Whitney Houston and American Psycho

- a marriage made in the 80s

It might seem today that there are people born to war-torn, aids-ravaged nations with a higher life expectancy than the mega-stars of the music industry. Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, and now Whitney Houston, is to name but a few of those who've recently come to a self-destructive, premature demise. And with each death there of course follows the predictable, violently-opposed responses. On the one hand, there are those who hold dear the achievements of their star, looking upon the self-destructive addictions and chaotic relationships as tragic mistakes. And on the other, opposing such sentimental remembrances, is the druggy-bitch-had-it-coming brigade, ghoulishly revelling in the star's 'deserved' fall from grace; their tweeters and yellow-top columnists alike expressing much the same puerile sentiments.

Though of course, far more interesting than such moral and aesthetic wranglings is the question as to why we've such heavy investment in our mega-stars to begin with. And not just as to the question as to why we've the the need of such mega-stars generally, but also as to what the rise and fall of each particular celebrity tells us about the specific cultural needs of the world that elevated them to stardom. And with Whitney, the most recent mega-star to have fallen from grace, the culture in question is of course that of the 1980s. And it is the gambit of this article that the function of Whitney in Brett Easton Ellis's 'American Psycho' gives us the vital clue as to understanding that social world's investment in her.

Video link to Patrick Bateman on Whitney Houston

The scene posted is one of the most brilliantly comic of the film, and points too to the greatness of the film adaptation of the novel; the Whitney Houston speech being an interior monologue in the book, but is here brilliantly scripted into a scene with Bateman and two of his victims. Why then is the scene so comic? Why does the intoxicated Elizabeth laugh as Bateman delivers a treatise on the greatness of Whitney's top hit, The Greatest Love of All? It is because she knows, as we do, that by day he lives within the ruthless 1980s world of Wall Street, in Mergers and Acquisitions- or, Murders and Executions as Bateman brazenly tells a barmaid in another scene. Bateman's world is that of a poisonously competitive world where rampant, top-end consumerism is the badge of success; a world away from the love of Whitney's theme. So too are the cold electronic beats that were the back-track to Bateman's world of greed in flagrant incongruity with his giving a tender treatise on a singer from the tradition of gospel, soul and jazz. But there is another, yet darker side to the comic effect. We know too that he has surely brought the girls back to his apartment so as to sexually assault and murder them. Indeed, the hooker Christie, who looks peculiarly on at him as he affirms his passion for Whitney, is only there because Bateman has promised her money for plastic surgery so as to cover up the damage caused by his last orgy having ended with her being cut with the sharpened end of a steel coat-hanger. With Christie and our own knowledge then, the speech takes on a rather blacker comic hue.

Why then does Bateman identify with The greatest love of all. In his reply to Elisabeth's puzzlement the reason ought to be clear- that it is just because 'it is impossible in this world we live in to empathise with others'- that he identifies with the message of Whitney's song. That in spite of such impossibility of empathising with others, 'we can always empathise with ourselves'. That is where we find 'the greatest love of all' is, according to Whitney, 'inside of me'. So though Bateman exists within the vicious world of 1980s Wall Street by day, supplemented by the excesses of his orgies of sex and violence by night, he still hopes to find some love- some transcendence- there inside himself. That in spite of all else, he hopes that the love he finds in himself might mean that 'it is not too late to better ourselves', 'to act kinder'. Or in the context of the scene, a hope that might perhaps allow him to spare the lives of the already intoxicated girls upon the sofa....

....But yet Whitney's 'greatest love' doesn't save the girls from Bateman. Why? Well, whilst we might agree with Bateman that Whitney promises a certain transcendence from a world that robs him of all empathy, of all love, of his fellow man. But yet that song must come to an end. He must return to the world where such transcendence can only ever be a fragmentary escape- something bought as a mere commodity within that world like any other. That in fact, loving himself is made impossible by the same mechanism that makes loving his fellow man impossible. An impossibility owing to the fact that his world only runs in so far as he and his colleagues are in brutal competition with one another. In so far as they hate each other. Each must hate the successful for the success that transforms their own lives into failures. And each must in turn hate the failures because to empathise with them could only weaken their will to the top- empathy as such is ideologically impossible in that world. But why does this imply that such a man cannot love himself through Whitney's transcendence from that world devoid of empathy and love for others? It is because the only traits that seem to distinguish people from their more successful colleagues are the barely perceptible upgrades in the things that they themselves identify with. In the world of American Psycho, people are always confusing one executive with another, but yet at the same time they are always squabbling over the small differences between their status symbols. Hence Bateman is horrified that his more successful rival, Paul Allen, has much the same apartment as he himself has, only with a better view of the park. Or in another iconic scene of the film, Bateman becomes feverish at the slightly better quality of Allen's business card, otherwise identical to his own.

In short, Brett Easton Ellis makes us see why the very cause of the need for Whitney's self-love in its transcendence from the cut-throat 1980s world, is the very thing that makes it an impossibility. Self-love is not an option in a world where we must hate a fellow man who is all but indiscernible from us but for small advantages in things that we ourselves aspire to. It is thereby a world whose hatred of others implies self-hatred- a realisation that can be stayed only by hating those others and the world in general in a yet more energetic, violent form. Patrick's self-hatred implied in the hatred of his colleagues is the motor that leads him to lurch between outward destructive violence and inward self-annihilation- this is the dynamic at the heat of Easton Ellis's masterpiece.

And returning to Whitney, we might note that she herself always admitted to suffering from the cut-throat world of the music industry. So perhaps a depressing implication of her own demise suggests that even the most talented preachers of transcending the hatred of the world through self-love, struggle to live by their own preaching within such a world....

From Lady Prime Minister..... to Vegetarian Chancellor

-A World Exclusive from The Gadflyista. Inspired by the success of The Iron Lady, actor-turned-director Nell Gibbon met us in London to talk to us about his latest project, The Vegetarian Chancellor.

I'm sitting in a cafe in Soho, waiting patiently for arrival of the man I'm due to interview. Actually that's a lie- I may as well admit it, since he's safely back in California by now. He's in fact been standing in clear view of my window-side seat for some minutes now, raging obscenities at the cab driver who brought him here. I wonder again whether to intervene, what with him no doubt being unused to the pricklier variety of London cabby, but think better of it. It would be presumptuous indeed to think that the all-action star of such movies as Deadly Killer Machine parts I, II, III and IV would have any need of my help should it come to a scrap.

Eventually he comes in, looking grizzled. Everyone turns around as he approaches my table, recognising immediately the good looks and the lustrous mane of big name Hollywood actor-turned-director, Nell Gibbon. Though looks aside, his opening mumblings of the words 'worse than', 'Yids' and 'New York' could have given the game away too. I choose to ignore these mumblings, and after introducing myself, quickly offer an opening sally on the movie billboard now passing by up on the bus outside. I note again how out-of-kilter the phrase 'The Iron Lady' looks with the pale but sensual, very-human face of actress Meryl Street looking down at us, so I ask Nell what he makes of it. His point is clear: 'she knows what she's doing, Meryl'. 'So do the studio'. 'Cut out the crap' about her being the 'Butcher-of-the-Belgrano', the 'smasher of communities', and focus on 'the good stuff'- on a 'chick' 'wading her way through shit, all guns blazing' so as to be 'the first chick to make it to the top. Now there's a story!'

It seemed strange to me to hear him echo the sentiments of the liberal feminists discussing the film in this morning's papers- well, the stuff about 'chicks', 'shit' and 'guns' excepted- since Nell's notorious misogynistic remarks in the past seem about as likely to make him praise a feminist triumph, as the liberal feminist's 'leftist' remarks of the past seemed likely to see them praise a neo-liberal triumph. But perhaps Nell's own respect for the film has something to do with the fact that its success undoubtedly helped to make his latest project possible- a pet project that no studio would back as little ago as last year. But box office receipts don't lie. And such are the projected returns on The Iron Lady that rival studio, Revisomax, has commissioned Nell to make a similar resuscitation of a formerly loathed leader, again on the basis that they were the first leader of a group formerly excluded from holding power. Hence The Vegetarian Chancellor project was born, aimed to be be released next year so as to mark the 80-year anniversary of the coming to power of the first ever non-meat-eating leader of a Western nation.

So what's it about? Well Nell paints the following picture: of a sensitive young boy growing up in Imperial Austria, one of the world's most notorious fleisch-guzzling lands, only to find his conscience will no longer allow him to eat as his family eats. Nay!- what his whole culture eats. Dish after dish of schnitzel and sausage are set before him, but in spite of all the parental threats made, all the sibling mockery he has to endure, each time he refuses everything but sauerkraut. No innocent little animals would suffer on his account, no matter what the problems it caused him!

Remember, Remember. But what to remember?

(A thought for the day from the Reverend Gadflyista)

Why do we stand in silent remembrance of the war-dead? Is it for the tragic waste of life? Is it because they did their duty for their country? No. And if we do we do remember them merely as objects of our humanitarian pity, or still worse, as nodding dogs who shot whoever the government of their day told them to shoot at, then we grossly dishonour their memory. How? Because what is lost in the ambiguity of standing in silent remembrance of the deceased just as deceased is the grounds that truly makes their loss worthy of our respect. Namely, in the heroism that is staking their life for some cause. It is this we ought to remember them for today- what we need to remember them for today more than ever. To remember the heroism of every soldier who fought in fascist Europe not because he did what he was told to do, nor even for some notion of king and country, but to rid the world of the scourge of genocide, of barbarism. That we ought to remember every Union soldier of the American civil who fought, not because he was from the north, but because he was for the abolition of slavery.

But if such fidelity to a cause is indeed the ground that makes those brave men and women worthy of our respect, then we need to remember that not everyone is so fortunate as those allied or union soldiers, in finding themselves ordered to fight for the good cause. And in fact, it requires a still greater heroism, one yet more worthy of our adulation, to go to the limit for a cause when one is ordered to do otherwise; when one risks terrible punishment for so acting. It is therefore even more important then to remember all those who deserted when what they were ordered to do went against what they thought they ought to do. To remember every soldier of World War One who was shot because he refused any longer to participate in such senseless butchery of his fellow man. Every Syrian soldier who today refuses to be the mere lackey of a discredited regime; who has deserted rather than fire on their fellow countrymen who've set their faces against tyranny. People like Bradley Manning, who chose to expose the atrocities in Iraq rather than propagate them, in spite of the consequences.

It is these men and women who have earned not a gloomy two-minute silence in commemoration of their death, but a two-minute riotous cheer for the heroism of their life. Because when today, doing one's duty means, more and more often, standing on the side of the bad cause- whether in the police, the army, the bureaucracy or the corporation- then it is these men and women we need to be held up as examples to emulate. That in our own defiance we might do much better in honouring their heroism.

On the oddity of a certain species of 'egalitarian' enthusiasm

-A reply to yesterday's Guardian editorial on the Royal Succession (link)

These are hard times indeed for the editors of our centre-left press. For unlike their opposite numbers on the right, they do not lick their editorial chops over the government's daily butchery of the last few progressive institutions left standing on this near-bankrupt isle. A situation that leaves them in the uneasy position of though having to live amid the devastation of their old causes, their vocation seemingly prevents them from giving-up their faith in the progressive potential of government, in their own ability to influence such progress- for to what other end are their editorials directed? Such that, just as the Christian ascetics of old, in denying themselves the more carnal satisfactions of their peers, always found themselves desperately seeking some sign that their sacrifice had some meaning, that they had earned God's favour, so too do our centre-left editors today desperately seek out some sign that their progressive voice doesn't go unheard by our axe-wielding politicians.

For only in such a context can we understand the over-zealous way in which the Guardian editorial yesterday grasped the news that the monarchy was to get an egalitarian face-lift. Sure, they readily conceded, monarchy and egalitarianism are certainly not compatible bedfellows. But on the other hand, they added, it would surely be 'churlish' not to celebrate the 'egalitarian zeal' of the political classes in such bold policy-making. In fact, so carried away did the editorial get that they even summon-up some histrionics for the occasion: 'For 300 years, the mad and the bad have been ushered on to the throne on the shaky claim of their sex'. Though, of course, how having the eldest child on the throne as opposed to merely the eldest son would have spared us so many mad or bad monarchs remains a mystery; unless of course, we are to infer some highly inegalitarian claim that royal daughters are generally less mad or bad that their brothers. Such excesses amid the frenzy of their enthusiasm shouldn't detract us from the central message though: that we'd been given a sign that the egalitarian spirit was still alive and well. That the Bastille wasn't stormed in vain. That Martin Luther King didn't have a dream for nothing. For now all sexes and creeds have an equal right to....? An equal right to... become the lofty unequal of everyone else?

And isn't this just the rub? That what the Guardian editors see as merely 'churlish' opposition, is just this refusal to enthuse over certain forms of equality being realised internally to an institution which itself perpetuates the grossest kind of inequality. That anyone who wishes to retain anything like fidelity to progressive ideals ought to be highly discomforted by expending their energies and enthusiasm in reforming such constitutively backwards institutions.

Now of course, those editors will reply that should they get the chance to tomorrow, they would wholly enthuse over the abolition of the institution itself if that further promotes the cause of equality. And they'd say that such a commitment wholly compatibly with the fact they today enthusiastically affirm equality rather than inequality in the inequality-promoting institution itself. That in a world otherwise hell-bent on pursuing the grossest of inegalitarian paths, they'd say we ought to encourage even the most tentative of egalitarian steps in what are otherwise wholly inequality-promoting institutions. That they'd hold against us that to demand more today is to demand too much, perhaps to discourage those today willing only to take such tentative steps, but that perhaps, if encouraged, might tomorrow affirm more. Is there anything that can be said to be wrong with so seemingly sensible reasoning?

To see what's wrong with this logic we ought to perhaps take a look at another, more dramatic illustration of the commitments of such 'egalitarian' enthusiasm across the pond. Recall the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy of the US military that so enraged liberal egalitarians and gay rights groups in the US; a policy effectively preventing men from being openly gay in the military, until it was recently overturned by Obama. But what did all that egalitarian zeal thrown into the campaign effectively achieve? That openly gay men can march off to get killed alongside their heterosexual countrymen? Is this really what progressive politics wants to be committed to? That after all the campaign energies that went in to guaranteeing such equality, that people are not going to be happy, perhaps even shed a tear, at the sight of the first crop of openly gay soldiers drafted alongside the rest- irrespective of the fact that they're marching off to kill a lot of innocent people whenever their government decides that it might have been unwise to sell arms to some tyrannical regime. Is that really what today's 'egalitarian' enthusiasm wants to be committed to? A principle of equality-for-equality's sake which amidst the Holocaust, would have presumably got bogged down in insisting as to why only the Jews, the communists, the mentally ill are to be gassed and not anyone else? Missing completely the rather more fundamental question as to whether mass murder on an industrial scale really ought to be happening at all?

Such is the fate of any 'egalitarian' enthusiasm that is content to praise the realisation of some purely formal equality in what are otherwise the grossest, most inequality-promoting of institutions. That instead of campaigning for equality in the sex that might become monarch, progressives ought instead to campaign for the abolition of the inegalitarian monarchy. That instead of promoting equality in the sexuality of who gets to go and shoot a load of foreigners, they ought rather to be promoting an equal right to not to have to kill, or be killed, in whatever wars our governments decide are expedient. That when for the first time within the living memory of most of us, those institutions themselves are increasingly called into question, we need no longer be content with merely realising equality within an institutional framework that is itself the most grotesquely unequal in its consequences. That such 'egalitarian' enthusiasts, if they genuinely to be on the side of equality, need only turn their gaze away from the shadow play staged by the representatives of those discredited institutions- staged only to keep open a little glimmer of hope that those institutions might still be capable of realising their hopes. And instead to step outside the theatre and see those institutions naked, in the clear light of day- from the vantage points of the camps now erected outside stock exchanges and parliaments across the world. That they ought to talk to men and women there who are no longer content with enthusing over reforming that which is in itself bad; men and women who now suffer such bleak prospects in our masochistic age of austerity that, unlike the editors of centre-left newspapers, cannot afford the luxury of a naive faith in the 'progressive' potential of our discredited institutions. That the times are such that it can only be from their vantage point that any genuine egalitarian enthusiasm worthy of the name can be directed.

Berlin Blog

-The Carnival of Irreverence

I'd not been walking too far down Kreuzberg's main thoroughfare when the awful feeling of being watched crept over me. Sure, being watched along Oranienstrasse wasn't a particularly unusual event- what with its cafes, bars and pizzerias spilling out onto the street, allowing its customers to watch the world go by in between milling over the various alternative-type wares sold there- but this felt to me a far more ominous species of people-watching. So with that animal instinct famed us, my eyes were led with a sense of dread on towards the source, up on high, down along the thoroughfare.... And yes, there were the eyes I'd felt- 'the-eyes-of-a-killer' as Paul Merton once put it- those of Pope Ratzinger staring down at me from a poster spanning all 19 floors of some newspaper offices; there accompanied by the German tabloid Das Bild's craven headline: Wir sind Papst, or We are the Pope. The pope's arms were outstretched in accompaniment to this, though not so much in giving the impression of motioning down divine grace for his fellow Germans, but rather, as if to bring down lightening in a manner akin to his uncanny lookalike, the emperor from Star Wars. Bringing down papal wrath upon we atheistic types within Berlin's radical enclave.

Now the provocateur who'd set the poster facing-off against Berlin's Kreuzberg district was the the aforementioned Das Bild; a positioning of the poster that couldn't have done more to enrage Berlin's various radicals already already united in affront at the papal visit; an extraordinary unification of anarchists, leftists, feminists, and LGBT-activists that the Pope's particular brand of authoritarianism, political reaction, and sexual and misogynistic bigotry, seems especially well placed to achieve. The poster was a red rag to the bull then, whose equivalent for the tabloids themselves could only be, say, during one of their periodic bouts of frenzied anti-paedophile hysteria, walking up to their offices in a t-shirt reading: love all the paedos. And indeed, such everyday expectations of the tabloids so-called morals is what makes Das Bild's craven popery-worship so surprising. For if paedo-steria is as standard a tabloid fare as, say, brazen page 3 breasts or celebrity sex scandal, then one would have thought that they'd have paid particular attention to one of the most disturbing of papal criticisms- that is, of course, of his involvement in the church's child-rape scandal. Indeed, in a variety of countries there is clear documented evidence of the present pope doing everything in his power as Vatican enforcer to hold-up and eventually quash investigations into such abuse, allowing for what amounted to a child-sex racquet not merely to go unpunished, but in many cases to continue flourishing. It was indeed such an overzealous defence of his church above all else- even the welfare of children- that earned him the affectionate nickname: God's Rottweiler. Behaviour that managed to bring out ample numbers of mothers and Hausfraus onto the streets of Berlin, wielding the simple slogan "Nie Wieder", or "Never again"; women you wouldn't ordinarily expect to see alongside Berlin's more anti-establishment communities.

Now, of course, all of this about the pope is common knowledge, and I only risk banality in repeating it because, as Das Bild's action emphasises, we know it but seem to forget it every time His Popeyness does us the honour of a visit. As if the sight of someone who might otherwise be a cuddly-wuddly old man- the eyes excepted- or in the misguided sense that 'its nice for people to have some spiritual trappings in the modern world'- even if it's a spiritualism baptised in the tears of traumatised young children?- were sufficient to make us forget. But the truth of Das Bild's own blindness to the allegations against the pope is no doubt owing to its jingoistic nationalism- in the national triumph of a German leading the world's largest, all-powerful church. It is this that saves the pope from the fate meted out to others accused of helping to protect paedophiles; that rather than having his paparazzi-caught leer spread over the tabloid's front page, we get his glossed image celebrated on a 19-story high-rise block

As for the rest of the crowd assembled for the protest on Potsdamer Platz, the LGBT crowd were predominant, many decked-out in camped-up papal and nun garb- an act of defiance against a Church with a long history of making lives hellish for so many so-called 'deviants'- persecution we've seen the church forgo when the most monstrous forms of 'deviance' involves its own priests. It was therefore Berlin's lesbian and gay communities that led the rest of us in a glorious carnival-of-irreverence on the square, with provocative dancing, speeches, and street theatre- no doubt reflecting the kind of 'liberal society' that the pope has, almost unbelievably, gone as far as to blame for the corruption of his paedophile priests. But the more politically astute among the protesters made an especially nice allusion in this respect. Their message was clear: not only is the vision of a world free of intolerant, tyrannical dogma desirable for the church's flock, but so too for the present enforcers of that dogma itself. That the priests and cardinals themselves, with their desire and self-expression freed from the repression and distortion of papal dogma, might just have a chance of preventing the festering of perversions that have so frequently led their own low fall from grace, together with the awful, traumatic consequences that result.

Bolivian Blog

- Coca y Las Minas

I'm heading down from the Bolivian town of Coroico, perched high up above a network of sub-tropical jungle-clad valleys. Some old stone steps lead down towards the coca fields I'm heading out to, and along which I can see a girl and a guy. The girl is stood by and is singing a sweet little Spanish song, whilst her boyfriend is sat down upon a step. He looks up, and I note first his eyes- they seem darkened, clouded, though he greets me warmly enough, even gesturing to me with the small metal crack-pipe he has in his hand. It's certainly a hospitable gesture- that, as if in premonition of my investigating the local coca production, he thinks I might like to sample one of the end products of the production process- crack cocaine. I quickly ask myself what Michael Palin would do- but before I´ve decided upon an answer, an oh-so-very-English ’errr... no thanks' has slipped out from my lips; an utterance that gives me cause to note that though English today sits proud as the unrivalled international language, it really is still most at home in mumbling awkward apologies, in bumbling over a thanks-but-no-thanks....

    With the girl's sweet accompaniment to her boyfriend's high fading out, I cut down through some fairly dense junglely sections, intermixed with odd patches of orange and banana plantation, together with coffee, a narcotic our Western governments are rather more at ease with than with coca. All's well then so far, but glimpsing now some houses through the trees, I'm greeted by a far less warm example of Bolivian hospitality than I'd received back on the steps. It's a dog, savagely barking at me as it bounds aggressively over.  It stops a few yards short, the heckles of its scraggy white back up, salivating at the chops as its psychotic eyes lock onto the gringo intruder. I raise my sandal, and a stand-off ensues. I daren´t turn my back on it, so there´s not much else I can do-  I try to reason with it, convince it that I'm a great friend of canine kind..... Only I realise now that my reasoning with it isn't helping much. In fact, it can only make matters worse, since the dog has heard my mother tongue in these parts before.... and is sadly unable to distinguish my accent from the American; the latter a nation that is certainly no friend of the coca farmers here, and presumably too of the ever-loyal canine-kind that depend upon them.

    Now the punitive policies of the U.S. government towards the production and consumption of cocaine and crack has long been unable to stem the demand from those languishing within U.S. ghettos. Or, to paraphrase Marilyn Manson, we might say that though America don't like the drugs, the drugs certainly like Americans. A state of affairs that has historically presented a dilemma for the US Government: either it tried to solve the problem of demand by finding ways to eradicate the entrenched social deprivation within that 'land of liberty', or it move to disrupt the supply. Needless to say the latter option seemed to them more expedient, and though the Mexican drug mafia was largely beyond its power to touch, the easily bullied government of Bolivia- Latin America's poorest nation, as well as being a major coca leaf grower- proved a more expedient target. So began the US narco-wars here in Bolivia; the US government trying its best to transform its own social problem into someone else's social problem.

   Now the coca leaf has been used here in Bolivia for centuries. Upon ancient temple walls can be seen high priests salivating as they chew upon the coca leaf stuffed within their cheeks- a practice they believed gave them access to the Gods. Though today its primary uses are more prosaic: within many medicines, as well as a cure for altitude sickness (of which sea-level-dwelling tourists such as me benefit), and rather more tragically, that in chewing the leaf, the hunger, cold and thirst that still bedevil so many Bolivians can be somewhat staved off. Indeed, it is a leaf so widespread in its use here that in 1995 it was calculated that one in eight Bolivians drew their living from its production. It was against such a background that America's narco-cops, together with their lackeys in the Bolivian government, sought to eradicate the coca leaf. Though we might note that the narco-cops would presumably have had to have stopped short of eradicating the leaf altogether, though not out of deference for the autonomy of Bolivians- dear Lord, no!- but rather, because one of the U.S's major corporations has the leaf as its special ingredient. And if you haven't already guessed it, unlike with most corporations you don't have to dig very far to find its little secret- the clue is in the name: coca-cola.

    Under such circumstances, with so many livelihoods at stake, subsequent heavy-handed policies directed at the coca farmers were inevitably going to produce a backlash. It all began with a rather spontaneous, localised resistance, but soon grew to an oppositional movement, headed by a coca farmer named Evo Morales, a man who, in riding the wave of anti-US sentiment, was soon elected to congress. Though it didn´t take long for the authorities to get rid of him- for having made the eminently reasonable assertion that if the police were using violent means of coercion against coca farmers, then coca farmers were justified in using violent means back, the death of three policeman as they tried to close down a coca market- and with it the livelihood of the farmers- gave them all the pretext they needed to get rid of him. It was, however, to be a hollow victory for the government- for Evo, as his supporters affectionately call him, bearing the coca leaf as his symbol, was not merely content to march back to congress, but was to go on to win the very presidency itself. Pity then, poor old Washington! Its narco-wars had not only failed, but had stoked up a broad based democratic movement that would not only see its drug-policy in Bolivia in tatters, but given the very much red-hue of the Evo movement, foreign capital would almost certainly be at stake too.

   So the back-story of Evo is certainly romantic, but perhaps more importantly, the democratic, grass-roots movement that carried him to power has clearly energised the democratic culture of Bolivia as a whole. In La Paz, for example, can be seen a new wave of progressive political graffiti, together with grand murals, that cry-out that the new order be true to its anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and pro-ecological roots. So too are mass-movements out in force every day on the streets of La Paz. For example, during my stay, there was a pro-gay rights march- men and women marching in white masks across the city so as to highlight the plight of homosexuals classified as 'mentally ill' by a law enacted by the previous government. But what was even more heartening than their energies directed towards their own cause was that on the main thoroughfare in La Paz they joined in solidarity with another campaign group- a group of wives campaigning for the rights of their husbands who work in the mines; thus effecting a brief union of emancipatory struggles, suggesting that the universal demand for full emancipation in dimensions economic, political, cultural and social is still alive and well today.

    Though in spite of the heartening thoughts such protests evoke, the reality of the lives of people such as those miner´s wives and their families is certainly anything other than heartening, lives that Evo has had a hard task in improving. For nowhere are the problems thrown up by centuries of exploitation, at the hands of conquistadors and foreign capital alike, more apparent than in the old colonial mining town that those women hail from:

   The town of Potosi is set high up upon the bleak Altiplano, where at a thin-aired 4100m the nights are frozen cold. One wonders why anyone would choose to live up here, but the reason isn't too far away- in the red-hued mountain that looms up high above the town. For legend has it that in the 16th century an Inca farmer lost a llama up in these desolate parts, and having followed it up to the mountain, found himself harassed by the Altiplano's biting cold. He therefore lit a fire, only to find- to his astonishment- that after a few minutes a little stream of silver flowed out from his fire´s base. For the man had landed upon the world's richest silver source- henceforth christened the Cerro Rico, or Rich Mountain.

    Naturally enough, it didn't take long for the ever-rapacious Conquistadors to learn of this discovery, whereupon they quickly began the enslavement of the local indigenous population to dig out the silver that would enrich the treasuries of Western Europe. African slaves were conscripted too, though the bleak conditions- a world away from Africa- saw them survive little more than a few weeks on the Altiplano. And the natives too, though more used to the climate, didn't fare too much better- for toxic fumes, the bitter cold, and collapsed mines meant that, over the centuries, millions of indigenous people died in the mine; leading historians to place the mine as one of the main causes of the depopulation of Latin America during the colonial period. In sum, the mine, though enriching the Western powers with unimaginable wealth, wrought terrible suffering, misery and death upon the indigenous population; conditions which, tragically, the working conditions in that same mine today still offer an impression of:

    I'm standing a few yards away from the mine´s narrow, dark opening. I´ve taken some local precautions so as to steel myself for the descent- my belly’s been fired by a shot of the miner’s 96% alcohol- sweetened with 4% sugar cane so as to avoid vomiting-, and my mouth is just now beginning to go numb with the coca leaves I´m chewing. So I nod in readiness at my guide, Ronaldo; an ex-miner who’s to be my guide, as well as the sufferer of my insufferably numerous questions.

    As you descend through the upper passages of the mine, the first impression beyond the darkness and the claustrophobia, is the overwhelming stench of sulphur, whose yellow traces can be seen crystallised in the bare faces of rock. Ducking down through the low passages, held up by wooden struts supported at times on patches of brickwork, and sometimes on still more precarious rock outcrops- Health and Safety is certainly not a concept they're familiar with here in the mines- you have to proceed quickly, for the carts that trundle along the rail here, full of rocks from which their trundlers hope precious minerals will be found, are unwilling to stop for the likes of us- any increase to their thirteen hour day caused by we tourists would certainly not be welcome. We pass by the trundlers of the heavy carts, the hot and sweaty men who winch the rock between levels, and on down to the solitary workers deep down in the most inaccessible passages; each with a ball of coca bulging within their mouth so as to make them, if not 'comfortably numb', then at least tolerably numb enough to get through another thirteen hour day.

    As you proceed down further through the levels of the mine, the passages get harder to crawl through, conditions further worsening as the temperature becomes unbearably hot. It is down here that men blow apart the rock in the hope of finding sporadic sections of precious rock leftover from the heyday of the mountain's exploitation. Their methods haven't changed an awful lot in that time; in spite of the nationalisation of the mine in 1952, followed by its transformation into a mining cooperative after a Thatcherite-style attack by the government during the 80s. For the hissing pipes, running by the heads of those who descend, do not carry oxygen so as to make the mining spaces more breathable, but compressed air for drills, so that holes might be born out of the rock large enough to insert a stick of dynamite; which can be bought in Potosi as easily as a cappuccino can be bought in central London. The two-minute fuse lit, and a boom later, then should the mine not collapse around the miners, the mineral can be chipped away at, winched up the four levels, and then carted out to the on-site lab where it is tested for mineral content. It is a hit and miss business this- the rock could be worthless, or it could bring the men who extract it a modest rise in their living-conditions. Though unfortunately for these men, and the Bolivian government, the lack of any industrial apparatus to process the mineral here means that in spite of all their back-breaking labour, all the risks they run, it is the capital of wealthy neighbouring Chile that pockets most of the benefits.

    What then could impel such 'free men'- free in contrast to their enslaved ancestors- to go down into such a place for such scanty, uncertain rewards? Where if they are not buried in a collapsed mineshaft, or suffocated by a poisonous gas leak, they can expect that at between 45 and 55 years old they will begin coughing bloodied sputum into a handkerchief; living out just a few more days of their life in agony, coughing up the contents of their lungs. And all in the knowledge that they leave their widow in a world that does not know social security to boot.

    The reason why they do it is that though the rewards may be uncertain, the average wage that can be made in Potosi is just 800 Bolivianos per month, or £2.40 per day- not much to feed a family on, which being a Catholic country tend to be large. It is thus for 1000Bs, perhaps 1500Bs or more that men endure the mines- driven to a harsh life at the whims of the world market by the very conditions of poverty that same world market universalises in Bolivia. Such that, as one man proudly told me as he chipped away in a solitary, dank corner of the mine, his children might get an education- such that they might have a better fate than he.

    It was after two hours of such experiences that I left the mine, filthy and exhausted- overwhelmingly relieved to glimpse daylight once more, to know that I wouldn´t ever have to go back down there again. Though things are clearly very different for the men I left behind in the mine. For were they to glimpse daylight in the knowledge that they wouldn´t be going back down into the mine, it would almost certainly be because the mine had finally become unprofitable, that the international commodity price in London had sounded their death knell. For the miners here do not any longer believe that some mystified Inca god of nature presides over their fate- they know full well that the only God in town is the world mark;, the same one which has determined the fate of so much of the rest of the immiserated Bolivian economy they'd be left to scrape a living in were the trading floors of London to announce their doom.

    And with the bitter experience of what happened in the 1980s, the miners know that there is little even the progressive Evo can do in the face of such forces. Sure, he has been radical within the parameters permitted him, but has all the time had to proceed cautiously, knowing full well the punishment our global economic order can meet out to those that defy its laws. And we all know full well that even a radical head of state at the head of a radical democratic movement is powerless to shield his country from those laws.

    What then can we do?  We who are able to leave the mines? We who are able to breathe fresher, though yet still unfree, air? Must we resign ourselves to their harsh fate at the whims of the global marketplace? Accept their fate as merely 'the way of the world'? Or, most grotesquely of all, merely count ourselves lucky?

    There are perhaps two points to be made here that offer some hope: that unlike the old Inca Gods of nature, this new God of the world market is made by men, and so consequently can be undone by men. Second, that though it is beyond the power of any one government, or even 'people', to defy that cruel market´s laws, it is not beyond the power of the sum of mankind to change it. And it is here the Morales democratic revolution can teach us a lesson- that though at the national level, such movements are limited in their power, at the global level, this may not be the case. That the globalised order we all suffer from, in varying degrees, might with a globalised, democratic union of peoples who, as with the Bolivians, are unwilling to be silenced, might just challenge that order.

   That´s no doubt a forlorn hope.... but one that anyone unable to endure the reality of such man-made suffering must cling to- must be faithful to- if they are to live with their own ability to leave those hellish mines.

Peruvian blog- Ratas y Revolucionarios

I landed in a Peru gripped by election fever. But unlike when that cliché is used in the West, its use here did not bring to my mind thoughts of a literal sickness; in the sense that through our taking seriously the narrow political choices presented to us, such as 'how much to cut the deficit?' and 'how fast?', we seem to be in the throes of an actual fever; one whose most harmful symptom is to make us forget to ask whether such 'choices' are indeed those worthy of democratic subjects.

    Not so here in Peru. For the liberal centrists who, in the manner of our Western politicians, competed to make the blandest, least divisive of statements in line with some 'national consensus' were all annihilated in the first round. And what we have left are two remaining candidates who through their posters, their political rallies and concerts, and even the drive-by dancing by beautiful Latino girls, pronounce proscriptions that violently differ in their vision for Peru's future. Thus the prospect of radical change is in the air here, such that even we tourists, moving in the narrow orbit that we do, can't help getting a whiff of it. And morover, not merely a whiff of the change itself, but so too of its necessity. To illustrate:

   I'm standing nearby the fortress set above the old Inca capital of Cusco. A middle-aged American gentleman is stood nearby, and who like me is attempting to do justice to the fine Inca stonework within the confines of his pixelated little screen. His wife however is unconcerned with such technicalities and is stood with extraordinarily wide-eyed rapture at these Inca marvels. Could the holiday get any more perfect? I can see her wonder. But yet it seems that it can- for she's just seen a native lady approaching, dressed in full, elaborate indigenous dress, and leading an Alpaca dressed-up in a cutesy bow. The American lady soars to new romantic flights. An Inca descendent.... Here walking an Alpaca to market in this most ancient of Inca towns.... Just as her ancestors might have done all those centuries ago.... She tugs at her husband, who without needing to be told, quickly turns so as to capture this magical holiday moment. The approaching lady feels the gaze, hears the click, and looking up now at the couple, she makes to speak. Would she offer us some of her Alpaca wares? So the American lady wondered. Wares made with craftsmanship transmitted down through the generations? Or would she merely greet them as travellers to her ancestral lands?

   "Dollars," was how she in fact greeted them, before repeating this very un-Inca word as she opened out her hand. The American lady's lower lip fell, whilst her husband looked indignant: What did it cost her? Was he not free to snap what he liked? Though of course, the truth is that were people like himself not willing to so pay, then there'd never have been this native spectacle so as to snap; for this is the only reason why she- and many like her- come to visit this power base of their ancestors. She now insists on her payment, and the American gentleman magnanimously yields, thinking it not worth the hassle to argue over a dollar. But then, so too did this exchange buy him more than mere avoidance of a tiresome argument- for her further needy pleas would surely have led him to acknowledge the degradation to which economic necessity has led such heirs of the Incas to sink- into playing the grinning ´native´ for the tourist's enjoyment, all in the name of being tossed a few reluctant coins. Thus can money buy ignorance as well as knowledge. Now, the tourists can fare somewhat better in their search for an ´authentic´ indigenous when they move out into the countryside. But even here, that ´authentic´ culture is little more than a synonym for poverty; of the lack of power to progress beyond subsistence farming so as to make a new life for themselves on their own terms. Or, as one local lad of indigenous stock whom I met on a hike out into that beautiful Cusco countryside, bluntly put it: "People here are poor. They've no healthcare, and little education." Hence the red slogans that have been painted on houses, roadsides, and even on far-flung boulders in the countryside, all over the Andean region. And it is such support that made their man the victor in the first round of the election, securing 31% for left-wing candidate, Ollanta Humala. A man who, in promising to radically redistribute the profits of Peru´s economic boom, offers the promise of overturning centuries of immiseration suffered by these indigenous folk, not to mention those living in the vast slums near wealthy Lima.

    Now in the Andes it's hard to imagine anyone competing with Ollanta in the final head-to-head, but then Peru is a country divided by more than its dramatic geography. For passing down from the Andes that divide Peru´s coastal desert from its Amazonian interior, on the Pacific coast you enter a very different economic and political realm. And no-where is this more apparent than on a journey along the Pan-American highway- the impressive road network that now stretches the length of the Americas. Now one might think at first sight that such a construction had been built with a mind to overcoming that great stumbling block to all revolutionaries who dreamt of unifying Latin America, right down to Ollanta himself who shares that dream today. For as the journalist Eduardo Galeano put it, history has been such that the lines of economic interdependency do not so much connect each Latin American nation to its neighbours, but that like spokes on a wheel the lines radiate out to Europe, as well as to their powerful Northern neighbour, the USA. However, though formally this highway opens up the space for realising that revolutionary dream, the free-marketeers who actually built it had very different ideas in mind. Chief among them being the former Peruvian President who had the road paved, one Albert Fujimori, who was not only an autocratic imposer of free trade on Peru but also crushed Peru's left-wing Guerrillas in the 1980s. But above and beyond having achieved his aim of turning the Peruvian economy over to the free market, he surely would have further reason to be cheered today in looking at the vast slums that cling precariously to the faces of the Andean foothills along his highway; the slums clinging, as slums do, wherever the ground is too unsafe for any more prosperous developments. For dominating the political colours sprayed across the faces of the slum-dwellings is the colour orange, signalling the dominance of his daughter, presidential candidate Keiko. But though Fujimori must surely be proud of his daughter's political success, it seems that she´s not so proud of him- since on the millions of her glossy posters and painted walls across Peru there is absolutely no trace of her family name, Fujimori. An effacing that has meant that, in the spirit of symmetry, her party's congressional candidates too are only allowed to use their given names- so it's 'Keiko y Juan' or 'Keiko y Diego'. And to imagine the absurdity of this we have only to consider the equivalent slogans in a British election: 'Vote Dave and George' or 'Nick and Vince are safe on the economy, or 'Two Eds are better than one´.

    Why then this absurd, obsessive effacing of her father's name? Because, like so many strong armed autocrats who win Western plaudits for liberalising their economies, Alberto Fujimori was subsequently charged with crimes against humanity- being complicit in the kidnapping and torture of Peruvians by right-wing death-squads in the name of opposing the gurillas- in addition to using State coffers to bribe his cronies, as well as personally ripping of for his own benefit millions from Japanese-based charities. It all amounts to quite an impressive charge sheet- meaning that Keiko's daddy is currently serving a long prison term. Hence Keiko not being so keen to associate with Daddy's name. Though that hasn't stopped her using his ill-gotten gains, together with a rolodex full of grateful cronies, from attempting to buy the election. And indeed it seems to have almost worked- we have the daughter of an autocratic abuser of human rights who use their power for their personal enrichment in the final presidential run-off. (We might think of her father as a kind of Peruvian Berlusconi, were Berlusconi to be charged with the human rights abuses he deserves to be charged with for what he's allowed to happen to the Roma in Italy). And though I might be thought ungenerous to think her of the same kind as her father, whenever smiley-faced Keiko is forced to acknowledge her father, she proceeds to zealously defend his record.

   The stage is thus set for a titanic battle between the autocratic, free-trading right and the socialist left. But who will win? Well it is clear that not so much of Ollanta's support will shift. Those in the Andes, unlike many of their coastal countrymen do not absolve Fujimori of his crimes because of the prosperity he brought to Peru. For firstly, it was those in the mountains that suffered at the hands of the right-wing death squads- often worse terror than that caused by the left-wing guerrillas such squads were supposed to liberate them from. And secondly, as we've seen, in spite of the fabulous wealth the boom years produced along the coast, that chimera of the economist's 'trickle-down effect'- whereby some of the wealth of those allowed to become fabulously rich 'trickles-down' to the poor- has not managed to make its way upstream from the coast into the mountains. And supporters of Ollanta are certainly in no mood for accepting excuses that the trickle is merely delayed owing to the gravity-defying path it must make upstream into the mountains. Thus the negative graffiti on Keiko posters in the Andes- the most common being 'Rata', which incidentally gave me the chance to practice my Spanish grammar- the word ´rat´ being feminised by adding an 'a'.

    With such entrenched extremes, the election will thus be decided by the centrist, liberal block. However, historical precedent isn't particularly promising here for the left- for faced with the threat of the radical left, too often the centrist liberal establishment have sided with the autocratic right; who though illiberal in other ways, at least uphold the liberal's economic status quo. And this worry is born out in talking to otherwise quite thoughtful, middle-class young Peruvians, who seem to be swallowing the rhetoric of Fujimori's cronies in the media about Ollanta being another Hugo Chavez- in their eyes a dictator. Even though I point out that whilst Keiko wholeheartedly identifies with the autocratic tendencies of her father, Ollanta actually goes to great pains to identify with the centre-left Brazilian president Lula rather than Chavez. I've also heard the argument that Ollanta isn't sufficiently educated. But, as I pointed out, this qualification in such a country would disqualify almost everyone poor from becoming president. And that though an educated progressive might indeed be better than one uneducated, since there's no such credible, educated progressive on offer, they really ought to vote for the progressive against an autocratic, corrupt, regressive member of the Fujimori clan, irrespective of the fancy American schools she's been sent to

   Well, I'm not sure exactly how convinced those young men were by my arguing for the outrage of voting for Keiko, but hopefully the vast support for Ollanta in the Andes, together with that of those in the coastal slums, will convince liberals that continuing the inegalitarian status quo will no longer be accepted. And that is a view that has been given further hope through the economically liberal poet, Vargas Llosa, backing Ollanta, despite having previously described the choice between Keiko and Ollanta as like choosing between 'terminal cancer and aids'. Though as to whether this decision influences liberal opinion nationwide, we´ll have to wait until June.

   Anyway, there it is- my traveller's-eye view of the Peruvian election. And though no doubt I'll get told off for talking politics for too long, isn't the real lesson of the traveller's futile search for an 'authentic' indigenous culture that such a culture is in fact nothing other than a political product? A product fashioned by centuries of political oppression, whose knowledge ought therefore to spoil the traveller´s enjoyment of it. And therefore, that as awesome as Machu Picchu and the like are, the real interest in Peru is not the search for some static past that merely reflects historical injustice, but rather the dynamic political history being made in the present. That a people enslaved by the Conquistadors after the fall of the Inca empire, and subsequently exploited by foreign and national capitalist alike right down to today, might now win the political and economic power for determining their own course again. Isn´t that the traveller´s experience that brings a people- and their past- to life?