Guatemalan goverment an invoice for what the US thought was a more appropriate valuation: $16m.

Langley plotting against Guatemalan democracy had started under Truman but didn't really get going until John Foster Dulles was handed the State Department by Eisenhower.

CIA agent Howard Hunt, who went on to do great things at the Bay of Pigs and the Watergate Hotel, was instructed by Director Allen Dulles to build a case that Árbenz was intellectually challenged and under the control of his wife, Maria Cristina Villanova, a progressive-leaning lady from one of the '14' families of El Salvador. (One could see something similar going on in the local media when Colom was standing for election last year)

Hunt created a phony radio station called the Voice of Liberation and hired an actor to anchor it. He then recruited exiled General and part-time furniture salesman Carlos Castillo Armas to fulfill the role of liberator personified.

Meanwhile Bernays had helped el pulpo to produce a 20 minute film entitled Journey to Banana Land which was widely shown in American schools during the crisis year of 1954. He was also organising a series of notorious press junkets to Guatemala involving mocked-up disturbances designed to convince editors that the country was a hotbed of communist agitation.

Another PR called John Clements produced a 'Report on Guatemala' which advised Eisenhower's government that the ultimate aim of la Señora Árbenz and her commie compadres was nothing less than the seizure of the Panama Canal no less.

As Castillo Armas and his rather compact army of liberation approached Guatemala City, Hunt made sure that the roads behind him were littered with dead mules, suggestive of heavy fighting - which was backed up by reports on The Voice of Liberation. Pictures were shown to US newsmen of bodies, reportedly the result of government atrocities but more likely, Thomas McCann later admitted, to be archive images of earthquake victims.

CIA planes then dropped a few bombs on the capital's slums along with a letter signed by the Archbishop declaring Árbenz to be a godless communist.

Che Guevara, in Guatemala because he'd failed to get a post at a United Fruit hospital, urged Árbenz to 'take to the hills' but instead the President fled the country and the long nightmare of successive dictatorships and civil war began. Che meanwhile headed for sanctuary at the Argentinian embassy. Hunt later claimed to have briefly captured the future guerrilla leader and to have made the glaring error of sparing his life.

More on this fascinating book later...

One of our SOBs?

When repeatedly pressed by a Spanish hack to reveal if he would invite President Zapatero to the white house, John McCain found himself in a bit of a geo-political tangle recently.

"I will meet with any leader who has the same principles and philosophy as us in terms of human rights, democracy, and freedom and I will stand up to those who do not." was his eventual answer, after a brief digression about US-Mexican relations and the general balance of friends and enemies in the Latin world.

No indication if dinner would be included.

Perhaps the Spanish leader sounded a bit like one of those bolshie types down south that have recently developed the annoying habit of ejecting their US ambassadors.

Idiomatic Chapin (2)

Contribuir - verb: Paga (casi) todo burro.

Idiomatic Chapin (1)

Colaborar - verb: Paga todo burro.

John Lloyd Stephens (1)

Back in 1839, on his first trip to Central America, President Van Buren's special envoy John Lloyd Stephens found himself on the Carretera Atlántico which links the capital with the Caribbean entry points:

"This is the great high road to the city of Guatemala, which has always been a place of distinction in Spanish America. Almost all the travel and merchandise from Europe passes over it; and our guide said that the reason it was so bad was because it was traversed by so many mules. In some countries this would be a reason for making it better; but it was pleasant to find that the people to whom I was accredited were relieved from one of the sources of contention at home, and did not trouble themselves with the complicated questions attendant upon internal improvements."

Similar thoughts traversed my mind the last time I found myself jolting around on the road that leads from the Belizean border to Santa Elena and Flores, gateway to Tikal. In other countries such an important tourist artery would be well maintained...

When you're a Jet...

There are two gangs in this house. One consists of two adult humans, two dogs and one white cat and the other consists of the other seven cats, including two adults, two adolescents and a couple of recent additions whose long-term loyalties are yet to be decided.

Actually Osli - the cat in our gang - is one of those flexible types that thinks he can move smoothly across social frontiers without causing major ructions.

The architecture has a lot to do with this. Like many Oxbridge colleges, Guatemalan homes are not big on corridors. Five of the cats in the other gang were born in the internal patio and have no reason to suspect that this area of the house might actually belong to us humans (and dogs) in any way.

Whenever we cross over from our indoor space into their outdoor space - to do some gardening for example - they collectively assume expressions of profound vexation. They themselves will only slink into our zone when it appears to be otherwise unoccupied...whereas you can't hold a door open for more than four seconds without Osli trying to dart through it one way or another.

Who do you think you are?

Given that the two biggest skeletons in the cupboard of Western civilisation are slavery and the Holocaust respectively, it's perhaps not surprising that the BBC signs up a disproportionate number of celebrities of Afro-Caribbean and Jewish ancestry for this popular ancestor-tracking series.

Last week TV chef Ainsley Harriot went back five generations and found a young black slave girl, a free negress - who may have been a prostitute - a poor white slave overseer and a wealthy slave-owner: one Mr Harriot. (The overseer had apparently been paid by his employer to increase the slave-stock by natural means.)

Ainsley expressed some distate about the assumed mental make-up of his white forebears, yet declared himself "proud" of a mulatto NCO from Barbados one generation nearer, who had distinguished himself by killing his brother Africans in Sierra Leone as part of a British-led regiment.

The balance on this programme between the historical-didactic elements and the journey of personal discovery is a fine one. Personally I felt that I learned nothing particularly surprising from Ainsley's investigation, but Jerry Springer's was another matter. He knew for instance that both of his maternal grandmothers had been murdered by the Nazis and that his own parents made it to Britain just a few days before the outbreak of war would close that particular exit route, but the precise details of their terrible fate provided material for a singularly moving and disturbing slant on what has become something of a familiar story.

Moloteras

Today is Independence Day in Mexico and we were a bit surprised to see a Mexican TV news reporter awaiting the military parade in DF this morning wearing a flak jacket.

Last night in Morelia (Michoacán), at the very moment when the state Governor Leonel Godoy rang the bell and everyone filled their lungs ready to shout "Viva Mexico!" two grenades went off in the crowd, killing 7 and wounding over 80. As bodies fell and innocents writhed in agony, a firework display started and mariachis played.

Michoacán is not only the base of President Vicente Calderón, it is also the heart of what is now being desacribed as "disorganised crime" in Mexico - run by a new breed of narcos that care less about their social base (building schools etc.) and operate according to a far more random and brutal set of principles.

The crowd here in Antigua last night was less deadly but also significantly disorganised. Part of the problem was that the 15th fell on a Monday this year, creating a long weekend and encouraging an influx of outsiders. The fragile state of the Palace of the Captains General also meant that the marching bands were not permitted to fully circulate the park. The combined effect of more people and less space was therefore "una molotera," according to one woman we overheard fleeing up the 4a Calle Oriente. She was soon followed by one of the school bands, which broke away from the procession after their jefe called out "let's go, we aint never gonna to make it to the cathedral".

And up that road we soon drifted ourselves...and I was to make the interesting discovery that the sliced wholemeal bread made at Doña Luisa Xicotencatl is not only yummier than the Bimbo crap sold at the Bodegona, it's cheaper too. (However, one of the viejas who serves in the shop has been there about twenty years and makes your typical Parisian shopkeeper seem postively welcoming in comparison.)

UPDATE: This shockingly nihilistic intentado in the plaza of Morelia last night barely merited a mention on the BBC news, TV and Web. One has to suppose that editors over there couldn't find a way to relate it to the prevailing narrative of global terror.

"Lift your hand if you are one of the priority wounded," called out an ambulance worker at the scene...not a strategem that would work especially well even outside Central America.

Independence Day

Today is Independence Day here in Guatemala, the pivotal date in what ends up running to over a week of constant celebrations.

Guatemala claimed its independence on September 15, 1821, when Brigadier General Gabino Gainza, taking note of what had already happened up north in Mexico, called a special meeting of notables to sort out their own formal emancipation.

The country then briefly became part of the Mexican Empire (not something you'd think people here would want to celebrate) before forming part of the United Provinces of Central America.

Here in Antigua groups of people from outlying towns and villages come to the Parque Central to collect a diesel burning torch - the independence antorcha - before running back home with it. It's all a bit like a deregulated Olympic torch run, without the Chinese heavies and screaming Tibetans. Torches are carried around on a national level too, with at least one going all the way to Costa Rica.

All of the nations of Central America celebrate their freedom from Spain on this day, with the exception of Panama which was later carved out of Colombia by the gringos for rather obvious reasons.

If anyone knows how, why, when this tradition got started I'm all ears.

This was the spectacular fireworks display in Antigua last night:

Boulangerie

Our favourite Hispanic TV programme these days is Boulangerie with Bruno Gillot and Olivier Hanocq, two fantastically incomprehensible Frenchmen who own a Buenos Aires bread-shop with an 'artesanal' wood-fire oven dating back to 1911 - L'Epi.

Last Sunday they showed us how to make a ham sandwich with a leisurely nine hours preparation time! (Pain Faluche and a home-cooked leg of ham.)

Here's a clip someone has uploaded to YouTube. They're speaking Spanish, though you'd hardly know it. (That they learned it in Argentina just adds to the fun.)

There would appear to be a whole gang of these Gallic exiles in BA...clearly a global mecca for people with silly accents. (see also...)

Hancock

You should know you have problems when the moral centre of your story is a PR executive.

Indeed it's not hard to see why this script floated around Hollywood for a decade before finding a willing producer. One of its main premises has a great deal of potential, but there are also quite a few built-in flaws, which would have been very apparent to any backer...right up to the moment when Will Smith stepped up to take the lead!

Hancock's problem is ultimately a lack of decent antagonists. Having seen off his own asshole self in the promising satirical-comedy opening, the rest of the film sees him not really confronting his former other half and not really confronting a non-descript gang of roughneck crims. Along the way the writers lost the will to be funny, yet in spite of its rather half-baked halves, Hancock does, just about, manage to remain an entertaining way to spend an evening.

Guns n Geezers

When Mark Kermode says "I went in with an open mind" you just know that the movie in question isn't going to come out all that well. And so it was with Rocknrolla, Guy Ritchie's latest, described by the Good Doctor as The Long Good Friday as performed by Chas and Dave. 

Shame it's not on YouTube yet. 

Time to share the joy...

I think we may already have enough cats.

It's beginning to feel a bit like Gremlins HQ around here. 

Cherry seems to think so too...

La hora de antojo

Doña Mari, our local tortillera, sells her tortillas at four for one Quetzal at lunchtime. 

Prices elsewhere have risen in 2008, but there has been a recent influx of competition here coupled with a surge in demand thanks to the various construction projects going on in the neighbourhood.

Come the evening she pushes her comal outside her front gate and fries up pupusas in pig fat - these are essentially the same tortillas with some added cheese, but now costing five Quetzales each. Both the competition and the daytime demand have by this time abated...but this is also the hora de antojo (the hour of whims) so she does a decent enough trade. 

Fresh tortillas are great, but once they have been in the fridge for a day or so V likes to treat them to a quick spin in the microwave before frying them briefly in olive oil. The result is crispy and very delicious. 

Queso de Capas

And here is my personal favourite of the doorbell-ringing vendors - the cheese man. This poor old chap is dispatched every other Friday by some distant finca to sell their dairy produce here on the outskirts of Antigua.

His name is Andres Castro and this morning he remembered that V had made a special order last time for some queso de capas - 'layered' cheese - produced by gradually supplementing the harder base with additional layers as the cheese matures in order to cultivate a more rubbery texture. (The commoner milk-cheese here is saltier, creamier and crumblier.)