Thursday Music Link, here on a Saturday
I've mentioned in the past that there are two rules for getting away with genocide - make sure you do it to a pre-literate culture, and make sure you do them hard. That's how Buddhism retains its reputation as a peaceful religion, and it's also why Aussies are considered to be much more laid-back, decent blokey types than South Africans.
But what about Latin America? Just been reading "Semi Invisible Man", a really excellent biography of Norman Lewis. I'd never known about his work with Survival International before, and only dimly about the appalling record of basically every South American state with respect to their tribal peoples.
this is the sound of a truly genocidal culture
(not really; actually the Brazilian music community was in general of the left, and Gilberto Gil has continued to support the rights of native people into his political career. here's an article about the politics of bossa nova if you want one. But it does strike me as strange that there is absolutely nothing in the global perception of places like Brazil which even hints at their really very nasty record)
You're only saying that because you're not on a paleo diet.
ReplyDeleteYikes, that comment was meant for the previous post.
ReplyDeleteDid Sting live for nothing?
ReplyDeleteHmm. In the sense that he was jailed, then exiled, for the politics in his music? Or that other tropicaliscmo musicians were tortured by the military regime? Maybe next time you should do a tiny bit of research before making your snide remarks...
ReplyDeletenot sure what your point is here Cian since I a) did do research, as partly shown in the parenthesis following the link and b) explicitly mentioned GG as someone ho has always stuck up for the rights of indigenous people. But Brazil in general has a really nasty streak through its culture which isn't really part of the popular perception of the place.
ReplyDeleteCian's point is perhaps Sting != Gilberto Gil.
ReplyDeleteSting has however attempted to draw attention the plight of tribal people in Brazil and if he knows what's going on...
Maybe it's an 80's thing that hasn't had a proper revival yet but between Sting, Emerald Forest and The Mission, South American brutality towards indigenous was big box office even before The City of God. The conquistadors I thought were well known for shocking brutatlity. Does anyone think that their rep has been eclipsed by their North American counterparts?
What I was more thinking of was that brutality toward indigenous people really didn't stop with the conquistadors. Norman Lewis was documenting genocides up and down Latin America in the late 1970s.
ReplyDeleteHe went to jail under the military regime before being exiled for 20 years. That's a little bit more than being vaguely right on as you imply in your article. It was a bad example to pick.
ReplyDeleteI thought Cian was referring to the comment about Sting, rather than the original post, for what it's worth.
ReplyDelete(A life of Norman Davies sounds more than interesting, btw.)
If you reply to my email, I'll bring it along to the pub.
ReplyDeleteI am told by a correspondent that I did fuck up by posting a bossa nova link, and that samba was the music of the fascists. Who knew?
I guess you could have worked that out from the article, but it would take some heroic assumptions about the class base of the dictatorship.
ReplyDelete(Also, stand by for loads of guff about the beautiful game, Pele, Jairzinho, etc etc this month as the seleccao* pass the ball very very slowly along their back four and tackle people in the mouth before winning on a penalty shootout, having left all the interesting players out as bad security risks. Like they did in 1994 and 2002 and for all I've seen of it, 1982 as well. Barnsley FC fans singing "It's just like watching Brazil" had a point in more ways than one.)
*this isn't worth installing a Portuguese virtual kbd, now is it?
Actually I do think that, along with "Dream of the Blue Turtles" which was a good album, Sting's work with indigenous Americans was one of the few praiseworthy things he did. happily, however, he has apparently left the Amnesty years behind him and is playing gigs for dictators in Uzbekistan, so I can go back to ignorantly hating him.
ReplyDeleteIn 1982 Brazil did have a great, beautiful midfield. But nobody up front (Careca was hurt) and nobody who could defend. In 1974, though, they were thugs.
ReplyDeleteRe genocide, I think the question is not "why do some people get a pass" but why does anyone ever get blamed? Many nations have appalling records that nobody ever points to, but some episodes become famous exemplars of immorality. What accounts for our occasional decisions to pay attention?
Indeed, 1982 was a bad example. But yes, watch out for loads of shite about Brazil including the claim that they're "everyboy's second team". Not mine they're not: which dates back pretty much to 1982 and the great game they lost to Italy, who I was supporting.
ReplyDeleteThey're not what they're claimed to be, and if they were, I wouldn't be so impressed: if you don't thinmk you have to defend (and in 1982, they didn't) you're only playing half a game, and the half that requires less use of your head.
It's possible - but unlikely - that the rest of LA simply looks good compared with Argentina, where not only was there a pretty comprehensive genocide of natives, but also - apparently due to an odd convergence of wars and disease in the 19th C, an almost complete disappearance of a once-large African-derived population, resulting in probably the whitest* country in the Western Hemisphere (much more so than Canada, believe it or not).
ReplyDelete* for certain values of "white," obviously. But it's an overwhelmingly Euro-descended populus.
"Once again, the indigenous peoples of the Xingú valley in the Brazilian Amazon are planning to make the long journey to the town of Altamira*, where the Trans-Amazonica highway crosses the Xingú. Their ultimate destination will be the island of Pimental a short distance downriver from the town, where the Brazilian government plans to build a huge hydroelectric dam they call Belo Monte after the nearest Brazilian village. The Indians’ bold plan, is to prevent the construction of the dam by building a new village directly on top of the proposed dam site and maintaining their occupation until the government abandons its plans for the dam. The planning for the encampment is being led by the Kayapo, the largest and most politically organized of the indigenous nations of the region, but other indigenous groups are also participating."
ReplyDeleteLook up Terry Turner he's the man responsible for this.
"You want a treaty? Enough of your lies. We'll do it on tape. We'll supply the equipment. And the cameraman."
Brazil's not going to get much criticism from other countries on indigenous affairs, because the latter generally have form on doing nasty things to natives. Glass houses and all that. New Zealand could probably get away with it - the British actually signed a treaty with the Maori which is still effective today. But not Australia. I may be wrong, but the Brazilians never destroyed a race and whole language family like the early settlers did to the Tasmanian aborigines.
ReplyDeleteIn my experience (in the inner-city haunts and cafes of Brisbane), most people discussing two historical evils - one in their own country, and the second in another - will be far more scathing of the first, irregardless of which is worse. It's not always logical, but it's better manners that the opposite behavior - always be more scathing of other countries' atrocities than your own.
There are exceptions. There are people who like to point out the mote in others' eyes when they have a great big beam in their own. I'm thinking of Christopher Hitchens.
This is partly a note-to-self-to-do-more-research based on recent conversations in Sydney, but also a solicitation-of-thoughts: did (a sizeable proportion of) the early European settlers in Australia believe that Aborigines weren't actually human, due to complete cultural-differences failure (whereas the Maoris had villages, land, chief, wars-as-we-comprehend-etc)? Or did they get the whole 'human, got a soul, real person' thing and exterminate them anyway?
ReplyDeleteNeither, John B - as with most of these genocides DIRECT murder was not much used.
ReplyDeleteThey were in the way, so it was convenient to say "feh" as they died of malnutrition and introduced diseases when their land was taken away. Local politicians used to hypocritically speak of "smoothing the pillow of the dying race" - there was no perceived need to smother them with the pillow.
Think of the vast number of people Stalin killed by famine - it was a far, far bigger number than were directly shot by the NKVD.
"smoothing the pillow of the dying race"
ReplyDeleteThe quote is "smoothing down their dying pillow" and it's the Rev. Samuel Marsden, and about New Zealand not Australia. The difference is enormous - no convicts, serious military power on the Maori side, the treaty relationship.
Marsden was a pretty weird guy - he was big on preaching against the wickedness of importing guns into NZ, until the evil day when a case of goods consigned to him was accidentally dropped on Auckland docks, bursting open and revealing several stand of rifles.
In Australia, things were much more genocidal in both the "let'em starve" sense and the "line'em up and shoot them" sense.