Mercury Prize shortlist

It is time for a new entry and all my ideas for posts are, at best, half-baked drafts. So, here's a short post on music.

Last week the short list for the Nationwide Mercury Prize was announced. The Mercury prize is awarded yearly to the best British/Irish album. All genres all taken into account, and the selection is based only on the music of the album. Even if it's impossible to make everyone happy with an award (and this is especially true for music/movie awards), I find this selection scheme very interesting. Since the wonderful "Stories from the city, stories from the sea" by PJ Harvey in 2001, I have tried to follow the list of nominees and winner each year, as it's a safe way of finding quality music. This year's shortlist is as follows:

• Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid

• Radiohead - In Rainbows

• British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music?

• Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Raising Sand

• Burial - Untrue

• Estelle - Shine

• Adele - 19

• Laura Marling - Alas I Cannot Swim

• Rachel Unthank & The Winterset - The Bairns

• Neon Neon - Stainless Style

• Portico Quartet - Knee-Deep In The North Sea

• The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age Of The Understatement

Apart from "In Rainbows" and "The Age Of The Understatement" (two of my favorites), all the albums are strange to me. It is my objective to hear most of them before the awards ceremony in September. I am always curious to know to what extent my taste (musical taste, in this case) is in accordance with the selection of some expert jury.

Independence Day

Today Colombia celebrates the first of the two annual festivities related to its Independence Day. This year the celebrations include yet another massive manifestation against FARC and kidnapping. This was done in each Colombian municipality as well as in a number of major cities in the world. I find this remarkable as the fragile unity of Colombian society was demonstrated around the world. Even if I could have joined the celebration in Milano, work and money reasons prevented me to do so, even if the idea of tasting Colombian food was very tempting ;-) Instead of travelling four hours in train and spending some money, I decided to celebrate this day by doing a small contribution in tracing back the origins of the fragility of Colombian society. Indeed, in this post I will give you a super summarized account of Colombian history.

As I mentioned before, to discuss the independence of what now is known as Colombia it is indispensable to mention two dates in history: the 20th of July 1810 and the 7th of August 1819. Let me start with the first one. As you might know, the Spanish empire had ruled America after 1492. Around 1810, the political instability in Spain, and of a number of social, economic and political factors in America were the trigger to a number of separatist movements. Back then, what we now today as Colombia was only a part of "The New Granada", a huge country that --more or less-- compressed today's Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia and Panama. The already mentioned problems in Spain made an Independence declaration rather easy and peaceful. This took place the 20th of July 1810 in SantaFe (what is known today as Bogota).

After this declaration, the perspectives were everything but clear. The society of the time was divided between people loyal to the Spanish crown and people wishing to cut every link with Spain. The second group prevailed, but then a new division arose, this time concerning the structure of the new government (federal vs. central). This caused a civil war, after which a guy called Simon Bolivar entered into the game. He had commanded the separatist movement in Venezuela in a rather short war. He then went to Santa Fe to try to organize the mess there was there.

Shortly after, there's a new king in Spain who orders to conquer again all the territories in which Spanish troops had been defeated. The mission sent by the king (leaded by a guy called Pablo Morillo) put some order and returned things as they were in 1810; this was around 1816 (more or less). The leaders of the separatist movements and armies were executed. This wasn't the case for Bolivar who escaped to Jamaica. It took little time for new separatist armies to reorganize; key in this process were Francisco de Paula Santander in Colombia and Jose Antonio Paez in Venezuela. Bolivar managed to return in 1817, assuming the leadership of the armies. Together with Santander, Bolivar fought against the last Spanish troops in a very famous battle, the Battle of Boyacá. This battle took place the 7th of August 1819, and consolidated the rather weak independence an incipient group of people had achieved back in 1810. The freed country was then called "The Great Colombia."

As you may imagine, both dates are important and meaningful. Unfortunately, few people in Colombia understand the history and politics behind them. Colombia's independence was a long, hard process that had to overcome external and internal disputes, in which political and military actions were crucial for the final outcome. In case you are wondering what happened after the 7th of August, here's a mini story. Yet another division took place on how to order the free countries. Now the sources of division were Santander and Bolivar, and they formed their respective political factions. The Great Colombia itself was very fragile and the leaders of the army in Ecuador and Venezuela started a division process to the countries we know nowadays. Several other interesting events occurred in Colombia, including: yet another war, the independence of Panama (technically Colombia sold it to the US in 1902), and the political violence that arose after that (around 1930-1960), and that in the last 30 years has evolved into the war against drugs Colombia still suffers today.

Colombia has only seen very short periods of peace. In this sense, we are independent in theory, but in practice this is not quite true. On the one hand, the myriad of cultures and social groups in Colombia have made difficult a real independence from ourselves. On the other hand, today we have a strong dependency on the current empire (USA , that stimulates our war), and --oddly enough-- also a rather implicit dependency on the old empire (Spain, that owns pretty much the whole financial and media systems in Colombia.)

To conclude, the recent euphoria of the "almost won" war against FARC should not confuse us: there are a lot of divisions and inequalities in Colombian society. They come pretty much since the very moment in which we started to exist as a country. I think it's a good idea to keep in mind our past to understand the lame present and to be prepared for a (hopefully not) also sad future.

The beauty conspiracy

One of the things I enjoy the most about having lived in two different cultures is that your pool of stories and anecdotes grows a lot. And then it is nice to tell the contrasts between cultures based on your stories. I like getting the surprise faces in both sides.

I am sure one of the things European people could find difficult to assimilate is the importance beauty contests have in tropical countries like Colombia. Of course, I know almost every country in the world elects its own 'miss', but in most of them media coverage is rather low, which corresponds to the irrelevant, frivolous character a beauty contest has. Not in Colombia: both the election of Miss Colombia and her later 'performance' in Miss Universe are something extremely relevant for Colombian society. This could be considered the tropical instance of a feature commonly found in western societies: beauty is key to obtain respect and recognition from your peers, in detriment of other qualities or values such as intelligence or honesty.

In Colombia every town has its very own 'miss', that is usually elected each year in the town's festivity. Miss Colombia is elected from a group of candidates, each one representing a region or state (a candidate of a region, in turn, is selected from a smaller, local contest). The nationwide contest takes place in November in Cartagena, and draws all the media attention that you can imagine. This is specially annoying because the contest has associated several irrelevant events, and the whole thing might last a month, so you can imagine how interesting the associated media coverage is.

Beauty contests in Colombia are useful to reveal how low our collective self-esteem is. I mention this because of the outcome of the 2008 edition of Miss Universe, which took place in Vietnam last week. After almost two decades of systematic failures, the Colombian candidate managed to arrive to the final stage of the competition with the highest scores in the preliminary rounds. She was competing with the Venezuelan candidate. Of course both girls were astonishing. Apparently the final decision was made on the answers both of them gave to some random questions. It seems the answer the Venezuelan girl gave was more appropriate (or conversely, less stupid) than the one my fellow Colombian gave. (You can see the intellectually challenging final questions round here.) Taking into account the answers, and in spite of the scores of the previous rounds, the jury decided that Miss Venezuela is Miss Universe 2008.

This was on Sunday night. On Monday there was a national crisis because of the result. People was deeply disappointed, facebook groups were created to describe the miserable fraud and sorrow, and the media asked groups of "experts" to explain such an unexpected outcome. The generalized reaction was that Colombia was victim of an international conspiracy. Several conjectures were proposed on the origins of such a conspiracy. The first one is that Donald Trump (the owner of the contest) has interests in Venezuela and hence electing Miss Venezuela could have a positive influence in his businesses there. A second one says that Hugo Chavez (president of Venezuela) bribed the jury of the contest with his "petrodollars", something unfeasible for the (poor, honest) Colombian government. Other conjectures, mixing the two before with the fact that the Colombian candidate "had connected to Vietnamese people" and "was nicer than the rest" were proposed too. Previous editions of the contest in which Colombia also arrived in second place were accommodated into a larger, everlasting beauty conspiracy theory.

I am not really able to explain why Colombian people react in this way when dealing with a collective defeat or loss. In general, I find it quite lame to blame others, or to invent stupid conspiracy theories, to try to justify your own deficiencies. (In the Miss Universe case, people is not able to see that the weak answer to the final question might have ruined everything.) I claim this persecution complex is a consequence the low self-esteem we Colombians have as a whole. In a worldwide context, not only we are ashamed of our country but we tend to believe the rest is doing fishy stuff against us. Perhaps it's something related to the latinamerican idiosyncrasy but my lack of knowledge of other tropical countries prevents me from further concluding. As I argued in another post, Colombians are not aware Colombia is "below" in some 'implicit ranking of countries', which might lead to a reinforcement of our destiny of failure in case of a negative outcome in any kind of competition.

Colombian society kinds of enjoy suffering with the most deserved things that others took from us (such as beauty contests hosted by Jerry Springer (!) or important football matches) and finding external "responsibles" (such as greedy Donald Trumps or unfair referees). I am afraid this kind of attitudes is extremely difficult (if not impossible) to change.

Update (17/07/2008). The Colombian candidate is still blaming others for the outcome. She found a responsible, way more powerful than Trump or Chavez, but a bit more abstract than them: God. At her arrival at Colombia, she said her answer to the question hadn't had any influence on the final result: "God wanted me to arrive in second place; he wanted Miss Venezuela to win". Argh.

Capsule of Absurdity No. 1

To the delight of my readers around the world, I am starting today a new section. As the title suggests, this post inaugurates a series of installments that will deal with absurd events that occur to me (or to people I know that don't have a nice blog). This should be a good deal for everyone: I will spend less time producing a post and you will waste less time reading my pseudo interesting remarks. In any case, the cool thing about absurd events is that they can be many things at the same time: sad, funny, lame, etc. Reading about absurd events it's like observing things and, as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

This capsule deals with a prominent aspect of Italian culture: the relation Italians have with the English language. (I can anticipate many future capsules will deal with Italy, I am afraid. This is a fertile land for absurdity.) The other day, by a combination of a faulty software and stupidity of mine, my Philips MP3 reader started to work in a weird way. It was usable, but the file system was a mess. Then I realized the firmware of it was quite outdated, and decided to update it. I read all the manuals and followed all the instructions to do so. Once the firmware upgrade was ready, the device didn't start. Nothing at all, it was dead.

Once again, I tried every trick manuals suggested, but nothing worked. Then I went to the Philips website, looking for further info. Nothing. My case wasn't listed in the manuals. Great. Then I went to the customers service website, and filed a complaint. In what it seemed to be a centralized website to do that, apart from my complain and info about my problem, I provided info on my location (country, city, address). The site was completely in English, so I wrote my case in English, and expected an answer from someone in, say, India.

The component of absurdity arises in what follows. Two days (!) after having filed the complaint/question I received the following email (in Italian) from the Philips people:

Dear Customer,
Thanks for contacting us.
We will be happy to answer your question and/or help you in your problem, as long as you write to us in Italian.
Thanks for understanding us.
Greetings,
Debora M.
Philips Customer Care Centre

I can understand that customer service teams are not equipped with multilingual personnel. But come on, Debora: you work solving problems with devices that involve some kind of technology, you gotta know some English! I can easily imagine the "Philips Customer Care Centre" in some Italian city. The "centre" should be nothing more than a group of 4-5 people trained to answer stupid questions following some predefined answers that come in a book. I guess the email I received is one of the most complicated things they have to do: to deal with inquiries in strange languages (or dialects). I wouldn't be surprised if someone tells me Debora is the supervisor of the "centre".

The story with my MP3 continued with me sending an email in Italian, Debora replying to it with some useless information ("try to upgrade the firmware again, and if that doesn't work I hope you're still covered by the warranty"), and me desperately formatting the MP3 player using Windows. (I had nothing to lose, either that worked or by upgrading I had obtained a USB key with a useless screen.) Luckily, the Windows formatting worked and my MP3 reader is now upgraded and functioning. And some stupid Debora wasn't helpful at all.

Next in "Capsules of Absurdity": all the things that can go wrong in a strike day in Paris.

More on France

In a "companion" post, I talked about a recent visit to Paris and argued on some of the things I don't like about France. Here I want to elaborate a bit on the things I really like about France.



As I think I mentioned once, sometimes in the past I took French lessons. I did it for a year or so, shorty after visiting France. I have great memories of those lessons, for several reasons. The lessons were given in an unusual time (6-7:30 am, Mon to Fri) which was really a challenge in terms of sleeping time. I joined the lessons with other friends, and we all had a great time. Indeed, we used to make jokes, especially because otherwise we would fall asleep! Also, we had a teacher that enjoyed creating controversy and could keep you awake either with the discussion topics or with his unusual teaching methods. The teacher's name was Djamel, a PhD student in Social Sciences that was in Cali (the Colombian city in which I used to live) to study the consequences of the free trade agreement between US and Colombia. Lessons with Djamel were a nice cultural exchange: we 'used' him to confront several of our myths/clichés on French culture; he also learned something from the Colombian culture from us, I think.

The French lessons were based on some method (a book plus videos) called "Reflets" (Reflections). The book and the videos tell the story of four main characters who share a flat in the center of Paris. It was easy to see how each lesson of the method was a carefully crafted piece on a particular aspect of the French culture. For instance, one of the lessons was about the birthday surprise party of one of the characters. I still remember some sort of mini cultural shock that such a lesson caused: in the video, the guy is given a flowers bouquet as a birthday gift, something absolutely inconceivable for a straight guy in the Colombian culture. (You can see the video here.) In many different ways, the lessons were very enjoyable because apart from the language, you could learn precise aspects in which the French culture and behaviors were different from ours. Properly assimilated, those lessons were a priceless opportunity to open your mind.

One of the 'Reflets' lessons I recall the most is one concerning the activities French people do in their spare time. The message of the lesson was clear: French people do not waste time. They're are very organized, even in their spare time: they spend time with the kids, play games with the friends, do some sport or hobby. According to 'Reflets', something very Colombian like watching TV on a Sunday afternoon for hours and hours ---without a good reason--- is out of the question for an average French.

In my last trip to France I remembered that 'Reflets' lesson. During all the metro/train travels, I cared to observe what French people did to kill the time. While I was looking around or listening music, most of the people in the train were reading a book, doing a crossword or some other useful activity. Of course, it wasn't like every single person was doing something useful, but the proportion of people who was committed not to waste the time was surprisingly high. Also related to 'not-waste-time' philosophy ---and this is something that would be considered outrageous in Colombia--- is that in France you have to pay an additional tax if you want to have a TV at home. (I don't know if this also occurs in other European countries.) I can certainly imagine that there are persons and families that instead of paying such a tax, prefer doing more instructive ways of entertainment, like going to the theater or to the movies. I can also conjecture that, overall, the tax might have had an influence on the attitude people have towards TV, and as such, they watch less TV, which in turn could be a positive thing in intellectual terms. Granted, I am sure it's not they're all geniuses in France, but I would dare to say that because of a reduced TV time, an average French teenager has a more responsible, realistic attitude towards the world than, say, a Colombian teenager with a comparable quality of life.

I really admire that French attitudes (or ways of understanding life, if you want.) Another, somewhat related, aspect I appreciate is the role education has in the French society. Indeed, only by knowing people from the French school in Cali, I could see that kids there not only study way more than in other schools, but also that they're given a better education. (It's a pity not everyone in Cali can afford the French school, though.) I have such a good concept of French education, that in the very unlikely case I have a son or a daughter, he or she will attend a French school :) Again, it's not simply the fact that they have more intense curricula: it seems to me that, at all levels, French education effectively aims at giving you an adequate preparation for life. For instance, you rarely see a French computer scientist that only knows about theory: even mathematicians have a good knowledge of implementation aspects. In general, I think that since they're kids, French people are educated to have a comprehensive view to solve problems, to propose solutions for them, and to lively defend their points of view.

To conclude, and to emphasize on my admiration for French education and culture, I must mention the place in which I took French lessons: the Alliance Française. The Alliance is the cultural dependency of the French embassy, and as such, it's supported directly by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It's mission is to spread the French language and culture around the world. In some way, one could say that France feels that is not completely understood by the world, and finds it useful to "explain" to the world its culture, language and traditions. I think the approach advocated by the Alliance is extremely successful: it's fair to say that most of the cultural activity in Cali is organized or sponsored (directly or indirectly) by the Alliance. Apart from France, in Colombia no other foreign country has such a clear commitment when it comes to spreading its culture out. (I know Germany and Italy have similar things, but only in Bogota; the Alliance is in more than ten cities in Colombia.)

To really conclude, I must say that find it fascinating the French culture and society, with all the things I don't like, with all the things I admire, with its (sometimes unintended) arrogance. And above all, with all the things I still am not able to understand about such a great country.

Miraculous Fishing

Consider the following series of events:

It occurred a week ago in one of the main highways of the country. Around 9pm, a group of bandits stopped the Mercedes in which they were traveling, right in the middle of two lanes of the highway. Next, they set the car on fire, thus blocking the traffic of the highway. People in cars behind them were threatened with rifles. Although no one was hurt, it is easy to imagine a dramatic scene of panic at the highway. Right after that, with the highway clean for them, some of the bandits took two cars and started to chase a money transport truck that was a bit ahead from them. They chased the truck, and by repeatedly shooting at it, managed to force the driver to stop it.

Using sophisticated tools, the group of bandits opened a hole in the left side of the truck and extracted a large amount of money. However, a substantial part of it remained in the truck, mainly because of the armored material of the truck and of the methods the attackers had used. After taking the guns of the money truck, the bandits escaped, although this last part of the events is not very clear for the authorities. Some believe they ran away from the highway by foot, while others claim that some other cars were waiting for them. Independent of this, the authorities' concern about this kind of professional attacks is growing. Indeed, this is not the first time a group of 10-12 young males set a roadblock in a main highway, aiming at 'catching' a money transport vehicle. The same authorities have assured the main members of the band have already been identified, and that police operations to arrest them should give positive results in forthcoming weeks.

As fictional as it may seem, this is not part of an action movie; it's a real story that occurred recently. It didn't occurred in Afghanistan nor Irak. Not even in Colombia, where attacks of this kind, called miraculous fishings, were very common some years ago. You can read about such a modality of fishing here.

No. The above story occurred in Italy, in northern Italy to be more precise. It was in the north direction of the A14 autostrada, which connects Bologna to towns like Imola. I was very surprised when I first heard the story, and it felt weird to see how things that were common in Colombia are starting to occur here in Italy. Of course, it's not like Italy's infrastructure is under guerrilla attacks, but I find this miraculous fishing in Europe (well, Italy) simply unacceptable. If this kind of things is already happening, what's next?

We already knew the line that differentiates Italy from third-world countries is disturbingly fuzzy. Now we know that line it's getting thinner and thinner.

Everything in its right place

Just when you think optimism is a valid option for life, reality puts things in their right place. After all the euphoria and torrents of information that Ingrid Betancourt's release brought, it is convenient to calm down and see what has changed. Yes, you guessed it: nothing has changed, at least for the better.

It turns out that for Colombians, president Uribe is not merely popular: he's closest thing to god around. Although some of his staffers had already disclosed that he has "a superior intelligence" (which, among other supernatural things, allows him to "express himself in abstract terms"), now it seems there's a growing number of people believing the same. Yes, I know every country has the leaders and politicians it deserves ---nothing more, nothing less--- but facing the reality is always painful. This time, the perfect timing (so perfect that seems suspicious) of the blitz that set Ingrid free was very convenient to forget ---the rather human--- recent controversial actions of him, like suggesting that the judges of the Supreme Court are terrorists and have something against them. (Any similarity with Silvio B, another innocent victim, devastated by the systematic attacks of the justice, is a mere coincidence.)

I have no problems with the decision, now almost certain, the Colombian people will make by electing Uribe (or someone similar) for a number of presidential terms to come. Of course I strongly oppose to that ---for a number of reasons, his unbreakable desire of destroying the basic democratic values perhaps being the main one. I am not disappointed in the Colombian people. That's essentially because to be disappointed in something one should have put some faith in that something in the first place. I have never had faith in the political sense of Colombian people.

This is to be contrasted with the hope I had on Ingrid Betancourt. I was somewhat sad and disappointed, but then I remembered she's still a politician. I cared to lose sleeping time to hear her impressions just after she got off from the plane. She said interesting things, but her position was clearly in favor of the government. Not that I expected a speech full of anger towards the Uribe administration, but a bit more of critical attitude would have been refreshing. She and her family are also forgetful, which is understandable, considering the indescribable suffering a long captivity comes with. The day after, she broke my heart even more by saying "Uribe running for another term? Why not? Reelecting him has been a very positive thing for Colombia." This might sound harsh, but perhaps Ingrid as we used to know her did die in the jungle.

Not everything was that bad, though. I didn't know the comedian Ingrid has inside. (I cannot resist women who are both intelligent and funny, so I don't discard voting for her, for the sake of such a rare combination.) She was so excited to be back in the civilization that she said one of the most laughable things I have heard recently. When acknowledging the French involvement in her case, she said the following (more or less): "as Colombians we should be confident in France. Each Colombian can rest assured in France as a second fatherland, that will take care of each one of us. Never give up on France." LOL!

That remark on the appreciation France might have for me as a Colombian citizen (or conversely, the fact I can rely on France, still LOL) made me remember all those foreigner tourists, that once they visit Colombia, complain about the lack of love Colombians feel for it. Bastards. I have to admit some of such tourists are very brave, as after a nice summer in Cartagena (or after being trapped by a Colombian beauty), they decide to leave their lame lives behind and come to live in Colombia. Clearly, your view on Colombia might change if you have an alternative citizenship.

Ingrid is free!

I am happy to report that after several years (!), a group of 15 hostages held captive by FARC has been rescued by the Colombian army a few hours ago. Happily, Ingrid Betancourt is among the rescued persons, which also include three US citizens and 11 members of the Colombian army. Of course, this is great news for all of us. Independently of our political views, one can only be happy to know that Ingrid and the others are back again.

Only a few details are known about the operation that lead to the rescue of the hostages. Here's what is known so far. According to the Minister of Defense (who, once again, stole all the credits from the president), the rescue was the consequence of a carefully planned (impressive, in my opinion) action of intelligence. It turns out that intelligence forces of the army managed to infiltrate people in both the group of guerrilla troops that were holding the hostages and the FARC's secretariat (the small group of commanders that leads that terrorist organization). Colombian intelligence knew that the hostages were divided in different groups, so using the infiltrated agents, they managed to made believe the guerrilla troops that Alfonso Cano (head of the secretariat) had ordered to bring all the hostages to him. The misinformation was successful, and all the small groups of hostages were brought to a determined point in the south of Colombia, where a helicopter was waiting. The FARC members thought that such a helicopter had been sent by Alfonso Cano to take the hostages to his place. Of course, the helicopter was of the army, and as soon as all the hostages were inside, a special forces unit neutralized the guerrilla soldiers in charge.

Too many things come to my mind right now. Let me mention two of them. First, the political consequences. On the one hand, I think that, once again, Alvaro Uribe will try to modify the Constitution, so he can run for a third period. In case this is not possible, the natural successor will be Juan M. Santos, current Minister of Defense and despicable human being. I don't know which one is worst. On the other hand, Ingrid Betancourt will for sure assume a political role, but right now it's difficult to say which position she will take with respect to the current right-wind government. Could be Ingrid the key to stop an eventual Uribe or Santos government, during 2010 elections? Ingrid's political intelligence is so needed in this moment, but I am not sure if she will be psychologically healed to assume such a challenge now.

The second thing I think is that, assuming that all what the Minister said about the intelligence plan is true, FARC are really weakened. I mean, infiltrating such an organization seems really difficult, and if they really managed to do it then they might have the key for the end of FARC as a rebel army with political ambitions. I really hope so.