Archivo etiqueta «Esclavitud»
By Ellen Ratner, White House bureau chief for Talk Radio News Service and a news analyst for Fox News (THE WASHINGTON TIMES, 07/10/11):
My life has been profoundly changed by a blind teenage boy. His name is Ker Deng. He belongs to the Dinka tribe in southern Sudan.
Arab raiders from northern Sudan enslaved Ker in his infancy. His mother later told him how they were captured and forced to leave their home in southern Sudan. Many of their relatives and neighbors, especially men, were killed. Homes were burned. Cows and goats were stolen. Ker and his mother were … Seguir leyendo
By Henry Louis Gates Jr., a professor at Harvard and the author of the forthcoming Faces of America and Tradition and the Black Atlantic (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 23/04/10):
Thanks to an unlikely confluence of history and genetics — the fact that he is African-American and president — Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to reshape the debate over one of the most contentious issues of America’s racial legacy: reparations, the idea that the descendants of American slaves should receive compensation for their ancestors’ unpaid labor and bondage.
There are many thorny issues to resolve before we can arrive … Seguir leyendo
Por Jaume Baucells, profesor de Derecho Penal de la UAB (EL PERIÓDICO, 25/02/10):
Dos nuevos casos de desarticulaciones de redes de trata de personas en tan solo dos semanas han vuelto a llamar la atención sobre este grave fenómeno delictivo. Grave, porque esta actividad criminal, al ser la más lucrativa –por delante del tráfico de armas y de drogas–, se desarrolla en el marco de organizaciones criminales con mucho poder y capacidad de corrupción, actuando a nivel global y poniendo continuamente a prueba la efectividad de los mecanismos represivos del Estado. Pero, sobre todo, grave, puesto que, al utilizar … Seguir leyendo
By John R. Miller, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute and the former State Department ambassador at large on modern slavery (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 11/07/08):
President Bush has won support abroad and bipartisan praise at home for his efforts to combat human trafficking, the slavery of our time. But now that work is imperiled by his own Department of Justice.
At the United Nations in 2003, Mr. Bush denounced the sex trafficking of women and girls around the world. A little more than two years later, he signed … Seguir leyendo
By Eric Foner, a professor of history at Columbia University (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 30/12/07):
We Americans live in a society awash in historical celebrations. The last few years have witnessed commemorations of the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase (2003) and the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II (2005). Looming on the horizon are the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth (2009) and the sesquicentennial of the outbreak of the Civil War (2011). But one significant milestone has gone strangely unnoticed: the 200th anniversary of Jan. 1, 1808, when the importation of slaves into the United States … Seguir leyendo
Por Hugh Thomas, historiador (ABC, 15/10/07):
Durante todo este año se han celebrado en Inglaterra gran cantidad de exposiciones y encuentros dedicados a la conmemoración del segundo centenario de la abolición del comercio de esclavos africanos, que tuvo lugar en 1807. La biblioteca de la Universidad de Cambridge, el nuevo Museo del Esclavo en Liverpool, el Gran Salón del Palacio de Westminster en las cámaras del Parlamento y el Museo del Imperio en Bristol han tenido su recuerdo. Supongo que ha habido muchos otros lugares que también han tenido el suyo. Yo mismo participé en un curioso encuentro en … Seguir leyendo
By Isabel Hilton, editor of chinadialogue.net (THE GUARDIAN, 12/07/07):
The last month in China has seen a range of reactions to the rescue of several hundred slaves, including children, from Chinese brickyards. In the cities there was shock; in the villages, where the victims came from, people knew that kidnapping is neither a new nor an isolated phenomenon. In the government, there was embarrassment: the existence of slavery cast something of a shadow over the party’s current promise of a “harmonious society”.
There was another, more unexpected result: the Southern Metropolis Weekly published an interview with the writer Wu … Seguir leyendo
Por Ma Jian, autor de Polvo Rojo y El vendedor de fideos (LA VANGUARDIA, 02/07/07):
Cuando se descubrió que una fábrica de tabiques manejada por el gobierno en el municipio de Hongdong en la provincia de Shanxi utilizaba esclavos, me vino a la mente un famoso episodio de una ópera de Pekín. En esa ópera, una prostituta de nombre Su San, después de haber sido sentenciada a muerte, suplica piedad a transeúntes indiferentes mientras la llevan con grilletes por las calles principales de Hongdong.
Cuando uno accede a la página de internet del gobierno del municipio no hay mención … Seguir leyendo
By Michael Gerson (THE WASHINGTON POST, 20/06/07):
In many quarters, the role of religion in public life and foreign policy is under question as a source of hatred and extremism. But this year marks the 200th anniversary of history’s strongest counterexample — the strange, irrational end of the British slave trade.
By 1820, some 2.6 million Europeans had left their homes for the Americas. And perhaps 9 million Africans had also made the journey — in chains, branded like cattle and packed like cordwood. Every slave voyage involved murder, since expected losses were more than 10 percent. Some captives died … Seguir leyendo
By Gary Younge (THE GUARDIAN, 16/04/07):
In Cardiff last week Tony Blair claimed the spate of knife and gun murders in London was not being caused by poverty, but a distinctive black culture. This is the speech he could have made.
There is a strange kind of liberation that comes with knowing that your days in office are literally numbered. Journalists spend a decade trying to finish you off and then, just when it looks as if they might be successful, they feed you to the historians.
So in this year when we commemorate the 200th anniversary of parliament passing … Seguir leyendo
By Priyamvada Gopal, who teaches in the English faculty at Cambridge University and is the author of Literary Radicalism in India (THE GUARDIAN, 02/04/07):
Why, demanded Jeremy Paxman recently, should he feel “guilty” about the slave trade, given that he wasn’t alive then and that his “ancestors were peasants”? He is not alone in asking this question. Many Britons wonder, not unreasonably, why and how they should “apologise” for a crime they did not physically perpetrate.Though driven by an honourable impulse, campaigners dressed up in instruments of bondage are in danger of reducing the complicated project of reckoning with … Seguir leyendo
Por Enrique Barón Crespo, eurodiputado socialista y ex presidente del Parlamento Europeo (EL PAÍS, 27/03/07):
Hace poco he visitado la isla de Gorée, frente a Dakar, y la “Boone Plantation”, cerca de Charleston. Dos escenarios que resumen cinematográficamente la tragedia de la esclavitud: Gorée, punto de partida de millones de negros africanos acarreados hacia América, reflejado en la serie Raíces y la plantación algodonera de Carolina del Sur, marco de Lo que el viento se llevó.
Tragedia en la que los europeos jugaron un papel esencial. El presidente Chirac, en nombre de Francia, y el premier Tony Blair, … Seguir leyendo
By Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London (THE GUARDIAN, 21/03/07):
Next Sunday marks the bicentenary of the abolition of one of history’s greatest crimes – the transatlantic slave trade. The British government must formally apologise for it. All attempts to evade this are weasel words. Delay demeans our country. Recalling the slave trade’s dimensions will show why. Conservative estimates of the numbers transported are 10-15 million; others range up to 30 million. Deaths started immediately, as many as 5% in prisons before transportation and more than 10% during the voyage – the direct murder of some 2 million people.… Seguir leyendo
By Nigel Willmott (THE GUARDIAN,24/02/07):
William Wilberforce probably had more influence than anyone else in this place on the course of human history, Melvyn Bragg intoned reverentially from Westminster Abbey in a special radio broadcast this week marking 200 years since the abolition of the slave trade. It’s a dubious claim, given that the mortal remains of Newton and Darwin are slowly evolving into dust nearby, but it may have some literal truth. Those who might challenge Wilberforce’s claim to be The Man Who Abolished Slavery are not, and could not, be buried in the abbey, given that a large … Seguir leyendo
By Richard Gott, the author of ‘Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution’, is writing a book about imperial rebellions (THE GUARDIAN, 17/01/07):
In March, the British state will rightly celebrate the bicentenary of the end of Britain’s part in the slave trade. Yet ordinary citizens, as well as schoolteachers and makers of television programmes who may find themselves caught up in the prolonged bout of self-congratulation imposed by government fiat (with the help of £16m from the Heritage Lottery Fund), will do well to reflect on aspects of this anniversary that are not so praiseworthy.
In the first place, … Seguir leyendo