La Plaza Central

Today’s good story comes from CNN’s Heroes series.  Erika Vohman is a biologist who encountered the Maya nut while working in Guatemala, and has been promoting its use ever since.  The Maya nut grows naturally in the rainforests stretching from Mexico through Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras into Nicaragua.  It can be made to taste like anything from mashed potatoes to coffee to chocolate.  In 2001, Vohman created an NGO, The Equilibrium Fund, to promote the Maya nut in workshops offered to women in five countries.  The charlas on harvesting, packaging and cooking the Maya nut also serve as a lesson on sustainable agriculture in the rainforest.  Check out the videos and see for yourself.

Video on Erika Vohman and The Equilibrium Fund
Workshops offered by The Equilibrium Fund

Here is a video on what exactly the Summit of the Americas is, how it works, and what it does.  The video comes from Howcast.com and it’s a little bit like the educational videos from junior high, but still informative and concise.

It looks like Latin America will be getting a little attention this week as President Obama travels to Mexico City today and then on to Trinidad and Tobago for the Summit of the Americas with a healthy contingent of staff in tow.  Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano Energy Secretary Steven Chu (Video) will accompany the President to Mexico City, the second largest metropolis in the world behind Tokyo with 20 million inhabitants.  It’s a shame that the President doesn’t have time to catch a game in Estadio Azteca.  Interestingly, Obama is only the fifth president in the last 100 years to visit Mexico City, and they all have been Democrats.

Then it’s on to the aforementioned Summit of the Americas in T&T where President Obama will meet with 33 other heads of government.  No doubt the talk will be about how he handles ALBA pack (Chávez, Morales, Ortega, and Castro), but the agenda for the summit is an ambitious one.  Topics on the docket to be discussed include energy, environment, security, democracy, prosperity, and how the summit itself should function.  Stay tuned for the results.

Here’s an interesting video passed on to me by another RPCV from Nicaragua.  It’s a little something to ponder on your Friday.

(Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters)

This must be what countries with no army do.  It is good to see that Nicaragua and Costa Rica, two countries that are currently disputing the legitimate location of their shared border can come together over their mutual love of a delicious meal of rice and beans.

Check out the video on the linked page.

Photo from BBC News

In keeping with our new (one week old) theme of something fun on Fridays, I wanted to post about this, the yearly poetry festival in Granada, Nicaragua.  Poetry is akin to a religion in Nicaragua.  This is a country whose national hero and native son, Rubén Darío, is a poet who spent much of his life outside of Nicaragua.  The story of Darío is very interesting, if you have the time.  He was publishing poetry at age 12 and teaching in El Salvador at age 14.  He was extremely peripatetic, constantly moving around to Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Argentina, France and Spain.  Here are some sample poems of his in English.  Modern day Nicaraguan poets like Gioconda Belli and Ernesto Cardenal are also seen as national heroes by many Nicaraguans.

First, the link from the Omaha World-Herald.  The article is about the large percentage of immigrant farm workers from indigenous communities in Latin America.  Oftentimes, they don’t self-identify as indigenous because of the prejudice they face in their home countries, and so they are underestimated in surveys of farm workers here in the U.S.  They arrived here for many of the same reasons as their more “Hispanicized” or ladino countrymen, primarily war and poverty.  In many cases, they suffered the most when it came to civil wars and oppression of the people.

I think that it might be hard for some of us to conceptualize, for example, a person from Mexico who is not “Mexican” in the sense that we think of as being Mexican.  Guatemala is geographically about half the size of Nebraska.  There are 21 official languages spoken in Guatemala.  My job took me to many small towns where the only ones in the auditorium who could speak Spanish were me and the community representative.  There are many other areas of Latin American that are the same way: southern Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru, to name a few.

I sometimes wonder to what extent and how quickly all of these differences will dissipate and eventually disappear as our world becomes more interconnected.   But that’s for another day.

If you are blessed to get to go the Dominican Republic avoid  the ugly hamster/anteater looking thing.  I do like the name, though.  Hispaniola solenodon.

I link to this article in Time magazine today for three reasons. One, it involves Nicaragua. B, it mentions Kiva.org which is one of my favorite organizations. And three, as any of my Peace Corps brethren will tell you, pastries in Central America are a tricky game of roulette. So many times did we step into a panadería looking for a dessert to satisfy the post-beans and rice sweet tooth, but rarely if ever did we select the slices of cake or cupcakes. That was because cake there is nothing like cake here. Here there is flour, there they have some grainy corn powder-like substance or Maseca, neither of which ever seemed to taste very good in cake. I’m sure that better ingredients are cost prohibitive for most places, but that doesn’t change the fact that when in doubt in Central America you should probably opt for donuts and bananas, and wash it all down with a fresco from a bag. Unless, I guess, you’re at the Little Mango Bakery in Managua.

Hey.  If you have some time, or even if you don’t, PBS’s Frontline came out with a program called The Hugo Chávez Show about his rise to power and his attempts to foment a socialist revolution in Venezuela.  It’s a whole 90 minutes, and you can watch the whole thing online in Inglés or Español.  Here’s the link.

I know this is more international than local, but since nobody answers the poll question (election fatigue?) I really don’t know what people want to hear about.