Waiting for Godot

Who reads this, I wonder to myself. As a friend of once bloggers who then fell off the face of the earth, I know the trend pretty much goes that once someone stops posting regularly, the few who were once reading dwindle to none.

But since there is still one hard core person out there, asking for an update, here it goes.

The update is that I still don´t have an update. Let´s call this Waiting for Godot, my-life style. I would like to tell you I have been waiting with grace and confident faith and all of that. That would be a lie. There have been moments like that. But there has also been fed-up frustration with not knowing, and what seem like countless scenarios where I focus my last energies and final shreads of sanity promising myself that the next blessed meeting will result in an answer. And nothing.

So I don´t bother to write you. Because who wants to hear that scenario over and over? I can hardly stand to write it. I want to give you an actual answer. I want to give myself an actual answer.

Blek. Moving on.

The last two days I have been able to take my mind off of some of this in part attending the 3rd Social Forum of the Americas, which is held ever two years in a different country in the American continents, and conveniently this time around it not only is being held in Guatemala, but in Guatemala City where I live, and a mere 15 min down the street from my apt by bus in low traffic.

Here´s the link:
http://www.forosocialamericas.org/index.php.en

It has been a good time to listen, to think, to see people from all over the Americas - Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico and more - all working to make the world a more just place to live for all. I have been particularly interested in attending the forums and talks related to indigenous communities and rural communities. Went to a talk on how some Mayan communities are using the traditional methods of Community Consultations to vote collectively on big issues facing their communities - like the impacts mining would bring.

See ¨Sipakapa no se vende (Sipakapa not for Sale)¨ video links on Utube (I think there are several that make up the whole video, here is one chunk):

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=6-hmX942t14

Some representatives from the communities from the video shared with us this experience and how they are using the tool to exercise indigenous rights claimed to be present in international policies (however, rarely followed) to have a say in what sorts of damaging industries are set up in their backyard.

I also attended a debate on bio-fuels. Essentially exploring the question of if it is the salvation we have been looking for to keep up with our ridiculous consuming of fossil fuels and consumerism in general, or if its risks and bad consequenses outweigh the good.

I was once sold on the bio-fule idea. It sounds so earthy and sustainable. But turns out that it has a range of bad consequenses that the poor and the rural dweller have to again take the bullet for, and it doesn´t ask the northern countries (US, Canada; europe) to also take some responsibility and change our lifestyles of luxuary. Maybe one day I´ll write more on agro-fuels, but I´ll leave it there fore now and maybe you will be curious enough to do some research on it.


Also went to a talk last night on the US presidential elections and what potential impacts the two possible administrations would have on Latin America. Interesting stuff.

And just got done watching a few indigenous videos - from Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico - taking a variety of themes like the forced work (de facto slavary) of Gold mining/destruction of natural habitat and native peoples (Brazil), Repression of the teachers strike in Oaxaca and women´s roles in popular movements (Mexico), manipulation of political parties/oppression of coffee plantations/loss of indigenous identity in youngest generation (Guatemala), a video of the dying "ice-harvester¨ vocation of a man in the ice-capped mountains of Ecuador who chisles big blocks of ice from the mountains, wraps them painstakingly with dried grasses to insulate them, and loads them onto his donkíes for the decent to then deliver them to cafes in the valley town who use it in their drinks claiming its health and superior taste to commercially-produced ice. And with that, I will abruptly finish.

So there´s AN update, even if it isn´t THE update. :)