Month: May 2020

An Andalusian Pueblo Blanco Without Coronavirus

Posted on by Jimmy

Instead of jumping on Twitter in the early mornings and inevitably seeing distressing reports of impunity and inequality, I’ve been reading La Voz de Galicia. It’s local news that relates more to my day-to-day, I practice reading Spanish and Galician, and there’s a plethora of human interest pieces that are pretty interesting. I pick out a few to read while I eat some breakfast to prepare for the day’s fasting. This pleasant article caught my attention today:

“Zahara de la Sierra, from medieval fortress to sanitary fortress”

The town of 1,500, a quarter of which over the age of 65, has not registered a single case of coronavirus. Considering that at the time of writing, Spain is the country with the second highest number of total cases and the fourth highest number of coronavirus-related fatalities, this is astonishing and awesome.

Zahara is a pueblo blanco, one of the whitewashed towns in the southern community of Andalusia with narrow streets and clustered houses. This one is perched on a mountain, with an old Moorish fort overlooking the town. I haven’t been there myself but I’ve been to other pueblos blancos like Grazalema and Ronda.

So how did Zahara de la Sierra manage to stay free from coronavirus, even as nearby towns and villages registered cases and fatalities?

First, they sprang into action the day after the state of alarm was announced and blocked off four of the five roads leading into the town. They sprayed every entering vehicle with water and bleach. The markets set up a delivery service. The women’s association cooked and delivered food to the footsteps of their elderly neighbors. They cleaned the streets a few times a week. They stayed in touch on Facebook. They outfitted music and lights onto cars to entertain children from the balconies. And they used the town’s contingency fund to help family-run businesses and autónomos, freelancers, stay afloat during the lockdown. They also turned away tourists, even though the pueblos blancos are very popular with international tourists and depend on the tourism sector.

This level of neighborhood support and seriousness to health should be envied everywhere.

First Brown Bear in the Central Ourensan Massif Since the Late 19th Century

Posted on by Jimmy

Some good news in nature conservation. A brown bear between 3-5 years old came from A Serra do Courel in Lugo and probably spent the winter in Parque Natural do Invernadeiro, where it was caught on cameras set up for a documentary.

Patricia found this article in National Geographic España. There’s also a short English version at The Guardian.

We moved to Galicia in September, first on the coast near O Grove. We were preoccupied with finding work and a place to live so we weren’t in the adventurous spirit, other than a small road trip to find where we live now. Now that the quarantine deescalation and true spring have begun, I’m itching to get back to camping in the van, going on hikes, and exploring some of these places so close to us, like the central Ourensan Massif and of course, back to Ribeira Sacra. Hopefully we won’t disturb this guy when we’re there.

14 Ramadan: Ignite the Divine Engine

Posted on by Jimmy

People who have never tried fasting before are astonished to contemplate not eating or drinking all day. But it becomes easier as one moves through the month of Ramadan. A rhythm is introduced; perhaps different than normal. Maybe your sleep schedule is different. You find something else to do during lunchtime. I find the change itself beneficial, especially during the quarantine.

I’m still being a bit stubborn. Other years, I’ve given up coffee for the month. This year, I didn’t dare think of it. In the early morning, I drank a cup (usually it’s two) before having the leftover vegan pizza from the iftar last night along with dates, cashews, almonds, cranberries, and homemade soy yogurt.

Spain is deescalating the estado de alarma with a series of phases. Each phase lasts approximately two weeks and gives more freedom of mobility to individuals and businesses. By late June, if there isn’t another big outbreak, spain will have transitioned into la nueva normalidad. There are still fatalities from COVID-19, however.

Even though it’s the fourteenth day, the 13th part of the Qur’an has one of my favorite verses:

“God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves.“ [13:11]

People who are skeptical of any religion or supernatural/unexplained phenomena in the world constantly wring their heads about why God would allow poverty to exist. But we allow it to happen. All the conditions are there for us to eliminate this, if people awake from their materialistic, individualistic stupor. We are connected to each other, our earth, and everything else within creation. We have the technology and resources to do away with poverty and cancer. We simply do not act on this on a big enough scale for us to achieve utopia in the here and now.

On Lamp of Islam, I came across a great response to the question of the mosque-goers during the pandemic.

God, according to the Quran, is not an external entity/deity that is separate from everything. He works through His laws, manifested to our perceptions as laws of nature…

Though it is God who is the ultimate ‘doer’, it is through His agencies that He eventually actualizes His will to ‘do’ the things. On this particular occasion, when some people are dying from the coronavirus pandemic because of going to the mosques, the agencies involved in actualizing God’s will are mainly these people’s own irresponsible actions.

The Quran relentlessly calls on us to act, to remember the law of consequences and to live so consciously that we feel morally accountable for our own actions.

Read the full response, along with cross-referenced verses.

Marx Predicted Our Present Crisis, and Points the Way Out

Posted on by Jimmy

“We need more robots, better solar panels, instant communication and sophisticated green transport networks. But equally, we need to organise politically to defend the weak, empower the many and prepare the ground for reversing the absurdities of capitalism. In practical terms, this means treating the idea that there is no alternative with the contempt it deserves while rejecting all calls for a “return” to a less modernised existence.”

“Capitalism’s reach is so pervasive it can sometimes seem impossible to imagine a world without it. It is only a small step from feelings of impotence to falling victim to the assertion there is no alternative. But, astonishingly (claims the manifesto), it is precisely when we are about to succumb to this idea that alternatives abound.“

In light of world governments pushing their citizens to “reopen economies”, the oncoming financial crisis sparked by lagging consumption and massive unemployment, and the further consolidation of capital from firms like Amazon, Yanis Varoufakis‘s Guardian article on the Communist Manifesto (adapted from his introduction of a recent edition) for the old man’s bicentennial is as relevant as ever:

If the manifesto holds the same power to excite, enthuse and shame us that it did in 1848, it is because the struggle between social classes is as old as time itself. Marx and Engels summed this up in 13 audacious words: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

From feudal aristocracies to industrialised empires, the engine of history has always been the conflict between constantly revolutionising technologies and prevailing class conventions. With each disruption of society’s technology, the conflict between us changes form. Old classes die out and eventually only two remain standing: the class that owns everything and the class that owns nothing – the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

This is the predicament in which we find ourselves today. While we owe capitalism for having reduced all class distinctions to the gulf between owners and non-owners, Marx and Engels want us to realise that capitalism is insufficiently evolved to survive the technologies it spawns. It is our duty to tear away at the old notion of privately owned means of production and force a metamorphosis, which must involve the social ownership of machinery, land and resources. Now, when new technologies are unleashed in societies bound by the primitive labour contract, wholesale misery follows. In the manifesto’s unforgettable words: “A society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.”

Everyone reading this has lived in the capitalist realist world with no first experience of anything else. Marx was born at precisely the right time in history to see capitalism being born. As such, his analysis is relevant to us, even if he didn’t understand ecology, gender, and technology in quite the same way we do now.

It is the end of ‘the end of history’. There is an alternative to the unequal American reality, regardless of what the political and capitalist classes say. You can see it for yourself in the human-centered responses.