not the motorcycle diaries

I have re-named my blog not the motorcycle diaries in honour of (a) a blissful first motorcycle ride through the tropical fields of the Pontal do Parapanema a few days ago and (b) my desire to never see a Che Guevara mural/t-shirt/book/theme park again.

In other news, coconut juice is the most restorative thing in the world.

This is bizarre, but I’m totally sick and tired of being in Brazil and doing this ‘research project’. This probably has something to do with the bedbugs/’very small mosquitos’ and the oppressive heat and humidity and the fact that I hung around the office for five hours today doing nothing but play peek-a-boo with a four year old and smiling idiotically at people and feeling that this was a reflection of my worth.

Things I am contemplating doing instead:

1. Asking for Silvio Santo’s hand in marriage.

2. Strangling the Mais Voce parrot.

3. Breeding wire-haired fox terriers called Julian, Dick, George, Anne and Timmy.

4. Attempting to wean myself off Kaut, with all natural guarana straight from the Amazon to you via Coca-Cola.

Any other ideas?

Acho que este colchao tem pulgas.

I think this mattress has fleas.

Yikes. And whoah. And yikes. If there was ever anything the media could make a meal of, it’s the Lateline interview with two of the Bakhtiyari (I am sure I have spelt that wrong) siblings where they said they felt decieved by their lawyers and advocates and wanted to play by the Government rules. I’m really shocked by the public comments of some of these lawyers and advocates in response to this (for example, that they feel they have been “kicked in the face”, and/or that ’someone’ had told the brothers to turn their backs on their lawyers - though I hope that some of this is a casualty of sensationalist media reporting?). To me these comments speak pretty damned strongly of many of the personal issues that one brings to ones activism/advocacy - the need to be needed, to be important, to be a human rights hero - and how quickly this can turn from being an interdependent, productive human trait into fetishizing and using people who are in incredibly vulnerable situations. And then lashing out at them when they aren’t properly grateful for such acts of heroism on ‘their’ behalf!

Doing The Right Thing is difficult in a world that is as endemically unjust as ours. Surely the least we can do is accept that in the way we go about our attempts, be continuously reflective about it, keep a watch on the ego and trust in some kind of ultimate human good. As opposed, that is, to slanging each other in the media - which, as well as playing right into the Howard/Ruddock/Vanstone agenda, does nothing towards achieving safety, peace and prosperity for this family and the billions of others who have been fucked over by global processes of war and fascistic governance and immigration policies and practices like Australia’s.

PS: not sure why comments aren’t working for this post. McDonalds?

In other news, which will do nothing for the closet case against me, I visited the town of Martinopolis yesterday. These small towns are brimming with community - and this tropical countryside is so, so beautiful. It’s vastness and fertility adds to my understanding of the land distribution injustices here.

I spent hours tramelling ye green rolling fields, the fragrance of mango trees in the warm air, the peace and stillness in my bones, delivering my well-practiced country wave when I came across random people. I also wandered a little in a quintessential Latin American catholic cemetery full of Nossa Senhora Aparecida icons (in varying skin tones) and gold spray-painted Jesus statues, with piles of fake flowers sweating in the sun and humidity (real flowers being banned for dengue fever prevention purposes. Obviously.).

Every so often, I come across something on this here world wide web that so beautifully interweaves with my research pursuits it’s like some kind of gift from the academic heavens. The latest issue of Ephemera journal is one such thing - containing all the story-telling that I wanted and got from We Are Everywhere, but also going further than this and paying proper attention to feminist thought (very rarely mentioned in global justice movement research and activist tracts, even though feminist thought and activism arguably pre-figures the movement and its scholarship), and embedding a deep enunciation of power relations and therefore reflexive ethics, stuff which simply *must* be a part of all thoughtful accounts of this ‘movement’, and stuff that I want to be writing about in yon PhD (a sense that is only stronger for hanging out in rural Sao Paulo al momento).

I am particularly glad of, in a sigh-of-frustration kind of way, Tadzio Mueller’s account of women’s (lack of) safety in the ‘inter-continental youth camp’ 2005 (the name ‘youth camp’ signals ‘nightmare’ enough, surely!). This sort of stuff is ever-present in activist locales (my own unpleasant and head-fucking experiences in this regard is another entry in itself). Naming it and working with it is absolutely non-negotiable; rather than pretending that we are living out some kind of domination-free utopia in our quest for such a world - which of course, only ever ends in reproducing those very same dominations.

Today I visited the tiny town of Mirante do Parapanema (Parapanema being a river, Mirante meaning ‘a view of’), travelling through some more vast lush countryside to get there. It was pretty gorgeous. I was continuously hugged, kissed, and fed by numerous tiny old women, and was introduced to all passers-by as ‘Ana from Australia who is a vegetarian’. Dig it.

The McDonalds restaurant in PP, as in Ipiranga, offers a free “educational” in-house internet access service next door to their free “classroom”, where kids learn English using McDonalds menus. I went in to the PP restaurant the other day and logged onto this ‘’McInternet'’ with a view to downloading McSpotlight.org onto the desktop, or at least into the history of visited sites, in order to increase the educational value of this important service for the (mostly pre-pubescent) punters. The site was barred by NetNanny. The lengths that corporate power goes to in order to maintain itself astonishes me anew.

I always find it hard to keep a straight face when people ask me if Australia has ’sem-terra’, i.e. landless families who occupy land. I try and explain our ‘relaxed and comfortable’ mortgage culture, and the relative concentration of people in cities and suburbs. Interestingly, one thing people do seem know about are indigenous land rights struggles in Australia, so that is sometimes a departure point for the Brazil/Australia comparison conversation - particularly because there is some history of mutual support between indigenous land rights movements in Brazil and sem-terra action.

In related news, I had an encouraging conversation with a visiting public servant this morning, who passionately advised me that I was right to want to talk to people at ‘the grassroots’ of social movements, because the leaders and bureaucrats will always have agendas. Just your average breakfast conversation with a guy you met five minutes ago, and a welcome relief from the usual hordes of military police - who I could almost take seriously, with their spanky uniforms and big guns, if they were’t also wearing shorts.

In the local rag today is news of MST and other organisations rallying in Presidente Venceslau (which neighbours Presidente Prudente) against the construction of new prisons while millions go without the basics of life. Jose Rainha speechified that “the best security policy is housing, food and education for the people”. Can’t argue with that.