July 4, Citizenship, GAO Cultural Day, My Kids in Hawaii, Ramadan with Rebiya Kadeer, Honduran Miners, Goodbye Mario Coyula

This posting is primarily a photo gallery. Here you see my son Jonathan on July 4, a tranquil scene that he sent from the far end of Oahu, the same island where busy Honolulu is located, then near the same area with my daughter Stephanie. Another photo shows the two of them when they were small. July 4 was a lovely day in Washington, DC. That evening, it was only about 70 F with a gentle breeze blowing with a nice party outdoors featuring live Mexican guitar music, singing, and dancing at a home near my own. A perfect evening for the fireworks and outdoor festivities.

 

 

At the Museum of the American Indian, I met with long-time friend, Manolo, holding up a copy of my new Cuba book in the photo, which was taken (as per copyright notice) by Jose Manuel, a former Cuban refugee rafter who appears in the book.

 

Days later, on July 8, I had the privilege of attending a friend's citizenship ceremony, for 117 new citizens from dozens of countries. A few children were also present, reminding me of the ceremony we attended for son Jon, adopted from Colombia, who became a citizen at age 4. I recall that many onlookers gave him quarters, to the great envy of his siblings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My three GAO visitors will be leaving soon, shown at recent GAO Cultural Day. They are from Argentina, Tanzania, and Zambia; the other photo is of me with the GAO fellow from Papua New Guinea, a colleague of someone who stayed with me years ago.

 

 

 

On July 9, we in Amnesty International in DC held an Iftar dinner to celebrate Ramadan, a month when no food or water is consumed during daylight hours. Exactly when Ramadan falls depends on geographic location and the cycles of the moon, but I believe the calendar for DC this year is June 28-July 27. Iftar refers to the first meal occurring after sunset, beginning with the consumption of a date. But before our dinner, we heard a speaker, Rebiya Kadeer, as shown above, a leader in exile in China’s Xinjiang region, formerly known as East Turkistan, with a population of 20 million, but, like Tibet and parts of Mongolia, taken over by the Chinese government and subjected to forced assimilation through language and Han Chinese immigration. The inhabitants are a Turkish people, the Uyghurs, most, but not all, Muslims. I had had met Kadeer, a small woman in her 60s with long gray braids, previously at an Amnesty conference in Delaware and rode back on the train with her and her interpreter.  She was once as a very successful businesswoman, but ran afoul of Chinese authorities and spent 5 years in prison as an Amnesty prisoner of conscience.  Two of her sons were also arrested and one is still in prison. One of her daughters attended our event and chatted with me.

 

Kadeer explained Ramadan as time for exercising self-restraint, showing solidarity with and empathy for poor people, and performing good deeds. She said that China is the only country that does not allow Ramadan fasting, forcing people to eat and drink water during daylight hours, contrary to their religious beliefs and preferences.  Many Uyghurs have recently been killed and arrested. She said she has written a piece that appeared recently in the Wall St. Journal asking for peaceful dialogue with the Chinese government and she had also asked Secretary Kerry to bring up Uyghur grievances during his meetings in China. Ask why more Muslim countries don’t support the Uyghurs, she said because of economic and political alliances with China. Her people do feel solidarity with and provide moral support for Muslims in Burma, who are similarly marginalized. The Voice of America recorded and filmed Kadeer’s presentation. I reintroduced myself to her and she acted as though she actually remembered me, smiling broadly and shaking my hand with both of hers.

El Corpus, Honduras (CNN) July 4, 2014-- Three of 11 miners who were trapped in a Honduran gold mine this week were rescued Friday morning, freed nearly two days after a landslide blocked their path out.

After rescuers brought the three out of the mine near the town of El Corpus, live footage shown on Honduran network Televicentro showed ambulances driving them away. Scores of Red Cross volunteers, firefighters and others have been trying to free the miners since a landslide blocked a tunnel late Wednesday, El Corpus Mayor Luis Rueda said. Information on the conditions of the three freed miners and the eight who remained in the mine wasn't immediately available.

 

Mario Coyula, a Cuban architect and planner, with whom I met several times, as recounted (and pictured) in my Cuba book, has died of cancer. He was loyal to the regime, but not uncritical, and

was a champion for the preservation of Havana’s architecture. He was very kind to me personal

and his death is certainly a loss to Cuba and to Havana, especially.

 Too bad the USA lost the World Cup, but actually didn’t do so badly after all.

Japanese Amnesty Visitor, Espaillat Disappointment, Honduran 1st Lady Visits Refugees, South Sudan, Haiti, Inter-country & Agency Adoption Slowdown, Spelling “Corrections,” Garcia Marquez Successor?, Proofing While Reading, Cuba Book Sold in Euros, Witness for Peace in Cuba, Cuban POCS, Google Execs Visit Cuba, School Lunches, More on the Super-Rich, Happy July 4!

A visitor from the board of Amnesty International in Japan met with our local group, as per the above photo, reporting that AI membership in that country is shrinking and consists mostly of older members who write letters, but don’t conduct rallies or marches or engage with public officials. There are only 7,000 members nationwide in a country 1/3 the population of the United States. Most citizens support the death penalty, carried out by hanging, with a death-row inmate only informed the day of his execution. Death-row inmates don’t know when prison officials make their rounds if it will be their turn that day. An innocent man on death row for 47 years was recently exonerated, the longest-serving exonerated capital punishment inmate on record. Many Japanese apparently regard Amnesty as a western import, making them wary, not only because AI opposes the death penalty, but because of its support of the cause of aging Korean “comfort women” gang raped by Japanese soldiers during World War II.

            My Espaillat family friends in the DR are pretty disappointed that their cousin, Adriano Espaillat, again barely lost to veteran Congressman Charlie Rangel, age 84, who got endorsements from the Clintons and many fellow congress members.

The first lady of Honduras, Ana Garcia de Hernandez, toured South Texas immigration shelters to learn more about the plight of thousands of Hondurans, including children, who entered the United States illegally.

It’s troubling that not only is the in-fighting in South Sudan continuing, but is now involving child soldiers, some no doubt forced into fighting, but others probably eager to join with adult men in carrying and shooting guns. 

In Haiti, a country I have visited several times, including as an election observer in 1990, President Martelly seems to dragging his feet on calling for elections and former presidents Duvalier and Aristide are apparently again getting into the political fray.

Meanwhile, there has been an abrupt slowdown in foreign adoptions because many countries are not willing to let their children leave, either because of national pride, failing birthrates, and political or ideological disputes with the US (i.e. Russia). To the extent that such adoptions are still allowed, the fees have become very high, unless a child has a disability. In the US, licensed agencies, such as the local one on whose board I serve, Holy Cross, are also seeing a drop in domestic adoptions and, apparently, the same is true of other agencies, both public and private. Instead, people who can afford it are turning to high-tech fertility treatments and even surrogacy, or to high-priced lawyers who offer expectant mothers everything short of actual payment for relinquishing a baby for adoption. While outright baby buying is prohibited, expectant mothers can get rent, food, medical care, a car, and other benefits, for which adoptive parents pay indirectly through the lawyer. So adoption has become the purview of people with financial means, except for older and disabled youngsters, who are still left with traditional agencies.

I must express annoyance at how Yahoo, Facebook, and even Microsoft Word automatically “correct” my spelling of similar Spanish words into the English version, requiring me to go back to correct those “corrections.” While typing merrily along, I must be super-vigilant, or else posible becomes possible, compromiso becomes compromise, autoriza becomes authorize, Julio becomes July, and poco ends up as pocus. Thanks, but “no gracias” for these misguided efforts!

Some have compared South America’s newest literary star, Juan Gabriel Vasquez, to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The central narrative of his novel, The Sound of Things Falling, is that PC ag volunteers were the originators of Colombia’ drug trade with the U. S. Among other events depicted, a PC staff member is murdered, presumably by drug forces. This story line has now been amplified by Amazon.com reviewers, via insatiable social media, to apply to Peace Corps as an institution, judging by readers’ comments. Of course, the book is fiction but do readers realize that? No PC staff member in Colombia was ever murdered and, from 1981 until recently, there weren’t any PC volunteers in Colombia.

A former PC volunteer reviewer of this book notes: “While it is fact that there were volunteers working in agricultural projects in rural Colombia, it is a mythical transformation of their presence to believe that the indigenous people they worked with were in a suspended state of animation, breathlessly awaiting since pre-Inca times the arrival of complete foreigners to awaken them to a new knowledge of how to convert coca leaf from its centuries old use in religious ceremony to a secular application in lands so distant from their own as to lie beyond their imagination.” During the period 1961-81, some 4,300 Peace Corps Volunteers served in Colombia. There is no record of any of them ever being charged with drug processing or trafficking. All the good that they accomplished over these two decades can be undone through literary inadvertence. According to Mario Vargas Llosa, Juan Gabriel “is one of the most original new voices of Latin American literature.” While his narrative is limited to a small group of imaginary volunteers in ag projects, the powers of social media have now conflated that scope and erroneously applied it to Peace Corps as an institution. One Amazon reviewer recently wrote: “I had no idea Peace Corps was so integral in the growth of Colombia’s drug industry.” I hope I’m not hereby furthering this book’s erroneous message by mentioning it here. A major motion picture may not be far behind.

Rare indeed is the book, even one published by a traditional publisher for a very well-known author, that has no errors. Because I was an editor for years at an association publication, OT Week, I cannot help reading everything with a gimlet eye. On p. 99 of Cheating Death by popular author Sanjay Gupta, MD, I’m sure the word shown in red was omitted from this description of a patient’s near-death experience: “He glimpses the spirits of relatives and friends who have already died, and a warm, loving spirit of a kind he has never encountered before—a being of light—appears before him.” 

Surprise, according to my last e-report from Amazon, two people bought a copy of my Cuba book in euros! I’m curious about who and where that might have been and hope the reader will get in touch with me via this blog. I wonder how they heard about my book?

                After I gave a copy of my book to someone for her birthday, I learned that she had visited Cuba with Witness for Peace. Ordinarily, WFP protects vulnerable people from government attacks, but, of course, if they were to do that in Cuba, they wouldn't be allowed in. Instead, in Cuba, WFP shows friendship and solidarity with the Cuba government, an interesting twist, just another example of the double-standard among progressives when it comes to Fidel Castro and Cuba. Every day, independent journalists, Ladies in White, and gay people trying to meet or express themselves without government approval are beaten up, arrested, and their writings, books, laptops, and DVDs confiscated. In Amnesty, we just issued an Urgent Action for an independent blogger (very hard to be in Cuba because the internet is virtually inaccessible). He is Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez who was beaten up by a government-sponsored mob, a so-called Brigada de Respuesta Rapida, on his way to the Czech Embassy to use the internet. We also have issued an Urgent Action for three brothers who have been in pre-trial detention in Cuba since late 2012 have now been tried and are due for sentencing. They are at risk of being sentenced to between three and five years’ imprisonment. Amnesty International believes they are prisoners of conscience, detained solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression. They are 22-year-old Alexeis Vargas Martín and his two 18-year-old twin brothers, Vianco Vargas Martín and Django Vargas Martín, detained in November and December 2012 respectively, tried on 13 June at the Provincial Court in Santiago de Cuba, south-eastern Cuba. They are now awaiting sentencing for the charges of public disorder of a continuous nature (alteración del orden público de carácter continuado). The Public Prosecutor has asked for Alexeis to be sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and three years for Vianco and Django, who were 16 at the time of their arrest. They were reportedly subjected to a summary trial, with none of the defense witnesses being allowed to testify. The brothers, from the city of Santiago de Cuba, are all members of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unión Patriótica de Cuba, UNPACU), a civil society organization which advocates for greater civil liberties in the country.

A delegation of top Google executives, including Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, reportedly visited Cuba this week to push for greater Internet access on the island. The team has met with officials and representatives of the Cuban technology and digital scene "to promote the virtues of a free and open internet," according to 14ymedio.com, an independent news site launched last month by blogger Yoani Sanchez. The group included Brett Perlmutter, Dan Keyserling, and Jared Cohen, a former State Department official who co-authored a book with Schmidt on how ubiquitous internet access will change society.

Moving on to a more low-key issue like the content of school lunches, even that has become more contentious lately, school administrators saying that kids are not eating the new foods, which are too expensive anyway, and with nutritionists accusing them of siding with big producers who don’t want to change over. Working as a school interpreter, even before Michelle Obama’s push for better nutrition, I’ve seen kids in lunchrooms throwing unopened milk cartons, oranges, and vegetables wholesale into the trash. Like most consumers, they prefer the usual salty, sweet, and fatty stuff.  Is that a matter of basic biology or due to advertising? I’m not sure, but I do agree with school administrators that kids don’t benefit if they are not actually eating the more nutritious food offered. The changeover, I would think, needs to be gradual and accompanied by a lot of education of kids, parents, and food manufacturers.

In a previous blog, I commented on the growing gap between the super-rich and the rest of us, that the 1% cannot possibly spend most of their wealth, no matter how many homes, yachts, and sports cars they buy. Well, perhaps I underestimated the value to society of massive wealth held in the hands of just a lucky few. In his 2012 book Unintended Consequences, former Bain Capital (Romney’s former company) executive Edward Conard argues that only those with excessive wealth can afford to take the risks of innovation and investment in new technologies and industries that move an economy forward. 

His book dissects the economic recession and gives it an unusual spin, reserving some fairly critical commentary for the responses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the housing crisis. Curious about the literal meaning of those familiar nicknames, I did some sleuthing, and found that they refer to entities dating back to 1938 and the New Deal. Fannie is the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) and Freddie is the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC). The nicknames have become so much a part of national discourse, we hardly ever ask what the formal names are nor does author Conard bother to define them.

Of course, someone like the now-popular French economist Thomas Piketty and others have argued that some super-rich are being overcompensated for positions heading up corporations because company success is attributed to them alone, as “great men” like other heroes in history, when, in fact, all great men, whether in business or politics, do not act alone, but in concert with advisors and a team of many others, including their workers, soldiers, or constituents.

            Have a good July 4 weekend! ¡Feliz día del 4 de Julio!

Communitas Marks 30 Years, Outages Fixed, Primaries, Humanitarian Border Crisis, Preventing More Mass Shootings, Discussion on This & Other Polarizing Issues, DR Citizenship Again, Empty Nest

This month, my storefront Catholic community, Communitas, celebrated 30 years since its formation. Shown with me is one of the original members, Sister Alice, an anti-torture crusader, who came from retirement in her mother-house in Minnesota to celebrate with us. My visitor from Argentina attended with me.

Am back online,after several big rainstorms and electrical and internet outages affecting my home office that lasted days and took two electricians numerous hours to fix on separate occasions (I’m bracing myself for the final bill!). One even came back again on Sunday, Father’s Day, when he charged double-time. I surely hope it’s fixed this time. We also experienced a terrible heat wave along the whole east coast. That’s why this particular blog posting is so long, an accumulation of events and commentary.

Possibly the electrical problem was due to hidden water leakage from recent storm or from squirrels that have taken up residence in nooks and crannies and perhaps chewed through or disrupted electrical wires. The remedy was to block off several electrical outlets, ones I didn’t even know existed, located behind heavy bookcases and file cabinets. Otherwise, the walls would have had to be torn open to find where shorts were occurring. My circuit breaker was no help, as it popped right out again when pressed, fortunately, since if it had allowed electricity to flow despite the short, the whole house could have burned down. I moved my computer temporarily into my bedroom, where I also have the necessary phone jack, as being off-line was losing me interpretation assignments and also inconveniencing my visitors taking a course here. One visitor’s room was also in darkness, though I ran an extension cord from another room into hers. I can appreciate how inconvenient it is to endure electrical outages, as many local families have been doing during these recent storms, though when I was in the Peace Corps in Honduras, it was common go days without electricity, partly because of flimsy wiring.

When the internet continued to have problems, I called the Verizon help line, usually answered by an English-speaker in Bangalore or Manila, but this time, I was surprised that he was in San Jose, Costa Rica!  After the problems continued, I ordered a new modem.

I’m not much into soccer mania, though 3 of my kids once played and now my 6-year-old great-grandson wants to learn.  My visitor from Argentina has been riveted by the games.

I don’t particularly mourn the loss of Va. Rep. Eric Cantor, but fear that his replacement is even worse, though with less seniority. It should be an interesting electoral season, with greater polarization than ever.  In New York City, octogenarian Charlie Rangel, a long-serving member of Congress who managed to get many political endorsements, including from the Clintons, again narrowly beat challenger Adriano Espaillat, a cousin of my Dominican friends of the same surname. Rangel says this will be his last term, but he said that last time. He showed that he still has a lot of fight left. 

As for the border crisis, I remember as a Peace Corps volunteer hearing radio spots, funded by USAID, urging parents not to go north and leave their children behind. Also, in my Spanish interpretation work, I've encountered several youngsters who have come across the border alone looking for their families in this vast country and, after not finding them, then being deported. I've traveled back to Honduras 10 times since I left the PC and often see an airport transport discharging deported people, including kids. My hostess in Tegucigalpa last Feb. is a public school kindergarten teacher of 40 kids, 5 of them born in the USA, presumably of deported parents. It's a discouraging situation. However, this border crisis and VP Biden’s remarks that the “vast majority” will be deported are not helpful to the overall immigration reform effort fought for all these years. While most Americans have expressed support of legalization for long-time de-facto residents, they oppose this sudden flood of children and others now trying to cross the border. VP Biden’s remarks about the “vast majority” being deported leave that sliver of hope that some will actually win the lottery and be among the lucky few allowed to stay. This border crisis seems to have doomed immigration reform for now and may also hurt Democrats’ chances in the mid-term elections, though Hispanic voters will be ever more firmly rooted in the Democratic camp.

This week, I had a patient who came to DC 30 years ago, all alone from El Salvador at age 14 and then became a citizen, thanks to Ronald Reagan's immigration amnesty. He does know English, but for a serious medical procedure, felt more comfortable with a Spanish interpreter. He said he lived completely on his own back then, worked to support himself, avoided going to school, and now has his own family and is employed laying tiles and polishing floors. He’s rooting for the unaccompanied minors now amassing at the border and hopes they will be allowed to stay. I doubt that will happen for most of them--unless they have families already here. Of course, my Cuban foster son Alex, who died of AIDS in 1995, was an "unaccompanied minor," which is how he ended up living with me and my kids.

Jeffrey DeLaurentis has been named to  head of the US Interests Section (embassy equivalent) in Havana, someone who has worked at that mission in the past and is apparently respected by democracy activists. He must know the score on Cuba, which he certainly should in that position.

Recent D-Day commemorations have evoked stories told by my late father, Leonard Currie, who died in 1996 and who participated in the Normandy offensive. He surely would have wanted to attend the remembrances if he were alive today. Born in Alberta, Canada, in 1913, he later became a US citizen and a Lt. Col. in the US Army Corps of Engineers during WW II.

Although there have been no mass shootings in the last few days, there was a whole spate of them recently and nothing has been done since to prevent them. Maybe people have given up in this political climate and have surrendered to fate. However, pepper spray may have gained new-found fame in Washington State as a way to subdue a violent gunman. I don’t know that it would always work for that purpose, but pepper spray’s stock must have gone up a notch. It offers a defensive weapon occupying a middle ground between a gun and nothing at all. It doesn’t seem likely that a suicide or accidental death or even a homicide would result from the use of pepper spray. With another fatal random shooting now in a public place, most recently in Las Vegas, I would think that the public’s tolerance for gun violence, for “the right to bear arms,” “open carry,” and “stand your ground” would be growing a little thin. No wonder restaurant diners, out for a relaxing time, don’t feel protected, but, rather, under siege when heavily armed men come in the door. How does anyone know their intentions?  It’s not just a question of “mental Illness,” something itself hard to define and identify, especially before a horrific act takes place, nor is mental health “treatment” foolproof, far from it. Nor is being armed necessarily protective, as the man killed at Walmart confronted the Vegas pair with his own gun.

Several recent mass shootings no doubt have an element of copy-cat behavior.  Others seem to stem not so much from individual mental illness and personal grievances, but from a group culture of exaggerated anti-government, anti-authority, pro-individualistic  violence—a philosophy of anarchy against any form of authority. I don’t believe the founding fathers intended for armed militias to be able to take up arms against an elected government.  Gun-rights advocates and NRA members should distance themselves from these militants who are really the few attacking the will of the majority in a democracy.

It’s getting risky now to be out in public. But do we just have to be sitting ducks, shrug our shoulders, and take the chance of getting killed because of some abstract “right” for an ever-smaller minority, who, however, own an ever-larger arsenal of personal weapons? What are their motivations for having such vast collections? I can understand collecting antique firearms, but assault weapons? Many collections go beyond the need for simple self-protection. The owners’ angry rhetoric and aggressive slogans on their t-shirts give little comfort about their intentions. Police officers and soldiers who wield firearms are screened and trained, but these folks, railing against the very government that the majority of us have elected and displaying behavior that seems vengeful and impulsive are not acting protectively, as they allege (and as Trayvon Martin found out and George Zimmerman showed in his reckless behavior after acquittal).  These militants want no registration, background checks, or restrictions on where and how they might display or use their weapons, as if the outside world were a war zone and they are in an arms’ race. They’re the ones making it so. Gun murders have been triggered by too-loud music, a dog that poops on a neighbor’s lawn, or simply someone trying to enter the wrong house after a night of partying. I think the right to life or to avoid being injured trump the right to bear arms.

The majority of “gun nuts” are men and some of their aggression is probably fueled by testosterone. Late-night comics have made fun of their obsession, with Jon Stewart showing a weapon hung with a set of large fake testicles. Most of us would have no objection to the sport of target shooting, which some nations allow with guns available only at the shooting range. I’m not a particular advocate of hunting, both because it doesn’t seem a humane way to kill animals if they must be killed and because of hunting accidents (i.e. Dick Cheney hitting his friend in the face), but hunting is probably acceptable to most people. Certainly the military and police need firearms and firearms training, including about when it’s permissible and necessary to use their weapons. That’s about as far as I’d be willing to go on firearms. I haven’t heard convincing arguments on the other side, just angry rhetoric about “constitutional rights,” thanks to the Supreme Court.

I’m not unique in having some close calls in my own family. My younger son Jonathan was about 11 when he and a group of boys found a loaded handgun at the bedside of the father of one of them. Another boy playing with the gun dropped it and it went off, wounding my son in the foot, not a fatal injury, thank goodness, but requiring emergency medical care. More recently, my great-niece was on lockdown for hours during a mass shooting at the nearby Columbia Mall.  And in Honduras and other parts of Latin America, the weapons used in the carnage there are American imports. Granted that some Hondurans have homemade guns that must be reloaded after each shot. These really are perhaps defensive weapons, ready to wound an intruder with a single bullet, but the country’s sky-high homicide rate is attributed to the use of imported firearms.

We never hear much, except locally, about the many private gun deaths: suicides, family murders, and accidents, including of and by children, occurring daily beyond the more high-profile public mass shootings. Retired Justice John Paul Stevens, a Ford appointee, has argued that the Second Amendment was originally a collective right pertaining to local militias and was never meant to be an individual right. Of course, he is no longer on the Supreme Court, so his opinion has little practical weight. With now so many guns in circulation and the gun lobby and weapons manufacturers have gained so much financial political clout, it’s hard to see how things will turn around. However, turning points have been reached on other polarizing and contentious issues such as ethnic, gay, and women’s rights, so maybe the rights of the majority who favor greater gun curbs will eventually prevail. 

A dialectic rhythm to public opinion is evident on many social and political issues. One side presses so hard that it reaches an extreme, as gun rights advocates seem to be doing right now, provoking a backlash. I believe “abortion rights” has reached a tipping point, with most Americans opposing late-term abortions, especially since the “viability” of preterm infants begins at an ever earlier point, thanks to neonatal intensive care, even though stalwart “pro-choice” people would argue for abortion rights at any stage, as long as the fetus is still inside the womb. Opposition to the legalization of undocumented immigrants, while still strong, is found in a shrinking minority. Likewise, it would seem that opposition to “Obamacare” and especially to Medicaid expansion, while still fierce among some politicians and their Tea Party supporters, is fading among the general public. I had hoped my book about life in Cuba and the true legacy of Fidel Castro might be part of a reassessment there, but it hasn’t happened yet.

While I and others disagree with “guns-rights” advocates and with folks on the other side of numerous other issues, I don’t know if it would help diffuse this polarization to acknowledge and understand the other side’s motivations, for example, gun people’s genuine fears and their desire  to feel strong, independent, and protected. I don’t know where that leaves us, as the hope would be that the other side would reciprocate by recognizing our own fears of being killed. Unfortunately, sincere and empathetic conversations are rarely held among rivals; instead, there is name-calling, sarcasm, and stone-walling—and reinforcement of a point-of-view by only speaking to those who agree with us.   

             President Obama has tried to bridge the impasse with Congress, inviting the other side to come to the table, but they have largely refused. Some divides seem unbridgeable.

On 3 June, Amnesty International made public an open letter to Dominican President Danilo Medina to share our analysis of the citizenship law that he presented to the legislature, designed to help remedy the situation created by the decision of the DR high court that rendered many Dominican-born individuals of Haitian ancestry stateless. His measure, approved by the legislature, is a step in the right direction, but does not go far enough in our opinion at Amnesty. The documents mentioned below express our current concerns regarding the law’s implementation, and the situation of statelessness of some individuals, particularly those never registered.

 

Open letter (English and Spanish): http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR27/008/2014/en

 

Public statement (English and Spanish): http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR27/009/2014/en

 

The IS Caribbean team sent to all diplomatic representatives in Santo Domingo a copy of this letter and urged foreign government to remain vigilant with regard to the law’s implementation. We in the US have also endeavored to get in touch with Vice President Biden to raise the issue during his trip to Santo Domingo as part of a Latin American tour.

Finally, while I have some empathy for parents facing the “empty nest” when a child goes off to college, as a bereaved parent, I feel like telling them not to complain so much, since at least their child is alive and breathing. They should be immensely grateful for that every single day of their child’s life.

 

More on Next-Door Renovation, Compassionate Friends, Belarus, Measles Denialism, Wealth Concentration, Unaccompanied Minors

 

The above photo, a bit fuzzy because it was taken in haste without focus or flash, gives you an idea of the scope of the “renovation” going on next door, but until I got a peek inside, I never realized how extensive those “repairs” were going to be. No wonder so many dumpsters have been filled up! The entire inside of the house has been gutted, floors, walls, the fireplace—nothing left of the interior of an historic 1850 farm house, the first ever built on this block. Only the front façade and side walls remain; I believe the front façade has to stay because this is an historic district—the back is completely open and a beautiful old flowering cherry tree has been removed there. The house is going to be extended and completely rebuilt inside. I mourn for the house that was before and which I knew from more than 40 years of living next door. The current owners have been there only about 3 years. They have a small daughter of that age. I don’t know if they always planned to remake the house or if they came into a lot of money recently or what. They had told me originally that they just planned to expand an enclosed back porch area. Well, things have gone way beyond that. No wonder they’ve moved out for the duration.

The other photo is from our Spanish-language meeting of The Compassionate Friends at Providence Hospital in Washington, DC. Why are so many people smiling? Perhaps out of habit when facing a camera, perhaps also because they’re glad to be together with likeminded souls after losing their children. The woman center-right in black and white, appearing to be laughing, is not a bereaved parent, but Sister Judy, a nun mentioned previously in these pages, the hospital’s chaplain who fled her native Colombia after she was threatened in her work by both guerrillas and paramilitaries. However, she also was mourning the recent loss of her brother, so was not so far removed from the rest of us. One couple there did not speak Spanish, but we provided interpretation, this time into English! Two couples at the meeting, each with Samsung smartphones, exchanged inspirational comfort music by placing their phones back-to-back. Amazing what smartphones can do. They really are pretty smart!

A volunteer Amnesty International USA specialist on Belarus, just as I am volunteer specialist for the Caribbean, talked at my local Amnesty Group, 211. He is a native of that country, which has a population of less than 10 million and became independent when the USSR dissolved in 1991. Its dictatorial President Alyaksandr Lukashenka controls everything, stifles dissent and human rights, but holds nominal elections which he rigs to win and has won ever since independence. There are no term limits; internet freedom is restricted but not entirely blocked. The country has the death penalty by firing squad. Most employment is with the state. The president tries to flatter Putin and maintain friendly ties so that the country won’t be overtaken by Russia, as happened in Crimea. Our speaker said most citizens feel it is better to be ruled by their president, dictatorial as he is, than to be overtaken again by Russia,

Following up on the “denialism” mentioned in the last blog posting, measles has been spreading recently in the US because children are not being vaccinated for religious reasons or because of unwarranted fears linking other maladies to vaccinations. Those opting out of vaccinations who think they are protecting their children are actually putting them and other children, especially those who cannot be vaccinated because of other medical conditions, at risk. (A mother whose unvaccinated daughter died of measles is now warning other parents.)

Denialism is allied with conspiracy theories, holding that outside forces, elites, and government are trying to manipulate and control us either for their own gain or due to evil intentions. Basically, it seems based on an individual’s urge to be independent in thought and deed, never mind if the person is completely wrong and must engage in odd mental gyrations to reach their conclusion. If the state of Hawaii displays Barack Obama’s original birth certificate, officials there are considered to be part of the conspiracy. Of course, some actual conspiracies do exist, which makes it hard to distinguish truth from fiction. But where are all the “birthers” now when Ted Cruz is being touted as a presidential candidate? Unlike Barack Obama, he clearly was not born in the United States.

The increasing concentration of wealth, especially in the hands of fewer and fewer super-rich, who now apparently control most wealth worldwide, is getting to a tipping point. Highly privileged folks may not realize it yet, as they live in gated communities, send their kids to private schools, travel on private jets, and don’t rely on public facilities and services. But their ever-increasing holdings may end up being counterproductive to their own families down through the generations. This is because, unless their descendants find ways to replenish their inherited wealth through selling ongoing services or products, their wealth will dissipate over time, since the overwhelming majority of poor people on earth will be unable to buy whatever it is that they have for sale. Henry Ford recognized this, paying his workers enough to be able to buy the cars they were making and keeping the economic cycle going.  In the present day, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, George Soros, and Mark Zuckerberg are wealthy entrepreneurs who recognize this and who have endeavored to spread around some of their wealth. However, too many super-rich and their political (Republican or conservative) allies endeavor only to increase their holdings by demanding ever-higher salaries far beyond what any human being could possibly spend, denying workers a living wage, promoting more tax cuts, reducing programs like food stamps (which not only allow some families to eat, but provide grocery chains with customers a la Henry Ford), and opposing universal health care.

 Nations that promote more economic equality not only provide most of their citizens a better quality of life, but the wealthier folks among them suffer no deprivations. What about measuring self-worth through projects that improve human well-being instead of those that increase the size of a bank account or involve the accumulation of still more property, as Donald Trump seems to do? Unfortunately, too many of the non-wealthy buy into specious arguments made by those promoting concentration of wealth who depict any discussion of the “wealth gap,” or any form of taxation or rules to protect the environment as unmitigated evils, amounting to socialism, class warfare, and curbs on individual liberty.  However, a reasonable middle ground exists between unbridled Ayn Rand-style capitalism/individualism and the quagmire of despotic systems like those of North Korea and Cuba.  As citizens, it’s our duty to ourselves and to future generations to actively promote that middle ground.

Why do the 99% not object more to the increasing wealth concentration by the 1%? Perhaps because they hope to become rich themselves—they see that as their future, though, quite obviously, the vast majority are never going to make, at best only a very lucky few.

Finally, a word about underage migrants who cross into the U.S. from Mexico, as has been highlighted in the news recently. This is not really a new phenomenon, though perhaps it has now increased. First, in my experience in my capacity as a Spanish interpreter, most are not small children, but teenagers either fleeing gang threats, seeking opportunity and adventure, or looking for parents living in the US, not realizing what a vast country this is. Some never find parents they feel have abandoned them and whom they hope to join. Possibly—and this is just a guess on my part—the prospect of allowing legal status to some undocumented immigrants has also attracted them, even though new arrivals would not be covered under any of the proposed immigration reform bills. My own late Cuban foster son, Alex, was an “unaccompanied minor” who arrived with the Mariel boatlift in 1980.

 

Kings Dominion, Congressional Reception for LGBT Advocacy in Jamaica, Cuban Independent LGBT Advocates Barred, DR Citizenship Measure, Bad/Sad News

On Memorial Day weekend, my daughter Melanie and I took her grandson De’Andre to Kings Dominion, a theme park about two hours away near Richmond, Virginia.  I rode only on one ride, a red and yellow car on a monorail circling above the park. I'm not fond of swirling around or bumping or zooming up and down, which seem to be the major motions of most rides. While my daughter and great-grandson rode many of the kiddie rides, I watched the crowds of families walking by, a cross-section of America and Americana, many sunburned overweight people in shorts and tank tops, all sorts of tattoos and hairstyles, men with beards and ponytails, women in saris and hijabs, and whole families wearing color-coded t-shirts of day-glow chartreuse or atomic pink to keep track of their members. Bags were searched at the entrance to assure that no one was bringing in food or drink, as that could only be bought inside at exorbitant prices, like $4 for a soda.  My six-year-old great-grandson’s favorite activity was driving cars of any type, his mother’s son in that regard, as my granddaughter loved driving small cars more than anything at his age. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to go with us, but plans to go next time.

May 17 was the International Day Against Homophobia. During the following week, several events took place, including a bipartisan Congressional reception for Human Rights First (HRF), an LGBT advocacy group in Jamaica. Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL) and Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee (CA) hosted and spoke at the May 22 event. The guest of honor was Jamaican lesbian activist Angeline Jackson, mentioned before on this blog, who started the HRF advocacy organization after she was raped at age 19 by a man who was convicted, then later exonerated. She recounted how the police had advised her to “go back to church” after she reported the crime. She and other lesbian activists in Jamaica are often taunted “You need a man.” The crowd at the event and the rousing cheers after Jackson’s speech, and the bipartisan congressional reception itself held at the Rayburn House Office Building, indicate how mainstream LGBT rights are becoming.

Meanwhile, in Cuba, as reported in a DC gay advocacy newspaper, The Washington Blade, Independent Cuban NGO's Excluded From LGBT Conference

Posted: 08 May 2014
Cuban advocates not invited to international LGBT conference

Apparently, the Blade asked Cuban authorities for comment, but none was forthcoming. One of those cited in the article, independent Cuban AIDS activist Ignacio Estrada, appears in my new book, Confessions of a Secret Latina: How I Fell Out of Love with Castro & In Love with the Cuban People.

 Partial progress has been seen in the Dominican Republic’s citizenship crisis, triggered when the high court there declared that all descendants of people who arrived in the country after 1929 were not citizens. In the wake of furious world-wide condemnation, the Dominican president, Danilo Medina, has proposed a plan that, so far, as legislative approval. Those born between 1929 and 1997 with proper documentation will be granted full citizenship; those born between 1997 and 2010 will need to apply for citizenship; and those born 2010 or later, or those who have no legal documents, will be given the opportunity to apply for naturalization after 10 years. Implementation must be monitored for the first category of people (who supposedly will get access to their Dominican documents), as well as for the second category, who, meanwhile, remain virtually stateless, and are probably the vast majority of affected people.

A progress report closer to home: the dumpster for the house next door, to which a 2-story rear addition is being added, has been moved somewhat closer to that actual property and I no longer run smack into it going out my front door. Now, the main disruption is a jack hammer starting at 8 am that’s breaking up a concrete slab in the back. I feel for the worker wielding it; he must feel the vibrations throughout his body. Of course, everyone working on the house is Hispanic, only the foreman is not. They heard me speaking Spanish to some guys who took some stumps out of my front yard, so now they always greet me with “buenos dias” in the morning.

Unfortunately local news and everyday happenings include both the bitter and the sweet.  In the last week, unaccountably and quite unusually, there have been four purse robberies if women walking alone in our neighborhood, one occurring as early as 4:45 pm when there is still much daylight. One robber was armed with a gun, the other robberies were apparently at knifepoint with two of the women being stabbed. Police patrols have been strengthened.

The staunch leader of our DC chapter of The Compassionate Friends, a parental bereavement support group, Olivia Gunther, has died after a long battle with cancer. Olivia was a woman who was able to comfort and rally other bereaved parents, despite the loss of her son, husband, and sister. She was a role model for us all.

My visitor from Tanzania received terrible news that her husband’s sister, who had been suffering complications from a botched dental procedure, had died, leaving her husband and two children. It’s so very hard for people here only temporarily to deal with such family tragedies from such a distance—committed as they are to representing their government and unable to make a quick trip home, not only because of the time involved, but the great expense. My visitor was feeling distraught about not being there to help her husband and his family at this crucial time, making it hard to focus on the course she’s taking here.  

Some time ago, an artist from an African country was staying with me. He’d left his young son and pregnant wife back home. One weekend, a girl friend from NYC came to stay with him over a long weekend and they seemed to be having a very good time together when news came from his wife that she had suffered a serious hemorrhage and miscarriage. She begged him to come home and, apparently conscious-stricken, he left immediately, though his time here was not up.

The latest book I've read is Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives by Michael Specter, a writer for the New Yorker. Among his examples are the anti-vaccination scare, the phony marketing of Vioxx, the rejection of genetically modified crops, and blind faith in Echinacea and other alternative medicines and vitamins. As he says, all crops have been genetically modified from their wild state, all medications have side effects as well as desirable impacts, "natural" doesn't mean safe, and childhood vaccination exemptions put not only the children involved at risk, but also children too young to be vaccinated or those with underlying conditions that make vaccination risky--preventing "herd immunity" from protecting them. So now measles, polio, and other common childhood diseases have resurfaced.

I would add American gun violence and the lack of gun restraints to denialism.  The individual “right to bear arms” supported by the Supreme Court, gun manufacturers, the NRA, and a small, but vociferous (violent?)  minority is depriving many Americans of the right to life or to a safe and secure life free of the fear of being killed at random. One columnist recommends, since the mantra is: guns don’t kill, only people do, let’s license and check out the people who wield the guns. But even psychiatrists admit they cannot predict which of the large number of people with emotional or mental health issues will commit violence.  Since countries with strict gun control laws have the lowest homicide and suicide rates, why not try more gun control for a change? As the grieving father of a student killed in Santa Barbara demands, it’s time for lawmakers stand up to the gun lobby. If enough of them did it, even the massive amounts donated by the gun lobby to defeat them would not defeat them all. I still think my proposal, paying gun manufacturers and dealers to phase out and move to another type of business endeavor should be considered. And there would also be less violence in Mexico and countries south without the massive firearms flow from the USA.

Next-door Home Makeover, DR Citizenship, A Lost Day, Tango Turco

As seen in the photos, my next-door neighbors (note sign in front) in an attached house are having a very large 2-story addition constructed on the back of their home, along with many other renovations. My house is the taller red house, with the second photo showing the view from my front steps. The owners expect the job to take 6 months and have moved out meanwhile with their small daughter. Alas, I’m still living in my own house, where banging and drilling of concrete, plaster, and wood goes on all day long both inside and out. Worse yet, their giant dumpster, emptied almost every day, usually sits parked right out in front of my house, not in front of theirs.  After many polite and not-so-polite requests, the foreman had it moved so that it’s no longer blocking my front door, just overlapping only part of my front yard. Still, that’s progress and I hope to have it moved gradually over completely to their side. If necessary, will appeal to city authorities.

 After a worldwide uproar, including from us at Amnesty International, DR President Danilo Medina has apparently sent the legislature a measure that would allow those descended from people coming into the country after 1929 and affected by the high court decision to opt for DR citizenship after all. It's supposed to go into effect June 1, which is pretty soon. If it should actually work, I must express surprise and also relief. Maybe all the pressure finally helped. However, people who have seen his proposal say the devil is in the details, also in the changes that the legislature may make.

 Last Friday, there was a huge rainstorm, but I had an interpretation assignment, so I grabbed an umbrella and set out gamely for the metro. But in a train inside a tunnel, there was an electrical outage and the train just stopped. By the time I made it to a metro stop to catch a bus to continue to my medical interpretation assignment, it was already the time I was supposed to be there. I asked someone else waiting for the bus if I could borrow her cell phone to tell the medical office that I was on my way, though sorry to be late. On that call, I found out the patient had come early, her son had served as her interpreter, and they had already left. So I went wearily back inside the metro station and came home, forfeiting my pay and also causing my agency to lose its half. To compound my problems, after arriving back home, I couldn’t find my keys and apparently no one was home. Thinking I might have dropped them, I retraced my steps to no avail, so I just sat out on my front steps—by then the rain had stopped—hoping someone would show up with keys. Well, finally, a housemate came home and opened the front door. Then another arrived and began a search outside and found my keys under a rose bush where I’d plucked off some dead blossoms, so all was well, but what a wasted day! The woman who found my keys is a GAO fellow from Argentina who had once lived in NYC and told me how she had lost her keys in Central Park and gone back the next day and found them, so she really has a nose for lost keys!

 With an old friend who now lives across the river in Arlington, Va., I saw a play at the Arlington-based Spanish-language theater, Teatro de la Luna, entitled “Tango Turco” or “Turkish Tango.”  I used to attend productions there with members of a Spanish-language book club. That was before I broke off ties after the dispute with my “nunny bunny” accuser which led to the writing of my newest book, Confessions of a Secret Latina. Although it had been some years since I had attended, I was amazed when the woman greeting us at the door remembered me by name! What a memory and how many people have passed through those doors since? My companion was less fluent in Spanish, so we sat in a rear row where surtitled translations flashed above. The staging and acting were excellent, but the work itself was a rather light comedy, as the title would suggest. My interpreting work in hospitals and schools is very basic, so after seeing that play, I found myself missing the more literary aspects of my Spanish-language engagement.

Local BookFest, Goodbye Dr. Helmuth, China’s Economy, Bolivia Brigade, Cuban Twitter, NRA Convention, “Smart” Gun, Ruminations on Retirement Communities

On Sunday, May 4, I participated in a BookFest with other local authors in our Capitol Hill neighborhood, as per photo above.

 Received terrible news that Dr. Helmuth Castro, my Peace Corps health director in Honduras, has died after an illness, a type of encephalitis, contracted while he was attending a conference on HIV in South Africa, no doubt a great honor to have been invited. He was a wonderful, supportive man by now in his 50s. Last I heard from him, he was working with the Peace Corps in Guatemala, after the program in Honduras was shut down.  I just got a message from his wife, whom I had contacted, saying she was sure that his work in disseminating HIV information has had an impact worldwide, which has given her some comfort.

 My local NPR station broadcasts BBC news late at night. One night, I heard speculation that China’s economy might overtake that of the US as the world’s largest later this year.  Other estimates are that it won’t happen until 2019. I had not realized it would be happening so soon in either case. I’m just waiting for some Republican political blog to blame Obama and the Democrats for this occurrence, assuming it is even true. Of course, determining the precise year all depends how an economy is measured.  China has more than 4 times the population of the United States, but we always want to be Number One. Reportedly, the Chinese leadership actually doesn’t want their country to be identified as having the largest economy as that might make it more responsible for climate change, foreign aid, etc.  In any case, apparently, China’s economy might perhaps come to be considered larger not in terms of actual GNP or output of goods or per capita income, but rather in terms of internal citizen purchasing power, in that many items cost less there than in the US. That’s true worldwide. As I have commented before, American manufactured drugs or their equivalents cost less in Honduras than in the US. Often, I can buy them there for less than the co-payment would be here and usually without a doctor’s prescription. (However, even using the measure of internal purchasing power, some argue that China’s economy still won’t be close to surpassing that of the US.)

 A fellow Spanish interpreter sent me a request from a Canadian medical charity working in Bolivia, looking for a Spanish medical interpreter for a surgical mission scheduled for next November. Like IHS, the group I regularly work with in Honduras, it requires volunteers to pay their own expenses, not only airfare, but, in this case, for a hotel stay too, as they perform surgery in a city hospital. It would be very interesting to do this work in a country other than Honduras, but I’m already committed to Honduras, where travel is cheaper. I certainly cannot afford two very expensive volunteer trips like that in a single year, having gone to Honduras already in February. It’s not only a matter of the actual outlay for the costs involved, but of lost work opportunities while I’m away. It takes a while for my interpretation agencies to get me back on board afterward and they are not too happy about my annual absence. I would like to see more of Bolivia, as years ago, I got only as far as the shores of Lake Titicaca, with a tantalizing glimpse of fishermen trawling with nets from their impossibly buoyant reed boats. I’m not particularly fond of Bolivia’s current leadership, especially after the president kicked out the Peace Corps ostensibly as a blow against Yankee imperialism, but I still would want to help people there if I could. For first-time participants in such a volunteer endeavor, it’s very educational and eye-opening.  Probably a Canadian medical charity is more acceptable to President Evo Morales than an American one would be, which he might suspect of being a front for gringo spies.  USAID’s Cuban Twitter program was not helpful in that regard.

The damage caused by the revelation of the now-defunct USAID Cuban Twitter program is based mainly on criticism of its secret character, but it had to be secret to function at all in Cuba, because, of course, the Cuban regime doesn’t allow private communication among its citizens that might threaten its control. Many American critics use Twitter themselves.  News stories and Cuban official outrage have focused on Twitter’s potential for sparking an uprising against the government. But the USAID program was in no way influencing the content of Twitter messages, just providing an avenue of communication in a country where communication is routinely blocked, along with gatherings of likeminded citizens. Most critics of the program don’t acknowledge how very difficult it is for Cubans to have unimpeded communication among themselves. Even gatherings of more than three unrelated people officially require a government permit.

 At the NRA’s recent annual convention in Indianapolis, members had to leave their firearms at the door. What? Were there any complaints about that? Perhaps, but probably even the leadership of the NRA realizes that having a bunch of armed gun owners together in a small space was not such a great idea. With someone like Sarah Palin as their darling, I would say that such folks cannot be trusted with firearms.

In a related development, a Maryland gun dealer planning to sell a “smart gun” that only the owner can fire has decided against it, after getting death threats from gun lovers. I’m not sure of the logic here, but it seemed to have to do with opposing any restriction on gun ownership and use. Such people are fanatics, who value the freedom to shoot a gun and hurt or kill someone else above the right of others to be protected from harm.

 Since my last posting about visiting former neighbors living in a lovely retirement community, I’ve pinpointed the main reason why their comfortable life does not particularly appeal to me, assuming I could even afford it. The complex is fairly far removed geographically, as such places usually are, from city life and the public transportation that I now use almost daily. If I were living there or somewhere like it, I would no longer be able to work, host foreign visitors, give public talks about my books, and just enjoy walking around my lively Eastern Market neighborhood in Washington, DC. I’m afraid I would be bored out of my mind and feel as though I had retired from life, no longer independent and in charge of my own destiny. Going for meals is the highlight of the day for most residents of such places, giving them their main opportunity to interact with others. Eating is a biological necessity, but usually a rather routine one. I need a little more excitement in my life. Of course, if our memory starts to fade and we need prompts about when and what to eat or if we become too disabled physically to care for ourselves, then that’s another story. At that point, we do have to accept that we’ve become dependent and have no other choice. Beyond its relation to dependency, any retirement, assisted, or senior living system is also the next step before death, as we would be reminded if we lived there because the death rate is naturally relatively high among residents. That’s usually how units become vacant and available to newcomers .  Somehow, clustering older people together in a protective environment doesn’t seem quite natural, but many older folks prefer it to being dependent on their kids. My daughter Melanie remarked, when we visited our former neighbors at such a place in rural Maryland, that the layout and amenities seemed identical to those in a complex where she recently visited relatives in Portland, Oregon.  If I end up moving to a retirement community myself, I may change my tune.