February 23, 2008.

They feared the worst.  Luis had gone out on his motorcycle and was expected home any moment.  There was a notorious curve in the road near their house, and a drop-off to a river.  They raced out to see, praying they were wrong.   Tragically, as they approached the crash scene, they realized they weren’t.

And so began the longest night in this family’s life.  They took the unconscious Luis to the hospital in Antigua.  But they couldn’t do anything to help, so they transferred him to the National Hospital in the capital.  The bike had fallen on Luis’s back in the accident.  An MRI revealed that the impact of the collision had fractured his spine.  Luis would never walk again.

Luis spent the next three months in the National Hospital.  During that time, the most hopeful intervention was to perform an operation that might allow Luis to sit up on his own. The first operation was unsuccessful, requiring a second three weeks later. Luis developed bedsores in the hospital, which can be life-threatening and often take years to heal.

When Luis was discharged, he couldn’t be cared for in the family home, because, even if the family could afford a wheelchair, the house was not accessible to the disabled.  So Luis lived by himself in a room his family rented for him closer to the road.  Moreover, due to his disability, Luis had no way of traveling to his classes, so he had to drop out of school and give up his dream of graduating from university

It is fair to say that these were Luis’ darkest days.

June 13, 2009. It is a typical Friday afternoon in Antigua.  A group of guys are playing basketball on the court in La Candelaria.  They’re good.  So good, in fact, they’ve won second place in an international tournament the last two years, playing against teams from Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico.  One guy, in particular, stands out.  He only joined the team five months ago, and is already playing center.

The young man is 21 years old.  He’s gainfully employed, he’s in his final year of studying to be an accountant and he’s on a scholarship to study English.  His name is Luis.

Luis’ fortunes got brighter when, two weeks after he returned from the hospital, he was introduced to Transitions – an Antigua-based project which provides wheelchairs, prosthetics/orthotics, rehabilitation, employment, education, training and other support to disabled Guatemalans.  The project is led by Alex Gálvez, a paraplegic himself.

Alex, who had suffered from life-threatening bedsores from his own injury, provided support and helped Luis treat the wound at home.  Three months later, it was healed.  Luis was then able to begin a rehabilitation program with the Transitions team, which provided him with a wheelchair and taught him skills such as bathing, dressing and navigating Antigua on wheels.

Alex founded Transitions in 1996 after a life-transforming experience.  At the age of 16, Alex was the victim of a gun-shot wound that left him paralyzed from the waist down.  He was in a critical condition from bedsores in Hermano Pedro hospital when he met John Bell, a special education teacher from the United States who was volunteering at the hospital.  John arranged for Alex to travel to the United States for life-saving surgical treatment and rehabilitation.  This experience gave Alex a vision of providing the next generation of disabled Guatemalans the same opportunity that he had.  So, with the help of John, he returned to Guatemala and began the work of Transitions.

Our Buddy, Earl Fish - File Photo

We met Joe Bageant the way we meet many of our best friends, through a mutual acquaintance that may have stepped on the wrong side of the law a few times. The brother in question, Earl Fish, did a couple of stints in the pen for safe cracking, and a couple more for trying to escape. Earl was down here in Antigua a few months ago, visiting from his half-a-year-home in Oaxaca where he also provides a hide out when we’re creatively transporting booze back across the Guatemala / Mexico border. Over a few beers I mentioned to Earl that I’d found a powerful voice for social justice and good whiskey on the interweb and that his name was Joe Bageant. Earl said, “Joe, he’s an old buddy of mine. Want me to drop him a line and see if you might use a few of his pieces for your magazine?”

I believe my response was both a spit take and a “Hells Yeah! But that doesn’t get you off the hook for writing me a piece or two, yer-self, Earl.”

Earl smiled more wryly than Clint Eastwood as Josey Wales eyeballing a copperhead and said, “Well, if you want the real good stories, you’ll have to wait for the statute of limitations to expire.”

Earl’s a gem, and anyone who would see him only through the lens of the crimes he’s done, and not the man he is, is a rat-hearted fool, as far as we’re concerned. Earl might have strayed from convention a bit in his younger days, but he’s about the best friend a guy could want. Honest as the day is long, never afraid to call shit, shit, and a brother who would walk a mile over broken glass if you said you’d come up light on a bar tab or just needed someone to shoot the shit with on a long, dark night of the soul.

Joe feels the same way, too, as it turns out. Within hours of Earl dropping him a line, Joe wrote us back saying that “any friend of Earl’s is a friend of mine.” He’s since allowed us to print a number of his essays in these pages, and we thank him for that enormously and promise him a barrel of free beer when he makes good on his promise (threat?) to come and visit us. We’ll keep you posted.

Joe’s honesty of spirit and clarity of soul carries through all of his writing, as readers of this mag will no doubt attest, and for those of you who don’t know his voice, we strongly urge you to discover it for yourself by checking out his website at www.joebageant.com. And in his book, Deer Hunting With Jesus, Joe brings that hard-living, great-loving spirit to the fore. I know there’s at least one copy of his book in town, and I might be inclined to lend it to you if you ask real nice.

Joe grew up in Winchester, Virginia, though he now splits his time between his old hometown and a small cabaña in Hopkins Village, Belize. In Deer Hunting With Jesus, Joe points out that Winchester is neigh on the most northern outpost of the old Confederacy, but it is still, undeniably, “The South.” It is a community of a few well-to-do who live in the airy Virginia sun above the majority of Rednecks who work the line, fix the cars, sing the Karaoke, love their country, and fall a bit deeper into debt to a system rigged to fuck them at every turn, until they die penniless in some run-down old folks storage container at the edge of town, or just over the state line.

Joe is a rarity in his hometown, and in the United States, writ large. He is a man who comes from a certain class (poor, under-educated and white) and yet was able to transcend the coarsest aspect of that acculturation, while maintaining the love and the connection that he feels for family and friends, even when they don’t see eye to eye. And even those few times when they might see  eye to clenched fist.

Adam’s first album, Friends Like These, is still set for heavy rotation on my iPod and I’ve been waiting over two years for Mr. Stokes to deliver on his promised follow-up. In the interceding time I’ve given Adam a raft of shit via email, voice mail and snail mail for not getting the album done, but I know two things about the musician and the man. The former is a perfectionist and the latter a serious stoner. So I cut the brother some slack.

October Sky was worth the wait.

The album’s 13 tracks are an invitation into Adam’s personal world and cover a range of material from the achingly private, “When We’re Free” to the memory seducing, “B to 34th.” Throughout the album Adam sings in a voice both sweet and whiskied.

With that voice, in “When We’re Free,” Adam sings that, “I’m a slob, but you’re a drunk and I get high a little too much. We never really get around to what’s really wrong. I hide from you and you hide from me, either of us only show the things we want seen. I know I’ll be lost before too long.” It’s a song written about those times in a relationship when all the things you once loved about your partner start to get under your skin in the worst of ways. But more than that, the song is about your willingness to work through the pain for the greater love, if only your lover will come along for the ride.

Fortunately for Adam, Jess and the rest of us, they’ve made it through those times and came out on the other end with a beautiful baby boy AND a new album!

In “B to 34th,” written in New York City in October of 2001, Adam brings us all – particularly expatriated New Yorkers – back to that tragically magical moment when we realized just how much our lives and our city were worth. It recalls that very moment when we knew that it was alright to just cry. As expressed in the song, pain and love are of a coin, obverse and converse. For Adam the moment came on the B train. For me it came at Flannery’s Bar on 14th street in late September of 2001 when I saw a woman crying, forlornly, into her drink. I pulled up my barstool next to hers and took her in my arms. We’d never met, but she let it all go. And then, wiping her tears, she said the quietest “thank you” before walking out of the bar never to be seen again. They were the only words we ever shared, and Adam’s powerful voice recalled them to me. And for that I thank him.

That is the mark of true power with a songwriter. By putting memory to melody and imbuing reality with rhythm, Stokes sings to the recollections of the listener and allows their private world to dance a waltz with his. I’ve heard few voices more attuned to that particular magic than Adam’s.

Another one of his true gifts is time-honored in American Roots music. He has the ability to tell a story. In one of my favorite cuts on the album, “Jane Jacobs,” Adam schools his audience on the life and work of the title character, a civilly disobedient woman who helped to save New York’s Greenwich Village from the further pillaging of Robert Moses. Moses was the urban planner who destroyed countless Gotham neighborhoods with the bisecting devastation of highways, bridges and canals, all in the name of progress. If it weren’t for Jane Jacobs, that same fate would have befallen the stomping grounds of my early adulthood. Without Adam, I never would have known her name.

Adam rounds out the album with the lighthearted and beautifully rendered ballad, “Bare Hands,” in which he fantasizes about killing an unnamed object of his recent affection. He claims it’s all a joke, and for Jess’ sake, we sure as hell hope so.

I’ll let him sing us out on that note:

“I’ve heard people say that a person can change, but I thought that it might take some time. But you went from Gandhi to Hitler it seems, all right in front of my eyes. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I hope you die sometime later today.  Maybe you should go and not come back. Don’t take this personal ’cause it’s a fact. I’d like to kill you in 10,000 ways. With some ancient torture that takes a couple days.  I want to kill you with my bare hands. And if I knew CPR I would kill you again. With my bare hands.”

Those hands, at their foundation, aren’t violent. They are jeweler’s tools with which he crafts beauty and brings it home to his audience.

Buy the album.

October Sky can be purchased online at cdbaby.com and iTunes. Someday soon you should visit his website at www.adamstokesmusic.com. He said it is still under construction, which means, with his weed habit, you might want to give it a few months.

]]> http://www.lacuadraonline.com/reviews/music-reviews/new-music-review/feed/ 0 http://www.lacuadraonline.com/reviews/businesses/an-open-letter-to-local-antigua-business-owners/ http://www.lacuadraonline.com/reviews/businesses/an-open-letter-to-local-antigua-business-owners/#comments Fri, 15 May 2009 02:10:51 +0000 Michael Tallon http://lacuadraonline.com/?p=267 We keep hearing, verbatim, the same line, over and over again, from our advertising staff. They say the most common reason new clients give for declining to take an ad is because they believe, “…only locals read La Cuadra.” This has been happening with a regularity that makes us wonder if one of our competitors has been practicing hypnotism during sales calls and we’d like to address the issue directly.

First, we’ve gotta call bullshit. We publish 5000 copies of La Cuadra every other month and they are always gone within five weeks. So, either there are 5000 locals reading the mag, or there is a good part of the traveling population that picks up La Cuadra. With our strong opinions and our the occasional off-color use of language, we might lose a few old blue-hairs from the Bible Belt, but we more than make up for that in travelers who want something to read, in English, at the end of a six hour Spanish class or a long day of volunteer work. And they’re the customers you want – those that are in town for weeks or months.

But we’ve got a better pitch – let’s explode our crafty competitor’s argument. You are a local business owner. You live here and you READ La Cuadra. You choose to spend time with us. That means something.

We’ve heard, time and again, from our readers that they take the magazine home with them to share with friends. They ask for back issues (which are pretty tough to come by at this point.) They ask if they can get a subscription and have the magazine mailed to them at home. We oblige. Also, later this month, we’ll be online. Our website, www.lacuadraonline.com, is within a few weeks of being fully operational – and that’s another advertising outlet for you.

We also know that people come to Antigua because of La Cuadra. They have heard, through friends, that something artistic and thoughtful is happening here. What that means for you is an engaged readership that is focused on the magazine before them. That means your ad is making a lasting impression. Give us a thought.

]]> http://www.lacuadraonline.com/reviews/businesses/an-open-letter-to-local-antigua-business-owners/feed/ 1 http://www.lacuadraonline.com/reviews/ngo-review/ngo-review-manos-abiertas/ http://www.lacuadraonline.com/reviews/ngo-review/ngo-review-manos-abiertas/#comments Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:25:51 +0000 Jessica Arnold http://www.lacuadraonline.com/?p=754 Paola is in her mid-thirties and has six children. She is deathly afraid to become pregnant again, but her husband wants more children. She is reluctant to have sex with her husband, and he is looking around for other women. He has threatened to leave Paola and their children if she does not submit, and Paola does not know what to do or where to turn.

Fortunately for Paola, Manos Abiertas offers a solution. Manos Abiertas, or “Open Hands,” is an integrated women’s health center providing family planning and maternal health services. The clinic is located in the small town of Ciudad Vieja, five kilometers from Antigua, at the base of Volcan Agua. The clinic is run by its founder and director, Hannah Freiwald.

Ms. Freiwald, originally from Germany, is a trained midwife who has managed birthing centers in Guatemala City since 1997. Several years ago, a representative from Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. (“PPFA”) contacted Ms. Freiwald about funding a Guatemalan project focusing on maternal health issues. With PPFA funding, Ms. Freiwald decided to open Manos Abiertas in Ciudad Vieja.

Before Manos Abiertas opened, there were no comparable services in Ciudad Vieja. Women lacked education about family planning choices. Ciudad Vieja had (and still has) no hospital. The public emergency health center was attended by a general auxiliary nurse with no emergency services outside of office hours. Generally, women delivered babies at the National Hospital in Antigua. Yet, the hospital had a high rate of infant mortality and performing C-sections, which are inherently dangerous to the mother. Women who chose not to deliver at the hospital gave birth at home with the assistance of a traditional midwife. Ms. Freiwald explained that although traditional midwives are good, they are not trained to handle emergency situations.

NEW SERVICES

Manos Abiertas now offers a full range of women’s health care services – from family planning options to post natal care. The clinic offers full gynecological care, including pelvic exams and pap smears, which test for cervical cancer and other abnormalities, and receives lab results in about a week. In addition, Manos Abiertas tests for most sexual transmitted diseases, including herpes, syphilis, gonorrhea, hepatitis B and C, and HIV. If other or more expensive tests are necessary, Manos Abiertas will refer the patient to other doctors, usually in Guatemala City.

Manos Abiertas supplies several family planning options. The clinic offers oral contraceptives, birth control shots (one or three month injections), birth control implants, condoms, intrauterine devices, emergency contraceptives, and other services. Most importantly, the clinic provides education and counseling about all of these family planning methods so that women can make informed decisions.

If a patient is pregnant, the clinic provides prenatal and postnatal services. Manos Abiertas supplies pregnant women with nutrition and health counseling, nutrition supplements, lab work, routine check ups, and prenatal classes. After delivery, the clinic offers check ups for the mother and baby for up to six weeks.

Manos Abiertas is also a birthing clinic, following a professional midwifery model. This means that the mother decides her position for delivery and who she wants present during delivery. She also delivers naturally without chemicals. There are two individual rooms for birthing at the clinic, and the mother may remain at the clinic for up to 24 hours after delivery. Only in an emergency situation will the clinic staff attend a delivery at the home of the mother.

The three staff members of Manos Abiertas, Ms. Freiwald, her assistant Gabriela, and the head of clinical maintenance, are all women. Ms. Freiwald is a certified professional midwife and has personally trained Gabriela. Both women are qualified to provide clinical care for women. The clinic also hosts interns studying midwifery for several months. Other volunteers are welcomed. The clinic is open every day during the week, with a staff member on call for emergencies.

On average, a woman will pay Q25 for each prenatal appointment until she delivers her baby. However, Manos Abiertas offers these services on a sliding scale, meaning that the amount a woman will pay for clinical care is based on her ability to afford treatment. Approximately one or two women a month are unable to cover the Q25 fee. According to Ms. Freiwald, “No one is ever turned away.”  The clinic will work out a payment plan for those who cannot afford to pay at the time services are rendered.

For example, recently a mother of five children in her mid-thirties sought the clinic’s help. The mother had miscarried twins at four months and had developed an infection and anemia. She had been to a doctor who had prescribed her antibiotics to prevent her from becoming more septic. The woman was too ashamed to tell the doctor that she could not afford to pay for the medicine. She refused to see the doctor again despite needing more care.

A family member then brought her to Manos Abiertas. The clinic realized that she desperately needed help. The clinic purchased and administered the expensive medication and allowed the woman to rest at the clinic. If the woman had gone without treatment for another twenty-four hours, she would likely have died. The clinic then worked out a payment plan with the family to pay off the debt from the medications. Manos Abiertas’ determination to turn no one away is an enormous drain on the clinic’s operating budget, and the clinic needs donations to cover these kinds of emergencies.

As for other funding, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. has supplied Manos Abiertas with a renewable grant for up to four years to cover general operating costs. PPFA also provides technical support, training, and all of the tests and contraceptives the clinic offers. Manos Abiertas hopes to be self sustainable in the next few years.

Manos Abiertas is the only clinic in Central America funded by PPFA that offers midwifery services. PPFA requires that the clinic use PPFA funds for maternal health care but has not placed any other restrictions on the clinic. Private donors have also helped by supplying the clinic with medical equipment and furniture.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

On average, the clinic sees eight to ten women a day, with most women being around the age of sixteen. The counseling and education the clinic provides is working. According to Ms. Freiwald, the clinic’s success is due in large part “because there are no men here.”  Manos Abiertas offers “Atención de mujer a mujer;” care from women to women. By creating an environment free from the influence of men, the women – and only the women – make decisions concerning their reproductive health.

Traditional midwives have also been supportive of Manos Abiertas. For example, a young woman named Maria was expecting her first child. She had been attended by a traditional midwife throughout her pregnancy, but her midwife was not allowed to deliver her baby because regulations from the Guatemalan Ministry of Health prohibit traditional midwives from delivering the baby of a first time mother. Instead of going to the hospital, the traditional midwife recommended that Manos Abiertas deliver the baby. Maria was able to deliver a healthy baby at Manos Abiertas with her family present.

Despite its success, Manos Abiertas still faces many challenges. The “machismo” culture in Guatemala oftentimes dictates that the husband will make all reproductive health choices for the wife, including when she has children and how delivery will occur. Additionally, some Guatemalan men believe that a woman who does not get pregnant is unfaithful. Accordingly, men often forbid women from using contraceptives.

As a result, women are seeking counseling secretly. For example, Paola, as noted above, has six children and does not want to get pregnant again. So, Paola comes to Manos Abiertas, without her husband’s knowledge, to receive monthly birth control injections. She plans to undergo sterilization surgery soon, and she must not become pregnant for the surgery to be successful.

Some religions also prevent women from receiving care because they advocate against contraceptives, emergency contraception, and abortion. (Abortion is illegal in Guatemala except in cases to save the mother’s life). Additionally, some patients are mono-lingual in a Mayan language, making counseling difficult.

Despite these challenges, the future for Manos Abiertas is promising. Backed by PPFA support, the clinic intends to reach more women and eventually offer more services. For now, Manos Abiertas is glad to be able to offer women an alternative to the maternal health choices – or lack of choices – that they have had in the past. With hands open, Manos Abiertas invites women to receive integrated family care given from one woman to another.

HOW TO HELP:

Manos Abiertas accepts donations and volunteers. The clinic desperately needs an ultrasound machine and donations to its emergency fund. If you are interested in helping, please contact the clinic via telephone at (502) 7888-7740 or (502) 5000-4810; via email at manosabiertas@centrodepartonatural.org; or in person at Manos Abiertas, 2 Calle 2-59 zona 3, Ciudad Vieja, Sacatepequez. Manos Abiertas’ website is available at http://centrodepartonatural.org/index_archivos/Page487.htm.

One of my favorite slogans

Groucho Marxists used comedy and outlandishness as a political tool. They believed revolution should be a party, a circus, a festival of irony and absurdity that raised political awareness and paved the way for real change.

In 1968, long before any of the blather about a “Pigs in Lipstick,” for example, they ran a pig – Pigasus The Immortal – as a presidential candidate.

During the Vietnam War, they organized a demonstration with over 50,000 non-violent protestors who hoped to end the war by using their collective psychic powers to levitate the Pentagon and turn it orange. Cool. The media attention they gained helped to swell the ranks of the anti-war movement.

I mention this because every night I go to bed and try to use my individual psychic power to levitate the Pentagon and send it spiraling out of our galaxy. Someday it will work and you will thank me.

I mention it because I have been thinking about how the methods of enacting change have evolved, and how there are those who often, very quietly and beneath the radar, work to make things a bit better. They are perhaps not as theatrical as the Yippies, but many of them are equally as bold and dedicated. Many of them are working here in Guatemala, privately or in NGOs.

I also mention it because my brain, during this time of year, is one giant egg-nog soaked non-sequitur and I needed a tenuous hook for the next sentence, which is: I have violated a central tenet of Groucho Marxism. I Now Belong to A Club That Would Have Me For A Member.

Even worse, I did not just join a club, I (and Café No Sé) joined an association along with Mono Loco, Reilly’s, La Sala, Bistro 5, Nokiate, Fridas, Sin Ventura, La Casbah, Gaia and Café 2000.

The association, ASADE, is a collective or restaurants, bars and entertainment venues that have joined together to try and give back to the community.

To that end, ASADE recently donated Q18,000 to the NGO, Niños de Guatemala which is opening a school in Ciudad Vieja this month. That donation was generously matched by Rotary International bringing the total to Q36,000. The money, which will be used to help furnish the school, was presented in November during a tribute concert for the late Garifuna star and social activist, Andy Palacio. The Niños de Guatemala school, when it opens, will enroll 70 students, with the goal of having 200 students by the beginning of 2013.

ASADE has also begun an environmental initiative to coordinate recycling programs amongst its members.

I think Groucho, quite the radical himself, would applaud ASADE. Happy New Year, and Niños de Guatemala, felicidades!

]]> http://www.lacuadraonline.com/reviews/businesses/local-business-association-review-asade/feed/ 0 http://www.lacuadraonline.com/reviews/book-reviews/book-review-%e2%80%93-the-predator-state/ http://www.lacuadraonline.com/reviews/book-reviews/book-review-%e2%80%93-the-predator-state/#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 03:46:37 +0000 James R. Tallon, Jr. http://lacuadraonline.com/?p=595 The Internet “gives us instant free communication at the price of universal surveillance.”

This parenthetical observation has nothing to do with the central themes of James K. Galbraith’s new book, “The Predator State.” It’s included in a brief description of technologies which moved from military roots to broader societal application. It marks the moment, however, when a casual summer read, poolside at a hotel in Antigua, gave way to an agreement by a recovering politician and policy wonk with minimal graduate training in the discipline to review a work on economic policy by a distinguished professor for his son’s magazine. Good thing, too. This book is worth reading.

With analytic clarity, grace, and wit – the Internet line is just one of myriad examples – James K. Galbraith takes the reader on an almost thirty year flight, from the Reagan Revolution to the hopes and fears of current discourse. The altitude is low enough to describe details on the ground but sufficient in height to discern patterns of governmental and economic policy. The result is a refreshing antidote, perhaps for the economist, but surely for the concerned general reader, to the superficial exchange of talking points and cable commentary which passes for a national policy debate. His goal, he says, is to “free up the Liberal mind.”

Galbraith introduces us to the concept of predation, “the systematic abuse of public institutions for private profit or, equivalently, the systematic undermining of public protections for the benefit of private clients.”  At its core, however, the analysis moves beyond yet another critique of the Bush administration to its real target, the inability of Democratic leaders to articulate a governing alternative. He challenges the reader to envision an approach which is more than not-Bush.

Galbraith begins with the theoretical economic tenets of the Reagan Revolution: tight money, low taxes, balanced budgets, deregulation, free trade and others.  With civility, he cites the roots of these ideas in the academia of the 1970s, and while affirming his rejection of both the content and logic of the theories, he grants a seriousness of belief to the revolutionaries.

A series of chapters, thought provoking to the layman, no doubt the grist for a bodily assault in the Academy, examines the rejection and abandonment of the conservative policies, at least with respect to their stated economic objectives, through the years of Reagan and beyond. The lasting impacts of the Reagan revolutionaries were not, he argues, in the basics of economic policy. Rather, Galbraith offers a fresh concept: Reagan and his supporters changed the language of debate.

The lasting effect of the “Reagan Revolution” was to bring reverence to the concept of markets, a word which Galbraith suggests has risen to the status of a secular religion in American political discourse. Observe the genuflections as the word “Market” is spoken. To the economic assertions about the market, Reagan conservatives appended the political concept of freedom. “Economic freedom,” in Galbraith’s words: “the freedom to shop,” took center stage in political discourse.

Far from defending or ensuring a role for coherent governmental action, Liberals have been overtaken by the language of “making markets work.”  The result has been to define and limit the discourse between Liberals and Conservatives nearly three decades later. What is government’s role and who speaks for it?

While the words of the current Bush administration echo the Reagan vision, they are – in Galbraith’s view – of a wholly different character.  The rhetoric is still of limited government, but the reality, simply stated, is why challenge the role of government when it is easier to acquire control directly? Galbraith cites the litany of oft-heard criticisms of the Bush years, but he places the behavior of the administration within the concept of a “corporate republic.”

Their policies are wholly consistent with a private takeover of the state. Help our “investors” make money on government’s lines of business. Keep regulation out of our way. Deliver our governing message with efficiency and effect. The rhetoric is conservative, but the reality is quite the contrary.  It is an aggressive governmental effort in support of private gain.

This is The Predator State.

To Galbraith, the ideas and policies of Reagan have been abandoned in practice. In his view, they were wrong anyway. But they have taken on cosmic life as a secular belief system. The political descendents of Reagan use the rhetoric to run a private interest government, and the Liberals, trapped in the language of markets, seem able only to stammer, “we’re not them.”

This is the puzzle of 2008.

While Galbraith admits that he could write more – perhaps he will – about the road ahead, he reminds us that our national success from the Great Depression forward grew not from a “free market economy” but from our unique American mix of public and private action. He concludes with thoughtful examination of the potential for public planning and standard setting in advancing a new approach to climate change and infrastructure development.

Lest The Predator State be viewed as a one-sided ideological attack, Galbraith takes aim at commonly heard criticisms of trade policy and the loss of jobs by America’s middle class. He reminds us that the quality of jobs “at risk” in the trade debate were not created as a result of “free markets” but by unions, laws, regulations and standards, imposed here at home. The problem is a conservative attack on those mechanisms, not in the concept of trade. The answer is how we respond in our domestic policies. “The trade deficit overall has practically nothing to do with trade agreements.”

I learned a valuable lesson from Professor Galbraith. As a member of his target audience, a Liberal caught in the language of markets, he offers a simple challenge. Think about how things really work. My work is in health care policy. His modest treatment of this area covers the well stated criticisms of high cost, uneven quality, and our lack of a universal payment system. It’s also a field awash in talk about markets, about the freedom to choose. How does this market thing really work? Can you even buy a unit of health care if you wanted to? Are you purchasing medical care or are you purchasing insurance, an entirely different product? In other words: think about how the terms of discourse alter and mask our real choices.

Galbraith acknowledges that the book, at least in part, was suggested during his last visit with his father, John Kenneth Galbraith, at a Cambridge hospital in 2006.

The Internet moment cited above occurred in the presence of my son and, thus, the agreement to write the review. If 2008 presents an opportunity for meaningful discussion among generations, Galbraith is a good traveling companion.

Jim Tallon is President of the United Hospital Fund, a health care policy think tank and philanthropy. He served as Majority Leader of the New York State Assembly. He lives and works in New York City.

Over the past few years,

Jean-Louis Trombetta Wilson, 42, of Antigua, Guatemala recently launched a business he has been thinking about for the past 31 years.

In some ways the genesis of Urban Reclamation, his messenger bag and clothing business, came in 1977 when he first visited Washington, DC and saw the Metro covered in graffiti. To Jean-Louis this street art was overwhelmingly beautiful. To his young eyes, the flat cement nothingness of an urban light rail system was transformed by individual, self-directed street artists into something far greater than anything the city planners had originally envisioned. And he felt that Guatemala could use some of that beauty, too.

“To see a wall that the day before was gray and blank transformed into a canvas overnight really changed the way I saw the world,” said Trombetta Wilson. “Some people see vandalism, I saw creation.”

Jean-Louis went on to explain that the graffiti, and the “hip-hop consciousness” it represents, is radically different from how it’s often portrayed.

“Real graffiti artists aren’t gang members, they aren’t out to destroy. They want to build and make an ugly world more beautiful. What’s wrong with that?”

That fascination with street art stayed with him, and in the past year he has created a way to bring its cultural value to a project intended to help save the planet.

“I am Guatemalan, and I see, everyday, the ugliness of the City along side the unnecessary waste and pollution that is choking the country,” said Jean-Louis, as we had coffee in Mono Loco, a local bar and restaurant in which he is a partner. “For years I’ve been trying to figure out how I could help reduce that waste and support street art. I was looking for a way to reclaim our culture, while reusing and recycling waste. One day I was driving back to Antigua from Guatemala City and saw some workers tearing down the vinyl from a billboard and it all kind of clicked. I knew I could do something cool with the vinyl – that I could use it to bring the Guatemalan graffiti movement to a wider public.”

He realized that if he could get his hands on that vinyl, which was headed to the Guatemala City garbage dump, he could use it to produce high quality, high visibility products upon which he could feature the work of Guatemala’s best graffiti artists and sell to people interested in both fashion and promoting a healthier environment. The main vehicle he settled upon was the messenger bag, which he produces at a facility in Ciudad Vieja entirely from recycled materials.

Of course, the moment of inspiration was just the beginning. Before the dream could take form he would have to get his hands on the vinyl, find a facility and skilled workers that could realize the product, organize a retail and distribution system – and, most challengingly, he needed to break his way into the rather secretive world of the graffiti artists themselves.

“Most businesses aren’t intentionally wasteful, but markets for discarded products need to be created,” said Jean-Louis.

When he contacted the company that manufactured the billboards they were more than happy to speak to their clients and offer them a means of getting rid of their used signs.

“Generally, what happens is that after they’ve run their advertising course, the signs are either hauled off to the dump or taken back and stored in the advertiser’s warehouse. When we offered to take them off their hands, people jumped at the opportunity.”

Happily for Jean-Louis, if not for Guatemala, there is also an enormous excess labor capacity in this country for skilled tailoring. In the mid 1990s, following the development of the World Trade Organization’s “free trade” rules, many clothing and apparel manufactures in the United States moved to Central America to take advantage of the “free trade zones” where no taxes were paid and labor and environmental costs were low. Unfortunately, with the development of the Chinese economy and its seemingly infinite pool of unorganized workers, most of those jobs have disappeared.

Trombetta-Wilson, going through old contacts, ended up contracting with a family run tailoring business in Ciudad Vieja, just a few miles west of Antigua. The fabrica employs 12 to 18 workers, though, if the venture is successful, those numbers could grow exponentially. With a payment system that includes a salary, plus production based incentives, the workers can earn the up to triple minimum wage in high demand seasons. Moreover, it allows the workers, mostly young women, to stay near home rather than traveling to the city for weeks at a time.

“We’re very conscious of valuing the fabric of the family. We want the women to be able to return home at the end of the day. Also, at the fabrica there is a garden and if the women need to bring their children to work, they are encouraged to do so. We want to help build these families, not tear them apart.”

I asked Jean-Louis if he would change his production methods and move manufacturing to China if the business were to grow. He flatly answered, “No.”

“The sustainable development, environmentally conscious philosophy is all about local production of both the final product and the art. Even if we someday become a multi-national company, we will not act like one. We’re all about building the local community.”

Having the raw materials and manufacture figured out, Jean-Louis needed to find the artists who would create the images for the messenger bags.

He’d seen street art all over Guatemala, and he had some contacts with the hip-hop community. The hip-hop connection brought him to a graphic design firm in the city called GuareGuare (a name intentionally mimicking the way that gringos mispronounce the “Guate, Guate” call of  chicken bus ayudantes on the road to the capital.)

When he visited their office he explained the project and the larger philosophy of Urban Reclamation, a philosophy that intends to embrace the living art of the streets and engender pride in creating a more beautiful Guatemala. As he counted off the names of the artists he wanted to contract for the business (Kiki, Zane, Zoad, Woser, Zick, Meteoro, Sonar…) smiles and laughter percolated around the room.

“I thought they were laughing at me,” said Jean-Louis.

As it turned out, four of the artists were actually sitting in the room.

“This, again, points out the disinformation many people have about graffiti. The real artists aren’t gangbangers or criminals. They’re artists. Professional artists.”

He then went on at length about the beauty he sees in the art form.

“Listen,” he said, “these are artists who really care about making their world more beautiful. These aren’t rich kids. They work during the day, they go to school. Each can of paint is 130Q. They risk getting caught. They risk coming back the next day and seeing their work painted over. They know the art is temporary, and yet they keep creating. They keep learning from one another, developing their personal styles. Each one of them works with a different visual language. And each one of them respects the work of the other. They don’t tag over someone else’s work. They respect national patrimony…”

I cut in and asked him what he meant by that.

“It’s completely against the rules to make art on national monuments. They choose spaces that are just ugly, underneath overpasses, on walls that are eyesores. They make their world more beautiful and none of them make a dime.”

He continued, “with Urban Reclamation, we want to give them an opportunity to get their work outside of their neighborhoods, and we pay them for every design.”

Jean-Louis then took me to the retail space he has in Antigua, in the entrance of Mono Loco, on 5th Ave, just south of the Parque Central.

The store is filled with several different lines of messenger bags and tee shirts. The messenger bags are faced with a design by one of the graffiti artists and carry the Urban Reclamation logo. The designs of each artist are unique, ranging from classic hip-hop iconography to a new line that Jean Louis is developing with the help of Meteoro, called Maya Manga – a fusion of traditional Mayan images and modern Japanese anime.

“We want to expand around the world – using street art and graffiti, supporting hip-hop culture and local production to get exposure for the artists and the art form, and also to encourage other businesses to get on board with the concept of sustainable development through recycling and reusing what otherwise would be garbage, while reclaiming their culture and their national pride,” said Jean-Louis.

For me, it’s comforting to think that, in these waning days of the American empire, something good may finally grow out of the relationship between Guatemala and Washington, DC.

Tom Graham and Willie Gomez

A couple of years back, at the last Jamtigua concert Tom Graham and Willie Gomez got on stage with their band, The Blue Dawgs. The crowd leapt to their feet for the first time that afternoon and started dancing. I don’t remember their opener, but I do remember Tom, his hair spilling over his shoulders, as he blew into his harp a bleating and furious rock riff. I remember Willie leaning back and wailing on his guitar, coaxing the blood of angels from each note. It was old-school, like the days of Paul Butterfield and Mike Bloomfield, when blues met rock with balls and a few white boys did both genres justice. It blew me away. It was flashback central, minus some guy selling tabs of windowpane.

The gig that afternoon was far too short, but one thing was for sure, these boys, who usually play small venues like Café No Sé and La Sala, were meant for the big stage where they can really tear it up and show off the breadth of their chops.

It’s in the smaller venues, however, where you will mostly find them these days. At Café No Sé, where they play every Wednesday night, the shows are intimate and spontaneous. The chemistry (altered as it often is) of two musicians who have played together for over 18 years is evident. A typical set at No Sé might include John Prine’s Angel From Montgomery, The Dead’s, Friend of the Devil, Cab Calloway’s Minnie The Moocher, and originals like The Antigua Shuffle.

At La Sala, where they play on Fridays with the Chupacabras, the band moves in and out of genres – from blues to rock to salsa to reggae, and back again.

These guys are  not to be missed at either venue!

Below is an interview with Tom and Willie conducted by Wendy Wever, former publisher of Austin Daze. They’ve got some great stories to tell, but if you really want to get a shot of their energy (and maybe an Ilegal Mezcal) head on down to No Sé or La Sala this week.

Salud!

John Rexer

Willie Gomez

Wendy Wever: How did you end up in Antigua?

Willie Gomez: I was born here in Guatemala in the city in Zone 2 in ‘55, it was a really nice, small, beautiful city back then. We moved to New Orleans when I was 2. When I turned 6 we moved to Houston and I stayed there for about 25 years. My brothers and I started a band together when I was, like, 8 years old. I was the drummer. I played the drums for a few years but when the band broke up that led me to start playing the guitar. Cause, I was like, “I can carry the guitar everywhere with me.” I was about 14 when I started playing the guitar.

WW: So was that the reason you chose to play the guitar?

WG: Pretty much it was. When I was little, I used to sing in choir. I was raised Catholic, and my brother and I used to do harmonies to the Ave Maria in Latin. Music was always in my blood. It’s because my dad is a piano player and my mom’s family are all musicians. They’re a bunch of bohemians. So, once I decided that’s what I wanted to do, I just moved forward and blew off college and started playing music and seeing how I could make a living.

So I lived in Houston for a long time, then I moved to Austin and I played up there for a while. One of our friends had a job that supported us. The rest of us were bum-ass musicians that didn’t make money, so we used to go to the grocery store and steal  to get a meal.

Then I moved to Colorado for 8 years and played music. After that I got sick of living in the United States, so my brother and I decided to move back here. This was in 1989. I ended up meeting Tom. We’ve been playing together for about as long as I’ve been living here. It ended up being a perfect place for me. It suits me just fine. I’ve been here for 18 years now.

WW:  What’s it like to be a musician in Antigua?

WG: It’s cool. I love Antigua. Being a musician is just what I do. It doesn’t matter where I am. When I was a kid, I decided that’s what I wanted to do and that’s what I’ve always done. I had other odd jobs in Colorado, wherever… Here I worked for my brother for a while at the restaurant and this and that. But once I figured out I could actually make a living playing a little music and live, then I just started doing that. So I just started getting bands together. I had some boys from Livingston playing with me for a while. We played kinda Caribbean music. They all were from Livingston, except for this one Mayan guy on the bass. He sang like a bird. They had the whole Garifuna thing going on. We learned a bunch of songs. We had a great Garifuna trip. It was great, it was great. We played and packed this place, Biancos.  It was a great place.

But Antigua, as you know, has always been problematic with the noise. So that place got shut down. I also owned a couple of places which got shut down cause of all the noise. Wherever I open up a place it always gets shut down cause I always make a bunch of noise. So now I just let somebody else deal with all that and I just show up and play.

WW: Do you have any problems now with the sound ordinances here in Antigua?

WG: Well, occasionally the owners just ask us to keep it down. I personally don’t’ deal with it anymore. I just follow orders from the bar owners. They’ll come in and tell us the cops are outside and we need to keep it down or stop playing. Or start again and so on. We just try to go with it.

WW: So where can we go see you play?

WG: You can go see Tom and me on Wednesdays at Café No Sé from  9pm till whenever they shut us down, and that would be around midnight. We sing Blues and whatever comes up. We don’t really have an itinerary. We don’t have any set list. Although there are some songs we do pretty regularly which are classic blues or standards. Everything else is whatever comes up – an original of mine or Tom’s, or a  song of a friend of ours. Or I’ll remember a song I haven’t played in 20 years, so I’ll play it.

On Fridays I play with The Chupacabras at  La Sala. There we usually play Blues, Soul Reggae, and Rock. Every now and then they want some Salsa too. We do quit a bit of parties in Santiago Atitlán and we go check out the concert Roberto Luz puts on up there every year. I always end up playing with someone. Last time I ended up playing the drums.

WW: What do you think of La Cuadra?

WG: It has some great funny stories and great horoscopes. I love the pictures.

Byrant Hand, 33, professional educator

Las Manos de Christine is a non-profit organization, named in honor of Bryant’s mother, an educator who dedicated her life to her family and her students.  The goal of Las Manos de Christine is to provide the same world-class language instruction to the poorest children in Guatemala that the Oxford Language schools provide to Central America’s business class.

Through both his for profit and non-profit work, Bryant knows that the level of proficiency a Guatemalan has in a second or third language, particularly English, is directly related to the success they will achieve in their professional lives.  And he knows that the Guatemalan economy of the coming decades, increasingly global and increasingly based on tourism, will reward today’s children who have the opportunity to integrate with that new economy. He is determined to see that the less well off are not left behind again.

But identifying the problem isn’t solving it.  The barriers to providing quality language instruction to the impoverished children of Guatemala are immense. The public education system is bureaucratic, underfunded  and unwelcoming of outsiders, the private schools don’t serve the target population, and volunteer projects generally are not structured in a way that would make intensive language instruction a viable option.

To surmount these obstacles Las Manos de Christine formed a partnership with Camino Seguro/Safe Passage, a NGO which provides educational, medical and nutritional support to children whose families work on the Guatemala City dump.

The philosophy of Las Manos de Christine is that for real learning to occur, students need a safe environment with professional language teachers willing to engage them in a long term educational commitment.  Las Manos de Christine has the teachers and the educational resources. Camino Seguro has the children, the will, and the facilities.

Together, they are building a successful future for hundreds of children that much of the rest of the world would rather simply forget.

For the past year, together, Camino Seguro and Las Manos de Christine have brought the disparate parts of the educational puzzle together and created a real solution for an endemic problem – and in the coming years, Las Manos de Christine is committed to building similar world-class ESL programs for impoverished students across Guatemala and Central America.

To reach these goals, Las Manos de Christine needs to continually raise resources.  Initially, Bryant Hand went to his family and friends for donations to begin building towards this inspiring dream.  To continue their growth and development, they are constantly searching for new sources of revenue.

One intriguing resource that Bryant and Las Manos de Christine has tapped is bringing together the arts community in Guatemala with those willing to donate time, effort and money to support their program.

On October 8, 2008 Las Manos de Christine will be hosting an art opening and auction at Meson Panza Verde in Antigua. At this event, which is sure to be a success, the work of over 20 Guatemalan artists – as well as the artwork of many of the children of Camino Seguro – will be on display in the Panza Verde Gallery.  Please come and join with Byrant, his teachers and  his friends as they continue to work for the poorest children of Guatemala on their quest to build better lives through education.

Wine and refreshments will be served for the opening on the evening of October 8.  The exhibit will remain open for public viewing and bidding through out the month of October.

Panza Verde is located at #19, 5th Avenida Sur.  To learn more about Las Manos de Christine, please visit their website: http://www.lasmanosdc.org. To learn more about Camino Seguro/Safe Passage, visit their website at www.safepassage.org.

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