Category Archives: religion

World War Z

Brooks, Max. World War Z: An Oral History of The Zombie War. New York: Broadway, 2006. Print.

Fengdu (city of ghosts) 豐都鬼城
Old Dachang
Monasteries at Meteora, Greece

Rabbi Loew and Golem by Mikoláš Aleš, 1899. Via Wikimedia.

Golem גלמי

Sinai Desert at Taba
Falasha

Ship breaking at AlangGujarat, India
“Pakistan’s south central mountains: the Pab, the Kirthar, the Central Brahui range.” p. 113

List of mountain ranges of Pakistan

thermobaric weapon

Henry J. Kaiser (father of modern American shipbuilding)

Vo Nguyen Giap in 1954. Via Wikimedia.

Vo Nguyen Giap (General in the Vietnam People’s Army)

Bosozoku 暴走族 Japanese motorbike subculture

Haya-ji  Shinto wind god

The Japanese wind god Fūjin, Sōtatsu, 17th century. Via Wikimedia.

Fujin Shinto wind god

Winston Churchill “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

To read: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

The Ossuary and Port-Mahon Quarry

The Lawless Roads

Greene, Graham. The Lawless Roads. London: Penguin, 1976. Print. (First Ed. 1939)

“Man’s like the earth, his hair like grasse is grown,
His veins the rivers are, his heart the stone.”
Wit’s Recreations (1640)

“Most priests wear their mufti with a kind of uneasiness, but Pro was a good actor.” p. 19

The execution of Miguel Pro. Via Wikimedia.

“Within two months of Pro’s landing, President Calles had begun the fiercest persecution of religion anywhere since the reign of Elizabeth.” p. 19

President Plutarco Elías Calles.

“For Mexico remained Catholic; it was only the governing class – politicians and pistoleros – which was anti-Catholic.” p. 20

“Over there – one argued to oneself – were Chichen Itza and Mitla and Palenque, the enormous tombstones of history,” p. 24

“For the priest prison, and for the politician a bullet.” p. 24

Quadragesimo Anno (encyclical issued by Pope Pius XI on 15 May 1931)

“We writers are apt to judge a country by freedom of the Press, and politicians by freedom of speech – it’s the same really.” p. 32

“This was Mexico, that was the United States. The only difference was dirt and darkness: there weren’t so many lights in Mexico. They called this Nuevo Laredo to distinguish it from the town in Texas, but as so often happens the son looked older than the father, more acquainted with the seamy side of life.” p. 33

“A drunken voice sung in Spanish and the rain fell over the dreary  Nuevo León plain,” p. 34

“mud huts and a few factories and then nothing at all until the seal-grey mountains gathered slowly round, little outcrops of rock like sailing-ships on the horizon.” p. 36

“The dry and prickly desert: the cacti sticking up like pins with an effect of untidiness, and the night deepening. Paths went off into the dark gleaming with wet, going to nowhere one knew of at all.” p. 37

“For one can respect an atheist as one cannot respect a deist: once accept a God and reason should carry you further, but to accept nothing at all – that requires some stubbornness, some courage.” p. 37

“The cheers were everywhere, stretching out to the dim mountains: they weren’t cheers at all, but the cocks crowing for miles around, an odd Biblical rhapsody at dawn.” p. 39

“God didn’t cease to exist when men lost their faith in Him; there were always catacombs where the secret rite could be kept alive till the bad times passed” p. 39

“At dinner the old gentleman couldn’t get over the joke of it: here I’d been walking miles about town and he’d gone all round in one hour by street car – for five cents. American money. ‘But I like walking,’ I kept on telling him – uselessly. ‘I’m going to tell them that back home,’ he said, ‘about my English friend who walked all day and saved five cents American.'” p. 41

(San Luis Potosí) “Roads were like the lines on a map; you saw them meandering thinly for an immense distance, dying out at the margin among the rocks and cacti. The cacti had no beauty – they were like some simple shorthand sign for such words as ‘barrenness’ and ‘drought’; you felt they were less the product than the cause of this dryness, that they had absorbed all the water there was in the land and held it as camels do in their green, aged, tubular bellies. ” p. 42

“Everything is repeated there, even the blood sacrifices of the Aztecs; the age of Mexico falls on the spirit like a cloud.” p. 44

“‘If you are a philosopher,’ he rebuked me, ‘every place is the same. Why not Mexico?'” p. 52

“The veranda was crowded with politicians waiting for the General to appear, with guns on their hips, the holsters and the cartridge belts beautifully worked, a decorative death” p. 53

“The General sat in the front seat; the great back and rounded shoulders reminded me of Tommy Brock in Miss Beatrice Potter‘s book – ‘he waddled about by moonlight, digging things up'” p. 56

Illustration of Tommy Brock from The Tale of Mr. Tod (via wikimedia)

“Presently somebody thought of trying a switch and the light went obediently on, a bare globe beating on a cracked mirror, a few hard chairs, a miniature billiard table with a ragged cloth.” p. 57

“He was caught in a maze of friends and enemies with similar faces.” p. 58

“Somewhere far away a thunderstorm shifted cumbrously in the hills… like cargo unloaded in a railway-yard.” p. 60

Rural Rides by William Cobbet

To Mexico City “[Cobbet] judged landscape by its value to human beings… The Romantics would have enjoyed the Mexican scene, describing it as ‘sublime’ and ‘awe-inspiring’; they scented God in the most barren regions, as if He were a poet of escape whom it was necessary to watch tactfully through spy-glasses as He brooded beside a waterfall or on the summit of Helvellyn: as if God, disappointed in His final creation, had fallen back on one of His earlier works. They preferred the kind of Nature which rejects man.” p. 61

Tacuba area in Mexico City. See Tlacopan

Map of “Valley of Mexico on the eve of the Spanish conquest of Mexico.” Via Wikimedia.

José Clemente Orozco

See mural Entering the Mine by Rivera (Murals by Diego Rivera in the Secretaria de Educacion Publico)

 

“All monuments in Mexico are to violent deaths.” p. 80

“In the great grey courtyard of Teotihuacán, surrounded by the platforms of small pyramidal temples, you do get the sense of a continent over the world’s edge – a flatness, a vacancy, through which peer plumed serpents and faces like gas-masks over over orifices that might be the mouths of Lewis guns or flamethrowers.” p. 82

Virgen de Guadalupe 

“But this shrine of Guadalupe, even at the height of the persecution, remained open – no government dared to rob the Indian of his Virgin, and it helped to break the career of the only man who ever threatened it.” p. 87

“The Virgin of Guadalupe, like St Joan in France, had become identified not only with the faith but with the country, she was a patriotic symbol even to the faithless…” p. 88

“I didn’t like the serious way he took this matter of the insurance; this was graveyard talk. The boat couldn’t be as bad as all that.” p. 101

“We climbed over the rail with the suitcase, and a sailor led the way down a few stairs into the engine-room, where one old greasy engine say like an elephant neglected in its tiny house.” p. 101

“breakfast was handed up through a hatch in the deck from the engine-room – a loaf of bread and a plate of anonymous fish scraps from which the eyeballs stood mournfully out.” p. 105

“Shark fins glided like periscopes at the entrance to the Grijalva River, the scene of the Conquistadores’ first landing in Mexico” 105-106

Villahermosa, Tabasco

“The vultures squatted on the roofs. It was like a place besieged by scavengers – sharks in the river and vultures in the streets.” p. 107

“For twelve hours there had been nothing but trees on either side; one had moved forward only into darkness; and here with an effect of melodrama was a city – lights burning down into the river, a great crown outlined in electricity like a casino. All felt the shock – it was like coming to Venice through an uninhabited jungle – they called, triumphantly, ‘El puerto, el puerto!'” p. 111

Dr Thorne by Anthony Trollope

“I went back to the hotel to bed and began to read Dr Thorne… A cockchafer came buzzing and beating through the room and I turned out the light – the light went out all over Barsetshire, the hedges and hte rectories and paddocks dropped into darkness,” p. 114

“It will be a fine journey, the man said, if you can make it – you’ll know what Cortés had to face in heavy armour on his march to Guatemala.” p. 116

“I had won twenty pesos with my first ticket. That sold the lottery to me: I bought at least a small share in a ticket in every town I came to, but never won again.” p. 117

“In the night beetles woke me, thumping against the wall. I killed two – one in the very centre of the great tiles floor, but when I woke there wasn’t a sign of it. It was uncanny.” p. 118

A Victorian Adventurer (p. 118-122)

The frontispiece for the 1638 edition of Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy. Via Wikimedia.

“In West Africa once I had made the mistake of taking the Anatomy of Melancholy, with the idea that it would, as it were, match the mood. It matched all right, but what one really needs is contrast, and so I surrendered perhaps my only hope of ever reading War and Peace in favour of something overwhelmingly national.” p. 128

“Ortega’s little red plane moved back across the merciless sky, like an insect on a mirror, towards Villahermosa. I had a sense of being marooned… ” p. 132

“The fireflies moved like brilliant pocket torches, and a small boy stood by the track with a flaming brand making mysterious animal noises into the dark.” p. 134

“I dreamed of a Mr Wang, also known as Mr Moon, who was to guide me – somewhere. He was dressed in the most extravagant robes – all silk and gold embroidery and dragons” p. 134

“the two mules swimming beside the canoe, with just their muzzles and their eyes above the water like a pair of alligator heads,” p. 135

***”Then the sound of horses came beating up across the plain – this is the romantic attraction of the Mexican countryside, the armed stranger travelling at night who may be a friend of an enemy. The door of the hut was barred shut. A horse whistled, stirrup irons jangled; when the lightning flared I could see four horses, and a man dismounting. He felt his way across the veranda and knocked at the door – ‘Con amistad.'” p.

“I learned from her for the first time of the rather wild dream that buoys up many people in Chiapas: the hope of a rising which will separate Chiapas, Tabasco, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo from the rest of Mexico and of an alliance with Catholic Guatemala.” p. 153

“Time passed; I saw the mule climbing briskly up the opposite slope, the size of a toy animal, and fifty yards behind it a toy man. Then they both disappeared altogether, and dusk began to fall. I was alone with the two mules – it seemed to be the end of that journey.
“In the mountains the sun sets early – the horizon is high up the sky. I waited half an hour; the sun dropped out of sight, the forests became black below their gilded tips. The world was all steel and gold, like war. The opposite slope dropped into obscurity, untenanted.” p. 164

“The guide couldn’t put up in their presence that Mexican façade of bonhomie – the embrace, the spar, the joke – with which they hide from themselves the cruelty and treachery of their life.” p. 167

“When we rode up the beds heaved on their piles and rows of eyes peered out of the darkness like a cave of cats: there wasn’t an inch of space to spare in the windswept shelter.” p. 168

“About eleven a fist beating on the barred door woke us all. I switched on my torch and saw the doubtful bearded faces lifted from the beds; somebody felt for his revolver holster, and then the password came, ‘Con amistad.'” p. 168

A Grove of Crosses “The scenery was magnificent: the great pine forests swept down to where we trudge at a mere six thousand feet, great rocky precipices showed like grey castle walls through breaks in the pines.” p. 169

“It was like a scene from the past before the human race had bred its millions – England of the Conquest before the forests had been cut, a herd called Sweyn, the wattle huts, the word of Ivanhoe.”

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

“It was like an adventure of Rider Haggard – coming so unexpectedly out of the forest above this city, once the capital of Chiapas and the home of Las Casas, a place with one rough road, impassable in the rains, running down to Tuxtla and the coast, and only a mule track for the traveller from the north.” p. 171

“I felt my incredulity shaken. Suppose there was a miracle, suppose out of some box a voice did speak… it was horrifying thought that life could never be the same again; one couldn’t go on living as one had been living. What happens afterwards to the people who are present at a genuine miracle?”

Mixtec ruins

“We stopped at a cantina, and had some mescal – the driver told me it was good for dysentery. I don’t think it was, but it was good for our spirits.” p. 198

Puebla’s Hidden Convent “In a glass of case enclosed in a reliquary was the founder’s withered heart, the colour of long-dried blood.” p. 203

“For the first time since I came to Mexico I could see the great volcano Popocatepetl, a cone of ice bobbing between the woods and peaks, over the decaying churches, like the moon outliving everything. It was beautiful, but I was more concerned with the incompetence of the drive.” p. 205

Garci Crespo “I had to ask him several times before I got it, and every time he nodded more winningly, darkly, knowingly – as if I were insisting on the letter of a code. When I was undressing, the glass of the door darkened; somebody scratched, scratched at the pane: it was the waiter. I asked him what he wanted; he merely grinned and said hadn’t I asked for a Garci Crespo? I slammed the door shut nad a little while later he came padding up the passage and scratched again. I shouted to him to go and turned out the light, but for a long while the small vicious shadow waited, with the patience of a snake, on the other side of the glass.” p. 206

Taxco is the showplace of the Mexican tourist belt – old Mexico carefully preserved by a society of business men and American artists known as ‘The Friends of Taxco’. It is the Greenwich Village of Mexico” p. 208

Tempest Over Mexico by Rosa E.King (Zapata rising)

The Escapist (218-222)

“Somewhere I suppose, the Ruiz Cano rolled from Vercruz or Villahermosa and back and the sailors stood about doing up their trousers; the dentists was back at El Frontera; and the Norwegian lady waited with hopeless optimism for her son’s return. It is awful how things go on when you are not there.” p. 223

The Wheel by W. B. Yeats (p. 223)

Through winter-time we call on spring,
And through the spring on summer call,
And when abounding hedges ring
Declare that winter’s best of all;
And after that there s nothing good
Because the spring-time has not come –
Nor know that what disturbs our blood
Is but its longing for the tomb.

To read

Greene’s The Power and the Glory, Journey Without Maps, The Heart of the Matter, The Third Man (film treatment), Our Man in Havana.

Beatrice Potter

W. B. Yeats

 See

Caste War of Yucatán

Project Gutenberg (free e-books)

 

Save

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Everyman

Roth, Philip. Everyman. New York: Vintage International, 2006.

“Most days the water was clear and he didn’t worry that a drowned man would collide with his bare legs as he stepped out into the low surf. But when oil from torpedoed tankers clotted the sand and caked the bottom of his feet as he crossed the beach, he was terrified of stumbling upon a corpse. Or stumbling upon a saboteur, coming ashore to work for Hitler.” p. 25-26

“His father had read that the waters of New Jersey were “the worst ship graveyard” along the entire U.S. coastline,” p. 26

“The profusion of stars told him unambiguously that he was doomed to die, and the thunder of the sea only yards away–and the nightmare of the blackest blackness beneath the frenzy of the water–made him want to run from the menace of oblivion to their cozy, lighted, underfurnished house.” p. 30

“And convinced of his right, as an average human being, to be pardoned ultimately for whatever deprivations he may have inflicted upon his innocent children in order not to live deranged half the time.” p. 32

“Her father owned an avocado farm in Jamaica, and her mother kept a dream book in whose pages, each morning, she recorded her children’s dreams.” p. 47

“one small brick mausoleum, whose filigreed steel door and original two windows–which, at the time of the interment of its occupants, would have been colored with stained glass–had been sealed with concrete blocks to protect against further vandalism, so that now the little square building looked more like an abandoned tool-shed or an outdoor toilet no longer in operation that an eternal dwelling place in keeping with the renown, wealth, or status of those who’d constructed it to house their family dead.” p. 53

“There the dead man would remain for even more hours than he’d spent selling jewelry, and that was in itself no number to sneer at.” p. 55

“His father was going to lie not only in the coffin but under the weight of that dirt, and all at once he saw his father’s mouth as if there were no coffin, as if the dirt they were throwing into the frave was being deposited straight down on him, filling up his mouth, blinding his eyes, clogging his nostrils, and closing off his ears.” p. 59-60

“couldn’t stop the tears from running down her face: she wanted her father to be the way he was when she was ten and eleven and twelve and thirteen, without impediment or incapacity–and so did he.” p. 76

“He was amazed when he looked around himself and saw how bitterly disappointed parents could be–as he was with his own two sons, who continued to act as if what had happened to them never happened before or since to anyone else” p. 76

“All but two were older than he, and though they assembled each week in a mood of comradely good cheer, the conversation invariably turned to matters of sickness and health, their personal biographies having by this time become identical with their medical biographies and the swapping of medical date crowding out nearly everything else.” p. 80

“His third marriage had been founded on boundless desire for a woman he had no business with but desire that never lost its power to blind him and lead him, at fifty, to play a young man’s game.” p. 96

“Into their forties they remained with their father the children that they’d been back when he’d first left their mother, children who by their nature could not understand that there might be more than one explanation to human behavior” p. 97

“They elected to make the absent father suffer, and so he did, investing them with that power. Suffering his wrongdoing was all he could ever do to please them, to pay his bill, to indulge like the best of dads their maddening opposition.” p. 97

“He hated him because, though they were offspring of the same two parents and looked so very much alike, Howie had inherited the physical impregnability and he the coronary and vascular weaknesses. It was ridiculous to hate him, because there was nothing Howie could do about his good health other than to enjoy it.” p. 99

“But now he hated him and he envied him and he was poisonously jealous of him and, in his thoughts, all but rose up in rage against him because the force that Howie brought to bear on life had in no way been impeded.” p. 100

“and the cost was about as much as the entire inventory of the Elizabeth store, if not more, back when he was running one-hundred-dollar engagement rings of a quarter or a half carat to be sized for his father’s customers by a man working on a bench in a cubbyhole on Frelinghuysen Avenue circa 1942.” p. 116-117

“But lying–lying is cheap, contemptible control over the other person. It’s watching the other person acting on incomplete information–in other words, humiliating herself.” p. 121

“”The man loses the passion for the marriage and he cannot live without. The wife is pragmatic. The wife is realistic. Yes, passion is gone, she’s older and not what she was, but to her it’s enough to have the physical affection, just being there with him in the bed, she holding him, he holding her.” p. 122

“Altogether he was a little late in learning that all her boldness was encompassed in her eroticism and that her carrying everything erotic between them to the limit was their only overpowering affinity. He had replaced the most helpful wife imaginable with a wife who went to pieces under the slightest pressure. But in the immediate aftermath, marrying her had seemed the simplest way to cover up the crime.” p. 124

“My God, he thought, the man I once was! The life that surrounded me! The force that was mine! No “otherness” to be felt anywhere! Once upon a time I was a full human being.” p. 130

“Nancy, the twins, and himself–it had been a ridiculous idea to begin with, and unfair as well, an abdication of the pledge he’d made to himself after having moved to the shore, which was to insulate his all too responsive daughter from the fears and vulnerabilities of an aging man.” p. 138

“Her beauty, frail to begin with, was smashed and broken, and tall as she was, under the hospital sheets she looked shrunken and already on the way to decomposing.” p. 139

“Old age isn’t a battle; old age is a massacre.” p. 156

“He saw himself racing in every direction at once through downtown Elizabeth’s main intersection–the unsuccessful father, the envious brother, the duplicitous husband, the helpless son” p. 164-165

“At his father’s burial he had been informed by the rabbi that, if he was on his own, it would be wisest to visit his mother and father during the High Holy Day period, when the local police department, as the request of a committee of cemetery chairmen, had agreed to provide protection for the observant who turned out to recite the appropriate psalms and remember their dead.” p. 167

“But he was thinking in terms of days. He was musing like a marked man.” p. 168

“It’s because life’s most disturbing intensity is death.” p. 169

“Daylight, he thought, penetrating everywhere, day after summer day of that daylight blazing off a living sea, an optical treasure so vast and valuable that he could have been peering through the jeweler’s loupe engraved with his father’s initials at the perfect, priceless planet itself–at his home, the billion-, the trillion-, the quadrillion carat planet Earth!”  p. 182

Trimarco

Vallejos, Soledad. Trimarco: la mujer que lucha por todas las mujeres. Argentina: Aguilar, 2013. Print.

A schematic showing global human trafficking, with specific focus to women and children. The map was based mostly on the UNODC map at http://strobelife.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/human_trafficking_map.gif and was accompleted with the moderate countries of origin of this map: http://www.thewe.cc/thewe_/images_5/bbc/_44425220_human_traffick_416map.gif Some simplifications were made; ie some countries on the first map shows that there are countries of both origin and destination; notably Poland, Czech republic, Pakistan, India and China. The exact route of trafficking can be seen (to some degree, maps don’t match fully) at http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/754727.gif A map showing the exact trafficking routes can be found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trafficking_of_women,_children_and_men_routes.svg. Via Wikimedia.

Trafficking of women, children and men routes. Via wikimedia.

Fundacíon María de Los Angeles

Susana Trimarco

Trata de Personas

San Miguel de Tucumán

la colimba

Revolución Libertadora (1955-1958)

pizpireta

“el ingenio. Era una masa no tan lehana que humeaba y angustiaba fantasías infantiles con la leyenda tucumana por excelencia: El Familiar, mezcla de espíritu y animal fantástico aterrador; ser con el que el patrón de todo ingenio estaba obligado a pactar si quería una buena zafra. A cambio de salvarlo de la ruina, El Familiar reclamaba como prenda la vida de un cañero al menos una vez al año. Por eso –dice– en los surcos desaparecían obreros.” p. 21

la Semana Trágica de 1919.

Jardín de la República

La Alianza Anticomunista Argentina (AAA) – Triple A

Horacio Verbitsky | periodista y escritor | derechos humanos / kirchnerista.

“prosíbulos ruteros de las provincias.” p. 61

monja incendiaria (Berta Povalej) “La monja rezaría mucho, pero tenía debilidad por entreverarse en asuntos terrenales.” p. 64

“Las redes de trata existían, el tráfico de mujeres, su explotación sexual en distintas provincias por parte de familias que operaban como pequeñas empresas y se vinculaban entre sí, también.” p. 67

“Hablaba de procesiones, de rituales, de magia negra.” p. 68

“la mención de la Pomba Gira, esa diosa del panteón umbanda, era habitual en el mundo de los tratantes.
–Y me dijo que los tratantes suelen usar ese tipo de rituales como métodos de sometimiento, como forma de doblegar la voluntad de la víctima. Y que son usuales eso rituales, esas ofrendas.
No importa dónde estén ubicados geográficamente: las fotos de los allanamientos a prostíbulos alimentados con mujeres traficadas y esclavizadas coinciden, todavía hoy, en retratar esos altares. Negros las más de las veces, como bañados en la cera de decenas de velas derretidas; presididos por San La Muerte, la Pomba Gira o algún otro santo de imagen impactante y origen sincrético.” p. 69

“Por decreo de Carlos Menem de 1991, cada año en esa fecha, San Miguel se convertía en la capital de la Argentina. Kirchner llegaba a ratificar la tradición, a seis semanas de asumido el cargo: era puro carisma y magnetismo político.” p. 70

“–Ella viene conmigo–dijo secamente la monja en la esquina. Y pasaron la primera valla del operativo de seguridad.
Trimarco se vuelve a asombrar al recordarlo. “Era como si nos hubieran invitado a las dos. Era una cosa que pasábamos sí o sí.”” p. 71

“Desconcertada por lo imprevisto, iba a hacerlo cuando vio a Povalej levantarse rauda y hablar con los hombres, que desistieron enseguida.” p. 72

“Alicia recuerda que todo “era muy triste”. “Vos sabés las veces que yo he ido y a ella le habían cortado la luz, y estaba ahí, entre las velas. Habían vendido todo, porque era que le tenía que poner nafta a los policías, que no les pagaban viáticos, tenía que pagarles el café con leche o la comida.” p. 74

Trimarco y Verón fueron entrevistados en el programa de Guillermo Andino.” p. 77

“agosto de 2004 desaparecería la bióloga alemana Annagreth Würgler.” p. 78

“Susana… Incluso una vez se disfrazó de prostituta y se metió en la zona de los travestis, en La Rioja, averiguando cosas.” p. 79-80

“Dice la causa: “Trimarco investigó la desparición de su hija, entrando al mundo de la noche”” p. 80

“Trimarco contó una vez más todo lo que había pasado desde la última mañana que vio a su hija. “Me contó que se metía en los lugares, ella era muy activa en ir a los lupanares”, recuerda el ex ministro Béliz.” p. 92

lupanares: prostíbulo

“–Graciasm señor presidente.
–No me gias señor presidente, decime Néstor.
–Sí, señor presidente.” p. 95

“Casi sin respirar, agrega Trimarco que alguna otra vez Kirchnerle dijo algo que no puede olvidar.:
–La única que va a aclarar esto sos vos.” p. 96

***”Posse, además, insistía en que los eufemismos no eran tales: “Candy” y “El Desafío” no eran prostíbulos, sino “whiskerías”, las mujeres que estaban allí lo hacían por su propia voluntad y no eran prostitutas, sino coperas que acompañaban a los clientes y tomaban algún trago con ellos.” p. 96

“Desde noviembre Trimarco insistía en que, de acuerdo con varios testimonios, Marita había sido aseinada y enterrada en una whiskeía que pertenecía a Lidia Irma Medina y sus hijos.” p. 102

“Cuatro días después, se había excavado en los patios de los prostíbulos “La isla” y “Candy”. Allí no habían restos humanos.” p. 102

“El cuerpo de Paulina Lebbos apareció a metros de una ruta en las afueras de la capital, un sábado cuando caían el sol. Dos muchachos de campo que pasaban al galope lo vieron y avisaron a la policía. La chica, de 24 años, llegvaba trece días desaparecida.” p. 102

“Periodistas locales que pasaron la noche en guardia al otro lado de la ruta, para no perder pisada de los trabajos policiales, todavía hoy recuerdan el aire viciado, el olor intenso que traía el viento y que se intensificó, más tarde, cuando el cuerpo fue preparado en el patio de la morgue para la autopsia. A Paulina, además, le faltaba parte de una pierna. Luego se sabría que no había muerto en el lugar donde había muerto en el lugar donde había sido hallada, que llevaba días fallecida, que alguien la había escondido y preservado hasta entonces.” 104

“Como erra su costumbre, Trimarco pidió una misa por su hija en la basílica Nuestra Señora de la Merced, la misma en la que Manuel Belgrano había rogado antes de la batalla de Tucumán.” p. 105

“La telenovela Vidas robadas mantendría distancias, pero en el corazón de la historia iba a latir el caso Verón.” p. 118

Aljibe

“Las dos muheres compartían un frente común: a diferencia de Fernández, sostenía que la ley no podía obligar a una víctima de trata a demostrar que había sido forzada, que estaba siendo sometida en contra de su voluntad, que no había dad su consentimiento para ser explotada.” p. 122

“el juicio de Bell Ville, en el que dos chicas secuestradas y explotadas habían sido juzgadas como victimarias de una tercera,” p. 128

Documentary “Fragmentos de una Busqueda” (2009) Dir. Pablo Milstein, Norberto Ludín.

“en la Argentina, de acuerdo con estudios de la Organización Internacional de Migraciones, el 80 por ciento de las víctimas de trata era personas nacidas en el mismo país.” p. 132-133

“un rumor persistente señalaba que en esa zona de La Rioja podía estar Marita, pero ya no viva, sino asesinada y enterrrada a la vera de la ruta, camino a la cordillera. Era una región largamente sospechada. De allí había desaparecido en 2004 la turista suiza Annagreth Würgler.” p. 135

“Quizá el ejemplo más claro fuera el personake de Nacha, la mujer del jefe de la red, una ex víctima explotada que había terminado por enamorar a su captor y convivir con él como su legítima ante los ojos de todos los demás, que ignoraban cómo se habían conocido.” p. 141

hablaban de bueyes perdidos mientras la luz del día huía.” p. 144

“Si la madre de Marita arremetía contra puertas cuando estaba sola y nadie la escuchaba, acompañada de una cámara y un micrófono, ya premiada y en pleno armado de la Fundación, resultaba implacable.” p. 145

Trimarco: “‘Hago todo esto sin darme cuenta. Como madre, tengo el deber de luchar contra viento y marea para encontrar a mi hija.'” p. 145

“–Entré al Desafío, estructura de dos pisos, varias habitaciones, tipo hotelm un portón al costado. Arriba había un altillo, con un altar a San La Muerte, tenía que ponerle cadenas de oro. El Candy da al fondo de la casa de la Lidia Medina, la casa azul.” p. 157

“Trimarco se ha peleado definitivamente con casi todas las personas que comparten su cotidianeidad.” p. 159

On Trimarco: “Muy directa, muy transparente. Muy franca. Eso es bueno y a veces no tanto, en la relación con ella se generan a veces situaciones por eso. Pero las prefiero”. p. 160

“Piquillín, una pequeña localidad cordobesa. Era jueves. Querían desenterrar restos para saver si la historia de “la tucumanita”, como las prostitutas de los locales “Las vampiras” y “El mote” llamadan al alma en pena de una joven aseinada por proxenetas, se correspondía con la realidad. Si ahí yacía un cuerpo, algunos indicios de testimonios hacían sospechar que podía ser el de Marita Verón.” p. 162

“Pero después, cuando entendés, cada vez que se paraba la máquina, lo que hacías era rezar para que no fuera un hueso humano. Lo que tiraba eran huesos de perro, de pollo…–dice D’Antona.” p. 163

“Ese día, la fiscal abrió uno de los prostíbulos y lo que había no eran habitaciones, sino celdas. “Habitaciones de 3 por 3, colchones en el piso, cuchetas de tres, una sola ventilación, una habitación cuadradita así, no con rejas, sino con barrotes gruesos.”” p. 163

“D’Antona era un penalista que había defendido al ex presidente Carlos Menem en la causa por la explosión de la fábrica de armas de Río Tercero.” p. 165

“insistía en que el caso de Marita era de derechos humanos y ella, Trimarco, una luchadora que encarnaba la continuidad: significaba en el siglo XXI lo que Madres y Abuelas habían significado para el siglo XX.”  p. 169

 

Book: Es Cristo que pasa by Josemaría Escrivá de Balanguer (founder of Opus Dei)

“También en el terreno del juicio por su hija, la figura de Trimarco sirvió de excusa para que terceros delimitaran campos y plantearan confrontación kirchnerismo-antikirchnerismo.” p. 209

El zar tucumano by José Sbrocco (unauthorized biography of José  Alperovich)

Nadie es profeta en su tierra

See article: “Un periodista de Mendoza dice que ‘Marita no fue secuestrada, sino qie ejercía la prostitución por su cuenta.” Contexto magazine.  Found in Notas p. 221

“Trimarco criticó a la policía por la ceguera, porque el machismo impedía a los oficiales tomar denuncias, actuar rápido, rescatar a chicas de sus victimarios.” p. 238

“Han afirmado muy bien los miembros del tribunal: lo que necesitan ellos es tener pruebas”, dice, convencida de que los testimonios no lograron aportar la luz suficiente para condenar a nadie.” p. 239

“Stella Maris Córdoba celebró que la ley nueva no dijera que una víctima puede consentir su explotación,” p. 240

“¿Que sufren las víctimas? La desconfianza permanente en el proceso penal, cuando saben que su victimario puede estar caminando a la vuelta de la esquina, amenazando tanto a ella como a su familia.” p. 240

“No importó el partido político: todos los representantes coincidían en la importancia de Trimarco, en la visibilidad que si tenacidad había dado a un tema que, hasta 2002, no figuraba en la agenda política, y mucho menos en la agenda pública.” p. 241

fiestas de la vendimia

Fiction films on human trafficking: Trade, Srpski film (A Serbian Film), Taken, Nina, La mosca en la ceniza y Tráfico humano (list from wikipedia entry: Trata de personas)

La Mosca en la ceniza (2010) Dir. Gabriela David

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To Read (20th Century)

James Baldwin (US) |

Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time, No Name in the Street, The Devil Finds Work  

Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina)|

Historia universal de la infamia, Ficciones, El Aleph.

 R. K. Narayan (India)|

Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts, The English Teacher. See his works on mythology/religion (Gods, Demons and Others, The Ramayana) see list of works.

Graham Greene (England)|

The Comedians, The Heart of the Matter, A Burnt-Out Case, The Quiet American, The End of the AffairThe Ministry of Fear,  Our Man in Havana, Monsignor Quixote 

Robertson Davies (Canada)|

The Salterton Trilogy, The Cornish Trilogy, The “Toronto Trilogy”

Giorgio Bassani (Italia)|

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

Mordechai Richler (Canada)|

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Barney’s Version, Solomon Gursky Was Here

Brian Moore (Northern Ireland/Canada)|

Judith Hearne, The Emperor of Ice-Cream, Black Robe 

Evelyn Waugh (England)|

Decline and Fall, A Handful of Dust, Brideshead Revisited, Sword of Honour

Nicolas Poussin, The Dance to The Music of Time, 1640. Wallace Collection, London. Via Wikimedia.

Anthony Powell (England)|

A Dance to the Music of Time

John Martin, The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, 1852. Via Wikimedia.

Marcel Proust (France)|

In Search of Lost Time

Robert Musil (Austria)|

The Man Without Qualities

Joyce in Zurich, c. 1918. Via Wikiemdia.

James Joyce (Ireland)|

Ulysses, Finnegan’s Wake, Dubliners,  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Simone de Beauvoir (France)|

The Second SexShe Came to Stay, The Mandarins

Bertolt Brecht (Germany)|

Threepenny Novel, Drums in the NightThe Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre    

Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)|

Aké: The Years of Childhood, Death and the King’s Horseman, The Lion and the Jewel  

Jean Cocteau (France)|

Les Enfants Terribles, Les Parents Terribles, Beauty and the Beast, Orpheus 

Jacques Prévert (France)|

Les Enfants du Paradis, Paroles (wrote scenarios and dialogues for films. See list)

Toni Morrison (US)|

Beloved, Song of Solomon, Sula, The Bluest Eye

Italo Calvino (Italia)|

Invisible Cities, If on a winter’s night a travelerOur Ancestors trilogy, Cosmicomics

Leonardo Sciascia (Italia)|

Una storia semplice, The Day of the Owl, To Each His Own. See films: Open Doors (1990), Cadaveri Eccellenti (1976) and Il giorno della civetta

Cesare Pavese (Italia)|

The Moon and the Bonfires, see translated poems.

Natalia Ginzburg (Italia)|

L’inserzione, Family sayings (Lessico famigliare),  Caro Michele (film Caro Michele, 1976)

Georges Simenon (Belgium)|

Creator of detective Jules Maigret. Maigret and the Yellow Dog, Dirty Snow, Red Lights 

Milan Kundera (Czech)|

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Joke,The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Chinua Achebe (Nigeria) |

Things Fall Apart,No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God, A Man of the People, Anthills of the Savannah, An Image of Africa (lecture on Heart of Darkness) 

Muriel Spark (Scotland)|

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Mandelbaum Gate, The Driver’s Seat, Memento Mori

Philip Roth (US)|

The Ghost Writer,American Pastoral, Sabbath’s Theater

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Eat Pray Love

Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. New York, N.Y.; Penguin, 2007. Print. (First ed. 2006)

“When the Crusaders drove East for the holy wars, they witnessed worshipers praying with these japa malas, admired the technique, and brought the idea home to Europe as rosary.” p. 1

“the number 108 is held to be most auspicious, a perfect three-digit multiple of three, its components adding up to nine, which is three threes.” p. 1-2

“This division means that there are 36 tales in each section, which appeals to me on a personal level because I am writing all this during my thirty-sixth year.” p. 2

Om Namah Shivaya

“It wasn’t so much that I wanted to thoroughly explore the countries themselves; this has been done. It was more that I wanted to thoroughly explore one aspect of myself set against the backdrop of each country,” p. 37

“Therefore, what we today call French is really a version of medieval Parisian. Portuguese is really Lisboan. Spanish is essentially Madrileño. These were capitalist victories; the strongest city ultimately determined the language of the whole country.” p. 57

“What this congress decided would henceforth be considered proper Italian was the personal language of the great Florentine poet Dante Alighieri. When Dante published his Divine Comedy back in 1321, detailing a visionary progression through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, he’d shocked the literate world by not writing in Latin.” p. 58-59

“He wrote his masterpiece in what he called il dolce stil nuovo, the “sweet new style” of the vernacular, and he shaped that vernacular even as he was writing it, affecting it as personally as Shakespeare would someday affect Elizabethan English.” p. 59

terza rima

“Dante writes that God is not merely a blinding vision of glorious light, but that He is, most of all, l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle… ” p, 60

il bel far niente “the beauty of doing nothing” p. 80

“For me, though, a major obstacle in my pursuit of pleasure was my ingrained sense of Puritan guilt. Do I really deserve this pleasure? This is very American, too–the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness.”p. 81

“Dai, dai, dai, Albertini, dai … va bene, va bene, ragazzo mio, perfetto, bravo, bravo… Dai! Dai! Via! Via! Nella porta! Eccola, eccola, eccola, mio bravo ragazzo, caro mio, eccola, eccola, ecco–AAAHHHHHHHHH!!!  VAFFANCULO!! FIGLIO DI MIGNOTTA!! STRONZO! CAFONE! TRADITORE! Madonna… Ah, Dio mio, perché, perché, perché, questo e stupido, e una vergogna, la vergogna… Che casino, che bordello… NON HAI UN CUORE, ALBERTINI! FAI FINTA! Guarda, non e successo niente.. Dai, dai, ah… Molto migliore, si si si, eccola, bello, bravo, anima mia, ah ottimo, eccola adesso … nella porta, nella porta, nell–VAFFANCULO!!!!!!!” p. 90-91

Plan Roms im Altertum. Via Wikimedia.

Augusteum

“The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve… Even in the Eternal City, says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation.” p. 100

magari (maybe, if only, I wish)

History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon

“Parla come magni.” p. 115

“Virginia Woolf wrote, “Across the broad continent of a woman’s life falls the shadow of a sword.” On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order, where “all is correct.” But on the other side of that sword, if you’re crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, “all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course.”” p. 126

The Bhagavad Gita–that ancient Indian Yogic text–says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection.” p. 127

“I drop out of my Italian-language school, having come to feel that it was interfering with my efforts to learn Italian, since it was keeping me stuck in the classroom instead of wandering around Italy, where I could practice with people in person.” p. 128

codega “a fellow you hired to walk in front of you at night with a lit lantern, showing you the way, scaring off thieves and demons, bringing you confidence and protection through the dark streets.” p. 135

“Or maybe I only want to go to Sicily because of what Goethe said: “Without seeing Sicily one cannot get a clear idea of what Italy is.”” p. 148

 

“Historians say that rhetoric was invented in Syracuse, and also (and this is just a minor thing) plot.” p. 150

The Italians (1964) by Luigi Barzini

“In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible.” p. 152

“You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.” p. 154

arati prayer

“Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: “You bear God within you, poor wretched, and you know it not.”” p. 161

To Read: Epictetus

“”Our whole business therefore in this life,” wrote Saint Augustine, rather Yogically, “is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen.”” p. 162

To Read: Saint Augustine

“the monk quoted to me from the Bhagavad Gita, the most sacred ancient text of Yoga: “Oh Khrisna, the mind is restless, turbulent, strong and unyielding. I consider it as difficult to subdue as the wind.”” p. 174

Ham-sa mantra

Saint Teresa of Ávila by Peter Paul Rubens. Via Wikimedia.

Saint Teresa of Avila

“The most difficult challenge, the saint wrote in her memoirs, was to not stir up the intellect during meditation, for any thoughts of the mind–even the most fervent prayers–will extinguish the fire of God.” p. 190

kundalini shakti  

“You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be.” p. 199

guru gita

“Zen masters always say that you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water.” p. 226

Vipassana meditation

“”The world is afflicted with death and decay, therefore the wise do not grieve, knowing the terms of the world,” says an old Buddhist teaching.” p. 229

“Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well-considered intention.” p. 235

“Because if you can’t learn to master your thinking, you’re in deep trouble forever.” p. 236

“”Guilt’s just your ego’s way of tricking you into thinking that you’re making moral progress.”” p. 244

(Instructions for Freedom) “3. The day is ending. It’s time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, let go.” p. 245

“7. Let your intentions be freedom from useless suffering. Then, let go.” p. 246

“the rules of transcendence insist that you will not advance even one inch closer to divinity as long as you cling to even one last seductive thread of blame.” p. 247

“To know God, you need only to renounce one thing–your sense of division from God.” p. 255

Sextus “”The wise man is always similar to himself.” p. 256

Sentences of Sextus

turiya state (pure consciousness)

 

“We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy’s fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, begging for pennies from every passerby, unaware that his fortune was right under him the whole time. Your treasure–your perfection–is within you already. But claim it,” p. 262

“”All know that the drop merges into the coean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop,” wrote the sage Kabir” p. 265

To Read: Kabir

“”Imagine that the universe is a great spinning engine,” he said. “You want to stay near the core of the thing–right in the hub of the wheel–not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place,” p. 275

“In the dead of night the dogs howl about how misunderstood they are.” p. 312

“The word paradise, by the way, which comes to us from the Persian, means literally “a walled garden.”” p. 313

“The next piece of land was rejected because it was too close to a river, which, as everyone knows, is where ghosts live.” p. 411

“We get seduced by our own mantras (I’m a failure… I’m lonely…I’m a failure… I’m lonely…) and we become monuments to them.” p. 433

Saint Anthony once wrote about having gone into the desert on silent retreat and being assaulted by all manner of visions–devils and angels, both… you can only tell which is which by the way you feel after the creature has left your company.” p. 435

The Meeting of Saint Anthony and Saint Paul, Master of the Osservanza, 15th century. Via Wikimedia.

To Read: Saint Anthony

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Animal Farm

Orwell, George. Animal Farm. New York, N.Y.: Signet Classics, 1996. Print. (First ed. 1945).

“Orwell called the book “a fairy story.” Like Voltaire’s Candide, however, with which it bears comparison, it is too many other things to be so handily classified.” p. vi
“Orwell started work on Animal Farm in 1943. As he discovered when he went looking for a publisher, Stalin’s Soviet Union was so popular that year in Britain and America that few wanted to hear or read anything critical of it.” p. viii

Orwell’s essay “”Politics and the English Language,” showing how politicians twist the language to distort and deceive.” p x

Candide by Voltaire

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

 

Orwell and others “Why did they get it all wrong? For one thing, they were men who had come to maturity in the age of the dictators.” p. xiii

Rimsky-Korsakov‘s Le Coq d’Or “a fairy tale with a moral.” p. xxi

“The point about fairy-stories is that they are written not merely without a moral but without a morality. They take place in a world beyond good and evil, where people (or animals) suffer or prosper for reasons unconnected with ethical merit–for being ugly or beautiful respectively, for instance, or for even more unsatisfactory reasons.” p. xxii

“Moses, who was Mr. Jone’s especial pet, was a spy and a tale-bearer, but he was also a clever talker. He claimed to know of the existence of a mysterious country called Sugarcandy Mountain, to which all animals went when they died.” p. 17

“Some hams in the kitchen were taken out for burial,” p. 23

“A unanimous resolution was passed on the spot that the farmhouse should be preserved as a museum.” p. 23

“THE SEVEN COMMANDMENTS

1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings is a friend.
3. No animal shall wear clothes.
4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.
5. No animal shall drink alcohol.
6. No animal shall kill any other animal.
7. All animals are equal.” p. 24-25

“The mechanical details came mostly from three books which had belonged to Mr. Jones–One Thousand Useful Things to Do About the House, Every Man His Own Bricklayer, and Electricity for Beginners.” p. 49

“But just at this moment Napoleon stood up and, casting a peculiar sidelong look at Snowball, uttered a high-pitched whimper of a kind no one had ever heard him utter before.
“At this there was a terrible baying sound outside, and nine enormous dogs wearing brass-studded collars came bounding into the barn.” p. 52-53

“”He fought bravely at the Battle of the Cowshed,” said somebody.
“Bravery is not enough,” said Squealer. “Loyalty and obedience are more important.” p. 55

“He was always referred to in formal style as “our Leader, Comrade Napoleon,” and the pigs liked to invent for him such titles as Father of All Animals, Terror of Mankind, Protector of the Sheep-fold, Ducklings’ Friend, and the like.” p. 93

“Squealer would talk with the tears rolling down his cheeks of Napoleon’s wisdom, the goodness of his heart, and the deep love he bore to all animals everywhere, even and especially the unhappy animals who still lived in ignorance and slavery on other farms.” p. 93

“By the evening of that day it was learned that he had instructed Whymper to purchase in Willingdon some booklets on brewing and distilling.” p. 108

“the retiring age had been fixed for horses and pigs at twelve, for cows at fourteen, for dogs at nine, for sheep at seven, and for hens and geese at five.” p. 112

“But the explanation was very simple. The van had previously been the property of the knacker, and had been bought by the veterinary surgeon, who had not yet painted the old name out. That was how the mistake had arisen.” p. 125

“No one stirred in the farmhouse before noon on the following day, and the word went round that from somewhere or other the pigs had acquired the money to buy themselves another case of whiskey.” p. 126

“Squealer was so fat that he could with difficulty see out of his eyes.” p. 128

“But the luxuries of which Snowball had once taught the animals to dream, the stalls with electric light and hot and cold water, and the three-day week, were no longer talked about. Napoleon had denounced such ideas as contrary to the spirit of Animalism. The truest happiness, he said, lay in working hard and living frugally.” p. 129

“neither pigs nor dogs produced any food by their own labour; and there were very many of them, and their appetites were always good.” p. 130

“Sometimes the older ones among them racked their dim memories and tried to determine whether in the early days of the Rebellion, when Jone’s expulsion was still recent, things had been better or worse than now. They could not remember. There was nothing with which they could compare their present lives: they had nothing to go upon except Squealer’s list of figures, which invariably demonstrated that everything was getting better and better.” p. 130

“She neighed again, and all the animals broke into a gallop and rushed into the yard. Then they saw what Clover had seen.
“It was a pig walking on his hind legs.” p. 132

“And finally there was a tremendous baying of dogs and a shrill crowing from the black cockerel, and out came Napoleon himself, majestically upright, casting haughty glances from side to side, and with his dogs gambolling round him.” p. 133

“There was nothing there now except a single Commandment. It ran:
ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS” p. 134

“He believed that he was right in saying that the lower animals on Animal Farm did more work and received less food than any animals in the country.” p. 137

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” p. 141

To Read:
Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) Novel
Burmese Days (1934) Novel
Homage to Catalonia (1938) Novel