American Women… Sunday Readings: 14 September 2008

From the sublime… to the absurd… to the inspiring… to the downright scary:

Doris Gibson — More than just a pretty face:

Retrato de Doris Gibson, Sérvulo Gutiérrez, 1948

Via Guanabee, comes the story of legendary Peruvian magazine editor, Doris Gibson, who died last month at the age of 98.  Gibson (and yes, she was a native-born Peruvian) was more than just another “very beautiful young woman” who worked for a living.   Dan Colliyns (BBC News) tells the story:

She began with 10,000 soles (£2,066), which her uncle had given her, and a typewriter in a single room.

The magazine was going to be called Caras y Caretas – faces and masks – but as Peru was under a military dictatorship at the time they decided to call it just Caretas to symbolise the repression they were living under.

They planned to revert to the original title after the dictatorship but it never happened.

Maria Telpuk: Nothing to declare… and everything to show

Here in Mexico, we’re reading every day about ex-police officers who take up a career as hitmen or kidnappers. At least in Argentina, one former customs officer has found a second career, which at least doesn’t get anyone killed (except maybe old pervs with bad tickers).   Revolter at BoRev.Net has the story — and the (not safe for work) pictures:

Meet Maria Telpuk. This classy lady was the Argentine customs officer who discovered $800,000 in the suitcase of Guido Antonini Wilson last August, setting the whole Valijagate story in motion.

…Telpuk became a minor celeb in Argentina. She changed her name to Lorena, invested in some new boobs, and set out to make her dreams come true. After a photo shoot for Playboy, Telpuk trained to compete for a slot in the hit Argentine teevee program “Skating for a Dream”–sort of a Dancing With the Stars on ice thingy–before producers mysteriously pulled her off the show. Undaunted, she went on to mark the opening of the trial with another nudie spread in second-rate Argentine beaver mag Premium.

Margarita Mbywangi: up from slavery

Lee Glendinning of the Guardian (U.K) profiles Paraguay’s new minister of indigenous affairs.

She was sold between several families as a child. “When I was a girl, four years old, the whites kidnapped me in the jungle and I was sold several times to families of hacienda owners. They sent me to school, so I can read and write,” she told Channel 2 television.

She said her masters told her she was an Indian and began to seek her origins “until I found my people in the community of Chupapou”.

Both in Paraguay and in Bolivia (where separatists, backed by the now departed United States Ambassador, continue to hold slaves) emancipation is coming mostly from new “people power” governments. An English-language broadcast from France24 (unearthed by Duderino at Abiding in Bolivia) looks at the Bolivian slaves and their struggle for freedom.

Maria Estela Martinez Cartas… perhaps a warning is in order.

A presidential candidate in his 70s,  once chose a good-looking younger woman with limited executive experience, troubling ties to eccentric religious figures, but ideologically sound as far as the party’s right-wingers were concerned.

The ticket was elected, the elderly president died and… Maria Estella (“Isabel”) Martinez de Peron became the first woman in the Americas to be head of state of a Republic.  As her “Unofficial Biography” makes clear it was wot because she was a she… but because of her inexperience and her choice of advisers … Martinez was a disaster for Argentina:

Isabel had very little in the way of political experience or ambitions…

Isabel was very unpopular. One factor was that [religious crank] Lopez Rega, by this time minister of social welfare, had so much influence over Isabel that he was a de facto prime minister. Despite his right-wing views, his status as the power behind the throne greatly frightened the military. …

… Isabel agreed to fire Lopez, but the military concluded that with the prevailing climate of widespread strikes and political terrorism, a “weak-willed and inexperienced woman” would not be a suitable President. Her time in power resulted in a spike in the inflationary rate and this did not help her case.

To avoid charges of sexism, I’ll add that any resemblance between the Argentine leader and any particular North American one is purely co-incidental, though Pilar Marrero (la Opinion via New American Media) suggests Alaska is a Latin American county:

… One of the reasons Governor Palin is so popular in Alaska is that during her term, she has not had to deal with budgetary problems. She took office in December 2006 in the midst of a huge oil boom, which reminded me of my home country, Venezuela, where the government is swimming in money and mass spending for political purposes.

In the end, Alaska – if it were tropical, warm and the people danced salsa – would be Venezuela. But Sarah Palin is no Hugo Chavez…