Blog # 8 – Granito

“Granito” is effectively part 2 of “When the Mountains Tremble” and gives us a much deeper (and more modern) view of Guatemala. Things do seem to be starting to change some there, but there are still many problems (as evidenced in the film). The trials (especially that of Rios Montt) still drag on, but some have ended with convictions (that were actually upheld). It’s a slow progress, but progress all the same.

The title point of this film comes back to the discussion of a “grain of sand” which effectively means that one grain of sand alone can’t make much of a difference, but you get a bunch of them, and it’s a different story (like one grain of sand flying at you wouldn’t hurt much, but a bunch of it, and you’re being sandblasted). The people of Guatemala are trying to be “grains of sand” so that together they can make a big difference.

The Spanish court (who claims international jurisdiction to try human rights violators) seems like it would be willing to give him a fair trial, but they have to get him in Spain (or in any other country that has extradition to Spain). This effectively make Rios Montt a prisoner within Guatemala as if he leaves, he’ll almost certainly be captured and extradited to Spain.

As we’ll find out from our readings and the timeline of events, the Guatemalan courts did finally take up the case and did convict Rios Montt in the Guatemalan courts (which was the first ever conviction of a head of state for human rights violation in a domestic, rather than international, court). However, the same Constitutional Court that is blocking his extradition to Spain, also overturned this ruling and set the case back (although now instead of being unanimous, it was a 3-2 split, showing there is some division there now).

Personally, I think the division in the Constitutional Court is because Rios Montt is becoming a major embarrassment to Guatemala. The more public this gets, the worse they look for harboring this blow hole. Perhaps they really don’t care how bad they look. After all as we covered in class they are (and have been for quite some time) the #1 worst human rights violators in the world. Maybe it’s like New Mexico and our drunk drivers. We don’t take it seriously because hey, everyone has to be #1 at something. New Mexico has drunk driving, Guatemala has human rights abuse.

Listen up Guatemalan government… I have a solution for you. Why don’t you just have Rios Montt “disappeared”. You know, car accident, industrial accident, “we don’t know where he could have gone, he must have fled!”, that kind of thing. If you wait too long, someone else might come and “disappear” him to Spain, which while I’d love to see, would be an even bigger embarrassment for you. We all know you really don’t care about how you treat your people (and for once at least it’s not just the indigenous targeted, and how sad it is that I have to say that like it’s a good thing).

We all know who and what Rios Montt is and what he has done. Guatemala needs to “man up” and deal with him once and for all. If they don’t, the international community should. We blockade Cuba for being Communist, but we don’t shut down Guatemala for being the worst human right s violators in the world. How jacked up is that? We should send in a team and extradite him ourselves. I, for one, would openly volunteer to go over there with a team and “disappear” him (either to Spain, or to the next world).

Blog # 6 – Crude

Like “Trinkets and Beads” before it, “Crude” shows us the impact to the indigenous cultures (and perhaps more importantly, people) by the oil companies. “Trinkets and Beads” focused more the Maxum and the other “tribe”, but “Crude” focuses more on the Cofan people’s direct struggle with Chevron (formerly Texico), of which we got a glimpse in “Trinkets and Beads”.

Mostly we see this from the legal team for the Cofan people’s perpective, but we see very clearly the type of fight they have as Chevron outright lied to try to avoid what would eventually become (after the scope of the film) a 19 billion verdict. Of course, they still aren’t paying up and are even challenging the validity of the verdict now.

This whole thing has been a public relations disaster for them and one would think they would just go in and do the remediation (of course they would still likely deny wrongdoing) for “the sake of the indigenous people”. It would give them a way to put this to bed, do what’s ultimately right (finally), and still not “acknowledge guilt” which seems to be very important to them.

Sadly Chevron, like most governments and other corporate entities, don’t think ahead. They tend to be more reactionary than visionary. They fail to realize that by saving a little money now, it’s probably going to cost you more in the long run. For Chevron (Texico really), while it would have cost them more to properly drill and produce, it probably wouldn’t have cost them 19 billion more. That’s not even counting the human cost (because frankly, Chevron doesn’t care about that). But even just looking at the almighty dollar, it would have been in their best interest to do it right the first time.

As if Chevron’s evasion and outright deceit isn’t enough, they add insult to injury by forcing the filmmaker to turn over raw footage (including footage not used) of the lead attorney for the Cofan people, and that of government officials on what is effectively a technicality. That “technicality” was that not only was he approached by the lead attorney to make this film, but he had also removed some scenes at his request, which the judges decided amounted to being “commissioned” and thus not an independent journalist.

The bottom line is that Chevron, like most corporations, simply cares about the almighty dollar, and especially doesn’t care about human life. At this point the fact that the people they are screwing over are indigenous simply makes it easier to run them over. I don’t believe Chevron is specifically against the indigenous, but rather simply puts money over human life (any human life) and sees the Indigenous as less empowered, thus less able to defend themselves, thus easier to save money by not doing things properly with (because they can’t defend themselves).

Blog #5 – When the Mountains Tremble

So after seeing When the Mountains Tremble and comparing it to the reading, I can easily see why it helped changed foreign policy. I suppose the question I’m left with is why did it take so long? As a country we seem ready to take any foreign governments word on things, even though we are well aware of many of their biases. It really is like we don’t learn from history. Even in modern times we still carry this one. Sure we went in to remove a horrible dictator named Sadam Hussein, but history seems to conveniently leave out that we were the fools who installed that idiot in the first place (CIA mostly).

While I know we aren’t technically supposed to bring the Texaco/Chevron film as part of this blog, frankly it all ties in together. The oil companies cry about how their operatives (who are masquerading as missionaries) are getting killed (because they are trespassing on land they have been warned would probably get them killed) to the government, who then asks the US for help, and we just start training them without even bothering to look into the situation any further than that. Why? Because we want the oil too (you know, the oil that will keep our cars running for 11 days or whatever ridiculously low number it was).

Sadly, it’s almost better in Guatemala. At least there the natives know what the score is. You don’t have the government telling them how much they want to help them then letting them die. The government in Guatemala has at least made their position clear (as screwed up as it is). They are basically saying, “We have zero respect for you and will bend you to our will however we think we can.” Obviously a very flawed and moronic position, but they are at least honest about it. In the other film we saw a lot of the proverbial “kissing babies while stealing their lollypops”.

About that other film, I said in class that I thought they should have killed that missionary as soon as she set foot on their lands all those years ago. After our weekend readings and film (especially the reading), let’s just say that thinking of the guerillas getting ahold of some of the army leaders and giving them a taste of their own medicine would please me very much (yeah, I had to do a LOT of self-censorship to wind up with this line).

On my father’s side we have the Dominican Republic, but on my mother’s side, I am Cherokee. Which is very funny on those forms we have to fill out for demographics for UNM and CNM, because they always think I’m being a smart-ass for checking both “First Generation American” and “Native American”, but the simple fact is I am both. My father became a US Citizen legally through military service (but I and my sister were born while he was doing that). The Cherokee part I don’t suppose I really need to explain too much. Most of you were at least history minors, so I’m sure you already know what that moron Andrew Jackson did to my people (not to mention how he set back jurisprudence in this country). If you don’t, go look it up. So when I see what is going on in the film and the reading, it makes me angry first and foremost.

I’m glad it worked to change foreign policy, but I think we’re all fooling ourselves if we let ourselves believe that a policy change is going to actually affect anything over there.

Blog #4 – The Other Conquest

Despite the freezing and skipping this film was really good. I liked how they hit on the idea we know as “double mistaken identity” in a very simplistic but easy to understand way. The indigenous assumed they were after the codex (trying to destroy their history), but the Spanish were clearly after gold. The Spanish saw the indigenous trying to protect something (and assumed it was gold).

However, many of the other ideas the filmmaker put forward in this movie were myths from our book that I have to assume that either he didn’t realize were myths or simply didn’t care that he was furthering the myths (in order to tell a story). The other option would be that he was putting them forward as a sort of cynical/satire kind of way, but I didn’t see any evidence of that.

For discussion purposes, that works out well though (and is probably why our instructor chose this film to be viewed at this point in the course). One of the myths we see strongly and is incorporated from our reading is the myth of communication (or as Restall puts it, miscommunication). This one in particular has always befuddled me because I have worked with many translators in my time, and one of the first thing they always remind me of before beginning any translation is that “word for word” translation is rarely (if ever) possible. While it’s true that some words can be directly translated, and entire sentence then changes how those words are used, and conveying an idea (say a paragraph), is altogether different. The filmmaker did take part of this into account when having the sister translate to the brother “word for word” what she said was different than what Cortez did, but did convey the same idea. While I forget the exact words, I noted that it was something like “do you wish to confess?” became “does anything weigh on your heart?” (Of course, both of these were translated to English from the languages in the film, to further complicate it). To a people who wouldn’t understand “confession”, this translation does do an adequate job of expressing the same idea.

This seems to further the myth though that they could basically just express the same ideas back and forth with each other and as our readings point out, this was simply not the case. The filmmaker also left stuff out from our earlier readings and films (for example the indigenous allies). From our current readings, the filmmaker seemed to be trying to further the myth of “native desolation”. We see this first with families being divided by them (the brother went to work for the Spanish), then later at the monastery with the “successfully” converted native woman, and of course the “mating” with the sister so that their blood (read as “our race”) could survive.

I have to wonder if the filmmaker simply didn’t know that the ideas he was putting forward were myths that he was propagating, or if his intention was to simply tell a story (as it wasn’t entirely “non-fiction” anyway) that people would be able to relate to with their (albeit incorrect) understanding of the history.

Blog #3 – The Great Inca Rebellion

The film we watched is a documentary of the proof that indigenous peoples fought each other (some Inca, some as allies of the “Spanish”) in many of these battles. It helps put to bed many of the myths by providing proof of what most scholars (and probably most reasonably educated people) already suspected. That the “handful of men” didn’t somehow miraculously go in and virtually singlehandedly take out the Mexica / Incan empires. They had help, and a lot of it.

Our reading expounds on this, pointing out that blacks were also involved in this. In one specific case it even mentions a band of “500 natives” being captained by a black conquistador winning many victories. But the film goes on to include a lot more than simply evidence for this. It actually touches on some of the complexities of how the various indigenous groups allied with the Spanish. For example, the native concubine/bride of Pizarro’s letter to her mother asking for aid when they were being attacked was likely a decision based mostly on protecting the daughter more than specifically to aid the Spanish.

The film did focus a bit more on the disease aspect than the reading did. But both the film and the reading made it clear that without their allies, the Spanish would almost certainly not been anywhere near as successful as they were.

Another thing that scholars have always assumed (and hopefully reasonably educated people have at least thought about) is the bias the Spanish had in recording history. “To the victor belong the spoils” – William L. Marcy. One of the “spoils” in this case is the ability to write history. Therefore, it is true that “History is written by the victor” – unknown (often attributed to Winston Churchill, but unconfirmed), at least in that present time. As the film points out, the Spaniards “official story” clearly doesn’t stand up to the evidence that they uncovered (nor did it make much sense really).

I do find it interesting that even the official account acknowledges that they asked for the kings ransom, got it, and still “tried, convicted, and sentenced to death” Atahualpa. I get that they did the “trial” in order to make it seem like they weren’t killing him over the ransom, but I’m a bit surprised that their “official account” didn’t say something like “he never paid the ransom (even though they got it) but we had a trial and….” If they are willing to cover up everything else, I’m not sure why they wouldn’t cover that up too. At any rate, it just kind of goes to show that you have to take all their “official accounts” with a grain of salt (and assume it has the kind of bias you’d expect).

Blog #2 – Cracking the Mayan Code

Our reading points out that the myth of Columbus arguing that the world was round is false (as no real argument that it was flat was being made at the time), but instead that the argument was about how far it was to Asia (via the Atlantic). It also points out that Columbus was wrong (at least in regards to Asia) in that argument, but it got me thinking about the film we watched as well. Thompson was sure that beyond numbers and astronomy, the Mayan hieroglyphs couldn’t possibly be translated into anything else and were just references to their gods or something. Even to the point where discouraged the Russian linguists work about different symbols being different sounds, because Thompson was so sure he was correct. I have to imagine that Columbus believed he was just as correct when he was making his arguments.

Much Like Columbus and those who came after him, the story of the translations we saw in our films were the work of many and not just those few that stand out. It started with whoever (their names likely lost to history) managed to save the documents that would become known as the various codex’s. They did so at great personal risk as being caught with it likely meant death. From there, someone (several people over a long period of time, who are also possibly lost to history) had the good sense keep it preserved until someone else got it to the Dresden, Germany museum. Then, had someone not taken the time to make a book reproduction of several of the surviving codex’s, the Russian linguist would never have been inspired by picking up that book on the floor in Berlin. If the great depression hadn’t effectively forced Alice to take that job drawing at the sites, she would have likely wound up working in the US instead and many of her discoveries probably wouldn’t have been made. Likewise, if David’s father hadn’t brought him along to his many trips as a child, his mind would have probably pondered questions other than Mayan hieroglyphs.

All these events, especially those by people not even known or mentioned in history, were required links in the chain of our history, and should any one of them have been broken, we’d be looking at a different outcome. Our reading points out that it was the same for Columbus and the Spaniards. While a small few get the “credit” (or the infamy depending how you look at it), a lot of it (like “discovering” the “Indies”) was just a happy mistake. Like Thompson, Columbus was wrong (at least about the size of the world and how long it would take to get to Asia via the Atlantic), but that incorrect assessment was a link (probably a required link) in the chain that lead to other events. If Thompson had made the correct assumption about the sounds of the words, or if he had not figured any of it out at all, all the other links in the chain would have been different as a result.

My Introductory Post

Greetings,

My name is Andy and I’m a Pol Sci major and History minor.  I’m originally from Bryan / College Station, Texas.  I’ll be getting my BS at the end of the Fall 2013 term.  While politics and history are my interest for working, computers are personal passion.  I’m a dev (developer) in a MMORPG game project and am an avid gamer and programer (although I’m still learning the programing aspect as I go).  I’m taking this class because I’ve not taken a “history through film” class yet, and from what I hear the experience is well worth it.  It’s also my first class condensed down to 2 weeks, so we’ll see how it goes. 🙂  I’m told I should include in this blog that my grandfather (Hector Garcia-Godoy) was the Provisional President of the Dominican Republic after the OSC (i think that’s the right acronym) went in in 1965ish (very similar to the Provisional President of Iraq when we went in).  Obviously I wasn’t born yet, so it’s before my time. 🙂