New poll

Mano Dura's radio ads now openly refer to the opposition as 'Mano Aguada'.

Things are looking up a bit for Mano Aguada though. According to the latest poll from CID Gallup 44.7% would vote for Colom, compared to the 42.1% that apparently intend to vote for Mano Dura; 13.2 % remain undecided.

Both candidates have said they want to increase the education budget; not a bad thing as 100m Quetzales (approx. $13m) were recently diverted from this by Oscar Berger's government towards the refurbisment of the airport.

It has to be said that this project has been carried out pretty well, on the inside at least. Getting in and out of Aurora International is, if anything, a more chaotic experience since it became 'the most modern airport in Central America'...thanks in part to the selfless sacrifice made by a generation of Guatemalan schoolkids.

Literature into Film

Yesterday I went along to see two films set in nineteenth century Rio; both part of the Barbican's season of Brazilian movies which have scripts adapted from literature.

The first of these was Memórias Póstumas (2001) taken from The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, the classic novel by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, which most Brazilians get to read at school.

The second was O Xangô de Baker Street (also made in 2001 and translated as A Samba for Sherlock), a rather silly caper that originated as a novel by Brazilian talk-show host Jô Soares. In it a rather bumbling Sherlock Holmes, played by Joaquim de Almeida is invited to Rio to help solve a crime that involves a missing Stradivarius and an increasing number of carved-up females. He may not uncover the murderer's identity but he does appear to start a fashion for light linen suits and along the way invents the caipirinha.

The scenes involving substances that are banned today and Dr Watson being possessed by a female orixa are very drôle. "Is he effeminate?" the shaman asks Holmes. "No, he's English," the detective responds. ("And you thought Swimming Pool was a piss-take of the English," TC chuckled afterwards.)

Memórias Póstumas begins with a dead man proposing to take his audience back through the significant moments of his 'full' life. We then see how Bras Cubas has pursued rogueish mediocrity as a lifestyle choice, but was obsessing about finally making a contribution to mankind when an unfortunate gust of wind laid him low with terminal pneumonia at the age of 65.

He has lived and died in a country which has many of the forms, but hardly any of the substance of elite European culture. In this context we see that Bras Cubas' approach to life is as good as any of the others we see around him. "At least I didn't have children," is his bleak final observation.

Afterwards the director André Klotzel fielded questions from the audience. One man, a rather obvious Latin America groupie, couldn't quite understand why such a notoriously hedonistic nation would include a work of such bitter irony in its standard formation. TC reminded me afterwards however. that an appreciation of the essential crapness of life is of course a necessary component of Latin joie-de-vivre.

She told Klotzel that she was impressed with the way he used nineteenth century artworks as an alternative to expensive period-scenes in the streets of Rio. Personally, I enjoyed the way the sex scene (above) was handled, with the couple cavorting out of focus with the embarrassed-looking ghost of Bras Cubas loitering in the foreground. Klotzel says his next movie will be about the secret life of a food blender.

I'm pretty fond of the Barbican nowadays. I always used to jest that I could only find it when I wasn't trying, but for the past couple of years I have only ever lost my bearings on the inside. TC says that the architecture evokes urban desolation for her. Maybe I was in a good mood yesterday, but instead I perceive the drama of romantic ruin within its brute early 70s, futuristic forms.

The Conservatory, with its two giant bourgainvillea, bizarre Brazilian ficuses and florifundia (plus the carp that appear too fat to even swim) takes me straight back to Silent Running. All that's missing are the rings of Saturn.

Gegen die Wand (Head-On)

Cahit is a middle-aged widower of Turkish origin living in Hamburg who keeps his demons at bay by pursuing Punk-induced slovenliness as a lifestyle choice. Sibel is a hedonistic young Turkish girl desperate to protect her own way of life from the traditional mores of her father and brother.

They meet in a mental institution after separate episodes of self-harm and she proposes a marriage of convenience. Living as room-mates they both pursue their carnal interests elsewhere, but the stability of their relationship is gradually compromised by a domestic bliss that evolves from affection through desire and onto jealousy.

It's easier to see how Cahit makes this transition than his wife, because at first she seems quite oblivious to his inner world.

Each section of their story is separated by a transition in which a line of musicians plays soulful Turkish music with the Istanbul skyline behind them. I found the last of these acts the least satisfactory, because I felt that writer-director Fatih Akin had attempted to explore so many different themes of exile and clashing values that he'd lost sight of the personal story at the heart of his movie.

This unfortunately culminates in a cinematic cliché, but overall the film is thoroughly gripping, as well as being occasionally quite startling. It has a definite edgy quality, deriving I think from the fact that there are so many alternative ways that the phoney wedlock situation might have been resolved.

More unequal than others

While 54% of Guatemalans now propose to vote for the cheque-cashing former General, 50% remain pessimistic that the country's situation will improve during the course of the next next administration. Mano Dura's message of security at any (moral) cost appears to be drowning out Colom's (somewhat garbled) message that the issue of rural poverty needs to be addressed as a priority.

Attempts to solve Guatemala's poverty problem with the sort of rising tide of development that lifts all boats are being undermined by the country's similarly rising inequalities of wealth. Guatemala may be Central America's largest economy, but it has also now surpassed Brazil as the most unequal society in all Latin America.

This year's Instituto Nacional de Estadistica (INE) Survey on Living Standards concludes that the number of people living below the poverty line (i.e. earning less than US$2.30 a day) has dropped only 5% since 2000, standing today at 51%. Most of these people however, are not the poorest of the poor, as 15.2% of Guatemalans live below the extreme poverty line (US$1.17 a day; in effect insufficient cash to feed oneself), a number which has decreased by only 0.5% over the same period.

According to the survey, 72% of the poor live in rural communities (with a strong bias towards the indigenous Maya), mostly in the western and northern regions. In contrast just 5% of urban Guatemalans live below the US$2.30 poverty line.

Around Huehuetenango poverty has actually increased to 55% (4% above the national average) and extreme poverty in that region has jumped from 8% to 20% since 2000. The central zone of the country has also seen increases in extreme poverty, but the problem of malnutrition is at its worst up in the Petén where 40% are listed as extremely poor.

Costa Rica joins CAFTA

All of the countries that signed on to the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) have over the course of the last year, surrendered their favorable trade balances with the US (according to a report from the Red Regional de Monitoreo de los Impactos del TLC en Centroamerica.)

A steady influx of American agricultural goods over the past twelve months has created a condition whereby, as less competitive local producers go under, the whole region is losing its ability to feed itself and is further endangering its food security by becoming increasingly dependent on these imports. The report further suggests that the emergence of the biofuels industry could potentially amplify the negative effects because corn is the major dietary staple. (This part of the Red's 's case doesn't ring that true however, as they do have a lot of sugar cane. Why would they use corn like the dumb gringos?)

Anyway, none of this has discouraged Costa Rica from voting this weekend to join CAFTA. It was a close one though, with 52% in favour.

Hold your horses...

The State Department has issued new advice this week to US citizens thinking about adopting from Guatemala − don't, for the time being at least:

"Guatemala has stated that it will become a Hague Convention country on January 1, 2008. The Government of Guatemala has informed us that they will not process adoption cases that do not meet Hague standards after December 31, 2007. They have also informed us they will not process adoptions for non-Hague member countries after December 31. We understand this to mean that Guatemala will stop processing adoptions to the United States beginning January 1, 2008, until U.S. accession to the Hague Convention takes effect. Given the average time frame for completing an adoption in Guatemala, cases started now cannot be completed before January 1, 2008.

"When the Convention takes effect for the United States, there may be a period of time during which we will not be able to approve adoptions from Guatemala, until Guatemala's adoption process provides the protections for children and families required by the Hague Adoption Convention.

"The Government of Guatemala has confirmed its commitment to the Hague Adoption Convention, and is already working to amend its adoption law to conform to Hague requirements. However, the current adoption process in Guatemala is not consistent with the Convention. Designing and instituting new procedures will take time. The U.S. Government is working closely with the Hague Permanent Bureau and other interested governments to support Guatemala's transition to meeting its obligations under the Hague Convention.

"At this time, over 3000 applications for adoption from Guatemala are in process with USCIS or the Guatemala government. The U.S. government is asking the Government of Guatemala to allow such cases, now pending, to proceed to completion without additional requirements.

"American citizens pursuing adoptions in Guatemala are already encountering some delays in the process. As recently as August 2007, several dozen children who were to be adopted by U.S. citizens were taken into custody by Guatemalan authorities because of alleged irregularities in the adoption process and concerns about the care of the children. A court-ordered investigation is now underway.

"Several adoption service providers are under investigation in the United States, and at least one U.S. adoption facilitator faces prosecution in the United States. Under these circumstances, prospective adoptive parents face the real possibility that current, pending cases may be disrupted by legal investigations.

"The Department of State strongly recommends that prospective adoptive parents defer plans to begin an adoption in Guatemala until the legal and procedural issues described above have been resolved."

"Unfair at best"

The first American soldier killed in Iraq back in March 2003 was a Guatemalan orphan who had walked his way to the US as a boy and was serving in the Marine Corps in order to pay for a college education.

CNN has this week reported on the case of Mildred, the Guatemalan wife of a US Naval Petty Officer serving his third tour in Iraq. She came to the US illegally as a five year-old and now faces deportation. The couple have a twenty month-old son.



Back in June Specialist Alex Jimenez went missing in Iraq (presumed kidnapped by insurgents), since when his wife has also faced the threat of deportation:



Update: Britain, on the other hand, appears to want to do the decent thing, having offered asylum to a number of translators who have worked with our forces in Southern Iraq.

Heroes returns

"And now the conclusion of the Heroes premiere, brought to you with no further commercial interruption by Nissan"

Except that I was watching it on my PC, so this was the only commercial interruption.

So, Nathan has a beard and Parkman has had a divorce, so his wife doesn't appear to have made the leap to series two. George Takei and other characters seem to have been given the option of an on-screen exit.

There are also some new characters, such as a pair of Honduran twins, one of whom is called Maya. Hero twins?

When complex structured plots like this are threatened with being pulled apart by their own contradictions the usual response from writers is to speed things up as the season progresses. This does present some pacing difficulties for the start of the second run, but sometimes dividing up the cast into alternating clumps chasing after different objectives (a la Lost) can overcome them. I'm still intrigued enough to download the next one!

No le hagas caso al negro!

http://guatemalaelecciones2007.blogspot.com/

Campaña negra?

Álvaro Colom has increasingly felt it necessary to invite the Guatemalan electorate to participate in a campaña blanca (clean campaign). The first of the clips below makes it clear that Colom a) doesn't get covert support from Hugo Chávez b) is not the beneficiary of dirty donations and c) has no ties to the FRG.



This is the kind of thing he's up against. Black Campaigns are certainly more YouTube friendly.



and...



and...

Bulgaros

A.K.A. Lactobacillus Bulgaricus. These ones were given to us by V's niece Eugenia for whom caring for live cultures is a relatively new hobby.

They look a bit like popcorn with the texture of gnocchi. Here V is treating them to their daily ablutions, after which they are left to soak overnight in milk at room temperature, which produces the yoghurt.

It's a bit sour on the tongue, but throw in a few sweet bananos morados and a dollop of honey and you have a very nice breakfast...along with the other ingredients in this photo.

Notisiete

Is one of the main news bulletins on terrestrial TV in Guate. The Nacionales section usually involves footage from the scenes of the day's fatal shootings: partially covered corpses surrounded by standing bomberos and assorted rubbernecks.

In this clip the presenter informs viewers that the 'Antichrist' has been denied an entry visa. Whenever we watch this programme V tends to read the text moving across the bottom of the screen rather than listen to what the person behind the Vaio is saying.

Ripley Under Ground

Some dodgy mates in London's art world call up Tom Ripley at Belle Ombre and ask him to help them sort out a mess.

He does so, by creating a much bigger one. The Police seem to suspect him from the start but he manages to stay ahead of them thanks in part to his ability to move around the continent at will, the slowness of early 70s telecommunications, an amoral wife and a dedicated French housekeeper.

The original mess in question is something that 'Tome' is at least partly responsible for. (They are collectively reaping the proceeds of forged paintings puporting to be the work of the long dead Philip Derwatt, a scam that Ripley himself had originally suggested.)

The plot is as itinerant as Ripley himself and you end up feeling quite strongly that he deserves to be rumbled, but the book is enjoyable for its further insights into its protagonist's tastes and character, even if it falls some way short of the quality of The Talented Mr Ripley and the later Ripley's Game.

It was made into a movie starring Barry Pepper which seems to have sunk without trace.

Atonement

I've never really been one of the novel's legion of adoring fans and Joe Wright and Christopher Hampton's adaptation has most of the source's faults plus a few more of its own. 

Essentially the plot and the key characters have the classic outline without much of the necessary filling, something which the casting of Keira Knightley has only served to emphasise. We are given no real reason to care about any of these people. Yes, we sense the injustice that has befallen Robby, but the suspicion remains that Fritz is as much to blame as Briony for the bad way things pan out! 

The mid-movie scenes set in a wartime hospital comes across here as even more phoney and pointless than the equivalent section of the text. 

The coda, in which Anthony Minghella interviews Vanessa Redgrave as the atoning novelist doesn't really work cinematically either, so, to some extent as in the novel, it's really the country house set-up scenes that are left to carry the overall imaginative impact. 

Unable to afford a Stuka-bombed flight to Dunkirk, Wright gives us a long traveling shot on the beach incorporating the maximum allowable number of extras. This felt very staged and artficial to me, and set me thinking about a video V once made of me strolling towards the camera whilst several of her nieces and nephews performed somersaults and other strange contortions both in front and in the background.

The Brave One

A film about the bad things that happen when you let your dog off its lead...

Or maybe it's about the kind of provocation needed for well-meaning white collar citizens of the 'world's safest big city' to go to war with its underclasses? (OK, Foster does take out one rather unpleasant affluent bloke...just so that the class war aspects of her campaign of vigilante violence are not quite so blatant. )

We see how a radio presenter who has lived in a cocoon of complacency into her mid-forties has one very bad brush with NYC's rap-sheet roughs, which kind of opens the floodgates so that the city's low-life's are soon practically lining up to feel the lethal power of her vengeance. This social cleansing spree ends with a descent of sorts to the low-lifes' hellish lair where the original thugs (and the missing pooch) are finally tracked down. Roger Ebert said he detected "the slight aroma of a studio re-write" in this ending, which appears to leave open the (unlikely) possibility of a sequel.

The Brave One certainly seems to get cleverer as it goes along, but ultimately remains dumb to the core. The script and the performances from Jodie Foster and Terence Howard prevent this from becoming as obvious as it otherwise might. Enjoyable though, especially for those that enjoy mentally blowing away some of their least respectable fellow passengers on the Underground.

Ratatouille

I remember thinking a few months back that the trailer wasn't all that funny.

That Disney-Pixar felt the need to tell audiences how to pronounce the title ('rat-a-too-ee') is indicative of one of the difficulties it may face, especially with younger audiences: the cultural references with which its tale of stuffiness overcome by the most unlikely form of inclusiveness is wrapped, are more likely to tickle the tastebuds of parents. Foodiness is after all one of adulthood's sensual pleasures.

Whilst not quite up to the standards of incredibleness in terms of script and digital animation set by The Incredibles, it was very funny, but in that inward-smiling grown-up way. Perhaps the best laugh it got from us came with a visual gag that could not really have been realised to such great effect in a movie with live actors − the moment when restaurant critic Anton Ego tastes Remy's signature dish and is instantly transported back to a meal prepared by his mother in his rural childhood home.

Michael Clayton

After a summer of dumb movies a sudden raft of clever ones, including this romance-free corporate-legal thriller from the pen of Tony Gilroy who scripted all three Jason Bourne films.

It may not be quite sure whether it intends to be an exposé of contemporary American business ethics or an intriguing character study, but it does have one quite supreme moment of cleverness at the end where Clooney is locked in a mesmerising dialogue with Tilda Swinton, which in a way subsumes the plot's most likely alternate ending.

Joseph Conrad specialised in protagonists such as this: men that have long occupied an unusual existential niche which is suddenly transformed into a particularly tight spot. Clooney carries off the role well, with the slight caveat that however much of a stagnated pool of disappointed ambition Clayton's life has become, he still has that unruined gorgeous-George look about him. Swinton and Pollack are also excellent, the latter in his now familiar role as sinister corporate kingpin.

Latest poll

Strikes, power-cuts, several livestock plagues, earth tremors, torrential rain, kids gunned down in the street, people running to empty their bank deposits....

No, this isn't the backdrop to the Presidential election in Guatemala, it's Gordon Brown's Britain, which gets ever more Guatemala-esque as his premiership develops. Shame about the weather though.

Meanwhile, this new poll confirms my suspicions about the likely outcome of the second round of voting in Guate on November 4:

Who would you vote for in the presidential run-off? (Decided Voters)

Source: Vox Latina / Prensa Libre

Otto Pérez Molina (PP)
54.4%

Álvaro Colom (UNE)
45.6%

Mano aguada, lengua trabada

The ambiguity of Álvaro Colom's political programme is naturally complemented by his personal deficiencies of elocution.

This is his third tilt at the highest office in Guatemala; he has therefore built up a considerable debt to his backers, many of whom are noted for their shadiness. It is his last chance.

He also has a problematic wife. Sandra Torres Casanova was, according to rumours in circulation, the one time lover of Guerrilla commander 'Comandante Isaías' who spent most of the eighties holed up on the Tajmulco volcano near San Marcos. She herself went by the name of 'Marta' then and regularly assisted the insurgents with logistics...and one noted kidnapping, it is said. Her personal circle, including her private secretary, still apparently fraternise rather intimately with the old guerrilla leadership, and Señora Colom is also said to have ties with exiled former President Jorge Antonio Serrano Elías.

She has been largely kept under wraps during the 2007 election, no doubt because Colom's opponents four years ago were able to successfully intimate that she had an undue influence over her husband.

Colom himself has consistently been the subject of 'black' rumours. That he drinks, that he is a closet Maya priest. His last campaign was derailed by allegations of corruption that he eventually managed to disprove, but many still suspect that his UNE party has connections with organised crime and the narcos.

Many middle-class voters don't want to have this mumbler representing their nation abroad.

Yet UNE's essentially centre-left positioning would in theory represent a significant change of direction in Guatemalan politics and Colom has a much better chance than Pérez Molina of forming an effective majority government in the congress (in which UNE is now the largest single group).

Carlos Peña

V rang me very early this morning with the news that her brother had just called her and chanted "Carlos Peña, Carlos Peña, Carlos Peñaaaaa". The nineteen-year old Guatemalan had just won Latin American Idol...and we'll probably never hear the end of it.

A few days before I left the country the evening news anchors were telling Guatemalans that it was their solemn national duty to vote for him in the semi-final. This was a few days after he had come home to visit some of his old haunts in the capital over the Independence Day weekend, thereby denying the concert given by Los Héroes del Silencio any real publicity.