← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Feb 11, 2012
00:28:16
That windswept outpost of Britishness in the South Atlantic again causes tension and...
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You're listening to a download from the BBC. This is from our own correspondent. You can hear the version of the programme broadcast on the World Service by following the link to the iplayer on the top of our website. To keep up with our latest reports and get a sneak preview of the stories, you can sign up to our Twitter feed as well. But now, with the addition Broadcast on Radio 4, here's Kate Ady.
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Today, growing resentment in Greece. The bailout hangs in the balance as the Eurozone demands yet more austerity. We're on the banks of Lake Garda tracking down Republican hopeful Rick Santorum's Italian connection. There's a ceremonial downing of Coca Cola as the Mexican authorities try to impress descendants of the great Mayan civilization. And as tensions rise in the South Atlantic ahead of the anniversary of the Falklands War. A question for Prince William. Did you bring any bananas? The Argentine Foreign Minister was at the UN in New York yesterday, presenting a formal complaint about, as his government sees it, Britain's militarisation of the South Atlantic. They're unhappy that Britain's sending one of its most modern warships to the Falkland Islands. They say it poses a grave danger to international security. The arrival there of Prince William on a tour of duty as a search and rescue helicopter pilot has also been criticised. Fergal Keen was in Buenos Aires. As tension once again grew between Britain and Argentina, we were hemmed in.
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The crowd surged from behind us, pushing closer to the steel gates of the Casa Rosada, or I should say pushing us deeper into the unwilling embrace of the presidential security men who guarded the gates. It was hot, sweaty, chaotic. There were curses in Spanish, bands of young people were hammering drums and. And waving flags. And then, with a sudden heave, rather like a rolling maul in rugby, we were through and into another security queue. The crowds and the journalists awaited the arrival of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Once again, the Casa Rosada pulsed with political exuberance. It's never been merely a presidential palace. It dominates the Plaza de Mayo, the greatest theatre the of Argentine politics. It was here in 1945 that more than a quarter of a million people gathered to demand the release of the recently imprisoned army officer and government minister, Juan Peron. Here the vast crowd erupted in joy when his wife Eva, the Evita of legend, stepped onto the balcony to announce his return. Here, a decade later, that the military bombed a Peronist demonstration, killing more than 300 people. And here that the mothers of those disappeared by the military during the dirty war of the 1970s and 80s. Came every day to shame the junta. The shadow of those days looms over Argentina, for it was the same junta that took the country into a disastrous war with Britain in the South Atlantic in 1982, and whose memory now circumscribes the debate about the Falklands, or Malvinas, as they're called here. Everything said by any Argentine politician on that question is touched by the national humiliation of that period. In a different context, but with words that seem opposite the great Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges, who grew up in the Palermo district of Buenos Aires once and the city now is like a map of my humiliations and failures. From this door I have seen the twilights, and at this marble pillar I have waited in vain. They are melancholy words that evoke much of the country's modern history. The chronic instability engendered by military coups and guerrilla war, the pain of the families of the disappeared, economic collapse and the war with Britain, which cost more than 600 Argentine lives. Inside the Casa Rosada, the chanting of President Kirchner's supporters echoed along the cool marbled corridors up the room where she addressed the press and denounced once again British control of the Falklands. The longing to redeem the islands is deeply and widely felt in the eyes of many in Argentina. British oil exploration and the use of the Falklands fisheries amount to the pillaging of national resources. And while every politician I met was at pains to stress the war had been a mistake, they invariably followed up by pointing out that that the cause was just. Argentina's push for territorial redemption is driven predominantly by nationalist emotion, but with an important subtext. The desire to control potentially significant oil and gas deposits. In the 19th century Cafe Tortoni, once frequented by the Spanish playwright Federico Garcia Lorca and the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, I spent a stimulating hour. Over coffee. Was one of the older statesmen of Argentina. Dr. Jorge Castro was once the country's minister for strategic planning. The day of the gun was gone in this part of Latin America, he told me. Argentina had learned from the past. But it also had a powerful sense of a future in which Latin American nations acted together to protect regional interests. This is the grand narrative being constructed by Argentina's political elite. Isolate the British in the region, make trading harder, make the ports and waters of Latin America unwelcoming. For Falkland's ships perhaps soon shut the air link from Chile to the islands. For all the media hubbub about the dispatch of a Royal Navy destroyer to the Falklands, it's the long diplomatic battle that really Counts. That is why we will see more of the Foreign Secretary William Haig in Latin America, making his way to Santiago and Brasilia and the other capitals of the region, trying to frustrate Argentina's campaign to make the South Atlantic an even colder place for the British.
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Fergal keene. And later in the program, we'll have Alan Little with the view from Port Stanley in the Falklands. Trade unions in Greece are this morning continuing a protest strike against the latest austerity package put forward by their political leaders on Thursday. It includes drastic wage cuts and liberalisations of labour laws. Yesterday, demonstrators voiced their opposition to it outside the Parliament building in Athens, and several members of the coalition government resigned. They'd been told by the eurozone finance ministers the measures must be approved in the next few days if the country is to receive another 130 billion euros in bailout funds. Mark Loewen says the continuing crisis is making the Greek public increasingly angry.
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I am looking with dismay at my half empty apartment a month into my new posting in Athens. The beds haven't yet arrived from the store and the desk is still being made. When I called the furniture delivery man a few days ago, he simply said, mark, there is one word you have to learn in Avrio. It means tomorrow. Timekeeping isn't a Greek speciality, as I'm quickly finding out here. The coalition government began crucial talks recently to reach an agreement on fresh budget cuts Every day. It seemed there was a new deadline that was set and then quietly ignored. A deal had to be struck by noon or this evening or tomorrow morning if Greece were to receive its vital bailout money and be saved from imminent bankruptcy. I joined dozens of other journalists waiting in freezing temperatures outside the Prime Minister's office night after night and hoping to hear that an agreement had been reached, only to be told to come back the next day. And then, at the 11th hour, Greece's seemingly preferred time, a deal was struck, taken to Brussels for approval and then promptly sent back here for more work to be done. All the while, Greece's financial future hangs in the balance. No deal means no bailout cash, which means that frightening word default for ordinary Greeks. The outlook is growing ever bleaker. Unemployment has soared as recession and austerity bite. And the crowds of protesters are growing ever larger, furious that their politicians are imposing yet more cuts on a nation squeezed, it appears, to breaking point. The signs of the crisis are everywhere. I met the new homeless, as they're called out on the streets in the past few days. Teachers and journalists and civil servants who until last year had a comfortable life and are now reduced to relying on soup kitchens and free hotel schemes. We're still shocked at this phenomenon, a social worker told me. At this new kind of poverty and misery, we weren't psychologically prepared for it, but it exists. A few parts of the city are now virtual no go areas at night, as despair turns to crime. I was stunned to stumble upon people in downtown Athens injecting themselves with drugs in broad daylight in the middle of a European Union capital, a shocking manifestation of a society that has seemingly lost its way. There are several targets of popular the rich, the politicians renowned for their corruption, but also increasingly, the economic powerhouses of Europe, who Greeks feel are dictating their future. A German flag was burnt outside parliament during a protest earlier in the week. I found myself at an uncomfortable demonstration outside the German embassy here a couple of months ago, featuring a man dressed as Hitler and another as an SS officer pretending to rape a woman who represented Greece. Greeks have been stereotyped in the German press as lazy and unproductive, and now it appears they're having their revenge. I feel we will forever be slaves of Germany because of these cuts, Panos, a shopkeeper told me last week. We won't accept it. There will be a revolution here because the fear is that Greece has not yet reached the bottom, that unemployment, now at over 20%, will increase, poverty will get worse, and that at some point this country will simply have to throw in the towel because its debt level will prove unsustainable. Perhaps the remedy is killing the patient. But leaders here and in Europe are determined to stick to the path because the alternative, Greece's exit from the euro, is still something that strikes fear into the heart of many, with the possibility that the whole European project could slowly unfold. And yet, despite the economic woes, the country still functions, the tourists still arrive, and Athens remains a fabulously vibrant city. That, in a sense, is the saddest part that peel back the dark layer and the old Greece is still there, aching to show itself once again. A country of proud Europeans who feel they straddle east and West, a highly educated and cultured nation who like nothing more than to enjoy their wonderful food and ouzo with tourists who admire Greece's natural beauty. But somewhere along the way it has gone wrong these past few years, and Greeks are paying the price of spendthrift folly. And so the bailout still hangs in the balance, and the dark clouds of default are beginning to close in. I may be waiting for some household furniture, but Greece is playing an altogether more dangerous waiting game.
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And that's Mark Loewen. The contest to find a Republican challenger to Barack Obama in this November's presidential election looks wide open again after votes in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri this week. All three primaries were won by the former senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum. The results are seen as a serious setback for the man who was considered the front runner, Mitt Romney. So what's known about Mr. Santorum? Well, he's of Italian origin. His family used to live on the banks of the lovely Lake Garda. But as Christine Finn's been finding out, the most people there know nothing about their admittedly tenuous connection with the race for the White House.
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Gianni Botesi thought he recognised the features of the American politician he glimpsed on the TV news as he watched it in his North Italian home. When he saw and heard his surname, he said out loud to his wife, giannina, he must be family, our family. The politician was Rick Santorum, whose grandfather Pietro left the bustling lakeside town of Riva Delgada for America in 1920. With him was his young son Aldo, who grew up on the east coast and became Rick Santorum's father. For Gianni, watching the TV at his family hotel on the outskirts of Riva, it was a new story beyond politics. He had long lost contact with his mother's side of the family, the Santorums, who were in America, and he was thrilled by this unlikely update. Rick Santorum has spoken about his grandfather as being inspirational for his presidential campaign. Pietro Santorum. He's told audiences left Italy because he was worried about Mussolini's rise. Riva's museum displays photos and artefacts from the Fascist era. Mussolini came to live beside Lake Garda. His experimental republic was at nearby Salo. But Santorum is an old surname in the Riva area, about as common as Smith is in England, someone said when I arrived, intrigued to trace what remained of the politician's line. Santorum lives on as a name in the town, but I was advised direct connections with the candidate had probably long gone. I tried my luck in a bustling piazza where locals were cooking polenta for a public festival. Santorum? I asked a trio of elderly men. America, they replied in unison. When I expanded a little, one of them suggested I try asking in a district on the outskirts of town. Walking there against the tide of people rushing to town for polenta, I wondered if my quest was just a little far fetch. But when I tried the local tobaccy, the owner didn't seem in the least Surprised, it turned out he was from Milan and kept up with international news. He confidently suggested I could ask the owner of a hotel a few streets away. But now, he sighed, I think it will be closed. The hotel was indeed closed, but I rang one of the several bells. The door clicked open for me. Inside, a charming woman leaned over a balcony. I explained in my feeble Italian that I was looking for family of Rixantorum, feeling even as I said it that it seemed a random quest indeed. But it was as though the family were expecting me. They welcomed me into their living room, sat me down at a table, and brought out the previous day's local newspaper, which had a full page story on page 34 about Reaver's unexpected link with American politics. Gianni's wife, Giannina, brought out a bulging family photo album. While she went through it, the images tumbling onto the table, her husband tried to enlighten me on Santorum family history. My brain was spinning at the sheer numbers of cousins and which line was which. But sketching a family tree on my notebook, he backed up what I'd already found out on an online ancestry site. Pietro Santorum's father, Giuseppe, was born in 1872. Giuseppe had six children, including Maria, who had given birth to gianni Botesi in 1938. So that makes you Rick Santorum's distant cousin, I suggested as Gianni's granddaughter Martina joined us as translator, and other relatives appeared from other parts of the family run hotel. Giannina was still working her way through the album. Nothing just yet of the American emigres, none in particular of Rick Santorum, who, according to the local newspaper, had visited Reeva at least once. I thought one relative did have a strong facial resemblance to him. There is a Santorum look, giani said, and a few minutes later a young child appeared to show me the distinctive family colouring of pale eyes. What colour eyes does Rick Santorum have? I had to admit I had no idea. And anyway, Santorum's mother is Irish Italian. Before I left this wonderfully hospitable family, I was taken on a Santorum mini tour the cemetery and the church and the house where some relatives had lived. Whether this all ends up on a tourist trail, it's been an interesting few weeks for Santorums on either side of the pond, and Gianni Botesi is claiming a personal victory. He's delighted at last to have news of family who left Riva a century ago, however late it is in arriving.
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Christine Finn in northern Italy, there's been many a Prophecy of doom recently relating to the ancient Mayan calendar. Apparently it comes to an end this year. There is no 2013. Academics, though, have been wheeled out to reassure us. The Mayans, they say, weren't predicting the end of the world. They probably just didn't plan beyond 2012. And anyway, their own Mayan civilization died out centuries ago. Once an advanced race, their descendants today mostly live in poverty in Central America. Alistair Leithhead has just been to a Mayan village fiesta to see the efforts the Mexican government's making to introduce them to a more modern way of life.
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It was a very posh affair. Not high class or hoity toity, but more traditional and very alcoholic. Posh, you see, is Mayan moonshine, illegal sugar cane spirit which could run your car, strip paint, or in this case, fuel a fiesta. It was 8am and as I was offered a glassful, he wasn't taking no for an answer. The band were tuning up their instruments and lubricating themselves even more enthusiastically. It was going to be a long weekend. Santiago Al Pinar is a small town deep in southern Mexico, and the people with whom I was sharing an early drink were descendants of the Mayan civilization which all but disappeared centuries ago. They're called the Tsotzil, after the language they speak and their heritage goes back millennia. We had stumbled upon the annual celebration of the town's patron saint, Sebastian, marking three days of ritual and religion, incense and insanity. It began with a brass band, frantic church bell ringing and a very long clothes line. A statue of San Sebastian lives in the church, surrounded by flashing neon lights and a smog of incense smoke and dressed in layers of fine vestments. Ritual one was washing all his clothes and hanging them out to dry in the square. The traditional dress for the men is a raffia hat, a thick grey woollen blanket fashioned into a poncho and rather short shorts. The church was dwarfed by a high tech concert stage and in front of both chairs were set out for the elders who sat in the sun, suitably attired, to await their gifts. Bottles of posh, naturally, and then the ceremonial giving of the Coca Cola. It could have been a TV advert. Each bottle was treasured, sipped slowly and deliberately, treated like some rare gift, which I suppose it was. This is one of the poorest parts of Mexico and fizzy drinks are a modern day luxury, a sign of excess and of extravagance. I'd come to the village to see how traditional living and modern influences are colliding up on the hillside above town more than a hundred Colorfully painted wooden homes have appeared, built by the government to help people beat poverty and move into a more modern way of life. Santiago el Pinar is one of Mexico's four sustainable rural cities, as they're known. A development experiment to try to gather in a scattered population to give them the services they need in one place. It's a suburb complete with concrete road, plumbing and power. Normal in many parts of the world, but quite alien to people here. A wooden floor isn't ideal when people cook on wood fires. Running water isn't great when it isn't running, and commuting to your coffee bushes isn't really an option. The houses are mostly empty. It's an experiment that so far isn't working. People are set in their ways. They know what they like and they like what they're used to. And they're not used to a gleaming new hospital with new machines and shelves of drugs. The big white building next to the suburb of wooden houses might just as well have come from outer space. I met an old woman. She was clearly unwell and was being helped to hobble into an old wooden shack down in the village. She was 120 years old, the traditional healer told me. No, sorry, 130. She looked fantastic for 130, but not great for 70, which was probably nearer her age. He was her doctor. Zotzil. People have always gone to healers. The ceremony involved an hour of chanting, incense, circling boiled eggs around her head, a bottle of cola as a totem and to drink, and a shot of posh for everyone in the room. People don't believe in us anymore and want to cure themselves with modern medicine. The healer scoffed. But enough it seems do believe. That hospital up on the hill was empty. It stocked all the medicines and equipment needed to bring down infant mortality, but had no takers. It's not yet the way a classic story of people doing what they've always done and not wanting to change, and good intentioned governments trying to develop them. Both have a point, but both can also be pretty stubborn. With a cloud of fireworks, smoke and alcohol hovering over town and a scattering of drunks, posh zombies staggering vaguely in time to the music. The statue of St. Sebastian did one last lap of the square before getting his clothes back on and returning to his glass case for another year. Tradition runs deep here and apart from a few bottles of popular and the odd electric guitar, life is only going to change very slowly.
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Alistair Leithhead in Mexico. You may have heard earlier in the program Fergal Keen talking about the complaint from Argentina that Britain is, as it puts it, militarising the South Atlantic. The accusation has drawn a tough response from Britain. Defences, said a spokeswoman at number 10 Downing street remained unchanged around the Falkland Islands. And in a separate statement the Foreign Office added there would be no negotiation with Argentina on sovereignty unless the islanders wished it well. Alan Little, who was in the Falklands earlier this week, says people there don't seem too concerned about the increased tension between London and Buenos Aires. They've got other things to worry about.
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Have you been hit, sir? She asked as she ushered us into the drawing room of Government House on the seafront at Stanley. Have you been hit by the egg shortage? And I thought, yes, although I hadn't realized it until this moment, I had indeed been hit by the egg shortage. The drawing room of Government House is a splendid Victorian space and as you take your seat, all the British monarchs who've reigned since the islands became British look down at you from their magnificent framed portraits. Queen Victoria, Edward VII and his Danish Queen Alexandra, George V and Queen Mary, even surprisingly, Edward viii, then George VI and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth ii. On the mantelpiece is a silver cigarette case presented in 1933 to the then governor of the islands to mark the 100th anniversary of British sovereignty. Everywhere you go, you're reminded of how deep the roots of Britishness go. Falkland Islanders will slip into conversation early in your encounter. Their generation count. I'm seventh generation, one sheep farmer told me. My grandchildren are ninth generation Falkland Islanders. He was one of many who made the same claim to belonging authentically and indisputably to this little outcrop of British identity in the wind blown South Atlantic. Yes, I said. As a matter of fact, I have been hit by the egg shortage. For at breakfast that morning I had nonchalantly ordered two poached eggs on toast. It was one of those moments when you realize that as an outsider you have failed to pick up on a matter of local custom and have momentarily caused embarrassment to your hosts. Two eggs, sir, the lady said. I'm afraid that won't be possible. We're down to one egg apiece now. The two and a half thousand people who live here are among the most isolated in the world and are getting more so. The editor of the local newspaper whimsically called the Penguin News wrote in her editorial this week about being asked again and again by visiting journalists to express the islanders excitement about the presence here of Prince William on a six week tour of duty as a helicopter pilot. She described Instead, a call she had received from a friend who was bubbling over with joy. Not because of Prince William and all that his stay here symbolized about the all important bond between these islands and Britain, but because she had managed to grow a pepper and a cucumber. Like eggs, fresh vegetables are increasingly hard to come by. The islands, acre for acre, aren't much smaller than Wales, but the land is rocky and unyielding. You can drive for mile after mile across peaty moorlands of black and pale yellow. There are no trees, for the wind comes in at you with such force from the cold Atlantic that nothing stands a chance. I visited a sheep farm. 19,000 acres to sustain 2 1/2 thousand sheep. In other words, each individual sheep needs 7 acres of land to get through the year. That's how ungiving this land is. And yet the Falkland Islanders make it work. But you can't get eggs and you can't get vegetables. South America once traded happily, with the islanders supplying all their needs. But Buenos Aires has been working hard to cut the islands off. Recently, Argentina persuaded other South American countries to turn away from their ports. Falklands flagged vessels. Ships rounding Cape Horn heading for the Falklands are routinely stopped, searched and delayed. So much so that merchant vessels have largely given up trying. Argentina has also restricted air traffic. There is one flight a week from Chile. Argentina won't allow more than this to pass through its airspace. Now Argentina is threatening to close even this last link with mainland South America. But they're an unflappable lot to the Falkland Islanders. They keep calm and carry on. They also seem strikingly egalitarian, unimpressed by status or rank. Ask them about Prince William and they'll say they're glad he's here, but that he's here to do a job. And so are a lot of other young servicemen and women whose names you don't know. And we're just as glad they're here. The editor of Penguin News, combining the two big stories, the Prince and the fresh produce shortage was in no doubt, which she considered more germane to the life and well being of the islanders. Were I to obtain an interview with the dashing young royal, she wrote, my first question might well be, did you bring any bananas?
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Alan Little, back now from the Falklands and able to have as many eggs and bananas as he wants. And that's it. More from correspondence far and wide on Thursday and Saturday of next week. Do join us. Goodbye.