REVIEWS
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 17. Gonzalo S. Paz, “Rising China’s ‘Offensive’ in Latin America and the U.S. Reaction,” Asian Perspective 30, no. 4 (2006): 111. 18. People’s Daily, October...
...The Tío, a deity venerated and feared by workers as lord and guardian of the mine, must be paid utter respect and regularly made offerings...
...Such an effort would also contribute to the growing literature on the history of science, technology, and medicine in Latin America...
...2. José Flavio Sombra Saraiva, O lugar da Africa...
...What’s more, Smallman argues, focusing on poverty alone can minimize other social factors that exacerbate the epidemic but whose interrogation may pose more of a challenge to national elites—patriarchy, gender inequality, ethnic and racial discrimination...
...Father Jesús seems to misunderstand the essential paradox involved here...
...Yet the geography of the Honduran epidemic does not seem to support this hypothesis...
...Smallman calls the relationship between democracy and HIV “probably the most understudied question in the field...
...Peter Hakim, “Is Washington Losing Latin America...
...Nonetheless, he asserts that the conditions for the “progressive reform of capitalism” are absent, and may not reappear, and he therefore concludes that “the use of some type of revolutionary violence will be inevitable...
...27...
...They are interrupted by the sound of explosions and have to hurry to the surface—counting the explosions, because it is essential that these match the number of charges actually laid...
...Shawn Smallman’s The AIDS Pandemic in Latin America, an ambitious new study of the history of AIDS in the region, will provide conference-goers and anyone interested in the topic with an excellent introduction...
...He inspires sympathy rather than pity...
...In the Western Hemisphere, one of the poorest countries in the region, Bolivia, has a very low prevalence of HIV infection compared to the United States and Argentina...
...co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4872522.stm...
...The same applies to the strategy adopted by Braulio, who marks Basilio’s first day at the Rosario mine by taking him into its very depths...
...The massive cone of the Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain), source of much of the silver that flowed into Spain’s coffers from its American colonies, looms over the city as a topographical and historical behemoth...
...countries like Brazil and Egypt...
...Smallman demonstrates a remarkable resourcefulness and creativity in using whatever sources are available to illuminate facets of the epidemic he is unable to tackle in a more straightforward journalistic mode, like the experiences of Cuba’s roqueros and the perspective that the beliefs of Candomblé offer HIV-positive Brazilians...
...Basilio talks in his noncommittal way about being stigmatized and mocked by schoolmates because he works in the shaft...
...A Quechua speaker whose earnings from guarding the mine entrance do not suffice to maintain three children, she is 37 but looks far older...
...He is fully conscious of the possibility of an early death—either through a mine accident or from the insidious effects of silicosis...
...Basilio is not only a vulnerable boy but also the breadwinner, essential to the well-being of all of them...
...By regional standards, Mexico has a relatively low rate of HIV infection...
...The tools belong to Basilio, and attention switches to his fresh face as he introduces himself, his brother, and the foreman Saturnino...
...HenriqueAltemanideOliveira,“China-Brasil:perspectivasdecooperaciónSur-Sur,” Nueva sociedad, August 9, 2006, www.nuso.org/upload/articulos/3357_1.pdf...
...his tone and delivery comply with the film’s avoidance of sentimentalism...
...21...
...A German NGO, Kindernothilfe, donated 1 million euros in aid of the street children of Potosí, though the film does not explicitly claim credit for this...
...The foreman Saturnino points out that this is infinitely more than just a working environment...
...1 (January/February 2006): 45...
...This is reflected in the cheerful Andean music (sanjuanitos from Ecuador are chosen for some reason) that accompanies the entire family, buying uniforms in the markets for the imminent opening of the school year, and visiting barbers for the regulation “semi-mushroom” haircut...
...The film operates an effective interaction between the private lives of its subjects and the implacable economic realities that surround them...
...Comparative studies from around the world have made clear that a nation’s level of economic development, in and of itself, is not a good predictor of how its population will be impacted by HIV...
...Given the frequent distrust of government initiatives, the moral authority of NGO workers, who often share identities and problems relating to sexuality, drugs, and other issues with the communities they serve, can often be of great importance...
...These workers, including some of tender age, like Basilio Vargas (14 when this film was made) and his younger brother Bernardino (then 12), are fully aware of the dangers they face...
...Still the world’s highest city, it is also one of the most visually dramatic...
...Lugubrious electronic music accompanies an introductory caption explaining that the Cerro Rico has been exploited for more than 450 years and that more than 5,000 indigenous miners working in cooperatives still search for any remaining minerals...
...The discovery of one of the richest silver lodes ever found appeared to confirm God’s approval of Spanish domination...
...In analyzing the current situation in its historical context, he argues that there has not been a general shift to the left—a “pink tide”—but that, rather, what has been created is a model of neoliberal democracy “capable of ‘tolerating’ left governments as long as they are committed to governing with right-wing policies...
...23...
...The gang of drillers attacking the vein with pneumatic equipment creates an inferno of noise, dust, and confusion admirably caught on film— an approximation of the terrifying and sobering effect this is intended to exert on the youngster...
...0 SUBCOMMANDER MARCOS: ThE MAN AND ThE MASK By Nick Henck, 2007, Duke University Press, 528 pages, $24.95 paperback in this first english-language bio graphy of Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, better known to the world as Subcommander Marcos of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, Nick Henck retraces some of what is already familiar about this now infamous masked guerrilla: his upbringing of relative privilege, his higher education, his university professorship...
...Well-intentioned teachers work in limited circumstances, inculcating respect for the national flag and anthem and integrating religious values into everyday life...
...He speaks with genuine confidence rather than bravado, yet the transparent emotion in his gaze and voice is contagious...
...Infections have been concentrated in urban areas in the central and northern part of the country, while the Contra bases were located along the southern border...
...in each, Smallman emphasizes the contrasts between countries with very different experience of the epidemic...
...Forrest Hylton’s contribution on Medellín, the city that one historian called in 1989 “the world capital of crime,” is especially illuminating given Latin America’s long history as the testing ground of neoliberalism...
...the Tío has the power to take or spare lives and must be constantly appeased...
...Another universal is the unthinking cruelty of childhood...
...It reviews is an inevitably piecemeal lesson “about the universe” in which the relative sizes of planets in the solar system are explained...
...When viewed in an international context, Smallman argues, “perhaps the most compelling question about Latin America’s experience is why there [has] been so little spread of HIV...
...government for its efforts to produce generic antiretroviral medications...
...Reviews: Books and More ThE DEvIL’S MINER (DVD, 2006, 82 minutes), a film by Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani, distributed by First Run/Icarus Films, www.thedevils miner.com several documentaries have appeared since Evo Morales was elected president of Bolivia, some of which are closely linked to political developments in that country...
...China Undermines U.S...
...This is particularly true when he relies on World Health Organization and UNAIDS figures to illuminate important differences in countries’ experiences of HIV/AIDS...
...jokes and wrestles with Bernardino under the blankets...
...Basilio gives his brother a remarkably coherent explanation of the Tío’s significance as they chew coca under its forbidding gaze...
...The 2008 conference is already generating international attention to the lessons that might be learned from the region’s experiences...
...22...
...Drawing on nearly every published work ever written by Marcos, Henck argues that while the guerrilla leader is most well-known for his media savvy, more important is his “great flexibility of mind,” which allowed him to put aside the theoretical priorities he had brought with him as a radical intellectual and to become a conduit for the demands of the indigenous population of Chiapas...
...As Saturnino puts it, “Outside we believe in God, we cross ourselves...
...Such measures have the potential to dramatically slow the spread of the virus and to reduce mortality, as the Brazilian example dramatically illustrates...
...Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 9. 26...
...With case studies of cities like Dubai, Hong Kong, Kabul, Managua, and Medellín...
...We see a splash of the animal’s blood against the wall next to the cross above the mine entrance, a powerful expression of spiritual ambivalence...
...troops or the CIA and Nicaraguan Contra forces stationed there during the war...
...Premiered in 2005, it was finally shown in La Paz in October 2006 and welcomed as providing an outside viewpoint invaluable in the comprehension of national reality...
...Nevertheless this documentary perfectly illustrates its theme and will be of use to universities, study and pressure groups, and anyone interested in the still bleak and enduring colonial legacy in Latin America...
...Education is the great hope: Basilio is seen at the school, which represents practically a holiday for him, providing a crucial stimulus to his imagination...
...This may be because the government has provided health testing to sex workers and because IV drug use is uncommon...
...The book is organized by subregion, with chapters on the Caribbean, Brazil, Mexico and Central America, and Spanish South America...
...For this reason, Smallman worries that a focus on poverty can “let both national elites and the international community off the hook,” allowing them to point the finger at macroeconomic policies like structural adjustment and unfair terms of trade—obscuring the crucial role that political leadership can play in challenging stigma and defending the human rights of those infected, increasing popular awareness of effective prevention methods, and ensuring that those infected receive adequate treatment...
...On the one hand, the Brazilian government was forced to contend with intense opposition from the multinational pharmaceutical industry and the U.S...
...The priest sees the church’s failure when he witnesses the miners’ divided worship...
...The most dramatic example of this in the Americas is the contrast between Honduras and Nicaragua...
...Moreover, they elide the U.S...
...The most dangerous part of his job, which consists of chiseling holes in the rock and inserting explosive charges, is tapping the stick of dynamite into the hole...
...3. See www.desenvolvimento.gov.br/sitio/secex/depPlaDesComExterior/ind Estatisticas/intCom_IntBloEconPaises2007.php...
...The miners’ identity is a source of pride and their place of work a distinct spiritual universe...
...Basilio plays with his six-year-old sister Vanessa, who calls him papa...
...25...
...Despite Latin America’s widespread poverty, gender inequality, IV drug use, hidden male homosexuality, extensive sex trade, and often imperfect public health systems, it has largely been spared a generalized pandemic (with the exception of Haiti, Guyana, and perhaps Honduras...
...Acknowledging that much epidemiological work remains to be done, he argues that understanding the history of HIV/AIDS in the region and the international factors that shaped it can suggest some initial answers...
...NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS LATIN AMERICA AT ThE CROSS ROADS: DOMINATION, CRISIS, POPULAR MOvEMENTS AND POLITICAL ALTERNATIvES By Roberto Regalado, 2007, Ocean Press, 263 pages, $17.95 paperback at first glance, roberto regalado’s Latin America at the Crossroads appears to be yet another in the recent flurry of books documenting Latin America’s “pink tide...
...Smallman admirably synthesizes information from a range of available sources from the social and biomedical sciences...
...Humphrey Hawksley, “Chinese Influence in Brazil Worries US,” http://news.bbc...
...His book, tentatively titled Latin America Through Film, is forthcoming from McFarland in 2008...
...But they appear to have been attracted by the symbolic value of Potosí as well as the city’s visual impact...
...An imposing effigy represents this deity at the entrance to every mine...
...Spectacular shots of Basilio and other family members walking the dirt roads above Potosí remind us of their marginal existence, but their descent into the city brings them to a far more benign environment...
...The Devil’s Miner, by Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani, is instead a social document that avoids overt political comment...
...Beyond these domestic factors, however, “perception and response to the epidemic in [Brazil and Mexico] was shaped by its relation to the United States as well as its particular political culture...
...His inclusion of key Spanish- and Portuguese-language texts generat SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007 reviews ed by Latin American scholars and activists in the early years of the epidemic are especially noteworthy, attesting to his linguistic competence as well as his dedication to providing a carefully documented historical overview of the epidemic...
...On the other hand, the Brazilian government’s policy of universal treatment was bolstered by a massive investment in health infrastructure and training financed by three successive loans from the World Bank...
...The miners’ fear of the mountain is, however, entirely justified...
...But in this exhaustive study, readers also see each of the revolutionary seeds as they were sown: his initial contacts with members of National Liberation Forces at the Metropolitan Autonomous University, his travels to the south of Mexico with those comrades to create a southern wing of the FLN, which would become the EZLN, and his work in the decade between his move to the Lacandón jungle in 1984 and the offensive that put the Zapatistas on the world stage in 1994, a period during which he transformed from an urbane Mexico City professor into a full time guerrilla leader...
...We gain access to this duality from various perspectives—those of the miners themselves (through Saturnino and another foreman, Braulio), from the brothers about to enter the pit, and through the perspective of a priest, Father Jesús...
...As Farmer made clear, while HIV is transmitted through the most intimate of personal behaviors (sex, intravenous drug use, breastfeeding), the pandemic reflects complex historical and international issues, from the economic forces shaping poverty and intellectual property regimes to the cultural beliefs that define difference, morality, and prejudice...
...But inside we believe in Satan...
...The statistics, and the social categories upon which they are based, go unquestioned...
...NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 17...
...Most miners die well before they reach 45, and Basilio is anxious to study and escape this fate...
...Ladkani and Davidson have avoided overt political commentary...
...This is rendered visually by the ponderous entry made by Ladkani’s camera into the mouth of the mine to the SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007 barely audible clink of hammer against chisel...
...William Ratliff, “Raul, China, and Post-Fidel Cuba,” Latin Business Chronicle, August 28, 2006, www.latinbusinesschronicle.com/app/article.aspx?id=369...
...But the reasons may also lie in cultural and social responses that are partly outside the federal government’s control and come from the local or state level...
...He allows that the governments of Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales do not fit within the schema of legitimacy imposed by imperialism (sadly, his confidence in the revolutionary potential in the 2006 Sandinista victory seems seriously misplaced) and that the “steamroller” of imperialist dominations has lost some small measure of its effectiveness...
...The film certainly does not neglect the opportunity to exploit the didactic possibilities offered by its location...
...Brazilian NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NGO workers, for example, are more likely to enter places like favelas than state employees...
...Potosí, as one of the miners points out, once held the largest urban population in the Western Hemisphere, bigger than London or Paris in the 17th century...
...This makes him, Henck argues, “the most advanced stage so far in the evolution of the revolutionary,” posing the question: Who comes next...
...role in Bolivian mining...
...in Latin America,” Latin Business Chronicle, June 4, 2007, available at www.latinbusinesschronicle.com/app/article .aspx?id=1297...
...The DVD’s extras show a relieved Basilio having escaped the mines, but this happy ending still applies to a tiny proportion of Bolivian children forced into work, or life on the streets, by economic hardship...
...In this, Smallman’s work follows in the tradition of Paul Farmer’s seminal work on the early years of Haiti’s epidemic, AIDS and Accusation...
...Stark shots of the stone shack far above the city they call home, sharing space with mining machinery and piles of rubble, is contrasted with the often amusing and touching scenes within...
...Her husband, who was not a miner, nevertheless died relatively young...
...In Medellín, as in many of the locales described in this collection, condos are a poor substitute for citizenship...
...One critic saw it as “essential in order to understand the world of the Potosí mines...
...It has as much to do with the here-and-now as with historical statistics and colonial propaganda...
...4 (2004): 5. 20...
...Although he is characteristically cautious positing conclusions, Small-man ultimately declares that “HIV would have had a far more serious impact on Latin America if it had not been for the flowering of civil society that accompanied the region’s democratization...
...Thus, the neoliberal makeover of the city, Hylton argues, creates a “ ‘weak’ or ‘thin’ citizenship, based largely on North Atlantic models of consumerism and electoral politics...
...Another example of the miners’ spirituality arises at the ceremonial sacrifice of a llama to the Tío...
...This glimpse of universal childhood reappears as he and Bernardino hurl water bombs at girls during the carnival procession that offers one of the community’s main diversions...
...And the impact of this film is not limited to aesthetic value and affective power...
...and the psychic cartographies of malls, monasteries, and museums, the authors examine the physical manifestations of neoliberalism’s “winner-take-all ethos . . . unfettered by any remnant of social contract,” mapping “terminal . . . stages in the late history of modernity...
...The Devil’s Miner is an excellent documentary that is at once moving, poetic, and informative...
...In Oaxaca, given the tension between the government (both state and federal) and rural indigenous communities, NGO workers are able to carry out sex education and HIV-prevention campaigns in the countryside...
...Basilio, who had already been working for four years when this documentary appeared, was carefully chosen as an intelligent, articulate, and agreeable subject whose frankness and equanimity is refreshing...
...SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007 reviews ThE AIDS PANDEMIC IN LATIN AMERICA by Shawn Smallman, University of North Carolina Press, 2007, 290 pages, $22.50 paperback next august, the 17th international AIDS Conference will take place for the first time in Latin America, in Mexico City...
...Furthermore, while poverty is an important factor in explaining the relative spread of HIV, poor countries are not all equally affected by the virus...
...Shanti Avirgan Shanti Avirgan is a documentary filmmaker and graduate student in New York University’s anthropology department...
...and talks of his mother’s taste for horror films among the fare offered on their small battery-powered television...
...A dimensão atlantica da politica externa brasileira (de 1946 a nossos dias) (Universidade de Brasilia, 1996...
...This is evident in one of the most mysterious aspects of AIDS: its ability to devastate one country, while a statistically and culturally similar neighbor escapes its wrath...
...His mother, Manuela, shares this hope...
...The miners hope that the sated deity will desist from taking human life...
...Foreign Affairs 85, no...
...This is unfortunate, since a comparative history of the ways in which biomedical knowledge about the epidemic has been produced would illuminate the interplay between exactly the international and local forces that Smallman is after...
...they leave any reflection on Bolivian politics to the viewer, and the filming predates the election of Morales...
...The contrast between the opportunity for reverie presented by classes and NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS the bleak reality of work is eloquently expressed in a scene where the brothers pause in the mine to chat about school...
...The particular importance of NGOs can be seen in Mexico and Brazil, which both experienced a proliferation of AIDS NGOs in the late 1980s and early 1990s...
...Smallman concludes that there is no clear explanation of why the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Honduras emerged so early and impacted young heterosexuals so severely...
...4. Khatchik Derghougassian, “IBSA No-Gubernamental,” paper presented at the international conference “Los poderes emergentes y la seguridad regional: el caso IBSA” (Emerging Powers and Regional Security: The IBSA Case), organized by the Universidad de San Andrés and Le monde diplomatique, Buenos Aires, Mayo 30, 2006...
...Middle Powers 1. www.iade.org.ar/modules/noticias/article.php?storyid=1570...
...In country after country, Smallman demonstrates, the popular protests of grassroots activists, often acting with funds from international donors, have led to key policy changes, from the enforcement of human rights provisions to the provision of free treatment for the ill...
...More than 20,000 delegates— research scientists, health care workers, journalists, businesspeople, philanthropists, religious leaders, artists, public health bureaucrats, and HIV-positive activists and advocates—from almost every country on earth are expected...
...There are few girls in the class, but Basilio doesn’t associate with them in any case because they scratch and play rough...
...Smallman examines the argument that the virus was introduced by U.S...
...EvIL PARADISES: DREAMWORLDS OF NEOLIBERALISM Edited by Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk, 2007, The New Press, 336 pages, $26.95 hardcover davis and monk’s new edited collection of essays attempts to examine “the new geographies ofexclusionandlandscapes of wealth that have arisen during the long ‘globalization’ boom since 1990...
...But while he contextualizes the social and cultural research, he settles for only the occasional cautionary note when presenting quantitative data...
...Perhaps the most dramatic illustration of this comes from the African continent, where the richest country, South Africa, has been most devastated by the epidemic...
...Honduras, the epicenter of the disease in Central America, had a sharply higher rate of HIV infections early in the epidemic, which was predominantly heterosexual...
...The Brazilian National AIDS Program (NAP)—widely recognized as the leading example of an integrated HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment program in a middle-income country with significant levels of social inequality—illuminates the contradictions and complexities of globalization in the AIDS era...
...But this is a hard area to delineate because of the integral role played by AIDS NGOs and community-based charities in almost every arena of national responses in countries like Brazil and Argentina...
...As for Nicaragua, the isolation imposed by the war may explain its low rate of infections...
...While there are notable exceptions like Peru, the historical context in which HIV/AIDS emerged in Latin America was one in which authoritarian regimes were crumbling while civil society, in the form of grassroots groups and internationally connected NGOs, was flourishing...
...Basilio explains to Bernardino that Tío (Spanish for uncle) in this context is a corruption of the Spanish Dios (God...
...Keith John Richards Keith John Richards teaches literature and film at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz, Bolivia...
...For detailed analysis of the topic, see Ming Wan, Human Rights in Chinese Foreign Relations Defining and Defending National Interests (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001...
...the charge might detonate with, of course, lethal consequences...
...Overall, Smallman is struck by the effectiveness of many Latin American states in responding to the epidemic, even in the absence of economic resources...
...Many have created public health infrastructures, fostered communication systems that make international collaboration possible, and participated in the Pan-American Health Organization...
...The estimate that at least 8 million people have died in the mines (according to the foreman Braulio) might be contested by historians, but what is undeniable is the grim legacy giving rise to the epithet “the mountain that eats men...
...Randall Peerenboom, China Modernizes: Threat to the West or Model for the Rest...
...The choice of Potosí as location is in itself significant—the filmmakers could have chosen other, dowdier mining areas in Bolivia...
...their actions are geared toward self-preservation...
...Project Group on Latin American Studies, China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, “Report on China’s Latin American Policy,” Xiandai guoji guanxi (Contemporary International Relations), no...
...But Christianity is part and parcel of the cultural and economic imposition that forces people into the mine in the first instance...
...The limpieza of Medellín’s red-light districts, drug markets, and gang-controlled areas by private narco-paramilitary security forces made way for urban redevelopment and foreign investment in the form of condos, luxury hotels, shopping centers, and corporate headquarters...
...Jiang Shixue,“A New Look at the Chinese Relations with Latin America,” Nueva sociedad, August 9, 2006, www.nuso.org/upload/articulos/3351_2.pdf...
...Potosí became central to the so-called Black Legend with which the Protestant powers of northern Europe condemned Spanish colonial practices, among which was the mita (contributory service in the mines during Inca times, adopted by the new rulers as an alternative to the outright slavery then officially forbidden...
...Instead, Regalado, one of Cuba’s most prominent public intellectuals, brings us a treatise on the history of a Latin America that has arrived at a point “between the centuries,” where a “qualitatively higher form” of global domination has caused a crisis in the state’s ability to negotiate the contradictions of capitalism, resulting in a rise of popular movements and left political apparatuses attempting to represent them...
...Basilio is allowed to tell his own story...
...This violent “pacification” of the city was carried out with strong support from a progressive municipal government that enjoys a high approval rating...
...24...
...People’s Daily, October 8, 1995, p. 2. 19...
Vol. 40 • September 2007 • No. 5
