Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/05/03

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Subject: RE: [Leica] OT: Some of Life's Chumps, oops I mean Dumps
From: "Tim Atherton" <tim@KairosPhoto.com>
Date: Wed, 3 May 2000 18:13:48 -0600

 But I must add, IMHO,
> that the real
> cause of world poverty etc. has nothing to do with birth control
> or anything
> else besides bad government. Most of these countries have
> incredibly corrupt
> elites that steel every last cent they can. Look at Russia. At least $150
> billion in foreign aid, loans, grants and  foreign exchange payments have
> left the country in recent years, to enter the foreign bank
> accounts of the
> elite.


Silly me,  and here I had though all these years that (in this instance)
much of the cause was first world countries draining the natural resources
dry in such places (got to love those Canadian Gold Mines in Nicaragua -
guess who gets rich from those?), an insatiable N. American hunger for
hamburger -  though generally further south - (and, of course cocaine),
timber, cotton, coffee (was your morning latte made from beans produced by a
Guatemalan or Nicaraguan farmer who was ripped off and paid a pittance for
his crop by one of our multinationals? I bet you don't even know). cheap
labour to provide all those designer clothes we like, bananas (of course),
the running of much of central america as client states by more powerful
nations and on and on...

Of course, such things as effective birth control, democracy and the rule of
law help (though encouraging democracy doesn't seem to have been a big part
of US Central American policy over the last century, until the last 4 or 5
years, more like support for military dictatorships, virtual genocide in
Honduras via a US equipped military) - and unrestrained corruption, while
not the cause, just makes it worse and harder to make a dent in, but in the
end it is basically first world greed that fuels it all. And don't get me
wrong, I'm not especially US bashing - if we were talking about Africa, I'd
be referring to my own colonial and post-colonial countrymen.

And what has this got to do with photography - well, on a broad canvas, much
of the classic Leica photography we get excited about often shows us the
effects of all this. It's up to us to be diligent in examining how and why
it happens.

Secondly, projects like the photography on the dump and numerous other small
scale projects I have encountered in Central America, Belfast, inner-city
wastelands and native reservation can often make a real difference. In
Nicaragua last year, I came across six young men and women who had once been
part of the countries poorest. 2 rural, the rest from the city - street kids
there. One was training as a journalist, one was a nurse, 2 were rural
education workers, the others were now actually going to school and passing
grades. One thing that made a big difference for them all, were these small
scale projects.

In the end I am left with only one thing to say, shame on those who find it
gratifying or amusing to belittle such work - ever hear of the mote and the
beam?

Tim A