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When the Mountains Tremble (clip)

War on Democracy - Guate cut

Bilingual education in Guatemala

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View Article  Guatemalan Government Actions On Food Security Issue
Democracy Now! ran the following headline: "UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has warned the growing global food crisis has reached emergency proportions. Ban Ki-moon said the international community needs to take urgent action in order to avert a larger political and global security crisis. On Monday, President Bush ordered the release of $200 million in emergency food aid to help alleviate food shortages in developing countries. The World Bank estimates world food prices have risen 80 percent over the past three years and that at least thirty-three countries face social unrest as a result."

In Guatemala, President Alvaro Colom made the following appeal to the nation in the face of rising oil and food prices:



According to Prensa Libre (6th April 2008):

"Según el último monitoreo efectuado el 3 de abril del 2008, por la Secretaría de Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutricional (Sesan), seis mil 147 comunidades en todo el país presentan algún grado de riesgo y registran casos de niños con desnutrición. De éstas, 332 están en muy alto riesgo, de las cuales 93 se encuentran en el departamento de Totonicapán.

De los 22 departamentos del país, 20 registran algún tipo de desnutrición. Alta Verapaz y San Marcos son los que tienen mayor número de comunidades en niveles variados de riesgo, 972 y 967, respectivamente, pero es Totonicapán el que tiene más comunidades en muy alto riesgo, y Momostenango es el municipio más afectado, con un total de 31, seguido de San Bartolo Aguas Calientes, con 28."

Prensa Libre ran a story on 28th January reporting significant increases in cases of malnutrition in Guatemala.
View Article  Hiawatha: An Attempt To Understand Cultures And Peace
The publication of "The Song of Hiawatha" in 1855 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow marked an early attempt in Western literature to join native American concepts with a Finnish epic's meter.

On the Mountains of the Prairie,
On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
He the Master of Life, descending,
On the red crags of the quarry
Stood erect, and called the nations,
Called the tribes of men together.

There's little connection between Longfellow's hero and the sixteenth-century Iroquois chief Hiawatha who founded the Iroquois League. Longfellow took the name from works by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, whom he acknowledged as his main sources. In 1856 Schoolcraft published The Hiawatha Legends, based on this material.

Despite this it is an enduring symbol of the attempt by North American writers to discover and understand the native American culture that mainstream society was largely ignorant of. I can't help feeling it mirrors many of the challenges facing the outsider trying to understand the Maya and their descendants in Guatemala.

Here below is a full reading of the poem "The Song of Hiawatha". You can download the original here from Project Gutenberg or view it online here.


Credits:

BBC R4 - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 'The Song of Hiawatha' (abridged)
Music by Mia Soteriou
Pipes by William Lyons
Abridged by Tom Holland
Produced by Viv Beeby and Jeremy Howe
Broadcast May 21, 2000

Cast
Narrator - Timothy West
Hiawatha - Chris Garner
Gitche Manito - Burt Caesar
Little Hiawatha - Sam Fry
Iagoo - Chris Harris
Chibiabos - Peter Polycarpou
Pau-Puk-Keewis - Gary Sharkey
Mudjekeewis - Bill Wallis
Nokomis - Mia Soteriou
Minnehaha - Nicole Arumugam
Chorus - Tom Espiner and Chris Grimes
 

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