Another great talk found at TED following after a conversation with Mark the other day about the way we think and perform education in the world today. Truth told, Mark did most of the talking as I was preoccupied with looking forward to my Guatemalan Christmas dinner, so I decided to do a bit of homework for next time. Mark and I’ve spent a good bit of time before discussing the way our educations are shaping us as individuals and socially responsible citizens, and if indeed they are doing a good enough job at that. We’re both in and out of school and self studies, and have had the opportunity to look in on our schooling from the outside, and we’ve begun a little side project, a curriculum that I’ll post about again when it’s up and on its way. In any case, in this video talk by Sir Ken Robinson, in which he says we need to radically rethink our view of intelligence, is a great viewpoint on how we have developed a global hierarchical educational system which scorns mistakes and stills creative development in children, stigmatizing talented people who don’t fit into the neat categories for useful citizenry, and a highly inspirational call to arms for a new educational strategy. Check it out no matter your education and whether or not you see your body as a form of transport for your head.

more below.
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The view from my window, one cold December 24th. After a wildly entertaining chicken bus ride last night I’m back in dear old Xela (Quetzaltenango, Guatemala). The mornings are freezing and the afternoons warm – a grand setting for celebrating Christmas with friends. I’ll be calling this home for the next seven months or so.
It’s great to be back!

(click on an image to view them all as a slideshow)

Photos from the mines in Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain), Potosí, Bolivia.

The mountain was once the richest source of silver in the World, and Potosí grew to becoming the largest and richest city in Latin America. By now the silver is mostly depleted, and other minerals, tin especially, are being mined. Plunging mineral prices have sent workers’ wages down to a point where they can barely sustain themselves, yet still some 80 percent of the city’s population work in the mines – some as young as 13 years old.

A week ago I went on a tour into the mines, and the photos below are from that tour. The next day I went with a french guy named Stephane who is making a documentary, as a translator to conduct an interview with the secretary of the mining cooperative and a miner named Ruben. Despite a few initial doubts, it worked out really well, and I think both interviews came out good, on the image side too. The photos above are from this day, taken away from the main active mine entrance. I mostly shot on my film camera the first day, and managed to break it on the first day … damn … so the pictures here are shot on my pocket digital camera. Worked out pretty well.

The working methods are much the same as centuries ago, and working conditions horrifying; the work is dangerous, hard manual labour using pickaxes, hammers, and dynamite, and the many risks include tunnel collapses, rock falls, fires, toxic gasses, heat exhaustion and suffocation due to dust – there’s plenty of asbesto in the mines (as I found out as my finger was picking away at some pretty little crystals). Few miners live beyond the age of 40, many dying from silicosis ten years after entering the mines.

The Rich Mountain is believed to have produced as much as 60,000 tons of silver over the years – also, it is said to have claimed the lives of 8 million indigenous workers. The vast majority of these poor souls still lies somewhere in the bowels of the mountain.

more below.

(click on an image to view them all as a slideshow)

( Some rough math on those numbers: If 8,000,000 workers perished producing 60,000 metric tons of silver (132,230,000 pounds), then an average of 7.5 kilos of silver (16.5 pounds) was produced by each of those miners. I know it’s terrifically inaccurate, but still I thought it was worth the quick math. Now it may be cynical, but would be interesting to convert 7.5 kilos of silver into the commercial value of silver in the 16th-17th centuries, then bring it up to today’s value. How much is it worth, the life of a Bolivian miner? )

The only light source within the mines are battery-powered headlamps. My 18-year old guide on the second day, Alvaro, described the mountain as a Swiss cheese. Indeed – after 400 years of mining activity, the pitch black maze of tunnels, grottos, shafts penetrate the Cerro Rico in all imaginable directions, some say there are as much as 75 levels. These are the only photos I managed to pull out of the mines. On a personal note, the mines are pretty fucking scary.

Also, check out Lucas Mulder’s great photo essay Miners of Potosí at Photoshelter.

From the bus leaving Potosí, a few more photos in b/w:

(click on an image to view them all as a slideshow)

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Sad news from consumer culture:

On Black Friday, the day of the beginning of the holiday shopping season following Thanksgiving, Jdimytai Damour, a 34-year-old temporary employee of Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, New York, was trampled to death by a mob of 200 customers as they rushed into the store in search of good deals:

Jdimytai Damour [...] was crushed underfoot as thousands of shoppers, chanting “push in the doors,” did just that — ripping the doors right off their hinges, these desperate-for-a-deal maniacs stampeded into the store, massacring Damour under their heavy, relentless feet, which I guess were so caught up in marching to the capitalistic tune of consumerism that they just couldn’t register the life they were squeezing out of the man beneath them.

There are no reports of any shopper attempting to help Damour.  On the contrary, Damour’s co-workers, as well as paramedics and police officers at the scene, all tell of hostile shoppers who impeded assistance to Damour and who became angry when the announcement came over the PA that the store would be closing because of Damour’s death.

CommonDreams.org: Blood in the Machine, Tani Bellestri

and,

“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since Friday morning!’” [witness Kimberly Cribbs] said. “They kept shopping.”

Items on sale at the Wal-Mart store included a $798 Samsung 50-inch Plasma HDTV, a Bissel Compact Upright Vacuum for $28 and Men’s Wrangler Tough Jeans for $8.

NYDailyNews.com: Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede

I don’t really have any bright thoughts here, just thought I’d forward the news. I guess those Wrangler’s is a pretty sweet deal.

Today is a special holiday here, the Day of the Virgin. People keep on sweating, the airconditioners above keep on sweating, the trees on the avenues keep on sweating. It rains from a clear sky.

on the back of my hand the words perspectives, family, an address montevideo 138, where I slept last night. Tonight is my last night in Buenos Aires, tomorrow my last day; I left my blue bike that made this city my home, now like a snail I’m carrying my home on my back and inside an old brown suitcase. I am heading up north to Bolivia, in a few weeks I’ll fly back to Guatemala. To continue my studies and start working. With what I’m not quite sure. Come Christmas and I’ll be back in good ol’ Xela.

I’m going back to a lot of frijoles, tortilla and egg, so there’ll meat on the menu tonight!

four months
on my bike through this city, this heat, these nights of warm concrete and flies in my face, I felt that it was finally almost mine, riding around in streets well known, cobblestones and treacherous sinkholes in the asphalt, murderous city buses spewing out dark brown smoke, ridiculous maneuvers on two wheels. I’ll miss those two wheels though. They served me well, and at times I almost betrayed them.

Always busy, even on holidays like today, the famed cartoneros of the capital spend their days scavenging, picking at the garbage, sorting out recyclable material in their massive carts, hand drawn wagons or horse drawn carriages, veritable towers of garbage to be sold by the kilo at recycling factories outside the city. Pushed or pulled through the streets while North American cars woosh past them at superspeed, and I drink my cafe cortado, sitting on the air conditioned inside looking out at them, and throw in a few spare words on them.

In the shopping malls, fake snow cover the workshop of Santa Claus and his elves, and plastic pine trees are supplied with a power adapter. In the night, cicadas or crickets take to the scene, chirping away in the night.