Short People at a Tall Man's Game

Colombia is futbol country. Across Bogotá, the football pitches are usually crowded, while the few basketball courts often sit empty - except when they're being used to play football.

There are a few exceptions, such as the Parque Nacional, Parque La Florida and El Salitre on Sundays. And, on my way home this evening; I passed thru Tercer Milenio Park and came upon this scene:

On Sundays, Tercer Milenio seems to be transformed into Ecuadorean territory, probably because

many Ecuadorean immigrants live in the poor neighborhoods around it. And it was moving and startling to see dozens of boys, girls, men and women playing basketball. Women played in long dresses. They played three games simultaeneously on the same court, banging into each other. They played badly and without rules - but very enthusiastically. This was the real spirit of sports, and something which millionares like Lebron James and Cristian Ronaldo could never equal.

Go figger: What cultural happenstance moves these uniformly short people, of Quechua indigenous ancestry, to play a tall North American man's game.

Whyever it is, I found it heartwarming, and for a little while it cleared away my despair about the state of our world.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Humans Discover the Olinguito - and Condemn It?

An olinguito. (Photo: Smithsonian Magazine)

This week, the Smithsonian Institution announced the 'discovery' of a new species of carnivorous mammal, related to the raccoon, native to the cloud forests of Ecuador and Colombia. It's the first new carnivore species to be identified in the past 35 years.

Indigenous people walk thru Yasuni National Park.
Will oil drilling devastate their culture? 

Except that the olinguito isn't really new. Specimens had been studied in laboratories and even kept in zoos - where the keepers couldn't understand why they weren't interested in mating with other with their zoo companions. It turned out that zoologists had been confusing the olinguito with other, species in the olingo genus.

Ecuador's Yasuni National Park,
on the Colombian border.

Humans' tardy realization that the olinguitos were a distinct species in the olingo genus probably doesn't matter as much to the olinguitos as do peoples' other activities - their invasion and deforestation of the olinguitos' cloud forest habitat. Almost half of the little animals' habitat has already been destroyed by agriculture and urban development.

And that trend looks to accelerate with Ecuador's decision this week to open its vast Yasuni National Park to oil drilling. The park, which covers 9,820 square kilometers may be one of the most biodiverse places on earth, according to Wikipedia. In a single hectare, it has as many insect species as all of North America, as well as myriad bats, amphibians and mammals. Several groups of indigenous people also inhabit the park, living in voluntary isolation from outsiders.

How much impact? Mining titles
awarded by Colombian departments. 

But the park, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, also close to a billion barrels of oil. In 2007, the Ecuadorean government offered to leave that oil underground if other countries would pay Ecuador half of the oil's value, or more than 3 billion dollars. But Ecuador received only $13 million and more than $100 million in pledges.

"The world has failed us," Ecuadorean Pres. Rafael Correa said this week, and criticized rich countries' "hypocrisy."

Yasuni National Park at nightfall.
(Photo: Understory.ran)

Correa is right, of course. But one can also criticize Correa's policies as short-sighted and selfish. When it is burned, the oil will pump hundreds of millions of tons of global warming gases into the atmosphere, making Ecuador, a member of OPEC, even more of an accomplice in climate change. The drilling work will also trigger wide pollution and deforestation.

I don't think that the olinguito, which inhabits high-altitude regions, lives in Yasuni park. But Ecuador's decision is only the beginning of wider oil exploration and mining across the Amazon. Ecuador, in fact, is also opening huge areas adjoining the park to oil drilling. And Colombia, naturally, is opening its own wilderness areas to resource exploitation. (Coincidentally, this week Nicaragua also announced that it will open sea waters awarded to it last year by an international court to oil exploration. The waters are disputed by Colombia, which had barred oil exploration from the region, which contains the largest barrier reef in the Americas.)

A waterfall in Yasuni National Park.
(Photo: Sense and Sustainability)

Matt Finer of the Center for International Environmental Law told Britain's Guardian newspaper that Ecuador's decision was "deeply disappointing..."The Yasuni-ITT Initiative was the lone exception to the relentless expansion of hydrocarbon projects deeper into the most remote tracts of the western Amazon. Now there is really no viable alternative to stop the wave of drilling slated for the most biodiverse region of the world."

The olinguito may have entered human awareness only to be soon driven to extinction by human greed. And with it will go many other species still unknown to humanity.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Ecuador on the Eje Ambiental

These photos are from the exhibit 'Fotografias al Cielo Abierto,' or something like 'Open Air Photography,' financed by the Ecuadorean Embassy and now on display on the Eje Ambiental in La Candelaria. 

They contain scenes from Quito, Ecuador, some of them quite unexpected, including a woman in what looks to me like a Palestinian headress, and some men resembling country and western musicians from the U.S. 

 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Mr. Freedom of Information is Going WHERE???

Assange: Persecuted or persecutor?

The news that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is seeking political refuge in Ecuador is the last piece of evidence of Assange's moral emptiness.

Assange may have done the world a real service with Wikileaks by revealing wartime abuses and financial amorality. But it always seemed evident to me that the man who wanted all 'information to be free' was happy to free information only as long as it satisfied his worldview and didn't inconvenience him. Remember, after all, how heatedly Assange complained when embarrassing facts about the Swedish charges of sexual abuse against him were leaked.

And the government data he posted online seemed to be overwhelmingly about the U.S. government and corporations. But what about embarrassing data about authoritarian governments in Asia and the Middle East?

Odd couple: Assange and Ecuadorean
President and media repressor Rafael Correa.

Assange's claims that the court case against him was persecution also rang hollow. Assange was accused of rape and other sexual crimes by two Swedish women who had been his supporters and intimate friends. That doesn't sound like a Washington-backed conspiracy. And Sweden isn't known particularly as  a corrupt nation or a United States puppet. Why doesn't Assange go to Sweden and face the sort of open, public trial which he would certainly demand for people whose crimes Wikileaks revealed.

But Assange's decision to seek refuge in Ecuador is more telling. Ecuador's president Rafael Correa has been widely criticized by media and human rights organizations for using legal mechansims to repress criticism of his government.

When a free speech defender seeks protection from a free speech repressor, what does that tell us about him?

Once Assange gets comfortable in Ecuador, expect Wikileaks to get active again, now backed by Correa's oil money and filled with anti-U.S. revelations.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The FARC Files - redux

Reyes working on his laptop - his words may now be haunting his allies. 

In March 2008, the Colombian military bombed a FARC guerrilla camp located just across the border in Ecuador, killing a guerrilla leader and leading to the recovery of computer files. Today, consequences of that attack may bomb relations between Colombia and its neighbors. 

A London think tank just released a studying arguing that the Venezuelan government cooperated closely with Colombia's guerrillas, who are considered terrorists by Colombia, the United States and the European Union.

In the attack - which had certain similarities to the U.S.'s killing of Osama bin Laden - Colombia killed FARC 'foreign minister' Raul Reyes and other guerrillas and recovered a trove of computerized guerrilla communications. At that time, the attack and evidence released by Colombia of Venezuelan government collaboration with the guerrillas ruptured diplomatic ties between Colombia and its neighbors Ecuador and Venezuela - and even brought talk of war. Venezuela alleged that the computer files had been falsified - even tho international experts endorsed them as genuine.

In recent months, and with a new president in Bogotá, relations between Colombia and its neighbors have warmed.

However, after the attack on the camp, then-Pres. Alvaro Uribe had turned over the computer information to the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies think tank. And today the IISS released its findings - which incriminate Venezuela and its leftist Pres. Hugo Chavez.

According to the IISS, as reported in El Tiempo, the Guardian and the New York Times, messages in the computers showed that the Chavez government had offered the FARC money to buy weapons, let the guerrillas use Venezuelan territory and warned the guerrillas about Venezuelan military manuevers to permit the guerrillas to move camp. In return, the FARC allegedly helped train Venezuelans in guerrilla fighting tactics and may even have provided assassins to kill Venezuelan government opponents in Venezuela.

The cooperation with the FARC was a Venezuelan "state policy," according to the IISS.

The IISS study also reports evidence that the FARC contributed to the campaign of Ecuador Pres. Rafael Correa, but that the relationship didn't become institutionalized.

I was struck by one internal message in which a guerrilla leader told another that the Venezuelans would wait for a loan to be paid back "when we achieve power" in Colombia. That's as clear an indication as any of the FARC's - and perhaps also the Venezuelan government's - detachment from reality.

Venezuela's embassies in London and Washington D.C. issued a statement calling into question the computer files' authenticity. They and the Ecuadoreans are, however, about the only ones who have questioned that authenticity, suggesting there's yet another worldwide conspiracy afoot against Hugo Chavez and his revolution.

The Santos administration has been trying hard to improve relationships with its leftist neighbors, and recently defied the U.S. by extraditing a Venezuelan narcotrafficker to Caracas, while Chavez angered his leftist allies by handing over the FARC's press officer in Europe to Colombia. To preserve relations, Santos isn't commenting on the IISS report. However, ex-Colombian Pres. Alvaro Uribe, who clashed constantly with Chavez and once even compared Chavez to Hitler and has criticized Santos' reproachment with Venezuela, must be grinning. This report was a grenade which Uribe tossed upwards years ago and which is finally landing, with the potential to blow up Colombia's relationship with its neighbors.

If the IISS report is accurate, however, the relationship may be doomed, anyway. The report says that the FARC-Venezuela relationship had become so institutionalized that it's not likely to end.

I can only suspect they are correct - at least in terms of the past. When I visited Venezuelan-Colombian border areas about seven years ago, people on both sides of the border described Venezuelan military sympathy and support for the Colombian guerrillas.

And it's worth recalling that the Raul Reyes file are only part of the evidence of Venezuelan support for Colombia's guerrillas. There are also the guerrilla camps in Venezuela, Venezuelan army weapons found in guerrilla hands and even statements by Venezuelan leaders.

None of which is surprising, considering Chavez's dogmatic ideology, which demonizes his critics and idolizes the enemies of his enemies. And his faith in dialectic, as opposed to real-life evidence.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

No more 'bases gringas'?

After the U.S. handed over the Panama Canal , the Panamanians also kicked out the U.S. military base there. Washington looked around, and finally rented a space on the Ecuadorian air force base at Manta to use for what it said were solely anti-drug flights. But then Ecuador elected leftist Pres. Rafael Correa, and he ended the U.S.'s rights to use the Manta air base. So, Washington looked east and found Colombia, with which it signed an agreement giving the US's military landing rights on seven Colombian military bases.

The US-Colombia agreement generated lots of

controversy, especially among leftists, who denounced the arrangement as 'US bases' and an example of US imperialism. Venezuelan Pres. Hugo Chavez suggested that the US and Colombia would spy on his country and were even preparing to invade Venezuela.

Yesterday, Colombia's high court ruled that the agreement was invalid because it had not been approved by Colombia's Congress. That appears unlikely to happen, unless Colombian Pres. Juan Manuel Santos is willing to rile up the Venezuelan government.

What's the lesson in this? First of all, the US doesn't look like much of an imperialistic power - not when tiny nations like Panama and Ecuador have evicted US soldiers without firing a shot.

And the decision shows once again that Colombia is a democracy with an independent court system - with a backbone.

At the same time, the US should find a lesson in this: Its war on drugs is unpopular in Latin America, where it is widely seen as an imposition. What's more, despite billions of dollars spent and many thousands of deaths, the war has produced little progress against the drug trade.

Perhaps a change of strategy is in order.

This blog written by Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours.