Hound Dog
Jun 26, 2010, 12:56 PM
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Imagine a more qualified periodical than The Economist to report on poverty and injustice in Chiapas and Oaxaca State and if you find that idea compelling, go to The Economist on line and read their take through The Pulitzer Center on these complex and generally poverty stricken areas of great, indescribable beauty and extraordinary human misery.
Summing up what a place may represent in terms of human achievement and satisfaction is an effort bound to obfuscate. What can you make of a written sentence originated by a Brit that both lauds and laments a place inhabited by fellow human beings in such a sentence as, "In this, Mexico´s second poorest state (Oaxaca) , political upheaval over social justice go hand in had with languid tourism, a vibrant art scene and some of Mexico´s best cooking. The central plaza, known as the Zocalo, is usually a giant tourist attraction and town meeting place filled with overpriced restaurants, hawkers selling curios, old women pushing textiles and children selling cigarettes and candy.
Lets move on south to Chiapas. Here we are informed that,( if I may edit and summarize) indigenous women are much more likely to die during childbirth than other Latin American women and the problem relates to transport and the availability of hospital facilities.
All of these human crises become fodder for the tourist mill and we have this perversion of the human experience that I have culled from these rather lengthy aricles in The Economist to illustrate a point:
Ah yes; extreme poverty among the indigenous who, despite seeming penury dress in colorful clothing and send their tiny munchkins out on the central plaza and surrounding areas to sell chiclets and candies 12 to 20 hours a day and beat them mercilessly when they get home if they do not achieve their arbitrary goals but how quaint and how nice that Euros or Dollars are so highly prized so that after we have exhibited empathy for the cursed among us we can head for the nearest steak house to assuage our sorrow over a T-Bone or some tourist modified mole in a phony Oaxaca style restaurant catering to foreigners and a martini and then, in a vague, alcohol induced fog, lament the inequity among humans before taking that plane to Lima. from either Oaxaca or Tuxtla Gutierrez.
How nice it is to lament the world´s inequities over a martini with a Oaxacan mole or a Chiapanecan tamal and then retire to a hotel room that costs more than those lamented could ever afford and would never engage and peaceful sleep comes easily under those circumsances.
All of this is both sad and funny.
(This post was edited by Hound Dog on Jun 26, 2010, 1:00 PM)
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