The Blue Monkey Review

I regularly receive commentary on events and developments in Israel from Yaacov Lozowick, who is the director of the archives at Yad Vashem and author of Right to Exist (reviewed on the Blue Monkey Review). Yesterday he sent along the following. The text is entirely Yaacov. The links are mine, so don't blame Yaacov for them. A general primer on Israel parties can be found on the BBC.

---
As you may know, we've got an election coming up soon. Me, I already know what the result will be, and indeed, even published them in the paperback edition of Right to Exist. However, I've decided that prudence is an admirable virtue, so I ain't saying, not till after the results roll in and I've had the opportunity to airbrush my version a wee bit as necessary.

In the meantime, however, here is an e-mail I sent out earlier this evening to a fellow voter, who is still undecided at this late date. Slightly annotated, for the benifits of those of you unversed in our shorthand.

If you like settlements, you vote for Ichud Leumi [right-wing religious], coz Lieberman is not to be trusted [Lieberman =a Russian party, nominally right-wing, but not if that means being in the opposition], and Bibi even less, especially as he may get thrown out and Silvan will run to join Olmert. [Bibi (i.e. Beyamin Netanyahu): need I explain? If Likud gets thrashed, the assumption is that he'll get ousted, and replaced by Silvan Shalom]

If you don't like settlements, you vote Kadima or Labour, depending upon what you prefer: crooks or communists. if you want to be a real feinshmeker, you vote Meretz. That more or less sums up all the options this time round. Ah, and abstaining is not an option, because the issue really is important, and you have to choose.

See? That wasn't so hard.

Posted by at 9:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 10: The whole point of this trip was to gain some familiarity with Mayan culture. I´ve now toured four Mayan sites in four days, and I might have predicted that by now they would all look pretty much the same to me. Not so! First, I made the uncharacteristically good decision to begin with sites that don´t have the reputation of overwhelming visitors. Tulum has an extraordinary setting, on a promontory over the Caribbean. Otherwise, though, is is not exciting to a casual visitor like myself. Coba, and then Chichen Itza fulfilled my desire to find powerful testimony of Mayan culture in the city ruins.

Uxmal, however, has an attraction all its own. More compact than Coba or Chichen Itza, it has many more buildings standing in a condition that allows you to see them as buildings. The courtyard of the ¨Nunnery¨ (probably a palace) could probably accommodate a soccer field. What the imposing buildings on each of the four sides probably imposed was the difference in wealth, rank, and power of the ruling class compared to the ordinary men and women who may have attended rituals there. The palace buildings, like many of the structures in Uxmal, allow you to imagine what they might have looked like when in use. Of course, you have to ingore the colorful names given by the Spanish--the governor's palace, the sorcerer's castle--since they had no idea what purpose the buildings served.

Remember, too, that buildings here include their decoration. At Coba I paused over every stela, trying to make out the form or picture engraved in it, thankful for the picture provided by conservators. Weathering has pretty much wiped out the messages of the stelae. At Uxmal, though, the pervasive representations of Chac-Mool look as detailed as they did when Alvarado first led conquistadors into the tropical jungle. Okay, I don't know that. But the decorations at Uxmal are detailed, and the designs have remaind in good condition through the centuries.

Uxmal, by the way, received a stamp of approval from a long-time traveler in Central America. I met Charlie two days later. He was finishing up several months in Central America, selling property he had owned for some years, and preparing to spend more time traveling--in Southeast Asia. Over the years he has visited many Mayan sites, and he chose Uxmal as one of the most impressive.

Posted by at 4:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 6: On Monday I spent the morning at Coba, an amazing site from the classic period, the centr of a gridwork of roads leading to other Mayan cities. From the top of the pyramid you can take in the surrounding jungle for miles, and better appreciate the achievemnt of the Mayans. Not to dismiss their great works of city-building, but it was amazing that they could live her at all. This peninsula is a flat shelf of limestone, with little in the way of surface water except for the cenotes that dip down into the limestone rivers below. The organization of labor around agriculture must have provided the base for organizaing it around religion and civic life. I´m sure it´s true that it takes a village to raise a child. Here, it took a city to raise a crop.

From Coba I took what seemed like an endless drive to Chicen Itza. Along the way I reconsiderd my interior dialogue about my approach to tourism and decided that maybe it would not kill me to take a chance on a poshy resort. I´m flexible enough to think of trying comfort as a way to challenge myself. So, just outside the park entrance to Chicen Itza I pulled into the Mayaland Hotel. I asked for a room and turned over my VISA number to open an account (since then that VISA has stopped working, giving me messages about being overdrawn--I´m sure there´s not relation). I won´t say how much my ¨Superior Room¨ cost, but will tell you that it cost more than my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th most expensive nights combined.

And, I won´t say it didn´t bite a little to have the spacious room, the balcony with a view of the archeological site, the huge swimming pool, and the spacious restaurant with gourmet cook. The puritan still lurks within. I think I settled down and enjoyed it all pretty well. Mayaland, begun in 1923, has both beautiful rooms and cabanas. It´s kind of a Maya them park, with pavilions made with thatched roofs and dance troops entrtaining the busloads of tourists who stop there with some kind of Mayan bottle dance. The cabanas are built to give the impression of Mayan huts, though about the size of 10 or maybe 20 of the real huts. It´s the kind of place that appeals to middle-aged, middle-class travelrs from Georgia and Germany. It´s the kind of place that has peacocks wandering around the grounds.

I arrived late afternoon and had planned to se the site the next day. That night, though, I went to the laser light show at the Great Pyramid. I´m not recommending it, though it did provide an overview of the history of Chichen Itza and some genral information about the Maya. But it attempted to maintain a dramatic delivery throughout the 45 minutes of the presentation (no jokes, no local color). I have to admit that my attention wandered several times.

I did meet interesting people(just as predicted), John Eric and Sarah, a young couple from San Francisco here in the Yucatan to go to a wedding on the beach, near Belize. It´s at an eco-resort, so no elctricty and private-communal bathrooms. I wanted to go along, but I don´t think the dean would be happy if I didn´t make it back by Monday. We had dinner together, and discussed our various professions. Sarah is a civil enginer, whose company is building the new Bay Bridge. John Eric works in environmental insurance. Still not clear what I´m doing.

John Eric and Sarah both recommended that I show up at the ruins early. I did, and was happy about it. (One of the advantages of staying at Mayaland is that it has its own entrance to the park.) I shared the Great Pyramid with one other tourist (no, we didn´t climb--not allowed), and wanderd through the Thousand Columns section pretty by myself. Even by the time I left, later that morning, there were still fewer toursits than vendors at the site.

I can´t possibly say anything about Chichen Itza that would go beyond the rave reviews of your friends who have visited. It´s well worth the effort to make a visit.

Posted by at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

March 5: I had made plans to stay at the hip El Crucero in Tulum. When I arrived, howevr, the reception guy told me that the woman who had my room the night before had broken her foot. He told me the story sevral more times as he showed me my alternative, a two bunkbed dorm room that might have really apealed to me 25 years ago. I thanked him, said I´d find another place, and walked across the stret to a hotel called El Acuario (there was a moment when I thought it was called El Actuario). The room I ended with cost more and was comfortable enough. And, unlike the situation at El Crucero, I had the place to myself. That is, I pretty much had the hotel to myself. Tourists voting with their feet and Visa cards preferred El Crucero about 50 to one, at least on Sunday night.

Later that night I wonderd why I always end up staying more or less at the margin of tourism, in places where you can find ex-hippies and young people, the kind who often go camping and do without elctricty. As I drove south from Cancun earlier in the day, I´d seen several mega-resorts; they must have cost a fortune, but had to include all the possible comforts. They probably possessed comforts I don´t evevn know exist. And from these favored rooms and hallways the residents take intersting excursions, do fun things like snorkeling and ziplining. Instead of figuring out the highway system in Quintana Roo province and searching for reception on the rental car radio, I could be taking air conditioned bus rides with intersting people and walking through the ruins of Tulum with a knowledgable guide.

So, it would be a trip without bed bugs and light swtiches that don´t switch on anything. But, I would also miss the opportunity of sitting in the Aquarium´s empty restaurant watching Desafio de Estrellas (singers compet with one another and face the judgment of a panel of experts) with the owner, manager, and staff of the hotel, Felipe.

As we sat watching the young men and women compete and face the unforgiving opinions of the experts, a comercial came on for Obrador, one of the candidates for president in Mexico this year. I casually asked Felipe, a man in his early to mid-sixties, who he favored among the candidates. ¨It doesn´t matter who is president,¨ he said, ¨they all take their orders from the United States.¨

I´m accustomed to some anit-American sentiment wherever I travel--I expect a little, and find that it´s usually mixed with both admiration and attraction. But this wasn´t exactly the case for Felipe. He was very pro-American, and he soon outlined a plan to me in which the U.S. would adopt Mexico, make it into sevral new states. ¨You tell us what to do,¨ he said, ¨we´ll do the work.¨

I couldn´t exactly see this happening in the North America that I´m familiar with. I mentioned that ther might be many Mexicans who would object to this plan. ¨They need to be told what to do by those who think and understand.¨ We might have pursued this further, but somehow the conversation took an unexpected turn when Felipe hapend to mention that in the U.S. the Jews run evrything. He could see my incredulity pretty quickly, which only ecouraged him to expand on this notion. ¨They control the capital,¨ he said, ¨so they control the politicians.¨ And as I struggled to decide wher to begin to argue about this, he added, ¨And there´s another Jew in England, another in Russia...¨

Well, I made some attempts to respond--feble enough, because big ideas like this have a self-referential quality that makes them the intellectual equivalent of quicksand. Anyway, Felipe to larger themes. The U.S. (in spite of the Jews? because of them?) is at the height of its power, its maximum point. We should become one world, he said, under the leadership of the U.S.

And how will this happen? ¨The U.S. will guarantee employment, health, education.¨ Once ths problems are solved, Felipe said, the other countries of the world will follow us with no resistance. I´m not so sure about his conclusion, but I pointed out that we who live in the U.S. don´t have those rights.

We had spent about an hour talking, completly ignoring the young beauties singing their hearts out on Desafio when Felip said that the U.S. had to act soon--it had already begun the long, slow process of decline. Well, Democrats have ben saying that for years, but I asked him why?

¨Women´s liberation,¨ he said. Again, he got my incredulous look and I began to talk about economics. He told me, though, that as families changed, as women went out to work (and made more than their husbands) the three children in each family who wer growing up without mothers, without her guidance and assistance, what was hapening to them? ¨Prostitutes! Drug addicts!¨

No telling wher this would have gone, but Felipe had to eat his dinner. By this time I was kind of tired, so took a beer to my room to think about the margins of tourism.

Posted by at 3:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)