Washington DC: Memorial Overdose and Headaches

  If its dysfunctional Congress makes headlines, it is its monuments that turn the American capital into a tourist draw. As a result, Washington DC has morphed into a shrine to Americana. Year round, museums to anything and memorials to anybody are attracting hordes of curious visitors. With over twenty memorials (of questionable architectural value) and counting, the city is facing a situation of memorial overkill.

As the dust settles over the controversial architecture and design of the Martin Luther King Memorial, a new memorial project is creating waves, offending families, upsetting the architectural world, and distracting the government. If one of America’s greatest sons deserved a memorial it must be Dwight D. (Ike) Eisenhower. Ike is both a world-class hero and for many Americans a national icon. The hero of the WW II was a five-star general, who subsequently became the 34^th president of the United States of America. The decision on how best to represent Ike’s multi-talented personality and legacy by the means of a three-dimensional monument is putting Ike’s family against the world famous architect Frank Gehry, who has been selected to design the project. For this blogger who has recently visited Washington DC and dutifully took the Grand Memorials Tour, it seems that the conflict boils down to the feuding party’s diverging views on architectural style and design.

As far as Washington memorials go, there are two competing artistic thoughts: the good old-fashioned, unoriginal neoclassicism versus the modern eye-popping extravaganza and Gehry’s trade mark (e.g. the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain). Tempers have been flaring and Gehry’s initial design has been compared to “totalitarian architecture and even to something designed by Nazis and Communists”1. These over-the-top comments make this blogger cringe as she feels that a number of the most recent Washington memorials are ugly, unimaginative and pompous, very much like the projects designed by Nazi architect Albert Speer.  


The recently (2004) inaugurated World War II Memorial is a case in point. It is an eye sore and a stone monster in the pure Nazi tradition. This blogger felt emotionally disturbed as it reminded her of the grounds of the 1930s Nazi parades in Nuremberg and immortalized by Leni Riefenstahl’s film The Triumph of the Will. Although this uncomplimentary comparison is lost on younger generations, the memorial draws many visitors including WWII veterans. These frail men are wheeled to the site. It makes for a moving scene in an architecturally grotesque setting.

On the War Memorial tour, one can also visit the Korean War Memorial built in 1995. It is outstanding for its realism and visual effect. It displays nineteen human-sized emaciated soldiers, seemingly cast in a tin-looking metal. They are plodding through winter mud and their silhouette is reflected in the mirror of a long granite wall. For many Americans, the Korean War (1950-1953) is an in-between conflict. It is somehow forgotten and frequently referred as the Forgotten War. The war outcome was a dismal draw and the Korean peninsula was consequently divided in two. Because of this unfinished business, tempers occasionally flare between the Communist North Koreans and the democratic South Koreans bothering the whole region. Visitors may leave this memorial more puzzled than inspired.

The newly completed memorial to another great American, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is noteworthy for being compassion deprived. If he knew about it, Dr. King would twist and turn in his grave. His XL white marble statue is particularly incongruous; one wonders whether it was not intended to Marshal Mobuto the former dictator of Zaire.

If one memorial has beaten the odds, it is the Vietnam War Memorial (1982). The Vietnam War was very unpopular; 58,209 men and women lost their life or are still missing in action (MIA). Although controversial from the beginning, the low, sunk-in wall has managed to convey the human losses in the most unpretentious but poignant manner. The names of the victims are listed by year and in alphabetic order. Each name is followed by one or two symbols. A diamond follows the name of a dead soldier and a cross indicates a MIA. If the soldier returns alive, a circle is added to his or her name. When only remains are identified the diamond circles the cross. Among the newer memorials it is the most visited and worshipped.

The blockbuster memorials remain the “big three”, respectively dedicated to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Washington DC’s most prominent landmark is still the tall stone obelisk to Washington, the country’s first president. The monument is now off-limits to tourists as it was damaged by the 2011 earthquake. The obelisk may be sinking and remarkably Congress has set money aside for repairs. Although Jefferson’s and Lincoln’s are architecturally worlds apart, both are paradigms of the neoclassical style. The setting of the Jefferson Memorial is particularly pleasing; its rotunda reflects in the Tidal Basin and in spring the Japanese cherry trees are in full bloom.

Washington DC is increasingly becoming a memorial Disneyland. Tourists are bused from one monument to the other; consequently the original purpose of these memorials -remembrance, tribute and respect- may be lost. It may be time for a pause in memorial building. This blogger doesn’t imply that statesmen like Dwight D. Eisenhower should be deprived of their own memorial; very much to the contrary, but some peace may be needed to ensure that outstanding Americans get the memorial they rightly deserve.

1. A Monumental Conflict, Paul Goldberger. Vanity Fair, September 2012.

Richard Wagner’s Ring: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

 
In the Ring of the Nibelung, the bad and ugly guys greatly outnumber the good ones. However it is not a spaghetti western but rather the soap opera of all operas! Nineteenth century German composer Richard Wagner created his super-sized epic musical-drama over a twenty-six year period. The Ring is a fifteen-hour long four-part series, in soap opera parlance. The drama begins with the Rhinegold; follows with the Valkyries and then Siegfried and unfolds with Götterdämmerung (the Twilight of the Gods).
Not only has the Ring all the key ingredients of an archetypal miniseries like sex, deceit, and greed, but incest, polygamy, betrayal and murder are added for good measure. Essentially the Ring is “about being screwed’, and no one escapes unscathed. Wagner takes no prisoners and death usually comes violently.
The drama is full of mythical characters inhabiting a fantasy world of special effects; it is a harbinger of modern adventures like The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional epic novels. The Ring is the blockbuster of German opera buffs.
In a nut shell, the Ring of the Nibelung reveals the dealings and struggles between Nordic mythological gods, semi-gods, monstrous creatures and human characters. One could compare it to a mythological version of the British television miniseries Upstairs Downstairs. The gods live in the upstairs world and the underground’s Nibelung brothers scurry downstairs. The plot revolves around various characters who outmaneuver one other to grab a magic ring in order to achieve universal power. Hostilities go on for three generations (of humans as gods don’t seem to age) until Armageddon at the end of Götterdämmerung.
The story begins when an ugly and lecherous dwarf called Alberich is successively rebuffed by three mermaids frolicking in the Rhine River. These bimbos are entrusted with the safekeeping of the Rhine gold. Scorned, Alberich steals the gold and consequently gives up on love. He is the leader of the Nibelungs. Trouble starts in earnest when Alberich obliges his brother Mine to forge a magic ring out of the gold. Through trickery Wotan, the king of the gods, steals the ring. He then has to trade it to the giants to pay for his lavish palace. The ring goes from person to person and ends up with Siegfried, Wotan’s mortal grandson. Using a magic potion, Alberich’s son Hagen tricks Siegfried who is quickly murdered. Finally Brünnhilde the Valkyrie, estranged daughter of Wotan and betrayed lover of Siegfried, recovers the ring from Siegfried's finger and returns it to its legitimate owners, the Rhine maidens. Consequently, the doomed gods perish when Valhalla their palace, burns to the ground.
Among the Ring’s ugly individuals, Alberich is certainly the most evil. He is a paranoid control freak, a delusional and vain midget-dictator, full of hatred but dejected, possibly Hitler‘s role model. His mission is to destroy the gods, and his curse will eventually bring the gods’ downfall. Actually, evil runs through the Nibelung family: Alberich’s brother Mine and Hagen, his son, are evil too. Not only does Hagen murder Siegfried, the Ring’s only good individual by stabbing him in the back but he also swiftly dispatches his half-brother Gunther. Hagen is a frustrated bad guy. Alberich has fathered him with the wicked queen Grimhilde, Gunther’s mother. She had agreed to have sex with Alberich in exchange for gold. Coincidently Queen Grimhilde is the witch of the brothers Grimm’s fairy tale Snow White and Disney’s evil queen in the film. Hagen resents being a dwarf’s son and compelled to do his father’s dirty work. He may be an expert hunter, but he is a bad swimmer and when pushed into the Rhine River, he drowns.
In this gallery of sociopaths, Wotan deserves special mention. He is the king of the gods, and the patriarch of the lesser gods who live in his Valhalla palace; he is a dapper middle-age gentleman who elegantly dons an eye patch. If Alberich traded love for gold, Wotan gave one of his eyes for wisdom. His sacrifice didn’t help him much, as his foolish decisions lead to the violent ending of his reign and kingdom. Wotan is certainly the most complex character of the whole cast, if not the most human with flexible moral values, leadership shortcomings and contradictions. Wotan is selfish, full of self-importance, tyrannical and calculating. He abuses his power; nowadays he would be impeached for his deeds.
Wotan strikes opera goers as a very modern and flawed hero and like countless 21^st celebrities, he is oversexed. He is a philanderer and polygamist who fathered a dozen kids with different women. Additionally, he uses his brood to achieve his dubious aims. To his defense one can concede that life in Valhalla next to his nagging wife Fricka must not be fun every day. Didn’t Wotan sneak out of Valhalla to have a tryst with some mortal woman? Twins Siegmund and Sieglinde are born from this amorous rendezvous. The reality check comes when the earth goddess Erda, his former mistress and mother of his nine Valkyrie daughters, informs him that his kingdom is doomed. Erda is famous for her last words.
This writer’s favorite bad guy is Loge, the semi-god of fire. Broadly speaking, Wagner’s wicked characters are either bass or bass baritone singers. On the other hand, Loge is a tenor. Is this a signal for being less evil? Loge is Wotan’s cunning henchman, his trusted “fixer”, the street-wise underling who consistently cleans the mess left behind by Wotan’s bad judgment. Loge’s major accomplishment is to trick Alberich into losing the magic ring. Cool-headed Loge is certainly the smartest individual in the Ring. He is no dupe and openly mocks the vanity of the gods. When disaster strikes, he escapes.
In Wagner’s drama the good guys are typically individuals of little significance like Fricka’s two brothers and her sister Freia. The twins Sieglinde and Siegmund could fall into the good guy category, except that their adulterous and incestuous love making disqualifies them. Freia is the goddess of love, youth and beauty. She doesn’t peddle youth activating creams but apples which protect the gods from aging. This important function seems to have been lost on Wotan who, without her consent, had bartered her to the twin giants as a payment for his castle.
Two individuals stand out in Wagner’s drama: Brünnhilde, Wotan’s favorite daughter and Siegfried the product of Siegmund and Sieglinde’s incestuous affair.
Siegfried is an orphan. His father Siegmund was killed by Sieglinde’s jealous husband, Hunding, before his birth, and his mother died in childbirth. He is adopted by Mine, Albrecht’s malicious and jealous brother. Mine is not much of a tutor and Siegfried develops into a strong, brave but wild and reckless youth. Without a proper role model, and formal education Siegfried does plenty of dumb things which hurt people he cares for and lead to the unraveling of the drama. He becomes a clueless, instinctual man, both sweet and nasty with a short fuse and short attention span. It is hard to understand how he elicits Brünnhilde’s love. True, she had not much experience in the romance department. Towards the end of Götterdämmerung, Siegfried is swiftly murdered by Hagen. Wagner is a master of funeral music and the piece he composed for Siegfried’s funeral is the most magnificent and poignant. Siegfried is obviously not this writer’s preferred character.
Brünnhilde gets more sympathy. She and her eight sisters are the Norse version of Amazons. Although she enjoys the privileges of Valhalla, Brünnhilde is only a semi- goddess, and Wotan’s foot soldier. A bit wild, an impulsive and plucky tomboy she loses her independence and nearly her mind when she falls madly in love with the nincompoop Siegfried. Her twenty-some year beauty sleep on top of the mountain protected by a wall of fire did not make her wiser. Her hysterical attitude in Götterdämmerung leads to two opposite interpretations depending on whether you are a feminist or a Wagner devotee.
This writer is of the first category. Blinded by her love for Siegfried, Brünnhilde behaves like a silly school girl and acts very unpredictably. She is giddy with the ring, Siegfried’s gift to her. She refuses to return it to the Rhine mermaids knowing that her decision will cause fatal harm to the gods. Is this pay-back time for Wotan’s cruel attitude towards his daughter? Or is it the reaction of a woman in love? When Brünnhilde learns that Siegfried has cuckolded her with Gudrune a sexy husband chaser, she became uncompromisingly vengeful and betrays him by revealing his vulnerability to his assassin. Finally she understands that she has been taken for a ride by three men: Siegfried (he drank a potion which made him forget her), Gunther, her replacement husband and Hagen. Subsequently she returns the ring and commits suicide by riding her horse Grane into Siegfried’s pyre. I felt sorry for the steed. There was no disclaimer to the effect that “no animal was hurt in the course of the opera!”
Wagner buffs see a completely different picture; it is their heroine’s immolation. Before leaping into the fire, Brünnhilde commits the selfless world-redeeming act of returning the damned ring to its rightful owners, the Rhine maidens. After fifteen hours of musical drama, we are back to square one.

In 2011 and 2012, the Metropolitan Opera of New York City staged a new Ring production with magnificent singers and an impressive set (see above picture from the Met gallery). Artistically speaking, it was a very successful opera feast: it attracted Wagner buffs from all over the world. Too bad they were confronted with a couple of logistical shortcomings: during the five-hour long Götterdämmerung, neither the bars nor the restrooms could cope with the traffic!
The star of the current production is a 45-ton “machine” which moves like the fingers of a hand rising, flipping, and falling independently. This behemoth is the brain child of Robert Lepage of the Cirque du Soleil in Quebec. Videos projected on the background make the plot live. The result is mesmerizing, both fantastic and realistic.
After watching and hearing the Good, the Bad and the Ugly for fifteen hours with a sore butt and stiff legs, one can take comfort remembering that Wagner spent twenty six years composing his masterpiece. The glorious music and the intensity of the drama make you easily forget the Ring’s gallery of sociopaths, notably Alberich who is still alive somewhere ready for new mischiefs.

So Close, So Far: The Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia.

 
This recent Air France TV commercial may have attracted your attention: Two dancers perform a pas de deux, a duet on a salt mirror in the middle of a desert landscape. To add hip to the beauty of the scenery, Air France chose the well-named dancer Benjamin Millepied (mille pieds means thousand feet in French), retired New York City Ballet principal dancer, choreographer of the film Black Swan and husband of the actress Natalie Portman. The shoot took place in a remote part of the Bolivian altiplano, the mythical Salar de Uyuni.

                       
                         Extract of the video clip “l’Envol” by Air France.

The Salar (salt flat in Spanish) is one of these places so close distance-wise but so far logistically speaking. This blogger had several times tried to travel there but saw her plans dashed at the last minute. This article is written out of the frustration of organizing a trip to Uyuni. Fortunately there might be is a window of opportunity next October. Stay tuned.
The Salar de Uyuni is located in the south-west corner of Bolivia in the Andean Cordillera. It the world’s largest salt plain covering some 10,000 square kilometers. It contains more than 10 billion tons of salt and 50 to 70% of the world’s lithium reserves (lithium is used in batteries).

                                
                                 Satellite picture of the Salar de Uyuni.

This region is a world of nature superlatives. Nothing compares to it: its geological setting, geothermal springs, brine lakes, flora, fauna and history make the place unique and fascinating. It is a photographer’s dream. Colors of the scenery change by the minute. The clash of colors is awesome as the surrounding reddish-yellow sierras and volcanoes reflect in the white salt flat as in a vast extraterrestrial mirror.

                                   
                                  Picture freely downloaded from the Web

As the advertisement implies, Air France may fly you hassle-free from Paris to Bolivia, a landlocked country. In case you live in Rio de Janeiro, you have no such luck, as not a single airline will deliver you non-stop to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. La Paz is only 2700 kilometers from Rio de Janeiro, not that far by South American standards. Brazilians don’t go to Bolivia in general and to Uyuni in particular. Brazilians who never felt very latinos in the first place, predominantly enjoy traveling to the United States and Europe. Well-healed Brazilians occasionally explore their own vast country whose landmarks are usually more expensive to reach and enjoy than Miami or Lisbon. Brazilians eventually visit their hermanos of Argentina and Chile (both countries are renowned for their good wine); but rarely venture beyond these urban locations; places like Bolivia are still very much terras incognitas.
Uyuni appeals to the more adventurous travelers. From Rio, it is a 24 hour long slog to fly to La Paz; it takes two different airlines, three separate tickets, and an overnight lay-over before landing at La Paz El Alto airport, 4061 meters above sea level, with possible altitude sickness as a bonus upon arrival.
The next step is to fly to the lovely colonial town of Sucre, the constitutional capital of Bolivia. This is the easy part of the adventure. It takes another 9 hours on a dusty trek on the Altiplano to reach Uyuni. As there is not much money to be made on this labor-intensive itinerary, travel agents don’t cater to this breed of exotic travelers.
This is not to say that the Salar de Uyuni is a no man’s land, quite to the contrary. Many people visit the region during the dry season between July and November in the southern hemisphere winter; they are mostly backpackers from Europe. They come by bus and join local tour companies for a three to four day, 4wheel drive tour. They commonly squeeze six to seven in each vehicle. This thrifty option is by far the most popular. Travelers looking for a more comfortable visit have unfortunately little option. This blogger knows firsthand. It is either feast of famine!
A luxury alternative is offered by a posh resort in San Pedro de Atacama in Chile south of the border. The week-long package costs a whooping US$ 10,000, airfare not included.
After an extensive Internet search, this blogger discovered a tour operator in London who offers a comfortable ten day package for less than half the above price. The solo traveler will enjoy her own 4X4, driver and guide. Oddly, the tour was even cheaper than a similar itinerary quoted by a travel agency in Rio! The great adventure is finally planned for mid-October.
Up to now, if dancing takes place on the salt mirror it will be a solo number unless one or two travel companions join this surreal escapade.

Abaporu: From culture cannibalism to culture “vulturing”

 
Abaporu is the name of the most expensive Brazilian painting to date. It was painted in 1928 by Tarsila do Amaral as a birthday gift for her then husband writer Oswaldo de Andrade. The painting sold for US$ 1,5 million in 1995.
                                
Abaporu is a Tupi-Guarani word which means “the man who eats people”. Before and during the Portuguese conquest in the 16^th century, Brazilian Indians routinely ate their vanquished enemies. Munching a brave enemy was believed to make the warrior stronger. Oswaldo de Andrade echoed this tribal tradition of cannibalism when he published his Manifesto Antrópofago, (Cannibal Manifesto) in 1928. His argument was that “cannibalism” was very much a Brazilian tradition in culture. Brazilian artists cannibalized foreign culture to strengthen their own. These so-called Modernist artists picked and chose to assert themselves against external cultural supremacy. Early 20^th century iconic painters like Di Cavalcanti, Tarsila do Amaral, and Anita Malffati were the stalwarts of the Modernist movement.
The Modernist movement encompassed diverse types of cultural expression from landscape design to painting through literature and performing art. Its legacy is still very much present in today’s art scene. Abaporu has become a catch word for any type of appropriation. The “antropofagia” practice lives on and as recently as last year (Feb. 27, 2011), Bloomberg News titled its art column “Barbecued Buttocks? Cannibals inspire Contemporary Artists".  The involved artists were none other than world renowned Adriana Varejão and Vic Muniz (see his-self portraits below)!
                 
More recently and according to its founder, singer and composer Caetano Veloso, the Tropicalia music movement owns much to artistic cannibalism.
Otherwise known for its soccer, samba and bikinis Brazil is now emerging as a powerful player in art. Art Newspaper, which through its attendance survey monitors annual trends and figures in the art world, disclosed amazing news, namely that in 2011 the number one ranking blockbuster art exhibit didn’t take place in New York City, Paris or London but in Rio de Janeiro. The exhibition of works by M.C. Escher, the Dutch graphic artist had attracted a daily average of 9,700 visitors. The same year, some 7.5 million people visited Brazilian museums largely in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Brasilia and Belo Horizonte. Not a bad number for a country of 195 million inhabitants with a US$ 1,000 average income. What is most extraordinary is that 770.000 “culture vultures” flocked to a place few have heard of in Brazil, let alone outside the country. The place is the contemporary Art Park of Inhotim in the State of Minas Gerais.
                              
                                     Helio Oiticica’s Magic Squares # 5. Inhotim.
Careless agriculture and mining have scared the landscape around the city of Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais. Arriving in Inhotim is like landing in the Garden of Eden so degraded is the surrounding countryside. The contrast is beyond belief. The Inhotim art park is the brainchild of a rich entrepreneur, Bernardo Paz who metamorphosed a 3000 acres ranch into a lush botanical garden with avant-garde art installations. The contrast doesn’t stop there; one has to imagine provocative art visited and enjoyed by a Disney-like crowd.
The popular success of art in Brazil has much to do with the policy of the government which encourages large companies through tax breaks to subsidize art in all its forms, and the eagerness of the Brazilian public who gulps down art without social class restraint. This social inclusiveness is quite unique to Brazil; art exhibitions are mostly free and are for everyone to see and enjoy.
Recently the New York Times marveled at the way culture was funded in Brazil; the newspaper ran an article on Servicio Social do Comercio or Social Service of Commerce (SESC). Since the entity is funded through a 1.5 % payroll tax it is flush with cash. Trade and commerce employees are all members who have access to SESC facilities for culture, sport, education, tourism and health. Most of the events are free or inexpensive for non-members.
The Escher’s exhibit took place in the cultural center of the Banco do Brasil; all the center’s exhibits are free. On the other hand, Inhotim Park charges an entry fee but all the same, people from all wakes of life flock there for a family outing.
The absence of social inhibition is particularly evident in the attendance of concerts of classical music. Rio’s two main orchestras are subsidized by natural resources corporations: Petrobras, the state-owned oil company and the giant mining company Vale. Not only season subscriptions are very affordable, but many concerts are free. These concerts are so popular that orchestras routinely play in Rio shanty towns, the favelas. On Xmas 2011, the recently pacified favela da Rocinha extended an enthusiastic welcome to the ballet The Nutcracker.
So, it is relatively cheap to become a culture vulture in Brazil. It is unfortunate that the iconic and most expensive painting Abaporu is not displayed in this country. It was purchased by an Argentinian and it is shown at the MALBA museum in Buenos Aires.
Dedicated to all my culture vulture friends.

A Tale of two cities, Lima and Caral.

 
Travelers arriving in Lima usually land at the busy and friendly Jorge Chavez International Airport. It feels like a department store: all duty free goods are available for arriving passengers. Shop attendants welcome passengers with spray perfume in hands. Travelers have then to go through the usual airports hassles, immigration, and luggage collection; there is the additional hurdle of an x- ray tunnel for luggage. No problem really, unless you are a mule, i.e., a drug smuggler. Civility however ends at the door of the terminal.
Driving in Lima is not recommended for the faint of heart. Limeños, as the inhabitants of Lima are known, take traffic rules in utmost contempt. Taxi drivers define their driving style as alternatively offensive or defensive, depending on the comparative size of their vehicle in any given traffic situation. Obviously, bigger is better in Lima. Literally speaking, truck and SUV drivers usually get away with murder. Driving is so reckless and dangerous that some 500 cyclists recently decided to demonstrate. To make sure that people paid attention, they rode naked in the city; their mobile protest created a buzz and gridlock. After a day in Lima traffic, one wished that Humvees would be available for rent.
Visitors are also puzzled by the weather and the color of the sky. In summer, the blue sky may suddenly turn grey with dark clouds and thick fog but it doesn’t rain. In winter a sea mist engulfs the city, bringing moisture but rarely rain. This phenomenon has a specific name: la garúa. La garúa comes in all shades of grey; actually grey is inaccurate, it is rather dirty beige: the color of the earth, the color of the pre-colonial ruins and the color of most of the houses.
With 9 million inhabitants, Lima is the second largest desert city in the world after Cairo, the Egyptian capital. The coastal desert of Peru is also one of the driest in the world. Lima is a rather characterless city. Many people even question how its derelict historic center deserved an UNESCO Heritage site listing. Lima could easily be dismissed save for its magnificent museums, the hustle bustle of its Chinatown, the rich gastronomy and its tempting silver market.
Lima’s residential suburbs are very spread out, on the model the urban sprawls of the West Coast of the United States. The housing density is small. High rises are still few in the quaint suburb of San Isidro; many green areas including an 18-hole golf course, have notably been preserved. Now and again, the uniformity of San Isidro’s bourgeois housing pattern is broken by the sight of mini fortresses guarded by heavily armed men. A foreign flag usually flies on top of the gate. San Isidro’s claim to fame is the 1996-97 hostage-taking crises in the residence of the Japanese Ambassador. Even before this dramatic event, Lima’s embassies had always been surrounded by high walls for protection against terrorism.
However, high walls did not deter the daring raid by 14 Tupac Amaru guerrilleros in December 1996. On the contrary, these walls prevented the escape of the hundreds of dignitaries trapped inside. The stand-off lasted for 126 days. Finally in April 1997, the Peruvian Special Forces blasted a hole in the roof and tunneled their way into the residence and freed the 72 remaining hostages. One hostage was killed in the raid and all the captors were summarily dispatched to an unknown location. Now, under Human Rights new legislation, family members of the guerilleros are suing the army.
The hostages ‘ordeal makes good reading. It notably inspired American novelist Ann Patchett. She wrote a novel titled “Bel Canto”. This best seller explores the relationship between captors and captives and the impact of opera music on people with a very different background.
Now, every foreign ambassador worth his salt is living in a dungeon. The new residence of the Japanese ambassador stands out. Its high walls and metal fences look like a castle out of a Harry Potter film. An empty lot is all that is left of the former residence where the siege took place. It is for sale.
The heydays of urban warfare are gone; this is not to say that Peru is not totally free of terrorists, guerrilleros or freedom fighters. This writer is not qualified to make the distinction between these terms, subtlety of which escapes her. Many former guerrillero movements have diversified their activities, with political activism being a front for more lucrative drug trafficking. Today Lima is enjoying more peaceful days.
Peace-loving tourists must visit the Sacred City of Caral. The ruins of the city lay in the rocky coastal desert, some 120 kilometers north of Lima. What makes Caral so extraordinary, is not the site which is remarkable in itself, but the exceptional story of the


                       Caral: Lunar desert and two of the six pyramids.
archeological discovery.  Caral is still a place few tourists have heard of. It takes over two hours to get to the site in the Supe Valley. The last 26 kms are on a dirt road. Before reaching Caral, cars have to pull out at the gate of a chicken battery farm. Disinfection of the vehicles is the first stop on the way to Caral. Intensive chicken farming is big business in Peru; to avoid contamination the majority of the farms are scattered in the desert near Lima. Their dusty white sheds add to the overall desolation of the area.
The fascinating story of Caral only started to unfold in 1994 when the first pyramids were identified by Ruth Shady Solis, a Peruvian archeologist. The site had been known since 1905, but it had been dismissed as marginal because no ceramic artifacts were found. In 2001, radio-carbon dating confirmed that the settlement was the oldest in Latin America, dating from 2600 BC. This news caused disbelief among the archeologists. Many had to make drastic revisions to their theories. Caral was a millennium older than previously believed!
Furthermore the warfare model which had been taken for granted as the underpinning of city building had to be thrown out. In the Americas, most pre-Colombian cities were built to protect the population. In Caral no weapons or mutilated bodies were found, only tools for agriculture, nets for fishing and musical instruments. Therefore Caral had not been established to protect its inhabitants from quarrelsome neighbors, but to enjoy peaceful activities and trade. Life must have been quite idyllic in Caral during its heyday when 3000 people lived there. Since there is no evidence of ceramics, the people were certainly eating their food raw. The city was opened to visitors in 2006 and became a UNESCO Heritage site in 2009.
Not only is the Sacred City of Caral the oldest known civilization of the Americas, it is the third oldest in the world after that of Mesopotamia and China. It is contemporaneous to Egypt and a couple of hundred years older than the Giza Pyramids. With its 626 hectares, Caral is the largest and most grandiose settlement of the Supe Valley. Life in Caral lasted for some 400 years before declining; the city was later abandoned. Why did the population flee? Did they move to a greener area or to the coast? Since there is no indication of violence or destruction, archeologists believe that drought may have compelled the residents to leave the area. Obviously, archeologists are still looking for clues.
Despite its archeological significance, Caral is not as breathtaking as Machu Picchu which stunning beauty is unparalleled. Cusco, the Inca capital has more appeal than Lima. However Peru’s capital deserves a little more respect thanks to its five impressive museums, most of them set up by private collectors: Museum Larco Herera (pre-Colombian ceramics, including erotic ones); museum Andres del Castillo (Peruvian minerals and Chancay ceramics); museum Pedro de Osma (colonial art); museum Amano (pre-Colombian weavings) and the Gold museum (mish-mash of gold artifacts, ceramics, and weapons). Savvy shoppers will head for the silverware market of Salaverry St in the Surquillo suburb. Last but not least, Limeños take their food seriously, and tourists cannot miss savoring a ceviche made from raw fish and sea food marinated in lime juice and chilies. Like in Caral, present-day Peruvians eat their fish raw.
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1269
http://www.myspace.com/video/pat/peru-caral-bbc/34547931

SALZBURG: AN HAVEN OF RESISTANCE?

 
Setting foot in Salzburg, Austria is like stepping back in time. This statement sounds like a cliché to describe a city whose reputation and business depend on an 18^th century wunderkind and a mid-20^th century family choir. Mozart and the Trapp kids aside, Salzburg is at least five years behind other European cities on the political correctness scale. Not only do the locals still smoke in restaurants and bars, but drivers have little use for seatbelts.
Is Mozart’s home town a haven of resistance to modern diktat? Or is the city still in a time warp? Since I am unaware of any study commissioned by the Brussels bureaucrats on this matter, I cannot express an informed opinion. However I suspect that the home town of the Sound of Music is far from being the bland playground for family it would like to have tourists believe. When scratching the gelded surface of the baroque landmarks, one finds some wicked stories.
By promoting the Trapp family values, Salzburg authorities may want to conceal less virtuous stories. In Salzburg, family values are a rather modern concept. Until Napoleon unleashed his brand of creative destruction on the city, from the early Middle Ages without interruption Salzburg had been ruled by autocratic prince archbishops. One of the most notable and colorful was Wolf Dietrich Von Raitenau who during the 17^th century razed the mediaeval town to re-build it in his cherished baroque style. The elegant Mirabell palace is certainly his most magnificent building legacy. The palace was built as a love nest for his 15 children and his mistress, appropriately named Salomé.
If Von Raitenau’s reign ended in disgraceful fashion, it was not for having renegaded on his chastity vows. In this troubled period, the prince archbishop made some bad political decisions and paid dearly for his mistakes. He was jailed in the Hohensalzburg Fortress, the imposing medieval castle which still proudly watches over the city. Contrary to the majority of central European castles, this particular one doesn’t show wear and tear. It came under siege only once: the surrounding forces were not well-armed foreign troops but mobs of angry and hungry farmers.
In the early 1800s, when Napoleon’s troops reached the castle’s foothills, the castle surrendered without a shot. At this time medieval furnishing was no longer fashionable and no one of importance lived in the castle. The French soldiers removed whatever could be taken away. In order to efficiently sack Salzburg and avoid twice visiting the same house, the French named the streets and gave numbers to the houses. Salzburg is grateful for this initiative.
               
                 The Fortress and Man on a Golden Globe Sculpture
                                     by Stephan Balkenhol.                             
                   

The rooms of the fortress are still empty save for an impressive collection of torture devices. In these pre-water boarding times, torture was more labor intensive, but not lacking creativity, as the artifacts reveal. They may have inspired the Gestapo, which set up shop in a convent at the bottom of the castle during WWII.
To show its Nazi credentials, Salzburg held book burning fetes on the square in front of the prince archbishop’s palace. Some of these books were authored by Stefan Zweig, who had been a city resident for many years. Zweig has now been rewarded with a museum. Actually Salzburg has museums for nearly everybody and everything. Mozart, its most celebrated son, born in 1756, has not one but two museums. Obviously the tourism-fed city does not hold a grudge against the genial composer. Mozart hated the city: he felt snubbed by its rulers.
It is not all baroque in Salzburg. The city is breaking new grounds in the modern art department. It has two modern art museums, both named Der Moderne. One is located in the historic center and the new one on the Mönchberg, overlooking the city. Architecturally, the mountain museum is a strikingly provocative building. Its bunker-like structure seems to defy the mediaeval fortress which stands on the opposite side of the mountain. In an act of defiance to conservative family values, the winter exhibits bare it all! There were oversized penises, courtesy of Canadian artist Evan Penny; clitorises on the sadomasochistic photos of Nobuyoshi Araki; and naked androgynous women snapped by photographer Helmut Newton.
Artistic provocation seems to be the staple of modern art. All this pornographic art and erotic titillation were for every kinder to see. It is extraordinary that gemütlich Salzburg didn’t rate it R. Is this another act of resistance to the politically correct?
On the other hand, the winter music festival, Mozart Week, was musically correct to the hilt, with predictable artistic quality. The festival’s habitués are well behaved and don’t wear jeans like in Carnegie Hall in New York City. Many don Alpine fashion: dirndl for women and steireranzug, a loden jacket with green lapels for men, like the characters of the Sound of Music musical. With its small white apron the dirndl may be fashionable again among Austrian and Bavarian women but it very much remains a symbol of the 3 Ks, kinder, küche, kirche; children, kitchen and church and, therefore, an outdated female role model.
Mozart is still Salzburg’s poster boy but there is a new kid on the block. Dietrich Mateschitz was not born in the city but he has taken it by storm. The flamboyant and attractive looking billionaire is the owner of Red Bull the energy drink. With plenty of disposable income, he is challenging the Salzburg cultural tradition. Hangar-7, his brain child, looks like a futuristic glass airport terminal. It was built to display Mateschitz’s high-octane collection of vintage planes, racing cars and motorcycles. Being Salzburg, it is also an art center and a concert hall. Hangar-7’s claim to fame is its over-the-top restaurant. Creative cuisine is a novelty in Salzburg.  However patrons are challenged to find a table in the small smoke-free section of the restaurant.

Where Are Women Going?

“The greatest achievement for a woman is to be as seldom as possible spoken of.”

Unfortunately, the quotation still rings true today. It was written during the 4^th century BC by the Greek historian Thucydides.

When recently in New York City, I saw the entertaining film Margin Call which is roughly based on the final days of the investment bank Lehman Brothers. Over a 24-hour-period, the fiction film follows the actions of seven employees from the boss to junior traders, as they try to salvage the bank by unloading its toxic assets to clients. Demi Moore plays the head of risk management, the only woman among these Wall Street’s Magnificent Seven. Although she had warned the boss of this impending financial disaster (but no one listened) she is now slated to be the sacrificial lamb. But we only learn this later.

When the film credits were scrolling on the screen, my neighbors, two middle age women started to chat and one said with a shrug: “To be able to stay all night at the firm, this woman cannot have kids”! I had a jolt, and if she had kids? Why do women keep blaming professional women for wanting to be successful? Is motherhood the only success criteria for a woman? Actually the film raises two related issues: women’s professional achievement and the poor recognition for it, more on this later.

In my generation, women aimed for the corner office; some got there but many of them chose to stay single or childless. In the 1980s, progress was impressive, but progress brought false expectations, namely that thanks to generous maternity leaves careers could be balanced with motherhood. Too many Western women believed that they could combine home bliss with successful workplace. Business construed this as an ambition-gap and a woman’s lack of commitment to the corporate bottom line. As a result progress in the workplace stalled, private sector female salaries continued to lag behind that of their male colleagues and female occupations became increasingly segregated with less pay and subsequently smaller pension. Promotions are also increasingly biased towards women. Studies indicate that women are promoted on their performance and men are rewarded on their potential. By being constantly tested women have slower promotions. Many women have come to think that a successful career means becoming a member of the rat race and that it is not for them. Consequently, a number of successful North American women dropped out to stay home. It is a Catch-22 situation.

Early December 2011 The Economist magazine[1] ran an online debate entitled “This house believes that a woman’s place is at work”. At the end of the week-long debate, 53% of the respondents had disagreed with The Economist. Although it was meant as a quip, the title was not liked by many women respondents who thought it was too dogmatic. The debate was old-fashioned for its lack of new ideas. Apart from a couple of contributions from macho provocateurs, it was the voice of the gynecium (Thucydides probably kept his wife in one of these). One of the conclusions was that many women “were compelled to work”. In other words women would have preferred not to work but stay home with their children. Unless a majority of men join women in regarding paid work as a requirement and constraint, the work-centered and the home-centered groups of people are defined by gender determinism.

In her book The Second Sex (1949), Simone de Beauvoir asserts that women have difficulty to reconcile their reproductive and productive capacities. Both allow them to contribute to societal well-being. Beauvoir stressed that “woman is neither exclusively a worker nor exclusively a womb”. Sixty years later, women’s social contribution is still overly reduced to that of reproduction: wombs wins over brains. Wombs belong to the home and brains to the workplace where both men and women can engage their minds in creative and competitive pursuits.

According to The Economist‘s special report on women and work (November 26^th-December 2^nd, 2011), data on what is best for children are far from being clear cut. The quality of parenting depends on several elements; stay-at-home mother is one of them, significant but not fundamental. If baby-boom mothers had full time jobs at home, 21^st century mothers in OECD countries[2] have a much lighter load as their fertility has dropped to 1.7 children per woman. They also tend to be much better educated. In economic terms, these highly educated stay-at-home mothers seem to be a waste of talent and money. For the state, the return on investment is absurdly modest. In Europe, the tertiary education system is predominantly financed by the tax payers.

On the other hand, many studies have made clear that a large number of women in the higher echelons of the workforce are good for both the economy of a country and the financial and market success of companies. Similarly, countries that have the higher number of women in political decision-making are in general much better managed. In these troubled financial times, it is probably not coincidental that the Nordic countries show a better socio-economic performance than Greece, Italy, Portugal and even France. Sweden, Denmark, Netherland, Norway and Finland have an average of 40% women in parliament. Greece, Italy, Ireland and France don’t even reach 20%[3]. In some situation numbers are not relevant as women tend to be elected by parties on the left which often bestow unrealistic social benefits that the economy of a country can ill afford. E.g. by granting unrealistically long maternity leave and benefits to women only, these politicians are de facto distorting the job market, making women workers less valued than men.

The current predicaments of women in general and working women in particular result from a lack of women critical mass in decision-making positions in both workplace and political sphere. Legislation and fiscal policies should able to reconcile productivity with reproduction. Not only women’s views must be heard, but women must understand the socio-economic implications of their choices. Once again the diversity of the workplace provides a much more dynamic environment than the isolation of the home for healthy work-life balance decisions.

One cannot discuss women issues without bearing in mind the impact of globalization. There is evidence that women in emerging economies will leapfrog and achieve a higher level of political and economic empowerment than their developed economies’ sisters. The formers obviously started from a lower base. In a competitive globalized world, the deflated economies of the aging developed countries can ill afford to allow 40%[4] of their human resources cut from the productive sectors.

In China, in the 1950s, Chairman Mao Zedong got women out of the house. He liked to quote and old Chinese proverb “women hold up half the sky”. In many parts of the world this proverb is still more aspiration than reality. Many would have added that women hold the better half. Now women should run with it, and the world will be all better off.

The title of this article is a quote of a Greek philosopher who died 400 years BC. The punch line is from a 21th century woman role model Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO who according to Forbes magazine is the fifth most powerful woman in the world: “So, the question is, what are you going to do with it (your education)? What will you do with this education you worked so hard to achieve? What in the world needs to change, and what part do you plan on playing in changing it[5]?

This article is dedicated to four bright young women Elsa, Clémence, Tiphaine and Béatrice who are pursuing higher education. I hope that they will hear Ms. Sandberg’s message and manage a harmonious work-life balance by reaching their full potential as productive and self-reliant women.

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[1] www.economist.com/debates
[2] The Organization for Economic Co-operation for Development, OECD has currently 32 country members; most of them are high-income economies.
[3] Ireland: 15%; Portugal: 26.5%; Greece: 17%; Italy: 21%; France: 19%. www.ipu.org
[4] OECD average: 64% women employed in 2010.
[5]http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-05-18/tech/30071342_1_graduation-speaker-achievement-gap-young-women#ixzz1gn0PPBiG