The littlest Iber

He was born on July 25, 2011.

Cuauhtémoc: Congruencia y contradicción

My review of Sobre mis pasos, the political memoirs of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, was published by Nexos. The final, key graf:

Nada de lo anterior implica regatearle sus logros a cualquiera de los dos Cárdenas, o menospreciar la esperanza que ambos han representado, en sus respectivos momentos, para la historia de la socialdemocracia en México. Pero parte de construir un Estado progresista robusto está en crear instituciones que mantengan su carácter progresista aun y cuando los progresistas ya no estén en el poder. Eso es algo que hombres menos comprometidos con la integridad y la buena fe, como los Cárdenas, quizás habrían reconocido con más celeridad.

Special thanks to CBR for facilitating the publication of the review, and for excellent editing.

Kraft Boulders

Bouldering by myself at the Kraft Boulders. "The Pearl" boulder is in the background: the eponymous V5 there was much too hard for me.

Red Rocks

Winter 2011

I'm one of those ill people who quite likes a snowy winter, and if I could invent a place with perfect weather I'd make it have a nice cold winter for two months (and then move straight on to spring, thankyouverymuch). This year, my snow exposure lasted about half an hour, and it happened in late-March, but was no less lovely for that.

My interview with Jorge Edwards

This interview was published in English in Chicago Review 55, no. 1 (Winter 2010). Letras Libres was kind enough to publish the Spanish version in its peninsular edition. We discuss Edwards' recent book, La Casa de Dostoievsky, Cuba and the Padilla Affair, and the old-fashioned but still important question of the "writer's responsibility." A sample:

PJI: Ha escrito sobre los efectos corrosivos de las dictaduras para el pensamiento y las universidades. Entiendo el punto, pero confieso que también me deja algo perplejo. Quizás esta es una aflicción norteamericana, pero me parece difícil imaginar las ideas de los intelectuales como algo particularmente influyente o amenazador. Pero porque las dictaduras actúan para suprimir opiniones disidentes con tanta frecuencia, tengo con enfrentar la posibilidad de equivocarme. Tal vez bajo una dictadura los intelectuales pueden adquirir un sentido simbólico: encarnan la ausencia de libertad que otros sienten pero que no pueden expresar. Pero entonces la lucha exitosa contra una dictadura, emprendida por un intelectual, parece una búsqueda por la irrelevancia.

JE: Las dictaduras siempre terminan por combatir la disidencia intelectual. Por una razón que me parece muy clara: donde se suprime la oposición política, los escritores y los intelectuales y artistas terminan por convertirse en la única oposición posible. Y su lenguaje, aunque sea indirecto, metafórico, es rápidamente entendido por todos. Doy un ejemplo. Durante la dictadura de Pinochet asistí a una lectura de poesía de Nicanor Parra en una plaza del centro de Santiago. El poeta anunció en un momento del recital: “Poema censurado”. Y guardó silencio durante el tiempo que toma la lectura de catorce versos endecasílabos. Al final hubo una ovación extraordinaria. En esos días se hablaba de un “parlamento de los columnistas”. Eran las personas, muchas de ellas escritores, que escribíamos columnas en la prensa diaria. El parlamento, como se sabe, había sido clausurado, pero en muchas de esas columnas de opinión se ejercía una fuerte crítica al régimen. Había que autocensurarse y saber medir, pero se decían muchas cosas. Desde los comienzos de la transición política y cuando se recuperaron las libertades públicas, la voz de los intelectuales empezó a escucharse menos. Pero a veces se vuelve a escuchar.

The full interview is available here.

El Palmar

In the hills of the Estado de Mexico.

Malinalco 2010 V

Malinalco 2010 IV

Malinalco 2010 III

Malinalco 2010 II

Malinalco 2010 I

Mexico 2010

A guard tower at the Palacio de Lecumberri; once Mexico City's most important prison, it now houses the National Archive.

Underwater II

Underwater

We were mostly traveling on a budget, but went on one boat tour and it was well worth it. We took a disposable underwater camera. As always, such pictures don't turn out too well, but you can get some idea of how great the snorkeling was. This is from Captain Cook's bay, where Cook was killed. It's difficult to get a sense of the depth, but the reef structure just disappeared into the murk...maybe 50 feet down? Maybe more?

We then traveled south a bit to Honaunau, where the water was even clearer.

There were spinner dolphins in Honaunau, resting and playing in the bay (they're technically nocturnal animals). I spent several minutes swimming in the deep water, looking around for fins where I could see them and swimming in their direction. Eventually I was surrounded by groups of dolphins, who must be pretty used to snorkelers in this area and didn't seem to care about my presence one way or the other.

Pololu Valley

If I could go back to the Big Island, I would love to spend a week hiking around the backcountry of Pololu Valley on the northern coast. It's a remarkable intersection of forest, wetlands, seacliffs, and beach. I'm told that the opening scenes of Jurassic Park were filmed here. It also produces really smooth stones - great for skipping and building cairns. They look hard to build--but we had a little contest and in five minutes we were able to build piles of 15 or 16 stones without trouble. Someone else did this one, though.

Photos by Nicole.

Punalu'u Black Sand Beach

On the way back from Volcanoes, we stopped at a black sand beach. In a large tidepool there, we found two sea turtles resting and eating algae. By law, you are supposed to give them space, but camera zoom can create the illusion of intimacy. This one breathed at me.

Volcanoes National Park II

Another part of the park was pure rainforest. And, indeed, it was raining while we were there and not very photogenic at a distance.

Volcanoes National Park

On day three, we drove to the other side of the island to Volcanoes National Park. There was no lava flow while we were there, but the general trend is for the island to be growing. (There's one underwater volcano which will eventually emerge and join with the Big Island.)

In one section of the park near to the coast, there are petroglyphs preserved in the lava rock.

Hawaii

Recently, I had the opportunity to train a laser death ray on my last remaining proletarian credentials and take a vacation in Hawai'i. And it was a lot of fun! Thanks to everyone who made it possible and entertaining. As per my usual blog policies, to respect the privacy of others I don't post names or pictures of people except to give photo credits.

We were staying on the "Big Island" of Hawai'i. It has an enormous number of microclimates. Guidebook-level information would have it that there are 13 biomes on the planet, and that eleven of them occur of the Big Island alone (all save the Saharan and Antarctic climates). Parts of the island look like the Amazon, parts like Sonoma, parts like Ireland. The center-west region is dominated by lava flows and scrub. You see mountain goats along the road. The beaches, where they occur, are great, but it mostly looks like part of Nevada or New Mexico. The Ironman Triathlon takes place in this part of the Big Island.

A bit to the south, there's a coffee-producing region. We stopped for a tour of a small coffee plantation, and Nicole took this picture of a gecko on a banana tree.