TYG Winter 2011 Pop by jeffrey kaiser

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR 3

GLOBALIST The Yale

An Undergraduate Magazine of International Affairs Winter 2011 / Vol. 12, Issue II www.tyglobalist.org

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JOURNALISM ADVISORY BOARD Steven Brill, Yale Dept. of English Nayan Chanda, Director of Publications, MacMillan Center Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, Foreign Affairs Jef McAllister, Time Magazine Nathaniel Rich, The Paris Review Fred Strebeigh, Yale Dept. of English

ACADEMIC ADVISORY BOARD Harvey Goldblatt, Professor of Medieval Slavic Literature, Master of Pierson College Donald Green, Director, Institution for Social and Policy Studies Charles Hill, Yale Diplomat-in-Residence Ian Shapiro, Director, MacMillan Center Ernesto Zedillo, Director, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization

DEAR

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GLOBALIST

READERS,

op culture and new media impact our lives in myriad ways. Our generation has seen social interactions move out of the age of telephones and into the age of the Facebook wall and tweets. We have been a part of an age in which the most remote corners of the world watched President Obama’s inauguration speech on YouTube and where people in repressed regimes can taste a slice of the outside world by way of the Internet. Television, art and entertainment have defined today’s youth’s experience. Today’s barrage of media experiences not only reflects a zeitgeist but also shapes culture and impacts politics. The Globalist’s second issue of the 2011-2012 school year is taking on this strange new world that we have grown up in. Erin Biel, in her article on a cartoonist’s representation of Egypt’s revolution, and Jeffrey Dastin, in his piece on a children’s television show depicting a friendship between an American and Jordanian boy both reveal how pop culture can translate modern politics for the masses. Aaron Gertler’s feature on an Icelandic political party making waves through YouTube and Seth Thompson’s glimpse into a Serbian pro-Gadaffi Facebook group demonstrate the increasing trend of mass media shaping political dialogue as well. From Isabel Ortiz’s tale of a changing Argentine tango world to Ned Downie’s inquiry into why China hates its soccer team, this issue offers our readers a delightful and eclectic mix of pop culture today. In the off-theme section of the issue, our writers have traversed the globe, writing from Greece to China to Afghanistan. Jeff Kaiser’s reporting on cattle raiding in South Sudan offers a perspective on a new nation’s harrowing problem, while Ashley Dalton’s intimate portrait of a small town in Ecuador’s battle with mining offers readers a look into an otherwise inaccessible part of the world. Our redesigned website now boasts daily changing content, from bloggers in Brazil to students on campus covering China, Libya, and more. We have also been able to welcome several dozen new freshmen and sophomores to our ranks, working regularly on the website, production and design, the business team, and of course, writing and reporting. This fall semester we have hosted events with speakers ranging from journalists to area-specific international relations specialists. As with all magazines, we could not exist without support from donors. Please consider making a contribution or purchasing a subscription by emailing Executive Director Jessica Shor (jessica.shor@yale.edu). With our burgeoning online presence and increasingly large footprint on campus, I hope you will continue your faithful readership of the Globalist. I am incrediby excited to present the second issue of the Globalist this year: Pop! Yours,

Sanjena Sathian Editor-in-Chief, The Yale Globalist Production & Design Editors Jay Pabarue, Anisha Suterwala Managing Editor for Online Raisa Bruner

ON THE COVER: Life and pop culture.

Director of Online Development Lauren Hoffmann

Editor-in-Chief Sanjena Sathian

Executive Director Jessica Shor

Managing Editors Jeffrey Dastin, Nikita Lalwani, Charlotte Parker, Adele Roussow

Publisher Jason Toups

Associate Editors Marissa Dearing, Cathy Huang, Diana Saverin, Emily Ullmann, Maggie Yellen Copy Editor Sophie Broach

Directors of Development Conrad Lee, Margaret Zhang Events Coordinator Julie Kim

(Design by Jay Pabarue and Anisha Suterwala)

Pictures from CreativeCommons used under Attribution Noncommercial license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

Editors Emeriti Raphaella Friedman, Uzra Khan, Sibjeet Mahapatra, Angela Ramirez, Eli Markham, Alexander Krey

Editors-at-Large Rae Ellen Bichell, Jeffrey Kaiser, Catherine Osborn, Diego Salvatierra

WRITE FOR The Yale

GLOBALIST

Contact sanjena.sathian@yale.edu

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CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS 5

Winte r 201 1 / Vo l . 1 2, Issue 2

24 35 31

FOCUS: Pop

A traditional dance form in the tech age. By Isabel Ortiz

23 | Delightful or Dodgy?

31 | Imagining

The ethical debate surrounding green fashion. By Kelly Schumann

Mumbai

High culture meets the Mumbai masses. By Dan Gordon

24 | Cartoons and Mideast Peace

33 | Who Else Were You Going to Vote for?

A TV show: the solution to Mideast peace? By Jeffrey Dastin

Icelandic politics goes rogue. By Aaron Gertler

26 | Gaddafi Does Facebook

35 | Illustrating a Revolution

Gaddafi’s Facebook cult. By Seth Thompson

27 | Why Does China Hate Its Soccer Team? Furious fans and an intolerable team. By Edmund Downie

| A Tale of Two Tangos

Egypt’s revolution in cartoon form. By Erin Biel

38 | A Conversation with Benjamin Cann The psychology and culture of the Mexican telenovela. By Sofia Norten

GLIMPSES

7 | Teaching Tobacco Chinese schools flourish thanks to cigarettes. By Rachel Brown

FEATURES

8 | The Rules of Pashtunwali Afghanistan’s strict codes of morality. By Marissa Dearing

14 | A New Home on the Range 10 | Saga of the Pseudo-State Immigrants shake up a divided island. By Raisa Bruner

12 | Worth its Weight in Copper A community in Ecuador confronts the mining industry. By Ashley Dalton

A new nation at a crossroads. By Jeffrey Kaiser

LETTER FROM

17 | Letter from... Greece Summer strikes in Athens. By Nikolaos Efstathiou

The Yale Globalist is a member of Global21, a network of student-run international affairs magazines at premier universities around the world.

GLIMPSE 7

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Teaching Tobacco Chinese tobacco companies are trying a new marketing strategy: sponsoring elementary schools By Rachel Brown

magine attending a school with the phrases “Tobacco helps your success” and “Genius comes from hard work—Tobacco helps you become talented” posted all over campus. At the Sichuan Tobacco Hope School in China, this is the reality. And thousands of miles away at the Pinggu Zhongnanhai School outside Beijing, the brand name of Zhongnanhai cigarettes is emblazoned on the school gates and students’ desks. Even the uniforms are Zhongnanhai’s trademark shade of blue. These schools are just two examples of the growing number of elementary schools in China funded by tobacco companies through a program called “Project Hope.” Sponsoring one of these schools costs tobacco companies approximately 200,000 yuan, or $31,000, and many are named after popular tobacco brands. Current estimates suggest there are approximately 100 such schools, but Gan Quan, a senior project officer at the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, said he would not be surprised if there were twice as many in reality. Presumably, tobacco companies hope to inspire brand loyalty in future smokers by sponsoring these schools. And the companies seem to be succeeding. In 2010, the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control (CATC) conducted a survey comparing the Pinggu Zhongnanhai School with a local government-run primary school. Their results suggest that a quarter of the students at Zhongnanhai School had a favorable impression of the Zhongnanhai cigarette brand and would choose that brand if buying cigarettes for their family members. In contrast, none of the students at the local, unfunded primary school thought favorably of the Zhongnanhai brand. These schools also impact parents’ perceptions of tobacco companies. Since most of the sponsored schools are located in poor, rural communities long neglected by the government, many parents are very thankful to the tobacco companies for pro-

Students at Beijing Pinggu Zhongnanhai Love Primary School sin China learn in an environment supported by the tobacco industry. (Courtesy Chinese Association on Tobacco Control)

viding their children with much-needed educational resources. A study conducted by the CATC in 2009 showed that 18 percent of adults would choose a cigarette brand based on corporate charity work. Unsurprisingly, public health experts in both the United States and China are alarmed. China already boasts a third of the world’s smokers, and tobacco-related illnesses currently kill one million Chinese annually. According to Kathy Chen, director of China Programs at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, students at these schools are exposed “to pretty much blatant tobacco advertising.” And it is effective: According to research provided by the Campaign, in the United States, tobacco marketing persuades kids to pick up smoking more often than peer pressure. Moreover, youth are three times more likely to be affected by advertising than adults are. Tobacco sponsorship of schools also violates a key World Health Organization (WHO) treaty on tobacco control, which China ratified in 2005. Although China has enacted laws to restrict advertising and sponsorship, they have not been comprehensive or effectively enforced. Many rural Chinese see the schools as acts of corporate social responsibility in a nation where poverty remains a significant problem. “Villagers [living around the Hope School outside Beijing] think that tobacco is a poison, but money is not poison. In economic conditions tobacco companies can give them support because this place

is relatively poor,” said Yang Gonghuan, a former deputy director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The Chinese tobacco industry is essentially state-run, which poses unique challenges for tobacco control. The same ministry charged with overseeing the overall implementation of the WHO tobacco control treaty also controls The China National Tobacco Corporation, a governmentrun monopoly. Unwilling to jeopardize the enormous revenues generated by tobacco companies, while mandated to protect the health of its citizens, the government grapples with thorny conflicts of interest. Taxation, however, could provide a solution to both China’s educational and tobacco control issues. As Sarah England, head of the WHO’s Tobacco-Free Initiative in China, explained, a significant tax increase on tobacco products would deter those who do not yet smoke from starting, and incentivize those who do smoke to quit. The government could then use revenues from such a tax to expand education and healthcare benefits and provide social services. If the Chinese government does crack down on these schools, it may curb students’ cigarette brand loyalty. But the government will also face a new problem: finding another way to educate these students. RACHEL BROWN ’15 is in Saybrook College. Contact her at rachel.brown@yale.edu.

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the yale globalist: winter 2011

The Rules of Pashtunwali

Tribal codes may hold the keys to Afghanistan’s future. By Marissa Dearing

Sports time for students in Bamyan province. (Courtesy Nasim Fekrat)

akimjan Ahmadzai, a Pashtun born in southeastern Afghanistan, understands rules. Raised in a place where familial memory stretches back ten generations, revenge can be necessary to salvage honor, and promises are binding, Ahmadzai often attended the community meetings convened by his father, a local tribal leader. In those talks, he learned that the rules he knows so well are not simply meant to dictate particular punishments for particular crimes. Rather, these rules define the fundamentals of social conduct and conflict resolution. Known as the Pashtunwali Codes, they authorize the community to resolve its own conflicts. The Codes can be complex, as Ahmadzai acknowledged. “But it resolves the issues permanently.” Afghanistan is an ethnically diverse nation, and the Pashtun, representing about 40 percent of its population, comprise its largest single ethnic group. The Pashtun have long played a dominant role in Afghan culture and politics, particularly in the influential eastern and southern provinces. Their cultural codes provide a look into the complexity of modern Afghani culture and the future of the development of Afghanistan.

An informal, oral system of tribal values governing individual and communal behavior, Pashtunwali is defined by its emphasis on community consensus and local decision-making. By privileging village, tribe, and even family over the state, the Codes depend on active local participation. Other Afghan ethnic groups often

“Some things the formal institution can do, some things the civil society can do…the government cannot do everything.” follow their own, distinctly local tribal or traditional codes of governance and justice, particularly in rural areas. Shahmahmood Miakhel, a Pashtun from Kunar province, former Deputy Minister of the Interior, and current chief of party for Afghanistan programs at the United States Institute of Peace, believes that the Codes’ basis in cooperation and consent is central to their enduring efficacy. Governance dependent on meetings of locally elected elders and councils, called

jirgas and shuras, derives legitimacy from local consent. In Miakhel’s view, the Codes allow Afghans to “choose their own life,” a fundamental requirement for a functional and genuinely democratic political order. The Pashtunwali system has served as the central source of stability in Afghan society through centuries of invasions, occupations, and tyrannical rule. The country’s tumultuous history has instilled a profound distrust of externally imposed power structures. Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist, believes this firm foundation has been central in holding together the backbone of Afghani communities. “The Pashtunwali are very much part of the society; it’s how the society sees itself,” he said. “Its traditions, its history: It’s all linked to Pashtunwali in a way.” The influence of Pashtunwali extends into Afghanistan’s cities, and even into the capital of Kabul. In Kabul, as in more rural areas, the Codes have served as an essential backbone of stability in the vacuum created by ineffective state law. Noah Coburn, a Traditional Justice specialist at the United States Institute for Peace, cited a report written by an Afghan judge: “In the formal system, judges quite often take cases and refer them to shuras and jirgas, [which] make a decision, and the judge will ratify that.” Participation in the in-

FEATURE 9

www.tyglobalist.org formal Pashtunwali system is widespread, and any stable system of governance in Afghanistan must acknowledge and somehow integrate its structure. The Codes, however, might be improved by limited government intervention. “There is a need to reshift some of the focus onto individual rights,” Coburn said. “That’s really the space for government intervention, and for the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to step in, for the Ministry of Justice to step in.” State law could work to address deficiencies in the Codes, at the same time that Pashtunwali might restore trust in the state system. Especially in times of high insecurity, informal institutions must provide avenues for the practice, and demonstration, of just governance when formal institutions are too weak to do so. “Some things the formal institution can do, some things the civil society can do… the government cannot do everything,” Miakhel said. An informal, community-based system would also work to restore local agency, which would further strengthen trust in Afghan governance. As Coburn said, “One of the things that we forget is that our own legal code grew up organically and takes into account local political norms.” He sees the ideal system for Afghanistan as one that takes into account significant differences in the local political culture. “Any attempt to impose a uniform process on culturally different [areas] will founder—with collateral damage.” Still, the implementation of this integrated formal-informal system of governance will not be easy or immediate. The absence of effective formal institutions in much of the country means that the government cannot implement anything beyond Kabul and other large cities. In many cases, the Afghan government has actively worked to stymie the integration process. Although tribal elders and community members would, in theory, be amenable to a hybrid system, the central government has eroded local trust by appointing district governors and judges from outside local areas. Coburn sees this practice as an attempt by the Karzai regime to divide communities and avert any possibility of rebellion

Shot of the village of Rabat, Afghanistan. (Courtesy Nasim Fekrat) or challenge to its authority. Instead of nurturing cooperation between local and state institutions, the government has signaled that it would prefer to subvert or abolish local governance, driving a wedge been local communities and the central government. “Local communities are wary of negotiating with these guys who they see as outsiders,” Coburn said. Nevertheless, the government does rely on Pashtunwali and local tribal structure to some extent. “The government still relies on conventions and councils [and] Pashtuns and Pashtunwali play important role in assisting the government,” said Ahmadzai. “[The Codes] are just strong cultural principles… But with more participation in the system, they can form a strong national government.” Ahmadzai believes that despite current resistance by the state, given even an initially minor role in the formal system, the Codes have the power to stabilize and legitimize the government in power. Those crafting Afghanistan’s future must recognize Pashtunwali as an important element in the emergence of any sound, viable Afghan state in the coming years. The Afghan state was most functional when the government resembled a loose confederation with legislative power at the local level, said Michael Hughes, a foreign policy strategist at New World

“One of the things that we forget is that our own legal code grew up organically and takes into account local political norms.”

Strategies Coalition, a policy analysis group based in Afghanistan. Local and state institutions must work together to achieve effective governance in the unknown future of Afghanistan Ahmadzai believes Afghanistan’s political future should be founded on the existing, and influential, informal justice system set up by the Codes. “Hard work, loyalty, and hospitality are the things that make a person and community successful,” he said. He acknowledged that some of the Pashtunwali Codes violate human rights and freedoms and that there must be change in those areas, but he believes that change is coming. “Political socialization takes time, [and the Codes] will change over the course of time. I do not mean that they will completely go away. But, cultures do change over the course of time.” For Ahmadzai, it is the youth that will bring this necessary change. “I think if the seniors let the young generation be part of making decisions, and the new generation use their knowledge of today’s world, while considering relevant Codes as [a] major contributor, rather than making all decisions based on the Codes, [it] will help to shape the Pashtunwali and its role in Afghan-Politics.” It is up to the rising generation of Afghans to use the traditional, organic Codes to forge a stable future for their country. MARISSA DEARING ’14 is in Berkeley College. Contact her at marissa.dearing@yale.edu.

10 10 FEATURE

the yale globalist: winter 2011

Saga of the Pseudo-State In northern Cyprus, settlers from mainland Turkey have become unintended political troublemakers.

n the drowsy late afternoon heat, the dusty streets of North Nicosia, Cyprus are empty. But inside the crumbling houses, living rooms are crowded with women in headscarves and their children: families from Turkey, recent imports to the island country. Though they do not know it, many of these families are targets in a grand political game of finger-pointing and frustration that has left the status of the fragmented island in limbo. At 22 years old, Mohammed Ali Bora is one of these immigrants. He manages a small grocery store in the center of North Nicosia. It is a neighborhood shop with trays of shiny tomatoes and peaches on display by the street. The slow sales typical of most businesses in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) don’t bother Mohammed; he is not the type of person to worry about finances, politics, or his future plans. He is happy here: The island has been his home for four years now, and he has become a good friend to many in the community of Nicosia, even giving away food if he knows someone is in need. What Ali Bora does not realize is that his presence in the TRNC, as well as that of an untold number of other registered immigrants, temporary residents, and undocumented workers of Turkish origin, is driving a wedge into the complex political process of unifying the northern and southern halves of Cyprus. In doing so, their presence is even one of the factors blocking Turkey’s admission into the E.U. For nearly all of its history, the island of Cyprus has fallen under the dominion of one gloried empire after another: Lusignan, Venetian, Ottoman, British. Remnants of each are tied into every aspect of modern Cypriot life across the island— frescoed churches and domed mosques dot the landscape; sunburned Brits fill the beaches. Genetic evidence even links all Cypriots most closely to Italians. Since

By Raisa Bruner

1974, however, Cyprus has been defined not by its common history, but instead by the division of Greek Cypriot from Turkish Cypriot. The island gained independence from British colonial rule in 1960; soon after, native Greek Cypriots attempted to unite with Greece. In protective response, Turkish forces invaded the North. They maintain a force of 30,000 troops to this day. A 180-kilometer-long militarized border slices across the center of Cyprus, demarcating a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone—and acting as the catalyst of a bitter population swap. Today, the south is Greek-affiliated, Greek Orthodox, and boasts E.U. membership. The north is referred to by many as Turkey’s proxy state, with a Muslim population and a puppet government called the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), recognized only by Turkey. As Perihan Aziz, the direc-

tor of the Turkish News Agency—Cyprus, exclaimed of the mother country: “She’s the boss!” That relationship has been reflected in Turkish policy. Since the establishment of this “pseudo-state” in the 1970s, Turkey has been encouraging citizens of its impoverished rural region of Anatolia to emigrate to the island to make use of northern land abandoned by Greek Cypriots in the population swap. It was a good deal then, and remains one now: Ali Bora readily admits that Cyprus offers better public education, healthcare, and work opportunities than back in the rural parts of the mainland. The perks of this emigration policy are also substantial for Turkey itself, which knows that the more Turks it deposits in northern Cyprus, the more likely an eventually unified Cyprus will align itself with Turkish sympathies. And as Turkey flexes its geopolitical muscles

“Even the cuisine is changing, the vegetables in the market are changing.”

Mohammed Ali Bora, a Turkish immigrant, sits behind the counter at the grocery shop he manages in downtown northern Nicosia. (Osborn/TYG)

FEATURE 11

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Soto agreed: “You’re not getting doctors from Istanbul, you’re getting peasants from Anatolia.”

Abandoned homes from the population swap of 1975 still scatter the countryside of northern Nicosia. Much of the North remains empty and underpopulated. (Bruner/TYG) in its new role as a regional leader, deepening the connection with the TRNC has taken on even greater strategic significance.

efore the conflict and ensuing division, the island was 18 percent Turkish Cypriot and 77 percent Greek Cypriot. People lived in mixed communities from north to south, in mountain towns and fishing villages. Today, while no government agency or new authority can say for certain how many people live in the TRNC, most agree that the population living in the northern half and considering themselves Turkish Cypriots has doubled. Some estimate that it has tripled. These new Anatolian settlers make easy scapegoats for the Greek Cypriots; to them, the immigrants are “illegal settlers.” The murky population statistics have been a major sticking point in the endless rounds of U.N. negotiations over the possibility of a future joint government. But according to Alvaro de Soto, former U.N. negotiator during the 2004 peace talks and Special Adviser to the Secretary General, resistance to the immigrants stems from more than a local xenophobia. He deemed it a greater phenomenon of “enlargement fatigue,” a “long-lasting indigestion of multicultural Islam [in Western Europe]... It’s the aversion that dare not speak its

name.” It’s what’s keeping Turkey out of the E.U., and keeping the Turkish settlers unwelcome in Cyprus. That aversion shows itself in subtle ways on a local level. Two different societies now inhabit the sphere of the TRNC: native Turkish Cypriots, now in the minority, who disdain the religious and socially conservative values of the settlers; and the Turkish immigrants, whose Islam and even sometimes language are distinct. Entire neighborhoods in downtown North Nicosia are now populated by Anatolian settlers. Mustafa, a Turkish Cypriot who has lived in Nicosia all his life, believes that the newcomers outnumber native Turkish Cypriots by ten to one and have impacted the North’s ways of life substantially. “Even the cuisine is changing, the vegetables in the market are changing,” he said with a frown. Meanwhile, the settlers are facing problems as well. Overcrowding in downtown Nicosia forces an average of a dozen people to share a single home, according to Ali Bora. Work permits can be challenging to acquire and involve stringent renewal requirements. Emrah Emre, a mainland Turk who attends university in the TRNC, explained the types of immigrants arriving in Cyprus: “Of course if you are a government and you are sending people here, you are sending unemployed people.” De

n political negotiations, ensuring a balance of power is critical for the two sides of Cyprus to agree on a workable unitary government for the island. Neither side is ready to give up its demographic edge. “We cannot accept a [deal] that would erase all the rights of the Turkish Cypriots and reduce them to a minority,” said Mehmet Dana, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the TRNC. To him, an acceptable agreement must give equal recognition to recent immigrants and longtime residents in the North, because “the notion of belonging somewhere is not only related to ethnicity or where you are born.” Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has made clear that Turkey’s support of the TRNC will not change any time soon. Without a political solution that satisfies Dana’s demands of equality, Turkey remains a stolid ally of the TRNC, even promising to freeze diplomatic relations with the E.U. if significant progress towards reunification has not been made by 2012—at which point the southern Republic of Cyprus will assume the E.U. presidency. The E.U. currently refuses to admit Turkey as a member nation unless it recognizes the sole legitimacy of the southern half’s government. At a standoff, both sides seem fixated on the age-old “Cyprus problem.” Stuck in the middle of these power politics sits Ali Bora in his grocery shop. He smokes a cigarette lazily. On the fabled island of Aphrodite’s birth, the violent passion of change has been tempered by the slow crawl of political maneuvering. In October, a summit between Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders and U.N. SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon failed to produce substantive results; in January 2012, they will try again. But unless the settlers can be seen without their political trappings, all those who live in northern Cyprus will remain underserved in political purgatory, manipulated by both their captors and their champions. RAISA BRUNER ’13 is an Anthropology major in Calhoun College. Contact her at raisa.bruner@ yale.edu. Catherine Osborn ‘12 and Eli Markham ‘13 contributed reporting.

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the yale globalist: winter 2011

Worth its Weight in Copper A small town in Ecuador confronts the mining industry. By Ashley Dalton

n May 13, 1997, the smell of smoke infused the fresh mountain air of Junín, Ecuador as a single, empty wooden shack burned to the ground. If the burning timber didn’t send a message clearly enough, a simple wooden sign nailed to a post just beyond it did: “Not Another Step Forward For Miners.” The message was left for the mining companies, in this case Bishimetals, that, since the discovery of copper in Junín in 1991, have coveted the seventy-two million ton copper deposit tucked away beneath the town’s pastoral land and forest reserve. So far, the community of Junín has defended the message they left that day: That which they value most—their homes, their livelihood, and their forest— are safe from the environmental disaster that would ultimately ensue from copper mining. For now. According to the government-mandated environmental audit that Bishimetals conducted in 1991, the open pit mine proposed in Junín would result in massive deforestation that would lead to dire environment consequences including desertification and pollution of water sources by heavy metals. Social unrest would also likely follow due to the introduction of prostitution, alcoholism, and crime. Upon the publication of this audit, a local grassroots ecological organization created to resist mining in the region, Defensa y Conservación Ecológica de Intag (DECOIN), obtained a copy. Two concerned foreign activists associated with DECOIN, Cuban native Carlos Zorrilla and Wisconsin native Mary Ellen Fieweger,

Citizens of Junín protesting in Otavalo. (Dalton/TYG) took a copy of the audit to the leader of the Junín community, Victor Caldachi, and asked him to call a town meeting about it. A month later, Zorrilla and Fieweger returned to Junín to check on the progress of the community’s education about the proposed mine. But Caldachi hadn’t called the meeting. Rather, Fieweger explained, “He and another local leader, Luis Torres, had gone door to door and sat down with all 50 families in the community and explained to them the essence of the environmental audit: The mine is going to be a disaster for all of us.” Junín believed him. As a result, the overwhelming majority of the Junín community strongly opposed the mine proposed by Bishimetals

“Mining will be a problem that we deal with as long as there’s copper in Junín. And as long as we are successful, there will always be copper in Junín.”

and organized against it. They partnered with neighboring communities in Junín’s region, called Intag, and with national and international non-governmental organizations to create alternative industries for the rural population. These include Fieweger’s local newspaper, a radio station, a shade-grown coffee production cooperative, sugar cane collectives, fish farms and ecotourism. All of these industries support the community’s political resistance to mining by serving as a means of alternative income. When speaking about the purpose of her local newspaper, Periódico Intag, Fieweger says that “in order to say no to some kind of economic activity, you have to say yes to something.” For a town in which 90 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, however, the appeal of the lucrative employment opportunities that a mining company offers cannot be underestimated. Even industries as profitable as ecotourism are not stable enough to serve as a primary means of income for the majority of the population. As a result, cattle raising

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www.tyglobalist.org remains the foremost means of income in the Intag region, as it has been long before the appearance of mining companies in the area. The alternative industries serve only to supplement income from pastoral agriculture. It is not surprising, then, that when in 2006 a second mining company, Ascendant Copper, promised employment, roads, and healthcare to the Junín community in exchange for their land, the once stalwart resistance weakened. “Many people saw the money that would come from mining as an opportunity to educate their children,” said Danielle Bernstein, who filmed a documentary about Ascendant’s occupation of Junín in 2006. On this occasion, however, the community’s resistance to mining prevailed, proving strong enough even to cause Ascendant to send in paramilitaries in an attempt to take over the land that the community would not cede. The resulting armed conflict attracted international attention and undoubtedly served a role in the Ecuadorian government’s subsequent revocation of Ascendant’s mining concession, causing them to leave Junín in 2007. While Ascendant may have left Ecuador and gone out of business, mining has continued to affect the area. For example, just after the departure of Ascendant from Junín, Bernstein witnessed one of the young leaders of the anti-mining movement go to work in a mine in the south to

Father and son sawing wood in Junín. (Dalton/TYG) pay for the healthcare of his sick mother. “You saw how, even though the resistance was so strong in collective, it could be quite fragile for individuals,” she said. Currently, three of the seven houses on the main square in Junín are left vacant since their inhabitants have gone to work for the mining industry.

he struggle for control of Junín’s land is by no means won. This year Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, announced an ambitious plan to invest 9 million dollars on studies to determine the feasibility of mining the Junín copper deposit. Such a measure would undoubtedly serve as the first step in the Ecuadorian government’s long-held desire to national-

ize the mining industry. The economic feasibility of nationalization, however, seems low in a country with such massive foreign debts. The economic future more likely lies in transnational mining companies, but only those that, Correa assures, “respect the workers and develop social and environmental responsibility projects.” In short, companies unlike Ascendant, which send in paramilitaries and attract negative attention towards Ecuador in international news. Correa’s clear support of “responsible” mining by transnational companies was called into question this fall in his administration’s approval of an environmental audit for Ecuador’s first large-scale copper mine in the south of Ecuador, El Mirador, despite the fact that its environmental audit pointed out numerous potential social and environmental issues. “[Mining] represents this country’s future,” he said. If this is true, then the Bishimetal’s bleak environmental audit represents Junín’s future. Community resistance, partially organized by alternative industries such as Fieweger’s Periódico Intag, has proved successful in the past, but the threat of even wealthier mining companies and potentially even the government lies ahead. As Fieweger remarked, mining will be “a problem that we deal with as long as there’s copper in Junín. And as long as we are successful, there will always be copper in Junín.” Now, the only smoke in the mountain air of Junín comes from sugar cane refinement houses. Within this relative tranquility, however, the people have not forgotten the current looming threat. When the next mining company, and possibly even the government, comes in, the economic and political power organized by alternative industries will be tested. Whatever their chances of success against future miners may be, the people of Junín in general have clearly affirmed that they will not give up. Junín local Rosario Piedra, who runs Junín’s tourism cabaña, affirmed, “We want to make it clear that mining companies will not be allowed to come in and destroy our natural resources.” ASHLEY DALTON ’15 is in Ezra Stiles College. Contact her at ashley.dalton@yale.edu.

Ascendant paramilitaries confront people of Junín. (Dalton/TYG)

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the yale globalist: winter 2011

A New Home on the Range

Cattle raiding is a symptom of bigger problems in South Sudan By Jeffrey Kaiser

Most herders in rural areas of South Sudan are still armed. State police forces are ill-equipped to guard against cattle raiding.(Kaiser/TYG)

uben Mathiok has two wives, seven children, and hundreds of cattle. He is a rich man for a herder, living on the outskirts of Bor, the capital of Jonglei State in South Sudan. “Cattle are my bank account,” he told me. A moment later we walked across the camp to look at one animal in particular, an extraordinary white beast, his prize bull, marked by a small black tassel dangling from the tip of its gargantuan right horn. Mathiok has a home village to which he returns a few times each year, but he spends nearly all of his time here in camp with his cattle, shrouded in smoke, never entirely free from cow dung and flies, and aware of the constant threat of being raided. Mathiok is a member of the Dinka tribe, the largest tribe in the new nation of South Sudan. His greatest fear? “The Murle. They are the ones destroying our villages. They are here even now in the bush.” Inter-tribal clashes in the form of cattle raiding have been commonplace for centuries, but the secession of the South has exacerbated the issue: Many people speculate that the Sudanese government in Khartoum is arming aggressors, in particular the Murle, simply to create problems for the South. Mathiok denied that the other tribes, including his own, ever launch raids of their own or even as revenge. The facts suggest otherwise: A

devastating Murle raid that killed 600 in August appears to have been in retaliation to a raid by the Lou Nuer—another large tribe—in June. It left 400 dead.

ince South Sudan declared independence in July of this year, these cattle raids have killed over a thousand people. Raids and counter-raids in Jonglei state, South Sudan’s largest state, between the Murle and the Lou Nuer have escalated to previously unseen levels. Despite speculations of Northern involvement, economic motivations seem to be the key driving force, especially of smaller, more localized raids. A single bull can fetch up to $500 in the market. Inflation in bride prices has made marriage impossible for many: A dowry today can include up to 150 head of cattle, in addition to other livestock and cash. Government attempts to deal with raiding have failed, and internal insecurity is only growing, especially in rural areas where the hand of the state is completely absent. Interventions have been unsuccessful, in part, because the approach taken by the government deals only with the symptoms of much deeper issues facing the new state of South Sudan.

uol Manyang, the governor of Jonglei State, is an intimidating man. A towering six-foot-five at least, Manyang was one of the most feared but celebrated rebel commanders during the

long civil war that eventually led to the secession of South Sudan. Governor since 2007, he has turned down cabinet-level positions in the new government of the South to remain in Jonglei. Manyang understands the massive challenges ahead for South Sudan and for his state in particular. “There is insecurity being created by the cattle raiders,” he acknowledged when I met him in his office in Bor. “And it is mainly the Murle. They are the cause of most of the problems.” Rumors and myths abound about this small tribe. Most significantly, the Murle are accused of abducting children because of genetic infertility problems. I reminded Manyang that the Murle people are also part of his constituency as governor. “The plan I have to solve the problem is, first of all, to build roads,” he said, ignoring my assertion. “Build roads into Murle land. We can introduce trade in these rural areas.” He went on to cite another region of South Sudan now mostly at peace because of the introduction of cross-border trade with Uganda. In theory, the plan could work. Infrastructure investment, in roads especially, allows not only for trade but also better access to rural areas for security forces. “There are no roads in Jonglei state,” Manyang said bluntly. “Without roads you cannot get to a situation even ten kilometers away. By the time the information comes and you reach there, you’ll find the criminal has fled.”

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www.tyglobalist.org Manyang also deplored the state of the police force: “…the police are not yet well trained, not well equipped, they don’t have cars. Only a third of the force has guns. Many are old people who were transferred from the army because they were physically unfit to serve.” But these are systemwide problems, and there is little that the Jonglei state government can do in this realm.

lso in June the Murle conducted a raid killing two people and stealing 90 cattle from a camp just eight kilometers from Mathiok’s camp. Mathiok said that the Dinka herders targeted took no revenge, fearing that the government would intervene. But he also acknowledged that the government never does anything. Disarmament programs have only put his family more at risk: While his camp had their guns taken away because they live near town, the Murle attackers that raided the nearby camp were armed with AK-47s. The Murle were never disarmed because they live far from town in an area yet unreached by the state’s disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration program. “If there is security from the government we have no need for guns,” said Samuel Kuc Manyirol, Mathiok’s uncle and one of the elders of the camp. Until then raids will continue as armed herders easily target the disarmed camps. Manyang also acknowledged the failure of disarmament but again faulted the Murle. “They don’t want to volunteer to

Celebrations in the streets of Juba, the new capital of South Sudan, lasted well into the hours of the morning on July 9, 2011, the day of the official declaration of independence. (Kaiser/TYG) give up the guns,” he said. Because they are mobile it is easy to hide weapons and avoid searches. “The other tribes then also keep their guns because they don’t see that the police can protect them,” he continued. “It is not working.”

he problem of tribalism, apparent in the scapegoating of the Murle, is rarely mentioned in discussions of government response to cattle raiding. But it is a primary issue to be dealt with. South Sudan may now be a state, but it lacks the characteristics of a nation. In large part this is due to tribal factionalization and perceptions that a few tribes, namely the Dinka, dominate the political, economic, and social realms of the country. Until the state can provide services to people in all areas of the country, many feel no need to respond to the state and act like citizens. The Murle are a perfect example. Fundamentally ignored and denigrated by the government, they will continue to cause problems until they too are treated as citizens with equal rights and protections under the law.

Until the state can provide services to people in all areas of the country, many feel no need to respond to the state and act like citizens.

T Children in the cattle camps cover themselves in ash to keep the flies away. (Kaiser/TYG)

and Law Enforcement Gabriel Duop for a moment before the meeting began, and he suggested a visit to the Livestock Protection Unit (LPU), a new initiative working to eliminate cattle raiding in Jonglei. It sounded intriguing, and Duop placed a few calls to set up the visit. About 20 minutes later Colonel Abui Atem Abui arrived on a motorcycle taxi, unarmed but decked out in a bright blue camouflage uniform. We waited for Colonel Abui’s bodyg u a r d — u n l i ke Abui, he wore no uniform but carried an AK47—and then departed for the LPU. We arrived around 10:00 a,m., and the small outpost was just rousing as we pulled in. Half a dozen or so men scrambled into their uniforms and donned SWAT-like vests, only half of which bore the “Livestock Protection Unit” badge. No other vehicles were in sight, and each officer saluted theatrically as Colonel Abui, the unit’s director, led me past the barracks into his barren office. The LPU was assembled and funded by the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to help the government begin to tackle major internal insecurity issues. Fifty men received 11 weeks of training from the United Nations, though only 21 were still stationed with the LPU when I visited. Colonel Abui seemed, at first,

he morning after meeting with the governor and visiting the cattle camp, I returned to the seat of the state government in Bor to catch the first few minutes of the weekly cabinet meeting. I spoke with Minister of Security

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passionate about his unit and their work. “Child abductions were taking place here, but since we came, nothing has happened,” he said. “When they [raiders] see the patrol, they will not do anything.” He also stressed that the station was built strategically on the border between Jonglei State and Central Equatoria State in an effort to curb cross-border raiding. And in this area, incidence of raiding has fallen. But the LPU is incredibly limited. Patrols last two or three hours and can only cover a distance of about six kilometers from the station in any direction because teams patrol on foot. “We were provided two vehicles by UNDP, but one has now been destroyed. Mine has no fuel. UNMIS gave us vehicles, but no one gives us fuel. My government says, ‘you are attached to the U.N., so we cannot provide you with fuel.’” Out of two cars provided to the LPU, it seemed one belonged exclusively to Colonel Abui—apparently for his personal use, as he does not participate in patrols—and the other had already been destroyed. The lack of cooperation between the United Nations and the government over something as simple as fuel is shocking. Abui quickly opened up about the rest of the problems he faces: “The food is also a problem. My men have no food. We protect the people of this area but they provide us with no food. Even the clothes now: We were told we would have a different uniform. And also we don’t have any medicine. We were told that UNDP would build a clinic.” On June 22, one of the officers of the LPU was killed when a group of herders attacked a patrol. But these men had not been on a raid. “They were punishing the patrol,” said one of the other officers in the room. “They came to ambush us.” Admittedly the Livestock Protection Unit was a pilot project, and no doubt well intentioned. But preventing cattle raiding six kilometers around the LPU headquarters in a state the size of Pennsylvania is like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound. A few months before I met with Colonel Abui, a high-level U.N. Security Council delegation had visited this same

The official independence celebrations in Juba asserted the multiculturalism of the new country, which is home to nearly 60 different tribes. (Kaiser/TYG) site. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice later commented that, “While the Livestock-Protection Unit is a worthy initiative, the economic, social, and political effects of cattle rustling and associated child abduction remain daunting.”

here are no clear solutions to the major security issues that threaten Jonglei State and all of South Sudan. But unlimited resources—a pipe dream—would allow for some creativity. I spoke with one senior official in the South Sudan Police Service who believes technology is the solution: “We have to build a police force that is technology oriented.” This general envisions a 10 or 12-story modern headquarters in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, networked and linked to information management centers around the country, including the LPU and future stations like it. “In the future we want to provide them [local police forces] with helicopters to patrol the area and collect information on the movement of raiders and stolen cows,” he said. He also mentioned the need for night vision goggles and eventually satellites to help the LPU safeguard large swaths of the country. “When we increase their ca-

…preventing cattle raiding six kilometers around the LPU headquarters in a state the size of Pennsylvania is like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound.

pacity and give them resources, they can combat cattle rustling and bring stability.” Helicopters would be a game-changer, and given the amount of money pouring into South Sudan from the United Nations and international donors, the project could become a reality with a bit of political will and pressure from knowledgeable officials like the general I spoke with. But addressing the issue of cattle raiding will require more than tactics and technology in South Sudan. It will require massive, long-term infrastructure projects to develop roads and electricity grids. It will mean addressing the often flawed relationships between the South Sudanese government and the United Nations and international donors. And it will require tackling the issue of tribalism and working to change perceptions of historic tribal biases and prejudices. None of these changes is easy, but given the stakes—the success of the world’s newest state—it seems worthwhile to put in the effort.

outh Sudan was born this summer amidst fanfare. Hundreds of people gathered to watch and celebrate as the countdown clock at a central traffic circle in Juba struck midnight on July 8. People rode on rooftops and running boards, singing and shouting and dancing. Cries of, “SPLA Oyeee!”—a chant of support for the army from the days of the war—rang out nearly every minute. Only a few hours later, just as the sun began to rise over Juba, the gates to the public viewing area for the official celebrations were opened. People poured in by the thousands, from every tribe and corner of the country, prepared to wait hours for a good spot from which to witness the historic moment. The festivities glorified the multiculturalism of the new country, but it was President Salva Kiir’s speech that rang the most true. In addressing the issue of tribalism, he reminded the crowd that, “We may be a Zande, Kakwa, Nuer, Toposa, Dinka, Lotuko, Anyuak, Bari, and Shilluk, but remember you are a Southern Sudanese first.” But for the new nation to survive, translating this message into action will be one of the most important tasks in the months and years ahead for South Sudan. JEFFREY KAISER ’12 is a Political Science major in Saybrook College. Contact him at jeffrey. kaiser@yale.edu.

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Letter from... Athens

LETTER FROM 17

What is the face of modern Greek democracy? by Nikolaos Efstathiou

he loud chants echoed across the center of Athens while dozens of protestors rhythmically pumped their fists in the direction of the Greek parliament building. I watched as smoke from the tear gas swirled among the mob’s banners, following the summer breeze. As the sun set, the voices of the rioters grew louder and more hysterical. “Tonight, we are bringing the government down!” cheered the student standing next to me among protestors pointing bright laser lights at the parliament building. But they did not manage to overthrow the government that night. Or the night after. In fact, a summer of wild demonstrations, continuous strikes, and violent clashes with the police only exacerbated the problems of an already fragile economy and created more tension in the divided social fabric. When seen through a populist lens, the public outrage in Greece is justifiable, even expected. Troubled by years of governmental inefficiency, bureaucratic institutions, and corrupt politicians, the country known as the cradle of democracy currently faces one of its most tumultuous political crises in recent memory. After the cabinet implemented waves of austerity measures cracking down on Greek households, a new surge of large scale protests hit the country. “Why should we pay for the deficit that they created?” shouted a young teenager, his voice echoing across Syntagma Square. Standing amidst the crowd, I couldn’t help feeling sympathetic towards their protests. But most modern demonstrations are hardly an appropriate or proportional reaction to the government’s inefficiency. In late July, the Taxi Driver syndicates declared an indefinite strike that paralyzed the tourism industry for almost a month. For most of the summer, a suffocating combination of smog and haze from tear gas used by the police plagued Athens’s historical center. “What right do the protestors have to kill our businesses and to

“...protesting has become a sort of popular cult, a casual activity that the revolutionary youth of Greece engages in on a daily basis.” make our everyday lives like hell?” asked Argyris Papanikolaou, the owner of a pastry shop across from the parliament. Papanikolaou said that his store has been burned and broken into by protesters several times this past year. Later that night, after the protests subsided, I decided to take a stroll to Syntagma Square. Despite the chaos and anger of the demonstrations, I was shocked to find an ambience better suited to a summer camp than a revolutionary gathering. The rioters had broken down into smaller groups, visiting coffee shops like Papanikolaou’s, making jokes about the current political system, and singing rebellious songs. Tents were set up throughout the plaza, and people gathered around fires, discussing Greece’s future. The atmosphere was buoyant, vigorous, and lighthearted.

As I walked towards the crowded subway, I reflected on my day at the protest. The unexpected contrast between the protest and its afterparty of sorts highlighted how superficial the tradition of protest has become in Greek society. The selfproclaimed “Indignant Greeks” have been voicing their disgust for everything, from current ministers to famous TV personas, yet they don’t seem to be offering any substantial solutions. In fact, protesting has become a sort of popular cult, a casual activity that the revolutionary youth of Greece engages in on a daily basis. But protests must not be undervalued in a democracy. In his famous “Apology” speech 2,000 years ago, Socrates extolled the values of questioning political authority. In Athens a student riot against the ruling military junta in 1974 eventually led to the restoration of democracy. Has this culture of protest that has long characterized Greek society been overused, to the extent that it has become trivialized? Has the institution that forged democracy in Greece ended up killing democracy from within? Do protests have anything to offer Greek citizens other than a cathartic purge of rage and frustration? An entire summer in the center of Athens was not enough to provide me with answers to these complex questions. What I did observe, however, was a crowd getting angrier and a country getting poorer. While the culture of protest is expanding, crossing frontiers and reaching even the puritan political culture of America, I cannot help but think that there are more constructive ways to channel discontent. Certainly dialogue is a difficult and often inefficient path, but it will certainly bring more tangible results than angry chants and heated slogans. NIKOLAOS EFSTATHIOU ’14 is in Timothy Dwight College. Contact him at nikolaos.efstathiou@yale.edu.

18 PHOTO CONTEST

the yale globalist: winter 2011

9th ANNUAL

The Yale Globalist’s

INTERNATIONAL PHOTO CONTEST WINNERS

CATEGORY:

PEOPLE 1st Place

All Hail the King Julie Reiter ‘14 Hometown: Montclair, NJ I took this photograph during the Yale Summer Session course “LITR S-244: Paris in the 20’s” that I attended this past summer in Paris, France. I was inspired to photograph this street performer’s ambiguous expression, especially when juxtaposed to the scowls and puzzled expressions of his audience members. After I took his photograph, the street performer blasted some French hip hop from his boombox and breakdanced.

2nd Place

Cattle Herder Jeffrey Kaiser ‘12 Hometown: Bryn Mawr, PA A young cattle herder poses with his AK-47 as his herd crosses the main road from the Southern Sudanese capital of Juba to Bor, the capital of Jonglei State.

PHOTO CONTEST 19

www.tyglobalist.org

3rd Place

Baby I Was Born this Way Grier Barnes ‘14 Hometown: Washington, D.C. These men were proudly strutting their stuff down Regent Street for the Pride London Parade. This event is part of the Pride London Festival, which happens every summer, celebrating the LGBTQ community in London and beyond.

CATEGORY:

PLACES 1st Place

Death on the Savannah Alice Buckley ‘15 Hometown: Orinda, CA This photo was taken in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, in the summer of 2010. The complex savannah ecosystem ensures that within days of the killing, the carcass of the expired wildebeest has been wholly picked clean and left to char in the hot noonday sun.

2nd Place

Privatized Road, Chilean Border Isaac Bloch ‘12 Hometown: Brooklyn, NY These are some of the remains of Bolivia’s railroad system, which deteriorated after being privatizated in the mid-1980s. It is now provides income for locals as a tourist attraction.

2020PHOTO CONTEST

the yale globalist: winter 2011

3rd Place

Beijing Street Cat Asa Maynard ‘15 Hometown: Guilford, CT Taken in Beijing, China.

CATEGORY:

GLOBAL HEALTH 1st Place

An Aspiring Doctor Julia Goldberg ‘13 Hometown: Dix Hills, NY I volunteered with a medical program at Casa de Fe, a house for orphans and abandoned children in a small town near the Ecuadorian Amazon. One of the girls living there wanted to learn how to use my stethoscope and tried listening to her friends’ heartbeats.

PHOTO CONTEST 21

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2nd Place

Mother Noah Remnick ‘15 Hometown: New York City, NY A woman waits at the door of a health clinic in Arusha, Tanzania as her daughter is treated inside.

3rd Place

Natasha and Molly Noah Remnick ‘15 Hometown: New York City, NY Natasha sits with her greatgrandmother, Molly, in a hospital in Nyack, New York a few days before her greatgrandmother’s death.

Graphics by Anisha Suterwala and Jay Pabarue

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Delightful or Dodgy? The Londoner’s case for ethical fashion. By Kelly Schumann

ost dresses are made of cotton, not cownipples. But Rachel Freire has a whole collection of couture cow-teat gowns, ranging from jet black to a pale, fleshy pink. The U.K. designer recently unveiled her peculiar creations at the London and Paris Fashion Weeks. Beginning with a cascading nipple breastplate, the dresses build off petticoat frames studded with nipple-rosettes and finish with a train of leather patchwork. Though the dresses were too heavy for the catwalk, Freire’s work still managed to raise a major fashion dilemma: Should intimate cow parts be used as fabric? Animal rights activists and British parliamentarians alike denounced the dresses as outlandish, grotesque, and repulsive. Seemingly overnight, Freire’s designs were flung into the middle of the United Kingdom’s ethical fashion debate. Freire defends her work as merely an artistically inclined form of recycling. “I was developing couture leathers at the tannery and was interested in what was thrown away,” Freire said, noting the origins of her idea to work with scrap leather. The material is often discarded because “the nipples at the edges of the leather protrude. I love the fact that they are so narrative of the source of the leather, that it was once skin,” she observed. When asked about the public’s explosive response, Freire noted that she “chose to make something which was potentially provocative.” She added, “Logic dictates that if they wish to attack me they should also attack every person who wears leather.”

ately the fashion industry, particularly in the United Kingdom, has been working to find a little beauty below the surface. While fashion looks pretty on the outside, underneath all the

glamour lies a dark world churning out products at an unfathomable rate with dire consequences: sweatshop labor conditions, environmental degradation, and addictive consumption habits. According to the British columnist and book author Lucy Siegle, the world is suffering from “fashion malnutrition,” an affliction characterized by a general lack of substance or thought in products and purchases alike that runs from “wasting money buying ‘cheap’ items in bulk that look ghastly” to “gorging on ‘luxury’ handbags.” London is emerging as a leader in the movement towards more thoughtful, ethical fashion. A tradition of quirky style gives the Brits free license to explore new design areas, Siegle said, making London the ideal frontier for green fashion. “There is a real attraction to innovate, and to try things that might fail, but to try them anyways,” offered Helen Storey, Professor at the Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF) at the London College for Fashion. It’s individuals like Storey, along with organizations like CSF, the British Fashion Council’s Estethica showcase, and the Ethical Fashion Forum, who are driving the push towards more substantial fashion. Brits are going beyond standard organic fabrics and fair trade practices—they have developed clothing that could actually reduce air pollution. With chemist Dr. Tony Ryan, Helen Storey has discovered a way to transform everyday fabrics into mass air-filtration mechanisms by infusing textiles with titanium photocatalysts during the wash process. Their Catalytic Clothing technology works especially well on blue jeans, which is “a very lucky break,” according to Storey. The number of jeans, “the most democratic piece of clothing on the planet,” exceeds the human population, providing many potential opportunities for sucking contaminants out of the air.

Rachel Freire’s cow-nipple dress is making waves in British fashion. (Courtesy Nathan Gallagher) Storey estimates that a marketable laundry product is just one year away, and she hopes that that one product could touch off a larger trend in the fashion industry. She dreams that soon all will have “the capacity to revolutionize their wardrobes in this way.”

ut will sustainable practices ever underpin all fashion? Freire hopes buyers will eventually lose their “flippant consumerism.” She hopes people “will begin to appreciate the value of quality again, and we will all slow down our consumption.” Ethics, she believes, should form the backbone of any activity, even fashion— but for now green fashion seems to be merely a trend. “This is not altruism, it’s because they find sustainability seductive,” noted Siegle. “The difficulty about fashion in itself, is that it often picks up things that are far more important than it and then drops them,” Storey offered. The real problem, she continued, “is how to make sustainability sustainable in fashion.” KELLY SCHUMANN ’15 is in Morse College. Contact her at kelly.schumann@yale.edu.

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Is Cartoon Network Ready for Mideast Peace? By Jeffrey Dastin

ew events merit renting the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Yet on May 8, 2006, the museum hosted a black-tie dinner in honor of a new television show, “Ben and Izzy.” The show follows the unlikely friendship of two boys, one American and one Jordanian, as they travel through time in high-tech computer graphics. Hundreds of executives and celebrities attended the event, walking a red carpet to the Egyptian gallery where the dinner was held. Bathed in warm red light, the grand Temple of Dendur shined brighter than it had in two thousand years. The location seemed fitting: an Egyptian temple built by Romans, a confluence of East and West. While the guests ate chicken tahini salad, Barbara Walters introduced

Queen Rania of Jordan, the keynote speaker. The Queen spoke of the show’s promise: “This cartoon uses a language that modern children understand – a language that unites them, whatever their background or beliefs, and makes them realize that you do not have to be alike to get along.” The show ended after one season. After the initial 13 episodes aired in 2008, “Ben and Izzy” fell into obscurity. No American distributor picked up the show, and the first reruns aired on Cartoon Network Arabic in 2010. Only recently did writers pen new episodes. Why did this promising show fall short? The answer lies both in creative shortcomings and deeper cultural traits of the United States and the Middle East. “Ben and Izzy” was first conceived by David Pritchard and Issam Ayoubi

in Manhattan Beach, CA. Pritchard was a veteran of the entertainment industry, having produced “The Simpsons,” “Family Guy,” and “King of the Hill;” Ayoubi was the head of technology at the new Jordanian media firm Rubicon Group Holding. The two met some months after the September 11 attacks. “I wanted to find ways to build communication bridges where there aren’t any,” Pritchard said. “And the place where that really starts is with young people.” According to Pritchard, the idea came from his relationship with Ayoubi. The two came from different cultural backgrounds and had different life experiences. Yet they connected over their interest in entertainment—and in telling stories. “His stories were about great scientists that came out of the Arab world. My stories were about heroes that were part

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www.tyglobalist.org of American culture. So, the concept was using heroes in our two cultures to get a peek into their culture, which I was not familiar with” said Pritchard. “[‘Ben and Izzy’] was a lens into that history… to get exposed to this in a way that was kind of cool.” Jordan seemed the natural place to test their cross-cultural experiment. King Abdullah II long supported progressive reform. The country’s education system was strong. And more so than its neighbors, Jordan’s economy was increasingly based on technology. Rubicon adopted and created the show. The media company had ambitions to make Jordan a global entertainment center, and “Ben and Izzy” would be its headlining project. Despite little funding, Rubicon managed to pay for 13 episodes without the help of distributors. Pritchard helped with production, and Jymn Magon, an Emmy Award-winning writer for “Winnie the Pooh,” wrote the scripts. The show’s announcement generated a lot of excitement. P. Baman Rusby, whose consulting firm Atoka International represented Rubicon, said, “It was received with a lot of pride in Jordan and in other markets in the Middle East… There were emails we were getting from a teacher in Australia or teachers in the United States who had read about “Ben and Izzy” and really wanted to get their hands on the episodes. And that was all because of the [Met] launch. But the product wasn’t yet available.” “Ben and Izzy” did not air until two years after the Met event; Rubicon still had not completed the show. The early event aimed to capitalize on Rubicon’s fame as a rising star in animation. “This raised expectations but also took away a little bit of momentum,” said Rusby. The show finally aired in Jordan in 2008. In each episode, the genie Yasmine (played by Lucy Liu) takes “Ben and Izzy” across time to stop the greedy, neo-imperialist Clutchford Wells from stealing treasures. Along the way, the boys meet famous Arab thinkers—from the Baghdad philosopher Al Kindi to the Moorish inventor Abbas Ibn Firnas. Rubicon also released commercials for “Ben and Izzy,” video games, and some merchandise. Rubicon even produced the show in Russian and other languages. But Middle East Broadcast (MBC) quickly put

“Ben and Izzy” aside: ratings were low despite the show’s prime-time slot during Ramadan, the highest-viewed television season of the year. Was the show poorly made? Randa Ayoubi, the CEO of Rubicon and Issam Ayoubi’s sister, said, “I was satisfied with the ultimate product within the constraints that we worked with. Like I said, it was [Rubicon’s] first product… There was action and there was humor, but not enough action and humor to make it a complete entertainment show.” Rusby praised the show’s animation but echoed Ms. Ayoubi’s concern about comedy. Humor was the missing key. “Ben and Izzy” had the difficult task of striking a balance in edutainment. “What is it that we want to achieve?” asked Rusby. “You either had the commercial world or you had the PBS world… Distributors were not looking to air something that was educational, though now you can find more edutainment programs.” Ultimately, the

“We are more interested in being entertained than we are in being provoked or informed.” show erred on the educational. While edutainment was tough itself, Rubicon lacked experience at the time. “‘Ben and Izzy’ was the most difficult thing I’ve done in my life, because it was the first production we did on that large scale,” said Ayoubi. “We didn’t want to be preaching either on the Arab side or the American side. We wanted it to be fun yet true, representative of the characters” Still, Rubicon went to great lengths to ensure success. The company created focus groups of children in North America, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe and changed episodes—line by line—based on feedback. This practice is uncommon in the television industry, but Ayoubi explained it was necessary given the stakes. Yet the show did not pick up steam. To Pritchard, a deeper cultural issue was at play. “It ended primarily because of a lack of inquisitiveness on behalf of the Western audience, and that’s a real tragic statement for me to make. The stereotyping and narrow-mindedness that exist in

so much of America is the thing that’s actually hurting us the most in our capacity to innovate, our capacity to grow… We are more interested in being entertained than we are being provoked or informed.” The cultural problem extended beyond American frivolity to viewing interests in the Middle East. At the core was the novelty of shows like “Ben and Izzy.” Pritchard, Rusby, and Ayoubi agreed that the Arab world lacked positive heroes. There was no Michael Jordan or Barack Obama in the Middle East. Indeed, its high-profile politicians were far from role models. “People appreciate those who stand up to the West, like Saddam Hussein… but no kid can relate to him or other politicians on a regular basis,” said Rusby. The focus “Ben and Izzy” placed on heroes made it essential for the future of Arab culture yet inaccessible at the same time. Labeling “Ben and Izzy” as a failure, however, would be unfair. First, it jumpstarted Rubicon and the animation industry in Jordan. After “Ben and Izzy,” Rubicon produced the new Pink Panther movies; today Rubicon remains a top company. Likewise, Pritchard went on to produce “Captain Abu Raed” with goals similar to those of “Ben and Izzy.” The film won awards at the Sundance Film Festival and received acclaim as one of the first great international films in Arabic. Even “Ben and Izzy” has a second chance at the spotlight. After airing reruns, Rubicon planned to release a second season in 2012. The new episodes will take Ben and Izzy outside the Middle East to engage heroes from Latin America, China, and the United States. The characters will have a twist; merchandizing will include smart phone apps, e-books, and video games; and Rubicon intends to increase the show’s action and humor significantly. “It’s now beginning to show the success it should have shown maybe two years ago,” said Ayoubi. “I’m hoping [the second season] will create a lot more interest and get to be known in the United States.” But “Ben and Izzy” still tells a sad tale about popular culture. Producers must walk a fine line between education and entertainment to appease capricious, thrillseeking viewers. Few shows can afford to try. JEFFREY DASTIN ’14 is in Saybrook College. Contact him at jeffrey.dastin@yale.edu.

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Gaddafi Does Facebook

78,000 Serbians Like This By Seth Thompson Image by TYG

have never spent more time on any other site in my life,” wrote Vyeljko Nyedi on the wall of the Facebook group “Support for Muammar al Gaddafi from the people of Serbia.” Along with 78,000 other members, Vyeljko uses the page as a forum to post videos, comments, and stories supporting the loyalists of the Libyan civil war. The adoration displayed for “Comrade Gaddafi” through the deluge of Facebook activity raises the fundamental question: Why did the despotic Libyan general strike a chord with so many young, Internet-savvy Serbians? Toni Kuzmanovskim, a college student from Novi Sad, Serbia, was stirred to support Gaddafi after watching a Youtube video clip of Miroslav Lazanskia, a respected Serbian journalist and military analyst. Lazanskia proclaimed that NATO’s involvement in Libya was unwelcome given that the majority of Libyans supported Gaddafi and enjoyed a high standard of living under his rule. Seeking confirmation, Toni asked several Libyan students studying in Belgrade if they agreed with the reporter’s argument. “[They did] and they were supporting Gaddafi,” he said in a Facebook message. Motivated by this first-hand knowledge, Toni returned to Facebook where he discovered a community of Serbian youth discussing the plight of Gaddafi. While students and young adults generate much of the momentum behind the pro-Gaddafi Internet movement, Serbians

of all ages, especially those with far-right political leanings, can be sympathetic to Gaddafi. Mario Milovanovic, an activist from the south-Serbian city of Niš said, “Almost all Serbians I know support Gaddafi but they are not all active in [their] support. Many people don’t have time for that and some are afraid to openly say what they mean.” Milovanovic likens the recent NATO intervention in Libya to NATO’s presence in Serbia during the Kosovo War in 1999. While Western powers supported the Kosovar independence movement as a legitimate response to Serbian ethnic cleansing, Serbs themselves viewed the struggle as an attempt by Albanian terrorists to separate Kosovo, historically the heart of Serbia, from its native peoples. Gaddafi was one of few Arab rulers to support Serbia during the Kosovo War—an unusual position that aligned Gaddafi with Orthodox Serbs and pitted him against Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims. To this day, many Serbs blame NATO for much of the war’s destruction. The pro-Gaddafi movement gives voice to Serbian citizens still reeling from the aftermath of the Kosovo War. Stefan Laki Lazi, 18, described the horrors of the war in a Facebook post: “Do you know what [it feels like] when you are sixw, and it is your birthday, and you are sitting in [a] basement because the American bomb can kill you outside? Gaddafi was the only one who was helping our people… our duty is to support him!” Facebook may be a hub of pro-Gaddafi activity, but Milovanovic is quick to point

“Gaddafi was the only one who was helping our people… our duty is to support him!”

out that activism extends beyond the digital realm. In March and April, four antiLibyan-intervention protests were staged in Belgrade. Throngs of supporters waved protest signs and voiced their mistrust towards NATO, affirming their solidarity for Libya. By contrast, a Belgrade rally in favor of Libyan rebels drew only eight attendees. Despite his age, Rastko Pocésta, a 15-year-old pro-NATO activist and the organizer of the rally, is perhaps the most outspoken proponent of the Libyan rebels. He contends on his blog that the NATO intervention in Libya prevented the fall of Benghazi and thus saved tens of thousands of lives. His position, however, is so unpopular in Serbia that he has received numerous death threats. Since Gaddafi’s death in late October, the support movement has maintained momentum; it continues to encompass a broad agenda of political efforts in protest of foreign intervention. The pro-Gaddafi movement has become a multi-faceted crusade, with fronts both online and on the streets of Belgrade. Though each advocate brings his own reasons for supporting the loyalist Libyan cause, one thing is clear. The original source of the movement, the “Support for Gaddafi” Facebook group, is the sounding board of a large contingent of Serbian youth. Burdened by a history of Balkan wars, these college-aged activists have a strong sense of national identity, a desire to learn about their own history, a drive to be involved in global events, and an effective means to motivate political change: their Facebook accounts. SETH THOMPSON ’14 is in Saybrook College. Contact him at seth.thompson@yale.edu.

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Why Does China Hate its Soccer Team? The politics and psychology behind China’s most vilified sports team By Edmund Downie

as there ever been a better time to be a Chinese soccer fan? Fans in China enjoy unprecedented attention from Europe’s best teams, who are tripping over themselves to gain a foothold in the world’s fastest-growing market for the world’s most popular sport. Top clubs like Manchester United and Real Madrid make regular visits, while fieldlevel billboards at English Premier League games run a steady stream of Chineselanguage advertisements directed at the league’s millions of Chinese viewers. But then there is the men’s national team. In August 2011, FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, ranked China 69th among men’s national teams. This puts China fifth in Asia, tied with Guinea, and one place behind Uzbekistan. China has hovered around this position since the first edition of the rankings came out in 1993. The team has qualified for only one FIFA World Cup, in 2002, when it lost all three of its games and failed to score even once. Years of poor performances have turned the team into one of the Chinese public’s favorite punching bags. Three losses in three matches at the 2008 Beijing Olympics led to parodies like the video “Chinese Soccer Team Welcomes You.” In this satire of the official Olympics song, “Beijing Welcomes You,” Chinese netizens skewered the team. Even the players owned up to their feeble showing. When Brazil, the most successful national team in soccer history, steamrolled the Chinese in a 3-0 victory at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, team captain Li Weifeng told the press, “We play soccer like the Brazilians play ping-pong.” And he is right. Sixty-ninth in the rankings, and with just one World Cup appearance in their history, the team has much room to improve. (On the other hand, Brazilian ping-pong ranks among Latin America’s best.) But why does China care so

much? In India, for instance, though soccer is the fastest growing and third most watched sport, the men’s national team is ranked at 158th, one spot below Palestine. Yet the public tolerates its shortcomings with far greater equanimity. What makes China different?

orruption, geopolitics, Asian history, and the Beijing Olympics must all play into the politics and psychology of China’s relationship with soccer. Soccer’s longstanding connection to nationalism may be the foremost factor. In Spain, Catalan pride underlies the fervent fan support and unusual community-based ownership model at Barcelona F.C., right now the best team in Europe. But national pride can also turn against a team when it fails to meet expectations. In England, the country that founded modern soccer, a

4-1 defeat to Germany in last year’s World Cup prompted headlines like “Message to England Players: You Let Your Country Down” from the U.K. Sun. As in England, nationalism and soccer in China form a toxic mix. When a loss to Hong Kong knocked China out of the race to qualify for the 1986 World Cup, the riots that followed prompted Beijing’s leadership to disband the team. Since then, China’s rapid rise in geopolitical and economic status has put the team’s failings in an even starker light. Of course, were it the ping-pong team that was struggling, it might not attract so much attention—but it is the soccer team, China’s representative in the world’s most popular game. For this reason, the losses have Chinese questioning much more than just the coach’s decisions, as history professor and Chinese national Xu Guoqi explained in a 2008

With as many angry fans as England’s team, but with a lot less talent, the Chinese soccer team might be the unluckiest in the world. (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

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Washington Post op-ed, “They have also prompted doubts about Chinese manhood, undermined the country’s vaunted can-do spirit, and sparked agonizing questions about our politics, culture, and society—even about what it means to be Chinese.” Confucian psychology heightens the intensity of the reaction. Traditional Confucian beliefs espoused by Chinese society describe the concept of “face,” a notion that encompasses dignity, reputation, and one’s own self-respect. One can gain face (lian in Chinese) by rising in the esteem of others and lose face by not living up to their standards. Moreover, because Confucian ethics value group identity more than individual identity, one can also gain and lose lian from the actions of family and friends. The idea of face puts enormous social pressure upon the national team. As Cameron Wilson, a Shanghai native and blogger on Chinese soccer, said, China’s desire to win global respect “fuels an intense desire to gain face. And there’s no better sport to gain face than [soccer].” One could add that there is no better sport from which to lose face than soccer, and so each loss becomes a blow against the selfregard of China’s soccer-watching public.

o be sure, plenty of other national teams labor under the threat of bringing shame upon their people with a loss. England’s 40-year-long failure to win a World Cup title has made headlines tearing into the team for its performances almost de rigueur. But Europe’s ties to modern soccer run much deeper than China’s, whose first fully-fledged league didn’t appear until 1978. In addition, it’s hard to imagine European players mocking their own teams as Li Weifeng did after the loss to Brazil. Speaking to the press after the loss to Germany, England captain Steven Gerrard said, “It’s bitterly disappointing to go out of the World Cup and especially so to Germany. At stages in the game we were on top of them—at 2-1 down, I thought we’d go and win it 3-2, but at 3-1 it’s game over.” Some also see a more subversive undertone in criticisms of China’s national soccer team. Rowan Simons, who has written about his 20-year fight to build a network of amateur soccer leagues in China, explained in an email that “discussing the

the yale globalist: winter 2011 failure of football in China has become one of the favorite ways for urbanites to criticize the system without undermining it.” (Urbanites form the bulk of Chinese soccer’s fanbase.) Anthropology professor and Chinese sports expert Susan Brownell has a similar take. “[The fans] believe [the team’s] problems reflect the political challenges facing the political system as a whole, so their frustration with the team reflects their frustration with the entire system,” she said in an email. China’s government often censors public dissent about its policies, but, in soccer, it takes a more populist approach. The day after the loss to Brazil, state-run wire service Xinhua ran an article titled “Chinese Soccer Team’s Disgraceful Exit Causes Public Outrage,” which cited officials,

“We play soccer like the Brazilians play ping-pong.” sports icons, and popular writers decrying the team’s showing. Authorities did eventually ask newspapers to cut back on their negative coverage, but not until later that week. Such (relatively) loose oversight gives citizens a level of freedom in criticizing the team. In Brownell’s eyes, the government’s tactics here are part of a calculated approach to political reform. Since China began re-engaging with the West in the 1970s, the government has designated a handful of sites as shidian, or “experimental sites,” to test out experimental policies. For instance, in the 1980s, the southern city of Shenzhen prospered under a set of market-oriented reforms that became a model for later liberalization efforts nationwide. Brownell sees sports as an unofficial shidian. In the 1970s, “ping-pong diplomacy,” a pair of exchange visits between the American and Chinese table tennis teams, served as the first step in the gradual thawing of relations between China and the United States. Likewise, she said, sports reforms were an early aspect of the market reforms of the 1980s. In an effort to help smooth the country’s transition to a competitive economy, the government began to pay successful sports teams per-

formance bonuses to provide the people with, as Brownell put it, “an understandable model of fair competition.”

ow sports like soccer are leading a gradual evolution in Chinese politics. Brownell says the lax restrictions around public comment on sports means the atmosphere around sports resembles “what Chinese political culture as a whole would look like if it had free expression.” Likewise, the recent soccer scandal gives a template for true accountability in Chinese government. After journalist Li Chengpeng exposed widespread corruption in 2009 in the game, the government responded by arresting a slew of prominent figures, including both the director and deputy director of the Chinese Football Association (CFA). “The thing that was amazing to Chinese people was that it went all the way up to [director],” noted Brownell. “Everybody agrees the whole system is corrupt from top-tobottom, but the investigations usually stop before they get to [director].” Sports fit the shidian format quite well. For one, their popularity makes them an excellent tool for teaching the public, as they did during the market reforms of the 1980s. In addition, sports compose only a tiny fraction of the Chinese economy. As a result, attempts to rein in corruption in sports need not threaten the endemic corruption that defines the relationship between officials and big business throughout China. If anti-corruption measures win favor, the government can expand their reach. If not, the government can let them slide. Is soccer the gateway to political reform? It does seem possible, but with the start of World Cup 2014 qualifying matches this past September, the national team players have more immediate concerns on their minds. The CFA picked former Spanish national team coach Jose Antonio Camacho to lead the effort, but results from the first two matches—a hard-fought 2-1 victory over Singapore and a 2-1 loss to Jordan—suggest it will not be easy. Win or lose, though, there is one constant: The public will have plenty to say. Let the games begin. EDMUND DOWNIE ’14 is in Ezra Stiles College. Contact him at edmund.downie@yale.edu.

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A Tale of Two Tangos By Isabel Ortiz

s the camera zooms in, a pulsing bass beat is suddenly joined by the faraway lilt of a bandoneon. Two dancers stand faceto-face, performing intricate, isolated movements in bizarre hip-hop choreography. The music sounds smooth and confident as the camera shifts from the hip hop dancers to the shadowy specter of a traditional tango milonguero. An eerie breeze lifts his coattails in slow motion as he stares intently into the camera, tipping his hat at the viewer. The video cuts back to the hip hop and zooms in on one of the dancers. A giant tattoo of Carlos Gardel, tango titan of the ‘30s, covers his entire chest. When I first watched the music video for “La Gloria” by Gotan Project, I was immediately intrigued by this strange new musical phenomenon called electro-

tango. Growing up in an Argentine family, the tango had always been the unofficial soundtrack of my life. My idea of tango was informed by my grandmother’s constant crooning of tango lyrics and my dad’s enormous collection of old, grainy recordings of the greats. Watching my first electrotango video catapulted me into unfamiliar territory: A world made up of the clashing images, sounds, and times that composed my identity as both a voyeur and an insider in the Argentine cultural landscape. The Paris-based group Gotan Project and their Argentinean counterparts Bajofondo currently dominate the electrotango scene. Their music targets younger generations by mixing acoustic tango with electronic music—DnB, house, chill out, and trip-hop. Both groups “sample” tango orchestras with traditional violin, bandoneon, bass, and piano instrumentation,

overlaying them with electronic beats. Already, electrotango’s global impact has been quick and definitive. Gotan Project released the genre’s first album in 2000, Vuelvo al Sur/El Capitalismo. The album was a huge success, spawning Bajofondo and many other electrotango groups. Since, electrotango has found its way through mainstream cultural narratives, in various television shows, commercials, and motion pictures around the world. Following its debut album, Gotan Project’s music was featured in “Sex and the City,” “Nip/Tuck,” “Chuck,” and “Top Gear,” as well as in the movies “Ocean’s Twelve” and “Knight and Day.” During commercials for Finish Jet Dry dishwashing detergent in the United States, Australia, and Brazil, the languorous track “Epoca” plays as spotless dishes glint and sparkle in slow motion.

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lectrotango’s popularity marks a recent tango renaissance, after the genre underwent a dormant period both at home and abroad. Following its “Golden Age” in the ‘40s and ‘50s, tango went out of style as rock music took over the Argentine music scene, and the genre had little impact with international youth removed from its cultural context. This changed in the 1990s: Increased tourism to Argentina and the rise of YouTube and music sharing sites created a demand for more global art forms. Removed from its historic time and place, tango was reborn on the international stage. “In Argentina, the rebirth of tango started when Buenos Aires became a popular place for international tourism,” said Federico Monjeau, music critic for the highest circulating newspaper in Argentina, Clarín. “Tango musicians were getting jobs again and started to come out of their caves. At the same time, in the ‘90s there was a reconciliation between the youth and the tango, two worlds that in Argentina had always been separate,” he said. To Monjeau, the return of tango satisfied commercial needs over aesthetic ones. He added, “[Electrotango is] more the creation of a marketable product than of an art form.” Monjeau underscores a common concern among Argentine audiences. To many, the push for global consumption

the yale globalist: winter 2011 is and an electrotango scholar highlights the obstacles inherent to the genre itself: “[Electrotango] is something new in the history of tango. It has to interpret the history of the genre, which has always had a complicated relationship with the concept of the new.”

his summer when I returned to Buenos Aires, I viewed tango as a vestige of a lost epoch, a postcard from another time. In the bustling, modern metropolis, I longed for the beautiful simplicity of the past—for the lilting music, elaborate architecture, and slower pace of a lost way of life. On city blocks, dusty, dilapidated ‘40s era cafes punctuate rows of steel industrial buildings, and elegantly coiffed old ladies walk by in fur coats and black pumps, impervious to the forward motion around them. Monjeau spoke of the sacrifices that come with trying to translate the inherent contrasts of Buenos Aires into music. “Electronic tango is based on a prerecorded, fixed time,” he explained. “Tango musicians don’t respond well to [electrotango] because the essence of tango is the rubato,” he said, referring to the emotional speeding up and slowing down of tempo. Buch added, “the air of family and of conjoining that serves as the foundation… of tango is completely abandoned in electrotango.”

“Electrotango is too damn simplified! Any idiot can play a chord on the bandoleon….” threatens to erase the nostalgic fragility of a uniquely Argentine tradition. Since the days of Golden Age Buenos Aires, the warbles of impassioned tango singers and the swoons of violins have pervaded the national culture. Faithfully passed down within families from great grandparents to grandparents, tango has acquired its own brand of fierce nostalgia. Tango lyrics brim with specific names of Buenos Aires streets and embody mannerisms and peculiarities unique to their eras of origin, firmly rooting them in space and time. Thus, the very nature of the tango links it to its rich cultural context. Esteban Buch, director of studies at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Par-

While electrotango has been successful in Europe and other parts of South America, its role among new generations in Argentina remains unclear. Walking down a Buenos Aires street, I would often hear the recognizable thump of electrotango coming from restaurants or record shops, but at nightclubs most teenagers still dance to American pop or reggaeton. “You can easily say that in Buenos Aires fans of the first life of tango don’t follow electrotango too much. Evidence is the main tango radio, la dos por cuatro. Rarely will they pass electrotango,” said my Argentine friend Daniel Low. He too is nostalgic for traditional tango. “Electrotango is too damn simplified! Any idiot can

play a chord on the bandoleon, but to play a fugue by Astor [Piazolla]? To have the feeling of [Aníbal] Troilo?” However, some argue the traditionalist stance prevents the genre from advancing. According to Monjeau, “I think that we have to take on the idea of globalization and stop talking about the ‘Argentine tango’… Tango today has its own international network… Electrotango is the expression of this new global tango, as if the global paroxysm of tango has subsumed the tango itself. Techno tango isn’t tango, it’s just international techno tango for global consumption.” Buch also views electrotango as a completely different animal, citing the importance of cultural dialogue on an international scale. “I think we need to resist the interpretation of electrotango as some imperialism of tango,” he said. “The window of opportunity to circulate the culture on a global scale was there and [Gotan Project and Bajofondo] took it.”

alking in Buenos Aires one morning, I passed a CD store blaring the latest Gotan Project album, only to turn the corner into a deserted neighborhood. At the end of the street, I saw an old gramophone playing one of my favorite tangos, “Yuyo Verde,” as an old couple danced for an imaginary audience in an empty square. I watched them from a distance. Without warning, I was hit by an overpowering wave of nostalgia for a time I hadn’t even experienced, moved by the lonely couple’s rejection of the bustling forward motion around them. But when I left the square and again walked past the CD store playing Gotan, I reflected on electrotango as yet another dimension of this city’s distinct time warps. Perhaps there was a need to join these two times, a way in which the genres could coexist within a city of so many overlaid realities. Passing the record store, I listened to the lyrics of Gotan’s “Epoca” (of detergent commercial fame), which could only pertain to the relationship between electrotango and tango: “Yes, it disappeared/ In me it reappears/They thought it died/ But it will be reborn/It was 25 years ago/ And you existed, without existing yet.” ISABEL ORTIZ ’14 is in Jonathan Edwards College. Contact her at isabel.ortiz@yale.edu.

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Imagining Mumbai In the city, one artist fights to bring high culture to the masses. By Dan Gordon

’ve traveled to New York, and Paris, and Berlin, and London, and Shanghai, and Kyoto, and Tokyo. But… the city of Bombay remains my favorite with all its problems and struggle.” Atul Dodiya reflected. He spoke from his art studio in a lower class neighborhood of Mumbai, the city he calls his muse. “It ultimately makes me aware of life itself.” For many in the city, life is a contest to survive. Wealthy elites are the exclusive consumers of contemporary art, including Dodiya’s, but they seem incapable or at least unwilling to transform Mumbai into a city of high culture accessible to all. Against tremendous odds, Dodiya is on a quest to bring contemporary art back to those who inspire it—the poor and working classes of the city. He has a mission. All he needs is a plan. Navigating the streets of Mumbai, one is assaulted by the noise of auto-rickshaws and beggars’ requests, visually bombarded by colorful saris and austere

suits, and tricked into smelling the sewage along with the fresh cooking. To the overwhelmed foreigner, making sense of the place is difficult. Reductive binaries—rich/poor, east/ west, ancient/modern—often serve to encapsulate the city’s spirit, and Dodiya could not resist using one himself, identifying two elements that compose Mumbai: diversity and development. In terms of the first, Mumbai is a microcosm of India—in Dodiya’s vocabulary, “a palimpsest of a kind of diverse and coexisting culture.” The city’s many languages (and Dodiya speaks several himself) are an aural testament to Mumbai’s diversity, signifying the deeper cultural traditions—food, music, and worldview—that swim below the babel of sounds. Explosive and uneven development in Mumbai has produced a social geography perhaps even more perplexing than the linguistic landscape. The 20.5 million inhabitants of the city (compared to New York City’s 8 million) live in incongruous extremes of wealth and poverty. In South Mumbai, the wealthiest section of the city, glass and steel skyscrapers cut jagged edges in the sky. Antilia, one of the most expensive homes in the world, boasts three helipads, an ice room with artificial snow flurries, and six floors of parking for party guests. From the penthouse, one can easily see the Mumbai slums below: cramped, one-story dwellings.

gnoring the city’s polarities is impossible: “You are in the twenty-first century, and you go into another lane, and you feel like it’s the middle ages,” Dodiya recalled. “It’s that kind of a ‘what!’ difference.” His artistic response integrates these worlds, so that his art tells the many stories of the metropolis. The Mumbai that Dodiya loves is enigmatic in its multiplicity of contradictions. “I go up to a certain thing in one style, take a somersault, and go to look at something else, and come

back,” the artist explained. “Each show is so different from each other it’s almost like five artists working in one body.” There is no one Mumbai for Dodiya, only a city stunning in its many faces. Diverse and developing, Mumbai is also cosmopolitan. As a globalizing Mumbai extends beyond India’s borders, Dodiya’s work grasps for material beyond Indian artistic tropes. His work is a watershed of references. Visual quotations of other artists in his oeuvre lend diversity to his subject and style: Medieval European tapestries, seventh-century Chinese calligraphy, and American contemporary art all stream into his work. A child of Mumbai, once a colonial port city, Dodiya fittingly claimed, “Nothing is foreign to me.” Through his art, Dodiya becomes the translator of ideas between India and the world, and he also functions as an ambassador between the social and cultural worlds within India itself. His awareness of Mumbai’s social, economic, and cultural transformations places him in an ideal position to expand access to art. As someone with upper-class resources who lives in a mixed income neighborhood and has knowledge of the lives of the lower classes, Dodiya has the opportunity to solve the problem of limited viewership in a way that few others do. Despite their conceptual complexity and subtleties, Dodiya’s works have sold well, with some pieces fetching hundreds of thousands of dollars on the market. With such high prices, it comes as no surprise that only the wealthy can access his creations. “Art is always going to be elitist,” Shireen Ghandy declared. As director of Chemould Prescott Road, one of Mumbai’s oldest galleries, Ghandy is a fixture in the top levels of Mumbai’s evolving art world. She recalled how her mother “discovered” Dodiya, and affectionately declared that Dodiya is “my artist.” She counts famous Indian artists among her close friends and

32 32 FOCUS: POP has expanded her father’s gallery into a successful commercial enterprise. In contrast to Dodiya, she is not concerned that her galleries entertain an exclusive audience. Ghandy spoke on her cell phone from an exhibition in Paris that had attracted the tens of thousands of viewers. “[I]n France… you grow up with the museum culture and you grow up with the art around you,” she observed. “In India, you don’t have that privilege. You don’t even have a museum to go to on a Sunday afternoon.” To some extent, western countries have democratized the art world, supporting museums and conservatories in almost every major city. The same is not true in India.

ven if there were museums, making them easily accessible to the lower classes would pose another challenge. Most galleries are located in South Mumbai, where the poor and working classes tend not to live. Mortimer Chatterjee started a gallery in South Mumbai with his wife in 2003, situated a few miles south of Chemould Prescott. “Viewership in Bombay is problematic,” he said. “The local audience itself is fairly small. It’s quite a passive group, which means that galleries often struggle to get footfall be-

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yond opening nights.” Opening the galleries to a wider viewership might alleviate that problem. Wealth unites the business tycoons, connoisseurs,

“You are in the twenty-first century, and you go into another lane, and you feel like it’s the middle ages.” artists, and the occasional tourist who frequent the Mumbai galleries. Money endows their social constellation with the leisure to enjoy art and the means to reach the galleries. The poor and lower classes, many of whom cannot afford the time or money to travel to South Mumbai, are stranded in the outlying neighborhoods and suburbs of the city. Dodiya believes that “art comes from life and from people” and trusts that any audience could grasp his work, if they could access it. “Understanding is not the issue, but to see and feel… something,” he said. “Sometimes a common, simple man notices something that art critics do not notice.”

Atul Dodiya stands in his Mumbai studio. (Courtesy Atul Dodiya)

Much of Indian contemporary art, like Dodiya’s, references the unglamorous aspects of Mumbai life. Dodiya’s most recent exhibition, Bako Exists. Imagine., presents a Gujarati poem composed about Bako, a young boy who meets Mahatma Gandhi in his sleep and talks with him about school, prayer, and dreams, among other things. Included in each painting are an excerpted text of the poem and an abstract image of a human form. It is a representation of humanity asleep, in which distinctions of wealth and power dissolve. Dodiya takes responsibility for the problems of viewership. “I would blame the artists and gallerists,” he declared. A follower of Gandhi, he believes that one man alone can change the world. “It’s me,” he said. “I should be going.” As of now, he shares art with those who live in his neighborhood, but not far beyond it. He wants to see more spaces in the suburbs for art, more public lectures, and more artists engaging the less affluent neighborhoods, rather than hosting cocktail parties in South Bombay.

ince the government has made the alleviation of poverty one of its top priorities, there is virtually no money available for establishing new museums, preventing the poor and middle class from accessing contemporary art. Without more initiatives, Mumbai will have difficulty bringing contemporary and traditional visual arts to middle and lowerclass city dwellers. Despite the challenges of limited viewership, galleries in Mumbai will continue to flourish. Artists will continue to create and patrons to buy. The fate of the nonelite’s ability to view that art is less certain. Dodiya’s grassroots resourcefulness is a hopeful sign in the Mumbai art world. In his honesty and exuberance, Dodiya dreams of what seems like a quixotic fantasy: bringing sophisticated culture to those who fight to put food on the table. His greatest resources are his verve and boldness. In Mumbai, the city of dreams, that is sometimes enough. DAN GORDON ’14 is a History major in Davenport College. Contact him at daniel.p.gordon@ yale.edu.

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Who Else Were You Going to Vote for? Can Iceland’s Best Party live up to its promises to transform Reykjavík? By Aaron Gertler

n May 29, 2010, the voters of Reykjavík, Iceland rejected politics as usual, dumping the Independent and Social Democratic parties in favor of a new candidate’s covenant: increased transparency, family values, free towels in public pools, and a new polar bear for the Reykjavík Zoo. When three of Iceland’s largest banks collapsed during the global financial crisis of 2008, the nation nearly went bankrupt, and its four major political parties were helpless to prevent the meltdown. Suddenly, a nation of 300,000 owed six times its GDP to foreign lenders. Whatever promises the parties made seemed less than credible; any policies meant to resurrect the economy would depend mostly on assistance from Europe, independent of the Icelandic government. Besides, politicians had their own problems—Wikileaks documents and government probes revealed party members’ questionable collaborations with the “finance Vikings” who had brought Iceland to its knees. Enter Besti Flokkurinn—Best Party, in English. Headed by Jon Gnarr (the star of the popular local comedy “Bjarnfredarson”), the party formed a mere six months before the municipal election, but quickly made a splash on the Icelandic political scene. Gnarr attracted talent from various sources, including television star Augusta Erlandsdóttir, Bjork backing-band member Einar Benediktsson, and Heida Helgadóttir, a recent graduate from the University of Iceland. Helgadóttir’s B.A. in political science made her the Party’s most politically experienced member. In fact, she is its CEO—and one of the most successful political consultants in her country. Besti Flokkurinn’s success still amazes Helgadóttir, who can’t quite believe what’s happened to her in the last two years. She described the party’s formation as “a beautiful way to protest” against the career politicians who ruled Iceland for generations. However, she didn’t expect

The Best Party with Jon Gnarr on box and Heida Helgadottir to the right. (Courtesy Best Party) that they’d win any seats, let alone six of a possible 15, with 35 percent of the popular vote in a five-way race. A later alliance with the Social Democrats gave Besti Flokkurinn a solid voting majority, and cemented Gnarr’s mayoral position. Reykjavik’s new leader was a man who first entered the political world when he prank-called the White House and the CIA on live television. It’s easy to see how Gnarr’s outsized personality captivated the capital. When he announced his entry into the mayoral race, he was Iceland’s most famous actor and the centerpiece of the nation’s popular culture. “Bjarnfredarson,” his latest movie, sold more tickets in Iceland than “Avatar.” Gnarr played a maniacal gas-station owner—a twisted, Marxist Michael Scott with a scruffy orange beard. On stage, screen, and radio, he made Iceland laugh for 15 years. When he launched his latest

stunt, all of Reykjavík turned to watch. But how did Gnarr turn their attention into votes? At first, confidence was low. “People had always taken Jon with a grain of salt,” Gaukur Úlfarsson said. A TV producer who followed the Party from its humble beginnings to the May election, Úlfarsson had worked with Gnarr for over a year before the announcement. He wasn’t sure what to make of his colleague’s new project: “[Gnarr] kept talking about running for mayor, which I thought was a terrible idea… the chaos and confusion in Iceland was enough without him adding to it.” Still, Úlfarsson joined the movement and directed the Party’s campaign video: four minutes of satirical slogans and vocal harmonies, set to a Tina Turner melody, and featuring Iceland’s biggest celebrities, many of them official Besti Flokkurinn members.

34 FOCUS: POP In the video, Gnarr shouts promises from atop a 15-story building. “Sustainable transparency! All kinds for the unfortunates! A drug-free Parliament by 2020!” Besti Flokkurinn’s official platform included a promise to stop corruption by “participating in it openly,” a cancellation of Icelandic debt, and free bus rides for students and the disabled. “We can offer more free things than any other party because we aren’t going to follow through with it,” the platform reads. “We could say whatever we want.” And of course, there were the towels and the polar bear. What may have seemed like pure comedy, however, masked serious political strategy. Free towels would give Iceland’s saltwater saunas official European Union spa certification, attracting tourists. A zoobound polar bear would help to erase the bloody legacy of those wild Ursus martimi who swam to Iceland in recent years, only to be killed by police before they could threaten humans. As for the debt cancellation? It was no less practical, perhaps, than any solution the Social Democrats or Independents could propose. At first, Besti Flokkurinn confused Gunmundur Steingrímsson, a member of the Althing, Iceland’s national parliament. However, he soon looked past the movement’s comedic façade and discovered its true appeal. “It was a joke,” he said, “but the joke had a point… politics had reached an incredible level of surrealism.” Still, Besti Flokkurinn’s victory was a total shock. The party had entered the maximum possible number of candidates for Council seats, but besides Gnarr and Benediktsson, the choices were essentially random. On the morning of May 30, Helgadóttir began to realize the magnitude of the task ahead of her—running a city with a campaign staff of two people. “I sort of need to clone myself in order to make this happen,” Helgadóttir explained. Úlfarsson concurs. “It all happened so fast,” he said. “Nobody knew about the state of the mess the city was in.” Besti Flokkurinn’s primary concern was the state of the Hellisheidi power plant. Responsible for 22 percent of Reykjavík’s electricity, it had been on the verge of collapse even before the 2008 crisis, thanks to years of mismanagement and, according to Helgadóttir, use as a “cash cow” by the capital’s former leadership. “The whole thing was a very huge [disaster],” Ulfarsson said. “We had to lay off

THE BEST PARTY CAMPAIGN SONG We want a city that’s cuddly and clean and cool And top-notch stuff as a general rule Stop the usual bluffs Doing better isn’t all that tough Fountains, wild animals, and electric trains (Best… best… best… best…) No more concrete and steel messing up our brains Send it all back Let the imbeciles pack! CHORUS We are the best! The bestest of parties! Best for Reykjavík Best city of every week Things have gone sour We’ve come to the clean-out hour Hey! The message is plain It’s time for major change Gimme a B, gimme an E, gimme an S, gimme aT (Best… best… best… best…) Tell the squatters in charge that it’s time to leave The blathering loons should be given a home in the city Zoo CHORUS All by yourself on Election Day The ballot looking lifeless and a little gray You have to choose, it’s such a mess Vote for us, we’re the Best!

hundreds of people.” With the plant’s takeover by a private corporation, many employees were rehired, but Besti Flokkurinn took steps to ensure that the malfeasance wouldn’t repeat, carefully selecting new management without political ties. Since then, Hellisheidi has doubled its energy production, and will soon be the world’s largest geothermal power station. When the party runs for reelection in 2014, the plant will symbolize their dedication to reshaping Reykjavík’s economy—but will it guarantee a repeat victory? In Iceland, as in so many other European countries, layoffs and cutbacks are the order of the day. While the economy finally grew by 2.5 percent in 2011 after three years of contraction, those in power suffered the consequences of their forced austerity. Besti Flokkurinn’s support in Reykjavík fell from 35 percent on election day to under 20 percent this summer, and the right-wing Independents are poised to retake the council. While in office, Gnarr appeared in drag at Reykjavík’s Gay Pride Parade and tattooed the city crest on his

the yale globalist: winter 2011 forearm. To a populace that cares mainly about lost jobs and city services, these antics have an appeal that is far from universal. “You can’t win everybody,” said Helgadóttir, in response to her party’s declining popularity. She complained about the refusal of other parties to tone down political formalities, as well as their occasional disdain for a party different from anything they knew before. “Sometimes they end up screaming at us during closed meetings,” she said. Besti Flokkurinn ran, in part, to make politics more accessible to the masses, but their time in the system has left their optimism slightly shaken. According to Steingrímsson, some members might not mind losing the next election.“[The party] sees itself almost as doing time in politics. They look forward to getting out.” Even if Reykjavík abandons Besti Flokkurinn, however, Iceland as a whole might not return to its old voting habits. In September, Steingrímsson left the Progressive Party and joined Helgadóttir to start crafting a second party from scratch. So far, the project has no official membership and no name (the name will later be chosen through a nation-wide contest), but it’s already attracted many Icelanders who watched Reykjavík’s experiment with interest. The new faction intends to win national power and tackle Iceland’s most pressing problems, from its wish to join the European Union to its dealings with international gas conglomerates. Steingrímsson even wants to recruit other Althing members. “None of them has joined so far,” he said, “but I know they’re interested. I can see it in their faces. Other people are as tired as we are.” Whether or not Jon Gnarr remains mayor after the 2014 election, his party’s blend of pop and politics reignited many Icelanders’ hope for change in their country. “Sitting and discussing politics around the pool has become our national sport,” said Steingrímsson. “People do not like to be pushed around anymore.” Many years will pass before Iceland completely recovers from the crash of 2008. When that day dawns, if five parties share space in the Althing, Besti Flokkurinn will have left a permanent mark on a nation brave enough to give chaos and confusion a chance. AARON GERTLER ’15 is in Timothy Dwight. Contact him at aaron.gertler@yale.edu.

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Illustrating the Revolution

Cartoons and the New Face of “Artivism” in Egypt By Erin Biel

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rom amidst the tear gas, a man emerges on the television screen, brandishing a weapon. Sitting atop another’s shoulders and yelling in defiant Arabic, he begins to shake the object vigorously back and forth. It is not a Molotov cocktail or a Kalashnikov. It is a placard, and on it, a cartoon of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s face about to be stomped on by a shoe. To most around the world who watched the events of the Jan. 25 Revolution in Egypt unfold, the images of Tahrir Square protesters fleeing flanks of riot police, tear gas, and armored tanks served as vivid depictions of the egregious violence experienced directly by those on the ground. However, for those on the ground, other vivid images began to illustrate the Revolution: cartoons. These cartoons came to serve as veritable weapons as they took their place on banners and t-shirts all throughout Tahrir. The hero responsible for this cartoon arsenal doesn’t live in Cairo, or any other Egyptian city for that matter. He lives in Rio di Janeiro, Brazil, over 6,000 miles away. “I remember that, one day, I was watching the news on television just shortly after the Revolution began. I then saw images of people waving posters with my work appear on the screen, just days after I had made those particular cartoons. That was when I began to realize the popularity of my cartoons,” Carlos Latuff said. Latuff, a Brazilian cartoonist and self-proclaimed “artivist,” uses cartoons to expose some of the most serious instances of corruption, imperialism, and capitalist exploitation in the world today. The Jan. 25 Revolution and its aftermath have consumed Latuff’s attention and portfolio recently, and it is those pieces that have taken Latuff to a new level of international fame. “I have long had a passion for international affairs, specifically human rights, the cowardice of states, and repression through censorship,” Latuff explained. Latuff, now in his 40s, started drawing cartoons professionally in the 1990s for Brazilian leftist trade-union newspapers, which he still works for today. In 1996, when Latuff first gained Internet access, he realized this new medium could make his work freely available to people all over

the yale globalist: winter 2011

the world. Stirred by a documentary he saw that year on the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, a primarily non-violent, libertarian socialist group based in southern Mexico, he decided to fax a number of his cartoons to the Zapatista political arm in Mexico City. He then drew and uploaded all of his subsequent cartoons onto the Zapatista website and permitted free dissemination of his work. Ever since, the Internet, Latuff’s “theater for virtual guerilla tactics,” has served as his gallery to the world. He doesn’t believe in copyright, preferring “copyleft”, in keeping with his staunchly leftist leanings. Although he does not maintain a personal website, he does have a Twitpic page, and he encourages visitors to reproduce his cartoons and post them on their Facebook accounts.

erhaps it comes as no surprise, then, that Latuff’s work garnered so much attention from the Egyptian people during the Jan. 25 Revolution, now commonly called the “Facebook Revolution.” The Egyptian youth who fomented and orchestrated the Revolution relied heavily on Facebook and Twitter to organize protests, coordinate platforms, and spread ideas. It was through Twitter that Latuff first came across the demands of the Egyptian Revolution, and most of the information inspiring his cartoons comes from that social media platform. “After all, the information on Twitter is coming from actual Egyptians who are tweeting right from Cairo or Alexandria, so they are in the eye of the storm,” Latuff explained. Latuff views his cartoons as yet another weapon in a protester’s arsenal—and a

more peaceful one at that. Protests continue to take place throughout Egypt to varying degrees, even nine months after the ouster of Mubarak. Men sit atop the lampposts surrounding Tahrir; women, too, amass in the square and chant in unison. All together, they voice their concerns about the incompetence of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), the ongoing trials of civilians in military courts, and increased media censorship, among myriad other issues. To complement these demands, protesters wave Latuff’s cartoons, such as Field Marshal

“After 1996…I became an activist, an artivist. [Cartooning] was no longer just professional, it was personal.” Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, top officer of the SCAF, smashing an Al Jazeera video camera, or Osama Heikal, SCAF’s Minister of Information, spilling poisonous lies all over a map of Egypt. Many of Latuff’s cartoons even possess the flourish of pointed statements in Arabic, thereby evoking the true voice of the Egyptian people. “Of course I put my own opinions into the pieces as well, but, as a human rights activist, I seek to give a voice to the voiceless, to activists in countries where they cannot speak out. For instance in Egypt, it was widely thought that after the fall of Mubarak, people would have a voice, but… we must remember that SCAF generals are the same generals that took part in the Mubarak regime,” Latuff expounded.

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As such, Latuff has no intention of slowing his production of Egypt-focused cartoons, which stands now at about three per week. Latuff’s work continues to enjoy an incredible level of admiration and support among Egyptians. Over ten Facebook pages are devoted to his work. The most “liked” page boasts over 22,000 supporters, and the next two most popular pages have over 17,000 followers each. Most of these Facebook pages were started by Egyptians or others in the Middle East-North Africa region. Two of the Facebook groups go so far as to advocate awarding Latuff with Egyptian nationality. Samar Sultan, a secondyear undergraduate at the American University in Cairo, is a supporter of one of these Facebook groups. She pores over the photo albums of Latuff’s work and excitedly points out all of the nuances in his cartoons. “We don’t feel like he’s foreign, because he knows all of the Egyptian jokes. He knows all of the small details and everything,” she exclaimed, as she pauses over a caricature of Tawfiq Okasha, former member of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party. Okasha, owner of the Egyptian TV channel Al-Faraeen (“The Pharoahs”) and presidential candidate, now uses his own talk show to spout widely disdained Mubarak-era policies, and Latuff’s cartoon lampoons his personality perfectly. Latuff’s pieces have also become wellrecognized visual representations of multiple prominent human rights movements in Egypt, perhaps the most notable of which is the “We Are All Khaled Said” movement. The movement began after the eponym, a 28-year-old Egyptian from the coastal city of Alexandria, was beaten and tortured to death at the hands of two police officers on June 26, 2010. Said has since become a symbol for many Egyptians who aspire to live in a country free of brutality, torture, and ill treatment. His memory and the values that he stood for were immortalized in a prominent Facebook group, now with over 1,700,000 followers, that was started by Wael Ghonim, Head of Marketing for Google Middle East and North Africa and one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2011. Before Jan. 25, Ghonim contacted Latuff and asked him to produce some cartoons in support of the cause. Latuff responded

(Comics Courtesy Carlos Latuff) with five cartoons, the most recognizable of which is a resolute and imposing Said holding a diminutive Mubarak by the lapel. Almost immediately after the cartoon’s release, poster upon poster of the image flooded Tahrir. However, perhaps the most notable media endorsement in Egypt of Latuff’s work came more recently, at the end of August 2011, when Al-Masry Al-Youm, one of the most reputable newspapers in Egypt, published Latuff’s cartoon of “The Amazing

“After all, the information on Twitter is coming from actual Egyptians who are tweeting right from Cairo or Alexandria, so they are in the eye of the storm.” Flagman” on its front page. The cartoon was created after Israeli gunfire killed five Egyptian policemen in Egypt’s Sinai. The incident served as an identifiable reason for the Egyptian people to express their disdain for the Israeli government’s policies, feelings that had been muted during

the Mubarak era. At a demonstration in Cairo, 23 year-old Ahmed al-Shahat scaled the building that houses the Israeli embassy and tore down the Israeli flag, replacing it with an Egyptian one. Al-Shahat thereafter was hailed in popular media as “Flagman,” and Latuff, in keeping with his characteristically vigilant and prompt nature, provided his own creative rendition of the event within hours. “The Amazing Flagman” essentially depicted Spider Man, with the Egyptian flag’s eagle emblazoned on his uniform, descending from a building, a burning Israeli flag in hand. A day after posting the cartoon to his TwitPic page, Latuff’s site received 1.5 million views, according to Aya Batrawy of the Associated Press. Since the Flagman episode, there have been a number of other protests at the Israeli embassy and the relationship between Egypt and Israel grows increasingly tenuous. Latuff’s marked and unabashed support of Palestinian sovereignty and his scathing critiques of the Israeli government, as depicted in endless cartoons, have won him even more popularity in Egypt. Nevertheless, as much as he would like to visit his Egyptian fans in person and set his own two feet in Tahrir, the Israeli embassy, or any of the other places he has captured in his Revolution cartoons, he doubts that he will ever get

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the opportunity because of his controversial opinions.

atuff is not a moderate. As an ardent “artivist,” he realizes that taking a public stance on highly contentious issues won’t make everyone happy. He readily admits that although he has received an overwhelming amount of support from the Egyptian people, the occasional criticisms he hears “are to be expected.” He discerns, “The Egyptians are very nationalistic and some of them believe that someone who is not Egyptian and is drawing about Egyptian affairs could be an interference. But this… also happens when I make cartoons about Bahrain or Palestine or Iraq. My duty is not to interfere in internal affairs but to make sure a particular point of view is seen.” Nevertheless, this strain of criticism elucidates a marked irony surrounding Latuff’s work. Latuff, in illustrating issues that span the entire globe, provides commentary on behalf of or against groups that he has personally never met. To critics, he is just penning pieces from a desk that is an ocean away from the action. In the case of Egypt specifically, he is depicting a revolution: a revolution in which heated words are exchanged, bullets fly, and lives are lost. He is providing visual images that are to speak for an entire population, or at least much of the population, and he has to demonstrate somehow a solidarity with and a keen understanding of the people on the ground without falsely representing their platform or co-opting it. That is no easy task. And that is what underlies the great victory of social media. Latuff has been able to draw a remarkable connection with the Egyptian people—a connection

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through great visual imagery and culturally apposite wit—thanks to his two primary sources of information: Twitter and Facebook. Not only do these two social platforms feed him his information, but he also uses them as a dissemination tool. Moreover, news obtained from social media sites has made it possible for someone with a singular talent, like Latuff, to bolster the efforts of activists abroad. Although he is not Egyptian, and will not likely be on Egyptian soil any time soon, he is still able to follow and interact with thousands of Egyptians online, providing him with perhaps even more insight than if he were on the ground. And yet another reason why Latuff does not fall into the role of detached artist is because Latuff is not just an artist. He is an artivist. He knows what it is like to raise issues that are obscured by one’s govern-

ment and to risk one’s life in an effort to bring about a greater sense of humanity. “I have been arrested three times in Brazil for making cartoons against state and police brutality, homelessness, education, and workers’ strikes. I believe in making art for a change,” Latuff stated passionately. And that is perhaps what binds him so closely to other activists throughout the world, all waging their own battles on the human rights front, whether the battlefield is Tahrir Square in Egypt, Pearl Square in Bahrain, or Martyrs’ Square in Libya. For right now, though, Latuff must be content with confining his own personal reach to the “public square” of the Internet. However, with close to 50,000 followers on Twitter, well over that number through various Facebook groups, and an ever-increasing fan base, his public square evades the limitations imposed by cordoned-off streets, flanks of police, and armored personnel carriers. Rather, his gallery to the world seems to be only expanding with time. The Jan. 25 Revolution—the Facebook Revolution—in Egypt is far from over, and Latuff is prepared to chronicle the Revolution in vivid color every step of the way. ERIN BIEL ’14 is a Global Affairs and Ethnicity, Race, & Migration double major in Ezra Stiles College. Contact her at erin.biel@yale.edu.

A CONVERSATION WITH 39

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Q & A

A Conversation with Benjamin Cann Benjamin Cann is a Mexican telenovela writer and director for Televisa, the largest television network in Latin America. His telenovelas have won awards in Mexico and have gained large fan bases abroad. This interview was conducted by SOFIA NORTEN.

Q: What exactly does your job entail? A: I am a director. This means I am in

charge of telling the story.... I decide if the story we are telling is realistic or nonrealistic. I decide if we try to impact the audience with action and suspense, or if we try to make them laugh and cry with the lives of the characters. So, in the end, I am responsible for achieving the main goal: to make the audience identify with the lives of the characters. [For this] I offer the audience a variety of possibilities: entertainment, introspection.

Q: I know that your 2004 hit “Rubi”

was broadcast in both Israel and Arab countries. As shows like “Rubi” begin to reach more international and diverse audiences, what changes have you had to make in order to appeal to different audiences?

A: I have to be honest about this: My

main audience is the Mexican audience. Not all of it. We think mainly of the lower classes and the middle class. We try to entertain those who cannot afford other possibilities of entertainment. Those whose economic possibilities do not allow them to go shopping as a form of evasion or entertainment. Those who do not travel for fun. Those who suffer economic marginalization. This is my main audience—audiences with low levels of formal education. And we know they watch it while doing something else. While working, while cooking or doing house chores, while watching their kids, while doing their homework… this is very important to us. We do not make television to win awards. We do not, as a main objective, explore new techniques or technological advances. We do try to avoid language forms that will offend other audiences, even audiences who speak Spanish outside of Mexico. And it is important to keep in mind that

we make telenovelas that the whole family can watch together, so there is never explicit sex or any form of showing violence that will alter the very conservative morals of the Mexican audiences. But actually the subjects that we talk about, the stories that we tell, and the way they are produced are so family-oriented and so “universal” that it is very easy to show them anywhere.

progressive or controversial subject matters in telenovelas lately (such as same sex-relationships, religion, abortion, narcotrafficantes)?

guys, against those who lie, the bad guys. This is very significant in a country in which we are very aware that our leaders lie. We try to show a beautiful country. In a way, we are very proud of our country: of our landscapes and our beaches, of our honest people, of our good manners, and of our very rich variety of traditions and food. So we show these things off. But we hide the ugly. We hide the bad. We actually show the bad in order to remind us that we punish the bad. Every bad action will be punished in the end. Every bad character will be punished and will suffer for his bad actions.

A: Actually, sadly, no. Production com-

Q: Do you think that telenovelas can

Q: Has there been an increase of

panies, exhibition companies, in Mexico, are very conservative and have not shown a real interest in getting involved with any controversial subject matters. I say “sadly” because, in my point of view as a storyteller, I think we should talk about controversial matters in order to be closer to the lives of our audiences.... The telenovelas I direct are generally love stories, romantic comedies, or romantic dramas, melodramas in which good defeats bad. In many forms, in many different ways, but still frozen in time, still always the same type of story that, surprisingly enough, still attracts… big audiences all over the world. So are we frozen in time, or is the whole world frozen in time?

Q: What sorts of Mexican values, or

possibly stereotypes, do you think that telenovelas communicate to the rest of the world?

A: The telenovelas that I have been

involved with are always very careful in showing certain stereotypes very clearly: the good guys and the bad guys. Those who prefer love and moral good behavior against those who prefer crime and ambition. Those who tell the truth, the good

be negative in the sense that they may stereotype Mexican culture? Why or why not?

A: Telenovelas are stories in which good defeats bad. In which honesty defeats corruption. We all know it is not necessarily true, but it is true in fiction itself. Fiction is always an arbitrary reflection of reality. Every watcher, every spectator will have the right or the chance to believe it or not. We always know we are watching a fiction. In that fiction characters live in beautiful cities, in beautiful houses. I certainly know my city is different than the city shown in the show, even if they have the same name, even if they have the same streets and references. Fictions are dreams made by persons, and they exist because we believe, fair enough, in dreams. We dream that dreams may come true, even if in reality we know they will not come true, for they are dreams, and we are able to discern—we know they are dreams. SOFIA NORTEN ’15 is in Morse College. Contact her at sofia.norten@yale.edu.