toppings 9 : downfall

the following is not a representation, but it sure as hell might be in the near future.

a blue, affective piece came out in today's nyt, injured in iraq, a soldier is shattered at home." it tells the story of sam ross, a 24-year-old who served in iraq, lost a leg and his sight, came back to a parade and a brand-new log cabin, couldn't deal, went through over 20 surgeries, attempted suicide several times, burned his former trailer down (the same one his father killed his stepmother in) and now faces charges for arson and attempted homicide.

this is dream material for a tear-jerker, for the new wave of repentant films (in the eighties we had vietnam and charlie sheen or tom cruise, in the late nineties the gulf and africa and marky mark wahlberg...) bound to be harvested from heroic u.s. "incursions" and "rebuilding efforts" in the middle east. but before it gets to the scripts and the stars and the screenings, it could stir a lesson and a glimpse of things to come.

this is a near-perfect condensation of america's bushean rise and downfall, the refractory compression of american dream and american nightmare. like iraq, there is guantánamo, and the wtc site, and global warming, and illegal immigration, and corporate scandals, and media manipulation, and issues of privacy and basic guaranties, and... and... there hasn't been time or willingness to come to terms with these issues that have shaken the social core of the country, people are just starting to grip the consequences of the past eight years.

"the story of sam ross has the makings of a ballad..." says the article.

it also has the makings of a cutthroat history lesson : "i came home a hero, and now i'm a bum."

let's wait for the rest of them.

touring the bush (13) : caracas chavista

move over, che. there’s a new big man in town, and on t-shirts. in the nineties we had marcos, now the sporadic-shower kids of genoa, seattle, gràcia, and other “politically sensitive” first-world enclaves have a new icon of enduring revolución, all the current rage in lefty-pop-politics and resistencia superstardom: hugo chávez.


1989 was the tragic year of the caracazo, the biggest social shakedown caracas faced in the last decades. in 1992, chávez appeared on the radar of global politics after two failed coup-d’états against president carlos andrés pérez, who had adopted an active repression against the protests and riots of those years (pérez, a former socialist-turned-sucker-for-washington-consensus-economics, was later removed from the presidency and imprisoned for an outrageous corruption case. he later went into exile). chávez, back then lieutenant cornel, went to jail for two years. he was later pardoned and went on to try his luck in politics, founding the mvr (movimiento quinta república, or fifth republic movement). he won the 1998 presidential election, and from then on things in venezuela would never be the same (well, some things).


privatizations were reverted, a new constitution was sworn, social programs sprung out of nowhere (sustained by petrol-dollars), massive for and against chávez demonstrations rocked the capital (around twenty between 2000 and 2004), a bush-backed coup against chávez failed, and chávez was on his way to becoming the hemispherical anti-freetrade, anti-bush spearhead (he called bush “the devil” in a speech given at the UN general assembly). his local “bolivarian missions” extended to a regional and even global call for radical change. supposedly.



chávez is a polarizing figure. he has taken control over parliament, the military, and the local media (he’s even created telesur, an alternative t.v. broadcasting company that is a sort telemundo-crossdressed-al-jazeera). he’s unsettled foreign affairs and silenced the opposition. he’s pushed the resurgence of the latinoamerican left and proven a vital ally to castro’s withering regime in cuba.


what about the city? has caracas become a revolutionary capital? is there evidence of radical change in the urban fabric? well, yes, but not really because of chavismo, not even his terms. chávez has maintained old political and economic structures, and he has reinstalled even older ones (the return of economic populismos : price controls, state intervention, subsidies, oil-funded spenditure). the precise, acupunctural interventions that have seized caracas and her barrios in the last years do reflect a generalized discontent and a reinvigorated social participation, but they are not direct outcomes of state policy. some are even funded by the devil's advocates (world bank, etc. etc.) what lies in the brick and mortar moutains of caracas's barrios is a semi-latent alternative to pure bolivarismo, a more active, pragmatic and open approach to social needs and problems. another revolution, still in the rough.

next : caracas revival

touring the bush (1)

yes bush, we believe (aha).

like we believed in your promises to make latin america your priority (aha), pushing development (sure), a fair immigration initative (yaright), etc etc etc...

now that you're practically OUT (whoopie), you decide to tour "the slums of brazil...the impoverished villages of guatemala..." and again, promises promises, this time "to deliver social justice to 'poor and struggling' latin americans left behind by the global economy..."




well, mr. bush, you should know, we haven't been expecting you to keep any promise for quite some time now. and we haven't been waiting either.

without further ado, i'm countering the chávez-countering bush tour with my own extended tour of the bush: the neo-tropical, post-authoritarian, hyper-pop, auto-projection, auto-construction, third-world-celebrationist, forever-peripherial, meta-panamericanista, superpovera ... urban/architectural landscape of latinoamérica.

stops: bogotá, buenos aires, brasilia, caribe, caracas, curitiba, méxicocity, panamácity, santiago, sao paulo, tijuana, l.a.



come ride with me. 'ámonos.