Some photos tell us more than an entire book. The chief of a nomadic clan of Issah people (Somalia)…
Nomadic travel by bicycle
A 60 years old Australian man, in the course of the last year, has covered thousands of kilometers by bicycle along the roads and paths of Latin America, in complete solitude and with the only aid of its legs and the hospitality of the people who met along the way… A nomadic travel along the Americas faced with the right speed, chasing the rhythm of the seasons and the curiosity, without conditionings of sort. An unforgettable nomadic travel!
The synthesis of this experience is in his words: “La importancia de viajar es comprender con tus propios ojos la realidad, es decir observar de una manera crítica, sin que te lo cuente un tercero. Se trata de contemplar sin prejuicios” (the importance of traveling is to experience the reality with your own eyes, that is to observe in a critical way with no one telling you the story. It means contemplate without prejudgments).
Latin america and child labour
Child labour, especially in its worst forms, is in decline for the first time across the globe, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said, in a new, cautiously optimistic report.
According to the report, Latin America and the Caribbean have seen the most rapid decline in child labour over the four-year period. The number of children at work in the region has fallen by two-thirds during that time, with just 5 per cent of children now engaged in work. The report presents Brazil as an example to illustrate how countries can move forward in tackling child labour. Another country with significant decline in child labour is Mexico. As half of the children in Latin America live in either Mexico or Brazil, these reductions are very important in order to show this way is the right one for all the other countries in Latin America and all over the world.
Saint Lawrence, patron of the miners
From Antofagasta all roads lead into the heart of the Atacama desert, a trip to a mysterious abyss. Crossing the desert by bus, on foot and partly by bicycle, you come into contact with an incredibly dry earth, a lunar landscape wrought by a tropical and breath taking sun. Even here a few brave people still live, especially because the barren land hides an incredible richness of the subsoil. Along the way are oases of dust and 60 years old american cars, mining towns were abandoned to their infamous faith, swallowed by the sand and the passing of time. Pedro de Valdivia, Maria Elena, and then Quillagua.
The red earth hides, together with the minerals, the countless bodies of those who have come here to die by their own choice (open copper mine of Chuquicamata is the largest in the world), and many by constraint (the Pinochet’s regime jailed in these wastelands dissidents for forced labor). A lasting memory of these tragedies are the graves of Pisagua. The memory of these abuses spread the devotion to Saint Lawrence, considered by Chileans as the patron of the miners and celebrated on August 12 of each year. He hid the material goods of the church under the ground to protect them from the voracity of the Emperor Valerian. Similarly, the Chileans are struggling to maintain control over their natural resources (gold, silver, nickel, molybdenum, sulfur, etc..).
Maria Elena is a town hanging in the wind, the presence of ghosts fills the void of a community hidden underground. Everything disappears in the heat of the afternoon, but even in the evening when the heat loosens its grip, the community does not come alive. The resignation of a life of hardship covered with dusty scrub every house, every object. We stop at a playground where the swings have died of rust and neglect, each mechanism creaks, the children have left these amusements even before their birth.
Chile on the road
The bus station in Santiago of Chile is one of those places where time is suspended between the heat and the coolness of the night. When from any bus appears a new face, this immediately triggers a sudden excitement, typical of those little tricks of daily living. The bus station is always a fork in the journey of endless choices. After a brief consultation to decide whether to continue the travel toward the green and southern Switzerland, toward Concepcion and the legendary University of Bio Bio, toward Puerto Montt and his project of sustainable city (district heating, heat pumps especially from Baumann technology and an innovative composting system for organic waste through the work of earthworms), we decided to turn our eyes toward the north to the Atacama Desert. We leave Santiago slowly, hampered by a colorful procession of malabaristas, street artists who protest against the ban to exercise their art in the streets of downtown Santiago. We meet to party and discuss in the typical Peñas, places where you can listen and dance some cuecas of Violeta Parra and Victor Jara’s ballads, perhaps accompanied by delicious empanadas, pastel de choclo with humitas and Chilean wine. The meeting is for the next day in front of La Moneda, the historic headquarter of the Chilean president. Place where you will find all the protests of the country, a symbol of the military coup that overthrew Allende in 1973 and led to the long dictatorship of Pinochet.
From Valparaiso the Pan-American highway runs fast alongside the Pacific Ocean, the coast is interrupted by infrequent fishing villages, the coast is bent by the majestic power of the ocean. Distant to be seen, Easter Island lies at the mercy of the currents. In the bus we travel with a young Chilean family, a young woman with three small children, all beautiful. We talk about each other’s differences and we think, a gulf seems to divide us, but then we take a break for lunch on the road and they order a large plate of fries, which they call chorillana, with a huge glass of cola. The world nowadays is liquid, perhaps even more than predicted by Bauman at the dawn of the digital age.
