Fidel Castro earlier this month in Havana (Image: Estudios Revolución)

International media made a big deal about Fidel Castro’s spate of public appearances this month. On July 11, he was on Cuban TV for the first time since he fell very ill in 2006. Later the same week Fidel made his fifth public appearance in just nine days (including a visit to the Cuban aquarium’s dolphin show).

In an editorial, the San Francisco Chronicle mentioned that Fidel’s appearance on TV coincided with the release of dozens of political prisoners by Raúl Castro, who now runs the Cuban government. The newspaper wondered if Fidel’s remarks on Cuban TV warning about the risks of nuclear proliferation were part of a new openness, or whether they were only “observations from an aging revolutionary who craves attention and hasn’t quite accepted retirement.”

My bet: neither. Also, give the guy a break: Fidel Castro, like any retired government executive, has a right to visit institutions, glad-hand, and pontificate on TV. Jimmy Carter does it, God knows Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, and Al Gore do it. No one gets out the tea leaves when they appear in public.

The one conclusion that can be derived from Castro’s recent appearances, I think, contrary to most press reports’ asides on how “frail” he looks, is that Fidel Castro is much improved, otherwise he would not be showing himself as much. (Newspapers, I think, tend to have a bias toward implying old famous people are half-dead, since their obituary writers and editors need the encouragement to get major obits ready.)

The photo to the left, from a few days ago, shows Fidel looking rather well (compare to another photo from 10 months ago). Physical strength has always been part of Fidel’s mystique. And his resilience after major gastrointestinal surgery has, I think, added another chapter to that dimension of his biography. Even if he were to die tomorrow, his four years of hanging in there since he bowed out of the presidency for health reasons are still, on a simple human level, impressive.

I was forwarded this video by a reader, a fellow Argentine-American sort. It’s a fascinating must-see for anyone who has been to Buenos Aires. Judging by the “FW: RV: Fwd: FW:” business going on in the subject line of my friend’s e-mail, this video has been sent around by Argies quite a bit already.

It’s an MGM-produced travelogue video from 1932, probably meant to be shown in the newsreel segment ahead of feature films. It shows Buenos Aires, and Argentina, as it was in the early 1930s. This was still fat-cat Argentina, with wealthy estancieros and businessmen lounging by their riverside estates, at the Hippodrome, etc. As a porteño (native of Buenos Aires), I couldn’t help but share it.

There is one thought I had on how much Buenos Aires has changed in the decades since the film was made. The fountain shown towards the beginning, with the sirens and water gurgling here and there, today is surrounded by an eight foot wall of Plexiglass, hockey rink-style, to keep away vandals, looters (who often plunder Buenos Aires monuments for bronze), and opportunistic bathers. The Plexiglass is an eyesore, but Buenos Aires is no longer in its Belle Époque; instead it’s limping along in its sort of 80-year-long post-boom hangover. As my friend and I mused in an email exchange, Argentina and its capital kind of froze after 1930, when the Great Depression (and a military coup that same year) began to catch up with its once-prosperous democracy and ushered in a long fall from grace, still ongoing.

The old school facets of Buenos Aires that charm the many gringo expats who have taken up residence there (birdcage elevators, art deco and art nouveau buildings, ultra-retro signage, bad plumbing, etc.) are all evidence that things didn’t change all too much once the Depression punctured its for-export beef, grain, and wool economy.

Anyways, enjoy:

I spent much of last week reporting on the Mormon Church, or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), and its position or non-position on immigration.

The result was a 1500-word article that was published today at New America Media, just as Utah authorities gathered for a one-day immigration summit convened by Gov. Gary Herbert.

Utah, of course, is the headquarters of the LDS Church, and a state where two-thirds of the population belong to that church.

Why is Utah a hot state for immigration politics? Because Utah, just north of border state Arizona, is a likely next stop for a hardline approach towards immigration. Already, a Utah legislator, Rep. Stephen Sandstrom, says he will introduce a Utah law that will mirror Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, set to go into effect later this month, which authorizes police to investigate a suspect’s immigration status. Both Sandstrom and the sponsor of Arizona’s legislation, Russell Pearce, are LDS Church members.

Utah’s immigration situation also became national news last week when a blacklist of 1,300 alleged undocumented immigrants living in Utah (a list illegally compiled by state employees using government databases) was circulated to media and government offices. The blacklist, an attempt to “out” hundreds of people living in the country without papers, was universally condemned (with the exception of some Utah Minutemen, who didn’t like that one of their leaders condemned the list).

All of this, for me, raised the question: How does the Mormon Church, which is the dominant institution in Utah, feel about immigrants?

continue »

The narco-submarine in its mangrove "shipyard"

Police in Ecuador recently seized a 30-meter (98-foot) fully submersible submarine built, the authorities say, to carry cocaine tonnage across a swath of the Pacific to Mexico.

The DEA called it “the first seizure of a clandestinely constructed fully operational submarine built to facilitate trans-oceanic drug trafficking.”

It was among the most sophisticated narco-submarines ever discovered by authorities. According to the DEA, which assisted in the bust, it has an extra-strength hull, can carry a half-dozen crew members, and was outfitted with periscope, climate control, a hybrid electric-diesel engine (eco-friendly!) and state-of-the-art navigation tools.

An AFP story quotes Joel Loaiza, head of Ecuador’s drug police, who says the “narco-submarine” only required some sealing to the hatch area before it was seaworthy. Loaiza said the sub was set to sail for Mexico, with up to 12 tons of cocaine. It was found in a coastal area of Ecuador near the border with Colombia.

But the most interesting information in the many stories on this narco-sub, which made headlines throughout Latin America when it was found earlier this month, was the estimated cost of the underwater ship.

Loaiza, for one, put the submarine’s price tag at $4 million. Consider first that the submarine can carry up to 12 metric tons of coke. Then consider that the United Nations’ World Drug Report put the wholesale price of cocaine at $7,800 per kilo in Mexico, which means about $8 million for a metric ton (the report’s estimates are for 2004, so if anything, today’s price is probably higher). continue »

Carles Puyol (Image by FIFA)

I was thinking of something to write about Spain’s soccer team, which on Sunday will play in the World Cup finals against the Netherlands. But all I could think of was Puyol’s hair. Carles Puyol was the star of Spain’s semifinal 1-0 win against Germany, and he is right now, in economically depressed Spain, a demi-god.

However, look at that mop. Soccer players are known for their mullets and déclassé and risqué hair styles, so it’s not like Puyol is necessarily a standout.

After all, at The New Republic magazine’s World Cup blog, Rabih Alameddine cited Puyol for second place in the worst hair category, but in the end went for a Slovak, Marek Hamsik, and his new wave mohawk as the tournament’s worst hair. And there were enough mullets on the Argentine team alone to build a hair-thread net that would probably contain the Gulf oil spill.

But there is something beyond retro about Puyol’s hair, something magical about it. Those bouncy curls, they must have given special oomph to the ball when the relatively stocky 5′8” Puyol headed the ball for the winning goal. Apparently Puyol has a history of knocking in bullet-speed headers.

Puyol is from Catalonia, that autonomous community around Barcelona, where Catalan is spoken, and where the cliquish natives sometimes consider themselves a cut above the rest of the Iberian peninsula. It is a wealthy forward-thinking cosmopolitan place, but not immune from that Mediterranean predilection for casting an eye back to ancient times. Perhaps it is not so much that Puyol’s crown of hairy oodles is outmodishly cool, but that it harks way back, to princely times, when a bunch of Catalan knight-wannabes bounced around on their steeds with similar floppy dues curling out of their helmets. continue »