Anna Bernard – Pike & Hurricane

Stories of Palestine Told with the Oud

Anna Bernard — Sun, 11 Mar 2018 12:15:33 +0000

Hopes and dreams and desires are inherent to the human condition. When far away from loved ones, we experience a sense of longing and nostalgia. Different people find different ways of expressing these feelings; some find a language in art, some in music or poetry. The editors of Pike and Hurricane had a unique opportunity to sit down with Adnan Joubran, a world renowned Palestinian musician, to discuss the language and power his oud gives him.

Musical evolution

The oud is an ancient stringed instrument popular in the Middle East. The expertise in the instrument has been in Joubran’s family for a long time:

“I come from […] a family of oud makers and musicians, my father is the third generation in the family who builds the instrument and my brother is the fourth.”

Joubran explains to us how he was enticed by the oud in his youth:

“[…] in the year 2003 there was this kind of phase where I just started to play the oud on my own in the house and I felt it could be my language.” His big brothers supported him and that is how Le Trio Joubran came to be. He explains his path in more detail:

“In 2004 we formed the band Le Trio Joubran, and in 2014 I made my own band. Here I am in Sweden making my own show.”

Many things have happened in the world and in the music scene as Joubran’s career has evolved:

“The oud was only for the old people, culturally the instrumental music is only for the old people. We’ve made a big movement, not only us, but a lot of other musicians too. Young people find it trendy to listen to Trio Joubran.”

Dimensions of hope

When asked what music can do that politics cannot Joubran answers:

“I think with my art I can prove I have existed, I can prove that there is culture,” he says. Further in the interview he explains:

“I am always pro-culture. We should be building history. Whatever we do good today one day will become folkloric, one day will become tradition. In 50 years my music will become tradition. Mozart was contemporary then, he was rebellious then, but now it’s classical,” Joubran asserts. He continues by explaining that music cannot come just from an idea, it comes from history:

“There is culture, there is Palestine, it was there, it is still there.”

Like many other Palestinians, Joubran is a part of the Palestinian diaspora, splitting his time between London and Nazareth. According to him the diaspora is important in preserving Palestinian identity and culture because “each member is a whole nation,” he emphasises and adds:

“I’ve been lately in Chile. There’s more than 400,000 Palestinians in Chile. [Many of them] went in the 1920s. And it’s nice to see in their houses ouds from that time. For me that was so moving.”

During our interview we try to stay away from politics. Nevertheless, we briefly discuss his hopes for the future of Palestine:

“I said earlier I am a bit hopeless, but my mission is to give hope”, he asserts. Joubran’s mission of giving hope comes out of necessity:

“Unfortunately we live in a world where you wake up and you see the news and you suddenly get paranoid: […] is [this] the life that we came for or is [this] the world that we are living in?”

Joubran tells us about a track called ‘I wish I were a tree’ from his latest album:

“We are here only to grow just like the trees. […] we are here just born to love and just born to grow the one next to the other, not to be uprooted, not to be killed. This tree can have red leaves, I can have different coloured leaves, we are different but we should just live this difference and enjoy the beauty that we give to this world, with our differences,” Joubran describes. In addition to giving an awareness of cherishing our differences and a dimension of hope to the listeners, he wishes to provide a space to drop a tear or to get a smile on their faces.

Tears or smiles, Joubran does not seem to give up hope:

“Everyday I wake up with a different dream. I think my pleasure in life is just to dream, to keep dreaming. The way home is nicer than home. […] The pleasure is not fulfilling your dreams, it’s the pleasure of dreaming.”

By Anna Bernard

Photo credits:

Captain.orange, Oud, Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0)
Ida Sharla Løjmand, All Rights Reserved
Ida Sharla Løjmand, All Rights Reserved

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Nigeria: from recession toward sustainability

Anna Bernard — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 23:03:43 +0000

Sustainable business practice is a hot topic because ensuring the continuity of today’s economical survival into the future is of great concern. The core question is how a country can reconcile the need to be environmentally and socially sustainable with the demands of a market-based system, whose key measurements of success are growth and profit. Nigeria is just climbing out of recession and while the government is focusing on structural reforms to diversify the country’s economy, financial institutions have adopted a guideline of sustainable business principles that help evaluate the effect of their operations on the quality of lives, the economy and even the very existence of the Nigerian economic system as a whole.

Giant strides and setbacks

Firstly, we need to remember that Nigeria is a mammoth in all respects: in it resides the biggest population of the continent of Africa (the 7th biggest in the world) and its capital, Lagos, is one of the fastest growing megacities of all times. Nigeria also plays a key geopolitical role in West Africa while being one of the rising African economic giants side by side with South Africa and Egypt.

The risk is that when a giant falls, it falls hard. Nigeria slipped into recession in 2016, battling with unpredictable fluctuations in oil prices; a falling naira, the Nigerian currency; and an inflation rate higher than in more than a decade. The population of the country is relatively young and filled with potential, but at the same time it is a critical challenge to be checked – a tinderbox waiting to flare up if desperation and disillusionment creep in.

Just a year ago the prospects for a reemerging Nigeria seemed gloomy to say the least: its economy is reliant on oil and susceptible to knockouts when crude prices crash and Nigeria is perturbed by the threat of extremist terrorism. An ongoing task for the Nigerian officials has been to reassure Nigerians and foreign investors that President Buhari, who was on medical leave for most of 2017, is strong enough to steer the country out of harms way.

President Muhammadu Buhari

Sustainability a.k.a. how to stay in business

When the going gets tough, the tough get going and that is exactly what Nigeria is doing as it is emerging from its first recession in 25 years. The climb back has been nerve-wracking with the aforementioned internal challenges and external variables, such as fluctuating oil prices, putting additional pressure on the economy and the Nigerian society.

However, due to the recession, the government has become aware of the urgent need for structural reforms to properly diversify the country’s economy. Infrastructure for agriculture, energy, and transport, are necessary for a more sustainable Nigeria that would not depend on oil for growth.

Bank alert

Already as early as 2012 the Nigerian business sector emphasized the necessity of sustainability within its own framework. The Bankers’ Committee adopted in July 2012 the Nigerian Sustainable Banking Principles that oblige “banks, discount houses and development finance institutions to develop a management approach that balances the environmental and social risks identified with the opportunities to be exploited through their business activities”.

What makes balancing like this ever more daunting is that sustainability comes with a price that does not necessarily square with the profit incentives that the market has to offer. It is all too common to hear that many companies succeed by doing nothing at all to be more sustainable; others even survive by doing harm.

However, according to Ibukun Awosika, the Chairwoman of the First Bank Nigeria Limited “business sustainability is an approach that creates long-term stakeholder value by implementing a business strategy that considers every dimension of how a business operates in the ethical, social, environmental, cultural, and economic spheres.” A wholesome approach like this seems critical in a complicated situation with which Nigeria is dealing as it is leaving the recession behind.

In the future Nigeria should expect evermore complex challenges; however if it practices what it preaches and strides forward with its sustainable aspirations while learning from its experiences in the recession, the mammoth need not fear extinction.

By: Anna Bernard

Images:

Global Panorama, Nigeria Flag, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Global Panorama, Gen Buhari, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

David Holt, Money 013 nigeria 1995, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Satanold, IMG_0454, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

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SWIFT, Sanctions and Human Security

Anna Bernard — Tue, 12 Dec 2017 20:18:33 +0000

In March 2012 something unprecedented happened. A country was cut off from SWIFT, the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. In this case, the disconnecting of Iran was an effort to contain Iran’s disputed nuclear program. The narrative was that Iran’s exclusion would damage its ability to conduct foreign trade and money transfers, since the system is used to transmit payments and letters of credit globally and locally. Belonging to global financial networks opens up an endless amount of opportunities, but once severed from the system, who pays the price?

The severity of the crippling economic pressure imposed on Iran led to the nuclear deal of 2015 where economic sanctions were lifted in return for limitations to the country’s debated nuclear energy programme. The side effects of the sanctions were many, ranging from unemployment and inflation to regime change. The people of Iran, tired of global financial sanctions, elected Hassan Rouhani, a reformist, to follow the populist hardliner Mahmoud Ahmedinejad in an attempt to restore living standards.

SWIFT

SWIFT, with its headquarters in Brussels, operates the largest international money transfer mechanism and is vital to international money flows, exchanging an average 18 million payment messages per day between banks and other types of financial institutions in 210 countries. According to the SWIFT website, it enables the global community to communicate securely and exchange standardised financial messages reliably, thus facilitating global financial flows, and supporting trade and commerce all around the world.

Expelling 25 Iranian banks from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication shut down Iran’s main avenue to doing business with the rest of the world. The effects reverberated not only through Iran’s economic structures, but reflected heavily on the local population.

Why does this matter?

Cutting off a country completely from the international financial system in this day and age has an all-encompassing impact. SWIFT cutting off Iranian banks was the first time the West reached so deep into the global banking system to short-circuit financial mechanisms that a society relies on. It is significant because the aggressive nature of the sanctions regime created a situation where the ends justified the means. Disconnecting all Iranian banks from the SWIFT system blocked critical services related to the wellbeing of the Iranian people. The provision of food and medicine was affected, and noncommercial family remittances were impeded.

But just like water will carve its way through stone to create the Grand Canyon, so will money find its way to flow. In the midst of the most aggressive sanctions, expat-Iranians would travel to visit family members with suitcases full of cash or medical supplies. In such a situation of financial short-circuiting, ordinary commerce will become deeply dependent on the international criminal network in order to function at all. This creates even more insecurity for the most vulnerable in such a situation.

The dire situation on the ground in Iran also led to vocal discontent among the people towards former president Ahmedinejad who eventually had to concede power to his follower Rouhani. One of Rouhani’s main campaign promises was to relieve sanctions and restore living standards. This resonated well with the Iranian population and the reformist Rouhani was elected president with the consent of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who saw in Rouhani an opportunity to bring to an end the nuclear confrontation with global powers while not destabilising the entire regime already suffering from the sanctions. The election of Rouhani also seemed to delight the West, since highest-level direct contact between the US and Iran was established for the first time since the revolution in 1979.

Global finance and human security

The case of Iran’s severance from SWIFT serves as a reminder of the depth and magnitude of the interconnectedness of the global economy. Economic interaction and interdependence is not something that happens in a hidden strata beyond most of us. It affects us every day in a plethora of ways. This case raises questions of the mechanisms in which national interests and ideologies are enmeshed with global security concerns to justify debilitating measures against a regime.

In this age of interdependency and interaction, what befalls a government or a regime, will first and foremost impact the people on the ground. When foreign remittances stop flowing, when the state economy starts to dwindle, when discontent erupts, the daily lives of people become insecure and eventually unbearable. In Iran’s case, all because of a severed SWIFT connection.

By Anna Bernard

Photo credits:

Teheran, ilee_wu, CC BY-ND 2.0

imam khomeini, seier+seier, CC BY-ND 2.0

Money!, Hans Splinter, CC BY-ND 2.0

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A defector’s tale

Anna Bernard — Sun, 29 Oct 2017 20:01:06 +0000

On September the 22nd, UF Malmö members and others intrigued had a rare chance to sit down and hear the story of Mi Jin, a North Korean defector. The hall in Orkanen filled up with curiosity – the lived reality of people inside North Korea remains the great unknown of our time. The experiences of this woman, defecting from the totalitarian rule of one of the world’s most isolated countries, are unimaginable to most of us. She professed in a calm and composed manner the significance of determination and defiance in a battle from destitution to a position of advocacy.

The lecture “Inside North Korea” dealt with the reality of North Koreans’ lives and the Human Rights movement for North Korea. We also had the pleasure of having South Korean Eun Kyoung, Secretary General of the International Coalition to Stop Crimes against Humanity in North Korea, acting as interpreter for Mi Jin and sharing her own knowledge regarding the human rights violations found by the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry.

Life in North Korea

The story that Mi Jin shared with us was a narration riddled with hardship and perseverance under the strongman rule of a totalitarian regime. She faced personal loss and famine, overcame bigotry and was forced to endure seeing her young child work instead of study just to make ends meet. Eventually she exerted all the strength she could amass to be able to perform her mission impossible escape from the most isolated country in the world. She abandoned the regime, risking it all, to be able to provide a future defined by freedom to her daughter.

Mi Jin left escaped with her 14-year-old daughter in 2009, arriving in South Korea in January 2010 after traversing Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. Mi Jin emphasized on several occasions that her daughter was the core reason for leaving, because their life defined by hardships became increasingly insecure after Mi Jin’s husband died when their daughter was only 10. At this point the daughter had to quit school in order to provide for the two remaining members of the family.

What chimed clearly throughout her recollections of her past in North Korea was the arduous everyday life; getting enough money to secure sufficient amounts of food was a perpetual battle, creating a situation where merely existing in the system was a daily fight for survival: “being employed does not mean anything in North Korea”, Mi Jin declared with contempt in her voice, having reminisced on her various jobs including an army-affiliated job and selling bread in the market.

A new life

The impetus for their plans to defect came when Mi Jin was almost detained by the officials. She reminisced with reticence how a police officer tried to “make trouble”, which led her into further problems. As Mi Jin was almost sent away to a prison camp she looked back at her life – she had always been a law-abiding citizen and a patriot. The constant influx of insecurities inflicted onto her life by the authorities seemed unscrupulous.

It is at this point that she took the required steps to commence her defection. She first explored the possibility of finding a Chinese broker who could sell them into China. Finding a broker who will sell a North Korean woman to a husband in China is a common way of defecting. However this plan did not take flight because she wanted to defect with her daughter, a factor that complicated issues. Thus she was forced to study the regimen of the border patrol squads to find a weak point in order to cross the border undetected.

And in this she managed, and she and her daughter fled the country into China. The perils, however, were not over, since they were forced to make their way out of China across several other countries, finally finding refuge in South Korea.

After settling in South Korea, Mi Jin has worked as a journalist in the South Korean online magazine, DailyNK, exploring the North Korean “ins-and-outs”. Her daughter, even after being so many years away from school, was welcomed by her South Korean peers and has reveled in her studies to the extent that she has been granted a scholarship to attend university in one of the most competitive societies in the world. Time after time, Mi Jin solemnly asserted with a smile on her face how incredibly proud she is of her daughter.

Advocating for change

There is something very impressive about hearing stories of the most vulnerable or marginalized people becoming strong advocates for their rights and the rights of others, trying to highlight an abusive situation in their home country while functioning as an influencer for positive change.

Mi Jin provided us with an insight into this kind of advocacy. Mi Jin and Eun Kyoung came to Malmö from Geneva to show us the power of evidence: the data derived from the monitoring of the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry are critical for successful lobbying work.

Their visit showed us the power of relationship building – in this case engaging with the UN and other institutions and organizations. Both advocates make an effort to extend this relationship-building to potential future decision-makers and influencers which explains their eagerness to engage with students.

After the lecture some students had the opportunity to sit down with the guests for a more intimate conversation.

Mi Jin is an example to us all of co-operation of the media in raising awareness with the wider public while relentlessly telling the stories emanating from her North Korean informants still residing in the regime. Her disdain for the North Korean government became clear: advocates are able to and want to work, and it is their basic human right.

A leader cannot lead if nobody follows

Leadership takes many forms, and sometimes the underdog will go to the greatest lengths to advocate for real change. Mi Jin and Eun Kyoung’s cause, however venerable it is, requires not only their work and sacrifice, but it needs followers and support to gain momentum. On a number of occasions Mi Jin pointed out that there is too much focus on the North Korean leader, and not enough focus on the suffering and troubled everyday existence of the North Korean population. They are working to shift this focus, and we should be receptive for their plea.

By: Anna Bernard

Photo Credits

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Shadow Government: Paranoia and Lizard People

Anna Bernard — Mon, 05 Jun 2017 15:43:45 +0000

Blue bloods or serpent bloods?

Since time immemorial there seems to have been a common theme between royalty and serpent worship around the world, as for example in China, where the ancient emperors believed they had the divine right to rule because they
were connected to the “serpent gods”. Further evidence can be found in early images of ancient cultures such as the Hindus and Cambodians with their nāgas, Nordics with their Jörmungandr, and African and Native American cultures with their various serpent deities.

It is said that this connection between the nobility and the serpent creatures has never been forgotten, as the bloodlines of the serpents and the humans have converged over time, thus producing reptoids, or the lizard people.

The reptoid world order

According to David Icke, a new-age philosopher and one of the most outspoken proponents of the reptilian theory,these blood-thirsty, man-eating creatures have influenced the course of humankind since ancient times. Reptoids are a result of not only the mixing of human and reptilian bloodlines; these reptilians are actually an alien life-form that came to Earth from another dimension some 200,000 years ago to breed with people, thus creating our current world elite. Conspiracy poses that world leaders like Queen Elizabeth, George W. Bush and the Clintons, are all lizard people, belonging to secret societies like the Freemasons and Illuminati.

Conspiracy theories

Currently, an approximate 12 million US citizens believe that lizard people run the country. That is just a bit more than the population of Belgium, or a rough equivalent of the population of the state of Ohio. For an average person without inclinations towards conspiracy theories this might seem like an amusing piece of information providing a bit of distraction from the daily dose of gloomy news.

However, the lizard people conspiracy is only one of an untold multitude of conspiracy theories gaining credence. We shouldn’t be focusing on the lizard people, we should focus on the underlying political paranoia and distrust towards our current political regimes. This paranoia is not something obscurely afflicting only some individuals but a widespread condition of modern societies, possibly related to changing societal values. It is hypothesized that the rise of paranoia and conspiracy theories correlates with a rise in individualistic values and a feeling of loss of control. When the modern individualists have to try to reconcile with the lack of control over their lives, it is easier to transfer blame onto hidden forces controlling the distressing events.

In this globalized world where split-second events in one part of the world can have long-lasting repercussions on an international level, it is easy to understand where these feelings of powerlessness stem from. Governments fall, economies crash and somewhere in the rubble stands the individual gathering the scraps left behind, trying to make sense of it all. When it happens one too many times without anybody claiming responsibility, cognitive biases kick in with a tendency to see patterns where there are none. After all, it seems more plausible that it was the reptoid Illuminati who benefited from the 2008 market crash than trying to understand the interconnectedness of our world and the interplay of the seemingly insignificant incidents that led us to the economic meltdown?

As these distressing events happen and nobody can be held responsible, people start to question the status quo, since its incapacity to provide protection is apparent. In an interesting study in 2012, researchers found that only 10-12% of the American population trusts the national legislature. The election of Donald Trump is an excellent example displaying this loss of trust in Washington amongst the average Americans who are tired of corporations affecting the economy and decision-making.

If the mainstream parties and conventional politics cannot channel the voice and concern of the public nor offer a feeling of security to the masses, people will turn their gaze elsewhere to find explanations. For some this means protesting by voting for a political outsider like Trump, who found a way to manipulate the fears of the public. For others, it means interpreting current events from a perspective where the reptoid-Illuminati controls the world. They are both the symptoms of an individual feeling powerless while experiencing massive world events.

By Anna Bernard

Featured image: Bernard Spragg. NZ, “Brown anole, Maui” (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0))

Image 1: Jim Winstead, “Dragon outside jumbo floating restaurant” (Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Image 2: Garry Knight, “Practicing Scales” (Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Image 3: Christopher Dombres, “Conspiracy theories” (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0)

Image 4: Gage Skidmore, “Donald Trump supporter” (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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Manuela Sáenz – Liberator of the Liberator

Anna Bernard — Wed, 10 May 2017 13:22:47 +0000

Manuela Sáenz is a curious case indeed. She was a Latin American revolutionary figure from the continent’s turbulent 19th century. The revolutionary times opened up a space for behavior defying gender, class and racial norms, which created the first seeds for emancipatory women’s movements. Since her passing, Sáenz has gained a heroine status. Her legacy has empowered various Latin American feminist and revolutionary movements to this day.

The life of Sáenz

Born in Quito, current-day Ecuador, in 1797 as the illegitimate child of elite class parents, Manuela Sáenz defied societal norms since her birth. She was informally recognized by her father who later found her a rich English merchant, who she married according to her father’s wishes. This marriage subsequently set off a chain reaction that destined her to become a revolutionary heroine.

Sáenz followed her husband and became a socialite in Lima, Peru. It is in these circles that she got involved in political and military affairs, leading her to bloom as a supporter of the independence cause. As a politically active member of the upper class in Lima, she initially engaged in the independence cause in ways acceptable for women. She informed independence leaders of any Spanish royalist actions and strategies that she heard of, and she was known to hold “tertulias”, intellectual gatherings, where independence sympathizers gathered to further their cause.

It was in 1822, at the age of 25, that Manuela Sáenz met Simón Bolívar, the Liberator, the most famous Spanish American revolutionary figure of the time. During the revolutionary campaigns, Sáenz worked as Bolivar’s personal archivist, informant and confidant, while also being his lover, companion and political supporter. Sáenz is also believed to have fought alongside Bolívar’s troops as an equal in one or more of the battles, thus contributing to the independence movement’s victories and to the consolidation of the independence of Spanish America.

Most memorably she also twice saved her confidant’s life. In 1828, Sáenz assisted Bolívar to flee would-be assassins who had made their way into Bolívar’s proximity. Her audacity and perceptiveness earned her the title ‘Libertadora del Libertador’ from Bolívar.

Women’s involvement in the revolution – the legacy

Although the life of Sáenz was incredibly eventful and full of departures from the norms of her times, she has been depicted most commonly merely as the lover and partner of Bolívar, thus not receiving the credit she deserves for her efforts and loyalty to the independence movement. This difficulty to reconcile with and accept her significance in the creation of an independent continent is arguably related to her break from traditional female roles and societal norms. However, since the turn of the twentieth century, a variety of scholars have sought to capture the deep scope of her life and efforts in the revolutionary processes, while recalling and re-evaluating her association with Bolívar and his movement.

Women were crucial to the Spanish American wars of independence. Most women, especially among the elite and middle sectors of society, conformed to the notion of “proper womanhood” even during exceptional times such as revolutionary struggles. These women supported the independence cause by giving monetary support, serving as spies, sewing uniforms, and by sacrificing their husbands and adult sons to the independence movement. Some women would follow armies in order to tend to the wounded, which was deemed as acceptable behavior for women, as they were seen as extending their supposedly natural instinct to nurture into an extreme situation in a time of crisis and sacrifice. Most of the women with the armies, however, were poor indigenous or mestiza women, who were the daughters, girlfriends, or wives of low-ranking soldiers. These women followed their men, feeding and comforting them as they fought for independence. Still, women in the aforementioned functions stayed in the accepted spectrum of actions regarding their gender, class, race, and status.

Manuela Sáenz departed from these standards. She was engaged in the revolution long before she was involved with Bolívar. Sáenz was a talented and dedicated revolutionary who was capable of manipulating existing gender norms – sometimes adhering to them, at others rejecting them – when she needed to advance her personal and political interests. The problem was that as the revolution ended, strong female revolutionaries such as Sáenz were expected to step away from their exceptional position they had gained during the crisis, and once again pertain to a more traditional role out of the realms of politics and military affairs.

Emancipation emanating from the revolutions

It is argued that Manuela Sáenz and other women like her participating in the revolutionary movements have been crucial in the revolution of women’s emancipation in Latin America.

“The revolution will be feminist or it will not be.”

Five factors have been identified that contributed to the emergence of Latin American women’s emancipation and revolutionary feminism, born of the various revolutionary movements. Firstly, engagement, such as that of Sáenz’s, in independence movements challenged the status-quo perception of gender behavior thus giving women more space to manoeuvre. Secondly, training in the ranks of the independence movements gave women unprecedented logistical skillsets that they were able to utilize in the organization of women’s movements. Thirdly, there was a political opening in a more chaotic state structure that gave women a chance to organize. In addition, this organizing was stimulated by unmet basic needs by revolutionary movements that women themselves felt a need to address; and finally, a collective feminist consciousness – subtle or not – needed to be present for emancipatory movements to gain strength.

In this context Sáenz was certainly ahead of her time, as great innovators often are. Instead of receiving recognition for her efforts, she was exiled and died a pariah. However, even after such degradation, Sáenz’s legacy subtly lived on, inspiring countless women to mobilize.

The life of Sáenz was that of norm-breaking behavior and extreme solidarity for a cause and commitment to the leader she deemed invaluable for the revolution. Sáenz found an opportunity to express her aspirations, desires and ambitions through the revolutionary movement, and by doing so she contributed to an independent continent and paved way for successive women’s mobilization.

By Anna Bernard

Photos:

Osvaldo Gago #acampadasol (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0))

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Atlantis Submerging – Building a Future in the Pacific

Anna Bernard — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 11:00:11 +0000

“In those histories, half tradition,

With their mythic thread of gold,

We shall find the name and story

Of thy cities fair and old.

[—]

Every heart has such a country,

Some Atlantis loved and lost;

Where upon the gleaming sand-bars

Once life’s fitful ocean tossed.

[—]

Now above this lost Atlantis

Roll the restless seas of Time.”

The Lost Atlantis, Edith Willis Linn Forbes

The impacts of climate change are revealing themselves at a varying pace around the world. The inevitable changes in the world the way we have known it will produce a multitude of responses amongst nations. We are witnessing the shaping of a new world order very different to what we have imagined. In this article I will examine the case of climate refugees in the context of the Pacific Islands, where low-lying nations are forced to consider such seemingly far-fetched adaptation strategies as buying land on foreign soil in order to secure territory for the relocation of the population when their home islands will unavoidably submerge as sea levels continue to rise. The story unfolding is that of countries loved and lost, resembling the mythical tale of Atlantis. I will specifically look at the case of Kiribati and its climate evacuation plans.

Climate refugees

According to various security experts, the risks related to unchecked climate change include extreme risks to food security, elevated risk of terrorism as states fail, and unprecedented migration that would overwhelm international assistance, among other factors compromising human and national security. In accordance, climate change has been called the greatest security threat of the 21st century.

According to worst-case scenarios, over 200 million people could easily become displaced by climate change. Numerically and geographically, South and East Asia, including the Pacific small island states are particularly vulnerable to events leading to large-scale forced migration. This is because sea level rise will have a disproportionate effect on the vast masses living in low-lying areas.

This forced migration triggered by climate events would affect development negatively in various ways. There would be an increasing pressure on urban infrastructure and services, which would undermine economic growth and increase the risk of conflict. Forced migration would result in worsened health, educational and social indicators among climate migrants themselves.

The restless seas rolling over Kiribati

The Pacific Island nation of Kiribati is one of the first countries in danger of becoming completely uninhabitable due to climate change. Kiribati is composed of 33 atolls, which are ring-shaped coral reefs encircling a lagoon. Atolls are by nature low-lying, and have a high ratio of coastline to land area, which makes them extremely vulnerable to various problems related to climate change, such as sea-level rise, shore erosion, fresh water contamination and disastrous storm surges. Kiribati has already experienced some of its islets vanishing into the Pacific. In addition, Kiribati is threatened by the rising sea temperatures which forms a severe risk to the coral reefs sustaining the atolls and their islands.

There have been several other attempts at implementing adaptation strategies, at varying, often poor, degrees of success. These strategies have included the construction of sea walls and water management plants, as well as installing rainwater-harvesting systems. However, such measures are not financially realistic for resource-poor and aid-dependent countries like Kiribati. To implement a reliable climate adaptation strategy would require consistent, long-term funding for which development aid is insufficient.

Thus, the government of Kiribati has promoted the concept of “migration with dignity”, in which residents are guided towards the option of considering moving abroad if they are equipped with employable skills. The Kiribati government has in fact launched a programme called the Education for Migration programme intended to make the Kiribati population more attractive as immigrants by focusing on enforcing their skill sets. Another novel idea has surfaced in which international refugee law is applied for climate refugees who are forced from their homes due to the consequences of climate change.

The more radical step has been in preparation for an extreme humanitarian evacuation: Kiribati bought approximately 20 km2 of land in Fiji, as a potential refuge. Fiji’s higher elevation and more stable shoreline make it less vulnerable than the islands of Kiribati. The former president of Kiribati, Anote Tong, who was in charge of the Fiji purchase, intended it to be a signal for the rest of the world in the form of a cry for attention regarding the predicament the Pacific island states are in.

A lost Utopia or climate extinction?
As the effects of climate change are revealed, nations like Kiribati are forced to prepare for the ultimate fight for survival. According to scientists’ predictions a significant portion of Kiribati will be uninhabitable within only a few decades. The question is not merely about safely relocating the biomass of the nation – its population – but there should be an existential urgency regarding the preservation of their national identity, culture and traditions. As we continue this haphazard and blasé approach towards climate change, climate migration and climate evacuation, we are possibly turning a blind eye towards the dawning era of de facto human climate extinction regarding cultures and communities. In the case of Kiribati and the other low-lying Pacific island states, only time will show if the future generations of the Pacific will have mere wistful myths and a restless sea of time rolling over their beloved countries and nations.

Anna Bernard

Photo 1: 2012. Kiribati Grunge Flag by Nicolas Raymond, Attribution 3.0 Generic (CC BY 3.0);Photo 2: 2009. Millenium atoll by The TerraMar Project, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0); Photo 3: 2011. As an extremely low-lying country, surrounded by vast oceans, Kiribati is at risk from the negative effects of climate change, such as sea-level rise and storm surges, by Erin Magee / DFAT, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

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Evo Morales – Weak State Populism from an Indigenous Perspective

Anna Bernard — Tue, 28 Feb 2017 11:29:50 +0000

Bolivia, a country once termed “ungovernable” by former president Carlos Mesa, and known for its political and economic instability, elected its first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2005. Morales rose to power from a political movement called the Movement for Socialism, and he recently celebrated his 11th year in office, a milestone demonstrating his long-lasting and solid popularity amongst the Bolivian people. I will look at how the institutional weakness of the Bolivian state creates a need for populist politics in order for an administration to embark on an uninterrupted program of reform with success. There is a viable connection between the historical social, cultural and economic oppression, and Morales’ rise to power with his novel type of indigenous democracy that functions as a charismatic appeal to the disgruntled, structurally excluded majority.

Populism of a weak state

The status of the Bolivian indigenous population as the marginalized political minority stands in contrast to the fact that some 44–66% of the population identify themselves as belonging to an indigenous group (depending on the source, results vary based on the wording of the ethnicity question and the available response choices).

However, despite the structural exclusion of the masses of the poor and the indigenous portions of society, and despite ingrained racism and the elites battling against indigenous cultural survival, the masses have had a significant role in populist politics in Bolivia. On several occasions in the 19th century, the state targeted indigenous communities through agrarian reforms with destructive intentions, but the indigenous population successfully resisted such attacks, forcing the government to back down on their reform programs.

This leads us to examine the function of populism in Bolivia regarding the institutional weakness of the state. Without strong institutions and consolidated democratic practices a situation is created where these weaknesses ultimately force the state to engage in political practices rooted in a direct appeal associated with populism. In essence, there needs to be a method that mobilizes the rural and poor urban masses behind a state-sponsored common goal. From this perspective, the weakness of the state and its institutional incapacity means that political survival requires an administration to successfully embark on a program of reform with a convincing ‘appeal to the people’.

Evo politics – indigenous perspective on democracy?

Morales, who is from the Aymara indigenous group, began his political career as a leader of a coca-growers union, lobbying on behalf of the cocaleros, farmers involved in the traditional, yet internationally contested, livelihood of coca production. This made him the first president to come from the social movements that forced Bolivia’s two previous presidents from office. In fact, Morales was directly tied to the 2005 collapse of democratic institutions as the widely supported cocalero movement under his leadership paralyzed the economy with roadblocks and protest-marches, thus paving the way for Morales’s road to executive power.

Keeping in mind the above discussion on the populism of a weak state, and the required appeal to the masses, one of the most defining election promises Morales made was to govern in favor of Bolivia’s indigenous majority, who have experienced centuries of marginalization and discrimination. Along the lines of his election promises, Morales engaged in a radical push for a re-interpretation of Bolivian national identity largely through constitutional reform, in order to raise the indigenous values and identities to prominence.

In August 2008 a referendum approved his plans for the new constitution, setting out the rights of the indigenous majority, granting them unprecedented recognition, representation, and autonomy. The new constitution also enshrines Bolivia’s controversial coca crop as national patrimony and includes unparalleled language on environmental protection, while also entirely redefining Bolivia as a “multi-ethnic and pluri-cultural” nation. These were arguably important steps in a vigorous program of decolonization that Morales’s anti-imperialist ideology supported, giving Morales evermore credibility amongst those who felt marginalized and in need of an administration that would look after their needs.

From a socio-economic perspective, one of the first and most significant moves Morales made according to his socialist focus, a few months after taking office, was to re-nationalize Bolivia’s oil and gas industries. The growth in tax revenue allowed Bolivia to extensively increase its public investment, benefitting the large portions of vulnerables in the Bolivian society. This program has reduced poverty by 25% during his government, while extreme poverty has fallen by an estimated 43% (as of 2016).

From an indigenous perspective, the protection of the environment took precedence in the vision Morales initially furthered through the new constitution in 2009. The aims of the constitution have been influenced by an indigenous Andean spiritual world-view which places the environment and the earth goddess known as the Pachamama at the centre of all life. In 2010, a law was passed that defines Mother Earth as a collective subject of public interest. The Law of the Rights of Mother Earth declares both Mother Earth and life-systems (combining human communities and ecosystems) to possess inherent rights that the human representatives are required to defend.

Additionally the law states that Mother Earth is considered sacred in the worldview of indigenous peoples and nations, once again displaying Morales’s solemn commitment to forward an indigenous perspective. Morales garnered support in many environmentalist circles and indigenous communities by propagating this environmental focus. All in all, the law is an internationally unrivalled shift from an anthropocentric perspective to a more Earth community based perspective to say that Mother Earth is of public interest.

The new constitution has also supported the inclusion of women in politics, and Bolivia’s National Assembly currently consists of more than 50% of women, having the second highest women’s representation in the world, after Rwanda. This aim for gender parity in the cabinet emanated from Evo Morales’s indigenous background: for the Aymaras and Quechuas the notion of Chacha warmi entails that female and male forces are the opposing but complementary constituents of the cosmos. For Morales, gender parity is thus a part of his decolonization program and, in his own words, a way of showing homage to his own female relatives.

In December 2009 Evo Morales was re-elected president with 64% of the vote. In 2014 he was re-elected for his third term with 61% of the popular vote, speaking of his wide support base in the marginalized majority. This points to his apparent success in making a long-lasting appeal to the masses by addressing issues critical for various portions of the society. Support within the core of the population has continued to be strong over the years, but Morales has been increasingly criticized. Some of the indigenous leaders, environmentalists and activists have argued he is becoming a sell-out: compromising with the elite establishment and shifting his policies to benefit the whiter, upper-class minority.

Ego politics – an end in sight?

The controversy around the president has been growing, getting fire from one scandal after the other: from a secret child to influence-peddling to the construction of the “Evo museum” worth 7 million dollars of taxpayers’ money.

Corresponding with these murmurs of criticism, having ruled for over a decade, a referendum was held in February 2016 on allowing Morales to run for a fourth term, and it seems he lost the vote narrowly. However, in December 2016, the leftist party, Movement for Socialism, proceeded to pick Morales as its candidate for the 2019 presidential elections, blatantly defying the results of the referendum and taking a course into unexplored terrain with uneasy reflections of authoritarianism.

Morales has argued that continuity is needed to forward the decolonization project, to redistribute wealth from nationalised resources equally to all levels of society, and to consolidate indigenous rights. Regarding his keenness to stay in power, Morales is quoted of saying: “I have to respond to the people. It is not the power of the Evo, it is the power of the people”. Only time will show if Morales’s populist appeal still resonates in the Bolivian population to the extent that a single man is allowed to lead the country for two decades (or more?). The future developments in the political landscape of Bolivia will be particularly interesting due to Bolivia’s institutional weakness, its turbulent past and the resilience of the social movements when they unite behind a common goal.
Anna Bernard

Photo 1: Evo Morales By Eneas De Troya, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0); Photo 2: 2014 March of la Central Obrera Obrera by Eneas De Troya, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0); Photo 3: 2013 Socialist and Indigenous Congregation By Cancillería del Ecuador, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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