“Ello es que el lugar donde me pongo el pantalón, es una casa donde me quito la camisa en alta voz…”
Ike has made landfall again in Cuba and we are trying to contact the goddess OYA to save Havana. Fortunately Ike is only at Category 1 now, although they are saying he can grow again to Category 3 or 4 once he gets out over the Gulf. I have forgotten to say is that another of the forecasters I like is FRANKLIN.
EPARREI OYA, I will buy dark red clothes, of which I have too few, wear them Wednesdays, and build you an altar with your favorite things on it if you will rein in the storm over Cuba, which honors you, and then let it fly above the oil platforms in the Gulf but NOT in the land of Mexico where the computer models now have Ike landing next.
I have been living in Louisiana for seventeen years, of which six were in New Orleans. I love New Orleans but I have never liked any of the other towns as places to live – until now. Post Lima 2008 I am quite happy with my city, it seems so charming, comfortable, and cute. The students say there is nothing to do here but go to restaurants and bars. This is not entirely true, although you do have to look for the things, it is not New York. I used to call it a large Third World town with all the disadvantages of Los Angeles and none of the advantages. Is it that I simply do not like large Third World cities, but am in denial about it?
I like Mexico City, Port of Spain, and Havana, but I have never lived daily life in these cities, nor do I consider Mexico, Trinidad, or Cuba to be classic “Third World” countries. I know we are not expected to like any of the Central American capitals, and I have never resided in any of them, so I won’t discuss them extensively now.
I have never been to Caracas, and have not formed an opinion on Bogotá. I used to like Quito, but my student, recently returned from a year there, said: “It is so hard to get a cup of coffee or a shower, and you have to cover your mouth and nose to walk down the street because of the pollution.” That is my current experience of Lima, a city I used to enjoy, but which is now the most polluted city in the Americas, and of Santiago de Chile, the second most polluted city.
The one time I went to Buenos Aires, I was not impressed either – the attempt to “be European” hung heavy upon the place, with the effect of emphasizing the secondariness I, as a Hispanist, ought not to say I seemed to see. It had two distinct advantages over Brazil, where I was living, namely that fewer of its children had obvious symptoms of intestinal parasites, and fewer adults showed visible signs of childhood malnutrition. Still, I felt trapped in the nineteenth century and was glad to go home to São Paulo.
I enjoyed São Paulo greatly at that time, but more recently the pollution combined with the winter grayness and the drabness of the cheap new buildings shocked me just as Lima has now. And Rio de Janeiro is beautiful, but society there strikes me as all too colonial, so I do not know. And I like La Paz and Sucre, the two capitals of Bolivia, but I have no idea what it would be like to actually live in either.
Am I growing intolerant, or is the world simply growing worse? One is not supposed to say The horror! The horror! but I want to say it. Neither is one supposed to identify with Faulkner’s character Quentin (in Absalom, Absalom!) when he says No, I don’t hate the South! I don’t hate it! I don’t! but I can hear that in what I say, and it would be more obvious if I wrote the post I should write some time, “On Gender Relations in Daily Life, or, Down and Out in Lima and Santiago.”
This post breathes negativity, so remember, I am not discussing tourist experiences primarily. Were I speaking in Tourist, I could give glowing reports. Neither am I from any of these places. Being from somewhere gives you the possibility of cushioning yourself from some of its less desirable aspects.
And yet mostly I think THE HORROR it is that the dictatorships were so destructive in Brazil, Argentina and Chile, and industry (yes there was the war, but intuitively I fault industry) in Peru that, when you add the COLONIAL HORROR to the POSTMODERN INDUSTRIAL HORROR it is just all very horrifying.
And yet I have seen nothing because since I stopped going to Europe and North Africa with any regularity 25 years ago I have only been to Latin America, and I have not been to Haiti (although I have been to Bolivia and Nicaragua, the two other official worst countries in the hemisphere) or to the Dominican Republic.
And despite what statistics say I will bet I might find the DR to be the second worst place, because I suspect it fairly breathes repression. And I need to check on this but I am told Latin America is only medium on the world scale of horror, which sounds plausible to me, so I have seen nothing.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Even though I lived in Europe from 1971-1985. It was Paradise, protected from the unrest and poverty to the East and South. Today the floodgates are open, and Western Europe shares in all those miseries of the world that it was able to fend off in the post WW II years. But it still abounds in the luxuries of life, great and small.
I’m hoping to get over there next fall. The problem is that I get sick too often when I travel, so age is catching up with me. Travel while you can, because it gets more difficult as the years advance.
Post rebuild Europe really was paradisiacal, especially if you were American or white. My parents say that in the 50s it was not, but I first spent time there in the 60s and was charmed. Except not by Portugal which had really obvious starvation and police beatings – these things were not done openly in Spain any more at that point.
Then in the 70s I spent huge chunks of time there and it was amazing – unless, of course, you were an immigrant from the East or South, or from the Arctic, in which case you got mistreated. People said you’re from the United States which represses the Vietnamese and the “Negroes,” and I said yes, but at least some of us are trying to stop those things, whereas you are trying to imitate our worst features – features which you, by the way, began exporting BEFORE 1492.
When I last went, recently, after a gap of more than 20 years everyone said I would find it very changed but I hardly did – and it was weird, I landed at de Gaulle and found I still had the Paris metro system memorized, and the whole trip was like that. Mmmm, I would like to start a European summer trip about now. So pleasant. Mmmm the West Coast of the United States, the Sierra Nevada, the Rocky Mountains, the Mediterranean, Iceland and the Faroes, all these places I cannot afford to go because they are so desirable. Mmmm and I should never have given up California, I only knew it so I thought the world in general was like that, but it is not.
Travel, getting more difficult, and needing to be somewhere really pleasant for when travel is less practical, I get it and will plan for this!
I love California, still, crowded and full of fools though it is.
And you are certainly right about the “race” thing. The most discriminated against group in Switzerland when I lived there were the Sicilians. The level of hatred of these hapless people was downright visceral, like some cracker talking about Blacks in the South. They were good enough to produce wealth for the Swiss but otherwise regarded as lower than dirt.
Yes, visceral. California, yes, despite the crowds and fools. But back when there were so many more open fields and orange groves it was so amazing…