looking away from migrants

A Guardian journalist remind us the accepted scientific knowledge that the pollution in the West is the main culprit on the drought in the Sahel region. Such a statement does not come as a surprise, I believe, to the readers of this page. More interesting is that in the same article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1860299,00.html) is discussed a proposal to reduce the greenhouse effect. Another scientist has recently proposed to shoot into the atmosphere certain chemicals, able to reduce the darkening of our skies. Nice and dandy, besides the detail that those chemicals are the same pollutants that caused the droughts in the Sahel. So another neat example of looking away. Let's deal with the greenhouse effect, which scare the wits out of our western populations (certainly after the hyped movie “the day after”), but let's look away from the consequences of our solution in other, less sexy, parts of the world.

Consider another stance of western-people-saving-the-world. For any reader of spanish newspapers, the drama of african migration is a day to day affair. I hardly remember a day in the last year in which I have not find in a spanish newspaper the body count of arrivals at the beach-heads of globalized flows of people. In the last months -finally- the media catch up with the fact that every day, the coasts from spain are arrival points of every kind of boat crammed with people flying from africa and intending to start again in europe. A real flow of people, that suddenly, could not be integrated any longer. It looks like europe does not need, after all, so much cheap labour. So we have got, in the last weeks, different spanish ministers doing the european tour of asking for support to stave the rising tide. Already couple of months ago, the sexy government of Zapatero trumpeted the agreement of the EU to supply helicopters, newer boats and money to the coasts guards of spain. It did look very much like fortress europa.

But for good or for bad, that europa -oh so hugely concerned with the migrant question- has turned her back to this issue as well. The headlines of today tell me that the EU has refused funding for the defence of the spanish front. No new helicopters, no fast boats, no money for welcome –or deporting- centres. It is really hard to imagine what is really going on. How comes that the fearful europa is going to left undefended the front? How comes that the governments -of say The Netherlands- are looking away from the reaching-for-money hand of Zapatero?

Probably it all boils down to crass budget policy. Probably the EU has not yet designed a budget instance called something alike “fund for the fighting of unasked migration”. So there is no money in the purse of Brussels bureaucrats for paying a fleet of boats rescuing the hundreds of persons floating away miserably, in their attempt to reach the beaches of europe. Probably, now that we are in the warming up of an electoral year, in due time those funds are going to be released, and less barbaric and more reasonable support will be given to the coastguards.

But now, xenophobic europa is looking away. And the african europhiles go on dying in the sea.

Fires

The jungle at the south of Venezuela exerts the fascination of the unknown. As a venezuelan child, right after reading “the lost world”, with dinosaurs still alive and mountains made of diamonds, you are told that the places described lie right at the south of your country. So you want to go there. Later on, when you are about to give away the hope of seeing weird animals from long gone times, you realize that perhaps not dinosaurs, but surely unknown plants and insects. A field biologist trip to those forests will give you fame and adventure. So as a student of biology, you still want to go.

Well, it was around 1988, and I could register for an expedition organized by the climber's club of my university. I was already frustrated with studying physics, and indeed, after that travel I switch to biology. The travel itself was a disaster. I was in the group that supported the climber team, and we were made to carry backpacks of thirty some kilos, meanwhile hacking our way into the jungle with machetes. We run out of food, and expend two weeks more than planned walking, aiming at a wall that every day seemed to grow further away. As I say, I could not have imagined a better trip.

Today, one reportage of the Spanish newspaper “El Pais” made me remember the starting days of that hike. Before getting into the rain forest, we have to walk some forty kilometres in the savannah. It was a hell of a hike, but we ended it. Actually, in the many stops that we have to make to rest, the almost pristine savannah showed burned patches. We were told that few years ago, the inhabitants of the region had started a series of protests again a governmental ban on tourism. The people there worked as guides and porters of the few hikers that would arrive, and the ban coming from the capital (more than two thousand kilometres away) could deprive the region from its main income. So the people burned the place. As simple as that. The local law enforcement, perhaps remembering the science fiction best-seller Dune (the one that controls a resource is the one that can destroy it) acknowledge the treat, and restore the tourist flow. The savannah, nevertheless, stayed burned for the years to come. Ecosystems do not really recover after human crimes.

Now, I read in El Pais that the record season of fires in Galicia, a spanish province heavily burned the past weeks, had a social background. Different social workers, researchers and politicians of the region agree: the fires started as a protest.

Differently than in Venezuela, though, the reasons of the protest are less clear. There haven't been a ban on tourism, for example. Neither there is an identifiable movements behind the action. One university professor, though, believes that fires increase when left wing governments take power. The reasoning is that the right wing activist like to show he incompetence of the current government, and then produce the fire to expose them. Be this true or not, the agreement exists: people burn because they are upset.

In the table that I am using now there is a candle burning. I stare at the flame, the warmth light that transform my morning café into the intimate and personal location that I like so much. I imagine then the same flame, expanding on the forests of Spain, I imagine the trees going away in a flash of ashes. In the years to come I'll visit Spain again, and probably I'll walk in Galicia. I will stare at the burned places.

Once more, I won't be able to understand.

Time to look away, again

One day of ceasefire, and we can look away. Time to turn our attention to more pressing matters. Talk about the politics of your own country, another book, the last film.

Nevertheless, from the first pages of most newspapers today, it does strike me the multitude that is facing the horror. I stare, almost in disbelieve at the procession of cars that go back home, to their home in Lebanon.

In one way or another those masses today remind me the few photos that I, as southamerican, have been able to see in museums. The photos of germans after the carpet bombings of Berlin, the photos of Warsaw totally destroyed after the bulldozers of the the nazi army. Photos that almost always fail to give me any inkling into the people there, in the paper. How could you go back to that? What are you going to do?

Well, actually I am not being very fair. It looks like Unifil is getting some reinforcement, and a part of the west will not be looking away. In the months to come we'll see again, if the international press allow us, blue helmets in between the ruins. Those young soldiers from other universes that will come and patrol, that will try to give some feeling of security to the ones that, right now, are waiting patiently in a car to move another meter, just another meter... and eventually discover if home is still there, or there will be the time, again, of building the walls, the roof.

Normally, when in other columns that I have written I get to this moment, it's time to reveal my own position, say my ideological or pragmatical evaluation of the facts so exposed. It will be so nice if I could do that now. Imagine that i could craft some sentences about the government of Israel, of Lebanon, of Iran. Some few sentences that could allow my conscience to look away again, my role of commentator of international politics fulfilled. Alas, that is not the case. At least for me, is still time of not look away. The drama of our century keeps on unfolding itself in the east. I can only go on looking, with the encountered feelings of the politically responsible citizen and the voyeur. The katiushkas did not fall in Utrecht, nor were all inhabitants of Caracas removed and send away to give place to other newcomers. We in the west are foreigners to the tragedy of the east. But we can look at it.