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Switching to Substack

It’s actually pretty hard to write on this tumblr. I’m not totally sure why it’s bugging out a bunch, but writing here is kinda miserable (on web or app).

So I imported everything and new posts will also be here: https://garbagetoday.substack.com

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Always Take the Bike Tour - Part 2

23 March, 2023 | Santiago Chile

Rolling back to Bellavista, most of the tour ended up at lunch together at the good but otherwise unremarkable restaurant next door. Carlos the tour guide saved us from a debate on venue by helpfully handing us a free drink ticket each.

Back on the bikes, our new guide was named Ama.

This tour was more focused on politics - particularly recent politics. Ama was a student who could give a first hand account about the protests that rocked Chile in 2019. In brief:

Chile elected a socialist President named Salvador Allende in 1970.

Allende started implementing the programs he was elected on: nationalization of large scale industries, national healthcare and education, public works projects etc.

US president Richard Nixon did not like the look of this nation in South America growing closer to Cuba and telling its international creditors to fuck off.

With substantial US backing, Allende was deposed and murdered; with General Augusto Pinochet taking power.

Pinochet ran a brutal military dictatorship that resulted in thousands of murders, disappearances, and widespread torture. Everything was privatized - schools, healthcare, water, etc.

In a sweetheart deal, Pinochet left the presidency in 1990 but basically remained in power (Senator for Life, head of the military) well into the 2000s.

Chile still has the constitution Pinochet basically wrote when he took power, Ama explained. This, and a series or right-leaning rulers since Pinochet, caused widespread discontent. The straw that broke the camels back took the form of a small increase in the cost of transit - small, but they had been raised, and raised and raised again.

Students poured into the subway entrance above and forced open the gates. Ama was there. She described a police response that bordered on homicidal. But the protests persisted and grew. More than 1.2m people marched in early October 2019. Only a national referendum on whether or not to replace the constitution eventually dissipated them.

The referendum was approved, a new constitution was drawn up, but another vote rejected it. They are trying again, this time with some “experts” starting the process. Given nothing had changed - the Constitution of 1980 was still the law of the land - I asked Ama why protests had not resumed.

“Exhaustion” she said.

I could certainly understand that. It’s not like the police in the United States have gotten any less murderous or any better at preventing violence; one need only point to Uvalde.

We visited the site of the coup d'état - the presidential palace - as our last stop.

Statues of former presidents are placed throughout the courtyard. This was most recent addition.

Biking back through the dense city center, I was struck by a feeling of nostalgia. Here I was, more than 6000 miles away from Seattle, but the broken disconnected biking infrastructure and truly awful drivers were all too familiar.

Once we were back, I joined two of the other tourists at a local pub. The pub was delightful and well stocked with a variety of beers using exclusively local ingredients. My companions for this outing were Marcel - a dutch airline pilot here an extra day after a conference, and Mira - a german automotive engineer. Given our technical backgrounds, it was about three beers in before we managed to get into engineering-related disasters in an insane amount of detail. Marcel went deep on the Boeing 747 MAX debacle, Mira on the Volkswagen emissions scandal, and of course I got to talk about Silicon Valley Bank.

A great time was had, and I learned a bit of a lesson trying to keep up with Nederlanders on the beer front, but I’ll add one thing I was particularly struck by: the connection both of these folks had to Ukraine. While the United States has been relatively untouched, Marcel’s family had taken in refugees. Mira was originally from Ukraine and still had quite a few family and friends there. It’s easy to find our exposure to a distant war to be limited to a few friends with closer connections and some headlines; but to Europeans it is quite literally next door.

#politics #history #chiletravel #santiago #biking #I will admit I started us on talking about disasters #I might have tipped the guide a full day’s salary accidentally but have zero regrets

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Always Take the Bike Tour - Part 1

23 March, 2023 | Santiago Chile Day 2

As my partner can attest to, I can sometimes get myself into a mood. Any combination of lack of sleep, food, adequate hydration, or ingesting political news can easily bring this on. What is less known is that beyond fixing these problems directly (drinking water, eat more locally), getting me on a bike is an instant mood elevator.

My lack of sleep from the flight in was immediately remedied by jumping on one of these first thing in the morning.

There were two legs of the tour - morning and afternoon - and I signed up for both. I was not entirely alone in this - a German woman and a Dutch gentleman did the same, but more on them in the second half of this.

First leg involved a brief spin by Pablo Neruda’s house; specifically the one he build in Bellavista (we started out there) explicitly for cheating on his wife, and then an extensive walk through the massive markets at Mecardo Central.

Zero rats in this market thanks to the hard work of the 89345 cats I observed napping while walking through.

If there is anything that will compel me to have a much lengthier stay in Santiago it will be this place - just an insane quantity of fresh produce, meats, and other goods in a seemingly endless collection of enormous warehouses. Check out TripAdvisor for the single dumbest tourists on the planet giving reviews.

This portion of the market was rebuilt after an earthquake, with the support beams meant to give a feeling of being under a forest canopy. It works surprisingly well in this regard.

Carlos, our guide, directed us to a particular restaurant in the market that was filled with material on the largest indigenous population in Chile, the Mapuche. So successful were the Mapuche at resisting the Spanish attempts at conquest that it was not until the late 19th century that their territories came under permanent occupation. Contemporary views of the Mapuche within Chile vary by the individual, but it’s worth noting a quarter of the national flag (the star bit) is meant to represent Venus - of great significant to the Mapuche.

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Rube Goldberg Airlines - LATAM

Okay it probably isn’t their fault; booking through my credit card company in order to expend some of the ten-years worth of points I’ve been studiously ignoring probably didn’t help. But still, lol.

It genuinely wasn’t a big deal. So the flights Santiago -> Auckland -> Sydney sometimes showed as one flight with a 127 hour layover in Auckland. This didn’t actually impact my experience. The only thing that was kinda annoying was not being able to do online check-in, but they don’t support Apple Wallet for that anyway so, who cares?

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Santiago Chile - Arrival

22 March 2023

It was like a ten hour flight with the requisite wailing child and person-with-some-kind-of-respiratory-infection per section.

I had just enough energy to take a look at the view from the place.

Then get some food across the river in Bellavista, passing through this thing strip of park in the evening.

The exchange rate is just a bit different here.

Why Santiago? Big city, big history, lots of different kinds of folks from all over - multicultural. A symbol from the largest indigenous population - the Mapuche (almost 10% of the population) - is incorporated into the flag of Chile (the star bit).

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CDMX - Centro Redux

21 March, 2023

Naomi had to fly back early, but with the extra day I made another run at Centro (or The Historic Center of Mexico City). It’s an area with a bunch of cool stuff; it’s the center of a town conquered by the Spanish so you better believe there is a big ass old church there:

But the star of the show, in my opinion, is Templo Mayor.

Wikipedia:

On 21 February 1978, workers for the electric company were digging at a place in the city then popularly known as the "island of the dogs" as the area was slightly elevated and stray dogs would gather there during times of flooding. Just over two meters down, the diggers struck a massive pre-Hispanic stone disk of over 3.25 meters (10.7 feet) in diameter, 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) thick, and weighing 8.5 metric tons (8.4 long tons; 9.4 short tons). The relief on the stone was later determined to be Coyolxauhqui, Huitzilopochtli's sister, and was dated to the end of the 15th century.

This was just the first thing they found. Turns out to be a massive temple you can walk around in:

Then dive into a nice air-conditioned museum that gives you an insane amount of detail about the pre-colonial Mexica people.

Their beliefs, including this sacred tree.

Rabbit themed pottery

Agriculture: human’s first meta-breaking strategy

And a whole floor about stuff they did with human hearts sometimes.

Strongly recommend visiting.

#history #cdmx

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Monumento de Revolución - A secret treat

As it happens there was a temporary exhibit at the monument that was a bunch of great stuff on 18th and 19th century socialist and anarchist movements/literature, and the various ways both were brutally suppressed. Weird homestate connection to learn one of the newspaper dissidents Porfirio Dias tried to eliminate - Ricardo Flores - was imprisoned at McNeil Island. Hardly the only alley-oop we’ve given dictators over the years from a rightward angle but I digress.

Anyway, here are some more pictures.

Our gal

The newspaper the Flores brothers produced; got them targeted by Dias.

#anarchism #socialism #méxico cdmx #history #cdmx #they piped in le marseillaise too - literally you could put a pipe up to your ear to hear it

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Monumento de Revolución - Skipping to the End

I’m insanely behind on this blog. At the time of writing, I have been in Sydney Australia for several days. So to skip to the end of the Mexican Revolution:

General Victoriano Huerta seized power and about everyone in the country turned against him.

Pancho Villa (escaping execution yet again) and Emiliano Zapata loosely recognized Venustiano Carranza as the “first chief” of the opposition to Huerta, known as the Constitutionalists.

Huerta got bodied, ran for it, and was granted asylum by the US.

BUT AS IT TURNS OUT Carranza, Villa, and Zapata had very different ideas about what the new government should look like and immediately started fighting among themselves

Zapata kept up his insurgency. Villa’s army was crushed by a general under Carranza named Obergon (who by now could look at the war in Europe in 1915 for some pointers around how good machine guns are).

Pancho Villa basically pulls an Osama bin Laden - attacking the United States to draw it into conflict with his enemies while he hides in a cave. Yes we have absolutely fallen for this multiple times in multiple centuries.

Zapata is betrayed and assassinated. Everyone else gets tired of fighting and an amnesty is put together in 1920.

TLDR: everyone fought this war for different reasons, no one came out terribly happy, the country was monumentally fucked up, and they all hated each other.

Which is why it is pretty funny they put all their bodies in the same monument. Literally each corner of it:

#carranza is there too but I didn’t get a picture #Zapata isn’t there tho which basically tracks #revolution is a hell of a drug

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CDMX - Rest Day

20 March, 2023

We were already intending on having this be a good “rest” or planning day, given most museums and similar attractions are closed, but the timing was even more fortuitous. At least, in a manner of speaking. My partner was feeling I’ll and this was the observed day for the birthday of Benito Juarez - a pretty critical “founding father” of Mexico I have mentioned in previous posts.

Here I sit in a fairly good cocktail bar attached to a pizza joint. Playing are a number American music videos. I had no idea “We built this city on rock and roll” would try to match its insipid lyrics with what amounts to a waking 1980s nightmare.

Idk maybe I’m in a Mood.

It’s now apt to call this stuff granddad music. “Simply Irresistible” could be a heartfelt plea against the human cloning of backup dancers.

Awful.

Anyway, the length to which I was using my partner’s fluency in Spanish as a crutch for almost every human interaction is only now dawning on me. My failure to understand basic instructions has varied in its results - from mild embarrassment to frustrating waste of times. I have no excuse here; Spanish is not just spoken by a billion goddamned people, but also by a huge number of Americans and a large number of my company’s new employees (particularly in the tree nurseries). To say nothing about the whole ass part of my family that hails from the DR (and now Miami) that speak or spoke it as their primary language their entire lives. These folks went to some effort to teach me and failed, with my 14 year old lack of motivation principally to blame.

The last time I did any real international travel I barely had internet and translator apps were mostly trash. Now they are Pretty Good and my plan just gives me data in almost any country. When I get around to this next maybe we’ll have gone all Star Trek but I doubt it. If anything, I’m pretty bearish on tech actually delivering us a good solution here. Not that we need more ways to start wars.

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CDMX - Just Let People Bike Sometimes

You can just shut down a major road and let people bike down it. They do this every Sunday. The world doesn’t end.

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CDMX - Trotsky Time

19 March, 2023

Whether you think of Leon Trotsky was cool and good or one of history’s greatest monsters (lol get out more), he was a guy of considerable impact. There’s a very strong argument to be made (1) the October Revolution and (2) the ultimate victory of the Bolsheviks - and the subsequent formation of the USSR - would simply have not happened without him. He was their strongest orator and turned the Red Army from nothing into a force that was breathing down the necks of Central Europe.

And there is absolutely no denying this: he looks like Jean-Ralphio (played by Ben Schwartz) from Parks and Recreation.

Anyway, his power struggle with Stalin having Not Went Well, he fled repeatedly until finally finding a home in Mexico. The same president that nationalized their oil industry, did a bunch of land redistribution, and invited in Republican exiles from the Spanish Civil war - Lázaro Cárdenas - welcomed him. Cool dude, still one of the most popular Mexican presidents.

Here is Trotsky with Diego Rivera, who did that mural I posted about earlier that punked the Rockefeller Center.

Trotsky was assassinated by Stalin in his home in Mexico (just south of Mexico City). After his wife died his home was made into a museum and he was buried there.

Here is an unflattering picture of me next to his grave.

This photo is not an endorsement. I am not a Trotskyist. I might be of the left (relative to most Americans) but Trotsky would have absolutely purged my ass in his time.

#not using the trotsky hashtag because who wants that heat? #history #cdmx

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CDMX - American Cuisine

18 March, 2023

Always on the lookout for “American” food or goods in foreign countries - either to get the funhouse mirror treatment or a devastating critique (or both)

#AMERICA #year 18000 future percy shelly ozymandias fodder

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Wherein We Stumble into Mass Politics

18 March, 2023

Big fat raindrops impact the windshield of the car with which we made our escape. But even the driver realized the futility of trying to get us all the way back to the hotel and let us out early.

The plan was Centro, with its many museums and monuments. My partner was concerned about the crowds on the weekend, but I insisted we press on and try it out.

Boy howdy were they right. But as it turns out, it was because there were a great quantity of Politics happening.

The signs came early. First the subway was very crowded. Sure, okay, that can happen.

But then almost everyone left on the next stop. The few of us that remained were treated to the train reversing course and moving *backwards* to the previous stop. No announcement or explanation.

When we finally emerged, we started hoofing it to Centro and the crowds just kept getting thicker

Look closer at that picture and you can see that there is a screen set up, showing the Centro area with a massive crowd that resembles a political rally - because it is!

A lot of empty busses from other cities were lining the streets - only obvious to us later as a means of bringing in more supporters. Many groups walking toward the square were wearing the same t-shirts and holding flags with a variety of political parties; whatever this was, it at least had an air of unity or some coalition - no counter protesters or anything like that.

We eventually turned back, and it was a wise decision, because this was not our party. It was an anniversary of telling American business interests to go fuck themselves.

In 1938, President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–40) sided with oil workers striking against foreign-owned oil companies for an increase in pay and social services.

In other times and places, this might have resulted in devastating sanctions, attempts to destabilize/overthrow the government, or even direct military intervention. But despite the long and loud bitching of US owners, the government of the United States led by FDR had a “good neighbor” policy in place that sought to limit such intervention - presumably because there were substantially more pressing international (and domestic!) concerns.

PEMEX was one of the first nationalized oil and gas entities - predating Saudi ARAMCO and Norway’s whatever it’s called. It was considered the model to be followed in many ways; American business interests anticipated being invited back in for their skills and expertise but, as it turned out, Mexico was able to develop these locally and did not require them.

As the anniversary of the nationalization, the current President of Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador (or AMLO) gave the most VEEP-ass speech I have ever seen: it was literally named “Continuity with Change is Assured”

Anyway, Mexico nationalizing its oil industry was good and cool. Making the US investors eat shit is absolutely fine. All worth celebrating. The only better and cooler thing they could do right now is leave it in the fucking ground and rich counties should absolutely pay them to do that.

#history #cdmx #look it was plainly written in their constitution they could/would do this #leave it in the ground now thanks

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Mexico City: Just one more concept in the mural bro! Please bro!

March 17 2023

Besides the Monumento de Revolución, which I am not done writing about, we went to the Palacio de Bella Artes.

This place is home to a couple of murals by Diego Rivera. They are brilliant and insanely complex - you could spend half a day just looking at how much detail is stuffed in these things.

I’m just going to highlight my favorite, along with a hilarious autotranslation description. Mind you, this isn’t even close to all of it.

Absolutely 10/10 trolling to include Lenin in your mural for a Rockefeller.

#so far the only place I haven’t seen ACAB prominently is in NZ #there are not enough tags in the world to contain everything happening in that mural

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Maduro: fake friends

Previously:

Overview

The Porfiriato

It’s 1910 and after flip-flopping on running for reelection basically everyone was tired of Profirio Dias’s shit. So when he arrested the plucky upstart Francisco Madero and ran a sham election, both the north and the cooler parts of the south rose up in revolt.

Which parts? Time to introduce two of of the only Mexican historical figures many Americans can name.

In the north we have Pancho Villa:

And in the south we have Emiliano Zapata:

Zapata leads an armed rebellion in a region known as Morelos - just south of Mexico City. The area has been repeatedly fucked over by large landowners and Zapata represented a movement that had had enough. They weren’t going to rest until there was land redistribution, indigenous rights were recognized, and a host of other stuff detailed in a document called The Plan of Ayala.

While Zapata was bleeding Federal troops sent against him in the south, Villa was taking garrisons through daring and subterfuge; sometimes in the face of Madero trying to caution him off.

Dias saw the writing on the wall in a few short months and ran for it. Madero was elected president shortly thereafter.

President Madero kinda pulled an Emperor Maximilian. He tried to get Villa and Zapata to lay down their arms while filling posts with conservatives. This attempt at conciliatory inclusion managed to piss everyone off, he even had Villa imprisoned and ended up needing to continue to fight those Zapistas (who were still in it for land redistribution).

Having successfully pissed off his friends and embolded his enemies, you’ll never guess what happen next.

Coup d’etat! And not even the last one!

A multi-day running battle now referred to as The Ten Tragic Days ensued, pitting Madero against Profirio Dias’s failson (cousin) Felix. After getting the green light from the shithead US Ambassador, General Victoriano Huerta switches sides and seizes power.

Huerta executes Madero and becomes the clear winner in “the biggest asshole of the revolution” contest. Many Mexicans have complicated feelings about all the personalities so far, but not for this guy, then and now.

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Mexican Revolution: The Porfiriato

March 17, 2023

Previously: Overview

Okay so the museum can’t just jump right in to the old regime. Of course there is a bunch of prehistory, brutal colonization, and finally independence from the Spanish Empire. This is supposed to be microblogging, we’re gonna skip all that.

The main thing to understand is from independence at the beginning of the 1800s to 1876 there were back and forth struggles between liberals and conservatives (including the brief reintroduction of a Hapsburg monarch mentioned before) before the liberals won. Here’s a bunch of them:

One of these liberals was a guy named Porfirio Dias. He was a war hero in the struggle against the French who were propping up Maximilian.

Then and now, Mexico had/has a strong presidential system. These are unstable garbage, arguably among the USA’s worst constitutional exports. Presidents have a lot of power, can easily become dictators, and those precious checks and balances are basically legitimacy minefields. You’ll never guess what happens when President Benito Juerez decided to run for re-election.

That’s right baby! We get ourselves a coup d'état!

Dias takes power in 1876 on a platform of “no reelection”. Yet he stays in power until 1911, curious!

Porfirio Dias runs the kind of “democratic” dictatorship Hungary’s Victor Orebon and boot licking American conservatives thinks he invented because he’s just such a clever boy. “Oh I wasn’t going to run for reelection again but gosh darn it the people just demand it.”

To the US, he’s just the kind of shithead we like, absolutely happy to sell out his country’s natural resources and human labor in exchange for foreign investment in rail, telegraphs, his bank account etc.

Anyway, next post let’s turn our attention to the election of 1910. Dias is like 80, there’s no good succession plan, and there’s this guy named Francisco Madero who is actually making a real, non-fake run for the presidency? We’re about to enter the Cool Zone.

#coup d'état is exceptionally fun to say out loud #but still also revolucion too #cdmx #history #fake democracies #try this one weird trick to have unstable governments (presidents) #hungary is just running a dumber Porfiriato