Las estatuas más incómodas de América

En marzo de 2011, durante una visita oficial a la Argentina, el entonces presidente Hugo Chávez vio la estatua que se levantaba detrás de la Casa Rosada y preguntó: “¿Qué hace ahí ese genocida?”. Era una escultura de Cristóbal Colón de unos seis metros de alto y 38 toneladas, hecha en mármol de Carrara, ubicada allí desde hacía casi un siglo. “Colón fue el jefe de una invasión que produjo no una matanza, sino un genocidio. Ahí hay que poner un indio”, dijo Chávez. Para los funcionarios que lo acompañaban, ciudadanos de un país donde aún se repite que los argentinos descienden de los barcos, aquella figura tal vez nunca había resultado incómoda hasta ese momento. Pero tomaron nota de sus palabras.

El comentario de Chávez no solo fue disparador de la remoción del monumento dedicado al marino genovés en Buenos Aires —una medida que tomó el Gobierno de Cristina Kirchner en 2013 y desató una larga polémica y una batalla judicial con la comunidad italiana—, sino también el síntoma de una época en que las sociedades de América, y algunos de sus dirigentes, empezaban a poner en discusión de forma más o menos central los símbolos que han dominado los espacios urbanos durante décadas. A veces manifestación de impotencia, a veces demagogia, a veces el descubrimiento repentino de una forma de mostrar la historia y de una resistencia que ya estaban allí desde hacía bastante tiempo, pero en los márgenes.

“Las estatuas hablan siempre de quien las colocó”, escribió en 2020 el autor peruano Marco Avilés, columnista del Washington Post, después de una serie de ataques a monumentos confederados y a figuras de Cristóbal Colón durante las protestas antirracistas en Estados Unidos. En su texto, Avilés cuenta sobre el derribo a martillazos de una escultura del conquistador Diego de Mazariegos en San Cristóbal de las Casas, México, en octubre de 1992. Aquella estatua había sido emplazada 14 años antes frente a la Casa Indígena por orden del alcalde, para celebrar un aniversario de fundación de la ciudad. “Consultar a las personas indígenas o negras no es una costumbre muy extendida entre las élites que ahora gobiernan América Latina, y era peor hace cuatro décadas”, escribe Avilés.

https://elpais.com/internacional/2022-09-25/las-estatuas-mas-incomodas-de-america.html

 

Forgetting the apocalypse: why our nuclear fears faded – and why that’s dangerous

On an August morning in 1945, 600 metres over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, a small sun came briefly into existence. Few remember a sound, but the flash printed shadows on the pavements and sent buildings thrashing. The explosion – 2,000 times greater than that of any bomb yet used – announced not only a new weapon but a new era.

It was a stunning military victory for the United States. Yet jubilation there was undercut by “uncertainty and fear”, the newsman Edward R Murrow observed. It took only a moment’s reflection on the bomb’s existence to see the harrowing implication: what had happened in Hiroshima, and three days later in Nagasaki, could happen anywhere.

The thought proved impossible to shake, especially as, within the year, on-the-ground accounts emerged. Reports came of flesh bubbling, of melted eyes, of a terrifying sickness afflicting even those who’d avoided the blast. “All the scientists are frightened – frightened for their lives,” a Nobel-winning chemist confessed in 1946. Despite scientists’ hopes that the weapons would be retired, in the coming decades they proliferated, with nuclear states testing ever-more-powerful devices on Pacific atolls, the Algerian desert and the Kazakh steppe.

The fear – the pervasive, enduring fear – that characterised the cold war is hard to appreciate today. It wasn’t only powerless city-dwellers who were terrified (“select and fortify a room in which to shelter”, the UK government grimly advised). Leaders themselves were shaken. It was “insane”, US president John F Kennedy felt, that “two men, sitting on the opposite sides of the world, should be able to decide to bring an end to civilisation”. Yet everyone knowingly lived with that insanity for decades. It was as if, wrote the historian Paul Boyer, “the Bomb” were “one of those categories of Being, like Space and Time, that, according to Kant, are built into of the very structure of our minds, giving shape and meaning to all our perceptions”.

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Boyer remembered the unsettling news of the Hiroshima bombing, which occurred the week of his 10th birthday and shaped the rest of his childhood. Today, someone remembering the bomb that well would have to be 86 at least. The memory of nuclear war, once vivid, is quietly vanishing. The signs on the fallout shelters – those that remain – are rusted, and most of the world’s population can’t even recall an above-ground nuclear test (the last was in 1980). The bomb no longer gives “shape and meaning to all our perceptions”; until recently, many thought of it only rarely. It has been tempting to see nuclear war as a bygone terror that no longer terrifies, like polio.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/12/forgetting-the-apocalypse-why-our-nuclear-fears-faded-and-why-thats-dangerous

 

Bosnia e Ucraina sono due facce della stessa medaglia

Se fermi le persone per le strade di Sarajevo e gli chiedi cosa pensano della guerra in Ucraina, ti rispondono che quasi tutto quello che è accaduto in Bosnia Erzegovina si sta ripetendo in Ucraina. Qualcuno ha scritto su Twitter che rispetto alla Bosnia la guerra in Ucraina somiglia a una partita lampo a scacchi, perché lì tutto sta procedendo a un ritmo frenetico.

Alcuni giorni prima dell’invasione russa ho intervistato un giovane scrittore ucraino convinto che l’obiettivo di Mosca fosse di conquistare tutta l’Ucraina. Avevo poco da obiettare, ma comunque il mio cervello è configurato in modo da inserire un granello d’ottimismo anche nelle visioni più apocalittiche.

Era spudoratamente evidente che la Russia avrebbe attaccato. Non si aprono ospedali da campo per accogliere feriti se si stanno facendo delle semplici esercitazioni. Le persone che non conoscono i meccanismi della guerra pensano sia facile spegnere una macchina bellica da 190mila persone con migliaia di carri armati, veicoli corazzati, pezzi d’artiglieria e unità logistiche. Quella macchina bellica è rientrata prepotentemente in azione nelle prime ore del 24 febbraio, e sull’Ucraina si è scatenato l’inferno.

https://www.internazionale.it/notizie/faruk-ehic-2/2022/07/20/bosnia-ucraina-guerra

 

The origin of the Black Death

History’s deadliestpandemic was the Black Death, an outbreak of plague that ravaged Europe, the Middle East and north Africa between 1346 and 1353. Where it struck, it killed up to 60% of the population. Even after this first, exceptionally lethal wave had passed, local plagues continued for about 500 years, and the disease still spills over into people from rodent “reservoirs” from time to time.

Insight into the Black Death’s origins came in 2012, when Cui Yujun’s team at the Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology sequenced genomes of Yersinia pestis, the plague bacterium, collected from five countries. Dr Cui’s results suggested four lineages of the bug had emerged in quick succession during an evolutionary big bang. Calculations based on the estimated speed of evolution led them to suggest this so-called polytomy happened between 1142 and 1339.

A paper published this week in Nature, by a team led by Maria Spyrou of the University of Tübingen, in Germany, builds on Dr Cui’s work. It claims an ancestor of all four lines existed in part of modern-day Kyrgyzstan as recently as 1338—the near-most extremity of Dr Cui’s distribution. This suggests the explosion of diversity he observed was a direct precursor to the plague’s devastating irruption.

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2022/06/15/the-origin-of-the-black-death

 

How Europe’s Changing Borders Define the Region

If Russia’s war in Ukraine ends in triumph for the West, could Ukraine, with all of its manifold problems—vast devastation of infrastructure, corruption, weak institutions—eventually join NATO and the European Union? Given Europe’s history over two millennia, that course would be unsurprising.

Europe has always been defined and influenced by its periphery, and it has shifted its position on the map accordingly. NATO’s very move eastward after the Cold War, incorporating the countries of the former Warsaw Pact—however controversial that decision remains—has a deep echo in Europe’s past. So does the construction of Russian natural gas lines extending throughout Central and Eastern Europe. The American historian Henry Adams famously wrote more than a century ago that the fundamental challenge of Europe was and would remain how to integrate Russia’s various lands into what he called the “Atlantic combine.”

Expansion, writes Tony Judt, the late historian of postwar Europe, is part of the “foundation myth” of the European Union. From the start, the EU was a highly ambitious enterprise, gradually encompassing former Carolingian, Prussian, Habsburg, Byzantine, and Ottoman domains, each with its own separate history and development pattern. In other words, Europe must always find a way to be larger than itself, to be forward-deployed, so to speak: to be continually ambitious. For if Europe’s influence is not strongly felt in its frontier zones, adversaries like Russia will constantly threaten.

Europe on the Edges

 

The Holocaust Memorial Undone by Another War

In late September, 1941, after months of bombing and weeks of siege, German troops entered the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. The brass seized the most desirable offices and apartments and began their occupation. Rank-and-file Germans took over the poorer areas, robbing the residents of what little they had left after the siege.

On the afternoon of September 24th, there were explosions along Khreschyatyk, Kyiv’s central avenue, which continued for four days and set off a massive fire. Before retreating, the Soviets had mined the city. An area the size of Manhattan’s financial district was decimated; the rubble of destroyed buildings rendered streets unrecognizable and impassable. The ruins smoldered for weeks. The number of victims of the blasts and fires is unknown, but likely included more Ukrainian civilians than German troops.

On September 28th, the Germans papered the city with flyers instructing “all Jews of the city of Kyiv and its environs” to report to the corner of Melnikova and Dehtiarivska Streets, on the outskirts of town, by eight the following morning. They were to bring “documents, money, valuables, warm clothing, linens, etc.” The notices were unambiguous: “Those Jews who do not carry out this order and are found elsewhere will be shot dead.” The gathering place was near two cemeteries—one Russian, the other Jewish—and a railroad station. Many people assumed that the Jews of Kyiv were being deported, probably in retribution for the mining of the city.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/18/the-holocaust-memorial-undone-by-another-war

 

Kyiv’s ancient normality

More than a thousand years ago, Viking slavers found a route they were seeking to the south.  It followed the Dnipro River through a trading post called Kyiv, then down through rapids even they could not master.  They had slaves carry the boats, and left runes on the riverbank to mark their dead.  These Vikings called themselves the Rus.

The ancient domain of Khazaria was breaking up.  The Khazars had stopped the advance if Islam in the Caucasus in the eighth century, at around the same time as the Battle of Tours.  Some or all of the Khazar elite converted to Judaism.  The Vikings supplanted the Khazars as the tribute collectors of Kyiv, merging customs and vocabulary.  They called their leaders “khagans.”

As the Vikings came to understand, conversion to a monotheistic religion could mean control of territory.  The pagan Rus apparently considered Judaism and Islam before converting to Christianity.  The ruler believed to have converted, Valdemar (or Volodymyr, who Russians, much later, called Vladimir), had first ruled Kyiv as a pagan.  According to Arab sources, he had earlier ruled another city as a Muslim.

Colorful this is, but normal.  Vikings contributed to state formation throughout Europe, at the cusp of millennial conversions.  Kyivan Rus was normal in its marital politics, sending a princess to marry the king of France.  Its succession struggles were typical of the region, as was the inability to resist the Mongols in the early 1240s.

Thereafter most lands of Rus were gathered by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.  This was in a certain sense also normal: Lithuania was the biggest country in Europe.  Kyiv then passed a civilizational package to Vilnius.  Christianity had brought Church Slavonic to Kyiv.  Created in Byzantium to convert Slavs in Moravia, Church Slavonic was then adopted in Bulgaria and in Kyivan Rus.  In Rus it provided the basis for a legal language, now borrowed by Lithuania.

https://snyder.substack.com/p/kyivs-ancient-normality?utm_source=url

 

Pepsi’s Soviet Submarine Fleet Was the Endpoint of Business Dreams

In 1989, PepsiCo Inc., the maker of Pepsi, acquired 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer from the Soviet Union. In recent years, an internet legend has grown up around this deal, which holds that Pepsi briefly possessed the sixth-largest fleet in the world. In one way, that isn’t far off. According to an analysis of Jane’s Fighting Ships 1989-90, a country operating a squadron of 17 submarines would have tied with India for possessing the seventh-largest fleet of attack submarines.

Yet in any real sense the story is false. What PepsiCo acquired were small, old, obsolete, unseaworthy vessels. The Pepsi navy no more conferred military power than a rusting Model T could have been a Formula 1 contender. What’s more, the ships themselves were immediately turned over to a Norwegian shipyard to be scrapped. PepsiCo was more a middleman than a maritime power.

Most interpretations of the story get its meaning wrong, too. The Pepsi navy is sometimes portrayed as an embarrassment for the USSR. Far from it. The multinational firm and the country founded by Vladimir Lenin were business partners, and in 1989 Pepsi executives were bullish on Soviet prospects. PepsiCo acquired the rusting fleet as part of a multibillion-dollar bet on the long-term stability of the Soviet Union, an enormous market that had little to trade immediately besides raw material and the promise of future profits.

The Pepsi navy isn’t a story from the era of Soviet collapse. It’s from the brief moment right before, when the Soviet Union looked likely to survive even though the Cold War had ended. The rusting submarines were one way in which Soviet leaders and Western corporations could establish world peace and a new, post-communist prosperity led by business.

The Doomed Voyage of Pepsi’s Soviet Navy

 

22 Orphans Gave Up Everything to Distribute the World’s First Vaccine

When the United States green-lit two coronavirus vaccines in December, it was a rare bright spot during this pandemic: Scientists had developed a vaccine for COVID-19 far faster than any other vaccine in history. The end finally seemed at hand.

Since then, many, many things have gone wrong. In mid-December, Pfizer reported that it had millions of doses sitting around in a warehouse, and no instructions on where to send them. Medical teams trained to vaccinate masses of people have been sitting infuriatingly idle. Health departments originally stuck to banking hours instead of vaccinating around the clock. Governors have slowed things down by relying on confusing guidelines about who can get vaccinated when. Unused doses have expired and been thrown away.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/01/orphans-smallpox-vaccine-distribution/617646/

 

History by Decree

Song Gengyi, a journalism teacher in Shanghai, was fired last month for doing her job. She had encouraged her students to verify official accounts of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, the orgy of mass murder and rape perpetrated in the then-Chinese capital by the Imperial Japanese Army. Another teacher, Li Tiantian, who protested against the firing, was punished by being committed to a psychiatric hospital.

Verifying facts is what journalists are supposed to do. But because the atrocity in Nanjing during the Sino-Japanese War has become a cornerstone of Chinese nationalism, and thus of the Communist Party of China’s propaganda, any critical scrutiny of what precisely happened is seen as criticism of the Chinese government.

Perhaps this needs some explanation. Until the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, official Chinese accounts paid little attention to the Nanjing Massacre. History under Mao was instead a heroic tale of communist victory over fascist and bourgeois oppressors. Nanjing had been the Chinese Nationalist capital at the time of the Sino-Japanese War. The massacre was thus a story of Nationalist defeat, not communist heroism.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/official-histories-danger-of-triumphalism-victimhood-by-ian-buruma-2022-01