Life encounters

My trip partner in the Central America is Marcia Ribeiro, a friend I met in 1999 during a course in the Archipelago of the Azores, in Portugal. Marcia is a Portuguese born journalist who has been living in Montréal, in Canada, for 16 years. She visited me twice in Florianópolis, after had worked in the World Social Forum, in Porto Alegre, for the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC). This is the third time we meet after our first encounter in the Azores.
After Nicaragua, we head to El Salvador.
Hope that there will be more trips together!

Under the Nicaraguayan sky

Nicaragua embraced us with a warm breeze and a starry sky. There is no better way to start a visit to a new country. We arrived yesterday in the largest country in Central America, after a ten-hour bus trip from San José, the capital of Costa Rica. Managua, the Nicaraguayan capital, was busy on Christmas day. Nearly 60,000 Nicaraguans left Costa Rica to spend the holiday season with their beloved ones, back home.
The country has been part of my imaginary since my childhood. More specifically, since 1979, when a revolution overthrew the Somoza family´s dictatorship and installed a socialist government, led by the people who followed the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN)´s ideas and ideals.
As usual, the United States´ and Great Britain´s interference didn´t allow the country to go beyond most of its projects. Nicaragua, as most of the Central American nations, is seen as economically and politically strategic for the big potences.

Sunday tunes

Sunday morning feels like listening to Malpaís, one of the my finest musical discoveries in Costa Rica. I missed two of their concerts, but hope to see them in 2008. New year always comes with new expectations.
A bit of Malpaís here, in the lyrics of "Contramarea", by Jaime and Fidel.
"Adónde estabas perdida, sueño del alba, espuma de los remansos donde crecí? Adónde estabas durmiendo, lírio del agua? Nací solo para verte...Nací solo para verte llegar a mí..."
More information about them on anaclaudiamenezes.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html

State of belonging, state of being

The last issue of the Refugees Magazine, edited by the United Nations Refugee Agency, brings a special report about "The Excluded - The strange, hidden world of the stateless". One of the people mentioned in the article is the German philosopher Hannah Arendt, who was stateless for 16 years until she became an American citizen, in 1969, six years before her death. As the report states, Arendt had a successfull career, as one of the most influential thinkers in the 20th century, but most of the millions of the stateless people in the world remain anonymous and marginalized by their situation.
Here is Arendt´s reflection on the issue:
"To be stripped of citizenship is to be stripped of worldliness; it is like returning to a wilderness as cavemen or savages... they could live and die without leaving any traces" (Hannah Arendt, in "The Origins of Totalitarism")
The full report can be seen at www.unhcr.org

To think about, before starting a new war II

“My children, this country has lost its good heart. People don’t trust each other anymore. Years ago, you would have been heartily welcomed in this village. I hope that you boys can find safety before this untrustworthiness and fear cause someone to harm you"
(a village elder to Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier in Sierra Leone, in the book "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier", Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2007)

Pensata

"An enemy is one whose story we have not heard"
Gene Knudsen-Hoffman

Sorry, guys, but this one goes in Portuguese...

Senti minhas primeiras saudades do Brasil ontem, com a visita de meus amigos Silvia Pavesi e Eumano Silva a Ciudad Colón, cidadezinha a meia hora de San José, na Costa Rica, onde vivo desde agosto deste ano.
Sim, falar português por horas, saber das notícias da política e da economia (e, claro, do poço Tupi!), lembrar do gosto da farinha (só em imaginação...), tomar café da tarde (só faltou a cuca de Brusque!), comentar sobre os amigos de tempos passados.
Ou de tempos futuros - quem sabe? Eu e Silvia não nos víamos desde 1994, segundo nossos cálculos. Os destinos nos levaram, naquela época, a locais tão distintos e distantes. Ela, a Paris. Eu, a Nova York.
Agora, a América Central nos uniu. Silvia e Eumano estão pelas estradas latino-americanas desde abril de 2007 e têm muito chão pela frente. Logo logo estarão na Nicarágua, onde encontrarão outros amigos nossos, Cristina Gallo e Lúcio Lambranho. Que Nossa Senhora de Los Angeles, nossa padroeira na Costa Rica, ilumine os seus caminhos.