Efraín Bámaca, Quetzaltenango, 2009. Everardo.

Everado Lopez lives in Efraín Bámaca, a small community of ex-combatants in Cantón Chichigüitan, just on the other side of the hills from my house. After the civil war officially ended in 1996, a group of 22 families who participated in the war as guerillas got together and bought this small patch of land behind the eastern hills of Quetzaltenango. They named it after Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, the revolutionary leader of the URNG who was captured and permanently disappeared by the military government in the familiar fashion aided by the CIA. Efraín Bámaca the community lies beautifully among cultivated hillsides and fields of corn and cabbage, which almost all of the inhabitants work as day-laborers since their own land contains little fertile land. After five years of building the community, three family houses still remain to be built, but the community no longer has the external support or funding needed to buy the materials. They’ve recently installed electricity, but the community lacks an efficient water solution, a water drainage, and a paved road to avoid swamping during the rainy season – and dust during the dry season. The residents of Efraín Bámaca also dream of one day building a school and perhaps even a small playground for their children, but due to a large communal debt and low income, they need external support in order to take the community towards a sustainable future.

I visited on February 14th, and the image above is my first out of Aperture, a photo editing software I’ll be using from now on. Click on the image to view the large version of the photo along with its caption, this is an option for every own photo that I upload. More to follow on Efraín Bámaca.

Christopher Anderson, Silicon Forest. Magnum Photos 2007.

I’m not supposed to blog again until I’ve got something ready from my own view, too much time spent reading and clicking and reading and seeing in front of the screen. On Magnum In Motion I found this piece Silicon Forest by Christopher Anderson. Photographs of Akademgorodok, a town created during the Cold War deep within a Siberian forest, and which now services Western companies with computer support. Shortwave radio transmissions on the audio side gives it that vintage Eastern-bloc mood I can’t help but feel a certain sentimentality for … growing up in Northern Europe in the eighties n’ all. Those colours left an everlasting impression on a young child … (The photographs are from 2007)

8 Jan – Sderot, Israel. Israeli citizens watching Gaza under attack.
Eduardo Castaldo 2009.
Click on the image to see it and others in big.

Eduardo Gastaldo was one of the many (that is to say, all) photographers/journalists who was denied access to Gaza when Israel bombed the shit outta the place. While this cease-fire still holds, I’ll post a few of his pastoral, and incongruous images from the safe side of the wall. Most of his images from the series Watching Gaza serve to reflect a general Israeli support of the war, but to their credit also Israeli anti-war demonstrations in Tel Aviv. You’ll have to go to his own site for that more balanced view, though.

Though I gladly participated in the Palestine peace march here in Xela two weeks ago, I didn’t support the local organizers in defacing the monument at the Plaza de Israel (a big metal Star of David) as representative of the crimes of the state of Israel. I felt that instead of encouraging peace, it inspires returned prejudice against a people on the base of religion – remembering that prior to being a national symbol, the star is a symbol of Jewish identity, a religious rather than a state emblem. (oh, the irony of confusing it with a swastika) Just to say that albeit a small act, symbolically it’s as strong as the benevolent little peace march. At least in my mind.

I know that there are a few who would rather see and hear about stuff closer to my own life, and to Guatemala, and I hope I will be able to tell some soon, besides from telling that I’ve been alternating between my bed and the pot these past few days (I feel a lot better today, thank you).

GAZA STRIP. 2005. Settler in Gadid try to resist evacuation by Israeli forces.
Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos

…

Update: Please read Letters from Gaza
and from same site, take a closer look at the Map of Gaza Casualties

click on the image for a larger view

It’s gotten late, and I am sitting in the hallway outside my room, with double the amount of trousers considered normal and a borrowed jacket, the temperature falling fast, so I’ll make it short and sweet. An announcement:

There’s a new photo agency out there. After much anticipation (I would’ve been one of those camping outside the ticket office), the new cooperative Ballad Photo finally aired not with a bang but with a whisper. At time of writing, the cooperative consists of Jonathan Boulet-Groulx and Lucas Mulder, based respectively in Canada/Haiti and (across the street) in Guatemala.

“Ballad Photo is a cooperative of independent photographers working internationally on diverse projects. And while our individual work differs we are united by our desire to produce high quality, in-depth reportage grounded in responsibility, accuracy, accountability, and truth-to-power.

We prioritize an authentic journalism based on solidarity and partnership with the people we are working with; a journalism that best represents both the unique character of the issues at hand, as well as the communities in which they are based.”

Short glimpses around the site and it’s looking real good. A clear and logical design of the website: a selected photos slide show welcomes the visitor on dark background, with a brief and open mission statement, while all other content is provided on text-friendly white section, and photo galleries are hovered as a light box slide show. The functionality and focus om images is a lot better here than a lot of other (good) photo agency sites out there (the heavy Magnum and VII sites, say). And of course they’ve been clever enough to include a blog.
Already, Ballad houses nine full photo essays by Lucas Mulder and Jonathan Boulet-Groulx, featuring stories from Guatemala, Quebec, Haiti, Bolivia, and Palestine.

I bet they could use a hand in promoting it (so what if Lucas is one of the very few people reading my blog?), so a big welcome to Ballad – it looks great guys, and I for one will be keeping an eye out for what happens. Bring on the stories!

visit www.balladphoto.org

Yuri Kozyrev / dispatches © Copyright 2008 dispatches magazine

Soldiers from the first amored division celebrate American Independence Day at a palace that belonged to Saddam Hussein’s son Uday. Baghdad, July 4, 2003.

For the Beyond Iraq issue at the dispatches website, Yuri Kozyrev has published the photo essay ирак, documenting post-invasion Iraq, what struck me the most was the above photo. Besides from making me think of the iconic scene of surfing soldiers after napalming a vietnamese fishing town in Apocalypse Now, it kind of sums up a great deal of what I’ve been learning for the past five months; about a war that has obviously failed, and while bringing about a deepening segregation between cultures, has cultivated ideological blowback and left a culture as old as civilization in rubble. The soldiers on the image celebrate their Independence Day amid the wreckage of a country that has not only been robbed of its promise of own national independence, but also looted of its cultural heritage, its infrastructure, and history – literally loaded onto trucks and disappeared. And while the soldiers were high on a sense of victory and, I suppose, of liberation, the country was in flames while the priority of the Bush administration was to fling open the borders for foreign multinational investment, privatize all institutions, industries and social services to non-Iraqi companies, and creating the widest of free-market zones anywhere in the world; an Iraq open for business, a shopping mall for disaster production and relief industries. According to Michael Ledeen, adviser to the Bush administration, invading Iraq was an attempt at “a war to remake the world” – and Thomas Friedman of the New York Times proclaimed that “we are not doing nation-building in Iraq. We are doing nation-creating,” as if there was nothing there to begin with.

Back in the seventies in military governments throughout Latin America, it was decided that in order to build and maintain stable societies and economies, “whole categories of people and their cultures would have to pulled up “from the root”" (quotes so far from Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine), including their cultural heritage, more often than not in order to make way for economic policies beneficial to investors. Full circle back to Guatemala, where the recent trend of United States sponsored military interventions had its kickoff. In these parts, little over fifty years ago, business had its buddying introduction into transnational politics when a banana company managed to have the U.S. overthrow the democratically elected government and install the first military dictatorship in a long row that went on until the nineties. They also witnessed the worst genocide in 20th century Latin America; the attempt to pull up from the roots the indigenous Mayan population, another culture as old as civilization, one of the richest and most beautiful I’ve encountered.

Now I’m back in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. I hope to be able to address these things more, in the very least understand it and the context around me, and in the meanwhile keep looking for a voice and a medium. The policies and politics of these events of the past continue today, in other parts of the world, and continues to reverberate right here where it started; the Mayans are still targeted, now by static and insufficient social policies and discrimination and a still corrupt government. One of the better (or worse) examples is that of Efrain Rios Montt, the man responsible for ordering the destruction of some 400 Mayan villages during his presidency thirty years ago, who to this day retains a seat in the Guatemalan parliament.

By the way I’m violating the copyright acknowledged above as the image is reproduced without permission. If anyone has a problem with it contact me and I’ll remove the photograph from here right away. It’s taken from the photo essay by Yuri Kozyrev linked to in the first paragraph (and here).

(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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Coolest kid on the blog.

I went to this street corner to snap a pic of a mural on Avenida Corrientes, only to find that it had been pasted over with election posters. The mural depicted what has become an icon of the fight for justice from the disappearences in Argentina, the outlined drawing of faceless Jorge Julio López. López was ‘disappeared’ by the dictatorship during the National Reorganization Process in 1976 but returned in 1979. In 2006 hours before he was going to witness against his torturers, López was disappeared for the second time. Here there was a big mural. Now it’s gone.

Evo Morales in coca leaves. The guy’s definitely growing on me. Or what’s the expression..

Redirect your gaze at this article on Z net: The United States: Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia

Photo: REUTERS/David Mercado/files

I’ve posted several links to TED, an organisation that brings together leading scientists, thinkers and designers committed to social change at an annual conference and a website where all the conference talks by are made available for free. I read about this today and thought I’d start off posting about the same thing. I’ve been checking out the work of photojournalist James Nachtwey the last couple of days, when I read about him at Lucas Mulder’s blog. The news are that James Nachtwey received the TED Prize last year. Aside from giving him a big chunk of money, as is often the case with such prizes, the TED prize more interestingly granted him a “wish to change the world.” His wish:

I’m working on a story that the world needs to know about. I wish for you to help me break it in a way that provides spectacular proof of the power of news photography in the digital age.

On October 3, TED and James Nachtwey will present his photographic news story “on LED screens on all 7 continents”. Here is the link to the story.

Update, October 6th
Nachtwey’s wish: Awareness of XDR-TB: Extremely Drug Resistant Tuberculosis

On October 3rd the story broke of XDR-TB (Extremely (some sources: Extensively) Drug Resistant Tuberculosis) that is now spreading throughout the world, “a new and deadly form of tuberculosis that is threatening to become a global pandemic.”

TB (tuberculosis) in its common form is a terrifying and deadly disease, but both preventable and curable. But due to insuficient treatment throughout developing countries, it has now mutated and taken on a new form for which there is no reliable cure. According to TEDBlog, wiping out normal TB before it mutates costs $20. Since you are more likely to catch TB if you are malnourished, living in crowded conditions or living in a refugee camp or shelter, or if you lack access to health care, TB is a disease of the bottom million – here is a link to a TED talk by Paul Collier entitled “4 ways to improve the lives of the “bottom billion”".

With the TED funds he received for his work documenting images of war, disease and political unrest across the globe for more than 25 years, James Nachtwey has covered the epidemic in countries across the globe including South Africa, Cambodia, Siberia, Rwanda and India, documenting the devestating effects of XDR-TB and the efforts to prevent it.

On being a witness and a photographer, James Nachtwey says:

Photographers got to the extreme edges of human experience to show people what’s going on. The believe your opinions and your influence matter. They aim their pictures at your best instincts: generosity, a sense of right and wrong, the ability and the willingness to identify with others, the refusal to accept the unacceptable.

My TED wish: There’s a vital story that needs to be told. I wish for TED to help me gain access to it and then help me come up with innovative and exciting ways to use news photography in the digital era.

The story is now out, but it needs to be spread to all corners of the world, so get updated, get involved, and spread the word.

Note: I tried embedding the XDRTB video here on my blog, but it seems it is temporarily unavailable on the youtube channel. I got the message that it is not available in my country, which puzzles me. I’ve written to XDRTB.org and informed them of the problem, so hopefully we will be able to watch it there and here soon. In any case, the video is available on the XDRTB.org site.