Sunday readings: 20 July 2008

Guns or butter (or rice, or tortillas):

Frei Beto, “Food: A luxury item” (Latin America in Movement):

Who would have imagined having to go to a boutique to buy rice, beans, vegetables, and meat? But perhaps this reality is not so far off. The average price of food has tripled in the last twelve months.

Last year, the owners of the world invested $134 billion in the industry of death — arms manufacturing — a 45% increase from just ten years ago, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI. Governments invested 2.5% of the global GDP in military spending. Worldwide, $202 billion was invested per capita in feeding the beasts of the Apocalypse with missiles, bombs, mines, and nuclear arms. In summary: according to the FAO, compared to spending on food, the amount spent on arms surpassed it 191 times over!

Gringos are whiners
(Trailero, Mexico Trucker):

They’ve set up surveillance on the Rio Grande and filmed illegal immigrants crossing the river by night.

They’ve mapped border crossing spots from Texas to California in airplanes mounted with cameras. They’ve confronted day laborers on street corners and parking lots in Houston.

But now activist groups working to limit illegal immigration are stunned and dismayed by the rise of Arizona Sen. John McCain as the likely Republican presidential nominee — and a threat to their work and cause.

Left unsaid too long
(Mexico’s long forgotten dirty war, Duncan Kennedy, BBC)

To have the words “Mexico”, “dirty war” and “death camp” all appear in the same sentence, might come as a shock to some people.

We all know about Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, but Mexico?

I met the family of Rosendo Radilla, a local man brought here in 1974.

His son, also called Rosendo, was just 10-years-old when soldiers came to take away his father.

His eyes swollen with tears, he tells me his father was active in council politics. But he was never the left-wing anarchist he was accused of being, by the commanding officer of the late night snatch squad.

Rosendo Radilla was 10 when his father was arrested
Rosendo and his 11 brothers and sisters never saw their father again. They now believe him to be one of those buried in this garden.