Son "El Grito" (Yo soy puro Guatemalteco)

Yo soy puro guatemalteco

y me gusta bailar el son,

con las notas de la Marimba

también baila mi corazón.

Cuando bailo con mi María

hasta un grito me sale así...

que rechulas son las inditas

cuando las veo bailar el son,

con sus faldas levantaditas

van taconeando con suave rumor.

Para bailar...

indita mía yo voy palmeando alrededor,

para gritar...

con una mano tomo el sombrero y lo hago así.

Yo ya me voy...

me voy cantando

me voy gritando lejos de aquí,

te canto a ti...

mi Guatemala tierra querida donde nací.

Son: El Grito

Letra: José Ernesto Monzón

Música: Everardo De León


Tortillas blancas en el comal

Maize was first encountered by Europeans in Central America. There are some theories of how the Indians domesticated this cereal but it seems its origin are still involved in mystery. Europeans brought maize back to Europe and since then it has been consumed almost everywhere. In Guatemala, one of the main staple foods are tortillas, a flat bread made of maize. In the countryside, the tortillas are still prepared manually through a process called nixtamalisation. This process includes soaking and cooking the maize grains in limewater, and after, hulling, washing, and grinding the grains into the dough, that will be shaped into flat circles. These become tortillas after being cooked in the "comal". The process of nixtamalisation eliminates the toxins while improving the flavour and nutritional value of the grains. These tortillas were white but they can be different colours depending on the colours of the maize grains they are made of. Tortillas can be eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Black and White picture of Amadeo

Last April I was so lucky to be in Paris at the same time the exhibition about the work of the Portuguese painter Amadeo Souza Cardoso was being displayed at the Grand Palais. Amadeo's work is so great, across so many currents and so vivid that it was an immense pleasure to walk the galleries and absorb every detail of his paintings. Had he not died in 1918 at the age of 30 and he would have been remembered as Picasso, Dali or Modigliani (whom he befriended). The paintings have to be appreciated of course but as they can all be found in the internet I rather leave here a photo of him, confident, futuristic, someone who shocked the narrow minded Portuguese society of the time. When I came across this photo and  sentence: "Je ne fais partie d'aucune ecole" meaning "I am not part of any current", I straight away empathised with it and smiled inside.   

Green Ethiopia

When I was a teenager I had this idea that I wanted to live and work in Africa. I have not managed so far but the idea is still in my head. Africa, is of course, a huge, hugely diverse, continent. In Ethiopia  I loved the people, the spicy food, the landscape and the heritage. On the other hand, I have talked to young people that, even though had a smile in their faces, were disillusioned by what the future could bring. When I was little I remember once going to the church in the evening with my grandma to watch a slide show facilitated by missionary nuns about the hunger crisis in Ethiopia. After travelling around and seeing so much farming land I found difficult to believe I was in the same country where this  happened. I noticed signs of prosperity and development but another food crisis is an hovering threat. Frail political stability, increased droughts, population pressure - the stressors are adding up...

Green grass surrounds the ruins of Quinta d'Areia

Last April I met Mr Goncalo and his wife who guided me to Quinta d'Areia, nearby Praia Azul in the municipality of Torres Vedras, Portugal. He is a descendant of the nobles who owned this house and the land around it more than fifty years ago. The legend says that once upon a time, a mermaid and her daughter were hungry and went to pick some green peas in the farms belonging to the owner of Quinta d'Areia. The men who were working in the fields spot them and caught the daughter mermaid killing her even after her mother's plea. Because of this, the older mermaid threw a spell of bad luck to the owner and his estate. Since then, it has been sold several times and the big house is been in ruins until nowadays. When I was a kid, I remember listening my great grandmother telling me she used to listen to the mermaids singing near Quinta d'Areia. And when I was in Orkney last year, I bought a book about the Tales of Orkney and in there I found similar legends to this one. Everything seems to come together at some point of our lives!

Blue sea and the Tragedy of the Commons

If I remember well, the first time I came across the concept of the tragedy of the commons was during my Game Theory classes when undertaking my MSc in Economics. The tragedy of the commons describes the situation where individuals act according to their self interest and deplete the resources through their collective action. In this case, the "common resource" were mussels and the individuals were people who, compelled by the tradition of going "fishing" on Good Friday, came from everywhere to Praia Azul and caught as many kg of mussels as they could only in a few hours. As the weather was reasonably good, this meant hundreds of people on the rocks and hundreds of kg of mussels caught. Although the amount and size allowed per person have been finally regulated in 2014 (3kg per person per day and >5cm), with absolutely no control from the authorities, the tragedy happened. The excessive capture of mussels in a single day damages its population and also the food web, endangering other sea species that are dependent on this resource to survive.