Where constitutions are suggestions and even Elvis won't hide anymore...

Seriously, there are some mornings when the BBC Americas section just angers me.

Simple, pure anger.

Today’s anger is brought to you by yet another Latin American leader thumbing his nose at a country’s constitution. In this region that so desperately needs to gain international legitimacy, so much happens to keep these nations from moving forward. It’s almost like there’s only so much room for politically successful countries, so no matter what reforms are passed, no matter who is ousted from office, Latin America will remain a politically backward place.

Mr. Zelaya of Honduras is the newest offender of the pack. Before I get into this though, I want to give a brief synopsis of Latin America’s history with executive branches of government.

- Latin America is discovered by Europeans and subsequently serves as Spain’s bitch for centuries.
- Political revolutions begin, namely in Mexico, around 1910. Nothing happens in these revolutions. They happen about once every two to three years. It’s always a conservative replacing a conservative. Villa & Zapata run around some countryside. Santa Anna lost his leg, gave it a state funeral, had it dug up and paraded around the city, (GO AHEAD AND CHECK. I AM NOT KIDDING.) and then lost his cork leg in Texas.
- Most argue that it was until the PRI was elected in 2000 and Vincente Fox was the president of Mexico, however, constitutional reform was floating around Latin America in the 1980s. Since there was no money in the region, the idea of a weak executive didn’t bother politicians. They couldn’t afford to run and serve for more than one term.
- Then money started to pour into the region. And people got excited (read: greedy). That’s when presidents started closing down congresses and bribing militaries to back them into taking over the country until the next guy came along and bribed all of the original guy’s supporters into turning on him. Meanwhile, people in Latin America remain poor, uneducated, and receive no real services from the state. (Talk about a social contract in need of overthrowing.)
- Things calmed down a bit in the last ten years with Castro getting old and not being able to support crazy young guys, but then Chavez was elected and the crazy young guys got a big champion in him. Now people think it’s once again okay to try and change the constitution to give oneself more time in office. This clearly causes all kinds of problems.

So Mr. Zelaya tried to gauge public opinion about changing the constitution to allow for executive reelection. He was promptly escorted out of the country by the congress and the military. In a region where executives are notorious for abusing power once they’ve gained it via legitimate means, Zelaya had to see a negative reaction coming on that one.

So why the anger? Well…in true US fashion we’ve chosen a horse to back and it’s the wrong one. The right one being no horse, because the more we intervene in political decisions, the worse things get twisted. Sec. Clinton received Zelaya after he was booted out. Even better is that Obama wants to pretend he’s not intervening at all. For the most part, he’s not. He refuses to engage with Chavez, which may be one of the few things we agree on completely. But the invitation to Zelaya should have been rescinded. Sigh. Now he’s playing chicken with the Honduran border and Chavez is shouting his support louder and louder every day.

And people wonder why Latin America doesn’t make any kind of global progress. It’s a circus down there people. A CIRCUS.

iPod etiquette continues

If you turn up your iPod to not be bothered by the announcements on the metro, do not turn to me and ask what they just said when you sense the announcement is over. Not only did I have to listen to the announcement AND your poor musical choices at the same time, but now you've taken out one earbud, I can hear the Jonas Brothers more clearly, and I have to repeat the announcement three times before you get it.

Just don't.

The one where I discuss why men aren't evil...

I just read a blog post where the author discussed having changed her name four times and then dove into the reasons behind each name change. Now, she’s a professional writer and some of her reasons have to do with the nom de plume issues of writing controversial (but highly entertaining) columns, but her first name change is what stuck with me. She changed her last name in order to undermine our patriarchal society. I can understand the reasoning behind this. Words are incredibly powerful, or at least I’ve always believed they are, and I suppose changing your last name will remove a public association to the men in your family. (And to be fair, her childhood was horrific enough to cut off her arm if it meant disassociating with some of the monsters in her life.) But then she mentioned the other women in society who change their names. And I started thinking, would I just up and change my name?

Well for starters, I definitely wouldn’t change my first name. I like it. Everything about it. I like my first initial in all kinds of script, I like the origin of my name, I like how my name sounds in a variety of languages. I love my name.

As for my last name? I would feel like I was betraying two amazing men who have done so much to make me the person I am today. I don’t feel like keeping their name in any way diminishes the efforts of women who also contributed to my upbringing, some with the same last name, some with another.

My father’s father was born in a tiny town in Cuba. His dad didn’t really want him, so one day he dropped my grandfather off at his grandparents’ house and left him there. I think he was around 4. He spent his childhood doing little boy things, his adolescence learning to be a welder, and his young adulthood fighting first in a revolution, then in a counterrevolution. He left his home, knowing he’d probably never see it again, and brought his family to a country where he worked like an animal to put his children in the best schools available. He was a tough man, and big, the kind of man who would frighten little children with his sheer size. I once saw him bring a grown uncle to his knees with a simple handshake. But he was also kind. I saw him every week as a young child. He would bring a pizza to our house for lunch and just sit and talk with us and with my mom. He was a pillar of the community and a lot of my faith in God comes from his example. He overcame alcoholism, heart disease, and was eventually brought down by the cruel condition, Alzheimer’s. But even when he was sick, when he couldn’t recognize me or my brothers, his children or his wife, he was still the man who bought my a bike, never held me back from doing anything because I was “just” a girl, and encouraged me to study hard and want for more than he had.

My father is a product of his father in so many good ways. He’s generous and loving, and still has that toughness. He’s got the handshake too. He spent his childhood studying hard. He was “that guy.” Top of his class, varsity wrestler, handsome, blah blah blah. He went to college and started studying to be a doctor. And then he met my mother. She was (and still is) a good friend of his little sister’s. After a while, it was evident that they were meant to be together. They got married his senior year, despite objections from both sides of the family. He crammed about five million credits into his last semester so he could get a job and they could start their life together. Most 23 year-old guys I know run away from that kind of commitment, emotion, and lifestyle change. His life plan was on a medical school track and here he was college-educated, married, working as a phlebotomist, and pumping gas at night. He met the love of his life and didn’t “keep things casual” or ask her to wait while he “dated around while he was young.” (I’ll keep my thoughts on the ridiculous antics of boys nowadays for another post.) He moved on to other jobs, settled into a successful career, and created an amazing family. I was always encouraged to go after what I wanted, to look for things that made me happy. I also was lucky to be reared in the presence of an amazing relationship. My parents are still sublimely happy, like high-schoolers in puppy love. And they fight. It wasn’t until I left home and got more insight into how the normal world works that I realized how rare it was to find a relationship where you can fight and use it to make the relationship stronger. I am immeasurably grateful to have this example in my life as a model for my future marriage (which is unlikely at this time, let’s be honest).

I could go on an on about both of these men. I could go on and on about their flaws too, but I won’t. It’s enough to mention that they have them, that they’ve passed some of them onto me (I'm not perfect! Shocker!), and that the good far outweighs the ugly. I could also go on about my uncles, cousins, brothers, friends. They are all amazing men in their own right who’ve made an impact, big or small, on me.

So there you have it. Why would I change my name? These men have given me everything I’ve ever wanted and needed and taught me how to get these things for myself. I don’t even know if I can change my name when my unlikely marriage happens. I’ll probably just tack the new one at the end. Because I like my last name’s first initial, I like how it sounds in Spanish the best, but mostly I like that it marks me as being a product of my patriarchy. Maybe that’s an unpopular thought among young women my age. Maybe I will be labeled an anti-feminist. It doesn’t really matter though, because the only label I care about is the Rodriguez one on my birth certificate.

(Just for the record, I carry the marks of the women in my family proudly too. And that’s another post for another time.)

Conscious Effort...

I've been twittering like mad and don't think anything of it. But then I read an article about how twittering is replacing the actual dialogue taking place on the internet. And I didn't really like the tone of the article, because it assumed laziness, the bastards. And here I am making a concerted effort to "contribute" even though no one reads this.

Since my last post, I accepted that I hate my job/career path, quit in January, and am still unemployed. It's gotten easier to say. And I feel like such a poseur too, because someone will ask what I do, and when I answer, they give me the "oh, bad economy" look. Sometimes I let them think it, but I feel so bad when I do that. I did this to myself. I'm not a victim. I shouldn't pretend. I don't regret quitting my job. Ever. But unemployment has indeed gotten old and I'm dying to have a job at this point. Hopefully something works out soon.

Why is this so difficult to understand?

I'm really irritated by all of the focus on higher education, both in the US and abroad. They all wonder why enrollment is down, why students don't do well, why it takes five and six years to get a bachelor's. I don't know if they've figured it out, but the longer you're trying to change the trajectory of a child's education, the more of a chance you have to get them to succeed. So no, stepping in during their freshman year of college isn't the best use of my money or your time.

How many children are in high school and can't read? How many children in the third grade can't write their own names? The number of functionally illiterate people in a place that touts itself as a land of opportunity is astounding. Imagine what would happen if states actually took control of their own destinies and enacted education reform that meant something. What would that even look like?

She says she went to grad school, but I won't bat an eye when she ends up working at Fast Eddie's...

Laughed out loud. Posting this to read and laugh out loud in the future.

Xiao-bo: oh man so i went to the craziest talk to a professor here

me: tell me

Xiao-bo: you know when profs get to a certain tenured age, they are just allowed to be as crazy as they feel like? only a certain adherence to societal norms prevents them from going pantless around campus. anyway, this one very old, very eminent native americans scholar gave all of us first-years a talk supposedly about his research on animal symbolism, instead, he told us all these stories about him hunting possums in west virginia he may also have claimed that he once fought a bear. at the climax of the story, he paused like he was going to say somethig important

we all leaned in, riveted

me: i love where this is going

Xiao-bo: then, he busted open the front of his snap-button shirt and inside he was wearing this t-shirt with a picture of a possum, and the words, "possums: the other white meat"

and that was the end of his lecture. AMAZING.

My life is an SNL skit...

Anonymous Friend: You're dating one person with two different spellings.
Anonymous Friend: Fuck.