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- [00:00]
A
Hello everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:08]
B
Hello everyone. Welcome to this is the Place, a podcast series from the Common magazine on the New Books Network. The Common publishes literature and art with a modern sense of place. I'm Emily Everett, managing editor of the magazine and host of the channel. Today we'll be talking to Kush Rodriguez Moz about his essay Future the Mysterious Allure of a Town in Ruins, which appears in issue 30 of the common. Kush Rodriguez Moz is a journalist, writer and photographer currently based in Madrid. His investigative articles and long form narrative pieces cover an array of themes that include environmental issues, agriculture and urbanism. His work has appeared in El Mal Pensante, Altair, the New Yorker and Climatica, among other outlets. He also collaborates regularly with Revista Latte. He holds degrees in history, geography and journalism. Prior to Spain, he lived in Italy and Argentina. Gus Rodriguez Maaz, thanks for joining us.
- [02:06]
C
Thanks for the invitation to be here.
- [02:09]
B
I would love if you would just set the scene for our conversation. Just describe where you're calling from now, geographically and maybe atmospherically.
- [02:16]
C
So I'm speaking to you from Madrid, the city where I live. And at the moment I am in the basement of Espaciolade, which is a cafe bookstore that forms part of a cooperative of journalists to which I belong. So you can see the stairs behind me right above me, this Nonfiction books Only and Coffee.
- [02:41]
B
That's great. A cooperative journalist. Sounds amazing. I would love to start off with a reading from your essay. Would you just read the first few paragraphs, Horace?
- [02:50]
C
Ah, I'd be happy to. Turntables coated in rust and salt, illuminated beneath halogen lamps and stacked on one another like the layers of a wedding cake, the vintage record players boast a thick icing of sodium chloride and iron oxide, the granularity of which almost perfectly emulates the breading of a recently fried chicken finger. Instead of occupying a warehouse shelf, a basement box, or a landfill, these outdated music makers ended up in a museum display case as witnesses to a singular event that somewhat defined as catastrophic, others tragic, others fascinating. The museum, installed in a train station that hasn't housed a locomotive for decades, commemorates the flooding and destruction of the town where it is located. Villa Epequen Villa Epocuen was and continues to be a small settlement in the middle of the grand Argentine pampas, an immense, humid prairie with a vastness and flatness that place it among the most fertile stretches of the planet's arable land. For centuries, the pampas nourished guanacos and cattle and sprouted fields of wheat and corn. Today it exudes a matted carpet of transgenic soybeans. As a tourist destination, Vicha Epecuen once drew visitors from all over the province and the country. They took baths in the therapeutic waters of Lake Epecuen, on whose shores the town lies, waters whose salinity, like that of the dead sea, is 10 times greater than that of most of the world's oceans at seas, waters that in 1985 rose 15ft, submerging all of Via Epecuen's buildings in a briny and muddy alluvium. Only 20 years later did the water level begin to recede, slowly releasing the sunken settlement back to the pampas with its roofs collapsed, its trees petrified, its record players deep fried. Today, visitors keep coming, but they no longer bathe in the lake. Rather, they bask in the ruins.
- [05:02]
B
Thanks for reading that. I love the deep fried record players. For our listeners who may not have read your essay yet, would you just describe what the piece is about generally?
- [05:12]
C
Yeah. So I suppose in some sense it's a travelogue. The main axis of the piece is my visit to Abequin. It focuses on one hand of the history of this place itself, not only concretely what happened there, the sequence of events, but also maybe sort of the metaphoric or symbolic relationships those events have with broader Argentine History in general. And then my. Also my personal experience there. When I visited Epiquen, I just days earlier I had. I had planned the trip and days earlier I had. I had injured my leg rather seriously. And it was sort of interesting to visit a. A broken place when I too myself was, I guess, feeling a little bit broken. So it made for an interesting way to experience, I guess, that little spot along the map, I suppose. So it highlights that Vichabiquin was founded in the early 1920s at a time when Argentina as a nation was experiencing this golden age. Argentina's economy has had a lot of ups and downs, but this is probably one of its most historic highs. And it was this resort for the moneyed elites who lived in Buenos Aires and they would come and take these therapeutic baths and in these spas that were built along the shores there. With time, by the mid 20th century, it was a little more, how would you say, working class. And then in the 1980s, there's this disaster. The lake rises some 20ft in the span of a week and the whole town floods. And the people who live there, there were about 25,000 people went every year. But it was relatively a small town. It only had about 800 permanent residents. They're all forced to leave. So this hometown is underwater for at least two decades. I mean, even if you see today, a majority is accessible, but there are still parts that are flooded. So in the early 2000s, the water level begins to recede and just left with this. What had sort of been a. Oh, maybe a typical vacation spot, you think, you know, a place with ice cream stores, hotels, bed and breakfast restaurants, pizzerias, arcades, even sort of a water playground, you know, for. For young children who would go to play at the small beach there. And it's just, you know, completely destroyed. It became well known because it quickly turned into a movie set for films. There's actually a film, an Argentine film in the 90s that was shot there while it was still flooded. But then different music videos and commercials or other sort of film productions use it for a set. And it's. That's when it really entered the popular imagination. So I wouldn't say in Argentina everyone knows about Epic One. It's not widely known, but it's not unknown. It's not like a well kept secret. If you ask someone about it, they might know about it, maybe they've been there. What's curious about it today is annually about 25,000 people visit it per year. So it's the level of tourism, it Receives is back up to the level it was before the flood. Obviously it's a different experience for those who go there. So I think that's also maybe a curious detail that speaks about maybe our current era. We find this allure in ruins and sort of observing the destroyed past, even when it's not that far in the past.
- [08:53]
B
Yeah, it's really interesting. I was just talking with my brother in law about Pompeii in Italy and he had been there once or twice and I was just like, oh, I don't know if I would want to go there. And I was thinking about your essay and you know, Pompeii is, you know, centuries and centuries old, but yeah, this is a much more recent ruin. Yeah. Like looking at your own history or something.
- [09:15]
C
Yeah, there's just something about that though. You know, ruins are kind of ruins. I guess they have that. I guess there's something tragic about them. Of course, there's a sense of loss. Maybe when you're really far distant from that history. Thinking of Pompeii, it's. That tragic element doesn't win. You're so heavy even. You know, for me, I sure, I imagine it might be difficult for, you know, people whose parents or grandparents were evicted from Epaquin. But, you know, the majority of people who visit there, it's. It's something, you know, emotionally removed. But there's also sort of that, you know, that fascination, that curiosity, you know, you can walk into homes and just, you know, access space. That because of its abandonment, it's a lot more open, I suppose.
- [09:58]
B
So for something we did at the Common, I recently had to write a little blurb about a piece that I loved from the magazine and actually wrote about your essay. And I was thinking about how it's sort of a perfect specimen of what great nonfiction could do because it pulls you in with something really hooky, you know, something really fascinating and sort of unique, a unique experience. And then, you know, this tourist attraction. But then it broadens out to these larger themes, larger worldwide issues. You know, we have sort of like climate disaster looming in the background. You know, this is sort of like a look at like the rise and fall of one country's prospects, as you said, with this sort of golden age that sort of faded away. And then we have sort of deeper philosophical ideas, like this idea of like, what does it mean to go and look at ruins? Why are we fascinated with destruction? And then we have that great personal element that you were talking about with sort of visiting a broken place when you're also A little broken. And I was also thinking about how amazing it is that you do all that in quite a short piece. Like it's not a long. In depth, like 10,000 words. You know, it's relatively brief. I wonder, I mean, could you just tell us like, what inspired you to start on it, what the first draft looked like? I mean, like, when did you visit Epiquin?
- [11:11]
C
I visited. It was. I had shortly before moving to Italy. So I already knew I was going to. Was sort of on. You could say it was on my bucket list. My wife and I, we had made plans to. To move to Italy. And I think I had maybe month left or so in Argentina. And of course, a lot of logistical things we needed to do. And one of them was to sell the motorcycle I had at the time. So before parting ways, it was sort of buying a motorcycle was like an adolescent dream come true. I was already in my, you know, early 30s. But anyways, I wanted to do this trip. So that was sort of what inspired the timing. But for a long time I'd had in the back of my head, I guess, like I said, a sort of always had this maybe sort of also kind of adolescent fascination with ruins. I first discovered Epic when watching a music video. I was with my roommate at the time and showed me this music video. And I thought it was just so fascinating that place existed at the time. I was also studying geography. University of Buenos Aires. And shortly thereafter. I don't know if it was the same week, but epicoin came up as a case study how a combination between natural disasters, but also social, economic and political elements. Because the flooding of the lake is sort of. There are a lot of factors involved. It wasn't just heavy rains. It was also poor irrigation systems that had been neglected led to this result. So sort of a case study of how all these factors come together. And you can have a disaster that has something catastrophic, at least for. For this town and these people who lived here. So there's sort of an academic element too. I wanted to see, sort of taking all this theory we studied in doing my geography program and sort of just getting out there and getting my hands dirty. So that was what spawned the initial interest and that was what led me to go there. Unfortunately, I was even rethinking it at the time because I'd injured my leg. That's sort of another story. But for a writing workshop, I was inspired to do a. I was driven to do a new. A new experience. And that was experience was participating in a medieval battle. And I participated And. And walked away with quite a gimp. But I started to go anyway to the Gwen, because it was my last chance, you know, before moving internationally. I didn't know when I was going to return to Argentina, and. And I went. I. I already sort of was developing maybe a journalistic outlook. So, you know, I went with the camera and took some notes, read a little bit about the history before going, while I was there and of course, afterwards. So my plan was to write a piece about it. And that's what I did with my initial draft. But it was much more of a travelogue, I suppose, in a conventional sense, or much more in the vein of which we call La chronica Latin Americana. So you think of, like, the great chroniclers, like, that sort of spawned this genre. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a classic example where you mix literary elements with nonfiction. And the genre is really predominant among Latin American authors where the first person is an absent. But the piece is not about. There's not a personal dimension to it. So the chronicler, the journalist, the writer recognizes his or her presence and how he or she interacts with the world and the characters he or she's narrating, but the focus is very much outward. So the initial piece I put together was maybe perhaps a bit shorter than the final published piece and didn't really mention at all my personal experience of visiting Epic when hobbling along through the ruins, you know, with my. With my injured leg. When it was injured, it was like I couldn't fully extend it and I couldn't fully contract it either. Sort of bent at an odd angle. And I hadn't even had a diagnosis, so I was a little bit worried if it was going to stay like that forever. Luckily, it. It didn't. I've healed up more or less, but. So when I submitted the piece to the Common, I worked with the editor, Sam Spratford. I hope I'm saying their name correctly. Yeah. And Sam really encouraged me to explore this personal dimension a lot more. So really under Sam's editorial guidance, I think it became a personal essay. So I reflected more on my own personal lived experience when visiting this place, which, like I said, my individual visit wasn't that exceptional. 25,000 people go there a year, so anyone, almost anyone, can just go there and see what's there. So I think that really added a lot to the piece in the sense, too, that travel writing is sort of a. I wouldn't call it a dying genre, but it's a genre that needs to be reinvented. And I think Introducing this personal element really gives a lot more dimension and even perhaps validity to a piece that highlights a trip. The trip is still there, maybe organizes the piece in a structural sense, but as you mentioned, you can touch a lot more themes, a lot more dimensions, a lot more aspects of any sort of subject, not really limited to. How would you say it? Maybe the spatial dimension becomes a door that opens up and allows you to expand the piece a lot more. Especially when you include that personal element instead of delimiting or closing off a certain area that the text is sort of comes up against these borders that it really can't get out of. I don't know. I might have got myself lost in my own metaphor.
- [17:18]
B
No, no.
- [17:21]
C
So. But no, with Sam's encouragement, I think I really explored an aspect of my own experience in Epic, one that I hadn't really given much consideration. I'm grateful because I think the piece is a lot stronger because of it. Okay.
- [17:34]
B
I'm so glad to hear that. Yeah, I think so too. I actually remember, I have a very distinct memory of. I printed out your piece from the submission queue because it sounded so interesting. And I read it while I was walking around this cemetery outside my house. So I was in my own ruins. And I really, really liked it. And it did feel short. And I gave it to Sam because Sam was at that time, our sort of resident journalist. They've since moved on from the Common. It was like a one year fellowship position, but, yeah, now they're working in journalism. But I knew that they would be sort of the right person to look into, sort of how we could deepen it, lengthen it. But also, that is the note we give. I would say, like the majority note we give to nonfiction pieces that we work on is that we want more of the personal in it. I think my guess is that's how things that could be just reporting become kind of. Yeah. Creative nonfiction or essays, personal narrative, that kind of thing that makes sense in the Common as opposed to in a more traditional magazine or a literary journal. But I'm sure as a journalist, it can feel strange to sort of center yourself in a. In a piece like. That's not probably your. Your first instinct.
- [18:47]
C
No, not at all. No, it was. It was. It was an exercise for sure. It definitely took me some time going back and forth and writing and erasing and rewriting to find, how would you say, sort of destroy a little bit from maybe my, you know, reporter voice, but not too far and narrate, you know, different things that happened to me directly or things that are, you know, maybe a little more of opinion. But when you're telling your own personal story, the opinions you share, of course, are also a lot more personal. So it was a good exercise. I'm happy with the way it turned out.
- [19:31]
B
Yeah, I'm thrilled with how it turned out. I also, like. I really love a piece that teaches me something, and I think that's true for lots of readers. And I think I was most interested to learn about Argentina's sort of golden age that you talked about, and these sort of ebbs and flows of power and economics and also currency stuff. But I would also guess that when you're writing, you must have a sense often that you're writing for an audience that isn't familiar with Argentina at all, isn't familiar with how things have been there. So you're sort of writing from that perspective. And you might have sort of an outsized role of sort of teaching people who are unfamiliar about your home. You know, Is that something you think about when you're writing? Does it complicate writing? Or is it. I mean, sometimes a clean slate is nice.
- [20:16]
C
Yes, I definitely think about it. Most certainly. You have to be careful, Argentina. Most places are complex, but Argentina is a complex place, and it has a lot of unique complexities that you maybe wouldn't find in other countries to understand them. Sometimes the explanation can be too long to capture anyone's interest. But you have to be careful. You don't want to dumb things down too much, sort of. We live in an era where it's. There's a real tendency just to see things in black and white or good and bad. So sometimes, and I hope that I'm not too cynical or pessimistic in the piece, I think it can be important to create valid criticism. But when you're speaking to an audience who doesn't have a context of Argentine history, it's important. I try not to be too critical because Argentina is a wonderful place. I love it very much. It's a beautiful place. It's. People are complex, but they're also wonderful, among many other things. So you have to be careful not to not portray it in a negative light necessarily. But it can be tricky. I think we're in an era where audiences, even writers maybe. I would not know if we're a bit lazy, but there's a version. Maybe the gut instinct isn't to take the time to sort of unravel the complexity of a certain phenomenon in a place or situation. I find myself doing that all the time. I'm interested about a topic and I, for about 10 or 15 minutes, I've sort of become tired of investigating it, unless I need to for something I'm working on. And I realized that my whole knowledge on that topic is limited to what I just randomly or came across during those 10 or 15 minutes. And that's definitely not a complete picture. But anyways, I also think maybe criticism can be in a certain way, in a certain context, a sign of affection. Usually if you don't care about something, if you're indifferent, you don't take the time and energy and effort to formulate informed or original or crafted criticism. So I think there's also a little margin that if you want to demonstrate a certain place in a positive light, there's room to be critical. But anyways, I hope I don't come off as too pessimistic or cynical. Although pessimism is a common emotion in Argentina. So it's not out of tune I guess either.
- [22:59]
B
Yeah, I fear that might be everywhere now. Yeah, yeah, things are not feeling great. I just want to one more thing about your piece before we kind of move on to other things. I just encourage our listeners to check out your piece online or in the print issue because there are really, really beautiful photographs that you took on 35 millimeter film and then I think did some post editing on them as well of epiquen and it's so haunting. They're really unusual photos. We get that description at the beginning of things looking like they've basically been deep fried and you really have to see it to believe it. But I wonder if you could just how would you describe those photos for our listeners and what do you specifically love about them?
- [23:45]
C
Those photos? I would. I think the best word to describe them is. Well, they're I guess experimental. I think you could see them being haunting as well. I have to confess this is one of my premier, my first incursions into photography. I have since bought a digital camera and become, you know, it's still maybe level of an amateur, but a much better photographer. I realized when publishing pieces oftentimes editors would ask me for photos and I just. But you know, realized that I hadn't take the time to take any photos. So I realized it was important for me to branch out into photography. And like I said, I was may plan this trip to epic when I had this pending move and the only camera I had available was an old 35 millimeter camera that my father had given me some years before. That was. It was his old camera I mean, it was older than me. I don't know if it was from the 70s or so. That's what I took with me. It was the only. I guess I had a cell phone camera. But I've never really. I don't know, it felt more correct to have a big chunk of a camera. And I had. I mean, she said I had used the care, you know, the 35 millimeter cameras before, but it had been a long time. So it was sort of my reconnection with photography and film photography, and it turned out all right. I think some of the film I used was actually past its expiration date. So the colors are bizarre. And I later discovered that I guess I did everything wrong. The camera even had a light leak. So there's kind of these blurring stains that pop up on some of the images. I took a lot of photos, maybe, I don't know, 100 or 150. And a lot of them were very bad. But some of them, I think this combination of all these imperfect factors produced a handful of images that I think, luckily they accompany the piece quite well. And luckily, the common. You're kind enough to publish them along with the piece. They sort of transmit the. There's a haunting there, but I think just sort of the state of degradation and slow decay and there's a desolation to them as well. The most fascinating things, I think of the trees. You know, the trees were under this briny water for, you know, 20 some years. And they're all dead now, but they're sort of, you know, they're petrified and they have these thick trunks and the top of the trunks, just these, you know, spiny little branches that's, you know, the state they were in when the flood came. And this, you know, the bark has just become this big, gnarled, calloused bark that it's. They almost have a sort of presence. Like you sort of walk past a tree and you're. You're not sure if it's going to, I don't know, jump out and grab you or something like that. So I think the photos of the trees, I think, are quite. Captured a certain essence of the place. The cemetery as well, I think I didn't mention. But you're talking about cemeteries. The case with epicuinas. Initially, the cemetery didn't flood. It was on higher ground and it's a little bit removed from the town. It wasn't until about a month later that as the water continued to rise, the water reached the cemetery. And because, you know, the I guess, would you call it, the groundwater is so low. These weren't graves that were dug in the ground. They were all mausoleums or, you know, above ground tombs. And the water reached these tombs and the coffins begin to float. So it's quite horribly. The residents who'd taken refuge would organize trips where they'd go out in canoes and they would, they'd try to collect these floating coffins to be able to, you know, give their past relatives a burial somewhere else. And the water didn't flood all of the cemetery, so it flooded maybe two or three levels of coffins, but the tops of these mausoleums. And like I said, you have to think when this was first built in the 1920s, it was a place for money to leak. So a lot of these coffins were quite ornate. Some of them were made from marble from Carrara in Italy. And they were quite ostentatious. And the townspeople who had taken refuge, they were so bothered by the sight of the flooded cemetery that they decided to go out at night and just. They destroyed the tops of the coffins. It bothered them to see them floating above the surface of the lake. So then eventually all the water went away. So you go back and you just have these empty tombs that have been destroyed. It's also quite eerie. But I think there are a couple of good photographs that, that you included in the publication that capture that a little bit.
- [28:19]
B
Yeah, yeah. The tops of the mausoleum's broken off. Yeah. I'm glad you told that story. I should have asked you a question about it. It's kind of my favorite creepy detail. You can just imagine the sort of. I don't know, I feel like that moment really puts us in with the people who actually experienced this. Without that remove that we have a lot of the other times in the piece and it's just very. Yeah, very haunting. That's. I love hearing that about the photos too, that there were so many sort of mistakes or imperfections with the photos because I don't know, that seems sort of fitting. Maybe it would be weird if we had perfectly pristine, well shot photos of this sort of disaster area.
- [28:57]
C
Yeah, I suppose. Maybe that's what gives a little bit of originality. Like I said, many people go to Paquin and it's a very, I guess you could say a photogenic place. So my highly imperfect photos, I guess, are tad bit original. Anyways.
- [29:15]
B
I'm curious just, you know, as a journalist, my sister is a journalist. You know, you're working all the time, you're making new stuff all the time, in a way that I think, you know, I write books, so I'm not always working. I'm not always writing something new. I wonder if you feel like there are topics or themes that you keep returning to, you know, kind of whatever you're working on, like things that crop up even when you. You aren't really planning to.
- [29:37]
C
To write about them to a certain degree. To a certain degree, ultimately. Or. Or lately, I guess, you know, as a journalist, I'm f. Maybe focusing quite a bit on environmental journalism. I work as a freelance journalist too. So a lot of times a project depends on grant funding. And luckily, at least for the time being, there's still a lot of grant funding for environmental investigations. So it definitely ties in a lot with space and place. And there's an environmental dimension to the coin, I suppose. But I've never abandoned some of this fascination I've had for ruins. A piece I'm working on now is about another ruined town in Sicily called Gibellina. It was a town that is a medieval town. It was founded, I don't know, in the 12th or 13th century, something like that. In the 1960s, it was destroyed by a horrible earthquake, but then it was eventually rebuilt in a new location. And all of these, some of them were even actually world renowned. But famous architects and urbanists and city planners were brought in to build this modernist town. So it really contrasts sort of with the traditional Sicilian countryside. And at the same time, the ruins of the original Jubileena were turned into a giant maze. So it's sort of like this huge piece of land art. Anyways, so I'm working on that. I was there actually for a photography residency some time ago. It was a couple years ago. I have this pending chronicle that I'm almost finished with, so. But I can see some parallels between catastrophe, abandonment, and different ways to rebuild or not to rebuild, I suppose.
- [31:30]
B
That's so interesting, you know, that really reminds. I'm sure you've been to Lisbon.
- [31:34]
C
I confess that I have not.
- [31:36]
B
Oh, really? Oh, I just. We were speaking about Portuguese earlier, so I thought maybe.
- [31:39]
C
I confess that I have not.
- [31:41]
B
No, I just. There's a cathedral there that was, you know, they had a terrible earthquake in Lisbon and the city is, you know, almost completely rebuilt now, for the most part. But there's a cathedral where they left it, not quite finished, or I should say they did not rebuild it. And so it's sort of like you get the arches of, like, the structural elements, and it has the sides and the bottom of a church, but there's no roof over top of it, and they've just kept it like that. And at night, they project on the walls like a beautiful, very theatrical, very musical retelling of, like, the history of Lisbon, including, you know, the revolution and these kind of things. And it's very, very beautiful. And it just. Everybody just comes in and sits on the floor and watches the walls of these ruins. You would love it.
- [32:32]
C
Oh, yeah. Well, I'm sure I'll visit Lisbon at some point, and I'll have to make sure to visit that. I think it's interesting to maybe consider space as when you come into contact with ruins. It's almost like you experience space as sort of a. I guess a palimpsest could be the term. It's this fixed area where, you know, things are created. You know, they're written and then erased and written over again. And, you know, those remnants are sort of there. So it's sort of. When you come into contact with ruins like that, it's sort of a way of feeling time, but in a spatial way, I guess, that I find kind of enticing.
- [33:15]
B
Yeah, yeah. Watching that performance inside the ruins of the cathedral is really different than going to see it in a museum or something like that. You're in this ruined cathedral that was ruined by an earthquake, and then you get to the part in the history where they tell you about the earthquake. It's very intense.
- [33:33]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. That's the thing. There's almost an intimacy, I guess, with the past when you come into contact with the ruin that, like you say, maybe you just. You can't experience in a museum or, you know, of course, you know, delving into something that, you know, so many different ways to uncover the past. But, you know, when you're sort of in the contact with ruins, you feel. I guess that's what it is, an intimacy, for better or for worse. Like I said, if it's a, you know, a place where horrible things have happened, it could be an intimacy that you don't really desire to experience, but at the same time, you feel the presence of time and history. That's curious, at the very least.
- [34:13]
B
So I know that Argentina is very different from Venezuela, but it also felt sort of like it would be strange if we didn't sort of mention what happened a couple weeks ago, the forced regime change happening in Venezuela right now. So I just wanted to give you space to talk about that situation, if that's something you'd like to. I assume that the repercussions of that have Been felt, you know, in Argentina and everywhere.
- [34:38]
C
Yes, most certainly. You know, I haven't, it's been, it's been a couple of years since I visited Argentina. So I'm not really don't have like the, you know, the pulse on the ground. What can I say? I think it definitely injects a very high level of instability to a region sort of already unstable politically and, and economically. And it adds a really great degree of uncertainty not, not just for Venezuela, but you know, for the region as a whole that for decades has just come to live with uncertainty. So in that sense I, I definitely don't think it's anything positive for, for South America at the very, you know, it sets a very dangerous precedent. It been over 30 years. I guess the last time it was a direct US intervention that toppled a, a head of state was in 1980, 1989 in Panama. So it was curious when I, I, I was in Panama City once and there was during the US intervention at that time there was a heavy bombing in a, a sort of a working class, low income neighborhood called Choros, I believe it's Chos. And even today also I was, you know, maybe there, I don't know, right before the pandemic. So three decades had passed. There's still areas of Chorizo's like blocks that had been bombed out. I think they were intentionally unrepaired sort of to, you know, keep a memory of that invasion. I think that invasion was a lot deadlier too than what happened in Venezuela on January 3rd. So I think it sets a really unfortunate precedent. I guess I don't like, maybe I wouldn't have a lot of personal experience to establish a really strong opinion about national politics in Venezuela. I certainly understand why there can be a lot of rejoicing at the absence of Maduro, who I think really had an iron control over their country for quite a long time and had obviously from all accounts committed horrible electoral fraud in the last elections. I guess what I think maybe is sort of sad to see is that Venezuelan democracy has come to a state where the only way to get a despot out of power is foreign intervention. And there's a whole totalitarian surge well throughout the world, but it's taking hold in Latin America and I hope something similar. I just hope that model doesn't solidify in other countries where the rules of democracy can be ignored or just sort of laughed at. And then you just come to a point where national democratic tools and institutions aren't strong enough to expel someone who's Just a leader who's just clinging to power. So I think it's sort of an unfortunate case as well. What can I say? I think it seems that self, at least Argentina and other South American countries seem to be sort of without a North Star at the moment. So the last political wave where there was a certain degree of unification and something like more or less a shared plan was in the early 2000s. You had what was called the La Maria Rosa, the pink time. Different progressive governments. They called it pink because I guess they weren't red. They weren't necessarily socialist, hardline communists, but they had progressive values, came to power in different countries throughout the region at different times. You had Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, and even Chavez. His moment was at times associated with this surge. And there were definitely some important steps taken. Inclusion of certain sectors of society that have been excluded, perhaps slightly greater distribution of wealth among a larger portion of the population. And I think a lot of the achievements of that era are largely gone. A lot of the politicians who protagonize that area are either in jail or in exile. Sometimes rightfully so, sometimes not so rightfully so. I guess every case is a little bit unique and really sort of authoritarianism seems. Authoritarianism seems to be the only thing that's really shaking things up. And I think that's unfortunate for a lot of people. But anyways, I think it just furthers a cloud of uncertainty in a region that has defined itself over the last decades as being in an uncertain place.
- [39:21]
B
Yeah, that's well said. Always our last question on the podcast is just to ask what you're working on now and what's next from you. Anything you want to share with us?
- [39:32]
C
So what's next? Well, I'm always sort of attentive to grant opportunities to send proposals for different environmental projects, but I'd say right now I'm working on, as I was saying, putting together this piece about this destroyed town, Cerulina in Sicily. It's a place I visited some time ago and I've sort of had it hanging over me. And having worked on this piece for the common with Sam, I'm sort of questioning what is the level of personal narrative I want to inject here. So naturally I injected a little bit more. But I'm sure by the time I have my first draft complete, I'll sit down in front of it and really see, maybe making a little bit more personal, veering a little bit towards that essay format and that just sort of as more cold or distant, you know, travelogue or nonfiction narrative. Might be a. Might be a good decision to tweak it. And I also have a lot of very good photos that I took the digital camera. So hopefully I'll be able to. Well, good. I guess you would say more typical professional photos where, you know, all the color balance is correct or what align with the standard. So hopefully I'll be able to put together another interesting piece for anyone who's interested in reading it.
- [40:59]
B
That sounds so great. Forgive me if this is a very silly question. I mean, do you normally write in English? Is this piece in English? Do you write in Italian? Sometimes Spanish?
- [41:08]
C
I normally write in Spanish. In fact, my very first draft of this piece was in Spanish. The piece of comic. Yes. Instead of referring to a chicken finger, I referred to a milanesa, which is a common dish in Argentina. It's like a fried beef. Fried breaded beef that's fried. Normally in Spanish, but I do write in English too, sometimes, first drafts. And I wish I had the level of Italian. I have an advanced level, but writing in Italian, I've done it before and it's really slow. So if I want to write something, publish a little in Italian, I'm going to need to keep working at it.
- [41:45]
B
Oh, interesting. Well, that piece sounds great. Yeah. If it is in English, I would love to read it at some point.
- [41:52]
C
Most certainly.
- [41:53]
B
Well, thank you so much for joining us. It's been really, really great to talk with you. Really fun to talk about this piece, which is just. Yeah, really one of my favorites.
- [42:02]
C
Oh, I'm so glad. This has been great. Emily, thank you so much for the invitation. I've really enjoyed this myself.
- [42:08]
B
Listeners, you can read this essay and subscribe to the latest issue@thecommononline.org SA.