It's nothing personal, just human nature.

Many fellow Colombians, for many different reasons, are living abroad these days. Some of them were forced to do it. Others, like me, had the chance of making that decision. Even if I do not know too many Colombians abroad, a common conversation topic between Colombians abroad is the kind of information foreigners have about Colombia. We even have fun sometimes. Indeed, it is not difficult to hear pretty strange stuff such as "oh, you're from Colombia, so you speak Portuguese, right?" As an immediate reaction, one starts thinking about the education the person who said that has. After some thoughts, however, I think I have found a good justification for that kind of questions. This is the topic of this post.

An interesting part of a country's culture concerns the perception the country (that is, people living in that country) has of other countries. In this line, a country has "rivals", which are seen in that way because of political, historical or even sport reasons. In the same line, there are countries that are "friends" to each other (again, this means that people of one country see people of the friend country with a positive, open attitude), and so on. Only after you have lived in the country for a while, you manage to understand well these issues.

As a whole, a country's attitude is only the amplified version of its people's attitude. So, just like you have people you respect, a country has other countries they respect or admire, for any given reason. Just as you know certain other people only their names, people in one country might only have heard of some country, but have no real idea of what such a place looks like. (Several youtube videos on the perception people in USA have of other countries illustrate well this idea.) To keep things short, my point is: as a citizen of a country, you only know well those countries that your own country regards as important. That is, countries only care about their "peers"; countries rarely look down, down to those unknown (and/or distant) other countries.

I realized that when I was asked about Belize. In spite of being in central america, I don't know anything about Belize apart from the fact that's a very small country in which English is the official language. According to some "distance criterion", I should know more about Belize than, say, an Italian, because Colombia is closer to Belize than Italy. (I have found that this "distance criterion" is more common in people's minds than I imagined. According to this criterion, all southamerican countries are more or less the same: they speak similar languages and one needs to cross an ocean to reach them.)

Why should a Colombian know about Belize? Well, I have found no good reasons. I guess that apart from drawing it on some map in primary school, I never got information on Belize. (It turns out that drawing a country into a map is the closest many persons get to know about distant countries.) That's my primary school teacher's fault. Now I know nothing about Belize and that's certainly my fault. Do I need to know more, or do I feel curious about Belize? No, not at all. The English fact is a curious thing to know for some trivia, but no more than that. Perhaps if I meet someone from Belize things would be different...

That exercise on a country I don't know was useful to understand that Colombia is a country most people don't care about. That's the reality. OK, people relate drugs and Colombia very easily, and that's a burden because some minds are not able to assimilate there's more beyond that shameful reality. Why should an Italian (French, Danish, almost any citizenship fits here...) know something about Colombia? Really, there's no good reason. Colombia and Italy (or the country you chose) never had any strong diplomatic relationships, excepting perhaps some isolated event. We had no European immigration, so there was no chance for cultural interchange. Apart from some sportsmen (and Pablo Escobar), there are no famous Colombians widely known abroad. (Surprisingly enough, I have found that many foreigners ignore that some famous Colombians are actually Colombians.)

Colombians unaware of this fact complain: "we know so much about this country: we know the language they speak, the name of the capital, who's the president, the football... how come they don't have a similar background on us???" The same Colombians usually confuse this very unique aspect of human nature with ignorance. They think knowledge on other countries should be symmetric, and since we look up at Europe, Europe should look down on us. They get offended, thus finding more reasons to not interact (or to interact with prejudices) with foreigners. They never talk again with the person who made a drug-related joke.

At the end, they do not realize that Colombia is "below" for people in many countries, and since countries do not look down, foreigners have no reason to know about Colombia. Meeting a Colombian is usually not a good reason. That's the way it is: it's nothing personal, just human nature.

So, let's say the guy is dead: now what?

It seems my Colombian fellows are in a strange state of shock/happiness/confusion regarding the unconfirmed death of Manuel Marulanda a.k.a. Tirofijo (something like "sure shot"), the creator and highest leader of FARC.
Once again, I am afraid I will have to express my skepticism regarding the whole thing. Let me examine the facts, and then draw a conclusion.

First of all, in the tradition of the Uribe administration, there is no press release, nor official statement announcing the news. The "news" arose as part of an interview the Minister of Defense gave to Semana, the weekly Colombian political journal which, for what it's what worth, I regard as a serious and objective publication. The interview was conducted by Maria Isabel Rueda, a journalist who is popular because of her strong positions in favor of the Uribe administration and his policies. She has a weekly column in Semana, and trust me, she could be very annoying defending the government. That was a first point against the interview, because it gives you the idea that the "interview" is just a part of a plan between the Minister and the journalist who's friend of the government.

Second, let's analyze what it's said in the interview. The Minister says he has "strong evidence" Marulanda is dead, but that he has no confirmed information about that. It is merit of the journalist to make the "big announcement" of the supposed death of the guerrilla leader. More precisely, one can read the following:

Rueda.: ¿Is'Tirofijo' dead?
Minister: That's the latest information we have and we're working on confirming it.

Rueda: ¿Can I put as headline of this interview, ''Tirofijo' is dead'?
Minister: It's up to you.

As you can see, very surprisingly, the Minister is rather prudent on his claims on Tirofijo (btw, the minister has a long story of invented stories about the operational results of the Colombian army.) It is the journalist who takes the risk of creating the news.

The above two points are to justify my skepticism about the news. There is no official announcement, there are no evidences and the government says it clearly. So, it would be a mistake to take such a thing as a certain fact. The rest is bullshit.

Now, let's say the guy is really dead (or, suppose, the government finds, all of the sudden, evidence of the guy's death.) Tirofijo being dead is quite possible because the guy is old and apparently had/has cancer. My position is: nothing really will change in the Colombian conflict. Of course, lots of articles will be written, and time in TV will be wasted on that. Recall that this is not the first time someone says Marulanda is dead (for different reasons, including cancer and a stroke, for instance), and everytime some else has been there to deny the fact. Independent of that, my impression is that Marulanda is/was too smart to know he was close to death and I am sure he did suitable arrangements for that moment. I am sure his successor has/had been elected already and that all the "machinery" of the guerrilla management part has been prepared. Moreover, I am sure his successor --as it usually occurs-- is way worse than the original Marulanda. So we shouldn't expect a huge, positive change. Could be this claimed as a victory of the government? Hardly, I'd say. I guess they didn't kill the guy, and therefore they don't have bloody, disgusting images of the old guy. Hence, they can do not have a psychological weapon for those poor guerrilla soldiers (mos of them kids) who are doubting about fighting a futureless war. Also, in case you were wondering, I guess remaining leaders of FARC are not that stupid so to kill among themselves to get control of the organization.

All in all, I see this as another masterpiece on how to deviate the national attention from other Colombian problems, such as the lack of credibility of the congress (many senators are in jail or are close to go there) and the fishy maneuvers the government did to get Uribe's second term approved.

Update (25/05/2008, 10am): I just read the Ministry of Defense released a statement "confirming" the "news". The facts are the same: Tirofijo might have died because of some bombing in Meta (south of Bogota) or by natural causes, and the government has no further evidence. That is, they're creating a victory by putting some unconfirmed small facts in some press release. The only new thing is that the government challenges FARC to prove Tirjofijo is indeed alive. The press statement was read by some Admiral Moreno that no one knows. I say: if the news is confirmed, and it's so important, why some unknown Admiral is announcing it to the world? Where are the Minister and the President?

Update (25/05/2008, 5:50pm): The FARC have admitted Tirofijo is dead. The uncertainty lasted much less than I expected. The new FARC leader is Alias Alfonso Cano.

Israeli Movies

In the last days I have seen several Israeli movies, which are part of a special movie mini-season, part of the celebration the Jewish community in Bologna organized in the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel.
It's been an interesting experience not only because of the movies themselves, which have been both touching and illuminating, but also because going alone to see a "weird movie" in an almost empty theater (Bologna's Cineteca) is not something I usually do.

In any case, even if I missed two or three movies that seemed promising, I still could see four pieces that I would like to recommend to you. All of them have won awards in prestigious festivals. This could be a useless suggestion, though: the movies are very recent and some of them seem to be quite "underground" which makes it difficult to find in dvd or in the torrents of information the net provides. The movies are:

• My father, my lord. The movie is focused on the family of an ultra-orthodox rabbi, his wife and only son. It portrays very well the rigid and somehow mysterious/traditional atmosphere such orthodox communities have nowadays. It is a short movie (around 75 min) that conveys a touching story on the relation of this rabbi and a tragedy concerning his 5- or 6-year old kid. I enjoyed the music a lot. It's one of the saddest things I have seen in a while.
  
  
  
• Sweet Mud. The life of a 12-year old kid in a kibbutz, in the mid seventies, is portrayed in a simple and peculiar way. The movie spans the year before the kid's bar mitzvah, and reflects though decisions he mas to made regarding his mentally affected mother and the whole kibbutz community. The photography is simply AMAZING; I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw certain Israeli landscapes. The music is also fantastic; rightly placed comic sequences give the story a great rhythm.
  
  
• Jellyfishes. 5-word description: stories of women in Tel-Aviv. The life of four or five female main characters is portrayed in a very clever way. There is the girl who just broke up with the boyfriend and works as waitress in wedding parties; the girl who just got married has a crappy honeymoon; the photographer who's looking for something else in her life; the Phillipine immigrant that has to leave her son back home and do her best taking take of elderlies; the mysterious little girl who comes from the sea. The simplicity of the stories, the subtle way these stories touch each other, and, above all, the fact that simplicity can be interesting if told in the proper way, is what gets you in your chair with no complaints.


• Souvenirs What started as a project of a documentary on the Jewish brigades that fought in the WWII, slowly evolves to the story in which the director of the film rediscovers his father, a former driver of the brigade. After a meeting of the remaining members of the brigade, the director learned that he might have a stepbrother in the Netherlands, a "souvenir" his father could have left to some grateful young lady in Eindhoven. They then start a trip to Europe, tracing back the steps of both the brigade in Italy and of the "souvenir". It turns out that the brigade was decisive in defeating the Nazi troops here in Emilia-Romagna! In fact, they visit the monument the Comune of Riolo Terme (Ravenna) dedicated to the brigade; seeing the tears of joy the former driver has kept with him for 60 years is one of the most touching moments of the film. The nostalgic trip continues in the Netherlands, where the director and his father find the answers they were looking for.

I want to conclude pointing out that the selection of movies was simply great; they certainly make you question yourself on your ideas on Israel and the Jewish culture. In the very worst case, you end up throwing away a bunch of misconceptions. The easiest criterion for selection could have been the war and the conflict. Instead, the movies I saw reflect a very diverse society that fights to remain faithful to their traditions in the modern times.

First entry

This is the first entry of the blog.
I have no ambitions whatsoever regarding visits, not to mention "readers feedback". Any positive reaction is of course welcome.
I expect to stick to a few traditions, however.
In the Italian tradition, I will, from time to time, complain about Italy.
In the Colombian tradition, I will, from time to time, complain about Colombia.
In the PhD student tradition, posts will often deal with my frustrations.
In the Internet tradition, I will write mostly in English.

I expect to cover several topics, including but not limited to traveling, politics, football, (good) music, not boring aspects of research (if any).