Rock the Kasbah...(had to say it)

February 20, 2010 was the day for the protests to start in Morocco. One day later, there is little sign of the thousands that marched in the streets of Rabat. People walk calmly along the main boulevard, men and women sip coffee at the café across from Parliament and the streets are clear of pamphlets. The only thing amiss is that metal barriers cordon off the main boulevard and police vans hover along the sides of the squares.

The day before, this had been the site of a protest of an uncommon but not overwhelming magnitude. The entire Mohammad V boulevard, the main drag in town, was been filled with protest groups, their chants resounding off the high rises, their mass snaking down from in from of Parliament and around the corner past the walls of the old medina. I defer to my academic director for an estimate of the attendance: about 1,500 in the morning. This is also in accordance with Facebook mathematics: 3,000 people said they’d attend the event on Facebook, putting real-life attendance expectations between 1,000 and 1,500. The day was a warm, sunny Sunday, so more people came out as the day went on (the protest inexplicably began at the ungodly hour of 10 am).

I was there around noon, and the atmosphere was intoxicating though the protest was orderly. I am always struck by how calm protests are. People were milling around, going about their Sunday business as the chants of a thousand people filled the air. As one girl in my program pointed out, it seemed like a parade. I mean, they were selling candy for gods sake. Still, there were all the trappings of a protest: the bullhorns, the chants, the flag-waving, signs calling for freedom, equality and democracy, written in an impressive array of languages (speaking to both the multilingualism of the Moroccan people as well as the importance of the international community’s attention) and the camera men high above the crowd.

There were some remarkably poignant moments: as a small fistfight broke out between either government sympathizers or plain-clothes policemen, people surrounded them and stopped the violence by praying on the lawn.

I’ve included some photos to give you an idea of the atmosphere.

As I watched with some friends from the sidelines, I noticed how the march truly did seem like a parade—there were noticeable separate groups, distinguishable by their slogan, chant and demographic. There was the group waving Palestinian and Egyptian flags—perhaps a Middle Eastern revolutionary pride group? Then there was a group lead by a man with a Che Guevara cape—Latin American-inspired radical socialist group? The most powerful though, was the veiled women holding photos of their presumably disappeared husbands, brothers, sisters, daughters and sons. To Western eyes, it was incredible seeing women with only their eyes showing demonstrating against human rights abuses. This movement of mothers organizing to demand the return of their disappeared family members dates back to the years of oppression during the previous king Hassan II. Just as the Madres de Plaza de Mayo of Argentina do, they use the sympathies and social immunity afforded to them as mothers to call for justice. One of my friends speculated that the conservative veiling was not in deference to modesty but instead to protect their identity. There also was a puzzlingly well organized group of men who walked in perfectly parallel lines. The different factions occasionally united to chant together, lead by veteran protesters who were recognizable by their standard issue revolutionary attire: army green coats, that checkered scarf (you know the one, what’s it called?) and defiantly held-up peace signs. However, these groupings speak to one of the weaknesses of the Moroccan protest movement.

Moroccans, like many around the world, like to protest. Protesters are a regular fixture outside Parliament. However, these protesters are rarely united by a single issue, making Sunday’s protest cohesive demand of reforming the structure of the government and possibly the constitution all the more unique and credible.

Still, there remains such a plethora of special-interest groups that there is no cohesive opposition party with clear demands. The result is that within the political sphere there is little possibility for real change. And this reality is why there should be any concern for unrest in Morocco. On the radio, my academic director heard a caller ask say that the protesters simply should create a party, call it the February 20^th Party. Another caller responded and said the problem is that that party would not get any votes, there simply are too many competing parties out there. Perhaps because of the stratification of the parties, voter turn out is low, the last election only 37% of the eligible voting population participated. Obviously, political discourse in Morocco is lacking.

There are a few explanations for this—the electoral system, the diverse nature of Moroccan society, simply that there are a lot of things to complain about and the conspiracy theory—fractured opposition is easier for the king and his supporters to control.

The most well-known faction are the university protesters—unemployed graduates of public universities with degrees in “useless” majors like Philosophy, Biology and Islamic Studies (Computer Science and Communications are the surefire tracts to success here). These graduates are demanding the government provide them with employment. Their existence is a sign of how Morocco lacks a diversified economy to provide sufficient professional jobs, but their demands would lead, critics say, to an increase in inefficient, corrupt bureaucracy. According to my academic director (a Political Science professor among other things), in the lead up to these protests, this particular group was placated by a minister who promised them if they disbanded they would be employed by March. Abdelhay contends that if they had been present the protests would have been more “rowdy.”

In the Western media I have read so far, the protests I saw were represented in the most dramatic fashion possible while still clinging to some truth. There were some who in the North burned down a bank but they are probably people taking advantage of the situation rather than part of the organized revolution. For the time being, it seems all is calm on the Magharib front.

(that’s a really clever pun if you didn’t know. You see, Maghrib is the Moroccan word for Morocco. It also means West. Get it, huh?)

Egypt Protests: First hand account

A good friend of mine, Liana, is a Middle Eastern Studies Major at Mount Holy Oake College, and in the course of her studies decided to spent a year in Egypt with a Boren Scholarship. She originally chose Lebanon, but that was nixed because of unrest, so instead she was able to experience some of the greatest political unrest in the Arab world first-hand, from her apartment in Cairo, Egypt. Love the irony. You can read her blog here:

http://lianasarabianbites.blogspot.com/

THIS REVOLUTION WILL BE TELEVISED, TWEETED, ANALYSIED AND BLOGGED

Here are two obvious observations:

1. TV makes the strange stranger.

2. I’m sorry Gil Scott-Heron, now the revolution is always televised.

Today I met my Moroccan host family and spent my first seven hours in their house watching TV. Here is the programming list:

-An Arabic dubbed soap opera from Argentina

-7NN: “Connecting you locally”. An English language channel broadcasting from the UAE with news that exclusively pertains to and compliments the home country.

-The Worldwide Wrestling Federation. I kid you not. The World’s Strongest Man simultaneously defeated 7 of the sport’s biggest spandex-clad stars in an epic battle only to be interrupted by the Mexican aristocrat Alguién De Río who entered the arena in his latest model Bentley to announce his unquestionable victory in the next championship fight, which would be held the next episode. It had my host mom, dad and me in stitches.

-We interrupt this broadcast to give you a Powerpoint presentation of the call to prayer

-Arab MTV

-An incest-filled dubbed Turkish soap opera

-A New Age music video celebrating Khomani, the Iranian imam that started the Iranian revolution. And speaking of…

-Non-stop-every-other-channel-coverage of the riots in Egypt.

When we were first greeted by our Academic Directors, Abdelhay Moudden and Laheen Haddad, they joked that every year they prepare something special and this year it is revolutions in the Arab world. By the time we had arrived, Tunisia had already overthrow a dictator and currently in Egypt millions are rioting in the street against a supposedly democratically elected president that has been in power for 30 years. You see, this is the first time there has ever been a successful revolution in the Arab states.

Political scientists have used the Arab world as a case study of the theory that things like revolutions, democracy, personal freedoms and human rights are not compatible with certain dominate cultures, just like socialized health care, free higher education and soccer don’t work in others.

By the way, the Arab world is defined as countries that list Arabic as an official language so it includes Somalia but not Iran, meaning the classification does not technically include, though it does imply, a common religion or race. As I mentioned earlier, there are 22 official Arabic countries while there are 57 Islamic countries in the world, many of who have experienced revolutions. This theory has attributed the lack of democracy in the Arab world to forces as diverse as Islamic fatalism, tribal societies, geographic isolation, recent decolonization and the resource trap phenomenon.

Suffice to say, it’s agreed upon that this CAME OUT OF NOWHERE. The panicked eyes of news anchors harkens back to the heady first days of the economic crisis. No one saw this coming. (It took days of riots to for travel insurance to evacuate American study abroad students. And those were the lucky ones. For more info follow Liana’s blog). No one knows what started it (Burning men? Twitter? Jasmine? Pent-up Repression?) No one knows how it will end (Democracy? Power vacuum to new dictator? Violent crackdowns and continued oppression?). And, no one knows how far it will spread (Yemen? Saudi Arabia? Morocco?). The New York Times, as always, has some great articles and opinions about it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/world/middleeast/03arab.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast

Despite being on the same continent as all of this strife and in a country that could be due for a revolution, I have surprisingly little first hand knowledge of what is happening. My Internet access has been spotty and the orientation schedule has been fulfilling its duty to distract us from everything we have left behind. Which brings me back to my 7 hour TV watching marathon, the closest I have gotten to being informed about the riots.

(For informed journalism, check out the International Herald Tribune, the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/middleeast/index.html and Nicolas Kristoff is posting a lot interesting opinion pieces)

First of all, this will be primarily a Visual Media Critical Cultural Analysis Study due to my complete ignorance of the Arabic language. It isn’t Comparative since I don’t know how this is being broadcast back home but I assume biases are present on both sides. For example, Dr. Moudden said there was a 1,000% difference in CNN’s estimate for the Wednesday protest (200,000) and Al Jazeera’s (2,000,000). From here, Obama’s call for Mubarak to reform rings hollow and Israel’s fundamentalist scares sound shrill, but I am surrounded by Middle Eastern and Peace Studies majors (see last post)

The quantity and quality of the images struck me initially. That is, the quantity is endless and the quality is of shitty cell-phone resolution. There is one incident where a military or police van swerved through the streets and ran down two men. They played an overview shot, a first person shot and a few close-ups , all clearly captured on different onlookers’ cell phones. There is even a photo of a man using his cell phone as a light for impromptu medical treatment on another protester’s gaping wound.

The images also have taken a turn for the battlefield genre. One station favors a nice photomontage of wounded protestors—heads, arms, legs, more heads, Egyptian flags, you name it, and they’re bloody. As the Mubarak supporters have started to retaliate there are videos of walls constructed of overturned dumpsters and people lobbing stones across them. There is even a video of men on horses running through crowds (really want a translation about that one). This sounds like a modern dramatic interpretation of medieval warfare, and in a way, it is. This is still a mainly leaderless movement and the streets have become chaos. Last count there were 6 dead and hundreds injured. One has to hope that some sense is made soon before it escalates more.

The last thing I noticed was the English. Occasionally, recognizable alphabetic characters would pop onto the screen in the form of banners, shirts and signs. The words that Egyptians chose to translate show how they want to be portrayed to the Western media: We Want Freedom, Game Over Mubarak, and Democracy Now. They all define the movement as political, choosing words that tug at America’s heart strings (Liberty, anyone?) and avoiding mention of Islam. Although this is the beginning of Arabic revolutions, the English-speaking, namely, American world is seen as having the power to make this revolution succeed. One of Kristoff’s articles went across the screen and Obama was discussed at length, while no other world leaders were mentioned.

And while this was happening, what was did my Moroccan family think? I have no idea. Fortunately my host dad speaks some Spanish so we can communicate, but his broken Spanish and our conflicting accents made it so the political discussion only came down to: “Mubarak needs to resign. The problem is he doesn’t want to.” We watched CNN briefly enough for me to hear Fareed Whosit declare Egypt the center of the Arab world and that they were all watching but my host dad took a sip of water rather than confirm or deny the claim when I translated it.

From what it sounded like, the Moroccans are somewhat in awe. There were a lot of questions being asked back and forth. A hush fell on the room as the violent images played. The problem is, I just don’t know.

These revolution is groundbreaking for the reasons I mentioned but also because it could represent a socially meaningful application of social networking tools (the Twitter Revolution, remember?) I read a nice rebuttal to this argument in the International Herald Tribune opinion section but can’t track it down. To summarize, social networking does a good job of counting how many people believe in a certain cause so society doesn’t commit the fallacy of pluralistic concession (or something) but alone it is not a catalyst. In fact, virtually supporting a cause may completely satisfy the revolutionary urge, preventing people from acting in real life, where it matters.

It will be interesting to see how this develops, I’ll most likely be watching.

Moroccan Listings

I’ll sum up my orientation to Morocco in lists. You can await a breathless oh-my-god-what-have-I-gotten-myself-into-what-is-that-and-how-many-ways-can-you-make-a-guttural-noise at a later juncture.

My scheduled seminars for first day of orientation, in order:
1. Health Issues
2. Safety and Security Guidelines
3. Fears and Expectations
4. Lunch
5. Introducing Bargaining

Badrdine’s tips for bargaining in Morocco:
1. Show indifference
2. Shop around. Every store is the same.
3. Use Arabic. “ssalamu ‘lekum”, peace be upon you, is the way to any Morccan’s heart.
4. Bring a companion.
5. Have change in your pockets.
6. Always ask ¼ of the price.
7. If all else fails, just walk away. They’ll call you back if they can make profit.


Words taught to survive the first night at the homestay:
Shukran: Thank you
Safi: Enough, I’m full.
Shabaat: I swear, I’m fine.
Kuhli: Eat. (usually repeated by host mom)

Bad Scheduling:
Thursday, Febuary 3rd
3:00
Meet family

Friday, Febuary 4th
8:30-10:00 am
Begin Survival Arabic
11:30-12:30
Lunch with your families
Enjoy your Week end (:


My only description of my host family before meeting them:

Name: Drissi
Mother: Fatima
Father: Moustafa
Daughters: Iman and Hamid

Languages Spoken: Moroccan Arabic, English (few), French
Room: Single
Bathroom: Turkish
Water: Hot

Harper’s index, SIT Multiculturalism and Human Rights in Morocco version.
Number of monarchies in the world: 27
Number of Arabic countries in the world: 22
Number of Islamic countries: 57
Number of countries in the world: 193
Total world Arabic population: 350 million
Total world Muslim population: 1.7 billion
Total Moroccan population: 33 million
Percentage of Moroccans that identify as Muslim: 99%
Number of newly appointed judges in Morocco that are women: 25%
Percentage of Moroccans whose mother language is Berber: at least 50%
Percentage or Moroccan’s who are Berber: unknown.
Total number of people in my program: 37
Number of men in my program: 7
Number of people in the other SIT Morocco program: 12
Number of men in that program: 0
Percentage of participants majoring in International SomethingorOther: 78%
Percentage of people with a major name that is too long: 89%
-i.e. Politics with a Minor in Peace, Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation. Major in Humanities, Media and Cultural Studies. Double Major in Anthropology and International Studies with a Minor in English Literature.
Number of women with a major and/or minor with “Gender” or “Women’s” in the title: 7
Middle Eastern Studies majors: 6
Jewish Studies majors: 2

(the last five stats are educated guesses).

Producto de Los Estados Unidos

WE PRETEND TO LISTEN FOR FOOD

My program took a trip to Rabuco, an agricultural area outside of Valparaiso and toured a blueberry farm with the stated intention, as set out by our director, to understand the effects of globalization in Chile’s agriculture. The real reason all of the students were there was for the promised feast we would (and did) have later. With the unfortunate scheduling of the excursion on a Saturday morning, the resulting collective sleep deprivation and the general indifference to blueberries (besides eating them), we were not at our academic best.

Last semester I took the “International Political Economy of Food and Hunger”, so despite the weight of a sleepy friend’s head on my shoulder for the majority of the tour, I made an effort to pay attention since I had spent the good part of a semester debating about how exactly globalization affects farmers in developing countries such as Chile. For the most part, it was in vain. The jolly owner showed us the unripe blueberry plants, took us into the room where they held the chemicals they sprayed, and showed us the outfits they picked berries in. I began to wonder about lunch.

THIS PART IS ACTUALLY INTERESTING

Once we got into the packing plant I had broken off from both the group and relieved myself from my friend’s head and began to wander around, thinking about what lunch might consist of. I found myself staring lazily at the packets the blueberries were put in, unconsciously reading the words: “Sunnydale Blueberries! Product of the USA”.

What.

While I hadn’t paid much attention, I had at least gathered that these blueberries were by no stretch of the imagination or FDA rules being produced in the States, much less at the Florida address stamped on them.

I had a brief inner struggle about whether I should embarrass this kindly man about whether his operation was essentially illegal but decided I owed it to my hours spent in Food and Hunger to at least ask. After all, I would not be able to tell this story if I didn’t have a suitable ending.

THE PUNCH LINE

When I asked the owner his look of confusion made me think that my Spanish made my question unintelligible. I showed him the packet and told him what “Product of the United States” translated to in Spanish.

He smiled and said that the company just sends him the boxes to fill up with blueberries. He was responsible for the blueberries meeting their export standards but what how they labeled the blueberries was their own “engaño”.

Engaño is one of those words that has many translations but each one is illuminating. Engaño means: deceit, swindle, trick, ploy, mistake, misunderstanding and hoax. (Thank you, SpanishDict.com) I think all are appropriate.

On that note, he decided to direct us to the free samples of blueberry jam. My friend started to speculate on how awesome it may be if the jam was dispensed by massive jam-shooting guns hanging from the ceiling accompanied by women covered only by mashed blueberries, rather than in jars. I think there may have been sound effects.

AND THE AFTERMATH

This experience (jam-shooting aside) made it startling real many of the things that I had talked about in class. (See, Dad, it’s not called “not study” abroad, it’s just learning in a different cultural context). It served as a confirmation of what I had learned and now is a perfect anecdote to illustrate what a strange, deceitful, tricky, hoaxy food system we live with.

Labels aren’t to be trusted—I would be very curious to see how the blueberries make it into the United States in these boxes and whether the FDA knows about their existence. If they do, I wonder if there is some loophole that allows them to be marketed as such.

The fractured supply chain—watching the farmer shrug off the responsibility for who eats his berries demonstrated how estranged the food system has made the producer and consumer. Between them is the looming middle man of a transnational corporation.

The importance of face-to-face information—So where does this leave people who are determined to buy local or at least from their own country? If you can’t trust the labels and federal regulatory organization, who can you trust? (Douse with skepticism, light with irony).

No, but seriously. The information gap makes it almost impossible to be a conscientious consumer. Perhaps someday there will be an iPhone app for that. In the meantime, I award another point to the farmer’s market.

Sounds of Valparaiso

Many a morning I have laid in bed cursing the streets of Valparaiso. To be clear, I love this city. These are the damnations made by the recently and rudely awakened. Each morning I have the distinct pleasure of enjoying, from my own bed, the symphony of obnoxious noises that make up the street life of Valparaiso.

It is mainly due to location. The next-door church clock tower, the busy street below and the fire station across the street are relatively discreet. In this case, relative is the operative word.

Across the street is the headquarters of the Santiago Wanders, which, despite it’s name, is Valparaiso’s home soccer team. The Wanders and their fans are unanimously recognized as “flaite”, a Chilean socioeconomic category characterized by poverty, low education, an aggressive demeanor, a vulgar vocabulary and a fierce love for playing reggaeton from their cell phones in public. On game days, the die-hard fans line in front of the building to drink cheap beer and yell. They chant fútbol cheers, holler at passing women, harass passing men, argue loudly about sports statistics and probably even remark on the weather at an elevated volume. On special days they remember to bring the drums. This all begins at the godforsaken hour of 9 am on a Saturday.

During the week, the noises of the street take a more academic turn. The local schools regularly fill the streets with marching bands from the military academy, drum lines from the alternative school, even German heritage pageants from the German language school. Non school-sanctioned activities include mass walkouts protesting the government’s education budget cuts.

Other sounds can be heard throughout Chile. There are the ever-present car alarms, which I can now imitate from memory. There is the man who is selling 7 kitchen towels for a dollar and announces this incredible offer by repeating it rapid-fire through a static filled megaphone. (Thankfully the Wanders fans have not yet been so inspired). There also is the lazier and more-tech savvy salesman who plays his spiel from equally static boom box. The wares change but they always are of poor quality and dubious utility.

The source of the most obnoxious and prevalent sound—a repetitive metallic clanging that goes on for minutes—remained a mystery to me for a month. Turns out, it was the propane man. Most of these door-to-door salesmen yell and some have rhythm but they all push a cart full of tanks and bang a stick against the metal to announce their presence. It feels like it is banging against your own eardrums.

Finally, there is a strange moaning call I hear some mornings whose source I have avoided discovering. The pitch and rhythm is always the same but the words are indiscernible. I have decided to imagine a mythical creature that wanders the streets of Valparaiso, undetectable besides its call. Of course, it is searching for long-lost love. It probably looks like Sasquatch.

Perhaps I entertain this fantasy because I am in between dreaming and waking. Or perhaps because surrounded by the reality of the junk salesman, gas tanks, drunk soccer fans, uniformed drum lines and protesting students, I don’t want to know the truth. Or perhaps it is that I simply I want to preserve the mystery of this city. I want to leave some of it unknown, left to be discovered. Or, I don’t want to get out of bed to find out.

los 33

So after a long absence, mining is my theme. Below you’ll read about my recent travels, how to know when the desert flowers, what makes Chileans honk their horns, why zee Germans are in Chile, the still fresh Bolivian grudge against Chile from 1884, the Day of National Dignity and how it caused the coup, a little IPE jargon, stories of real live Chilean miners that I met in real life and also a link to a quite informative article.

This past week I took a trip up the coast of Chile with some friends to see the desierto florido or flowering desert. Every few years or so, depending on the rainfall, parts of the desert in Chile will spontaneously burst into bloom. It can happen in many different places, but usually centers around Vallenar and Copiapó. It’s impressive, considering this country is home to the Atacama desert which has the distinction of being the driest place on earth. This phenomenon is one of those natural wonders that so unpredictable that it can still easily be enjoyed without seeing a gift shop. The 6 day trip up was everything you could dream of as a gringo college student—our lives contained in our backpacks, every night clandestinely sleeping on beaches, surviving on deli meat, cheese, bread and avocado for every meal, never showering—I had a blast. I’ll put some more photos up on my tumblr, for all to see.

When we were driving through the desert, taking in the dusty hills that have been transformed by washes of fuchsia, yellow and baby blue, our driver told us that about 34 km away were the trapped miners. It was odd standing in the dry heat with the sun beating down on my already burnt face while that only X miles away there are men who hadn’t seen the sun for…how many days?

When the miners first sent up their letter with saying they were alive after XX days, I was in an underground museum in Santiago. As my friend and I entered an exhibit of staged photos of the who’s who of Chile committing unspeakable acts in the darkness of the Santiago nighttime, a security guard stopped us with the news. Los 33 todavía son vivo. When we got above ground the city was reverberating with the honking of cars. As we walked down an avenue cars went by with Chilean flags waving out windows and words painted on their hatchbacks? I tried to imagine that sort of spontaneous, public, communal celebration happening in the US. Chalk it up to culture, to a different brand of nationalism, to latin passion, that sort of thing doesn’t happen in the States unless there is a sports team involved.

Mining is integral not only Chile’s economy but also their national identity. We are a country of copper, a Chilean told me, which is Chile’s most exported natural resource. In fact, mining created Chile’s borders. The War of the Pacific (1879-1884), that Chile won quite handily against Peru and Bolivia, started with disputes over the mining region of Antofogasta. For a few decades Bolivia and Chile had shared the territory, giving free reign to their respective venture capitalists, obviously an arrangement meant to be broken. By the way, while Chilean entrepreneurs, engineers and miners were flocking to what is on the surface an arid wasteland, the fledgling Chilean state was paying Germans to populate the much greener and hospitable south. (More on Chilean Deutschophilia later).

In any case, secret treaties were made, there were arguments over taxes, so inevitably war broke out. Chile, much more unified than Peru or Bolivia, won and came away with some heroic stories to retell during national holidays and two more regions chocked full of mines (more on Arturo Pratt later). Bolivia, on the other hand lost its access to the sea, which they are still contesting to this day (current request: 10 km of coastline). Peru lost dignity and territory. This new acquisition was a very lucrative source of income for the Chilean state and much needed to solidify its hold on the area.

The mines, however, were not a continual blessing for the Chilean state, nor did they even stay in Chilean hands. The elite in Chile, since the beginning, have tended toward a mutually beneficial (for them) combination of a conservative politics with very liberal economics. Sounds familiar, right? As mercantilism faded into a more free market policy, the income from the mines stopped flowing back into Chile and instead was extracted (hah) out by multinationals.

There was a break in this process of extraction is when the mines were made state property during a process known as the Chileanization of Copper, starting in 1955 with the establishment of a government body to deal with the multinationals and then worked towards state ownership through “negotiated nationalization” in which the state bought shares to avoid conflict with businesses (and according the Wikipedia article, the US). Then, that dastardly or saintly—depends who you ask—President Salvador Allende took a drastic or much needed—again, depends…—step and got Congress to unanimously pass a constitutional amendment that nationalized all mines, present and future, which was celebrated with the Day of National Dignity. These fairly radical socialist policies were the catalyst for the coup that instated the military government or dictatorship—…who you ask—headed by the infamous General Augusto Pinochet. Under Pinochet the mines were made private once more, as they are to this day.

I could write about resource traps and what they mean for the development of a country, but this article summarizes much better.

If you don’t want to read it, heres the jist:

A problem facing Chile and other Latin American countries is “the inability to break free of the shackles of commodities exploitation, which provides their livelihoods but leaves them perennially vulnerable to boom-and-bust cycles and wild currency fluctuations. It also consumes capital that might be used to develop higher-revenue, and more stable sources of wealth, like manufacturing”…as well investment in science, technology and education.

Still,the inter/multi/transnational ownership of the Chile's natural resources is a common complaint, with the main culprits being Canada, the US and Spain (and globalization looming in the background). It seems the only mining money this country really sees is from the income of those who are employed in it, and I’ve met many of them. My friend’s host dad is gone every other two weeks to drive a truck at a mine near Iquiqui, I talked with a man who does surveying for a Canadian mining company and spends most of his weeks traveling and I met a 20 year old Rastafarian from Copiapó who has a son on the way who is studying to be a mechanic in the mines. What ties these people together is that while the mines are providing their employment, their jobs are inconvenient, to say the least, and mostly chosen out of necessity. And lets not forget that mining is so dangerous that when the mine first collapsed on los 33, they weren’t the least bit surprised, they had been expecting it.

So, as I was passing through the northern parts of this country, I was glad to see all the Chilean flags inscribed with messages such “Esperamos por los 33”, esperar being a verb that encompasses wishing, waiting, hoping and expecting. At the same time though, I wonder if this will be a moment when the country not only revises its safety policy for mines (which, of course, the government is promising) but also reexamines what mining means for this country now, and whether it should continue to define it.