Archivo «Domingo, 07/Feb/2010»
Por Pedro J. Ramírez, director de El Mundo (EL MUNDO, 07/02/10):
Recluido durante la primera parte del vuelo en su cabina de la sección delantera del Airbus, Mr. Shoemaker ha repasado y pulido cada una de las palabras del discurso con la minuciosidad y mimo de quien desmonta la maquinaria de un reloj para asegurarse de que funcionará a la perfección. Luego, mientras el avión presidencial se zambulle hacia la base de Andrews, me enseña con orgullo la composición de la mesa en la que estará sentado: Obama, Michelle, Hillary, Biden, el jefe de la junta de jefes de Estado… Seguir leyendo
Por Mario Vargas Llosa © Derechos mundiales de prensa en todas las lenguas reservados a Ediciones EL PAÍS, SL, 2010 (EL PAÍS, 07/02/10):
Me pasó hace algunos años con Javier Cercas y ahora me acaba de pasar de nuevo con Héctor Abad Faciolince. Cuando leí la extraordinaria novela de aquél, Soldados de Salamina, no sólo me quedó en el cuerpo -bueno, en el espíritu- ese sentimiento de felicidad y gratitud que nos depara siempre la lectura de un hermoso libro, sino, además, una necesidad urgente de conocerlo, estrecharle la mano y agradecérselo en persona. Gracias a Juan Cruz, uno de… Seguir leyendo
Por Sergio Ramírez, ex vicepresidente de Nicaragua y escritor (EL PAÍS, 07/02/10):
Cuando Eva Duarte se encontró por primera vez con Juan Domingo Perón en Luna Park, la noche del 22 de enero de 1944 en que se daba una función artística de beneficencia por los damnificados del terremoto de San Juan, ella le dijo cuando estuvieron sentados lado a lado: “Gracias por existir”. O no se lo dijo nunca para los términos de la historia mezquina que resiente de imaginaciones, porque la frase la inventó Tomás Eloy Martínez, que acaba de morir en Buenos Aires, en su novela Santa… Seguir leyendo
Por Andrés Amorós (ABC, 07/02/10):
En su epílogo al libro de don Gregorio Corrochano «Qué es torear. (Introducción a la Tauromaquia de Joselito)», plantea don Emilio García Gómez una cuestión fundamental: la Tauromaquia es, por definición, un arte efímero. (Añado yo: igual que sucede con el teatro o la música en vivo, frente a otros productos «enlatados», reproducidos y reproducibles mecánicamente).
Por ello, no pueden dar cuenta completa de lo que ha sucedido en el ruedo ni la fotografía, ni el cine, ni el vídeo. Pasado el momento mágico, nos queda sólo – y ya es bastante- el recuerdo, con… Seguir leyendo
Por Josep Lluís Micó, codirector del Digilab, Laboratori de Comunicació Digital de Catalunya, Universitat Ramon Llull (LA VANGUARDIA, 07/02/10):
Tras meses de incertidumbre, la solución de la ecuación parece ahora más sencilla. Por un lado, están las industrias culturales (cine, televisión, radio, música, videojuegos…), acuciadas por la crisis. Por el otro, una tecnología como la telefonía móvil y el resto de dispositivos portátiles (iPhone, Blackberry y demás), con unas unas tasas de crecimiento prodigiosas en términos de usuarios y rentabilidad económica.
Entonces, ¿podrían estos aparatos, que han entrado a formar parte de la vida del ciudadano común con una facilidad… Seguir leyendo
Por Walter Laqueur, director del Centro de Estudios Internacionales y Estratégicos de Washington Traducción: José María Puig de la Bellacasa (LA VANGUARDIA, 07/02/10):
Los arqueólogos e historiadores del mundo antiguo han estado riñendo durante mucho tiempo. La suya, después de todo, no es una ciencia exacta, sino un oficio. Indios y pakistaníes, por ejemplo, han mantenido discusiones encarnizadas sobre la civilización del valle del Indo. Durante treinta años ha habido asimismo una guerra encarnizada entre el arqueólogo bíblico y sus críticos. Era costumbre, hasta hace escasas generaciones, utilizar el Antiguo Testamento como una guía para excavar en Tierra Santa, aunque… Seguir leyendo
By Amy Wilentz, who teaches journalism at the University of California, Irvine and the author of The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 07/02/10):
So many of the scenes from this earthquake have reminded me of the early days.
I first stepped onto the broad central square that was the heart of the Haitian government on the morning of Feb. 7, 1986. Just hours earlier, when it was still night, I’d seen Jean-Claude Duvalier, heir to his father’s dictatorship, flee the country with his wife, children and mother, driving a BMW sedan down the airport road and… Seguir leyendo
By Ben Fountain, the author of the short-story collection Brief Encounters with Che Guevara (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 07/02/10):
In 1999 I made a day trip from the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, up to the wanly charming town of Kenscoff, a couple of hours drive into the mountains. I’d done this journey before, but not in several years, and as the road wound upward I couldn’t help being astonished by the sprawling mansions that had taken over the hillsides.
Where this road had once offered peaceful views of terraced fields, patches of forest, clusters of modest farmhouses, there now hulked villa… Seguir leyendo
By Wang Dan, a student leader at Peking University who helped organize the Tiananmen protest, was returned to prison from 1995 to 1998 and now teaches history at National Chengchi University in Taiwan (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 07/02/10):
Twenty years ago, I was in Qincheng, the most well-known of China’s political prisons, along with several hundred other students and intellectuals who had taken part in the student movement of the previous summer. On a particularly cold winter morning, I sat on my bed and picked up my copy of The People’s Daily, the government newspaper we were allowed to read,… Seguir leyendo
By Ko Bo Kyi,who spent nearly eight years in prison in Burma before escaping to Thailand and co-founding the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 07/02/10):
News of Nelson Mandela’s release dominated the radio broadcasts by the BBC and Voice of America on Feb. 11, 1990. I felt I understood why he had resisted so long, because in Burma, as in South Africa at the time Mr. Mandela was in jail, the majority of people were struggling to make their voices heard. Within three months, the military junta would refuse to recognize the results of our national… Seguir leyendo
By Fadjroel Rachman, a political economist who was jailed during the Suharto regime, is the chairman of the Research Institute of Democracy and Welfare State in Jakarta (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 07/02/10):
Nelson Mandela has won the battle, I said to myself in my cold, tiny cell in the military prison in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia. Thank God, at last justice and freedom win.
The news of Mr. Mandela’s release had just come over the radio that stood on a shelf in the canteen for prison guards directly in front of my cell. Tears rolled down my cheeks. Justice and… Seguir leyendo
By Wei Jingsheng, a democracy activist who was in jail in China from 1979 to 1993 and now lives in Washington (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 07/02/10):
Nine months before Nelson Mandela was released from prison in South Africa, the Chinese police cracked down on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, and in August 1989 I was sent to Hebei Prison for incitement to overthrow state power. My cellmates, like so many Chinese people at the time, were pessimistic about China’s future. “Why do you persist?” they would ask me. “Democracy and freedom are good, but there is not much hope for them… Seguir leyendo
By Jack Mapanje, a visiting fellow at Newcastle University Center for Literary Arts in Britain and the author of a forthcoming memoir about his time in prison in Malawi (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 07/02/10):
I was in Mikuyu Prison in Malawi when Nelson Mandela was released. Hearing the news, whispered to me by a daring prison guard, I instantly thought back to the day, a year earlier, when the same guard had told me the rumor that President F. W. de Klerk of South Africa was holding secret talks with Mr. Mandela. Rumors played a critical, if therapeutic, role for… Seguir leyendo
By Nguyen Dan Que, a doctor in Vietnam who has been imprisoned three times (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 07/02/10):
It was back in the 1970s, when I was doing diabetes research in Britain, that I first learned of the political drama surrounding Nelson Mandela. At the time I never would have predicted that one day I, too, would be imprisoned by a repressive regime for advocating human rights and democracy.
By the time of his release from prison many years later, I had already spent 10 years in many labor camps and prisons in Vietnam, and was under house arrest.… Seguir leyendo
By Souleymane Guengueng, who spent 27 months in a Chadian prison and now lives in New York City (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 07/02/10):
During the dictatorship of Hissène Habré in Chad, I was wrongfully accused of political activity and imprisoned. Our jail was infested with insects, and the heat was nearly unbearable. Packed in our cells, we had to take turns to sleep, often on top of the corpses of other prisoners who had died from torture, disease or malnutrition. We were forbidden to pray aloud. And every night, President Habré’s political police took away prisoners who never returned.
As… Seguir leyendo