NATIVE TONGUES →
You’re welcome humanity! Pre-Colombian Mexicans were the first people to cultivate many of the most beloved ingredients that grace dining tables across the world. Here, a brief primer on five staples of Mexican origin.
Alabama city destroying ancient Indian mound for Sam's Club →
How is this legal????
City leaders in Oxford, Ala. have approved the destruction of a 1,500-year-old Native American ceremonial mound and are using the dirt as fill for a new Sam’s Club, a retail warehouse store operat
More gorgeous variations on the Paper Dolls sweater by Kate Davies.
Link to part one.
In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
“Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of.” - Angelina Jolie
My Medical Choice →
Angelina Jolie discusses her preemptive double mastectomy.
I’m posting this, I think, partly because I’m a fan of Brad Pitt’s climate adaptation/green architecture project “Make it Right” in Louisiana. Partly because cancer has taken many people in my life. And partly because I have so many young women followers. So, even though it’s way off topic, I hope it means something to someone somewhere…
As a double mastectomy survivor myself, stories like this make me feel even stronger. Do what you need to do, and fight cancer with all your being.
Alpaca shearing day.
Picture: REUTERS/Michaela Rehle (via Alpaca shearing day in Germany - Telegraph)
How Ronald Reagan Made Genocide Possible in Guatemala →
http://How Ronald Reagan Made Genocide Possible in GuatemalaThe early 1980s were particularly violent in the Latin American theater of the Cold War. Smack in the middle of Guatemala’s 36-year civil war which claimed 200,000 lives, Rios Montt edged out the winner of a sham election in a bloodless coup and began systematically repressing support for the Marxist opposition,as his forces raped women, burned villages, and murdered indigenous Mayan peasants.
From day one Reagan backed Rios Montt, feeding him millions first in jeeps and trucks, and then helicopter and plane parts, despite clearly articulated reports from both the CIA and international watchdogs that genocide was accumulating bodies in the ditches and gullies of Guatemala.
A cache of internal Guatemalan records from the time revealed the existence of Operation Sofia, which was the operation that led to the massacre of indigenous peasants. It was used by the 1999 UN-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission to classify the counterinsurgency campaign in the summer of 1982 as “acts of genocide against groups of Mayan people.”
The horror described by independent human rights reporters on the ground is enough to turn your stomach: “We heard many, many stories of children being picked up by the ankles and swung against poles so their heads [were] destroyed.”
Despite the fact that he knew all this, Reagan praised Rios Montt, calling him ”a man of great personal integrity and commitment” who wanted to “promote social justice.”
President Bill Clinton apologized in 1999, saying that the U.S. support for the death squads “was wrong.”
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