Red Light Politics
Welcome to my short form Tumblr blog. My name is Flavia Tamara Dzodan, I am a business developer, writer, public speaker, ideas instigator, content creator, media facilitator and trend watcher living in Amsterdam.
This Tumblr is about the spaces and intersections between politics, culture, race and gender matters with some humor and pop culture thrown in the mix.
My long reads blog is Red Light Politics.
I also blog at Tiger Beatdown.
If you would like to know more about me, visit this page .
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Noted Elsewhere
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What did I miss?
I’ve decided that I am not even going to try to catch up on Tumblr since Friday. Nope. Not gonna do it.
So, did anything important...
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Interesting
Just got a job offer? I know the company, it has a good reputation. And awesome downtown offices.But it’s not quite my style - their...
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“The new rules, which were given the force of an executive order, are a clear improvement over a draft version. If monitored and enforced, they could...”
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Heroism in the Supermarket:
Vitamin Water wants me to believe that drinking their sugary concoction will help to make me a superhero rather than...
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…and The Onion for the win, forever.
Tl;dr: All 10 ways are “Revolutionary Terror.”
(via TheNoobYorker)
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Last night got the pleasure to met and chat with the German Tumblr team.
These women were totally awesome. Total girl crush!
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“The institution of marriage is not under attack as a result of the President’s words. Marriage was under attack years ago by men who viewed women as...”
Tag Results
29 posts tagged Latin America
“Argentina received support across Latin America and the Caribbean today to become the non-permanent representative for the region at the UN Security Summit for the 2013-2014 period, the Foreign Ministry informed today.”
Argentina elected to represent Latin America at UN Security Summit - BuenosAiresHerald.com
Also, from the article:
“The Republic of Argentina is committed to representing all of the relevant topics for the region and the Security Summit and its voice will be the voice of the people,” the government assured through a communiqué sent from the Foreign Ministry.
It continued to say that Argentina “received today the unanimous support of Latin America and the Caribbean at the United Nations, for the candidacy as a non-permanent member of the Security Council during the 2013-2014 period.”
“President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and the Argentine people thank all Latin American countries and the Caribbean for this acknowledgment,” the communiqué furthered.
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The dictatorship that followed consigned thousands of Argentineans into military detention. Most were tortured; a few were released, many were eventually murdered. These “disappeared” numbered in all around 30,000.
In 1979, the Inter-American Human Rights Commission visited Argentina and inspected the most notorious detention centre, the Navy Mechanical School in Buenos Aires. They found no prisoners. As Horacio Verbitsky reveals in this extract from his extraordinary book, the prisoners had been dispersed, some of them to El Silencio, an island property that had belonged to an official of the Catholic archbishop of Buenos Aires.
The Catholic church’s complicity in torture and murder in Argentina should be no surprise; it had, after all, long precedents in extreme doctrines that came to Argentina (and elsewhere in Latin America) from the far right in France.
”Breaking the silence: the Catholic Church in Argentina and the ‘dirty war’ | openDemocracy
I know today many Americans are rightfully very angry because of the Catholic Church’s meddling into politics. Some of us have seen this first hand elsewhere. At the link above, one of the many examples of how the Church was not just complicit but an active participant in the torture and death of thousands of people. And this is just one such case, it is an almost exact copy of what happened everywhere in Latin America during the 70s and 80s.
This, of course, does not mean that what they are currently doing in the US is not disgusting. Of course it is. I am just surprised they hadn’t openly inserted themselves into politics sooner.
14kgoldnyc replied to your quote: Announcing her presence with a major gesture with…
Do you think there will be any ‘cultural differences’ backlash because she’s U.S.-born?
I don’t expect so, not necessarily. Because from what I read, she seems to have always identified with her Ecuadorian roots, even while in the US. There will be backlash because of her proposed laws for equality, though. I’ve seen the backlash in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico City so I wouldn’t expect it’d be different in Ecuador. The pressure from the Catholic Church and its affiliated groups all over Latin America is HUGE. It can be as virulent and agressive as what the Christian right does in the US.
“Announcing her presence with a major gesture with the closure of ex-gay torture clinics, Ecuador’s new American born Health Minister has been revealed to be an openly gay woman who led the charge against those clinics since 2008.”
Ecuador President appoints lesbian to cabinet | Washington Blade
From the article:
According to LGBT Latino news blog, Blabbeando, Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa announced Wednesday the appointment of Carina Vance Mafla as the replacement of outgoing Health Minister, who resigned earlier this month over charges that he’d left the health system to languish without proper modernization efforts.[…]
Yesterday, the nation’s most prominent LGBT organization brought attention to Mafla’s sexual orientation by heralding her as a “lesbian activist.”
According to the translation, “the organization goes on to say that they hope the newly appointed minister will pay attention to current delays in the distribution of HIV medications, create guidelines to prevent discrimination against LGBT individuals at hospitals and health centers and take action on shutting down illegal religious “clinics” that promote “cures” for homosexuality.”
“These doctors took advantage of many illiterate parents whom take their children for treatment by pressuring and forcing them into signing these 28-page consent forms and getting them involved in the trials.”
“Laboratories can’t experiment in Europe or the United States, so they come to do it in third-world countries.”
Pediatrician Ana Marchese explaining how, in Argentina, GlaxoSmithKline was just fined over vaccine tests that killed 14 babies
The pharma company specifically targeted illiterate people who had to sign agreements for these tests. All children who were part of them come from extremely poor backgrounds.
More at the link.
“A mysterious epidemic is sweeping Central America – it’s the second biggest cause of death among men in El Salvador, and in Nicaragua it’s a bigger killer of men than HIV and diabetes combined. It’s unexplained but the latest theory is that the victims are literally working themselves to death.”
Kidney Disease Epidemic | PRI’s The World
From the article (which is well worth the read and includes video):
All of them [the men who died] worked in the sugarcane fields.
“It is important that the chronic kidney disease (CKD) afflicting thousands of rural workers in Central America be recognized as what it is – a major epidemic with a tremendous population impact,” says Victor Penchaszadeh, a clinical epidemiologist at Columbia University in the US. He is also a consultant to the Pan-American Health Organization on chronic diseases in Latin America.
Today, at Occupy Amsterdam, there is a debate, Voices from the South – ‘What if Latin America Ruled the World?’. They have invited a couple of academics to discuss this with the public, etc.
And of course, as a born and bred Latin American, I have to laugh at their lack of imagination. They cannot even conceive a world without colonizers? Someone, anyone, has to rule? But naturally, so many of these Northern Europeans love, love, love “the exotic” that probably their imaginations run wild at the thought of lush vegetation, “hot women” and “passionate music”, so they are very keen on this little exercise in reverse colonialism.
Oh how I wish you could ALL read Spanish
Really, I so wish you could read this. And since I do have many followers who do, I am putting it out there because I have never read anything like it before.
It’s a public letter written by Martha Maiz Mier, to her brother. Martha Maiz Mier is the sister in law of the former Governor of the State of Nuevo Leon in Mexico (who had to face trials for corruption and whose political career came to an end long before this letter saw the light of day). And in this long, morose letter she tells the story of not only many decades of corruption in her family (one of Mexico’s most powerful), but also in the highest public and political echelons of Mexican society. It is breathtakingly plagued by the stuff that makes the best Latin American soap operas: corruption, abuse, political maneuverings, sexual scandals, illicit affairs, violence and a long list of etceteras. Except that it is not fiction and it involves the lives of millions of people in a country that is currently facing serious social issues.
It’s long, but if you can read Spanish and are interested in Latin American politics, this is a must read. And if you are not interested in politics per se, it is still a must read, because truly, our best works of “magical realism” fiction do not even convey half of what goes on in this missive.
Also, about the income inequality post, I love how The Atlantic (the original source of both the map and the quote) states “We’re on par with some of the world’s most troubled countries”. Well, perhaps you could acknowledge that, if you are on par with such countries it might as well mean that you are one of the most troubled countries. But I guess it’s better for collective American morale to point that Latin America is one of those troubled regions, while the US, even though it shares every index that makes Latin America troubled, is exceptional.
Students in South America march for free education
I wrote this week about Argentina’s policy of free University education. Two news items from today worth noting on the subject:
In spite of freezing climate, 100.000 Chileans march for education reform
Though the 1980 Constitution maintained the illegality of profit in educational institutions, the [Pinochet] regime encouraged the emergence of private institutions, which critics blame for the emergence of a class-based education system.
“What the students are calling for is free education like what they have in Argentina and Mexico,” said Urbano [a grade school teacher for 25 years, who took to the streets in support of reforms]
and
Paraguay University Students Campaign for Free Education
University students in Paraguay started a national campaign to demand from the Government free quality education in a country where gaining access to higher educational levels is a privilege.[…]
The initiative to demand free education was put forward very recently in an assembly of the university and now the students have started to tour different public universities to try to build a large national movement in favour of it.
More at the links above.
Look! I am now writing at Global Comment!
I wrote this piece hours before last night’s events in London, but yeah, I stand by those words. How Argentina’s government(s) responded to the 2001 riots creating programs that could serve as alternative models for Western economies.
Chile hit by violent anti-government protests
via Chile hit by violent anti-government protests | World news | guardian.co.uk
Protesters have clashed violently with police in Chile’s capital to decry President Sebastián Pinera’s policies, as a poll showed him to be the least popular leader in the two decades since the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.
Demonstrators led by students demanding cheaper and better state education blocked roads and lit fires as police used water cannons and tear gas to quell the latest outcry against the conservative billionaire.
More at the link, including video of the protests.
The title says it all. My latest at Tiger Beatdown.
RIP Antonio Prieto, Chilean singer who passed away last night at 85.
His greatest hit, “La Novia” (The Bride) was translated into several languages and was played in millions of weddings across Latin America. One of the biggest exponents of the Latin bolero genre, Prieto was also a well known actor who had a prominent role in Sergio Leone’s film “A fistful of dollars” along side Clint Eastwood.
redlightpolitics replied to your post: Yes, This Happened
Oh, if I can add to your list of stereotypes based on my own background: Latin America! Femicides! Anti Abortion Catholics! More Femicides!Absolutely! For us South Asian “third worlders”, we are meek and subservient and ETERNALLY WAITING FOR WHITE MAN TO SAVE US (Thanks Mr. E. M. Forster and Jules Verne for cementing this trope), for Latin@ women it’s a *different* kind of overt sexualisation, no? Particularly that “all” Latin@ women are always up for sex, and once they are over a certain age, they can be house cleaners and nannies, no?
Correct me if I’m wrong — and I very well can be, I’m still learning.
You are totally spot on! I even have to regularly put up with these stereotypes in my daily life. When we meet someone new, my own partner is regularly asked, amid a wave of sneer and sarcastic laughter how he “manages to keep up with me”, implying that obviously the oversexualized Latina must be so difficult to deal with! And in media, it’s a trope of either salsa dancers in skimpy clothes or victims of femicide in the hands of macho culture. Add a good dose of “all those backwards Catholic countries where women will never get abortions!” and you will have the complete picture.
They always forget that Argentina was the first country in the entire American continent to legalize same sex marriage. They also never mention that the country is currently debating in congress a law (the only one of its kind in the world) that would allow the de-medicalization of trans* identities based on what they call “personal narratives” (thus, allowing trans* folks to legally change names and all documents without the need to go through an invasive medical evaluation and only basing the changes on the personal life stories of trans* folks and not on the opinions of doctors or therapists). And this is just to give two examples out of the top of my head, there are many, many more across the continent. But such matters are hardly ever spoken about in English speaking media when they address “backwards, poor and oversexualized Latin America”.
