Shortly after winning the presidency in 2005, Evo Morales went on a whirlwind world tour and brought a few
small coca leaves with him to New York. It is illegal to travel with coca leaves, so it's been said that the president stuck them inside a book he was reading at the time, to conceal them from the customs
officials. During his landmark speech at the United Nations Security Council, he brought out the leaves 
and held them with his right hand, as he tried to make his case about coca in front of hundreds of dignitaries.
"The penalization of the coca leaf has been a historic injustice. I'm talking about the green coca leaf, not the white one that is cocaine," he said, to rousing applause. "This leaf represents Andean culture, nature, and the hope of our people."
Continue reading "Bolivia: The U.N. Verdict" »
La Asunta held a mysterious quality for us even before we began our project on coca. The town is considered to be a no man's land in the middle of a dense forest, where anyone looking for a patch of soil and coca plants on steroids -- that can be harvested up to five times a year -- could easily set up shop. Under the law that regulates coca cultivation in Bolivia, La Asunta is considered a "zona excedentaria", or an area outside of the legal zone where coca farming is now rapidly spreading.
La Asunta is one of a handful of coca-farming community in the Southern Yungas region that does not have a Quechua or Aymara name. "Asunto" means "issue" or "deal" in Spanish -- and in feminine form, it turns out, Asunta is the name of a Peruvian Catholic virgin. There's something about La Asunta that comes across as forward and independent and proud, and somehow the name fits this community's personality.
Continue reading "Bolivia: La Asunta (or the Next Frontier)" »
Katie Suter, Georgetown University Class of 2011
When entering our Justice and Peace Studies class this past January, many of my classmates were excited about the prospect of learning various human rights and social justice theories. However, more than simply teaching us about the academic prospects associated with nonprofit work, Professor Rachel Stohl wanted us to get a hands-on approach to the field of Justice and Peace, starting with participating in the Pulitzer Center’s Global Gateway initiative.
Participating in Global Gateway was most definitely rewarding for me, but presented its share of challenges. Using the Pulitzer Center’s reporting as research, we were to design an awareness campaign and choose a target group, short-term and long-term strategies, and what information we were going to disseminate. This was the first challenge: getting started.
Continue reading "News Points: Georgetown Global Gateway — A Student’s Experience" »
Yesterday I visited the rubbish dump on the edge of Mae Sot, a Thai town across the river from Burma. The dump itself was a predictable reflection of the consumption of a medium-sized Thai city. Plastic bags, decrepit toys, batteries, tin cans and the occasional ruined soccer ball stretched out for hundreds of meters.
But what's trash to some is the livelihood of others. Atop the garbage pile, more than 300 illegal Burmese immigrants have built small huts and call the dump home. They spend their days combing through the rubbish for a meager harvest - plastic and glass bottles and aluminum cans that they can cash in for petty change. Some have lived here for nine years.
"It's better than Burma," one mother told me as flies swarmed around her face. "We don't have work in Burma. Here we earn forty to sixty baht a day ($1.30-$2). There are many problems."
Continue reading ""Better than Burma"" »
So one night in Vientiane I printed a couple dozen business cards, which peddled me as the owner of a Colorado-based jewelry business that has never existed. I designed my own executive stationary and drafted a formal letter of intent. In three days, I had the visa; stamped, sealed and shining like a coin from the pages of my passport.
Recent Comments