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What date is St Stephen's Day?	St. Stephen's Day in Ireland Home Calendar Holidays Ireland St. Stephen's Day St. Stephen's Day in Ireland St. Stephen's Day (Lá Fhéile Stiofáin), or the Day of the Wren (Lá an Dreoilín), is an occasion to commemorate the life of St Stephen, a Christian martyr. Many people spend the day quietly with close friends or family. Image of the stoning of St Stephen St Stephen was an early Christian martyr who is remembered on December 26. ©iStockphoto.com/ivan-96 What Do People Do? Many people generally spend the day quietly with family members or close friends. Some Christians attend special church services to remember St Stephen's life. Other people may visit a theater to see a pantomime. Pantomimes are musical-comedy productions based on fairy tales and aimed at families. They incorporate audience participation, cross-dressing, double entendre and references to recent local events. In some parts of Ireland, children go from door to door with a wren (a small bird) in a cage or a model wren on a stick. They may also sing, play music or perform traditional dances. In some areas, boys may dress as girls or women. Many hope to collect money for community or school projects or charity. Public Life Banks, post offices and many other businesses and organizations are closed on St Stephen's Day. However, stores and pubs are generally open, although they may open later and close earlier than usual. Public transport service schedules vary depending on where one lives and intends to travel. If St Stephen's Day falls on a Sunday, the public holiday moves to Monday, December 27. Background St Stephen is believed to be the first Christian martyr. He was stoned to death sometime around the year 33 CE. According to an Irish legend, he was betrayed by a wren while hiding from his enemies. Another legend tells of Viking raids on Ireland on St Stephen's Day sometime around the year 750 CE. Irish soldiers were approaching a Viking camp to drive out the intruders. However, a wren started eating crumbs from a drum and alerted the Vikings to the presence of the Irish soldiers. Hence, some people felt that wrens betrayed them and should be stoned to death, just as St Stephen was. Boys traditionally hunted a wren and threw stones at it. They tied it to a stick when it was dead and paraded it around the village. They did this to collect money for a dance or party for the whole village. Although the custom of killing wrens on December 26 died out around 1900, St Stephen's Day is still known as the Day of the Wren, particularly in rural areas. St Stephen's Day has been a holiday in Ireland for hundreds of years. It became a public holiday following the Bank Holidays Act 1871. Symbols The wren and images of St Stephen are important symbols of St Stephen’s Day in Ireland.	December 26
The song White Christmas was first performed in which 1942 film?	St. Stephen - Saints & Angels - Catholic Online Saints & Angels Author and Publisher - Catholic Online Facts Patron of Deacons, altar Servers, bricklayers, casket makers, & Stonemasons Death: 34 Take the Saints Trivia Quiz now! Saint Stephen was one of the first ordained deacons of the Church. He was also the first Christian martyr. The Greek word from which we derive the English word martyr literally means witness. In that sense, every Christian is called to bear witness to Jesus Christ, in both their words and their actions. Not all are asked to shed their blood. Those who do shed their blood for the faith are the greatest of witnesses. They have been especially honored since the very beginning of Christianity. Stephen was so conformed to Jesus in his holy life that his martyrdom was both a natural and supernatural sign of his love for the Lord. It also inspired the early believers as they faced the first round of brutal persecution. His behavior, even forgiving those who were taking his life while he was being stoned to death, was a beautiful reflection of how conformed he truly was to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is recorded in Chapter 7 of the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 7:54-60), which immediately follows the Gospels in the New Testament. The 6th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles contains an account of the choice of the first seven deacons of the Church. As the Apostles worked to continue the ministry of Jesus Christ as his elders, some of the Greek-speaking widows were being neglected in their practical needs. The Twelve decided to ordain seven deacons to oversee their care. In doing so, the deacons extended the pastoral care of the Apostles, the first Bishops of the early Church, enabling them to attend more to teaching. Of the seven ordained, Stephen was the oldest and given the title of "archdeacon," the chief among them. Little is known about him before this account. Like most of the early Christian leaders, he was Jewish, but may have come came from among the Greek speaking or Hellenistic believers, the ones feeling slighted in the distribution of alms. Great preaching and miracles were attributed to Stephen. The Bible records that Stephen "full of grace and power, did great wonders and signs among the people." Stephen s popularity created enemies among some Jews, members of the Synagogue of Roman Freedmen. They debated with him, to generate evidence against him in furtherance of their persecution of the early Church. They accused him of blasphemy, of speaking against God and Moses. The charges inflamed the local populace which demanded he be tried and punished. When Stephen was put on trial, several false witnesses were brought forward by the Sanhedrin to testify that he was guilty of blasphemy. He was charged with predicting that Jesus would destroy the Temple and for preaching against Mosaic law. Stephen was filled with wisdom from heaven. He responded by detailing the history of Israel and outlining the blessings God had bestowed upon his chosen people. He also explained how disobedient Israel had become, despite the goodness and mercy of the Lord. Stephen explained that Jesus had come to fulfil the law of Moses, not destroy it. He quoted extensively from the Hebrew scriptures to prove his case. Finally, he admonished the Sanhedrin, saying, "You stubborn people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears. You are always resisting the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do. Can you name a single prophet your ancestors never persecuted? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Upright One, and now you have become his betrayers, his murderers. In spite of being given the Law through angels, you have not kept it." (Acts 7:51-53) As Stephen concluded his defense, he looked up and saw a vision of Jesus standing at the right hand of God. He said, "Look, I can see heaven thrown open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." That vision was taken as the final proof of blasphemy to the Jews who did not believe Jesus was the Messiah or Son of God. For them, Jesus could not possibly be beside the Father in Heaven. The crowd rushed upon Stephen and carried him outside of the city to stone him to death. As Stephen was being brutally stoned, he spoke his last words, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Lord, do not hold this sin against them." Words which echoed the very words of Jesus on the Cross. Following those words, Stephen died, in the Lord. Watching the trial and execution was a Rabbi named Saul of Tarsus, a virulent persecutor of the early Church. Shortly thereafter, that Rabbi would himself encounter the Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus and be dramatically converted. His encounter is recorded in the 9th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. He took the name Paul as a sign of his new life in Jesus Christ and went on to become the great apostle to the Gentiles. Stephen was buried by Christians, but the location of his tomb is not specified in the New Testament and may have been forgotten for a time. In 415 a Christian priest claimed he had a vision of the tomb and located Stephen s remains. A name inside the tomb confirmed the find. St. Stephen is often depicted with stones, a Gospel Book, a miniature church and a martyr's palm frond. He is the patron saint of Altar Servers, bricklayers, casket makers and deacons and his feast day is celebrated on December 26. Join with us in offering this prayer, written by Deacon Keith Fournier, seeking his intercession: "Lord Jesus, Receive my Spirit" (St. Stephen, Martyr) A Prayer by Deacon Keith Fournier Lord Jesus, you chose Stephen as the first deacon and martyr of your One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. The heroic witness of his holy life and death reveals your continued presence among us. Through following the example of his living faith, and by his intercession, empower us by your Holy Spirit to live as witnesses to the faith in this New Missionary Age. No matter what our state in life, career or vocation, help us to proclaim, in both word and in deed, the fullness of the Gospel to a world which is waiting to be born anew in Jesus Christ. Pour out upon your whole Church, the same Holy Spirit which animated St Stephen, Martyr, to be faithful to the end, which is a beginning of life eternal in the communion of the Trinity.	i don't know
London's Trafalgar Square Christmas tree is traditionally given by which country?	London's Trafalgar Square Christmas tree is trad... - Brainly.com This Is a Certified Answer × Certified answers contain reliable, trustworthy information vouched for by a hand-picked team of experts. Brainly has millions of high quality answers, all of them carefully moderated by our most trusted community members, but certified answers are the finest of the finest. London's Trafalgar Square Christmas tree is traditionally given by NORWAY. The Trafalgar Square Christmas tree is donated by the City of Oslo in Norway to the people of Britain. This practice began in 1947. It is displayed in the square from the beginning of December until 6th January of the next year. The Christmas tree is a symbol of thanks from the people of Norway to the people of Britain when British support was given to Norway during the World War II. A Christmas tree cutting ceremony happens every November in Norway and it is attended by the British Ambassador to Norway, Mayor of Oslo, and Lord Mayor of Westminster. The tree is then shipped to Great Britain and displayed in the Trafalgar Square with traditional Norwegian decor and 500 white lights.	Norway
Which Christmas carol includes the lyrics '...To save us all from Satan's power, when we were gone astray..'?	BBC News \| UK \| Wave to the world Thursday, 6 December, 2001, 18:10 GMT Wave to the world BBC News Online celebrated the season of good cheer in 2001 by installing a webcam on top of the Norwegian Christmas tree in London's Trafalgar Square. The camera was live until the New Year when the tree was taken down. While you can no longer see the view from tree, you can find out more about the venture and the story behind one of London's best known Christmas landmarks. The story behind the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree is based in traditional Christmas values of generosity and thanksgiving. The webcam is perched on top of the tree In 1940, King Haakon VII of Norway fled his country, driven out by Germany's invading forces. He found safety in Britain and set up a Norwegian government in exile. At the end of the war, the Norwegians wanted to express their gratitude to Britain. They decided to send an annual gift of a majestic Norwegian spruce. The first tree, given in 1947, was 48ft high and was presented to Britain two days before Christmas. It took four days to dig the six feet deep hole it needed in the middle of Trafalgar Square. The view of Trafalgar Square In recent years the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree has been as tall as 75 feet, but not much else has altered in the 50 year old tradition. Each year the tree is selected by the head forester from the 17,500 hectares of Oslo's municipal forests. It is then carefully cut down and transported to Oslo docks from where it begins its journey to Felixstowe. The tree is crane-lifted into the now permanent setting in Trafalgar Square. Click here to watch the Christmas tree being erected in Trafalgar Square. The tree is lifted into place It is shrouded in its traditional Norwegian mantle of 500 white lights surmounted by a star which are turned on at a special ceremony attended by Norwegian Embassy guests and British officials and heralded by the choir of St Martin-in-the-Fields. The lights shine out every day from noon to midnight until Twelfth Night. Click here to watch the pictures of the tree cutting in Norway and lighting ceremony in London and a brief speech by the Crown Princess. On November 27, the Lord Mayor of London, accompanied by Princess Mette-Marit of Norway - helped cut down the giant spruce. On December the 6, the crown princess was at Trafalgar Square in London for the lighting-up ceremony. In 1975, the programme Jim'll Fix It, arranged for one little girl to go to Norway to chop down the tree that would be brought over to London. Kathryn shouted "timber" as the tree was pulled down then came back to the UK to see it put up in Trafalgar Square.	i don't know
The character Jack Skellington appears in which 1993 Tim Burton film?	The character Jack Skellington appears in which ... - Brainly.com This Is a Certified Answer × Certified answers contain reliable, trustworthy information vouched for by a hand-picked team of experts. Brainly has millions of high quality answers, all of them carefully moderated by our most trusted community members, but certified answers are the finest of the finest. Nightmare Before Christmas	The Nightmare Before Christmas
In the inspirational 1946 film, It's a Wonderful Life, what's the name of George Bailey's guardian angel?	Jack Skellington \| Halloween Wiki \| Fandom powered by Wikia Share Jack as he appears in Kingdom Hearts II. Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King is the protagonist of the 1993 film The Nightmare Before Christmas . He has become a pop culture icon as well as entering both gothic and Halloween culture. Because he is a popular Disney-owned character, he has appeared many times in the company's other media, such as cameos in other films (most notably in James and the Giant Peach) as well as video games , primarily the Kingdom Hearts series, which is a crossover between Disney and Square Enix (formerly Squaresoft, before its merger with Enix). According to The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge , Jack is a non-corporeal being. Known as the Pumpkin King in his home land of Halloween Town , Jack is the patron spirit of Halloween and is seen to be a tall, eerily-thin skeleton dressed in a black pin-striped suit and a bat -shaped bow tie. However, he is known to dress up as a scarecrow with a jack-o-lantern on his head during parades. He owns a pet ghost dog named Zero , who is little more than a sheet and a glowing nose which resembles a jack-o-lantern. He also has a romantic interest in the rag doll Sally , who was created by the selfish Dr. Finklestein . Speculation Interestingly, many similarities can be drawn between Skellington and the other two of Tim Burton's animated characters, Victor Van Dort and Victor Frankenstein; this includes not only overall physical appearance but also a protagonist and his undead dog ( Scraps and Frankenweenie , respectively). Behind the scenes	i don't know
What is New Year's Eve called in Scotland?	The History of Hogmanay The History of Hogmanay By Ben Johnson \| Comments Only one nation in the world can celebrate the New Year or Hogmanay with such revelry and passion – the Scots! But what are the actual origins of Hogmanay, and why should a tall dark stranger be a welcome visitor after midnight? It is believed that many of the traditional Hogmanay celebrations were originally brought to Scotland by the invading Vikings in the early 8th and 9th centuries. These Norsemen, or men from an even more northerly latitude than Scotland, paid particular attention to the arrival of the Winter Solstice or the shortest day, and fully intended to celebrate its passing with some serious partying. In Shetland, where the Viking influence remains strongest, New Year is still called Yules, deriving from the Scandinavian word for the midwinter festival of Yule. It may surprise many people to note that Christmas was not celebrated as a festival and virtually banned in Scotland for around 400 years, from the end of the 17th century to the 1950s. The reason for this dates back to the years of Protestant Reformation, when the straight-laced Kirk proclaimed Christmas as a Popish or Catholic feast, and as such needed banning. And so it was, right up until the 1950s that many Scots worked over Christmas and celebrated their winter solstice holiday at New Year when family and friends would gather for a party and to exchange presents which came to be known as hogmanays. There are several traditions and superstitions that should be taken care of before midnight on the 31st December: these include cleaning the house and taking out the ashes from the fire, there is also the requirement to clear all your debts before "the bells" sound midnight, the underlying message being to clear out the remains of the old year, have a clean break and welcome in a young, New Year on a happy note. Immediately after midnight it is traditional to sing Robert Burns ' "Auld Lang Syne". Burns published his version of this popular little ditty in 1788, although the tune was in print over 80 years before this. "Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot and auld lang syne For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne, We'll take a cup o kindness yet, for auld lang syne." An integral part of the Hogmanay party, which is continued with equal enthusiasm today, is to welcome friends and strangers with warm hospitality and of course lots of enforced kissing for all. "First footing" (or the "first foot" in the house after midnight) is still common across Scotland. To ensure good luck for the house the first foot should be a dark male, and he should bring with him symbolic pieces of coal, shortbread , salt, black bun and a wee dram of whisky . The dark male bit is believed to be a throwback to the Viking days, when a big blonde stranger arriving on your door step with a big axe meant big trouble, and probably not a very happy New Year! The firework displays and torchlight processions now enjoyed throughout many cities in Scotland are reminders of the ancient pagan parties from those Viking days of long ago. The traditional New Year ceremony would involve people dressing up in the hides of cattle and running around the village whilst being hit by sticks. The festivities would also include the lighting of bonfires and tossing torches. Animal hide wrapped around sticks and ignited produced a smoke that was believed to be very effective in warding off evil spirits: this smoking stick was also known as a Hogmanay. Many of these customs continue today, especially in the older communities of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. On the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides, the young men and boys form themselves into opposing bands; the leader of each wears a sheep skin, while another member carries a sack. The bands move through the village from house to house reciting a Gaelic rhyme. The boys are given bannocks (fruit buns) for their sack before moving on to the next house. One of the most spectacular fire ceremonies takes place in Stonehaven, south of Aberdeen on the north east coast. Giant fireballs are swung around on long metal poles each requiring many men to carry them as they are paraded up and down the High Street. Again the origin is believed to be linked to the Winter Solstice with the swinging fireballs signifying the power of the sun, purifying the world by consuming evil spirits. For visitors to Scotland it is worth remembering that January 2nd is also a national holiday in Scotland, this extra day being barely enough time to recover from a week of intense revelry and merry-making. All of which helps to form part of Scotland's cultural legacy of ancient customs and traditions that surround the pagan festival of Hogmanay. Tweet If you enjoyed this article, you might also like... Robert "Rabbie" Burns - Robert Burns is the best loved Scottish poet, admired not only for his verse and great love-songs, but also for his character, his high spirits, 'kirk-defying', hard drinking and womanising! Uisge Beatha - The name given by the ancient Celts to the fiery amber nectar we now call whisky. Traditional British Food & Drink - From afternoon tea to fish and chips to yorkshire puds ... Scottish Shortbread - Scottish cookery has always differed from culinary endeavours south of the border. The Romans influenced English cooking but as they did not venture far into Scotland, historically Scottish cuisine developed slowly. Scottish cooking methods advanced through the influence of the French at the court ... Advertising	Hogmanay
What Christmas item was invented by London baker and wedding-cake specialist Tom Smith in 1847?	New Year in Scotland, New Year's Eve in Scotland, New Year Festival in Scotland New Year Festival » Around The World » New Year In Scotland (hogmanay) New Year In Scotland (hogmanay) December 31st is the official holiday all over Scotland as it is the New Year's Eve or the Hogmanay. New Year in Scotland is celebrated with fervor and enthusiasm on January 1st. Hogmanay is also called 'night of the candle'. The idea of celebrating Hogmanay dates back to the pagan celebrations of the winter solstice. These celebrations were inherited from the Vikings who celebrated Yule in the medieval period. Hogmanay Traditions People of Scotland perform all traditions earnestly to bring in prosperity and good health in the New Year. There is a tradition of cleaning the house and surrounding area on 31st December. They also burn juniper branches and carry it throughout the house. People believe that all debts and loans should be paid off before the New Year. Tradition of Fireball Swinging The custom of fireball swinging is quite popular in Stonehaven (North-east Scotland). People make balls of chicken wire, tar and paper. Each ball has a 2m wire attached to it. Swingers then swing the balls over their body and head while walking through the streets. The main attraction of the day is casting the burning balls in the harbor. This makes the display even more impressive at the evening time. It signifies the power of sun to purify the world by consuming all evil spirits. Custom of bonfires At many places in Scotland, people light bonfires and straw like figures called Auld Wife which represents old year thrown in the burning fire. There is also a torchlight procession which adds to the ongoing New Year activities. Crackers are also burnt to scare off the evil spirits. Tradition of First Footing This tradition starts immediately after midnight. The first person to step in the house sets the luck for the coming year. A tall, dark, handsome and dark-haired man is welcomed bearing the New Year gift. The gift should be symbolic such as salt, coal, whisky, shortbread and black bun. Traditional Song As soon as church bells strike at midnight to welcome the New Year, people start singing the traditional New Year song "Auld Lang Syne" . Handsel Day The first Monday of the New Year is celebrated as Handsel Day. On this day, employers give presents to their employees and children are given presents by their parents. Hogmanay Celebrations The first person to rise up in the morning take Het Pint (spiced ale) to those members who are still asleep. On the New Year's day, children get up early and take rounds singing traditional songs. They are given coins, pies, apples and candies for their sining. New Year celebrations are a blend of music, drinks and dance when it comes to Scotland. All party halls, clubs, discotheques and restaurants are thronged with people in full party mood. People hug, kiss and wish each other Happy New Year. Special food eaten on this day include wine, cordials, cheese, bread, currant loaf, cones and oatcakes.	i don't know
Who wrote How the Grinch Stole Christmas?	Who Wrote “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” Who Wrote “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” 23 Dec, 2012 who wrote 0 “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” is a fictional children’s book first published in 1957. The story features a bitter cave-dwelling creature called the Grinch who is annoyed by the Christmas celebrations in the nearby town. He decides to steal all of the Christmas presents and decorations to stop Christmas. Despite his efforts, Christmas comes anyway and he learns that Christmas is more than gifts and decorations. The author uses this story to focus on the commercialization of Christmas. The book was later made into an animated special, which has become a popular Christmas tradition. A number of other adaptations, including a feature film and musical, have also been created. Let’s find out who wrote this popular Christmas story. Who Wrote “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!”? “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” was written by the famous children’s author Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Deuss. Geisel also provided the illustration for the original publication of the story. The book was published in 1957 by Random House and also in an issue of Redbook Magazine in the same year. Since the original publication the book has sold millions of copies and is commonly featured in lists of the top children’s books of all time. In 1966 Geisel authorized an animated version of the book, which was completed by Chuck Jones. Geisel and Jones were friends and former colleagues and worked closely on the animation. This animated version is narrated by Boris Karloff and closely follows the original story. It is still shown every Christmas on American television, often on Christmas Day, and it is one of the only Christmas specials from the 1960’s that is regularly shown on television. Did you know? The 2000 feature film by the same name stars Jim Carrey as the Grinch. This film is the second highest grossing holiday movie of all time. Related Articles	Dr. Seuss
From which country does the poinsettia plant originate?	You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch, Original Version - 1966 (HD) - YouTube You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch, Original Version - 1966 (HD) Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Aug 12, 2011 ♪ You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch ~ From the 1966 cartoon special "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" is a Christmas song that was originally written and composed for the 1966 cartoon special How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The lyrics were written by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel, the music was composed by Albert Hague, and the song was performed by Thurl Ravenscroft. The song's lyrics describe the Grinch as being foul, bad-mannered and sinister using increasingly creative metaphors and synonyms, beginning with the opening line "you're a mean one, Mister Grinch". Lyrics: You're a mean one Mr Grinch You really are a heel You're as cuddly as a cactus You're as charming as an eel Mr. Grinch You're a bad banana with a greasy black peel You're a monster Mr. Grinch Your Hearts an empty hole Your brain is full of spiders You've got garlic in your soul Mr. Grinch I wouldn't touch you with a 39 and a half Foot pole You're a vile one Mr. Grinch You have termites in your smile You have all the tender sweetness of a seasick crocodile Mr. Grinch Given the choice between the two of you I'd take the a seasick crocodile You're a foul one Mr. Grinch You're a nasty wasty skunk Your heart is full of unwashed socks, Your soul is full of gunk Mr. Grinch The 3 words that best describe you, are as follows, and I quote Stink, Stank, Stonk You're a rotter Mr. Grinch You're the king of sinful sots Your hearts a dead tomato splotched with moldy purple spots Mr. Grinch Your sole is an appalling dump heap Overflowing with the most disgraceful Assortment of deplorable rubbish Imaginable, mangled up in tangled up knots You nauseate me, Mr. Grinch With a nauseous super naus You're a crooked jerky jockey and, you drive a crooked horse Mr. Grinch You're a 3 Decker sour kraut and toad stool sandwich With arsenic sauce! No copy infraction intended on my videos. Thank you for watching! Category	i don't know
Who is officially credited as the author of Auld Lang Syne?	Auld Lang Syne \| Desiring God Auld Lang Syne @Bloom_Jon Jon Bloom serves as author, board chair, and co-founder of Desiring God. He is author of three books, Not by Sight , Things Not Seen , and Don’t Follow Your Heart . He and his wife live in the Twin Cities with their five children. @Bloom_Jon Jon Bloom serves as author, board chair, and co-founder of Desiring God. He is author of three books, Not by Sight , Things Not Seen , and Don’t Follow Your Heart . He and his wife live in the Twin Cities with their five children. Arrow Staff writer, desiringGod.org This song, loved and sung around the world, is thought to be partially composed by an unknown Scottish bard in days, as its most famous refrain says, “old long since.” Today we would say (less poetically) long, long ago or days gone by. We don’t know how old the song is. Scotland’s most famous poet, Robert Burns (popularly credited as the song’s author), claimed to have discovered “Auld Lang Syne” in the late 1700’s and transcribed it as an old lowland Scot sang it for him. There may be truth to this, though it appears Burns improved the lyrics. What makes “Auld Lang Syne” so powerful? It has nothing to do with a New Year and everything to do with an old friend. It is a tribute toast to treasured time spent roaming rolling Scottish hills and swimming stony Scottish streams with a cherished childhood companion. The Treasure of Old Friendship A new year may be a good time for new resolutions, but the ending of an old year is a good time for reflection on what has past. And I don’t mean merely lesson-learning reflection for future improvement. Some reflection is meant simply to treasure with gratitude what we were once given and will never have in the same way again. Old friendship is that sort of treasure. Few gifts in life are as precious as companions with whom we once spent long summer days and talked long into the night; with whom we shared thrilling adventures and disastrous mishaps; with whom we bent over in convulsive laughter and sat silently in tearful loss; in whom we confided the hopes and fears of our youthful years. Most often we didn’t choose our best friends as much as we were thrown together with them in “accidents” of Providence. Frequently, they happened to move in next door or up the street or in our tenement or began attending our church or had the locker or workstation next to us. We became friends out of forced proximity, the joy of shared interests, and the deep, unspoken knowledge that it never has been good for man to be alone, which we learned meant far more than romantic love (2 Samuel 1:26; John 15:14–15). We sometimes fought and injured each other with wounds only intimates can inflict. But we carried each other’s hearts and had each other’s backs when others attacked. Let Auld Acquaintance Not Be Forgot Our old acquaintances, particularly those who helped us see and love what is true and pure and beautiful and excellent (Philippians 4:8), should not be forgotten. They should be recalled and reverenced. They left an indelible imprint on our souls and they still shape who we are. They were good, gracious gifts from God himself (James 1:17), to whom it is fitting to give heartfelt, profound thanks. The beginning of a new life chapter is a good time to remember precious characters of chapters past. And perhaps it is time, before it’s too late, to schedule that lunch with or make that phone call or write that email or old-fashioned handwritten letter to a cherished friend simply to express again or at last what they have meant to you — still mean to you. Or if they are beyond contact now, it would be fitting to honor their significance to someone who can share with you the sweet melancholic memory of invaluable moments that you once knew. As a New Year’s gift to you in honor of gifts of years’ past, below are the lyrics to Auld Lang Syne, with some translation help. And here is a beautiful Scottish reading of Burns’s transcription and here is a beautiful rendition of it in song. As you toast the arrival of 2016, take a prayerful cup of thankfulness for the kindness God showed to you in days old long since. Verse 1 Should auld acquaintance be forgot, (Should old acquaintance be forgot) And never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, (Should old acquaintance be forgot) And auld lang syne. (And long, long ago) Chorus: For auld lang syne, my jo, (For long, long ago, my dear [or for the sake of old times]) For auld lang syne, (For long, long ago) We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet, (We’ll take a cup of kindness yet) For auld lang syne. (For long, long ago) Verse 2 And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp! (And surely you’ll buy your pint-jug!) And surely I’ll be mine! (And surely I’ll buy mine!) And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet, (we’ll take a cup of kindness yet) For auld lang syne. (For long, long ago) Verse 3 We twa hae run about the braes (We two have run about the hills) And pu’d the gowans fine; (And pulled the daisies fine;) But we’ve wander’d mony a weary foot (But we’ve wandered many a weary foot) Sin auld lang syne. (Since long, long ago) Verse 4 We twa hae paidl’d i’ the burn, (We two have paddled in the stream,) Frae mornin’ sun till dine; (From morning sun till dinner-time;) But seas between us braid hae roar’d (But seas between us broad have roared) Sin auld lang syne. (Since long, long ago) Verse 5 And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere! (And there’s a hand, my trusty friend!) And gie’s a hand o’ thine! (And give us a hand of yours!) And we’ll tak a right guid willy waught, (And we'll take a deep draught of good-will) For auld lang syne. (For long, long ago)	Robert Burns
What is the name of the cake traditionally eaten in Italy at Christmas?	What does Auld Lang Syne mean? \| HowStuffWorks What does Auld Lang Syne mean? You know that song you hear every New Year's Eve? The one about not forgetting old acquaintances. Did you ever wonder what that phrase is in the chorus? Is it: For old ang zine Foothold and sign For all the aunts of mine Actually, it's not any of these. On New Year's Eve, the most common song for most English-speaking people to sing is "Auld Lang Syne." Isn't it funny how it's possible to sing and hear a song so many times and have no idea what it means? And wouldn't it be funny if it meant "Big Pink Elephants"? Up Next New Year's Cocktail Party Guide A good sub-question is, what language is it? It turns out that "Auld Lang Syne" is an extremely old Scottish song that was first written down in the 1700s. Robert Burns is the person whose transcription got the most attention, so the song is associated with him. According to this page , a good translation of the words "auld lang syne" is "times gone by." So (incorporating a couple of other translations) when we sing this song, we are saying, "We'll drink a cup of kindness yet for times gone by." 1	i don't know
Dempo, Churchill Brothers, and Salgaocar are famous successful Indian what?	I-League & Indian Super League (ISL) - India (Football League Review) \| Fieldoo Blog Level on the pyramid: 1 Domestic cup: Federation Cup, Durand Cup International cup: AFC Champions League, AFC Cup Current champions: Bengaluru FC Average range of annual salaries (v €): 60,000€ – 85,000€ Transfer window (dates): 8th June – 31st August (domestic), 16th January – 15th February (domestic), 1st January – 31st December (foreign) Season duration: September – April (2013) / January – May (2014/2015) Number of allowed foreign players (per team): 4 slots, 1 of them has to be from another AFC country Number of foreign players: 33 Average stadium attendances: 5,618 Due to the league still being in the developing stages the rules have changed almost yearly, last year for example there were 13 teams competing. With the launch of Super League this year, I-League is pushed and starts in December and ends in May (opposed to last year when it started in mid September), with teams playing 18 matches each, totalling 90 matches in the season. Most games are usually played in the afternoons during the weekends or midweeks. I-League Teams Sporting Goa Most football clubs in India are formated as what is known as Institutional teams and since 21st February of 2014 these teams are not allowed to play in the I-League. This means that players and staff from an institutional team mostly aren’t full professionals and often work a full-time job outside the game for the company his team is sponsored by. The positives of this kind of system is that players are earning a decent wage and have a prospect of employment after their footballing career comes to an end. The negatives though are that teams mainly represent their company and not cities or regions which means it’s difficult for them to gain broad support and since India is working heavily in the direction to bring worldwide attention to their football this does not bode well. Two domestic and one foreign transfer window Teams are allowed to sign players during three transfer windows where two domestic last from 8th June to 31st August and from 16th January to 15th February and one foreign that lasts for the whole year. Transfers in India are mostly done on the national level as almost 90% of all transfer business is done between the Indian teams. The average salaries range from 60,000€ – 85,000€. There are currently 33 foreign players in the I-League while every team is allowed to have 4 foreigners where 1 of them has to be from another AFC country. I-League Transfers Between I-League teams or other Indian teams with I-League teams: 89% From abroad to I-League: 9% From I-League to abroad: 2% International transfers Portugal, Australia, Iran, Trinidad and Tobago, Cameroon: all 12,5% From I-League (to countries): New Zealand, Singapore: both 50% There’s another requirement for the teams of the first division that was announced in May of 2014 and also goes with the policy of making football in India more popular: Every club in the I-League must have at least one marquee foreign player on their team. Where marquee means that that player represented his country in an international competition (FIFA World Cup, European Championship, AFC Asian Cup etc.), has played for his club team in a top international competition (UEFA CHampions League, AFC Champions League etc.) or has played in a top domestic league (Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga etc.) Indian Super League The Indian Super League (ISL) , officially known as the Hero Indian Super League for sponsorship reasons, launched in October 2014 and is one of the top divisions beside the already described I-League. It was founded in 2013 with the purpose of making football a top sport in India and bringing international attention to the Indian football. UPDATE: Atlético de Kolkata are the first Indian Super League Champions! Indian Super League (ISL) Level on the pyramid: 1 Season duration: October – December Number of allowed foreign players (per team): at least 7 foreigners (5 from draft) and one from another AFC country Famous foreign players: David Trezeguet, Robert Pires, David James, Freddie Ljungberg, Luis Garcia, Alessandro Del Piero, Joan Capdevila, Manuel Friedrich Super league features eight franchise teams from all over India who participate in a three months long competition lasting from October to December with the finals series deciding the champion. The league uses a franchise system Unlike the majority of football leagues around the world and it’s fellow I-League, the ISL does not use the promotion and relegation system but a franchise system in which eight teams will be created to participate in the league. ISL Teams Tax rate (gross vs net): 0%, 10%, 20%, 30% National currency (value in € and $): Indian rupee (INR) = 0.012€ = 0.016$ Average temperature, humidity and rainfall during the season: 21.7C, 63%, 25mm Food: Chicken and mutton meat, potatoes, rice, lots of spices Most popular sports: cricket, football, field hockey, badminton Transport: Domestic flights between all major cities Football stars will now play in India A project to bring international attention to Indian football the Super League has started with some of the biggest stars of world football signing for the teams in the competition. Spaniard Luis Garcia who’ve won the Champions League while playing for Liverpool has signed for Atlético de Kolkata, former World Champion and Juventus’ great David Trezeguet will play for FC Pune City while former Spanish and English internationals Joan Capdevila and David James will join NorthEast United FC and Kerala Blasters FC respectively. Former Arsenal players Robert Pires and Freddie Ljungberg have also agreed to join the ISL’s clubs FC Goa and Mumbai City respectively, while Italian legend Alessandro Del Piero will play for Delhi Dynamos FC. The League also attracted some reputable managers (coaches), such as Zico (FC Goa) or Peter Reid (ex-Sunderland and Leeds boss) who will take over Mumbai City. You can read an article explaining how is it like to be a football player in India here . At football network Fieldoo we connect 150,000+ players & agents, enhance transfers and transparency in the world of football. Thousands of Fieldoo members found a new club in the last season (2013/14). Become one of them by joining the platform.	Football team
The Indian endangered species Platanista gangetica gangetica is a?	Churchill and three other clubs axed from I-League \| Zee News Churchill and three other clubs axed from I-League PTI \| Last Updated: Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - 19:09 0 Follow @ZeeNewsSports New Delhi: In a stunning development in Indian football, two-time champions Churchill Brothers were today thrown out of the I-League along with three other teams for failing to fulfil the AIFF`s club licensing criteria. The All India Football Federation`s Club Licensing Committee - First Instance Body - took the decision after its meeting here. Two Kolkata clubs -- United SC and Mohammedan Sporting -- and Rangdajied United of Shillong were the other three teams which failed to clear the licensing criteria. All the four clubs will be out of the I-League for at least a year. Interestingly, all the four clubs finished at the bottom four in the 13-team I-League (2013-14) which ended last month, with Mohammedan Sporting finishing last and Churchill 11th. Under the AIFF`s Club Licensing Regulations, the clubs are expected to meet several legal, administrative, sporting, infrastructure and financial criteria. Licensing is an annual process where all clubs eligible to compete based on sporting merit need to have a License under the AIFF`s Indian Club Licensing system. Last year, only Pune FC met the requirements with all other clubs being given a once in a lifetime one-year exemption. Churchill had been one of the top club sides in the country in the last few years. They won the I-League title in 2008-09 and 2012-13 seasons and they are also the reigning Federation Cup champions. Churchill are also one of the few clubs to have played in the AFC Cup. I-League Chief Executive Officer Sunando Dhar told PTI that the four clubs can come back in the I-League 2015-16 but through the second division league. "These licensing criteria are on annual basis. They can come back in the 2015-16 season if they fulfil the criteria by then. But they will have to play in the I-League second division and qualify from there," Dhar said. Bengaluru FC, Dempo SC, Pune FC, Salgaocar SC, East Bengal, Mohun Bagan, Sporting Clube de Goa, Mumbai FC, and Shillong Lajong FC were the nine clubs which passed the licensing criteria. "Based on the documents provided by all the parties concerned and the Inspection conducted by the AIFF Inspection Team in the month of April/May, the Committee found that nine out of the 14 applicants have made the grade while four have failed," the AIFF said in a statement. "Bengaluru FC, Dempo SC, Pune FC, Salgaocar SC, East Bengal, Mohun Bagan, Sporting Clube de Goa, Mumbai FC, and Shillong Lajong FC have successfully fulfilled the Licensing Criteria while United SC, Churchill Brothers, Mohammedan Sporting and Rangdajied United have not been up to the mark, thus bringing down the curtains on their participation in the forthcoming Football Season 2014/15 starting with the I-League in December." Newly promoted Royal Wahingdoh of Shillong, who won the I-League second division, have been given an one-time exemption applicable for a year only to tick all the boxes. "Wahingdoh have done exceptionally well in several departments of Club Licensing in such a short time since qualifying for the I-League," Committee Chairman Dr Girija Mungali said. "They deserve a leeway being given to them under the Licensing regulations," he added. Mumbai FC and Shillong Lajong though have been granted only the National License compared to their counterparts who have both National as well as the AFC Certificate. The two clubs cannot take part in AFC competition and even if they win the I-League or the Federation Cup, they cannot participate in the AFC Cup or the AFC Champions League play-offs. "Both these clubs do not have AFC A class Stadium, but were fully compliant of the infrastructure requirement for the National License," AIFF`s Club Licensing Manager Roma Khanna stated. Hailing the remarkable progress of the clubs since last year when the committee was formed for the first time, Dr Mungali said, "The nine clubs who have granted the License have come a long way since last year when only Pune FC passed. "They have all passed with flying colours and it is a heartening sign for Indian Football. Clubs becoming professional is the best thing that can happen. "They have taken Licensing very seriously and credit goes to AIFF. The Governing Body has played its role to perfection sensitising the issue s very diligently," the chairman added. FIFA Regional Developmental Officer for South and Central Asia Shaji Prabhakaran, Advocate Ushanath Banerjee, Chartered Accountant Punkaj Jain and Dhar are the other members of the First Instance Body. "The message has gone across that AIFF is very serious on licensing and I am glad at the progress of the clubs. We have conducted two to three seminars since the First Instance Body met for the first time and gave the clubs a year`s exemption," Dhar said. "We have been there to help the clubs at all time and we are committed to further aiding them in each and every department of Club Licensing. It`s nice to see most of them responding so well," he added. First Published: Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - 19:09	i don't know
Based in Mumbai, abbreviated to RBI, what is India's central banking institution and guardian of the currency?	Different Types of Banks - What are Various Kinds of Banks ? Different Types of Banks - What are Various Kinds of Banks ? Post: Gaurav Akrani. Date: 2/09/2011. No Comments . Label: Banking . Type 1. Saving Banks Saving banks are established to create saving habit among the people. These banks are helpful for salaried people and low income groups. The deposits collected from customers are invested in bonds, securities, etc. At present most of the commercial banks carry the functions of savings banks. Postal department also performs the functions of saving bank. Image Credits © crispyteriyaki Type 2. Commercial Banks Commercial banks are established with an objective to help businessmen. These banks collect money from general public and give short-term loans to businessmen by way of cash credits, overdrafts, etc. Commercial banks provide various services like collecting cheques, bill of exchange, remittance money from one place to another place. In India, commercial banks are established under Companies Act, 1956. In 1969, 14 commercial banks were nationalised by Government of India. The policies regarding deposits, loans, rate of interest, etc. of these banks are controlled by the Central Bank. Type 3. Industrial Banks / Development Banks Industrial / Development banks collect cash by issuing shares & debentures and providing long-term loans to industries. The main objective of these banks is to provide long-term loans for expansion and modernisation of industries. In India such banks are established on a large scale after independence. They are Industrial Finance Corporation of India ( IFCI ), Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India ( ICICI ) and Industrial Development Bank of India ( IDBI ). Type 4. Land Mortgage / Land Development Banks Land Mortgage or Land Development banks are also known as Agricultural Banks because these are formed to finance agricultural sector. They also help in land development. In India, Government has come forward to assist these banks. The Government has guaranteed the debentures issued by such banks. There is a great risk involved in the financing of agriculture and generally commercial banks do not take much interest in financing agricultural sector. Type 5. Indigenous Banks Indigenous banks means Money Lenders and Sahukars. They collect deposits from general public and grant loans to the needy persons out of their own funds as well as from deposits. These indigenous banks are popular in villages and small towns. They perform combined functions of trading and banking activities. Certain well-known indian communities like Marwaries and Multani even today run specialised indigenous banks. Type 6. Central / Federal / National Bank Every country of the world has a central bank. In India, Reserve Bank of India, in U.S.A, Federal Reserve and in U.K, Bank of England . These central banks are the bankers of the other banks. They provide specialised functions i.e. issue of paper currency, working as bankers of government, supervising and controlling foreign exchange. A central bank is a non-profit making institution. It does not deal with the public but it deals with other banks. The principal responsibility of Central Bank is thorough control on currency of a country. Type 7. Co-operative Banks In India, Co-operative banks are registered under the Co-operative Societies Act, 1912. They generally give credit facilities to small farmers, salaried employees, small-scale industries, etc. Co-operative Banks are available in rural as well as in urban areas. The functions of these banks are just similar to commercial banks. Type 8. Exchange Banks Hong Kong Bank, Bank of Tokyo, Bank of America are the examples of Foreign Banks working in India. These banks are mainly concerned with financing foreign trade. Following are the various functions of Exchange Banks :- Remitting money from one country to another country, Discounting of foreign bills, Buying and Selling Gold and Silver, and Helping Import and Export Trade. Type 9. Consumers Banks Consumers bank is a new addition to the existing type of banks. Such banks are usually found only in advanced countries like U.S.A. and Germany. The main objective of this bank is to give loans to consumers for purchase of the durables like Motor car, television set, washing machine, furniture, etc. The consumers have to repay the loans in easy installments.	Reserve Bank of India
The oldest Sanskrit literature and Hindu scriptures are called what, meaning 'knowledge' in Sanskrit?	Mumbai travel guide - Wikitravel Time Zone UTC+5:30 The Gateway of India is the most recognizable symbol of the city. It was built to commemorate the visit of the British Monarch King George V to India in 1911. Mumbai ( Marathi : मुंबई) [1] , a cosmopolitan metropolis, earlier known as Bombay, is the largest city in India and the capital of Maharashtra state. Mumbai was originally a conglomeration of seven islands on the Konkan coastline which over time were joined to form the island city of Bombay. The island was in turn joined with the neighboring island of Salsette to form Greater Bombay. The city has an estimated metropolitan population of 21 million (2005), making it one of the world's most populous cities. Mumbai is undoubtedly the commercial capital of India and is one of the predominant port cities in the country. Mumbai's nature as the most eclectic and cosmopolitan Indian city is symbolized in the presence of Bollywood within the city, the centre of the globally-influential Hindi film and TV industries. It is also home to India's largest slum population. Districts[ edit ] South Mumbai (Fort, Colaba, Malabar Hill, Nariman Point, Marine Lines, Tardeo) The oldest areas of Mumbai. Contains Mumbai's downtown area and is considered the heart of this commercial capital of India. The richest neighborhoods in the country are located here, which command among the highest property rates in the world. Real estate prices in South Mumbai are comparable to those in Manhattan. This is the primary tourist area of Mumbai and home to most of Mumbai's museums, art galleries, bars, upscale restaurants, luxury retail with brands like Armani, zegna, Hermes, Sangeeta Boochra etc., and the Gateway of India. North Mumbai (Manori, Jogeshwari, Malad, Borivali, Gorai, Mira Road, Bhyander, Naigaon, Vasai , Nala Sopara , Virar) This is where you go to find beaches that are not dirty. Other than this, it is just another victim of Bombay's vast urban sprawl. Contains the Sanjay Gandhi National Park and Mumbai's oldest heritage sites: the Kanheri, Mahakali, Jogeshwari, and Mandapeshwar rock-cut temples dating from the 1st century B.C to the 5th century A.D. The Global Vipassana Pagoda is a notable monument in Gorai, Mumbai, India. The pagoda is to serve as a monument of peace and harmony. This monument was inaugurated by Pratibha Patil, the President of India on 8 February 2009. It is located in the north of Mumbai in an area called Gorai and is built on donated land on a peninsula between Gorai creek and the Arabian Sea. Essel world, India's largest amusement park is also located on the gorai island, just besides the global vipassana pagoda. Western and Central, East and West A visitor to Mumbai's suburbs will quickly learn that the suburbs are divided into "Western" and "Central". You will also hear of a "West" side and an "East" side. Here is a quick explanation for the confused. The Western and Central suburbs are named after the local railway lines that serve the respective areas. The Western and Central Railways are rail lines that serve the western and central parts of India. Both have their headquarters in Mumbai. The Harbor Line is a feeder line that connects the harbor areas to the Central and Western lines. It also provides connectivity to the Northeastern suburbs of Mumbai and on wards to Navi Mumbai . Most of these areas do not lie anywhere close to an harbor. Almost all localities in Mumbai have a "West" side and an "East" side. "West" means West of the railway line and "East" means East of the railway line. For example, Mulund (West) means that the area is to the west of the Mulund railway station. In addresses, West and East are abbreviated, i.e. Mulund(W) and Mulund(E). Mumbai is a city built in successive waves of migrations. The neighborhoods acquired their character from the communities that settled there first. These neighborhoods are too numerous to list and there is no commonly accepted way to group these neighborhoods into larger districts. But roughly, from the south to the north, this is how the city developed. Understand[ edit ] Carvings at the Elephanta Caves Mumbai is a bustling, diverse metropolis with a flair all its own. The entrepreneurial spirit and pulsing pace of life provide a sharp contrast to much of the rest of India. Name[ edit ] There has been much debate regarding the original name of the city. Some say the current name of the city Mumbai is the original name; and is an eponym derived from "Mumba", the name of the local Hindu goddess Mumbadevi, and "Aai", meaning "mother" in Marathi. Others claim Bombay was an anglicized version of Bom Bahia, a name given by the Portuguese to mean "Beautiful Bay" and later made popular by the British as the name of the Bombay state. The name was officially changed from Bombay to Mumbai in 1995. Although Bombay and Mumbai are both used, people who explicitly use "Bombay" are generally non-Marathi speakers whereas "Mumbai" proponents primarily speak Marathi. In the West, Mumbai has become more commonly accepted in order to avoid controversy. It is also fondly called as आमची मुंबई ("our Mumbai"). History[ edit ] Though the seven islands that now make up the city have a long recorded history like any other place in India, their journey to form the city of Mumbai really started in 1498, when the Portuguese took them over from the Sultan of Gujarat. They built a settlement, forts, and churches, (including the strange looking Portuguese Church that stands to this day.) They, however, could not make much of their possession and the seven islands were handed over to England in 1661 as part of the dowry of Catherine de Braganza when she married Charles II of England. He wasn't very interested in the islands either, and he leased them to the British East India Company for £10 a year in 1668. The East India Company built the docks, the trading posts, and the fort that would form the nerve centre of the city. They also started off the long process of reclaiming land and joining the islands, an activity which went on until the 1960s. The port attracted industries and the entrepreneurial communities like the Parsis, Gujaratis, and Marwaris (from Rajasthan) migrated and set up trading companies and factories in the late 19th century. Industries attracted migrant labor from different parts of the country. The successive waves of migration shaped the character of the city and its neighborhoods. The city that owes its existence to the efforts of the British was also the birthplace of the Indian National Congress, which played an overwhelmingly important role in the independence movement. The city whose mills were built by industrialists from across the country is the capital of Maharashtra state, which was carved on linguistic lines for Marathi speakers. In the 80s, high labor costs and unrest forced the closure of many textile mills and the city went into a decline from which it started recovering only in the late 90s. The high population put a strain on the infrastructure. The rail and road network has been undergoing a steady improvement over the 90s, but because of the magnitude of the task, the roads seem to be perennially under construction. Mumbai has now reinvented itself as a hub for the Service industry. In January 1993, in the wake of the destruction of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya , a wave of riots swept the city, with over 1000 people killed, the vast majority of whom were Muslims. Relations between the city's various ethnic groups have been tense ever since, with several terrorist outrages (see #Stay safe ) adding fuel to the fire. Culture and attitudes[ edit ] Mumbai is the most cosmopolitan city in India. In comparison with the rest of the country, the city is quite liberal. With a regular influx of immigrants from rest of India, the citizens, popularly known as 'Mumbaikers', have shown remarkable tolerance towards other cultures, making it a true cultural melting pot. However in recent times, this tolerance has sometimes bowed under external pressures. Between the 60s and 80s, there was resentment about the non-Marathi speakers taking away jobs. The 1991 and 1993 riots between Hindus and Muslims did attempt to affect this spirit, however the city largely managed to recover from these, although serious divisions remain as memories remain scarred. source Indian Meteorological Department Mumbai has three main seasons — Summer, Monsoon, and Winter (milder summer). The best time to visit is during the winter between November and February. Humidity is also less during the winter, when the climate is pleasant; the minimum temperature is 17 degrees centigrade and the maximum is 30-31 degrees. Summer is from March to May with highs in the low to mid 30s (roughly 80-90°F). It is hot and humid during this time. June to September is the monsoon season when the city is lashed by heavy rains. The city gets flooded two or three times and normal life gets disrupted during this season. Climate is humid pretty much throughout the year because the city rests on the coast. By plane[ edit ] Mumbai has excellent connectivity with most of the major cities around the world, including, New York, London, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur to name a few. If you are flying from Europe it is generally cheaper to fly from London, and there are many flights daily. Most of the domestic sectors too are linked to Mumbai, making it the second busiest aviation hub in the country. Airport[ edit ] Newly opened swanky Domestic Terminal 1B Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport ( IATA : BOM) (ICAO: VABB) [2] is India's second busiest airport and one of the main international gateways to the country. Many international airlines such as British Airways, United, Emirates, Malaysia Airlines, Lufthansa, Qantas, and Singapore Airlines, fly into Mumbai. Low-cost carriers also fly to the city. The airport consists mainly of two terminals (for Domestic & International purposes) - both terminals use the same airspace but are 4km apart. There is a free shuttle bus connecting them but be prepared for long delays through security. Going from Domestic to International you are taken outside the airport and you will re-enter through International Departures. Terminal 1 Domestic Terminal Terminal 1A: serves Air India Terminal 1B: serves various private airlines, such as Jet Airways, Indigo, SpiceJet, & GO Air The domestic terminals are undergoing a long overdue upgrade. Terminal 1B now meets international standards and work is going on at Terminal 1A. Terminal 2 International Terminal The new international terminal (T2) opened in 2014 replacing the old international terminal. The Sahar Elevated Access Road, abbreviated to SEAR, is a dedicated, elevated, express access road in Mumbai that connects the Western Express Highway (WEH) near Hanuman Nagar junction in Vile Parle, with the forecourts of Terminal T2 of the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. It facilitates easier and quicker access to the commuters proceeding to and from the airport. To and from airport[ edit ] The airport is 28 km from downtown. Take a prepaid coupon taxi to minimize hassle. Never pay more than Rs 450-600 for a prepaid taxi. This amount should get you all the way to the southernmost point of Colaba, the main tourist district. While it is possible to take metered taxis to your eventual destination, it is always a safer bet to take the prepaid taxis, in order to avoid being taken to your destination via a longer route, thus increasing the meter reading! While it is not mandatory to pay extra charges for your luggage, a tip of Rs 50-100 shall always be appreciated. Be extra careful with the main prepaid counter on the left as you leave the terminal. There is a well-known scam with the employees here replacing your 500 rupee bill with a 100 rupee bill and giving you change for the latter. There are many prepaid taxi offices all in a row as you are exiting the airport, if one offers a very high rate, just walk to the next window and so forth until you find one with a good rate. Go to the taxi office and purchase a coupon to take to the driver. The coupon will have the taxi registration number written on it. Make sure that you get into that very taxi. Do not accept a lift from someone claiming to be a taxi driver as they may charge much higher prices designed to target tourists. The charges will depend on the general area you need to get to and will include all tolls to be paid. Most premium hotels will organize their own cars which is a much better alternative. While most drivers should not have any problem delivering you to major hotels and intersections, do not assume your driver will be familiar with lesser known hotels etc.. Before departing, make sure you have secured full address of your destination. By taking this extra step, you should avoid any delays. BY PUBLIC TRANSPORT: For those who don't want to use taxis to get to downtown, take bus 337 or 308 (bus stop just outside Level 6 departure hall entrance); to terminus which is Andheri station (bus fare Rs 14), walk a short distance to the Andheri train station, then take Harbour Line (Blue) towards CST terminus, (train fare Rs 10 buy from ticket/booking office, but there seem to be no one checking tickets on the jam packed trains). [Alternate train is taking the red line Western line to Dadar, then switch to Green Central line towards CST.] Worth noting is that the blue Harbour line passes by Dharavi slum, reportedly Asia's largest slum. Parking at airports[ edit ] Paid parking is available at the airport. The charges are Rs 60 per four hour block for cars. Longer term parking is available in a "premium" area, but it is hideously expensive, amounting to Rs 600 per day. ATM[ edit ] There are ATM terminals in the international arrival area and many money changers near the exit as well. Tourist traps[ edit ] As in any other city, local people may try to take advantage of tourists who are unfamiliar with the area. Although you are bound to run into many different tourist traps while you are in Mumbai one should be aware that when your taxi cab pulls up to the airport a man will more than likely get your luggage out of the trunk, put it in a cart, push it towards the terminal asking for a Rs 500+ baggage fee along the way. There is no baggage fee; it is best to decline the offer take the cart and pushing it yourself. You can dance in the streets and look like an idiot too until the thief runs away in embarrassment. By boat[ edit ] Numerous travel organizations now offer cruises to Singapore, Malaysia, Dubai, etc. Though the cruise industry is still developing, Mumbai can be reached by such cruises. Ferries from Ferry Wharf allow cheap access to islands and beaches in the vicinity of the city and the Elephanta caves. By train[ edit ] Railways in India The first commercial railway service began on 16th April 1853 at 3:35PM on its first run between VT (now the Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus) and Thane. Trains arrive in Mumbai from all over India. The Central line serves connectivity to Southern India , Eastern India , and parts of North India. The key stations are Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus (formerly Victoria Terminus, known just as VT), Dadar Terminus, and Kurla (Lokmanya Tilak) Terminus. The Western line connects to the Western states of Gujarat , Rajasthan , and some parts of North India. The main termini are Mumbai Central and Bandra Terminus. The Konkan Railway [3] (which is a separately administered and newly built line) travels through the picturesque Konkan coast of Maharastra and is a good way to travel from Goa ,[Mangalore]] and Kerala . The Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (LTT) is the destination for the line. By car[ edit ] National highway numbers 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 17, and the Mumbai-Pune expressway radiate from the city providing links to all parts of the country. The road conditions are generally better than in the rest of India. The comfortable air-conditioned blue cabs are available to Pune and Ahmednagar-Nashik from opposite Asiad Bus Termina in Dadar and Lakhamsi Nappoo Rd near Dadar east railway station respectively. Distances from various cities to Mumbai are: From Other States: Ahmedabad (550 km, 12 hrs), Bangalore (998 km), Chennai (1109km), Cochin (1384 km), Goa (593 km, 11 hrs), Hyderabad (711 km, 24 hrs), Mangalore (713km), New Delhi (1407 km) From Maharashtra State: Amravati (673km), Ahmednagar (300km), Nagpur (844 km), Pune (160 km, 2.5/3hrs) If you are visiting from nearby cities like Pune, Bangalore, etc then there is other option to take shared cab service started by cabs4share & 7mcar.com in which you have options to share your trip with other travelers. If you are looking for one way drop cab. One way drop cab service From any part of Maharashtra you can take one way car service to Mumbai Airport and Mumbai Airport to other city By bus[ edit ] Mumbai is well served by buses from destinations inside India. Asiad Bus Service The bus terminal, popularly known as 'Asiad Bus Terminal' on Ambedkar Rd in Dadar east is another hub from where buses travel to Pune at regular frequency of 15 minutes to 1 hour. Dadar and Pune are well connected by comfortable airconditioned Shivneri buses run by State Road Transport Corporation.The fares are in the range of Rs 100 300 and buses vary in comfort from ordinary to luxury with air conditioning. Other routes available are Mumbai - Satara, Mumbai - Nasik. The easiest way to reach the terminal is to cross over using pedestrian foot bridge to Dadar East from the Dadar Terminus and walk straight all the way (less than 5 mins) to Ambedkar Rd. Private Buses There also exist numerous private bus operators who operate a large number of services from/to Mumbai from most major cities like Udaipur, Ajmer, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Indore, Nashik, Aurangabad, Hyderabad, Belgaum, Hubli, Bangalore, Mangalore, Trichur and Goa. For Pune, buses depart every 10 minutes. Crawford Market, Dadar T.T, Sion, Chembur and Borivili are the main starting points. Some of the reliable private operators are - National, Sharma, VRL, Konduskar, Dolphin, Paulo and Southern Travels. ST Buses The MSRTC (Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation), (Mumbai Central: +91 22 2307 4272/ +91 22 2307 6622, Parel: +91 22 2422 9905 Dadar: +91 22 2413 6835) commonly known as ST, operates services to Mumbai from various cities in Maharashtra. Mumbai Central is the most important Terminus in the city. All major cities in Maharashtra and nearby states are connected through Mumbai Central Terminus. The other important ST depots are at Parel, Nehru Nagar-Kurla, and Borivali. You can get buses for all over Maharashtra from these depots. But from Mumbai Central you would get buses any time as well as other State Transport buses. Quality varies. Get around[ edit ] Most of Mumbai's inhabitants rely on public transport to and from their workplace due to the lack of parking spaces, traffic bottlenecks, and generally poor road conditions, especially in the monsoon. However, do ride in a taxi and auto at least once in the city. If you are not used to Indian roads, an auto-rickshaw ride can be a heart-stopping, death-defying, laws-of-physics-bending adventure in a vehicle that feels like it might fall apart at a speed over 30 km/h with a driver who thinks he's Schumacher. By taxi[ edit ] Black & Yellow Top Taxi[ edit ] Taxis are cheap and plentiful ($15-18 should be enough to take you from one end of the city to the other). Most taxis in Mumbai are small-medium sized cars (non air-conditioned), painted black-and-yellow (black on lower body and yellow on roof). You can hail a cab off the streets. However, many are quite rickety, dirty, and carry mechanical fare meters that could be tampered at times. Increasingly, these outdated Premier cabs, commonly referred to as Fiat taxis, are being replaced by small but efficient Hyundai Santro and Suzuki Altos, with electronic meters. Also, according to law, a black-and-yellow taxi driver cannot refuse a fare. If a driver does refuse, a threat to complain to the nearest cop usually does the trick. Calculating Taxi Fare Calculating taxi fares by reading a mechanical meter and converting it to a fare using a tariff card, may seem like a complicated system. However it's fairly simple. Just read the meter, calculate the fare by matching the meter reading with a tariff card to arrive at the final payable fare - the minimum fare is Rs 21 for first 1.5 kms and then Rs 1 for every 100 meters. Prepaid plans have the fare collected at the start and thus the meter reading is not applicable. For night charges (midnight to 5AM) mark up the fare by 25%. With large items of luggage add approximately Rs 10 per piece. It's quite handy to have the Taxi Meter Card issued by The Mumbai Traffic Police. However, going by traffic laws, Tariff card is mandatory and should be made available by the taxi/auto rickshaw driver to the passangers on request. You can access it online at Mumbai Traffic Police website [4] . Complaints can also be lodged online using the same site. There are smartphone apps which can calculate the rate for you based on the card - these are very useful. Some drivers may "forget" the tariff card, or auto rickshaw drivers may choose the taxi card, which is more expensive. Make sure the meter has been reset before you go - if your driver refuses to use the meter, take another cab/rickshaw. One can pre-estimate Taxi and Auto fares using the website [5] . You need to enter the "From" location name and "To" location name and the service will calculate the distance, fare and also show you a Google map with the route. If you have extra pieces of luggage, the boot (i.e. trunk) of the taxi will not provide sufficient space - one large suitcase is all that will fit there. Hiring a taxi with a top carrier will be better. Top carriers can accommodate up to three large suitcases. Before starting the journey, ensure that the luggage is securely fastened to the carrier. Generally, the only way to call for the standard taxi is to hail one on the street. This will not be a problem if you are inside city limits (i.e. North Central Bombay and below). If you are in the suburbs, it will be difficult to find a taxi as they have been out-competed by the cheaper auto-rickshaws. Recently State Transport Authority of Maharashtra State has also introduced on-call facility to book these taxis, one can call 022-61234567 to book black and yellow (Non-AC) and CoolCabs (AC) taxis. The maximum number of passengers allowed for a trip officially is four — three in the back seat and one in the front. Seat belts are not mandatory for taxi passengers and most standard black and yellow taxis will not even have them installed, though expect them in the branded ones. Private taxis[ edit ] However, if you want a comfortable, air-conditioned ride at a small surcharge of 25 percent over normal taxis it's best to travel by branded cab services that operate at government-approved tariffs. These services operate modern fleets with well trained drivers. You can get them at 30-60 minutes notice, they are clean, air-conditioned, equipped with digital, tamper-proof meters, punctual, honest, and GPS-equipped-monitored, which makes them far secure at any time. If you're using a mobile phone, you receive an SMS with the driver's name, mobile number and car number 30 minutes before scheduled departure. Charges are Rs 27 for the first kilometer and Rs 20 for subsequent kilometers, with a 25% night surcharge (midnight-5AM). Some can be booked online. Follow the queue system to board a taxi. Quite frequently, tourists and new visitors are mobbed by unscrupulous taxi drivers. Most drivers are honest, but the dishonest ones tend to cluster around railway stations and airports where they can more easily find suckers. Unless you are taking a prepaid taxi, always ask taxis to go by the meter and don't be afraid to seek another taxi if the driver refuses. At the start of the journey, ensure that the meter is visible and shows the flag-down fare/meter reading. Uber Ola cabs and GetMeCab are also easily available, and can be approached either by calling the customer care, through mobile apps or through their websites. Some of the most preferred destinations close to Mumbai like Adlabs Imagica, Lonavala, Khandala, Alibaug, Kanakeshwar Mandir, Kolad, Shirdi, Pune etc can be explored by hiring an outstation taxi service for one-way or round-trip. GetMeCab (GetMeCab taxi hire), ☎ +91 9015154545 ( [email protected] ), [6] . GetMeCab is an online car rental aggregator providing out-station taxi solutions in and around Mumbai for our travel buddies. Book a cab with getmecab and explore Mumbai with comfort and satisfaction. edit Stay safe[ edit ] If you travel alone, especially in night, then always see the meter by yourself and then pay the fare. If you are alone, sit in front so that you can see the meter. Most frauds take place at railway terminuses and at the airport. By auto-rickshaw[ edit ] Auto-rickshaws are only allowed to operate beyond Bandra in the western suburbs and beyond Sion in the central suburbs. They are not issued licenses in the downtown areas. Before departing, ensure that the meter is visible and shows the flag-down reading as 15.00, which is the minimum fare. If the the number is higher, insist that the driver flags it down once again. The meter remains at 17.00 for the first 1.5 km and the fare is Rs 1 for every 100 meters beyond the first 1.6 km. The meter also keeps ticking if you are waiting and/or are stuck in traffic. The waiting charges are 1 rupee or 100 meters per minute It's quite handy to have a copy of the meter card issued by The Mumbai Traffic Police. However, these days Auto rickshaws are fitted with an electronic display fare meter that displays the fare + Distance travel led + Waiting time. Auto-rickshaws are slower than cars and have terrible suspensions. Pregnant ladies are most strongly advised not to travel by auto-rickshaws since the combination of rash driving, poor suspensions, and horrible road conditions have quite often led to serious complications. The auto-rickshaw is a slow and uncomfortable vehicle and not recommended for very long distances. By bus[ edit ] Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (known as BEST) [7] provides efficient and comprehensive services connecting up all places of the city and the suburbs. Some services also link the city with the extended suburbs like Navi Mumbai, Thane, and Mira-Bhayanadar areas. Seats are almost always occupied. There are bus stops all over the city. There is usually a crowd and queue. You have to get in through the rear entrance and off at the front. Tickets are issued by a uniformed "conductor" after you get in. Special seats are marked for "Ladies", "Senior Citizens", "Handicapped", "Expectant Women", and "Women with infants". They can get in from the front. Buses run from 5AM to midnight. Selected routes run beyond these timings, but much less often. Average frequency between buses ranges from five to 30 min depending on the route. Fares are reasonable and buses can be traveled during peak hours, unlike trains which are far too crowded. Some trunk routes do get extremely crowded however. Peak hours also have traffic snarls which may depend on the area traversed and the state of the roads. What connects Electric supply and Transport? BEST got into transport by starting a tram company. Now, of course, it runs buses that run on diesel & CNG, not electricity. The company is still in charge of electricity distribution for South and Central Mumbai. Buses are numbered and the final destination is marked on the front in Marathi and on the side in English. Generally, buses around the city and trunk routes would be in the 1-199 series. Buses in the western suburbs would be the 200 series while those plying in the central and eastern suburbs would be in the 300 and 400 series. Services to Navi, Mumbai are in the 500 series and buses to the Mira-Bhayander area are in the 700 series. The BEST website has a nifty tool [8] that will help you plan your journey. BEST has introduced the "DayPass" (Cost for adults — Rs 70 (across Mumbai, Mira-Bhayander, Navi Mumbai and Thane) - for children it's less), a ticket valid all day (until midnight) on all buses except Express and A/C services. A/C "Day Pass" costs Rs 150/- (across Mumbai, Mira-Bhayander, Navi Mumbai and Thane) - a ticket valid all day (until midnight) on all BEST A/C & Non-A/C buses. But any of such "Day Pass" can be availed by only those passengers who hold the SMART Photo ID Card(cost Rs. 25/-) issued by BEST. Mumbai suburban railway route map Suburban rail network[ edit ] Most people travel in Mumbai using the Suburban Rail Network commonly referred to as "Locals". Mumbai has an extensive network, with three lines — the Western Line, the Central Main Line, and the Harbour Line. Mumbai is a linear city and the Western Line travels from Churchgate to Virar via Mumbai's Western Suburbs. The Western line provides North-South connectivity. Slow local trains (MEMUs-Main Line Electric Multiple Units) may go beyond till Dahanu Road as well. The Central Main Line travels from Mumbai CST (Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus), aka VT Victoria Terminus to Kalyan via Mumbai's Central Suburbs and Thane , with some slow services running beyond to Karjat, Khopoli, and Kasara. The interchange point between the Western Line and the Central Line is Dadar. The Harbour Line has a common stretch between Mumbai CST (aka VT Victoria Terminus) and Vadala. The harbour line splits into two spurs, the main one running to Mumbai's Eastern Suburbs and Navi Mumbai, up to Panvel. The Interchange point of this line with the Central Main Line is at Kurla. The other spur of the Harbour Line runs up to Mahim on the Western Line and runs parallel up to Andheri. The interchange stations with the Western line are Bandra and Andheri. Trains on all lines start operations after 4AM and close operations between midnight and 1AM. Second class travel is very cheap. However, it is advisable to buy first class tickets as the economy class is extremely crowded. First Class can be quite expensive and if four people are travelling together, a taxi might be better. There would always be queues and it would be advisable to buy coupon booklets. If you are a tourist, you can buy a 'Tourist Ticket'. It costs Rs.275 and you can travel in first class compartments of all the three lines during the entire day. Ensure the location of the first class compartment before the train arrives. You may ask fellow passengers or the vendors at the various food stalls. An easier way to spot the location of the First class compartment is to check the station walls painted with red and yellow slant stripes. Avoid using local trains during rush hour (first class or otherwise). Rush hour is 8:30AM-10:30AM towards CST and Churchgate and 5:30PM-8:30PM in the opposite direction. If you must transit during rush hour, avoid, at all costs, standing near the train car entry, as you will be swamped by a frantic, every man for himself, stampede of men attempting to get on the car. Take no offense if you are pushed and shoved about, as passengers jostle for a spot. As you near your exit station, ensure that you are as close as possible to the train door, as experienced commuters, will be begin the mad run to be first on, or off, the car before the car comes to a full stop! If you stand any chance of getting on/off before the train depart, you must be equally aggressive in your focus to exit/enter, remember no one will take offense if you make contact with others, as you wriggle by! Last, but not least, exiting/entering a train before it comes to a full stop is not something to be taken lightly, one misstep can send a person onto the rails with an amazing ease! Leave the stunts to the experienced locals. There are special coaches for women on both classes. These are designated by green and yellow slant stripes, spot these stripes on the station walls and you'll know where the ladies compartment is. These are generally less crowded and safer. But very late at night, it might actually be safer to travel by the general coach than the first-class women's coach, as the latter may be absolutely empty except for you. From 11.15pm - 6:30am the ladies compartment towards the northern end is open to general public. Sometimes they have a cop guarding the coaches, but sometimes they won't. Use your judgment. Find all trains to Mumbai: http://trainspy.com/static/station/(CSTM)MUMBAI-CST Mumbai Metro[ edit ] The Mumbai Metro was launched on Sunday, the 8th of June 2014. An inaugural offer of Rs 10 as fare for the month. Now the fares range from Rs. 10-40 depending on the distance between the stations. Stations: Mumbai Metro has 12 stations in the V-A-G corridor namely Versova, D.N. Nagar, Azad Nagar, Andheri, Western Express Highway, .J.B. Nagar, Airport Road, Marol Naka, Saki Naka, Asalpha, Jagruti Nagar and Ghatkopar. The Andheri metro station is connected to the Andheri Western Railway Station (andheri local station). It is also important to note that the Airport Road station is 2kms away from the international airport and not directly connected to it. Schedule: The 1st train leaves from Versova at 05:35 hrs and last train leaves at 23:12 hrs. The 1st train leaves from Ghatkopar at 05:31 hrs and last train leaves at 23:39 hrs. There is a train every 4 minutes during peak hours and every 8 minutes on non-peak hours, Sundays and public holidays. [Ref: http://www.reliancemumbaimetro.com/train_schedule.html ] Fare: For fares, please refer the below link. http://www.reliancemumbaimetro.com/fares.html By ferry[ edit ] These are a few intra-city ferry services: Gateway of India to Elephanta caves Fast boats and Catamarans operated by private operators. These are moderately priced. This is the only way to get to Elephanta Caves. Marve Jetty (Malad) to Manori Jetty Cheap ferry connecting Manori and Gorai. Also services for Esselworld (Amusement Park). Versova (Andheri) to Madh Jetty Cheap ferry connecting Madh/Erangal/Aksa/Marve. Gorai (Borivali) to Gorai Beach Low cost ferry connecting Gorai Beach/Esselworld. By car[ edit ] Travel agents and hotels can arrange private chauffeur driven cars to provide services. Expensive by comparison with taxis, they are the most trusted, secure, and comfortable way to travel around the city. Driving in Mumbai can be difficult, because of poor driver discipline, but chauffeur driven services are very reasonable. These can be arranged by travel companies or online from the countries of origin. However, if one wants to drive cars themselves, the option of self-drive rental cars also exist. 'Zoom car' and 'Just Drive' are two service providers of such cars. By bike[ edit ] It is also possible to navigate the city and its outskirts with bikes. Although, tourists may find it extremely difficult to ride bikes due to poor road conditions. There are very few bike rental services in Mumbai and some of them allow online advanced booking like: Born to ride (Born to Ride), (2 kms. from Versova Metro), [9] . Rs 1800-5000/day. (19.14,72.81) edit Talk[ edit ] Mumbai is India's melting pot — a confluence of people from various parts of India, but dominant are people from the west, then north, and followed by the south. Marathi is the state and city official language used by State Government agencies, municipal authorities, and the local police, and also the first language of most locals. However, being India's largest city and main commercial centre, Mumbai is now also home to migrants from other parts of India who do not speak Marathi. A local variant of Hindi , with strong Bollywood influence, called Bambaiya Hindi serves as the "lingua franca" and although almost everyone can understand normal Hindi, you may get an interesting reply from some. Most educated locals will be trilingual in Marathi, Hindi and English. English is widely used in the corporate world and in banking and trading. At most places, you will be able to get by with Hindi and English, as most people you will encounter can communicate in broken English at the very least. However expect to hear more regional languages including Gujarati , Kannada , Telugu , Tamil , Sindhi based on work & location. According to 2011 census Mumbai has a literacy rate of 94.7%, higher than the national average of 86.7%. Locals in Mumbai can manage to speak in broken English and those working in corporates and belonging to middle, upper middle and high class can speak fluent english. See[ edit ][ add listing ] The game of names The names of Mumbai's monuments tell us the story of which way political winds were blowing when they were built. In the late 19th century the British named everything after their Queen, so we had Victoria terminus, Victoria Gardens, and the Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute (built in 1887 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Her Majesty's coronation). In the early 20th century, they named everything after the Prince of Wales. After independence the colonial names could not be retained of course, so they were renamed. Depending on whether the city was suffering from bouts of nationalistic pride or Marathi pride at that time, they were named after either Jawaharlal Nehru (the first Prime Minister of India) or Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj (King Shivaji, who founded the Maratha empire in the 18th century). Often, they were named after Shivaji's mother, Jijabai. The advantage of this was that using Veermata Jijabai ("Courageous mother Jijabai") for a place that was earlier named for Victoria maintains the same abbreviation, so "Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute" (formerly Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute) is still VJTI. For a traveller, the practical problem would be that many places have multiple names. Multiple places are named after Nehru, Shivaji, or Jijabai, so you need to be careful about specifying which place you need to get to. Few important names changes to remember are: 'Victoria Terminus' is now 'Chhtrapati Shivaji Terminus' 'Jacob Circle' is now 'Saat Rasta' or 'Sant Gaadge Maharaj Chowk' 'King's Circle' is now 'Maheshwari Udyyan' 'Kurla Terminus' is now 'Lokmanya Tilak Terminus' There is a lot to see in Mumbai, but the typical "tourist" sights are concentrated in South Mumbai . By Indian standards, Mumbai is a young city and much of the land comprising the city did not exist until it was claimed from the sea over three centuries ago. It is therefore, a pleasant surprise to find rock cut caves such as the Elephanta, Kanheri, and Mahakali within city limits. Colonial buildings[ edit ] The British built a magnificent city within the walls of Fort St. George, which lies at the southern extremity of the city. Some fine examples of the Gothic revival, Neo-classical style and Indo-Saracenic style are seen within this area. To get the best [South Mumbai] experience, stroll around the wide streets of the area right from Churchgate to Colaba. These areas are all beautifully planned and have wide and clean pavements unlike the rest of the city. Famous monuments to be seen in this area are the Gateway of India, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (Victoria Terminus) building, the Municipal Corporation and Police Headquarters and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Vastu Sanghralaya (formerly, the Prince Of Wales museum). The famous Taj Mahal hotel is located just opposite the Gateway of India. The Mumbai University buildings and the High Court are also excellent examples of colonial architecture in the city. There are a lot of other modern structures to look at in this area. The area known as Marine Drive (right from Chowpatty beach to NCPA) is home to a large number of buildings built in the Art Deco style. Mumbai is second only to Miami in the number of Art Deco buildings. some famous buildings in this style are the Eros and Regal cinemas. Museums and galleries[ edit ] Nehru Centre Some of the most famous museums and art galleries in India are found here. The Kala Ghoda area in South Mumbai teems with them, particularly the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (Prince of Wales Museum) [10] , and the National Gallery of Modern Art [11] . Once again, most of them are concentrated in South Mumbai. Also worth planning a visit is Jehangir Art Gallery, also at Kala Ghoda, displays changing exhibits by notable artists. The plaza next to the gallery also regularly displays exhibits of various artists. Situated in Nehru Complex in Worli is Nehru Centre Art Gallery at Worli, a gallery dedicated to young and promising talent along with established artists. Also within the complex is located a permanent exposition, Discovery of India, which attempts to cover every aspect of artistic, intellectual and philosophical attainment of India through ages. The exposition spreads across 14 galleries and reflects true identity of the country. On the other end of the complex, Nehru Science Centre - which has a separate entrance from Mahalaxmi race course road, has a permanent exhibition on 'interactive and exciting' science related exhibits highlighting science principles in fun yet educational way. Beaches[ edit ] Mumbai has a few beaches, including one in the downtown area. But they aren't that great and the water off Mumbai's coast is extraordinarily dirty. The relatively better ones are in the Northwest Mumbai area. However, they are a great place to see how the locals spend their Sunday evenings, with various food and game stalls. There are other beaches to be found such as the Girgaon Chowpaty in South Mumbai, Juhu beach in the western suburbs and Aksa Beach in Malad. The currents don't seem strong, but particularly in the rains, lots of people die from drowning, so avoid getting in the water (especially at Aksa Beach). A word of advice to women: Bombay beaches are not the kind you can wear swimsuits to, particularly two-pieces. Chowpatty beach Zoos, parks and gardens[ edit ] Mumbai has a justified reputation as a concrete jungle, but there are some nice pockets of greenery within the city. It is also one of the rare metropolises to have an entire national park within its borders. (Borivali national park also known as Sanjay Gandhi National Park [12] ). You will not visit Mumbai for them, but if you are already here, they make a nice escape from the din and bustle. It also houses the ancient Kanheri Caves crafted out of rocky cliffs, which dates back to 2,400 years. Entrance fee: Indians/Foreigns 30/30 Besides, at Andheri in the North there is a nice little Bhavans Nature Adventure Centre offering nature trails, animal care sessions and adventure activities, interesting for children and youngsters; 5 minute walk from Azadnagar metro station and 15 minute walk from Andheri station The city zoo (Veermata Jijabai Udyan) is in Byculla and is a colonial relic which is surprisingly well-preserved. The animals may look rather emaciated, but the sheer diversity of trees on this lush zoo is worth a trip. Some city parks are very well-maintained and combine history as well. The "Hanging Gardens" on Malabar Hill offers stunning vistas of the Marine Drive. Opposite the Hanging Gardens, there is another park which is known as Kamla Nehru Park, famous for the striking shoe-shaped structure which has been filmed in various Bollywood movies Further in South Mumbai, the Mumbai Port Trust Garden, is another hidden gem. This is set off a small side street off the Colaba Causeway 2-3 kms south of the main section. Once again, lovely views of the port, the naval yards, and sunset. In central Mumbai, there are the Five Gardens. Mainly used by walkers in the morning, it is a mess in the evenings. But the gardens encircle some historic, art deco residences. Markets and crowds[ edit ] Mumbai is probably worth visiting just for its street markets, the hustle of vendors, and the madness of the crowds. If you are interested in buying handicrafts, brass items, crystals or jewelry, then, you should head to Colaba market or can visit Silver Centrre by Sangeeta Boochra inside cottons at kemps corner for authentic indian jewellery. Modern buildings and malls[ edit ] Once the British left, the zeal to wipe away the traces of colonial rule was, unfortunately, not matched by the enthusiasm to build a new city that matched the grandeur of the British-era buildings. Now, while the shabbiness of the socialist era is thankfully being replaced by architecture with an eye on aesthetics, the new malls, multiplexes, and office buildings that are coming up are indistinguishable from those anywhere else in the world. Still, they are worth a look, especially if you want to have a look at India's success story. Skyscrapers exceeding 60 stories now dominate the skyline. For long, Inorbit Mall was the only mall offering a lot of variety for shoppers. Palladium, built within the High Street Phoenix, broke the monopoly of Inorbit Mall. From state of the art interiors to international brands, the Palladium has everything. Nirmal Lifestyles Mall in Mulund and Metro Junction Mall in Kalyan used to be two of the largest malls in Mumbai. R-City in Ghatkopar is now the biggest and best mall in the City. Located in the central suburbs, they are quite popular in the city. Powai is a modern central mumbai suburb with European looks. Powai houses the Indian Institute of Technology and is built around fabulous lake. Most of the construction is in a township format and is privately built. It houses twenty top of the line restaurants, two large convenience stores, a handful of coffee shops and entertainment areas. Initially built as an upmarket self contained township, Powai has now grown into a business process outsourcing hub in Mumbai. The township reflects both characteristics; you will often find families shopping and twenty somethings hanging out in tables next to each other. Religious places[ edit ] Mumbai has temples, mosques, churches, Parsi agiaries, and even a few synagogues reflecting the diversity of its citizens. While these are naturally of interest if you are a believer, some, like the Portuguese church at Dadar are worth visiting just for their unique architecture. Haji Ali Dargah is one of the most visited places in Mumbai. The Dargah Sharief is built on a tiny islet located 500 meters from the coast, in the middle of Worli Bay, in the vicinity of Worli. People from different religion and places visit this places. More than 80,000 people visit dargah every week. One notable monument in the northwest suburbs of Mumbai is the Global Vipassana Pagoda (Global Pagoda) , Gorai, Mumbai. It is a meditation centre that can seat 8000 people. Vipassana literally means meditation, and the centre runs 10-day meditation courses and 1 day mega course on Sundays. The courses are free of cost but you would have to register for them in advance on their website. Siddhivinayak temple of Mumbai is very famous. It is located in Dadar and you can easily get a taxi to go to the temple from the Dadar railway station. The city also boasts of Jewish places of worship predominantly in the area called Byculla.In this area the three prominent sub castes amongst inhabiting Jews of Mumbai lived . They were Bagdadi Jews, Bene Israelis and the locals who had converted over a period of time and lived in the hinterland. There are two Hare Krishna (ISKCON) temples located near the Juhu beaches and Chowpatty beaches. They are very popular tourist attractions ranking in the top 5 Mumbai attractions (tripadvisor.com) The devotees perform active worship of Lord Krishna and one can hear and participate in the sacred Hare Krishna chanting. Camping[ edit ] There are many spots near mumbai in which you can go for camping. Camping can be done safely on spots such as Lonavala, Tungarli Lake, Valvan Lake, Rajmachi, Mahableshwar, Panchgani, Kashid & Phansad. You can try out letscampout.com [13] for more options on camping near Mumbai. Rusticville [14] offers excellent hill top camping at Tikona near Lonavala. Weekend Getaways[ edit ] Mumbai is in close proximity to hill stations, beaches and jungles. Places like Matheran, Lonavala, Alibaug, Khandala Panchgani and Mahabaleshwar are some of the destinations which can be done over a weekend. There are several companies that connect all of these places with individual travelers and corporate travelers from Mumbai. LifeIsOutside, ☎ +91 88800 36677 ( [email protected] ), [15] . LifeIsOutside has a good collection of short breaks and weekend getaways within driving distance from Mumbai. It also has a decent selection of group outing options [16] edit ZaraHutke, ☎ +91 98670 00918 ( [email protected] ), [17] . ZaraHutke.in brings to you Offbeat Stays & Experiences, Farm Stays, Home Stays, Eco Retreats, Beach Resorts & Weekend Getaways in Mumbai, Maharashtra & Goa [18] edit Do[ edit ][ add listing ] There is a lot to do in Mumbai, but lack of space means that for outdoorsy activities, you need to head north, often outside city limits. In the Northwestern suburbs and Thane, you will find opportunities for water sports like H20 [19] at Girgaum Chowpatty. There are two golf courses in the city, the more famous one in Chembur [20] in the Harbor suburbs. Mumbai has a vibrant theater scene with plays in many languages including English, Hindi, Gujarati, and Marathi. While South Mumbai has frequent performances, the best organized theater effort is at Prithvi theater, Juhu in the Western Suburbs. There are plenty of opportunities to enjoy Indian classical music and dance. While not a patch on the Sabhas of Chennai, you will find frequent performances of Carnatic music in Shanmukhananda Hall, Matunga in the South Central suburbs. Mumbai is also usually the first stop for Western pop and rock stars visiting India, which they usually do when they are over 50. The Rock scene is very good in Mumbai. These are very safe to go to and are recommended for rock fans. Most bands cover heavy metal acts like Pantera, Six feet under, and Slipknot, but at places like 'Not just jazz by the bay', there are treats for Jazz fans, as well. To try to find places with specific music tastes try asking students outside Mumbai's colleges. Western classical music performances are rarer. However most classical music performances along with other art forms are regularly performed at NCPA [21] and Tata Theatre [22] , both situated next to the the narrow strip at Nariman Point. Experience Bollywood; plan a trip Film City located in Goregaon and enjoy the first hand experience of Bollywood shooting Watch a Movie; you are in the land of Bollywood. Expect whistles and clapping by crowd in admiration of their celebrities on the screen. Most of the cinema halls run both 'popular and new' Bollywood as well as Hollywood movies and some even screen ones in regional languages. Some of the popular Hollywood screening cinema halls in South Mumbai are Eros opposite Churchgate, Metro on M.G.Road, Regal in Colaba, Sterling next to CST Station, and New Excelsior in Fort. Checkout newspaper listing to get the list of latest screenings. Visit Essel World: a large amusement park in Gorai Take A Dip at Water World Visit museums and art galleries Pub Hopping, The number and variety of Pubs in the city allow for an enthralling Pub Hopping opportunity. Borivili National Park, or go for Flamingo watching in Chembur (check with Bombay Natural History Society for further info). Do Rock Climbing, Adventure, learn about plants, insects, birds, interact with Animals at Bhavans Nature Adventuree Centre Andheri Watch Cricket for free; cricket is has a national games stature in India, and Mumbaiites revere that every day of the year. Azad Maidan (Azad ground) near C.S.T. Railway station, ground opposite to Ruia College in Matunga and Shivaji Park in Dadar west are some of the best places to witness the cricket fever for free. Look out and you may be even lucky to witness ongoing game of cricket on some of the empty streets of Mumbai. Marine Drive Temples; there are so many religious places around in the city (both old and new) that one can plan a day long itinerary on that. Start with Mahalkshmi Temple, Banganga Temple, Siddhi Vinayak, Afghan Church, Mahim Church, Haji Ali... the list will get really long. Take a Slum Tour, Tours from Reality Tours and Travel [23] , or Be the Local Tours [24] , can be set up to walk through Dharavi, one of Asia's largest slums and the heart of small-scale industry in Mumbai. Both groups are socially conscious: Reality Tours and Travel uses 80% of their profits to support the activities of their sister NGO, while Be the Local is run by students in Dharavi. Both offer tours from Rs 500 which take 2.5-3.5 hours. Reality Tours and Travel also offer a long tour for Rs. 1200 which includes a trip to Dhobi Ghat, the largest open air laundry in the world as well as the red light district. Short walks are also available from Be the Local while Reality Tours and Travel provides other city tours (including a Bicycle Tour, Market Tour, Night Tour, and a Public Transport Tour.) Note: Photos are not permitted during either group's tour of the slum, out of respect for the residents. If you must have that slum pic, just provide your guide with your email details, they will be happy to arrange to email you a nice set of pics. Cruise on a Harbor Cruise; cruises from Gateway of India leave every 30 min daily except during the monsoon season (Jun-Sep). Rs 40. Join for Heritage walks [25] ; organized by two architects, these walks take you around various historic and architecturally significant areas of the city. Walks are organized on the third Sunday of every month (with a break from June through August for the monsoons) and the route varies each time. The walks last around 90 min. Rs 100 (Discounted rates for students and the physically challenged). Walk along Marine Drive; also known as Queen's Necklace, this beachside promenade is worth a ride. A walk can be planned from Girgaon Chowpati (Girgaon beach) all the way upto Nariman Point. Be carefull and avoid this area during heavy rains. Take a morning walk on Juhu beach Celebrate at the Kala Ghoda Festival, [26] . The arts and crafts festival is held in the last week of Jan or first week of Feb annually in the historic precinct of Kala ghoda in Mumbai. Taj private yacht; if you can afford it (at $300/hr, including drinks & meals), rent the Taj's private yacht (has two sun decks and three bedrooms) for a cruise around the Mumbai harbor. Poonawallas Breeders Multimillion; on the last Sunday of February, the glitterati of Mumbai dress up for the Ascot of Mumbai at the Mahalaxmi Race Course. With High Tea, amazing hats, and hundreds of ordinary punters staking their little all on the outside chance, this is the event to attend in Mumbai so try to cage a ticket if you happen to visit around then. Enjoy theatre & performances; Mumbai offers unlimited opportunities to theatre lovers and there are regular shows across theatres in the city. Check newspapers on latest shows as well as performances at prominent halls such as Prithvi Theatre, NCPA, Tata Theatre. Get crowded, and try catching suburban trains at peak times. You are warned though. Chowpati Jayenge Bhel Puri Khayenge; as it says in the lyrics of one of the Bollywood movie song, go to beaches (specially in the evenings) and enjoy local favorite 'Bhel Puri' while the sun sets in the Arabic sea. Festivals[ edit ] While many religious festivals are celebrated by people in Mumbai, a few of these are essentially public and social occasions, where the traveler can participate. Organized festivals & events[ edit ] Mumbai Festival (Jan) Sample the vibrant culture of the city. The festival covers theater, sports, fashion, food, and shopping. Banganga Festival (Jan) The musical festival is organized by Maharashtra Tourism (MTDC) [27] annually at Banganga Tank on Malabar Hill. Elephanta Festival (March) Organized by Maharashtra Tourism [28] , the festival of music and dance at Elephanta Caves has in the past festivals have seen performances by renowned artists like Alarmel Valli, Sanjeev Abhyankar, and Ananda Shankar and traditional Koli dances as well as traditional food. 7PM-10PM (Ferries start at 4PM), Rs 300 per day (includes to and from journey by ferry from Gateway of India to Elephanta Island) Mumbai Wine Fest (Feb) Wine connoisseurs across the city gather to sample wines, enjoy the culinary delights while soaking in the cultural extravaganza put up at Kala Ghoda. Religious festivals[ edit ] Holi (March) is often known as ‘The Festival of Colours’. It is held every year on the day of the full moon in the Hindu calendar month of Phalgun (March). During this time, the country dances, bathes and celebrates life in all the colours of the rainbow imaginable. Janmashtami (Jul/Aug) Birth Anniversary of Lord Krishna. Earthen pots full of curd are strung high up across the streets. Young men stand on top of one another to form a human pyramid and attempt to break the pots. Ramadan-Id Muslim festival marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Marked by feasting at many places. Non-Muslims can also join in. Ganesh Chaturthi (Aug/Sep) is one of Mumbai's most important and colorful festivals. During the 10 day celebration, Lord Ganesh is worshiped in millions of homes. See the colourful processions and participate in them. The Lalbaug, Parel, Matunga and Dadar areas represent some of the best large scale decorations. On the last day of the festival, processions are carried out to bid bye to the loved deity in the sea. These presentations are colourful and carry a celebration fever. The best places to watch them are Girgaon and Dadar chowpati (beach) or the main roads such as Ambedkar road from where the processions are carried out. Mt. Mary's Feast (Sep) The feast in honor of Our Lady of the Mount is celebrated with great solemnity at St. Mary's Church, Bandra. A week long Bandra fair is held during this time attracting huge crowds. Navratri (Sep/Oct) is a 10 day festival, where nine of the nights are spent in worship and entire Mumbai swings to the rhythm of Garba and Raas dances of Gujarati community. Diwali (Oct/Nov) Festival of Lights. Start of New Year and opening of new accounts. Worshiping of Goddess Laxmi. Participate in the fireworks and view the bright lights. Christmas (Dec) This is charcterised by midnight (nowadays held around 8-9PM on Christmas eve due to restrictions on loud speakers) masses in churches and is usually followed by a number of private parties all across the city. Sports[ edit ] Mumbai inherits the cricket fever justifiably and has 3 of the finest Crickets stadiums namely Brabourne Stadium (Churchgate), Wankhede Stadium (Marine Lines) and D.Y.Patil Stadium (Navi Mumbai). Several of international cricket matches and domestic championships such as IPL have been played in these stadiums. Watch out for upcoming cricket stadium to join the cricket frenzy crowd. Apart from these, Ruia College, Shivaji Park, Azad Maidan, Marine Lines are some of the places where live cricket action can be seen for free. Alternatively if you are a football (soccer) fan, you may want to visit Cooperage Football ground (Colaba) for a local league match. For swimming enthusiasists, Mahatma Gandhi Swimming Pool (Dadar W) is the place to visit. For horse racing, head straight to Mahalakshmi Race Course (Mahalakshmi). Powai hosts some of the finest Golf fields. For others there are many sport activities including Tennis, Table Tennis, Badminton which can be practised at various clubs. Gyms are plenty and can be easily found. Work[ edit ] Nariman Point and Fort are the commercial hubs of the city and the most sought after destinations. There is a significant expatriate population working in the banks and financial services industries. Bandra-Kurla region has come up in recent years too, but remains less desirable. Advertising industry is a prominent industry in Mumbai. Many of the top advertisings companies such as Lintas, O&M, Saatchi & Saatchi, Contract, Trikaya Grey have their offices in the city. A good idea to make quick money is to work part-time in a BPO or a call center most of which are concentrated at Mindspace, Malad(W) and Hiranandani Gardens (Powai). A part-time job can pay you as much as Rs 15,000 a month for just six hours a day for five days in a week. Only good for English speaking travelers. Foreigners can also earn a quick buck as extras in Bollywood movies. Pay rates average Rs 500-700 for a full day (8AM-8PM). Bring a book as there is alot of time spent sitting around, so it's not something do do for the money. Normally you won't have to look for them as they will be asking tourists near Leopolds or your hotel manager may ask you when you book in. Buy[ edit ][ add listing ] Visa and Master cards are widely accepted in the city shops. Many shopping establishments also accept American Express, Diners and host of other cards. However, some of the small shops or family-run shops may not accept these cards and some handy cash can be of help here. ATMs are widely available and many debit cards accepted as well. If you have an Indian bank account or credit card, you may not need to carry too much of cash. If you are a foreigner, it is a good idea to carry some cash to avoid charges while using your credit or debit card. In general, costs in Mumbai are higher than the rest of India, though they are still much lower by Western standards. Jewellery[ edit ] Silver Centrre by Sangeeta Boochra, [29] located at inside cottons opposite gangar opticians , mehta mansion , kemps corner , mumbai ( landline - 022-23649720 ) , is a govt approved Jeweller for generations - designer Sangeeta Boochra is the leading jewellery designer of the country. Oldest Jewellery brand in Silver Jewellery. Here you will find exquisite jewellery for all age groups , they do tribal , traditional and contemporary jewellery which has the essence of India . The brand continuously work towards the upliftment of the Indian Artisans and Kaarigars who work in the villages and do not have a platform to showcase their work. They have tribal Jewellery from Rajasthan , Madhya Pradesh , Gujrat , Tamil Nadu , Kashmir etc . The designer gives her own design signature to all the pieces. A must recommended place to buy jewellery when in India. The prices are affordable and an air-conditioned shop with english speaking staff. The quality of items is quite good. You can pay with credit cards. The brand is from Johari Bazar Jaipur and is more then 119 years old. Individual listings can be found in Mumbai's district articles The shopping experience in the city is a study in contrasts. At the lower end of the spectrum are street vendors. Existing at the borderline of legality, entire streets have been given over to these hawkers and in many places it is impossible to walk on the footpaths, because they have blocked the way. On the other hand, these vendors often give you a great bargain though you will have to haggle a lot and be careful about what to buy. There's nothing like taking a local along to shop for you. Some famous shopping streets are: Chor bazaar, (get down at the Grant Rd station on the Western Line. The market is on the east side of the station). Chor Bazar which literally translates to "Thief Market" is a colloquial term used to refer a place selling stolen items. It consists of number of interconnecting by-lanes with street vendors hawking a wide variety of items from antiques to shoes to car accessories etc. The place can be quite a surprise for the number and type of items on sale. A great place to spot bargains and bartering is a must. Shop with a keen eye - look out for fakes or second hand items that are shoddily repaired and can be passed out for a quick buck. Fashion Street, (from Chruchgate Station start walking towards Flora Fountain make a left turn and its a block down). Best place in Mumbai to buy cheap clothes. Bargaining/haggling skills are a must if you want to shop here! Offer to pay 1/4 of the asking price or less and then work your way upwards. Colaba Causeway, is filled with tourists and locals. It is located very close to the Gateway of India. It is a place where you will be able to find many authentic Indian souvenirs, antiques, carpets, and chandeliers. But foreigners will have to be very careful, as all these stores are road-side stalls. What may seem a good price that the person has quoted to you, it will actually be a rip off. Do not settle for anything more than one-fourth the quoted price. If they refuse a price just walk away and they will call you back quoting a lower price. Normally, the more you buy, the less you will have to pay for each individual item. Zaveri Bazaar, Best known jewelry Market, all at one place. Mangaldas Market, for silk and cloth Bhuleshwar Market, for fruits and vegetables Dadar (W) Flower Market. Visit early morning to see colourful and wholesale flower market in action Crawford Market, It is now officially known as the Mahatma Jyotirao Phule Market. But locals still refer to it by its old name. It is within 10 minutes walking distance from the Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus on the Central Line in South Mumbai. Earlier it was the major wholesale trading market for fruits & vegetables. Now it houses shops selling imported items such as food, cosmetics, household and gift items. Family-run shops, Or one could do shopping at family-run shops, where the items are behind the counter and one has to ask the salesperson to get items from the list. The traditional way to buy sarees or jewelry is to go to a shop where you sit on a bedspread laid out on the floor and the salespeople bring out their wares one-by-one until you make a decision. Shops like Bharat Kshetra in Dadar have scaled this model up to such an extent that they have a two-storied complex where you can do the same. Shopping Malls, Mumbai has been experiencing a boom in malls in the past few years. You can combine your shopping, dining out, and watching movies all in one place. What to buy[ edit ] Jewellery, Authentic jewellery by Silver Centrre ( Sangeeta Boochra ) Jaipur , inside cottons at kemps corner. Khadi clothing, Khadi is an authentic Indian variety of home spun cotton. Mahatma Gandhi advocated the use of khadi as a form of satyagraha against the use of foreign goods and a form of rural self-employment for India during the pre-independence days. Check out the Khadi Gram Udyog Bhavan located at 286, DN Road, Near the Mumbai GPO & Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus. It is run by the Khadi Gramudyog Vikas Samiti [30] which is an umbrella organization started by the Mahatma himself which today has evolved into a government registered unit promoting the use of khadi. A good place to buy souvenirs including khadi Indian flags. These are similar in type to the ones used during the freedom struggle. It also houses other forms of fabrics like pure cotton wool, and silk. Items on sale include Blankets, Sweaters, Shirt pieces, Sandals, Shoes, Folders, Files, etc. All the items are hand made. Some of the items make use of natural straw. They also offer a collection of handmade paper products. Traditional clothing & handicrafts, State government operated emporiums such as those for Maharashtra, Gujarat, Jammu & Kashmir etc sell state specific items of clothing and handicrafts. These are located in places around South Mumbai or the shopping arcades of Five Star Hotels. There is also a Central Cottage Industries Corporation of India Emporium located near the Gateway of India beside the Tendulkar's restaurant. The items on display include embroidered clothing, carvings, paintings, sculptures etc and are reasonably priced. Amongst the private labels, Fabindia [31] is a must visit for its variety of kurtas [tunics], salwars, pyjamas, churidars & dupattas. They also offer bedspreads, cushion covers, decorative pillows, quilts, table linens, home furniture etc. Just like the government owned emporiums, Fabindia operates on a cottage industries model where products are hand crafted by artisans and sourced from villages across India. Good quality, smart colours, trendy designs but prices are a bit on the higher side. Stores are located across Mumbai. Prrem's - The Winter Wear Store houses a range of silk scarfs, made in India. It is located on Linking Road, Khar (West). Cotton clothes, Mumbai is great place to buy quality and cheaper cotton clothes. Amongst many notable shops and brands, Cottonworld is a place to look out for. Kurties and tunics', a must have in India. Linkin Laado has a wide range of classy kurties, fushion ethnic wear and exquisite dress materials in most sought after pure fabrics such as muls, cottons, maheshwari and chanderi silk etc in handblock prints and intrinsic chikankari work. The shop is situated at Link Square Mall, Shop No. F5, Opposite KFC, Above Croma, Linking Road, Bandra West. Dhoop, (translates into Sunshine or Incense) A quaint, stylist store where you can find really interesting quality crafts and home accessories. On the corner of Union Park, Near Olive, Off Carter Road in Bandra. Burlingtons, in the Taj is a tailor specializing in Indian outfits. Buy some material and get some clothes made up by a tailor. It's an incredibly cheap way to get quality made-to-measure clothes. Usually only takes a couple of days. Leather jackets, go to the main road in Dharavi. You can fit yourself with a leather jacket (they stitch it for you) of leather you pick. Usually takes just one day to get it and it costs around Rs 1,000-2,000. Antiques & second hand items, Visit Chor Bazar for the best options and bargains Carpets, rugs and shawls Colorful Sarees Sarees, the best place to buy them is Dadar (both east and west). The place is buzzing 12 months a year. On Sundays the crowd can be maddening for outsiders. Good shops to buy Sarees are Dadar Emporium, Lazaree, Roop Sangam. On N C Kelkar Road and Ranade Road you can buy almost everything a woman needs. Bargain hard. Pashmina, cheap stuff is everywhere and decent shawls in every hue can be purchased at various markups in any hotel arcade. High-quality items in unusual colors and unique designs require more searching. The "pashminas" sold on Colaba Causeway are not anywhere close to pashmina. Prrem's - The Winter Wear Store houses authentic Pashmina shawls. The Store is located on Linking Road, Khar (West). The business also houses every other winter wear garment, all manufactured in India. Indian musical instruments, Indian music has its own set of musical instruments such as Tabla, Harmonium, straight Flute that it relies upon. These can be bought at various music shops scattered across the city. Some well known shops are L.M.Furtado, Ghaisas & Bros. Luxury Retail, Mumbai has witnessed a massive boom in luxury retail. All the brands you can buy in any other major city are available there. Bookshops[ edit ] Individual listings can be found in Mumbai's district articles Mumbai has large number of organized book shops. However it also has number of streetside second hand book shops or displays that give opportunity to come across rare collections. Many of these roadside book shops can be prominently found, among many, near Flora Fountain, Maheshwari Udyyan (former King's Circle) and Dadar west market. Tourist traps[ edit ] In a place without clearly displayed price tags (and sometimes even in places with), you will get charged about 3-4 times as much as a local if you seem like a tourist. Take a local with you if you're going to local markets to haggle. Haggling is much louder and ruder in India than elsewhere. Don't be afraid to haggle things down to 1/4 of the asking price. And most importantly remember that almost all stores that sell carpets, jewelry, handicrafts, etc. pay huge amounts of commission (25% up to even 50%!) to the cab drivers, hence avoid tourist taxis, cabs, etc. Another thing to remember is not to haggle just for the fun of it. The shopkeepers may take offense if you don't buy an item after they have agreed to your price. One of the places that you can trust is The World Trade Centre (in Cuffe Parade, near Hotel Taj President). Besides being the only World Trade Centre in Mumbai, this place has an amazing range of exquisite carpets, handicrafts, shawls, etc. with reputed government approved stores and state emporiums too. Ask for receipts everywhere including bars and check what you have been charged for. Don't ever accept a guide offer or escort of somebody from the street: You will certainly get conned. If some place (including cabs, eateries, stores, etc) claims it doesn't have change (this is highly unlikely), insist they get change from a neighbouring store. Groceries[ edit ] In addition to the local grocery stores which can be found on most of the streets, there are new additions to the city in the form of new big and small supermarkets and hypermarkets where you can get all the food items you need. Some of them are Big Bazaar, Food Bazaar, Hypercity, DMart, Spinach Local, Apna Bazaar. Eat[ edit ][ add listing ] The dining experience at an upscale restaurant in Mumbai is more or less the same as anywhere else in the world. If you search hard enough, you will find cuisine from practically every part of the world represented in the city. But to get a real flavour of what's unique to Mumbai, you will have to go a little lower down the scale and experience the street food and Irani cafes. That is what is described here. For individual restaurants and other places to eat, go to the individual district pages. Don't leave Mumbai without trying: Gujrati, Maharashtrian and Kerala Thali Indian Chinese Specialty restaurants[ edit ] Seafood, Apurva (Fort right off Horniman Circle). If you want to eat some authentic Indian (Konkan) sea food you must visit the Bharat Excellensea. It is located next to the Horniman Circle and the Reserve Bank of India. It is becoming pretty expensive. In the slightly higher price range, Trishna (at Kala Ghoda in Fort) and Mahesh Lunch Home (also in Fort) are very popular amongst both locals and tourists. North Western Peshawari, Andheri ,(at Maratha Sheraton). It's sister restaurant Bukhara in Delhi has been recognised as the best Indian restaurant across the world. Try tandoori jhinga, the kebab platter, sikandari raan (leg of lamb), and mangoes and ice cream (only during summers), Kebab Corner (Hotel Intercontinental), Copper Chimney (Worli) Khyber (Kala Ghoda), and Kareem's Malad Link Road in Malad W. International Cuisine[ edit ] Sushi, Sushi Café (Santa Cruz West). Sushi Café is a cozy little place. The decor, including the furniture, is all-white. Here, you can get 20 pieces of those delicious, delicately-flavoured chunks of white rice rolled with fresh fish and vegetables for just Rs 600. The food is as much a feast for the eyes as it is a treat for the tongue. They also do home delivery all over Mumbai. Sushi Café, Shop No. 1, Ground Floor, Sainara Building, corner of North Avenue and Linking Road, Santa Cruz (West), Tel: 98336-50503, www.sushicafemumbai.com. Chinese, India Jones, (Hilton Towers Mumbai), Mainland China (Saki Naka), Ling's Pavillion (Colaba), Golden Dragon (Taj Mahal Hotel), Great Wall (The Leela), Spices (JW Marriott), China Gate (Bandra), China White (Bandra). Bandra offers a range of Chinese Restaurants ( [32] . Royal China at VT (behind Sterling Cinema serves some of the best DimSum the city has to offer). The new CG83 at Kemps corner is brilliant and the signature restaurant of Nelson Wang. Also new is Henry Thams. The food is brilliant as are the prices, however the bar is much more popular than the restaurant. Combination Oriental, India Jones (Hilton Towers Mumbai), Pan Asian (at Maratha Sheraton), Seijo, and Soul Dish (Bandra), Joss (Kala Ghoda) has some of the best East Asian food in the country and at moderate prices (compared to hotels). San Qi at the Four Seasons (Worli) combines East Asian and South Asian cuisine quite well. Japanese, Wasabi by Morimoto (Taj Mahal Hotel, Colaba) is Mumbai's best and most expensive restaurant, but Japanese food is on the menus of most Pan Asian restaurants like Tiffin (The Oberoi, Mumbai), Pan Asian (Maratha Sheraton), India Jones (Hilton Towers Mumbai), and Spices (JW Marriott), Origami (Atria Mall Worli). Also Japengo Cafe at CR2 Mall in Nariman Point serves up some sushi. Tetsuma, adjacent to Prive (probably best nightclub in town) serves an average sushi but other dishes are worth a try. Best to go there for a cocktail and a few starters. 'Tian cafe' at Juhu is also a good place for sushi. Try the Teppanyaki restaurant at Tian. Italian, Shatranj Nepoli (Bandra, Union Park), Little Italy (Juhu next to Maneckji Cooper school), Don Giovanni's (Juhu, opposite JW Marriott), Mezzo Mezzo (at the JW Marriott), Vetro (at The Oberoi, Mumbai), Celini (at the Grand Hyatt), Mangi Ferra (Juhu), Taxi(Colaba), Spaghetti Kitchen (Phoenix Mills, Parel). Lebanese Food, Picadilly, at Colaba Causeway, deserves mention for being the only restaurant to serve Lebanese food. Try their shawormas. Cost for a meal for one Rs 100-200. Alcohol is not served. Parsi, Their ancestors originating from Iran, the Parsis are a special community of people that one would associate Mumbai with. Parsi food is based on ancient Persian cooking. Go to Brittania at Ballard Estate or Jimmy Boy close to Horniman Circle. International brands[ edit ] Chili's, Central Avenue Road, Powai, Ventura Building, Hiranandani Business Park. Ruby Tuesday, shop No. 20, 2nd Floor, Inorbit mall, Malad (West) or at Shop No. 31, CR 2 Mall, Nariman Point, Mumbai OR Nirmal Lifestyle, Lbs Marg, Mulund West. T.G.I.F, Palladium mall,Phoenix High Street,Lower Parel or Infiniti Mall,New Link Road,Oshiwara,Andheri(West). Dunkin Donuts, multiple locations Punjabi, Preetam's Dhaba at Dadar(E) and Urban Tadka at Mulund Goan Cuisine, Casa Soul Fry opposite to Bombay University in town Gujarati Thalis, Chetana at Kala Ghoda, Thacker's at Marine Drive, and Rajdhani (multiple locations) General Indian, Sheetal Bukhara, Great Punjab (both in Bandra). More in Bandra. Vegetarian, Swati Snacks (Tardeo, opposite Bhatia Hospital) a gem of a restaurant, it does not take bookings and the waiting during peak meal times is usually 45 minutes every day of the week! Little Italy located on Juhu Tara Road (Jugu), Andheri West opp. Fame Adlabs multiplex, Malad (above croma), New Yorkers on Marine Drive Opp chowpatty; Creame Center on Linking Road, Bandra near Shopper's Stop and also on Marine Drive opp chowpatty; Statua at Nariman point opp. Maker Chambers. Relish (Hotel Samrat — Churchgate). Excellent vegetarian cuisine from around the world. Fusion, Zenzi (Waterfield Road, Bandra), Out of the Blue ( Pali Hill, Bandra). Lounge, Olive (Bandra), Rain (Juhu), Indigo. Speciality Deli, Indigo Deli (Colaba), Gourmet Shoppe (The Oberoi Shopping Arcade), Moshe's (Cuffe Parade), Cafe Basilico. Cafe, Leopold [33] and Cafe Mondegar (both near Regal Cinema, Colaba) are great places to while away time, eat cheap, and get a beer. Mocha (chain) is popular with the younger crowd. Deliciae, the dessert cafe which has some of the best desserts in town, located next to Olive Restaurant in Khar. 24X7 Coffee Shops, Trattoria (Taj President), Frangipani (Hilton Towers Mumbai), Vista (Taj Land's End, Bandra), Hornby's Pavilion (ITC Grand Central), Lotus Cafe (JW Marriott), basically all the big hotels have one. More coffee shops in Bandra [34] Goan, Coastal, Goa Portuguesa (Mahim) near Hinduja Hospital. New and a must try is Casa Soul Fry (opposite Bombay University in town) which serves up Goan Cuisine. Mumbai Street Food, To experience the tastes and flavors of typical Mumbai chaat, and yet not expose oneself to the dangers of unhygienic street food, check out Vitthal's Restaurant located on one of the lanes opposite Sterling Cinema (C.S.T.), but make sure you have a strong stomach. Vithal Bhelwalla (not the Vithal resaurant which is copycat) near VT station (behind Mcdonald's) is a safe option. Street food stalls[ edit ] Songs have been written about Mumbai's street food and you will find that the hype is justified. You will find them at every street corner, but they are concentrated in beaches and around railway stations. Bhelpuri stalls, Selling what in the rest of India would be called chaat. In Mumbai itself, the term chaat is rarely used. Rolls, Essentially different meat and cheese grilled and served with some Roti and spice, these are cheap and cheerful for anyone with a stomach that can handle it. They are known to be spicy so always ask them to make it mild. Try Ayubs (Kala Ghoda), Bade Miyan (highly over-rated), Khao Gulli (Food Lane, near Mahim Hindu Gymkhana), or Kareems (Bandra). All are particularly busy after a night of heavy drinking. Vada pav stands, Fried potato stuffed in yeasty bread. Developed to provide nourishment to mill-workers in Mumbai's burgeoning mills. Now they are found everywhere, particularly in the railway stations. This is a Mumbai specialty. In Vile Parle (West), try the one off S.V Road near Irla across from Goklibai School. One of the most popular ones are opposite Mithibai College which is about 15 mins walk from Vile Parle Station. Also try the one outside Grant Road Station and Churchgate Station. Sandwich stands, Uniquely developed in Mumbai, you won't find anything like it anywhere else in India or the world. Chinese food stalls, You'll find them at many places, but they are particularly concentrated near Dadar railway station. They all have a typical Indian twist added to it, which is why it is frequently called "Indian Chinese". Although it is great tasting, the hygiene of these places leaves a lot to be desired. Bhurji, Either Egg bhurji or Paneer bhurji, a mash of eggs and chopped tomato, onion, chili, and lots of oil. Eaten on the side with some pav. Try the Maker Chamber area (near Crossroads 2, Nariman Point). Tip: cheap and tasty food stalls are concentrated around the city's colleges. Street stall food in India is fantastic, and dirt cheap (you can fill yourself up for Rs 20). However, do consider well what you are putting in your mouth. Almost certainly the water used is non-potable, street vendors don't seem to understand much about hygiene or hand-washing, and food safety standards are low, with flies buzzing over everything. Even locals steer clear of street food during the monsoons, when diseases run rampant. If the stall seems very clean, and if it clearly states that it is using Aquaguard or mineral water, go for it. Authentic Marathi cuisine[ edit ] Individual listings can be found in Mumbai's district articles Mumbai, being home to large ethnic Marathi community, has its share of notable restaurants that offer authentic Marathi cuisine. Most offer both snacks and regular dining. Some of the snacks to check out are Sabudana Wada, Batata Wada, Missal, Kanda Poha, Uppit (or Upma), Shira, Alu Wadi, Thalipith, Zunka Bhakari,ghavane (neer dosa) and many more. Two notable appetizer are Kokam Sarbat and Solkadhi which are best enjoyed during hot summers. People say that many of these authentic Marathi restaurents are finding it difficult to survive competitions with other modern or fast food typed restaurants, but you will find Gajali, Malvan Kinara, Sindhudurg and many more have retained their own charm and clientele. Udupi restaurants[ edit ] Individual listings can be found in Mumbai's district articles Mangalorians(and udupi) forms the highset tourist populations of Mumbai,and both the cities have almost same culture and architecture. "Udupi" restaurants (or "hotels") are everywhere. They bear the name of the town of Udupi in Karnataka, but do not be misled into thinking that they specialize in the cuisine of Udupi. They serve pretty much everything, and that is their specialty. Usually strictly vegetarian, these restaurants were opened by migrants from the district of Dakshina Kannada in Karnataka (of which Udupi is a part), to satisfy the palates of other migrants from the district. Over time, they gained popularity as places to have South Indian food. As the tastes of their customers evolved, so to did their menus, so much that now you can find Mughlai, Indian Chinese, Bhelpuri, and other chaats in addition to South Indian stuff. Amazingly, some places serve imitations of pizzas, burgers, and sandwiches too! They are fast food joints and sit-down restaurants combined. The reason to visit them is not to experience fine gourmet dining, but to have cheap, passably tasty and fairly hygienic food. There is no easy way to identify an Udupi restaurant — they are not a chain of restaurants and they may not have "Udupi" in their name, so you will have to ask. Matunga(Central line) has the best south Indian fare in Mumbai. There are few restaurants which could well be heritage sites as they are more than 50 years old and still retain thier old world charm(and furniture). Irani cafes[ edit ] Individual listings can be found in Mumbai's district articles Irani cafe's are Persian styled cafes opened by 19th century Persian migrants from Iran. These cafes have a unique lazy atmosphere, display of day-to-day accessories including toothpastes behind the cashier, soaps and what nots(specially targeted at bachelor crowds) and furniture. Most of these cafes were located at the corner of the road or building and were chosen spots by commuters to spend time while the traffic died down. It was quite an usual sight to find people spending hours reading newspaper over a cup of tea for hours in these places. Sadly the new restaurents and fast food culture has almost removed these cafes from the maps, though few notables like Kyani & Co. and " Light of Bharat" near Shivaji park still remain. The joints are best known for their "Irani Chai", "Bun-Maska/Maska Pav" (bread and butter) and Egg Omlette. Also are popular their assorted snacks, like Kheema-na-Patice, samosas, mava-na-cakes, etc. One of the the best dish which is almost always on the menu is Kheema (prepared from ground meat) and pav (bread). Thalis[ edit ] If you order a thali (translated as "plate"), you get a complete meal arranged on your plate, with a roti or chappati, rice, and many different varieties of curries and curd. Ordering a thali is a popular option when you are hungry and in a hurry as it is usually served blazingly fast. Most mid-level restaurants have a thali on the menu, at least during lunch hours. Occasionally, they are "unlimited", which means that some of the items are all-you-can-eat. The waiters serve them at your table. Of course, you find many varieties of them, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian. There is the South Indian thali. The "North Indian" thali translates to Mughlai or Punjabi. Do try Gujarati or Rajasthani thalis if you can find them. They are sinfully filling and tasty. Rajdhani (At Crawford Market) serves up thalis in the Rajasthani style while Aram (near Mahim Church, Mahim), Ramanayak Udipi (At Matunga Station, east) serves up thalis in South Indian style and Shree Thakker Bhojanalaya (off Kalbadevi Road) do filling and fabulous Gujarati thalis. Fast food chains[ edit ] Surprisingly, there is no fast-food chain in Mumbai serving Indian cuisine. But Western chains like McDonalds [35] , Subway [36] , Pizza hut [37] , Dominos [38] , Kentucky Fried Chicken [39] etc. have many outlets all over the city. But if you are a weary Westerner looking for the taste of the familiar, be warned that all of them have rather heavily "Indianized" their menus, so you will find the stuff there as exotic as you found Bambaiyya food. However, Barista [40] , Cafe Coffee Day [41] , and Smokin' Joe's [42] are all Indian chains, although they don't serve Indian food. While Barista and Cafe Coffee Day, as there names suggest, serve coffee and pastries, Smokin' Joe's serves decent pizzas and is headquartered in Carmichael Rd, Mumbai. International coffee chains like The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Aromas have recently set shop in Mumbai. Naturals is a chain of ice cream stores that serves up tasty and unconventional flavors of ice creams. Try their tender coconut or the coffee walnut ice creams. Its main branch is in Juhu in the Western suburbs (hence the tagline - 'Ice cream of Juhu Scheme'), but it has franchises at many places including Marine Drive, Bandra, Nepean sea road, etc. Naturals is also famous for its seasonal "Sitaphal" or Custard Apple Ice-cream. Baskins-Robbins is an international ice cream chain having its presence throughout the city. Also there are a number of shops in malls amongst other places which serve Italian Gelato ice cream. What to eat[ edit ] Asking a local for suggestions is a fun way to try new things. Here are a few suggestions: Indian Cuisine Vada Pav, the vada is a mashed potato patty. Pav is a kind of bread that has its roots in Mumbai. (The word comes from the Portugese word "pão", for bread). The potato patty is sandwiched in the bread. Liberal helpings of three kinds of chutneys (sauces) are also added to the sandwich to make a seriously tasty snack. It is widely available on the streets and most folks price it Rs 6 a piece. If you feel uncomfortable with the hygiene of a particular stall, avoid it. In that case eating at , Jumbo Vada Pav [43] outlets, found almost at all train stations in the city, is a hygienic and safer options. Pav Bhaji, Part of the street food culture, this is mashed vegetables cooked in spices, topped with butter and served piping hot with pav. Widely available. For a variation, try the Pav Bhaji Dosa which merges Pav Bhaji with the South Indian Dosa. For the especially brave, ask for a plate of Masala Pav. It consists of two piece of Pav smeared with a generous helping of spicy paste. Bhel Puri & sev puri, A classic Mumbai concoction, bhel-puri (or bhel for short) comprises mostly of puffed rice and assorted spices with a few chutneys. You can specify whether you want it spicy or bland and the vendor will make it for you. It is quite tasty and again ought to be had off the streets to get the real flavor. Most people though, like to flock to Juhu beach to try this out. Pani Puri, For first timers, this can be seriously intriguing. The vendor hands you a plate. Next he takes a puri (it looks like a golf ball, but brown in color), makes a small hole in it, and dips the puri into two jars. These jars contain water — one tangy on a tamarind base, the other spicy on a mint base. He tops it off with some condiments and places the puri on your plate. You pick it with your hand and pop the whole thing into your mouth. The outcome is an explosion. Awesome. A word of caution here though. Make sure you don't have your pani puri from just any vendor. The best vendors use only packaged water. Stick to that and enjoy the taste. Indian-Chinese, Nothing like regular Chinese. For a typical Bambaiyya flavor, try the Chinese Bhelpuri!. Hapus (Alphonso) mangoes, A must try, if you happen to be in Mumbai in the summers. Mewad ice cream, If you happen to be in Mumbai, it is recommended you avoid ice creams from the famous and expensive parlors and try out the cheap Mewad ice cream stalls. They are a lovely treat at their price and provide a lot of options. The vendors are found everywhere across the streets, but avoid those who appear unhygienic. Variations of world cuisine such as Tandoori Chicken Pizzas - the Bombay Masala Pizza at the Pizzeria on Marine Drive is legendary and well worth investigation - or McAloo Tikki burgers. Tipping[ edit ] Tip between 5-10% at sit-down places. If a place includes service charges on the bill, you don't need to leave an extra tip. Note the difference between service tax and service charges. Service tax goes to Government and not to the staff. While tipping is always good practice, you don't necessarily have to tip the bartender while at a bar. If you plan to be there a while though it's a good idea to give him Rs 50-100 on your first drink to ensure a night of trouble-free service. You do not have to tip cab or auto drivers at all, and don't get out of the vehicle until they have given you full and exact change. Pubs & bars[ edit ] Individual listings can be found in Mumbai's district articles A recent police crackdown (June 2012) on many popular bar and clubs is underway, so be cautious when visiting lower to mid range bars. Mumbai is one of the most liberal cities in India when it comes to attitudes to alcohol. Bars exist at virtually every street corner and many of them advertise themselves as "family" bars and restaurants, which indicates that they are primarily restaurants where one can also have a drink. Other places are primarily bars, some of them might be sleazy. In South Mumbai and in the Western suburbs, you are likely to find many places where foreigners hang out. Mumbai is much more accepting of women drinking than the rest of India. A woman ordering a drink is unlikely to raise eyebrows even in mid-range bars, though if you are alone, you might need to look out for your safety. Nightlife in Mumbai spans the gamut from performances at five star hotels to discos. Dance bars which involve young, fully clothed women dancing mostly to Hindi film and pop music, have been shut down by the government for corrupting the morals of those who frequent those places. While the state high court has ruled that the crackdown was illegal, it will be a while before they open again as there are some technicalities involved to be sorted out. Indian Beer In Mumbai, alcohol is much more easily available than many cities in India. Drinking & driving Driving under the influence of alcohol is not considered as a serious offence in India as compared to western countries [44] [45] . In the event of an accident the law does not deals with drink-drive offenders with severity. The punishment is a minor fine and/or imprisonment for only up to 6 months. The driving license is suspended only for at least six months. Coffee shops[ edit ] There many coffee shops in and around Mumbai. Try the Cafe Coffee Day [46] and Barista [47] chains. Since late 2012, the holy grail of coffee shops, Starbucks has made its presence felt in Mumbai in a big way. Do check out the biggest and tastefully interior-ed Starbucks at Horniman Circle at Fort in South Mumbai. Then there's the Cafe Mocha chain of coffee shops which also serve fruit flavoured hookas — South Asian smoking pipes. If a small coffee and cookies place is what you are looking for, try Theobroma, it has an outlet at Cusrow Baug in Colaba. There are also "Costa Coffee" outlets throughout the city. Those looking for a more native form of coffee can try the filter coffee, a milky coffee with origins from South India, from any Udupi restaurant. But nowadays hookahs are banned in restaurants, cafes and pubs in Mumbai. Taj Mahal Hotel at night Individual listings can be found in Mumbai's district articles It is very difficult to find good budget hotels in Mumbai. If you are a tourist or a business traveler, you may have to stay in South Mumbai, which is where both the business district and the touristy areas are. Lack of space means that even the cheapest hotel charges stratospheric tariffs. The state of public transport and traffic means that it is not really a good choice to stay anywhere else. In any case, things aren't much better if you are looking for hotels close to the airport. You should be looking at the Western Suburbs in that case. There are many guest houses at Colaba, where you find most of budget foreign travelers stay. Other budget hotels are found near railway stations, such as Dadar or Santa Cruz, but most of them are absolute dumps. One safe and economical place to stay in Mumbai is the YMCA. Reasonably priced accommodations are available at the Colaba, Bombay Central, Andheri, and CBD Belapur Branches. Staff at the Windsor Hotel on Kumptha St have been accused assaulting a traveler on TripAdvisor. [48] One inexpensive alternative is to live with a local family as a paying guest. A list of available families can be obtained from the Government of India tourist office (+91 22 2220 7433) opposite Churchgate train station. On the other hand, if money is not a problem, you can stay at the Taj in Colaba (the oldest in India), the Leela Kempinski, the ITC Grand Maratha, or the JW Marriott Mumbai, Renaissance Mumbai Hotel & Convention Centre. Hotel listings are in the district pages. LGBT options[ edit ] There is already a lively late night, if somewhat subterranean, scene for gays, as well as social and political networks. However, you need to do your homework before arriving, as LGBT gathering spaces and organizations are not published or available at local newsstands. However, Bombay Dost (Bombay Friends) the only magazine catering to the community, after 7 years of running was closed and relaunched in 2009. Much of Mumbai's LGBT scene is coordinated using social networking sites and groups. Use extreme caution; robberies, hustlers, and even police entrapment are not unheard of, though a July 2009 judgment legalizing homosexuality might have saved you from the last one. Unfortunately, that was revised and declared criminal in 2013. Landlines[ edit ] The area code for Mumbai is "22" (prefix "+91", if you are calling from outside India). Phone numbers are eight digits long, but on occasion you will find a seven digit number listed. That is probably an old listing. They made the changeover from seven to eight digits a few years back, when they allowed private service providers to offer telephone. Just prefix a "2" to the number and it should work just fine. Pay phones[ edit ] Phone booths can be found all over the city. Though they are coin operated, there is usually someone to run the place. (Typically the phones are attached to a roadside shop). You need to keep putting 1 rupee coins into the slot to extend the talk time, so keep a change of 1 rupee coins handy with you. The person running the booth will usually have them. If you find a booth marked STD/ISD, you can call internationally or anywhere within the country. Fees will be charged according to the time spent and a meter runs to keep track of your time. You pay when you have finished your call. Often it is difficult to find one that is open early in the morning or late at night. Mobile phones[ edit ] Cell phone coverage in the city is excellent. There are many service providers offering a wide variety of plans. Among them are The MTNL [49] , Vodafone [50] , Loop Mobile [51] , Airtel [52] , Dolphin [53] , Reliance [54] , and Tata Indicom [55] . It might be a good idea to buy a cell phone and use one of those prepaid plans to get yourself connected while you are in the city. All mobile numbers, are 10 digits long and begin with a "9", "8" or "7". Do not dial the city prefix for mobile numbers. If you don't get through to a mobile number, try adding a "0" before you dial it. Due to security threats, in order to purchase a SIM card you will need to provide formal identification. While Roaming in Mumbai the best app you should have in your mobile is m-Indicator. It will give you detailed Mumbai local information, Cab-auto fair, bus route, cinemas near by and many more Cybercafes[ edit ] Cybercafes are located at virtually on every street corner and the rates are quite low. Do note that they have probably not kept pace with advances in hardware or software, so if you find yourself in one of them, don't be surprised if you are stuck with a really small monitor, Windows 98, and Internet Explorer 5.0. Also data security could be an issue. As a caution, change your password after you use it at a cybercafe. Wi-Fi[ edit ] Finding Wi-Fi in Mumbai is very difficult due to security concerns. A few coffee shops such as Barista may offer access. You should start your search with Chembur, Pamposh, Phoenix Mall, Santa Cruz, and Sterling Baristas. Canada, Indiabulls Finance Centre, Tower 2/21st Floor, Senapati Bapat Marg, Elphinstone Road West, ☎ +91 22 6749 4444. Also, most lobbies of upper-end hotels (eg. Taj, Oberoi Trident, etc.) will have Wi-Fi services if you wish to hang-out in their coffee shops. Please add to this list edit You can also find free Wi-Fi at the airport if you have an Indian phone number, provided by You Broadband. At Mexiloko (Shop 1, Bela CHS Ltd, 81A, Colaba Causeway, Colaba, Mumbai-400005), you can get Free Wi-Fi and you don't need a mobile phone. A staff will tell you a password. Postal & courier services[ edit ] TNT, [59] ,DTDC [60] etc. The Indian Postal service's head office is housed at GPO, a magnificent colonial architecture on its own., next to C.S.T. railway station. The other main branch office can be found at Dadar(E) on Ambedkar Rd. Stay safe[ edit ] For a city of its size and global importance, Mumbai is quite safe. However, as with any foreign city, it is best to err on the side of safety and act according to your local environment. Here are a few basic safety tips: Littering is punishable with a INR 200 fine throughout Mumbai as part of the Clean-Up Mumbai initiative by the BMC. In reality, the chances of getting caught are extremely low. The fines are given out by the BMC and the police never bother if people litter right in front them. Keep your money and credit cards safe at all times. Always carry some cash as many places won't take cards. Do not display 500 and 1000 rupee notes in public. Beware of pickpocket-ting on buses and trains. Also beware of mobile, chain, or bag snatchers who operate in densely populated places, such as railway stations, busy roads, and traffic signals. Women traveling by train, especially on off-peak routes should travel in the second class where at least a few co-passengers are also found. Women (especially Westerners) should avoid crowded places, you might well get groped. Cases of men pinching or touching women are common in crowded public places, including nicer nightspots. Create a scene if this does happen to you, there will be enough people around that will come to your defense. In general, in Mumbai, if you are ever worried about your safety, make a loud scene. It is an extremely crowded city, and somebody is always around and willing to help. Women should never ever take lifts from strangers. Western women tourists should note that if they visit a disco or pub in Mumbai or India, don't take lifts or even get too friendly with strangers. You will almost certainly get conned, if not worse. Many Indian men presume that if you're foreign you must be easy. Men should also be careful, pay respect to ladies and maintain safe distance. Don't ever let an auto or taxi you are traveling in pick up any more people, or pull over before your final destination. Police can sometimes be almost as shady as criminals in Mumbai. At night, women should ensure if they are ever stopped by police, there needs to be a female police officer present or they are well within their rights in demanding the presence of a woman cop. Be aware of scams. There´s one man claiming to be a British citizen that will tell you that he has been mugged and lost his passport and so on and that he needs your help to claim some money from his brother in the UK. Just tell him you are in a rush or out of money because it's a scam and he is just a good actor. There is another scam, in which a person (mostly taxi drivers) asks you for a change of 1000 INR currency note. If you give him two 500 INR notes in exchange for a 1000 INR note he will cleverly change one or both the 500 INR notes to 100 INR without you noticing. hence you may end up believing you gave him less money in return. He will ask you to pay the difference conning you of that cash. So Beware when someone asks you change for 1000 INR. Fraudulent SIM cards are not only sold on streets, but also in official-looking mobile phone stores. Never buy a SIM card if the vendor refuses to give you a receipt; make sure that the SIM envelope is not open, and check prices against an official brochure. Violent crime in Mumbai is more or less like any other large Indian city. Most notably, terrorists have staged several murderous attacks in Mumbai, targeting banks and the stock exchange in 1993 (killing around 300), commuter trains in 2006 (killing over 200) and top hotels including the Taj Mahal Palace and Oberoi in 2008 (over 170 dead). The last of these saw foreigners, specifically Americans, Britons and Israelis, explicitly targeted for the first time. Fire Station, ☎ 101, +91 22 23076111/23086181/2306112/13 Coast Guard, ☎ +91 22 24376133, +91 22 24371932 Touts[ edit ] Recently, there has been a great rise in the number of complaints about harassment of innocent tourists in various destinations around the country. The Ministry of Tourism has adopted a strategy of introducing Audio Guide Devices at various places of interest around the country such as the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort, etc. to provide reliable and factual information to tourists. It is wise to hire such devices as you can avoid being ripped off or ambushed by desperate touts itching to make a buck. The Ministry of Tourism has also announced its partnership with AudioCompass, a company specializing in creating Audio Tours of all places of interest in the country including Mumbai, in the form of Audio Devices available at the monuments and Smartphone apps that can be download from the App Store. Stay healthy[ edit ] Food As elsewhere in India, be careful with what you eat. Outside of major tourist hotels and restaurants, stay away from raw leafy vegetables, egg-based dressings, like mayonnaise, and minced meat are particularly risky. In short, stick to boiled, baked, fried, or peeled goods. Water Opinions on tap water vary, but most visitors choose to stick to the bottled stuff. Large bottles of water can be purchased at a very low cost. One note of caution, when buying water from street vendors, make sure the lid is sealed, there have been cases of bottles being filled with tap water, and sold as new. Fitness Numerous fitness centers exist throughout the city. Many exercise facilities and spas offer 24 hour memberships for visitors and are a popular way to unwind after a long day of touring in Mumbai. Smog can reach unhealthful levels, especially during the dry season. This, coupled with the summer heat and humidity, can make spending time outdoors quite unpleasant. Maps[ edit ] City Map, Eicher has an excellent city-map of Mumbai with detailed listings. Familiarize yourself with it before you begin, or alternatively trace your route on it. Rs 30. BEST Route Map, Thanks to the density of bus routes in the city, the map is quite hard to decipher. Although bus routes are listed in the itinerary, you may have to find out about a few others if you plan to mix/match the order of the sights. People are very helpful in general. Check the BEST Route Finder for detailed information on the routes. The map is available at news stands. Rs 10. Google Maps works brilliantly for most purposes Newspapers[ edit ] Local newspapapers can be handy and reliable sources for day to day updates about the city. The city has number of newspapers and other publication that list local happenings. The Times of India [64] has a supplement called Bombay Times. There are also other papers like The Asian Age [65] , DNA [66] , Indian Express [67] , Hindustan Times [68] and Free Press Journal [69] . For the business updates, check Economic Times [70] . There are three very good local city tabloids called Mid-Day [71] , Mumbai Mirror [72] , and Afternoon. These papers are city focused and cover a lot of gossip, local news, and have plenty of entertainment listings. One could refer to these papers for any specific activity. In addition, Time Out now has an excellent Mumbai edition each month which can be picked up on street bookshops. It is a little more eclectic than the others listed here. Most newspapers would not cost more than Rs 3. All of these papers have information on arts, dance, eating out, food festivals, events, exhibitions, lectures, movies, theatre listings, concerts, seminars, and workshops. There are also many local newspapers in regional languages such as Lok Satta [73] (marathi), Maharashtra Times [74] (marathi), Saamna [75] (marathi), Navakal [76] (marathi), Janmabhoomi (gujrati), Mumbai Samachar [77] (gujrati) and Navbharat Times [78] (hindi) which cater to local and regional interests and tastes. Radio[ edit ] There are twelve radio stations in Mumbai, with nine broadcasting on the FM band, and three All India Radio stations broadcasting on the AM band. Mumbai also has access to commercial radio providers such as Sirius and XM. Individual listings can be found in Mumbai's district articles List of Major Hospitals and health care centers: Asian Heart Institute, G/N Block, Bandra Kurla Complex, Bandra(E), 400051 (Bandra Kurla Complex), ☎ +91 22 56986666 (fax: +91 22 56986506), [79] . edit Breach Candy Hospital, 60 Bhulabhai Desai Rd, 400026, ☎ +91 22 23643309/23633651/3623224/23671888/23672888 (fax: +91 22 23630147), [80] . edit Jaslok Hospital, 15 Dr. G. Deshmukh Marg, 400026 (Peddar road), [81] . edit Animal hospital[ edit ] Bai Sakarbai Dinshaw Petit Hospital for Animals (Locally this hospital is known as 'Bail Ghoda (Bull Horse) Hospital. The Bombay Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) is also Headquartered there. Their ambulance rushes in answer to any call of distress to animals.), (Parel), ☎ +91 22 24135285/24135434/24137518/24133598. edit Diagnostic centre[ edit ] List of Major Diagnostic, health care and Polyclinics: Soningra Polyclinic - Since 1984, catering the nation since last 25 years effectively and efficiently. B - Helal Bldg, Dr. Mascarenhas Rd, Mazgaon, ☎ +91 22 23715963, +91 22 2749662 Super Religare Laboratories Limited formerly Ranbaxy SRL [91] - Largest clinical reference laboratory network in India and in South East Asia. Plot 113, St 145 MIDC Andheri (E), ☎ +91 22 28237333, +91 22 30811111-99 Wellspring [92] - Another premier diagnostic laboratory owned by the Piramal group. Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Near A to Z Industrial Estate, Off Worli Naka, Lower Parel(W),. Along with the above they have other centers as well throughout the city. 24 hour chemist[ edit ] High Commissions/Embassies[ edit ] Australia, 36 Maker Chambers VI, 220 Nariman Point, ☎ +91 22 66692000. edit Brazil, Units 113 & 114, Free Press House, 11F, Free Press Journal Marg,Nariman Point, ☎ +91 22 2283 4467, +91 22 2283 4469 (Mobile +91 9820686143), [93] . edit Canada, Fort House, 6F, 221 Dr. D. N. Rd, ☎ +91 22 6749 4444 (fax: +91 22 6749 4454). edit China, 9F, Hoechst House, 193 Backbay Reclamation, Nariman Point, ☎ +91 22 5632 4303/4/5/6 ( [email protected] , fax: +91 22 56324302), [94] . edit France, Hoechst House, 7F, Nariman Point (next to N.C.P.A.), ☎ +91 22 6669 4000 (fax: +91 22 66694066), [95] . edit Germany, Arcadia Bldg, Ground Floor, Nariman Point, ☎ +91 22 2280 7385 (fax: +91 22 2284 2184), [96] . edit Greece, Baharestan, 30/A, Juhu Tara Road, Juhu, ☎ +91 22 660 7852 ( [email protected] , fax: +91 22 6606446). edit Indonesia, 19 Altamount Rd, Cumballa Hill, ☎ +91 22 2351 1678, +91 22 2353 0940, +91 22 2353 0900 ( [email protected] ), [97] . edit Italy, Kanchanjunga 1F, 72 G.Deshmukh Marg, ☎ +91 22 23804071 (fax: +91 22 2387 4074), [98] . edit Japan, 1 M. L. Dahanukar Marg, Cumballa Hill, ☎ +91 22 2351 7101 (fax: +91 22 2351 7120), [99] . edit Malaysia, 4-B, 4F, Notan Plaza, Turner Rd, Bandra(W), ☎ +91 22 2645 5751, +91 22 2645 5752, [100] . edit Netherlands, Forbes Building, Charanjit Rai Marg, Azad Maidan, ☎ +91 22 2219 4200, [101] . edit Saudi Arabia, Maker Tower “F”, 4F, Cuffe Parade, Colaba, ☎ +91 22 22156001, +91 22 2215 6002, +91 22 2215 6003 (fax: +91 22 2215 6006). edit Singapore, 152, 14F, Maker Chambers IV 222, Jamnalal Bajaj Rd, Nariman Point, ☎ +91 22 22043205/22043209 (fax: +91 22 2285 5812 (For visa matters only) or +91 22 2204 3203 (For non-visa matters)), [102] . edit Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka House, 34, Homi Mody Street, Mumbai 400 023, ☎ +91 22-2204 5861 (fax: +91 22 2287 6132), [103] . edit Thailand, General, 1F, Dalamal House Jamnalal Bajaj Marg, Nariman Point, ☎ +91 22 2281 0808 (fax: +91 22 22810808). edit United Arab Emirates, 7 Jolly Maker, Apartment #1 Cuffe Parade, Colaba, ☎ +91 22 2218 3021 (fax: +91 22 22180986). edit United Kingdom, Maker Chambers IV Second Floor, 222 Jamnalal Bajaj Road, Nariman Point, ☎ +91 22 56502222 (fax: +91 22 6650 2324), [104] . Emergency Duty Officer: +91 98 2000 0343. edit United States, Lincoln House, 78 Bhulabhai Desai Rd, ☎ +91 22 2363 3611 (U.S. citizens 24-hr emergencies +91 22 2363 3611 ext 0, [email protected] , fax: +91 22 2363 0350), [105] . edit Vietnam, B-603, Oberoi Chambers, New Link Rd, Andheri(W), ☎ +91 22 2673 6688 (fax: +91 22 2673 6633), [106] . edit Apart for the ones listed above there are consulates of a number of nations which can be can be found in the yellow pages directory.	i don't know
Dainik Jagran is (at 2014) India's, and perhaps the world's, most popular?	Jagran’s Newspaper Deal in Black, White — and Red - India Real Time - WSJ Jagran’s Newspaper Deal in Black, White — and Red By European Pressphoto Agency A collection of front pages of Indian national newspapers Indian newspaper publisher Jagran Prakashan Ltd .’s deal Wednesday to buy the print business of English-language tabloid publisher Mid-Day Multimedia Ltd . was given a rather lukewarm reception from the market. In the cashless deal, Jagran – publisher of India’s most-read newspaper, Hindi daily Dainik Jagran – will issue two new shares to Mid-Day’s shareholders for every seven shares they hold in Mid-Day. Shares of Jagran slipped 3.2% Wednesday because of the 5% equity dilution the deal would cause. They were trading up 1.1% at 116.30 rupees Thursday in a Mumbai market where the benchmark Sensex was down 0.8% . Why such a muted response when so much has been said about how the deal will lend Jagran a presence in the coveted Mumbai market – where it doesn’t have a foothold – as well as enhance advertising revenue and earnings? A lot of the answer has to do with the timing and the size of the deal. Jagran’s move comes at a time when readership growth for Hindi dailies has been outpacing that of their English counterparts. Mid-Day has been hit particularly hard, losing market share to rivals such as Mumbai Mirror, Hindustan Times and DNA. Its average issue readership has slumped to 417,000 from around 663,000 in 2006, according to the Indian Readership Survey. Given Jagran’s existing readership of around 17 million (Dainik Jagran and the bilingual compact daily I-Next combined), these numbers do not make for a significant addition. “We remain concerned about stiff competition from Bennett Coleman and HT Media in the slow growing English segment which is losing market share to Hindi segment,” K.R. Choksey Shares and Securities says in a note. Bennett Coleman publishes the Times of India and Economic Times; HT Media publishes Hindustan Times and Mint, a business newspaper that has a content partnership with The Wall Street Journal. Thus, the deal will not prove to be a game changer unless Jagran is able to turn around Mid-Day’s operations. The publisher could look at launching Mid-Day in cities where it has a strong distribution network for its Hindi dailies. But that, certainly, is one long-term bet. As for Mid-Day’s shareholders, the revelry began Wednesday when the stock surged 18.1%. It was recently trading up 1.9% at 34.20 rupees. Share this:	Newspaper
Name the Indian corporation joint-venture partner in India's Virgin Mobile and Starbucks businesses?	Jagran’s Newspaper Deal in Black, White — and Red - India Real Time - WSJ Jagran’s Newspaper Deal in Black, White — and Red By European Pressphoto Agency A collection of front pages of Indian national newspapers Indian newspaper publisher Jagran Prakashan Ltd .’s deal Wednesday to buy the print business of English-language tabloid publisher Mid-Day Multimedia Ltd . was given a rather lukewarm reception from the market. In the cashless deal, Jagran – publisher of India’s most-read newspaper, Hindi daily Dainik Jagran – will issue two new shares to Mid-Day’s shareholders for every seven shares they hold in Mid-Day. Shares of Jagran slipped 3.2% Wednesday because of the 5% equity dilution the deal would cause. They were trading up 1.1% at 116.30 rupees Thursday in a Mumbai market where the benchmark Sensex was down 0.8% . Why such a muted response when so much has been said about how the deal will lend Jagran a presence in the coveted Mumbai market – where it doesn’t have a foothold – as well as enhance advertising revenue and earnings? A lot of the answer has to do with the timing and the size of the deal. Jagran’s move comes at a time when readership growth for Hindi dailies has been outpacing that of their English counterparts. Mid-Day has been hit particularly hard, losing market share to rivals such as Mumbai Mirror, Hindustan Times and DNA. Its average issue readership has slumped to 417,000 from around 663,000 in 2006, according to the Indian Readership Survey. Given Jagran’s existing readership of around 17 million (Dainik Jagran and the bilingual compact daily I-Next combined), these numbers do not make for a significant addition. “We remain concerned about stiff competition from Bennett Coleman and HT Media in the slow growing English segment which is losing market share to Hindi segment,” K.R. Choksey Shares and Securities says in a note. Bennett Coleman publishes the Times of India and Economic Times; HT Media publishes Hindustan Times and Mint, a business newspaper that has a content partnership with The Wall Street Journal. Thus, the deal will not prove to be a game changer unless Jagran is able to turn around Mid-Day’s operations. The publisher could look at launching Mid-Day in cities where it has a strong distribution network for its Hindi dailies. But that, certainly, is one long-term bet. As for Mid-Day’s shareholders, the revelry began Wednesday when the stock surged 18.1%. It was recently trading up 1.9% at 34.20 rupees. Share this:	i don't know
The state-owned corporation re-branded simply 'Indian' (2005-11) was a major operator in which sector?	Final Project Report on Indian Aviation Industry \| Airlines Final Project Report on Indian Aviation Industry hii, guys this project will help to make your project easyly , when i search here , i could not find any project that is worthy so i make it and uploaded for you guys ,go and enjoy it...!!! Copyright: Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC) 1 \|P a g e THE ECONOMICS OF INDIAN 2 \|P a g e Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank the Almighty for providing me with the strength to complete this project. I am highly obliged to have support of my Parents without which it was not possible to take up this activity. I feel deeply feel indebted to myDir ecto r, Mr. S. K. Gulati, who was the strength and an encouragement behind every student. I also, take this opportunity to thank Mr. Gaurav, of Kingfisher Airlines, Mr. Ashish Srivastava of Indian Airlines, Mr. Kapil Kaul of Center for Asia Pacific of Avionics, Mr. Rupesh Kumar of Jet Airways and Mr. Shantanu Prakash of Indi Go; for providing me an opportunity to take this project work and under whose guidance whole of the project has been completed. MY sincere thanks also goes to our friends, peers and colleagues for supporting at every j uncture which helped us complete this project work in time and without which we would not have been able to unravel several mysteries of the Aviation Industry of India , which is now part of this report. SANDEEP SINGH 3 \|P a g e The Indian Aviation Industry Introduction Air India was set up by J.R.D. Tata, who ran it successfully until it was nationalized in 1953. In the 1960s the \u2015Maharaja\u2016, as the national flag-carrier was affectionately known, was flying to 32 destinations (it now flies to 46 destinations) and making profits.For many years in India air travel was perceived to be an elitist activity. This view arose from the \u2015Maharajah\u2016 syndrome where, due to the prohibitive cost of air travel, the only people who could afford it were the rich and powerful. In recent years, however, this image of Civil Aviation has undergone a change and aviation is now viewed in a different light - as an essential link not only for international travel and trade but also for providing connectivity to different parts of the country. Aviation is, by its very nature, a critical part of the infrastructure of the country and has important ramifications for the development of tourism and trade, the opening up of inaccessible areas of the country and for providing stimulus to business activity and economic growth. Until less than a decade ago, all aspects of aviation were firmly controlled by the Government. In the early fifties, all airlines operating in the country were merged into either Indian Airlines or Air India and, by virtue of the Air Corporations Act, 1953 this monopoly was perpetuated for the next forty years. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation controlled every aspect of flying including granting flying licenses, pilots, certifying aircrafts for flight and issuing all rules and procedures governing Indian airports and airspace. Finally, the Airports Authority of India was entrusted with the responsibility of managing all national and international airports and administering every aspect of air transport operation through the Air traffic Control. With the opening up of the Indian economy in the early Nineties, aviation saw some important changes. Most importantly, the Air Corporation Act was repealed to end the monopoly of the public sector and private airlines were reintroduced. Domestic liberalization took off in 1986, with the launch of scheduled services by new start-up About	Airline
What is India's country internet TLD (top level domain)?	Strategic Management \| College Thesis Writing Help \| Custom Dissertation Writing Services \| Research Paper Writers Strategic Management: Concepts and Cases Mcgraw-Hill Higher Education (2012) edition 2012 or the newest MHID: 0071317910; ISBN: 978-0-07-131791-7 The case (questions) need to be solved. It is the Case Number 26: UPS in India (in 2011)-A Package Deal? The questions (mostly at the end of the case text) should be answered. Therefore the book should be used, especially the chapter 11 Organisational Design: Structure, Culture, and Control to answer the case questions. If needed to answer the question other frameworks can be used (pestle, five forces etc…. but only if it is needed to answer the questions in addition to the things which are mentioned in the chapter 11). English level like in the Case. 0+ FRANK T. ROTHAERMEL UPS in India (in 2011)—A Package Deal? It’s challenging. But UPS is all about global trade. Global trade is going to pull us out of this recession. —UPS CEO Scott Davis in a 2009 CNBC interview IT HAD BEEN six months since Robin Page first walked into the Sandy Springs headquarters of United Parcel Service (UPS) and assumed her role as Chief Strategy Officer. Though she had been doing strategic analysis and planning for years, she felt an unusual amount of pressure to prove herself in this new position. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Scott Davis had made it clear when he offered her the job that he had high expectations of what she could do for the company, and that he wanted to see concrete results by the end of the first year. Ms. Page glanced at the pile of reports sitting on her desk, many of them describing recent international acquisitions and alliances. She knew that one of the reasons she had been Mr. Davis’s top choice for the position was her extensive international experience. UPS already had a presence in more than 200 countries, but they wanted to penetrate those markets more deeply, especially the rapidly growing economies of Southeast Asia. Ms. Page had traveled extensively around the region both for work and for pleasure, and Mr. Davis was counting on her insights to help the company with its Asian expansion. First and foremost on her mind was India. She remembered fondly a vacation she had taken there just a year or so ago, and how the city marketplaces had struck her as a unique mix of the modern and the ancient. People milled around everywhere, pushing their way through crowded streets, families piled on motor bikes weaving in and out of lanes of standstill traffic. Yet everywhere she looked, someone was talking on a cell phone, and modern buildings lined the horizon with names of multinational corporations from all over the world. An entrepreneurial spirit seemed to fill the air, with new businesses coming to life on a daily basis; for every venture that failed, two more sprouted up to claim its space. The country was awash with business opportunities amidst the clamor, congestion, and complexity that typified modern life in India’s major cities like Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore. The sheer volume of people promised seemingly unlimited market potential. Although UPS had established a footprint in India, it had yet to penetrate the market on the scale that Ms. Page and other UPS managers hoped for. They formed an alliance with Jet Air in 2005, which led to the opening of the first “UPS Store” in Mumbai and several other major cities. In 2008, UPS established a second alliance with AFL Private Ltd, gaining access to the logistics company’s field stocking locations and significantly increasing its access points for international delivery. Since then, however, UPS’s attention had shifted to other Asian markets like China and Malaysia, leaving India wide open to invading competitors. Sure enough, in UPS’s absence, DHL acquired the Indian Professor Marne L. Arthaud-Day, Research Associate Shreyasi Banerjee (Industrial Engineer and Systems Analyst, Intel), and Professor Frank T. Rothaermel prepared this case from public sources. This case is developed for the purpose of class discussion. It is not intended to be used for any kind of endorsement, source of data, or depiction of efficient or inefficient management. © Arthaud-Day, Banerjee, and Rothaermel, 2013. delivery company Blue Dart and had become the clear market leader in both the international and domestic segments. Today, DHL-Blue Dart had a combined market share three times higher than the next largest company.1 Clearly, it was to time to reformulate UPS’s India strategy. In many ways, the India situation reminded Ms. Page of when UPS first began to offer overnight delivery back in the 1980s. A major competitor (the U.S. Postal Service) dominated the marketplace, and while UPS had strongholds in all of the major locations, the challenge was to figure out how to connect rural America to its major transportation hubs. UPS had promised overnight delivery between any two addresses in the United States, and they weren’t joking. If a package needed to get to the base of the Grand Canyon, the plan was to drive the package on a dirt road for 50 miles from Valentine, Arizona, to the rim of the Canyon. A mule train operator would then take the letter over to the rocky final leg for a $35 charge to UPS. UPS would deliver the letter at a loss in order to maintain its commitment to overnight delivery. Ms. Page knew that vast regions of rural India still lacked adequate roadways, and she chuckled thinking that mule trains might not be such a far-fetched idea after all. Delivery at the local level was still very much a small business, especially in developing countries. It’s like Kent Nelson, UPS’s senior vice president for finance and customer service, said in a 1985 interview, “When you are in the package-delivery business, you are really in the pennies business. The trick is to have the pennies build up to be profitable.”2 If UPS was to be a major player in the current “India Mania,” the company would have to figure out the answers to several difficult questions. How unique was the Indian situation compared to other developing countries? UPS had been in business for over 100 years and had experience in over 200 worldwide marketplaces. Surely some of the lessons learned would transfer to India, but how could they determine which ones? Competitors already had a head start, so UPS could not afford to experiment based simply on trial and error. How should they go about tapping the extensive potential of one of the world’s largest economies? How difficult would it be to streamline their supply and distribution chain given the lack of infrastructure development? With the size of India’s population and the economy’s rapid growth, the rewards for successfully addressing these issues were sizeable to say the least. Ms. Page sat down and started reviewing the pile of documents sitting on her desk, hoping the deals of the past would help her figure out the right path for UPS’s future in India. The UPS Story The UPS saga has all the elements of a remarkable success story. Two teenage entrepreneurs in 1907 started what would one day become the world’s largest package delivery company. EARLY HISTORY Claude Ryan and Jim Casey had a big idea and a small amount of debt capital. Working from a Seattle basement, they began running errands and carrying notes on foot, as well as making home deliveries for drugstore customers. As the arrival of new technologies such as the telephone and automobile led to a decrease in demand for messaging services, the company shifted its emphasis to delivering packages for retail stores. “Merchants Parcel Delivery” quickly built a strong reputation based on its personalized customer service and the care with which it handled every package.3 The young enterprise changed its name to United Parcel Service in 1919 as it entered a golden period of domestic expansion. The word “United” was chosen to reflect that even as the company expanded into other cities like Oakland and Los Angeles, they still belonged to the same organization. 2 Throughout its early history, UPS functioned primarily as an intra-city delivery service, innovating in response to consumers’ changing lifestyles and shopping patterns.4 In the 1920s, UPS added several unique service features such as daily pick-ups, acceptance of C.O.D. payments, and multiple delivery attempts. It also developed a new conveyor belt system for handling packages.5 When fuel shortages leading up to World War II caused retailers to curtail their delivery activities and encourage customers to carry their parcels home, UPS stepped up and expanded its retail store service.6 After the war, as people migrated to the suburbs and bought cars that could hold their goods, UPS shifted its focus to the business-to-business segment.7 COMMON CARRIER RIGHTS In the next phase of its expansion, UPS decided to pursue common carrier rights, meaning that it could deliver packages between both private and commercial customers. This was traditionally the domain of the U.S. Postal Service, as stipulated by the Interstate Commerce Commission and multiple state regulatory bodies. A series of legal battles ensued as UPS fought to expand its operating authority to all 48 states, a goal which it finally achieved in 1975. By 1978, UPS also provided nationwide air transport services, flying packages in the cargo bays of commercial airlines.8 UPS AIRLINES In response to the deregulation of the airline industry, many established carriers trimmed flights during the 1980s, leading to reduced air freight capacity. UPS saw this as an opportunity to enter the air delivery business and began to acquire cargo jets. It offered next-day air service to 48 states by 1985, and in 1988, UPS Airlines was formally recognized by the Federal Aviation Administration. It was the fastest airline startup in FAA history, taking just over one year to get all systems into place.9 Building on the success of its airline service, the company shifted from a national delivery company to a global footprint throughout the 1990s. UPS now provides delivery services to more than four billion people in over 200 countries.10 GOING PUBLIC The latter half of the 1990s brought both major challenges and new business opportunities. In August 1997, the Teamsters Union led about 185,000 UPS workers on a strike. They wanted more union control of employee pension funds and objected to UPS’s increasing use of part-time workers. UPS controlled about 80 percent of all package deliveries in the United States, so the repercussions of the 15-day strike for both the company and its customers were severe. UPS lost $650 million in business over a disagreement that then CEO James Kelly commented could have been worked out “without a strike.”11 UPS recovered quickly, however, and went public in 1999, almost 100 years after its conception. A report in The New York Times said, “Investors have greeted the new stock with an enthusiasm usually reserved for dot-com ventures whose founders’ parents had not even been born by 1907.”12 In fact, the UPS IPO was the largest public offering to date. (See Exhibits 1 and 2 for UPS financial data.) SYNCHRONIZED COMMERCE In the meantime, UPS continued to redefine itself in response to changes in its external environment. No longer restricting its activities to delivery services, UPS sought to become a “solutions company” that offered services tailored to its customers’ business process value chain.13 It formed the UPS 3 Logistics Group in 1995 to streamline service operations over its customer base, and UPS Capital in 1998 to provide financial products and services to help small businesses grow.14 The company made about 30 acquisitions in total, including freight forwarders, customer clearers, and a bank for the efficient movement of goods, information, and financing along their supply and distribution network.15 When a study by FutureBrand concluded that UPS had no terminology to explain their expanded business model to customers, they coined the term “Synchronized Commerce.”16 By modifying its supply chain to streamline the flow between buyers and sellers, UPS was able to “synchronize” goods, information, and funds to deliver more products and services to its customers. By the start of the new millennium, UPS was well on its way to becoming a full-service business.17 In 2001, UPS acquired Mail Boxes Etc., then the world’s largest franchisor of retail shipping, postal, and business service centers.18 This strategic move enabled the company to target smaller businesses and increased its accessibility to residential and home-office customers. Over 3,000 Mail Boxes Etc. locations were re-branded as “The UPS Store,” in the largest re-branding campaign in history. Mail Boxes Etc.’s CEO said that the initiative helped set lower maximum retail prices for UPS shipping. He added, “By pooling MBE’s expertise in retail business services with UPS’s expertise in shipping and other expanded capabilities, The UPS Store offers an extensive portfolio of products to our franchisees and their customers.” Currently, “The UPS Store” and “Mail Boxes Etc.” have over 4,800 locations in the United States, Canada, and India alone.19 Today, UPS maintains its focus on services as its core business while continually looking to grow new revenue sources. To ensure that the company keeps its strategic focus, former CEO Mike Eschew introduced the “Four Quadrant” growth strategy that “focuses on innovating existing business operations internally and externally, and, likewise, focuses innovation on new entrepreneurial ventures both internally and externally.”20 This strategy has helped to land UPS among the top 15 most respected companies and in the top 10 of all logistics companies worldwide (see Exhibits 3 and 4). HUB AND SPOKE MODEL UPS’s delivery network is based on the hub and spoke model,21 a centralized and integrated approach to logistics management.22 It consists of a hub (the center), where packages are sent for consolidation, and spokes that link the hub to all other points in the system. UPS’s rival, FedEx, pioneered the hub and spoke system in the U.S. domestic express delivery sector, and then extended it to its international operations. FedEx’s first Asian hub was at Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport, located in east China’s Zhejiang Province.23 UPS transitioned from direct shipping to the hub and spoke system somewhat later than its major competitor, but has still benefitted from significant cost savings by doing so. UPS BRAND AND CULTURE Claude Ryan and Jim Casey started UPS with the goal of providing the best service at the lowest rates. Jim’s commitment to reliability, courtesy, neatness, and high ethical standards helped establish the values that continue to guide UPS today.24 “They trust UPS, our technology and visibility tools. It’s good to get there on time,” said CEO Scott Davis, when asked what loyal customers think of the brand.25 Since its inception, UPS has stressed employee ownership as a way to get its people to feel responsible and involved. “We are all owners, that is a big part of enhancing culture. At some point, all of our employees have had a moment when they realize what it means to be a partner,” said former UPS CEO 4 Mike Eskew. The company cultivates further loyalty by following a “promote from within” principle. Over the years, many delivery workers and mail sorters have risen to management levels, including Eskew himself. Before serving as CEO from 2002 to 2007, Michael Eskew started as an industrial engineering manager in 1972 and worked his way up the ranks for 30 years. India Mania In a 2006 address, Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India, declared, “We believe that India is now on a sustained path of high growth. We have developed a new model for service-led and technology-driven integration with the global economy.”26 As if on cue, India’s GDP topped the $1 trillion mark in early April 2007, making it the 12th wealthiest nation in the world according to Swiss investment firm Credit Suisse.27 India’s GDP now stands at $1.16 trillion, with an annual growth rate of 7.9 percent even during the global financial crisis.28 When asked about the biggest benefit of doing business in India, Steve Hochradel, Assistant VP of distribution for PBD Worldwide said, “India offers great growth opportunities, and it is easier to do business there than in many other international markets. India has a high population of English speakers, which makes it easy to enter the market, negotiate with vendors and part ners, and set up operations.”29 ECONOMIC REFORM However, prosperity did not follow immediately after India’s emergence from British control and establishment as an independent nation in 1947. For the first 40 years or so, the new socialist government took an extreme protectionist stance, structuring society on the basis of collective action as opposed to capitalist acquisitiveness. The License Raj represented the state’s efforts to control all aspects of the economy. Elaborate permits and regulations were required to set up or run businesses, severely limiting their growth. Though there was economic discipline at the macro level and inflation was low compared to other developing countries, the Indian economy dragged along at a subsistence level with a low GDP per capita. Basic industries such as steel and textiles were conspicuous by their absence.30 The UPA (United Progressive Alliance), a coalition of political parties that constitutes the Government of India still today, is credited with opening up the economy. An economic crisis during the 1991 general election triggered the beginning of micro-economic liberalization. To rectify the situation, then–finance minister Dr. Manmohan Singh proposed changes such as repealing the “License Raj” and lifting a ban on foreign direct investment. The economy grew by 9 percent the following year as a result of these changes. The Manmohan Singh government showed further support for international trade through the achievement of two key foreign trade policy objectives in 2004: (1) to double India’s percentage share of global merchandize trade in a five-year period; and (2) to use trade expansion for both employment generation and economic growth.31 To expand upon these objectives, the government established several Special Economic Zones (SEZ Act, 2005) in 2006 to attract foreign and domestic investment. Companies operating in these zones receive significant tax benefits and face much simpler clearance and compliance procedures. India’s worldwide trade is linked to the world economy. For example, with the recession hitting most of India’s major trading partners like the United States, United Arab Emirates, and Singapore, export demand from India declined by 16 percent in January 2009.32 KEY INDUSTRIES India boasts a technical work force of 4 million and trains 60,000 software engineers every year.33 Combined with lower wages, these factors make India a prime source for information technology (IT) services and a choice business process outsourcing (BPO) destination. In turn, large-scale employment in the IT and BPO sectors has helped to create an upwardly mobile working class, driving increased purchasing/spending power for India’s younger generations. India’s economic climate is highly dependent on the oil industry, which until recently has been closely regulated by the national government. An FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) report found a strong positive correlation between the price of oil and commodity prices across different sectors of the Indian economy (with the exception of manufacturing, see Exhibit 5). This was largely due to the fact that political pressures ensured that the government absorbed a large part of the increase in oil prices. Public sector oil companies reported losses of approximately US$ 28 million per day on the sale of petroleum products at government-mandated prices. The government offset these losses by selling oil bonds, providing crude oil to state-owned oil retailers at discounted rates, and making periodic adjustments in retail oil prices.34 In June 2010, the Indian government made a surprising announcement that it plans to deregulate the oil industry. This move is expected to drastically reduce India’s fiscal deficit by shifting increased oil costs to the end consumer, and level the playing field between public and private sector oil companies. TRANSPORTATION SECTOR Transportation in India has undergone rapid development only in the last two decades. The onus of covering 1,269,210 square miles of land area and supporting a population of more than one billion (1,028,737,436) people makes the sustainable development of India’s transportation sector difficult.35 The Eleventh Five-Year plan, which detailed the latest plans for the Indian economy, projected that $500 billion was needed to achieve comprehensive growth in aviation, roads, railways, and waterways combined. The plan also proposed mobilization of resources from the private sector to complement government efforts. India has 2.1 million miles of roadways that carry 80 percent of its total passengers and 65 percent of India’s freight (see Exhibit 6). As of 2000, roughly 74 percent of India’s rural population lacked adequate road access, while 40 percent of the existing roads lacked all-weather capability. As a result, the government plans to invest $70 billion in India’s road infrastructure over the next few years;36 $33 million has been dedicated to providing rural connectivity.37 Developmental projects such as the Golden Quadrilateral Project are helping link India’s four major metropolises (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai), while the Prime Minister’s Rural Roads Program (PMGSY) aims to provide increased access to agricultural communities. India’s civil aviation industry was born in 1912 with the first air flight between Karachi and Delhi (see Exhibit 7). The government monopolized the industry for most of the 20th century through the state-owned Air India and Indian Airlines Corporation, until the passage of the “open sky” policy in April 1990 (effective as of 1994). Under “open sky,” airlines could receive foreign direct investment of up to 49 percent, opening the market to a host of new players like Jet Airways and Sahara. Deccan Airlines was started by Captain Gopinath in August 2003 as a no-frills budget air service, becoming the first in the industry to fly to second-tier cities from major metropolitan areas.38 However, after an initial period of rapid growth, the Indian airline industry fizzled around 2007. Today, the industry operates at 6 fares below its costs and is weighed down by huge debt. When oil prices hit $75 a barrel in early 2009, the industry as a whole was expected to post a $9 billion loss. Major carriers like Indian, Jet, and Sahara have been forced to turn their full-service businesses into budget fleets by cutting down on frills, due to the government’s refusal to provide bailouts. While passenger airlines are suffering, the government has increased the maximum level of foreign direct investment in cargo carriers from 49 percent to 74 percent in order to attract overseas players to increase their network in India.39 Research for Air Cargo India 2010 indicates that air cargo now comprises 19 percent of the total freight in India—the same amount as ocean and rail freight combined. Overall, aviation is expected to grow at a rate close to 25 percent in the next decade. Air cargo is expected to post a CAGR of 11.2 percent, expanding to more than three times its present size by 2025. Currently, India has 126 functional airports, 12 of which are international and are managed by the Airport Authority of India (5 of these have been privatized for development). Pricing in the industry is directly dependent on high sales taxes on aviation turbine fuel (ATF) and high airport charges. Players in the industry also face major challenges in acquiring land, developing infrastructure, and other issues such as environmental clearance. India’s first rail line was set up as an experimental line during the Madras Presidency in 1836. Later, the British government encouraged development of a railway system to haul construction materials around the country, securing 9 million pounds from British companies in guarantees. In 1951, the Indian Railway was nationalized and integrated into one unit to form one of the largest rail networks in the world. Today, it has more than 7,500 railway stations connected by tracks spanning 39,233 miles that, most importantly, reach both metropolitan cities and rural villages.40 Railroads in India carry over a million tons of freight every day (see Exhibit 8). India has 12 major seaports, which account for about 90 percent of India’s trade in terms of volume.41 Inland, the presence of canals, rivers, backwaters, and creeks has facilitated the development of an extensive waterway network, maintained by the Inland Waterways Authority of India. Ten of these inland waterways have potential significance at the national level. Although close to 5,700 miles can be used by mechanized crafts, freight transportation is limited to only 0.1 percent of the total inland traffic in India. The volume of cargo carried by Inland Waterways Transport has been declining consistently in recent years in favor of alternative modes of transportation.42 Nevertheless, future development of the inland waterway system could bring economic as well as environmental advantages, and under some conditions, may be the only feasible mode of carrying cargo. Logistics Industry in India A World Bank research paper sums up the Indian economic climate as having “a highly fragmented service industry. Outdated regulations, heavy government control, a constrained private sector, and largely inadequate infrastructure have curtailed efforts to improve trade logistics.”43 Despite these obstacles, the World Bank projects that the Indian logistics industry will grow at an annual rate of 15 percent to 20 percent, achieving revenues of $385 billion by 2015.44 By 2013, approximately 110 logistics parks and 45,000,000 square feet of warehousing space are expected to be developed across the country by various logistics companies (see Exhibit 9). Tier-2 and tier-3 cities have become favorable destinations due to the availability of large pieces of land at lower prices, connectivity to multiple markets, and the proximity to industrial clusters. Such improvements in logistics capabilities could potentially spur national GDP growth to 11 to 12 percent (see Exhibit 10). Impediments to the development of the Indian logistics industry include government bureaucracy, a fragmented market structure, and inadequate infrastructure. Indian bureaucracy remains a quagmire; it takes about 20 days to clear import and export cargo at India’s ports, while the same process takes only 4 days on average in Singapore. Smaller players form a major part of the industry, and they are typically characterized by low capacity and poor technology. Meanwhile, the power supply is erratic and subject to prolonged outages in many parts of the country. All of these inefficiencies lead to increased costs. Compared to European countries, rail transportation in India costs about three times more and the average transit time by road is about three times longer. Airport charges and related operating expenses are the major contributors to the cost structure in the aviation segment, while shipping is plagued by high operating expenses, staff cost and depreciation.45 In the Indian context, operating expenses generally exceed the costs of raw materials (see Exhibit 11). A study by Cygnus Business Consulting and Research listed three main growth drivers for the Indian logistics industry in the near future. Since transportation accounts for over 40 percent of the total cost of production in India, growth in quality physical infrastructure is essential for improving the efficiency of the industry.46 Secondly, the introduction of a Value Added Tax (VAT), a consumption tax levied on any value that is added to a product, has led to increased demand for integrated logistics solutions.47 Manufacturers are seeking to reduce the number of independent warehouses spread over various regions to minimize unnecessary handling and processing (and thus their VAT burden). Lastly, globalization in the manufacturing sector has highlighted the need to integrate fragmented and independently operated functions (for example, transportation, warehousing, freight forwarding, and so on) in order to achieve greater efficiency (see Exhibit 12).48 Despite strong potential, the Indian logistics sector currently comprises only about 2 percent of the estimated $5,000 billion global logistics industry. Another potential growth driver is e-commerce and the associated increase in demand for shipping larger volumes of small packages direct to consumers. Online retailing has been somewhat slow to develop in India due to the lack of infrastructure. Many of the country’s rural population of 700 million still lack Internet access, though Comat Technologies is actively working to establish Internet centers in villages with populations of more than 5,000. Other project collaborators include ICICI Bank, India’s second-largest private bank, and Wyse Technologies, a manufacturer of computer terminal equipment.49 Another barrier is that Indians value a personalized shopping experience and are not as discount-driven as the American consumer. Credit card transactions in India are not as secure as they are in other countries. Nevertheless, many analysts expect that India will warm up to the idea of Internet shopping as the technology infrastructure improves. UPS in the Asia–Pacific Region UPS entered the Asia–Pacific market in 1986, by setting up a regional headquarters in Singapore. Today, the company’s presence in the Asia–Pacific region spans more than 40 countries and territories, and employs more than 13,300 people. Additional air hubs are located in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Shanghai, China. UPS’s initial foray into India was its 2005 partnership with Jet Air. This agreement led to the opening of the first “UPS Store” in Mumbai, which also marked the brand’s first expansion outside North America. The UPS Store was India’s first full-service retail outlet to offer shipping, packaging, and other business services under one roof. Speaking at the official opening of a UPS Store in New Delhi 8 in 2007, David Abney, then President of UPS International said, “India’s role in the global economy continues to grow impressively . . . ‘The UPS Store’ will provide businesses as well as consumers a convenient channel to markets throughout the world.”50 To better consolidate business processes and gain faster, more cost-effective outputs in India, UPS established a second alliance with AFL Private Ltd in 2008. AFL is a logistics service provider with a significant footprint in India. The alliance was mutually beneficial: UPS gained access to 130 of AFL’s field stocking locations and increased its number of access points for international delivery customers from 26 to 200, while AFL gained access to UPS’s export capabilities. UPS’s penetration into the Asian markets deepened further with the incorporation of 101 additional field stocking locations in China into UPS’s service parts logistics network.51, 52 Globally, UPS maintains 1,000 such distribution centers to provide customer inventory and order management services in addition to core packaging services. Some of those facilities also house specialized contract services such as technical diagnostics and repair. UPS continues to form alliances and collaborations with other local Asian companies to target different segments. For example, in May 2010, UPS formed an alliance with AliExpress, a subsidiary of the China-based Alibaba group. AliExpress is the world leader in e-commerce for small businesses and hosts the world’s largest base of suppliers in the segment.53 Jordan Colletta, VP of E-commerce and Marketing at UPS, explained the purpose of the agreement as follows: “Through our alliance with Alibaba, we hope to partner with more small and mid-sized Chinese businesses to simplify their logistics processes and connect them with new buyers and sellers worldwide.”54 Less than one month later, UPS formed another alliance with PosLaju, the leader in the Malaysian domestic courier business with a 27 percent market share. Together, the companies created PosLaju International Premium, which boasts money-back guaranteed overnight international delivery service to 215 Asian locations.55 Competition in India India was proving to be one of the more difficult Asian markets to penetrate due to the sheer number of competitors. Currently, the subcontinent boasts more than 2,500 parcel carriers and courier services, all competing to differentiate themselves based on cost, speed, and territorial coverage. Larger players have a clear advantage with respect to infrastructure, business-consumer interface, and speed of delivery. Smaller or more local firms tend to have better access to local information and ease of penetration at the domestic level (see Exhibit 13 for market share data, Exhibit 14 for performance metrics, and Exhibit 15 for key success factors, respectively). These different approaches are reflected in their respective investments in information systems: larger firms devote close to 20 percent of their development funds to information technology, compared to just over 7 percent for smaller firms. Blue Dart-DHL Express is the clear market leader in both the international and domestic segments, with a combined market share three times higher than that of the nearest competitor.56 Prior to its acquisition by DHL, Blue Dart had an 8 percent share in the non-document cargo and road freight sector. The next largest competitor in the international segment is TNT, which has double the market share of FedEx and UPS.57 AFL, GATI, and First Flight are Blue Dart-DHL’s main challengers in the domestic sector. See Exhibit 16 for a comparison of the stock performance of some of these key competitors. Started in 1989, GATI has become a leader in express cargo delivery. With operations touching 603 out of 611 districts in India, GATI is one of the most sought-after freight carriers in the country.58 The company covers 200,000 miles every day and claims to have brought India and the world closer by virtue of their “deeply entrenched network and domain knowledge.” In recent years, GATI has diversified both its services and its geographic reach. GATI now offers distribution and supply chain management solutions as well as delivery services, and has spread across the Asian subcontinent. While expanding its international presence through the establishment of offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, and Sri Lanka, GATI continues to develop highly focused expertise in India-centric operations. Of course, all of these private companies also compete against the Indian Department of Posts, the government-run postal service. The Department of Posts has the largest network of post boxes in the world, and close to 90 percent of this network spans rural India. The Department also offers express delivery through its Emergency Mail Service (EMS), which comprises 13 percent of the express market share in India.59 The Post Office (Amendment) Bill of 2006 gives the Department a monopoly in the delivery of small letters and packages (weighing less than 0.66 lbs), limits foreign direct investment in the industry to 49 percent, and requires all private carriers to participate in an expensive and cumbersome registration system. Every registered service provider with a turnover of $50,000 or more is required to deposit 10 percent of its annual turnover to a Universal Service Obligation Fund (USO Fund).60 Despite its legal mandate, a survey of users of delivery services carried out by the Indian Institute of Management revealed that 60 percent of consumers did not use India Post. The 40 percent that did use it sent only letters or documents (but not packages). For all other shipments, customers preferred express delivery service providers for their reliability and accountability. What Lies Ahead? At the end of the day, Ms. Page gathered up the remaining reports, shut down her computer, and headed out to her car. She figured she’d catch up on some more “light” reading once she got home. At least she was starting to feel like she had a better sense of what UPS had done thus far, as well as some of the obstacles the company faced if they were to penetrate the Indian market more deeply. How could they take advantage of India’s growth potential? Did UPS’s strategy of promising delivery to “every address” in their area of reach make business sense in the Indian context? Was it possible to overcome the numerous challenges that this highly regulated yet underdeveloped economy presented? Which global strategy should they apply? Could they decentralize decision making and adopt a strategy that would make it easier to incorporate the diverse local conditions of India? Which segment would prove to be most profitable: business-to-business, consumer-to-consumer, or the emerging business-to-consumer channel? How quickly would the advent of the new “credit-card generation” change the scope of e-commerce in the country? Once they decided what activities to pursue, what was the best means of accomplishing UPS’s business objectives? Could they use their current strongholds to grow organically, or would additional alliances be a better way to go? Perhaps they should follow the model of DHL and pursue an acquisition instead. The dynamic business environment in India surely needed a dynamic strategy, and it was up to Ms. Page to figure out how to proceed from here. . . . EXHIBIT 1 UPS Income Statement (U.S. $ in millions) Years Ended December 31, Revenue $49,545 $45,297 $51,486 $49,692 Operating Expenses: Compensation and benefits 26,324 25,640 26,063 31,745 Repairs and maintenance 1,131 1,075 1,194 1,157 Depreciation and amortization 1,792 1,747 1,814 1,745 Purchased transportation 6,640 5,379 6,550 5,902 Fuel 2,972 2,365 4,134 2,974 Other occupancy 939 985 1,027 958 Other expenses 3,873 4,305 5,322 4,633 Total Operating Expenses 43,671 41,496 46,104 49,114 Operating Profit 5,874 3,801 5,382 578 Other Income and (Expense): Investment income 3 10 75 99 Interest expense (354) (445) (442) (246) Total Other Income and (Expense) (351) (435) (367) (147) Income Before Income Taxes 5,523 3,366 5,015 431 Income Tax Expense 2,035 1,214 2,012 49 Net Income 3,488 2,152 3,003 382 Basic Earnings Per Share Cash and cash equivalents $ 3,370 $ 1,542 $ 507 $ 2,027 Marketable securities 711 558 542 577 Accounts receivable, net 5,627 5,369 5,547 6,084 Finance receivables, net 203 287 480 468 Deferred income tax assets 659 585 494 606 Income taxes receivable 287 266 167 1,256 Other current assets 712 668 1,108 742 Total Current Assets 11,569 9,275 8,845 11,760 Property, Plant and Equipment, Net 17,387 17,979 18,265 17,663 Goodwill 2,081 2,089 1,986 2,577 Intangible Assets, Net 599 596 511 628 Non-Current Finance Receivables, Net 288 337 476 431 Other Non-Current Assets 1,673 1,607 1,796 5,983 Total Assets $33,597 $31,883 $31,879 $39,042 LIABILITIES AND SHAREOWNERS’ EQUITY Current maturities of long-term debt and commercial paper $ 355 $ 853 $ 2,074 $ 3,512 Accounts payable 1,974 1,766 1,855 1,819 Accrued wages and withholdings 1,505 1,416 1,436 1,414 Self-insurance reserves 725 757 732 704 Other current liabilities 1,343 1,447 1,720 2,391 Total Current Liabilities 5,902 6,239 7,817 9,840 Long-Term Debt 10,491 8,668 7,797 7,506 Pension and Postretirement Benefit Obligations 4,663 5,457 6,323 4,438 Deferred Income Tax Liabilities 1,870 1,293 588 2,620 Self-Insurance Reserves 1,809 1,732 1,710 1,651 Other Non-Current Liabilities 815 798 864 804 Shareowners’ Equity: Class A common stock (285 and 314 shares issued in 2009 and 2008) 3 3 3 3 Class B common stock (711 and 684 shares issued in 2009 and 2008) 7 7 7 7 Additional paid-in capital — 2 — — Retained earnings 14,164 12,745 12,412 14,186 Accumulated other comprehensive loss (6,195) (5,127) (5,642) (2,013) IT 2 (Continued) Source: Barron’s Magazine, 2009. Source: SEC.gov. IT 4 The Top 10 Global Logistics Companies 2008 Revenues Rank Company (million US$) Base Country Coverage 1 DHL Logistics $39,900 Germany Global 2 Kuehne + Nagel 20,220 Switzerland Global 3 DB Schenker Logistics 12,503 Germany Global 4 Geodis 9,700 France Global 5 CEVA Logistics 9,523 Netherlands Global 6 Panalpina 8,394 Switzerland Global 7 Altadis/Logista 8,190 United Kingdom Europe 8 C.H. Robinson Worldwide 7,130 USA Global 9 Agility Logistics 6,316 Kuwait Global 10 UPS Supply Chain Solutions 6,293 USA Global Source: Traffic World, 2009. EXHIBIT 5 The Impact of Oil Prices on Various Factors International $50 38.9 2.1 0.4 1.5 60 66.7 9.7 1.9 3.6 70 94.2 16.9 3.4 5.7 80 122.2 24.5 4.9 7.9 Source: Study on oil price impact, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry. IT 6 The Road Network in India, Showing Major Warehouse Hubs Source: Cygnus Research and Consulting. IT 8 The Rail Network of India Source: http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Rail-transport-in-India IT 9 Warehouse Capacity Plans of 3PL Players in India (in millions of square feet) Company Current Capacity Planned Capacity Expected by Year TCI 7.5 10.0 2010 DRS Logistics 1.5 5.0 2010 Indo Arya 2.0 3.5 2010 Blue Dart 1.0 2.0 2010 Gati 1.0 2.0 2009 Micro & Small Companies (78 responses) All Companies (133 responses) Independent Type of p-value Independent Type of p-value variable relationship variable relationship Customer acquisition Breadth of services ” 0.009 Coverage ” 0.000 Industry focus – 0.015 Experience ” 0.000 Experience ” 0.015 Human resources ” 0.003 Grographic reach Coverage ” 0.005 Coverage ” 0.001 Industry focus ” 0.004 Industry focus – 0.003 Reputation ” 0.038 Investment in assets ” 0.001 Client relations – 0.006 Integration of services ” 0.000 Source: A Survey of Indian Express Delivery Providers, IIMC. EXHIBIT 15 Comparative Study of Key Success Factors Cluster No. of Observations 78 15 7 Key Success Factor Rank % Rank % Rank % Door-to-door service 1 97.44 1 100 8 85.71 On-time delivery & reliablity 1 97.44 2 93.33 1 100 Coverage (national/international) 6 55.13 7 80 1 100 Breadth of service offerings 11 15.38 9 60 1 100 Focus on specific industries 12 11.54 14 6.67 13 57.14 Experience of service provider 5 88.46 2 93.33 11 71.43 Reputation of service provider 3 93.59 2 93.33 1 100 Competitive pricing of services 4 92.31 8 73.33 8 85.71 Extension of credit facilities 6 55.13 12 40 14 28.57 Relationship with customers 8 53.85 5 86.67 8 85.71 Investment in assets 12 11.54 11 46.67 1 100 Investment in information systems 9 38.46 5 86.67 1 100 Quality of human resources 9 38.46 10 53.33 11 71.43 Integration of services 14 5.13 13 26.67 1 100 Source: A Survey of Indian Express Delivery Providers, IIMC. IT 16 Comparative Study: Domestic vs. Global Market Source: UPS form 10K, Annual Report filed February 27, 2009. Endnotes 1. Mitra, S. (2009), “A survey of Indian express delivery service providers,” Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, May. 2. Berg, Eric N. (1985), “United Parcel extends its reach,” The New York Times, June 9. 3. www.ups.com/content/corp/about/history/1929.html. 4. Hess, E. D., and R. Kazanjian (2006), The search for organic growth. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 5. www.ups.com/content/corp/about/history/1929.html. 6. “Company history; About UPS,” UPS.com, www.ups.com/content/corp/about/history/1980.html?WT. svl=SubNav. 7. www.pressroom.ups.com/About+UPS/Company+History/. 9. “Company history; About UPS,” UPS.com, www.ups.com/content/corp/about/history/1990.html?WT. svl=SubNav. 10. Ibid. 11. “Teamsters end UPS strike,” CNN.com, www.cnn.com/US/9708/20/ups.update.early/. 12. Leonhardt, D. (1999), “Returns to senders; Snail mail: It’s alive! And it’s mutating!” The New York Times, November 14, www.nytimes.com/1999/11/14/weekinreview/returns-to-senders-snail-mail-it-s-alive-and-it-smutating.html?ref=united_parcel_service_inc. 13. Hess, E. D., and R. Kazanjian (2006), “The search for organic growth.” 14. www.ups.com/content/corp/about/history/1999.html?WT.svl=SubNav. 15. Hess, E. D., and R. Kazanjian (2006), “The search for organic growth.” 16. UPS Media Kit, www.underconsideration.com/speakup_v2/ups_media_kit.pdf. 17. Hesseldahl, A. (2004), “Toshiba will have UPS fix its laptops,” Forbes.com, www.forbes.com/2004/04/27/ cx_ah_0427ups.html. 18. “Company history; About UPS,” UPS.com, www.ups.com/content/corp/about/history/2002.html?WT. svl=SubNav. 19. “The UPS store debuts more than 3,000 strong,” The UPSStore.com Pressroom, www.theupsstore.com/about/ pressroom/pages/040703_press_release.aspx. 20. Hess, E. D., and R. Kazanjian (2006), “The search for organic growth.” 21. “United Parcel Service,” Wikipedia.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Parcel_Service. 22. Hudson, S., “Success with hub and spoke distribution,” Supply Chain Management, NCSU, http://scm. ncsu.edu/public/lessons/less031014.html. 23. “FedEx announces domestic express services in China,” 2007 Press Releases, Fedex.com, http://fedex.com/ cn_english/about/pressreleases/20070320_507.html. 24. “Company history; About UPS,” UPS.com, www.ups.com/content/corp/about/history/. 25. UPS CEO Scott Davis in a 2009 CNBC interview, http://video.msn.com/?mkt=enus&brand=money&vid=372a9fb9-1195-4a1c-93aa-1ad61bd526e4&playlist=videoByTag:tag:mo ney_top_investing:ns:MSNmoney_Gallery:mk:us:vs:1&from=MSNmoney_ticker&tab=s216. 26. PM’s address to Joint Session of the DIET, Press Information Bureau (India), December 14, 2006, www.pib. nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=23318. 27. Balogh, M. (2007), “Significant growth is crucial for India’s economy,” January 10, Credit Suisse, http:// emagazine.credit-suisse.com/app/article/index.cfm?fuseaction=OpenArticle&aoid=200210&lang=EN. 28. “India GDP growth rate,” TradingEconomics, July 5, 2010, www.tradingeconomics.com/Economics/GDPGrowth.aspx?Symbol=INR. 29. “UPS snapshot for small businesses: Doing business in India,” http://pressroom.ups.com/pressroom/staticfiles/pdf/fact_sheets/India_Snapshot_for_Small_Businesses.pdf. 30. Williamson, J. (2006), “The Rise of The Indian Economy,” www.unc.edu, May 11, www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2006/0406/will/williamson_india.html. 31. Sharma, A. (2009), “India’s Foreign Trade Policy 2009–2014,” November 2, The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel, www.metrocorpcounsel.com/current.php?artType=view&EntryNo=10306. 32. ENAM Securities Logistics Update, March 2009. 33. “India information,” Embassy of India, www.indianembassy.org/indiainfo/india_it.htm. 34. “Deregulation of oil prices—Yet another endeavor,” IndiQuest, http://indiquest.wordpress. com/2009/06/30/deregulation-of-oil-prices-yet-another-endeavor/. 35. “Transport in India,” Wikipedia.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_India. 36. “Indian road network,” Wikipedia.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Road_Network. 37. “Rural roads—A lifeline for villages in India,” World Bank Publication, http://web.worldbank.org/ WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/SOUTHASIAEXT/EXTSARREGTOPTRANSPORT/0,,contentMDK:217557 38. “Kingfisher Red,” Wikipedia.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingfisher_Red. 39. “Research for Aircargo India 2010,” www.stattimes.com/aci2010/. 40. “Indian Railways Information System,” www.indianrail.gov.in/abir.html. 41. “India: Transport and communications,” The Economist, June 24, 2008, www.eiu.com/index. asp?layout=VWPrintVW3&article_id=1113483696&printer=printer&rf=0. 42. “Inland waterway transport,” United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific,www.unescap.org/ttdw/Publications/TPTS_pubs/pub_2307/pub_2307_ch11.pdf. 43. Peters, H. J., “India’s growing conflict between trade and transport,” Infrastructure and Urban Development Department, The World Bank, January 1990, www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/ WDSContentServer/IW3P/IB/2000/02/24/000009265_3960929153437/Rendered/PDF/multi_page.pdf. 44. www.tcil.com/pdfiifr/TCILar09_09_07_09.pdf. 45. Hesseldahl, A. (2004), “Toshiba will have UPS fix its laptops.” 46. Cygnus Business Consulting and Research Pvt Limited, Quarterly Performance Analysis of Companies (January– March 2009), Indian Logistics Industry. 47. “Value added tax,” Wikipedia.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_added_tax. 48. www.tcil.com/pdfiifr/TCILar09_09_07_09.pdf. 49. Markoff, J. (2005), “Plan to connect rural India to the Internet,” The New York Times, June 16, www.nytimes. com/2005/06/16/technology/16compute.html. 50. “First of its kind, one-stop retail outlet offers full range of business services to North India,” press release, UPS.com, www.ups.com/content/in/en/about/news/press_releases/new_delhi_ups_store.html. 51. Peters, H. J., “India’s growing conflict between trade and transport.” 52. “UPS increases FSL presence in China,” Post and Parcel, http://postandparcel.info/30941/markets/ ups-increases-fsl-presence-in-china/. 53. Home page, Alibaba.com, http://news.alibaba.com/specials/aboutalibaba/index.html. 54. “UPS teams with AliExpress,” Atlanta Business Chronicle, May 3, 2010, http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/ atlanta/stories/2010/05/03/daily23.html. 55. “PosLaju and UPS form alliance, The New York Times, July 5, 2010, http://markets.on.nytimes.com/research/ stocks/news/press_release.asp?docTag=201006031000BIZWIRE_USPRX____BW5289&feedID=600&press_symbol=277628. 56. Mitra, S. (2009), “A survey of Indian express delivery service providers.” 57. “Fast-growing Indian express market set for further consolidation,” press release, CEP Research, https:// www.cep-research.com/export/sites/default/cepresearch/pages/custom/press_release_articles/PI_06-09-21CEP-Research.pdf. 58. These facts were collected in an author’s interview with logistics industry expert Supratem Ganguly. 59. Mitra, S. (2009), “A survey of Indian express delivery service providers.” 60. “India together,” www.indiatogether.org/2006/aug/law-poffice.htm.	i don't know
Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha are the two what of India?	OUR PARLIAMENT (29) Andaman & Nicobar Islands 1 (30) Chandigarh 1 (31) Dadra & Nagar Haveli 1 (32) Daman & Diu 1 (33) NCT of Delhi 7 (34) Lakshadweep 1 (36) Anglo-Indians (if nominated 2 by the President under Article 331 of the Constitution) RAJYA SABHA Rajya Sabha is the Upper House of Parliament. It has not more than 250 members. Members of Rajya Sabha are not elected by the people directly but indirectly by the Legislative Assemblies of the various States. Every State is allotted a certain number of members. No member of Rajya Sabha can be under 30 years of age. Twelve of Rajya Sabha members are nominated by the President from persons who have earned distinction in the fields of literature, art, science and social service. Rajya Sabha is a permanent body. It is not subject to dissolution but one-third of its members retire every two years. Rajya Sabha was duly constituted for the first time on April 3, 1952 and it held its first sitting on May 13, that year. There are at present 245 members in Rajya Sabha, distributed among different States and Union Territories as follows: (1) Andhra Pradesh 18 (29) NCT of Delhi 3 (30) Pondicherry 1 (31) Nominated by the President under 12 Article 80(1)(a) of the Constitution Presiding Officers Lok Sabha elects one of its own members as its Presiding Officer and he is called the Speaker. He is assisted by the Deputy Speaker who is also elected by Lok Sabha. The conduct of business in Lok Sabha is the responsibility of the Speaker. The Vice-President of India is the ex-officio Chairman of Rajya Sabha. He is elected by the members of an electoral college consisting of members of both Houses of Parliament. Rajya Sabha also elects one of its members to be the Deputy Chairman. Functions of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha The main function of both the Houses is to pass laws. Every Bill has to be passed by both the Houses and assented to by the President before it becomes law. The subjects over which Parliament can legislate are the subjects mentioned under the Union List in the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution of India. Broadly speaking, Union subjects are those important subjects which for reasons of convenience, efficiency and security are administered on all-India basis. The principal Union subjects are Defence, Foreign Affairs, Railways, Transport and Communications, Currency and Coinage, Banking, Customs and Excise Duties. There are numerous other subjects on which both Parliament and State Legislatures can legislate. Under this category mention may be made of economic and social planning, social security and insurance, labour welfare, price control and vital statistics. Besides passing laws, Parliament can by means of resolutions, motions for adjournment, discussions and questions addressed by members to Ministers exercise control over the administration of the country and safeguard peopleï¿½s liberties. Difference between Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha (1) Members of Lok Sabha are directly elected by the eligible voters. Members of Rajya Sabha are elected by the elected members of State Legislative Assemblies in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of single transferable vote. (2) The normal life of every Lok Sabha is 5 years only while Rajya Sabha is a permanent body. (3) Lok Sabha is the House to which the Council of Ministers is responsible under the Constitution. Money Bills can only be introduced in Lok Sabha. Also it is Lok Sabha which grants the money for running the administration of the country. (4) Rajya Sabha has special powers to declare that it is necessary and expedient in the national interest that Parliament may make laws with respect to a matter in the State List or to create by law one or more all-India services common to the Union and the States.	Palace of Westminster
The Indian city of Amritsar (also called Rāmdāspur and Ambarsar) is a main border crossing point to which other nation?	PARLIAMENT OF INDIA PARLIAMENT OF INDIA ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ The Constitution of India which came into force on 26 January 1950, provides for a bicameral Parliament consisting of the President and the two Houses known as the Council of States (Rajya Sabha) and the House of the People (Lok Sabha). The President ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ The President of the Republic is elected by an electoral college consisting of the elected members of both Houses of Parliament and the elected members of the Legislative Assemblies (popular Houses) of the States.ï¿½ Though the President of India is a constituent part of Parliament, he does not sit or participate in the discussions in either of the twoï¿½ Houses.ï¿½ There are certain constitutional functions which he has to perform with respect to Parliament.ï¿½ The President summons and prorogues the two Houses of Parliament from time to time.ï¿½ While the Rajya Sabha is a continuing body, the power to dissolve the Lok Sabha vests in the President.ï¿½ His assent is essential for a Bill passed by both Houses of Parliament.ï¿½ When the Parliament is not in Session and he is satisfied that circumstances exist which render it necessary for him to take immediate action, the President can promulgate Ordinances having the same force and effect as laws passed by Parliament. The Two Houses of Parliament Composition and Duration Council of States (Rajya Sabha) ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ The Rajya Sabha is to consist of not more than 250 members.ï¿½ Of these, 12 are nominated by the President for their special knowledge or practical experience in such matters as literature, science, art and social service.ï¿½ The remaining seats are allocated to the various States and Union territories, roughly in proportion to their population; each State is, however, represented by at least one member. The total number of seats in the Rajya Sabha at present is 245, including 12 members nominated by the President. ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ The representatives of each State in Rajya Sabha are elected by the elected members of the Legislative Assembly of the State in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of single transferable vote. The representatives of the Union territories are chosen in such manner as Parliament may by law prescribe.ï¿½ The minimum age for membership of the House is 30 years. The allocation of seats in the Rajya Sabha to be filled by the representatives of the States/Union territoriesï¿½ is as follows: Name of the State/Union Territory Total Number of Seats 29. The National Capital Territory of Delhi 30. Pondicherry 31. Nominated by the President under article 80 (1) (a) of the Constitution 18 Total 245 ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ The Rajya Sabha is not subject to dissolution, but as nearly as possible, one-third of its members retire as soon as may be on the expiration of every second year in accordance with the provisions made in that behalf by Parliament by law.ï¿½ The normal term of office of a member of Rajya Sabha is six years from the date of election or nomination. House of the People (Lok Sabha) ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ The Lok Sabha, as the name itself signifies, is composed of representatives of the people chosen by direct election on the basis of adult suffrage.ï¿½ The maximum strength of the House envisaged by the Constitution is 552 ï¿½ upto 530 members to represent the States, upto 20 members to represent the Union territories and not more than two members of the Anglo-Indian Community to be nominated by the President if, in his opinion, that community is not adequately represented in the House.ï¿½ The total elective membership of the House is distributed among the States in such a way that the ratio between the number of seats allotted to each State and the population of the State is, so far as practicable, the same for all States.ï¿½ The qualifying age for membership of the Lok Sabha is 25 years.ï¿½ The Lok Sabha at present consists of 545 members.ï¿½ The allocation of seats to the States and the Union territoriesï¿½ is as under: ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ Total 545 ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ The Lok Sabha, unless sooner dissolved, continues for five years from the date appointed for its first meeting and the expiration of the period of five years operates as dissolution of the House.ï¿½ However, while a Proclamation of Emergency is in operation, this period may be extended by Parliament by law for a period not exceeding one year at a time and not exceeding in any case beyond a period of six months after the Proclamation has ceased to operate. ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ Following the first General Elections held in the country in 1952, the First Lok Sabha met for the first time on 13 May 1952. The Second Lok Sabha met for the first time onï¿½ 10 May 1957, the Third Lok Sabha onï¿½ 16 April 1962, the Fourth Lok Sabha onï¿½ 16 Marchï¿½ 1967, the Fifth Lok Sabha on 19 March 1971, the Sixth Lok Sabha on 25 March 1977, the Seventh Lok Sabha onï¿½ 21 January 1980, the Eighth Lok Sabha on 15 January 1985, the Ninth Lok Sabha on 18 December 1989, the Tenth Lok Sabha on 9 July 1991, the Eleventh Lok Sabha on 22 May 1996, the Twelfth Lok Sabha on 23 March 1998, the Thirteenth Lok Sabha on 20 October 1999 and Fourteenth Lok Sabha on 2 June, 2004. Functions ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ The main function of both the Houses is to make laws. Every Bill has to be passed by both the Houses and assented to by the President before it becomes law. The subjects over which Parliament can legislate are the subjects mentioned under the Union List in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution of India. Broadly speaking, Union subjects are those important subjects which for reasons of convenience, efficiency and security are administered on all-lndia basis. The principal Union subjects are defence, foreign affairs, railways, insurance, communications, currency and coinage, banking, income tax, customs, excise duties, atomic energy, census, etc. Apart from the wide range of subjects allotted to it in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution, even in normal times Parliament can, under certain circumstances, assume legislative power over a subject falling within the sphere exclusively reserved for the States. Further, in times of grave emergency when the security of India or any part thereof is threatened by war or external aggression or armed rebellion, and a Proclamation of Emergency is made by the President, Parliament acquires the power to make laws for the whole or any part of the territory of India with respect to any of the matters enumerated in the State List.ï¿½ Similarly, in the event of the failure of the constitutional machinery in a State, the powers of the Legislature of that State become exercisable by or under the authority of Parliament. This apart, the Constitution also vests in the Parliament the constituent power or the power to initiate amendment of the Constitution. ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ Besides passing laws, Parliament can by means of resolutions, motions for adjournment, discussions, questions addressed by members to Ministers, system of committees, etc., exercise control over the administration of the country and safeguard people's liberties. Relative Roles ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ As between the two Houses, the Lok Sabha has supremacy in financial matters. It is also the House to which the Council of Ministers drawn from both Houses is collectively responsible.ï¿½ ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ On the other hand, the Rajya Sabha has a special role in enabling Parliament to legislate on a State subject if it is necessary in the national interest.ï¿½ It has a similarï¿½ power in regard to the creation of an All-India Service common to the Union and the States.ï¿½ In other respects, the Constitution proceeds on a theory of equality of status of the two Houses. ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ Disagreement between the two Houses on amendments to a Bill may be resolved by both the Houses meeting in a joint sitting where questions are decided by majority vote.ï¿½ However, this provision of joint sitting does not apply to Money Bills and Constitution Amendment Bills. The Presiding Officers ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ Each House ofï¿½ Parliament has its own Presiding Officers.ï¿½ In the Lok Sabha, both the Presiding Officers, i.e. the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker are elected from amongst its members.ï¿½ In the Rajya Sabha, the Vice-President of India is the ex officio Chairman.ï¿½ He is elected by the members of an electoral college consisting of the members of both the Houses of Parliament in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of a single transferable vote.ï¿½ The Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha is, however, elected by the members of the Rajya Sabha from amongst themselves. Leader of the House ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ Each House ofï¿½ Parliament has a Leader.ï¿½ The Prime Minister, who is the Leader of the majority party in the Lok Sabha, functions as the Leader of the House in the Lok Sabha except when he is not a member of the Lok Sabha. In the case, when the Prime Minister is not a member of the Lok Sabha, he appoints/nominates a Minister, who is a member of the Lok Sabha,ï¿½ to be the leader of the House in the Lok Sabha. The senior-most Minister, who is a member of the Rajya Sabha, is appointed by the Prime Minister as the Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha. Leader of the Opposition ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ ï¿½ Each House of Parliament has a Leader of the Opposition.ï¿½ The Salary and Allowances of Leaders of Opposition in Parliament Act, 1977 defines the term ï¿½Leader of the Oppositionï¿½ as that member of the Rajya Sabha or the Lok Sabha who, for the time being, is the Leader of that House of the Party in Opposition to the Governmentï¿½ having the greatest numerical strength and recognized,ï¿½ as such, by the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha or the Speaker of the Lok Sabha. Sessions ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ Normally, three Sessions of Parliament are held in a year: (i) Budget Session (February-May); (ii) Monsoon Session (July-August); and (iii) Winter Session (November-December).	i don't know
The first prime minister of India, regarded as architect of the modern Indian state, was Jawaharlal (Who?)	Jawaharlal Nehru - Prime Minister, Activist - Biography.com Jawaharlal Nehru Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi’s father, was a leader of India’s nationalist movement and became India’s first prime minister after its independence. IN THESE GROUPS The Nehru-Gandhi Dynasty - Full Episode (TV-14; 45:26) The life and work of activist and visionary Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi was the inspirational root of the Nehru political dynasty. They have maintained sovereignty for India at a high personal cost. Synopsis Jawaharlal Nehru was born on November 14, 1889, in Allahabad, India. In 1919, he joined the Indian National Congress and joined Indian Nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi’s independence movement. In 1947, Pakistan was created as a new, independent country for Muslims. The British withdrew and Nehru became independent India’s first prime minister. He died on May 27, 1964, in New Delhi, India. Pre-Political Life Jawaharlal Nehru was born in Allahabad, India in 1889. His father was a renowned lawyer and one of Mahatma Gandhi's notable lieutenants. A series of English governesses and tutors educated Nehru at home until he was 16. He continued his education in England, first at the Harrow School and then at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he earned an honors degree in natural science. He later studied law at the Inner Temple in London before returning home to India in 1912 and practicing law for several years. Four years later, Nehru married Kamala Kaul; their only child, Indira Priyadarshini, was born in 1917. Like her father, Indira would later serve as prime minister of India under her married name: Indira Gandhi. A family of high achievers, one of Nehru's sisters, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, later became the first woman president of the UN General Assembly. Entering Politics In 1919, while traveling on a train, Nehru overheard British Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer gloating over the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. The massacre, also known as the Massacre of Amritsar, was an incident in which 379 people were killed and at least 1,200 wounded when the British military stationed there continuously fired for ten minutes on a crowd of unarmed Indians. Upon hearing Dyer’s words, Nehru vowed to fight the British. The incident changed the course of his life. This period in Indian history was marked by a wave of nationalist activity and governmental repression. Nehru joined the Indian National Congress, one of India's two major political parties. Nehru was deeply influenced by the party's leader, Mahatma Gandhi. It was Gandhi's insistence on action to bring about change and greater autonomy from the British that sparked Nehru's interest the most. The British didn't give in easily to Indian demands for freedom, and in late 1921, the Congress Party's central leaders and workers were banned from operating in some provinces. Nehru went to prison for the first time as the ban took effect; over the next 24 years he was to serve a total of nine sentences, adding up to more than nine years in jail. Always leaning to the left politically, Nehru studied Marxism while imprisoned. Though he found himself interested in the philosophy but repelled by some of its methods, from then on the backdrop of Nehru's economic thinking was Marxist, adjusted as necessary to Indian conditions. Marching Toward Indian Independence In 1928, after years of struggle on behalf of Indian emancipation, Jawaharlal Nehru was named president of the Indian National Congress. (In fact, hoping that Nehru would attract India's youth to the party, Mahatma Gandhi had engineered Nehru's rise.) The next year, Nehru led the historic session at Lahore that proclaimed complete independence as India's political goal. November 1930 saw the start of the Round Table Conferences, which convened in London and hosted British and Indian officials working toward a plan of eventual independence. After his father's death in 1931, Nehru became more embedded in the workings of the Congress Party and became closer to Gandhi, attending the signing of the Gandhi-Irwin pact. Signed in March 1931 by Gandhi and the British viceroy Lord Irwin, the pact declared a truce between the British and India's independence movement. The British agreed to free all political prisoners and Gandhi agreed to end the civil disobedience movement he had been coordinating for years. Unfortunately, the pact did not instantly usher in a peaceful climate in British-controlled India, and both Nehru and Gandhi were jailed in early 1932 on charges of attempting to mount another civil disobedience movement. Neither man attended the third Round Table Conference. (Gandhi was jailed soon after his return as the sole Indian representative attending the second Round Table Conference.) The third and final conference did, however, result in the Government of India Act of 1935, giving the Indian provinces a system of autonomous government in which elections would be held to name provincial leaders. By the time the 1935 act was signed into law, Indians began to see Nehru as natural heir to Gandhi, who didn’t designate Nehru as his political successor until the early 1940s. Gandhi said in January 1941, "[Jawaharlal Nehru and I] had differences from the time we became co-workers and yet I have said for some years and say so now that ... Jawaharlal will be my successor." World War II At the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, British viceroy Lord Linlithgow committed India to the war effort without consulting the now-autonomous provincial ministries. In response, the Congress Party withdrew its representatives from the provinces and Gandhi staged a limited civil disobedience movement in which he and Nehru were jailed yet again. Nehru spent a little over a year in jail and was released with other Congress prisoners three days before Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese. When Japanese troops soon moved near the borders of India in the spring of 1942, the British government decided to enlist India to combat this new threat, but Gandhi, who still essentially had the reins of the movement, would accept nothing less than independence and called on the British to leave India. Nehru reluctantly joined Gandhi in his hardline stance and the pair were again arrested and jailed, this time for nearly three years. By 1947, within two years of Nehru's release, simmering animosity had reached a fever pitch between the Congress Party and the Muslim League, who had always wanted more power in a free India. The last British viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, was charged with finalizing the British roadmap for withdrawal with a plan for a unified India. Despite his reservations, Nehru acquiesced to Mountbatten and the Muslim League's plan to divide India, and in August 1947, Pakistan was created—the new country Muslim and India predominantly Hindu. The British withdrew and Nehru became independent India’s first prime minister. The First Prime Minister of Independent India Domestic Policy The importance of Jawaharlal Nehru in the context of Indian history can be distilled to the following points: he imparted modern values and thought, stressed secularism, insisted upon the basic unity of India, and, in the face of ethnic and religious diversity, carried India into the modern age of scientific innovation and technological progress. He also prompted social concern for the marginalized and poor and respect for democratic values. Nehru was especially proud to reform the antiquated Hindu civil code. Finally Hindu widows could enjoy equality with men in matters of inheritance and property. Nehru also changed Hindu law to criminalize caste discrimination. Nehru's administration established many Indian institutions of higher learning, including the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the Indian Institutes of Technology, and the National Institutes of Technology, and guaranteed in his five-year plans free and compulsory primary education to all of India's children. National Security and International Policy The Kashmir region—which was claimed by both India and Pakistan—was a perennial problem throughout Nehru's leadership, and his cautious efforts to settle the dispute ultimately failed, resulting in Pakistan making an unsuccessful attempt to seize Kashmir by force in 1948. The region has remained in dispute into the 21st century. Internationally, starting in the late 1940s, both the United States and the U.S.S.R. began seeking out India as an ally in the Cold War, but Nehru led efforts toward a "nonalignment policy," by which India and other nations wouldn’t feel the need to tie themselves to either dueling country to thrive. To this end, Nehru co-founded the Non-Aligned Movement of nations professing neutrality. Recognizing the People's Republic of China soon after its founding, and as a strong supporter of the United Nations, Nehru argued for China’s inclusion in the UN and sought to establish warm and friendly relations with the neighboring country. His pacifist and inclusive policies with respect to China came undone when border disputes led to the Sino-Indian war in 1962, which ended when China declared a ceasefire on November 20, 1962 and announced its withdrawal from the disputed area in the Himalayas. Legacy Nehru's four pillars of domestic policies were democracy, socialism, unity, and secularism, and he largely succeeded in maintaining a strong foundation of all four during his tenure as president. While serving his country, he enjoyed iconic status and was widely admired internationally for his idealism and statesmanship. His birthday, November 14, is celebrated in India as Baal Divas ("Children's Day") in recognition of his lifelong passion and work on behalf of children and young people. Nehru's only child, Indira, served as India's prime minister from 1966 to 1977 and from 1980 to 1984, when she was assassinated. Her son, Rajiv Gandhi, was prime minister from 1984 to 1989, when he was also assassinated. Videos	Jawaharlal Nehru
India became independent (of British colonial rule) in?	Jawaharlal Nehru - Wikipedia, Photos and Videos Jawaharlal Nehru NEXT GO TO RESULTS [51 .. 100] WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE 15 August 1947 – 27 May 1964 Monarch 31 October 1962 – 14 November 1962 Preceded by 30 January 1957 – 17 April 1957 Preceded by 10 February 1953 – 10 January 1955 Preceded by 13 February 1958 – 13 March 1958 Preceded by 24 July 1956 – 30 August 1956 Preceded by 15 August 1947 – 27 May 1964 Preceded by (now in Uttar Pradesh , India) Died 27 May 1964(1964-05-27) (aged 74) New Delhi, India listen ) ; 14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was the first Prime Minister of India and a central figure in Indian politics before and after independence. He emerged as the paramount leader of the Indian independence movement under the tutelage of Mahatma Gandhi and ruled India from its establishment as an independent nation in 1947 until his death in 1964. He is considered to be the architect of the modern Indian nation-state: a sovereign, socialist, secular, and democratic republic. He was also known as Pandit Nehru due to his roots with the Kashmiri Pandit community while many Indian children knew him as "Uncle Nehru" (Chacha Nehru). [2] [3] The son of Motilal Nehru , a prominent lawyer and nationalist statesman and Swaroop Rani, Nehru was a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge and the Inner Temple , where he trained to be a barrister . Upon his return to India, he enrolled at the Allahabad High Court , and took an interest in national politics, which eventually replaced his legal practice. A committed nationalist since his teenage years, he became a rising figure in Indian politics during the upheavals of the 1910s. He became the prominent leader of the left-wing factions of the Indian National Congress during the 1920s, and eventually of the entire Congress, with the tacit approval of his mentor, Gandhi. As Congress President in 1929, Nehru called for complete independence from the British Raj and instigated the Congress's decisive shift towards the left. Nehru and the Congress dominated Indian politics during the 1930s as the country moved towards independence. His idea of a secular nation-state was seemingly validated when the Congress, under his leadership, swept the 1937 provincial elections and formed the government in several provinces; on the other hand, the separatist Muslim League fared much poorer. But these achievements were seriously compromised in the aftermath of the Quit India Movement in 1942, which saw the British effectively crush the Congress as a political organisation. Nehru, who had reluctantly heeded Gandhi's call for immediate independence, for he had desired to support the Allied war effort during the Second World War , came out of a lengthy prison term to a much altered political landscape. The Muslim League under his old Congress colleague and now bête noire, Muhammad Ali Jinnah , had come to dominate Muslim politics in India. Negotiations between Nehru and Jinnah for power sharing failed and gave way to the independence and bloody partition of India in 1947. Nehru was elected by the Congress to assume office as independent India's first Prime Minister, although the question of leadership had been settled as far back as 1941, when Gandhi acknowledged Nehru as his political heir and successor. As Prime Minister, he set out to realise his vision of India. The Constitution of India was enacted in 1950, after which he embarked on an ambitious program of economic, social and political reforms. Chiefly, he oversaw India's transition from a colony to a republic, while nurturing a plural, multi-party democracy . In foreign policy, he took a leading role in Non-Alignment while projecting India as a regional hegemon in South Asia. Under Nehru's leadership, the Congress emerged as a catch-all party, dominating national and state-level politics and winning consecutive elections in 1951 , 1957 , and 1962 . He remained popular with the people of India in spite of political troubles in his final years and failure of leadership during the 1962 Sino-Indian War . In India, his birthday is celebrated as Children's Day . Contents Early life and career (1889–1912) Nehru in khaki uniform as a member of Seva Dal . Jawaharlal Nehru was born on 14 November 1889 in Allahabad in British India . His father, Motilal Nehru (1861–1931), a wealthy barrister who belonged to the Kashmiri Pandit community, [4] served twice as President of the Indian National Congress during the Independence Struggle . His mother, Swaruprani Thussu (1868–1938), who came from a well-known Kashmiri Brahmin family settled in Lahore , [5] was Motilal's second wife, the first having died in child birth. Jawaharlal was the eldest of three children, two of whom were girls. [6] The elder sister, Vijaya Lakshmi , later became the first female president of the United Nations General Assembly . [7] The youngest sister, Krishna Hutheesing , became a noted writer and authored several books on her brother. The Nehru family ca. 1890s Nehru described his childhood as a "sheltered and uneventful one". He grew up in an atmosphere of privilege at wealthy homes including a palatial estate called the Anand Bhawan . His father had him educated at home by private governesses and tutors. [8] Under the influence of a tutor, Ferdinand T. Brooks, he became interested in science and theosophy. [9] He was subsequently initiated into the Theosophical Society at age thirteen by family friend Annie Besant . However, his interest in theosophy did not prove to be enduring and he left the society shortly after Brooks departed as his tutor. [10] He wrote: "for nearly three years [Brooks] was with me and in many ways he influenced me greatly". [9] Nehru's theosophical interests had induced him to the study of the Buddhist and Hindu scriptures . [11] According to B.R. Nanda , these scriptures were Nehru's "first introduction to the religious and cultural heritage of [India]....[they] provided Nehru the initial impulse for [his] long intellectual quest which culminated...in The Discovery of India ." [11] Nehru became an ardent nationalist during his youth. The Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War intensified his feelings. About the latter he wrote, "[The] Japanese victories [had] stirred up my enthusiasm ... Nationalistic ideas filled my mind ... I mused of Indian freedom and Asiatic freedom from the thraldom of Europe." [9] Later when he had begun his institutional schooling in 1905 at Harrow , a leading school in England, he was greatly influenced by G.M. Trevelyan 's Garibaldi books, which he had received as prizes for academic merit. [12] He viewed Garibaldi as a revolutionary hero. He wrote: "Visions of similar deeds in India came before, of [my] gallant fight for [Indian] freedom and in my mind India and Italy got strangely mixed together." [9] Nehru dressed in cadet uniform at Harrow School in England Nehru went to Trinity College, Cambridge in October 1907 and graduated with an honours degree in natural science in 1910. [13] During this period, he also studied politics, economics, history and literature desultorily. Writings of Bernard Shaw , H.G Wells , J.M. Keynes , Bertrand Russell , Lowes Dickinson and Meredith Townsend moulded much of his political and economic thinking. [9] Nehru at the Allahabad High Court After completing his degree in 1910, Nehru went to London and stayed there for two years for law studies at the Inns of Court School of Law ( Inner Temple ). [14] During this time, he continued to study the scholars of the Fabian Society including Beatrice Webb . [9] He passed his bar examinations in 1912 and was admitted to the English bar. [14] After returning to India in August 1912, Nehru enrolled himself as an advocate of the Allahabad High Court and tried to settle down as a barrister. But, unlike his father, he had only a desultory interest in his profession and did not relish either the practice of law or the company of lawyers. He wrote: "Decidedly the atmosphere was not intellectually stimulating and a sense of the utter insipidity of life grew upon me." [9] His involvement in nationalist politics would gradually replace his legal practice in the coming years. [9] Struggle for Indian Independence (1912–47) Nehru had developed an interest in Indian politics during his time in Britain. [15] Within months of his return to India in 1912 he had attended an annual session of the Indian National Congress in Patna . [16] He was disconcerted with what he saw as a "very much an English-knowing upper class affair". [17] The Congress in 1912 had been the party of moderates and elites. [16] Nehru harboured doubts regarding the ineffectualness of the Congress but agreed to work for the party in support of the Indian civil rights movement in South Africa. [18] He collected funds for the civil rights campaigners led by Mohandas Gandhi in 1913. [16] Later, he campaigned against the indentured labour and other such discriminations faced by Indians in the British colonies. [19] When the First World War broke out in August 1914, sympathy in India was divided. Although educated Indians "by and large took a vicarious pleasure" in seeing the British rulers humbled, the ruling upper classes sided with the Allies . Nehru confessed that he viewed the war with mixed feelings. Frank Moraes wrote: "If [Nehru's] sympathy was with any country it was with France, whose culture he greatly admired." [20] During the war, Nehru volunteered for the St John Ambulance and worked as one of the provincial secretaries of the organisation in Allahabad. [16] He also spoke out against the censorship acts passed by the British government in India. [21] Nehru in 1918 with wife Kamala and daughter Indira Nehru emerged from the war years as a leader whose political views were considered radical. Although the political discourse had been dominated at this time by Gopal Krishna Gokhale , [18] a moderate who said that it was "madness to think of independence", [16] Nehru had spoken "openly of the politics of non-cooperation, of the need of resigning from honorary positions under the government and of not continuing the futile politics of representation". [22] He ridiculed the Indian Civil Service (ICS) for its support of British policies. He noted that someone had once defined the Indian Civil Service, "with which we are unfortunately still afflicted in this country, as neither Indian, nor civil, nor a service". [23] Motilal Nehru, a prominent moderate leader, acknowledged the limits of constitutional agitation, but counselled his son that there was no other "practical alternative" to it. Nehru, however, was not satisfied with the pace of the national movement. He became involved with aggressive nationalists leaders who were demanding Home Rule for Indians. [24] The influence of the moderates on Congress politics began to wane after Gokhale died in 1915. [16] Anti-moderate leaders such as Annie Beasant and Lokmanya Tilak took the opportunity to call for a national movement for Home Rule . But, in 1915, the proposal was rejected because of the reluctance of the moderates to commit to such a radical course of action. Besant nevertheless formed a league for advocating Home Rule in 1916; and Tilak, on his release from a prison term, had in April 1916 formed his own league. [16] Nehru joined both leagues but worked especially for the former. [25] He remarked later: "[Besant] had a very powerful influence on me in my childhood... even later when I entered political life her influence continued." [25] Another development which brought about a radical change in Indian politics was the espousal of Hindu-Muslim unity with the Lucknow pact at the annual meeting of the Congress in December 1916. The pact had been initiated earlier in the year at Allahabad at a meeting of the All-India Congress Committee which was held at the Nehru residence at Anand Bhawan. Nehru welcomed and encouraged the rapprochement between the two Indian communities. [25] Home rule movement Several nationalist leaders banded together in 1916 under the leadership of Annie Besant to voice a demand for self-government , and to obtain the status of a Dominion within the British Empire as enjoyed by Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and Newfoundland at the time. Nehru joined the movement and rose to become secretary of Besant's All India Home Rule League . [25] [26] In June 1917 Besant was arrested and interned by the British government. The Congress and various other Indian organisation threatened to launch protests if she were not set free. The British government was subsequently forced to release Besant and make significant concessions after a period of intense protest. Non-cooperation The first big national involvement of Nehru came at the onset of the non-co-operation movement in 1920. He led the movement in the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh ). Nehru was arrested on charges of anti-governmental activities in 1921, and was released a few months later. In the rift that formed within the Congress following the sudden closure of the non-co-operation movement after the Chauri Chaura incident , Nehru remained loyal to Gandhi and did not join the Swaraj Party formed by his father Motilal Nehru and CR Das . Internationalising the struggle Indira Gandhi , Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi Nehru and his daughter Indira in Britain, 1930s Nehru played a leading role in the development of the internationalist outlook of the Indian independence struggle. He sought foreign allies for India and forged links with movements for independence and democracy all over the world. In 1927, his efforts paid off and the Congress was invited to attend the congress of oppressed nationalities in Brussels in Belgium. The meeting was called to co-ordinate and plan a common struggle against imperialism. Nehru represented India and was elected to the Executive Council of the League against Imperialism that was born at this meeting. [27] During the mid-1930s, Nehru was much concerned with developments in Europe, which seemed to be drifting toward another world war. He was in Europe in early 1936, visiting his ailing wife, shortly before she died in a sanitarium in Switzerland. Even at this time, he emphasised that, in the event of war, India's place was alongside the democracies, though he insisted that India could only fight in support of Great Britain and France as a free country. Nehru closely worked with Subhash Bose in developing good relations with governments of free countries all over the world. However, the two split in the late 1930s, when Bose agreed to seek the help of fascists in driving the British out of India. At the same time, Nehru had supported the Republicans who were fighting against Francisco Franco 's forces in the Spanish Civil War . Nehru along with his aide V.K. Krishna Menon visited Spain and declared support for the Republicans. HE refused to meet Benito Mussolini , the dictator of Italy when the latter expressed his desire to meet him. [28] [29] Republicanism Nehru was one of the first nationalist leaders to realise the sufferings of the people in the states ruled by Indian Princes. He suffered imprisonment in Nabha , a princely state , when he went there to see the struggle that was being waged by the Sikhs against the corrupt Mahants. The nationalist movement had been confined to the territories under direct British rule. He helped to make the struggle of the people in the princely states a part of the nationalist movement for independence. The All India states people's conference was formed in 1927. Nehru who had been supporting the cause of the people of the princely states for many years was made the President of the conference in 1935. He opened up its ranks to membership from across the political spectrum. The body would play an important role during the political integration of India, helping Indian leaders Vallabhbhai Patel and V.P. Menon (to whom Nehru had delegated the task of integrating the princely states into India) negotiate with hundreds of princes. In July 1946, Nehru pointedly observed that no princely state could prevail militarily against the army of independent India. [30] In January 1947, he said that independent India would not accept the Divine Right of Kings , [31] and in May 1947, he declared that any princely state which refused to join the Constituent Assembly would be treated as an enemy state. During the drafting of the Indian constitution, many Indian leaders (except Nehru) of that time were in favour of allowing each Princely state or Covenanting State to be independent as a federal state along the lines suggested originally by the Government of India act (1935). But as the drafting of the constitution progressed and the idea of forming a republic took concrete shape (because of the efforts of Nehru), it was decided that all the Princely states/Covenanting States would merge with the Indian republic. Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi , de-recognised all the rulers by a presidential order in 1969. But this was struck down by the Supreme Court of India. Eventually, the government by the 26th Amendment to the constitution was successful in abolishing the Princely states of India. The process began by Nehru was finally completed by his daughter by the end of 1971. Declaration of Independence Nehru was one of the first leaders to demand that the Congress Party should resolve to make a complete and explicit break from all ties with the British Empire. He introduced a resolution demanding "complete national independence" in 1927, which was rejected because of Gandhi's opposition. [32] In 1928, Gandhi agreed to Nehru's demands and proposed a resolution that called for the British to grant dominion status to India within two years. If the British failed to meet the deadline, the Congress would call upon all Indians to fight for complete independence. Nehru was one of the leaders who objected to the time given to the British – he pressed Gandhi to demand immediate actions from the British. Gandhi brokered a further compromise by reducing the time given from two years to one. Nehru agreed to vote for the new resolution. Demands for dominion status was rejected by the British in 1929. Nehru assumed the presidency of the Congress party during the Lahore session on 29 December 1929 and introduced a successful resolution calling for complete independence. Nehru drafted the Indian declaration of independence, which stated: We believe that it is the inalienable right of the Indian people, as of any other people, to have freedom and to enjoy the fruits of their toil and have the necessities of life, so that they may have full opportunities of growth. We believe also that if any government deprives a people of these rights and oppresses them the people have a further right to alter it or abolish it. The British government in India has not only deprived the Indian people of their freedom but has based itself on the exploitation of the masses, and has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually. We believe therefore, that India must sever the British connection and attain Purna Swaraj or complete independence. [33] At midnight on New Year's Eve 1929, Nehru hoisted the tricolour flag of India upon the banks of the Ravi in Lahore. A pledge of independence was read out, which included a readiness to withhold taxes. The massive gathering of public attending the ceremony was asked if they agreed with it, and the vast majority of people were witnessed to raise their hands in approval. 172 Indian members of central and provincial legislatures resigned in support of the resolution and in accordance with Indian public sentiment. The Congress asked the people of India to observe 26 January as Independence Day. The flag of India was hoisted publicly across India by Congress volunteers, nationalists and the public. Plans for a mass civil disobedience were also underway. After the Lahore session of the Congress in 1929, Nehru gradually emerged as the paramount leader of the Indian independence movement. Gandhi stepped back into a more spiritual role. Although Gandhi did not officially designate Nehru his political heir until 1942, the country as early as the mid-1930s saw in Nehru the natural successor to Gandhi. Civil disobedience Nehru and most of the Congress leaders were initially ambivalent about Gandhi's plan to begin civil disobedience with a satyagraha aimed at the British salt tax. After the protest gathered steam, they realised the power of salt as a symbol. Nehru remarked about the unprecedented popular response, "it seemed as though a spring had been suddenly released". [34] He was arrested on 14 April 1930 while entraining from Allahabad for Raipur . He had earlier, after addressing a huge meeting and leading a vast procession, ceremoniously manufactured some contraband salt. He was charged with breach of the salt law, tried summarily behind prison walls and sentenced to six months of imprisonment. He nominated Gandhi to succeed him as Congress President during his absence in jail, but Gandhi declined, and Nehru then nominated his father as his successor. With Nehru's arrest the civil disobedience acquired a new tempo, and arrests, firing on crowds and lathi charges grew to be ordinary occurrences. The Salt Satyagraha succeeded in drawing the attention of the world. Indian, British, and world opinion increasingly began to recognise the legitimacy of the claims by the Congress party for independence. Nehru considered the salt satyagraha the high-water mark of his association with Gandhi, [35] and felt that its lasting importance was in changing the attitudes of Indians: Of course these movements exercised tremendous pressure on the British Government and shook the government machinery. But the real importance, to my mind, lay in the effect they had on our own people, and especially the village masses. ... Non-cooperation dragged them out of the mire and gave them self-respect and self-reliance. ... They acted courageously and did not submit so easily to unjust oppression; their outlook widened and they began to think a little in terms of India as a whole. ... It was a remarkable transformation and the Congress, under Gandhi's leadership, must have the credit for it. [36] Architect of India Gandhi and Nehru in 1942 Nehru elaborated the policies of the Congress and a future Indian nation under his leadership in 1929. He declared that the aims of the congress were freedom of religion, right to form associations, freedom of expression of thought, equality before law for every individual without distinction of caste, colour, creed or religion, protection to regional languages and cultures, safeguarding the interests of the peasants and labour, abolition of untouchability, introduction of adult franchise, imposition of prohibition, nationalisation of industries, socialism, and establishment of a secular India. All these aims formed the core of the "Fundamental Rights and Economic Policy" resolution drafted by Nehru in 1929–31 and were ratified by the All India Congress Committee under Gandhi's leadership. [37] However, some Congress leaders objected to the resolution and decided to oppose Nehru. The espousal of socialism as the Congress goal was most difficult to achieve. Nehru was opposed in this by the right-wing Congressmen Sardar Patel , Dr. Rajendra Prasad and Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari . He had the support of the left-wing Congressmen Maulana Azad and Subhas Chandra Bose . The trio combined to oust Dr. Prasad as Congress President in 1936. Nehru was elected in his place and held the presidency for two years (1936–37). [38] He was then succeeded by his socialist colleagues Bose (1938–39) and Azad (1940–46). After the fall of Bose from the mainstream of Indian politics (because of his support of violence in driving the British out of India), the power struggle between the socialists and conservatives balanced out. However, Sardar Patel died in 1950, leaving Nehru as the sole remaining iconic national leader, and soon the situation became such that Nehru was able to implement many of his basic policies without hindrance. The conservative right-wing of the Congress (composed of India's upper class elites) would continue opposing the socialists until the great schism in 1969. Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi , was able to fulfill her father's dream by the 42nd amendment (1976) of the Indian constitution by which India officially became "socialist" and "secular". [39] During Nehru's second term as general secretary of the Congress, he proposed certain resolutions concerning the foreign policy of India. [40] From that time onwards, he was given carte blanche in framing the foreign policy of any future Indian nation. He developed good relations with governments all over the world. He firmly placed India on the side of democracy and freedom during a time when the world was under the threat of fascism. [29] He was also given the responsibility of planning the economy of a future India. He appointed the National Planning Commission in 1938 to help in framing such policies. [41] However, many of the plans framed by Nehru and his colleagues would come undone with the unexpected partition of India in 1947. Electoral politics Jawaharlal Nehru and Rabindranath Tagore Nehru visit to Europe in 1936 proved to be the watershed in his political and economic thinking. Nehru's real interest in Marxism and his socialist pattern of thought stem from that tour. His subsequent sojourns in prison enabled him to study Marxism in more depth. Interested in its ideas but repelled by some of its methods, he could never bring himself to accept Karl Marx's writings as revealed scripture. Yet from then on, the yardstick of his economic thinking remained Marxist, adjusted, where necessary, to Indian conditions. When the Congress party under Nehru chose to contest elections and accept power under the Federation scheme, Gandhi resigned from party membership. Gandhi did not disagree with Nehru's move, but felt that if he resigned, his popularity with Indians would cease to stifle the party's membership. When the elections following the introduction of provincial autonomy (under the government of India act 1935) brought the Congress party to power in a majority of the provinces, Nehru's popularity and power was unmatched. The Muslim League under Mohammed Ali Jinnah (who was to become the creator of Pakistan) had fared badly at the polls. Nehru declared that the only two parties that mattered in India were the British Raj and Congress. Jinnah statements that the Muslim League was the third and "equal partner" within Indian politics was widely rejected. Nehru had hoped to elevate Maulana Azad as the pre-eminent leaders of Indian Muslims, but in this, he was undermined by Gandhi, who continued to treat Jinnah as the voice of Indian Muslims. World War II and Quit India movement ( Learn how and when to remove this template message ) When World war II started, Viceroy Linlithgow had unilaterally declared India a belligerent on the side of the Britain, without consulting the elected Indian representatives. Nehru hurried back from a visit to China, announcing that, in a conflict between democracy and Fascism, "our sympathies must inevitably be on the side of democracy.... I should like India to play its full part and throw all her resources into the struggle for a new order." After much deliberation the Congress under Nehru informed the government that it would co-operate with the British but on certain conditions. First, Britain must give an assurance of full independence for India after the war and allow the election of a constituent assembly to frame a new constitution; second, although the Indian armed forces would remain under the British Commander-in-Chief, Indians must be included immediately in the central government and given a chance to share power and responsibility. When Nehru presented Lord Linlithgow with the demands, he chose to reject them. A deadlock was reached. "The same old game is played again", Nehru wrote bitterly to Gandhi, "the background is the same, the various epithets are the same and the actors are the same and the results must be the same". On 23 October 1939, the Congress condemned the Viceroy's attitude and called upon the Congress ministries in the various provinces to resign in protest. Before this crucial announcement, Nehru urged Jinnah and the Muslim League to join the protest but the latter declined. In March 1940 Jinnah passed what would come to be known as the "Pakistan Resolution", declaring "Muslims are a nation according to any definition of a nation, and they must have their homelands, their territory and their State." This state was to be known as Pakistan, meaning "Land of the Pure". Nehru angrily declared that "all the old problems ... pale into insignificance before the latest stand taken by the Muslim League leader in Lahore". Linlithgow made Nehru an offer on 8 October 1940. It stated that Dominion status for India was the objective of the British government. However, it referred neither to a date nor method of accomplishment. Only Jinnah got something more precise. "The British would not contemplate transferring power to a Congress-dominated national government the authority of which was "denied by large and powerful elements in India's national life". In October 1940, Gandhi and Nehru, abandoning their original stand of supporting Britain, decided to launch a limited civil disobedience campaign in which leading advocates of Indian independence were selected to participate one by one. Nehru was arrested and sentenced to four years' imprisonment. After spending a little more than a year in jail, he was released, along with other Congress prisoners, three days before the bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Nehru and Jinnah walk together at Simla, 1946 When the Japanese carried their attack through Burma (now Myanmar ) to the borders of India in the spring of 1942, the British government, faced by this new military threat, decided to make some overtures to India, as Nehru had originally desired. Prime Minister Winston Churchill dispatched Sir Stafford Cripps, a member of the war Cabinet who was known to be politically close to Nehru and also knew Jinnah, with proposals for a settlement of the constitutional problem. As soon as he arrived he discovered that India was more deeply divided than he had imagined. Nehru, eager for a compromise, was hopeful. Gandhi was not. Jinnah had continued opposing the Congress. "Pakistan is our only demand", declared the Muslim League newspaper "Dawn" and by God we will have it." Cripps's mission failed as Gandhi would accept nothing less than independence. Relations between Nehru and Gandhi cooled over the latter's refusal to co-operate with Cripps, but the two later reconciled. On 15 January 1941, Gandhi had stated: Some say Pandit Nehru and I were estranged. It will require much more than difference of opinion to estrange us. We had differences from the time we became co-workers and yet I have said for some years and say so now that not Rajaji but Jawaharlal will be my successor. [42] Gandhi called on the British to leave India; Nehru, though reluctant to embarrass the allied war effort, had no alternative but to join Gandhi. Following the Quit India resolution passed by the Congress party in Bombay (now Mumbai) on 8 August 1942, the entire Congress working committee, including Gandhi and Nehru, was arrested and imprisoned. Nehru emerged from this—his ninth and last detention—only on 15 June 1945. During the period where all of the Congress leadership were in jail, the Muslim League under Jinnah grew in power. In April 1943, the League captured the governments of Bengal and, a month later, that of the North West Frontier Province. In none of these provinces had the League previously had a majority – only the arrest of Congress members made it possible. With all the Muslim dominated provinces except the Punjab under Jinnah's control, the artificial concept of a separate Muslim State was turning into a reality. However, by 1944, Jinnah's power and prestige were on the wane. A general sympathy towards the jailed Congress leaders was developing among Muslims, and much of the blame for the disastrous Bengal famine of 1943–44 during which two million died, had been laid on the shoulders of the province's Muslim League government. The numbers at Jinnah's meetings, once counted in thousands soon numbered only a few hundreds. In despair, Jinnah left the political scene for a stay in Kashmir. His prestige was restored unwittingly by Gandhi, who had been released from prison on medical grounds in May 1944 and had met Jinnah in Bombay in September. There he offered the Muslim leader a plebiscite in the Muslim areas after the war to see whether they wanted to separate from the rest of India. Essentially, it was an acceptance of the principle of Pakistan – but not in so many words. Jinnah demanded that the exact words be said; Gandhi refused and the talks broke down. Jinnah however had greatly strengthened his own position and that of the League. The most influential member of Congress had been seen to negotiate with him on equal terms. Other Muslim League leaders, opposed both to Jinnah and to the partition of India, lost strength. Prime Minister of India (1947–64) Nehru signing the Indian Constitution c.1950 Lord Mountbatten swears in Jawaharlal Nehru as the first Prime Minister of free India at the ceremony held at 8:30 am IST on 15 August 1947 Teen Murti Bhavan , Nehru's residence as Prime Minister, now a museum in his memory. Nehru and his colleagues had been released as the British Cabinet Mission arrived to propose plans for transfer of power. Once elected, Nehru headed an interim government, which was impaired by outbreaks of communal violence and political disorder, and the opposition of the Muslim League led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah , who were demanding a separate Muslim state of Pakistan . After failed bids to form coalitions, Nehru reluctantly supported the partition of India , according to a plan released by the British on 3 June 1947. He took office as the Prime Minister of India on 15 August, and delivered his inaugural address titled " Tryst with Destiny ". "Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity." [43] On 30 January 1948, Gandhi was shot while he was walking to a platform from which he was to address a prayer meeting. The assassin, Nathuram Godse , was a Hindu nationalist with links to the extremist Hindu Mahasabha, who held Gandhi responsible for weakening India by insisting upon a payment to Pakistan. Nehru addressed the nation through radio: Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives , and there is darkness everywhere, and I do not quite know what to tell you or how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the father of the nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that; nevertheless, we will not see him again, as we have seen him for these many years, we will not run to him for advice or seek solace from him, and that is a terrible blow, not only for me, but for millions and millions in this country. [44] [45] President Harry Truman and Jawaharlal Nehru, with Nehru's sister, Madame Pandit, during Nehru's visit to the United States, October 1949 Yasmin Khan argued that Gandhi's death and funeral helped consolidate the authority of the new Indian state under Nehru and Patel. The Congress tightly controlled the epic public displays of grief over a two-week period—the funeral, mortuary rituals and distribution of the martyr's ashes—as millions participated and hundreds of millions watched. The goal was to assert the power of the government, legitimise the Congress party 's control and suppress all religious para-military groups. Nehru and Patel suppressed the RSS , the Muslim National Guards, and the Khaksars , with some 200,000 arrests. Gandhi's death and funeral linked the distant state with the Indian people and made more understand the need to suppress religious parties during the transition to independence for the Indian people. [46] In later years, there emerged a revisionist school of history which sought to blame Nehru for the partition of India, mostly referring to his highly centralised policies for an independent India in 1947, which Jinnah opposed in favour of a more decentralised India. [47] [48] Such views has been promoted by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which favours a decentralised central government in India. [49] In the years following independence, Nehru frequently turned to his daughter Indira to look after him and manage his personal affairs. [50] Under his leadership, the Congress won an overwhelming majority in the elections of 1952. Indira moved into Nehru's official residence to attend to him and became his constant companion in his travels across India and the world. Indira would virtually become Nehru's chief of staff . Nehru had led the Congress to a major victory in the 1957 elections, but his government was facing rising problems and criticism. Disillusioned by alleged intra-party corruption and bickering, Nehru contemplated resigning but continued to serve. The election of his daughter Indira as Congress President in 1959 aroused criticism for alleged nepotism , although actually Nehru had disapproved of her election, partly because he considered it smacked of "dynastism"; he said, indeed it was "wholly undemocratic and an undesirable thing", and refused her a position in his cabinet. [51] Indira herself was at loggerheads with her father over policy; most notably, she used his oft-stated personal deference to the Congress Working Committee to push through the dismissal of the Communist Party of India government in the state of Kerala , over his own objections. [51] Nehru began to be frequently embarrassed by her ruthlessness and disregard for parliamentary tradition, and was "hurt" by what he saw as an assertiveness with no purpose other than to stake out an identity independent of her father. [52] In the 1962 elections, Nehru led the Congress to victory yet with a diminished majority. Communist and socialist parties were the main beneficiaries although some right wing groups like Bharatiya Jana Sangh also did well. Assassination attempts and security There were four known assassination attempts on Nehru. The first attempt on his life was during partition in 1947 while he was visiting North-West Frontier Province (now in Pakistan) in a car. [53] The second one was by a knife-wielding rickshaw-puller in Maharashtra in 1955. [54] [55] [56] [57] The third one happened in Bombay (now Maharashtra ) in 1956. [58] [59] [60] The fourth one was a failed bombing attempt on train tracks in Maharashtra in 1961. [61] Despite threats to his life, Nehru despised having too much security around him and did not like to disrupt traffic due to his movement. [62] Economic policies Nehru meeting with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Deutsche Bank chairman Hermann Josef Abs during a state visit to West Germany in June 1956. Nehru implemented policies based on import substitution industrialisation and advocated a mixed economy where the government controlled public sector would co-exist with the private sector . [63] He believed that the establishment of basic and heavy industry was fundamental to the development and modernisation of the Indian economy. The government therefore directed investment primarily into key public sector industries – steel, iron, coal, and power – promoting their development with subsidies and protectionist policies. [64] The policy of non-alignment during the Cold War meant that Nehru received financial and technical support from both power blocs in building India's industrial base from scratch. [65] Steel mill complexes were built at Bokaro and Rourkela with assistance from the Soviet Union and West Germany. There was substantial industrial development. [65] Industry grew 7.0 per cent annually between 1950 and 1965 – almost trebling industrial output and making India the world's seventh largest industrial country. [65] Nehru's critics, however, contended that India's import substitution industrialisation, which was continued long after the Nehru era, weakened the international competitiveness of its manufacturing industries. [66] India's share of world trade fell from 1.4 per cent in 1951–1960 to 0.5 per cent over 1981–1990. [67] On the other hand, India's export performance is argued to have actually showed sustained improvement over the period. The volume of exports went up at an annual rate of 2.9 per cent in 1951–1960 to 7.6 per cent in 1971–1980. [68] GDP and GNP grew 3.9 and 4.0 per cent annually between 1950–51 and 1964–65. [69] [70] It was a radical break from the British colonial period. [71] But, in comparison to other industrial powers in Europe and East Asia, the growth rates were considered anaemic at best. [67] [72] India lagged behind the miracle economies (Japan, West Germany, France, and Italy). [73] State planning, controls, and regulations were argued to have impaired economic growth. [74] While India's economy grew faster than both the United Kingdom and the United States – low initial income and rapid population increase – meant that growth was inadequate for any sort of catch-up with rich income nations. [72] [73] [75] Agriculture policies Under Nehru's leadership, the government attempted to develop India quickly by embarking on agrarian reform and rapid industrialisation. A successful land reform was introduced that abolished giant landholdings, but efforts to redistribute land by placing limits on landownership failed. Attempts to introduce large-scale cooperative farming were frustrated by landowning rural elites, who formed the core of the powerful right-wing of the Congress and had considerable political support in opposing the efforts of Nehru. Agricultural production expanded until the early 1960s, as additional land was brought under cultivation and some irrigation projects began to have an effect. The establishment of agricultural universities, modelled after land-grant colleges in the United States, contributed to the development of the economy. These universities worked with high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice, initially developed in Mexico and the Philippines, that in the 1960s began the Green Revolution, an effort to diversify and increase crop production. At the same time a series of failed monsoons would cause serious food shortages despite the steady progress and increase in agricultural production. [76] Domestic policies See also: States Reorganisation Act The British Indian Empire, which included present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, was divided into two types of territories: the Provinces of British India, which were governed directly by British officials responsible to the Governor-General of India; and princely states, under the rule of local hereditary rulers who recognised British suzerainty in return for local autonomy, in most cases as established by treaty. Between 1947 and about 1950, the territories of the princely states were politically integrated into the Indian Union under Nehru and Sardar Patel. Most were merged into existing provinces; others were organised into new provinces, such as Rajputana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Bharat, and Vindhya Pradesh, made up of multiple princely states; a few, including Mysore, Hyderabad, Bhopal, and Bilaspur, became separate provinces. The Government of India Act 1935 remained the constitutional law of India pending adoption of a new Constitution. The new Constitution of India, which came into force on 26 January 1950, made India a sovereign democratic republic. Nehru declared the new republic to be a "Union of States". The constitution of 1950 distinguished between three main types of states: Part A states, which were the former governors' provinces of British India, were ruled by an elected governor and state legislature. The Part B states were former princely states or groups of princely states, governed by a rajpramukh, who was usually the ruler of a constituent state, and an elected legislature. The rajpramukh was appointed by the President of India. The Part C states included both the former chief commissioners' provinces and some princely states, and each was governed by a chief commissioner appointed by the President of India. The sole Part D state was the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which were administered by a lieutenant governor appointed by the central government. In December 1953, Nehru appointed the States Reorganisation Commission to prepare for the creation of states on linguistic lines. This was headed by Justice Fazal Ali and the commission itself was also known as the Fazal Ali Commission. The efforts of this commission were overseen by Govind Ballabh Pant , who served as Nehru's Home Minister from December 1954. The commission created a report in 1955 recommending the reorganisation of India's states. Under the Seventh Amendment, the existing distinction between Part A, Part B, Part C, and Part D states was abolished. The distinction between Part A and Part B states was removed, becoming known simply as "states". A new type of entity, the union territory, replaced the classification as a Part C or Part D state. Nehru stressed commonality among Indians and promoted pan-Indianism. He refused to reorganise states on either religious or ethnic lines. Western scholars have mostly praised Nehru for the integration of the states into a modern republic but the act was not accepted universally in India. Social policies Nehru with schoolchildren at the Durgapur Steel Plant . Durgapur along with Rourkela and Bhilai were the three integrated steel plants set up under India's Second Five-Year Plan in the late 1950s. Jawaharlal Nehru was a passionate advocate of education for India's children and youth, believing it essential for India's future progress. His government oversaw the establishment of many institutions of higher learning, including the All India Institute of Medical Sciences , the Indian Institutes of Technology , the Indian Institutes of Management and the National Institutes of Technology . Nehru also outlined a commitment in his five-year plans to guarantee free and compulsory primary education to all of India's children. For this purpose, Nehru oversaw the creation of mass village enrolment programmes and the construction of thousands of schools. Nehru also launched initiatives such as the provision of free milk and meals to children to fight malnutrition. Adult education centres, vocational and technical schools were also organised for adults, especially in the rural areas. Under Nehru, the Indian Parliament enacted many changes to Hindu law to criminalise caste discrimination and increase the legal rights and social freedoms of women. [77] [78] [79] [80] A system of reservations in government services and educational institutions was created to eradicate the social inequalities and disadvantages faced by peoples of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes . Nehru also championed secularism and religious harmony, increasing the representation of minorities in government. Nehru specifically wrote Article 44 of the Indian constitution under the Directive Principles of State Policy which states : 'The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India.' The article has formed the basis of secularism in India. [81] However, Nehru has been criticised for the inconsistent application of the law. Most notably, Nehru allowed Muslims to keep their personal law in matters relating to marriage and inheritance. Also in the small state of Goa, a civil code based on the old Portuguese Family Laws was allowed to continue, and Muslim Personal law was prohibited by Nehru. This was the result of the annexation of Goa in 1961 by India, when Nehru promised the people that their laws would be left intact. This has led to accusations of selective secularism. While Nehru exempted Muslim law from legislation and they remained unreformed, he did pass the Special Marriage Act in 1954. The idea behind this act was to give everyone in India the ability to marry outside the personal law under a civil marriage. As usual the law applied to all of India, except Jammu and Kashmir (again leading to accusations of selective secularism). In many respects, the act was almost identical to the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955, which gives some idea as to how secularised the law regarding Hindus had become. The Special Marriage Act allowed Muslims to marry under it and thereby retain the protections, generally beneficial to Muslim women, that could not be found in the personal law. Under the act polygamy was illegal, and inheritance and succession would be governed by the Indian Succession Act, rather than the respective Muslim Personal Law. Divorce also would be governed by the secular law, and maintenance of a divorced wife would be along the lines set down in the civil law. Nehru led the faction of the Congress party which promoted Hindi as the lingua-franca of the Indian nation. After an exhaustive and divisive debate with the non-Hindi speakers, Hindi was adopted as the official language of India in 1950 with English continuing as an associate official language for a period of fifteen years, after which Hindi would become the sole official language. Efforts by the Indian Government to make Hindi the sole official language after 1965 were not acceptable to many non-Hindi Indian states, who wanted the continued use of English. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a descendant of Dravidar Kazhagam, led the opposition to Hindi. To allay their fears, Nehru enacted the Official Languages Act in 1963 to ensure the continuing use of English beyond 1965. The text of the Act did not satisfy the DMK and increased their scepticism that his assurances might not be honoured by future administrations. The issue was resolved during the premiership of Lal Bahadur Shastri , who under great pressure from Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi , was made to give assurances that English would continue to be used as the official language as long the non-Hindi speaking states wanted. The Official Languages Act was eventually amended in 1967 by the Congress Government headed by Indira Gandhi to guarantee the indefinite use of Hindi and English as official languages. This effectively ensured the current "virtual indefinite policy of bilingualism" of the Indian Republic. Foreign policies See also: Role of India in Non-Aligned Movement Nehru led newly independent India from 1947 to 1964, during its first years of independence from British rule. Both the United States and the Soviet Union competed to make India an ally throughout the Cold War . Nehru also maintained good relations with the British Empire. Under the London Declaration , India agreed that, when it became a republic in January 1950, it would join the Commonwealth of Nations and accept the British monarch as a "symbol of the free association of its independent member nations and as such the Head of the Commonwealth." The other nations of the Commonwealth recognised India's continuing membership of the association. The reaction back home was favourable; only the far-left and the far-right criticised Nehru's decision. On the international scene, Nehru was a champion of pacifism and a strong supporter of the United Nations. He pioneered the policy of non-alignment and co-founded the Non-Aligned Movement of nations professing neutrality between the rival blocs of nations led by the US and the USSR. Recognising the People's Republic of China soon after its founding (while most of the Western bloc continued relations with the Republic of China ), Nehru argued for its inclusion in the United Nations and refused to brand the Chinese as the aggressors in their conflict with Korea. [82] He sought to establish warm and friendly relations with China in 1950, and hoped to act as an intermediary to bridge the gulf and tensions between the communist states and the Western bloc. Nehru had promised in 1948 to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir under the auspices of the UN. Kashmir was a disputed territory between India and Pakistan, the two having gone to war with each other over the state in 1948. However, as Pakistan failed to pull back troops in accordance with the UN resolution and as Nehru grew increasingly wary of the UN, he declined to hold a plebiscite in 1953. His policies on Kashmir and the integration of the state into India was frequently defended in front of the United Nations by his aide, Krishna Menon , a brilliant diplomat who earned a reputation in India for his passionate speeches. Nehru receiving US President Dwight D. Eisenhower at Parliament House, 1959 Nehru, while a pacifist, was not blind to the political and geostrategic reality of India in 1947. While laying the foundation stone of the National Defence Academy (India) in 1949, he stated: "We, who for generations had talked about and attempted in everything a peaceful way and practised non-violence, should now be, in a sense, glorifying our army, navy and air force. It means a lot. Though it is odd, yet it simply reflects the oddness of life. Though life is logical, we have to face all contingencies, and unless we are prepared to face them, we will go under. There was no greater prince of peace and apostle of non-violence than Mahatma Gandhi , the Father of the Nation, whom we have lost, but yet, he said it was better to take the sword than to surrender, fail or run away. We cannot live carefree assuming that we are safe. Human nature is such. We cannot take the risks and risk our hard-won freedom. We have to be prepared with all modern defence methods and a well-equipped army, navy and air force." [83] [84] Nehru envisioned the developing of nuclear weapons and established the Atomic Energy Commission of India (AEC) in 1948. [85] Nehru also called Dr. Homi J. Bhabha , a nuclear physicist, who was entrusted with complete authority over all nuclear related affairs and programs and answered only to Nehru himself. [85] Indian nuclear policy was set by unwritten personal understanding between Nehru and Bhabha. [85] Nehru famously said to Bhabha, "Professor Bhabha take care of Physics, leave international relation to me". [85] From the outset in 1948, Nehru had high ambition to develop this program to stand against the industrialised states and the basis of this program was to establish an Indian nuclear weapons capability as part of India's regional superiority to other South-Asian states, most particularly Pakistan. [85] Nehru also told Bhabha, and later it was told by Bhabha to Raja Rammanna, that: "We must have the capability. We should first prove ourselves and then talk of Gandhi, non-violence and a world without nuclear weapons." [85] Nehru was hailed by many for working to defuse global tensions and the threat of nuclear weapons after the Korean war (1950–1953). [86] He commissioned the first study of the human effects of nuclear explosions , and campaigned ceaselessly for the abolition of what he called "these frightful engines of destruction". He also had pragmatic reasons for promoting de-nuclearisation , fearing that a nuclear arms race would lead to over-militarisation that would be unaffordable for developing countries such as his own. [87] Nehru ordered the arrest of the Kashmiri politician Sheikh Abdullah in 1953, whom he had previously supported but now suspected of harbouring separatist ambitions; Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad replaced him. In 1954, Nehru signed with China the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence , known in India as the Panchsheel (from the Sanskrit words, panch: five, sheel: virtues), a set of principles to govern relations between the two states. Their first formal codification in treaty form was in an agreement between China and India in 1954. They were enunciated in the preamble to the "Agreement (with exchange of notes) on trade and intercourse between Tibet Region of China and India", which was signed at Peking on 29 April 1954. Negotiations took place in Delhi from December 1953 to April 1954 between the Delegation of the PRC Government and the Delegation of the Indian Government on the relations between the two countries with respect to the disputed territories of Aksai Chin and South Tibet. The treaty was disregarded in the 1960s, but in the 1970s, the Five Principles again came to be seen as important in Sino-Indian relations , and more generally as norms of relations between states. They became widely recognised and accepted throughout the region during the premiership of Indira Gandhi and the 3-year rule of the Janata Party (1977–1980). [88] In 1956, Nehru had criticised the joint invasion of the Suez Canal by the British, French and Israelis. The role of Nehru, both as Indian Prime Minister and a leader of the Non Aligned Movement was significant; he tried to be even-handed between the two sides, while denouncing Eden and co-sponsors of the invasion vigorously. Nehru had a powerful ally in the US president Dwight Eisenhower who, if relatively silent publicly, went to the extent of using America's clout in the IMF to make Britain and France back down. The episode greatly raised the prestige of Nehru and India amongst the third world nations. During the Suez crisis , Nehru's right-hand man, Menon attempted to persuade a recalcitrant Gamal Nasser to compromise with the West, and was instrumental in moving Western powers towards an awareness that Nasser might prove willing to compromise. In 1957, Menon was instructed to deliver an unprecedented eight-hour speech defending India's stand on Kashmir; to date, the speech is the longest ever delivered in the United Nations Security Council , covering five hours of the 762nd meeting on 23 January, and two hours and forty-eight minutes on the 24th, reportedly concluding with Menon's collapse on the Security Council floor. During the filibuster , Nehru moved swiftly and successfully to consolidate Indian power in Kashmir (then under great unrest). Menon's passionate defence of Indian sovereignty in Kashmir enlarged his base of support in India, and led to the Indian press temporarily dubbing him the "Hero of Kashmir". Nehru was then at the peak of his popularity in India; the only (minor) criticism came from the far-right. [89] [90] The US had hoped to court Nehru after its intervention in favour of Nasser during the Suez crisis. However, Cold War suspicions and the American distrust of Nehruvian socialism cooled relations between India and the US, which suspected Nehru of tacitly supporting the Soviet Union. Nehru maintained good relations with Britain even after the Suez Crisis. Nehru accepted the arbitration of the UK and World Bank, signing the Indus Water Treaty in 1960 with Pakistani ruler Ayub Khan to resolve long-standing disputes about sharing the resources of the major rivers of the Punjab region. Although the Pancha Sila (Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence) was the basis of the 1954 Sino-Indian border treaty, in later years, Nehru's foreign policy suffered through increasing Chinese assertiveness over border disputes and Nehru's decision to grant political asylum to the 14th Dalai Lama . After years of failed negotiations, Nehru authorised the Indian Army to invade Portuguese controlled Goa in 1961, and then he formally annexed it to India. It increased his popularity in India, but he was criticised by the communist opposition in India for the use of military force. The use of military force against Portugal earned him goodwill amongst the right-wing and far-right groups. Sino-Indian War of 1962 Prime Minister Nehru talks with United Nations General Assembly President Romulo (October 1949). From 1959, in a process that accelerated in 1961, Nehru adopted the "Forward Policy" of setting up military outposts in disputed areas of the Sino-Indian border, including in 43 outposts in territory not previously controlled by India. [91] China attacked some of these outposts, and thus the Sino-Indian War began, which India lost, and China withdrew to pre-war lines in eastern zone at Tawang but retained Aksai Chin which was within British India and was handed over to India after independence. Later, Pakistan handed over some portion of Kashmir near Siachen controlled by Pakistan since 1948 to China. The war exposed the unpreparedness of India's military which could send only 14,000 troops to the war zone in opposition to the many times larger Chinese army, and Nehru was widely criticised for his government's insufficient attention to defence. In response, Nehru sacked the defence minister Krishna Menon and sought US military aid. Nehru's improved relations with the US under John F. Kennedy proved useful during the war, as in 1962, President of Pakistan (then closely aligned with the Americans) Ayub Khan was made to guarantee his neutrality in regards to India, who was threatened by "communist aggression from Red China". [92] The Indian relationship with the Soviet Union, criticised by right-wing groups supporting free-market policies was also seemingly validated. Nehru would continue to maintain his commitment to the non-aligned movement despite calls from some to settle down on one permanent ally. The aftermath of the war saw sweeping changes in the Indian military to prepare it for similar conflicts in the future, and placed pressure on Nehru, who was seen as responsible for failing to anticipate the Chinese attack on India. Under American advice (by American envoy John Kenneth Galbraith who made and ran American policy on the war as all other top policy makers in the US were absorbed in coincident Cuban Missile Crisis) Nehru refrained, not according to the best choices available, from using the Indian air force to beat back the Chinese advances. The CIA later revealed that at that time the Chinese had neither the fuel nor runways long enough for using their air force effectively in Tibet. Indians in general became highly sceptical of China and its military. Many Indians view the war as a betrayal of India's attempts at establishing a long-standing peace with China and started to question Nehru's usage of the term "Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai" (meaning "Indians and Chinese are brothers"). The war also put an end to Nehru's earlier hopes that India and China would form a strong Asian Axis to counteract the increasing influence of the Cold War bloc superpowers. [93] The unpreparedness of the army was blamed on Defence Minister Menon, who "resigned" his government post to allow for someone who might modernise India's military further. India's policy of weaponisation via indigenous sources and self-sufficiency began in earnest under Nehru, completed by his daughter Indira Gandhi, who later led India to a crushing military victory over rival Pakistan in 1971. Toward the end of the war India had increased her support for Tibetan refugees and revolutionaries, some of them having settled in India, as they were fighting the same common enemy in the region. Nehru ordered the raising of an elite Indian-trained "Tibetan Armed Force" composed of Tibetan refugees, which served with distinction in future wars against Pakistan in 1965 and 1971. [94] During the conflict, Nehru wrote two desperate letters to US President John F. Kennedy, requesting 12 squadrons of fighter jets and a modern radar system. These jets were seen as necessary to beef up Indian air strength so that air-to-air combat could be initiated safely from the Indian perspective (bombing troops was seen as unwise for fear of Chinese retaliatory action). Nehru also asked that these aircraft be manned by American pilots until Indian airmen were trained to replace them. These requests were rejected by the Kennedy Administration (which was involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis during most of the Sino-Indian War), leading to a cool down in Indo-US relations. According to former Indian diplomat G Parthasarathy, "only after we got nothing from the US did arms supplies from the Soviet Union to India commence". [95] Per Time Magazine's 1962 editorial on the war, however, this may not have been the case. The editorial states, 'When Washington finally turned its attention to India, it honoured the ambassador's pledge, loaded 60 US planes with $5,000,000 worth of automatic weapons, heavy mortars and land mines. Twelve huge C-130 Hercules transports, complete with US crews and maintenance teams, took off for New Delhi to fly Indian troops and equipment to the battle zone. Britain weighed in with Bren and Sten guns, and airlifted 150 tons of arms to India. Canada prepared to ship six transport planes. Australia opened Indian credits for $1,800,000 worth of munitions'. [96] Death Nehru's health began declining steadily after 1962, and he spent months recuperating in Kashmir through 1963. Some historians attribute this dramatic decline to his surprise and chagrin over the Sino-Indian War, which he perceived as a betrayal of trust. [97] Upon his return from Dehradun on 26 May 1964 he was feeling quite comfortable and went to bed at about 23:30 as usual, he had a restful night till about 06:30 soon after he returned from bathroom, Nehru complained of pain in the back. He spoke to the doctors who attended on him for a brief while and almost immediately Nehru collapsed. He remained unconscious until he died. His death was announced to Lok Sabha at 14:00 local time on 27 May 1964 (same day); cause of death is believed to be heart attack (dissecting aneurysm of the aorta). [98] Draped in the Indian national Tri-colour flag the body of Jawaharlal Nehru was placed for public viewing. "Raghupati Raghava Rajaram" was chanted as the body was placed on the platform. On 28 May, Nehru was cremated in accordance with Hindu rites at the Shantivan on the banks of the Yamuna River , witnessed by 1.5million mourners who had flocked into the streets of Delhi and the cremation grounds. [99] Nehru, the man and politician made such a powerful imprint on India that his death on 27 May 1964, left India with no clear political heir to his leadership (although his daughter was widely expected to succeed him before she turned it down in favour of Shastri). Indian newspapers repeated Nehru's own words of the time of Gandhi's assassination: "The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere."[ citation needed ] Religion Described as Hindu Agnostic , [100] Nehru thought that religious taboos were preventing India from going forward and adapting to modern conditions: "No country or people who are slaves to dogma and dogmatic mentality can progress, and unhappily our country and people have become extraordinarily dogmatic and little-minded." [101] The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organised religion, in India and elsewhere, has filled me with horror and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it. Almost always it seemed to stand for blind belief and reaction, dogma and bigotry, superstition, exploitation and the preservation of vested interests. In his autobiography, he analysed Christianity [102] and Islam , [103] and their impact on India. He wanted to model India as a secular country; his secular policies remain a subject of debate. [104] [105] Personal life Nehru with Edwina Mountbatten A member of the Nehru-Gandhi family , Nehru married Kamala Kaul in 1916. Their only daughter Indira was born a year later in 1917. Kamala gave birth to a boy in November 1924, but he lived only for a week. [106] Indira married Feroze Gandhi in 1942. They had two sons – Rajiv (b. 1944) and Sanjay (b. 1946). Nehru was alleged to have had relationships with Shraddha Mata, [107] Padmaja Naidu [108] [109] and Edwina Mountbatten . [110] Edwina's daughter Pamela acknowledged Nehru's platonic relationship with Edwina. [111] Legacy Statue of Nehru at Park Street, Kolkata Bust of Nehru at Aldwych , London As India's first Prime minister and external affairs minister, Jawaharlal Nehru played a major role in shaping modern India's government and political culture along with sound foreign policy. He is praised for creating a system providing universal primary education, [112] reaching children in the farthest corners of rural India. Nehru's education policy is also credited for the development of world-class educational institutions such as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences , [113] Indian Institutes of Technology , [114] and the Indian Institutes of Management . "Nehru was a great man... Nehru gave to Indians an image of themselves that I don't think others might have succeeded in doing." – Sir Isaiah Berlin [115] In addition, Nehru's stance as an unfailing nationalist led him to also implement policies which stressed commonality among Indians while still appreciating regional diversities. This proved particularly important as post-Independence differences surfaced since British withdrawal from the subcontinent prompted regional leaders to no longer relate to one another as allies against a common adversary. While differences of culture and, especially, language threatened the unity of the new nation, Nehru established programs such as the National Book Trust and the National Literary Academy which promoted the translation of regional literatures between languages and also organised the transfer of materials between regions. In pursuit of a single, unified India, Nehru warned, "Integrate or perish." [116] Historian Ramachandra Guha writes, "[had] Nehru retired in 1958 he would be remembered as not just India's best prime minister, but as one of the great statesmen of the modern world." [117] Nehru, thus, left behind a disputed legacy, being "either adored or reviled for India's progress or lack of it". [118] Commemoration Nehru distributes sweets among children at Nongpoh , Meghalaya Jawaharlal Nehru on a 1989 USSR commemorative stamp In his lifetime, Jawaharlal Nehru enjoyed an iconic status in India and was widely admired across the world for his idealism and statesmanship. His birthday, 14 November is celebrated in India as Bal Divas (" Children's Day ") in recognition of his lifelong passion and work for the welfare, education and development of children and young people. Children across India remember him as Chacha Nehru (Uncle Nehru). Nehru remains a popular symbol of the Congress Party which frequently celebrates his memory. Congress leaders and activists often emulate his style of clothing, especially the Gandhi cap and the " Nehru jacket ", and his mannerisms. Nehru's ideals and policies continue to shape the Congress Party 's manifesto and core political philosophy. An emotional attachment to his legacy was instrumental in the rise of his daughter Indira to leadership of the Congress Party and the national government. Nehru's personal preference for the sherwani ensured that it continues to be considered formal wear in North India today; aside from lending his name to a kind of cap, the Nehru jacket is named in his honour because of his preference for that style. Numerous public institutions and memorials across India are dedicated to Nehru's memory. The Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi is among the most prestigious universities in India. The Jawaharlal Nehru Port near the city of Mumbai is a modern port and dock designed to handle a huge cargo and traffic load. Nehru's residence in Delhi is preserved as the Teen Murti House now has Nehru Memorial Museum and Library , and one of five Nehru Planetariums that were set in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Allahabad and Pune. The complex also houses the offices of the 'Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund', established in 1964 under the Chairmanship of Dr S. Radhakrishnan , then President of India. The foundation also gives away the prestigious 'Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fellowship', established in 1968. [119] The Nehru family homes at Anand Bhavan and Swaraj Bhavan are also preserved to commemorate Nehru and his family's legacy. In popular culture Many documentaries about Nehru's life have been produced. He has also been portrayed in fictionalised films. The canonical performance is probably that of Roshan Seth , who played him three times: in Richard Attenborough 's 1982 film Gandhi , Shyam Benegal 's 1988 television series Bharat Ek Khoj , based on Nehru's The Discovery of India , and in a 2007 TV film entitled The Last Days of the Raj. [120] In Ketan Mehta 's film Sardar , Nehru was portrayed by Benjamin Gilani . Girish Karnad 's historical play, Tughlaq (1962) is an allegory about the Nehruvian era. It was staged by Ebrahim Alkazi with National School of Drama Repertory at Purana Qila , Delhi in the 1970s and later at the Festival of India, London in 1982. [121] [122] Writings Nehru was a prolific writer in English and wrote a number of books, such as The Discovery of India , Glimpses of World History , and his autobiography, Toward Freedom . He had written 30 letters to his daughter Indira Gandhi , when she was 10 years old and was in a boarding school in Mussoorie , teaching about natural history and the story of civilisations. The collection of these letters was later published as a book Letters from a Father to His Daughter . [123] Awards In 1955, Nehru was awarded Bharat Ratna , India's highest civilian honour. [124] See also	i don't know
Waheguru is the common term for God in which Indian religion?	What is Sikhism? What is Sikhism? By Sukhmandir Khalsa Updated August 22, 2016. If you have questions about Sikhism you may be able to find some of the answers you are looking for here. This brief introduction is for anyone new to Sikhism, or who is unfamiliar with the Sikh people and Sikh Faith . Sikhism is the religion of the Sikh people. The word Sikh means one who seeks after truth. The first word in the Sikh scripture is "Sat", which translates to truth. Sikhism is based on truthful living. More » Amritsanchar - Panj Pyara. Photo © [Ravitej Singh Khalsa / Eugene, Oregon / USA] A Sikh is defined as a person who believes in: One God The teachings of the ten gurus and Guru Granth Baptism according to the method outlined by Guru Gobind Singh How Many Sikhs Live in the World and Where? Sikhism is the fifth largest religion in the world. There are about 26 million Sikhs worldwide. The vast majority of Sikhs live in the Panjab, a part of northern India. Sikhs live in just about every major country around the world. It is estimated that nearly one million Sikhs live in the United States. More » Waheguru Etched in Marble. Photo © [S Khalsa] Who is Waheguru? Waheguru is the Sikh name for God. It means wonderful enlightener. Sikh believe that repeating Waheguru keeps God ever present in the mind, which is considered is the key to overcoming ego and becoming enlightened. Sikhs believe the creative aspect of one God is manifest in all of creation as intelligent design. Sikhs worship only one God. Favors sought from images, icons, pictures, nature, or other deities, is not condoned, and considered idol worship . More » 3 Golden Rules of Sikhism. Photo © [S Khalsa] Sikhs believe in meditation as a way of life. The Sikh ideal is to remember God while carrying out daily duties. A Sikh is to remember God while employed in honest work. Sikhs believe in sharing what they earn with others in need. Charitable work is considering the same as giving service to God, if carried out while meditating and keeping God in mind. Indulgence is considered to be an entrapment of ego. Sikhs believe meditation is a means of moderation to guard against excess pride, desire, greed, and attachment, which can result in anger and diminish the soul’s connection with God. More » The Panj Pyara Prepare Amrit. Photo © [Gurumustuk Singh Khalsa] At the time of baptism , initiated Sikhs are instructed in the Sikhism Code of Conduct and given four commandments: Honor the intention of the creator by keeping all hair intact. Uphold the values of family life by abstaining from adultery. Refrain from eating animals who suffer a ritualistic death. Observe temperance by avoiding the use of intoxicants. What is Adherence to the Five Articles of Faith? Sikhs maintain a distinctive appearance. Baptized Sikhs keep five articles of faith with them at all times. Part of the religious duty is to keep every hair intact and unaltered. Men, wear turban s to keep long hair tidy. Women wear turbans or long silky scarves. Long hair is groomed daily with a wooden comb. A loose undergarment is worn for modesty. A steel bangle is worn as a sign of faith. Sikhs wear a small sword. It symbolic of battling the senses. It also signifies the Sikh ideal of protecting the innocent against aggressive force.	Sikhism
Prasar Bharati (at 2014) is India's major?	FAQ - Sikh Coalition Sikh Coalition FAQ WHAT IS THE DEFINITION OF A SIKH? The most widely accepted definition of a Sikh comes from the Sikh code of conduct, the Rehat Maryada. Originally written in Punjabi, it is translated as: “A Sikh is any woman or man whose faith consists of belief in: One God, The ten Gurus, from Guru Nanak to Guru Gobind Singh, The Guru Granth Sahib, The utterances and teachings of the ten Gurus, Who has faith in and aspires to take Amrit, initiation ceremony into the Khalsa, And who does not owe allegiance to any other religion.” As with most religions, however, a devotee cannot be confined to a definition. HOW MANY SIKHS LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES? WHEN DID SIKHS FIRST IMMIGRATE TO AMERICA? There are over 500,000 Sikh Americans, and Sikhs have been in America for over 100 years. WHY DON’T PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT SIKHISM EVEN THOUGH IT IS THE 5TH LARGEST WORLD RELIGION? There are several different reasons. First, Sikhism, compared to other world traditions, is relatively young. The faith first emerged in 1469. Second, since many people are not aware that Sikhism is the fifth largest world religion, it is not referenced when discussing the other world religions. For example, many school textbooks have incorrect or no information on the faith. IS THERE AN OFFICIAL SIKH GREETING? The tenth Sikh Guru instructed Sikhs to greet each other with “Waheguru ji ka Khalsa, Waheguru ji ki Fateh” (“The Khalsa belongs to Waheguru (the Divine) and victory belongs to Waheguru”). Another common Sikh greeting is “Sat Sri Akal” (“Truth reigns eternal”). IS THERE A SIKH EMBLEM OR SYMBOL? WHAT IS THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE KHANDA? ‍The Ik Onkar and the Khanda are some of the symbols of the Sikhs. According to the Sikh scholar Kapur Singh, the Khanda first appeared around the eighteenth century. “The Khanda is the symbol of the Sikhs, as the Cross is to Christians or the Star of David is to Jews. It reflects some of the fundamental concepts of Sikhism. The symbol derives its name from the double-edged sword (also called a Khanda) which appears at the center of the logo. This double-edged sword is a metaphor of divine knowledge, its sharp edges cleaving truth from falsehood. The circle around the Khanda is the chakar. The chakar being a circle without a beginning or end symbolizes the perfection of God who is eternal. The chakar is surrounded by two curved swords called kirpans. These two swords symbolize the twin concepts of meeri and peeri – temporal and spiritual authority introduced by Guru Hargobind. They emphasize the equal emphasis that a Sikh must place on spiritual aspirations as well as obligations to society.” This information was obtained from http://www.sikhs.org/khanda.htm . IS THERE A PARTICULAR ‘SIKH COLOR’? SAFFRON? No, there is no particular color for Sikhs or Sikhism. The Sikh flag, which is seen at almost every Gurdwara, is a bright orange/saffron color or dark blue. These represent traditional colors for Sikhs. WHY DO SO MANY SIKHS HAVE A COMMON NAME, SINGH OR KAUR? The tenth Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, created the unique identity of the Sikhs and also gave all Sikh men one last name—Singh and all Sikh women another—Kaur. The reason for doing so is strongly rooted in the culture of South Asia. In that time period’s caste-ridden society and even today, someone’s last/family name signifies their social status and caste. Guru Gobind Singh wanted to remove these barriers between people, and create an egalitarian society. The word Singh means Lion and the word Kaur denotes Princess. DO SOME SIKHS KEEP THEIR LAST (CASTE) NAME? WHY? Many Sikh families have kept their family name, but have maintained Singh and Kaur as middle names. DO SIKHS HAVE ANY DIETARY RESTRICTIONS? CAN SIKHS EAT MEAT? Sikh Gurus strongly forbade all rituals and superstitions. Sikhs are thus not allowed to eat any food prepared through a ritualistic process (e.g., Sikhs are not meant to eat Kosher or Halal). There is no mandate allowing or disallowing Sikhs to eat meat. Sikhs are also not supposed to drink alcohol or consume any other intoxicants. IS THERE A SIKH CEREMONY OF INITIATION? Yes. Initiated Sikhs are said to have joined the “Khalsa.” Joining the Khalsa is an important step in one’s life. You are pledging your commitment to this faith and agreeing to live your life as a Sikh. This means that you must wear the five articles of faith, and carry Singh or Kaur as your last name. HOW OLD DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO BE INITIATED? There is no prescribed age at which a Sikh should be initiated and can choose to do so whenever he or she is ready. According to the Rehat Maryada, only those who understand the significance of the ceremony and carry its discipline with sincerity should be initiated. It is important that once you are initiated you are committed to that lifestyle. WHY DON’T SIKHS CUT OR SHAVE THEIR HAIR? The founders of the Sikh faith started the practice of keeping hair unshorn. Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru, gave the Sikhs 5 articles of faith (including unshorn hair), which as a whole comprise the daily uniform of a Sikh. In other words, keeping your hair (kesh) and wearing a turban form an external identity for a Sikh. HOW ABOUT PEOPLE WITH CUT HAIR WHO IDENTIFY THEMSELVES AS SIKH? All Sikhs are supposed to have uncut/untrimmed hair. But like in every religion, there are people who closely follow the religion and others who may not. Some people may cut their hair, but that does not exclude them from the Sikh community. DO WOMEN SHAVE? Sikhs are not supposed to cut hair from any part of their body. All Sikhs are thus supposed to have unshorn hair, and Sikh women are to maintain a separate identity and not shave. CAN I TOUCH SOMEONE’S TURBAN OR HAIR? Do not touch someone’s turban or hair without asking, as it may make him/her uncomfortable. WHAT IS UNDER YOUR TURBAN? Hair. Sikhs keep their hair unshorn and tie it in a bun or top knot on top of his/her head. WHAT DOES THE COLOR OF THE TURBAN MEAN? DO ALL SIKHS WEAR THE SAME COLOR? WHY OR WHY NOT? Sikhs can wear any color or style of turban, and there are no significant colors. Some Sikhs wear very few colors and others have a broad color palette. HOW CAN I TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SIKH TURBANS AND OTHER TURBANS? Ever Sikh ties his or her turban slightly differently. Remember that in America, 99% of the people you see wearing a turban will be Sikh. If you see someone wearing a turban and you are not sure if they are Sikh or not, ask them! The Sikh turban is thus an article of faith. People of many other cultures and religions wear turbans, but none are required to do so by their religion. Sikhs tie their turbans anew each day. Sikh turbans become a part of a Sikh’s body and are usually removed only in the privacy of the house. DO WOMEN WEAR TURBANS? Just like Sikh men, Sikh women are not supposed to cut their hair. In the Rehat Maryada, it is explicitly written that Sikh men wear a turban. There is nothing explicitly written about women, except that the turban is optional. Traditionally, women have always covered their head, but we’ve seen in the last 50 years, that women have deviated from this. There are many reasons for this change: globalization, cultural trends, and a lack of clarity in the Rehat Maryada. For Sikh women who tie a turban, the turban is just as much a part of their body and identity as it is for Sikh men! WHY DO SIKHS WEAR A KIRPAN? WHAT SIZE KIRPAN DOES A SIKH CARRY? A kirpan does not have a prescribed length. In most cases it is about 3-9 inches long. The kirpan serves as a reminder to fight against injustice and oppression. A Sikh understands that carrying a kirpan is a great responsibility. It is only intended to protect themselves or others. DO KIDS IN SCHOOL CARRY A KIRPAN? Some Sikhs that are younger have made the choice to become initiated, and as such, do wear a kirpan. Oftentimes, school personnel are aware that the Sikh student wears a kirpan, and both parties have come to an understanding as to how the student may wear his/her kirpan. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A SIKH GOES ON AN AIRPLANE? DO YOU HAVE TO TAKE THE KIRPAN OFF? At the present time, Sikhs put their kirpans into check-in luggage and do not carry it with them on an airplane. CAN I VISIT A GURDWARA? Everyone is welcome at a Gurdwara regardless of their race, religion, color or class. If you are interested in visiting a Gurdwara, feel free to reach out to Sikhs you know or contact [email protected] for additional suggestions and ideas. DO YOU HAVE TO BE A SIKH TO READ THE GURU GRANTH SAHIB? Anyone who wishes to can read the Guru Granth Sahib. DO SIKHS HAVE A CLERGY? WHAT ABOUT GRANTHIS/GIANIS? No. Sikh gurus were very clear about each Sikh making her or his own journey and not depending on a clergy to show them the way. Sikhs do have Granthis/Gianis. These are people who have studied the Sikh scriptures extensively, and are available in the Gurdwaras as teachers. They often lead a congregation, but any members from the congregations—both men and women—can also perform the same ceremonies. CAN WOMEN EXECUTE DUTIES IN A GURDWARA OR CONGREGATION? Yes. Sikhism does not delineate/define certain tasks to only men or only women. A woman can lead or take part in any service or ceremony just as a man would. WHY ARE MEN AND WOMEN DIVIDED INTO SEPARATE SECTIONS WHILE SITTING IN THE GURDWARA? Sikh Gurus always taught equality between men and women. For instance, the Gurus decried the cultural climate that denied women access to religion and gave women equal rights as men in all spheres. In Sikh congregations, men and women are asked to sit side by side—women on one side of the Guru Granth Sahib, and men on the other. There are both practical and cultural reasons for this practice. Since everyone sits on the floor, often unintentionally touching the person next to them when there is a large congregation, having such interaction with the member of the opposite gender is frequently inappropriate in the cultural context in which Sikhism arose. However, in some smaller Gurdwaras, men and women may be seen sitting mixed in the congregation. WHAT IS LANGAR? The Sikh Gurus instituted the unique practice of Langar. Langar is food that is cooked by the members of the community and served by members of the community, to all people at the Gurdwara. All Gurdwaras have a common kitchen, where Langar is cooked by volunteers and open to all. Langar is communal cooking, eating and sharing. Langar is eaten while sitting on the ground. The idea is to demonstrate equality of all people, irrespective of caste, creed, religion, race or sex. When Sikhism was sprouting in the South Asian subcontinent, the caste system stratified society. Higher castes would sit on stools and chairs and eat, while the lowest caste were not allowed to eat even in the same room, and usually on the floor, away from sight. The Gurus wanted Sikhs to always practice egalitarianism and communal responsibility. Langar represents one of the institutions the Gurus founded to break down caste barriers. WHAT IS THE SIKH WEDDING CEREMONY? The Sikh marriage ceremony is called Anand Karaj. It is performed in the presence of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh scripture. In a Sikh wedding, scripture is read from the Guru Granth Sahib, and after each section the couple walks around the Guru Granth Sahib, showing their commitment to the teachings being read. This is done four times. Following this, a communal prayer is said for the couple and religious hymns are sung. The ceremony may be performed by any initiated member of the Sikh faith. The prayers being read indicate that the couple pledge allegiance to each other as well as the Sikh way of life and make a commitment to working together to help each other realize the Divine Presence. DO YOU BELIEVE IN AN AFTERLIFE? DO YOU BELIEVE IN HEAVEN/HELL, SALVATION? Sikh focus is on this lifetime. The Sikh Scripture ask Sikhs to make the best of their time on this earth, for this is one’s opportunity to accomplish her or his best and to make a connection with Waheguru—the One, Omnipotent Power. Sikhs are asked not to partake in rituals and superstitions and not to concentrate on what occurred before birth or after death. Sikh scripture repudiates a belief in a physical place called Heaven or Hell. Similarly, Sikhism rejects the notion of a Judgment Day. Sikhs believe in the doctrine of karma, which is a cosmic law that takes into account a person’s good and bad actions during his or her lifetime. The person then is rewarded or must endure suffering based on his deeds. The Sikh scripture supports the idea of reincarnation. FUNERALS — WHERE, WHAT, HOW? According to the Sikh Rehat, Sikhs may dispose the body of the dead in any way they like. Sikhs generally cremate their dead because it is clean, simple and environmentally friendly. The body is bathed and clothed in fresh clothes by family members, and community members say collective prayers. The ashes are usually gathered afterwards, and put afloat in a flowing body of water—returning the person’s last physical remains to nature. WHAT DOES SIKHISM TEACH ABOUT OTHER RELIGIONS? The Sikh scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib, is the only major religious text which contains writings by teachers of other faiths. This is because Sikh gurus taught that there are many different ways of achieving a connection with the God. The Sikh way is one of these ways. If you are following the Sikh way, you must follow it to the best of your abilities, and with absolute devotion. DOES SIKHISM TRY TO CONVERT OTHERS? No. Sikhism forbids proselytization or forced conversions. Sikhism believes that there are many paths to achieving attunement with the Divine. However, Sikhism welcomes those interested in learning about the religion. Thus, people might learn about Sikh faith and then even be initiated as Sikhs. There are Chinese Sikhs, African Sikhs etc. However, once someone is initiated as a Sikh, she or he must follow the Sikh path to the best of her or his ability.	i don't know
What commercial organization governed India from 1612-1858 before it became a British colony?	US History/English Colonies - Wikibooks, open books for an open world US History/English Colonies 12 References Patterns of Colonization[ edit ] The islands of Great Britain changed greatly in the Renaissance, resulting in the Church of England, the British Civil War, and total transformation of economic, political, and legal systems. Yet through this time, despite pressure from other nations and America's own Natives, a diverse set of English colonies were planted and thrived. These new colonies were funded in three different ways. In one plan, corporate colonies were established by joint stock companies. A joint stock company was a project in which people would invest shares of stock into building a new colony. Depending on the success of the colony, each investor would receive profit based on the shares he had bought. This investment was less risky than starting a colony from scratch, and each investor influenced how the colony was run. These investors often elected their own public officials. (An example of a joint stock company on another continent was the British East India Company.) Virginia was settled in this way. Proprietary colonies were owned by a person or family who made laws and appointed officials as he or they pleased. Development was often a direct result of this ownership. Charles II granted William Penn the territory now known as Pennsylvania. Penn's new colony gave refuge to Quakers, a group of millennial Protestants who opposed the Church of England. (Quakers did not have ministers and did not hold to civil or religious inequality, making them a dangerous element in hierarchical societies.) Penn was an outspoken Quaker and had written many pamphlets defending the Quaker faith. He also invited settlers from other countries and other Protestant minorities, and even some Catholics. Finally, royal colonies were under the direct control of the King, who appointed a Royal Governor. The resulting settlement was not always identical to England. For example, England had broken with Catholicism during the reign of Henry the Eighth, and the Old Faith was seen not only as religious heresy but the prelude to domination by other countries. Yet Maryland's grant of toleration of Catholics was granted as a boon from the British Crown. In 1634, Lord Baltimore appointed George Calvert of England to settle a narrow strip of land north of Virginia and south of Pennsylvania as a Catholic colony via a royal charter. Fifteen years later, in 1649, he signed the Act of Toleration, which proclaimed religious freedom for its colonists. Despite the original charter, Protestants later became the majority faith. After Lord Baltimore's death several years later, Margaret Brent, the wife of an esteemed landowner in Maryland, executed his will as governor of the colony. She defied gender roles in the colonies by being the first woman of non-royal heritage to govern an English colony. Massachusetts Bay Colony[ edit ] The Massachusetts Bay Colony, another corporate colony, was founded as a place far from England where its religious dissenters could live. The Puritans, a group of radical Protestants who wanted what they called a return to the faith of the Bible, suffered torture and execution because they disagreed with the official Church of England. In 1620, forty-one Puritans (who called themselves Pilgrims) sailed for the new world. Their own contemporary accounts show that the Pilgrims originally intended to settle the Hudson River region near present day Long Island, New York. Once Cape Cod was sighted, they turned south to head for the Hudson River, but encountered treacherous seas and nearly shipwrecked. They then decided to return to Cape Cod rather than risk another attempt to head south. After weeks of scouting for a suitable settlement area, the Mayflower's passengers finally landed at Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts on December 26, 1620. They called it Massachusetts after the name of the Indian tribe then living there. Passengers of the Mayflower signing the "Mayflower Compact" William Bradford, who was selected as a governor after the death of John Carver, wrote a journal that helps us to better understand the hardships colonists endured, encounters with the Native Americans, and ultimately, the success of the colony. The Pilgrims agreed to govern themselves in the manner set forth in the Mayflower Compact, which signed on the Pilgrims' ship, The Mayflower. After two years they abandoned the communal form of partnership begun under the Compact and in 1623 assigned individual plots of land to each family to work. Ten years later, the joint-stock Massachusetts Bay Company acquired a charter from King Charles of England. The colony of Plymouth was eventually absorbed by Massachusetts Bay, but it remained separate until 1691. A large group of Pilgrims later migrated to the new colony of Massachusetts Bay. In keeping with its mother Church of England, the colony did not provide religious freedom. It only allowed (male) Puritans the right to vote, established Puritanism as the official religion of the colony in The Act of Toleration, and punished people who did not go to their Church. New York[ edit ] Other countries used the joint-stock company to fund exploration. In 1609, the Dutch East India company discovered a territory on the eastern coast of North America, from latitude 38 to 45 degrees north. This was an expedition in the yacht Halve Maen ("Half Moon") commanded by Henry Hudson. Adriaen Block and Hendrick Christiaensz explored the territory from 1611 until 1614. In March of 1614 the States General, the governing body of the Netherlands, proclaimed exclusive patent for trade in the New World. The States General issued patents for development of New Netherland as a private commercial venture. Ft. Nassau was swiftly built in the area of present day Albany to defend river traffic and to trade with Native Americans. New Netherland became a province of the Dutch Republic in 1624. The northern border was then reduced to 42 degrees north, as the English had encroached north of Cape Cod. According to the Law of Nations, a claim on a territory required not only discovery and charting but settlement. In May 1624 the Dutch completed their claim by landing thirty Dutch families on Noten Eylant, modern Governors Island. In the next few decades incompetent directors-general ran New Netherland. The settlers were attacked by Native Americans, and British and Dutch conflicts seemed destined to destroy the colony. All that changed when Peter Stuyvesant was appointed Director-General in 1647. As he arrived he said, "I shall govern you as a father his children". He expanded the colony's borders. He oversaw conquest of the one settlement of northernmost Europe, New Sweden, in 1655. He resolved the border dispute with New England in 1650. He improved defenses against Native American raids, and the population of the colony went from 500 in 1640 to 9,000 by 1664. But in August of 1664, four English warships arrived in New York Harbor demanding the surrender of the colony. At first, Stuyvesant vowed to fight, but there was little ammunition and gunpowder. He received weak support from the overwhelmed colonists, and was forced to surrender. New Netherland was subsequently renamed New York, in honor of the British Duke of York. In an attempt to gain supremacy over trade, the English waged war against the Dutch in 1664. The English took control over the Dutch harbor of New Amsterdam on the Atlantic coast of America. James, the brother of King Charles II, received the charter for New Amsterdam and the surrounding Dutch territory. In 1673 the Dutch, lead by Michiel de Ruyter, briefly reoccupied New Netherland again, this time naming it New Orange. After peace was made, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War, they agreed to return it to the English. Patterns of Colonization in the Other Early Colonies[ edit ] The territory of Carolina, named after the British King Charles I, was granted as a proprietary colony to eight different nobles. The proprietors divided Carolina into two separate colonies -- North Carolina and South Carolina. Four colonies were formed by division from already extant larger territories. When New Holland was taken to become New York, King James granted a portion of the territory, present-day New Jersey, to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Cartaret, while retaining present-day New York for himself as a proprietary colony. Sir George had come from the Isle of Jersey, and the new colony was named accordingly. Another portion of the territory became the crown colony Connecticut. This colony was also named for its native tribe of Indians. A corner of Pennsylvania which was not peopled by Quakers separated in 1704 to become the colony of Delaware. This was given the name of Thomas West, Third Baron De La Warr, a nobleman under Queen Elizabeth and a noted adventurer. Rhode Island was a unique experiment in religious and political freedom. Massachusetts banished Roger Williams after he began asserting that Jesus Christ meant for the Church to be separate from the governing authority. This dissenter from the Church of England, and then from the Puritans, became the first American Baptist. After many adventures in other colonies, he bought land from the Narragansett Indians for a new settlement. Providence was meant to be a colony free from religious entanglements and a refuge for people of conscience. He was later followed by Anne Hutchinson. She had outraged Boston divines because she was a woman who preached, and because she believed that one's works were not always tied to grace, unlike the Puritans. She also bought land from the Indians. On this was the settlement subsequently named Portsmouth, and afterward a dissident sister town, Newport. The colony was partially based upon Aquidneck Island, later called Rhode Island for unknown reasons, and the entire establishment eventually took its name from that place. Georgia was another proprietary colony, named after King George I, with a charter granted to James Oglethorpe and others in 1732. It was intended as a "buffer" colony to protect the others from attacks from the Florida Spanish and the Louisiana French. Because of this, Georgia was the only colony to receive funds from the Crown from its founding. The laws in Great Britain put people in prison for debt. Many of these people were shipped from overcrowded jails to freedom in the wilds of Georgia colony. America was already seen as a land of prosperity, and Oglethorpe hoped that the ex-prisoners would soon become honest and rich. However, few of the prisoners of London jails knew how to survive in the new wilderness. Portrait of the British Colonies[ edit ] The Colonies are often considered as three groups: New England (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut), the Southern Colonies (Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia), and the Middle Colonies (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware). Sometimes the Carolinas and Georgia are counted as separate from the Chesapeake Colonies. Each group had geographic and economic characteristics. New England's rocky soil only encouraged small farms, and its agricultural opportunities were limited. Thus it focused on fishing, forestry, shipping, and small industry to make money. [1] Richer land in the Southern colonies was taken over by individual farmers who grasped acreage. This created large plantation farms that grew tobacco, and later cotton. Farms in the Carolinas also farmed sugar, rice, and indigo. In the 17th century, these were farmed by indentured servants, people who would work for a period of years in return for passage to America and land. Many of these servants died before their indentures ended. A group of indentured servants rose up in Bacon's Rebellion in 1676. After Bacon's Rebellion, plantations began using African slaves instead. Even after release from indenture, many of these white people remained in the economic lower classes, though not subject to the slave codes, which became more harsh as time passed, denying almost all liberty to slaves in the southern colonies. By the American Revolution, one in five colonists was an African slave. And the products produced by slavery in the South were consumed and traded by towns in the Middle Colonies and New England. Few people questioned the slave economy. The Middle Colonies had medium-sized farms. These colonies also had people from many different cultures with many different beliefs. Individuals in these states used indentured servants, and later slaves, but there was not the concentration of masses of slave labor found in the Southern colonies. Another distinction lies in religious practices. New England was mostly Congregationalist, with some admixture of Presbyterian congregations and the religious non-conformists who called themselves Baptists. These were all descendants of dissenters before and during the British Civil War. The South was mostly Anglican, cherishing religious and secular traditions and holidays. The Middle Colonies held small groups of people from Holland, German lands, and even Bohemia, and they brought a welter of Catholic and Protestant faiths. Among the whites sent to the colonies by English authorities were many Scots-Irish people from Ulster. These had been Calvinist Protestants in the middle of a Irish Catholic majority, at odds both with them and with England. This minority settled in the frontier region of the Appalachian Mountains and eventually beyond in the Ohio and Mississippi country. In America their desire for land and freedom pushed the colonial boundary westward at little cost to the government, and provided an armed buffer between the eastern settlements and Native American tribes which had been driven away from the seaboard. Colonial frontiersmen endured a very harsh life, building their towns and farms by hand in a dense wilderness amid economic deprivation and native attack. Each colony developed its own areas of edification and amusement, depending upon the local faith and the local capacities. The culture of the South recorded early interest in musical theater, with Charleston, South Carolina and Williamsburg, Virginia as hubs of musical activity. A performance of Richard III, the first professional production of Shakespeare in America, took place in New York City in 1750. And preachers, lecturers, and singers entertained the colonists. Their commonalities were stronger than their differences. All three regions shared a population mostly derived from the British Isles. All had terrible roads, and all had connections to the Atlantic Ocean as a means of transportation. And all were tied to the Atlantic economy. Atlantic merchants used ships to trade slaves, tobacco, rum, sugar, gold, silver, spices, fish, lumber, and manufactured goods between America, the West Indies, Europe and Africa. [2] New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston were the largest cities and main ports at that time. [3] Early Technology[ edit ] The first wave of colonists used hand labor to cultivate their farms, and established such land-based crafts such as pottery and tanning. As later ships brought cattle and horses, draft animals became part of the economy. Indentured servants, and then slaves kidnapped from Africa, were imported. This was when larger plantations began to be founded. In the latter part of the eighteenth century small-scale machine-based manufacturing began to appear. Individuals started to dig for coal and iron ore. New England used the latter to begin making building tools and horseshoes. A new textile industry arose, dependent in part upon Southern cotton. Powered by wood or coal and fed by the need for strong metal, household forges pioneered new techniques of iron-making. The blacksmith and the tinsmith became part of large settlements. Colonies started making mechanized clocks, guns, and lead type for printing. Mercantilism, Salutary Neglect and British Interference[ edit ] The American colonies, entirely new societies separated by an ocean from Great Britain, believed they had the right to govern themselves. This belief was encouraged by Great Britain's Glorious Revolution and 1689 Bill of Rights, which gave Parliament the ultimate authority in government. A policy of relatively lax controls or Salutary Neglect ended in increased British regulation resulting from the policy of mercantilism, and seen through the Lords of Trade and the later Navigation Acts. Mercantilism[ edit ] Parliament placed controls on colonial trade in obedience to the economic policy of mercantilism. This was the idea that a nation's economic power depended on the value of its exports. A country could use its colonies to create finished goods, rather than raw materials. These could be traded to other countries, thus increasing the strength of the colonizing nation. This policy had been put forth by a Frenchman named Jean-Baptiste Colbert. It seemed tailor-made for Great Britain. Spain had American gold as its economic base, and France had American furs. England had neither of these. But it had American cotton, molasses, and tobacco, as well as its state-of-the-art ships. Prior to the mid-1700's, the colonies had enjoyed a long period of "salutary neglect", where the British largely let the colonies govern themselves. This now ended. The Lords of Trade[ edit ] In an attempt to enforce mercantilism policies, King Charles II created the Lords of Trade as a new committee on the Privy Council. The Lords of Trade attempted to affect the government of the colonies in a manner beneficial to the English, rather than to the colonists. The Lords of Trade attempted to convert all American colonies to royal ones so that the Crown could gain more power. Under King James II, the successor to Charles II, New York, New Jersey, and the Puritan colonies were combined into the Dominion of New England in 1687. However, the Dominion only lasted a brief time. King James II, a Catholic, was seen as a threat by British Protestants. James was overthrown (he was technically held abdicated by Parliament) in the bloodless Glorious Revolution of 1688. In 1689, James' daughter Mary II and her husband William III took the throne as joint rulers. However, the British Parliament actually held the power. The Dominion of New England was dissolved, the various separate colonies were reestablished, and the Lords of Trade were abandoned (replaced by a Board of Trade, a purely advisory body). Navigation Acts[ edit ] Beginning in 1660, the Parliament of England passed the Navigation Acts to increase its benefit from its colonies. The Acts required that any colonial imports or exports travel only on ships registered in England, meaning that only England could have the shipping power and the fees derived from them. They forbid the colonies to export tobacco and sugar to any nation other than England. (Tobacco was then used as medicine, and sugar was used to make alcohol, also a medicine.) And the colonies could not import anything manufactured outside England unless the goods were first taken to England, where taxes were paid, and then to the colonies. In the 1730s, The Sugar Act established a tax of six pence per gallon of sugar or molasses imported into the colonies. By 1750, Parliament had begun to ban, restrict, or tax several more products. It tried to curtail all manufacture in the the colonies. This provoked much anger among the colonists, despite the fact that their tax burdens were quite low, when compared to most subjects of European monarchies of the same period. Colonists hated the Navigation Acts because they believed they would be more prosperous and rich if they could trade on their own behalf. They also believed that some vital resources would not be found in Britain. Indians in the 1700s[ edit ] Indians of the Great Plains: Today, the area where the Indians of all the Great Plains lived is located from the Rocky mountains to the Mississippi River. During the 1700s, there were about 30 tribes that lived on the Great Plains. These tribes tended to rely on buffalo as their food source as well as other daily needs, such as clothing. Not only did Indians, specifically women, make their clothing out of buffalo, but also out of deer. Women would soak the deer or buffalo and scrape off the hair of the dead animal. [4] Also, Indian tribes traded with one another. The amount of horses an individual owned was a sign of wealth; Indians would trade their horses for food, tools, weapons(such as guns), and hides. Since the tribes spoke many different languages from one another, they had to use sign language to be able to trade with each other. [4] Philadelphia Election Riot[ edit ] A riot broke out on election day in Philadelphia in 1742 as a result of the Anglican population disagreeing with the Quaker majority. The riot stemmed over a power struggle between the Anglican and Quaker population. The Quakers had a history of political dominance over Philadelphia. The German population backed the Quaker vote because of the Quaker Pacifism which would protect from higher taxes and ultimately the draft. On election day, the Anglicans and sailors fought with the Quakers and Germans. The Quakers were able to seek shelter in the courthouse and complete the election. The Anglican party lost the election and 54 sailors were jailed following the riot. Education[ edit ] As the three sections of the colonies through the 1700s were made up of people with different interests, they provided differing sorts of education for their children. Although there were commonalities -- a rich family in any of the three regions might send a son to Europe for his education -- people in different colonies tended to educate in differing ways. New England's motives for education were both civil and religious. The good citizen had to know his or her Bible. The Massachusetts General School Law of 1647 stated that if more than 50 families lived in a community, a schoolteacher must be hired. This law gave a justification: "It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times by keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times by persuading from the use of tongues, that so that at least the true sense and meaning of the original might be clouded and corrupted with love and false glosses of saint-seeming deceivers; and to the end that learning may not be buried in the grave of our forefathers, in church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors." This was the Pilgrim ethos, set up in opposition to what they saw as the ignorance imposed by tyrants. Both boys and girls were often taught to read the Bible by their parents, perhaps with the aid of a horn book, an alphabet and syllabary page covered by a protective layer of horn. In addition to being able to read the Bible, a Christian ought to be able to govern in his society. (His society: for government was the province of godly, property-holding men, rather than women.) To obtain this youths had to gain a classical education -- that is, one based thoroughly on Latin. The 1647 law was the beginning of the American grammar school, which initially taught Latin, but later included practical subjects such as navigation, engineering, bookkeeping, and foreign languages. [5] Most of the schools opened in the colonial era were private. [6] However, they had been preceded by the first public-supported school, the Boston Latin School, in 1635. It had a rigorous education, and as a result, few students. Harvard was the first university in America, founded in 1636 and originally intended to teach Protestant clergy. Because of the small number of people graduating from the classical curriculum, attendance was low. Some people jumped directly from the classical curriculum to the University, sometimes entering Harvard as young as 14 or 15 years old. Cotton Mather graduated Harvard at 15, an exception only because of his extreme precocity. In private schools, boys and girls learned penmanship, basic Math, and reading and writing English. These fed the various trades, where older children were apprenticed. Girls who did not become servants were often trained for domestic life, learning needlework, cooking, and the several days-long task of cleaning clothes. Like New England, the Middle Colonies had private schools which educated children in reading and writing. However, the basics were rarer. The further west one lived, the less likely one was to be able to go to school, or to read and write at all. Ethnic and religious sub-groups would have their own private schools, which taught their own children their own folk-ways. In none of the colonies was higher education certain. Secondary schools were very rare outside of such major towns as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. [7] The Chesapeake experience was different again. Children could only could only read and write if their parents could. [8] And the South had few schools, of any kind, until the Revolutionary era. Children in wealthy families would study with private tutors. Though wealthy girls might learn 'the womanly arts,' they would not have the same curriculum as their brothers. Martha Washington's granddaughter Eliza Custis was laughed at by her stepfather when "[I] thought it hard they would not teach me Greek and Latin because I was a girl -- they laughed and said women ought not to know those things, and mending, writing, Arithmetic, and Music was all I could be permitted to acquire." [9] Middle class children might learn to read from their parents, and many poor children, as well as all black children, went unschooled. The literacy rates were lower in the South than the North until about the 19th century. [10] In 1693 the College of William & Mary was founded, Virginia's first University. As the 18th century wore on, it specialized not in theology for clergymen but in law. [11] In 1701, the Collegiate College was founded. In 1718 it received funds from a Welsh governor of the British East India Company, Elihu Yale, and was renamed Yale College. These were later joined by several other universities, including Princeton in 1747. In the 18th century, astronomy, physics, modern history and politics took a bigger place in the college curriculum. Some colleges experimented with admitting Native American students in the 18th century, though not African-Americans. [12] In 1640, The whole Booke of Psalms Faithfully Translated into English Metre, commonly known as the Bay Psalm Book, was printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was the first book written in the new world. The Bay Psalm Book was the first metrical English translation of the Biblical psalms. [13] This famous and influential songbook was succeeded by a whole New England publishing industry. Sometime after 1687 the first New England Primer was published as an aid to childhood reading and spelling. An alternative to the classical curriculum emerged in Benjamin Franklin's American Academy, founded in Philadelphia in 1751. This body represented something closer to the modern American high school, offering vocational education. This sort of school later outnumbered the classical secondary school. However, Franklin's Academy was private as well, making such learning open only to those who could afford it. During this period colonists attempted to convert Native Americans to Christianity. [14] Review Questions[ edit ] 1. Choose one of the following colonies: New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, Georgia. In which of the three areas is it located? Why and how was it initially colonized? How did its immigrants and the religions they adhered to affect it? 2. Why did the British interfere with the colonies? References[ edit ] ↑ Morison, Samuel Eliot (1972). The Oxford History of the American People. New York City: Mentor. pp. 199–200. ISBN 0451-62600-1 . ↑ Kurlansky, Mark. Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World. New York: Walker. ISBN 0-8027-1326-2 .	East India Company
What is India's international telephone dialling code?	British colonial rule \| Article about British colonial rule by The Free Dictionary British colonial rule \| Article about British colonial rule by The Free Dictionary http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/British+colonial+rule Also found in: Dictionary , Thesaurus , Wikipedia . British Empire, overseas territories linked to Great Britain in a variety of constitutional relationships, established over a period of three centuries. The establishment of the empire resulted primarily from commercial and political motives and emigration movements (see imperialism imperialism, broadly, the extension of rule or influence by one government, nation, or society over another. Early Empires Evidence of the existence of empires dates back to the dawn of written history in Egypt and in Mesopotamia, where local rulers extended their ..... Click the link for more information. ); its long endurance resulted from British command of the seas and preeminence in international commerce, and from the flexibility of British rule. At its height in the late 19th and early 20th cent., the empire included territories on all continents, comprising about one quarter of the world's population and area. Probably the outstanding impact of the British Empire has been the dissemination of European ideas, particularly of British political institutions and of English as a lingua franca, throughout a large part of the world. The First Empire The origins of the empire date from the late 16th cent. with the private commercial ventures, chartered and encouraged by the crown, of chartered companies chartered companies, associations for foreign trade, exploration, and colonization that came into existence with the formation of the European nation states and their overseas expansion. An association received its charter from the state and sometimes had state support. ..... Click the link for more information. . These companies sometimes had certain powers of political control as well as commercial monopolies over designated geographical areas. Usually they began by setting up fortified trading posts, but where no strong indigenous government existed the English gradually extended their powers over the surrounding area. In this way scattered posts were established in India and the East Indies (for spices, coffee, and tea), defying Portuguese and later Dutch hegemony, and in Newfoundland (for fish) and Hudson Bay (for furs), where the main adversaries were the French. In the 17th cent. European demand for sugar and tobacco led to the growth of plantations on the islands of the Caribbean and in SE North America. These colonies, together with those established by Roman Catholics and Protestant dissenters in NE North America, attracted a considerable and diversified influx of European settlers. Organized by chartered companies, the colonies soon developed representative institutions, evolving from the company governing body and modeled on English lines. The need for cheap labor to work the plantations fostered the growth of the African slave trade. New chartered companies secured posts on the African coasts as markets for captured slaves from the interior. An integrated imperial trade arose, involving the exchange of African slaves for West Indian molasses and sugar, English cloth and manufactured goods, and American fish and timber. To achieve the imperial self-sufficiency required by prevailing theories of mercantilism mercantilism , economic system of the major trading nations during the 16th, 17th, and 18th cent., based on the premise that national wealth and power were best served by increasing exports and collecting precious metals in return. ..... Click the link for more information. , and, more immediately, to increase British wealth and naval strength, the Navigation Acts Navigation Acts, in English history, name given to certain parliamentary legislation, more properly called the British Acts of Trade. The acts were an outgrowth of mercantilism, and followed principles laid down by Tudor and early Stuart trade regulations. ..... Click the link for more information. were passed, restricting colonial trade exclusively to British ships and making England the sole market for important colonial products. Developments in the late 17th and early 18th cent. were characterized by a weakening of the Spanish and Dutch empires, exposing their territories to British encroachment, and by growing Anglo-French rivalry in India, Canada, and Africa. At this time the British government attempted to assert greater direct control over the expanding empire. In the 1680s the revision of certain colonial charters to bring the North American and West Indian colonies under the supervision of royal governors resulted in chronic friction between the governors and elected colonial assemblies. The early 18th cent. saw a reorganization and revitalization of many of the old chartered companies. In India, from the 1740s to 1763, the British East India Company East India Company, British, 1600–1874, company chartered by Queen Elizabeth I for trade with Asia. The original object of the group of merchants involved was to break the Dutch monopoly of the spice trade with the East Indies. ..... Click the link for more information. and its French counterpart were engaged in a military and commercial rivalry in which the British were ultimately victorious. The political fragmentation of the Mughal empire permitted the absorption of one area after another by the British. The Treaty of Paris (1763; see under Paris, Treaty of Paris, Treaty of, any of several important treaties, signed at or near Paris, France. The Treaty of 1763 The Treaty of Paris of Feb. 10, 1763, was signed by Great Britain, France, and Spain. ..... Click the link for more information. ) firmly established the British in India and Canada, but the financial burdens of war involved the government in difficulties with the American colonies. The success of the American Revolution American Revolution, 1775–83, struggle by which the Thirteen Colonies on the Atlantic seaboard of North America won independence from Great Britain and became the United States. It is also called the American War of Independence. ..... Click the link for more information. marked the end of the first British Empire. The Second Empire The voyages of Capt. James Cook to Australia and New Zealand in the 1770s and new conquests in India after 1763 opened a second phase of territorial expansion. The victories of the Napoleonic Wars Napoleonic Wars, 1803–15, the wars waged by or against France under Napoleon I. For a discussion of them see under Napoleon I. ..... Click the link for more information. added further possessions to the empire, among them Cape Colony, Mauritius, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Trinidad and Tobago, St. Lucia, British Guiana (Guyana), and Malta. During the second empire mercantilist ideals and regulations were gradually abandoned in response to economic and political developments in Great Britain early in the 19th cent. Britain's new industrial supremacy lent greater force to doctrines of free trade free trade, in modern usage, trade or commerce carried on without such restrictions as import duties, export bounties, domestic production subsidies, trade quotas, or import licenses. ..... Click the link for more information. , which, as part of their critique of mercantilism, questioned the economic value of political ties between the colonies and the mother country. The plight of large nonwhite populations within the empire became a matter of concern to humanitarians. Abolition of the slave trade (1807) and of slavery (1833) was accompanied in the colonies by efforts to improve the lot of indigenous groups. Better communications and the establishment of a regular civil service facilitated the development of a more efficient colonial administration. But the growth, notably in the English-speaking colonies, of national identity and of relative national self-sufficiency, as well as a trend of opinion in Britain favoring colonial self-government, made the British, now engaged in liberalizing their own governing institutions, willing to concede certain powers of self-government to the white colonies. In 1839, Lord Durham, in response to unrest in Canada, issued his "Report on the Affairs of British North America." Durham stated that to retain its colonies Britain should grant them a large measure of internal self-government. The British North America Act British North America Act, law passed by the British Parliament in 1867 that provided for the unification of the Canadian provinces into the dominion of Canada. Until 1982 the act also functioned as the constitution of Canada. ..... Click the link for more information. of 1867 inaugurated a pattern of devolution followed in most of the European-settled colonies by which Parliament gradually surrendered its direct governing powers; thus Australia and New Zealand followed Canada in becoming self-governing dominions. On the other hand, the British assumed greater responsibility in Africa and in India, where the Indian Mutiny Indian Mutiny, 1857–58, revolt that began with Indian soldiers in the Bengal army of the British East India Company but developed into a widespread uprising against British rule in India. It is also known as the Sepoy Rebellion, sepoys being the native soldiers. ..... Click the link for more information. had resulted (1858) in the final transfer of power from the East India Company to the British government. To govern territories with large indigenous populations, the crown colony system was developed. Such colonies, of which one of the most enduring was Hong Kong, were ruled by a British governor and consultative councils composed primarily of the governor's nominees; these, in turn, often delegated considerable powers of local government to local rulers. In the later decades of the 19th cent. there occurred a revival of European competition for empire in which the British acquired or consolidated vast holdings in Africa—such as Nigeria, the Gold Coast (later Ghana), Rhodesia (Zambia and Zimbabwe), South Africa, and Egypt—and in Asia—such as Burma (Myanmar) and Malaya. The size and wealth of the empire and the anxieties produced by European colonial competition stimulated a desire for imperial solidarity. The Imperial Conference Imperial Conference, assembly of representatives of the self-governing members of the British Empire, held about every four years until World War II. The meetings prior to 1911—in 1887, 1897, 1902, and 1907—were known as Colonial Conferences, and were chiefly ..... Click the link for more information. , begun in 1887, represented an attempt to strengthen Britain's ties with those colonies that had become self-governing territories. From Empire to Commonwealth World War I brought the British Empire to the peak of its expansion, but in the years that followed came its decline. Victory added, under the system of mandates mandates, system of trusteeships established by Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations for the administration of former Turkish territories and of former German colonies. ..... Click the link for more information. , new territories, including Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, and several former German territories in Africa and Asia. Imperial contributions had considerably strengthened the British war effort (more than 200,000 men from the overseas empire died in the war; the dominions and India signed the Versailles Treaty and joined the League of Nations), but at the same time expectations were raised among colonial populations that an increased measure of self-government would be granted. Nationalist agitation against economic disparities, often stimulated by acts of racial discrimination by British settlers, was particularly strong in India (see Indian National Congress Indian National Congress, Indian political party, founded in 1885. Its founding members proposed economic reforms and wanted a larger role in the making of British policy for India. ..... Click the link for more information. ) and in parts of Africa. Although loath to lessen its hold over countries it had done much to develop, and thereby to incur great economic and political loss, Britain gradually capitulated to the pressures of nationalist sentiment. Iraq gained full sovereignty in 1932; British privileges in Egypt were modified by treaty in 1936; and concessions were made toward self-government in India and later in the African colonies. In 1931 the Statute of Westminster Westminster, Statute of, 1931, in British imperial history, an act of the British Parliament that gave formal recognition to the autonomy of the dominions of the British Empire and was in effect the founding charter of the British Commonwealth of Nations. ..... Click the link for more information. officially recognized the independent and equal status under the crown of the former dominions within a British Commonwealth of Nations Commonwealth of Nations, voluntary association of Great Britain and its dependencies, certain former British dependencies that are now sovereign states and their dependencies, and the associated states (states with full internal government but whose external relations are ..... Click the link for more information. , thus marking the advent of free cooperation among equal partners. After World War II self-government advanced rapidly in all parts of the empire. In 1947, India was partitioned and independence granted to the new states of India and Pakistan. In 1948 the mandate over Palestine was relinquished, and Burma (Myanmar) gained independence as a republic. Other parts of the empire, notably in Africa, gained independence and subsequently joined the Commonwealth. In 1997 Hong Kong passed to China and, in the opinion of many historians, the British Empire definitively ended. While the empire may have faded into history, Great Britain still continues to administer many dependencies throughout the world. They include Gibraltar in the Mediterranean; the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands, and St. Helena (including Ascension and Tristan da Cunha) in the South Atlantic; Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos Islands in the West Indies; and Pitcairn Island in the Pacific. These dependencies have varying degrees of self-government. In 1982 Britain clashed with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, retaking them by force after Argentina, which also claims them, had invaded and seized the islands. Bibliography See The Cambridge History of the British Empire (8 vol., 1929–1963); R. A. Huttenback, The British Imperial Experience (1966); J. A. Williamson, A Short History of British Expansion (2 vol., 6th ed. 1967); C. E. Carrington, The British Overseas (2d ed. 1968); C. Cross, The Fall of the British Empire (1968); G. S. Graham, A Concise History of the British Empire (1970); C. Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (1972); T. O. Lloyd, The British Empire, 1558–1982 (1984); A. Clayton, The British Empire as a Superpower, 1919–1939 (1986); A. J. Christopher, The British Empire at Its Zenith (1988); P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688–2000 (rev. ed. 2003); N. Ferguson, Empire (2003); S. Schama, A History of Britain: The Fate of Empire, 1776–2000 (2003); P. Clarke, The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire (2008); P. Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781–1997 (2008); J. Darwin, The Empire Project (2009) and Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain (2013). British Empire the designation given to the aggregate of Great Britain and its colonial possessions. The term “British Empire” came into official use in the mid-1870’s. The first colonial seizures by England date back to the epoch of feudalism. In the 12th century the conquest of Ireland began. In a later period, with the ripening of capitalist relations within English feudalism, England began its colonial policy proper. In 1583 the island of Newfoundland was seized, and in 1607 the first English colony in North America (Virginia) was founded. In wars at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century England dealt a number of heavy blows to Spain, its chief rival at sea and the biggest colonial power of the time. Large-scale monopolistic trading companies were formed in England, including the East India Company (1600). These companies not only carried on trade with overseas countries but also began the seizure of strongholds in Asia and Africa. In this period the English policy of colonial seizures, although it was directly related to the development of trade and industry, was determined mainly by the interests of the aristocracy, which was seeking to acquire overseas territories for the consolidation of its feudal land monopoly. With the establishment of the capitalist system in England as a result of the bourgeois revolution of the 17th century, English colonial expansion intensified. In wars in 1652-54, 1665-67, and 1672-74, England defeated Holland and captured a number of territories in North America. In the mid-17th century, Portugal and its large colonial empire became dependent on England. During the War of the Spanish Succession, Great Britain (the name that became established after 1707 for the united kingdom of England and Scotland) seized Gibraltar and new territories in North America. In the Seven Years’ War of 1756-63, Great Britain dealt a heavy blow to feudal-absolutist France, which by that time had become its chief rival in the struggle for commercial and colonial hegemony, and fatally undermined Spain’s colonial might. The English annexed French Canada and installed their rule in North America. The conquest of India unfolded: the East India Company took over Bengal in 1757. “The events of the Seven Years’ War transformed the East India Company from a commercial into a military and territorial power. It was then that the foundation was laid of the present British Empire in the East,” wrote K. Marx in 1853 (K. Marx, and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 9, p. 152). The formation of the British colonial empire was a constituent part of the single world-historical process of the establishment of capitalism, which occurred most swiftly in Great Britain. The exploitation of colonies (especially India), along with the slave trade, was one of the principal aspects of the primary accumulation of capital in that country and contributed in large measure to the Industrial Revolution. The development of capitalist relations in the colonies (above all in India) was hampered by the policy of the mother country, which sought to preserve the feudal and prefeudal forms of land ownership. The situation of the British colonies in North America was different. These colonies were populated by English settlers, while Indian tribes were driven from their lands and annihilated. In the North American colonies, despite the resistance of the mother country, capitalist relations developed relatively quickly. In the last quarter of the 18th century, the British Empire experienced its first crisis. As a result of the War of Independence in North America (1775-83), Great Britain lost 13 North American colonies. English capitalism overcame this crisis comparatively easily. As a result of wars with Napoleon’s France, Great Britain triumphed in the struggle for colonial and commercial supremacy. The Congress of Vienna (1814-15) secured for Great Britain the Cape Colony (South Africa), Malta, Ceylon, and other territories that it had seized in the late 18th century and early 19th century. The victory over France and the establishment of Great Britain’s domination of the sea promoted an increase in its colonial expansion in all parts of the world. In the first half of the 19th century Great Britain, in the main, completed the conquest of India and was colonizing Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. As a result of the Opium Wars of 1840-42 (in Russian, the Anglo-Chinese War) and 1856-60 (the Anglo-French-Chinese War), the first unequal treaties were imposed on China, and a number of Chinese ports were forcibly opened for British trade. Great Britain seized the island of Hsiangkang (Hong Kong), which was subsequently turned into a base for British expansion in China. Beginning in the mid-19th century, two distinguishing features of imperialism were manifested in Great Britain: vast colonial possessions and a monopolistic position on the world market. In this period a system of economic relations was evolving within the British Empire, based on the domination of the mother country, which used the colonies as sources of raw materials and markets. The growing competition of British industry was having an increasingly destructive effect on the economies of the colonies. The import of British industrial goods led to the ruin of local domestic industry (especially in India, where cheap English fabrics caused no less devastating consequences than the military expeditions of the colonialists) and led to the destruction of the alliance between the craftsmen and the farmers, on which the rural community was based in most colonies. Relying on the support of the exploiter (most often feudal) classes of the colonies, the British colonialists practiced on a wide scale in the colonies the principle of “divide and rule”; in India, enmity was artificially inflamed between Hindus and Muslims and between individual provinces and principalities. The intensification of the British colonial yoke caused a number of anticolonial revolts. The largest of them was the Indian Mutiny of 1857-59, which threatened British rule in India and forced the colonialists to change the system of government of India. In 1858 the East India Company was liquidated; India became a crown colony, and in 1876 the English Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. A special case was the settled colonies (Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), a large part of whose population was composed of emigrants from Great Britain (in Canada, from Great Britain and France). By the mid-19th century, during a tenacious struggle (revolts in Canada in 1837-38, in Australia in 1854), these colonies achieved internal self-government (in 1867, Canada became the first British dominion) and began to develop as overseas branches of British capitalism; their ruling circles regarded the remaining colonies as being under their joint ownership with the English bourgeoisie. In the last quarter of the 19th century Great Britain, despite the loss of its world industrial monopoly, not only preserved but substantially enlarged its colonial empire. The struggle for the capture of not yet divided territories and for the strengthening of the British Empire was the core of British foreign policy. Making use of its supremacy at sea and of its vast network of naval bases and strongholds, the British colonialists waged numerous colonial wars. In the 1880’s and 1890’s, enormous territories were taken over on the western and eastern coasts of Africa. With the seizure of Cyprus (1878), the establishment of control over the Suez Canal (1875) and of British rule in Egypt (1882), and with the completion of the conquest of Burma (1885), Great Britain’s position in vast regions of Asia and Africa was solidified. After bloody wars, Great Britain established a de facto protectorate over Afghanistan. In 1898, under the guise of a “lease,” it seized from China the port of Weihaiwei andcompleted the seizure of the peninsula of Jiulong (Kowloon). Great Britain entered the age of imperialism as the possessor of an enormous colonial empire that provided it with monopolistic markets and spheres for investment. “In this case, enormous exports of capital,” V. I. Lenin pointed out, “are bound up most closely with vast colonies” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 27, p. 361). By the end of 1913 the countries of the British Empire accounted for about half of all British investments abroad (£1,780,000,000 out of £ 3,763,000,000). The exploitation of the colonies led to the intensification of the features of parasitism and decay in the British economy. The desire of British capitalists to preserve and enlarge the British Empire remained one of the determining factors of Great Britain’s foreign policy. This purpose was served by a naval-arms race and an increase in the army and the colonial bureaucracy. The British Empire was a complex political-economic system, all of whose members were closely tied to the mother country and obeyed it. This situation was promoted, in large part, aside from direct political and military coercion, by the system of economic relations that had evolved and that made the countries of the empire fully dependent on Great Britain. Despite tenacious resistance by the mother country, industry was developing in the countries of the British Empire (especially in the settled colonies and India); a national bourgeoisie and a proletariat were taking shape and becoming an increasingly serious force in political life. The Russian Revolution of 1905-07 was a major influence on the development of the national liberation movement in the British Empire. The Indian National Congress in 1906 put forth a demand for self-government for India. However, the British authorities brutally suppressed the anticolonial activities. In the first decades of the 20th century the dominions of the Commonwealth of Australia (1901), New Zealand (1907), the Union of South Africa (1910), and Newfoundland (1917) were formed. The governments of the dominions were called to discuss questions of the foreign policy and defense of the British Empire at the imperial conferences. The capitalists of the dominions participated with the British capitalists in the exploitation of the colonial part of the British Empire. By V. I. Lenin’s definition, this was the participation of the dominions in the imperialism of the mother country. In addition to this, “local imperialism” by the dominions was developing, manifested at that time in their effort to subordinate certain parts of the British Empire to their influence (ibid., vol. 28, p. 511). In the late 19th century and early 20th, particular importance was acquired by Anglo-German imperialist contradictions (including their colonial and maritime rivalry), which played the principal role in the onset of World War I (1914-1918). Great Britain’s entry into the war automatically entailed the participation of the dominions as well. (See the state of the British Empire before World War I in Table 1.) Great Britain’s dominance in fact extended also to Egypt (area, 995,000 sq km; population, over 11,000,000), Nepal (area, 140,000 sq km; population, about 5,000,000), Afghanistan (area, 650,000 sq km; population, about 6,000,000) and to Hsiangkang (Hong Kong; population, 457,000) and Weihaiwei (population, 147,000), which were wrested from China. World War I upset the economic relations that had evolved in the British Empire. This contributed to the stepped-up economic development of the dominions. Great Britain was compelled to recognize their rights to conduct an autonomous foreign policy. The first appearance of the dominions and India in the world arena was their participation in the signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty (1919). The dominions joined the League of Nations as autonomous members. As a result of World War I, the British Empire expanded. The imperialists of Great Britain and the dominions annexed a number of possessions from their rivals. Mandated territories of Great Britain (Iraq, Palestine, Transjordan, Tanganyika, parts of Togo and of the Cameroons), the Union of South Africa (Southwest Africa), the Commonwealth of Australia (part of New Guinea and contiguous islands of Oceania), and of New Zealand (West Samoa Islands) entered the British Empire. British imperialism expanded its positions in the region of the Near and Middle East. Many states of that region that formally did not belong to the British Empire (for example, the states of the Arabian Peninsula) in fact were semicolonies of Great Britain. Table 1. The British Empire in 1912-13, on the eve of World War I Mother country	i don't know
The partition of India, creating an independent India and Pakistan, was called the (Who?) Plan, after the last Viceroy of India, later assassinated by the IRA in 1979?	Learn and talk about Partition of India, British Empire, Divided regions, Ethnic cleansing in Asia, Forced migration The Partition of India was the 1947 partitioning of the British Indian Empire into India and Pakistan. [4] It led to the creation of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan (which later split into Pakistan and Bangladesh ) and the Union of India (later Republic of India ) on 14–15 August 1947. "Partition" here refers not only to the division of the Bengal province of British India into East Pakistan and West Bengal (India), and the similar partition of the Punjab Province into West Punjab ( West Pakistan ) and East Punjab (now Punjab ), but also to the respective divisions of other assets, including the British Indian Army , the Indian Civil Service and other administrative services, the railways , and the central treasury. In the riots which preceded the partition in the Punjab Province, it is believed that between 200,000 and 2,000,000 [1] [3] [5] people were killed in the retributive genocide between the religions. [6] [7] UNHCR estimates 14 million Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims were displaced during the partition; it was the largest mass migration in human history. [8] [9] [10] The term partition of British India does not cover the later secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971, nor the earlier separation of Burma (now known as Myanmar ) from the administration of British India, nor the separation of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka ). The coastal area of Ceylon was part of the Madras Presidency of British India from 1795 until 1798, when it became a separate Crown Colony of the Empire. Burma, gradually annexed by the British during 1826–86 and governed as a part of the British Indian administration until 1937, was directly administered thereafter. [11] Burma was granted independence on 4 January 1948 and Ceylon on 4 February 1948. (See History of Sri Lanka and History of Burma .) Nor does it cover the later annexation and division of the previously independent kingdoms and states of: French India , Hyderabad , Jammu and Kashmir , Mysore State , Portuguese India , Sikkim , and Travancore by one or more extant entities. Bhutan , Nepal and the Maldives , the remaining present-day countries of South Asia, were unaffected by the partition. The first two, Bhutan and Nepal, although earlier being regarded as de facto princely states , later signed treaties with the British designating them as independent states before partition, and therefore their borders were unaffected by the partition of India. [12] The Maldives, which had become a protectorate of the British crown in 1887 and gained its independence in 1965, was also unaffected by the partition. Contents 1909 Percentage of Muslims. 1909 Percentage of Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains. In 1905, the viceroy, Lord Curzon , in his second term, divided the largest administrative subdivision in British India, the Bengal Presidency , into the Muslim-majority province of East Bengal and Assam and the Hindu-majority province of Bengal (present-day Indian states of West Bengal , Bihār , Jharkhand and Odisha ). [13] Curzon's act, the Partition of Bengal —which some considered administratively felicitous[ by whom? ], and, which had been contemplated by various colonial administrations since the time of Lord William Bentinck , but never acted upon—was to transform nationalist politics as nothing else before it. [13] The Hindu elite of Bengal, among them many who owned land in East Bengal that was leased out to Muslim peasants, protested fervidly. The large Bengali Hindu middle-class (the Bhadralok ), upset at the prospect of Bengalis being outnumbered in the new Bengal province by Biharis and Oriyas, felt that Curzon's act was punishment for their political assertiveness. [13] The pervasive protests against Curzon's decision took the form predominantly of the Swadeshi ("buy Indian") campaign led by two-time Congress president, Surendranath Banerjee , and involved boycott of British goods. Sporadically—but flagrantly—the protesters also took to political violence that involved attacks on civilians. [14] The violence, however, was not effective, as most planned attacks were either preempted by the British or failed. [15] The rallying cry for both types of protest was the slogan Bande Mataram ( Bengali , lit: "Hail to the Mother"), the title of a song by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee , which invoked a mother goddess, who stood variously for Bengal, India, and the Hindu goddess Kali . [16] The unrest spread from Calcutta to the surrounding regions of Bengal when Calcutta's English-educated students returned home to their villages and towns. [17] The religious stirrings of the slogan and the political outrage over the partition were combined as young men, in groups such as Jugantar , took to bombing public buildings, staging armed robberies, [15] and assassinating British officials. [16] Since Calcutta was the imperial capital, both the outrage and the slogan soon became nationally known. [16] The overwhelming, but predominantly Hindu, protest against the partition of Bengal and the fear, in its wake, of reforms favouring the Hindu majority, now led the Muslim elite in India, in 1906, to meet with the new viceroy, Lord Minto , and to ask for separate electorates for Muslims. In conjunction, they demanded proportional legislative representation reflecting both their status as former rulers and their record of cooperating with the British. This led, in December 1906, to the founding of the All-India Muslim League in Dacca . Although Curzon, by now, had resigned his position over a dispute with his military chief Lord Kitchener and returned to England, the League was in favour of his partition plan. The Muslim elite's position, which was reflected in the League's position, had crystallized gradually over the previous three decades, beginning with the 1871 Census of British India, which had first estimated the populations in regions of Muslim majority. [18] (For his part, Curzon's desire to court the Muslims of East Bengal had arisen from British anxieties ever since the 1871 census—and in light of the history of Muslims fighting them in the 1857 Mutiny and the Second Anglo-Afghan War —about Indian Muslims rebelling against the Crown. [18] ) In the three decades since that census, Muslim leaders across northern India, had intermittently experienced public animosity from some of the new Hindu political and social groups. [18] The Arya Samaj , for example, had not only supported Cow Protection Societies in their agitation, [19] but also—distraught at the 1871 Census's Muslim numbers—organized "reconversion" events for the purpose of welcoming Muslims back to the Hindu fold. [18] In UP, Muslims became anxious when, in the late 19th century, political representation increased, giving more power to Hindus, and Hindus were politically mobilized in the Hindi-Urdu controversy and the anti-cow-killing riots of 1893. [20] In 1905, when Tilak and Lajpat Rai attempted to rise to leadership positions in the Congress, and the Congress itself rallied around symbolism of Kali, Muslim fears increased. [18] It was not lost on many Muslims, for example, that the rallying cry, "Bande Mataram," had first appeared in the novel Anand Math in which Hindus had battled their Muslim oppressors. [21] Lastly, the Muslim elite, and among it Dacca Nawab , Khwaja Salimullah , who hosted the League's first meeting in his mansion in Shahbag , was aware that a new province with a Muslim majority would directly benefit Muslims aspiring to political power. [21] World War I, Lucknow Pact: 1914–1918[ edit ] Indian medical orderlies attending to wounded soldiers with the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force in Mesopotamia during World War I . Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (seated in carriage, on the right, eyes downcast, with black flat-top hat) receives a big welcome in Karachi in 1916 after his return to India from South Africa. Muhammad Ali Jinnah , seated, third from the left, was a supporter of the Lucknow Pact, which, in 1916, ended the three-way rift between the Extremists, the Moderates and the League. World War I would prove to be a watershed in the imperial relationship between Britain and India. 1.4 million Indian and British soldiers of the British Indian Army would take part in the war and their participation would have a wider cultural fallout: news of Indian soldiers fighting and dying with British soldiers, as well as soldiers from dominions like Canada and Australia, would travel to distant corners of the world both in newsprint and by the new medium of the radio. [22] India's international profile would thereby rise and would continue to rise during the 1920s. [22] It was to lead, among other things, to India, under its own name, becoming a founding member of the League of Nations in 1920 and participating, under the name, "Les Indes Anglaises" (British India), in the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp. [23] Back in India, especially among the leaders of the Indian National Congress , it would lead to calls for greater self-government for Indians. [22] The 1916 Lucknow Session of the Congress was also the venue of an unanticipated mutual effort by the Congress and the Muslim League, the occasion for which was provided by the wartime partnership between Germany and Turkey. Since the Turkish Sultan , or Khalifah, had also sporadically claimed guardianship of the Islamic holy sites of Mecca , Medina , and Jerusalem , and since the British and their allies were now in conflict with Turkey, doubts began to increase among some Indian Muslims about the "religious neutrality" of the British, doubts that had already surfaced as a result of the reunification of Bengal in 1911, a decision that was seen as ill-disposed to Muslims. [24] In the Lucknow Pact , the League joined the Congress in the proposal for greater self-government that was campaigned for by Tilak and his supporters; in return, the Congress accepted separate electorates for Muslims in the provincial legislatures as well as the Imperial Legislative Council. In 1916, the Muslim League had anywhere between 500 and 800 members and did not yet have its wider following among Indian Muslims of later years; in the League itself, the pact did not have unanimous backing, having largely been negotiated by a group of "Young Party" Muslims from the United Provinces (UP), most prominently, two brothers Mohammad and Shaukat Ali , who had embraced the Pan-Islamic cause; [24] however, it did have the support of a young lawyer from Bombay, Muhammad Ali Jinnah , who was later to rise to leadership roles in both the League and the Indian independence movement. In later years, as the full ramifications of the pact unfolded, it was seen as benefiting the Muslim minority élites of provinces like UP and Bihar more than the Muslim majorities of Punjab and Bengal; nonetheless, at the time, the "Lucknow Pact", was an important milestone in nationalistic agitation and was seen so by the British. [24] Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms: 1919[ edit ] Secretary of State for India , Montagu and Viceroy Lord Chelmsford presented a report in July 1918 after a long fact-finding trip through India the previous winter. [25] After more discussion by the government and parliament in Britain, and another tour by the Franchise and Functions Committee for the purpose of identifying who among the Indian population could vote in future elections, the Government of India Act of 1919 (also known as the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms ) was passed in December 1919. [25] The new Act enlarged both the provincial and Imperial legislative councils and repealed the Government of India's recourse to the "official majority" in unfavorable votes. [25] Although departments like defence, foreign affairs, criminal law, communications, and income-tax were retained by the Viceroy and the central government in New Delhi, other departments like public health, education, land-revenue, local self-government were transferred to the provinces. [25] The provinces themselves were now to be administered under a new dyarchical system, whereby some areas like education, agriculture, infrastructure development, and local self-government became the preserve of Indian ministers and legislatures, and ultimately the Indian electorates, while others like irrigation, land-revenue, police, prisons, and control of media remained within the purview of the British governor and his executive council. [25] The new Act also made it easier for Indians to be admitted into the civil service and the army officer corps. A greater number of Indians were now enfranchised, although, for voting at the national level, they constituted only 10% of the total adult male population, many of whom were still illiterate. [25] In the provincial legislatures, the British continued to exercise some control by setting aside seats for special interests they considered cooperative or useful. In particular, rural candidates, generally sympathetic to British rule and less confrontational, were assigned more seats than their urban counterparts. [25] Seats were also reserved for non- Brahmins , landowners, businessmen, and college graduates. The principle of "communal representation," an integral part of the Minto-Morley Reforms , and more recently of the Congress-Muslim League Lucknow Pact, was reaffirmed, with seats being reserved for Muslims , Sikhs , Indian Christians , Anglo-Indians , and domiciled Europeans, in both provincial and Imperial legislative councils. [25] The Montagu-Chelmsford reforms offered Indians the most significant opportunity yet for exercising legislative power, especially at the provincial level; however, that opportunity was also restricted by the still limited number of eligible voters, by the small budgets available to provincial legislatures, and by the presence of rural and special interest seats that were seen as instruments of British control. [25] Two nation theory[ edit ] Main article: Two-nation theory The two-nation is the ideology that the primary identity and unifying denominator of Muslims in the South Asian subcontinent is their religion, rather than their language or ethnicity , and therefore Indian Hindus and Muslims are two distinct nations, regardless of ethnic or other commonalities. [26] [27] The two-nation theory was a founding principle of the Pakistan Movement (i.e. the ideology of Pakistan as a Muslim nation-state in South Asia), and the partition of India in 1947. [28] The ideology that religion is the determining factor in defining the nationality of Indian Muslims was undertaken by Muhammad Ali Jinnah , who termed it as the awakening of Muslims for the creation of Pakistan. [29] It is also a source of inspiration to several Hindu nationalist organizations, with causes as varied as the redefinition of Indian Muslims as non-Indian foreigners and second-class citizens in India, the expulsion of all Muslims from India , establishment of a legally Hindu state in India, prohibition of conversions to Islam , and the promotion of conversions or reconversions of Indian Muslims to Hinduism. [30] [31] [32] [33] There are varying interpretations of the two-nation theory, based on whether the two postulated nationalities can coexist in one territory or not, with radically different implications. One interpretation argued for sovereign autonomy, including the right to secede, for Muslim-majority areas of the Indian subcontinent, but without any transfer of populations (i.e. Hindus and Muslims would continue to live together). A different interpretation contends that Hindus and Muslims constitute "two distinct, and frequently antagonistic ways of life, and that therefore they cannot coexist in one nation." [34] In this version, a transfer of populations (i.e. the total removal of Hindus from Muslim-majority areas and the total removal of Muslims from Hindu-majority areas) is a desirable step towards a complete separation of two incompatible nations that "cannot coexist in a harmonious relationship". [35] [36] Opposition to the theory has come from two sources. The first is the concept of a single Indian nation , of which Hindus and Muslims are two intertwined communities. [37] This is a founding principle of the modern, officially secular, Republic of India . Even after the formation of Pakistan, debates on whether Muslims and Hindus are distinct nationalities or not continued in that country as well. [38] The second source of opposition is the concept that while Indians are not one nation, neither are the Muslims or Hindus of the subcontinent, and it is instead the relatively homogeneous provincial units of the subcontinent which are true nations and deserving of sovereignty; this view has been presented by the Baloch, [39] Sindhi, [40] and Pashtun [41] sub-nationalities of Pakistan. Muslim homeland, provincial elections, World War II, Lahore Resolution: 1930–1945[ edit ] Allama Muhammad Iqbal , fifth from left, arriving at the 1930 session of the All India Muslim League , where he delivered his presidential address outlining his plan for a homeland for the Muslims of British India. Chaudhari Khaliquzzaman (left) seconding the 1940 Lahore Resolution of the All-India Muslim League with Jinnah (right) presiding, and Liaquat Ali Khan centre. Although Choudhry Rahmat Ali had in 1933 produced a pamphlet, Now or never , in which the term " Pakistan ", "the land of the pure", comprising the Punjab , North West Frontier Province (Afghania) , Kashmir , Sindh , and Balochistan , was coined for the first time, the pamphlet did not attract political attention. [42] A little later, a Muslim delegation to the Parliamentary Committee on Indian Constitutional Reforms gave short shrift to the Pakistan idea, calling it "chimerical and impracticable". [42] Two years later, the Government of India Act 1935 introduced provincial autonomy, increasing the number of voters in India to 35 million. [43] More significantly, law and order issues were for the first time devolved from British authority to provincial governments headed by Indians. [43] This increased Muslim anxieties about eventual Hindu domination. [43] In the Indian provincial elections, 1937 , the Muslim League turned out its best performance in Muslim-minority provinces such as the United Provinces , where it won 29 of the 64 reserved Muslim seats. [43] However, in the Muslim-majority regions of the Punjab and Bengal regional parties outperformed the League. [43] In the Punjab, the Unionist Part of Sikandar Hayat Khan , won the elections and formed a government, with the support of the Indian National Congress and the Shiromani Akali Dal , which lasted five years. [43] In Bengal, the League had to share power in a coalition headed by A. K. Fazlul Huq , the leader of the Krishak Praja Party . [43] The Congress, on the other hand, with 716 wins in the total of 1585 provincial assemblies seats, was able to form governments in 7 out of the 11 provinces of British India . [43] In its manifesto the Congress maintained that religious issues were of lesser importance to the masses than economic and social issues, however, the election revealed that the Congress had contested just 58 out of the total 482 Muslim seats, and of these, it won in only 26. [43] In UP, where the Congress won, it offered to share power with the League on condition that the League stop functioning as a representative only of Muslims, which the League refused. [43] This proved to be a mistake as it alienated the Congress further from the Muslim masses. In addition, the new UP provincial administration promulgated cow protection and the use of Hindi. [43] The Muslim elite in UP was further alienated, when they saw chaotic scenes of the new Congress Raj, in which rural people who sometimes turned up in large numbers in Government buildings, were indistinguishable from the administrators and the law enforcement personnel. [44] The Muslim League conducted its own investigation into the conditions of Muslims under Congress-governed provinces. [45] The findings of such investigations increased fear among the Muslim masses of future Hindu domination. [45] The view that Muslims would be unfairly treated in an independent India dominated by the Congress was now a part of the public discourse of Muslims. [45] With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the viceroy, Lord Linlithgow , declared war on India's behalf without consulting Indian leaders, leading the Congress provincial ministries to resign in protest. [45] The Muslim League, which functioned under state patronage, [46] in contrast, organized "Deliverance Day," celebrations (from Congress dominance) and supported Britain in the war effort. [45] When Linlithgow, met with nationalist leaders, he gave the same status to Jinnah as he did to Gandhi, and a month later described the Congress as a "Hindu organization." [46] In March 1940, in the League's annual three-day session in Lahore , Jinnah gave a two-hour speech in English, in which were laid out the arguments of the Two-nation theory , stating, in the words of historians Talbot and Singh, that "Muslims and Hindus ... were irreconcilably opposed monolithic religious communities and as such no settlement could be imposed that did not satisfy the aspirations of the former." [45] On the last day of its session, the League passed, what came to be known as the Lahore Resolution , sometimes also "Pakistan Resolution", [45] demanding that "the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in majority as in the North-Western and Eastern zones of India should be grouped to constitute independent states in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign." Though it had been founded more than three decades earlier, the League would gather support among South Asian Muslims only during the Second World War. [47] In March 1942, with the Japanese fast moving up the Malayan Peninsula after the Fall of Singapore , [46] and with the Americans supporting independence for India, [48] Winston Churchill , the wartime Prime Minister of Britain, sent Sir Stafford Cripps , the leader of the House of Commons , with an offer of dominion status to India at the end of the war in return for the Congress's support for the war effort. [49] Not wishing to lose the support of the allies they had already secured—the Muslim League, Unionists of the Punjab, and the Princes—the Cripps offer included a clause stating that no part of the British Indian Empire would be forced to join the post-war Dominion. As a result of the proviso, the proposals were rejected by the Congress, which, since its founding as a polite group of lawyers in 1885, [47] saw itself as the representative of all Indians of all faiths. [49] After the arrival in 1920 of Gandhi, the preeminent strategist of Indian nationalism, [50] the Congress had been transformed into a mass nationalist movement of millions. [47] In August 1942, the Congress launched the Quit India Resolution which asked for drastic constitutional changes, which the British saw as the most serious threat to their rule since the Indian rebellion of 1857 . [49] With their resources and attention already spread thin by a global war, the nervous British immediately jailed the Congress leaders and kept them in jail until August 1945, [51] whereas the Muslim League was now free for the next three years to spread its message. [46] Consequently, the Muslim League's ranks surged during the war, with Jinnah himself admitting, "The war which nobody welcomed proved to be a blessing in disguise." [52] Although there were other important national Muslim politicians such as Congress leader Abul Kalam Azad , and influential regional Muslim politicians such as A. K. Fazlul Huq of the leftist Krishak Praja Party in Bengal, Sikander Hyat Khan of the landlord-dominated Punjab Unionist Party , and Abd al-Ghaffar Khan of the pro-Congress Khudai Khidmatgar (popularly, "red shirts") in the North West Frontier Province , the British were to increasingly see the League as the main representative of Muslim India. [53] 1946 Election, Cabinet Mission, Direct Action Day, Plan for Partition, Independence 1946–1947[ edit ] Members of the 1946 Cabinet Mission to India meeting Muhammad Ali Jinnah . On the extreme left is Lord Pethick Lawrence ; on the extreme right, Sir Stafford Cripps . An aged and abandoned Muslim couple and their grand children sitting by the roadside on this arduous journey. "The old man is dying of exhaustion. The caravan has gone on," wrote Bourke-White. An old Sikh man carrying his wife. Over 10 million people were uprooted from their homeland and travelled on foot, bullock carts and trains to their promised new home. Gandhi in Bela, Bihar, after attacks on Muslims, 28 March 1947. In January 1946, a number of mutinies broke out in the armed services, starting with that of RAF servicemen frustrated with their slow repatriation to Britain. [54] The mutinies came to a head with mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy in Bombay in February 1946, followed by others in Calcutta, Madras, and Karachi. Although the mutinies were rapidly suppressed, they had the effect of spurring the new Labour government in Britain to action, and leading to the Cabinet Mission to India led by the Secretary of State for India, Lord Pethick Lawrence , and including Sir Stafford Cripps , who had visited four years before. [54] Also in early 1946, new elections were called in India. Earlier, at the end of the war in 1945, the colonial government had announced the public trial of three senior officers of Subhas Chandra Bose 's defeated Indian National Army who stood accused of treason. Now as the trials began, the Congress leadership, although ambivalent towards the INA, chose to defend the accused officers. [55] The subsequent convictions of the officers, the public outcry against the convictions, and the eventual remission of the sentences created positive propaganda for the Congress, which only helped in the party's subsequent electoral victories in eight of the eleven provinces. [56] The negotiations between the Congress and the Muslim League, however, stumbled over the issue of the partition. The 1946 elections had resulted in the Muslim League winning 90 percent of the seats reserved for Muslims. Thus the 1946 election was effectively a plebiscite where the Indian Muslims were to vote on the creation of Pakistan; a plebiscite which the Muslim League won. [57] This victory was assisted by the support given to the Muslim League by the rural peasantry of Bengal as well as the support of the landowners of Sindh and Punjab. The Congress , which initially denied the Muslim League 's claim of being the sole representative of Indian Muslims, was now forced to recognise that the Muslim League represented Indian Muslims. [57] The British had no alternative except to take Jinnah 's views into account as he had emerged as the sole spokesperson of India's Muslims. However the British did not desire India to be partitioned and in one last effort to avoid it they arranged the Cabinet Mission plan . [58] Jinnah proclaimed 16 August 1946 Direct Action Day , with the stated goal of peacefully highlighting the demand for a Muslim homeland in British India. However, on the morning of the 16th, armed Muslim gangs gathered at the Ochterlony Monument in Calcutta to hear Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy , the League's Chief Minister of Bengal, who, in the words of historian Yasmin Khan, "if he did not explicitly incite violence certainly gave the crowd the impression that they could act with impunity, that neither the police nor the military would be called out and that the ministry would turn a blind eye to any action they unleashed in the city." [59] That very evening, in Calcutta, Hindus were attacked by returning Muslim celebrants, who carried pamphlets distributed earlier showing a clear connection between violence and the demand for Pakistan, and implicating the celebration of Direct Action Day directly with the outbreak of the cycle of violence that would be later called the "Great Calcutta Killing of August 1946". [60] The next day, Hindus struck back and the violence continued for three days in which approximately 4,000 people died (according to official accounts), Hindus and Muslims in equal numbers. Although India had had outbreaks of religious violence between Hindus and Muslims before, the Calcutta killings was the first to display elements of " ethnic cleansing ", in modern parlance. [61] Violence was not confined to the public sphere, but homes were entered and destroyed and women and children attacked. [62] Although the Government of India and the Congress were both shaken by the course of events, in September, a Congress-led interim government was installed, with Jawaharlal Nehru as united India's prime minister. The communal violence spread to Bihar (where Muslims were attacked by Hindus), to Noakhali in Bengal (where Hindus were targeted by Muslims), in Garhmukteshwar in the United Provinces (where Muslims were attacked by Hindus), and on to Rawalpindi in March 1947 in which Hindus were attacked or driven out by Muslims. [63] Vallabhbhai Patel was one of the first Congress leaders to accept the partition of India as a solution to the rising Muslim separatist movement led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah. He had been outraged by Jinnah's Direct Action campaign, which had provoked communal violence across India and by the viceroy's vetoes of his home department's plans to stop the violence on the grounds of constitutionality. Patel severely criticised the viceroy's induction of League ministers into the government, and the revalidation of the grouping scheme by the British without Congress approval. Although further outraged at the League's boycott of the assembly and non-acceptance of the plan of 16 May despite entering government, he was also aware that Jinnah did enjoy popular support amongst Muslims, and that an open conflict between him and the nationalists could degenerate into a Hindu-Muslim civil war of disastrous consequences. The continuation of a divided and weak central government would in Patel's mind, result in the wider fragmentation of India by encouraging more than 600 princely states towards independence. [64] Between the months of December 1946 and January 1947, Patel worked with civil servant V. P. Menon on the latter's suggestion for a separate dominion of Pakistan created out of Muslim-majority provinces. Communal violence in Bengal and Punjab in January and March 1947 further convinced Patel of the soundness of partition. Patel, a fierce critic of Jinnah's demand that the Hindu-majority areas of Punjab and Bengal be included in a Muslim state, obtained the partition of those provinces, thus blocking any possibility of their inclusion in Pakistan. Patel's decisiveness on the partition of Punjab and Bengal had won him many supporters and admirers amongst the Indian public, which had tired of the League's tactics, but he was criticised by Gandhi, Nehru, secular Muslims and socialists for a perceived eagerness to do so. When Lord Louis Mountbatten formally proposed the plan on 3 June 1947, Patel gave his approval and lobbied Nehru and other Congress leaders to accept the proposal. Knowing Gandhi's deep anguish regarding proposals of partition, Patel engaged him in frank discussion in private meetings over the perceived practical unworkability of any Congress-League coalition, the rising violence and the threat of civil war. At the All India Congress Committee meeting called to vote on the proposal, Patel said: I fully appreciate the fears of our brothers from [the Muslim-majority areas]. Nobody likes the division of India and my heart is heavy. But the choice is between one division and many divisions. We must face facts. We cannot give way to emotionalism and sentimentality. The Working Committee has not acted out of fear. But I am afraid of one thing, that all our toil and hard work of these many years might go waste or prove unfruitful. My nine months in office has completely disillusioned me regarding the supposed merits of the Cabinet Mission Plan. Except for a few honorable exceptions, Muslim officials from the top down to the chaprasis (peons or servants) are working for the League. The communal veto given to the League in the Mission Plan would have blocked India's progress at every stage. Whether we like it or not, de facto Pakistan already exists in the Punjab and Bengal. Under the circumstances I would prefer a de jure Pakistan, which may make the League more responsible. Freedom is coming. We have 75 to 80 percent of India, which we can make strong with our own genius. The League can develop the rest of the country. [65] Following Gandhi's denial[ citation needed ] but Congress' approval of the plan, Patel represented India on the Partition Council, where he oversaw the division of public assets, and selected the Indian council of ministers with Nehru. However, neither he nor any other Indian leader had foreseen the intense violence and population transfer that would take place with partition. Late in 1946, the Labour government in Britain , its exchequer exhausted by the recently concluded World War II, decided to end British rule of India, and in early 1947 Britain announced its intention of transferring power no later than June 1948. However, with the British army unprepared for the potential for increased violence, the new viceroy, Louis Mountbatten , advanced the date for the transfer of power, allowing less than six months for a mutually agreed plan for independence. In June 1947, the nationalist leaders, including Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad on behalf of the Congress, Jinnah representing the Muslim League, B. R. Ambedkar representing the Untouchable community, and Master Tara Singh representing the Sikhs , agreed to a partition of the country along religious lines in stark opposition to Gandhi's views. The predominantly Hindu and Sikh areas were assigned to the new India and predominantly Muslim areas to the new nation of Pakistan; the plan included a partition of the Muslim-majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal. The communal violence that accompanied the announcement of the Radcliffe Line , the line of partition, was even more horrific. Of the violence that accompanied the Partition of India, historians Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh write: There are numerous eyewitness accounts of the maiming and mutilation of victims. The catalogue of horrors includes the disembowelling of pregnant women, the slamming of babies' heads against brick walls, the cutting off of victims limbs and genitalia and the display of heads and corpses. While previous communal riots had been deadly, the scale and level of brutality was unprecedented. Although some scholars question the use of the term 'genocide' with respect to the Partition massacres, much of the violence manifested as having genocidal tendencies. It was designed to cleanse an existing generation as well as prevent its future reproduction." [66] On 14 August 1947, the new Dominion of Pakistan came into being, with Muhammad Ali Jinnah sworn in as its first Governor General in Karachi . The following day, 15 August 1947, India, now a smaller Union of India, became an independent country with official ceremonies taking place in New Delhi, and with Jawaharlal Nehru assuming the office of the prime minister , and the viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, staying on as its first Governor General ; Gandhi, however, remained in Bengal, preferring instead to work among the new refugees of the partitioned subcontinent. Geographic partition, 1947[ edit ] Mountbatten Plan[ edit ] Mountbatten with a countdown calendar to the Transfer of Power in the background The actual division of British India between the two new dominions was accomplished according to what has come to be known as the 3 June Plan or Mountbatten Plan. It was announced at a press conference by Mountbatten on 3 June 1947, when the date of independence was also announced – 15 August 1947. The plan's main points were: Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims in Punjab and Bengal legislative assemblies would meet and vote for partition. If a simple majority of either group wanted partition, then these provinces would be divided. Sind and Baluchistan were to take their own decision. [67] The fate of North West Frontier Province and Sylhet district of Assam was to be decided by a referendum. India would be independent by 15 August 1947. The separate independence of Bengal was ruled out. A boundary commission to be set up in case of partition. The Indian political leaders accepted the Plan on 2 June. It did not deal with the question of the princely states , but on 3 June Mountbatten advised them against remaining independent and urged them to join one of the two new dominions. [68] The Muslim League 's demands for a separate state were thus conceded. The Congress ' position on unity was also taken into account while making Pakistan as small as possible. Mountbatten's formula was to divide India and at the same time retain maximum possible unity. Abul Kalam Azad expressed concern over the likelihood of violent riots, to which Mountbatten replied: At least on this question I shall give you complete assurance. I shall see to it that there is no bloodshed and riot. I am a soldier and not a civilian. Once partition is accepted in principle, I shall issue orders to see that there are no communal disturbances anywhere in the country. If there should be the slightest agitation, I shall adopt the sternest measures to nip the trouble in the bud. [69] Jagmohan has stated that this and what followed shows the "glaring" "failure of the government machinery". [69] On 3 June 1947, the partition plan was accepted by the Congress Working Committee. [70] [ unreliable source? ] Boloji states that in Punjab there were no riots but there was communal tension, while Gandhi was reportedly isolated by Nehru and Patel and observed maun vrat (day of silence). Mountbatten visited Gandhi and said he hoped that he would not oppose the partition, to which Gandhi wrote the reply: "Have I ever opposed you?" [70] [ unreliable source? ] Britain's holdings on the Indian subcontinent were granted independence in 1947 and 1948, becoming four new independent states: India , Burma , Ceylon , and Pakistan (including East Bengal , from 1971 Bangladesh ). Within British India, the border between India and Pakistan (the Radcliffe Line ) was determined by a British Government-commissioned report prepared under the chairmanship of a London barrister , Sir Cyril Radcliffe . Pakistan came into being with two non-contiguous enclaves, East Pakistan (today Bangladesh) and West Pakistan , separated geographically by India. India was formed out of the majority Hindu regions of British India, and Pakistan from the majority Muslim areas. On 18 July 1947, the British Parliament passed the Indian Independence Act that finalized the arrangements for partition and abandoned British suzerainty over the princely states , of which there were several hundred, leaving them free to choose whether to accede to one of the new dominions. The Government of India Act 1935 was adapted to provide a legal framework for the new dominions. Following its creation as a new country in August 1947, Pakistan applied for membership of the United Nations and was accepted by the General Assembly on 30 September 1947. The Dominion of India continued to have the existing seat as India had been a founding member of the United Nations since 1945. [71] Further information: Radcliffe Line A map of the Punjab region c. 1947. In June 1947, Britain decided to have a boundary commission to oversee the partition. On 8 July 1947, Sir Cyrill Radcliffe, a civil servant with no experience of South Asia came to India as chairman of two boundary commissions and was given only five weeks to decide on the borders. [72] The Punjab – the region of the five rivers east of Indus : Jhelum , Chenab , Ravi , Beas , and Sutlej — consists of interfluvial doabs , or tracts of land lying between two confluent rivers. These are the Sind-Sagar doab (between Indus and Jhelum), the Jech doab (Jhelum/Chenab), the Rechna doab (Chenab/Ravi), the Bari doab (Ravi/Beas), and the Bist doab (Beas/Sutlej) (see map). In early 1947, in the months leading up to the deliberations of the Punjab Boundary Commission, the main disputed areas appeared to be in the Bari and Bist doabs, although some areas in the Rechna doab were claimed by the Congress and Sikhs. In the Bari doab, the districts of Gurdaspur, Amritsar, Lahore, and Montgomery (Sahiwal) were all disputed. [73] All of these disputed districts (other than Amritsar, which was 46.5% Muslim) had Muslim majorities; albeit, in Gurdaspur, the Muslim majority, at 51.1%, was slender. At a smaller area-scale, only three tehsils (sub-units of a district) in the disputed section of the Bari doab had non-Muslim majorities. These were: Pathankot (in the extreme north of Gurdaspur, which was not in dispute), and Amritsar and Tarn Taran in Amritsar district. In addition, there were four Muslim-majority tehsils east of Beas-Sutlej (with two where Muslims outnumbered Hindus and Sikhs together). [73] Before the Boundary Commission began formal hearings, governments were set up for the East and the West Punjab regions. Their territories were provisionally divided by "notional division" based on simple district majorities. In both the Punjab and Bengal, the Boundary Commission consisted of two Muslim and two non-Muslim judges with Cyril Radcliffe as a common chairman. [73] The mission of the Punjab commission was worded generally as the following: "To demarcate the boundaries of the two parts of the Punjab, on the basis of ascertaining the contiguous majority areas of Muslims and non-Muslims. In doing so, it will take into account other factors." [73] Each side (the Muslims and the Congress/Sikhs) presented its claim through counsel with no liberty to bargain. The judges too had no mandate to compromise and on all major issues they "divided two and two, leaving Cyril Radcliffe the invidious task of making the actual decisions." [73] Independence, population transfer, and violence[ edit ] e A refugee special train at Ambala Station during partition of India Massive population exchanges occurred between the two newly formed states in the months immediately following Partition. "The population of undivided India in 1947 was approx 390 million. After partition, there were 330 million people in India, 30 million in West Pakistan, and 30 million people in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)."[ this quote needs a citation ] Once the lines were established, about 14.5 million people crossed the borders to what they hoped was the relative safety of religious majority. The 1951 Census of Pakistan identified the number of displaced persons in Pakistan at 7,226,600, presumably all Muslims who had entered Pakistan from India. Similarly, the 1951 Census of India enumerated 7,295,870 displaced persons, apparently all Hindus and Sikhs who had moved to India from Pakistan immediately after the Partition.[ citation needed ] The two numbers add up to 14.5 million. Since both censuses were held about 3.6 years after the Partition, the enumeration included net population increase after the mass migration. About 11.2 million ( 77.4% of the displaced persons) were in the west, with the Punjab accounting for most of it: 6.5 million Muslims moved from India to West Pakistan, and 4.7 million Hindus and Sikhs moved from West Pakistan to India; thus the net migration in the west from India to West Pakistan (now Pakistan) was 1.8 million. A crowd of Muslims at the Old Fort (Purana Qila) in Delhi, which had been converted into a vast camp for Muslim refugees waiting to be transported to Pakistan. Manchester Guardian , 27 September 1947. The remaining 3.3 million (22.6% of the displaced persons) were in the east: 2.6 million moved from East Pakistan to India and 0.7 million moved from India to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh); thus net migration in the east was 1.9 million into India. The newly formed governments were completely unequipped to deal with migrations of such staggering magnitude, and massive violence and slaughter occurred on both sides of the border. Estimates of the number of deaths vary, with low estimates at 200,000 and high estimates at 2,000,000. [1] [3] [74] Lawrence James observed that, "'Sir Francis Mudie, the governor of West Punjab, estimated that 500,000 Muslims died trying to enter his province, while the British high commissioner in Karachi put the full total at 800,000…This makes nonsense of the claim by Mountbatten and his partisans that only 200,000 were killed' [James 1998: 636]". [75] Punjab[ edit ] The Indian state of East Punjab was created in 1947, when the Partition of India split the former British province of Punjab between India and Pakistan. The mostly Muslim western part of the province became Pakistan's Punjab province ; the mostly Sikh and Hindu eastern part became India's East Punjab state. Many Hindus and Sikhs lived in the west, and many Muslims lived in the east, and the fears of all such minorities were so great that the Partition saw many people displaced and much intercommunal violence. While Lahore and Lyallpur had comfortable Muslim majorities much of the properties in the two districts were owned by Hindus and Sikhs who were rich, powerful and influential. Similarly, though Amritsar had a slender Hindu-Sikh majority, it was an important centre of the Muslim weaving community. In the end, two districts in the Punjab were partitioned while the rest were awarded whole to India or Pakistan. Lahore district - Lahore, Chunian, Sharakpur and most of Kasur tehsil to Pakistan, a portion of Kasur tehsil including Patti and Khem Kharan municipalities to India Main article: Partition of Bengal (1947) The province of Bengal was divided into the two separate entities of West Bengal belonging to India, and East Bengal belonging to Pakistan. East Bengal was renamed East Pakistan in 1955, and later became the independent nation of Bangladesh after the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. While the Muslim majority districts of Murshidabad and Malda were given to India, the Hindu majority district of Khulna and the majority Buddhist, but sparsely populated Chittagong Hill Tracts was given to Pakistan by the award. Thousands of Hindus, located in the districts of East Bengal which were awarded to Pakistan, found themselves being attacked and this religious persecution forced hundreds of thousands of Hindus from East Bengal to seek refuge in India. The huge influx of Hindu refugees into Calcutta affected the demographics of the city. Many Muslims left the city for East Pakistan and some of their homes and properties were occupied by the refugee families. Sindh[ edit ] Most of Sindh 's prosperous middle class at the time of Partition was Hindu. At the time of Partition there were 1,400,000 Hindu Sindhis, though most were concentrated in cities such as Hyderabad , Karachi , Shikarpur , and Sukkur . Hundreds of Hindus residing in Sindh were forced to migrate. Some anti-Hindu violence in Sindh was precipitated by the arrival of Muslim refugees from India with minimal local Muslim support for the rioters. Sindhi Hindus faced low scale rioting unlike the Punjabi Hindus and Sikhs who had to migrate from West Punjab. [76] Movement of refugees upon the Partition of India On 6 December 1947, communal violence broke out in Ajmer in India, precipitated by an argument between Sindhi Hindu refugees and local Muslims in the Dargah Bazaar. Violence in Ajmer again broke out in the middle of December with stabbings, looting and arson resulting in mostly Muslim casualties. [77] Many Muslims fled across the Thar Desert to Sindh in Pakistan. [77] This sparked further anti-Hindu riots in Hyderabad, Sindh . On 6 January anti-Hindu riots broke out in Karachi, leading to an estimate of 1100 casualties. [77] 776,000 Sindhi Hindus fled to India. [78] Despite the migration, a significant Sindhi Hindu population still resides in Pakistan's Sindh province where they number at around 2.28 million as per Pakistan's 1998 census; the Sindhi Hindus in India were at 2.57 million as per India's 2001 Census. Some bordering districts in Sindh were Hindu Majority like Tharparkar District , Umerkot , Mirpurkhas , Sanghar and Badin , but their population is decreasing and they consider themselves a minority in decline. In fact, only Umerkot still has a majority of Hindus in the district. [79] Delhi[ edit ] For centuries Delhi had been the capital of the Mughal Empire and of previous Turkic Muslim rulers of North India. The series of Islamic rulers keeping Delhi as a stronghold of their empires left a vast array of Islamic architecture in Delhi and a strong Islamic culture permeated the city. The 1941 Census listed Delhi's population as being 33.22% Muslim. However thousands of Hindu and Sikh refugees from Punjab poured into the city. This created an atmosphere of upheavals as anti-Muslim pogroms rocked the historical stronghold of Indo-Islamic culture and politics. Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru estimated 1000 casualties in the city. However other sources claimed that the casualty rate had been 20 times higher. Gyanendra Pandey's more recent account of the Delhi violence puts the figure of Muslim casualties in Delhi as being between 20,000-25,000. [80] Tens of thousands of Muslims were driven to refugee camps regardless of their political affiliations and numerous historic sites in Delhi such as the Purana Qila, Idgah and Nizamuddin were transformed into refugee camps. At the culmination of the tensions in Delhi 330,000 Muslims were forced to flee the city to Pakistan. The 1951 Census registered a drop of the Muslim population in the city from 33.22% in 1941 to 5.33% in 1951. [81] Alwar and Bharatpur[ edit ] Alwar and Bharatpur were two princely states of Rajputana (modern day Rajasthan) which were the scene of a bloody confrontation between the dominant, land-holding community of Hindu Jats and the cultivating community of Muslim Meos from May 1947 onwards. [82] In the months immediately preceding the partition of India in August 1947, communal riots broke out between the Muslim Meos and Hindus. In the wake of unprecedented violent attacks unleashed against them in 1947, 100,000 Muslim Meos from Alwar and Bharatpur was forced to flee their homes and an estimated 30,000 Meos are said to have been massacred. [83] In the wake of this outbreak of violence in these two princely states of Rajputana, tens of thousands of Muslim Meos fled across the new international border into Pakistan. Jammu and Kashmir[ edit ] Main article: 1947 Jammu massacres In September–November 1947 in the Jammu region of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir , a large number of Muslims—estimated by some sources to as many as 200,000—were massacred and others driven away to West Punjab . The killings were carried out by extremist Hindus and Sikhs , aided and abetted by the forces of the Dogra State headed by the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir Hari Singh . Observers state that Hari Singh’s aim was to alter the demographics of the region by eliminating the Muslim population and thereby gain power to continue his rule.[ citation needed ] Resettlement of refugees in India: 1947–1957[ edit ] According to the 1951 Census of India 2% of India's population were refugees (1.3% from West Pakistan and 0.7% from East Pakistan). [84] Delhi received the largest number of refugees for a single city – the population of Delhi grew rapidly in 1947 from under 1 million (917,939) to a little less than 2 million (1,744,072) during the period 1941–1951. [85] The refugees were housed in various historical and military locations such as the Purana Qila , Red Fort , and military barracks in Kingsway Camp (around the present Delhi University). The latter became the site of one of the largest refugee camps in northern India with more than 35,000 refugees at any given time besides Kurukshetra camp near Panipat. The camp sites were later converted into permanent housing through extensive building projects undertaken by the Government of India from 1948 onwards. A number of housing colonies in Delhi came up around this period like Lajpat Nagar , Rajinder Nagar , Nizamuddin East , Punjabi Bagh , Rehgar Pura, Jangpura and Kingsway Camp. A number of schemes such as the provision of education, employment opportunities, and easy loans to start businesses were provided for the refugees at the all-India level. [86] Many Sikhs and Hindu Punjabis fled West Punjab and settled in East Punjab (which then also included Haryana and Himachal Pradesh) and Delhi. Hindus fleeing from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) settled across Eastern India and Northeastern India , many ending up in neighbouring Indian states such as West Bengal, Assam, and Tripura . Some migrants were sent to the Andaman islands where Bengalis today form the largest linguistic group. Sindhi Hindus settled predominantly in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. Some however settled further afield in Madhya Pradesh. A new township was established for Sindhi Hindu refugees in Maharashtra. The Governor-general of India, Sir Rajagopalachari laid the foundation for this township and named it Ulhasnagar (namely 'city of joy'). Resettlement of refugees in Pakistan: 1947–1957[ edit ] The 1951 Census of Pakistan recorded that the largest number of Muslim refugees came from the East Punjab and nearby Rajputana states (Alwar and Bharatpur). They were a number of 5,783,100 and constituted 80.1% of Pakistan's total refugee population. [87] This was the effect of the retributive genocide on both sides of the Punjab where the Muslim population of East Punjab was forcibly expelled like the Hindu/Sikh population in West Punjab. Migration from other regions of India were as follows: Bihar, West Bengal and Orissa, 700,300 or 9.8%; UP and Delhi 464,200 or 2.4%; Gujarat and Bombay, 160,400 or 2.2%; Bhopal and Hyderabad 95,200 or 1.2%; and Madras and Mysore 18,000 or 0.2%. [87] So far as their settlement in Pakistan is concerned, 97.4% of the refugees from East Punjab and its contiguous areas went to West Punjab; 95.9% from Bihar, West Bengal and Orissa to the erstwhile East Pakistan; 95.5% from UP and Delhi to West Pakistan, mainly Karachi and Sind; 97.2% from Bhopal and Hyderabad to West Pakistan, mainly Karachi; and 98.9% from Bombay and Gujarat to West Pakistan, largely to Karachi; and 98.9% from Madras and Mysore went to West Pakistan, mainly Karachi. [87] West Punjab received the largest number of refugees (73.1%), mainly from East Punjab and its contiguous areas. The Government undertook a census of refugees in West Punjab in 1948, which displayed their place of origin in India. Data on the Number of Muslim refugees in West Punjab from the Districts of East Punjab and Neighbouring Regions [88] Places Together other small states 39,322 East Bengal received the second largest number of refugees, 699,100, who constituted 9.7% of the total Muslim refugee population in Pakistan. 66.69% of the refugees in East Bengal originated from West Bengal, 14.50% from Bihar and 11.84% from Assam. [89] Karachi received 8.5% of the total migrant population while Sind received 7.6%. NWFP and Baluchistan received the lowest number of migrants. NWFP received 51,100 migrants (0.7% of the migrant population) while Baluchistan received 28,000 (0.4% of the migrant population). Missing persons[ edit ] A study of the total population inflows and outflows in the districts of the Punjab, using the data provided by the 1931 and 1951 Census has led to an estimate of 1.26 million missing Muslims who left western India but did not reach Pakistan. [75] The corresponding number of missing Hindus/Sikhs along the western border is estimated to be approximately 0.84 million. [90] This puts the total missing people due to Partition-related migration along the Punjab border to around 2.23 million. [90] Rehabilitation of women[ edit ] See also: Violence against women during the partition of India Both sides promised each other that they would try to restore women abducted during the riots. The Indian government claimed that 33,000 Hindu and Sikh women were abducted, and the Pakistani government claimed that 50,000 Muslim women were abducted during riots. By 1949, there were governmental claims that 12,000 women had been recovered in India and 6,000 in Pakistan. [91] By 1954, there were 20,728 recovered Muslim women and 9,032 Hindu and Sikh women recovered from Pakistan. [92] Most of the Hindu and Sikh women refused to go back to India, fearing that they would never be accepted by their family, a fear mirrored by Muslim women. [93] Pakistan[ edit ] Even after the 1951 Census many Muslim families from India continued migrating to Pakistan throughout the 1950s and even early 1960s. According to historian Omar Khalidi , there were three predominant stages of Muslim migration from India to West Pakistan. The first stage lasted from August–November 1947. In this stage of migration the Muslim immigrants originated from East Punjab, Delhi, the four adjacent districts of U.P. and the princely states of Alwar and Bharatpur which are now part of the present state of Rajasthan. [94] The violence affecting these areas during partition precipitated an exodus of Muslims from these areas to Pakistan. The second stage (December 1947-December 1971) of the migration was from what is U.P., Delhi, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. [94] The third stage which lasted between 1973 and the 1990s was when migration levels of Indian Muslims to Pakistan was reduced to its lowest levels since 1947. In 1959, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) published a report stating that from 1951 to 1956, a total of 650,000 Muslims from India relocated to West Pakistan [94] and 500,000 Indian Muslims migrated to East Pakistan. However, Visaria (1969) raised doubts about the authenticity of the claims about Indian Muslim migration to Pakistan, since the 1961 Census of Pakistan did not corroborate these figures. However, the 1961 Census of Pakistan did incorporate a statement suggesting that there had been a migration of 800,000 people from India to Pakistan throughout the previous decade. [95] Of those who had left for Pakistan, most never came back. The Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru conveyed distress about the continued migration of Indian Muslims to West Pakistan: [94] There has...since 1950 been a movement of some Muslims from India to Western Pakistan through the Jodhpur-Sindh via Khokhropar. Normallly, traffic between India and West Pakistan was controlled by the permit system. But these Muslims going via Khokhropar went without permits to West Pakistan. From January 1952 to the end of September, 53,209 Muslim emigrants went via Khokhropar....Most of these probably came from the U.P. In October 1952, up to the 14th, 6,808 went by this route. After that Pakistan became much stricter in allowing entry on the introduction of the passport system. From the 15th of October to the end of October, 1,247 went by this route. From the 1st November, 1,203 went via Khokhropar. [94] Indian Muslim migration to West Pakistan continued unabated despite the cessation of the permit system between the two countries and the introduction of the passport system between the two countries. The Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru once again expressed concern at the continued migration of Indian Muslims to West Pakistan in a communication to one of his chief ministers (dated 1, December 1953): A fair number of Muslims cross over to Pakistan from India, via Rajasthan and Sindh daily. Why do these Muslims cross over to Pakistan at the rate of three to four thousand a month? This is worth enquiring into, because it is not to our credit that this should be so. Mostly they come from Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan or Delhi. It is evident that they do not go there unless there is some fear or pressure on them. Some may go in the hope of employment there. But most of them appear to feel that there is no great future for them in India. I have already drawn your attention to difficulties in the way of Government service. Another reason, I think, is the fear of Evacuee Property Laws [EPL]. I have always considered these laws both in India and Pakistan as most iniquitous. In trying to punish a few guilty persons, we punish or injure large numbers of perfectly innocent people...the pressure of the Evacuee Property Laws applies to almost all Muslims in certain areas of India. They cannot easily dispose of their property or carry on trade for fear that the long arm of this law might hold them down in its grip. It is this continuing fear that comes in the way of normal functioning and normal business and exercises a powerful pressure on large numbers of Muslims in India, especially in the North and the West. [94] In 1952 the passport system was introduced for travel purposes between the two countries. This made it possible for Indian Muslims to legally move to Pakistan. Pakistan still required educated and skill workers to absorb into its economy at the time, due to relatively low levels of education in the regions which became part of Pakistan. As late as December 1971, the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi was authorized to issue documents to educationally qualified Indians to migrate to Pakistan. [94] The legal route was taken by unemployed but educated Indian Muslims seeking better fortunes, however poorer Muslims from India continued to go illegally via the Rajasthan-Sindh border until the 1965 India-Pakistan war when that route was shut. After the conclusion of the 1965 war, most Muslims who wanted to go to Pakistan had to go there via the India-East Pakistan border. Once reaching Dhaka, most made their way to the final destination-Karachi. However, not all managed to reach West Pakistan from East Pakistan. The 1951 census in Pakistan recorded 671,000 refugees in East Pakistan, the majority of which came from West Bengal. The rest were from Bihar . [96] By 1961 the numbers reached 850,000. In the aftermath of the riots in Ranchi and Jamshedpur, Biharis continued to migrate to East Pakistan well into the late sixties and added up to around a million. [97] Crude estimates suggest that about 1.5 million Muslims migrated from West Bengal and Bihar to East Bengal in the two decades after partition. [98] Over on the India-West Pakistan border, in the aftermath of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, 3,500 Muslim families migrated from the Indian part of the Thar Desert to the Pakistani section of the Thar Desert. [99] 400 families were settled in Nagar after the 1965 war and an additional 3000 settled in the Chachro taluka in Sind province of West Pakistan. [100] The government of Pakistan provided each family with 12 acres of land. According to government records this land totalled 42,000 acres. [100] Indian Muslim migration to Pakistan declined drastically in the 1970s, a trend noticed by the Pakistani authorities. On June 1995, Pakistan's interior minister, Naseerullah Babar, informed the National Assembly that between the period of 1973-1994, as many as 800,000 visitors came from India on valid travel documents. Of these only 3,393 stayed back. [94] In a related trend, intermarriages between Indian and Pakistani Muslims have declined sharply. According to a November 1995 statement of Riaz Khokhar, the Pakistani High Commissioner in New Delhi, the number of cross-border marriages has declined from 40,000 a year in the 1950s and 1960s to barely 300 annually. [94] India[ edit ] The migration of Hindus from Pakistan to India continued unabated. The 1951 census in India recorded that 2.523 million refugees arrived from East Pakistan, of which 2.061 million migrated to West Bengal while the rest migrated to Assam, Tripura and other states. [96] These refugees arrived in waves and did not come solely at partition. By 1973 their number reached over 6 million. The following data displays the major waves of refugees from East Pakistan and the incidents which precipitated the migrations. [101] [102] Year Bangladesh liberation war 1,500,000 The population in the Tharparkar district in the Sind province of West Pakistan was 80% Hindu and 20% Muslim at the time of independence in 1947. During the Indo-Pak wars of 1965 and 1971, the Hindu upper castes and their retainers fled to India. This led to a massive demographic shift in the district. According to the 1998 census of Pakistan, Muslims made up 64.42% of the population and Hindus 35.58% of the population of Tharparkar. Due to religious persecution in Pakistan, Hindus continue to flee to India. Most of them tend to settle in the state of Rajasthan in India. [103] According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan data, just around 1,000 Hindu families fled to India in 2013. [104] In May 2014, a member of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Dr Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, revealed in the National Assembly of Pakistan that around 5,000 Hindus are migrating from Pakistan to India every year. [105] Play media Refugees on train roof during Partition The Partition was a highly controversial arrangement, and remains a cause of much tension on the Indian subcontinent today. The British Viceroy , Lord Mountbatten of Burma has not only been accused of rushing the process through, but also is alleged to have influenced the Radcliffe Line in India's favour. [106] [107] The commission took longer to decide on a final boundary than on the partition itself. Thus the two nations were granted their independence even before there was a defined boundary between them. Some critics allege that British haste led to increased cruelties during the Partition. [108] Because independence was declared prior to the actual Partition, it was up to the new governments of India and Pakistan to keep public order. No large population movements were contemplated; the plan called for safeguards for minorities on both sides of the new border. It was a task at which both states failed. There was a complete breakdown of law and order; many died in riots, massacre, or just from the hardships of their flight to safety. What ensued was one of the largest population movements in recorded history. According to Richard Symonds , at the lowest estimate, half a million people perished and twelve million became homeless. [109] However, many argue that the British were forced to expedite the Partition by events on the ground. [110] Once in office, Mountbatten quickly became aware if Britain were to avoid involvement in a civil war, which seemed increasingly likely, there was no alternative to partition and a hasty exit from India. [110] Law and order had broken down many times before Partition, with much bloodshed on both sides. A massive civil war was looming by the time Mountbatten became Viceroy. After the Second World War, Britain had limited resources, [111] perhaps insufficient to the task of keeping order. Another viewpoint is that while Mountbatten may have been too hasty he had no real options left and achieved the best he could under difficult circumstances. [112] The historian Lawrence James concurs that in 1947 Mountbatten was left with no option but to cut and run. The alternative seemed to be involvement in a potentially bloody civil war from which it would be difficult to get out. [113] Conservative elements in England consider the partition of India to be the moment that the British Empire ceased to be a world power, following Curzon 's dictum: "the loss of India would mean that Britain drop straight away to a third rate power." [114] A cross-border student initiative, The History Project, was launched in 2014 to explore the differences in perception of the events during the British era which led to the partition. The project resulted in a book that explains both interpretations of the shared history in Pakistan and India. [115] [116] Artistic depictions of the Partition[ edit ] Main article: Artistic depictions of the partition of India The partition of India and the associated bloody riots inspired many in India and Pakistan to create literary/cinematic depictions of this event. [117] While some creations depicted the massacres during the refugee migration, others concentrated on the aftermath of the partition in terms of difficulties faced by the refugees in both side of the border. Even now, more than 60 years after the partition, works of fiction and films are made that relate to the events of partition. The early members of the Progressive Artist's Group of Bombay cite "The Partition" of India and Pakistan as a key reason for its founding in December 1947. They included FN Souza, MF Husain, SH Raza, SK Bakre, HA Gade and KH Ara, who went on to become some of the most important and influential Indian artists of the 20th Century. [118] Literature describing the human cost of independence and partition comprises Bal K. Gupta's memoirs Forgotten Atrocities (2012), Khushwant Singh 's Train to Pakistan (1956), several short stories such as Toba Tek Singh (1955) by Saadat Hassan Manto , Urdu poems such as Subh-e-Azadi (Freedom's Dawn, 1947) by Faiz Ahmad Faiz , Bhisham Sahni 's Tamas (1974), Manohar Malgonkar 's A Bend in the Ganges (1965), and Bapsi Sidhwa 's Ice-Candy Man (1988), among others. [119] [120] Salman Rushdie 's novel Midnight's Children (1980), which won the Booker Prize and the Booker of Bookers , wove its narrative based on the children born with magical abilities on midnight of 14 August 1947. [120] Freedom at Midnight (1975) is a non-fiction work by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre that chronicled the events surrounding the first Independence Day celebrations in 1947. There is a paucity of films related to the independence and partition. [121] [122] [123] Early films relating to the circumstances of the independence, partition and the aftermath include Nemai Ghosh 's Chinnamul (Bengali) (1950), [121] Dharmputra (1961) [124] Lahore (1948), Chhalia (1956), Nastik (1953). Ritwik Ghatak 's Meghe Dhaka Tara (Bengali) (1960), George Cukor 's Bhowani Junction (1956), Komal Gandhar (Bengali) (1961), Subarnarekha (Bengali) (1962); [121] [125] later films include Garm Hava (1973) and Tamas (1987). [124] From the late 1990s onwards, more films on this theme were made, including several mainstream ones, such as Earth (1998), Train to Pakistan (1998) (based on the aforementined book), Hey Ram (2000), Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (2001), Khamosh Pani (2003), Pinjar (2003), Partition (2007) and Madrasapattinam (2010). [124] The biographical films Gandhi (1982), Jinnah (1998) and Sardar (1993) also feature independence and partition as significant events in their screenplay. A Pakistani drama Daastan , based on the novel Bano, highlights the plight of Muslim girls who were abducted and raped during partition. The novel Lost Generations (2013) by Manjit Sachdeva describes the March 1947 massacre in rural areas of Rawalpindi by the Muslim League, followed by massacres on both sides of the new border in August 1947 seen through the eyes of an escaping Sikh family, their settlement and partial rehabilitation in Delhi, and ending in ruin (including death), for the second time in 1984, at the hands of mobs after a Sikh assassinated the prime minister. The 2013 Google India advertisement Reunion (about the Partition of India) has had a strong impact in India and Pakistan, leading to hope for the easing of travel restrictions between the two countries. [126] [127] [128] It went viral [129] [130] and was viewed more than 1.6 million times before officially debuting on television on 15 November 2013. [131] Original courtesy of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India — Please support Wikipedia. This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia . A portion of the proceeds from advertising on Digplanet goes to supporting Wikipedia. We're sorry, but there's no news about "Partition of India" right now. Limit to books that you can completely read online Include partial books (book previews) Oops, we seem to be having trouble contacting Twitter Support Wikipedia A portion of the proceeds from advertising on Digplanet goes to supporting Wikipedia. Please add your support for Wikipedia! Searchlight Group Digplanet also receives support from Searchlight Group. Visit Searchlight Copyright © 2009-2017 Digparty. All rights reserved.	House of Mountbatten
The Harmandir Sahib, the Sikh spiritual/cultural centre, is known popularly in western media as what?	India’s Partition \| Independent Indian: Work & Life of Dr Subroto Roy Independent Indian: Work & Life of Dr Subroto Roy How the India-Bangladesh Enclaves Problem Was Jump-Started in 2007 Towards its 2015 Solution: A Case Study of Academic Impact on Policy June 8, 2015 — drsubrotoroy How the India-Bangladesh Enclaves Problem Was Jump-Started in 2007 Towards its 2015 Solution: A Case Study of Academic Impact on Policy by Subroto Roy, with Brendan Whyte Progress on the complex problem of India-Bangladesh enclaves started slightly in 1958 and especially 1974, then came to be stalled completely. In May 2007 press reports said a joint delegation was doing some survey work. That same month, I as Contributing Editor at The Statesman newspaper (biding my time away from a corrupted academia) stumbled on the excellent doctoral work done by a young researcher in Australia on what seemed at the time the impossibly intractable problem of India-Bangladesh enclaves. I wrote to the newspaper’s Editor on 9 May 2007, Dear Ravi, You may know that there is an incredibly complex problem between India and Bangladesh relating to enclaves between them, some dating back to Cooch Behar and Mughal enclaves 200 years ago. An Australian researcher named Brendan Whyte at the Univ of Melbourne has done the definitive study of the problem. I think we should invite him to produce a 2000-2500 word two parter on his work which would be very helpful to both governments and to public discussion. If you agree, I can write to him and invite him or you can do so directly. I will have to find his email. Regards Suby I enclosed a published abstract of Whyte’s work: “Waiting for the Esquimo: An historical and documentary study of the Cooch Behar enclaves of India and Bangladesh. Whyte, Dr Brendan (2002) “Waiting for the Esquimo: An historical and documentary study of the Cooch Behar enclaves of India and Bangladesh” School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Melbourne “Enclaves are defined as a fragment of one country totally surrounded by one other. A list of the world’s current enclaves and a review of the literature about them reveals a geographical bias that has left enclaves outside western Europe almost untouched. This bias is particularly noticeable in the almost complete absence of information on the Cooch Behar enclaves, along Bangladesh’s northern border with India. The Cooch Behar enclaves number almost 200. This total includes about two dozen counter-enclaves (enclaves within enclaves), and the world’s only counter-counter-enclave. Together, these enclaves represent 80% of the total number of enclaves existing in the world since the 1950s, and have been at the centre of Indo-East Pakistani and then Indo-Bangladeshi boundary disputes since Cooch Behar acceded to India in 1949. The incredibly complex Cooch Behar sector of the Indo-Bangladesh boundary is investigated in detail for the first time, from historical, political and geographical perspectives. The history of the enclaves is traced, from their origin c.1713 until the present, in an attempt to understand their genesis and survival under a succession of states, from the Kingdom of Cooch Behar and the Mughal Empire in the 1700s, to Bangladesh and the Republic of India today. The difficulties of the enclaves’ existence for their residents and the two countries today is contrasted with their peaceful, albeit administratively inconvenient, existence until 1947, to prove that the enclaves themselves are not the cause of border tensions in the area, but are rather a focus for other cross-border disputes. The current situation of the enclaves is described, highlighting the abandonment of the enclave residents by each country, which refuse to allow the other to administer its exclaves. India’s inability to implement a 1958 treaty with Pakistan, and its continued delay in ratifying a subsequent 1974 treaty with Bangladesh to exchange the enclaves is highlighted as the major factor impeding resolution of the enclave dispute. That the delays have been rooted in Indian internal politics is demonstrated. Highly disparate official and media reports as to the number, area and population of the enclaves are analysed to determine the true extent of the enclave problem, and the first ever large-scale map of the enclaves is published, locating and naming each enclave.” The Statesman‘s Editor agreed, and I went about trying to locate Dr Whyte. I think I phoned Australia, asked after him, and learnt he was a New Zealander teaching at a university in Thailand. On 10 May, I wrote to his former department head, Ian Rutherfurd: Dear Dr Rutherfurd, I am Contributing Editor at The Statesman of Calcutta and New Delhi, and would like to be in touch with your colleague Brendon Whyte but there is no email for him at your site. Please tell him we much wish him to write a two-part article on the editorial page (over two days) for us of less than 2500 words in total on his important research on the India-Bangladesh enclaves. There would be a relatively tiny honorarium probably from the Editor but a large impact on policy and public discussion in both countries. The Statesman is India’s oldest and most eminent newspaper. It may be seen at http://www.thestatesman.net and I am to be found at http://www.independentindian.com Many thanks, Subroto Roy, PhD (Cantab.), BScEcon (London), Contributing Editor Brendan Whyte replied the same day: Dear Dr Roy, I have received your message, and am honoured to be asked to write a piece for your paper. I now work in Thailand. Are there any further details regarding this assignment in addition to your information below? For example, is there a deadline, and if so, when? Do you want/can you accept maps/photos and if so how to send them to you? Can the text be sent to you be email or do you prefer a printed version instead of/in addition to an email? Regarding email should the text be in the body of an email or do you prefer an attachment in Word/RTF or other format? Do you prefer a Word document, or should the text be in the body of an email Thank you very much Brendan Whyte, PhD, Faculty of Management Science,Ubon Ratchathani University, THAILAND I wrote back the same day Dear Dr Whyte, Many thanks for the quick reply, and our thanks to your colleagues for locating you. The Statesman’s editorial page is as influential a place as there can be in serious Indian public discussion, though I have to say there is far too little such discussion in the country. At my suggestion, the Editor has invited a 2500 word two-part article (over two days); I have said you may have done the definitive work in the area. I know nothing of the subject and am reluctant to suggest any further guidelines, and leave to you to say what you wish once you get a sense of the audience and likely impact. I have in recent months published numerous special articles in The Statesman, and these may be seen at http://www.independentindian.com to give you a sense of the kind of quality you may aim at — though certainly we are a newspaper and not a technical journal. Regarding graphs, each article would have an illustration a few inches square and if you felt you could squeeze the relevant data into two such articles for the two days it would be excellent. Do drop by Calcutta when you can. The honorarium will be a few thousand rupees I expect though the Editor has not specified it yet. No there is no time rush; I accidentally found your work through a wordpress.com blog on strange maps. On second thoughts, if your articles generated invitations from geography departments in India or other invitations to give lectures on the subject, that too would be a worthwhile aim. Best regards Suby Roy Brendan sent his proposed article a month later in June. I replied: Hello, I have reduced it by 300 words without reducing any substance. I hope you may agree. Can you please try to reduce another 200 words, eg of the Belgian/Dutch case? I normally don’t allow anyone to touch my stuff so if you would like to try to reduce it all yourself, that’s fine. Also, 198 is not equal to 106+91+3+1. Please send all the graphics you may think suitable, and people here will try to figure out what to use. It may all go on one day on the Op-Ed page, I have no iodea what the Editor may decide. Also add your PhD University Thanks for this. The work is excellent and I hope it brings you the publicity you deserve. Suby Roy Brendan sent his final draft on 16 July 2007 Hi Suby, My apologies that this has taken me so long, but the teaching year has been so busy! I have reduced it to 2274 words, about 10% below your limit of 2500. It is attached as a Word file, and appended below as plain text. I hope to send some illustrations separately in the next day or two. Let me know if the revised article is ok or not. Thanks, Brendan I wrote to the Editor again the same day: Subject: India-Bangladesh Enclaves: A Major Foreign Policy Problem Solved Dear Ravi, Apropos our correspondence two months ago, Dr Brendan Whyte has at our request produced an excellent analysis of one of the trickiest and longest-standing problems between India and Bangladesh, viz. enclaves. Dr Whyte is a political geographer from New Zealand who worked on this subject for his doctoral thesis at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He apparently teaches in Thailand at present. By publishing this, we will be doing the MEA a very big favour, besides of course contributing to an important yet neglected public problem relevant to Eastern India. I recommend it for a Saturday night-Sunday night two-parter, rather than the Perspective page, given its close factual basis. Sincerely, Suby. I wrote to Brendan: Hello, Your article looks to me first-rate. The basis of a Government White Paper on this side or that. I have forwarded it to the Editor with my recommendation. Please send me any illustrations asap, as he may go with it any day though likely not before the weekend. Best wishes SR Brendan Whyte’s 16 July 2007 final draft was this: “The Enclave Problem: India and Bangladesh can and must solve this 300 year problem! There are 198 “enclaves” (chhit-mahals) between India and Bangladesh. Cooch Behar district has 106 enclaves in Bangladesh, and Bangladesh has 92 enclaves in India: 88 in Cooch Behar, 3 in Jalpaiguri, and 1 between Cooch Behar and Assam’s Dhubri district. The enclaves vary from clusters of villages to individual fields. The smallest Indian enclave may be Panisala, only 0.1093 ha; the smallest Bangladeshi enclave is Upan Chowki Bhajni #24 at 0.2870 ha. The largest are India’s Balapara Khagrabari at 25.95 sq. km, and Bangladesh’s 18.68 sq. km Dahagram-Angarpota. The 198 enclaves also include 3 Indian and 21 Bangladeshi counter-enclaves (enclaves within enclaves). India also possesses the world’s only counter-counter-enclave: a 0.69 ha jute field inside a Bangladeshi enclave inside an Indian enclave inside Bangladesh! Enclave populations-sizes are unknown. The last censuses to include enclaves were in 1951, although the Pakistani enumeration was incomplete. The population today is probably under 100,000 persons in total, 60% living in Indian enclaves in Bangladesh, the rest in Bangladeshi enclaves in India. The enclaves are 300 years old, originating during the Mughal wars against Cooch Behar in the late 1600s. A treaty was concluded in 1711 in which the Mughals obtained three chaklas from Cooch Behar, but the Subahdar of Bengal rejected the treaty and forced Cooch Behar to cede further lands in 1713, reducing it to about its present borders. This second treaty is the origin of the enclaves: as in feudal Europe, the holdings of kings and their vassals were not contiguous wholes but rather a patchwork of land parcels, so the ceded chaklas included lands inside the unceded areas and vice versa. The East India Company fixed the Bengal-Cooch Behar boundary about 1773, and by 1814 noted that the enclaves were safe havens for bandits. Yet the Company itself created more enclaves in 1817 when it adjudicated a territorial dispute between Cooch Behar and Bhutan, creating Cooch Behari enclaves in then-Bhutanese territory (now Alipar Duar district of Jalpaiguri). These enclaves remained when the British annexed the Bhutanese lands in 1865. The British quashed the bandit menace but proliferation of liquor, ganja and opium shops in the enclaves became an excise problem between Bengal and Cooch Behar. After discussions, the main boundary of Cooch Behar became the customs and excise boundary. All Cooch Behar enclaves in British India fell under British excise control while all British enclaves in Cooch Behar fell under Cooch Behari excise control. This practical solution to the problem in hand left the sovereignty of the enclaves intact. A full exchange of enclaves was suggested by the British in the early 1930s, to reduce the costs of the upcoming survey and demarcation of the Cooch Behar boundary but the idea was dropped in face of strong local objections, and all the enclaves were surveyed and demarcated with pillars by the late 1930s. Partition and independence in 1947, and the subsequent accession of Cooch Behar to India in 1949, elevated the enclaves to the international level. Initially this was unproblematic, with India and Pakistan concluding agreements on cross-border trade and movement in the enclave areas. Censuses in 1951 included the enclaves. But Pakistan’s unilateral 1952 introduction of visas requirements, and immediate Indian reciprocation sealed the fate of the enclave dwellers. High-level politics subordinated the needs of enclave dwellers on both sides. Full exchange was again agreed upon by the 1958 Nehru-Noon Accord, and this was reiterated in modified form in the 1974 Indira-Mujib Agreement between India and Bangladesh (Bangladesh would keep its largest enclave, Dahagram-Angarpota, to guarantee access to which, India would lease it a short corridor. But a succession of mainly Indian legal challenges regarding the constitutionality of both accords prevented implementation until 1992, when the Tin Bigha corridor was finally opened. The exchange of the remaining enclaves, agreed in 1958 and 1974 and cleared of legal challenged by 1990 remains unimplemented, despite constant Bangladeshi calls for India to implement the agreements fully. Meanwhile, since the 1950s the chhit mahalis, or enclave dwellers, have been effectively rendered stateless by the two governments abandoning responsibility for them. India’s fencing of its border with Bangladesh has added a physical dimension to the political isolation of its own enclaves. The chhit mahalis on both sides are unable to vote, to attend schools or markets, to be helped by NGOs working in either country, or to seek police help or medical attention. Each country claims its original citizens have been forced out of their enclaves by the population of the other country surrounding them, and so each country refuses to extend its governmental responsibilities to the supposed invaders. Simultaneously each denies it can legally assist the populations of the other country’s enclaves inside its own territory. Abandoned by both sides, the chhit mahalis struggle to survive without the ability to protect their rights, homes or lives. Bandits once more make use of the enclaves to escape the jurisdiction of the surrounding state. The problem is one of India and Bangladesh’s own making but it is not unique. Since 1996, when the Lithuanian enclave of Pogiry in Belarus (population: three) was exchanged for equivalent land, 259 enclaves have remained on the world map. Besides India-Bangladesh, there are 61 enclaves affecting 21 countries as owners or hosts. Most consist of a single farm, or a village and its surrounding farmland, inside a neighbouring country. Some approach the complexity of the Cooch Behar enclaves, such as 30 enclaves (including 8 counter-enclaves) belonging to Belgium and the Netherlands in the village of Baarle (population 8500). The Belgian-Dutch enclaves originated in a feudal agreement c.1198, and emerged at the international level when Belgium declared independence from the Netherlands in 1830. The enclaves were an annoyance to customs, police and foreign ministry officials; but arrangements allowed goods to pass into and through the enclaves, paying tax only if they were destined for the other country or its enclaves. Nevertheless, smuggling brought prosperity to a village on the economic and political periphery of both countries. Today the village park boasts a statue honouring the smugglers. The economic union of Belgium and the Netherlands and the subsequent European Union have eliminated the profitabililty of smuggling without the need for policing or fences. Differences in tax rates and national laws remain, so that some types of business, such as sex or fireworks shops can only operate in one country and its enclaves, and not in the other. Yet the village happily contains both sorts of shops, each in the permitting country, but serving customers from both. Different planning laws, educational syllabii, post offices, town halls, and churches exist side by side. Several businesses and houses straddle the enclave boundaries, enjoying two postal address and two telephone connections. The policemen from each country share an office. The fire departments work together with special hose-coupling devices. Utilities, sewerage, road maintenance and rubbish collection are conducted by one country or he other for the population of both. Where a national law unduly inconveniences the enclaves, an exception is granted. Thus while Sunday shopping is illegal in the Netherlands, the shops in Baarle’s Dutch enclaves may open on Sundays to compete with the Belgian shops, and the village has a thriving Sunday market, drawing crowds from both countries. Before the Euro was introduced, all shopkeepers and government offices accepted both national currencies. Overall the village has boomed as a border market, increasingly tourism-oriented, marketing its enclaves as a tourist attraction. Without the enclaves Baarle would be a small unimportant village. The enclaves have allowed it to surpass its neighbouring villages in size and prosperity. Other enclaves are often placed inside the customs, postal or telephone jurisdiction of the surrounding country. Switzerland tolerates a casino in the Italian tax-haven enclave of Campione d’Italia, on condition that Swiss citizens have a daily betting limit. Germany’s village of Büsingen, also inside Switzerland, is inside the Swiss customs and currency area, not that of the EU. Passage from the UAE into the Omani enclave of Madha and into the UAE’s counter-enclave of Dahwa inside remain free of controls for locals and foreigners alike. On Cyprus, locals from two villages enclaved inside the British territory (and military base) of Dhekelia move about freely, and farm land under both British and Cypriot sovereignty. What can India and Bangladesh learn from these foreign enclave cases? They have three main options. The worst is to maintain the status quo, each country refusing to properly govern its own enclaves while also forbidding the other to govern its enclaves across the intervening territory. This “dog-in-the-manger” attitude has reduced the enclaves to poverty and despair, countenanced violence and oppression, fostered corruption, and encourages the problems of criminal dens and drug-cultivation in the enclaves. The second option is an enclave exchange. Inhabitants should be given two independent options concerning citizenship and relocation. For up to two years after the enclave exchange, they should have the option to choose whether to retain their current citizenship or to become citizens of the other country. They should also have the independent option to remain owning and farming the land they occupy after its tranfer to the other country, or of being resettled on land of equivalent value, size and productive capacity in their original country. There is no reason why they should not be able to choose to stay in situ and retain their old citizenship, nor why they could not hold both citizenships: dual nationality is an increasingly common occurrence worldwide. The problems with this policy include a requirement for equivalent land for the resettlement of those wishing to relocate, and the need for each country to recognise the inhabitants of its enclaves as its own citizens before exchange. An imbalance in the numbers on each side desiring resettlement will cause difficulties. But it would only repeat the injustices of the 1947 partition if an exchange was made without addressing the needs of the enclave inhabitants, and allowing them some input into the process. The enclaves also form the world’s most complicated boundary, and include the world’s only counter-counter-enclave: so another problem with exchange is heritage loss. Finally, an exchange of enclaves is also an admittance of failure. Enclave exchange will remove a cartographic anomaly but it will not solve the underlying tensions in bilateral relations. The enclaves are not a problem in themselves but are simply a focus point for distrust and tension created elsewhere. Exchange may not improve the lives of the chhit mahalis, who may end up marginalised, landless and dispossessed by the exchange process. Even if able to remain on their lands, they will still be living in an economically and politically peripheral location. Therefore any exchange should be entered into only with the will of, and in full consultation with, the people involved, so as not to become a further injustice. A third policy is to retain the enclaves but improve their situation. The 30 enclaves of Belgium and the Netherlands at Baarle, along with other enclaves of Europe and the Middle East, are a good model for this. The advantages are many. It would put the enclave dwellers in charge of their own destiny, leaving them on their lands, but able to engage fully as citizens of their own country. The distances between each country and its own enclaves are small, often less than one kilometre, rarely more than two or three. Designated access routes, for foot, cart and motorised traffic, could be easily set up and policed. This would allow enclave dwellers to traverse the intervening country to reach the nearest schools and markets of their own country. The local district commissioners should be granted authority to meet frequently and at will to discuss any problems and work out local solutions, without having to refer to New Delhi or Dhaka. Officials such as teachers, doctors, district officials, electoral officers, census enumerators and police should also be permitted visa-free access on demand. Which country’s currency, excise laws, and postal system, electricity and other services are used in an enclave should be based on principles of efficiency, not on chauvinistic nationalism. There is no reason why exchange of enclaves for customs and excise purposes made in the 1930s could not be readopted. Indian enclaves could be alcohol-free like surrounding Bangladesh, and Bangladeshi enclaves could be prohibited from slaughtering cows as in India. This is no more a threat to the sovereignty of either country than is the differing alcohol and tax regimes of the Indian states and territories. The unique border situation of the enclaves would encourage tourism to this forgotten region in both countries, offering new economic possibilities to an area devoid of industrial capability and development. India and Bangladesh are not alone in wrestling with the problem of enclaves. Similar problems have been solved in most other enclaves around the world. The long-delayed exchange of the Cooch Behar enclaves, mooted since 1910 and agreed upon in 1958 may simplify the border itself, but it is unlikely to improve bilateral relations, assist economic development of the area or improve the lives of the enclave dwellers. The needs and desires of the chhit-mahalis must be taken into account, but action must be taken to remove their current effective statelessness. The examples of successful enclaves elsewhere in the world suggest that even if relations between two countries are not completely harmonious, enclaves can exist and be beneficial to the economic potential of the area and the prosperity of its inhabitants. These two aspects are the raison d’etre of government, hence it behoves the governments concerned to ensure that any solution to the enclave problem addresses these issues and not merely cartographic simplification, which may only cement the 1947 division more firmly.” Brendan’s article was published in two parts on Sunday and Monday July 22 2007 & July 23 2007 with very slight alteration –except the splendid maps he had sent failed to be published! “The Enclave Problem India, Bangladesh can and must solve this 300-year-old issue! By BRENDANWHYTE There are 198 “enclaves” (chhit-mahals) between India and Bangladesh. Cooch Behar district has 106 enclaves in Bangladesh, and Bangladesh has 92 enclaves in India: 88 in Cooch Behar, 3 in Jalpaiguri, and 1 between Cooch Behar and Assam’s Dhubri district. The enclaves vary from clusters of villages to individual fields. The smallest Indian enclave may be Panisala, only 0.1093 ha; the smallest Bangladeshi enclave is Upan Chowki Bhajni #24 at 0.2870 ha. The largest are India’s Balapara Khagrabari at 25.95 sq. km, and Bangladesh’s 18.68 sq. km Dahagram-Angarpota. The 198 enclaves also include 3 Indian and 21 Bangladeshi counter-enclaves (enclaves within enclaves). India also possesses the world’s only counter-counter-enclave: a 0.69 ha jute field inside a Bangladeshi enclave inside an Indian enclave inside Bangladesh! Enclave population-sizes are unknown. The last census to include enclaves was conducted in 1951, although the Pakistani enumeration was incomplete. The population today is probably under 100,000 in total, 60% living in Indian enclaves in Bangladesh, the rest in Bangladeshi enclaves in India. The enclaves are 300 years old, originating during the Mughal wars against Cooch Behar in the late 1600s. A treaty was concluded in 1711 in which the Mughals obtained three chaklas from Cooch Behar, but the Subahdar of Bengal rejected the treaty and forced Cooch Behar to cede further lands in 1713, reducing it to about its present borders. This second treaty is the origin of the enclaves: as in feudal Europe, the holdings of kings and their vassals were not contiguous wholes but rather a patchwork of land parcels, so the ceded chaklas included lands inside the unceded areas and vice versa. The East India Company fixed the Bengal-Cooch Behar boundary about 1773, and by 1814 noted that the enclaves were safe havens for bandits. Yet the Company itself created more enclaves in 1817 when it adjudicated a territorial dispute between Cooch Behar and Bhutan, creating Cooch Behari enclaves in then-Bhutanese territory (now Alipurduar district of Jalpaiguri). These enclaves remained when the British annexed the Bhutanese lands in 1865. The British quashed the bandit menace but proliferation of liquor, ganja and opium shops in the enclaves became an excise problem between Bengal and Cooch Behar. After discussions, the main boundary of Cooch Behar became the customs and excise boundary. All Cooch Behar enclaves in British India fell under British excise control, while all British enclaves in Cooch Behar fell under Cooch Behari excise control. This practical solution to the problem in hand left the sovereignty of the enclaves intact. A full exchange of enclaves was suggested by the British in the early 1930s, to reduce the costs of the upcoming survey and demarcation of the Cooch Behar boundary but the idea was dropped in face of strong local objections, and all the enclaves were surveyed and demarcated with pillars by the late 1930s. Partition and independence in 1947, and the subsequent accession of Cooch Behar to India in 1949, elevated the enclaves to the international level. Initially this was unproblematic, with India and Pakistan concluding agreements on cross-border trade and movement in the enclave areas. The 1951 census included the enclaves. But Pakistan’s unilateral 1952 introduction of visa requirements, and immediate Indian reciprocation sealed the fate of the enclave dwellers. High-level politics subordinated the needs of enclave dwellers on both sides. Full exchange was again agreed upon by the 1958 Nehru-Noon accord, and this was reiterated in a modified form in the 1974 Indira-Mujib agreement between India and Bangladesh (Bangladesh would keep its largest enclave, Dahagram-Angarpota, to guarantee access to which, India would lease it a short corridor). But a succession of mainly Indian legal challenges regarding the constitutionality of both accords prevented implementation until 1992, when the Tin Bigha corridor was finally opened. The exchange of the remaining enclaves, agreed in 1958 and 1974 and cleared of legal challenges by 1990 remains unimplemented, despite constant Bangladeshi calls for India to implement the agreements fully. Meanwhile, since the 1950s the chhit mahalis, or enclave dwellers, have been effectively rendered stateless by the two governments abandoning responsibility for them. India’s fencing of its border with Bangladesh has added a physical dimension to the political isolation of its own enclaves. The chhit mahalis on both sides are unable to vote, to attend schools or markets, to be helped by NGOs working in either country, or to seek police help or medical attention. Each country claims its original citizens have been forced out of their enclaves by the population of the other country surrounding them, and so each country refuses to extend its governmental responsibilities to the supposed invaders. Simultaneously each denies it can legally assist the populations of the other country’s enclaves inside its own territory. Abandoned by both sides, the chhit mahalis struggle to survive without the ability to protect their rights, homes or lives. Bandits once more make use of the enclaves to escape the jurisdiction of the surrounding state. The problem is one of India and Bangladesh’s own making but it is not unique. Since 1996, when the Lithuanian enclave of Pogiry in Belarus (population: three) was exchanged for equivalent land, 259 enclaves have remained on the world map. Besides India-Bangladesh, there are 61 enclaves affecting 21 countries as owners or hosts. Most consist of a single farm, or a village and its surrounding farmland, inside a neighbouring country. Some approach the complexity of the Cooch Behar enclaves, such as 30 enclaves (including 8 counter-enclaves) belonging to Belgium and the Netherlands in the village of Baarle (population 8500). The Belgian-Dutch enclaves originated in a feudal agreement c.1198, and emerged at the international level when Belgium declared independence from the Netherlands in 1830. The enclaves were an annoyance to customs, police and foreign ministry officials; but arrangements allowed goods to pass into and through the enclaves, paying tax only if they were destined for the other country or its enclaves. Nevertheless, smuggling brought prosperity to a village on the economic and political periphery of both countries. Today the village park boasts a statue honouring the smugglers. The economic union of Belgium and the Netherlands and the subsequent European Union have eliminated the profitabililty of smuggling without the need for policing or fences. Different town halls and churches exist side by side. Several businesses and houses straddle the enclave boundaries, enjoying two postal addresses and two telephone connections. The policemen from each country share an office. The fire departments work together with special hose-coupling devices. Utilities, sewerage, road maintenance and rubbish collection are conducted by one country or the other for the population of both. Where a national law unduly inconveniences the enclaves, an exception is granted. Thus while Sunday shopping is illegal in the Netherlands, the shops in Baarle’s Dutch enclaves may open on Sundays to compete with the Belgian shops, and the village has a thriving Sunday market, drawing crowds from both countries. Before the Euro was introduced, all shopkeepers and government offices accepted both national currencies. Overall the village has boomed as a border market, increasingly tourism-oriented, marketing its enclaves as a tourist attraction. Without the enclaves Baarle would be a small unimportant village. The enclaves have allowed it to surpass its neighbouring villages in size and prosperity. Other enclaves are often placed inside the customs, postal or telephone jurisdiction of the surrounding country. Switzerland tolerates a casino in the Italian tax-haven enclave of Campione d’Italia, on condition that Swiss citizens have a daily betting limit. Germany’s village of Büsingen, also inside Switzerland, is inside the Swiss customs and currency area, not that of the EU. Passage from the UAE into the Omani enclave of Madha and into the UAE’s counter-enclave of Dahwa inside remain free of controls for locals and foreigners alike. On Cyprus, locals from two villages enclaved inside the British territory (and military base) of Dhekelia move about freely, and farm land under both British and Cypriot sovereignty. (To be concluded) The enclave problem~II What can India and Bangladesh learn from these foreign enclave cases? They have three main options. The worst is to maintain the status quo, each country refusing to properly govern its own enclaves while also forbidding the other to govern its enclaves across the intervening territory. This “dog-in-the-manger” attitude has reduced the enclaves to poverty and despair, countenanced violence and oppression, fostered corruption, and encouraged the problems of criminal dens and drug-cultivation in the enclaves. The second option is an enclave exchange. Inhabitants should be given two independent options concerning citizenship and relocation. For up to two years after the enclave exchange, they should have the option to choose whether to retain their current citizenship or to become citizens of the other country. They should also have the independent option to remain owning and farming the land they occupy after its transfer to the other country, or of being resettled on land of equivalent value, size and productive capacity in their original country. Dual nationality There is no reason why they should not be able to choose to stay in situ and retain their old citizenship, nor why they could not hold both citizenships: dual nationality is an increasingly common occurrence worldwide. The problems with this policy include a requirement for equivalent land for the resettlement of those wishing to relocate, and the need for each country to recognise the inhabitants of its enclaves as its own citizens before exchange. An imbalance in the numbers on each side desiring resettlement will cause difficulties. But it would only repeat the injustices of the 1947 Partition if an exchange was made without addressing the needs of the enclave inhabitants, and allowing them some input into the process. The enclaves also form the world’s most complicated boundary, and include the world’s only counter-counter-enclave: so another problem with exchange is heritage loss. Finally, an exchange of enclaves is also an admittance of failure. Enclave exchange will remove a cartographic anomaly but it will not solve the underlying tensions in bilateral relations. The enclaves are not a problem in themselves but are simply a focus point for distrust and tension created elsewhere. Exchange may not improve the lives of the chhit mahalis, who may end up marginalised, landless and dispossessed by the exchange process. Even if able to remain on their lands, they will still be living in an economically and politically peripheral location. Therefore any exchange should be entered into only with the will of, and in full consultation with, the people involved, so as not to become a further injustice. A third policy is to retain the enclaves but improve their situation. The 30 enclaves of Belgium and the Netherlands at Baarle, along with other enclaves of Europe and the Middle East, are a good model for this. The advantages are many. It would put the enclave dwellers in charge of their own destiny, leaving them on their lands, but able to engage fully as citizens of their own country. The distances between each country and its own enclaves are small, often less than one kilometre, rarely more than two or three. Designated access routes, for foot, cart and motorised traffic, could be easily set up and policed. This would allow enclave dwellers to traverse the intervening country to reach the nearest schools and markets of their own country. The local district commissioners should be granted authority to meet frequently and at will to discuss any problems and work out local solutions, without having to refer to New Delhi or Dhaka. Officials such as teachers, doctors, district officials, electoral officers, census enumerators and police should also be permitted visa-free access on demand. Which country’s currency, excise laws, and postal system, electricity and other services are used in an enclave should be based on principles of efficiency, not on chauvanistic nationalism. There is no reason why exchange of enclaves for customs and excise purposes made in the 1930s could not be readopted. Indian enclaves could be alcohol-free like surrounding Bangladesh, and Bangladeshi enclaves could be prohibited from slaughtering cows as in India. This is no more a threat to the sovereignty of either country than is the differing alcohol and tax regimes of the Indian states and territories. The unique border situation of the enclaves would encourage tourism to this forgotten region in both countries, offering new economic possibilities to an area devoid of industrial capability and development. Economic potential India and Bangladesh are not alone in wrestling with the problem of enclaves. Similar problems have been solved in most other enclaves around the world. The long-delayed exchange of the Cooch Behar enclaves, mooted since 1910 and agreed upon in 1958 may simplify the border itself, but it is unlikely to improve bilateral relations, assist economic development of the area or improve the lives of the enclave dwellers. The needs and desires of the chhit-mahalis must be taken into account, but action must be taken to remove their current effective statelessness. The examples of successful enclaves elsewhere in the world suggest that even if relations between two countries are not completely harmonious, enclaves can exist and be beneficial to the economic potential of the area and the prosperity of its inhabitants. These two aspects are the raison d’etre of government, hence it behooves the governments concerned to ensure that any solution to the enclave problem addresses these issues and not merely cartographic simplification, which may only cement the 1947 division more firmly. (Concluded)” I wrote to him immediately Hello, You were published in yesterday’s Sunday Statesman and continued in this morning’s edition, as the special article on the editorial page. I am enclosing the text as it appears on the Internet edition. Through some apparent editorial mishap, the illustrattions you sent never got published, and two photographs were used. I think you could follow it up with an invited talk in Kolkata. If you wish, I can look into that possibility. Send me a cv if you are interested and I shall see what I can do. Re working with me on the China-India problem, a visit from you might enable us to talk further. I am introducing you separately to the Editor’s assistant who should help with copies, money etc. Best wishes Subroto Roy All that was between May and July 2007. On 6 September 2011, Dr Manmohan Singh as India’s PM on a visit to Bangladesh apparently signed what the India’s Foreign Ministry calls the “2011 Protocol”. And now a few days ago, Prime Minister Sheik Hasina, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, along with the agreement of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, have all signed a comprehensive landmark “Land Boundary Agreement” between India and Bangladesh, solving the 300 year problem! All’s well that ends well… And yes, Excellencies, PM Sheikha Hasina, PM Narendra Modi, former PM Manmohan Singh, CM Mamata Banerjee: re the Land Boundary Agreement, Dr Brendan Whyte and I and The Statesman newspaper may all take a bow after you… Nota Bene: The Statesman for some reason did not publish along with Dr Whyte’s excellent article these important maps which are now published here below for the first time: A personal note: The words “enclave” and “No Man’s Land” entered my vocabulary due to my father back in January 1965 when we crossed from India through No Man’s Land into what was then East Pakistan. He was with India’s diplomatic post in Dhaka and during the 1965 war would be acting head while his friend G Parthasarathi was head of Mission in Karachi [Correction November 2015: Parthasarathi left shortly before the war, replaced in August 1965 by Kewal Singh]. Half a dozen years later in the summer of 1971, I was a schoolboy volunteer in West Dinajpur helping in small ways the innumerable refugees who had poured across the porous boundary with East Dinajpur during the tyranny West Pakistan had unleashed in East Pakistan; there was effectively no boundary distinction left then. I dedicate my part of this work to my late father MK Roy 1915-2012. The 5-Minute Negative Feedback Loop 2011 Model of Kashmir’s Problemss June 14, 2011 — drsubrotoroy January 24, 2011 — drsubrotoroy From Facebook: Subroto Roy regrets getting the sisters’ names wrong earlier; they were not Kulsooma and Yasmin but Akhtara, 19, and Arifa, 17. Their killings by terrorists in Sopore , and that of young Manzoor Ahmad Magray, 22, by the Army in Handwara within the week, mark a tipping point, for myself at least. Subroto Roy reflecting on the Lashkar-e-Toiba killing of the teenage Sopore sisters and the Indian Army killing of Manzoor Ahmad Magray in Handwara, all in one week, is reminded only of: Where be these enemies?… See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,…all are punish’d. From Facebook: Subroto Roy says at Seema Mustafa’s Wall “Some of these comments seem to be addressed to me in a somewhat ill-mannered way. I am due to speak in Lahore next month on Kashmir and Pakistan, and have published quite extensively over 20 years perhaps on the subject, apropos the University of Hawaii volume Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s etc. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=171926377284&set=a.136688412284.112038.632437284 I am quite happy to engage in any conversation with any shade of opinion from the leader of the United Jehad Council onwards. But discussion needs to be in English not pidgin English or slang, it needs to be polite and well-mannered, and it needs to be as well thought out and well-informed as possible. I may be addressed as Dr Roy or Mr Roy by people I do not know. Subroto Roy says to Mr Changal, Apropos your “@mr roy…. i hope u carry a message that KASHMIRIS WIL NEVER LIKE TO B A PART OF INDIA”, I am given to understand that you as an individual have no wish to be an Indian national, which to me is fair enough. A lot of Indian nationals have travelled after all to the USA, Britain etc and there have gone about freely renouncing their Indian nationality and accepting that of another country. May I assume that if you, as an individual, were given such a choice by the Govt of India to formally renounce, on paper, in a private decision with full security and no fear of repercussions, your Indian nationality, you would do so? You may then become stateless in international law, following which the Govt of India could assist you as an individual to accept the nationality of some other country for which you were eligible, e.g. the Islamic Republic of Iran or the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan or the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. If that went through properly, the Govt of India could also give you full “Green Card” or PIO status vis a vis the Indian territory you may wish to live or work etc in. Ajmal Nazir ‎@ subroto sir…..I personally appreciate the kind of efforts you are putting to highlight the meseries that kashmiris are going through. May God succeed you in your efforts . However there are lot of realities that one need to understand before talking about Kashmir.This issue is not a demographical or political issue. This is an human issue where kashmiris suffer. Before going into any discussion , both Pakistan and India should understand that this problems is taking its toll on common kashmiri who is getting killed everyday. Kashmir is like a beautiful prison where one can survive but cannot live freely. It looks completely normal from outside. But unfortunately you cannot see the fear that is inside the hearts of common people. You cannot see the uncertainty in the minds of those people.I wish you could have feel the fear in the mind of mothers when their kids are outside. I wish you could have feel the fear in the eyes of kids, when they see these indian forces roaming in their fields. There is a check post in every corner of the street, where it is obligatory for us to go through checking. We have to prove our identity in our own homes. It is not happening only on 26th Jan (like it happens in your states ]. It happening everyday, every-hour and every-time.I wish you could feel the fear when we have to go through these checking. Everyday, we have to make sure that we come home before 6:00 pm otherwise you will be picked up and your name will get added into hundrends and thousands of disappeared people. There are so many fake encounters happening in valley that nobody from outside world knows. Try to listen to local news here and there is a separate sections which tells you about the number of people that got killed every 24 hours. In 90’s that list was always above 20 and there was no such news outside kashmir. There is no such family in kashmir that hasn’t suffer I am not talking about mental suffering, I am talking about where somebody got killed.I wish you could have seen the pain of those mothers who lost their innocent sons, I wish you could seen the hopelessness in the minds of those fathers, who lost their only sons. There are so many half widows in kashmir, whose husbands were picked by forces and they never came back. they are still waiting for their husbands to return. In every community , there is an orphanage, where you will find the so many orphan kids. i believe you will find the most numbers orphans in kashmir than in any other state. These suffering are not visible from outside.We need to feel like kashmiris to understand these problems You need to take little pain to find the actual realities in kashmir. Every kashmir including our pandiths brothers suffer. KAshmir issue is not the political issue, neither is it regional issue. This is a human issue . This issue is not related to the geographical demographies, it is related with the people who live there.These boundaries are of no meaning for those mothers and fathers, who suffer everyday. If Indian wants kashmir, you have to win the hearts of kashmiris, Treat us like humans, Give us basic human rights . Release kashmiris from this militarized prison. Let us decide what is good for us.. Give us the freedom to express our problems. Let us bring kashmiris youth in your national media and let them discuss this issue. India is a democratic country so i believe everybody has a right to express their feelings.Highlight our miseries and punish the culprits who have killed innocent kashmiris. How can you justify the killing of those small kids who pelt stones on the streets. Does indian constitution allow killings of kids if they pelt stones. If they damage property, arrest them but how can we kill those small kids.Even some where beaten to death.What about Tufail Matoo who got killed when he was going to tuition classes. He didn;t damage any property. There are so many untold stories in kashmir that nobody knows. Subroto Roy says to Mr Nazir, Thank you for the lengthy and pertinent statement which clearly reflects your experience as well as your hopes and fears. I have no hesitation in accepting your saying the situation in recent times has become intolerable for ordinary people. I believe it is the outcome of a process which has evolved over decades in which the peoples and Governments of India, the peoples and Governments of Pakistan, and the peoples and Governments of J&K too, have all contributed. It is something for which everyone is responsible, no single person or country or community can be said to be exempt (other than perhaps the gentle people of Laddakh). And all the facts of history and the present have to be understood, and yes felt as well — each and every clear fact. I hope to show how this may be done during my Lahore lectures next month. Cordial regards and thanking you once more. Subroto Roy says to Mr Changal, Thank you for the reply though you may have made a mistake with my identity: I am not Mr Subroto who has been a senior minister in Indonesia, but rather Dr Roy or Mr Roy as you please. No I do not think I am or would want to be blind to any atrocities by armed forces on civilians in any country, my own included. Apropos your statement “we reject the illegal n forceful occupation of kashmir by the cruel hindu india”, I shall be glad to hear the basis of your opinion. Re Hindus and Muslims and my opinion thereof, there is a lot of material to be found at my site and among my Notes. Cordially, SR Sajad Malik I just wud humbly like to ask you a question sir, Do you deny the disputed nature of kashmir? Subroto Roy Mr Malik, Thank you for the question. I think it was I who said twenty years ago, when I was almost as young as some of you are now “The core of the continuing dispute between Pakistan and India has been Kashmir, where vast resources have been drained from the budgets of both countries by two large armies facing one another for decades over a disputed boundary”. I do not think the Govt of Pakistan had used the word “core” until that time. Please see p 15 of the book http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=171926377284&set=a.136688412284.112038.632437284 Subroto Roy says to Mr Changal, I cannot know but perhaps you speak from terrible personal experiences as an individual at the hands of governmental machinery; I know what that can be like. I would agree it is important in this grave and mortal matter to go into the whole history piece by piece, frankly and candidly, with scientific honesty and freedom of inquiry and thought. That is the only real way to aim for complete agreement across the political spectrum in the subcontinent. Such an agreement is possible too, and the only real way forward for all, especially the people of J&K, your generation and the future. I am sure my Lahore lectures will be public immediately after they are delivered next month, which you may find of interest. Clearly we have a number of factual questions for one another whose answers may emerge in time. Rape is an evil thing, and I find what you mention is discussed here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunan_Poshpora_incident Thank you for your comment and suggestion. The solution I have proposed since 2005 is far better than the plebiscite idea you mention. But I am afraid you will have to make a study of my publications here at FB or at my site or in my books, or wait until the Lahore lectures. I also wonder if you are aware that Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad offered a plebiscite when it was first mentioned in 1948 during the Pashtun tribal invasion from Pakistan but Pakistan balked. Subroto Roy says the solution he has proposed since 2005 is far better than the plebiscite idea often mentioned. Many are also unaware that Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad offered a plebiscite when it was first mentioned in 1948 during the Pashtun tribal invasion from Pakistan but Pakistan balked. Ganai Danish: It was pandit nehru,who in 1952 addressed the public gathering in lal chowk sgr,promised that the people of jk will be given a chance to decide their future whether they want to be part of india or accede with pakistan.It is worth mentioning that it was india itself who took the case of disputed nature of kashmir to UN by passing a resolution in 1948.But 63 years passed, india is yet to fulfull its promise and has mulishly held on to the uncompromising stance that jk is an integral part of india. Subroto Roy: Mr Danish, Thank you for the comment. Pandit Nehru’s Lal Chowk speech may have been 1947/48 during the Pashtun invasion. There is a small pic at my site here https://independentindian.com/2009/03/28/india-is-not-a-monarchy-and-urgently-needs-to-universalize-the-french-concept-of-citoyen-some-personal-thoughts/ By 1952, Sheikh Abdullah had pioneered the J&K Constitution http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=244956301112 Ganai Danish Respected Dr Roy,1952 or 1948,that isn’t the question.The question is why india uses its military might to crush our movement.By calling itself the world’s largest democrac<z>y,its democracy is buried in kashmir.Our movement is indegenious,peaceful,genuine,and non violent and we will take it to its conclusion Subroto Roy Mr Danish, Thank you for the comment. The difference between 1948 and 1952 is vital because that is the time Kashmir made its decision, and it was a democratic decision led by Sheikh-Sahib who had — practically single-handedly — awoken the Muslim masses from their slumber and oppression under the Dogras. Sheikh Abdullah paid the penalty for that most heavily– being jailed by the Dogras numerous times because of it. But even so I think you have raised a critically important question — which is how it is that your generation has become so utterly alienated and disaffected with their political experience of repression, war, terrorism etc that they want to free themselves of it. Ganai Danish It is very true that late sheikh abdullah traitor fought against dogra rule but he did such a blunder that whatever happened in kashmir since 1989 to 2010,sheikh is responsible for this.He sold kashmir to india and sold the blood of martyrs that were in favour of accession to pakistan.It was the same traitor’s son farooq abdullah who signed noozle to Shaheed Maqbool bhat,the first martyr of kashmir.It was the same farooq abdullah’s leadership in 1989 who killed 1 lac kashmiris and brought POTA,AFSPA,PSA and so on in kashmir.It was the same traitors son omer abdullah who killed 112 innocents in kashmir in just 4 months.So far as the imprisonment is concerned.,It is Syed Ali shah geelani,a vetern leader of kashmir,who spent more than 22 years in jail and is still under house arrest. Subroto Roy says to Mr Danish, Thanks for this point of view of which I know less than I should. I am glad we have reached a stage so quickly where we may discuss different interpretations of factual events. I reaoet what I have said to Mr Nazir, that I have no hesitation in accepting your saying the situation in recent times has become intolerable for ordinary people. I believe it is the outcome of a process which has evolved over decades in which the peoples and Governments of India, the peoples and Governments of Pakistan, and the peoples and Governments of J&K too, have all contributed. It is something for which everyone is responsible, no single person or country or community can be said to be exempt (other than perhaps the gentle people of Laddakh). And all the facts of history and the present have to be understood, and yes felt as well — each and every clear fact. I hope to show how this may be done during my Lahore lectures next month. Cordial regards and thanking you once more. Sajad Malik ‎@ Mr. Roy, you mean Sheikh Abdullah “offered” Plebiscite? well this is a news to me; as i am wondering on what authority wud they do that? All i have been knowing till now is, Plebiscite was in the offing, had Nehru not insisted that the tribes men from NWFP leave Kashmir and at the same time Jinnah insisting that for the plebiscite to happen, Indian forces need to be out of kashmir first. Subroto Roy says to Mr Malik, Yes, Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad offered a plebiscite when it was first mentioned and it was the Pakistanis who balked. Re. “disputed territory” and “core issue”, as I said yesterday, I do not have to admit it because I may have been the first to say so twenty years ago when I was almost as young as some of you are now “The core of the continuing dispute between Pakistan and India has been Kashmir, where vast resources have been drained from the budgets of both countries by two large armies facing one another for decades over a disputed boundary”. I do not think the Govt of Pakistan had used the word “core” until that time. Please see p 15 of the book http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=171926377284&set=a.136688412284.112038.632437284 You may perhaps see that it is a leap of logic from saying Pakistan and India have a disputed boundary to saying as you suggest “So what is the problem if a Kashmiri asks Azadi sir?”. 🙂 Subroto Roy says to Mr Malik: Mr Malik, Indeed as I have said Sheikh-Sahib and Bakshi did so; you would have to know how ghastly and vicious the tribal invasion from Pakistan was starting on October 22 1947, and how the Rape of Baramulla had proceeded (with Kashmiri women of all communities, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu, being abducted by lorry en masse to be sold in markets in Peshawar etc), to know that Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad could confidently predict the outcome at the time of any such plebiscite, which would explain why Liaquat Ali Khan (who had condemned Sheikh as a “Quisling of India”) would have ignored it. I say this having read reports from the original newspapers at the time, and have today asked the editor of that national newspaper to produce a set of reprints of all articles published from, say, the 1946 Cabinet Mission to the Jan-Feb 1949 ceasefire, since all this material is unknown by all the parties, and making it known would contribute to resolving this grave and mortal problem. Do please explain what you mean or Sheikh meant by “Siyasi Awaragardi”; also I would certainly be grateful to learn of your view and that of your friends on the history of J&K between, say, 1952 and the 1965 War. Sajad Malik: Mr Roy, I have been lately reading a piece done by Haroon Rashid. He pens down all that Kashmiri’s suffered at the hands of tribesmen..looting and arson, even killing of a lady running a convent. He outrightly rejects rape, (anyway thats altogether a diffrent debate). Sheikh Abdullah, wen released from the prison (Imprisoned by Nehru,for taking the plebscite front) scorned his ownself for taking up Plebscite front and termed it as “Siyasi-Awaragardi” (Political Intrigue). For your further enlightment here Mr. Roy;- 1951: Indian holds elections and tries to impose its democratic institution in Kashmir. It is opposed by the United Nations. They pass a resolution to declare elections void and stress on plebiscite. India ignores the opposition blatantly. Sheikh Abdullah wins unopposed and rumors of election rigging plague Kashmiri politics. 1952: Sheikh Abdullah signs the Delhi Agreement on July, 1952. It chalks out state-centre sharing of power and gives abidance to Kashmir to have its own flag. Sheikh Abdullah creates Kashmir centric land reforms which create resentment among the people of Jammu and Ladakh. Delhi Agreement provides the first genuine erosion in international resolution of Kashmir. Nehru’s Speech: ”On August1952, Jawahar Lal Nehru gives a negating speech contradicting the settlement provided in the Delhi Agreement: “Ultimately – I say this with all deference to this Parliament – the decision will be made in the hearts and minds of the men and women of Kashmir; neither in this Parliament, nor in the United Nations nor by anybody else” 1953-1954: Sheikh Abdullah takes U turns and procrastinates in conforming the accession of Kashmir to India. Sheikh Abdullah is jailed. In August, Bakhshi Ghulam Muhammad is installed in place of Sheikh Abdullah. He officially ratifies Kashmir’s accession with India. On April, 1954, India & Pakistan both agree in appointment of a Plebiscite Administrator. 1956-1957: On 30th October, 1956, J&K Constituent Assembly adopts a fresh constitution, and dissolves the Constituent Assembly, which further defines the relationship of Kashmir with the Indian Dominion. UN strongly condemns the developments and passes a resolution stating such attempts will not result in any final resolution. On 26th January, 1957, the new constitution is made enforceable. Kashmir is now a Republican-Democratic state under Indian Union. 1964: Sheikh Abdullah is released from jail. Jawahar Lal Nehru sends Sheikh Abdullah with a delegation to Pakistan in an effort to find a resolution discourse for Kashmir. In the meantime, masses in Kashmir protest against the implementation of Article 356 & 357, which allows Indian central authority over constituting legislative powers in Kashmir. The special status of Kashmir continues to get eroded. 1965-1971: The nomenclature is changed from ‘Sadr-e-Riyasat’ to Governor and from Prime Minister to Chief Minister. The Governor is now no longer elected locally, and is installed as per the orders of the President of India. This amendment lightens off Kashmir from its special titles. Free & fair elections in the guise of democracy are championed as just causes, and Indian mainstream parties are allowed to contest in the elections. However, these elections aren’t well received by the public. In many cases, international watchdogs accuse India of rigging elections. In 1967, Jammu Autonomy Forum is constituted with the aim of institutionalizing regional autonomy. Excerpts, “chronology of Kashmir conflict” by Naveed Qazi” Subroto Roy says to Mr Sajad Malik: thank you for this brief chronology which I shall certainly study more carefully. Am I to understand that you and perhaps others with you deny the Rape of Baramullah? Perhaps you mean that the thousands, but thousands, of Kashmiri women of all three communities who were abducted against their will by the tribesmen in lorries and later sold in Peshawar and other markets were not raped but taken in matrimony at their new destinations? Sajad Malik: Mr Roy, I am not denying anything. All I am saying is that Haroon Rashid (BBC) is rejecting it and that I maintain, its a separate debate. The thing which we are discussing here is that India has no legitimate authority over Kashmir. It’s military might, deciept, savagery has not been able to turn a leaf in Kashmir, despite tens of thousands been killed, despite all the laws it sought from the “once wicked” Britian. I am not a political analyst nor a strategist but with full conviction Mr. Roy, m telling you Kashmir can never be India. Smell our land it smells saffron, m not sure what it smells in India. Comment not intended to hurt your or any Indian’s emotions Mr. Roy. If it inadvertently does, I apologise. Subroto Roy: Mr Malik, Thank you; no not at all, there is absolutely no need for you to apologise in this discussion for anything. Clearly there are many factual disagreements here, as to what happened precisely, who said and did what precisely, and so on, and an exchange of views and references is always constructive. From what you say, you may find of interest these two articles of mine from 2006; the former is “History of J&K” and the latter contains a Brief History of Gilgit too: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=153977181125 Your statement “Kashmir can never be India” is perhaps intended to be controversial as it appears to beg the question, though of course you may agree some Kashmiris are Indians and wish to be Indians, and I may agree some Kashmiris are not Indians and do not wish to be Indians and also some Kashmiris are Indians and do not wish to be Indians; there may also be some Kashmiris who are not Indians but who wish to be Indians. Cordially. Subroto Roy Mr Malik, you are quoting from perhaps Dr Zakir Hussain or Sheikh Abdullah, not from my words. Secondly, are you saying Pakistan did not invade J&K in 1947? Britain did? I would agree there was a British-induced coup d’etat in Gilgit, but I trust you do not deny the whole history of the (then new) Pakistan’s military and political forces causing the vicious and ghastly Pashtun invasion along the Nowshera Road commencing October 22 1947. Modern Pakistan’s most eminent historians may agree with me I am afraid as to what happened as a matter of fact! You and I may not be able to progress much with conversation at this rate if our factual histories are so far apart as at present.. 🙂 But rest assured, all may become clear after my Lahore lectures next month, or at least all of my analysis and assessment of what happened and prescription of what may be best done now for everyone. I shall try to comment further on your statement later in the day. Sajad Malik Sir, I am not saying Britian carried out the invasion laughs. All, m saying is, General Gracey was heading the Pak army at the time of invasion and there has been no evidence so far, to establish a link b/n Pak army and the tribes men. I can furnish to you the reference of what I assert. shall inshallah pray for your lahore lecture, and hope our thinking and understanding converge as per the aspirations of me, the prime stake holder..and a kashmiri. (smiles) Subroto Roy Mr Malik, I am grateful for the clarification 🙂 — though as I have said, there was a British-induced coup in Gilgit, and you may also find my article “Pakistan’s Allies” of interest about the US and UK seeing themselves in battle against the old USSR etc. Suppose I said to you and your friends that in fact Sheikh-Sahib (and his mentor at the time Jawaharlal Nehru) were influenced by socialism and, at one remove perhaps by Soviet communism — and that is why they were against the Dogra regime? While the Hurriyat’s predecessor, Muslim Conference, were opposed to Sheikh Abdullah, and because the Dogras were also opposed to Sheikh-Sahib, the Muslim Conference’s Hamidullah Khan as of May 22-24 1947 said they wanted to not only preserve the Dogra regime but make him an international sovereign so he could be called “Your Majesty” instead of merely “Your Highness”? :)! And in that they were, oddly enough, joined by many in the Hindu and Sikh minorities who saw the Dogras as protecting them from Sheikh Sahib’s secular majoritarianism, as well as by perhaps British Conservatives like Churchill as well as Mr Jinnah…. History yields some unusual and paradoxical things…. 🙂 Re your offer to furnish a reference that “there has been no evidence so far, to establish a link b/n Pak army and the tribesmen” I would be most grateful for this. The classic work on it has been by the late General Akbar Khan of the Pakistan Army who was an author of the invasion, http://openlibrary.org/books/OL15997912M/Raiders_in_Kashmir . I have yet to own a copy of this book though am aware of its contents. I am most grateful for your good wishes for Lahore! I certainly need them, and I assure you, if you send me an email at my site, I shall send you a copy of what I say there as soon as possible after it is said. And indeed, I completely agree with you that the ordinary people of J&K of all communities have suffered most from this terrible and awful state of affairs, and their material and moral wellbeing needs most important and urgent relief. Cordially. I wrote & publicized a document “An Economic Solution to Kashmir” in Washington back in 1993, which referred for the first time to ideas of a condominium, an Andorra solution etc….This seemed at the time a logical result of the UH Manoa Pakistan project. But in retrospect it has seemed naive and uninformed. I’m afraid I think Mr Kasuri has been overoptimistic about the robustness of the near-agreement he suggests was reached some years ago. . On Pakistan and the Theory & Practice of the Islamic State: An Excerpt from the Munir Report of 1954 January 15, 2011 — drsubrotoroy On Pakistan and the Theory & Practice of the Islamic State: An Excerpt from the Munir Report of 1954 From REPORT of THE COURT OF INQUIRY constituted under PUNJAB ACT II OF 1954 to enquire into the PUNJAB DISTURBANCES OF 1953 “Munir Report” “ISLAMIC STATE It has been repeatedly said before us that implicit in the demand for Pakistan was the demand for an Islamic State. Some speeches of important leaders who were striving for Pakistan undoubtedly lend themselves to this construction. These leaders while referring to an Islamic State or to a State governed by Islamic laws perhaps had in their minds the pattern of a legal structure based on or mixed up with Islamic dogma, personal law, ethics and institutions. No one who has given serious thought to the introduction of a religious State in Pakistan has failed to notice the tremendous difficulties with which any such scheme must be confronted. Even Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, who must be considered to be the first thinker who conceived of the possibility of a consolidated North Western Indian Muslim State, in the course of his presidential address to the Muslim League in 1930 said: “Nor should the Hindus fear that the creation of autonomous Muslim States will mean the introduction of a kind of religious rule in such States. The principle that each group is entitled to free development on its own lines is not inspired by any feeling of narrow communalism”. When we come to deal with the question of responsibility we shall have the occasion to point out that the most important of the parties who are now clamouring for the enforcement of the three demands on religious grounds were all against the idea of an Islamic State. Even Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi of Jama’at-i-Islami was of the view that the form of Government in the new Muslim State, if it ever came into existence, could only be secular. Before the Partition, the first public picture of Pakistan that the Quaid-i-Azam gave to the world was in the course of an interview in New Delhi with Mr. Doon Campbell, Reuter’s Correspondent. The Quaid-i-Azam said that the new State would be a modern democratic State, with sovereignty resting in the people and the members of the new nation having equal rights of citizenship regardless of their religion, caste or creed. When Pakistan formally appeared on the map, the Quaid-i-Azam in his memorable speech of 11th August 1947 to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, while stating the principle on which the new State was to be founded, said:— “All the same, in this division it was impossible to avoid the question of minorities being in one Dominion or the other. Now that was unavoidable. There is no other solution. Now what shall we do? Now, if we want to make this great State of Pakistan happy and prosperous we should wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of the people, and specially of the masses and the poor. If you will work in co-operation, forgetting the past, burying the hatchet, you are bound to succeed. If you change your past and work together in a spirit that every one of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his colour, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges and obligations., there will be no end to the progress you will make. “I cannot emphasise it too much. We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities—the Hindu community and the Muslim community— because even as regards Muslims you have Pathana, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnavas, Khatris, also Bengalis, Madrasis and so on—will vanish. Indeed if you ask me this has been the biggest hindrance in the way of India to attain its freedom and independence and but for this we would have been free peoples long long ago. No power can hold another nation, and specially a nation of 400 million souls in subjection; nobody could have conquered you, and even if it had happened, nobody could have continued its hold on you for any length of time but for this (Applause). Therefore, we must learn a lesson from this. You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed— that has nothing to do with the business of the State (Hear, hear). As you know, history shows that in England conditions sometime ago were much worse than those prevailing in India today. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants persecuted each other. Even now there are some States in existence where there are discriminations made and bars imposed against a particular class. Thank God we are not starting in those days. We are starting in the days when there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State (Loud applause). The people of England in course of time had to face the realities of the situation and had to discharge the responsibilities and burdens placed upon them by the Government of their country and they went through that fire step by step. Today you might say with justice that Roman Catholics and Protestants do not exist: what exists now is that every man is a citizen, an equal citizen, of Great Britain and they are all members of the nation. “Now, I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State”. The Quaid-i-Azam was the founder of Pakistan and the occasion on which he thus spoke was the first landmark in the history of Pakistan. The speech was intended both for his own people including non-Muslims and the world, and its object was to define as clearly as possible the ideal to the attainment of which the new State was to devote all its energies. There are repeated references in this speech to the bitterness of the past and an appeal to forget and change the past and to bury the hatchet. The future subject of the State is to be a citizen with equal rights, privileges and obligations, irrespective of colour, caste, creed or community. The word ‘nation’ is used more than once and religion is stated to have nothing to do with the business of the State and to be merely a matter of personal faith for the individual. We asked the ulama whether this conception of a State was acceptable to them and everyone of them replied in an unhesitating negative, including the Ahrar and erstwhile Congressites with whom before the Partition this conception was almost a part of their faith. If Maulana Amin Ahsan Islahi’s evidence correctly represents the view of Jama’at-i-Islami, a State based on this idea is the creature of the devil, and he is confirmed in this by several writings of his chief, Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, the founder of the jama’at. None of the ulama can tolerate a State which is based on nationalism and all that it implies; with them millat and all that it connotes can alone be the determining factor in State activity. The Quaid-i-Azam’s conception of a modern national State, it is alleged, became obsolete with the passing of the Objectives Resolution on 12th March 1949; but it has been freely admitted that this Resolution, though grandiloquent in words, phrases and clauses, is nothing but a hoax and that not only does it not contain even a semblance of the embryo of an Islamic State but its provisions, particularly those relating to fundamental rights, are directly opposed to the principles of an Islamic State. FOUNDATIONS OF ISLAMIC STATE What is then the Islamic State of which everybody talks but nobody thinks? Before we seek to discover an answer to this question, we must have a clear conception of the scope and function of the State. The ulama were divided in their opinions when they were asked to cite some precedent of an Islamic State in Muslim history. Thus, though Hafiz Kifayat Husain, the Shia divine, held out as his ideal the form of Government during the Holy Prophet’s time, Maulana Daud Ghaznavi also included in his precedent the days of the Islamic Republic, of Umar bin Abdul Aziz, Salah-ud-Din Ayyubi of Damascus, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, Muhammad Tughlaq and Aurangzeb and the present regime in Saudi Arabia. Most of them, however, relied on the form of Government during the Islamic Republic from 632 to 661 A. D., a period of less than thirty years, though some of them also added the very short period of Umar bin Abdul Aziz. Maulana Abdul Haamid Badayuni stated that the details of the ideal State would be worked out by the ulama while Master Taj-ud-Din Ansari’s confused notion of an Islamic State may be gathered from the following portion of his interrogation :— “Q.—Were you also in the Khilafat movement ? A.—Yes. Q.—When did the Khilafat movement stop in India ? A.—In 1923. This was after the Turks had declared their country to be a secular State. Q.—If you are told that the Khilafat movement continued long after the Turks had abolished Khilafat, will that be correct? A.—As far as I remember, the Khilafat movement finished with the abolition of the Khilafat by the Turks. Q.—You are reported to have been a member of the Khilafat movement and having made speeches. Is it correct ? A.—It could not be correct. Q.—Was the Congress interested in Khilafat ? A.— Yes. Q.—Was Khilafat with you a matter of religious conviction or just a political movement ? A.— It was purely a religious movement. Q.— Did the Khilafat movement have the support of Mr Gandhi ? A.—Yes. Q.— What was the object of the Khilafat movement ? A.— The Britisher was injuring the Khilafat institution in Turkey and the Musalman was aggrieved by this attitude of the Britisher. Q.— Was not the object of the movement to resuscitate the Khilafat among the Musalmans ? A.—No. Q.— Is Khilafat with you a necessary part of Muslim form of Government ? A.—Yes. Q.— Are you, therefore, in favour of having a Khilafat in Pakistan ? A.—Yes. Q.— Can there be more than one Khalifa of the Muslims ? A.— No. Q.— Will the Khalifa of Pakistan be the Khalifa of all the Muslims of the world ? A.— He should be but cannot be.” Throughout the three thousand years over which political thought extends, and such thought in its early stages cannot be separated from religion, two questions have invariably presented themselves for consideration : — (1) what are the precise functions of the State ? and (2) who shall control the State ? If the true scope of the activities of the State is the welfare, temporal or spiritual or both of the individual, then the first question directly gives rise to the bigger question: What is the object of human life and the ultimate destiny of man? On this, widely divergent views have prevailed, not at different times but at one and the same time. The pygmies of equatorial West Africa still believe that their God Komba has sent them into the forest to hunt and dance and sing. The Epicureans meant very much the same when they said that the object of human life is to drink and eat and be merry, for death denies such pleasures. The utilitarians base their institutions on the assumption that the object of human life is to experience pleasant sensations of mind and body, irrespective of what is to come hereafter. The Stoics believed in curbing and reducing all physical desires, and Diogenes found a tub good enough to live in. German philosophers think that the individual lives for the State and that therefore the object of life is service of the State in all that it might decide to undertake and achieve. Ancient Hindu philosophers believed in the logic of the fist with its natural consequence, the law of natural selection and the struggle for survival. The Semitic theory of State, whether Jewish, Christian or Islamic, has always held that the object of human life is to prepare ourselves for the next life and that, therefore, prayer and good works are the only object of life. Greek philosophers beginning with Socrates thought that the object of human life was to engage in philosophical meditation with a view to discovering the great truths that lie in nature and that the business of the others is to feed the philosophers engaged in that undertaking. Islam emphasises the doctrine that life in this world is not the only life given to man but that eternal life begins after the present existence comes to an end, and that the status of a human being in the next world will depend upon his beliefs and actions in this world. As the present life is not an end in itself but merely a means to an end, not only the individual but also the State, as opposed to the secular theory which bases all political and economic institutions on a disregard of their consequences on the next life, should strive for human conduct which ensures for a person better status in the next world. According to this theory Islam is the religion which seeks to attain that object. Therefore the question immediately arises : What is Islam and who is a momin or a Muslim ? We put this question to the ulama and we shall presently refer to their answers to this question. But we cannot refrain from saying here that it was a matter of infinite regret to us that the ulama whose first duty should be to have settled views on this subject, were hopelessly disagreed among themselves. Apart from how these learned divines have expressed themselves, we conceive of Islam as a system that covers, as every systematic religion must, the following five topics :— (1) the dogma, namely, the essentials of belief ; (2) the cult, namely, religious rites and observances which a person must perform ; (3) ethics, i. e. rules of moral conduct ; (4) institutions, social, economic and political ; and (5) law proper. The essential basis of the rules on all these subjects is revelation and not reason, though both may coincide. This coincidence, however, is accidental because human reasoning may be faulty and ultimate reason is known only to God, Who sends His message to humanity through His chosen messengers for the direction and guidance of the people. One must, therefore, accept the dogma, observe the cult, follow the ethics, obey the law and establish institutions which God has revealed, though their reason may not be apparent—nay even if they be opposed to human reason. Since an error by God is an impossibility, anything that God has revealed, whether its subject be something occult or preternatural, history, finance, law, worship or something which according to human thought admits of scientific treatment as for instance, birth of man, evolution, cosmology, or astronomy, has got to be accepted as absolute truth. The test of reason is not the acid test and a denial of this amounts to a denial of the supreme wisdom and designs of Allah—it is kufr. Now God has revealed Himself from time to time to His favoured people of whom our Holy Prophet was the last. That revelation is contained in the Qur’an and covers the five topics mentioned above. The true business of a person who believes in Islam is therefore to understand, believe in and act upon that revelation. The people whom God chooses as medium for the transmission of His messages are rasuls (messengers) or nabis (prophets). Since every action or saying of a prophet is, in the case of our own Holy Prophet it certainly was, prompted by Allah, it has the same degree of inerrancy as the formal revelation itself, because prophets are ma’sum, incapable of doing or saying something which is opposed to Divine wishes. These sayings and actions are sunna having the same infallibility as the Qur’an. The record of this sunna is hadith which is to be found in several books which were compiled by Muslim scholars after long, laborious and careful research extending over several generations. The word hadith means a record of actions or sayings of the Prophet and his companions. At first the sahaba. i. e. people who had lived in the society of the Prophet, were the best authority for a knowledge of the sunna. Later people had to be content with the communications of the tabi’un, i. e. successors, people of the first generation after the Holy Prophet who had received their information from the sahaba, and then in the following generations with the accounts of the so-called successors of the successors (tabi’ul-tabi’un), i.e. people of the second generation after the Holy Prophet, who had concerted with the successors. Marfu’ is a tradition which contains a statement about the Prophet ; mawquf, a tradition that refers only to the sayings or doings of the sahaba ; and maqtu’ a tradition which does not at most go further back than the first generation after the Holy Prophet and deals only with sayings or doings of tabi’un. In some of the ahadith the actual word of God is to be found. Any such tradition is designated Hadith-i-Qudsi or Ilahi as distinguished from an ordinary Hadith-i-Nabvi. A very large portion of sayings ascribed to the Prophet deals with the ahkam (legal professions), religious obligations, halal and haram (what is allowed and forbidden), with ritual purity, laws regarding food and criminal and civil law. Further they deal with dogma, retribution at the Last Judgment, hell and paradise, angels, creation, revelations, the earlier prophets. Many traditions also contain edifying sayings and moral teachings by the Holy Prophet. The importance of ahadith was realised from the very beginning and they were not only committed to memory but in some cases were reduced to writing. The work of compilation of hadith began in the third century after the Hijra and the Sihah Sitta were all compiled in that century. These are the musannifs of — (1) Al-Bukhari, died 256/870, (3) Abu Dawud, died 275/888, (4) Al-Tirmizi, died 279/892, (5) All Nasa’i, died 303/915, and (6) Ibn-i-Maja, died 273/886. According to modern laws of evidence, including our own, the ahadith are inadmissible evidence of sunna because each of them contains several links of hearsay, but as authority on law they are admissible pro prio vigore. The merit of these collections lies not so much in the fact that (as is often wrongly stated) their authors decided for the first time which of the numerous traditions in circulation were genuine and which false but rather in the fact that they brought together everything that was recognised as genuine in orthodox circles in those days. The Shias judge hadith from their own stand-point and only consider such traditions reliable as are based on the authority of Ali and his adherents. They have, therefore, their own works on the subject and hold the following five works in particularly high esteem— (1) Al-Kafi of Muhammad b. Yaqub Al-Kulini, died 328/939, (2) Man La Yastahdiruhu’ul-Fakih of Muhammad b. Ali b. Babuya Al-Kummi, died 381/991, (4) Al-Istibsar Fi-Ma’khtalafa Fihi’l-Akhbar (extract from the preceding) of Muhammad Altusi, died 459/1067, and (5) Nahj Al-Balagha (alleged sayings of Ali) of Ali b. Tahir Al-Sharif Al-Murtaza, died 436/1044 (or of his brother Radi Al-Din Al-Baghdadi.) After the ritual, the dogma and the most important political and social institutions had taken definite shape in the second and third centuries, there arose a certain communis opinio regarding the reliability of most transmitters of tradition and the value of their statement. The main principles of doctrine had already been established in the writings of Malik b. Anas, Al-Shafi’i and other scholars regarded as authoritative in different circles and mainly on the authority of traditional sayings of the Holy Prophet. In the long run no one dared to doubt the truth of these traditions and this almost conclusive presumption of truth has since continued to be attached to the ahadith compiled in the Sihah Sitta. We have so far arrived at this result that any rule on any subject that may be derived from the Qur’an or the sunna of the Holy Prophet is binding on every Musalman. But since the only evidence of sunna is the hadith, the words sunna and hadith have become mixed up with, and indistinguishable from, each other with the result that the expression Qur’an and hadith is not infrequently employed where the intention is to refer to Qur’an and sunna. At this stage another principle, equally basic, comes into operation, and that is that Islam is the final religion revealed by God, complete and exhaustive in all respects, and that God will not abrogate, detract from or add to this religion (din) any more than He will send a fresh messenger. The din having been perfected (Akmalto lakum dinokum, Sura V, verse 3), there remains no need for any new code repealing, modifying or amplifying the original code; nor for any fresh messenger or message. In this sense, therefore, prophethood ceased with the Holy Prophet and revelation stopped for ever. This is the doctrine of the cessation of wahi-i-nubuwwat. If the proposition that Muslim dogma, ethics and institutions, etc., are all based on the doctrine of inerrancy, whether such inerrancy lies in the Qur’an, the sunna, ijma’ or ijtihad-i-mutlaq, is fully comprehended, the various deductions that follow from it will be easily understandable. As the ultimate test of truth, whether the matter be one of a ritual or political or social or economic nature, is revelation and revelation has to be gathered from the Qur’an, and the sunna carries almost the same degree of inerrancy as revelation and the only evidence of sunna is hadith, the first duty of those who desire to establish an Islamic State will be to discover the precise rule applicable to the existing circumstances whether that rule is to be found in the Qur’an or hadith. Obviously the persons most suited for the purpose would be those who have made the Qur’an and hadith their lifelong study, namely, among the Sunnies, the ulama, and among the Shias, the mujtahids who are the spokesmen of the hidden Imam, the ruler de jure divino. The function of these divines would be to engage themselves in discovering rules applicable to particular situations and they will be engaged in a task similar to that in which Greek philosophers were engaged, with only this difference that whereas the latter thought that all truth lay in nature which had merely to be discovered by individual effort, the ulama and the mujtahids will have to get at the truth that lies in the holy Book and the books of hadith. The ulama Board which was recommended by the Basic Principles Committee was a logical recognition of this principle, and the true objection against that Board should indeed have been that the Board was too inadequate a mechanism to implement the principle which had brought that body into existence. Ijma’ means concurrence of the mujtahids of the people, i.e., of those who have a right, in virtue of knowledge, to form a judgment of their own, after the death of the Holy Prophet. The authority of ijma’ rests on the principle of a divine protection against error and is founded on a basal tradition of the Holy Prophet, “My people will never agree in error”, reported in Ibn Maja, By this procedure points which had been in dispute were fixed, and when fixed, they became an essential part of the faith and disbelief in them an act of unbelief (kufr). The essential point to remember about ijma’ is that it represents the agreement of the mujtahids and that the agreement of the masses is especially excluded. Thus ijma’ has not only fixed unsettled points but has changed settled doctrines of the greatest importance. The distinction between ijma’ and ijtihad is that whereas the former is collective, the latter is individual. Ijtihad means the exerting of one’s self to the utmost degree to form an opinion in a case or as to a rule of law. This is done by applying analogy to the Qur’an and the sunna. Ijtihad did not originally involve inerrancy, its result being always zann or fallible opinion. Only combined ijtihad led to ijma, and was inerrant. But this broad ijtihad soon passed into special ijtihad of those who had a peculiar right to form judgments. When later doctors looked back to the founding of the four legal schools, they assigned to their founders an ijtihad of the first rank (ijtihad-i-mutlaq). But from time to time individuals appeared who returned to the earliest meaning of ijtihad and claimed for themselves the right to form their own opinion from first principles. One of these was the Hanbalite Ibn Taimiya (died 728). Another was Suyuti (died 911) in whom the claim to ijtihad unites with one to be the mujaddid or renewer of religion in his century. At every time there must exist at least one mujtahid, was his contention, just as in every century there must come a mujaddid. In Shia Islam there are still absolute mujtahids because they are regarded as the spokesmen of the hidden Imam. Thus collective ijtihad leads to ijma’, and the basis of ijma’ is divine protection against error—inerrancy. ESSENTIALS OF ISLAMIC STATE Since the basis of Islamic law is the principle of inerrancy of revelation and of the Holy Prophet, the law to be found in the Qur’an and the sunna is above all man-made laws, and in case of conflict between the two, the latter, irrespective of its nature, must yield to the former. Thus, provided there be a rule in the Qur’an or the sunna on a matter which according to our conceptions falls within the region of Constitutional Law or International Law, the rule must be given effect to unless that rule itself permits a departure from it. Thus no distinction exists in Islamic law between Constitutional Law and other law, the whole law to be found in the Qur’an and the sunna being a part of the law of the land for Muslim subjects of the State. Similarly if there be a rule in the Qur’an or the sunna relating to the State’s relations with other States or to the relations of Muslim subjects of the State with other States or the subjects of those States, the rule will have the same superiority of sanction as any other law to be found in the Qur’an or the sunna. Therefore if Pakistan is or is intended to be converted into an Islamic State in the true sense of the word, its Constitution must contain the following five provisions:— (1) that all laws to be found in the Qur’an or the sunna shall be deemed to be a part of the law of the land for Muslims and shall be enforced accordingly; (2) that unless the Constitution itself is framed by ijma’-i-ummat, namely, by the agreement of the ulama and mujtahids of acknowledged status, any provision in the Constitution which is repugnant to the Qur’an or sunna shall to the extent of the repugnancy be void; (3) that unless the existing laws of Pakistan are adapted by ijma’-i-ummat of the kind mentioned above, any provision in the existing law which is contrary to the Qur’an or sunna shall to the extent of the repugnancy be void; (4) that any provision in any future law which is repugnant to Qur’an or sunna shall be void; (5) that no rule of International Law and no provision in any convention or treaty to which Pakistan is a party, which is contrary to the Qur’an or the sunna shall be binding on any Muslim in Pakistan. SOVEREIGNTY AND DEMOCRACY IN ISLAMIC STATE That the form of Government in Pakistan, if that form is to comply with the principles of Islam, will not be democratic is conceded by the ulama. We have already explained the doctrine of sovereignty of the Qur’an and the sunna. The Objectives Resolution rightly recognised this position when it recited that all sovereignty rests with God Almighty alone. But the authors of that Resolution misused the words ‘sovereign’ and ‘democracy’ when they recited that the Constitution to be framed was for a sovereign State in which principles of democracy as enunciated by Islam shall be fully observed. It may be that in the context in which they were used, these words could not be misunderstood by those who are well versed in Islamic principles, but both these words were borrowed from western political philosophy and in that sense they were both wrongly used in the Resolution. When it is said that a country is sovereign, the implication is that its people or any other group of persons in it are entitled to conduct the affairs of that country in any way they like and untrammelled by any considerations except those of expediency and policy. An Islamic State, however, cannot in this sense be sovereign, because it will not be competent to abrogate, repeal or do away with any law in the Qur’an or the sunna. Absolute restriction on the legislative power of a State is a restriction on the sovereignty of the people of that State and if the origin of this restriction lies elsewhere than in the will of the people, then to the extent of that restriction the sovereignty of the State and its people is necessarily taken away. In an Islamic State, sovereignty, in its essentially juristic sense, can only rest with Allah. In the same way, democracy means the rule of the demos, namely, the people, directly by them as in ancient Greece and Rome, or indirectly through chosen representatives as in modern democracies. If the power of the people in the framing of the Constitution or in the framing of the laws or in the sphere of executive action is subject to certain immutable rules, it cannot be said that they can pass any law that they like, or, in the exercise of executive functions, do whatever they like. Indeed if the legislature in an Islamic State is a sort of ijma’, the masses are expressly disqualified from taking part in it because ijma’-i-ummat in Islamic jurisprudence is restricted to ulama and mujtahids of acknowledged status and does not at all extend, as in democracy, to the populace. OTHER INCIDENTS OF ISLAMIC STATE ACCORDING TO ULAMA In the preceding pages we have attempted to state as clearly as we could the principles on which a religious State must be built if it is to be called an Islamic State. We now proceed to state some incidents of such State, with particular reference to the ulamas’ conception of it. LEGISLATURE AND LEGISLATION Legislature in its present sense is unknown to the Islamic system. The religiopolitical system which is called din-i-Islam is a complete system which contains in itself the mechanism for discovering and applying law to any situation that may arise. During the Islamic Republic there was no legislature in its modern sense and for every situation or emergency that arose law could be discovered and applied by the ulama. The law had been made and was not to be made, the only function of those entrusted with the administration of law being to discover the law for the purposes of the particular case, though when enunciated and applied it formed a precedent for others to follow. It is wholly incorrect, as has been suggested from certain quarters, that in a country like Pakistan, which consists of different communities, Muslim and non-Muslim, and where representation is allowed to non-Muslims with a right to vote on every subject that comes up, the legislature is a form of ijma’ or ijtihad, the reason being that ijtihad is not collective but only individual, and though ijma’ is collective, there is no place in it for those who are not experts in the knowledge of the law. This principle at once rules out the infidels (kuffar) whether they be people of Scriptures (ahl-i-kitab) or idolators (mushrikeen). Since Islam is a perfect religion containing laws, express or derivable by ijma’ or ijtihad, governing the whole field of human activity, there is in it no sanction for what may, in the modern sense, be called legislation. Questioned on this point Maulana Abul Hasanat, President, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Pakistan says :— “Q.—Is the institution of legislature as distinguished from the institution of a person or body of persons entrusted with the interpretation of law, an integral part of an Islamic State? A.—No. Our law is complete and merely requires interpretation by those who are experts in it. According to my belief no question can arise the law relating to which cannot be discovered from the Qur’an or the hadith. Q.—Who were Sahib-ul-hall-i-wal-aqd A.—They were the distinguished ulama of the time. These persons attained their status by reason of the knowledge of the law. They were not in any way analogous or similar to the legislature in modern democracy.” The same view was expressed by Amir-i-Shari’at Sayyad Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari in one of his speeches reported in the ‘Azad’ of 22nd April, 1947, in the course of which he said that our din is complete and perfect and that it amounts to kufr to make more laws. Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, however, is of the opinion that legislation in the true sense is possible in an Islamic State on matters which are not covered by the Qur’an, the sunna, or previous ijma’ and he has attempted to explain his point by reference to the institution of a body of persons whom the Holy Prophet, and after him the khulafa consulted on all matters relating to affairs of State. The question is one of some difficulty and great importance because any institution of legislature will have to be reconciled with the claim put forward by Maulana Abul Hasanat and some other religious divines that Islam is a perfect and exhaustive code wide enough to furnish an answer to any question that may arise relating to any human activity, and that it does not know of any “unoccupied field” to be filled by fresh legislation. There is no doubt that Islam enjoins consultation and that not only the Holy Prophet but also the first four caliphs and even their successors resorted to consultation with the leading men of the time, who for their knowledge of the law and piety could well be relied upon. In the inquiry not much has been disclosed about the Majlis-i-Shura except what is contained in Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi’s written statement which he supplied to the Court at its request. That there was a body of men who were consulted is true, but whether this was a standing body and whether its advice had any legal or binding force, seems somewhat doubtful. These men were certainly not elected in the modern way, though their representative character cannot be disputed. Their advice was certainly asked ad hoc, but that they were competent to make law as the modern legislatures make laws is certainly not correct. The decisions taken by them undoubtedly served as precedents and were in the nature of ijma’, which is not legislation but the application of an existing law to a particular case. When consulted in affairs of State, their functions were truly in the nature of an advice given by a modern cabinet but such advice is not law but only a decision. Nor can the legislature in a modern State correspond to ijma’ because as we have already pointed out, the legislature legislates while the ulama of Majlis-i-Shura who were called upon to determine what should be the decision on a particular point which was not covered by the Qur’an and the sunna, merely sought to discover and apply the law and not to promulgate the law, though the decision when taken had to be taken not only for the purposes of the particular case but for subsequent occasions as a binding precedent. An intriguing situation might arise if the Constitution Act provided that any provision of it, if it was inconsistent with the Qur’an or the sunna, would be void, and the intra vires of a law made by the legislature were questioned before the Supreme Court on the ground that the institution of legislature itself was contrary to the Qur’an and the sunna. POSITION OF NON-MUSLIMS The ground on which the removal of Chaudhri Zafrullah Khan and other Ahmadis occupying key positions in the State is demanded is that the Ahmadis are non-Muslims and that therefore like zimmies in an Islamic State they are not eligible for appointment to higher offices in the State. This aspect of the demands has directly raised a question about the position of non-Muslims in Pakistan if we are to have an Islamic Constitution. According to the leading ulama the position of non-Muslims in the Islamic State of Pakistan will be that of zimmies and they will not be full citizens of Pakistan because they will not have the same rights as Muslims They will have no voice in the making of the law, no right to administer the law and no right to hold public offices. A full statement of this position will be found in the evidence of Maulana Abul Hasanat Sayyad Muhammad Ahmad Qadri, Maulana Ahmad Ali, Mian Tufail Muhammad and Maulana Abdul Haamid Badayuni. Maulana Abul Hasanat on being questioned on the subject stated as follows :— “Q.—If we were to have an Islamic State in Pakistan, what will be the position of the kuffar (non-Muslims)? Will they have a voice in the making of laws, the right of administering the law and the right to hold public offices? A.—Their position will be that of zimmies. They will have no voice in the making of laws, no right to administer the law and no right to hold public offices. Q.—In an Islamic State can the head of the State delegate any part of his powers to kuffar? A.—No.” Maulana Ahmad Ali, when questioned, said:— “Q.—if we were to have an Islamic State in Pakistan, what will be the position of the kuffar? Will they have a hand in the making of the law, the right to administer the law and the right to hold public offices ? A.—Their position will be that of zimmies. They will have no say in the making of law and no right to administer the law. Government may, however, permit them to hold any public office”. Mian Tufail Muhammad stated as follows :— “Q.—Read the article on minorities’ rights in the ‘Civil and Military Gazette’ of 13th October, 1953, and say whether it correctly represents your view of an Islamic State? (It was stated in the articles that minorities would have the same rights as Muslims). A.—I have read this article and do not acknowledge these rights for the Christians or other non-Muslims in Pakistan if the State is founded on the ideology of the Jama’at”. The confusion on this point in the mind of Maulana Abdul Haamid Badayuni, President, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Pakistan, is apparent from the following: — “Q.—Have you ever read the aforesaid speech (the speech of the Quaid-i-Azam to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on 11th August, 1947)? A.—Yes, I have read that speech. Q.—Do you still agree with the conception of Pakistan that the Quaid-i-Azam presented to the Constituent Assembly in this speech in which he said that thereafter there would be only one Pakistan nation, consisting of Muslims and non-Muslims, having equal civic rights, without any distinction of race, religion or creed and that religion would be merely a private affair of the individual ? A.—I accept the principle that all communities, whether Muslims or non-Muslims, should have, according to their population, proper representation in the administration of the State and legislation, except that non-Muslims cannot be taken in the army or the judiciary or be appointed as Ministers or to other posts involving the reposing of confidence. Q.—Are you suggesting that the position of non-Muslims would be that of zimmies or any better ? A.—No. By zimmies are meant non-Muslim people of lands which have been conquered by an Islamic State, and the word is not applicable to non-Muslim minorities already living in an Islamic State. Such minorities are called mu’ahids, i.e. those people with whom some agreement has been made. Q.—What will be their status if there is no agreement with them ? A.—In that case such communities cannot have any rights of citizenship. Q.—Will the non-Muslim communities inhabiting Pakistan be called by you as mu’ahids? A.—No, not in the absence of an agreement with them. To my knowledge there is no such agreement with such communities in Pakistan.” So, according to the evidence of this learned divine, the non-Muslims of Pakistan will neither be citizens nor will they have the status of zimmies or of mu’ahids. During the Islamic Republic, the head of the State, the khalifa, was chosen by a system of election, which was wholly different from the present system of election based on adult or any other form of popular suffrage. The oath of allegiance (ba’it) rendered to him possessed a sacramental virtue, and on his being chosen by the consensus of the people (ijma’-ul-ummat) he became the source of all channels of legitimate Government. He and he alone then was competent to rule, though he could delegate his powers to deputies and collect around him a body of men of outstanding piety and learning, called Majlis-i-Shura or Ahl-ul-Hall-i-wal-Aqd. The principal feature of this system was that the kuffar, for reasons which are too obvious and need not be stated, could not be admitted to this majlis and the power which had vested in the khalifa could not be delegated to the kuffar. The khalifa was the real head of the State, all power vesting in him and not a powerless individual like the President of a modern democratic State who is merely to sign the record of decisions taken by the Prime Minister and his Cabinet. He could not appoint non-Muslims to important posts, and could give them no place either in the interpretation or the administration of the law, the making of the law by them, as already pointed out, being a legal impossibility. This being the position, the State will have to devise some machinery by which the distinction between a Muslim and a non-Muslim may be determined and its consequences enforced. The question, therefore, whether a person is or is not a Muslim will be of fundamental importance, and it was for this reason that we asked most of the leading ulama, to give their definition of a Muslim, the point being that if the ulama of the various sects believed the Ahmadis to be kafirs, they must have been quite clear in their minds not only about the grounds of such belief but also about the definition of a Muslim because the claim that a certain person or community is not within the pale of Islam implies on the part of the claimant an exact conception of what a Muslim is. The result of this part of the inquiry, however, has been anything but satisfactory, and if considerable confusion exists in the minds of our ulama on such a simple matter, one can easily imagine what the differences on more complicated matters will be. Below we reproduce the definition of a Muslim given by each alim in his own words. This definition was asked after it had been clearly explained to each witness that he was required to give the irreducible minimum conditions which, a person must satisfy to be entitled to be called a Muslim and that the definition was to be on the principle on which a term in grammar is defined. Here is the result : — Maulana Abul Hasanat Muhammad Ahmad Qadri, President, Jami’at-ul-Ulamai- Pakistan — “Q.— What is the definition of a Muslim ? A — (1) He must believe in the Unity of God. (2) He must believe in the prophet of Islam to be a true prophet as well as in all other prophets who have preceded him, (3) He must believe in the Holy Prophet of Islam as the last of the prophets (khatam-un-nabiyin). (4) He must believe in the Qur’an as it was revealed by God to the Holy Prophet of Islam. (5) He must believe as binding on him the injunctions of the Prophet of Islam. (6) He must believe in the qiyamat. Q.—Is a tarik-us-salat a Muslim ? A.—Yes, but not a munkir-us-salat” Maulana Ahmad Ali, President, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Islam, Maghribi Pakistan — “Q.— Please define a Muslim ? A.—A person is a Muslim if he believes (1) in the Qur’an and (2) what has been said by the prophet. Any person who possesses these two qualifications is entitled to be called a Muslim without his being required to believe in anything more or to do anything more.” Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, Amir Jama’at-i-Islami — “Q.—Please define a Muslim ? A.—A person is a Muslim if he believes (1) in tauheed, (2) in all the prophets (ambiya), (3) all the books revealed by God, (4) in mala’ika (angels), and (5) yaum-ul-akhira (the Day of Judgment). Q.—Is a mere profession of belief in these articles sufficient to entitle a man to call himself a Musalman and to be treated as a Musalman in an Islamic State ? A.—Yes. Q.—If a person says that he believes in all these things, does any one have a right to question the existence of his belief ? A.—The five requisites that I have mentioned above are fundamental and any alteration in anyone of these articles will take him out of the pale of Islam.” Ghazi Siraj-ud-Din Munir— “Q.—Please define a Muslim ? A.—I consider a man to be a Muslim if he professes his belief in the kalima, namely, La Ilaha Illalah-o-Muhammad-ur-Rasulullah, and leads a life in the footsteps of the Holy Prophet.” Mufti Muhammad Idris, Jamia Ashrafia, Nila Gumbad, Lahore— “Q.—Please give the definition of a Musalman ? A.—The word ‘Musalman’ is a Persian one. There is a distinction between the word ‘Musalman’ which is a Persian word for Muslim and the word ‘momin’. It is impossible for me to give a complete definition of the word ‘momin’. I would require pages and pages to describe what a momin is. A person is a Muslim who professes to be obedient to Allah. He should believe in the Unity of God, prophethood of the ambiya and in the Day of Judgment. A person who does not believe in the azan or in the qurbani goes outside the pale of Islam. Similarly, there are a large number of other things which have been received by tavatir from our prophet. In order to be a Muslim, he must believe in all these things. It is almost impossible for me to give a complete list of such things.” Hafiz Kifayat Hussain, Idara-i-Haquq-i-Tahaffuz-i-Shia— “Q.—Who is a Musalman? A.—A person is entitled to be called a Musalman if he believes in (1) tauheed, (2) nubuwwat and (3) qiyamat. These are the three fundamental beliefs which a person must profess to be called a Musalman. In regard to these three basic doctrines there is no difference between the Shias and the Sunnies. Besides the belief in these three doctrines, there are other things called ‘zarooriyat-i-din’ which a person must comply with in order to be entitled to be called a Musalman. These will take me two days to define and enumerate. But as an illustration I might state that the respect for the Holy Book, wajoob-i-nimaz, wajoob-i-roza, wajoob-i-hajj-ma’a-sharait, and other things too numerous to mention, are among the ‘zarooriyat-i-din’ ” Maulana Abdul Hamid Badayuni, President, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Pakistan : “Q.—Who is a Musalman according to you ? A.—A person who believes in the zarooriyat-i-din is called a momin and every momin is entitled to be called a Musalman. Q.—What are these zarooriyat-i-din ? A.—A person who believes in the five pillars of Islam and who believes in the rasalat of our Holy Prophet fulfils the zarooriyat-i-din. Q.—Have other actions, apart from the five arakan, anything to do with a man being a Muslim or being outside the pale of Islam? (Note—Witness has been explained that by actions are meant those rules of moral conduct which in modern society are accepted as correct.) A.—Certainly. Q.—Then you will not call a person a Muslim who believes in arakan-ikhamsa and the rasalat of the prophet but who steals other peoples’ things, embezzles property entrusted to him, has an evil eye on his neighbour’s wife and is guilty of the grossest ingratitude to his benefector? A.—Such a person, if he has the belief already indicated, will be a Muslim despite all this”. Maulana Muhammad Ali Kandhalvi, Darush-Shahabia, Sialkot — “Q.—Please define a Musalman? A.—A person who in obedience to the commands of the prophet performs all the zarooriyat-i-din is a Musalman. Q.—Can you define zarooriyat-i-din ? A.—Zarooriyat-i-din are those requirements which are known to every Muslim irrespective of his religious knowledge. Q.—Can you enumerate zarooriyat-i-din ? A.—These are too numerous to be mentioned. I myself cannot enumerate these zarooriyat. Some of the zarooriyat-i-din may be mentioned as salat, saum, etc.” Maulana Amin Ahsan Islahi — “Q.—Who is a Musalman? A.—There are two kinds of Musalmans, a political (siyasi) Musalman and a real (haqiqi) Musalman. In order to be called a political Musalman, a person must: (1) believe in the Unity of God, (2) believe in our Holy Prophet being khatam-un-nabiyin, i.e., ‘final authority’ in all matters relating to the life of that person, (3) believe that all good and evil comes from Allah, (4) believe in the Day of Judgment, (5) believe in the Qur’an to be the last book revealed by Allah, (6) perform the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, (7) pay the zaka’at, (8) say his prayers like the Musalmans, (9) observe all apparent rules of Islami mu’ashira, and (10) observe the fast (saum). If a person satisfies all these conditions he is entitled to the rights of a full citizen of an Islamic State. If any one of these conditions is not satisfied, the person concerned will not be a political Musalman. (Again said) It would be enough for a person to be a Musalman if he merely professes his belief in these ten matters irrespective of whether he puts them into practice or not. In order to be a real Musalman, a person must believe in and act on all the injunctions by Allah and his prophet in the manner in which they have been enjoined upon him. Q.—Will you say that only the real Musalman is ‘mard-i-saleh’ ? A.—Yes. Q.—do we understand you aright that in the case of what you have called a political (siyasi) Musalman, belief alone is necessary, while in the case of a haqiqi Musalman there must not only be belief but also action? A.—No, you have not understood me aright. Even in the case of a political (siyasi) Musalman action is necessary but what I mean to say is that if a person does not act upon the belief that is necessary in the case of such a Musalman, he will not be outside the pale of a political (siyasi) Musalman. Q.—If a political (siyasi) Musalman does not believe in things which you have stated to be necessary, will you call such a person be-din ? A.—No, I will call him merely be-amal”. The definition by the Sadr Anjuman Ahmadiya, Rabwah, in its written statement is that a Muslim is a person who belongs to the ummat of the Holy Prophet and professes belief in kalima-i-tayyaba. Keeping in view the several definitions given by the ulama, need we make any comment except that no two learned divines are agreed on this fundamental. If we attempt our own definition as each learned divine has done and that definition differs from that given by all others, we unanimously go out of the fold of Islam. And if we adopt the definition given by any one of the ulama, we remain Muslims according to the view of that alim but kafirs according to the definition of every one else. APOSTASY Apostasy in an Islamic State is punishable with death. On this the ulama are practically unanimous (vide the evidence of Maulana Abul Hasanat Sayyad Muhammad Ahmad Qadri, President, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Pakistan, Punjab; Maulana Ahmad Ali, Sadr Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Islam, West Pakistan; Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, founder and ex-Amir-i-Jama’at-i-Islami, Pakistan; Mufti Muhammad Idris, Jami’Ashrafia, Lahore, and Member, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Pakistan; Maulana Daud Ghaznavi, President, Jami’at-i-Ahl-i-Hadith, Maghribi Pakistan; Maulana Abdul Haleem Qasimi, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Islam, Punjab; and Mr. Ibrahim Ali Chishti). According to this doctrine, Chaudhri Zafrullah Khan, if he has not inherited his present religious beliefs but has voluntarily elected to be an Ahmadi, must be put to death. And the same fate should befall Deobandis and Wahabis, including Maulana Muhammad Shafi Deobandi, Member, Board of Talimat-i-Islami attached to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, and Maulana Daud Ghaznavi, if Maulana Abul Hasanat Sayyad Muhammad Ahmad Qadri or Mirza Raza Ahmad Khan Barelvi, or any one of the numerous ulama who are shown perched on every leaf of a beautiful tree in the fatwa, Ex. D. E. 14, were the head of such Islamic State. And if Maulana Muhammad Shafi Deobandi were the head of the State, he would exclude those who have pronounced Deobandis as kafirs from the pale of Islam and inflict on them the death penalty if they come within the definition of murtadd, namely, if they have changed and not inherited their religious views. The genuineness of the fatwa, Ex. D. E. 13, by the Deobandis which says that Asna Ashari Shias are kafirs and murtadds, was questioned in the course of enquiry, but Maulana Muhammad Shafi made an inquiry on the subject from Deoband, and received from the records of that institution the copy of a fatwa signed by all the teachers of the Darul Uloom including Maulana Muhammad Shafi himself which is to the effect that those who do not believe in the sahabiyyat of Hazrat Siddiq Akbar and who are qazif of Hazrat Aisha Siddiqa and have been guilty of tehrif of Qur’an are kafirs. This opinion is also supported by Mr. Ibrahim Ali Chishti who has studied and knows his subject. He thinks the Shias are kafirs because they believe that Hazrat Ali shared the prophethood with our Holy Prophet. He refused to answer the question whether a person who being a Sunni changes his view and agrees with the Shia view would be guilty of irtidad so as to deserve the death penalty. According to the Shias all Sunnis are kafirs, and Ahl-i-Qur’an; namely, persons who consider hadith to be unreliable and therefore not binding, are unanimously kafirs and so are all independent thinkers. The net result of all this is that neither Shias nor Sunnis nor Deobandis nor Ahl-i-Hadith nor Barelvis are Muslims and any change from one view to the other must be accompanied in an Islamic State with the penalty of death if the Government of the State is in the hands of the party which considers the other party to be kafirs. And it does not require much imagination to judge of the consequences of this doctrine when it is remembered that no two ulama have agreed before us as to the definition of a Muslim. If the constituents of each of the definitions given by the ulama are given effect to, and subjected to the rule of ‘combination and permutation’ and the form of charge in the Inquisition’s sentence on Galileo is adopted mutatis mutandis as a model, the grounds on which a person may be indicted for apostasy will be too numerous to count. In an earlier part of the report we have referred to the proscription of the ‘Ashshahab’, a pamphlet written by Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani who later became Sheikh-ul-Islam-i-Pakistan. In that pamphlet the Maulana had attempted to show from the Qur’an, the sunna, the ijma’ and qayas that in Islam the punishment for apostasy (irtidad) simpliciter is death. After propounding the theological doctrine the Maulana had made in that document a statement of fact that in the time of the Caliph Siddiq-i-Akbar and the subsequent Caliphs vast areas of Arabia became repeatedly red with the blood of apostates. We are not called upon to express any opinion as to the correctness or otherwise of this doctrine but knowing that the suggestion to the Punjab Government to proscribe this pamphlet had come from the Minister for the Interior we have attempted to inquire of ourselves the reasons for Government’s taking a step which ex hypothesi amounted to condemning a doctrine which the Maulana had professed to derive from the Qur’an and the sunna. The death penalty for irtidad has implications of a far-reaching character and stamps Islam as a religion of fanatics, which punishes all independent thinking. The Qur’an again and again lays emphasis on reason and thought, advises toleration and preaches against compulsion in religious matters but the doctrine of irtidad as enunciated in this pamphlet strikes at the very root of independent thinking when it propounds the view that anyone who, being born a Muslim or having embraced Islam, attempts to think on the subject of religion with a view, if he comes to that conclusion, to choose for himself any religion he likes, has the capital penalty in store for him. With this implication Islam becomes an embodiment of complete intellectual paralysis. And the statement in the pamphlet that vast areas of Arabia were repeatedly bespattered with human blood, if true, could only lend itself to this inference that even when Islam was at the height of its splendour and held absolute sway in Arabia there were in that country a large number of people who turned away from that religion and preferred to die than to remain in that system. It must have been some such reaction of this pamphlet on the mind of the Minister for the Interior which prompted him to advise the Punjab Government to proscribe the pamphlet. Further the Minister who was himself well-versed in religious matters must have thought that the conclusion drawn by the author of the pamphlet which was principally based on the precedent mentioned in paras. 26, 27 and 28 of the Old Testament and which is only partially referred to in the Qur’an in the 54th verse of the Second Sura, could not be applicable to apostasy from Islam and that therefore the author’s opinion was in fact incorrect, there being no express text in the Qur’an for the death penalty for apostasy. On the contrary each of the two ideas, one underlying the six brief verses of Surat-ul-Kafiroon and the other the La Ikrah verse of the second Sura, has merely to be understood to reject as erroneous the view propounded in the ‘Ash-Shahab’. Each of the verses in Surat-ul-Kafiroon which contains thirty words and no verse of which exceeds six words, brings out a fundamental trait in man engrained in him since his creation while the La Ikrah verse, the relevant portion of which contains only nine words, states the rule of responsibility of the mind with a precision that cannot be surpassed. Both of these texts which are an early part of the Revelation are, individually and collectively, the foundation of that principle which human society, after centuries of conflict, hatred and bloodshed, has adopted in defining one of the most important fundamental rights of man. But our doctors would never dissociate chauvinism from Islam. PROPAGATION OF OTHER RELIGIONS Closely allied to the punishment for apostasy is the right of non-Muslims publicly to preach their religion. The principle which punishes an apostate with death must be applicable to public preaching of kufr and it is admitted by Maulana Abul Hasanat, Ghazi Siraj-ud-Din Munir and Master Taj-ud-Din Ansari, though the last subordinates his opinion to the opinion of the ulama, that any faith other than Islam will not be permitted publicly to be preached in the State. And Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, as will appear from his pamphlet ‘Punishment in Islam for an apostate’, has the same views on the subject. Ghazi Siraj-ud-Din Munir, when questioned on this point, replied :— “Q.—What will you do with them (Ahmadis) if you were the head of the Pakistan State ? A.—I would tolerate them as human beings but will not allow them the right to preach their religion”. The prohibition against public preaching of any non-Muslim religion must logically follow from the proposition that apostasy will be punished with death and that any attack on, or danger to Islam will be treated as treason and punished in the same way as apostasy. JIHAD Earlier we have pointed out that one of the doctrines on which the Musalmans and Ahmadis are at variance is that of jihad. This doctrine at once raises a host of other allied matters such as the meanings of ghazi, shahid, jihad-bis-saif, jihad fi sabili’llah, dar-ul-Islam, dar-ul-harb, hijrat, ghanima, khums and slavery, and the conflict or reconciliation of these conceptions with modern international problems such as aggression, genocide, international criminal jurisdiction, international conventions and rules of public international law. An Islamic State is dar-ul-Islam, namely, a country where ordinances of Islam are established and which is under the rule of a Muslim sovereign. Its inhabitants are Muslims and also non-Muslims who have submitted to Muslim control and who under certain restrictions and without the possibility of full citizenship are guaranteed their lives and property by the Muslim State. They must, however, be people of Scriptures and may not be idolaters. An Islamic State is in theory perpetually at war with the neighbouring non-Muslim country, which at any time may become dar-ul-harb, in which case it is the duty of the Muslims of that country to leave it and to come over to the country of their brethren in faith. We put this aspect to Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi and reproduce his views :— “Q.—is a country on the border of dar-ul-Islam always qua an Islamic State in the position of dar-ul-harb ? A.—No. In the absence of an agreement to the contrary, the Islamic State will be potentially at war with the non-Muslim neighbouring country. The non-Muslim country acquires the status of dar-ul-harb only after the Islamic State declares a formal war against it”. According to Ghias-ul-Lughat, dar-ul-harb is a country belonging to infidels which has not been subdued by Islam, and the consequences of a country becoming darul-harb are thus stated in the Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam :— “When a country does become a dar-ul-harb, it is the duty of all Muslims to withdraw from it, and a wife who refuses to accompany her husband in this, is ipso facto divorced”. Thus in case of a war between India and Pakistan, if the latter is an Islamic State, we must be prepared to receive forty million Muslims from across the border into Pakistan. In fact, Maulana Abdul Haamid Badayuni, President, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i- Pakistan, thinks that a case for hijrat already exists for the Musalmans of India. The following is his view on this subject :— “Q.—Do yon call your migration to Pakistan as hijrat in the religious sense ? A.—Yes”. We shall presently point out why Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s version of the doctrine of jihad is relied on as a ground for his and his community’s kufr, but before we do that it is necessary first to state how jihad has been or is understood by the Musalmans. There are various theories about jihad which vary from the crude notion of a megalomaniac moved by religious frenzy going out armed with sword and indiscriminately slaughtering non-Muslims in the belief that if he dies in the combat he becomes a shahid and if he succeeds in killing attains the status of a ghazi, to the conception that a Musalman throughout his life is pitted against kufr, kufr here being used in the sense of evil and wrong, and that his principal activity in life is to strive by argument a where necessary by force to spread Islam until it becomes a world religion. In the latter case he fights not for any personal end but because he considers such strife as a duty and an obligation which he owes to Allah and the only recompense for which is the pleasure of Allah. The Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam contains the following brief article on djihad :— “DJIHAD (A), holy war. The spread of Islam by arms is a religious duty upon Muslims in general. It narrowly escaped being a sixth rukn, or fundamental duty, and is indeed still so regarded by the descendants of the Kharidjis. This position was reached gradually but quickly. In the Meccan Suras of the Qur’an patience under attack is taught ; no other attitude was possible. But at Medina the right to repel attack appears, and gradually it became a prescribed duty to fight against and subdue the hostile Meccans. Whether Muhammad himself recognised that his position implied steady and unprovoked war against the unbelieving world until it was subdued to Islam may be in doubt. Traditions are explicit on the point ; but the Qur’anic passages speak always of the unbelievers who are to be subdued as dangerous or faithless. Still, the story of his writing to the powers around him shows that such a universal position was implicit in his mind, and it certainly developed immediately after his death, when the Muslim armies advanced out of Arabia. It is now a fard ala’l-kifaya, a duty in general on all male, free, adult Muslims, sane in mind and body and having means enough to reach the Muslim army, yet not a duty necessarily incumbent on every individual but sufficiently performed when done by a certain number. So it must continue to be done until the whole world is under the rule of Islam. It must be controlled or headed by a Muslim sovereign or imam. As the imam of the Shias is now invisible, they cannot have a djihad until he reappears. Further, the requirement will be met if such a sovereign makes an expedition once a year, or, even, in the later view, if he makes annual preparation for one. The people against whom the djihad is directed must first be invited to embrace Islam. On refusal they have another choice. They may submit to Muslim rule, become dhimmis (q. v.) and pay djizya and kharadj (q. v.) or fight. In the first case, their lives, families and property are assured to them, but they have a definitely inferior status, with no technical citizenship, and a standing only as protected wards. If they fight, they and their families may be enslaved and all their property seized as booty, four-fifths of which goes to the conquering army. If they embrace Islam, and it is open to them to do so even when the armies are face to face, they become part of the Muslim community with all its rights and duties. Apostates must be put to death. But if a Muslim country is invaded by unbelievers, the imam may issue a general summons calling all Muslims there to arms, and as the danger grows so may be the width of the summons until the whole Muslim world is involved. A Muslim who dies fighting in the path of Allah (fi sabil Allah) is martyr (shahid) and is assured of Paradise and of peculiar privileges there. Such a death was, in the early generations, regarded as the peculiar crown of a pious life. It is still, on occasions, a strong incitement, but when Islam ceased to conquer it lost its supreme value. Even yet, however, any war between Muslims and non-Muslims must be a djihad with its incitements and rewards. Of course, such modern movements as the so-called Mu’tazili in India and the Young Turk in Turkey reject this and endeavour to explain away its basis; but the Muslim masses still follow the unanimous voice of the canon lawyers. Islam must be completely made over before the doctrine of djihad can be eliminated”. The generally accepted view is that the fifth verse to Sura-i-Tauba (Sura IX) abrogated the earlier verses revealed in Mecca which permitted the killing of kuffar only in self-defence. As against this the Ahmadis believe that no verso in the Qur’an was abrogated by another verse and that both sets of verses, namely, the Meccan verses and the relative verses in Sura-i-Tauba have different scopes and can stand together. This introduces the difficult controversy of nasikh and mansukh, with all its implications. It is argued on behalf of the Ahmadis that the doctrine of nasikh and mansukh is opposed to the belief in the existence of an original Scripture in Heaven, and that implicit in this doctrine is the admission that unless the verse alleged to be repealed was meant for a specific occasion and by the coming of that occasion fulfilled its purpose and thus spent itself, God did not know of the subsequent circumstances which would make the earlier verse inapplicable or lead to an undesired result. The third result of this doctrine, it is pointed out, cuts at the very root of the claim that laws of Islam are immutable and inflexible because if changed circumstances made a new revelation necessary, any change in the circumstances subsequent to the completion of the revelation would make most of the revelation otiose or obsolete. We are wholly incompetent to pronounce on the merits of this controversy but what has to be pointed out is the result to which the doctrine of jihad will lead if, as appears from the article in the Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam and other writings produced before us including one by Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi and another by Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, it involves the spread of Islam by arms and conquest. ‘Aggression’ and ‘genocide’ are now offences against humanity for which under sentences pronounced by different International tribunals at Nuremburg and Tokio the war lords of Germany and Japan had to forfeit their lives, and there is hardly any difference between the offences of aggression and genocide on the one hand and the doctrine of spread of Islam by arms and conquest on the other. An International Convention on genocide is about to be concluded but if the view of jihad presented to us is correct, Pakistan cannot be a party to it. And while the following verses in the Mecca Suras :— Sura II, verses 190 and 193 :190. “Fight in the Cause of God Those who fight you, But do not transgress limits ; For God loveth not transgressors”. 193. “And fight them on Until there is no more Tumult or oppression, Justice and faith in God ; But if they cease, Let there be no hostility Except to those Sura XXII, verses 39 and 40: 39. “To those against whom War is made, permission Is given (to fight) because They are wronged;— and verily, God is most Powerful 40. “(They are) those who have Been expelled from their homes In defiance of right,— That they say, ‘Our Lord Is God.’ Did not God Check one set of people By means of another, There would surely have been Pulled down monasteries, churches, Synagogues, and mosques, in which The name of God is commemorated In abundant measure. God will Certainly aid those who Aid His (cause);—for verily God is Full of Strength, Exalted in Might, (Able to enforce His Will),” contain in them the sublime principle which international jurists have only faintly begun to discover, we must go on preaching that aggression is the chief characteristic of Islam. The law relating to prisoners of war is another branch of Islamic law which is bound to come in conflict with International Law. As for instance, in matters relating to the treatment of prisoners of war, we shall have to be governed by Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi’s view, assuming that view is based on the Qur’an and the sunna, which is as follows :— “Q.—Is there a law of war in Islam? A.—Yes. Q.—Does it differ fundamentally from the modern International Law of war? A.—These two systems are based on a fundamental difference. Q.—What rights have non-Muslims who are taken prisoners of war in a jihad? A.—The Islamic law on the point is that if the country of which these prisoners are nationals pays ransom, they will be released. An exchange of prisoners is also permitted. If neither of these alternatives is possible, the prisoners will be converted into slaves for ever. If any such person makes an offer to pay his ransom out of his own earnings, he will be permitted to collect the money necessary for the fidya (ransom). Q.—Are you of the view that unless a Government assumes the form of an Islamic Government, any war declared by it is not a jihad? A.—No. A war may be declared to be a jihad if it is declared by a national Government of Muslims in the legitimate interests of the State. I never expressed the opinion attributed to me in Ex. D. E. 12:— “Raha yeh masala keh agar hukumat-i-Pakisten apni maujuda shukl-o-surat ke sath Indian Union ke sath apne mu’ahadat khatm kar-ke i’lan-i-jang bar bhi de to kya us-ki yeh jang jihad ke hukam men a-ja’egi ? Ap ne is bare men jo rae zahir ki hai woh bilkul darust hai – Jab-tak hukumat Islami nizam ko ikhtiyar kar-ke Islami nah ho jae us waqt tak us-ki kisi jang ko jihad kehna aisa hi hai jaisa kisi ghair Muslim ke Azad Kashmir ki fauj men bharti ho-kar larne ko jihad aur us-ki maut ko shahadat ka nam dediya jae – Maulana ka jo mudd’a hai woh yeh hai keh mu’ahadat ki maujudgi men to hukumat ya us-ke shehriyon ka is jang men sharik hona shar’-an ja’iz hi nahin – Agar hukumat mu’ahadat khatm kar-ke jang ka i’lan kar-de to hukumat ki jang to jihad phir bhi nahin hogi ta-an keh hukumat Islami nah ho jae.’ (translation) ‘The question remains whether, even if the Government of Pakistan, in its present form and structure, terminates her treaties with the Indian Union and declares war against her, this war would fall under the definition of jihad? The opinion expressed by him in this behalf is quite correct. Until such time as the Government becomes Islamic by adopting the Islamic form of Government, to call any of its wars a jihad would be tantamount to describing the enlistment and fighting of a non-Muslim on the side of the Azad Kashmir forces jihad and his death martyrdom. What the Maulana means is that, in the presence of treaties, it is against Shari’at, if the Government or its people participate in such a war. If the Government terminates the treaties and declares war, even then the war started by Government would not be termed jihad unless the Government becomes Islamic’. About the view expressed in this letter being that of Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, there is the evidence of Mian Tufail Muhammad, the writer of the letter, who states: “Ex. D. E. 12 is a photostat copy of a letter which I wrote to someone whose name I do not now remember.” Maulana Abul Hasanat Muhammad Ahmad Qadri’s view on this point is as follows:— “Q.—Is there a law of war in Islam? A.—Yes. Q.—Does it differ in fundamentals from the present International Law? A.—Yes. Q.—What are the rights of a person taken prisoner in war? A.—He can embrace Islam or ask for aman, in which case he will be treated as a musta’min. If he does not ask for aman, he would be made a slave”. Similar is the opinion expressed by Mian Tufail Muhammad of Jam’at-i-Islami who says:— “Q.—Is there any law of war in Islamic laws? A.—Yes. Q.—If that comes into conflict with International Law, which will you follow? A.—Islamic law. Q.—Then please state what will be the status of prisoners of war captured by your forces? A.—I cannot reply to this off hand. I will have to study the point.” Of course ghanima (plunder) and khums (one-fifth) if treated as a necessary incident of jihad will be treated by international society as a mere act of brigandage. REACTION ON MUSLIMS OF NON-MUSLIM STATES The ideology on which an Islamic State is desired to be founded in Pakistan must have certain consequences for the Musalmans who are living in countries under non-Muslim sovereigns. We asked Amir-i-Shari’at Sayyad Ataullah Shah Bukhari whether a Muslim could be a faithful subject of a non-Muslim State and reproduce his answer:— “Q.—In your opinion is a Musalman bound to obey orders of a kafir Government? A.—It is not possible that a Musalman should be faithful citizen of a non-Muslim Government. Q.—Will it be possible for the four crore of Indian Muslims to be faithful citizens of their State? A—No.” The answer is quite consistent with the ideology which has been pressed before us, but then if Pakistan is entitled to base its Constitution on religion, the same right must be conceded to other countries where Musalmans are in substantial minorities or if they constitute a preponderating majority in a country where sovereignty rests with a non-Muslim community. We, therefore, asked the various ulama whether, if non-Muslims in Pakistan were to be subjected to this discrimination in matters of citizenship, the ulama would have any objection to Muslims in other countries being subjected to a similar discrimination. Their reactions to this suggestion are reproduced below:— Maulana Abul Hasanat Sayyed Muhammad Ahmad Qadri, President, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Pakistan:— “Q.—You will admit for the Hindus, who are in a majority in India, the right to have a Hindu religious State? A.—Yes. Q.—Will you have any objection if the Muslims are treated under that form of Government as malishes or shudras under the law of Manu? A.— No.” Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi :— “Q.—If we have this form of Islamic Government in Pakistan, will you permit Hindus to base their Constitution on the basis of their own religion? A—Certainly. I should have no objection even if the Muslims of India are treated in that form of Government as shudras and malishes and Manu’s laws are applied to them, depriving them of all share in the Government and the rights of a citizen. In fact such a state of affairs already exists in India.” Amir-i-Shari’at Sayyad Ata Ullah Skak Bukhari :— “Q.—How many crores of Muslims are there in India? A.—Four crores. Q.—Have you any objection to the law of Manu being applied to them according to which they will have no civil right and will be treated as malishes and shudras? A.—I am in Pakistan and I cannot advise them.” Mian Tufail Muhammad of Jama’at-i-Islami :— “Q.—What is the population of Muslims in the world? A.—Fifty crores. Q.—If the total population of Muslims of the world is 50 crores, as you say, and the number of Muslims living in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Indonesia, Egypt, Persia, Syria, Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, Turkey and Iraq does not exceed 20 crores, will not the result of your ideology beto convert 30 crores of Muslims in the world into hewers of wood anddrawers of water? A.—My ideology should not affect their position. Q.—Even if they are subjected to discrimination on religious grounds and denied ordinary rights of citizenship ? A.—Yes.” This witness goes to the extent of asserting that even if a non-Muslim Government were to offer posts to Muslims in the public services of the country, it will be their duty to refuse such posts. Ghazi Siraj-ud-Din Munir :— “Q.—Do you want an Islamic State in Pakistan? A.—Surely. Q.—What will be your reaction if the neighbouring country was to found their political system on their own religion? A.—They can do it if they like. Q.—Do you admit for them the right to declare that all Muslims in India, are shudras and malishes with no civil rights whatsoever? A.—We will do our best to see that before they do it their political sovereignty is gone. We are too strong for India. We will be strong enough to prevent India from doing this. Q.—Is it a part of the religious obligations of Muslims to preach their religion? A—Yes. Q.—Is it a part of the duty of Muslims in India publicly to preach their religion? A.—They should have that right. Q.—What if the Indian State is founded on a religious basis and the right to preach religion is disallowed to its Muslim nationals? A —If India makes any such law, believer in the Expansionist movement as I am, I will march on India and conquer her.” So this is the reply to the reciprocity of discrimination on religious grounds. Master Taj-ud-Din Ansari :— “Q.—Would you like to have the same ideology for the four crores of Muslims in India as you are impressing upon the Muslims of Pakistan? A.—That ideology will not let them remain in India for one minute. Q.—Does the ideology of a Muslim change from place to place and from time to time? A.—No. Q.—Then why should not the Muslims of India have the same ideology as you have? A.—They should answer that question.” The ideology advocated before us, if adopted by Indian Muslims, will completely disqualify them for public offices in the State, not only in India but in other countries also which are under a non-Muslim Government. Muslims will become perpetual suspects everywhere and will not be enrolled in the army because according to this ideology, in case of war between a Muslim country and a non-Muslim country, Muslim soldiers of the non-Muslim country must either side with the Muslim country or surrender their posts. The following is the view expressed by two divines whom we questioned on this point:— Maulana Abul Hasanat Sayyed Muhammad Ahmad Qadri, President, Jami’at-ul- Ulama-i-Pakistan :— “Q.—What will be the duty of Muslims in India in case of war between India and Pakistan? A.—Their duty is obvious, namely, to side with us and not to fight against us on behalf of India.” Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi : — “Q.—What will be the duty of the Muslims in India in case of war between India and Pakistan? A.—Their duty is obvious, and that is not to fight against Pakistan or to do anything injurious to the safety of Pakistan.” OTHER INCIDENTS Other incidents of an Islamic State are that all sculpture, playing of cards, portrait painting, photographing human beings, music, dancing, mixed acting, cinemas and theatres will have to be closed. Thus says Maulana Abdul Haleem Qasimi, representative of Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Pakistan: — “Q.—What are your views on tashbih and tamseel ? A.—You should ask me a concrete question. Q.—What are your views on lahw-o-la’b? A.—The same is my reply to this question. Q.—What are your views about portrait painting? A.—There is nothing against it if any such painting becomes necessary. Q.—What about photography? A.—My reply to it is the same as the reply regarding portrait painting. Q.—What about sculpture as an art? A.—It is prohibited by our religion. Q.—Will you bring playing of cards in lohw-o-la’b? A.—Yes, it will amount to lahw-o-la’b. Q.—What about music and dancing? A.—It is all forbidden by our religion. Q.—What about drama and acting? A —It all depends on what kind of acting you mean. If it involves immodesty and intermixture of sexes, the Islamic law is against it. Q.—If the State is founded on your ideals, will you make a law stopping portrait painting, photographing of human beings, sculpture, playing of cards, music, dancing, acting and all cinemas and theatres? A.—Keeping in view the present form of these activities, my answer is in the affirmative.” Maulana Abdul Haamid Badayuni considers it to be a sin (ma’siyat) on the part of professors of anatomy to dissect dead bodies of Muslims to explain points of anatomy to the students. The soldier or the policeman will have the right, on grounds of religion, to disobey a command by a superior authority. Maulana Abul Hasanat’s view on this is as follows :— “I believe that if a policeman is required to do something which we consider to be contrary to our religion, it should be the duty of the policeman to disobey the authority. The same would be my answer if ‘army’ were substituted for ‘police’. Q.—You stated yesterday that if a policeman or a soldier was required by a superior authority to do what you considered to be contrary to religion, it would be the duty of that policeman or the soldier to disobey such authority. Will you give the policeman or the soldier the right of himself determining whether the command he is given by his superior authority is contrary to religion ? A.—Most certainly. Q.—Suppose there is war between Pakistan and another Muslim country and the soldier feels that Pakistan is in the wrong; and that to shoot a soldier of other country is contrary to religion. Do you think he would be justified in disobeying his commanding officer ? A.—In such a contingency the soldier should take a fatwa of the ‘ulama’.” We have dwelt at some length on the subject of Islamic State not because we intended to write a thesis against or in favour of such State but merely with a view to presenting a clear picture of the numerous possibilities that may in future arise if true causes of the ideological confusion which contributed to the spread and intensity of the disturbances are not precisely located. That such confusion did exist is obvious because otherwise Muslim Leaguers, whose own Government was in office, would not have risen against it; sense of loyalty and public duty would not have departed from public officials who went about like maniacs howling against their own Government and officers; respect for property and human life would not have disappeared in the common man who with no scruple or compunction began freely to indulge in loot, arson and murder; politicians would not have shirked facing the men who had installed them in their offices; and administrators would not have felt hesitant or diffident in performing what was their obvious duty. If there is one thing which has been conclusively demonstrated in this inquiry, it is that provided you can persuade the masses to believe that something they are asked to do is religiously right or enjoined by religion, you can set them to any course of action, regardless of all considerations of discipline, loyalty, decency, morality or civic sense. Pakistan is being taken by the common man, though it is not, as an Islamic State. This belief has been encouraged by the ceaseless clamour for Islam and Islamic State that is being heard from all quarters since the establishment of Pakistan. The phantom of an Islamic State has haunted the Musalman throughout the ages and is a result of the memory of the glorious past when Islam rising like a storm from the least expected quarter of the world—wilds of Arabia—instantly enveloped the world, pulling down from their high pedestal gods who had ruled over man since the creation, uprooting centuries old institutions and superstitions and supplanting all civilisations that had been built on an enslaved humanity. What is 125 years in human history, nay in the history of a people, and yet during this brief period Islam spread from the Indus to the Atlantic and Spain, and from the borders of China to Egypt, and the sons of the desert installed themselves in all old centres of civilisation—in Ctesiphon, Damascus, Alexandria, India and all places associated with the names of the Sumerian and the Assyrian civilisations. Historians have often posed the question : what would have been the state of the world today if Muawiya’s siege of Constantinople had succeeded or if the proverbial Arab instinct for plunder had not suddenly seized the mujahids of Abdur Rahman in their fight against Charles Martel on the plains of Tours in Southern France. May be Muslims would have discovered America long before Columbus did and the entire world would have been Moslemised; may be Islam itself would have been Europeanised. It is this brilliant achievement of the Arabian nomads, the like of which the world had never seen before, that makes the Musalman of today live in the past and yearn for the return of the glory that was Islam. He finds himself standing on the crossroads, wrapped in the mantle of the past and with the dead weight of centuries on his back, frustrated and bewildered and hesitant to turn one corner or the other. The freshness and the simplicity of the faith, which gave determination to his mind and spring to his muscle, is now denied to him. He has neither the means nor the ability to conquer and there are no countries to conquer. Little does he understand that the forces, which are pitted against him, are entirely different from those against which early Islam, had to fight, and that on the clues given by his own ancestors human mind has achieved results which he cannot understand. He therefore finds himself in a state of helplessness, waiting for some one to come and help him out of this morass of uncertainty and confusion. And he will go on waiting like this without anything happening. Nothing but a bold re-orientation of Islam to separate the vital from the lifeless can preserve it as a World Idea and convert the Musalman into a citizen of the present and the future world from the archaic in congruity that he is today. It is this lack of bold and clear thinking, the inability to understand and take decisions which has brought about in Pakistan a confusion which will persist and repeatedly create situations of the kind we have been inquiring into until our leaders have a clear conception of the goal and of the means to reach it. It requires no imagination to realise that irreconcilables remain irreconcilable even if you believe or wish to the contrary. Opposing principles, if left to themselves, can only produce confusion and disorder, and the application of a neutralising agency to them can only produce a dead result. Unless, in case of conflict between two ideologies, our leaders have the desire and the ability to elect, uncertainty must continue. And as long as we rely on the hammer when a file is needed and press Islam into service to solve situations it was never intended to solve, frustration and disappointment must dog our steps. The sublime faith called Islam will live even if our leaders are not there to enforce it. It lives in the individual, in his soul and outlook, in all his relations with God and men, from the cradle to the grave, and our politicians should understand that if Divine commands cannot make or keep a man a Musalman, their statutes will not…. Home Minister of India Respected Sir, You may recall our brief interaction at the residence of the late Shri Rajiv Gandhi in September-October 1990, and also my visit to you in July 1995 when you were a member of the late Shri Narasimha Rao’s Government. I am delighted to read in today’s paper that you believe a “unique solution” exists to the grave mortal problem of Jammu & Kashmir. I write to say that almost four years ago, I published in The Statesman my discovery of the existence of precisely such a unique solution in the three-part article “Solving Kashmir”. This came to be followed by “Law, Justice and J&K”, “History of Jammu & Kashmir”, “Pakistan’s Allies”, “What to tell Musharraf” and a few others. The purpose of this open letter is to describe that solution which provides, I believe, the only just and lawful path available to the resolution of what has been known universally as the Kashmir problem. Very briefly, it involves recognizing that the question of lawful territorial sovereignty in J&K is logically distinct from the question of the choice of nationality by individual inhabitants. The solution requires (a) acknowledging that the original legal entity in the world system of nations known as Jammu & Kashmir arose on March 16 1846 and ceased to exist on or about October 22 1947; that the military contest that commenced on the latter date has in fact resulted, given all particular circumstances of history, in the lawful and just outcome in international law; (b) offering all who may be Indian nationals or stateless and who presently live under Article 370, a formal choice of nationality between the Republics of India, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan: citizen-by-citizen, without fear or favour, under conditions of full information, individual privacy and security; any persons who voluntarily choose to renounce Indian nationality in such private individual decisions would be nevertheless granted lawful permanent residence in the Indian Republic and J&K in particular. In other words, the dismemberment of the original J&K State and annexation of its territories by the entities known today as the Republic of Pakistan and Republic of India that occurred since October 22 1947, as represented first by the 1949 Ceasefire Line and then by the 1972 Line of Control, is indeed the just and lawful outcome prevailing in respect of the question of territorial sovereignty and jurisdiction. The remaining democratic question has to do with free individual choice of nationality by inhabitants, under conditions of full information and privacy, citizen-by-citizen, with the grant of permanent residency rights by the Indian Republic to persons under its jurisdiction in J&K who might wish to choose, for deeply personal individual reasons, not to remain Indian nationals but become Afghan, Iranian or Pakistani nationals instead (or remain stateless). Pakistan has said frequently its sole concern has been the freedom of Muslims of J&K under Indian rule, and any such genuine concern shall have been thereby fully met by India. Indeed if Pakistan agreed to act similarly this entire complex mortal problem of decades shall have begun to be resolved most appropriately. Pakistan and India are both wracked by corruption, poverty and bad governance, and would be able to mutually draw down military forces pit against one another everywhere, so as to begin to repair the grave damage to their fiscal health caused over decades by the deleterious draining away of vast public resources. The full reasoning underlying this, which I believe to be the only lawful, just, efficient and stable solution that exists, is thoroughly explained in the following six articles. The first five, “Solving Kashmir”, “Law, Justice & J&K”, “History of J&K”, and “Pakistan’s Allies”, “What to Tell Musharraf” were published in The Statesman in 2005-2006 and are marked ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR and FIVE below, and are also available elsewhere here. The sixth “An Indian Reply to President Zardari”, marked SIX, was published for the first time here following the Mumbai massacres. I believe careful reflection upon this entire body of reasoning may lead all reasonable men and women to a practically unanimous consensus about this as the appropriate course of action; if such a consensus happened to arise, the implementation of the solution shall only be a matter of (relatively) uncomplicated procedural detail. Cordially yours Subroto Roy, PhD (Cantab.), BScEcon (London) Kolkata, October 15 2009 “ONE SOLVING KASHMIR: ON AN APPLICATION OF REASON by Subroto Roy First published in three parts in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, December 1,2,3 2005, http://www.thestatesman.net (This article has its origins in a paper “Towards an Economic Solution for Kashmir” which circulated in Washington DC in 1992-1995, including at the Indian and Pakistani embassies and the Carnegie Endowment, and was given as an invited lecture at the Heritage Foundation on June 23 1998. It should be read along with other articles also republished here, especially “History of J&K”, “Law, Justice and J&K” , “Understanding Pakistan”, “Pakistan’s Allies” and “What to Tell Musharraf”. The Washington paper and lecture itself originated from my ideas in the Introduction to Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy, edited by WE James and myself in the University of Hawaii project on Pakistan 1986-1992.) I. Give Indian `Green Cards’ to the Hurriyat et al India, being a liberal democracy in its constitutional law, cannot do in Jammu & Kashmir what Czechoslovakia did to the “Sudeten Germans” after World War II. On June 18 1945 the new Czechoslovakia announced those Germans and Magyars within their borders who could not prove they had been actively anti-fascist before or during the War would be expelled — the burden of proof was placed on the individual, not the State. Czechoslovakia “transferring” this population was approved by the Heads of the USA, UK and USSR Governments at Potsdam on August 2 1945. By the end of 1946, upto two million Sudeten Germans were forced to flee their homes; thousands may have died by massacre or otherwise; 165,000 remained who were absorbed as Czechoslovak citizens. Among those expelled were doubtless many who had supported Germany and many others who had not — the latter to this day seek justice or even an apology in vain. Czechoslovakia punished none of its nationals for atrocities, saying it had been revenge for Hitler’s evil (”badla” in Bollywood terms) and the post Cold War Czech Government too has declined to render an apology. Revenge is a wild kind of justice (while justice may be a civilised kind of revenge). India cannot follow this savage precedent in international law. Yet we must recognise there are several hundred and up to several hundred thousand persons on our side of the boundary in the State of Jammu & Kashmir who do not wish to be Indian nationals. These people are presently our nationals ius soli, having been born in territory of the Indian Republic, and/or ius sanguinis, having been born of parents who are Indian nationals; or they may be “stateless” whom we must treat in accordance with the 1954 Convention on Stateless Persons. The fact is they may not wish to carry Indian passports or be Indian nationals. In this respect their juridical persons resemble the few million “elite” Indians who have in the last few decades freely placed their hands on their hearts and solemnly renounced their Indian nationality, declaring instead their individual fidelity to other nation-states — becoming American, Canadian or Australian citizens, or British subjects or nationals of other countries. Such people include tens of thousands of the adult children of India’s metropolitan “elite”, who are annually visited abroad in the hot summer months by their Indian parents and relatives. They are daughters and sons of New Delhi’s Government and Opposition, of retired generals, air marshals, admirals, ambassadors, cabinet secretaries, public sector bureaucrats, private sector businessmen, university professors, journalists, doctors and many others. India’s most popular film-actress exemplified this “elite” capital-flight when, after a tireless search, she chose a foreign husband and moved to California. The difference in Jammu & Kashmir would be that those wishing to renounce Indian nationality do not wish to move to any other place but to stay as and where they are, which is in Kashmir Valley or Jammu. Furthermore, they may wish, for whatever reason, to adopt, if they are eligible to do so, the nationality of e.g. the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan or the Islamic Republic of Iran or the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. They may believe themselves descended from Ahmad Shah Abdali whose Afghans ruled or mis-ruled Kashmir Valley before being defeated by Ranjit Singh’s Sikhs in 1819. Or they may believe themselves of Iranian descent as, for example, are the Kashmiri cousins of the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Or they may simply have wished to be, or are descended from persons who had wished to be on October 26 1947, citizens of the then-new British Dominion of Pakistan — but who came to be prevented from properly expressing such a desire because of the war-like conditions that have prevailed ever since between India and Pakistan. There may be even a few persons in Laddakh who are today Indian nationals but who wish to be considered Tibetans instead; there is, however, no Tibetan Republic and it does not appear there is going to be one. India, being a free and self-confident country, should allow, in a systematic lawful manner, all such persons to fulfil their desires, and furthermore, should ensure they are not penalised for having expressed such “anti-national” desires or for having acted upon them. Sir Mark Tully, the British journalist, is an example of someone who has been a foreign national who has chosen to reside permanently in the Republic of India — indeed he has been an exemplary permanent resident of our country. There are many others like him. There is no logical reason why all those persons in Jammu & Kashmir who do wish not to be Indians by nationality cannot receive the same legal status from the Indian Republic as has been granted to Sir Mark Tully. There are already thousands of Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi and Nepalese nationals who are lawful permanent residents in the Indian Republic, and who travel back and forth between India and their home countries. There is no logical reason why the same could not be extended to several hundred or numerous thousand people in Jammu & Kashmir who may wish to not accept or to renounce their Indian nationality (for whatever personal reason) and instead become nationals, if they are so eligible, of the Islamic Republics of Afghanistan, Iran or Pakistan, or, for that matter, to remain stateless. On the one hand, their renunciation of Indian nationality is logically equivalent to the renunciation of Indian nationality by the adult children of India’s “elite” settled in North America and Western Europe. On the other hand, their wish to adopt, if they are eligible, a foreign nationality, such as that of Afghanistan, Iran or Pakistan, and yet remain domiciled in Indian territory is logically equivalent to that of many foreign nationals domiciled in India already like Sir Mark Tully. Now if you are a permanent resident of some country, you may legally have many, perhaps most, but certainly not all the rights and duties of nationals of that country. e.g., though you will have to pay all the same taxes, you may not be allowed to (or be required to) vote in national or provincial elections but you may in local municipal elections. At the same time, permanently residing foreign nationals are supposed to be equal under the law and have equal access to all processes of civil and criminal justice. (As may be expected though from human frailty, even the federal courts of the USA can be notorious in their injustice and racism towards “Green Card” holders relative to “full” American citizens.) Then again, as a permanently resident foreigner, while you will be free to work in any lawful trade or profession, you may not be allowed to work in some or perhaps any Government agencies, certainly not the armed forces or the police. Many Indians in the USA were engineering graduates, and because many engineering jobs or contracts in the USA are related to the US armed forces and require US citizens only, it is commonplace for Indian engineers to renounce their Indian nationality and become Americans because of this. Many Indian-American families have one member who is American, another Indian, a third maybe Canadian, a fourth Fijian or British etc. The same can happen in the Indian State of Jammu & Kashmir if it evolves peacefully and correctly in the future. It is quite possible to imagine a productive family in a peaceful Kashmir Valley of the future where one brother is an officer in the Indian Armed Forces, another brother a civil servant and a sister a police officer of the J&K State Government, another sister being a Pakistani doctor, while cousins are Afghan or Iranian or “stateless” businessmen. Each family-member would have made his/her choice of nationality as an individual given the circumstances of his/her life, his/her personal comprehension of the facts of history, his/her personal political and/or religious persuasions, and similar deeply private considerations. All would have their children going to Indian schools and being Indian citizens ius soli and/or ius sanguinis. When the children grow up, they would be free to join, if they wished, the existing capital flight of other Indian adult children abroad and there renounce their Indian nationality as many have come to do. II Revealing Choices Privately with Full Information For India to implement such a proposal would be to provide an opportunity for all those domiciled in Kashmir Valley, Jammu and Laddakh to express freely and privately as individuals their deepest wishes about their own identities, in a confidential manner, citizen by citizen, case by case. This would thereby solve the fundamental democratic problem that has been faced ever since the Pakistani attack on the original State of Jammu & Kashmir commenced on October 22 1947, which came to be followed by the Rape of Baramulla — causing the formal accession of the State to the then-new Dominion of India on October 26 1947. A period of, say, 30 months may be announced by the Government of India during which full information would be provided to all citizens affected by this change, i.e. all those presently governed by Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. The condition of full information may include, for example, easy access to Afghan, Iranian and Pakistani newspapers in addition to access to Indian media. Each such person wishing to either remain with Indian nationality (by explicitly requesting an Indian passport if he/she does not have one already — and such passports can be printed in Kashmiri and Urdu too), or to renounce Indian nationality and either remain stateless or adopt, if he/she is so eligible, the nationality of e.g. Afghanistan, Iran, or Pakistan, should be administratively assisted by the Government of India to make that choice. In particular, he/she should be individually, confidentially, and without fear or favour assured and informed of his/her new rights and responsibilities. For example, a resident of Kashmir Valley who chooses to become a Pakistani citizen, such as Mr Geelani, would now enjoy the same rights and responsibilities in the Indian Republic that Mr Tully enjoys, and at the same time no longer require a visa to visit Pakistan just as Mr Tully needs no visa to enter Britain. In case individual participants in the Hurriyat choose to renounce Indian nationality and adopt some other, they would no longer be able to legally participate in Indian national elections or J&K’s State elections. That is something which they say they do not wish to do in any case. Those members of the Hurriyat who chose e.g. Pakistani nationality while still residing in Jammu & Kashmir, would be free to send postal ballots or cross the border and vote in Pakistan’s elections if and when these occur. There are many Canadians who live permanently in the USA who cross home to Canada in order to cast a ballot. After the period of 30 months, every person presently under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution would have received a full and fair opportunity to privately and confidentially reveal his/her preference or choice under conditions of full information. “Partition”, “Plebiscite”, and “Military Decision” have been the three alternatives under discussion ever since the National Conference of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and his then-loyal Deputy, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, helped the Indian Army and Air Force in 1947-1948 fight off the savage attack against Jammu & Kashmir State that had commenced from Pakistan on October 22 1947. When, during the Pakistani attack, the Sheikh and Bakshi agreed to the Muslim Conference’s demand for a plebiscite among the people, the Pakistanis balked — the Sheikh and Bakshi then withdrew their offer and decisively and irrevocably chose to accede to the Indian Union. The people of Jammu & Kashmir, like any other, are now bound by the sovereign political commitments made by their forebears. Even so, given the painful mortal facts of the several decades since, the solution here proposed if properly implemented would be an incomparably more thorough democratic exercise than any conceivable plebiscite could ever have been. Furthermore, regardless of the outcome, it would not entail any further “Partition” or population “transfer” which inevitably would degenerate into a savage balkanization, and has been ruled out as an unacceptable “deal-breaker” by the Indian Republic. Instead, every individual person would have been required, in a private and confidential decision-making process, to have chosen a nationality or to remain stateless — resulting in a multitude of cosmopolitan families in Jammu & Kashmir. But that is something commonplace in the modern world. Properly understood and properly implemented, we shall have resolved the great mortal problem we have faced for more than half a century, and Jammu & Kashmir can finally settle into a period of peace and prosperity. The boundary between India and Pakistan would have been settled by the third alternative mentioned at the time, namely, “Military Decision”. III. Of Flags and Consulates in Srinagar and Gilgit Pakistan has demanded its flag fly in Srinagar. This too can happen though not in the way Pakistan has been wishing to see it happen. A Pakistan flag might fly in the Valley just as might an Afghan and Iranian flag as well. Pakistan has wished its flag to fly as the sovereign over Jammu & Kashmir. That is not possible. The best and most just outcome is for the Pakistani flag to fly over a recognised Pakistani consular or visa office in Srinagar, Jammu and Leh. In diplomatic exchange, the Indian tricolour would have to fly over a recognised Indian consular or visa office in Muzaffarabad, Gilgit and Skardu. Pakistan also may have to act equivalently with respect to the original inhabitants of the territory of Jammu & Kashmir that it has been controlling — allowing those people to become Indian nationals if they so chose to do in free private decisions under conditions of full information. In other words, the “Military Decision” that defines the present boundary between sovereign states must be recognised by Pakistan sincerely and permanently in a Treaty relationship with India — and all of Pakistan’s official and unofficial protégés like the Hurriyat and the “United Jehad Council” would have to do the same. Without such a sovereign commitment from the Government of Pakistan, as shown by decisive actions of lack of aggressive intent (e.g. as came to be implemented between the USA and USSR), the Government of India has no need to involve the Government of Pakistan in implementing the solution of enhancing free individual choice of nationality with regard to all persons on our side of the boundary. The “Military Decision” regarding the sovereign boundary in Jammu & Kashmir will be so recognised by all only if it is the universally just outcome in international law. And that in fact is what it is. The original Jammu & Kashmir State began its existence as an entity in international law long before the present Republics of India and Pakistan ever did. Pakistan commences as an entity on August 14 1947; India commences as an entity of international law with its signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 20 1918. Jammu & Kashmir began as an entity on March 16 1846 — when the Treaty of Amritsar was signed between Gulab Singh Dogra and the British, one week after the Treaty of Lahore between the British and the defeated Sikh regency of the child Daleep Singh. Liaquat Ali Khan and Zafrullah Khan both formally challenged on Pakistan’s behalf the legitimacy of Dogra rule in Jammu & Kashmir since the Treaty of Amritsar. The Pakistani Mission to the UN does so even today. The Pakistanis were following Sheikh Abdullah and Jawaharlal Nehru himself, who too had at one point challenged Dogra legitimacy in the past. But though the form of words of the Pakistan Government and the Nehru-Abdullah position were similar in their attacks on the Treaty of Amritsar, their underlying substantive reasons were as different as chalk from cheese. The Pakistanis attacked the Dogra dynasty for being Dogra — i.e. because they were Hindus and not Muslims governing a Muslim majority. Nehru and Abdullah denounced monarchic autocracy in favour of mass democracy, and so attacked the Dogra dynasty for being a dynasty. All were wrong to think the Treaty of Amritsar anything but a lawful treaty in international law. Furthermore, in this sombre political game of great mortal consequence, there were also two other parties who were, or appeared to be, in favour of the dynasty: one because the dynasty was non-Muslim, the other, despite it being so. Non-Muslim minorities like many Hindus and Sikhs in the business and governmental classes, saw the Dogra dynasty as their protector against a feared communalist tyranny arising from the Sunni Muslim masses of Srinagar Valley, whom Abdullah’s rhetoric at Friday prayer-meetings had been inciting or at least awakening from slumber. At the same time, the communalists of the Muslim Conference who had broken away from Abdullah’s secular National Conference, sought political advantage over Abdullah by declaring themselves in favour of keeping the dynasty — even elevating it to become an international sovereign, thus flattering the already pretentious potentate that he would be called “His Majesty” instead of merely “His Highness”. The ancestry of today’s Hurriyat’s demands for an independent Jammu & Kashmir may be traced precisely to those May 21-22 1947 declarations of the Muslim Conference leader, Hamidullah Khan. Into this game stumbled the British with all the mix of cunning, indifference, good will, impatience, arrogance and pomposity that marked their rule in India. At the behest of the so-called “Native Princes”, the 1929 Butler Commission had hinted that the relationship of “Indian India” to the British sovereign was conceptually different from that of “British India” to the British sovereign. This view was adopted in the Cabinet Mission’s 12 May 1946 Memorandum which in turn came to be applied by Attlee and Mountbatten in their unseemly rush to “Divide and Quit” India in the summer of 1947. It created the pure legal illusion that there was such a thing as “Lapse of Paramountcy” at which Jammu & Kashmir or any other “Native State” of “Indian India” could conceivably, even for a moment, become a sovereign enjoying the comity of nations — contradicting Britain’s own position that only two Dominions, India and Pakistan, could ever be members of the British Commonwealth and hence members of the newly created UN. British pusillanimity towards Jammu & Kashmir’s Ruler had even extended to making him a nominal member of Churchill’s War Cabinet because he had sent troops to fight in Burma. But the legal illusion had come about because of a catastrophic misunderstanding on the part of the British of their own constitutional law. The only legal scholar who saw this was B R Ambedkar in a lonely and brilliant technical analysis released to the press on June 17 1947. No “Lapse of Paramountcy” over the “Native Princes” of Indian India could occur in constitutional law. Paramountcy over Indian India would be automatically inherited by the successor state of British India at the Transfer of Power. That successor state was the new British Dominion of India as well as (when it came to be finalised by Partition from India) the new British Dominion of Pakistan (Postscript: the deleted words represent a mistake made in the original paper, corrected in “Law, Justice & J&K” in view of the fact the UN in 1947 deemed India alone the successor state of British India and Pakistan a new state in the world system). A former “Native Prince” could only choose to which Dominion he would go. No other alternative existed even for a single logical moment. Because the British had catastrophically failed to comprehend this aspect of their own constitutional law, they created a legal vacuum whereby between August 15 and October 22-26 1947, Jammu & Kashmir became a local and temporary sovereign recognised only by the Dominion of Pakistan (until October 22) and the Dominion of India (until October 26). But it was not a globally recognised sovereign and was never going to be such in international law. This was further proved by Attlee refusing to answer the J&K Prime Minister’s October 18 1947 telegram. All ambiguity came to end with the Pakistani attack of October 22 1947, the Rape of Baramulla, the secession of an “Azad Kashmir”declared by Sardar Ibrahim, and the Pakistani coup détat in Gilgit on October 31 1947 followed by the massacre of Sikh soldiers of the J&K Army at Bunji. With those Pakistani actions, Gulab Singh’s Jammu & Kashmir State, founded on March 16 1846 by the Treaty of Amritsar, ceased to logically exist as an entity in international law and fell into a state of ownerless anarchy. The conflict between Ibrahim’s Muslim communalists backed by the new Dominion of Pakistan and Abdullah’s secularists backed by the new Dominion of India had become a civil war within a larger intra-Commonwealth war that itself was almost a civil war between forces of the same military. Jammu & Kashmir territory had become ownerless. The Roman Law which is at the root of all municipal and international law in the world today would declare that in the ownership of such an ownerless entity, a “Military Decision” was indeed the just outcome. Sovereignty over the land, waters, forests and other actual and potential resources of the erstwhile State of Jammu & Kashmir has become divided by “Military Decision” between the modern Republics of India and Pakistan. By the proposal made herein, the people and their descendants shall have chosen their nationality and their domicile freely across the sovereign boundary that has come to result. TWO LAW, JUSTICE AND J&K by Subroto Roy First published in two parts in The Sunday Statesman, July 2 2006 and The Statesman July 3 2006 http://www.thestatesman.net Editorial Page Special Article I. For a solution to J&K to be universally acceptable it must be seen by all as being lawful and just. Political opinion in Pakistan and India as well as all people and parties in J&K ~ those loyal to India, those loyal to Pakistan, and any others ~ will have to agree that, all things considered, such is the right course of action for everyone today in the 21st Century, which means too that the solution must be consistent with the facts of history as well as account reasonably for all moral considerations. On August 14, 1947, the legal entity known as “British India”, as one of its final acts, and based on a sovereign British decision made only two months earlier, created out of some of its territory a new State defined in international law as the “Dominion of Pakistan”. British India extinguished itself the very next day, and the newly independent “Dominion of India” succeeded to all its rights and obligations in international law. As the legal successor of the “India” which had signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and the San Francisco Declaration of 1945, the Dominion of India was already a member of the new UN as well as a signatory to many international treaties. By contrast, the Dominion of Pakistan had to apply afresh to sign treaties and become a member of international organisations. The theory put forward by Argentina that two new States, India and Pakistan, had been created ab initio, came to be rejected and was withdrawn by Argentina. Instead, Pakistan with the wholehearted backing of India was made a member of the UN, with all except Afghanistan voting in favour. (Afghanistan’s exceptional vote signalled presence of conflict over the Durand Line and idea of a Pashtunistan; Dr Khan Sahib and Abdul Ghaffar Khan were imprisoned by the Muslim League regime of NWFP which later supported the tribesmen who attacked J&K starting October 22, 1947; that conflict remains unresolved to this day, even after the American attack on the Taliban, the restart of a constitutional process in Afghanistan, and the purported mediation of US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.) Zafrullah Khan, Pakistan’s distinguished first ambassador to the UN, claimed in September 1947: “Pakistan is not a new member of UNO but a successor to a member State which was one of the founders of the Organisation.” He noted that he himself had led India to the final session of the League of Nations in Geneva in 1939, and he wished to say that Pakistan had been present “as part of India… under the latter name” as a signatory to the Treaty of Versailles. This was, however, logically impossible. The Treaty of Versailles long predated (1) Mohammad Iqbal’s Allahabad Address which conceptualised for the first time in the 20th Century a Muslim State in Northwest India; (2) Rahmat Ali’s invention of the word “PAKSTAN” on the top floor of a London omnibus; (3) M. A. Jinnah and Fazlul Haq’s Lahore Resolution; and (4) the final British decision of June 3, 1947 to create by Partition out of “British India” a Dominion named Pakistan. Pakistan could not have acted in international law prior to having come into being or been created or even conceived itself. Zafrullah Khan would have been more accurate to say that the history of Pakistanis until August 14, 1947 had been one in common with that of their Indian cousins ~ or indeed their Indian brothers, since innumerable North Indian Muslim families came to be literally partitioned, with some brothers remaining Indians while other brothers became Pakistanis. Pakistan was created at the behest of Jinnah’s Muslim League though with eventual agreement of the Indian National Congress (a distant ancestor of the political party going by the same name today). Pakistan arose not because Jinnah said Hindus and Muslims were “two nations” but because he and his League wished for a State where Muslims would find themselves ruled by fellow-Muslims and feel themselves part of a pan-Islamic culture. Yet Pakistan was intended to be a secular polity with Muslim-majority governance, not an Islamic theocracy. That Pakistan failed to become secular was exemplified most poignantly in the persecution Zafrullah himself later faced in his personal life as an Ahmadiya, even while he was Pakistan’s Foreign Minister. (The same happened later to Pakistan’s Nobel-winning physicist Abdus Salaam.) Pakistan was supposed to allow the genius of Indo-Muslim culture to flourish, transplanted from places like Lucknow and Aligarh which would never be part of it. In fact, the areas that are Pakistan today had in the 1937 provincial elections shown scant popular Muslim support for Jinnah’s League. The NWFP had a Congress Government in the 1946 elections, and its supporters boycotted the pro-Pakistan referendum in 1947. The imposition of Urdu culture as Pakistan’s dominant ethos might have come to be accepted later in West Punjab, Sindh and NWFP but it was not acceptable in East Bengal, and led inevitably to the Pakistani civil war and creation of Bangladesh by Sheikh Mujib in 1971. In August 1947, the new Dominions of India and Pakistan were each supposed to protect their respective minority populations as their first political duty. Yet both palpably failed in this, and were reduced to making joint declarations pleading for peace and an end to communal killings and the abduction of women. The Karachi Government, lacking the wherewithal and administrative machinery of being a nation-state at all, and with only Liaquat and an ailing Jinnah as noted leaders, may have failed more conspicuously, and West Punjab, the Frontier and Sindh were soon emptied of almost all their many Sikhs and Hindus. Instead, the first act of the new Pakistan Government in the weeks after August 14, 1947 was to arrange for the speedy and safe transfer of the North Indian Muslim elite by air from Delhi using chartered British aeroplanes. The ordinary Muslim masses of UP, Delhi and East Punjab were left in danger from or were subjected to Sikh and Hindu mob attacks, especially as news and rumours spread of similar outrages against Pakistan’s departing minorities. In this spiral of revenge attacks and counter-attacks, bloodshed inevitably spilled over from West and East Punjab into the northern Punjabi plains of Jammu, though Kashmir Valley remained conspicuously peaceful. Zafrullah and Liaquat would later claim it was this communal civil war which had caused thousands of newly decommissioned Mirpuri soldiers of the British Army, and thousands of Afridi and other Frontier tribesmen, to spontaneously act to “liberate” J&K’s Muslims from alleged tyranny under the Hindu Ruler or an allegedly illegal Indian occupation. But the main attack on J&K State that began from Pakistan along the Manshera-Muzaffarabad road on October 22, 1947 was admittedly far too well-organised, well-armed, well-planned and well-executed to have been merely a spontaneous uprising of tribesmen and former soldiers. In all but name, it was an act of undeclared war of the new Dominion of Pakistan first upon the State of J&K and then upon the Indian Dominion. This became obvious to Field Marshall Auchinlek, who, as Supreme Commander of the armed forces of both India and Pakistan, promptly resigned and abolished the Supreme Command in face of the fact that two parts of his own forces were now at war with one another. The invaders failed to take Srinagar solely because they lost their military purpose while indulging in the Rape of Baramula. Thousands of Kashmiri women of all communities ~ Muslim, Sikh and Hindu ~ were violated and transported back to be sold in markets in Peshawar and elsewhere. Such was standard practice in Central Asian tribal wars from long before the advent of Islam, and the invading tribesmen shared that culture. India’s Army and Air Force along with the militias of the secular democratic movement led by Sheikh Abdullah and those remaining loyal units of J&K forces, fought off the invasion, and liberated Baramula, Naushera, Uri, Poonch etc. Gilgit had a British-led coup détat against it bringing it under Pakistan’s control. Kargil was initially taken by the Pakistanis and then lost by them. Leh could have been but was not taken by Pakistani forces. But in seeking to protect Leh and to retake Kargil, the Indian Army lost the siege of Skardu ~ which ended reputedly with the infamous communication from the Pakistani commander to his HQ: “All Sikhs killed; all women raped.” Legal theory Now, in this grave mortal conflict, the legal theory to which both the Indian and Pakistani Governments have been wedded for sixty years is one that had been endorsed by the British Cabinet Mission in 1946 and originated with the Butler Commission of 1929. Namely, that “Lapse of Paramountcy” over the “Indian India” of the “Native States” could and did occur with the extinction of British India on August 15, 1947. By this theory, Hyderabad, J&K, Junagadh and the several other States which had not acceded to either Dominion were no longer subject to the Crown’s suzerainty as of that date. Both Dominions drew up “Instruments of Accession” for Rulers to sign upon the supposed “Lapse” of Paramountcy that was to occur with the end of British India. Ever since, the Pakistan Government has argued that Junagadh’s Ruler acceded to Pakistan and Hyderabad’s had wished to do so but both were forcibly prevented by India. Pakistan has also argued the accession to India by J&K’s Ruler was “fraudulent” and unacceptable, and Sheikh Abdullah was a “Quisling” of India and it was not his National Conference but the Muslim Conference of Ibrahim, Abbas and the Mirwaiz (precursor of the Hurriyat) which represented J&K’s Muslims. India argued that Junagadh’s accession to Pakistan or Hyderabad’s independence were legal and practical impossibilities contradicting the wills of their peoples, and that their integration into the Indian Dominion was carried out in an entirely legitimate manner in the circumstances prevailing. On J&K, India has argued that not only had the Ruler requested Indian forces to fight off the Pakistani attack, and he acceded formally before Indian forces were sent, but also that democratic principles were fully adhered to in the unequivocal endorsement of the accession by Sheikh Abdullah and the National Conference and further by a duly called and elected J&K Constituent Assembly, as well as generations of Kashmiris since. In the Indian view, it is Pakistan which has been in illegal occupation of Indian territory from Mirpur, Muzaffarabad and Gilgit to Skardu all the way to the Khunjerab Pass, Siachen Glacier and K2, some of which it illegally ceded to its Communist Chinese ally, and furthermore that it has denied the peoples of these areas any democratic voice. Roman law In June 1947, it was uniquely and brilliantly argued by BR Ambedkar in a statement to the Press that the British had made a catastrophic error in comprehending their own constitutional law, that no such thing as “Lapse” of Paramountcy existed, and that suzerainty over the “Native States” of “Indian India” would be automatically transferred in international law to the successor State of British India. It was a legal illusion to think any Native State could be sovereign even for a single logical moment. On this theory, if the Dominion of India was the sole successor State in international law while Pakistan was a new legal entity, then a Native State which acceded to Pakistan after August 15, 1947 would have had to do so with the consent of the suzerain power, namely, India, as may be said to have happened implicitly in case of Chitral and a few others. Equally, India’s behaviour in integrating (or annexing) Junagadh and Hyderabad, would become fully explicable ~ as would the statements of Mountbatten, Nehru and Patel before October 1947 that they would accept J&K going to Pakistan if that was what the Ruler and his people desired. Pakistan unilaterally and by surprise went to war against J&K on October 22, declared the accession to India “fraudulent”, and to this day has claimed the territory of the original State of J&K is “disputed”. Certainly, even if the Ambedkar doctrine is applied that no “Lapse” was possible under British law, Pakistan did not recognise India’s jurisdiction there as the suzerain power as of August 15, 1947. Altogether, Pakistan’s sovereign actions from October 22 onwards amounted to acting to annex J&K to itself by military force ~ acts which came to be militarily resisted (with partial success) by India allied with Sheikh Abdullah’s National Conference and the remaining forces of J&K. By these military actions, Pakistan revealed that it considered J&K territory to have descended into a legal state of anarchy as of October 22, 1947, and hence open to resolution by “Military Decision” ~ as is indeed the just outcome under Roman Law, the root of all municipal and international law today, when there is a contest between claimants over an ownerless entity. Choice of nationality Hence, the present author concluded (“Solving Kashmir”, The Statesman December 1-3, 2005) that the dismemberment of the original J&K State and annexation of its territories by India and Pakistan that has occurred since 1947, as represented first by the 1949 Ceasefire Line and then by the 1972 Line of Control, is indeed the just and lawful outcome prevailing in respect of the question of territorial sovereignty and jurisdiction. The remaining “democratic” question described has to do with free individual choice of nationality by the inhabitants, under conditions of full information and privacy, citizen-by-citizen, with the grant of permanent residency rights by the Indian Republic to persons under its jurisdiction in J&K who may choose not to remain Indian nationals but become Afghan, Iranian or Pakistani nationals instead. Pakistan has said frequently its sole concern has been the freedom of the Muslims of J&K under Indian rule, and any such genuine concern shall have been thereby fully met by India. Indeed, if Pakistan agreed to act similarly, this entire complex mortal problem of decades shall have begun to be peacefully resolved. Both countries are wracked by corruption, poverty and bad governance, and would be able to mutually draw down military forces pit against one another everywhere, so as to begin to repair the grave damage to their fiscal health caused by the deleterious draining away of vast public resources. THREE HISTORY OF JAMMU & KASHMIR by Subroto Roy First published in two parts in The Sunday Statesman, Oct 29 2006 and The Statesman Oct 30 2006, Editorial Page Special Article, http://www.thestatesman.net At the advent of Islam in distant Arabia, India and Kashmir in particular were being visited by Chinese Buddhist pilgrims during Harsha’s reign. The great “Master of Law” Hiuen Tsiang visited between 629-645 and spent 631-633 in Kashmir (”Kia-chi-mi-lo”), describing it to include Punjab, Kabul and Kandahar. Over the next dozen centuries, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and again Hindu monarchs came to rule the 85 mile long 40 mile wide territory on the River Jhelum’s upper course known as Srinagar Valley, as well as its adjoining Jammu in the upper plains of the Punjab and “Little Tibet” consisting of Laddakh, Baltistan and Gilgit. In 1344, a Persian adventurer from Swat or Khorasan by name of Amir or Mirza, who had “found his way into the Valley and in time gained great influence at the Raja’s court”, proclaimed himself Sultan Shamsuddin after the death of the last Hindu monarchs of medieval Kashmir. Twelve of his descendants formed the Shamiri dynasty including the notorious Sikander and the just and tolerant Zainulabidin. Sikander who ruled 1386-1410 “submitted himself” to the Uzbek Taimur the Lame when he approached Kashmir in 1398 “and thus saved the country from invasion”. Otherwise, “Sikander was a gloomy ferocious bigot, and his zeal in destroying temples and idols was so intense that he is remembered as the Idol-Breaker. He freely used the sword to propagate Islam and succeeded in forcing the bulk of the population to conform outwardly to the Muslim religion. Most of the Brahmins refused to apostatise, and many of them paid with their lives the penalty for their steadfastness. Many others were exiled, and only a few conformed.” Zainulabidin who ruled 1417-1467 “was a man of very different type”. “He adopted the policy of universal toleration, recalled the exiled Brahmins, repealed the jizya or poll-tax on Hindus, and even permitted new temples to be built. He abstained from eating flesh, prohibited the slaughter of kine, and was justly venerated as a saint. He encouraged literature, painting and music, and caused many translations to be made of works composed in Sanskrit, Arabic and other languages.” During his “long and prosperous reign”, he “constructed canals and built many mosques; he was just and tolerant”. The Shamiri dynasty ended in 1541 when “some fugitive chiefs of the two local factions of the Makri and the Chakk invited Mirza Haidar Dughlat, a relation of Babar, to invade Kashmir. The country was conquered and the Mirza held it (nominally in name of Humayan) till 1551, when he was killed in a skirmish. The line… was restored for a few years, until in 1559 a Chakk leader, Ghazi Shah, usurped the throne; and in the possession of his descendants it remained for nearly thirty years.” This dynasty marks the origins of Shia Islam in Srinagar though Shia influence in Gilgit, Baltistan and Laddakh was of longer standing. Constant dissensions weakened the Chakks, and in 1586, Akbar, then at Attock on the Indus, sent an army under Raja Bhagwan Das into Srinagar Valley and easily made it part of his Empire. Shivaism and Islam both flourished, and Hindu ascetics and Sufi saints were revered by all. Far from Muslims and Hindus forming distinct nations, here they were genetically related kinsmen living in proximity in a small isolated area for centuries. Indeed Zainulabidin may have had a vast unspoken influence on the history of all India insofar as Akbar sought to attempt in his empire what Zainulabidin achieved in the Valley. Like Zainulabidin, Akbar’s governance of India had as its “constant aim” “to conciliate the Hindus and to repress Muslim bigotry” which in modern political parlance may be seen as the principle of secular governance ~ of conciliating the powerless (whether majority or minority) and repressing the bigotry of the powerful (whether minority or majority). Akbar had made the Valley the summer residence of the Mughals, and it was Jahangir, seeing the Valley for the first time, who apparently said the words agar behest baushad, hamee in hast, hamee in hast, hamee in hast: “if Heaven exists, it is here, it is here, it is here”. Yet like other isolated paradises (such as the idyllic islands of the Pacific Ocean) an accursed mental ether can accompany the magnificent beauty of people’s surroundings. As the historian put it: “The Kashmiris remained secure in their inaccessible Valley; but they were given up to internal weakness and discord, their political importance was gone…” After the Mughals collapsed, Iran’s Turkish ruler Nadir Shah sacked Delhi in 1739 but the Iranian court fell in disarray upon his death. In 1747 a jirga of Pashtun tribes at Kandahar “broke normal tradition” and asked an old Punjabi holy man and shrine-keeper to choose between two leaders; this man placed young wheat in the hand of the 25 year old Ahmed Shah Saddozai of the Abdali tribe, and titled him “Durrani”. Five years later, Durrani took Kashmir and for the next 67 years the Valley was under Pashtun rule, a time of “unmitigated brutality and widespread distress”. Durrani himself “was wise, prudent and simple”, never declared himself king and wore no crown, instead keeping a stick of young wheat in his turban. Leaving India, he famously recited: “The Delhi throne is beautiful indeed, but does it compare with the mountains of Kandahar?” Kashmir’s modern history begins with Ranjit Singh of the Sikhs who became a soldier at 12, and in 1799 at age 19 was made Lahore’s Governor by Kabul’s Zaman Shah. Three years later “he made himself master of Amritsar”, and in 1806 crossed the River Sutlej and took Ludhiana. He created a fine Sikh infantry and cavalry under former officers of Napoleon, and with 80,000 trained men and 500 guns took Multan and Peshawar, defeated the Pashtuns and overran Kashmir in 1819. The “cruel rule” of the Pashtuns ended “to the great relief of Kashmir’s inhabitants”. The British Governor-General Minto (ancestor of the later Viceroy), seeing advantage in the Sikhs staying north of the Sutlej, sent Charles Metcalfe, “a clever young civilian”, to persuade the Khalsa; in 1809, Ranjit Singh and the British in the first Treaty of Amritsar agreed to establish “perpetual amity”: the British would “have no concern” north of the Sutlej and Ranjit Singh would keep only minor personnel south of it. In 1834 and 1838 Ranjit Singh was struck by paralysis and died in 1839, leaving no competent heir. The Sikh polity collapsed, “their power exploded, disappearing in fierce but fast flames”. It was “a period of storm and anarchy in which assassination was the rule” and the legitimate line of his son and grandson, Kharak Singh and Nao Nihal Singh was quickly extinguished. In 1845 the Queen Regent, mother of the five-year old Dalip Singh, agreed to the Khalsa ending the 1809 Treaty. After bitter battles that might have gone either way, the Khalsa lost at Sobraon on 10 February 1846, and accepted terms of surrender in the 9 March 1846 Treaty of Lahore. The kingdom had not long survived its founder: “created by the military and administrative genius of one man, it crumbled into powder when the spirit which gave it life was withdrawn; and the inheritance of the Khalsa passed into the hands of the English.” Ranjit Singh’s influence on modern J&K was even greater through his having mentored the Rajput Gulab Singh Dogra (1792-1857) and his brothers Dhyan Singh and Suchet Singh. Jammu had been ruled by Ranjit Deo until 1780 when the Sikhs made it tributary to the Lahore Court. Gulab Singh, a great grand nephew of Ranjit Deo, had left home at age 17 in search of a soldierly fortune, and ended up in 1809 in Ranjit Singh’s army, just when Ranjit Singh had acquired for himself a free hand to expand his domains north of the River Sutlej. Gulab Singh, an intrepid soldier, by 1820 had Jammu conferred upon him by Ranjit Singh with the title of Raja, while Bhimber, Chibal, Poonch and Ramnagar went to his brothers. Gulab Singh, “often unscrupulous and cruel, was a man of considerable ability and efficiency”; he “found his small kingdom a troublesome charge but after ten years of constant struggles he and his two brothers became masters of most of the country between Kashmir and the Punjab”, though Srinagar Valley itself remained under a separate Governor appointed by the Lahore Court. Gulab Singh extended Jammu’s rule from Rawalpindi, Bhimber, Rajouri, Bhadarwah and Kishtwar, across Laddakh and into Tibet. His General Zorawar Singh led six expeditions into Laddakh between 1834 and 1841 through Kishtwar, Padar and Zanskar. In May 1841, Zorawar left Leh with an army of 5000 Dogras and Laddakhis and advanced on Tibet. Defeating the Tibetans at Rudok and Tashigong, he reached Minsar near Lake Mansarovar from where he advanced to Taklakot (Purang), 15 miles from the borders of Nepal and Kumaon, and built a fort stopping for the winter. Lhasa sent large re-inforcements to meet him. Zorawar, deciding to take the offensive, was killed in the Battle of Toyu, on 11-12 December 1841 at 16,000 feet. A Laddakhi rebellion resulted against Jammu, aided now by the advancing Tibetans. A new army was sent under Hari Chand suppressing the rebellion and throwing back the Tibetans, leading to a peace treaty between Lhasa and Jammu signed on 17 September 1842: “We have agreed that we have no ill-feelings because of the past war. The two kings will henceforth remain friends forever. The relationship between Maharajah Gulab Singh of Kashmir and the Lama Guru of Lhasa (Dalai Lama) is now established. The Maharajah Sahib, with God (Kunchok) as his witness, promises to recognise ancient boundaries, which should be looked after by each side without resorting to warfare. When the descendants of the early kings, who fled from Laddakh to Tibet, now return they will not be stopped by Shri Maharajah. Trade between Laddakh and Tibet will continue as usual. Tibetan government traders coming into Laddakh will receive free transport and accommodations as before, and the Laddakhi envoy will, in turn, receive the same facilities in Lhasa. The Laddakhis take an oath before God (Kunchok) that they will not intrigue or create new troubles in Tibetan territory. We have agreed, with God as witness, that Shri Maharajah Sahib and the Lama Guru of Lhasa will live together as members of the same household.” The traditional boundary between Laddakh and Tibet “as recognised by both sides since olden times” was accepted by the envoys of Gulab Singh and the Dalai Lama. An earlier 1684 treaty between Laddakh and Lhasa had said that while Laddakh would send tribute to Lhasa every three years, “the king of Laddakh reserves to himself the village of Minsar in Ngarees-khor-sum, that he may be independent there; and he sets aside its revenue for the purpose of meeting the expense involved in keeping up the sacrificial lights at Kangree (Kailas), and the Holy Lakes of Mansarovar and Rakas Tal”. The area around Minsar village near Lake Mansarovar, held by the rulers of Laddakh since 1583, was retained by Jammu in the 1842 peace-treaty, and its revenue was received by J&K State until 1948. After Ranjit Singh’s death in 1839, Gulab Singh was alienated from the Lahore Court where the rise of his brothers and a nephew aroused enough Khalsa jealousy to see them assassinated in palace intrigues. While the Sikhs imploded, Gulab Singh had expanded his own dominion from Rawalpindi to Minsar ~ everywhere except Srinagar Valley itself. He had apparently advised the Sikhs not to attack the British in breach of the 1809 Treaty, and when they did so he had not joined them, though had he done so British power in North India might have been broken. The British were grateful for his neutrality and also his help in their first misbegotten adventure in Afghanistan. It was Gulab Singh who was now encouraged by both the British and the Sikhs to mediate between them, indeed “to take a leading part in arranging conditions of peace”, and he formally represented the Sikh regency in the negotiations. The 9 March 1846 Treaty of Lahore “set forth that the British Government having demanded in addition to a certain assignment of territory, a payment of a crore and a half of rupees, and the Sikh Government being unable to pay the whole”, Dalip Singh “should cede as equivalent to one crore the hill country belonging to the Punjab between the Beas and the Indus including Kashmir and the Hazara”. For the British to occupy the whole of this mountainous territory was judged unwise on economic and military grounds; it was not feasible to occupy from a military standpoint and the area “with the exception of the small Valley of Kashmir” was “for the most part unproductive”. “On the other hand, the ceded tracts comprised the whole of the hereditary possessions of Gulab Singh, who, being eager to obtain an indefeasible title to them, came forward and offered to pay the war indemnity on condition that he was made the independent ruler of Jammu & Kashmir. A separate treaty embodying this arrangement was thus concluded between the British and Gulab Singh at Amritsar on 16 March 1846.” Gulab Singh acknowledged the British Government’s supremacy, and in token of it agreed to present annually to the British Government “one horse, twelve shawl goats of approved breed and three pairs of Kashmir shawls. This arrangement was later altered; the annual presentation made by the Kashmir State was confined to two Kashmir shawls and three romals (handkerchiefs).” The Treaty of Amritsar “put Gulab Singh, as Maharaja, in possession of all the hill country between the Indus and the Ravi, including Kashmir, Jammu, Laddakh and Gilgit; but excluding Lahoul, Kulu and some areas including Chamba which for strategic purposes, it was considered advisable (by the British) to retain and for which a remission of Rs 25 lakhs was made from the crore demanded, leaving Rs 75 lakhs as the final amount to be paid by Gulab Singh.” The British retained Hazara which in 1918 was included into NWFP. Through an intrigue emanating from Prime Minister Lal Singh in Lahore, Imamuddin, the last Sikh-appointed Governor of Kashmir, sought to prevent Gulab Singh taking possession of the Valley in accordance with the Treaty’s terms. By December 1846 Gulab Singh had done so, though only with help of a British force which included 17,000 Sikh troops “who had been fighting in the campaign just concluded”. (Contemporary British opinion even predicted Sikhism like Buddhism “would become extinct in a short time if it were not kept alive by the esprit de corps of the Sikh regiments”.) The British in 1846 may have been glad enough to allow Gulab Singh take independent charge of the new entity that came to be now known as the “State of Jammu & Kashmir”. Later, however. they and their American allies would grow keen to control or influence the region vis-à-vis their new interests against the Russian and Soviet Empires. FOUR PAKISTAN’S ALLIES by Subroto Roy First published in two parts in The Sunday Statesman, June 4 2006, The Statesman June 5 2006, Editorial Page Special Article, http://www.thestatesman.net From the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar creating the State of Jammu & Kashmir until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Britain and later the USA became increasingly interested in the subcontinent’s Northwest. The British came to India by sea to trade. Barren, splendid, landlocked Afghanistan held no interest except as a home of fierce tribes; but it was the source of invasions into the Indian plains and prompted a British misadventure to install Shah Shuja in place of Dost Mohammad Khan leading to ignominious defeat. Later, Afghanistan was seen as the underbelly of the Russian and Soviet empires, and hence a location of interest to British and American strategic causes. In November 1954, US President Dwight Eisenhower authorized 30 U-2 spy aircraft to be produced for deployment against America’s perceived enemies, especially to investigate Soviet nuclear missiles which could reach the USA. Reconnaissance balloons had been unsuccessful, and numerous Western pilots had been shot down taking photographs from ordinary military aircraft. By June 1956, U-2 were making clandestine flights over the USSR and China. But on May 1 1960, one was shot or forced down over Sverdlovsk, 1,000 miles within Soviet territory. The Americans prevaricated that it had taken off from Turkey on a weather-mission, and been lost due to oxygen problems. Nikita Kruschev then produced the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, who was convicted of spying, though was exchanged later for a Soviet spy. Powers had been headed towards Norway, his task to photograph Soviet missiles from 70,000 ft, his point of origin had been an American base 20 miles from Peshawar. America needed clandestine “forward bases” from which to fly U-2 aircraft, and Pakistan’s ingratiating military and diplomatic establishment was more than willing to offer such cooperation, fervently wishing to be seen as a “frontline state” against the USSR. “We will help you defeat the USSR and we are hopeful you will help us defeat India” became their constant refrain. By 1986, the Americans had been permitted to build air-bases in Balochistan and also use Mauripur air-base near Karachi. Jammu & Kashmir and especially Gilgit-Baltistan adjoins the Pashtun regions whose capital has been Peshawar. In August-November 1947, a British coup d’etat against J&K State secured Gilgit-Baltistan for the new British Dominion of Pakistan. The Treaty of Amritsar had nowhere required Gulab Singh’s dynasty to accept British political control in J&K as came to be exercised by British “Residents” in all other Indian “Native States”. Despite this, Delhi throughout the late 19th Century relentlessly pressed Gulab Singh’s successors Ranbir Singh and Partab Singh to accept political control. The Dogras acquiesced eventually. Delhi’s desire for control had less to do with the welfare of J&K’s people than with protection of increasing British interests in the area, like European migration to Srinagar Valley and guarding against Russian or German moves in Afghanistan. “Sargin” or “Sargin Gilit”, later corrupted by the Sikhs and Dogras into “Gilgit”, had an ancient people who spoke an archaic Dardic language “intermediate between the Iranian and the Sanskritic”. “The Dards were located by Ptolemy with surprising accuracy on the West of the Upper Indus, beyond the headwaters of the Swat River (Greek: Soastus) and north of the Gandarae (i.e. Kandahar), who occupied Peshawar and the country north of it. This region was traversed by two Chinese pilgrims, Fa-Hsien, coming from the north about AD 400 and Hsuan Tsiang, ascending from Swat in AD 629, and both left records of their journeys.” Gilgit had been historically ruled by a Hindu dynasty called Trakane; when they became extinct, Gilgit Valley “was desolated by successive invasions of neighbouring rulers, and in the 20 or 30 years ending with 1842 there had been five dynastic revolutions. The Sikhs entered Gilgit about 1842 and kept a garrison there.” When J&K came under Gulab Singh, “the Gilgit claims were transferred with it, and a boundary commission was sent” by the British. In 1852 the Dogras were driven out with 2,000 dead. In 1860 under Ranbir Singh, the Dogras “returned to Gilgit and took Yasin twice, but did not hold it. They also in 1866 invaded Darel, one of the most secluded Dard states, to the south of the Gilgit basin but withdrew again.” The British appointed a Political Agent in Gilgit in 1877 but he was withdrawn in 1881. “In 1889, in order to guard against the advance of Russia, the British Government, acting as the suzerain power of Kashmir, established the Gilgit Agency”. The Agency was re-established under control of the British Resident in Jammu & Kashmir. “It comprised the Gilgit Wazarat; the State of Hunza and Nagar; the Punial Jagir; the Governorships of Yasin, Kuh-Ghizr and Ishkoman, and Chilas”. In 1935, the British demanded J&K lease to them for 60 years Gilgit town plus most of the Gilgit Agency and the hill-states Hunza, Nagar, Yasin and Ishkuman. Hari Singh had no choice but to acquiesce. The leased region was then treated as part of British India, administered by a Political Agent at Gilgit responsible to Delhi, first through the Resident in J& K and later a British Agent in Peshawar. J& K State no longer kept troops in Gilgit and a mercenary force, the Gilgit Scouts, was recruited with British officers and paid for by Delhi. In April 1947, Delhi decided to formally retrocede the leased areas to Hari Singh’s J& K State as of 15 August 1947. The transfer was to formally take place on 1 August. On 31 July, Hari Singh’s Governor arrived to find “all the officers of the British Government had opted for service in Pakistan”. The Gilgit Scouts’ commander, a Major William Brown aged 25, and his adjutant, a Captain Mathieson, planned openly to engineer a coup détat against Hari Singh’s Government. Between August and October, Gilgit was in uneasy calm. At midnight on 31 October 1947, the Governor was surrounded by the Scouts and the next day he was “arrested” and a provisional government declared. Hari Singh’s nearest forces were at Bunji, 34 miles from Gilgit, a few miles downstream from where the Indus is joined by Gilgit River. The 6th J& K Infantry Battalion there was a mixed Sikh-Muslim unit, typical of the State’s Army, commanded by a Lt Col. Majid Khan. Bunji controlled the road to Srinagar. Further upstream was Skardu, capital of Baltistan, part of Laddakh District where there was a small garrison. Following Brown’s coup in Gilgit, Muslim soldiers of the 6th Infantry massacred their Sikh brothers-at-arms at Bunji. The few Sikhs who survived escaped to the hills and from there found their way to the garrison at Skardu. On 4 November 1947, Brown raised the new Pakistani flag in the Scouts’ lines, and by the third week of November a Political Agent from Pakistan had established himself at Gilgit. Brown had engineered Gilgit and its adjoining states to first secede from J&K, and, after some talk of being independent, had promptly acceded to Pakistan. His commander in Peshawar, a Col. Bacon, as well as Col. Iskander Mirza, Defence Secretary in the new Pakistan and later to lead the first military coup détat and become President of Pakistan, were pleased enough. In July 1948, Brown was awarded an MBE (Military) and the British Governor of the NWFP got him a civilian job with ICI~ which however sent him to Calcutta, where he came to be attacked and left for dead on the streets by Sikhs avenging the Bunji massacre. Brown survived, returned to England, started a riding school, and died in 1984. In March 1994, Pakistan awarded his widow the Sitara-I-Pakistan in recognition of his coup détat. Gilgit’s ordinary people had not participated in Brown’s coup which carried their fortunes into the new Pakistan, and to this day appear to remain without legislative representation. It was merely assumed that since they were mostly Muslim in number they would wish to be part of Pakistan ~ which also became Liaquat Ali Khan’s assumption about J&K State as a whole in his 1950 statements in North America. What the Gilgit case demonstrates is that J&K State’s descent into a legal condition of ownerless anarchy open to “Military Decision” had begun even before the Pakistani invasion of 22 October 1947 (viz. “Solving Kashmir”, The Statesman, 1-3 December 2005). Also, whatever else the British said or did with respect to J & K, they were closely allied to the new Pakistan on the matter of Gilgit. The peak of Pakistan’s Anglo-American alliance came with the enormous support in the 1980s to guerrilla forces created and headquartered in Peshawar, to battle the USSR and Afghan communists directly across the Durand Line. It was this guerrilla war which became a proximate cause of the collapse of the USSR as a political entity in 1991. President Ronald Reagan’s CIA chief William J. Casey sent vast sums in 1985-1988 to supply and train these guerrillas. The Washington Post and New Yorker reported the CIA training guerrillas “in the use of mortars, rocket grenades, ground-to-air missiles”. 200 hand-held Stinger missiles were supplied for the first time in 1986 and the New Yorker reported Gulbudin Hikmatyar’s “Hizbe Islami” guerrillas being trained to bring down Soviet aircraft. “Mujahideen had been promised two Stingers for every Soviet aircraft brought down. Operators who failed to aim correctly were given additional training… By 1986, the United States was so deeply involved in the Afghan war that Soviet aircraft were being brought down under the supervision of American experts”. (Raja Anwar, The Tragedy of Afghanistan, 1988, p. 234). The budding US-China détente brokered by Pakistan came into full bloom here. NBC News on 7 January 1980 said “for the first time in history (a senior State Department official) publicly admitted the possibility of concluding a military alliance between the United States and China”. London’s Daily Telegraph reported on 5 January 1980 “China is flying large supplies of arms and ammunition to the insurgents in Afghanistan. According to diplomatic reports, supplies have arrived in Pakistan from China via the Karakoram Highway…. A major build-up of Chinese involvement is underway ~ in the past few days. Scores of Chinese instructors have arrived at the Shola-e-Javed camps.” Afghan reports in 1983-1985 said “there were eight training camps near the Afghan border operated by the Chinese in Sinkiang province” and that China had supplied the guerrillas “with a variety of weapons including 40,000 RPG-7 and 20,000 RPG-II anti tank rocket launchers.” Like Pakistan, “China did not publicly admit its involvement in the Afghan conflict: in 1985 the Chinese Mission at the UN distributed a letter denying that China was extending any kind of help to the Afghan rebels” (Anwar, ibid. p. 234). Support extended deep and wide across the Arab world. “The Saudi and Gulf rulers … became the financial patrons of the Afghan rebels from the very start of the conflict”. Anwar Sadat, having won the Nobel Peace Prize, was “keen to claim credit for his role in Afghanistan…. by joining the Afghanistan jihad, Sadat could re-establish his Islamic credentials, or so he believed. He could thus not only please the Muslim nations but also place the USA and Israel in his debt.” Sadat’s Defence Minister said in January 1980: “Army camps have been opened for the training of Afghan rebels; they are being supplied with weapons from Egypt” and Sadat told NBC News on 22 September 1981 “that for the last twenty-one months, the USA had been buying arms from Egypt for the Afghan rebels. He said he had been approached by the USA in December 1979 and he had decided to `open my stores’. He further disclosed that these arms were being flown to Pakistan from Egypt by American aircraft. Egypt had vast supplies of SAM-7 and RPG-7 anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons which Sadat agreed to supply to Afghanistan in exchange for new American arms. The Soviet weapons, being light, were ideally suited to guerrilla warfare. … the Mujahideen could easily claim to have captured them from Soviet and Afghan troops in battle.… Khomeini’s Iran got embroiled in war (against Iraq) otherwise Kabul would also have had to contend with the full might of the Islamic revolutionaries.” (Anwar ibid. p. 235). Afghanistan had been occupied on 26-27 December 1979 by Soviet forces sent by the decrepit Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov to carry out a putsch replacing one communist, Hafizullah Amin, with a rival communist and Soviet protégé, Babrak Karmal. By 1985 Brezhnev and Andropov were dead and Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev had begun his attempts to reform the Soviet system, usher in openness, end the Cold War and in particular withdraw from Afghanistan, which by 1986 he had termed “a bleeding wound”. Gorbachev replaced Karmal with a new protégé Najibullah Khan, who was assigned the impossible task of bringing about national reconciliation with the Pakistan-based guerrillas and form a national government. Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan in February 1989 having lost 14,500 dead, while more than a million Afghans had been killed since the invasion a decade earlier. Not long after Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution, Gregory Zinoviev had said that international communism “turns today to the peoples of the East and says to them, `Brothers, we summon you to a Holy War first of all against British imperialism!’ At this there were cries of Jehad! Jehad! And much brandishing of picturesque Oriental weapons.” (Treadgold, Twentieth Century Russia, 1990, p. 213). Now instead, the Afghan misadventure had contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Empire itself, the USSR ceasing to be a political entity by 1991, and even Gorbachev being displaced by Boris Yeltsin and later Vladimir Putin in a new Russia. What resulted for the people of the USA and Britain and the West in general was that they no longer had to live under threat of hostile Soviet tanks and missiles, while the people of Russia, Ukraine and the other erstwhile Soviet republics as well as Eastern Europe were able to throw off the yoke of communism that had oppressed them since the Bolshevik Revolution and instead to breathe the air of freedom. What happened to the people of Afghanistan, however, was that they were plunged into further ghastly civil war for more than ten years. And what happened to the people of Pakistan was that their country was left resembling a gigantic Islamist military camp, awash with airfields, arms, ammunition and trained guerrillas, as well as a military establishment enlivened as always by perpetual hope that these supplies, provisions and personnel of war might find alternative use in attacks against India over J& K. “We helped you when you wished to see the Soviet Union defeated and withdrawing in Afghanistan”, Pakistan’s generals and diplomats pleaded with the Americans and British, “now you must help us in our wish to see India defeated and withdrawing in Kashmir”. Pakistan’s leaders even believed that just as the Soviet Union had disintegrated afterwards, the Indian Union perhaps might be made to do the same. Not only were the two cases as different as chalk from cheese, Palmerstone’s dictum there are no permanent allies in the politics of nations could not have found more apt use than in what actually came to take place next. Pakistan’s generals and diplomats felt betrayed by the loss of Anglo-American paternalism towards them after 1989. Modern Pakistanis had never felt they subscribed to the Indian nationalist movement culminating in independence in August 1947. The Pakistani state now finally declared its independence in the world by exploding bombs in a nuclear arsenal secretly created with help purchased from China and North Korea. Pakistan’s leaders thus came to feel in some control of Pakistan’s destiny as a nation-state for the first time, more than fifty years after Pakistan’s formal creation in 1947. If nothing else, at least they had the Bomb. Secondly, America and its allies would not be safe for long since the civil war they had left behind in Afghanistan while trying to defeat the USSR now became a brew from which arose a new threat of violent Islamism. Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, whom Pakistan’s military and the USA had promoted, now encouraged unprecedented attacks on the American mainland on September 11 2001 ~ causing physical and psychological damage which no Soviet, Chinese or Cuban missiles ever had been allowed to do. In response, America attacked and removed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, once again receiving the cooperative use of Pakistani manpower and real estate ~ except now there was no longer any truck with the Pakistani establishment’s wish for a quid pro quo of Anglo-American support against India on J&K. Pakistan’s generals and diplomats soon realised their Anglo-American alliance of more than a half-century ended on September 11 2001. Their new cooperation was in killing or arresting and handing over fellow-Muslims and necessarily lacked their earlier feelings of subservience and ingratiation towards the Americans and British, and came to be done instead under at least some duress. No benefit could be reaped any more in the fight against India over Jammu & Kashmir. An era had ended in the subcontinent. FIVE WHAT TO TELL MUSHARRAF: PEACE IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT NON-AGGRESSIVE PAKISTANI INTENTIONS by Subroto Roy, First published in The Statesman December 15 2006 Editorial Page Special Article, www.thestatesman.net In June 1989 a project at an American university involving Pakistani and other scholars, including one Indian, led to the book Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s published in Karachi, New Delhi and elsewhere. The book reached Nawaz Sharif and the Islamabad elite, and General Musharraf’s current proposal on J&K, endorsed warmly by the US State Department last week, derives from the last paragraph of its editorial introduction: “Kashmir… must be demilitarised and unified by both countries sooner or later, and it must be done without force. There has been enough needless bloodshed on the subcontinent… Modern Pakistanis and Indians are free peoples who can voluntarily agree in their own interests to alter the terms set hurriedly by Attlee or Mountbatten in the Indian Independence Act 1947. Nobody but we ourselves keeps us prisoners of superficial definitions of who we are or might be. The subcontinent could evolve its political identity over a period of time on the pattern of Western Europe, with open borders and (common) tariffs to the outside world, with the free movement of people, capital, ideas and culture. Large armed forces could be reduced and transformed in a manner that would enhance the security of each nation. The real and peaceful economic revolution of the masses of the subcontinent would then be able to begin.” The editors as economists decried the waste of resources involved in the Pakistan-India confrontation, saying it had “greatly impoverished the general budgets of both Pakistan and India. If it has benefited important sections of the political and military elites of both countries, it has done so only at the expense of the general welfare of the masses.” International law Such words may have been bold in the early 1990s but today, a decade and a half later, they seem incomplete and rather naïve even to their author, who was myself, the only Indian in that project. Most significantly, the position in international law in the context of historical facts had been wholly neglected. So had been the manifest nature of the contemporary Pakistani state. Jammu & Kashmir became an entity in international law when the Treaty of Amritsar was signed between Gulab Singh and the British on March 16 1846. British India itself became an entity in international law much later, possibly as late as June 1919 when it signed the Treaty of Versailles. As for Pakistan, it had no existence in world history or international law until August 14 1947, when the British created it as a new entity out of certain demarcated areas of British India and gave it the status of a Dominion. British India dissolved itself on August 15 1947 and the Dominion of India became its successor-state in international law on that date. As BR Ambedkar pointed out at the time, the new India automatically inherited British India’s suzerainty over any and all remaining “princely” states of so-called “Indian India”. In case of J&K in particular, there never was any question of it being recognised as an independent entity in global international law. The new Pakistan, by entering a Standstill Agreement with J&K as of August 15 1947, did locally recognise J&K’s sovereignty over its decision whether to join Pakistan or India. But this Pakistani recognition lasted only until the attack on J&K that commenced from Pakistani territory as of October 22 1947, an attack in which Pakistani forces were complicit (something which, in different and mutating senses, has continued ever since). The Dominion of India had indicated it might have consented if J&K’s Ruler had decided to accede to Pakistan in the weeks following the dissolution of British India. But no such thing happened: what did happen was the descent of J&K into a condition of legal anarchy. Beginning with the Pakistani attack on J&K as of October 22 upto and including the Rape of Baramulla and the British-led Pakistani coup détat in Gilgit on one side, and the arrival of Indian forces as well as mobilization by Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad of J&K’s civilians to repel the Pakistani invaders on the other side, the State of Jammu & Kashmir became an ownerless entity in international law. In Roman Law, from which all modern international and municipal law ultimately derives, the ownership of an ownerless entity is open to be determined by “military decision”. The January 1949 Ceasefire Line that came to be renamed the Line of Control after the 1971 Bangladesh War, demarcates the respective territories that the then-Dominions and later Republics of India and Pakistan acquired by “military decision” of the erstwhile State of J&K which had come to cease to exist. What the Republic of India means by saying today that boundaries cannot be redrawn nor any populations forcibly transferred is quite simply that the division of erstwhile J&K territory is permanent, and that sovereignty over it is indivisible. It is only sheer ignorance on the part of General Musharraf’s Indian interviewer the other day which caused it to be said that Pakistan was willing to “give up” its claim on erstwhile J&K State territory which India has held: Pakistan has never had nor even made such a claim in international law. What Pakistan has claimed is that India has been an occupier and that there are many people inhabiting the Indian area who may not wish to be Indian nationals and who are being compelled against their will to remain so ~ forgetting to add that precisely the same could be said likewise of the Pakistani-held area. Accordingly, the lawful solution proposed in these pages a year ago to resolve that matter, serious as it is, has been that the Republic of India invite every person covered under Article 370, citizen-by- citizen, under a condition of full information, to privately and without fear decide, if he/she has not done so already, between possible Indian, Iranian, Afghan or Pakistani nationalities ~ granting rights and obligations of permanent residents to any of those persons who may choose for whatever private reason not to remain Indian nationals. If Pakistan acted likewise, the problem of J&K would indeed come to be resolved. The Americans, as self- appointed mediators, have said they wish “the people of the region to have a voice” in a solution: there can be no better expression of such voice than allowing individuals to privately choose their own nationalities and their rights and responsibilities accordingly. The issue of territorial sovereignty is logically distinct from that of the choice of nationality by individual inhabitants. Military de-escalation Equally significant though in assessing whether General Musharraf’s proposal is an anachronism, is Pakistan’s history since 1947: through Ayub’s 1965 attack, the civil war and secession of Bangladesh, the Afghan war and growth of the ISI, the Kargil incursion, the 1999 coup détat, and, once or twice removed, the 9/11 attacks against America. It is not a history that allows any confidence to arise in Indians that we are not dealing with a country misgoverned by a tiny arrogant exploitative military elite who remain hell-bent on aggression against us. Like the USA and USSR twenty years ago, what we need to negotiate about, and negotiate hard about, is an overall mutual military drawdown and de-escalation appropriate to lack of aggressive intent on both sides. Is General Musharraf willing to discuss that? It would involve reciprocal verifiable assessment of one another’s reasonable military requirements on the assumption that each was not a threatening enemy of the other. That was how the USA-USSR drawdown and de-escalation occurred successfully. If General Musharraf is unwilling to enter such a discussion, there is hardly anything to talk about with him. We should wait for democracy to return. SIX “AN INDIAN REPLY TO PRESIDENT ZARDARI: REWARDING PAKISTAN FOR BAD BEHAVIOUR LEADS TO SCHIZOPHRENIC RELATIONSHIPS” by Subroto Roy, December 17 2008 Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari’s recent argument in the New York Times resembles closely the well-known publications of his ambassador to the United States, Mr Husain Haqqani. Unfortunately, this Zardari-Haqqani thesis about Pakistan’s current predicament in the world and the world’s predicament with Pakistan is shot through with clear factual and logical errors. These need to be aired because true or useful conclusions cannot be reached from mistaken premises or faulty reasoning. 1. Origins of Pakistan, India, J&K, and their mutual problems Mr Zardari makes the following seemingly innocuous statement: “…. the two great nations of Pakistan and India, born together from the same revolution and mandate in 1947, must continue to move forward with the peace process.” Now as a matter of simple historical fact, the current entities in the world system known as India and Pakistan were not “born together from the same revolution and mandate in 1947”. It is palpably false to suppose they were and Pakistanis indulge in wishful thinking and self-deception about their own political history if they suppose this. India’s Republic arose out of the British Dominion known as “India” which was the legal successor of the entity known previously in international law as “British India”. British India had had secular governance and so has had the Indian Republic. By contrast, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan arose out of a newly created state in international law known as the British Dominion of Pakistan, consisting of designated territory carved out of British India by a British decision and coming into existence one day before British India extinguished itself. (Another new state, Bangladesh, later seceded from Pakistan.) The British decision to create territory designated “Pakistan” had nothing to do with any anti-British “revolution” or “mandate” supported by any Pakistani nationalism because there was none. (Rahmat Ali’s anti-Hindu pamphleteering in London could be hardly considered Pakistani nationalism against British rule. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s Pashtun patriots saw themselves as Indian, not Pakistani.) To the contrary, the British decision had to do with a small number of elite Pakistanis — MA Jinnah foremost among them — demanding not to be part of the general Indian nationalist movement that had been demanding a British departure from power in the subcontinent. Jinnah’s separatist party, the Muslim League, was trounced in the 1937 provincial elections in all the Muslim-majority areas of British India that would eventually become Pakistan. Despite this, in September 1939, Britain, at war with Nazi Germany, chose to elevate the political power of Jinnah and his League to parity with the general Indian nationalist movement led by MK Gandhi. (See, Francis Robinson, in William James and Subroto Roy (eds), Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s.) Britain needed India’s mostly Muslim infantry-divisions — the progenitors of the present-day Pakistan Army — and if that meant tilting towards a risky political idea of “Pakistan” in due course, so it would be. The thesis that Pakistan arose from any kind of “revolution” or “mandate” in 1947 is fantasy — the Muslim super-elite that invented and endorsed the Pakistan idea flew from Delhi to Karachi in chartered BOAC Dakotas, caring not a hoot about the vulnerability of ordinary Muslim masses to Sikh and Hindu majority wrath and retaliation on the ground. Modern India succeeded to the rights and obligations of British India in international law, and has had a recognized existence as a state since at least the signing of the Armistice and Treaty of Versailles in 1918-1919. India was a founding member of the United Nations, being a signatory of the 1945 San Francisco Declaration, and an original member of the Bretton Woods institutions. An idea put forward by Argentina that as of 1947 India and Pakistan were both successor states of British India was rejected by the UN (Argentina withdrew its own suggestion), and it was universally acknowledged India was already a member of the UN while Pakistan would have to (and did) apply afresh for membership as a newly created state in the UN. Pakistan’s entry into the UN had the enthusiastic backing of India and was opposed by only one existing UN member, Afghanistan, due to a conflict that continues to this day over the legitimacy of the Durand Line that bifurcated the Pashtun areas. Such a review of elementary historical facts and the position in law of Pakistan and India is far from being of merely pedantic interest today. Rather, it goes directly to the logical roots of the conflict over the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) — a state that itself originated as an entity in the world system a full century before Pakistan was to do so and more than half a century before British India did, but which would collapse into anarchy and civil war in 1947-1949. Britain (or England) had been a major nation-state in the world system recognized since Grotius first outlined modern international law. On March 16 1846, Britain entered into a treaty, the Treaty of Amritsar, with one Gulab Singh, and the “State of Jammu & Kashmir” came to arise as a recognizable entity in international law for the first time. (See my “History of Jammu and Kashmir” published in The Statesman, Oct 29-30 2006, available elsewhere here.) Jammu & Kashmir continued in orderly existence as a state until it crashed into legal and political anarchy and civil war a century later. The new Pakistan had entered into a “Standstill Agreement” with the State of Jammu & Kashmir as of August 15 1947. On or about October 22 1947, Pakistan unilaterally ended that Standstill Agreement and instead caused military forces from its territory to attack the State of Jammu & Kashmir along the Mansehra Road towards Baramula and Srinagar, coinciding too with an Anglo-Pakistani coup d’etat in Gilgit and Baltistan (see my “Solving Kashmir”; “Law, Justice & J&K”; “Pakistan’s Allies”, all published in The Statesman in 2005-2006 and available elsewhere here). The new Pakistan had chosen, in all deliberation, to forswear law, politics and diplomacy and to resort to force of arms instead in trying to acquire J&K for itself via a military decision. It succeeded only partially. Its forces took and then lost both Baramula and Kargil; they may have threatened Leh but did not attempt to take it; they did take and retain Muzaffarabad and Skardu; they were never near taking the summer capital, Srinagar, though might have threatened the winter capital, Jammu. All in all, a Ceasefire Line came to be demarcated on the military positions as of February 1 1949. After a war in 1971 that accompanied the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan, that Ceasefire Line came to be renamed the “Line of Control” between Pakistan and India. An ownerless entity may be acquired by force of arms — the erstwhile State of Jammu & Kashmir in 1947-1949 had become an ownerless entity that had been dismembered and divided according to military decision following an armed conflict between Pakistan and India. The entity in the world system known as the “State of Jammu & Kashmir” created on March 16 1846 by Gulab Singh’s treaty with the British ceased to exist as of October 22 1947. Pakistan had started the fight over J&K but there is a general rule of conflicts that he who starts a fight does not get to finish it. Such is the simplest and most practical statement of the history of the current problem. The British, through their own compulsions and imperial pretensions, raised all the talk about a “Lapse of Paramountcy” of the British Crown over the “Native Princes” of “Indian India”, and of how, the “Native Princes” were required to “accede” to either India or Pakistan. This ignored Britain’s own constitutional law. BR Ambedkar pointed out with unsurpassed clarity that no “Lapse of Paramountcy” was possible even for a single logical moment since “Paramountcy” over any “Native Princes” who had not joined India or Pakistan as of August 15 1947, automatically passed from British India to its legal successor, namely, the Dominion of India. It followed that India’s acquiescence was required for any subsequent accession to Pakistan – an acquiescence granted in case of Chitral and denied in case of Junagadh. What the Republic of India means by saying today that boundaries cannot be redrawn nor any populations forcibly transferred is quite simply that the division of erstwhile J&K territory is permanent, and that sovereignty over it is indivisible. What Pakistan has claimed is that India has been an occupier and that there are many people inhabiting the Indian area who may not wish to be Indian nationals and who are being compelled against their will to remain so ~ forgetting to add that precisely the same could be said likewise of the Pakistani-held area. The lawful solution I proposed in “Solving Kashmir, “Law, Justice and J&K” and other works has been that the Republic of India invite every person covered under its Article 370, citizen-by-citizen, under a condition of full information, to privately and without fear decide, if he/she has not done so already, between possible Indian, Iranian, Afghan or Pakistani nationalities ~ granting rights and obligations of permanent residents to any of those persons who may choose for whatever private reason not to remain Indian nationals. If Pakistan acted likewise, the problem of J&K would indeed come to be resolved. The Americans, as self-appointed mediators, have said they wish “the people of the region to have a voice” in a solution: there can be no better expression of such voice than allowing individuals to privately choose their own nationalities and their rights and responsibilities accordingly. The issue of territorial sovereignty is logically distinct from that of the choice of nationality by individual inhabitants. 2. Benazir’s assassination falsely compared to the Mumbai massacres Secondly, President Zardari draws a mistaken comparison between the assassination last year of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, and the Mumbai massacres a few weeks ago. Ms Bhutto’s assassination may resemble more closely the assassinations in India of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. Indira Gandhi died in “blowback” from the unrest she and her younger son and others in their party had opportunistically fomented among Sikh fundamentalists and sectarians since the late 1970s. Rajiv Gandhi died in “blowback” from an erroneous imperialistic foreign policy that he, as Prime Minister, had been induced to make by jingoistic Indian diplomats, a move that got India’s military needlessly involved in the then-nascent Sri Lankan civil war. Benazir Bhutto similarly may be seen to have died in “blowback” from her own political activity as prime minister and opposition leader since the late 1980s, including her own encouragement of Muslim fundamentalist forces. Certainly in all three cases, as in all assassinations, there were lapses of security too and imprudent political judgments made that contributed to the tragic outcomes. Ms Bhutto’s assassination has next to nothing to do with the Mumbai massacres, besides the fact the perpetrators in both cases were Pakistani terrorists. President Zardari saying he himself has lost his wife to terrorism is true but not relevant to the proper diagnosis of the Mumbai massacres or to Pakistan-India relations in general. Rather, it serves to deflect criticism and condemnation of the Pakistani state’s pampered handing of Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds, as well as the gross irresponsibility of Pakistan’s military scientists (not AQ Khan) who have been recently advocating a nuclear first strike against India in the event of war. 3. Can any religious nation-state be viable in the modern world? President Zardari’s article says: “The world worked to exploit religion against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan by empowering the most fanatic extremists as an instrument of destruction of a superpower. The strategy worked, but its legacy was the creation of an extremist militia with its own dynamic.” This may be overly simplistic. As pointed out in my article “Pakistan’s Allies”, Gregory Zinoviev himself after the Bolshevik Revolution had declared that international communism “turns today to the peoples of the East and says to them, ‘Brothers, we summon you to a Holy War first of all against British imperialism!’ At this there were cries of Jehad! Jehad! And much brandishing of picturesque Oriental weapons.” (Treadgold, Twentieth Century Russia, 1990, p. 213). For more than half of the 20th century, orthodox Muslims had been used by Soviet communists against British imperialism, then by the British and Americans (through Pakistan) against Soviet communism. Touché! Blowback and counter-blowback! The real question that arises from this today may be why orthodox Muslims have allowed themselves to be used either way by outside forces and have failed in developing a modern nation-state and political culture of their own. Europe and America only settled down politically after their religious wars were over. Perhaps no religious nation-state is viable in the modern world. 4. Pakistan’s behaviour leads to schizophrenia in international relations President Zardari pleads for, or perhaps demands, resources from the world: “the best response to the Mumbai carnage is to coordinate in counteracting the scourge of terrorism. The world must act to strengthen Pakistan’s economy and democracy, help us build civil society and provide us with the law enforcement and counterterrorism capacities that will enable us to fight the terrorists effectively.” Six million pounds from Mr Gordon Brown, so much from here or there etc – President Zardari has apparently demanded 100 billion dollars from America and that is the price being talked about for Pakistan to dismantle its nuclear weapons and be brought under an American “nuclear umbrella” instead. I have pointed out elsewhere that what Pakistan seems to have been doing in international relations for decades is send out “mixed messages” – i.e. contradictory signals, whether in thought, word or deed. Clinical psychologists following the work of Gregory Bateson would say this leads to confusion among Pakistan’s interlocutors (a “double bind”) and the symptoms arise of what may be found in schizophrenic relationships. (See my article “Do President-elect Obama’s Pakistan specialists believe…”; on the “double bind” theory, an article I chanced to publish in the Journal of Genetic Psychology, 1986, may be of interest). Here are a typical set of “mixed messages” emanating from Pakistan’s government and opinion-makers: “We have nuclear weapons “We keep our nuclear weapons safe from any misuse or unauthorized use “We are willing to use nuclear weapons in a first strike against India “We do not comprehend the lessons of Hiroshima-Nagasaki “We do not comprehend the destruction India will visit upon us if we strike them “We are dangerous so we must not be threatened in any way “We are peace-loving and want to live in peace with India and Afghanistan “We love to play cricket with India and watch Bollywood movies “We love our Pakistan Army as it is one public institution that works “We know the Pakistan Army has backed armed militias against India in the past “We know these militias have caused terrorist attacks “We are not responsible for any terrorist attacks “We do not harbour any terrorists “We believe the world should pay us to not use or sell our nuclear weapons “We believe the world should pay us to not encourage the terrorists in our country “We believe the world should pay us to prevent terrorists from using our nuclear weapons “We hate India and do not want to become like India “We love India and want to become like India “We are India and we are not India…” Etc. A mature rational responsible and self-confident Pakistan would have said instead: “We apologise to India and other countries for the outrageous murders our nationals have committed in Mumbai and elsewhere “We ask the world to watch how our professional army is deployed to disarm civilian and all “non-state” actors of unauthorized firearms and explosives “We do not need and will not demand or accept a dollar in any sort of foreign aid, military or civilian, to solve our problems “We realize our economic and political institutions are a mess and we must clean them up “We will strive to build a society imbued with what Iqbal described as the spirit of modern times..” As someone who created at great personal cost at an American university twenty years ago the book Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s, I have a special interest in hoping that Pakistan shall find the path of wisdom.” Seventy Years Today Since the British Government Politically Empowered MA Jinnah by Subroto Roy The bloated armies of Indian and Pakistani historians and pseudo-historians have failed to recognize the significance of the precise start of the Second World War upon the fortunes of the subcontinent. Yet, twenty years ago, in the book I and WE James created at an American university, Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s, one of our authors, Professor Francis Robinson of the University of London, had set out the principal facts most clearly as to what flowed from the September 4 1939 empowerment of MA Jinnah by the British Government. Germany invaded Poland on September 1 1939 and Britain declared war on Germany on September 3. The next day, Linlithgow, the British Viceroy in India, started to treat MA Jinnah’s Muslim League on par with the Congress’s nationalist movement led by MK Gandhi. Until September 4 1939, the British “had had little time for Jinnah and his League. The Government’s declaration of war on Germany on 3 September, however, transformed the situation. A large part of the army was Muslim, much of the war effort was likely to rest on the two Muslim majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal. The following day, the Viceroy invited Jinnah for talks on an equal footing with Gandhi” (Robinson, in James & Roy (eds) Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy 1989, 1992). Jinnah himself was amazed by the new British attitude towards him: “suddenly there was a change in the attitude towards me. I was treated on the same basis as Mr Gandhi. I was wonderstruck why all of a sudden I was promoted and given a place side by side with Mr Gandhi.” Jinnah’s political weakness had been made obvious by the electoral defeats the Muslim League had suffered in the 1937 elections in the very provinces which more or less came to constitute West Pakistan and today constitute modern Pakistan. Britain, at war with Germany and soon Japan, was faced with the intransigence of the Congress leadership. It was unsurprising this would contribute to the British tilt empowering Congress’s declared adversary, Jinnah and the Muslim League, and hence make credible the possibility of the Pakistan that they had demanded: “As the Congress began to demand immediate independence, the Viceroy took to reassuring Jinnah that Muslim interests would be safeguarded in any constitutional change. Within a few months, he was urging the League to declare a constructive policy for the future, which was of course presented in the Lahore Resolution. In their August 1940 offer, the British confirmed for the benefit of Muslims that power would not be transferred against the will of any significant element in Indian life. And much the same confirmation was given in the Cripps offer nearly two years later…. Throughout the years 1940 to 1945, the British made no attempt to tease out the contradictions between the League’s two-nation theory, which asserted that Hindus and Muslims came from two different civilisations and therefore were two different nations, and the Lahore Resolution, which demanded that ‘Independent States’ should be constituted from the Muslim majority provinces of the NE and NW, thereby suggesting that Indian Muslims formed not just one nation but two. When in 1944 the governors of Punjab and Bengal urged such a move on the Viceroy, Wavell ignored them, pressing ahead instead with his own plan for an all-India conference at Simla. The result was to confirm, as never before in the eyes of leading Muslims in the majority provinces, the standing of Jinnah and the League. Thus, because the British found it convenient to take the League seriously, everyone had to as well—Congressmen, Unionists, Bengalis, and so on….”(Robinson in James & Roy (eds) Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy, pp. 43-44). Even British socialists who were sympathetic to Indian aspirations, would grow cold when the Congress seemed to abjectly fail to appreciate Britain’s predicament during war with Germany and Japan (Gandhi, for example, dismissing the 1942 Cripps offer as a “post-dated cheque on a failing bank”). By the 1946 elections, Muslim mass opinion had changed drastically to seem to be strongly in favour of the creation of a Pakistan. The intervening years were the ones when urban mobs all over India could be found shouting the League’s slogans: “Larke lenge Pakistan; Marke lenge Pakistan, Khun se lenge Pakistan; Dena hoga Pakistan; Leke rahenge Pakistan” (We will spill blood to take Pakistan, you will have to yield a Pakistan.) Events remote from India’s history and geography, namely, the rise of Hitler and the Second World War, had contributed between 1937 and 1947 to the change of fortunes of the Muslim League and hence of all the people of the subcontinent. The British had long discovered that the mutual antipathy between Muslims and Hindus could be utilised in fashioning their rule; specifically that the organisation and mobilisation of Muslim communal opinion in the subcontinent was a useful counterweight to any pan-Indian nationalism which might emerge to compete with British authority. As early as 1874, well before Allan Octavian Hume, ICS, had conceived the Indian National Congress, John Strachey, ICS, was to observe “The existence side by side of these (Hindu and Muslim) hostile creeds is one of the strong points in our political position in India. The better classes of Mohammedans are a source of strength to us and not of weakness. They constitute a comparatively small but an energetic minority of the population whose political interests are identical with ours.” By 1906, when a deputation of Muslims headed by the Aga Khan first approached the British pleading for communal representation, Minto the Viceroy replied: “I am as firmly convinced as I believe you to be that any electoral representation in India would be doomed to mischievous failure which aimed at granting a personal enfranchisement, regardless of the beliefs and traditions of the communities composing the population of this Continent.” Minto’s wife wrote in her diary that the effect was “nothing less than the pulling back of sixty two millions of (Muslims) from joining the ranks of the seditious opposition.” (The true significance of MAK Azad may have been that he, precisely at the same time, did indeed feel within himself the nationalist’s desire for freedom strongly enough to want to join the ranks of that seditious opposition.) If a pattern emerges as to the nature of the behaviour of the British political state with respect to the peoples of this or similar regions, it is precisely the economic one of rewarding those loyal to them who had protected or advanced their interests, and penalising those perceived to be acting against their will. It is wishful to think of members of the British political state as benevolent paternalists, who met with matching deeds their often philanthropic words about promoting the general welfare of their colonial wards or subordinate allies. The slogan “If you are not with us you are against us” that has come to be used by many from the Shining Path Maoists of Peru to President George W. Bush, had been widely applied already by the British in India, especially in the form “If you dare not to be with us, we will be certainly with your adversaries”. It came to be used with greatest impact on the subcontinent’s fortunes in 1939 when Britain found itself reluctantly at war with Hitler’s Germany. British loyalties lay with those who had been loyal to them. Hence in the “Indian India” of the puppet princes, Hari Singh and other “Native Princes” who had sent troops to fight as part of the British armies would be treated with a pusillanimity and grandeur so as to flatter their vanities, Sheikh Abdullah’s rebellion representing the Muslim masses of the Kashmir Valley would be ignored. And in British India, Jinnah the conservative Anglophile and his elitist Muslim League would be backed, while the radicalised masses of the Gandhi-Bose-Nehru Congress would have to be suppressed as a nuisance. (Similarly, much later, Pakistan’s bemedalled army generals would be backed by the United States against Mujibur Rehman’s impoverished student-rebels, and India’s support frowned upon regardless of how just the Bangladeshi cause.) Altruism is a limited quality in all human affairs, never more scarce than in relations between nations. In “Pakistan’s Allies” , I showed how the strategic interests of Britain, and later Britain’s American ally, came to evolve in the Northwest of the subcontinent ever since the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar as long as a Russian and later a Soviet empire had existed. A similar evolution of British domestic interests in India is distinctly observable in British support for the Pakistan Movement itself, leading on August 14 1947 to the creation of the new Dominion of Pakistan. Sheikh Abdullah’s democratic urges or Nehru’s Indian nationalism or the general welfare of the subcontinent’s people had no appeal as such to the small and brittle administrative machinery in charge of Britain’s Indian Empire — even though individual Britons had come to love, understand and explain India for the permanent benefit of her people. This may help to explain how Britain’s own long democratic traditions at home could often be found so wonderful by Indians yet the actions of the British state abroad so incongruent with them. A Brief History of Gilgit by Subroto Roy This is a rather self-contained excerpt from my two-part article in The Statesman of June 4-5 2006 titled “Pakistan’s Allies” . “Jammu & Kashmir and especially Gilgit-Baltistan adjoins the Pashtun regions whose capital has been Peshawar. In August-November 1947, a British coup d’etat against J&K State secured Gilgit-Baltistan for the new British Dominion of Pakistan. The Treaty of Amritsar had nowhere required Gulab Singh’s dynasty to accept British political control in J&K as came to be exercised by British “Residents” in all other Indian “Native States”. Despite this, Delhi throughout the late 19th Century relentlessly pressed Gulab Singh’s successors Ranbir Singh and Partab Singh to accept political control. The Dogras acquiesced eventually. Delhi’s desire for control had less to do with the welfare of J&K’s people than with protection of increasing British interests in the area, like European migration to Srinagar Valley and guarding against Russian or German moves in Afghanistan. “Sargin” or “Sargin Gilit”, later corrupted by the Sikhs and Dogras into “Gilgit”, had an ancient people who spoke an archaic Dardic language “intermediate between the Iranian and the Sanskritic”. “The Dards were located by Ptolemy with surprising accuracy on the West of the Upper Indus, beyond the headwaters of the Swat River (Greek: Soastus) and north of the Gandarae (i.e. Kandahar), who occupied Peshawar and the country north of it. This region was traversed by two Chinese pilgrims, Fa-Hsien, coming from the north about AD 400 and Hsuan Tsiang, ascending from Swat in AD 629, and both left records of their journeys.” Gilgit had been historically ruled by a Hindu dynasty called Trakane; when they became extinct, Gilgit Valley “was desolated by successive invasions of neighbouring rulers, and in the 20 or 30 years ending with 1842 there had been five dynastic revolutions. The Sikhs entered Gilgit about 1842 and kept a garrison there.” When J&K came under Gulab Singh, “the Gilgit claims were transferred with it, and a boundary commission was sent” by the British. In 1852 the Dogras were driven out with 2,000 dead. In 1860 under Ranbir Singh, the Dogras “returned to Gilgit and took Yasin twice, but did not hold it. They also in 1866 invaded Darel, one of the most secluded Dard states, to the south of the Gilgit basin but withdrew again.” The British appointed a Political Agent in Gilgit in 1877 but he was withdrawn in 1881. “In 1889, in order to guard against the advance of Russia, the British Government, acting as the suzerain power of Kashmir, established the Gilgit Agency”. The Agency was re-established under control of the British Resident in Jammu & Kashmir. “It comprised the Gilgit Wazarat; the State of Hunza and Nagar; the Punial Jagir; the Governorships of Yasin, Kuh-Ghizr and Ishkoman, and Chilas”. In 1935, the British demanded J&K lease to them for 60 years Gilgit town plus most of the Gilgit Agency and the hill-states Hunza, Nagar, Yasin and Ishkuman. Hari Singh had no choice but to acquiesce. The leased region was then treated as part of British India, administered by a Political Agent at Gilgit responsible to Delhi, first through the Resident in J& K and later a British Agent in Peshawar. J& K State no longer kept troops in Gilgit and a mercenary force, the Gilgit Scouts, was recruited with British officers and paid for by Delhi. In April 1947, Delhi decided to formally retrocede the leased areas to Hari Singh’s J& K State as of 15 August 1947. The transfer was to formally take place on 1 August. On 31 July, Hari Singh’s Governor arrived to find “all the officers of the British Government had opted for service in Pakistan”. The Gilgit Scouts’ commander, a Major William Brown aged 25, and his adjutant, a Captain Mathieson, planned openly to engineer a coup détat against Hari Singh’s Government. Between August and October, Gilgit was in uneasy calm. At midnight on 31 October 1947, the Governor was surrounded by the Scouts and the next day he was “arrested” and a provisional government declared. Hari Singh’s nearest forces were at Bunji, 34 miles from Gilgit, a few miles downstream from where the Indus is joined by Gilgit River. The 6th J& K Infantry Battalion there was a mixed Sikh-Muslim unit, typical of the State’s Army, commanded by a Lt Col. Majid Khan. Bunji controlled the road to Srinagar. Further upstream was Skardu, capital of Baltistan, part of Laddakh District where there was a small garrison. Following Brown’s coup in Gilgit, Muslim soldiers of the 6th Infantry massacred their Sikh brothers-at-arms at Bunji. The few Sikhs who survived escaped to the hills and from there found their way to the garrison at Skardu. On 4 November 1947, Brown raised the new Pakistani flag in the Scouts’ lines, and by the third week of November a Political Agent from Pakistan had established himself at Gilgit. Brown had engineered Gilgit and its adjoining states to first secede from J&K, and, after some talk of being independent, had promptly acceded to Pakistan. His commander in Peshawar, a Col. Bacon, as well as Col. Iskander Mirza, Defence Secretary in the new Pakistan and later to lead the first military coup détat and become President of Pakistan, were pleased enough. In July 1948, Brown was awarded an MBE (Military) and the British Governor of the NWFP got him a civilian job with ICI~ which however sent him to Calcutta, where he came to be attacked and left for dead on the streets by Sikhs avenging the Bunji massacre. Brown survived, returned to England, started a riding school, and died in 1984. In March 1994, Pakistan awarded his widow the Sitara-I-Pakistan in recognition of his coup détat. Gilgit’s ordinary people had not participated in Brown’s coup which carried their fortunes into the new Pakistan, and to this day appear to remain without legislative representation. It was merely assumed that since they were mostly Muslim in number they would wish to be part of Pakistan ~ which also became Liaquat Ali Khan’s assumption about J&K State as a whole in his 1950 statements in North America. What the Gilgit case demonstrates is that J&K State’s descent into a legal condition of ownerless anarchy open to “Military Decision” had begun even before the Pakistani invasion of 22 October 1947 (viz. “Solving Kashmir”, The Statesman, 1-3 December 2005). Also, whatever else the British said or did with respect to J & K, they were closely allied to the new Pakistan on the matter of Gilgit.”	i don't know
What historical Indian figure is fondly called Bapu?	Gandhi, Mohandas, Karam Chand, Mahatma, Gandhiji Our Partners Gandhiji or Mahatma Gandhi, Father of Nation He was christened Mohandas. He signed his name as M.K. Gandhi , but in full it was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. (He was the third son of the state's divan (Prime Minister) Karamchand Gandhi and Putlibai). He preferred being called ' Gandhiji '. For India , officially, he is the Father of Nation, and is fondly called 'Bapu' ('father', in Gujarat i). Tagore the poet called him reverentially ' Mahatma ' (to mean 'Great Soul' in Sanskrit and almost all other languages in India ), and the honorific title stuck and for the whole world he became Mahatma Gandhi, the spiritual leader who helped to win the freedom back to India from the hands of the British colonialists through a non-violent struggle of resistance, the modern apostle of non-violence , amity and peace, and a role model for morality in public life. And when he was felled in a Free India by the bullets of a Hindu fanatic who felt Gandhi was a supporter of the Muslims , Einstein , the great scientist and humanist, paid his tributes thus: "Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this walked the Earth in flesh and blood." From The British George Bernard Shaw who rejected the award of a Nobel Prize to the French Romain Rolland who accepted it had held Gandhi in high esteem. Gandhi's martyrdom was the pinnacle of the several sacrifices he offered for the principles he held sacred. It was on January 30, 1948 that he fell. His country had become independent months before, in August 1947, but the country was partitioned into Pakistan and India . The irony was that the Hindu s and the Muslims would not live in peace, and they continued their rioting. When Indian National Leaders were celebrating the dawn of freedom in Delhi , Gandhi, the architect of freedom, was in Bengal , trying to quell the rioting. And finally, he had to begin his fast against the rioting and for the ending of the riots. The riots stopped, and the fast ended, but Gandhi was assassinated before long, by those who thought he was siding with the Muslims! Contents	Mahatma Gandhi
Which desert's edge is found at Nigeria's northernmost borderland?	Independence Day 2012: Indian freedom fighters \| Zee News Independence Day 2012: Indian freedom fighters Jhansi Ki Rani “Khub ladi mardani woh toh Jhansi wali rani thi” Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi embodied womanpower and stood like a defiant wall against the will of the British. With her son tied to her back, she ferociously fought the British, who had wanted to take over Jhansi. She led the first freedom struggle in 1857 against the East India Company. Mangal Pandey Mangal Pandey is known to be the first freedom fighter who sowed the seed for a struggle which gave India her freedom. He is referred to as `Shaheed` Mangal Pandey in the country. He was born on July 19, 1827 in the village of Nagwa, district Ballia, Uttar Pradesh. Though he served as a Sepoy in the East India Company, he revolted against them when he found that the cartridges which were by the British were greased with lard or tallow. Lard is pork fat and tallow is beef fat. Both Hindus and Muslims were opposed to this. Pandey was a part of the 6th Company of the 34th Bengal Native Infantry when he attacked his British sergeant and an adjutant on the afternoon of March 29, 1857. The British termed it Sepoy Mutiny 1857 as it was a mass revolt of Indian soldiers in the British Army. Mangal Pandey was sentenced to death on April 8, 1857 in Barrackpore. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, fondly called `Bapu`, was the charismatic leader who paved the way for India`s independence. The ‘Father of the Nation’ was born in Porbandar, Gujarat on October 2, 1869. Mahatma Gandhi was not only the face of the nation in India`s freedom struggle, but also became an inspirational figure for the Apartheid in South Africa. Bapu went to the UK in 1891 to study law and entered the British bar, but soon returned to India and started practising in Bombay. Thereafter, he moved to South Africa to join work as a legal advisor to businessman Dada Abdulla. He stayed there for twenty long years and fought for the rights of the Indians. But in 1915, Gandhiji returned to India and devoted himself to the freedom struggle. Numerous freedom fighters were pleased with his personality and the unique way in which he fought. After this, there was no looking back. Mahatma Gandhi launched movements like the Non-cooperation Movement, Purna Swaraj, Civil Disobedience Movement, Quit India Movement which shook the British Raj completely. He also gave the people this mantra: "Do or Die". The famous poet Rabindranath Tagore and India`s most well-known writer gave him the title of Mahatma, or `The Great Soul`. Bapu also fought for the eradication of untouchability in the Indian society and addressed the low caste people as `harijans`. Mahatma Gandhi, symbol of Free India, was assassinated by Nathuram Godse on 30 January 1948. Remembering our freedom fighters Today we are a free and democratic nation, but have we ever given a thought about who were the ‘Heroes’ who sacrificed their lives for this ‘free air’ that you and I breathe today? It was our great freedom fighters undying spirit, bravery and undaunted courage that freed ‘Bharat Mata’ from the clutches of the ‘British Raj’. Here are some great personalities who led the freedom struggle and got this largest democracy independent on August 15, 1947. Gopal Krishna Gokhale He was political mentor to the ‘Father of the Nation’. He was one of the senior leaders of the Indian National Congress, whose thoughts inspired an entire generation of freedom fighters who came after him. Biplob Ghosal & Sushmita Dutta - Biplob Ghosal & Sushmita Dutta Sarojini Naidu She was aptly called the Nightingale of India, for her status as a distinguished poet and excellent orator. She was the first woman to attain the post of the Governor of a state – Uttar Pradesh. She shared a very affectionate relationship with Bapu, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, whom she called ‘Mickey Mouse’. Dr Rajendra Prasad He was one of the prime architects of the Indian republic and the foremost in making the constitution of India. He was also the first President of India when the nation turned sovereign in 1950. He served dutifully for 12 years as the President of India, after which he retired. Lala Lajpat Rai Lalaji was popularly called Punjab Kesari. Along with Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal, they were called Lal-Bal-Pal, who advised stronger methods to gain independence from the British. During the Simon Commission, Lalaji received lathi blows which ultimately turned Bhagat Singh Bhagat Singh is still remembered as the youth icon who inspired his own generation for the Independence struggle. Bhagat Singh was born in Punjab on September 27, 1907. His hatred for the British began after the Jalianwala Bagh massacre and he joined the Non-Cooperation Movement that was begun by Mahatma Gandhi in 1921. However, after the Chauri-Chaura incident, he parted ways with Gandhiji`s ideology and joined the National College in Lahore, a center of revolutionary activities. Bhagat Singh, along with his mentor Chandrashekhar Azad, formed the ‘Hindustan Samajvadi Prajatantra Sangha’ (HSPS). Bhagat Singh gave the famous slogan `Inquilab Zindabad`. He gained widespread national support when he underwent a 116 day fast in jail, demanding equal rights for British and Indian political prisoners. Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were sentenced to death in the Lahore conspiracy case and ordered to be hanged on 24 March 1931. However, they were hanged on 23 March 1931 at 7:30 pm. Subhash Chandra Bose had said: "Bhagat Singh had become the symbol of the new awakening among the youths ..." Chandrasekhar Azad The firebrand revolutionary leader gave severe fright to the British. The Kakori Consipracy and the revenge of Lala Lajpat Rai’s death shook the very pillars of the British Empire. He had claimed that he would never be taken alive by the English, and he kept his pledge till the end of his life. When the British surrounded him, he shot himself before the British could touch him. The British did not dare to touch his body for a long time in fear that he could still be deadly. Subhash Chandra Bose Subhash Chandra Bose, also known as Netaji, was one of the most prominent leaders of the Indian Independence Movement against the British Raj. Such was his charisma that he defeated Mahatma Gandhi`s own candidate in the Congress presidential elections during the beginning of World War II. But after winning the elections, Netaji left Congress. In 1939, Bose sought assistance from Germany, Italy, and Japan as they were enemies of Britain and thus, would be natural allies to India. Thereafter, Netaji formed the Indian National Army (INA) with some 30,000 Indian soldiers in 1943. His famous slogan `Tum mujhe khoon do main tumhe azadi doonga` attracted many youngsters to join his Army. The remarkable thing about his army was that it was composed of a women’s regiment as well. On August 16, 1945 Netaji boarded a plane from Singapore to Bangkok. The plane made a stopover in Taipei and crashed within minutes of take-off from there. Netaji’s body was cremated in Taipei on August 20, 1945 and his ashes were flown to Tokyo on September 5, 1945 where they rest in the Renkoji Temple. Mystery still surrounds his death, as many feel that he survived the air crash and went into hiding. Subhash Chandra Bose was not only known for his struggle for freedom but also for advocating equality in the Indian society in terms of caste, religion and wealth. His slogan `Jai Hind` still resides amongst the people of this nation. Jawaharlal Nehru Often called Panditji, Nehru was the first Prime Minister of independent India. He remained in office till his death in 1964. Under the apprenticeship of Bapu, Pandit Nehru rose to be not only one of the tallest leaders of India but a great statesman too. He was one of the people responsible for founding the International Non-Aligned Movement. Motilal Nehru He was the patriarch of India’s most powerful political family, the Nehru-Gandhi family. An important leader of the Indian National Congress, Nehru also served the Congress twice as the President. He founded the Swaraj Party, which wanted Dominion status for India.	i don't know
Enugu, Kano Pillars, Heartland, and Lobi Stars are famous Nigerian?	Kano Pillars - First thoughts about Kano Pillars Kano Pillars Football Club is a Nigerian football club based in Kano. They play in the top division in Nigerian football, the Nigerian Premier League. Write here your first thoughts about Kano Pillars ... 14 Dec 2016 17:59 Kano pillars will beat Crystal Palace mercilessly with. 5 players. I will upload my nudes tonight if Manchester united loses this game 14 Dec 2016 16:47 GOod one from Kano Pillars Basketball team for making to the semi-final 14 Dec 2016 16:16 Fans hail Kano Pillars Basketball Club as team makes semi-finals in Egypt - 14 Dec 2016 16:09 Surprising kano pillars through to semi finals of that is good for nigerian basketball. 14 Dec 2016 15:21 Kano Pillars Basketball team doing well on the continental stage. Proud! ð ð³ð¬ 14 Dec 2016 15:20 Answer: Kano Pillars FC qualified for the Caf Champions League 5 times, in 2009, 2011, 2013, 2014, and 2015. 14 Dec 2016 15:13 Basketball: Kano Pillars zoom into semi-final of African Championship 14 Dec 2016 14:23 Good news: Kano pillars through to semis of the continental championship. 14 Dec 2016 14:15 Unbelievable, Kano Pillars thru to d semi final of 2016 Africa champions cup in Egypt, beat Algerian side Petroliers 91-81 today. 14 Dec 2016 14:07 Gold Cup : Kano Pillars, Remo Stars in semi finals - 14 Dec 2016 13:35 BREAKING: Kano Pillars Basketball club beat Algeria's Sportif Petroliers 91-81 to reach the semi-finals of the FIBA Africa Champions Cup. 14 Dec 2016 13:29 FT: Pillars 91 - 81. GSP. Kano Pillars qualified to the semi finals at the on going FIBA Africa Basketball Club Championships. 14 Dec 2016 13:25 FT Kano Pillars 91-81 Groupement Sportif Petroliers (Algeria). The Nigerian Champions are through to the semi finals 14 Dec 2016 11:33 The Quarterfinal game between Kano Pillars and Groupement Sportif Des Petrolier is about to tip off (1/2). 10 Dec 2016 13:18 Kano Pillars have announced they have signed Golden Eaglets star striker, Nazifi Yahya. âWe have signed Nazifi as... 29 Nov 2016 03:56 Kano Pillars beat MFM FC 4-2 in continuation of the pre-season Gold Cup tournament in Ijebu-Ode on Sunday. [ 58... 17 Nov 2016 17:11 El-Kanemi Warriors have confirmed the signing of Promise James from Kano Pillars and Efe Yarhere from relegated Warri Wolves 29 Oct 2016 06:22 Abia Warriors FC have successfully secured the services. of former Enyimba, Rangers. International, Kano Pillars and COD United coach 02 Jul 2016 23:20 Gyang eyes Kano success: Kano Pillars midfielder Amos Gyang is looking forward to the challen... 01 Jul 2016 21:03 even if Portugal and RM were to play against Kano Pillars you think'd root for them? Wales all the way. 01 Jul 2016 02:38 NPFL Review: Weâre robbed in Bauchi â Pillars - . Kano Pillars have alleged they were r... 01 Jul 2016 00:42 Pillars Deny Sacking Babaganaru - . Kano Pillars say they have no intention of sacking m... 30 Jun 2016 16:15 Kano Pillars Presentation of the DSTV Premier Basketball Trophy to the Kano State Sports Commission Chairman 30 Jun 2016 15:11 The heat is on as Akwa United host their northern demons Kano pillars.. Don't miss this.. 30 Jun 2016 15:08 The big game. Akwa United vs kano pillars this weekend.. 30 Jun 2016 10:33 Kano Pillars, sentiments aside "Please tweeps sentiments aside which club jersey is nice to have? ." 30 Jun 2016 06:56 Kano Pillars will be missing the services of influential striker, Emmanuel Edmund for the next two weeks owing to injury 29 Jun 2016 21:07 Den go need sew you new heart first. lol. Kano Pillars wan sign me." 29 Jun 2016 19:38 I thought Kano Pillars was local champions, NPFL is a Local League. smh 29 Jun 2016 17:32 In Argentine football sir,I don't see kano pillars threatening. na only u follow for Nigeria 29 Jun 2016 16:33 Kano Pillars emerge basketball champions. Despite going 13-17 in the first quarter, the Sani Ahmed tutored side... 29 Jun 2016 12:52 Very soon Orlando pirates and kano pillars go dey drag d * 29 Jun 2016 12:52 Most goals scored at home by teams. 28 - Kano Pillars, Wikki. 22 - Rangers. 21 - Nasarawa Utd, Sunshine Stars 28 Jun 2016 22:26 Nigeria new champions Kano Pillars qualify for FIBA Africa Champions Cup Zone 3 qualifier 28 Jun 2016 17:28 Former Giwa FC captain Charles Henlong has chosen to play for Wikki Tourist s over Kano Pillars, despite having to... 28 Jun 2016 16:45 Following its loss to Mark Mentors in last seasonâs finals, Kano Pillars Basketball club came back from a 4-point... 28 Jun 2016 16:19 kano pillars. Started supporting after a friend's bro gave d jersey to me 28 Jun 2016 12:16 Are you even sure Kano Pillars will be too much for them? 28 Jun 2016 11:53 there no way that I can get ur Jersey here in lagos, kano pillars and enyimba Jersey is in every sports shop in lagos. 07 Jun 2016 14:19 NPFL: Pillar& Rabiu Ali Returns After Suspension - . Kano Pillars have been boos... 24 May 2016 08:30 Big 5 in the Nigerian Premier League in no order 1. Enyimba 2.Shooting Stars 3. Rangers International 4.Kano Pillars 5.Heartland FC 12 May 2016 21:08 El-Kanemi trip Kano Pillars: El-Kanemi Warriors put life back to their campaign with a two-nil win over four-... 12 May 2016 19:35 El-Kanemi Warriors of Borno beat Kano Pillars of Kano 2 goals to Nil in Maiduguri today. . Where are we celebrating my peopâ¦ 12 May 2016 19:34 5 - Kano Pillars have now lost in five of their last six away matches against El-Kanemi Warriors in the Deflated 12 May 2016 19:31 sir dont block sombori o.. Is it true EL-Kanemi Warriors dealt with Kano Pillars? This life!! Pot of beans. 07 May 2016 05:14 Former Nigeria League champions Kano Pillars have been hammered by the League Management Company , LMC for the... 06 May 2016 09:01 LMC set to ban Kano Pillars after breaking Enyimbaâs driver head: The League Management Company (LMC) is set ... 06 May 2016 05:49 The League Management Company (LMC) and Kano Pillars have denied that Enyimba players and officials were attacked on Wednesday. 29 Apr 2016 17:24 Kano Pillars coach, Baba Ganaru says he wants his side to maintain their positive energy from last weekend when... 17 Apr 2016 11:59 Early team news Omo Johnson is in Kano Pillars' match day squad for the first time since February due to injury. 11 Apr 2016 09:48 Gambo Mohammed is the Gerrard of the NPFL, that guy don tey and him no comot for Kano Pillars. 09 Apr 2016 11:42 Kano Pillars vs Nassarawa Utd predictions . Expecting to pick the maximum point against Nassarawa Utd at the Sanni Abacha stadium 06 Apr 2016 11:49 Early Team News Gambo Mohammed returns to the Kano Pillars match day squad after missing last 2 games due to injury. 06 Apr 2016 07:40 Giwa against Kano Pillars will be where we might see away win or draw.Lobi will do enuf not to allow Wikki Tourist to tour on dem 06 Apr 2016 06:40 Kano Pillars have been boosted for todayâs game at Giwa FC with the return from injury of skipper Gambo Mohammed & defender Adamu Murtala. 05 Apr 2016 23:50 I think Kano Pillars are the most entertaining side of the NPFL. 05 Apr 2016 21:02 Giwa FC hosts kano Pillars at the Rwang Pang Stadium,its midweek action, its 05 Apr 2016 18:19 Even Kano Pillars almost Died By Fire. No way will withstand us. 05 Apr 2016 18:02 My four most delightful teams to watch in the npfl are: Rangers, Akwa Utd, mfmfc, Kano pillars(in no particular other) 05 Apr 2016 17:47 Rangers will draw or better Kano pillars result in Agege. Rangers sabi ball Na. 05 Apr 2016 17:45 Ilechukwu:"We have played two draws against Kano Pillars and Plateau United and we don't want to play another draw against Rangers" 05 Apr 2016 17:00 0 - Giwa FC have never defeated Kano Pillars in the P4 W0 D2 L2. Bugged 05 Apr 2016 14:24 i need quality pictures of Kano Pillars fans for a publication on why they are the best in Nigeria, pls get in touch 04 Apr 2016 17:44 -Gun Down Kadunaâs Kada, Immigration It is no news that Kano Pillars are in blistering form as they continue to... 04 Apr 2016 14:28 Ex-champions Kano Pillars on a 6-game unbeaten run play on the road at Giwa FC on Wednesday from 4pm 04 Apr 2016 13:48 95% of Kano Pillars fans don't have time for DSTV advert, they love their team 04 Apr 2016 09:36 On . Once again our focus is on Kano Pillars. They seem to be flawless this season as they... 04 Apr 2016 09:07 10 . Giwa FC of Jos will host title contender Kano Pillars in Jos, Where will... 03 Apr 2016 19:05 Former Kano Pillars coach Felix Okey Emordi has said his job hunting may soon be over as he looks forward to... 03 Apr 2016 16:47 See Valencia. Sigh. He can't even play in Kano Pillars. Good they didn't remove Mata in this match.. attack ticking 03 Apr 2016 16:11 you decamped form MFM to Kano pillars. 03 Apr 2016 14:47 On this day in 2014: Theophilus Afelokhai & Rabiu Ali scored from spot kicks as Kano Pillars beat Wolves 2-0 03 Apr 2016 14:09 Enyimba, FC Ifeanyiubah, Kano Pillars, Rangers are the only sides with 100% home record this season 03 Apr 2016 12:33 Kpakor thumbs up Kano Pillars, Sunshine Stars : Former Super Eagles star, Moses Kpakor has said Kano Pillars an... 11 Mar 2016 11:08 So Prince Aggrey collected money from FC Ifeanyi Ubah and still dumped them for Kano Pillars. I think should look into this. 28 Feb 2016 16:51 Rangers have allowed Niger Tornadoes pull one goal back...Hope it doesn't end like the Kano Pillars game. 28 Feb 2016 16:45 GOAL! Mubarak Umar reduce the deficit for Niger Tornadoes against Kano Pillars, 2-1. 22 Feb 2016 12:56 Which of the games got you talking after match day 1 fixtures in the Nigeria Professional Football League ? I love Kano Pillars vs Rangers... 21 Feb 2016 20:35 - This is the right time to invest in the Nigerian League. A crowd of 24,000 went to see the Kano Pillars game today. 21 Feb 2016 19:30 See the beauty of Nigerian League: 24,657 fans watched Kano Pillars best Rangers 2:1 today at Sani Abacha Stadium . 21 Feb 2016 18:31 Watched the Kano Pillars vs Rangers match which ended 2-1. Good advertisement for the Nigerian League I Hope this will be sustained. 05 Feb 2016 15:39 Ifeanyi Matthew has completed his move from El-kanemi Warriors to Kano Pillars 24 Jan 2016 12:08 Abia Warriors striker was generatin interest from Kano Pillars & Enyimba b4 d CHAN. & now international interest. 26 Dec 2015 15:07 look at the the * who mocked Rvp... even if he (Rvp) played for kano pillars. He's still no way this *** mate 26 Dec 2015 14:40 LVG:Guy check my cv, will the NFF hire me?. Giggs:omo, I doubt o, u fit try kano pillars sha . Cc 26 Dec 2015 14:24 Just support Kano pillars at least they win at home 26 Dec 2015 13:43 Like the people running United are some Kano Pillars trained mofos 26 Dec 2015 13:25 I would rather see kano pillars or Enugu Rangers play than to watch man u 26 Dec 2015 11:47 Kano Pillars to resume training next Monday 26 Dec 2015 09:48 Pillars resume training Monday: Kano Pillars will resume training for the new Nigeria season on Monday, offici... 26 Dec 2015 07:31 Nigeria champions Enyimba have completed the signing of Kano Pillars goalkeeper Theophilus Afelokhai ahead of the 2015/2016 season 25 Dec 2015 12:36 Enyimba reach agreement to sign Kano Pillars keeper Afelokhai: The Edo-State born goalkeeper is expected to gi... 25 Dec 2015 11:10 has completed the signing of goalkeeper Theophilus Afelokhai from Kano Pillars for an undisclosed fee. 24 Dec 2015 17:20 GLONPFL Champions, Enyimba have signed goalkeeper Theophilus Afelokhai from Kano Pillars, 24 Dec 2015 16:40 Yes that record breaking game in Kano pillars being beaten by Nassarawa united after 12years 24 Dec 2015 16:38 Another standout moment is Nassrawa United beating Kano pillars Away from Home after 10 seasons also Beating Sunshine Stars 24 Dec 2015 16:03 Reigning Nigeria Premier League champions, Enyimba have started recruiting for next season as they have snappe... 24 Dec 2015 15:46 Update: Kano Pillars winger Azeez Shobowale is in talks with Niger Tornadoes . 24 Dec 2015 14:44 Enyimba Official:"We have agreed terms with Afelokhai and Kano Pillars and you could say he is our players right now" 2/2 24 Dec 2015 11:33 Former Kano Pillars Coach, Okey Emordi lost out in the race to become the Technical Adviser of Rangers 24 Dec 2015 11:06 Enyimba Football Club have reached an agreement to sign Kano Pillars goalkeeper Theophilus Afelokhai for an undisclosed fee 24 Dec 2015 10:45 Enyimba reached an agreement with Kano Pillars over transfer of Theophilus Afelokai as Chijioke Ejiogu & M.Ocheje are both leaving the club 24 Dec 2015 10:38 have reached an agreement with Kano Pillars over the transfer of goalkeeper Theophilus Afelokai . 24 Dec 2015 10:27 Enyimba FC sign Dare Ojo Kwara United, reach an agreement with Kano Pillars for the signature of Goalkeeper Theophilus Afelokhai 25 Oct 2015 17:34 Liverpool can comfortably draw with Kano Pillars 25 Oct 2015 16:18 I'd rather watch Gombe United vs Kano Pillars,than to watch ManUnited vs ManCity again. A vry vry poor performance by the both of d teams. 25 Oct 2015 14:25 Valencia cannot pick a shirt in Kano Pillars.. so who is he a United player... 25 Oct 2015 11:43 I wish I have the money now I will arrange friendly match between Chelsea and my kano pillars for people to see we can beat 3-0." 24 Oct 2015 21:45 The team, which enjoyed the most victories is Kano Pillars (20 wins). 24 Oct 2015 16:43 GROUP B. & . Q1: Enugu, Kano Pillars, Heartland, and Lobi Stars are famous Nigerian_? 24 Oct 2015 16:19 Kano pillars will beat this chelsea team 24 Oct 2015 16:01 On current form4. Kano pillars can beat Chelsea fc 24 Oct 2015 16:00 is tending towards relegation and championship. Will be difficult to see game on TV by next season. Kano Pillars here I come 24 Oct 2015 14:52 Kano pillars will give Chelsea 2 goals ahead and still beat them 24 Oct 2015 10:07 Of course, your hand knows what your mind denies. Check Juve & Kano Pillars' league positions. They all remain BIG Champions. 24 Oct 2015 08:26 Kano pillars is better Arsenal is good,but. is better? 23 Oct 2015 14:34 Kano Pillars coach, Mohammed Baba Ganaru has confirmed that his club management have started planning for the... 23 Oct 2015 11:21 Man U. Got me cracked up with d Kano pillars stuff... Nice one. 23 Oct 2015 10:58 Ghanaian striker Godbless Asamoah bags brace for Dolphins in crucial survival win over Kanoâ¦ 23 Oct 2015 10:49 Kano pillars"Mention that club to win EPL this season_ 23 Oct 2015 10:21 Kano pillars Mention to that club that's a sure bet_ 23 Oct 2015 09:38 Kano Pillars unable to win at home and away in last 2 games is an indication a new NPFL champion is in the offing this seaâ¦ 22 Oct 2015 22:22 Godbless Asamoahâs brace propel Dolphins in vital home win over Kano Pillars in Nigerian top-flight'. 22 Oct 2015 22:20 Godbless Asamoahâs scores to help Dolphins in vital home win over Kano Pillars . 22 Oct 2015 20:02 Godbless Asamoah scored twice as Dolphins FC defeated Kano Pillars 2-1 in the Nigerian Premier League on Thursday https:/â¦ 11 Oct 2015 11:11 BALA MOHAMMED has been appointed referee for the Kano Pillars vs Sunshine Stars match. A. ABUBAKAR and JIBRIN ISA... 06 Oct 2015 08:37 Kano Pillars were paid N15 million ($93K) for winning the 2014 Nigeria Premier Football League, which is not up to Mikel Obi's 1 week salary 03 Oct 2015 16:07 Kano Pillars had an unbeaten run in Sani Abacha Stadium for 12yrs until Nasarawa United quashed the bragging rights but no video to relive. 25 Sep 2015 19:31 Wait oh, how did this Nassarawa Utd team beat Kano Pillars at home & end their. unbeaten home run? a sign of how poor Pillars are this season 25 Sep 2015 18:14 Kano Pillars.. at least I know I won't lose any home games 25 Sep 2015 13:48 "We are history-makers. We broke the records at Kano Pillars and Sunshine Stars . Now we are making history again... 25 Sep 2015 08:21 for what... But wetin i know be say kano pillars go win the match after 90 mins 25 Sep 2015 07:29 "That club that is better than Chelsea? Kano pillars 25 Sep 2015 04:04 Warri wolve will also beat kano pillars by 1_0 24 Sep 2015 19:12 the view I am looking at now from Uganda over that game, uba and Kano Pillars, its sad and bad. We should out grow all these 24 Sep 2015 19:09 D game btw FC Ubah and Kano pillars is an indication of bad thing that may occur in d GPL soon if nothing is done. 24 Sep 2015 19:03 kano pillars players should be sanctioned for bring unruly. A huge fine should be slammed on FC Ifeanyi Ubah too 24 Sep 2015 16:00 NPFL FACT "24"- In 2012 Kano Pillars Currently 8th on table won the "24th" Edition of the Championship. 24 Sep 2015 08:34 tanxs to all management, fans, and players of heartland for this issue whereever they are am Ur's. Kano pillars supporter. 23 Sep 2015 20:10 Arteta is not even good enough for kano pillars 23 Sep 2015 19:24 It as if is Celta Vigo vs Kano pillars 23 Sep 2015 18:46 31 Kano Pillars welcome Warri Wolves FC to the ancient city 23 Sep 2015 15:23 Still wondering why goodspower anefiok of Kano pillars still not ripe for Cc 23 Sep 2015 11:01 18 - no team scored more goals than in the of last season. - Enyimba FC 17, Kano Pillars 15. 23 Sep 2015 07:20 "That club that is better than Barcelona. ? Kano pillars 22 Sep 2015 20:11 Sani Kaita to make N3 million switch to Kano Pillars via \| 22 Sep 2015 19:22 Glo Premier League club FC IfeanyiUbah have demanded three million Naira as transfer fee from Kano Pillars for... 22 Sep 2015 14:52 I hear say China man wan force move to Kano pillars na true? 22 Sep 2015 12:36 Our camera man was attacked by Ifeanyi Ubah fans - Kano Pillars via \| 22 Sep 2015 12:26 What happened in your game against Kano Pillars last weekend? 22 Sep 2015 12:01 Please what happened in the game between FC Ifeanyi Ubah Vs Kano Pillars? I am hearing somethings, but I don't want to believe 22 Sep 2015 11:13 It's not too late u can do it, girls boku, kano pillars and Eynimba awaits u ðð 21 Sep 2015 20:22 Beefing Kano Pillars, last opponent, for daring to put a spanner in Wikki Tourist 's wheels, hands up4 eternity 4-em, 21 Sep 2015 18:39 Can u tell me what happened in kano pillars vs ifeanyi Ubah fc?. 21 Sep 2015 09:53 Kano Pillars lodge complain over bad officiating inÂ Nnewi 21 Sep 2015 09:08 Kano pillars"Barca Which club is going to win champions league ? . TheCastof93days" 21 Sep 2015 07:43 Kano Pillars coach Mohammed. Babaganaru rued his sideâs luck with. the referee that handled. Week 30 against FC IfeanyiUbah 21 Sep 2015 07:36 9JA SPORTS PLANET INTERVIEW WITH BABAGANARU. Kano Pillars coach Mohammed. Babaganaru has rued his sideâs luck with... 21 Sep 2015 07:15 Ganaru desperate for Pillars to finish in top three: Head coach of Kano Pillars, Mohammed Baba Ganaru, has adm... 21 Sep 2015 05:28 Aligo & MGP our game yesterday with kano pillars is Godwin because if not for de Referee kano boys will shop our boys like suya 21 Sep 2015 04:52 It is confirmed! Kano Pillars is currently holding the longest home unbeaten streak in the entire world of football. Total Fâ¦ 20 Sep 2015 22:35 Pillars: We were attacked by Ifeanyi Ubah fans: Champions Kano Pillars claim their camera man was attacked by... 20 Sep 2015 11:27 "Kano Pillars lose third game in a row 31 Aug 2015 06:03 NFL is taking a new dimension. Â«Kano Pillars lose third game in a row 31 Aug 2015 05:50 Kano Pillars lose third game in a row via 31 Aug 2015 05:40 It is raining stones at Kano Pillars, yesterday they lost 1 - 0 to bottom placed FC Taraba. 31 Aug 2015 05:34 Kano Pillars lose third game in a row 31 Aug 2015 04:57 FC Taraba inflict more misery on KanoÂ Pillars 31 Aug 2015 04:33 Kingsley I believe my Akwa United are yet to bounce back frm FA cup final,as for Kano pillars every juju get expired date 31 Aug 2015 04:19 Probably from that's a Kano Pillars jersey he's wearing. 31 Aug 2015 00:33 Pillars lose third consecutive match--punch. Champions of the Nigeria Professional Football League , Kano Pillars... 31 Aug 2015 00:23 Nigerian Premier League 's Kano Pillars lost 1-2 Sunday. They had gone unbeaten at home for 202 matches (since 2003)! 30 Aug 2015 23:04 One day the story behind the attack on Kano Pillars team will be told. Till then those who beat drums to prevent their neighbours sleeping.. 30 Aug 2015 22:56 We'll be waiting, & that's if Kano Pillars remain in the top flight with this their free fall! 30 Aug 2015 22:53 Glad that a Lagos club has finally joined the Glo NPFL. I can now troll my Lagos peeps any time Kano Pillars deal with MFM. 30 Aug 2015 21:42 Last week it was Kano Pillars. Tonight it is Angola. 30 Aug 2015 20:48 -FC Taraba Crumble Kano Pillars Chinedu Ohanachom was the hero for El Kanemi Warriors when he scored a brace to... 30 Aug 2015 20:46 Taraba FC of Jalingo reliable defender, Obinna Nwokolo has said that their 1-0 victory over Kano Pillars in a... 30 Aug 2015 20:46 It is poor season for Kano Pillars. FC Taraba defeated Kano Pillars in an entertaining match between two clubs. 30 Aug 2015 19:59 Sunshine Stars , Kano Pillars and Manchester United lose on the same day. Despite Chelsea's loss, I feel my weekend is complete... ððð 30 Aug 2015 19:33 Watching now on African Magic...you just got the answer on third team to form Kano pillars. united 20pts 4now 30 Aug 2015 19:18 what's happening to my kano pillars now, Baba Ganaro should get his tactics right nw 30 Aug 2015 19:07 Baba free... even LvG says Kano Pillars is hard to beat it wont be as bad as Moyes' statement... 30 Aug 2015 18:16 Nasarawa United are balling hot o; ended Kano Pillars home record and thrashed Kwara Utd. Even Man United will have to be scared now. 30 Aug 2015 18:13 Kano Pillars lost as well. Weekend couldn't get any worse. 30 Aug 2015 18:12 Some body help me with kano pillars result. 26 Aug 2015 23:23 Weâre not out of title race âPillars: Nigeria Professional Football League champions, Kano Pillars, have said theirâ¦ 23 Aug 2015 21:18 is Nassarawa United not the club Kano Pillars pinched Baba Ganaru from? Looks like karma all day long. 23 Aug 2015 19:58 Pillars' unbeaten home record ends: Kano Pillars' 12-year unbeaten home league record in Nigeria's Premier Lea... 23 Aug 2015 18:07 .precisely! Seems a heavier sanction meted by Nasarawa than the fine handed to both Kano Pillars and Baba Ganaru. 23 Aug 2015 17:07 Kano Pillars lost. To the team Baba Ganaru used to coach. Who writes this script. 22 Aug 2015 09:23 The energy we spend loving and arguing about spend it on Enyimba,Kano Pillars,Ifeanyi Uba FC 20 Aug 2015 18:51 Kano Pillars head coach Mohammed Baba Ganaru has blamed the playing surface for their 1-0 loss at Enyimba in the... 13 Aug 2015 10:18 Flying Eagles Zaharadeen Bello has signed for hometown club Kano Pillars 28 Jul 2015 20:15 A coach is as good as his last game.Okey Emodi's last games were awful.His sack by Kano Pillars was what we knew will happen. 23 Jul 2015 11:59 Do you see Kano Pillars' dominance in the Nigeria Premier Basketball League ending this season? 22 Jul 2015 06:03 Nigerian champions Kano Pillars have sacked coach Okey Emordi . 19 Jul 2015 18:39 Most impressive team so far: Wikki Tourist . Most disappointing team so far: Kano Pillars (struggling poorly after winning the last three) 16 Jul 2015 07:14 "We wanted more from the Kano Pillars match" Godwin Obaje( Wikki Tourist ). In Kano? Hmm, tell him to ask Duke Udi 15 Jul 2015 17:04 More trouble for champs Kano Pillars & coach Emordi. Held at home 1-1 by Wikki Tourist . Isn't that no win in 4 games now? 01 Jul 2015 14:07 HENRY OGUNYAMODI has been appointed. referee for the Rangers vs Kano Pillars match at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Stadium, Enugu. 01 Jul 2015 10:52 Would have loved to be in Enugu tomorrow. This is a game! "Rangers vs Kano Pillars 30 Jun 2015 19:02 with Kano Pillars dropping points at home against Dolphins& Enugu Rangers targeting top spot,that's the game to look forward too 30 Jun 2015 18:56 well, week 15 big game to look forward to is the game between Enugu Rangers v Kano Pillars, 7th v 8th on the league table... 30 Jun 2015 18:34 Rangers have a decent record against Kano Pillars in Enugu; Pillars have only won once in Enugu in 2011 29 Jun 2015 11:13 Dolphins come back from two goals down to draw 2-2 against Kano Pillars inside Sani Abacha Stadium 19 Jun 2015 18:10 The performance of the ref that officiated Kano Pillars vs Giwa is an eyesore. I hope Giwa will Lodge a complain 19 Jun 2015 16:46 I really wonder why folks fail to see this perspective. What's the return on investment if he buys Kano Pillars? 18 Jun 2015 22:12 NPFL: Kano Pillars thrash and ending GiwaFc 9-match unbeaten streak 18 Jun 2015 21:50 Kano Pillars 4-1 Giwa: Jos Elephant's nine-match unbeaten streak crumbles in ... - 18 Jun 2015 21:35 NPFL: Kano Pillars 4-1 Giwa: Sai Masugida dealt the ambition of the Jos Elephant a big blow after they hammere... 18 Jun 2015 21:26 - Park well. You're in for a decade of drought. You'd wish is Kano pillars. 18 Jun 2015 21:21 Can't wait for Dangote to turn Arsenal FC to Kano Pillars' feeders team! 18 Jun 2015 21:02 39' GOAL! Rabiu Ali bags a brace from the spot again. This time he was upended by Giwa FC defender Akide. Kano Pillars 3-1 Giwaâ¦ 18 Jun 2015 20:32 Pls those who advise him shd tell him to buy Kano Pillars. 18 Jun 2015 20:18 You want Dangote to buy Kano Pillars and not Arsenal. Is that supposed to be Coporate Social Responsibility? . Is his middle â¦ 18 Jun 2015 19:39 the man is obsessed, obviously has plenty money but little brains... Let him buy Kano Pillars, his hometown club first 18 Jun 2015 18:48 Sunshine Stars secured their top-of-the-table berth with a 2-1 defeat of Warri Wolves as Kano Pillars downed Giwa... 18 Jun 2015 18:40 Kelechi's explantion EXPLAINS why Kano Pillars have not lost a Home Match for 12 YEARS!! 18 Jun 2015 18:36 Arsenal is too far for Dangote, he should start with Kano pillars 18 Jun 2015 18:19 Nice one to Kano Pillars 4 being d biggest winner & also to El-Kanemi for getting wonderful away point 18 Jun 2015 18:16 Champions Pillars thrash Giwa 4-1: Kano Pillars thrashed Giwa 4-1 in a week 12 game of the Nigeria league to m... 18 Jun 2015 18:03 tell Dangote to first make Kano Pillars the team most lucrative in the NPL 18 Jun 2015 17:33 90' Three minutes of added time. Kano Pillars 4-1 Giwa. FC 18 Jun 2015 17:29 'yeah.. Kachi_ i see kanO piLLars DOminatinq aLL the way.. ReqarDs tO (rihanna umbâ¦ 18 Jun 2015 17:17 Anyone can make noise about beating Kano Pillars at home until they get to the Sani Abacha. Then reality hits them... 18 Jun 2015 17:09 Can Kano Pillars retain the NPFL title this season? 18 Jun 2015 17:04 82' Tempo of the game has dropped. Giwa FC playing with no zest now. Kano Pillars 4-1 Giwa FC 11 Jun 2015 09:50 Look at our league... No club left in Continental championships. Kano Pillars and the so called big clubs failed again. Local Champions! 12 May 2015 13:36 Kano Pillars are in celebration mood after their striker Gambo Mohammed resumed light training on Monday morning. 06 May 2015 12:20 If Dangote should by Kano Pillars today before December Otedola will buy Eko united, Jimoh Ibrahim Sunshine FC. 28 Apr 2015 12:10 As long as the govt of Kano State keeps sponsoring Kano Pillars, they'll kip winning d NPFL. 20 Apr 2015 07:00 NPFL Week four: Kano Pillars edge Enyimba as Heartland mount top spot - via 06 Apr 2015 12:39 Caf Champions League : 'Why we crashed out' - Pillars Coach. Okey Emordi , head coach of Kano Pillars, has admitted... httpâ¦ 04 Apr 2015 12:44 Kano Pillars boosted by Gambo Mohammed visit: The Sai Masu Gida are in high spirits to rout their Moroccan foe... 01 Apr 2015 19:04 Nigeriaâs flag bearers return to action, with Kano Pillars staring down the barrel of a huge task at Sani Abacha Stadium on Saturday. 10 Mar 2015 06:48 The Caf Champions League match between, Kano Pillars and Moghreb Tetouan of Morocco has been shifted by a week- 07 Feb 2015 20:33 Glo Premier League champions, Kano Pillars finished their pre-season tour of Ghana with a 1-0 win over that... 07 Feb 2015 13:00 Pillars tackle Ghana U-23s today: Nigeria league Â champions Kano Pillars will confront Ghana U23 national team... 28 Jan 2015 19:49 Pillars Need To Improve - Emordi. Kano Pillars coach, Okey Emordi has admitted that they have to improve and get... 28 Jan 2015 09:18 We underrated the Flying Eagles - Kano Pillars coach Kano Pillars coach Okey Emordi has said that his team lost ... 26 Jan 2015 14:01 \| Kano Pillars will justify government investment, says Okey Emordi 25 Jan 2015 19:59 Pillars Not Under Pressure - Emordi. Kano Pillars head coach Okey Emordi insists his side are not under pressure... 20 Jan 2015 08:00 Kano Pillars' players would start training today at the Ahmadu Bello Stadium , Kaduna as part of their preparation... 17 Jan 2015 11:12 "where did he played before? How age is he now" He joined Kano Pillars from Akwa United 13 Jan 2015 13:44 Flying Eagles Face Spotlight In Test Game On Wednesday The Flying Eagles will take on Nigeria National League (NNL) side Spotlight of Katsina in another test game on Wednesday. The match will be played at the Ahmadu Bello Stadium in Kaduna and it will kick-off by 11am. Spotlight, who have defender Mustapha Abdullahi with the Nigeria U20 side, are gearing up for promotion to the Nigeria top flight in the forthcoming season. The Katsina club, who placed 10th on the Nigeria National League Division A table, have made several top signings to match their ambitions. Spotlight have been on a pre-season training tour of Kaduna and have so far won three and drawn three of their matches. Their own loss thus far was to Jamba Aacdemy, who beat them 2-1. The Flying Eagles, who are getting set for the 2015 African Youth Championship in Senegal in March, are also likely to battle league champions Kano Pillars by the weekend also in Kaduna. The Nigeria U20s are also slated for an expanded Super 4 tournament in Abuja, whi ... 04 Jan 2015 18:09 Stories that Ibrahim Abubakar Aliyu joined Ajax Cape Town is "babash". Who wants to go to S.A when we have Kano Pillars the Chelsea of NPFL. 03 Jan 2015 12:38 TITBITS â¢ Nembe City attacking midfielder, Emmanuel Egesi, has signed for Aba club, Enyimba. â¢Peter Ebimobowei, who scored 18 goals for Bayelsa United last season, has joined Dolphins of Port Harcourt . â¢Esperance new signing, Emem Eduok, joined the Super Eagles camp preparing for friendlies against Cote d'Ivoire and Sudan, on Thursday. â¢Enyimba have reportedly slammed a price tag of $1.2m on NPFL all time goalscorer, Mfon Udoh. â¢Kano Pillars have released 10 players, including Bello Kofarmata. â¢Nigeria champions, Kano Pillars, are reportedly on the verge of signing Nasarawa United 's Tony Edjomariegwe. 20 Dec 2014 09:15 Enyimba, Sunshine Stars , Abia Warriors and Kano Pillars are all knocking on his door. 11 Dec 2014 20:09 Ogene Sticks With Abia Warriors Abia Warriors of Umuahia centre-back, Elijah Ogene says he will stay with the side for the upcoming Glo Premier League season. The former Nembe City strongman joined Abia Warriors during the mid-season break of the out gone season, in which Warriors finished in sixth position on 58 points, seven points behind champions, Kano Pillars. Ogene said though he has not been offered new contract he is quite positive to earn one given his five-star performance in the out gone season. "I'm staying put at Abia Warriors for the upcoming 2014/15 NPFL season even though nobody has been offered new contract. "We're observing the off season break with our respective families as the management promised to communicate to us the date to come back to camp. "I'm quite hopeful that my performance in the immediate past season will be good enough to earn me a new contract. I'm looking forward to a more fulfilling and successful new season with Abia Warriors . âIt actually pains that we're unable ... 11 Dec 2014 20:08 Esieme Eyes Pillars Deal By Bibian Onwugbolu, Port Harcourt There are strong indications that Enyimba International of Aba defender, Bright Esieme is set to join 2014 Glo Premier League champions, Kano Pillars, ahead of the northern teamâs outing in the 2015 Caf Champions League . Esieme was spotted in Kano over the weekend training with Pillars under his former coach at The Peoplesâ Elephant, Okey Emordi . SportsDay gathered that Esieme has already dropped his resignation letter at Enyimba, which he was said to have done before moving to Kano, in order to secure a new deal with the City of Groundnut Pyramids outfit. A Pillars club official confirmed that the three-time back-to-back Nigerian championsâ management have started negotiating with Esieme and other players they want to sign for next season. The official stated: âEsieme has been with us since the last League Game in Aba. He is a good player and the coach wants him so we will sign him if negotiation goes fine. âWe have invited few quality ... 03 Dec 2014 14:06 John Obuh has been Relieved of his Job at Enugu Rangers ... Most likely coach is Okey Emordi of Kano Pillars... 04 Nov 2014 21:15 Kano Pillars always win the league but always the first to be knocked out of the Caf Champions League . 04 Nov 2014 15:24 Hilal, Pillars Wrap Up League Titles: [CAF]Al Hilal and Kano Pillars have been crowned league champions in Sud... 03 Nov 2014 16:15 Congratulations to Kano Pillars, Champions of Glo Nigeria Premier League. Enyimba joins them in CAF Champion's League. 02 Nov 2014 17:35 I told them Kano Pillars r d best team,Enyimba r just lyk Man Utd living on past glory. Okey Emordi is d best coach,he did it with Enyimba n now with Pillars..Congrats Pillars d millennium team.haters go hug transformer.Congrats Gov. Rabiu Musa kwankwaso!!!.Ur support for d team is immeasurable. since u assumed office Pillars always come first.SAI MASU GIDA 26 Oct 2014 19:33 Kano Pillars got the better of El Kanemi Warriors to maintain their push for a third successive Glo Premier League â¦ 26 Oct 2014 15:38 "Update: El-Kanemi Warriors 0:0 Kano Pillars now 1:2 back infront .drama at kps football made in 9ja 26 Oct 2014 15:33 Na better match be dis, not ManUtd vs Chelsea>>"Update: El-Kanemi Warriors 0:0 Kano Pillars 22 Oct 2014 15:45 Kaduna United have taken the lead against Kano Pillars in Kano 22 Oct 2014 15:38 33' TRAILING! Defending champions and hosts, Kano Pillars still trailing Kaduna United by a lone goal and they... 22 Oct 2014 15:33 Kano Pillars Team News vs Kaduna United Rabiu Ali returns to the Kano Pillars squad after Hajj Pilgrimage in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, though will start from the bench, Okey Emordi reshuffled his regular starting 11 with Philips Auta, Tochukwu Esom and Mannir Ubale having a starting place with the Sai Masu Gida side looking for an outright victory to maintain their top spot on the NPFL Log. 19 Oct 2014 09:26 Nasarawa United vs Kano Pillars should have been on Tv.Only LMC knows the type of contract they have with Super Sportnorth 19 Oct 2014 07:55 Nasarawa United vs Kano Pillars FC. Come cheer our boys as they face the league leaders Kano Pillars in a long... 17 Oct 2014 13:41 Just like last season, the is looking like a three-horse race. Kano Pillars at the top, with Warri Wolves & Nasarawa United chasing. 12 Oct 2014 17:37 REPORT: calimed a thrilling 3-2 win over to close the gap on leaders, Kano Pillars. 12 Oct 2014 17:14 Reports from benin say Warri Wolves have done it. big trouble for Kano Pillars and Nasarawa United . 24 Sep 2014 14:49 Mother and child brace up for the Bayelsa Utd vs Kano Pillars match at the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium, Benin City... 22 Sep 2014 18:33 WEEKEND MIRROR (Maiden Edition) All home wins in the NPFL Barca and Madrid win big United's fall remains unavoided by Van Gaal Lampard ends love story, silent deep blue fans BY: ANYIANA UMANAH Weekend the world over is always agog with exciting sporting events, providing a suitable unwinding ambience for it teaming fans who use these sporting events to cool off after a hectic week. Football boast of a large fan base and has consistently been proven to be unarguably the most exciting sports with its attending intrigues. First call will be a jaunt on the Nigeria Professional Football League which saw all home teams winning, a phenomenon that has become synonymous with the league. The match between Nembe City and Lobi Stars was reportedly abandoned because of a penalty awarded to Lobi Stars in the 96th mintues. Elsewhere league leaders Kano Pillars peeped Uyo based Akwa United by a lone goal, while the People's Elephant of Aba (Enyimba) won big 4:0 against Bayelsa United . On the whole it was a weekend th ... 22 Sep 2014 08:49 Nasarawa, Enyimba Keep Pressure on Kano Pillars with Big Wins: In Sports / 22 September 2014 / 0 comments Nasarawa United and Enyimba both won big at home yesterday to keep up the pressure on Glo Premier League leaders, Kano Pillars. Champions Pillars won 1-0 against visiting Akwa United , but second-placed Nasarawa United beat Sharks 2-0 and Enyimba dumped Bayelsa United 4-0 to sustain the pressure on the league leaders. Pillars remain top of the standings on 47 points from 27 matches, while Nasarawa have 44 points and Enyimba are third with 43 points. Adamu Hassan scored his 11th goal of the campaign for Pillars and also what proved to be the match winner against Akwa United on 44 minutes. Goals from Mfon Udoh, Nzube Anaezemba and Emeka Nwanna saw Enyimba cruise to a convincing home win over a rather poor Bayelsa in Aba. Dolphins, who lost 2-1 at Enugu Rangers , bounced back to beat 10-man Gombe United 2-0. Former Nigeria U20 defender Chizoba Amaefule opened scoring from the penalty spot in the 73rd minut ... 30 Aug 2014 12:57 El Kanemi Warriors midfielders Ifeanyi Matthew and Nafiu Kabuga are being monitored by Nigeria league champions Kano Pillars. 11 Aug 2014 08:09 Backpass, August 11 Part 1(English) The Nigeria Professional League season hit week 22 over the weekend with the high point being the 3-0 demolition of defending champions and table toppers, Kano Pillars by Sunshine Stars FC, a victory coach of the Akure based team, Henry Abiodun says was a result of his attacking strategy which his boys executed perfectly. On the other hand, Kano Pillars' boss, Okey Emordi termed the humiliating defeat a shock but expressed optimism that his side would still retain the league title. So far, Kano Pillars still maintain top spot, while league debutants, Abia Warriors moved up to 2nd spot. Nasarawa United are 3rd on the log. Enyimba international lie on 7th spot. Heartland FC are 15th while Enugu Rangers are struggling for survival in 15th place. Crown FC of Ogbomosho and Nembe City seem doomed for relegation as they are the bottom placed teams. Deliberation: How would you ** the NPFL season so far? 10 Aug 2014 16:46 Musa New don do am for MFM FC, Bolowotan FC, Nembe City now he don score again for - SSFC 2:0 Kano Pillars 07 Aug 2014 09:00 After game 21 Kano Pillars top the table with 37 points followed by Nasarawa Untd at 34. Nembe City are bottom with 19 06 Aug 2014 15:47 The last time Kano Pillars lost a home game ? George Bush was still US president,Tony Blair was Britain PM,Idi Amin Dada was alive.. 25 Jul 2014 00:27 Pillars sets sight on treble: Kano Pillars are defending champions of the Nigeria Professional Football League ... 23 Jul 2014 13:00 Ekpai has said he will play for Kano Pillars when kicks off on Sunday despite resistance from Akwa United . 23 Jul 2014 08:25 Kano Pillars have completed the signing of winger Ubong Ekpai from Nigeria Premier League team Akwa United 23 Jul 2014 07:57 Akwa United says Kano Pillars bound Ubong Ekpai is under suspension. The club said Ekpai has been missing for more than two weeks 21 Jul 2014 12:00 Akwa United Ubong Ekpai has joined Kano Pillars for the second stanza of Glo Premier League . 21 Jul 2014 11:16 Kano Pillars latest addition, Ubong Ekpai. He will be missed by Akwa United fans. I just pray the Uyo side will... 21 Jun 2014 22:54 Ahmed Musa with his pace would've been competing with Gareth Bale but he's left his football ideas at Kano Pillars. 03 Jun 2014 22:36 FT: Kano Pillars 1-0 Enyimba. Gambo Mohammed scoring on 90 minutes for Kano Pillars in their last of three games in Kaduna 03 Jun 2014 06:58 I am still waiting for the day that I go to London and find Britons wearing T-shirts with, Bendel Insurance, Enugu Rangers or Kano Pillars football clubs emblazoned on them. 01 Jun 2014 11:00 Kano Pillars attacking midfielder Shobowale says they will end their 3-match banishment to Kaduna on a high 01 Jun 2014 10:42 Enyimba midfielder Sani Kaita out of Kano Pillars clash via 24 May 2014 22:41 Jeki na over age "Oshey all of us except baba dudu will play for kano pillars 24 May 2014 22:39 Oshey all of us except tht baba dudu u will play for kano pillars 24 May 2014 21:48 Congratulations RM, a well deserved win but come o, this Gareth Bale , which kin mumu player that guy be sef, make hin thank God say hin later score, that guy dey shoot like Kano Pillars players. Haba. 24 May 2014 21:46 Kano pillars Who are the 2014 Champions of Europe? 24 May 2014 21:45 Everybody is forming REAL MADRID FAN for FB, even KANO PILLARS fan they shout hala MADRID. Success truly has many friends. 24 May 2014 20:29 Frm this moment i am no more a madrid fan UP KANO PILLARS 24 May 2014 19:36 âKano Pillars Vs Kwara United "Who is even playing?"â. That has been what the first half looked like Donald Trump Alan Thicke Rogue One Star Wars Rex Tillerson Kanye West Star Wars Story Federal Reserve Rick Perry San Francisco Los Angeles President Obama Robin Thicke White House Premier League New Year Electoral College Elon Musk Strictly Come Dancing Manchester City Theresa May Middle East North Dakota Bill Murray Crystal Palace Stranger Things Hillary Clinton Trump Tower Bill Cosby Pep Guardiola Screen Actors Guild Daily News Silicon Valley Islamic State Michael Owen Mayor Rahm Emanuel San Diego Tiger Woods Kim Jong Un Antonio Conte Ashley Madison Boris Johnson Harry Potter Lamar Odom British Airways Alastair Cook Jim Brown Christopher Nolan Texas Gov Jeremy Corbyn Suicide Squad Virgin America Wall Street Rodrigo Duterte Bridget Jones Screen Actors Guild Awards Melania Trump Meghan Markle David Davis Man Utd Bruno Mars Mutual Fund North Atlantic Paul Ryan Roger Rabbit Jose Mourinho Watch Bill Murray Will Smith Taiwan Strait Golden Globe New Zealand Xbox One Real Estate Jeff Fisher Felicity Jones Real Life Taylor Swift Aston Martin Great Britain South Pole Lockheed Martin Michelle Obama Exxon Mobil Ghost Ship Amir Khan Alan Carr Andy Taylor Sinn Fein National Trust Power List Margaret Thatcher Loris Karius Joanna Lumley Prime Minister Sienna Miller Uptown Funk Victorian Christmas Tibetan Buddhist Sunday Telegraph Strictly Come Dancing 2016 © 2016	Football team
The Punch, Thisday, and Nigerian Tribune are long-standing popular Nigerian what?	Leadership by LEADERSHIP Newspaper (page 27) - issuu issuu Wednesday, July 16, 2014 Compiled by Abisola Alawode WORDSEARCH PUZZLES Find how many times the names of Sita and Ram are there Find and circle all of the Words that are hidden. The words may be hidden in any direction. Water words Bed Bird Boy Buck Aug Clock Colour Craft Cress Cure Fall Fowl Front Gap Gas Gate Glass Hole Level Lily Line Log Main Mark Meter Mill Mold Pipe MEN VS WOMEN “Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.” –Albert Einstein, Theoretical physicist, 1879-1955 “Why does a woman work ten years to change a man, and then complain he's not the man she married?” –Barbra Streisand, Musician, 1942 1ST- CLASS PERSON NEWS QUIZ Which of the following is not a factor contributing to the conflict between northern and southern Nigeria? A geographic difference b. monetary difference c. political difference D. religious difference 2. When was Nigerian oil source discovered? A. when the British first colonized Nigeria B. October 1, 1961 C. the time was never recorded so it is unsure D. between the late 1960s and early 1970s 3. What is Nigerian’s official language? a. English b. Hausa c. Yoruba d. Ibo 4. Enugu, Kano Pillars, Heartland and Lobi Stars are famous Nigerian: A. hotels B. National parks C. football clubs D. TV soaps NUMBER CROSSWORD Look at the clues below and fill all the numbers you can into the grid. Which number replaces the question mark? Rita Dominic Happy birthday to Nollywood’s stunning diva – July 12 REGISTER LAST WEEK SOLUTIONS Peter Odemwingie, a footballer –July 15th Ramson Noual, Nollywood actorJuuly 16th WORDSEARCH	i don't know
Galaxy is Nigeria's first commercial/private (and remains in the 2000s a leading)?	Switched on: New technology has created novel challenges and opportunities \| Nigeria 2013 \| Oxford Business Group Switched on: New technology has created novel challenges and opportunities Recommend Over the past few decades Nigeria’s media and entertainment industry has developed into one of the largest and liveliest in Africa. The most popular formats, which include radio, television and print media, are an important part of daily life for most of the country’s 168.8m residents. The Nigerian film industry – nicknamed “Nollywood” – is one of the largest in the world by number of films released, and is increasingly considered to be one of the country’s defining cultural institutions, not to mention a potentially large-scale economic contributor. Strong and steady growth in consumption of online media is expected to boost profitability in both the film and music industries in the coming years. Indeed, rising internet penetration rates throughout Nigeria since the mid-2000s have already resulted in a significant expansion in online advertising, which has become a key component of most national ad campaigns (see analysis). With these developments and the substantial amount of investment that has poured into the nation’s various media outlets in recent years, the sector presents many opportunities. KEY CHALLENGES: Local media companies and other industry participants currently face a number of challenges. As home to the largest population in Africa, Nigeria’s sheer size and demographic diversity are considered to be a hurdle for firms looking to establish a national footprint, for example. “It is hard to overstate the diversity in this country,” Adekunle Adekoya, a general editor at the Vanguard, a daily national newspaper, told OBG. “More than 400 languages are spoken here, and to reach a national audience you have to broadcast in a minimum of 46 languages.” Additional challenges include the underdeveloped and unreliable electricity grid and national transport networks, both of which increase distribution and transmission costs. Finally, the rapidly increasing popularity of online media over the past five years has resulted in some unanticipated regulatory overlap between government agencies, including the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), the Nigerian Press Council (NPC) and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), among others. EXPANSION AHEAD: Despite these issues, most local media firms are looking forward to years of expansion. The nation’s size and scale, which are currently considered to be a hurdle to ongoing expansion, are also representative of the market’s considerable long-term growth potential. Indeed, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a UN agency, internet penetration in Nigeria stood at less than 30% as of mid-2012. As the connected population grows in the coming years, demand for online media is expected to rise considerably. In the meantime, Nigeria remains a major market for printed newspapers, CDs, DVDs, and other physical media. “The internet is growing rapidly, but most media consumption is still physical here,” Audu Maikori, the CEO of Chocolate City, a Lagos-based music and entertainment company, told OBG. OVERSIGHT & REGULATION: The NBC was established in 1992, as a result of the federal government’s effort to liberalise radio and television. Since then it has overseen the development of the broadcasting industry. An update to the NBC code, which serves as the sector’s regulatory backdrop, was completed in mid-2012. The revised document, which was developed in conjunction with public and private sector stakeholders, addressed a number of issues that had yet to be codified in law, including the forthcoming switch from analogue to digital broadcasting in television and the need for the industry to invest in and broadcast more local content. In general, the updated code is widely considered to be an improvement on the previous governing legislation, of which four versions have been passed since the early 1990s. At the same time, a number of regulatory challenges remain. Press freedom, which improved considerably as a result of the institution of civilian rule in Nigeria in 1999, continues to be a topic of discussion and discontent among local publishers and broadcasters, many of which have criticised the government for overstepping its bounds on a number of occasions. Out of 179 countries included in the 2013 Press Freedom Index, an annual report published by Reporters Without Borders, Nigeria ranked 115th, up from 126th in 2012. In addition to these issues, the NBC currently faces the prospect of eventually merging its operations with the NCC, as a result of a federal initiative to bring the two organisations under the same roof. The merger, which was approved by the Federal Executive Council in late 2012, is being considered due to the overlap between traditional media and the communications sector as a result of the expansion of internet use. The NPC, which was launched in 1992, oversees the print segment in line with the Nigerian Press Council Law that established the body. It has a mandate to maintain press freedom and ethical conduct. On a day-to-day basis it serves as a buffer and mediator between the government and the Nigerian Press Organisation, an umbrella entity that is made up of major industry stakeholders. Finally, the advertising industry is overseen by the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON), which was set up in 1988 with a mandate to develop the sector in line with international best practice and classify and regulate local firms. IN PRINT: Nigeria is home to more than 100 print publications in total, including daily and weekly newspapers, weekly and monthly news and entertainment magazines and tabloids. Historically the country’s print media has had a pan-African reach – the Daily Times of Nigeria, established in 1925, went on to see daily regional circulation in excess of 275,000 (and 400,000 for the weekend edition) in the mid-1970s, making it the best-selling Nigerian newspaper to date. While no individual publication has topped these circulation figures since then, the sector remains the cornerstone of Nigerian media. “Private newspapers are widely seen as the most credible source of news in the country,” Vanguard’s Adekoya told OBG. “This is a result of the history of the sector – many Nigerian newspapers were at the forefront of the fight against colonialism during the run up to independence in the 1950s and 1960s. For the same reason, many people still do not trust government-operated newspapers.” Nonetheless, there are still issues with reliability even among private newspapers, and corruption and payment for positive coverage are considered to be widespread. CIRCULATION: The most recent sales data dates from 2010, when the Advertising Association of Nigeria carried out the nation’s first (and only, as of mid-2013) independent newspaper circulation survey. According to the report, the 15 top newspapers by distribution had a total circulation of less than 300,000 at the time, though this figure has since been disputed by a number of local publishers. Based on the survey results, the largest newspapers in Nigeria in mid-2010 were The Punch, The Nation, The Sun, Vanguard, The Guardian, This Day, Daily Trust and The Tribune. Other major local publications include The Champion, Business Day, New Nigerian, The print sector currently faces a number of challenges. The lack of reliable electricity supply means that most publishers rely on expensive diesel generators to power their presses. Distribution, which is hampered by the country’s decrepit national road network, is another key challenge. “To get around the transport issue, we print in numerous locations, including Lagos, Abuja and Asaba, in the Delta region,” said Adekoya. “We also fly newspapers to Port Harcourt and the far north, which is effectively unreachable on a daily basis.” The sector also faces security threats, particularly in a handful of north-eastern states, where individual journalists and publishing facilities have been targeted by members of Boko Haram in recent years. Finally, perhaps the most pressing long-term challenge facing the industry is the rise of digital media, which, as in most other markets, threatens to undermine traditional newspapers and other print media organisations. These issues are expected to have a major impact on the development of the sector moving forward. TUNED IN: Radio, which is low-cost and available in most parts of the country, is one of the most popular types of media in Nigeria, both in terms of overall listeners and advertisers. According to the NBC, Nigeria is home to more than 135 radio stations in total, including 80-plus publicly owned stations, at least 25 private stations, around 20 university-based stations and a handful of foreign broadcasters. The first radio broadcast in Nigeria took place in 1933, when colonial leadership relayed the BBC’s overseas service to Africa. In 1950 the Nigerian Broadcasting Service was established, and in the late 1970s became the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN), which operates more than 40 national stations providing a wide range of programming in a variety of languages and dialects, depending on the region in which they are broadcast. Additionally, all 36 of Nigeria’s state governments operate a radio station. The radio sector was liberalised in 1992, at which point the newly formed NBC began granting licences for private radio stations. Since then a handful of private broadcasters have gained market share, including The Beat 99.9 FM, Silverbird Communication’s Rhythm FM, Raypower, Star FM, Freedom Radio, Cool FM and Brilla FM, among others. Additionally, in recent years many private radio stations have begun broadcasting digitally on the internet. “We have made a real effort to grow our brand online in recent years, and particularly on social networks like Facebook and Twitter,” Deji Awokoya, the general manager of The Beat 99.9 FM, told OBG. In early 2013 the federal government announced that it planned to set up around 800 new community radio stations, primarily in an effort to reach rural areas. The community radio initiative, which has been in development since late 2010, is being supported by a number of international development agencies, and is expected to create around 12,000 new jobs. CHANNEL SURFING: Since the liberalisation of the broadcast sector in 1992, the television industry has become a key investment destination for local and foreign players alike. Nigeria is among the largest television markets in Africa – in early 2012 an estimated 79% of Nigerians had a working television at home, according to a joint poll carried out by Gallup and the US’s Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). The majority of this national audience primarily views terrestrial free-to-air broadcasts. The Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), the government-owned legacy operator, is one of the largest broadcasters not just in Nigeria, but in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, claiming an estimated audience in excess of 50m. The NTA broadcasts from all 36 state capitals and the federal capital territory. Private sector players dominate the satellite and cable segments. According to the Gallup-BBG poll, an estimated 13% of the country had a satellite dish and just over 10% had a fixed cable link. The South African firm Multichoice, which rolled out its Digital Satellite Television (DS tv) pay service to the Nigerian market in the mid-1990s, soon after liberalisation took hold, is among the most popular stations operating in the country today. StarTimes, a Chinese broadcaster that has been active in Nigeria since the mid-2000s, partnered with the NTA in 2010 to launch NTA Star TV, a digital terrestrial television station that has gained market share among Nigeria’s growing middle class in recent years. Other major players include African Independent Television, which broadcasts throughout the region; the Silverbird Group, a local conglomerate that has also become a presence in retail in recent years; and Galaxy Television, among others (see analysis). THE SILVER SCREEN: The history of film in Nigeria can be traced back more than a century. The first film showings took place in August 1903, when a Spanish production firm screened a handful of short movies in Lagos. Three decades later the Colonial Film Unit, which was launched by the government in 1939, produced didactic films on a variety of subjects, including health care, farming techniques and nutrition. Finally, in 1979 the Nigerian Film Corporation (NFC) was established by law, and it continues to serve as the government’s agency for film development and promotion. Private sector development began in earnest in the 1990s, and over the past two decades Nigerian filmmakers and producers have built a private sector-led industry that is increasingly considered to be a driving force in global cinema. In terms of films produced on an annual basis, Nollywood has been the second-largest film industry in the world since 2009, when it surpassed the American film industry in Hollywood. According to numbers put forward by the online publication African Movies News, in addition to estimates by the BBC and The New York Times, some 2600 films are produced in Nigeria on an annual basis. Most Nollywood films are made on the cheap – generally for between $10,000 and $15,000 – and released quickly, with an average production taking eight to 12 days from start to finish. The great majority of the movies are released directly to DVD and distributed throughout Africa, where many Nigerian filmmakers have a large following. Since Nollywood kicked off as a grassroots movement in the early 1990s it has remained largely unregulated, under-developed, in terms of licensing and permits, and until recently was unexamined by statistics organisations. Consequently, the sector’s full economic impact has yet to be measured. According to estimates from the BGL Group, a Nigerian investment company, as of mid-2012 the industry employed around 1m people, making it the country’s second-largest employer after agriculture. BGL estimates that Nollywood grosses $200m-300m annually. While the sector lacks a regulator, over the years several public entities and industry organisations have been launched, including the NFC, the Nigerian Copyright Commission, the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB), the Actor’s Guild of Nigeria, the Director’s Guild of Nigeria, the Association of Nollywood Core Producers, the Filmmakers Cooperative and the Screenwriters Guild of Nigeria. CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Since the May 2013 appointment of a new managing director at the NFC, the body has moved forward with plans to become a key growth driver in the industry, with a particular focus on boosting funding and training, and combating piracy. At an industry event in Lagos in July 2013, Danjuma Dadu, the organisation’s new administrator, announced that he planned “to seek ways of moving ahead with the industry; to make it compliant with international best practices.” One of the NFC’s key short-term goals involves pushing a new Motion Picture Practitioners Council (MOPICON) bill through the National Assembly. The bill, which has been circulating in draft form in Nollywood since 2006, would establish an overarching regulatory framework for filmmakers in Nigeria in line with best practices, with the objective of streamlining production procedures. According to the NFC, which introduced MOPICON in the mid-2000s, passage of the bill would likely result in a considerable uptick in foreign investment in Nollywood. Indeed, in recent years a number of international financial organisations have made initial moves to invest in the industry, only to back out due to the lack of a formal legal framework and other protections. As of mid-2013 the bill was under discussion in the government. OTHER INITIATIVES: In addition to its work on MOPICON, the NFC also recently announced that it planned to introduce a handful of new educational diploma and certificate programmes aimed at ensuring that filmmakers are trained. The new programmes are likely to be rolled out in conjunction with the National Film Institute (NFI), a film school owned by the NFC that was established in Jos in 1995. Other projects that are either under way or in discussion at the NFC include the establishment of an NFI campus in Lagos; a joint initiative with the National Copyright Commission to develop a long-term anti-piracy plan; a move to organise monthly film screenings nationwide; the creation of Plateau Film City; and the establishment of a multimedia film centre in Abuja. Additionally, in August 2013 the NFC announced its plans to produce a series of animated films for children, with the goal of promoting Nigerian cultural traditions. These movies are expected to be released in Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo. DEVELOPMENT HURDLES: A lack of financing is among the largest challenges currently facing Nollywood. Expensive local bank loans from a small group of willing lenders – including the Bank of Industry and the Nigerian Export-Import Bank, among others – have historically been responsible for a majority of funding. As a result of the industry’s growing reputation around the world, however, in recent years the sector has attracted new attention from both public and private sector players. In March 2013 the federal government announced that it would establish an N3bn ($18.9m) fund to support the nation’s film industry, with a focus on upgrading production values across the board. Roberts Orya, managing director and CEO of NEXIM Bank, told OBG, “Nigeria has been learning from India how to provide stronger financial support to the film industry. Years ago when Bollywood was at a more rudimentary stage, the Indian government spearheaded financial support for the film industry by strengthening intellectual property rights, while the Reserve Bank of India also issued directives to the banks on how to lend to this virgin segment based on key factors like insurance and cash flow.” Since 2010 the government has also overseen a project to provide loans to local filmmakers and producers, though many of these players have complained that the loans are hard to access. A number of state governments also work to support the industry. In 2012 Lagos State government launched the Nollywood Upgrade Project, which aims to provide support in the form of film grants and training to local filmmakers. More broadly, in May 2012 the Federal Capital Territory Administration began work on the Abuja Film Village, a 5000-ha development that is expected to serve as a centre for Nollywood. In 2010 the World Bank announced that Nollywood would be a major beneficiary of its Growth and Employment in States (GEMS) project, which is aimed at encouraging job creation in high-potential non-oil sectors, including hospitality, information and communications technology, wholesale and retail trade, tourism, construction and real estate, and entertainment. The initiative, which is being financed by a $160m loan from the World Bank and a £90m ($145.5m) grant from the UK’s Department for International Development, is slated to create at least 10,000 jobs by 2018. A substantial percentage of these are expected to be in small and medium-sized enterprises. A considerable amount of this funding has gone to Nollywood-related projects. In conjunction with a number of government partners – chiefly the Federal Ministry of Trade and Investment – funding has gone towards projects aimed at reducing piracy, improving distribution networks and establishing institutions to support the industry. Local entities that have benefitted from include the Nigerian Copyright Commission, the Nigerian Export Promotion Council and the NFVCB, among others. “Greater financing is the only factor standing in the way of the Nigerian film industry making it to the next level,” Ben Murray Bruce, chairman of Silverbird, told OBG. “Higher production values will not only increase the international appeal of Nigerian films, but will create longer-term job opportunities.” DISTRIBUTION: Facilitating more efficient distribution of Nollywood films is another pressing challenge. Cinemas are few and far between, although local firm Silverbird now runs the largest regional chain, with more than 50 screens in Nigeria and neighbouring Ghana. Currently, most films are distributed on DVDs, which are quickly copied and pirated. According to a 2011 report by the World Bank, for every legitimate Nollywood DVD sold by a producer, pirates sell an estimated 5-10 illegal copies. With this in mind, producers and filmmakers are working to strengthen their ties with television stations, many of which broadcast Nollywood films throughout Africa and other parts of the world, and pay studios for the right to do so. Additionally, digital distribution has picked up in recent years, and is increasingly seen as a potential growth driver in the industry. Large Nigerian diaspora communities in the UK, the US and other Western countries are largely responsible for driving demand for Nollywood films online. DIGITAL MEDIA: Over the past five years new technology has begun to transform the media and entertainment industries. Internet users grew from just 5m in 2006 to 48.37m at the end of June 2012, according to data from the ITU, which makes Nigeria the largest internet market in Africa. NCC figures put the number of mobile internet subscribers at 25m in the same month, meaning slightly more than half of those who accessed the internet did so by mobile phone. As in many other countries around the world, the rise of widespread internet use in Nigeria has threatened to undercut traditional media. Most of the country’s newspapers, for example, have seen declining subscription and readership rates in the past decade. In an effort to combat this trend, most major publications have launched full-service websites, which, according to anecdotal reporting from news organisations, have seen steadily increasing traffic since 2011, in particular. “It is not inconceivable that in the future hard copy newspapers will disappear entirely here,” said Adekoya of the Vanguard. ONLINE REACH: Both Nollywood and Nigeria’s nascent music industry have benefitted from rising internet penetration rates in recent years. Iroko Partners, a Lagos-based firm that was established in September 2010, has acquired the rights to large collections of Nollywood films and albums and made them available online for paying subscribers. The firm, which operates across a number of online platforms, has seen rapid uptake over the past three years, and, as of mid-2013, claimed to be “the world’s largest distributor of African entertainment,” with an audience of 6m users from 178 countries. While local subscribers are expected to play an increasingly important role in the future, currently the majority of the firm’s customers are members of Nigeria’s large diaspora community. The fact that the company pays filmmakers, musicians and other content producers to use their work is relatively novel in Nigeria, where CD and DVD piracy are common. This is particularly true for the music industry, which is considerably less-developed than Nollywood, for example. Indeed, while many Nigerian artists are popular throughout Africa and, in some cases, around the world, the country lacks a formal domestic music industry, per se. Most artists earn an income not by selling recorded copies – digital or otherwise – of their work, but by playing live shows. Consequently, residuals, royalties and other revenues from digital distribution represent a new form of income for many recording artists. “The Nigerian music industry has grown exponentially in the last few years, but record companies have so far failed to monetise this popularity and potential,” Tola Odunsi, the CEO of Storm 360, a local entertainment company, told OBG. “With new developments and opportunities in digital music, however, this is all about to change.” iROKING, which was launched by Iroko Partners in 2012, is one of the leading local digital music platforms. As of mid-2013 the service boasted a library of more than 35,000 songs by African artists, all of which are available for streaming or downloading via numerous channels and programmes around the world. The firm has deals to distribute music from its catalogue through Western digital marketplaces, including Apple’s iTunes, Spotify and Amazon, among others. INTERNATIONAL INTEREST: Nigeria’s growing tech-savvy population has attracted the interest of a number of major international media and entertainment players in recent years. In March 2013 the US-based Universal Music Group partnered with Samsung to launch The Kleek, a digital music service that offers a mix of tracks from Universal’s international catalogue and African artists. Similarly, in late 2013 Deezer, a French music streaming company, launched in Nigeria, in line with the firm’s roll-out across Africa in recent years. In December 2012 Apple launched iTunes in 56 new markets around the world, including Nigeria and 13 other countries in Africa. Finally, in June 2013 Spinlet, a digital music distribution platform, launched in Nigeria. Spinlet’s operation, which was established in conjunction with the mobile telecoms operator Etisalat, allows users to purchase tracks using phone credit. Despite this influx of new players and the rapidly growing number of Nigerian internet users, the country is widely considered to be a challenging operating environment for digital media distributors. As of mid-2012 internet penetration reached less than a third of the population, according to data from the UN, and very few internet users are willing to pay for the data speeds that are necessary to support on-demand streaming services such as those offered by Spotify, for example. Additionally, according to Informa Telecoms and Media, a UK-based research firm, at the end of 2012 only around 10% of mobile telecoms subscribers used smartphones. Designing digital music services that are accessible via low-bandwidth basic mobile phones is a challenge. This is not a high-revenue business plan – like Iroko Partners’ movie distribution platform, a considerable amount of iRoking’s revenue, for instance, comes from Western markets, where the firm’s music catalogue is available on iTunes and other major pay services. Similarly, users of The Kleek stream playlists have been designed with mobile phone access in mind. ADVERTISING: Spending on advertising in Nigeria has grown exponentially over the past decade. In 2003 the country saw less than N18bn ($113.4m) in total above-the-line ad spend – which includes television, radio, print media and outdoor – according to data from local industry research firm MediaReach OMD. By 2011 – the most recent confirmed data available at time of publication – this figure had jumped to N102.8bn ($647.6m). Lagos attracted 54% of 2011 ad spending, and television ads accounted for around 45% of the total. As in many other African markets, telecoms firms were among the most active advertisers, with the top four mobile service providers – MTN, Globacom, Etisalat and Airtel – accounting for more than 19% of total spend for the year, according to MediaReach. Other major advertisers include financial services firms and banks, food and beverages companies and alcoholic drinks producers. AD MEN: According to the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN), an industry body, as of May 2013 the sector was composed of around 100 professional players and more than 1000 informal, unregistered firms. In total, advertising contributes more than N300bn ($1.89bn) annually, according to AAAN. As the most populous country in Africa, most large international agencies are represented in Nigeria, either on their own or in partnership with a local firm. Major players include STB-McCann; SO&U Saatchi & Saatchi; Ogilvy; Lowe Lintas Lagos; Insight Communications, which partners with the US-based Grey Group; Centrespread FCB; Prima Garnet; DDB Lagos; and Rosabel Leo Burnett, among others. In recent years many advertisers have looked to digital placement, both on webpages and via mobile phone networks. In late 2012 Nigeria was home to the largest population of social media users in Africa, according to Socialbakers, a Czech digital research firm. With this in mind, many advertisers are demanding campaigns that focus on digital advertising strategies (see analysis). REFORMS: In January 2013 APCON, the primary advertising regulatory body, introduced a raft of reforms, with the aim of bringing the industry in line with international best practice and boosting local participation and content. The new legislation requires all advertising firms to be licensed by APCON, which is expected to result in a decline in informal firms and unlicensed campaigns. Perhaps more importantly, the reforms aim to boost indigenous activity. While the new legislation makes it clear that APCON does not wish to stifle foreign investment or interfere with competition, under the reform bill the industry is expected to “consider Nigerian content as an important element” of any given project or campaign. More specifically, the bill stipulates that a firm must submit a Nigerian content plan to APCON before it is eligible to receive an operating licence, for example, and agencies are required to use local talent and labour whenever possible, both in terms of hiring full-time employees and when it comes to producing individual advertisements. The reform bill is widely considered to be a response to numerous complaints of foreign content and firms dominating the industry in recent years. Since it was introduced, the bill has attracted criticism from local and foreign players alike, many of which have publicly questioned whether or not APCON would in fact be able to enforce the new requirements. Another key challenge currently facing advertising agencies operating in Nigeria is the widespread lack of up-to-date, reliable circulation and viewership data about most media segments, which complicates the industry’s ability to price advertising campaigns effectively. OUTLOOK: Nigeria’s media, entertainment and advertising industries face a number of interrelated challenges. The underdeveloped transport infrastructure is considered to be a key hurdle for print publications, as poorly maintained roads have resulted in high transport costs. Nigeria’s unreliable electricity grid also represents a challenge for local media firms, a majority of which have invested in diesel generators to ensure a steady supply of power, raising operating costs. According to Akinlola Irewunmi Olopade, CEO of out-of-home advertiser Afromedia, “Digital billboards are the way forward, however, independent power generation will represent a large upfront cost to the advertising firm.” Finally, the steady and rapid expansion of internet usage represents a challenge, but is also considered to be a major opportunity for ongoing expansion. Indeed, despite numerous challenging issues, media firms, advertising agencies, and film and music production companies are broadly optimistic about the future. Nigeria is uniquely situated to become a key international player in many of these areas. Nollywood, which is already a major economic contributor, has a devoted audience throughout Africa, parts of Asia and the Caribbean. With new investment on the way, the Nigerian film industry is on track to grow exponentially, which bodes well for the related and semi-related television, radio and music industries, as well. Key to taking advantage of these strengths will be local businesses’ ability to adapt quickly to the rapidly changing market. See also:	Television station
Bonny light, Forcados, Qua Ibo, and Brass River are types of what major Nigerian export commodity?	Switched on: New technology has created novel challenges and opportunities \| Nigeria 2013 \| Oxford Business Group Switched on: New technology has created novel challenges and opportunities Recommend Over the past few decades Nigeria’s media and entertainment industry has developed into one of the largest and liveliest in Africa. The most popular formats, which include radio, television and print media, are an important part of daily life for most of the country’s 168.8m residents. The Nigerian film industry – nicknamed “Nollywood” – is one of the largest in the world by number of films released, and is increasingly considered to be one of the country’s defining cultural institutions, not to mention a potentially large-scale economic contributor. Strong and steady growth in consumption of online media is expected to boost profitability in both the film and music industries in the coming years. Indeed, rising internet penetration rates throughout Nigeria since the mid-2000s have already resulted in a significant expansion in online advertising, which has become a key component of most national ad campaigns (see analysis). With these developments and the substantial amount of investment that has poured into the nation’s various media outlets in recent years, the sector presents many opportunities. KEY CHALLENGES: Local media companies and other industry participants currently face a number of challenges. As home to the largest population in Africa, Nigeria’s sheer size and demographic diversity are considered to be a hurdle for firms looking to establish a national footprint, for example. “It is hard to overstate the diversity in this country,” Adekunle Adekoya, a general editor at the Vanguard, a daily national newspaper, told OBG. “More than 400 languages are spoken here, and to reach a national audience you have to broadcast in a minimum of 46 languages.” Additional challenges include the underdeveloped and unreliable electricity grid and national transport networks, both of which increase distribution and transmission costs. Finally, the rapidly increasing popularity of online media over the past five years has resulted in some unanticipated regulatory overlap between government agencies, including the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), the Nigerian Press Council (NPC) and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), among others. EXPANSION AHEAD: Despite these issues, most local media firms are looking forward to years of expansion. The nation’s size and scale, which are currently considered to be a hurdle to ongoing expansion, are also representative of the market’s considerable long-term growth potential. Indeed, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a UN agency, internet penetration in Nigeria stood at less than 30% as of mid-2012. As the connected population grows in the coming years, demand for online media is expected to rise considerably. In the meantime, Nigeria remains a major market for printed newspapers, CDs, DVDs, and other physical media. “The internet is growing rapidly, but most media consumption is still physical here,” Audu Maikori, the CEO of Chocolate City, a Lagos-based music and entertainment company, told OBG. OVERSIGHT & REGULATION: The NBC was established in 1992, as a result of the federal government’s effort to liberalise radio and television. Since then it has overseen the development of the broadcasting industry. An update to the NBC code, which serves as the sector’s regulatory backdrop, was completed in mid-2012. The revised document, which was developed in conjunction with public and private sector stakeholders, addressed a number of issues that had yet to be codified in law, including the forthcoming switch from analogue to digital broadcasting in television and the need for the industry to invest in and broadcast more local content. In general, the updated code is widely considered to be an improvement on the previous governing legislation, of which four versions have been passed since the early 1990s. At the same time, a number of regulatory challenges remain. Press freedom, which improved considerably as a result of the institution of civilian rule in Nigeria in 1999, continues to be a topic of discussion and discontent among local publishers and broadcasters, many of which have criticised the government for overstepping its bounds on a number of occasions. Out of 179 countries included in the 2013 Press Freedom Index, an annual report published by Reporters Without Borders, Nigeria ranked 115th, up from 126th in 2012. In addition to these issues, the NBC currently faces the prospect of eventually merging its operations with the NCC, as a result of a federal initiative to bring the two organisations under the same roof. The merger, which was approved by the Federal Executive Council in late 2012, is being considered due to the overlap between traditional media and the communications sector as a result of the expansion of internet use. The NPC, which was launched in 1992, oversees the print segment in line with the Nigerian Press Council Law that established the body. It has a mandate to maintain press freedom and ethical conduct. On a day-to-day basis it serves as a buffer and mediator between the government and the Nigerian Press Organisation, an umbrella entity that is made up of major industry stakeholders. Finally, the advertising industry is overseen by the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON), which was set up in 1988 with a mandate to develop the sector in line with international best practice and classify and regulate local firms. IN PRINT: Nigeria is home to more than 100 print publications in total, including daily and weekly newspapers, weekly and monthly news and entertainment magazines and tabloids. Historically the country’s print media has had a pan-African reach – the Daily Times of Nigeria, established in 1925, went on to see daily regional circulation in excess of 275,000 (and 400,000 for the weekend edition) in the mid-1970s, making it the best-selling Nigerian newspaper to date. While no individual publication has topped these circulation figures since then, the sector remains the cornerstone of Nigerian media. “Private newspapers are widely seen as the most credible source of news in the country,” Vanguard’s Adekoya told OBG. “This is a result of the history of the sector – many Nigerian newspapers were at the forefront of the fight against colonialism during the run up to independence in the 1950s and 1960s. For the same reason, many people still do not trust government-operated newspapers.” Nonetheless, there are still issues with reliability even among private newspapers, and corruption and payment for positive coverage are considered to be widespread. CIRCULATION: The most recent sales data dates from 2010, when the Advertising Association of Nigeria carried out the nation’s first (and only, as of mid-2013) independent newspaper circulation survey. According to the report, the 15 top newspapers by distribution had a total circulation of less than 300,000 at the time, though this figure has since been disputed by a number of local publishers. Based on the survey results, the largest newspapers in Nigeria in mid-2010 were The Punch, The Nation, The Sun, Vanguard, The Guardian, This Day, Daily Trust and The Tribune. Other major local publications include The Champion, Business Day, New Nigerian, The print sector currently faces a number of challenges. The lack of reliable electricity supply means that most publishers rely on expensive diesel generators to power their presses. Distribution, which is hampered by the country’s decrepit national road network, is another key challenge. “To get around the transport issue, we print in numerous locations, including Lagos, Abuja and Asaba, in the Delta region,” said Adekoya. “We also fly newspapers to Port Harcourt and the far north, which is effectively unreachable on a daily basis.” The sector also faces security threats, particularly in a handful of north-eastern states, where individual journalists and publishing facilities have been targeted by members of Boko Haram in recent years. Finally, perhaps the most pressing long-term challenge facing the industry is the rise of digital media, which, as in most other markets, threatens to undermine traditional newspapers and other print media organisations. These issues are expected to have a major impact on the development of the sector moving forward. TUNED IN: Radio, which is low-cost and available in most parts of the country, is one of the most popular types of media in Nigeria, both in terms of overall listeners and advertisers. According to the NBC, Nigeria is home to more than 135 radio stations in total, including 80-plus publicly owned stations, at least 25 private stations, around 20 university-based stations and a handful of foreign broadcasters. The first radio broadcast in Nigeria took place in 1933, when colonial leadership relayed the BBC’s overseas service to Africa. In 1950 the Nigerian Broadcasting Service was established, and in the late 1970s became the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN), which operates more than 40 national stations providing a wide range of programming in a variety of languages and dialects, depending on the region in which they are broadcast. Additionally, all 36 of Nigeria’s state governments operate a radio station. The radio sector was liberalised in 1992, at which point the newly formed NBC began granting licences for private radio stations. Since then a handful of private broadcasters have gained market share, including The Beat 99.9 FM, Silverbird Communication’s Rhythm FM, Raypower, Star FM, Freedom Radio, Cool FM and Brilla FM, among others. Additionally, in recent years many private radio stations have begun broadcasting digitally on the internet. “We have made a real effort to grow our brand online in recent years, and particularly on social networks like Facebook and Twitter,” Deji Awokoya, the general manager of The Beat 99.9 FM, told OBG. In early 2013 the federal government announced that it planned to set up around 800 new community radio stations, primarily in an effort to reach rural areas. The community radio initiative, which has been in development since late 2010, is being supported by a number of international development agencies, and is expected to create around 12,000 new jobs. CHANNEL SURFING: Since the liberalisation of the broadcast sector in 1992, the television industry has become a key investment destination for local and foreign players alike. Nigeria is among the largest television markets in Africa – in early 2012 an estimated 79% of Nigerians had a working television at home, according to a joint poll carried out by Gallup and the US’s Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). The majority of this national audience primarily views terrestrial free-to-air broadcasts. The Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), the government-owned legacy operator, is one of the largest broadcasters not just in Nigeria, but in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, claiming an estimated audience in excess of 50m. The NTA broadcasts from all 36 state capitals and the federal capital territory. Private sector players dominate the satellite and cable segments. According to the Gallup-BBG poll, an estimated 13% of the country had a satellite dish and just over 10% had a fixed cable link. The South African firm Multichoice, which rolled out its Digital Satellite Television (DS tv) pay service to the Nigerian market in the mid-1990s, soon after liberalisation took hold, is among the most popular stations operating in the country today. StarTimes, a Chinese broadcaster that has been active in Nigeria since the mid-2000s, partnered with the NTA in 2010 to launch NTA Star TV, a digital terrestrial television station that has gained market share among Nigeria’s growing middle class in recent years. Other major players include African Independent Television, which broadcasts throughout the region; the Silverbird Group, a local conglomerate that has also become a presence in retail in recent years; and Galaxy Television, among others (see analysis). THE SILVER SCREEN: The history of film in Nigeria can be traced back more than a century. The first film showings took place in August 1903, when a Spanish production firm screened a handful of short movies in Lagos. Three decades later the Colonial Film Unit, which was launched by the government in 1939, produced didactic films on a variety of subjects, including health care, farming techniques and nutrition. Finally, in 1979 the Nigerian Film Corporation (NFC) was established by law, and it continues to serve as the government’s agency for film development and promotion. Private sector development began in earnest in the 1990s, and over the past two decades Nigerian filmmakers and producers have built a private sector-led industry that is increasingly considered to be a driving force in global cinema. In terms of films produced on an annual basis, Nollywood has been the second-largest film industry in the world since 2009, when it surpassed the American film industry in Hollywood. According to numbers put forward by the online publication African Movies News, in addition to estimates by the BBC and The New York Times, some 2600 films are produced in Nigeria on an annual basis. Most Nollywood films are made on the cheap – generally for between $10,000 and $15,000 – and released quickly, with an average production taking eight to 12 days from start to finish. The great majority of the movies are released directly to DVD and distributed throughout Africa, where many Nigerian filmmakers have a large following. Since Nollywood kicked off as a grassroots movement in the early 1990s it has remained largely unregulated, under-developed, in terms of licensing and permits, and until recently was unexamined by statistics organisations. Consequently, the sector’s full economic impact has yet to be measured. According to estimates from the BGL Group, a Nigerian investment company, as of mid-2012 the industry employed around 1m people, making it the country’s second-largest employer after agriculture. BGL estimates that Nollywood grosses $200m-300m annually. While the sector lacks a regulator, over the years several public entities and industry organisations have been launched, including the NFC, the Nigerian Copyright Commission, the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB), the Actor’s Guild of Nigeria, the Director’s Guild of Nigeria, the Association of Nollywood Core Producers, the Filmmakers Cooperative and the Screenwriters Guild of Nigeria. CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Since the May 2013 appointment of a new managing director at the NFC, the body has moved forward with plans to become a key growth driver in the industry, with a particular focus on boosting funding and training, and combating piracy. At an industry event in Lagos in July 2013, Danjuma Dadu, the organisation’s new administrator, announced that he planned “to seek ways of moving ahead with the industry; to make it compliant with international best practices.” One of the NFC’s key short-term goals involves pushing a new Motion Picture Practitioners Council (MOPICON) bill through the National Assembly. The bill, which has been circulating in draft form in Nollywood since 2006, would establish an overarching regulatory framework for filmmakers in Nigeria in line with best practices, with the objective of streamlining production procedures. According to the NFC, which introduced MOPICON in the mid-2000s, passage of the bill would likely result in a considerable uptick in foreign investment in Nollywood. Indeed, in recent years a number of international financial organisations have made initial moves to invest in the industry, only to back out due to the lack of a formal legal framework and other protections. As of mid-2013 the bill was under discussion in the government. OTHER INITIATIVES: In addition to its work on MOPICON, the NFC also recently announced that it planned to introduce a handful of new educational diploma and certificate programmes aimed at ensuring that filmmakers are trained. The new programmes are likely to be rolled out in conjunction with the National Film Institute (NFI), a film school owned by the NFC that was established in Jos in 1995. Other projects that are either under way or in discussion at the NFC include the establishment of an NFI campus in Lagos; a joint initiative with the National Copyright Commission to develop a long-term anti-piracy plan; a move to organise monthly film screenings nationwide; the creation of Plateau Film City; and the establishment of a multimedia film centre in Abuja. Additionally, in August 2013 the NFC announced its plans to produce a series of animated films for children, with the goal of promoting Nigerian cultural traditions. These movies are expected to be released in Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo. DEVELOPMENT HURDLES: A lack of financing is among the largest challenges currently facing Nollywood. Expensive local bank loans from a small group of willing lenders – including the Bank of Industry and the Nigerian Export-Import Bank, among others – have historically been responsible for a majority of funding. As a result of the industry’s growing reputation around the world, however, in recent years the sector has attracted new attention from both public and private sector players. In March 2013 the federal government announced that it would establish an N3bn ($18.9m) fund to support the nation’s film industry, with a focus on upgrading production values across the board. Roberts Orya, managing director and CEO of NEXIM Bank, told OBG, “Nigeria has been learning from India how to provide stronger financial support to the film industry. Years ago when Bollywood was at a more rudimentary stage, the Indian government spearheaded financial support for the film industry by strengthening intellectual property rights, while the Reserve Bank of India also issued directives to the banks on how to lend to this virgin segment based on key factors like insurance and cash flow.” Since 2010 the government has also overseen a project to provide loans to local filmmakers and producers, though many of these players have complained that the loans are hard to access. A number of state governments also work to support the industry. In 2012 Lagos State government launched the Nollywood Upgrade Project, which aims to provide support in the form of film grants and training to local filmmakers. More broadly, in May 2012 the Federal Capital Territory Administration began work on the Abuja Film Village, a 5000-ha development that is expected to serve as a centre for Nollywood. In 2010 the World Bank announced that Nollywood would be a major beneficiary of its Growth and Employment in States (GEMS) project, which is aimed at encouraging job creation in high-potential non-oil sectors, including hospitality, information and communications technology, wholesale and retail trade, tourism, construction and real estate, and entertainment. The initiative, which is being financed by a $160m loan from the World Bank and a £90m ($145.5m) grant from the UK’s Department for International Development, is slated to create at least 10,000 jobs by 2018. A substantial percentage of these are expected to be in small and medium-sized enterprises. A considerable amount of this funding has gone to Nollywood-related projects. In conjunction with a number of government partners – chiefly the Federal Ministry of Trade and Investment – funding has gone towards projects aimed at reducing piracy, improving distribution networks and establishing institutions to support the industry. Local entities that have benefitted from include the Nigerian Copyright Commission, the Nigerian Export Promotion Council and the NFVCB, among others. “Greater financing is the only factor standing in the way of the Nigerian film industry making it to the next level,” Ben Murray Bruce, chairman of Silverbird, told OBG. “Higher production values will not only increase the international appeal of Nigerian films, but will create longer-term job opportunities.” DISTRIBUTION: Facilitating more efficient distribution of Nollywood films is another pressing challenge. Cinemas are few and far between, although local firm Silverbird now runs the largest regional chain, with more than 50 screens in Nigeria and neighbouring Ghana. Currently, most films are distributed on DVDs, which are quickly copied and pirated. According to a 2011 report by the World Bank, for every legitimate Nollywood DVD sold by a producer, pirates sell an estimated 5-10 illegal copies. With this in mind, producers and filmmakers are working to strengthen their ties with television stations, many of which broadcast Nollywood films throughout Africa and other parts of the world, and pay studios for the right to do so. Additionally, digital distribution has picked up in recent years, and is increasingly seen as a potential growth driver in the industry. Large Nigerian diaspora communities in the UK, the US and other Western countries are largely responsible for driving demand for Nollywood films online. DIGITAL MEDIA: Over the past five years new technology has begun to transform the media and entertainment industries. Internet users grew from just 5m in 2006 to 48.37m at the end of June 2012, according to data from the ITU, which makes Nigeria the largest internet market in Africa. NCC figures put the number of mobile internet subscribers at 25m in the same month, meaning slightly more than half of those who accessed the internet did so by mobile phone. As in many other countries around the world, the rise of widespread internet use in Nigeria has threatened to undercut traditional media. Most of the country’s newspapers, for example, have seen declining subscription and readership rates in the past decade. In an effort to combat this trend, most major publications have launched full-service websites, which, according to anecdotal reporting from news organisations, have seen steadily increasing traffic since 2011, in particular. “It is not inconceivable that in the future hard copy newspapers will disappear entirely here,” said Adekoya of the Vanguard. ONLINE REACH: Both Nollywood and Nigeria’s nascent music industry have benefitted from rising internet penetration rates in recent years. Iroko Partners, a Lagos-based firm that was established in September 2010, has acquired the rights to large collections of Nollywood films and albums and made them available online for paying subscribers. The firm, which operates across a number of online platforms, has seen rapid uptake over the past three years, and, as of mid-2013, claimed to be “the world’s largest distributor of African entertainment,” with an audience of 6m users from 178 countries. While local subscribers are expected to play an increasingly important role in the future, currently the majority of the firm’s customers are members of Nigeria’s large diaspora community. The fact that the company pays filmmakers, musicians and other content producers to use their work is relatively novel in Nigeria, where CD and DVD piracy are common. This is particularly true for the music industry, which is considerably less-developed than Nollywood, for example. Indeed, while many Nigerian artists are popular throughout Africa and, in some cases, around the world, the country lacks a formal domestic music industry, per se. Most artists earn an income not by selling recorded copies – digital or otherwise – of their work, but by playing live shows. Consequently, residuals, royalties and other revenues from digital distribution represent a new form of income for many recording artists. “The Nigerian music industry has grown exponentially in the last few years, but record companies have so far failed to monetise this popularity and potential,” Tola Odunsi, the CEO of Storm 360, a local entertainment company, told OBG. “With new developments and opportunities in digital music, however, this is all about to change.” iROKING, which was launched by Iroko Partners in 2012, is one of the leading local digital music platforms. As of mid-2013 the service boasted a library of more than 35,000 songs by African artists, all of which are available for streaming or downloading via numerous channels and programmes around the world. The firm has deals to distribute music from its catalogue through Western digital marketplaces, including Apple’s iTunes, Spotify and Amazon, among others. INTERNATIONAL INTEREST: Nigeria’s growing tech-savvy population has attracted the interest of a number of major international media and entertainment players in recent years. In March 2013 the US-based Universal Music Group partnered with Samsung to launch The Kleek, a digital music service that offers a mix of tracks from Universal’s international catalogue and African artists. Similarly, in late 2013 Deezer, a French music streaming company, launched in Nigeria, in line with the firm’s roll-out across Africa in recent years. In December 2012 Apple launched iTunes in 56 new markets around the world, including Nigeria and 13 other countries in Africa. Finally, in June 2013 Spinlet, a digital music distribution platform, launched in Nigeria. Spinlet’s operation, which was established in conjunction with the mobile telecoms operator Etisalat, allows users to purchase tracks using phone credit. Despite this influx of new players and the rapidly growing number of Nigerian internet users, the country is widely considered to be a challenging operating environment for digital media distributors. As of mid-2012 internet penetration reached less than a third of the population, according to data from the UN, and very few internet users are willing to pay for the data speeds that are necessary to support on-demand streaming services such as those offered by Spotify, for example. Additionally, according to Informa Telecoms and Media, a UK-based research firm, at the end of 2012 only around 10% of mobile telecoms subscribers used smartphones. Designing digital music services that are accessible via low-bandwidth basic mobile phones is a challenge. This is not a high-revenue business plan – like Iroko Partners’ movie distribution platform, a considerable amount of iRoking’s revenue, for instance, comes from Western markets, where the firm’s music catalogue is available on iTunes and other major pay services. Similarly, users of The Kleek stream playlists have been designed with mobile phone access in mind. ADVERTISING: Spending on advertising in Nigeria has grown exponentially over the past decade. In 2003 the country saw less than N18bn ($113.4m) in total above-the-line ad spend – which includes television, radio, print media and outdoor – according to data from local industry research firm MediaReach OMD. By 2011 – the most recent confirmed data available at time of publication – this figure had jumped to N102.8bn ($647.6m). Lagos attracted 54% of 2011 ad spending, and television ads accounted for around 45% of the total. As in many other African markets, telecoms firms were among the most active advertisers, with the top four mobile service providers – MTN, Globacom, Etisalat and Airtel – accounting for more than 19% of total spend for the year, according to MediaReach. Other major advertisers include financial services firms and banks, food and beverages companies and alcoholic drinks producers. AD MEN: According to the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN), an industry body, as of May 2013 the sector was composed of around 100 professional players and more than 1000 informal, unregistered firms. In total, advertising contributes more than N300bn ($1.89bn) annually, according to AAAN. As the most populous country in Africa, most large international agencies are represented in Nigeria, either on their own or in partnership with a local firm. Major players include STB-McCann; SO&U Saatchi & Saatchi; Ogilvy; Lowe Lintas Lagos; Insight Communications, which partners with the US-based Grey Group; Centrespread FCB; Prima Garnet; DDB Lagos; and Rosabel Leo Burnett, among others. In recent years many advertisers have looked to digital placement, both on webpages and via mobile phone networks. In late 2012 Nigeria was home to the largest population of social media users in Africa, according to Socialbakers, a Czech digital research firm. With this in mind, many advertisers are demanding campaigns that focus on digital advertising strategies (see analysis). REFORMS: In January 2013 APCON, the primary advertising regulatory body, introduced a raft of reforms, with the aim of bringing the industry in line with international best practice and boosting local participation and content. The new legislation requires all advertising firms to be licensed by APCON, which is expected to result in a decline in informal firms and unlicensed campaigns. Perhaps more importantly, the reforms aim to boost indigenous activity. While the new legislation makes it clear that APCON does not wish to stifle foreign investment or interfere with competition, under the reform bill the industry is expected to “consider Nigerian content as an important element” of any given project or campaign. More specifically, the bill stipulates that a firm must submit a Nigerian content plan to APCON before it is eligible to receive an operating licence, for example, and agencies are required to use local talent and labour whenever possible, both in terms of hiring full-time employees and when it comes to producing individual advertisements. The reform bill is widely considered to be a response to numerous complaints of foreign content and firms dominating the industry in recent years. Since it was introduced, the bill has attracted criticism from local and foreign players alike, many of which have publicly questioned whether or not APCON would in fact be able to enforce the new requirements. Another key challenge currently facing advertising agencies operating in Nigeria is the widespread lack of up-to-date, reliable circulation and viewership data about most media segments, which complicates the industry’s ability to price advertising campaigns effectively. OUTLOOK: Nigeria’s media, entertainment and advertising industries face a number of interrelated challenges. The underdeveloped transport infrastructure is considered to be a key hurdle for print publications, as poorly maintained roads have resulted in high transport costs. Nigeria’s unreliable electricity grid also represents a challenge for local media firms, a majority of which have invested in diesel generators to ensure a steady supply of power, raising operating costs. According to Akinlola Irewunmi Olopade, CEO of out-of-home advertiser Afromedia, “Digital billboards are the way forward, however, independent power generation will represent a large upfront cost to the advertising firm.” Finally, the steady and rapid expansion of internet usage represents a challenge, but is also considered to be a major opportunity for ongoing expansion. Indeed, despite numerous challenging issues, media firms, advertising agencies, and film and music production companies are broadly optimistic about the future. Nigeria is uniquely situated to become a key international player in many of these areas. Nollywood, which is already a major economic contributor, has a devoted audience throughout Africa, parts of Asia and the Caribbean. With new investment on the way, the Nigerian film industry is on track to grow exponentially, which bodes well for the related and semi-related television, radio and music industries, as well. Key to taking advantage of these strengths will be local businesses’ ability to adapt quickly to the rapidly changing market. See also:	i don't know
The vast geographical feature called 'Chad' which forms a border between Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger, is a?	Chad Map / Geography of Chad / Map of Chad - Worldatlas.com Print this map The ancient land called Chad was inhabited over one million years ago, at a time when much of it was only water. In modern Chad, precious water is often difficult to find, while famine and war seem everywhere. Over the centuries it served as the stomping-ground of sorts for a litany of cultures and kingdoms, beginning with the Saos in the 6th century BC. The Kanem Empire became the longest-lasting in the region, gaining control in the first millennium AD, and surviving until internal struggles aided in their collapse towards the end of the 14th century. The French arrived in 1891, and established complete control of the region. France governed until Chad gained its independence in 1960, and Chadian Progressive Party (PPT) leader, Francois Tombalbaye, we appointed the country's first president. Decades of ethnic warfare followed, in addition to invasions from Libya , its most powerful neighbor. A certain level of peace was restored in 1990, but local power struggles continue, and the future of this unstable land is uncertain. On December 23, 2005, Chad declared a state of war against Sudan , due to the Sudanese government's attempt at overthrowing Chadian president, Idriss Deby. Failed attempts at overrunning the capital city of N'Djamena were orchestrated by rebel forces in 2006 and 2008, both of which were blamed on Sudan . A peace agreement was finally reached and signed on January 15, 2010, bringing the five-year war to an end, and opening the borders between both countries. Despite the peace treaty, Chad's foreseeable future remains unstable, and organized gangs have begun to terrorize the region. Much of the country is positioned within the hot and dry (and mostly unproductive) Sahara Desert, covering Chad with sand and barren scrub land. In the far south and southwest, surrounding Lake Chad, conditions improve to support an abundance of wildlife, as well as agricultural ventures. Chad's economy has recently benefited from a series of major oil field and pipeline projects, while cattle, cotton and gum arabic have long been the traditional economic mainstays. Long term weaknesses include its landlocked position, oppressive poverty, the shrinking of Lake Chad, and the ever increasing expansion of the Sahara Desert. See Also	Lake
Nigeria's international telephone country code is?	Nigeria - Evolution of a Nation Chapter (PDF Available) · October 2010 with 66 Reads In book: Nigeria 50: Celebrating 50 Years of Independence, Chapter: Evolution of a Nation, Publisher: Newsdeskmedia, London, pp.16-19 22.68 · African Development Bank Group, Abidjan Abstract Preamble A common belief is that history presents the glorious past of a country which is replete with unprecedented events and incidents that give the nation its own socio-political cum economic identity, providing an amazing glimpse into its glorious past. In this light, Nigeria's history represents the remarkable incidents that changed and redefined the various aspects of the country. Like in other countries and territories, since the ancient times the land of Nigeria, has been inhabited by different groups of tribes coming from other places. Basic Profile " Nigeria " is derived from the word Niger' which is the name of the river that constitutes the most remarkable geographical feature of the country. This name was coined by Flora Shaw, the future wife of Baron Lugard, a British colonial administrator, in the late 19th century. The country has an area of 9,323,768 square kilometres, lying east of Benin Republic, south of Niger and Chad Republics, west of the Republic of Cameroun, and north of the Gulf of Guinea. In 1960, her population was estimated to be about 52 million, in 1963 it was put at 55.7 million, while in 1991 the National Population Commission projected her population, to be about 88.5 million (later revised in 1997 to 88.9 million). Its population was estimated at 154.7 million by the year 2009, growing currently at 2.3%. The nation's population density was at 167.5/km 2 at the end of 2009. Nigeria is endowed with vast and largely untapped natural resources including such minerals such as petroleum, Discover the world's research Nigeria - Evolution of a Nation Preamble A common belief is that history presents the glorious past of a country which is replete with unprecedented events and incidents that give the nation its own socio-political cum economic identity, providing an amazing glimpse into its glorious past. In this light, Nigeria’s history represents the remarkable incidents that changed and redefined the various aspects of the country. Like in other countries and territories, since the ancient times the land of Nigeria, has been inhabited by different groups of tribes coming from other places. Basic Profile “Nigeria” is derived from the word `Niger' which is the name of the river that constitutes the most remarkable geographical feature of the country. This name was coined by Flora Shaw, the future wife of Baron Lugard, a British colonial administrator, in the late 19th century. The country has an area of 9,323,768 square kilometres, lying east of Benin Republic, south of Niger and Chad Republics, west of the Republic of Cameroun, and north of the Gulf of Guinea. In 1960, her population was estimated to be about 52 million, in 1963 it was put at 55.7 million, while in 1991 the National Population Commission projected her population, to be about 88.5 million (later revised in 1997 to 88.9 million) . Its population was estimated at 154.7 million by the year 2009, growing currently at 2.3%. The nation’s population density was at 167.5/km 2 at the end of 2009. Nigeria is endowed with vast and largely untapped natural resources including such minerals such as petroleum, limestone, tin, columbite, kaolin, gold and silver, coal, lead, zinc, gypsum, clay, shale, marble, graphite, iron-ore, stone, zircon and natural gas. It s GDP (Atlas method) in 2009 stood at US$164.7 billion while her GNI per capita was US$1,160. Historic Regions, Colonial and Post-Independence Eras: 5th Century BC – 21 st Century AD In the ‘beginning’…. It has been argued that Nigeria contains more historic cultures and empires than any other other nation in Africa. The people in what is today known as "Nigeria" consisted of 4 different 'empires', some of them extending into parts that are not part of current-day Nigeria, like parts of current-day Ghana, and current-day Cameroon. It is against this background that the country has been decscribed as an amalgam of ancient Kingdoms, Caliphates, Empires and City-states with a long history of organised societies, with its boundaries drawn as a result of trade (from slavery to pepper or ivory) and overseas territorial ambitions of Western European powers in the 19 th century. The first inhabitants of what is now Nigeria were thought to have been the Nok people (500 BC –AD 200). Subsequently, the Kanuri, Hausa, and Fulani peoples migrated there. The Nok Culture In essence, the nation’s ancient culture owes its origin to the Nok (a neolithic and iron-age civilisation) people who thrived extensively between 500 BC and 200 AD on the Jos Plateau situated in the north central part of Nigeria. The Nok people were neolithic tribes who acquired the iron technology spreading southwards through the rest of Africa, and produced the earliest terracotta sculptures ever to be found in the country. The Calabar Kingdom Calabar Kingdom also known as Efik Kingdom is an Ancient Kingdom that existed thousands of years before Christ. The City of Calabar was the seat of power of the Calabar Kingdom. The Kingdom covered the entire Akwa Ibom State, Cross River State, Western Cameroon, the offshore island of Fernando Po (now Equatorial Guinea), and extended into parts of present Abia and Imo States. The old Calabar or Efik Kingdom was composed of loosely governed states: Annang, Akamkpa, Efik, Eket, Ibibio, Ikom, Ogoja, (Opobo, now Ikot Abasi), Oron, Western Camaroon and 2 the offshore island of Fernando Po (now Equatorial Guinea). Calabar was the capital city of the Efik State of the old Calabar Kingdom. Calabar Kingdom was an active ancient trading kingdom. Recorded history shows that the Calabar Kingdom was the first Kingdom to use a money system in trading in West Africa. The ancient money of Calabar Kingdom was called "Okpoho", a Calabar word for money. This money became known as the Manillas. It is important to observe that the Obong of Calabar signed a treaty with the British government in the 17th century that resulted in the Southern Protectorate of Nigeria with headquarter at Calabar, thus making Calabar the first Nigerian Capital City. After Nigerian independence in 1960, Western Cameroon opted to become a part of Cameroon because of the weakness and poor political leadership and relationship of people of the then Eastern Nigeria. Hence, parts of the Calabar people got divided into Cameroon. The 11 century onwards, witnessed the formation of city states, kingdoms and empires, including Hausa kingdoms and Kanem-Bornu dynasty in north, Oduduwa/Yoruba and Benin (Edo) kingdoms in the southwest and mid-west, respectively, and Igbo kingdom of Nri. The Kingdoms of the North The first extensive kingdoms of the north (Northern Empire) - more than a millennium after the Nok people - derived their wealth from trade north through the Sahara and east into the Sudan. Indeed, with the emergence of trade relations between different countries and the opening of Trans- Saharan trade links between the western Sudan and the Mediterranean region paved the way for establishment of other dynasties and extension of the present boundaries. This led to the formation of the northern kingdoms of Savanna comprising of states as Hausa, Ghana, Gao and Kanem. During the 9 th century AD a trading empire grew up around Lake Chad. Its original centre wass east of the lake, in the Kanem region, but it soon extended to Bornu on the western side. Kano and Katsina had recorded history dating back to around 999. Towards the 11th century, popular Hausa states such as Kano, Katsina, and Gobir grew to be popular hubs of trade and industry. Hausa kingdoms and the Kanem-Bornu Empire prospered as trade posts between North and West Africa. Well placed to control trade with the forest regions to the south, the Hausa developed a number of small but stable kingdoms, each ruled from a strong walled city. Living among the Hausa in the northern regions of Nigeria are the Fulanis, who, in 1809 established a capital at Sokoto, from which the centre and north of Nigeria were effectively ruled for the rest of the 19 th century. At the beginning of the 19th century under Usman dan Fodio the Fulani led the centralized Fulani Empire which continued until 1903 when the Fulani population and land were divided into various European colonies. The Yoruba Kingdoms Towards the west of the River Niger, between the Hausa kingdoms and the coast, the Yoruba people (Oduduwa Empire) in the southwestern block of Nigeria were the dominant tribes. Here they established two powerful states: Ife, on the border between the forest regions and the savanna, now famous for its sculpture, flourished from the 11 th century; and Oyo, which developed and grew in strength in the 16 th century. By the end of the 18 th century the rulers of Oyo were controlling a region from the river Niger to the west of former Dahomey. Ifẹ and Oyo became prominent around 700—900 and 1400, respectively though Yoruba mythology states that Ile-Ife predates any other civilization. Ifẹ also produced terra cotta and bronze figures and Ọyọ once extended from western Nigeria to Togo. The Benin Kingdom The Edo Kingdom of Benin (Benin Empire), arguably the most powerful and prominent kingdom in Nigeria's history was also located in southwestern part of the country, with its power lasting between the 15 and 19 th century. Its dominance stretched from the Niger delta in the east to as far as the city of Eko (a Bini name later changed to Lagos by the Portuguese) and further. The kingdom was internationally known for its cast-metal sculpture, in a tradition inherited from the Ife. However, 3 Benin's fame is based on factors other than power. This was the coastal kingdom which the Portuguese discovered when they reached the mouth of the River Niger in the 1470s, bringing back to Europe the first news of superb African artefacts and of the ceremonial splendour of Benin's oba or king. In the 21 st century the original dynasty is still in place. The Nri Kingdom In southeastern Nigeria, the Kingdom of Nri (Nri or Igbo Kingdom) of the Igbo people flourished from the controversial date of around the 10 th century until 1911, making it the oldest kingdom in Nigeria. The Nri Kingdom was ruled by the Eze Nri while the city of Nri (in Umeuri clan), which traced its lineage back to the patriarchal king-figure, Eri, was considered to be the foundation of Igbo culture. The Colonial Era The first Europeans to begin trade (and to establish trading stations in the 1400s) in Nigeria in the port they named Lagos and in Calabar were Portuguese explorers. They traded with the ethnicities of the coast and also negotiated a trade in slaves. The British, Dutch, and European nations vied with the Portuguese to control the lucrative slave trade that was organized out of Nigeria and by the 1700s, the British controlled most of the coastal region. However, the tide changed after Britain abolished slavery and sought to eliminate slave trading. Britain abolished its slave trade in 1807 and, following the Napoleonic Wars, established the West Africa Squadron in an attempt to halt the international traffic in slaves. However, slavery was not finally outlawed in northern Nigeria until 1936. Nigeria was originally a collection of African states whose wealth came from trans-Saharan (and trans-Atlantic) trade, and became a British colony in 1861; divided into two British Protectorates in 1898; in 1906 land east of the Niger River was incorporated into the colony; on January 1, 1901 it became a British protectorate, part of the British Empire, the foremost world power at the time; merged in 1914 by Lord Frederick Lugard to form the colony of Nigeria (known as the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria); in 1946 Britain divided it into three parts (northern and northern provinces and Lagos colony), each with an advisory assembly; and restructured as the Nigerian Federation in 1954. Nigeria attained independence from Britain on 1 st October 1960 with Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa as the first Prime Minister. The Post-independence Era Nigeria became a republic on 1 st October 1963 with Azikiwe as its first President, and fought 30- month a civil war between July 1967 and January 1970, led by Yakubu Gowon on the Nigerian side and Odumegwu Ojukwu on the Biafran side. Indeed, following the coup of January 1966, Johnson T. U. Aguiyi-Ironsi became the head of a military government but in July 1966, another coup placed Yakubu Gowon at the head of a new military regime. Following the 1966 mass massacres of 1966, in May 1967, the Eastern parliament gave Chukwuemeka O. Ojukwu, the region's leader, authority to declare the region an independent republic. Yakubu Gowon proclaimed a state of emergency and redivided Nigeria into 12 states. However, on 30 May 1967, Ojukwu proclaimed the independent Republic of Biafra, and in July fighting broke out between Biafra and Nigeria. After much losses, destruction and suffering, the war came to an end on January 15, 1970, with the federal authorities declaring, “no victor, no vanquished”. Thus, in the early 1970s, the process of reconstruction and reintegration commenced in the country. It is important to point out that Nigeria is blessed with many natural resources, chiefly oil and gas. The first commercial discovery of crude oil in Nigeria was in 1959 by Shell. The country joined the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) as the eleventh member in 1971. Today, Nigeria has the second largest oil reserves in Africa; she is the largest oil producer in the Continent and the sixth largest exporter of crude oil in the world. The country is the seventh largest natural gas reserve holder in the world and the largest in Africa. Since the oil boom of the 1970s billions of dollars generated by production in the oil-rich Niger Delta flowed into the coffers of the Nigerian 4 government but rising corruption and graft at all levels of government had led to the squandering of most of the earnings hence high poverty levels and poor state of infrastructure, particularly epileptic and erratic electricity supply, which the current government of Goodluck Jonathan has started to seriously address. We also note that in 1975, Yakubu Gowon's regime was overthrown Murtala Muhammad, who moved the capital of the country from Lagos to Abuja and like his predecessors, pledged a return to civilian rule in the mid-1970s. However, he was assassinated in an attempted coup in February 1976 and was succeeded by Olusegun Obasanjo. Many analysts have noted that the key marks of this era included rapidly falling oil revenues, restriction of public opposition government, controlled union activity and student movements, nationalization of land through the land use decree, and increased oil industry regulation. Starting in 1979, Nigeria witnessed a brief return to democracy when Obasanjo transferred power to the civilian regime of Shehu Shagari, who was re-elected in 1983. The regime was however overthrown in military coup leeed by Mohammadu Buhari in 1984 on allegations of cooruption. Incidentally, this administration was short-lived as it was again overthrown another military coup led by Ibrahim Babangida in 1985. The Babangida era was chiefly characterized by the introduction of the International Monetary Fund/World Bank-supported Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) meant to effectively alter and restructure the consumption and productive patterns of the Nigerian economy, as well as to eliminate price distortions and heavy dependence on the exports of crude oil and imports of consumer and producers goods. It was also meant to aid in the repayment of the nation’s international debt overhang, which most federal revenue was dedicated to servicing. Bagandida set 1990 as the official deadline for a return to democratic governance but after he survived an abortive coup, he pushed back the promised return to democracy to 1992. When what was described as a free and fair elections were finally held on the 12th of June, 1993, Babangida aanuled the results, which showed that a presidential victory for M. K. O. Abiola, sparking mass civilian violence in protest which effectively shut down the country for weeks and forcing Babangida to “step aside”. This led to the emergence of an interim government headed by Ernest Shonekan, which was short-lived as t was overthrown in yet another military coup led in late 1993 by Sani Abacha. Many had decribed that regime as brutal but this came to an end in 1998 when Abacha was found dead amid controversial circumstances, but providing opportunity for a return to a new democratic dispensation. Obasanjo was re-elected for a second term in 2003 in an election marred by accusations of vote rigging, some violence, and eventuall unsuccessful challenge in court. Though the fight against corruption appeared to have been given some impetus during this period but a number of analysts termed it “selective fight against corruption”. From early 2006 the Niger Delta area witnessed an upsurge in kidnappings of foreign oil workers and attacks on oil operations, rseulting in loss of output, exports and foreign exchange earnings. By the end of 2005, the nation’s total external debt was US$35.9 billion, the largest debt burden in Africa. The vast majority – over US$30 billion – was debt to 14 rich governments who are part of the Paris Club group of creditors. The debt ballooned from original loans of less than US$17 billion, despite the nation having already repaid about US$20 billion. However, the hallmark of this era was the external debt deal with the Paris Club in which the country paid a total of US$12.124 billion to get a write-off of US$18 billion loans. But it is significant to re-emphasize that Nigeria squandered its oil windfall of the 1970s, which led to three decades of economic stagnation, the degradation of public institution and the “oil resource curse”, occasioned by a mix of poor fiscal and macroeconomic policy, corruption, and poor governance. 5 The military returned power to a democratically elected civilian administration on 29 May 1999 when Olusegun Obasanjo (a former military head of state) was elected as the new President, ending almost thirty three-years of military rule (from 1966 until 1999) excluding the short-lived second republic (between 1979 and 1983) by military dictators who seized power in coups d'état and counter-coups during the Nigerian military juntas of 1966-1979 and 1983-1998 as noted above. With this, Nigeria was readmitted to the Commonwealth. This period of Obasanjo’s first tenure as a civilian head iof state (1999-2003) may have witnessed some progress economically, but government, political and economic corruption remained a great challenge while the country was confronted with renewed ethnic and religious tension. Umaru Yar'Adua came into power in the general election of 2007 to succeed Obasanjo in yet what was described by election observers and the international community as a “flawed election”. In spite of the “seven point agenda” that the regime was known for, due to the frequent absence of Yar’Adua on medical treatment, the machinery of government appeared to have moved at “snail speed” in the face of massive corruption and social-economic malaise of gargantuan proportions. Yar'Adua died on 5 May 2010 and Dr. Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan was sworn in as his replacement on 6 May 2011, becoming the nations's 14 th Head of State. While it may be too early to assess the achievements of Dr. Jonathan, however, in a reformist zeal, he has vowed to fix three of Nigeria’s biggest problems: electoral fraud, a woefully unreliable electricity supply, and a violent insurgency in the oil-rich Niger Delta. His appointment of a former University Union activist, Attahiru Mohammed Jega, as the Independent Electoral Commision (INEC) chairman was widely commended locally and internationally as a sign of the President’s seriousness in ensuring a free and fair election. Already, he has revived the flagging amnesty for Delta militants initiated by Yar’Adua and in the oil and gas sub-sector, the government is tackling the perennial problem of gas-to-power, and pursuing the renewal of oil exploration activities in the Chad Basin and had seen to the passage of the Nigerian Content Law. On 26 August 2010, President Goodluck Jonathan, in Lagos, unveiled his administration’s strategies (“Power Sector Road Map”) to eliminate power outages in Nigeria by December, 2012. Among the policies announced in this direction include the implementation of a Super Transmission Network, generation of additional 5000MW by the International Oil Companies, active exploitation of hydro, nuclear and coal power, privatisation of PHCN generation and distribution network, a new gas pricing policy, constitution of two Presidential Committees on Power and the reconstitution of the boards and membership of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC). Only time will tell whether we did arrive at our planned destination! CitationsCitations0	i don't know
At 12,000 years old, the Nok of Nigeria is West Africa's oldest known?	The Nok of Nigeria - Archaeology Magazine Archive The Nok of Nigeria Volume 64 Number 4, July/August 2011 by Roger Atwood Unlocking the secrets of West Africa�s earliest known civilization A terracotta head created by the Nok culture, one of ancient West Africa�s most advanced civilizations, emerges at a dig site near Janjala, Nigeria. (Courtesy Peter Breunig) In 1943, British archaeologist Bernard Fagg received a visitor in the central Nigerian town of Jos, where he had spent the previous few years gathering and classifying ancient artifacts found on a rugged plateau. The visitor carried a terracotta head that, he said, had been perched atop a scarecrow in a nearby yam field. Fagg was intrigued. The piece resembled a terracotta monkey head he had seen a few years earlier, and neither piece matched the artifacts of any known ancient African civilization. Fagg, a man of boundless curiosity and energy, traveled across central Nigeria looking for similar artifacts. As he recounted later, Fagg discovered local people had been finding terracottas in odd places for years�buried under a hockey field, perched on a rocky hilltop, protruding from piles of gravel released by power-hoses in tin mining. He set up shop in a whitewashed cottage that still stands outside the village of Nok and soon gathered nearly 200 terracottas through purchase, persuasion, and his own excavations. Soil analysis from the spots where the artifacts were found dated them to around 500 B.C. This seemed impossible since the type of complex societies that would have produced such works were not supposed to have existed in West Africa that early. But when Fagg subjected plant matter found embedded in the terracotta to the then-new technique of radiocarbon dating, the dates ranged from 440 B.C. to A.D. 200. He later dated the scarecrow head�now called the Jemaa Head after the village where it was found�to about 500 B.C. using a process called thermoluminescence which gauges the time since baked clay was fired. Through a combination of luck, legwork, and new dating techniques, Fagg and his collaborators had apparently discovered a hitherto unknown civilization, which he named Nok. One excavation site, near the village of Taruga, revealed something else Fagg had not expected: iron furnaces. He found 13 such furnaces, and terracotta figurines were in such close association�inside the furnaces and around them�that he postulated the terracottas were objects of worship to aid blacksmithing and smelting. Carbon dating of charcoal inside the furnaces revealed dates as far back as 280 B.C., giving Nok the earliest dates for iron smelting in sub-Saharan Africa up to that time. The high number of smelters and quantity of terracottas suggested he had found evidence of a dense, settled population. For more than 2,000 years since the start of the Nok period, Nigerians have been building stone house bases like this one. (Courtesy Roger Atwood) Thus, in short order, Fagg had discovered some of the key markers of an advanced civilization: refined art and organized worship, metal smelting, and sufficient population to support these activities. But he knew such a society did not appear in isolation. Fagg, now back at Oxford University in England, wrote that Nok culture had almost certainly begun earlier and survived longer than he had evidence for at the time. �It was the product of a mature tradition,� he wrote, �with the probability of a long antecedent history, of which as yet, no trace has been found.� After 40 years of doing little archaeological exploration in the area, scholars are now returning to the scrubby, hilly lands where Fagg worked and are finding that, indeed, the Nok thrived for longer than he had realized. They may have been the first complex civilization in West Africa, existing from at least 900 B.C. to about A.D. 200. Their terracottas are now some of the most iconic ancient objects from Africa. And they may be the first society in Africa south of the Sahara to smelt iron, although at least half a dozen competitors for that title have surfaced since Fagg first excavated a Nok furnace. Nigeria has a reputation for chaos, corruption, and expensive visas that has kept archaeologists away and drastically slowed the pace of research. In 1959, anthropologist George Murdock quipped that for every ton of earth moved by archaeologists on the Nile, a teaspoon is moved on the Niger. Scholarship has also been hampered by an almost 40-year campaign of looting at Nok sites fed by the growing appetite for African antiquities among collectors in the United States and Europe. �No one continued with the work of Bernard Fagg. Instead of scientific exploration, the Nok became a victim of illegal digging and international art dealers,� says Peter Breunig, of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. Looting tapered off after about 2005 because of tighter export restrictions and a glut of fakes that frightened off collectors. Now, interest in Iron Age societies in Africa is surging as archaeologists contemplate a wide-open field that could hold essential insights into how technologies�especially iron�spread across continents. The Nok were expert terracotta craftsman and their human figurines are one of the most distinctive artifacts they left behind (Courtesy Barbara Voss) Breunig and his colleague Nicole Rupp are leading a team of German and Nigerian researchers, students, and even former looters excavating sites over some 150 square miles in central Nigeria, about two hours� drive north of the capital, Abuja. Their study area is but a microcosm of the Nok world, which covered more than 30,000 square miles, an area the size of Portugal. On a black granite mountain towering over the savannah, Rupp and her team are digging neat trenches at the summit. Within minutes, they start to find pottery sherds, grinding stones, and fragments of red terracotta sculpture of the type first found by Fagg. Within an hour, the excavators have filled three big Ziploc bags with artifacts. Among them is a terracotta arm broken off of a larger statue. Its coarse, grainy surface and realistic modeling immediately identify it as distinctively Nok. In his classic survey of African art, Frank Willett wrote that the Nok created Africa�s earliest sculptural tradition outside of Egypt. Like their contemporaries, the soldier-builders of Xian, China, the Nok mastered the almost limitless sculptural possibilities of terracotta. With it they created figures depicting illness, warfare, love, and music. For example, Rupp and Breunig�s team has found a sculpture of a man and woman kneeling in front of each other, their arms wrapped around each other in a loving embrace, and also several bare-buttocked prisoners with ropes around their necks and waists. Another figure, which has a skull for a head and wears an amulet around his neck, is shaking two instruments resembling maracas. There is also a figure of a man with a wispy moustache, mouth open, as if in speech or song, and one of a man playing a drum resting between his legs, possibly the earliest depiction of musical performance in sub-Saharan Africa. At one site, Breunig and Rupp found 1,700 pieces of terracotta in barely 450 square yards, indicating a large population. Despite the thematic variety, Nok terracotta has some characteristics that persist over hundreds of square miles and centuries of production. Figures almost always show large-headed people with almond-shaped eyes and parted lips. They often have grand headdresses or hairdos, which may indicate high status. A common pose, and one much imitated by forgers, shows a man sitting with his arms resting on his knees, gazing outward. Microscopic inspection of the clay used in the terracotta shows it to be remarkably uniform over the whole Nok area, suggesting that the clay came from a single, yet-undiscovered source. It could, says Breunig, support the idea of a unified Nok state or central authority of some kind.�The homogeneity of the clay used for terracotta might indicate centralized production. But other interpretations, including the concentration of skilled specialists, are no less probable at the moment,� says Breunig. �I think there was a set of respected, central rules that were enforced either through authorities, or through common beliefs, or both.� The triangular eyes and parted lips of this Nok terracotta figurine are characteristic of an artistic style that endured for millennia even after the Nok culture disappeared. This one may represent a deity, an ancestor, or be a portrait. (Courtesy Barbara Voss) Rupp agrees. �When you look at a piece like this,� she says, referring to the just-discovered arm, �you can see that the Nok were experts at making terracotta. There was a specialized, creative class.� There may have been a kind of terracotta �guild,� which, if true, would suggest the Nok had well-developed class hierarchy, she adds. Breunig and Rupp have found about 20 iron implements, including fearsome spear points, bracelets, and small knives, most of which are fairly crude-looking. How and when Africans developed iron is important because metallurgy is considered a crucial marker in the shift to complex societies. Manufacturing metal means better tools for farming, hunting, and preparing food, as well as better weapons for waging war and gaining resources. Yet whether metal-working creates the conditions for civilization to flourish or vice versa remains an open question for archaeologists. Carbon dating on charcoal that Breunig gathered from a Nok iron smelter at a site called Intini yielded a date of between 519 and 410 B.C., suggesting that iron technology was established earlier than previous scholars, including Fagg, had realized. These may not be the oldest smelters in sub-Saharan Africa, however. French archaeologists have located evidence of iron-smelting in the Termit Hills of Niger from as early as 1400 B.C., but critics point out that the wood used for dating could have been centuries old, a problem that dogs carbon dating, especially in very arid places such as Niger, where the wood desiccates and lasts longer. Breunig acknowledges that the problem could distort dates for the Intini furnace as well. But he has an important piece of evidence�Nok pottery, found inside the furnace alongside the charcoal, suggesting that they were placed there around the same time. As a result of his research, Breunig has been able to isolate a moment in time when iron and stone implements coexisted. Excavators regularly find iron tools only a short distance from Nok stone axes, suggesting they were used in the same communities, maybe even the same households. �When iron first develops, it might be too rare or too costly to be wasted on axes or other things that you can make with stone,� he says. �Our hypothesis is that iron tools replaced stone tools only after the technology was developed enough to deliver sufficient quantities of iron. The Nok is an almost perfect culture on which to test this assumption.� At Nok sites, metal tools made around 500 B.C. have been found alongside stone tools, attesting to the manufacture of iron while stone was still being used. (Courtesy Barbara Voss) Breunig�s evidence has also reinforced a view held by most archaeologists that ancient West Africans moved from stone tools directly to iron, without an intervening copper age. That�s a leap that few other parts of the world appear to have made. With the exception of a site in Mauritania known as Grotte aux Chauves-souris, where, starting in 1968, French archaeologists found copper tools and furnaces dating from 800 to 200 B.C., and another in Niger called Cuivre II, excavated by French archaeologists in the 1980s and dating from slightly earlier, researchers have yet to find evidence of copper smelting before iron smelting anywhere in West Africa. Its transition from Stone Age to Iron Age has puzzled researchers since Western European and North African cultures moved into iron after first smelting copper for a millennium or so (while others, such as those in Peru, made copper for centuries without ever developing iron). �In the sense of a progression of technological periods, with few exceptions, there was not a Copper Age between the Stone and Iron ages in West Africa,� says Tom Fenn, an expert on African metallurgy at the University of Arizona. Iron technology was probably brought across the Sahara by travelers from North Africa, says Rod McIntosh, an African specialist at Yale University. But archaeologists are looking at the possibility that West Africans developed iron-working technology autonomously, possibly starting with the Nok. Iron technology, and whether it was imported from across the Sahara or developed in West Africa, is currently a red-hot topic in the scholarly community. Skeptics of autonomous development are accused of denigrating the achievements of African technology, whereas believers are accused of lacking hard evidence. �It has become a political debate,� says Breunig. He will not commit to one side of the argument over the other before he excavates more Nok smelters, which he plans to do with a French archaeometallurgist next year. One skeptic is Rüdiger Krause, a European Iron Age expert at Goethe University. �When people see that somebody else has better technology, it moves very fast. And iron knives are much better than stone. You can sharpen them,� he says. �Mobility was very high in the ancient world. From the north coast of Africa to Nigeria is not a great distance for the movement of a new technology.� Archaeologist Peter Breunig visits the family of a team member near the excavation site. (Courtesy Roger Atwood) Little is understood about how Nok society ended. Sometime after A.D. 200, the once-thriving Nok population declined, as attested to by a sharp drop in the volume of pottery and terracotta in soil layers corresponding to those years. Overexploitation of natural resources and a heavy reliance on charcoal may have played a role, says Breunig. Even more puzzling is Nok�s legacy to later cultures. Art historians have long seen Nok as an isolated phenomenon, a splendid relic cut off from the sequence of African art over the next two millennia. Later civilizations in southern Nigeria had advanced metalworking skills and a tradition of naturalistic portraiture, and art historians are looking more closely at what they might owe to Nok. The most celebrated of these later cultures was Ife (pronounced EE-feh), whose people in southwestern Nigeria turned bronze into stunning portrait heads around A.D. 1300. �We would need more research to establish a stylistic continuum between Nok and Ife,� says Musa Hambolu, research director at Nigeria�s National Commission for Museums and Monuments in Abuja. �To do this would require more detailed study of Nok sculptures because, for now, the evidence is very fragmentary.� Bernard Fagg wrestled with this question�where did Nok culture come from, and where did it go? He wrote about the �striking similarities of style and subject matter� between Nok and Ife but acknowledged there was no proof the people of Ife had ever seen Nok terracottas. Now Breunig is trying to solve that riddle. �In the space of 1,000 years, West Africa moved from sedentary farming complexes like Nok to great empires, [such as Ife and Benin],� he says. �No society is completely isolated in time. That�s a story we�re starting to tell.� Roger Atwood is a contributing editor to ARCHAEOLOGY. He currently lives in London. © 2011 by the Archaeological Institute of America archive.archaeology.org/1107/features/nok_nigeria_africa_terracotta.html	Civilization
The national animal emblem of Nigeria is an?	When We Ruled *2nd Edition - 100 things that you did not know about Africa - Nos.1 - 25 100 things that you did not know about Africa Video is not visible, most likely your browser does not support HTML5 video An Introduction by Study Guide 100 things that you did not know about Africa - Nos.1 - 25 1. The human race is of African origin. The oldest known skeletal remains of anatomically modern humans (or homo sapiens) were excavated at sites in East Africa. Human remains were discovered at Omo in Ethiopia that were dated at 195,000 years old, the oldest known in the world. 2. Skeletons of pre-humans have been found in Africa that date back between 4 and 5 million years. The oldest known ancestral type of humanity is thought to have been the australopithecus ramidus, who lived at least 4.4 million years ago. 3. Africans were the first to organise fishing expeditions 90,000 years ago. At Katanda, a region in northeastern Zaï¿½re (now Congo), was recovered a finely wrought series of harpoon points, all elaborately polished and barbed. Also uncovered was a tool, equally well crafted, believed to be a dagger. The discoveries suggested the existence of an early aquatic or fishing based culture. 4. Africans were the first to engage in mining 43,000 years ago. In 1964 a hematite mine was found in Swaziland at Bomvu Ridge in the Ngwenya mountain range. Ultimately 300,000 artefacts were recovered including thousands of stone-made mining tools. Adrian Boshier, one of the archaeologists on the site, dated the mine to a staggering 43,200 years old. 5. Africans pioneered basic arithmetic 25,000 years ago. The Ishango bone is a tool handle with notches carved into it found in the Ishango region of Zaï¿½re (now called Congo) near Lake Edward. The bone tool was originally thought to have been over 8,000 years old, but a more sensitive recent dating has given dates of 25,000 years old. On the tool are 3 rows of notches. Row 1 shows three notches carved next to six, four carved next to eight, ten carved next to two fives and finally a seven. The 3 and 6, 4 and 8, and 10 and 5, represent the process of doubling. Row 2 shows eleven notches carved next to twenty-one notches, and nineteen notches carved next to nine notches. This represents 10 + 1, 20 + 1, 20 - 1 and 10 - 1. Finally, Row 3 shows eleven notches, thirteen notches, seventeen notches and nineteen notches. 11, 13, 17 and 19 are the prime numbers between 10 and 20. 6. Africans cultivated crops 12,000 years ago, the first known advances in agriculture. Professor Fred Wendorf discovered that people in Egyptï¿½s Western Desert cultivated crops of barley, capers, chick-peas, dates, legumes, lentils and wheat. Their ancient tools were also recovered. There were grindstones, milling stones, cutting blades, hide scrapers, engraving burins, and mortars and pestles. 7. Africans mummified their dead 9,000 years ago. A mummified infant was found under the Uan Muhuggiag rock shelter in south western Libya. The infant was buried in the foetal position and was mummified using a very sophisticated technique that must have taken hundreds of years to evolve. The technique predates the earliest mummies known in Ancient Egypt by at least 1,000 years. Carbon dating is controversial but the mummy may date from 7438 (ï¿½220) BC. 8. Africans carved the worldï¿½s first colossal sculpture 7,000 or more years ago. The Great Sphinx of Giza was fashioned with the head of a man combined with the body of a lion. A key and important question raised by this monument was: How old is it? In October 1991 Professor Robert Schoch, a geologist from Boston University, demonstrated that the Sphinx was sculpted between 5000 BC and 7000 BC, dates that he considered conservative. 9. On the 1 March 1979, the New York Times carried an article on its front page also page sixteen that was entitled Nubian Monarchy called Oldest. In this article we were assured that: ï¿½Evidence of the oldest recognizable monarchy in human history, preceding the rise of the earliest Egyptian kings by several generations, has been discovered in artifacts from ancient Nubiaï¿½ (i.e. the territory of the northern Sudan and the southern portion of modern Egypt.) 10. The ancient Egyptians had the same type of tropically adapted skeletal proportions as modern Black Africans. A 2003 paper appeared in American Journal of Physical Anthropology by Dr Sonia Zakrzewski entitled Variation in Ancient Egyptian Stature and Body Proportions where she states that: ï¿½The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the ï¿½super-Negroidï¿½ body plan described by Robins (1983). The values for the brachial and crural indices show that the distal segments of each limb are longer relative to the proximal segments than in many ï¿½Africanï¿½ populations.ï¿½ 11. The ancient Egyptians had Afro combs. One writer tells us that the Egyptians ï¿½manufactured a very striking range of combs in ivory: the shape of these is distinctly African and is like the combs used even today by Africans and those of African descent.ï¿½ 12. The Funerary Complex in the ancient Egyptian city of Saqqara is the oldest building that tourists regularly visit today. An outer wall, now mostly in ruins, surrounded the whole structure. Through the entrance are a series of columns, the first stone-built columns known to historians. The North House also has ornamental columns built into the walls that have papyrus-like capitals. Also inside the complex is the Ceremonial Court, made of limestone blocks that have been quarried and then shaped. In the centre of the complex is the Step Pyramid, the first of 90 Egyptian pyramids. 13. The first Great Pyramid of Giza, the most extraordinary building in history, was a staggering 481 feet tall - the equivalent of a 40-storey building. It was made of 2.3 million blocks of limestone and granite, some weighing 100 tons. 14. The ancient Egyptian city of Kahun was the worldï¿½s first planned city. Rectangular and walled, the city was divided into two parts. One part housed the wealthier inhabitants ï¿½ the scribes, officials and foremen. The other part housed the ordinary people. The streets of the western section in particular, were straight, laid out on a grid, and crossed each other at right angles. A stone gutter, over half a metre wide, ran down the centre of every street. 15. Egyptian mansions were discovered in Kahun - each boasting 70 rooms, divided into four sections or quarters. There was a masterï¿½s quarter, quarters for women and servants, quarters for offices and finally, quarters for granaries, each facing a central courtyard. The masterï¿½s quarters had an open court with a stone water tank for bathing. Surrounding this was a colonnade. 16 The Labyrinth in the Egyptian city of Hawara with its massive layout, multiple courtyards, chambers and halls, was the very largest building in antiquity. Boasting three thousand rooms, 1,500 of them were above ground and the other 1,500 were underground. 17. Toilets and sewerage systems existed in ancient Egypt. One of the pharaohs built a city now known as Amarna. An American urban planner noted that: ï¿½Great importance was attached to cleanliness in Amarna as in other Egyptian cities. Toilets and sewers were in use to dispose waste. Soap was made for washing the body. Perfumes and essences were popular against body odour. A solution of natron was used to keep insects from houses . . . Amarna may have been the first planned ï¿½garden cityï¿½.ï¿½ 18. Sudan has more pyramids than any other country on earth - even more than Egypt. There are at least 223 pyramids in the Sudanese cities of Al Kurru, Nuri, Gebel Barkal and Meroï¿½. They are generally 20 to 30 metres high and steep sided. 19. The Sudanese city of Meroï¿½ is rich in surviving monuments. Becoming the capital of the Kushite Empire between 590 BC until AD 350, there are 84 pyramids in this city alone, many built with their own miniature temple. In addition, there are ruins of a bath house sharing affinities with those of the Romans. Its central feature is a large pool approached by a flight of steps with waterspouts decorated with lion heads. 20. Bling culture has a long and interesting history. Gold was used to decorate ancient Sudanese temples. One writer reported that: ï¿½Recent excavations at Meroe and Mussawwarat es-Sufra revealed temples with walls and statues covered with gold leafï¿½. 21. In around 300 BC, the Sudanese invented a writing script that had twenty-three letters of which four were vowels and there was also a word divider. Hundreds of ancient texts have survived that were in this script. Some are on display in the British Museum. 22. In central Nigeria, West Africaï¿½s oldest civilisation flourished between 1000 BC and 300 BC. Discovered in 1928, the ancient culture was called the Nok Civilisation, named after the village in which the early artefacts were discovered. Two modern scholars, declare that ï¿½[a]fter calibration, the period of Nok art spans from 1000 BC until 300 BCï¿½. The site itself is much older going back as early as 4580 or 4290 BC. 23. West Africans built in stone by 1100 BC. In the Tichitt-Walata region of Mauritania, archaeologists have found ï¿½large stone masonry villagesï¿½ that date back to 1100 BC. The villages consisted of roughly circular compounds connected by ï¿½well-defined streetsï¿½. 24. By 250 BC, the foundations of West Africaï¿½s oldest cities were established such as Old Djennï¿½ in Mali. 25. Kumbi Saleh, the capital of Ancient Ghana, flourished from 300 to 1240 AD. Located in modern day Mauritania, archaeological excavations have revealed houses, almost habitable today, for want of renovation and several storeys high. They had underground rooms, staircases and connecting halls. Some had nine rooms. One part of the city alone is estimated to have housed 30,000 people. All of this information is extracted from When We Ruled. To find out more about this book CLICK HERE By Robin Walker ï¿½ 2014 Creation date : 21/04/2006 @ 23:44	i don't know
Nigeria is a major (until 1934 the world's largest) producer of what commodity from the Elaeis guineensis plant, used in foods, cooking and soap products?	Palm oil Palm oil Palm oil block showing the lighter color that results from boiling Palm oil (also known as dendê oil, from Portuguese) is an edible vegetable oil derived from the mesocarp (reddish pulp) of the fruit of the oil palms , primarily the African oil palm Elaeis guineensis , [1] and to a lesser extent from the American oil palm Elaeis oleifera and the maripa palm Attalea maripa . Palm oil is naturally reddish in color because of a high beta-carotene content. It is not to be confused with palm kernel oil derived from the kernel of the same fruit, [2] or coconut oil derived from the kernel of the coconut palm ( Cocos nucifera ). The differences are in color (raw palm kernel oil lacks carotenoids and is not red), and in saturated fat content: palm mesocarp oil is 41% saturated, while palm kernel oil and coconut oil are 81% and 86% saturated fats, respectively. Along with coconut oil, palm oil is one of the few highly saturated vegetable fats and is semisolid at room temperature. [3] Palm oil is a common cooking ingredient in the tropical belt of Africa , Southeast Asia and parts of Brazil . Its use in the commercial food industry in other parts of the world is widespread because of its lower cost [4] and the high oxidative stability ( saturation ) of the refined product when used for frying. [5] [6] The use of palm oil in food products has attracted the concern of environmental activist groups; the high oil yield of the trees has encouraged wider cultivation, leading to the clearing of forests in parts of Indonesia and Malaysia to make space for oil-palm monoculture . [7] This has resulted in significant acreage losses of the natural habitat of the orangutan , of which both species are endangered; one species in particular, the Sumatran orangutan , has been listed as critically endangered . [8] In 2004, an industry group called the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil was formed to work with the palm oil industry to address these concerns. [9] Additionally, in 1992, in response to concerns about deforestation, the Government of Malaysia pledged to limit the expansion of palm oil plantations by retaining a minimum of half the nation’s land as forest cover. [10] [11] Contents Oil palms (Elaeis guineensis) Human use of oil palms may date as far back as 5,000 years; in the late 1800s, archaeologists discovered a substance that they concluded was originally palm oil in a tomb at Abydos dating back to 3,000 BCE. [12] It is believed that Arab traders brought the oil palm to Egypt. [13] Some argue that it is not possible that Arab traders could have brought the oil palm to ancient Egypt, as the Arabs did not settle in Africa until the 8th century CE. It is more likely that the oil palm was brought to Ancient Egypt (Kemet) by its founding peoples who migrated from other regions of the African continent. [14] Palm oil from E. guineensiss has long been recognized in West and Central African countries, and is widely used as a cooking oil . European merchants trading with West Africa occasionally purchased palm oil for use as a cooking oil in Europe . Palm oil became a highly sought-after commodity by British traders, for use as an industrial lubricant for machinery during Britain’s Industrial Revolution . [15] Palm oil formed the basis of soap products, such as Lever Brothers ‘ (now Unilever ) “ Sunlight ” soap, and the American Palmolive brand. [16] By around 1870, palm oil constituted the primary export of some West African countries, such as Ghana and Nigeria , although this was overtaken by cocoa in the 1880s. Composition Fatty acids Palm oil, like all fats , is composed of fatty acids , esterified with glycerol . Palm oil has an especially high concentration of saturated fat, specifically, of the 16-carbon saturated fatty acid palmitic acid , to which it gives its name. Monounsaturated oleic acid is also a major constituent of palm oil. Unrefined palm oil is a significant source of tocotrienol , part of the vitamin E family. [17] [18] The approximate concentration of fatty acids in palm oil is: [19] Fatty acid content of palm oil Type of fatty acid black: Saturated; grey: Monounsaturated; blue: Polyunsaturated Carotenes Red palm oil is rich in carotenes, such as alpha-carotene , beta-carotene and lycopene , which give it a characteristic dark red color. [18] [20] Processing and use Many processed foods either contain palm oil or various ingredients derived from it. [21] Refining After milling , various palm oil products are made using refining processes. First is fractionation , with crystallization and separation processes to obtain solid ( stearin ), and liquid ( olein ) fractions. [22] Then melting and degumming removes impurities. Then the oil is filtered and bleached. Physical refining removes smells and coloration to produce “refined, bleached and deodorized palm oil” (RBDPO) and free sheer fatty acids, which are used in the manufacture of soaps , washing powder and other products. RBDPO is the basic palm oil product sold on the world’s commodity markets. Many companies fractionate it further to produce palm olein for cooking oil, or process it into other products. [22] Red palm oil Since the mid-1990s, red palm oil has been cold-pressed and bottled for use as cooking oil, and blended into mayonnaise and salad oil . [23] Butter and trans fat substitute The highly saturated nature of palm oil renders it solid at room temperature in temperate regions, making it a cheap substitute for butter or trans fats in uses where solid fat is desirable, such as the making of pastry dough and baked goods. A recent rise in the use of palm oil in the food industry has partly come from changed labelling requirements that have caused a switch away from using trans fats. [24] Palm oil has been found to be a reasonable replacement for trans fats; [25] however, a small study conducted in 2009 found that palm oil may not be a good substitute for trans fats for individuals with already-elevated LDL levels. [26] The USDA agricultural research service states that palm oil is not a healthy substitute for trans fats . [27] Biomass and bioenergy Palm oil is used to produce both methyl ester and hydrodeoxygenated biodiesel . [28] Palm oil methyl ester is created through a process called transesterification . Palm oil biodiesel is often blended with other fuels to create palm oil biodiesel blends. [29] Palm oil biodiesel meets the European EN 14214 standard for biodiesels. [28] Hydrodeoxygenated biodiesel is produced by direct hydrogenolysis of the fat into alkanes and propane. The world’s largest palm oil biodiesel plant is the Finnish-operated Neste Oil biodiesel plant in Singapore , which opened in 2011 and produces hydrodeoxygenated NEXBTL biodiesel. [30] The organic waste matter that is produced when processing oil palm, including oil palm shells and oil palm fruit bunches, can also be used to produce energy. This waste material can be converted into pellets that can be used as a biofuel. [31] Additionally, palm oil that has been used to fry foods can be converted into methyl esters for biodiesel. The used cooking oil is chemically treated to create a biodiesel similar to petroleum diesel. [32] In wound care Although palm oil is applied to wounds for its supposed antimicrobial effects, research does not confirm its effectiveness. [33] Production In 2012, the annual revenue received by Indonesia and Malaysia together, the top two producers of palm oil, was $40 billion. [34] Between 1962 and 1982 global exports of palm oil increased from around half a million to 2.4 million tonnes annually and in 2008 world production of palm oil and palm kernel oil amounted to 48 million tonnes. According to FAO forecasts by 2020 the global demand for palm oil will double, and triple by 2050. [35] A map of world palm oil output, 2013. Indonesia Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of palm oil, surpassing Malaysia in 2006, producing more than 20.9 million tonnes. [34] [36] Indonesia expects to double production by the end of 2030. [9] At the end of 2010, 60 percent of the output was exported in the form of crude palm oil. [37] FAO data show production increased by over 400% between 1994 and 2004, to over 8.66 million metric tonnes. Malaysia A palm oil plantation in Malaysia. In 2012, Malaysia , the world’s second largest producer of palm oil, [38] produced 18.79 million tonnes of crude palm oil on roughly 5,000,000 hectares (19,000 sq mi) of land. [39] [40] Though Indonesia produces more palm oil, Malaysia is the world’s largest exporter of palm oil having exported 18 million tonnes of palm oil products in 2011. China , Pakistan , the European Union , India and the United States are the primary importers of Malaysian palm oil products. [41] A palm oil plantation in Indonesia. Nigeria As of 2011, Nigeria was the third-largest producer, with approximately 2.3 million hectares (5.7×10 ^ 6 acres) under cultivation. Until 1934, Nigeria had been the world’s largest producer. Both small- and large-scale producers participated in the industry. [42] [43] Thailand In 2013, Thailand produced 2.0 million tonnes of crude palm oil on roughly 626 thousand hectares. Thailand expects to produce 11 million tonnes of fresh palm nuts in 2016, down from more than 12 million in 2015, the shortfall due to Thailand’s drought. [44] Colombia In the 1960s, about 18,000 hectares (69 sq mi) were planted with palm. Colombia has now become the largest palm oil producer in the Americas, and 35% of its product is exported as biofuel. In 2006, the Colombian plantation owners’ association, Fedepalma, reported that oil palm cultivation was expanding to 1,000,000 hectares (3,900 sq mi). This expansion is being funded, in part, by the United States Agency for International Development to resettle disarmed paramilitary members on arable land, and by the Colombian government, which proposes to expand land use for exportable cash crops to 7,000,000 hectares (27,000 sq mi) by 2020, including oil palms. Fedepalma states that its members are following sustainable guidelines. [45] Some Afro-Colombians claim that some of these new plantations have been expropriated from them after they had been driven away through poverty and civil war, while armed guards intimidate the remaining people to further depopulate the land, with coca production and trafficking following in their wake. [46] Other countries A satellite image showing deforestation in Malaysian Borneo to allow the plantation of oil palm . Benin Palm is native to the wetlands of western Africa, and south Benin already hosts many palm plantations. Its ‘Agricultural Revival Programme’ has identified many thousands of hectares of land as suitable for new oil palm export plantations. In spite of the economic benefits, Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), such as Nature Tropicale, claim biofuels will compete with domestic food production in some existing prime agricultural sites. Other areas comprise peat land , whose drainage would have a deleterious environmental impact. They are also concerned genetically modified plants will be introduced into the region, jeopardizing the current premium paid for their non-GM crops. [47] [48] Cameroon Cameroon had a production project underway initiated by Herakles Farms in the US. [49] However, the project was halted under the pressure of civil society organizations in Cameroon. Before the project was halted, Herakles left the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil early in negotiations. [50] The project has been controversial due to opposition from villagers and the location of the project in a sensitive region for biodiversity. Kenya Kenya ‘s domestic production of edible oils covers about a third of its annual demand, estimated at around 380,000 metric tonnes. The rest is imported at a cost of around US$140 million a year, making edible oil the country’s second most important import after petroleum. Since 1993 a new hybrid variety of cold-tolerant, high-yielding oil palm has been promoted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in western Kenya. As well as alleviating the country’s deficit of edible oils while providing an important cash crop, it is claimed to have environmental benefits in the region, because it does not compete against food crops or native vegetation and it provides stabilisation for the soil. [51] Ghana Ghana has a lot of palm nut species, which may become an important contributor to the agriculture of the region. Although Ghana has multiple palm species, ranging from local palm nuts to other species locally called agric, it was only marketed locally and to neighboring countries. Production is now expanding as major investment funds are purchasing plantations, because Ghana is considered a major growth area for palm oil. Markets According to the Hamburg-based Oil World trade journal, in 2008 global production of oils and fats stood at 160 million tonnes. Palm oil and palm kernel oil were jointly the largest contributor, accounting for 48 million tonnes, or 30% of the total output. Soybean oil came in second with 37 million tonnes (23%). About 38% of the oils and fats produced in the world were shipped across oceans. Of the 60.3 million tonnes of oils and fats exported around the world, palm oil and palm kernel oil made up close to 60%; Malaysia , with 45% of the market share, dominated the palm oil trade. Food label regulations Previously, palm oil could be listed as “vegetable fat” or “vegetable oil” on food labels in the European Union (EU). From December 2014, food packaging in the EU is no longer allowed to use the generic terms “vegetable fat” or “vegetable oil” in the ingredients list. Food producers are required to list the specific type of vegetable fat used, including palm oil. Vegetable oils and fats can be grouped together in the ingredients list under the term “vegetable oils” or “vegetable fats” but this must be followed by the type of vegetable origin (e.g. palm, sunflower or rapeseed) and the phrase “in varying proportions”. [52] Supply chain institutions The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was established in 2004 [53] following concerns raised by non-governmental organizations about environmental impacts resulting from palm oil production. The organization has established international standards for sustainable palm oil production. [54] Products containing Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) can carry the RSPO trademark. [55] Members of the RSPO include palm oil producers, environmental groups, and manufacturers who use palm oil in their products. [53] [54] The RSPO is applying different types of programmes to supply palm oil to producers. [56] Book and claim: no guarantee that the end product contains certified sustainable palm oil, supports RSPO-certified growers and farmers Identity preserved: the end user is able to trace the palm oil back to a specific single mill and its supply base (plantations) Segregated: this option guarantees that the end product contains certified palm oil Mass balance: the refinery is only allowed to sell the same amount of mass balance palm oil as the amount of certified sustainable palm oil purchased GreenPalm is one of the retailers executing the book and claim supply chain and trading programme. It guarantees that the palm oil producer is certified by the RSPO. Through GreenPalm the producer can certify a specified amount with the GreenPalm logo. The buyer of the oil is allowed to use the RSPO and the GreenPalm label for sustainable palm oil on his products. [56] Nutrition and health Palm oil is an important source of calories and a food staple in poor communities. [57] [58] [59] However its overall health impacts, particularly in relation to cardiovascular disease, are controversial and subject to ongoing research. Much of the palm oil that is consumed as food is cooking oil , to some degree oxidized rather than in the fresh state, and this oxidation appears to be responsible for the health risk associated with consuming palm oil. [60] Cardiovascular disease Several studies have linked palm oil to higher risks of cardiovascular disease including a 2005 study conducted in Costa Rica which indicated that replacing palm oil in cooking with polyunsaturated non-hydrogenated oils could reduce the risk of heart attacks, [61] and a 2011 analysis of 23 countries which showed that for each kilogram of palm oil added to the diet annually there was an increase in ischemic heart disease deaths (68 deaths per 100,000 increase) though the increase was much smaller in high-income countries. [62] Palmitic acid According to studies reported on by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), excessive intake of palmitic acid , which makes up 44 percent of palm oil, increases blood cholesterol levels and may contribute to heart disease . [63] The CSPI also reported that the World Health Organization and the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute have encouraged consumers to limit the consumption of palmitic acid and foods high in saturated fat. [57] [63] According to the World Health Organization , evidence is convincing that consumption of palmitic acid increases risk of developing cardiovascular diseases, placing it in the same evidence category as trans fatty acids . [64] Comparison to trans fats In response to negative reports on palm oil many food manufacturers transitioned to using hydrogenated vegetable oils in their products, which have also come under scrutiny for the impact these oils have on health. [65] A 2006 study supported by the National Institutes of Health and the USDA Agricultural Research Service concluded that palm oil is not a safe substitute for partially hydrogenated fats ( trans fats ) in the food industry, because palm oil results in adverse changes in the blood concentrations of LDL cholesterol and apolipoprotein B just as trans fat does. [26] [66] However, according to two reports published in 2010 by the Journal of the American College of Nutrition palm oil is again an accepted replacement for hydrogenated vegetable oils [65] and a natural replacement for partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, which are a significant source of trans fats. [67] Comparison with animal saturated fat Not all saturated fats have equally cholesterolemic effects. [68] Studies have indicated that consumption of palm olein (which is more unsaturated) reduces blood cholesterol when compared to sources of saturated fats like coconut oil , dairy and animal fats. [68] [69] Acrolein A 2009 study [70] tested the emission rates of acrolein , a toxic and malodorous breakdown product from glycerol , from the deep-frying of potatoes in red palm, olive, and polyunsaturated sunflower oils. The study found higher acrolein emission rates from the polyunsaturated sunflower oil (the scientists characterized red palm oil as “mono-unsaturated”) and lower rates from both palm and olive oils. The World Health Organization established a tolerable oral acrolein intake of 7.5 mg/day per kilogram of body weight. Although acrolein occurs in French fries , the levels are only a few micrograms per kilogram. A 2011 study concluded a health risk from acrolein in food is unlikely. [71] Social and environmental impacts Social In Borneo , the forest (F), is being replaced by oil palm plantations (G). These changes are irreversible for all practical purposes (H). The palm oil industry has had both positive and negative impacts on workers, indigenous peoples and residents of palm oil-producing communities. Palm oil production provides employment opportunities, and has been shown to improve infrastructure , social services and reduce poverty. [72] [73] [74] However, in some cases, oil palm plantations have developed lands without consultation or compensation of the indigenous people occupying the land, resulting in social conflict. [75] [76] [77] The use of illegal immigrants in Malaysia has also raised concerns about working conditions within the palm oil industry. [78] [79] [80] Some social initiatives use palm oil cultivation as part of poverty alleviation strategies. Examples include the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s hybrid oil palm project in Western Kenya , which improves incomes and diets of local populations, [81] and Malaysia’s Federal Land Development Authority and Federal Land Consolidation and Rehabilitation Authority, which both support rural development. [82] Food vs. fuel The use of palm oil in the production of biodiesel has led to concerns that the need for fuel is being placed ahead of the need for food, leading to malnourishment in developing nations. This is known as the food versus fuel debate. According to a 2008 report published in the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews , palm oil was determined to be a sustainable source of both food and biofuel. The production of palm oil biodiesel does not pose a threat to edible palm oil supplies. [83] According to a 2009 study published in the Environmental Science and Policy journal, palm oil biodiesel might increase the demand for palm oil in the future, resulting in the expansion of palm oil production, and therefore an increased supply of food. [84] Environmental Palm oil cultivation has been criticized for impacts on the natural environment, [85] [86] including deforestation , loss of natural habitats, [87] which has threatened critically endangered species such as the orangutan [88] [89] and Sumatran tiger , [90] and increased greenhouse gas emissions. [86] [91] Many palm oil plantations are built on top of existing peat bogs, and clearing the land for palm oil cultivation contributes to rising greenhouse gas emissions. [91] [92] Efforts to portray palm oil cultivation as sustainable have been made by organizations including the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil , [93] an industry group, and the Malaysian government, which has committed to preserve 50 percent of its total land area as forest. [10] According to research conducted by the Tropical Peat Research Laboratory, a group studying palm oil cultivation in support of the industry, [94] oil palm plantations act as carbon sinks , converting carbon dioxide into oxygen [95] and, according to Malaysia’s Second National Communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change , the plantations contribute to Malaysia’s status as a net carbon sink. [96] Environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth oppose the use of palm oil biofuels, claiming that the deforestation caused by oil palm plantations is more damaging for the climate than the benefits gained by switching to biofuel and utilizing the palms as carbon sinks. [92] [97] [98] While only 5 percent of the world’s vegetable oil farmland is used for palm plantations, palm cultivation produces 38 percent of the world’s total vegetable oil supply. [99] In terms of oil yield, a palm plantation is 10 times more productive than soya bean and rapeseed cultivation because the palm fruit and kernel both provide usable oil. [99] Roundtable On Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) Roundtable No 2 (RT2) in Zurich in 2005. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was created in 2004 [53] following concerns raised by non-governmental organizations about environmental impacts related to palm oil production. The organization has established international standards for sustainable palm oil production. [54] Products containing Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) can carry the RSPO trademark. [55] Members of the RSPO include palm oil producers, environmental groups and manufacturers who use palm oil in their products. [53] [54] Palm oil growers who produce Certified Sustainable Palm Oil have been critical of the organization because, though they have met RSPO standards and assumed the costs associated with certification, the market demand for certified palm oil remains low. [54] [55] Low market demand has been attributed to the higher cost of Certified Sustainable Palm Oil, leading palm oil buyers to purchase cheaper non-certified palm oil. Palm oil is mostly fungible . In 2011, 12% of palm oil produced was certified “sustainable”, though only half of that had the RSPO label. [100] Even with such a low proportion being certified, Greenpeace has argued that confectioners are avoiding responsibilities on sustainable palm oil, because it says that RSPO standards fall short of protecting rain forests and reducing greenhouse gases. [101] See also	Palm oil
Nigeria's 14th and current (at 2014) presidential head of state is (What optimistic expression?) Jonathan?	Wikipedia Palm Oil - Documents Documents Share Wikipedia Palm Oil Embed <iframe src="http://docslide.us/embed/wikipedia-palm-oil.html" width="750" height="600" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" style="border:1px solid #CCC; border-width:1px; margin-bottom:5px; max-width: 100%;" allowfullscreen> </iframe> <div style="margin-bottom:5px"> <strong> <a href="http://docslide.us/documents/wikipedia-palm-oil.html" title="Wikipedia Palm Oil" target="_blank">Wikipedia Palm Oil</a></div> size(px) Download Wikipedia Palm Oil Transcript Palm oil 1 Palm oil Palm oil, coconut oil and palm kernel oil are edible plant oils derived from the fruits of palm trees. Palm oil is extracted from the pulp[1] of the fruit of the oil palm Elaeis guineensis; palm kernel oil is derived from the kernel (seed) of the oil palm[2] and coconut oil is derived from the kernel of the coconut (Cocos nucifera). Palm oil is naturally reddish in color because it contains a high amount of beta-carotene. Palm oil, palm kernel oil and coconut oil are three of the few highly saturated vegetable fats. Palm oil is semi-solid at room temperatures. Palm oil contains several saturated and unsaturated fats in the forms of glyceryl laurate (0.1%, saturated), myristate (1%, saturated), palmitate (44%, saturated), stearate (5%, saturated), oleate (39%, monounsaturated), linoleate (10%, polyunsaturated), and [3] alpha-linolenate (0.3%, polyunsaturated). Palm kernel oil and coconut oil are more highly saturated than palm oil. Like all vegetable oils, palm oil does not contain cholesterol (found in unrefined animal fats),[4][5] although saturated fat intake increases both LDL[6] and HDL[7] cholesterol. Palm oil is a common cooking ingredient in the tropical belt of Africa, Southeast Asia and parts of Brazil. Its increasing use in the commercial food industry in other parts of the world is buoyed by its lower cost[8] and the high oxidative stability (saturation) of the refined product when used for frying.[9][10] The use of palm oil in food products is often the focus of environmental activist groups, due to it being documented as a cause of substantial and often irreversible damage to the natural environment. Palm oil from Ghana with its natural dark color visible, 2 litres Palm oil block showing the lighter color that results from boiling. Palm oil 2 History Palm oil (from the African oil palm, Elaeis guineensis) has long been recognized in West African countries, and is widely used as a cooking oil. European merchants trading with West Africa occasionally purchased palm oil for use in Europe, but since the oil was of a lower quality than olive oil, palm oil remained rare outside West Africa. In the Asante Confederacy, state-owned slaves built large plantations of oil palm trees, while in the neighbouring Kingdom of Dahomey, King Ghezo passed a law in 1856 forbidding his subjects from cutting down oil palms. Oil palm tree (Elaeis guineensis) Palm oil became a highly sought-after commodity by British traders, for use as an industrial lubricant for machinery during Britain's Industrial Revolution. Palm oil formed the basis of soap products, such as Lever Brothers' (now Unilever) "Sunlight" soap, and the American Palmolive brand.[11] By around 1870, palm oil constituted the primary export of some West African countries, such as Ghana and Nigeria, although this was overtaken by cocoa in the 1880s. Research In the 1960s, research and development (R&D) in oil palm breeding began to expand after Malaysia's Department of Agriculture established an exchange program with West African economies and four private plantations formed the Oil Palm Genetics Laboratory.[12] The government also established Kolej Serdang, which became the Universiti Pertanian Malaysia (UPM) in the 1970s to train agricultural and agro-industrial engineers and agro-business graduates to conduct research in the field. In 1979, following strong lobbying from oil palm planters and support from the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) and UPM, the government set up the Palm Oil Research Institute of Malaysia (Porim).[13] B.C. Sekhar was instrumental in helping Porim recruit and train scientists to undertake R&D in oil palm tree breeding, palm oil nutrition and potential oleochemical use. Sekhar, as founder and chairman, pushed Porim to be a public-and-private-coordinated institution. As a result, Porim (renamed Malaysian Palm Oil Board in 2000) became Malaysia's top research entity commercializing 20% of its innovations, compared to 5% among local universities. Nutrition Further information: palmitic acid Many processed foods contain palm oil as an ingredient.[14] Palm oil is composed of fatty acids, esterified with glycerol just like any ordinary fat. It is high in saturated fatty acids. Palm oil gives its name to the 16-carbon saturated fatty acid palmitic acid. Monounsaturated oleic acid is also a constituent of palm oil. Unrefined palm oil is a large natural source of tocotrienol, part of the vitamin E family.[15] The approximate concentration of fatty acids in palm oil is:[16] Palm oil 3 Fatty acid content of palm oil Type of fatty acid Myristic saturated C14 Palmitic saturated C16 Stearic saturated C18 Oleic monounsaturated C18 Linoleic polyunsaturated C18 Other/Unknown red: Saturated; orange: Monounsaturated; blue: Polyunsaturated pct 1.0% 43.5% 4.3% 36.6% 9.1% 5.5% Red palm oil Red palm oil gets its name from its characteristic dark red color, which comes from carotenes, such as alpha-carotene, beta-carotene and lycopene, the same nutrients that give tomatoes, carrots and other fruits and vegetables their rich colors. Red palm oil contains at least 10 other carotenes, along with tocopherols and tocotrienols (members of the vitamin E family), CoQ10, phytosterols, and glycolipids.[17] In a 2007 animal study, South African scientists found consumption of red palm oil significantly decreased p38-MAPK phosphorylation in rat hearts subjected to a high-cholesterol diet.[18] Since the mid-1990s, red palm oil has been cold-pressed and bottled for use as cooking oil, and blended into mayonnaise and salad oil.[19] Red palm oil antioxidants like tocotrienols and carotenes are added to foods and cosmetics due to their purported health benefits.[20][21][22] In a 2004 joint study between the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research and the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, the scientists found cookies, being higher in fat content than bread, are a better vehicle for red palm oil phytonutrients.[23] In a 2009 study, scientists in Spain tested the acrolein emission rates from the deep-frying of potatoes in red palm, olive and polyunsaturated oils. They found higher acrolein emission rates from the polyunsaturated oils. The scientists characterized red palm oil as "mono-unsaturated".[24] Frying French fries in red palm oil gives them an attractive color.[25] Refined, bleached, deodorized palm oil Palm oil products are made using milling and refining processes: first using fractionation, with crystallization and separation processes to obtain solid (stearin), and liquid (olein) fractions. Then melting and degumming removes impurities. Then the oil is filtered and bleached. Next, physical refining removes smells and coloration, to produce "refined bleached deodorized palm oil", or RBDPO, and free sheer fatty acids, which are used as an important raw material in the manufacture of soaps, washing powder and other hygiene and personal care products. RBDPO is the basic oil product sold on the world's commodity markets, although many companies fractionate it further into palm olein, for cooking oil or other products.[26] Splitting of oils and fats by hydrolysis, or under basic conditions saponification, yields fatty acids, with glycerin (glycerol) as a byproduct. The split-off fatty acids are a mixture ranging in carbon chain length from C4 to C18, depending on the type of oil or fat.[27][28] Palm oil 4 Uses Derivatives of palmitic acid were used in combination with naphtha during World War II to produce napalm (aluminum naphthenate and aluminum palmitate).[29] Many processed foods contain palm oil as an ingredient.[14] Biodiesel Palm oil, like other vegetable oils, can be used to create biodiesel, as either a simply processed palm oil mixed with petrodiesel, or processed through transesterification to create a palm oil methyl ester blend, which meets the international EN 14214 specification. Glycerin is a byproduct of transesterification. The actual process used to produce biodiesel around the world varies between countries and the requirements of different markets. Next-generation biofuel production processes are also being tested in relatively small trial quantities. The IEA predicts biofuels usage in Asian countries will remain modest. But as a major producer of palm oil, the Malaysian government is encouraging the production of biofuel feedstock and the building of palm oil biodiesel plants. Domestically, Malaysia is preparing to change from diesel to biofuels by 2008, including drafting legislation that will make the switch mandatory. From 2007, all diesel sold in Malaysia must contain 5% palm oil. Malaysia is emerging as one of the leading biofuel producers, with 91 palm oil plants approved and a handful now in operation.[30] On 16 December 2007, Malaysia opened its first biodiesel plant in the state of Pahang, with an annual capacity of 100,000 tonnes, and which also produces byproducts in the form of 4,000 tonnes of palm fatty acid distillate and 12,000 tonnes of pharmaceutical-grade glycerine.[31] Neste Oil of Finland plans to produce 800,000 tonnes of biodiesel per year from Malaysian palm oil in a new Singapore refinery from 2010, which will make it the largest biofuel plant in the world,[32] and 170,000 tpa from its first second-generation plant in Finland from 2007-8, which can refine fuel from a variety of sources. Neste and the Finnish government are using this paraffinic fuel in some public buses in the Helsinki area as a small scale pilot.[33][34] First generation biodiesel production from palm oil is in demand globally. Palm oil is also a primary substitute for rapeseed oil in Europe, which too is experiencing new demand for biodiesel purposes. Palm oil producers are investing heavily in the refineries needed for biodiesel. In Malaysia, companies have been merging, buying others out and forming alliances to obtain the economies of scale needed to handle the high costs caused by increased feedstock prices. New refineries are being built across Asia and Europe.[35] As the food vs. fuel debate mounts, research is turning to biodiesel production from waste. In Malaysia, an estimated 50,000 tonnes of used frying oils, both vegetable oils and animal fats, are disposed of yearly, without treatment, as wastes. In a 2006 study, researchers found used frying oil (mainly palm olein), after pretreatment with silica gel, is a suitable feedstock for conversion to methyl esters by catalytic reaction using sodium hydroxide. The methyl esters produced have fuel properties comparable to those of petroleum diesel, and can be used in unmodified diesel engines.[36] A 2009 study by scientists at Malaysian Science University concluded palm oil, compared to other vegetable oils, is a healthy source of edible oil and at the same time, available in quantities that can satisfy global demand for biodiesel. Oil palm planting and palm oil consumption circumvents the food vs. fuel debate because it has the capacity to fulfill both demands simultaneously.[37] By 2050, a British scientist estimates global demand for edible oils will probably be around 240 million tonnes, nearly twice 2008 consumption. Most of the additional oil may be palm oil, which has the lowest production cost of the major oils, but soybean oil production will probably also increase. An additional 12000000 hectares (unknown operator: u'strong' sq mi) of oil palms may be required, if average yields continue to rise as in the past. This need not be at the expense of forest; oil palm planted on anthropogenic grassland could supply all the oil required for edible purposes in 2050.[38] Palm oil 5 Market According to Hamburg-based Oil World trade journal, in 2008, global production of oils and fats stood at 160 million tonnes. Palm oil and palm kernel oil were jointly the largest contributor, accounting for 48 million tonnes or 30% of the total output. Soybean oil came in second with 37 million tonnes (23%). About 38% of the oils and fats produced in the world were shipped across oceans. Of the 60.3 million tonnes of oils and fats exported around the world, palm oil and palm kernel oil make up close to 60%; Malaysia, with 45% of the market share, dominates the palm oil trade.[39] Regional production Indonesia As of 2009, Indonesia was the largest producer of palm oil, surpassing Malaysia in 2006, producing more than 20.9 million tonnes. Indonesia aspires to become the world's top producer of palm oil.[40] But at the end of 2010, 60 percent of the output was exported still in the form of Crude Palm Oil.[41] FAO data show production increased by over 400% between 1994–2004, to over 8.66 million metric tonnes. Palm oil output in 2006 In addition to servicing traditional markets, Indonesia is looking to put more effort into producing biodiesel. Major local and global companies are building mills and refineries, including PT. Astra Agro Lestari terbuka (150,000 tpa biodiesel refinery), PT. Bakrie Group (a biodiesel factory and new plantations), Surya Dumai Group (biodiesel refinery). Cargill (sometimes operating through CTP Holdings of Singapore, is building new refineries and mills in Malaysia and Indonesia, expanding its Rotterdam refinery to handle 300,000 tpa of palm oil, acquiring plantations in Sumatra, Kalimantan, the Indonesian peninsula and Papua New Guinea). Robert Kuok's Wilmar International Limited has plantations and 25 refineries across Indonesia, to supply feedstock to new biodiesel refineries in Singapore, Riau, Indonesia and Rotterdam.[35] Malaysia In 2008, Malaysia produced 17.7 million tonnes of palm oil on unknown operator: u',' hectares (unknown operator: u'strong'unknown operator: u','sq mi) of land,[39] and was the second largest producer of palm oil, employing more than 570,000 people.[42] Malaysia is the world's second largest exporter of palm oil. About 60% of palm oil exports from Malaysia are shipped to China, the European Union, Pakistan, United States and India. They are mostly made into cooking oil, margarine, specialty fats and oleochemicals. In December 2006, the Malaysian government initiated merger of Sime Darby Berhad, Golden Hope Plantations Berhad and Kumpulan Guthrie Berhad to create the world’s largest listed oil palm plantation player.[43] In a landmark deal valued at RM31 billion, the merger involved the businesses of eight listed companies controlled by Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB) and the Employees Provident Fund (EPF). A special purpose vehicle, Synergy Drive Sdn Bhd, offered to acquire all the businesses including assets and liabilities of the eight listed companies. With 543,000 hectares of plantation in a landbank, the merger resulted in an oil palm plantation entity that could produce 2.5 million tonnes of palm oil or 5% of global production in 2006. A year later, the merger completed and the entity was renamed Sime Darby Berhad.[44] Palm oil 6 Nigeria As of 2011, Nigeria was the third-largest producer, with more than 2.5 million hectares (unknown operator: u'strong'×106 acres) under cultivation. Until 1934, Nigeria had been the world's largest producer. Both small- and large-scale producers participated in the industry.[45][46] Colombia In the 1960s, about unknown operator: u',' hectares (unknown operator: u'strong'unknown operator: u','sq mi) were planted with palm. Colombia has now become the largest palm oil producer in the Americas, and 35% of its product is exported as biofuel. In 2006, the Colombian plantation owners' association, Fedepalma, reported that oil palm cultivation was expanding to unknown operator: u',' hectares (unknown operator: u'strong'unknown operator: u','sq mi). This expansion is being funded, in part, by the United States Agency for International Development to resettle disarmed paramilitary members on arable land, and by the Colombian government, which proposes to expand land use for exportable cash crops to unknown operator: u',' hectares (unknown operator: u'strong'unknown operator: u','sq mi) by 2020, including oil palms. Fedepalma states that its members are following sustainable guidelines.[47] Some Afro-Colombians claim that some of these new plantations have been expropriated from them after they had been driven away through poverty and civil war, while armed guards intimidate the remaining people to further depopulate the land, while coca production and trafficking follows in their wake.[48] Other producers Benin Palm is native to the wetlands of western Africa, and south Benin already hosts many palm plantations. Its 'Agricultural Revival Programme' has identified many thousands of hectares of land as suitable for new oil palm export plantations. In spite of the economic benefits, Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), such as Nature Tropicale, claim biofuels will compete with domestic food production in some existing prime agricultural sites. Other areas comprise peat land, whose drainage would have a deleterious environmental impact. They are also concerned genetically modified plants will be introduced for the first time into the region, jeopardizing the current premium paid for their non-GM crops.[49] Kenya Kenya's domestic production of edible oils covers about a third of its annual demand, estimated at around 380,000 metric tonnes. The rest is imported at a cost of around US$140 million a year, making edible oil the country's second most important import after petroleum. Since 1993 a new hybrid variety of cold-tolerant, high-yielding oil palm has been promoted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in western Kenya. As well as alleviating the country's deficit of edible oils while providing an important cash crop, it is claimed to have environmental benefits in the region, because it does not compete against food crops or native vegetation and it provides stabilisation for the soil.[50] Palm oil Ghana Ghana has a lot of palm nuts vegetation, which can become an important contributor to the agriculture of the Black Star region. Although Ghana has multiple palm species, ranging from local palm nuts to other species locally called agric, it is only marketed locally and to neighboring countries. 7 Impacts Social Palm oil producers have been accused of various human-rights violations, from low pay and poor working conditions[51] to theft of land[52] and murder.[53] However, some social initiatives use palm oil profits to finance poverty alleviation strategies. Examples include the financing of Magbenteh hospital in Makeni, Sierra Leone through profits made from palm oil grown by small local farmers,[54] the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance's Food Security Program, which draws on a women-run cooperative to grow palm oil, the profits of which are reinvested in food security,[55] or the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's hybrid oil palm project in Western Kenya, which improves incomes and diets of local populations.[56] Environmental Palm oil production has been documented as a cause of substantial and often irreversible damage to the natural environment.[57] Its impacts include: deforestation, habitat loss of critically endangered species such as the Orangutan[58][59][60] and Sumatran Tiger,[61][62] and a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions.[63] The pollution is exacerbated because many rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia[64] lie atop peat bogs that store great quantities of carbon that are released when the forests are cut down and the bogs drained to make way for plantations. Environmental groups such as Greenpeace claim that the deforestation caused by making way for oil palm plantations is far more damaging for the climate than the benefits gained by switching to biofuel.[65][66] The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)is an organisation that was formed in 2004 with the objective promoting the growth and use of sustainable oil palm products through credible global standards and engagement of stakeholders. It has over 450 member organisations that are from the different stakeholders in the palm oil supply chain from the Palm Oil Growers to the Palm Oil Processors and Traders, Banks and Investors, Consumer Goods Manufactures, Retailers, Environmental Organisations (NGOs) and Social Organisations (NGOs). RSPO practices a consensus based decision making philosophy.[67] The seat of the association is in Zurich, Switzerland, while the secretariat is currently based in Kuala Lumpur with a satellite office in Jakarta.[68] This video done by WWF a environmental NGO gives a balance view of the industry and RSPO.[69] Many of the major companies in the vegetable oil economy participate in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, which is trying to address this problem, though their efforts so far have done almost nothing to change or slow the escalating situation and have been likened to green-washing.[70] Even so, in 2008 Unilever, a member of the RSPO group, committed to use only palm oil which is certified as sustainable, by ensuring that the large companies and smallholders that supply it convert to sustainable production by 2015.[71] On 1 June 2011, RSPO launched its trademark for use by its members. With this trademark producers of products such as chocolate, margarine and cosmetics can show their commitment towards sustainable palm oil through the use of the trademark.[72] On 1 July 2011, PT Carrefour Indonesia reiterated its commitment to exclusively source for sustainable palm oil products by 2015.[73] In August of that same year, RSPO marked one million hectares of certified sustainable land (and brought the volume of sustainable oil to over 5 million tonnes) with the certification of the Agropalma company in Brazil. It was also the first RSPO certification received by Brazil.[74] Meanwhile, much of the recent investment in new palm plantations for biofuel has been part-funded through carbon credit projects through the Clean Development Mechanism; however the reputational risk associated with Palm oil unsustainable palm plantations in Indonesia has now made many funds wary of investing there.[75] 8 Medical Although palm oil is applied to wounds for its supposed antimicrobial effects, research does not confirm its effectiveness.[76] Health Blood lipid and cholesterol effects The Center for Science in the Public Interest states that palm oil, which is high in saturated and low in polyunsaturated fat, promotes heart disease.[77] The CSPI report cited research that goes back to 1970[78] and metastudies.[79][80] CSPI also said that The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute,[81] World Health Organization (WHO), and other health authorities have urged reduced consumption of palm oil. WHO states that there is convincing evidence that palmitic acid consumption contributes to an increased risk of developing cardiovascular diseases.[82] 2005 research in Costa Rica suggests consumption of non-hydrogenated unsaturated oils over palm oil.[83] In 1993, Malaysia's Institute for Medical Research's head of Cardiovascular Disease Unit Cardiovascular, Diabetes and Nutrition Centre Dr Tony Ng Kock Wai[84] showed that the cholesterol impact of saturated fats is affected by its amount at the sn-2 position. Despite the high palmitic acid content (41%) of palm oil, only 13-14% is present at the sn-2 position.[85] In an email response to WHO's 2002 draft report, Dr. David Kritchevsky of the Wistar Institute, Philadelphia denied that there were, at that time, any data showing palm oil consumption causing atherosclerosis.[86] However, a 2006 study supported by the National Institutes of Health and the USDA Agricultural Research Service concluded that palm oil is not a safe substitute for partially hydrogenated fats (trans fats) in the food industry, because palm oil results in adverse changes in the blood concentrations of LDL cholesterol and apolipoprotein B just as trans fat does.[87][88] Comparison with animal saturated fat Not all saturated fats are equally cholesterolemic.[89] Studies have indicated that consumption of palm olein (which is more unsaturated) reduces blood cholesterol when compared to sources of saturated fats like coconut oil, dairy and animal fats.[90] In 1996, Dr Becker of University of Massachusetts stressed that saturated fats in the sn–1 and -3 position of triacylglycerols exhibit different metabolic patterns due to their low absorptivity. Dietary fats containing saturated fats primarily in sn–1 and -3 positions (e.g., cocoa butter, coconut oil, and palm oil) have very different biological consequences than those fats in which the saturated fats are primarily in the sn–2 position (e.g., milk fat and lard). Differences in stereospecific fatty acid location should be an important consideration in the design and interpretation of lipid nutrition studies and in the production of specialty food products.[91] Palm oil 9 Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was formed in 2004 with the objective of promoting the growth and use of sustainable oil palm products through credible global standards and engagement of stakeholders. The seat of the association is in Zurich, Switzerland, while the secretariat is currently based in Kuala Lumpur with a satellite office in Jakarta. RSPO is a not-for-profit association that represents stakeholders from seven sectors of the palm oil industry - oil palm producers, palm oil processors or traders, consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, banks Roundtable No 2 (RT2) in Zurich in 2005. and investors, environmental or nature conservation NGOs and social or developmental NGOs - to develop and implement global standards for sustainable palm oil. Such multi-stakeholder representation is mirrored in the governance structure of RSPO such that seats in the Executive Board and project level Working Groups are fairly allocated to each sector. In this way, RSPO lives out the philosophy of the "roundtable" by giving equal rights to each stakeholder group to bring group-specific agendas to the roundtable, facilitating traditionally adversarial stakeholders and business competitors to work together towards a common objective and making decisions by consensus The organization holds an annual meeting called RT or Round Table Meetings to bring together the various stakeholders to negotiate and deliberate on various issues affecting the industry. Such multi-stakeholder representation is mirrored in the governance structure of RSPO such that seats in the Executive Board and project level Working Groups are fairly allocated to each sector. Some of the key achievements of the organization so far include: • • • • Establishment of the RSPO Principles & Criteria (P&C) for certification of mills and plantations; Formation of Working Groups on Green House Gases to address climate change issues; Smallholder Task Force to protect the rights of small farmers planting oil palm; and Biodiversity Technical Committee to work out biodiversity issues pertaining to sustainable production and biodiversity protection and conservation.[92] References [1] Reeves, James B.; Weihrauch, John L.; Consumer and Food Economics Institute (1979). Composition of foods: fats and oils. Agriculture handbook 8-4. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Science and Education Administration. p. 4. OCLC 5301713. [2] Poku, Kwasi (2002). "Origin of oil palm" (http:/ / www. fao. org/ DOCREP/ 005/ y4355e/ y4355e03. htm). Small-Scale Palm Oil Processing in Africa. FAO Agricultural Services Bulletin 148. Food and Agriculture Organization. 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The Medical journal of Malaysia 46 (1): 41–50. PMID 1836037. [91] The Role of Stereospecific Saturated Fatty Acid Positions on Lipid Nutrition (http:/ / www. biomedexperts. com/ Abstract. bme/ 8710239/ The_role_of_stereospecific_saturated_fatty_acid_positions_on_lipid_nutrition) Eric A. Decker, Nutrition Reviews, 1996, Volume 54, Issue 4, Pages 108-110. [92] Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). "Who is RSPO? \| Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil" (http:/ / www. rspo. org/ ?q=page/ 9). RSPO. . Retrieved 2011-07-25. 12 External links • Palm Oil - Production, Consumption, Exports, and Imports Statistics by Country (http://www.indexmundi.com/ en/commodities/agricultural/oil-palm/) • Blood on the Palms: Afro-Colombians fight new plantations (http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2007/ 0707bacon.html) by David Bacon, July/August 2007 Dollars & Sense • Palm Oil as a Fuel for Agricultural Diesel Engines: Comparative Testing against Diesel Oil (http://www. journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_SVO-palm.html) Article Sources and Contributors 13 Article Sources and Contributors Palm oil Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=483374539 Contributors: 1luvly, A. B., Aardnavark, Abtinb, Acalamari, Adiput, Agradman, Ahoerstemeier, Alan Liefting, Alan.ca, Albmont, Alex Bakharev, Alex.tan, Amikake3, AndyGondorf, Andyd79, Anna Frodesiak, Antandrus, Anwar saadat, Archmage Brian, Areenarena, Atatakakata, Avillia, BT119991, Badagnani, Barefootguy, Barkeep, Beagel, Beal67, Because1981, Benjamindees, Betswiki, Bkell, Blackcats, Bonadea, Bongwarrior, Bremskraft, Brentt, Brinerustle, Bryan Derksen, Capricorn42, Cdc, Cgingold, ChemRamirez, Cherylrenee, Chillysnow, Chris Capoccia, Chris Roy, Cimbalom, ClairSamoht, Cloey 101, Cockroach.org.uk, Coemgenus, CommonsDelinker, Crl620, D a r l i n g f a c e, DMacks, Dale Arnett, DanEdmonds, Danielle35, Davehi1, David from Downunder, Dbatreja, Deiz, Deli nk, Deltabeignet, Dolcezza077, Dontworry, Dragon guy, Dream Focus, Drmies, Drnthe, Dycedarg, Edgar181, Edheitz, Egoddy, Emerson7, Epbr123, Ephebi, Eplebel, Erianna, Eshouthe, Ezzane, Flummery, Foobar, Fractal41x, Franamax, Freespeech4us, Freestyle-69, Frosted14, Gail, Ghandi dancer, Gigemag76, Gioto, Glane23, Glennhurowitz, Gsarwa, Gunnar Hendrich, H2g2bob, Hai398, Herostratus, Hobsonlane, Horologium, Huayi, Huseyx2, Hyacinth, Iammercutio, Icedog, Ijriims, Imalm91, JaGa, Jackol, Jakub, Jalen, JamesBWatson, Jay L09, Jedlink, Jeff G., Jeffhall318, Jensbn, John, John McDG, JohnFMayer, Johnfos, Johnvanzyl, KVDP, Kaeso Dio, Kaldari, Karkaputto, Kkolmetz, Kubigula, LeadSongDog, Lester, Lfstevens, Liffey, Lightmouse, Lights, LilHelpa, LinkinPark, Little sawyer, Lizzay01, LorenzoB, Luigi30, MPF, MZMcBride, Maggot, Magnificascriptor, Makeemlighter, Malmpoc, Mandarax, Margareta, Mark.murphy, Marknagel, Markthemac, Martin H., Masterhomer, Mausy5043, MaxPont, Maximum Nuts, McSly, Mded, Meggar, Menwith, Merbabu, Mikeblyth, Minimac, Mkativerata, Mmortal03, Modernist, Morpheios Melas, Mr Accountable, NJGW, Nanjareddy, Nemo bis, Neuenglander, Nhobgood, NickCT, Nicmart, Nicolas1981, Nigeriascholar, Nil Einne, Nipisiquit, Nivagh, NormanJiwan, Notmyrealname, Nunquam Dormio, Nutriveg, Nwbeeson, Oktuck, Olivierd, Omegawarrior, Optigan13, Peter G Werner, Peterlewis, Petrusim, Pharaoh of the Wizards, Piast93, Piercetheorganist, Piuslxix, Pmj, Press olive, win oil, Pseudomonas, Qeny, RJFJR, Ranking Update, Rep07, RicDod, Rich Farmbrough, Richhill, Rjwilmsi, Robert Merkel, Rodskogj, Roman888, Ronz, Rooooooooooman, Rosdan001, Rp, Rrburke, RudolfRed, Rusty2005, SAFTAG, SDC, SMasters, Semperf, Sgorka, ShakataGaNai, SheffGruff, Sir Anon, Skopelos-slim, Smallweed, Smartse, Snowbunny22, So-so the first, Solipsist, Soultaco, SpaghettiFreak, Spindled, Tabledhote, Tagus, Taxman, TeamOrangutan, Tedder, Tomtefarbror, Tornasole, Ufwuct, Ulric1313, Unioneagle, Urban-sm, Uriel8, User2004, UtherSRG, Vanished user 47736712, Virnas, Voyaging, WRK, Wahloon, Waitak, Watti Renew, Wavelength, Weedwhacker128, Wfaulk, Wfgiuliano, Wgfcrafty, WhisperToMe, Whitebox, Whosasking, WikHead, Will Beback, Witt1221, Woohookitty, Wsw16, Ytrottier, Zeshion, Zigger, Zodon, Zzorse, 653 anonymous edits Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors Image:Palm oil Ghana.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Palm_oil_Ghana.jpg License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.5 Contributors: en:User:Whitebox Image:Huile de palme biologique 350g.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Huile_de_palme_biologique_350g.jpg License: Public Domain Contributors: Romain Behar Image:Elaeis guineensis MS 3467.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Elaeis_guineensis_MS_3467.jpg License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.5 Contributors: Marco Schmidt Image:2006palm oil.PNG Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:2006palm_oil.PNG License: Public Domain Contributors: Anwar (talk). 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Nigeria's governmental constitution is chiefly based on that of the?	Nigeria - Government Government Nigeria Table of Contents THE STORY OF NIGERIA during the postcolonial era has been one of a search for the constitutional and political arrangement that, while allowing for the self-expression of its socially and culturally diverse peoples, would not hinder the construction of a nation out of this mosaic. In this search, the country has experienced cycles of military and civilian rule, civil war, and peaceful reconstruction. If any nation typified political scientist Richard Sklar's characterization of the African continent as a "workshop of democracy," it would certainly be Nigeria. The country has experimented with different federal, state, and local government systems, learning more about its needs, resources, and constraints with each experiment. Despite the predominance of military regimes during the three postcolonial decades, Nigerian society has retained many of the fundamental building blocks of a democratic polity: vigorous entrepreneurial classes, a broad intelligentsia and numerous centers of higher education, a dynamic legal community and judiciary, diverse and often outspoken media, and, increasingly, courageous human rights organizations. Despite the differences in character and composition of the successive governments, it is still possible to identify the major threads of Nigeria's institutional evolution. As the nation finds itself once more on the threshold of transition from military to civilian rule, promised for 1992, examination of these threads is essential for understanding the Nigeria that will become the Third Republic. Nigeria is essentially an artificial creation, which, like most other African states, is a product of colonialism. This fact is central to understanding the country's government and politics, which have been conditioned and bedeviled by the problems of accommodating several diversities: ethnic, linguistic (there are between 250 and 400 distinct languages), geopolitical, religious (there is a deepening cleavage between Christians and Muslims), and class. Nigeria became politically independent on October 1, 1960, after about seven decades of colonial rule by the British. Prior to colonial rule, most of the groups that today make up the country were often distinguished by differences in history, culture, political development, and religion. The major differences among these precolonial groups pertained to their sociopolitical organization: anthropological and historical studies usually distinguish between societies that were centralized ("state") and those that were noncentralized ("stateless"). To the former category belonged the Sokoto Caliphate and the emirates of the north that, together with the Kanem-Bornu Empire, were advanced Islamic theocracies. Also included in this category were the Benin, Oyo, and other western kingdoms, as well as the Igala Kingdom in the middle belt or lower north. In these centralized systems, there were clear divisions between the rulers and the ruled, usually based on wealth and ascribed status. Institutions of a distinctly political nature, as well as taxation systems, were already established. Of all the centralized systems, the Sokoto Caliphate with its vassal emirates had the most advanced form of state organization. Not surprisingly, it provided the model for the British colonial policy of indirect rule, i.e., the governance of indigenous peoples through their own institutions and rulers. By contrast, in noncentralized systems such as those of the Igbo and other eastern and middle-belt groups, there was a diffusion of political, economic, and religious institutions and practices. Also to be found was a large measure of egalitarianism, democracy, and decentralized authority. Under the colonial policy of indirect rule, "traditional" rulers (known as warrant chiefs) were imposed on these stateless societies. In the immediate precolonial period, a pronounced religious gulf separated the northern from the southern peoples. Islam had been introduced to the Hausa states and other northern parts in the fifteenth century, but it did not dominate until the jihad of 1804, which extended Islamic influence to most parts of the north and even to towns on the southern fringe, such as Oyo and Auchi. The southern peoples were devotees mainly of traditional religions who underwent increasing contact with, and exposure to, Europeans and Christianity. In some areas of the south, such as Benin and Warri, the penetration of Christianity dates to the fifteenth century. When the north experienced contact with Europeans much later, the spread of Christianity and other Western influences was slowed by the strong attachment to Islam. This fact explains in part the uneven rates of economic and educational development between the northern and southern peoples that have persisted to this day, with important consequences for government and politics. It should not be assumed that the various population groups in precolonial Nigeria were completely separated from one another. Historians have established evidence of various forms of interaction among the peoples, the major ones being trade and superordinate-subordinate relationships. Powerful centralized systems, such as the Sokoto Caliphate and the Benin Empire, dominated several neighboring groups. Where no established group held sway over the others, as was the case among the Yoruba-speaking people in the nineteenth century, a pattern of conflicts and wars prevailed. On balance, there were pronounced differences among the people who later came to comprise Nigeria, especially when we consider the major regional groups. British rule did much to accentuate these differences and, in some cases, created new divisive sentiments. Even the nature of British conquest and the process by which its rule was established encouraged separate identities. The conquest and colonization of the coastal area of Lagos and its hinterlands took place between 1861 and 1897. The conquest of the eastern region and the declaration of the Niger Coast Protectorate occurred in 1894. Finally, a third wave of penetration led to the declaration of a protectorate over the northern areas in 1900. In 1906 the colony of Lagos and the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria (which included the former Niger Coast Protectorate) were joined together to become the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria. Finally, in 1914 the northern and southern protectorates were amalgamated to become the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria, although both parts continued to be administered separately. During the period extending from amalgamation in 1914 to independence from colonial rule in 1960, Nigeria had four major constitutions, each named after the colonial governor who formulated it: the Clifford Constitution (1922), Richards Constitution (1946), Macpherson Constitution (1951), and Lyttleton Constitution (1954). Although the first two constitutions were virtually imposed on the country, the latter two involved some consultations with representatives of the people through constitutional conferences. At the Ibadan General Conference of 1950, Nigerian leaders agreed that only a federal system that allowed each of the three regions (north, west, and east as created by the Richards Constitution) to progress at its own pace would be acceptable. Until that point, the constitutions had a unitary orientation. In creating three regions and delegating some powers to them, the Richards Constitution was a forerunner of the later federal constitutions. Although the regional leaders at the Ibadan conference had unequivocally declared their preference for federalism, the subsequent Macpherson Constitution was essentially unitary. It went farther than the Richards Constitution in devolving power to the regions but left the regions subordinate and closely tied to the central government. Because many Nigerian political leaders favored a federal system in which the regions enjoyed wide autonomy, the Macpherson Constitution engendered continuing opposition. Finally, in 1953, this constitution became unworkable. Rather than self-government for the whole nation, the northerners wanted self-government as soon as practicable and only for any region that was ready for it. They believed that each region should progress politically at its own pace. When a constitutional conference was convened in London in 1953, a federal constitution that gave the regions significant autonomy eventually emerged. This Lyttleton Constitution was the one that remained in force, with slight amendments, until independence in 1960. It enabled the regions to become self-governing at their own pace: the two southern regions in 1956 and the northern region in 1959. Several important developments that have continued to affect Nigeria's government and politics in the postcolonial period marked the period of colonial rule. First, British colonial rule nurtured north-south separation, which has remained the classic cleavage in the country. In particular, after Lord Frederick Lugard's pact with northern emirs to protect Islamic civilization, the north was shut off from much of the Westernizing influences to which the south was exposed. This protection gave the southern peoples a head start, especially in Western education. During the struggle for independence, northern leaders were afflicted by a constant fear of southern domination. Many of the northern responses to national politics to this day can be attributed to this fear. At the same time, with the creation of three regions that saw the northern region larger in size and population than the two southern regions, there was also a southern fear of northern domination. The image of a homogenous north, although contradicted by the cultural diversity of that region, continued in 1990 to feature prominently in most southerners' perception of national politics. Second, in creating largely artificial regions, the British fostered the cleavage between ethnic majority and minority groups. Each region contained the nucleus of a majority group that dominated in its respective region: the Hausa/Fulani in the north, the Yoruba in the west, and the Igbo in the east. The major political parties that emerged in the regions and controlled them were based on these groups. With regional autonomy, the major groups became the major "shareholders" of the federation. Power-sharing and political calculations have consequently centered on ensuring a balance of power among these groups. The minorities, feeling oppressed and dominated, agitated for separate states in the regions. Although a panel was appointed in 1956 to inquire into the fears of the minorities and to explore ways of allaying them, their requests were not met until after independence. Third, the uneven rates of development among the groups, which generally coincided with regional boundaries, strengthened the forces of regionalism. The creed became north for northerners, west for westerners, and east for easterners. Despite the periodic creation of more states during the postcolonial period, these regionalist feelings continued to affect national politics, especially in the distribution of national resources. One manifestation of this tendency was the ceaseless disagreements and rancor over revenue allocation. Another consequence of these regional and ethnic divisions was the fragmentation of the national elite. Unlike a few other African countries, Nigeria had no fully national leaders at independence. Nnamdi Azikiwe, an Igbo, who had the greatest potential for becoming a national leader, was forced by regionalist pressures to become a sectional leader. The other leaders during the postindependence period--Ahmadu Bello, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Obafemi Awolowo, Michael Okpara, Samuel Akintola, and Aminu Kano--are best remembered as sectional leaders, even though they are usually called nationalists. This fractionalization of the political elite in turn reinforced ethnicity, regionalism, and religious conflicts, as these sentiments were often aroused in the competition for power, material resources, and privileges. The colonial heritage, therefore, produced a country that was only weakly united. At some points, the regional leaders threatened to secede from the federation: in the early to mid- 1950s northern leaders contemplated separation after their humiliation by southerners because of their refusal to support a motion for achieving self-government in 1956; in 1954 the Western Region threatened to separate itself if the colony of Lagos were not made a part of that region. There were strong countervailing factors that prevented breakup of the federation. First, British colonial rule had held the country together as one unit. Second, the regions had economic complementarity. In particular, given the export orientation of the colonial economy, the landlocked northern region depended greatly on the southern regions that had access to the sea. Third, in the final days of colonial rule, Nigerian leaders recognized the advantages conferred by the country's large size and population.	United States
The dominant 14-18th century Oyo Empire of Nigeria was noted for the organizational abilities of the Yoruba people and what feature of its powerful army?	Nigeria: History Nigeria History Early History Little is known of the earliest history of Nigeria. By c.2000 B.C. most of the country was sparsely inhabited by persons who had a rudimentary knowledge of raising domesticated food plants and of herding animals. From c.800 B.C. to c.A.D. 200 the Nok culture (named for the town where archaeological findings first were made) flourished on the Jos Plateau; the Nok people made fine terra-cotta sculptures and probably knew how to work tin and iron. The first important centralized state to influence Nigeria was Kanem-Bornu, which probably was founded in the 8th cent. A.D., to the north of Lake Chad (outside modern Nigeria). In the 11th cent., by which time its rulers had been converted to Islam, Kanem-Bornu expanded south of Lake Chad into present-day Nigeria, and in the late 15th cent. its capital was moved there. Beginning in the 11th cent. seven independent Hausa city-states were founded in N Nigeria—Biram, Daura, Gobir, Kano, Katsina , Rano, and Zaria. Kano and Katsina competed for the lucrative trans-Saharan trade with Kanem-Bornu, and for a time had to pay tribute to it. In the early 16th cent. all of Hausaland was briefly held by the Songhai Empire. However, in the late 16th cent., Kanem-Bornu replaced Songhai as the leading power in N Nigeria, and the Hausa states regained their autonomy. In southwest Nigeria two states—Oyo and Benin—had developed by the 14th cent.; the rulers of both states traced their origins to Ife, renowned for its naturalistic terra-cotta and brass sculpture. Benin was the leading state in the 15th cent. but began to decline in the 17th cent., and by the 18th cent. Oyo controlled Yorubaland and also Dahomey. The Igbo people in the southeast lived in small village communities. In the late 15th cent. Portuguese navigators became the first Europeans to visit Nigeria. They soon began to purchase slaves and agricultural produce from coastal middlemen; the slaves had been captured further inland by the middlemen. The Portuguese were followed by British, French, and Dutch traders. Among the Igbo and Ibibio a number of city-states were established by individuals who had become wealthy by engaging in the slave trade; these included Bonny , Owome, and Okrika. The Nineteenth Century There were major internal changes in Nigeria in the 19th cent. In 1804, Usuman dan Fodio (1754–1817), a Fulani and a pious Muslim, began a holy war to reform the practice of Islam in the north. He soon conquered the Hausa city-states, but Bornu, led by Muhammad al-Kanemi (also a Muslim reformer) until 1835, maintained its independence. In 1817, Usuman dan Fodio's son, Muhammad Bello (d.1837) established a state centered at Sokoto , which controlled most of N Nigeria until the coming of the British (1900–1906). Under both Usuman dan Fodio and Muhammad Bello, Muslim culture, and also trade, flourished in the Fulani empire. In Bornu, Muhammad al-Kanemi was succeeded by Umar (reigned 1835–80), under whom the empire disintegrated. In 1807, Great Britain abandoned the slave trade; however, other countries continued it until about 1875. Meanwhile, many African middlemen turned to selling palm products, which were Nigeria's chief export by the middle of the century. In 1817 a long series of civil wars began in the Oyo Empire; they lasted until 1893 (when Britain intervened), by which time the empire had disintegrated completely. In order to stop the slave trade there, Britain annexed Lagos in 1861. In 1879, Sir George Goldie gained control of all the British firms trading on the Niger, and in the 1880s he took over two French companies active there and signed treaties with numerous African leaders. Largely because of Goldie's efforts, Great Britain was able to claim S Nigeria at the Conference of Berlin (see Berlin, Conference of ) held in 1884–85. In the following years, the British established their rule in SW Nigeria, partly by signing treaties (as in the Lagos hinterland) and partly by using force (as at Benin in 1897). Jaja , a leading African trader based at Opobo in the Niger delta and strongly opposed to European competition, was captured in 1887 and deported. Goldie's firm, given (1886) a British royal charter, as the Royal Niger Company, to administer the Niger River and N Nigeria, antagonized Europeans and Africans alike by its monopoly of trade on the Niger; in addition, it was not sufficiently powerful to gain effective control over N Nigeria, which was also sought by the French. Colonialism In 1900 the Royal Niger Company's charter was revoked and British forces under Frederick Lugard began to conquer the north, taking Sokoto in 1903. By 1906, Britain controlled Nigeria, which was divided into the Colony (i.e., Lagos) and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria and the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria. In 1914 the two regions were amalgamated and the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria was established. The administration of Nigeria was based on a system devised by Lugard and called "indirect rule"; under this system, Britain ruled through existing political institutions rather than establishing a wholly new administrative network. In some areas (especially the southeast) new African officials (resembling the traditional rulers in other parts of the country) were set up; in most cases they were not accepted by the mass of the people and were able to rule only because British power stood behind them. All important decisions were made by the British governor, and the African rulers, partly by being associated with the colonialists, soon lost most of their traditional authority. Occasionally (as in Aba in 1929) discontent with colonial rule flared into open protest. Under the British, railroads and roads were built and the production of cash crops, such as palm nuts and kernels, cocoa, cotton, and peanuts, was encouraged. The country became more urbanized as Lagos, Ibadan, Kano, Onitsha, and other cities grew in size and importance. From 1922, African representatives from Lagos and Calabar were elected to the legislative council of Southern Nigeria; they constituted only a small minority, and Africans otherwise continued to have no role in the higher levels of government. Self-help groups organized on ethnic lines were established in the cities. A small Western-educated elite developed in Lagos and a few other southern cities. In 1947, Great Britain promulgated a constitution that gave the traditional authorities a greater voice in national affairs. The Western-educated elite was excluded, and, led by Herbert Macaulay and Nnamdi Azikiwe , its members vigorously denounced the constitution. As a result, a new constitution, providing for elected representation on a regional basis, was instituted in 1951. Three major political parties emerged—the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC; from 1960 known as the National Convention of Nigerian Citizens), led by Azikiwe and largely based among the Igbo; the Action Group, led by Obafemi Awolowo and with a mostly Yoruba membership; and the Northern People's Congress (NPC), led by Ahmadu Bello and based in the north. The constitution proved unworkable by 1952, and a new one, solidifying the division of Nigeria into three regions (Eastern, Western, and Northern) plus the Federal Territory of Lagos, came into force in 1954. In 1956 the Eastern and Western regions became internally self-governing, and the Northern region achieved this status in 1959. Independence and Internal Conflict With Nigerian independence scheduled for 1960, elections were held in 1959. No party won a majority, and the NPC combined with the NCNC to form a government. Nigeria attained independence on Oct. 1, 1960, with Abubakar Tafawa Balewa of the NPC as prime minister and Azikiwe of the NCNC as governor-general; when Nigeria became a republic in 1963, Azikiwe was made president. The first years of independence were characterized by severe conflicts within and between regions. In the Western region, a bloc of the Action Group split off (1962) under S. I. Akintola to form the Nigerian National Democratic party (NNDP); in 1963 the Mid-Western region (whose population was mostly Edo) was formed from a part of the Western region. National elections late in 1964 were hotly contested, with an NPC-NNDP coalition (called the National Alliance) emerging victorious. In Jan., 1966, Igbo army officers staged a successful coup, which resulted in the deaths of Federal Prime Minister Balewa, Northern Prime Minister Ahmadu Bello, and Western Prime Minister S. I. Akintola. Maj. Gen. Johnson T. U. Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Igbo, became head of a military government and suspended the national and regional constitutions; this met with a violent reaction in the north. In July, 1966, a coup led by Hausa army officers ousted Ironsi (who was killed) and placed Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon at the head of a new military regime. In Sept., 1966, many Igbo living in the north were massacred. Gowon attempted to start Nigeria along the road to civilian government but met determined resistance from the Igbo, who were becoming increasingly fearful of their position within Nigeria. In May, 1967, the Eastern parliament gave Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka O. Ojukwu , the region's leader, authority to declare the region an independent republic. Gowon proclaimed a state of emergency, and, as a gesture to the Igbos, redivided Nigeria into 12 states (including one, the East-Central state, that comprised most of the Igbo people). However, on May 30, Ojukwu proclaimed the independent Republic of Biafra , and in July fighting broke out between Biafra and Nigeria. Biafra made some advances early in the war, but soon federal forces gained the initiative. After much suffering, Biafra capitulated on Jan. 15, 1970, and the secession ended. The early 1970s were marked by reconstruction in areas that were formerly part of Biafra, by the gradual reintegration of the Igbo into national life, and by a slow return to civilian rule. Modern Nigeria Spurred by the booming petroleum industry, the Nigerian economy quickly recovered from the effects of civil war and made impressive advances. Nonetheless, inflation and high unemployment remained, and the oil boom led to government corruption and uneven distribution of wealth. Nigeria joined the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in 1971. The prolonged drought that desiccated the Sahel region of Africa in the early 1970s had a profound effect on N Nigeria, resulting in a migration of peoples into the less arid areas and into the cities of the south. Gowon's regime was overthrown in 1975 by Gen. Murtala Muhammad and a group of officers who pledged a return to civilian rule. In the mid-1970s plans were approved for a new capital to be built at Abuja, a move that drained the national economy. Muhammad was assassinated in an attempted coup one year after taking office and succeeded by Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo . In a crisis brought on by rapidly falling oil revenues, the government restricted public opposition to the regime, controlled union activity and student movements, nationalized land, and increased oil industry regulation. Nigeria sought Western support under Obasanjo while supporting African nationalist movements. In 1979 elections were held under a new constitution, bringing Alhaji Shehu Shagari to the presidency. Relations with the United States reached a new high in 1979 with a visit by President Jimmy Carter . The government expelled thousands of foreign laborers in 1983, citing social disturbances as the reason. The same year, Shagari was reelected president but overthrown after only a few months in office. In 1985 a coup led by Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Babangida brought a new regime to power, along with the promise of a return to civilian rule. A new constitution was promulgated in 1990, which set national elections for 1992. Babangida annulled the results of that presidential election, claiming fraud. A new election in 1993 ended in the apparent presidential victory of Moshood Abiola, but Babangida again alleged fraud. Soon unrest led to Babangida's resignation. Ernest Shonekan, a civilian appointed as interim leader, was forced out after three months by Gen. Sani Abacha, a long-time ally of Babangida, who became president and banned all political institutions and labor unions. In 1994, Abiola was arrested and charged with treason. In 1995, Abacha extended military rule for three more years, while proposing a program for a return to civilian rule after that period; his proposal was rejected by opposition leaders, but five political parties were established in 1996. The Abacha regime drew international condemnation in late 1995 when Ken Saro-Wiwa, a prominent writer, and eight other human-rights activists were executed; the trial was condemned by human-rights groups and led to Nigeria's suspension from the Commonwealth of Nations. Also in 1995, a number of army officers, including former head of state General Obasanjo, were arrested in connection with an alleged coup attempt. In 1996, Kudirat Abiola, an activist on behalf of her imprisoned husband, was murdered. Abacha died suddenly in June, 1998, and was succeeded by Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar, who immediately freed Obasanjo and other political prisoners. Riots followed the announcement that Abiola had also died unexpectedly in July, 1998, while in detention. Abubakar then announced an election timetable leading to a return to civilian rule within a year. All former political parties were disbanded and new ones formed. A series of local, state, and federal elections were held between Dec., 1998, and Feb., 1999, culminating in the presidential contest, won by General Obasanjo. The elections were generally deemed fair by international monitors. The People's Democratic party (PDP; the centrist party of General Obasanjo) dominated the elections; the other two leading parties were the Alliance for Democracy (a Yoruba party of the southwest, considered to be progressive), and the All People's party (a conservative party based in the north). Following Obasanjo's inauguration on May 29, 1999, Nigeria was readmitted to the Commonwealth. The new president said he would combat past and present corruption in the Nigerian government and army and develop the impoverished Niger delta area. Although there was some progress economically, government and political corruption remained a problem. The country also was confronted with renewed ethnic and religious tension. The latter was in part a result of the institution of Islamic law in Nigeria's northern states, and led to violence that has been an ongoing problem since the return of civilian rule. Army lawlessness was a problem as well in some areas. A small success was achieved in Apr., 2002, when Abacha's family agreed to return $1 billion to the government; the government had sought an estimated $4 billion in looted Nigerian assets. In Mar., 2003, the Ijaw, accusing the Itsekiri, government, and oil companies of economic and political collusion against them, began militia attacks against Itsekiri villages and oil facilities in the Niger delta, leading to a halt in the delta's oil production for several weeks and military intervention by the government. The presidential and earlier legislative elections in Apr., 2003, were won by President Obasanjo and his party, but the results were marred by vote rigging and some violence. The opposition protested the results, and unsuccessfully challenged the presidential election in court. The Ijaw-Itsekiri conflict continued into 2004, but a peace deal was reached in mid-June. The Ijaw backed out of the agreement, however, three weeks later. Christian-Muslim tensions also continued to be a problem in 2004, with violent attacks occurring in Kebbi, Kano, and Plateau states. Obasanjo's government appeared to move more forcefully against government corruption in early 2005. Several government ministers were fired on corruption charges, and the senate speaker resigned after he was accused of taking bribes. A U.S. investigation targeted Nigeria's vice president the same year, and Obasanjo himself agreed to be investigated by the Nigerian financial crimes commission when he was accused of corruption by Orji Uzor Kalu, the governor of Abia and a target of a corruption investigation. Ijaw militants again threatened Niger delta oil operations in Sept., 2005, and several times in subsequent years, resulting in cuts in Nigeria's oil production as large as 25% at times. Since early 2006 the Niger delta area has seen an increase in kidnappings of foreign oil workers and attacks on oil operations; the resulting government focus on protecting oil facilities allowed criminal gangs to expand their influence in populated areas there. In Oct., 2005, the government reached an agreement to pay off much of its foreign debt at a discount, a process that was completed in Apr., 2006. The end of 2005 and early 2006 saw increased contention over whether to amend the constitution to permit the president and state governors to run for more than two terms. The idea had been rejected in July, 2005, by a national political reform conference, but senators reviewing the conference's proposals indicated they supported an end to term limits. The change was opposed by Vice President Atiku Abubakar , but other PDP leaders who objected were removed from their party posts. A census—a contentious event because of ethnic and religious divisions in Nigeria—was taken in Mar., 2006, but the head count was marred by a lack of resources and a number of violent clashes, and many Nigerians were believed to have been left uncounted. In May the Nigerian legislature ended consideration of a third presidential term when it became clear that there was insufficient support for amending the constitution. Nigeria agreed in June, 2006, to turn over the Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon after a two-year transition period; the region was finally ceded in Aug., 2008. In July the vice president denied taking bribes from a U.S. congressman, but in September the president called for the Nigerian senate to remove the vice president from office for fraud, based on an investigation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). The senate agreed to investigate the charges, and the PDP suspended the vice president, blocking him from seeking the party's presidential nomination. Abubakar counteraccused Obasanjo of corruption. The EFCC was also investigating most of Nigeria's state governors, but the commission itself was tainted by charges that it was used for political retaliation by Obasanjo and his allies. Several state governors were impeached by legally unsound proceedings, moves that were seen as an attempt by Obasanjo to tighten his control prior to the 2007 presidential election. When the vice president accepted (Dec., 2006) the presidential nomination of a group of opposition parties, the president accused him of technically resigning and sought to have him removed, an action Abubakar challenged in court; the government backed down the following month, and the courts later sided with Abubakar. In Jan., 2007, the results of the 2006 census were released, and they proved as divisive as previous Nigerian censuses. The census showed that the largely Muslim north had more inhabitants than the south, and many southern political leaders vehemently rejected the results. In February, the EFCC declared Abubakar and more than 130 other candidates for the April elections unfit due to corruption, and the election commission barred those candidates from running. Abubakar fought the move in court, but the ruling was not overturned until days before the presidential election. The state elections were marred by widespread and blatant vote fraud and intimidation, but the election commission certified nearly all the results, handing gubernatorial victories to the PDP in 27 states. In the presidential election, Umaru Yar'Adua , the relatively unknown governor of Katsina state who was hand-picked by Obasanjo to be the PDP candidate, was declared the winner with 70% of the vote, but fraud and intimidation were so blatant that EU observers called the election a "charade" and the president was forced to admit it was "flawed." Nonetheless, Yar'Adua's inauguration (May) marked the first transition of power between two elected civilian presidents in Nigeria's post-colonial history. Yar'Adua subsequently moved to reorganize and reform the national petroleum company, but those efforts stalled, as did action to fight government corruption. The federal government did not, however, interfere with challenges in the courts to state elections. In Dec., 2008, challenges in the courts to Yar'Adua's election came to an end when the supreme court ruled that opposition lawyers had not provided sufficient evidence to annul the vote. In Feb., 2009, KBR, a U.S. company, pleaded guilty in U.S. court to giving $180 million in bribes to Nigerian officials to obtain a contract to build a liquefied natural gas plant. A significant army offensive against Niger delta militants that began in May, 2009, provoked an increased round of attacks against oil facilities, particularly pipelines. At the same time, however, Yar'Adua offered (June) amnesty to militants who lay down their weapons by Oct. 4, and many militants ultimately accepted the amnesty, though some did not. Subsequent slow progress by the government led to increased tensions in 2010. In July, 2009, Boko Haram, an extremist Islamist sect, launched attacks against the government in NE Nigeria after several leaders were arrested; the subsequent fighting was especially fierce in Maiduguri, where the group's headquarters was destroyed and some 700 died. The group began a new series of attacks in Sept., 2010, that continued into subsequent years, with the attacks become more significant beginning in mid-2011. The president traveled to Saudi Arabia in Nov., 2009, to seek medical treatment. As his stay there prolonged into 2010 many prominent Nigerians called for executive powers to be transferred on an interim basis to the vice president, Goodluck Jonathan , but the president did not initiate the constitutional process necessary for it to happen. In Feb., 2010, the National Assembly unanimously voted to make Jonathan acting president, but the lack of a formal letter from the president notifiying the Assembly of his absence raised constitutional issues. Jonathan remained acting president after Yar'Adua returned later in the month, and succeeded him as president when Yar'Adua died in May. Jonathan's subsequent decision to run for a presidential term in his own right threatened to split the PDP, which had alternated fielding northern and southern presidential candidates. In Dec., 2010, however, he won the support of most of the state governors who were members of the PDP, and the following month the PDP nominated him for the presidency. In Sept., 2010, one faction of Niger delta militants announced an end to their cease-fire, and the group subsequently set off car bombs in Abuja during an independence day parade on October 1. The Apr., 2011, elections were won by Jonathan and the PDP. Jonathan won 57% of the vote, but overwhelmingly majorities in a number of southern states led to charges of vote rigging. The opposition candidates challenged the results, and in some northern states, where support for the opposition was strong, there were riots after the results were announced. International observers, however, generally described the presidential election as the country's freest and fairest in many years. In the National Assembly elections, the PDP won with a reduced majority in both houses, and it also lost control of a number of governorships in the subsequent gubernatorial elections. By the first half of 2012 the increasingly violent, ongoing insurgency by the Islamic militant group Boko Haram was stoking sectarian tensions and worsening the economic situation in the already economically stagnant N Nigeria; the situation had also led to significantly larger government expenditures on security, diverting money from other needs. In May, 2013, after increasing Islamist-related violence, Nigeria imposed martial law in three northern states and launched an offensive against Islamist militants, but in many cases the militants fled without confronting the army, and subsquently they launched a number of murderous attacks as clashes increased later in the year. In August tensions in the PDP led to a split in the party, and several governors and a number of legislators left to form the New PDP; later in the year, most of them joined the All Progressives Congress (APC), an opposition group formed by the merger of several parties earlier in 2013. Sections in this article:	i don't know
Nigeria's internet country top level domain is?	Welcome to the .ng Domain Registry website - Nigeria internet Registration Association (NiRA) Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) Facebook Welcome to the .ng Domain Registry website NiRA is the registry for .ng Internet Domain Names and maintains the database of names registered in the .ng country code Top Level Domain. NiRA is a self-regulating body and managers of the .ng national resource, the country code Top Level Domain(ccTLD) name space in the public interest of Nigeria and global internet communities. NiRA Policies Our Policy Development Process gives room to Stakeholder Associations and members of the Internet community to contribute to its formulation. Read More Register a .ng Domain NiRA operates a 3R model of operation, Registry/Registrar/Registrant, it does not register domains directly for registrants. Read More. News Update	.ng
'Nollywood', Nigeria's movie industry, is ranked what position globally (by number of productions, at the 2010s)?	IANA — Report on the Redelegation of the .NG Top-Level Domain About IANA IANA Report on the Redelegation of the .NG Top-Level Domain The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is tasked with managing the Domain Name System root zone as part of a set of functions governed by a contract with the U.S. Government. This includes the delegation and redelegation of top-level domains. A subset of top-level domains are designated for the local Internet communities in countries to operate in a way that best suits their local needs. These are known as country-code top-level domains, and are assigned by ICANN to responsible trustees (known as ‘Sponsoring Organisations’) who meet a number of public-interest criteria for eligibility — largely relating to their level of support from their local Internet community, their capacity to ensure stable operation of the domain, and their applicability under any relevant local laws. Through an ICANN department known as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), requests are received for delegating and redelegating the sponsoring organisation of top-level domains. An investigation is performed on the circumstances pertinent to those requests, and, when appropriate, the requests are implemented. Decisions on whether to implement requests to delegate or redelegate top-level domains are made by the ICANN Board of Directors, taking into account ICANN’s core mission to ensure the stable and secure operation of the Internet’s unique identifier systems. In accordance with this, a request was received for the redelegation of the .NG top-level domain on 15 January 2009. This domain is designated in the ISO 3166-1 standard for Nigeria, a country in Africa with a population of approximately 150 million people. The .NG top-level domain was initially delegated in 1995 to Ms Iyabo Odusote of the Yaba College of Technology. Initially technical operations were performed by Instituto per le Applicazioni Telematiche (IAT) based in Italy, although these were later transferred and executed by Mr Randy Bush. In 2004, ICANN redelegated the .NG top-level domain to the National Information Technical Development Agency (NITDA), a national governmental agency, as described in its report (see http://www.iana.org/reports/2004/ng-report-10jun04.html ) which concludes: The structure proposed by NITDA and endorsed by the Nigerian Government is to have NITDA undertake management of the .ng ccTLD under appropriate oversight of the Nigerian Government concerning the national policy interests. NITDA and the Nigerian Government also acknowledge and support ICANN's responsibility for coordinating management of the DNS, including the .ng ccTLD, to safeguard global technical coordination interests. In reviewing the request, in light of the Nigerian Government's endorsement of NITDA as the appropriate manager, and in view of achievement of agreements documenting the framework of accountability described above; the IANA concludes that the .ng ccTLD should be redelegated to NITDA. The proposed redelegation appeals for the “Nigeria Internet Registration Association” to be designated as the Sponsoring Organisation for the .NG top-level domain. The proposed administrative contact is the President of the organisation, currently Mr Ndukwe Kalu. The proposed technical contact is the DNS Administrator of NIRA, Muhammed Rudman. Evaluation Procedure The evaluation of a delegation or redelegation request is guided by the practices summarised in: “Domain Name System Structure and Delegation” (RFC 1591). This document describes IANA function practices relating to delegations at its publication in 1994. “Internet Domain Name System Structure and Delegation” (ICP-1). This document represents an update of the portions of RFC 1591 dealing with ccTLDs and reflects subsequent evolution of the policies followed by ICANN through May 1999. The ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee’s Principles for Delegation and Administration of ccTLDs (GAC Principles). This document serve as “best practices” to guide governments in assuming proper roles with respect to the Internet's naming system. In considering the delegation or redelegation of a ccTLD, input is sought regarding the proposed new sponsoring organisation, as well as from persons and organisations that may be significantly affected by the change, particularly those within the nation or territory to which the ccTLD is designated. As noted in ICP-1, the parties affected include the relevant government or public authority: “The desires of the government of a country with regard to delegation of a ccTLD are taken very seriously. The IANA will make them a major consideration in any TLD delegation/transfer discussions.” Taking these factors into consideration, the burden required to permit a delegation action involves determining suitability in relation to the proposed sponsoring organisation’s capacity to meet the following criteria: Operational and technical skills The prospective sponsoring organisation has the requisite skills to operate the TLD appropriately. (ICP-1 §a, RFC 1591 §3.5) There must be reliable, full-time IP connectivity to the nameservers and electronic mail connectivity to the operators; (ICP-1 §a; RFC 1591 §3.1) The manager must perform its duties in assigning domains and operating nameservers with technical competence (ICP-1 §d; RFC 1591 §3.5) Operator in country The prospective manager supervises and operates the domain name from within the country represented by the TLD; (ICP-1 §a; RFC 1591 §3.1) The prospective administrative contact must reside in the country represented by the TLD. (ICP-1 §a; RFC 1591 §3.1) Equitable treatment The prospective manager must be equitable and fair to all groups encompassed by the TLD that may request domain names (ICP-1 §c; RFC 1591 §3.3) Community/Governmental support The prospective manager has the requisite authority to operate the TLD appropriately, with the desire of the government taken very seriously. (ICP-1 §a, GAC Principles) Significantly interested parties in the domain should agree that the prospective manager is the appropriate party to receive the delegation (ICP-1 §a; RFC 1591 §3.4) In meeting these criteria, information is requested from regarding the proposed sponsoring organisations. In summary, a request template is sought specifying the exact details of the delegation being sought in the root zone. In addition, various documentation is sought describing: the views of the local Internet community on a change; the competencies and skills of the organisation to operate the registry; the legal authenticity, status and character of the proposed operator; and the nature of government support for the proposal. The view of the current operator is obtained, and in the event of a redelegation, the transfer plan from the previous sponsoring organisation to the new sponsoring organisation is also assessed with a view to ensuring ongoing stable operation of the domain. After receiving these documents, the input received is analysed in relation to existing zone management procedures, seeking input from parties both related to as well as independent of the applying organization should the information provided in the original application be deficient. Once all the documentation has been received, various technical checks are performed on the proposed sponsoring organisation’s DNS infrastructure to ensure name servers are properly configured and are able to respond to queries for the top-level domain being requested. Should any anomalies be detected in the proposed technical infrastructure, IANA staff will work with the proposed sponsoring organisation to address the issues. Assuming all issues are resolved, a report is compiled providing all relevant details regarding the proposed sponsoring organisation, its suitability for operating the top-level domain being requested, and any other information pertinent to the application and submit that report to ICANN’s Board of Directors for its determination on whether to proceed with the request. Evaluation This evaluation is being provided to the ICANN Board for consideration and decision, as part of the contract for performance of the IANA function between the United States Government and ICANN. Under that contract, ICANN performs the IANA function, which includes receiving delegation and redelegation requests concerning top-level domains, investigating the circumstances pertinent to those requests, and reporting on the requests. The evaluation of the various criteria relating to the request are as follows: Operational and technical skills Documentation has been provided describing operational and technical aspects of the proposed domain operation. NIRA is comprised of four stakeholder components — a general assembly of stakeholder groups and individual end users; an elected board of trustees; an elected board of directors; and a management team. The proposed sponsoring organisation intends to deploy a resilient registry infrastructure with authoritative name servers located worldwide, as well as extensively within the country. The registry system is being provided by the Council of Country Code Administrators (COCCA), a registry software vendor whose software is currently used some other top-level domain operators. Operation in country The proposed sponsoring organisation is a not-for-profit, non-governmental body constituted under the laws of Nigeria and domiciled in Nigeria. The administrative contact is located within Nigeria. Fair and equitable treatment The proposed sponsoring organisation has made undertakings to IANA that a domain name registration policy will be used that provides for registrations on a basis that is fair and equitable. Governmental support The current sponsoring organisation is the Government of Nigeria, and it is endorsing the transfer of the domain to the proposed sponsoring organisation. The terms of its endorsement are spelled out in a formal agreement between the Government and NIRA, executed in January 2008. NIRA itself was established collaboratively between the Government and Nigerian Internet community following an explicit directive from the Minister of Science and Technology in 2004. Community sentiment Letters of support for the redelegation were received from different organisations that purport to represent community interests, including the Computer Professionals Registration Council of Nigeria which is the regulatory body for IT in Nigeria, and the Internet Service Providers’ Association of Nigeria, an association of all licensed Internet Service Providers in Nigeria. Recommendation In its decision making process on accepting delegation and redelegation requests, subject to meeting the minimum stability criteria enumerated earlier, ICANN respects the ability for a local Internet community as well as local law and local government to make decisions about the operation of a top-level domain. In its research, staff believe that there are grounds for reassignment of the domain name under the relevant criteria. It is therefore recommended that the .NG domain should be redelegated to the Nigeria Internet Registration Association as per the request. Postscript: Board Resolution On 23 April 2009, the Board of ICANN passed the following resolution: Whereas, the .NG top-level domain is the designated country-code for Nigeria. Whereas, ICANN has received a request for redelegation of .NG to the Nigeria Internet Registration Association. Whereas, ICANN has reviewed the request, and has determined that the proposed redelegation would be in the best interest of the local and global Internet communities. It is hereby resolved (2009.04.23.05), that the proposed redelegation of the .NG domain to the Nigeria Internet Registration Association is approved.	i don't know
The Third Mainland (What?) in Lagos is (at the 2010s) Africa's longest?	Eight Months in Africa Eight Months in Africa Lesson Learned (second blog title alliteration!) Some stuff: 1) Today when I was typing up the speech I have to give at my organization's big event on Saturday, I had about 5 tiny ants appear in various locations on my laptop over about a 20 minute time span - a couple started hiking across my monitor screen, others ambling along other Dell surfaces. I was working on my bed, so I started getting worried that there was some hidden ant hill that was going to terrorize me when I went to bed. But soon, I realized that the ants were crawling out of my keyboard. The dry cereal I sometimes snack on while working must be leaving tiny crumbs in my keyboard (hmm...probably not great for the laptop). I haven't noticed any bugs in my room...I'm pretty careful to keep food and such in containers, with the exception of dry cereal crumbs in my keyboard. I DO however notice ants marching in to my office through the open windows and under the unanchored carpet. We try to keep as much ventilation as possible in the office since there's no A.C. (except in the boss's office) and we all tolerate the random lizard wondering in through the open windows and doors and ignore the tiny ranks of ants filing in. I wonder what it's like living in a computer keyboard. It must get a little scary when I'm writing. Like now...they're probably all scurrying for their lives down there. I guess cereal crumbs are worth it! 2) Speaking of cereal, I tried Fruity Pebbles with water today. I usually eat cereal here with juice since fresh milk is very very hard to come by, but since I was running a little low on funds, I didn't want to spend money on juice when I had bottled water in the room. Surprisingly, it's not so bad. The sugar flavor in Fruity Pebbles is strong enough that a little dilution doesn't really take away. I do miss milk though. 3) Fifteen days until I fly to Zambia. I'm starting to get very excited. Starting all over again! My well-traveled American friends here have assured me that my experience there will be totally different than here. Also, since I'll be working with kids there instead of in an office, the nature of my daily activities in Zambia will be quite a contrast to those in Nigeria. I might have to read back through previous blog entries. I feel like I've written this before. Between journaling, blogging, emailing, writing letters, giving interviews, and phone calls, I can never remember what I've said to who and when. Anyway, I'm trying to get some serious blogging in now because it my internet and phone connections there will be much less regular. I was told that the best luck with the internet connection at the place I'll be staying is between 5 and 7 in the morning. I love you guys, buuuuut, that could be a slight deterrent to good correspondence. 4) I've spent a little time going back through journal and blog entries and it makes me a bit uncomfortable (I always get that feeling when I look back on my own, slightly dated writing though, so I guess it's not unusual). Little cultural misunderstandings, silly assumptions, and generalizations pop out at me, especially after my day today. I had a rather humbling experience at work. I've been getting a little too cocky about my expertise in event planning in developing countries (which is obviously non-existent anyway). I won't go into detail about what happened, but suffice it to say it was a much needed blow to the ego and after a little recovery time I quickly realized that living here for three months doesn't mean I own the place. As I've said many times before, it's hard to reconcile the contradictions of life here. On one hand, it's made clear that I'm a foreigner and an outsider who can never really know what it means to BE Nigerian, but on the other hand people love to see me dress up in their clothes and (attempt) to speak their language and sing their songs. I bounce from feeling awkwardly left out to feeling 100% Naija, as they would say. 5) I spent time with some American friends on Sunday. It was the first time I've been around Americans for almost 2 months. Lunch at a restaurant with them was a bit of a culture shock. Adjusting to more American conversation topics and speaking regular English was strange. I've adopted a very strange accent in my English. I phrase my sentences, especially questions, in weird word combinations. Local people understand me much much better than when I first arrived, but the accent I use isn't really African. It sounds sort of German or something. I hope I can drop it quickly when I'm back in the U.S. It's kind of embarrassing. 6) An interview I gave took up a full page in a small Sunday publication. The pictures are funny and the big blurb in the middle makes me squirm when I read it. Did I really say those things? Why do they even want to publish what I'm saying anyway? I haven't actually read the full interview yet, I hope I can get through the whole thing...I found myself blushing furiously just glancing at the page, hoping that the publication really is as small as I think it is. I'm gonna have to learn to be a little more guarded and a little less loquacious. Mental note: less word vomit is always better. 7) The last three anecdotes have been about how I'm an embarrassment to myself. I guess it's been a good day for humility, edging towards humiliation. But in a very "I learned some lessons today," kind of way. Posted by Finding Fear A more sobering example of this jungle of a society: The Scariest Moment of my Time in Lagos… I think I’ve said in previous blogs that I’m working very closely with a group called The Niger Delta Blind Students Association to plan their first big fundraising event (it’s in less than a week and I’m sort of freaking out about it). We’ve been traveling around the city, visiting different businesses trying to get corporate sponsorship. This process involves a LOT of waiting and sitting in the car in the terrible Lagos traffic. I’ve taken to reading books out loud during these long waits. During one such lull in activity, I was reading to three of the blind students (from Barack Obama’s first book!) while we all leaned against the car in a parking lot on a very hot day. One of the blind students’ brothers, the only other seeing member of these treks through the city, was quickly running an errand while we held down the fort at the car. I was really straining my voice so they could hear over the loud traffic and a roaring generator across the street. The three blind students were Gabriel, Ben, and Amaka. Amaka is a shy woman. Quiet and meek, I feel as though she’s a bit frail. I’m not sure if this has always been her personality or if she changed when she started going blind. I think she’s about 35 and she wasn’t totally blind until 2001 (due to complications and infection from a corrective eye surgery). I haven’t spent much time with her and because she’s quiet, she’s a bit of a mystery to me. She seems unsure and afraid of the world she cannot see. We also have a bit of a hard time communicating…she speaks more broken English than plain English. She was leaning against the car listening to the book I was reading (I think, it’s very hard to gauge if she’s listening or bored…she often closes her eyes). After a while, I noticed she turned to lean awkwardly across the back of the car. A few minutes later she turned back. Her movements seemed unnatural or strange, but I wasn’t sure why. Suddenly, as she began to change positions yet again, her body went slack and she kind of slumped to the floor. With my face in the book, I couldn't quite tell what had happened, “Did she faint?” I frantically wondered, “Or had she just decided to sit down?” I quickly dropped the book and leaned over her asking if she was ok. Her responses weren’t really audible, but I couldn’t distinguish if she was just being her quiet self (maybe she DID just sit down and my sudden inquiries frightened her). Her eyes were open, but because she’s blind, I couldn’t tell if she was conscious or not. Eventually, I understood that she wanted me to pull her back up, which I did. Both Gabriel and Ben, having not been able to see this, were unaware that anything out of the ordinary had happened. I’m fairly certain she fainted and was unconscious for several seconds. I sat her down in the car and hurried to find a street vendor to buy water for her. After eating some snacks and drinking a large bottle of water, she seemed to be fine, but this brief moment of uncertainty had me on edge for the rest of the day. I had felt totally helpless. These three people were under my care…not that they are incapable of caring for themselves, but we were in an area they didn’t know well and they relied on my sight and my narration to react to this noisy, busy area. I had panicked. I didn’t know if Amaka was having a heart attack or a stroke or if she was in pain or if she was overheated or diabetic. I couldn’t communicate with her and I was surprised at how much harder it was to understand the situation when I couldn’t meet her eyes. She couldn’t look at me with a reassuring expression (“I’m ok, just need to sit down”). I was preparing myself to put my lifeguard skills to use and start giving her CPR or mouth-to-mouth. It was just me – no 911, no emergency vehicles, no parents or adults or authorities to tell me what I should do. Although I’m beginning to feel comfortable in this foreign city, this incident reminded me what a stranger I am. In a moment of need, can I really communicate? I don’t even know if people will respond if I yell “Help!” Sure, I can walk down my own street and say Good Morning in Yoruba to people who recognize me every day, but that doesn’t exactly constitute survival. I suddenly feel so much more fragile. One slip-up and I’m in over my head. In general, people have been very helpful, but relying on random acts of kindness from strangers in a city this big, may not be the best policy... I had a conversation with some of my American friends the other day about how I sometimes feel as if I’m living in a different world than the one I read about in the newspapers. The Niger Delta you see on TV portrays pirates (there is a huge problem with boats being looted in the region), kidnappings, and violence – it looks like a war zone. But when I traveled there I was welcomed into smiling communities. They were certainly not living in good conditions and poverty wracked the villages, but I didn’t sense anger or resentment. I know I've been very sheltered, but still it's confusing to try to make these two images coexist. I’ve rarely felt threatened or vulnerable in Lagos, a city that’s supposed to be plagued with crime and disorder. I see the trash everywhere, of course. I’m quite aware of the desperate need for change. I’m definitely not trying to say that there are not extreme hardships that are being endured. But somehow I’m not fully experiencing what’s in front of me. I still have this naivety that I can’t shake. I don’t want to live in fear, but I don’t want to be ignorant of the dangers around me either. People keep telling me that I must be so brave to be traveling all alone in a foreign country. But it’s not that I’m brave…I’m just not really sure what to be afraid of. How do you find that balance? On another note! One of my friends here is a freelance journalist. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 2004 and has been living in various locations in Africa for several years now. He’s contributed to several NYTimes pieces, acting as a Nigerian correspondent. Take a look at some of his writing on Nigerian politics and more at www.willconnors.com Click on the blog title for a direct link to his webpage and read first rate stories about where I am written by a friend and fellow UChicago grad! Love to everyone! Coming to Terms Everywhere I look I see photo opportunities. As my time here starts to come to a close (3 weeks left before I fly to Zambia), I’m hyper-aware of every missed chance to “capture” what I’m seeing and experiencing. It’s frustrating because I feel like this urge to save every moment underscores the need to actually be IN each moment. I’m very distracted by this worry that each thing I don’t get on photograph will disappear as I fly onto my next destination. I try really hard to stay grounded and be “present” but it’s sort of against my nature. Allow me to impose my very Western romanticisms on a very non-Western world. When will I ever be seeing such things again? Will these people even exist to the outside world if I don’t bring them home in shiny little 3by5’s? Life is so fleeting here. There are 16+ Million people living in this city. By snapping a picture, I think I’m really trying to assure myself that each individual has some independent significance. That’s one of the things that’s been very hard to come to terms with during my time here. It’s quite frightening to be one in 16 million. So much of my childhood and life so far has been dedicated at being my own person, finding my own identity. And here I am in the middle of a bazillion people – we can’t ALL be individuals, can we? You might be surprised to hear this, but um, despite what my parents might have led me to believe, I don’t think life on this planet would stop were I not here. AHHHHHhhhh. Posted by The Shrine I went to see Femi Kuti at The New Shrine on Easter Sunday. He plays at this venue three days a week. The Afro beat music is in the style of his late father, the famous Nigerian musician and activist Fela Kuti. Despite the large scale of the place, It’s kind of family run joint – Femi Kuti’s older sister takes your ticket at the door and there are pictures of Fela and and another daughter of his who died on the wall behind the stage. The New Shrine is a big open venue and when Femi gets on stage around 10:30pm the place is just full of good vibrations and raw energy. There are lots of fluorescent lights and because the place is famous for its lax policy on a certain illegal substance there’s hazy glow everywhere. The individual sounds of the instruments of the large band (there were like 20 guys on stage) are kind of indistinguishable. The huge speakers they use look kind of archaic and they play everything so loud that it all becomes a single pulsation with blaring horn sections that interject at the height of each song. This kind of music has a really strong build and you can’t help but be pulled along by the momentum. Femi Kuti sings and plays keyboards and occasionally picks up a tenor or alto sax. Random people in the crowd cheer, stand to dance, and sing along with some of the famous lyrics about a better Nigeria. Almost all of the musicians are male and wear matching African print outfits. There is, however, a very strong feminine presence on stage thanks to the six scantily clad dancers/backup singers/tambourine players. They have matching fluorescent bikini shorts, tops, and ankle bracelets all with tassels. It might be easy, reading the description of these women, to see them as objectified sex symbols (there are also several girls who rotate for dancing positions in two mini “cages” off of the stage), especially if I were to detail their dancing which involves a LOT of intense ass-shaking, hip thrusting, and serious shimmying. But I didn’t find it offensive at all. I found their performance mesmerizing and powerfully sexy, in an “I am woman, hear me roar,” kind of way. They were not skinny women, they were all strong (as you would have to be to keep up with these girls for the 3 hours they were on stage), even chubby women – at least by most Western standards. The musical experience would not have been the same without their tasseled movements building with the music. About twenty minutes into the music I couldn’t contain myself to chair bobbing any longer and Africas (my host brother, if you forgot or never knew) and I headed onto the dance floor where I proceeded to do the most serious, sweaty dancing I’ve ever done. I’m not gonna lie, I think the Nigerian guys that crowded the dance floor (I was THE only girl…for some reason, girls don’t really get onto the dance floor here and I’ve found that it’s much more common for guys to go out with just guys) were pretty impressed with the white girl’s moves. I even attracted the attention of the really energetic musician guy on-stage playing the sticks (or whatever their called). All in all, a fabulous night of Afro beat madness. Posted by RE-awakening I've decided that my time here in Nigeria so far can be divided into stages. The first three weeks or so was stage one. Stage one was the honeymoon period. It was fast paced, exciting, eye-opening, fun. There was little time for self-reflection. I was much too busy experiencing to try and make sense of it all. Then there was stage 2 which lasted up until about a week ago. It started with an abrupt end to the honeymoon period, where I suddenly took a look around me and was quite frightened by what I saw. Homesickness quickly set in, then lonliness. I became very self-conscious of the stares I drew wherever I went. After being so open to every new experience the first few weeks, I became very suspicious of anyone who took an interest in me. I became painfully aware of how different I was from everyone else around me. This is not to say that I was unhappy all of the time, but I was certainly no longer happy and outgoing all of the time. About week 2 of stage 2 is when I moved out of my host family's place and into a hotel room. Living alone emphasized my sense of isolation even more. Withdrawing from the strange city I'm living in became easier and my life here became sort of compartmentalized. Life in my safe, airconditioned hotel room versus life in Lagos. Life in Lagos wasn't "bad" per se, but I definitely felt vulnerable outside of my own familiar space. And again, I wasn't unhappy, I just felt unsure of how to cope with these two worlds. I spent a lot of time trying to reconcile my newfound insecurity with being white. How do I wear traditional Nigerian clothes and enjoy traditional music and eat traditional food without just being a puppet? I constantly felt like I was being used as a representation of something I didn't understand and wasn't sure I was comfortable with (I know, preposition at the end of a sentence, but it sounds strange when I fix it, so it's gonna stay). As cliche as it might be, I was constantly in a state of internal struggle. And while all of this is still going on, I feel like I've reached a stage 3. And although I'm only a week into stage 3, it feels like a stage where I'm starting to put the compartments back together. Maybe I've just found a temporary bandaid, but I'm starting to feel a little bit more comfortable in my own skin, even outside of my little safe-space hotel room. I'm still a bit manic - I have good days and bad days. Happy experiences and unhappy experiences, but I think that my last month here in Nigeria will be the best of the four I've spent here. So I know my really deep self-introspective summary is a bit premature. I think each week will continue to reveal a greater understanding of what I'm doing here and I think getting home after Nigeria, Zambia, and Tanzania will give a much clearer picture of the whole "disappear in Africa" concept, but basically what I want to say is being here is really hard, but I like that and I appreciate it. A bit simplistic maybe, but honest! I'll write about more exciting stuff soon. Happy Easter!...speaking of which, my hotel is having a big production today for Easter Sunday. Some well-known NIgerian performers are putting on a show at the club adjoined to my hotel. If you wanna know what's happening next door to me you can look up some of the performers on YouTube. Basket Mouth (or maybe it's one word, not sure), a Nigerian comedian who performs speaking pidgin English, and 9ice (get it?), a rapper/musician, among others will be part of the show. Check it out and see what's hot in Lagos! I won't be at this Easter extravaganza however, I'll actually be at a famous Lagosian club called the Shrine tonight seeing Femi Kuti, the son of famous AFrican artist and activist "Fela", perform live. You can also look HIM up on YouTube. One of his music videos was filmed in the Shrine. So if you look it up, just imagine me there! LOve to all!!! I'm Alive! It’s 3:10 AM on Wednesday morning. I’m sitting on my bed in my little hotel room/home. It’s pouring outside – Harmattan, the dry season, is over. The rainy season has begun. Lightening, Thunder, Tropical winds…the whole she-bang. I know it’s been a long time since I’ve updated. No excuse. I haven’t been in Benin all this time, in case you were worrying. After 5 extra days there and lots of CFA spent (the Benin currency) I was finally able to procure the re-entry visa I needed. Unfortunately the re-entry visa I got only lasted for two weeks, so I had to spend about $200 more to extend the visa for the rest of my stay here. I guess I shouldn’t complain though, it could’ve been much worse. I had an American friend who was living in Lagos who had to return to the U.S. to resolve visa issues and she never even left the country. So I’m back in Nigeria and the season’s changed and a lot has happened and interesting things have been observed since I last wrote, so! in typical Laurel fashion I keep waiting until I have a gloriously excessive amount of time to write about every little detail. I finally realize, “Laurel, that’s ridiculous…just update the damn blog and get it over with.” So instead I write at 3 in the morning when there’s really no time to be spared and I really should be sleeping since I have work tomorrow. Like I said…typical Laurel fashion. Anyway. I’m going to go back to the list style of writing because my thoughts are sort of scattered now. There’s so much I feel like I should update everyone about! 1. I’m really excited about the change of season. Looking at online (read: facebook) photos of my friends in the snow and winter has made me ache for at least some sort of variation in the weather. The dry, dusty, blazing sunnyness was getting a little old. The burning piles of trash smell worse when it’s muggy and hot. And I’m a rain sort of girl. I hadn’t realized how much I missed it until it rained for the first time right around my 2 month mark here. It was a heavy rain and I had just gotten home from work and was lying down on my bed. Suddenly there was a heavy whirring sound and it took me a few seconds to realize it was rain on the roof (I’m on the top floor of the hotel). I flung open the window, quite literally - it’s broken so the flinging action is necessary to get enough momentum to actually open it. It was a perfect afternoon downpour falling straight out of big dark clouds. Quite contrary to its normal symbolic representation of all things sad and morbid, it made me so happy! Nice fat, warm raindrops and then with the wind it became thick, slanted sheets. People on the street disappeared except for the occasional soaking okada that would slosh through the road puddles. Lagos, at least from my bedroom window, became sort of muted in the cover of rainfall. Safe, even. >> I’m going to interject this excessively long rain description to say that currently, the rain has slowed to a drizzle, but there is some serious lightening and thunder action going on! It reminds me of summer storms in Nashville. Yay for the rainy season! 2. The non-profit I work for, the Ijaw Monitoring Group (IMG), is just opening its first website. Part of my work with them is supposed to be directed at finding more of an international audience and possibly finding partners in international organizations. Among many other things hindering this process was the fact that they didn’t have a website or even any official declaration of their goals and purposes. IMG functions in a very old-school Nigerian (or maybe it’s just Africa in general) sort of way in that it’s very dependent on the names and reputations of the people associated with it. My boss, the grand patron, founder, and director of the organization, “Comrade” Joseph Evah, is its big name. He is well known among politicians, activists, and the general public of Nigeria as an outspoken troublemaker. Always stirring up Niger Delta issues and making sure the people’s complaints are heard. He is constantly in the media and his organization is totally dependent on his personal funding, personal exposure, and personal beliefs. A consultant we’ve…err consulted and I have both strongly encouraged IMG to work towards a more independent image. Things like financial accountability, a loyalty towards certain standards (aka anti-militancy), and a more cohesive purpose are all very important if the group wants to receive funding or support from any bigger organizations. Hmm…got off track there a bit. What I was trying to say is…go check out the new website! I’ve had a lot of say in its production. It’s still mostly under construction, but the mission statement which is accessible from the main page, was written by me, and there will soon be an “intern’s journal” that I will be writing. There should be lots of photos somewhere as well. www.ijawmonitor.org (the site name was my idea…good, right?! Sounds kind of like a newspaper or something.) OK. It’s officially 5 am…I’ve been stopping to try and upload photos so this has taken a while. The mosque across the street just started its morning prayers. Luckily, I’m on African time, which means offices don’t open til late. I don’t get picked up for work until 10. I can totally do 4 hours of sleep…if I were at school now that would be, like, excessive amounts of sleep. I’ll add to my update list soon! I promise! Posted by Overdue Update/Benin Trip So! I'm stuck in Benin! After coming here to take a weekend trip to the beach, I discovered the Nigerian visa I have is not valid for a second entry into Nigeria. So after being denied re-entry into Nigeria, here I am in Cotonu, Benin, a wanderer! The process of applying for a new visa here is a bit different than the U.S. so I've spent some time at the Nigerian embassy to work that out. I'm hoping that the new visa will be approved on Thursday, but there's no guaruntees that it will be ready by then. In the meantime, I've made contact with the American Embassy here. The people have been very nice, and although there's nothing they can do to expedite the visa, one of the employees has taken me underwing and has been SO helpful, finding me a safe but inexpensive hotel, driving me back and forth from the embassies and even showing me around Cotonu when I've had nothing else to do. The American embassy told me it's just a matter of waiting for the Nigerian embassy to issue a new visa (an indefinite amount of time, but I have high hopes that Thursday is the day!!), and they even gave me a security brief on living in Cotonu, which, by the way, is MUCH quieter, and MUCH MUCH safer than Lagos. Benin is a French speaking country (so i'm getting some french practice in...i've forgotten SO much!!). Crossing over the border, there is a very distinct difference between Nigeria and Benin. Benin is much much much cleaner, with roads that are much better maintained, and power that is on almost all of the time, versus the few hours a day in Lagos. The white population is much more visible here, unlike Lagos, where most of the expats stay tucked away on the islands. There are quite a few Frenchies around and because of that and the French colonial influence, there are French baguettes sold on every corner (yay!) and small supermarkets with western food are easier to find. People tend to be friendlier and more polite. I'm stared at much less and rarely asked for money. I'm staying in a hotel that's just a few minutes from the embassies. After initially being a bit worried about my situation, I've found that being here is actually a nice break from the craziness of Lagos...I have to admit it would be nicer if I had packed a few more clothes, and if I at least had the option of returning to Nigeria instead of feeling like I've been exiled, but otherwise it's a relief to see that just a couple hours (30 mintues to the border to be exact and then about an 1 and a half back into Lagos) outside of Lagos, there is a world of difference. Africa is NOT one big Lagos, as I was beggining to despair, but instead there are places where life is calmer and cleaner and the lifestlye is very different. Over the weekend I visited an old slave trade castle in a town called Ouidah that is now a museum. There's a very interesting history to this place and I really loved that little town. Under different circumstances, it would have been nice to have a couple more days in that town. Benin is also the birthplace of the original voodoo. Voodoo is actually the official religion of Benin! I really wanted to see a tour of some voodoo temples this weekend, but we didnt have time. Although there are many Catholics here now (Portugese influence before the french got here), there are still a lot of people who follow the voodoo religion, especially in the smaller towns and villages. It seems the the Western idea of voodoo is not quite right because what we know of it is a version of voodoo that was brought over by the slave trade. The practices and beliefs apparently changed over time and with the geographical jump into a new home. Here, it's less sacreligious (although there are lots of animalistic and idolic tendencies) and closer to what we think of as a legitimate religion. There are many things here that are culturally the same as Nigeria...before colonialsim laid down random political borders, they did of course have a fluid relationship due to their geographical proximity. The traditional dress is practically the same, most of the traditional foods are similar if not the same, and despite more development here, there is still that African time mentality, where Western ideas of promptness and politeness just don't apply. There are also still problems of unemployment here, like Lagos, where jobs are not easy to find. Still lots of street hawking, people selling many of the same goods. But there's a more European twist to things. Things feel smaller, a bit more proper, and despite the language barrier, I feel a little less like an outsider and less conspicuous. I'm just accepting my time here as another learning experience. It was an unfortunate and a rather costly mistake to come into Benin without a re-entry visa to Nigeria, but everything's fine for now and so far, I'm glad I've been able to see another side of Africa. SO THAT'S WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW. HERE'S SOME OLD NEWS... An expanded excerpt from my journal: February 15th Yesterday was Valentine4s Day. Bought myself a chocolate bar, but otherwise didn't celebrate. Very popular holiday here, apparently. They call it "Val" and everyone wears red and it's quite counterculture to go without some sort of date or celebration. Drove to Victoria Island to pick up my visa to Benin Republic. Despite sweating without cease in the taxi (no a.c. + stand still traffic in some places + blazing African sun = HOT), I like that drive. Crossing the third mainland bridge to get onto the island is always a thrill. Never know if it might be your last time across - the longest bridge in Africa, or at least West Africa, infamously in poor repair. Crossing the water is an interesting change in scenery. Much more peaceful. A much simpler scene. Water, a few tiny fishing boats, some small makeshift sails on the wooden canoes. I think if I had grown up in Lagos I would want to be a fisherman...although the terribly polluted water is a bit of a deterrent and of course the fact that I'm a woman would mean I could only marry a fisherman...but hey, I can dream about my hypothetical life in Lagos, right? Once you're on Victoria Island you can see little communities that pop up under the shelter of the bridges as you drive past.Usually they look to be communities of young men, probably fishermen who prefer to live close to their "office". They have little huts leaning against the support beams of the bridges. Driving by you can see makeshift football (soccer) fields where they play and designated bathing areas. I know they are bathing areas because driving past you get quite an eyeful. Men stand nude, scrubbing themselves, 50 yards from the interstate. It's hard to comprehend this nudity from the mindset of a Westerner. I haven't quite grasped the culture of the body here. It's still foreign to me. Do native Nigerians notice this nudity? Is it just normal to them, or are these bathers living a rather alternative lifestyle? I'm not really sure. There's such a fervent, conservative religious-ness here that seems like it would condemn such liberal nakedness. My taxi driver, who has driven me before and is quite a jovial guy, had the radio on. We found a radio station that was playing everything from Michael Jackson "Thriller" to the popular 90's r&b hit "Return of the Mack" to John Mayer to Maroon 5. It was really random to hear this stuff, but really fun to hear something I was familiar with. It was so nice to whiz past markets and neighborhoods, getting a glimpse of the daily life of the area. Kind of like a movie or something - nice music, no participation required, just removed observation." Posted by	Bridge
Nigerian Aliko Dangote is (at 2014) Africa's foremost?	Eight Months in Africa Eight Months in Africa Lesson Learned (second blog title alliteration!) Some stuff: 1) Today when I was typing up the speech I have to give at my organization's big event on Saturday, I had about 5 tiny ants appear in various locations on my laptop over about a 20 minute time span - a couple started hiking across my monitor screen, others ambling along other Dell surfaces. I was working on my bed, so I started getting worried that there was some hidden ant hill that was going to terrorize me when I went to bed. But soon, I realized that the ants were crawling out of my keyboard. The dry cereal I sometimes snack on while working must be leaving tiny crumbs in my keyboard (hmm...probably not great for the laptop). I haven't noticed any bugs in my room...I'm pretty careful to keep food and such in containers, with the exception of dry cereal crumbs in my keyboard. I DO however notice ants marching in to my office through the open windows and under the unanchored carpet. We try to keep as much ventilation as possible in the office since there's no A.C. (except in the boss's office) and we all tolerate the random lizard wondering in through the open windows and doors and ignore the tiny ranks of ants filing in. I wonder what it's like living in a computer keyboard. It must get a little scary when I'm writing. Like now...they're probably all scurrying for their lives down there. I guess cereal crumbs are worth it! 2) Speaking of cereal, I tried Fruity Pebbles with water today. I usually eat cereal here with juice since fresh milk is very very hard to come by, but since I was running a little low on funds, I didn't want to spend money on juice when I had bottled water in the room. Surprisingly, it's not so bad. The sugar flavor in Fruity Pebbles is strong enough that a little dilution doesn't really take away. I do miss milk though. 3) Fifteen days until I fly to Zambia. I'm starting to get very excited. Starting all over again! My well-traveled American friends here have assured me that my experience there will be totally different than here. Also, since I'll be working with kids there instead of in an office, the nature of my daily activities in Zambia will be quite a contrast to those in Nigeria. I might have to read back through previous blog entries. I feel like I've written this before. Between journaling, blogging, emailing, writing letters, giving interviews, and phone calls, I can never remember what I've said to who and when. Anyway, I'm trying to get some serious blogging in now because it my internet and phone connections there will be much less regular. I was told that the best luck with the internet connection at the place I'll be staying is between 5 and 7 in the morning. I love you guys, buuuuut, that could be a slight deterrent to good correspondence. 4) I've spent a little time going back through journal and blog entries and it makes me a bit uncomfortable (I always get that feeling when I look back on my own, slightly dated writing though, so I guess it's not unusual). Little cultural misunderstandings, silly assumptions, and generalizations pop out at me, especially after my day today. I had a rather humbling experience at work. I've been getting a little too cocky about my expertise in event planning in developing countries (which is obviously non-existent anyway). I won't go into detail about what happened, but suffice it to say it was a much needed blow to the ego and after a little recovery time I quickly realized that living here for three months doesn't mean I own the place. As I've said many times before, it's hard to reconcile the contradictions of life here. On one hand, it's made clear that I'm a foreigner and an outsider who can never really know what it means to BE Nigerian, but on the other hand people love to see me dress up in their clothes and (attempt) to speak their language and sing their songs. I bounce from feeling awkwardly left out to feeling 100% Naija, as they would say. 5) I spent time with some American friends on Sunday. It was the first time I've been around Americans for almost 2 months. Lunch at a restaurant with them was a bit of a culture shock. Adjusting to more American conversation topics and speaking regular English was strange. I've adopted a very strange accent in my English. I phrase my sentences, especially questions, in weird word combinations. Local people understand me much much better than when I first arrived, but the accent I use isn't really African. It sounds sort of German or something. I hope I can drop it quickly when I'm back in the U.S. It's kind of embarrassing. 6) An interview I gave took up a full page in a small Sunday publication. The pictures are funny and the big blurb in the middle makes me squirm when I read it. Did I really say those things? Why do they even want to publish what I'm saying anyway? I haven't actually read the full interview yet, I hope I can get through the whole thing...I found myself blushing furiously just glancing at the page, hoping that the publication really is as small as I think it is. I'm gonna have to learn to be a little more guarded and a little less loquacious. Mental note: less word vomit is always better. 7) The last three anecdotes have been about how I'm an embarrassment to myself. I guess it's been a good day for humility, edging towards humiliation. But in a very "I learned some lessons today," kind of way. Posted by Finding Fear A more sobering example of this jungle of a society: The Scariest Moment of my Time in Lagos… I think I’ve said in previous blogs that I’m working very closely with a group called The Niger Delta Blind Students Association to plan their first big fundraising event (it’s in less than a week and I’m sort of freaking out about it). We’ve been traveling around the city, visiting different businesses trying to get corporate sponsorship. This process involves a LOT of waiting and sitting in the car in the terrible Lagos traffic. I’ve taken to reading books out loud during these long waits. During one such lull in activity, I was reading to three of the blind students (from Barack Obama’s first book!) while we all leaned against the car in a parking lot on a very hot day. One of the blind students’ brothers, the only other seeing member of these treks through the city, was quickly running an errand while we held down the fort at the car. I was really straining my voice so they could hear over the loud traffic and a roaring generator across the street. The three blind students were Gabriel, Ben, and Amaka. Amaka is a shy woman. Quiet and meek, I feel as though she’s a bit frail. I’m not sure if this has always been her personality or if she changed when she started going blind. I think she’s about 35 and she wasn’t totally blind until 2001 (due to complications and infection from a corrective eye surgery). I haven’t spent much time with her and because she’s quiet, she’s a bit of a mystery to me. She seems unsure and afraid of the world she cannot see. We also have a bit of a hard time communicating…she speaks more broken English than plain English. She was leaning against the car listening to the book I was reading (I think, it’s very hard to gauge if she’s listening or bored…she often closes her eyes). After a while, I noticed she turned to lean awkwardly across the back of the car. A few minutes later she turned back. Her movements seemed unnatural or strange, but I wasn’t sure why. Suddenly, as she began to change positions yet again, her body went slack and she kind of slumped to the floor. With my face in the book, I couldn't quite tell what had happened, “Did she faint?” I frantically wondered, “Or had she just decided to sit down?” I quickly dropped the book and leaned over her asking if she was ok. Her responses weren’t really audible, but I couldn’t distinguish if she was just being her quiet self (maybe she DID just sit down and my sudden inquiries frightened her). Her eyes were open, but because she’s blind, I couldn’t tell if she was conscious or not. Eventually, I understood that she wanted me to pull her back up, which I did. Both Gabriel and Ben, having not been able to see this, were unaware that anything out of the ordinary had happened. I’m fairly certain she fainted and was unconscious for several seconds. I sat her down in the car and hurried to find a street vendor to buy water for her. After eating some snacks and drinking a large bottle of water, she seemed to be fine, but this brief moment of uncertainty had me on edge for the rest of the day. I had felt totally helpless. These three people were under my care…not that they are incapable of caring for themselves, but we were in an area they didn’t know well and they relied on my sight and my narration to react to this noisy, busy area. I had panicked. I didn’t know if Amaka was having a heart attack or a stroke or if she was in pain or if she was overheated or diabetic. I couldn’t communicate with her and I was surprised at how much harder it was to understand the situation when I couldn’t meet her eyes. She couldn’t look at me with a reassuring expression (“I’m ok, just need to sit down”). I was preparing myself to put my lifeguard skills to use and start giving her CPR or mouth-to-mouth. It was just me – no 911, no emergency vehicles, no parents or adults or authorities to tell me what I should do. Although I’m beginning to feel comfortable in this foreign city, this incident reminded me what a stranger I am. In a moment of need, can I really communicate? I don’t even know if people will respond if I yell “Help!” Sure, I can walk down my own street and say Good Morning in Yoruba to people who recognize me every day, but that doesn’t exactly constitute survival. I suddenly feel so much more fragile. One slip-up and I’m in over my head. In general, people have been very helpful, but relying on random acts of kindness from strangers in a city this big, may not be the best policy... I had a conversation with some of my American friends the other day about how I sometimes feel as if I’m living in a different world than the one I read about in the newspapers. The Niger Delta you see on TV portrays pirates (there is a huge problem with boats being looted in the region), kidnappings, and violence – it looks like a war zone. But when I traveled there I was welcomed into smiling communities. They were certainly not living in good conditions and poverty wracked the villages, but I didn’t sense anger or resentment. I know I've been very sheltered, but still it's confusing to try to make these two images coexist. I’ve rarely felt threatened or vulnerable in Lagos, a city that’s supposed to be plagued with crime and disorder. I see the trash everywhere, of course. I’m quite aware of the desperate need for change. I’m definitely not trying to say that there are not extreme hardships that are being endured. But somehow I’m not fully experiencing what’s in front of me. I still have this naivety that I can’t shake. I don’t want to live in fear, but I don’t want to be ignorant of the dangers around me either. People keep telling me that I must be so brave to be traveling all alone in a foreign country. But it’s not that I’m brave…I’m just not really sure what to be afraid of. How do you find that balance? On another note! One of my friends here is a freelance journalist. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 2004 and has been living in various locations in Africa for several years now. He’s contributed to several NYTimes pieces, acting as a Nigerian correspondent. Take a look at some of his writing on Nigerian politics and more at www.willconnors.com Click on the blog title for a direct link to his webpage and read first rate stories about where I am written by a friend and fellow UChicago grad! Love to everyone! Coming to Terms Everywhere I look I see photo opportunities. As my time here starts to come to a close (3 weeks left before I fly to Zambia), I’m hyper-aware of every missed chance to “capture” what I’m seeing and experiencing. It’s frustrating because I feel like this urge to save every moment underscores the need to actually be IN each moment. I’m very distracted by this worry that each thing I don’t get on photograph will disappear as I fly onto my next destination. I try really hard to stay grounded and be “present” but it’s sort of against my nature. Allow me to impose my very Western romanticisms on a very non-Western world. When will I ever be seeing such things again? Will these people even exist to the outside world if I don’t bring them home in shiny little 3by5’s? Life is so fleeting here. There are 16+ Million people living in this city. By snapping a picture, I think I’m really trying to assure myself that each individual has some independent significance. That’s one of the things that’s been very hard to come to terms with during my time here. It’s quite frightening to be one in 16 million. So much of my childhood and life so far has been dedicated at being my own person, finding my own identity. And here I am in the middle of a bazillion people – we can’t ALL be individuals, can we? You might be surprised to hear this, but um, despite what my parents might have led me to believe, I don’t think life on this planet would stop were I not here. AHHHHHhhhh. Posted by The Shrine I went to see Femi Kuti at The New Shrine on Easter Sunday. He plays at this venue three days a week. The Afro beat music is in the style of his late father, the famous Nigerian musician and activist Fela Kuti. Despite the large scale of the place, It’s kind of family run joint – Femi Kuti’s older sister takes your ticket at the door and there are pictures of Fela and and another daughter of his who died on the wall behind the stage. The New Shrine is a big open venue and when Femi gets on stage around 10:30pm the place is just full of good vibrations and raw energy. There are lots of fluorescent lights and because the place is famous for its lax policy on a certain illegal substance there’s hazy glow everywhere. The individual sounds of the instruments of the large band (there were like 20 guys on stage) are kind of indistinguishable. The huge speakers they use look kind of archaic and they play everything so loud that it all becomes a single pulsation with blaring horn sections that interject at the height of each song. This kind of music has a really strong build and you can’t help but be pulled along by the momentum. Femi Kuti sings and plays keyboards and occasionally picks up a tenor or alto sax. Random people in the crowd cheer, stand to dance, and sing along with some of the famous lyrics about a better Nigeria. Almost all of the musicians are male and wear matching African print outfits. There is, however, a very strong feminine presence on stage thanks to the six scantily clad dancers/backup singers/tambourine players. They have matching fluorescent bikini shorts, tops, and ankle bracelets all with tassels. It might be easy, reading the description of these women, to see them as objectified sex symbols (there are also several girls who rotate for dancing positions in two mini “cages” off of the stage), especially if I were to detail their dancing which involves a LOT of intense ass-shaking, hip thrusting, and serious shimmying. But I didn’t find it offensive at all. I found their performance mesmerizing and powerfully sexy, in an “I am woman, hear me roar,” kind of way. They were not skinny women, they were all strong (as you would have to be to keep up with these girls for the 3 hours they were on stage), even chubby women – at least by most Western standards. The musical experience would not have been the same without their tasseled movements building with the music. About twenty minutes into the music I couldn’t contain myself to chair bobbing any longer and Africas (my host brother, if you forgot or never knew) and I headed onto the dance floor where I proceeded to do the most serious, sweaty dancing I’ve ever done. I’m not gonna lie, I think the Nigerian guys that crowded the dance floor (I was THE only girl…for some reason, girls don’t really get onto the dance floor here and I’ve found that it’s much more common for guys to go out with just guys) were pretty impressed with the white girl’s moves. I even attracted the attention of the really energetic musician guy on-stage playing the sticks (or whatever their called). All in all, a fabulous night of Afro beat madness. Posted by RE-awakening I've decided that my time here in Nigeria so far can be divided into stages. The first three weeks or so was stage one. Stage one was the honeymoon period. It was fast paced, exciting, eye-opening, fun. There was little time for self-reflection. I was much too busy experiencing to try and make sense of it all. Then there was stage 2 which lasted up until about a week ago. It started with an abrupt end to the honeymoon period, where I suddenly took a look around me and was quite frightened by what I saw. Homesickness quickly set in, then lonliness. I became very self-conscious of the stares I drew wherever I went. After being so open to every new experience the first few weeks, I became very suspicious of anyone who took an interest in me. I became painfully aware of how different I was from everyone else around me. This is not to say that I was unhappy all of the time, but I was certainly no longer happy and outgoing all of the time. About week 2 of stage 2 is when I moved out of my host family's place and into a hotel room. Living alone emphasized my sense of isolation even more. Withdrawing from the strange city I'm living in became easier and my life here became sort of compartmentalized. Life in my safe, airconditioned hotel room versus life in Lagos. Life in Lagos wasn't "bad" per se, but I definitely felt vulnerable outside of my own familiar space. And again, I wasn't unhappy, I just felt unsure of how to cope with these two worlds. I spent a lot of time trying to reconcile my newfound insecurity with being white. How do I wear traditional Nigerian clothes and enjoy traditional music and eat traditional food without just being a puppet? I constantly felt like I was being used as a representation of something I didn't understand and wasn't sure I was comfortable with (I know, preposition at the end of a sentence, but it sounds strange when I fix it, so it's gonna stay). As cliche as it might be, I was constantly in a state of internal struggle. And while all of this is still going on, I feel like I've reached a stage 3. And although I'm only a week into stage 3, it feels like a stage where I'm starting to put the compartments back together. Maybe I've just found a temporary bandaid, but I'm starting to feel a little bit more comfortable in my own skin, even outside of my little safe-space hotel room. I'm still a bit manic - I have good days and bad days. Happy experiences and unhappy experiences, but I think that my last month here in Nigeria will be the best of the four I've spent here. So I know my really deep self-introspective summary is a bit premature. I think each week will continue to reveal a greater understanding of what I'm doing here and I think getting home after Nigeria, Zambia, and Tanzania will give a much clearer picture of the whole "disappear in Africa" concept, but basically what I want to say is being here is really hard, but I like that and I appreciate it. A bit simplistic maybe, but honest! I'll write about more exciting stuff soon. Happy Easter!...speaking of which, my hotel is having a big production today for Easter Sunday. Some well-known NIgerian performers are putting on a show at the club adjoined to my hotel. If you wanna know what's happening next door to me you can look up some of the performers on YouTube. Basket Mouth (or maybe it's one word, not sure), a Nigerian comedian who performs speaking pidgin English, and 9ice (get it?), a rapper/musician, among others will be part of the show. Check it out and see what's hot in Lagos! I won't be at this Easter extravaganza however, I'll actually be at a famous Lagosian club called the Shrine tonight seeing Femi Kuti, the son of famous AFrican artist and activist "Fela", perform live. You can also look HIM up on YouTube. One of his music videos was filmed in the Shrine. So if you look it up, just imagine me there! LOve to all!!! I'm Alive! It’s 3:10 AM on Wednesday morning. I’m sitting on my bed in my little hotel room/home. It’s pouring outside – Harmattan, the dry season, is over. The rainy season has begun. Lightening, Thunder, Tropical winds…the whole she-bang. I know it’s been a long time since I’ve updated. No excuse. I haven’t been in Benin all this time, in case you were worrying. After 5 extra days there and lots of CFA spent (the Benin currency) I was finally able to procure the re-entry visa I needed. Unfortunately the re-entry visa I got only lasted for two weeks, so I had to spend about $200 more to extend the visa for the rest of my stay here. I guess I shouldn’t complain though, it could’ve been much worse. I had an American friend who was living in Lagos who had to return to the U.S. to resolve visa issues and she never even left the country. So I’m back in Nigeria and the season’s changed and a lot has happened and interesting things have been observed since I last wrote, so! in typical Laurel fashion I keep waiting until I have a gloriously excessive amount of time to write about every little detail. I finally realize, “Laurel, that’s ridiculous…just update the damn blog and get it over with.” So instead I write at 3 in the morning when there’s really no time to be spared and I really should be sleeping since I have work tomorrow. Like I said…typical Laurel fashion. Anyway. I’m going to go back to the list style of writing because my thoughts are sort of scattered now. There’s so much I feel like I should update everyone about! 1. I’m really excited about the change of season. Looking at online (read: facebook) photos of my friends in the snow and winter has made me ache for at least some sort of variation in the weather. The dry, dusty, blazing sunnyness was getting a little old. The burning piles of trash smell worse when it’s muggy and hot. And I’m a rain sort of girl. I hadn’t realized how much I missed it until it rained for the first time right around my 2 month mark here. It was a heavy rain and I had just gotten home from work and was lying down on my bed. Suddenly there was a heavy whirring sound and it took me a few seconds to realize it was rain on the roof (I’m on the top floor of the hotel). I flung open the window, quite literally - it’s broken so the flinging action is necessary to get enough momentum to actually open it. It was a perfect afternoon downpour falling straight out of big dark clouds. Quite contrary to its normal symbolic representation of all things sad and morbid, it made me so happy! Nice fat, warm raindrops and then with the wind it became thick, slanted sheets. People on the street disappeared except for the occasional soaking okada that would slosh through the road puddles. Lagos, at least from my bedroom window, became sort of muted in the cover of rainfall. Safe, even. >> I’m going to interject this excessively long rain description to say that currently, the rain has slowed to a drizzle, but there is some serious lightening and thunder action going on! It reminds me of summer storms in Nashville. Yay for the rainy season! 2. The non-profit I work for, the Ijaw Monitoring Group (IMG), is just opening its first website. Part of my work with them is supposed to be directed at finding more of an international audience and possibly finding partners in international organizations. Among many other things hindering this process was the fact that they didn’t have a website or even any official declaration of their goals and purposes. IMG functions in a very old-school Nigerian (or maybe it’s just Africa in general) sort of way in that it’s very dependent on the names and reputations of the people associated with it. My boss, the grand patron, founder, and director of the organization, “Comrade” Joseph Evah, is its big name. He is well known among politicians, activists, and the general public of Nigeria as an outspoken troublemaker. Always stirring up Niger Delta issues and making sure the people’s complaints are heard. He is constantly in the media and his organization is totally dependent on his personal funding, personal exposure, and personal beliefs. A consultant we’ve…err consulted and I have both strongly encouraged IMG to work towards a more independent image. Things like financial accountability, a loyalty towards certain standards (aka anti-militancy), and a more cohesive purpose are all very important if the group wants to receive funding or support from any bigger organizations. Hmm…got off track there a bit. What I was trying to say is…go check out the new website! I’ve had a lot of say in its production. It’s still mostly under construction, but the mission statement which is accessible from the main page, was written by me, and there will soon be an “intern’s journal” that I will be writing. There should be lots of photos somewhere as well. www.ijawmonitor.org (the site name was my idea…good, right?! Sounds kind of like a newspaper or something.) OK. It’s officially 5 am…I’ve been stopping to try and upload photos so this has taken a while. The mosque across the street just started its morning prayers. Luckily, I’m on African time, which means offices don’t open til late. I don’t get picked up for work until 10. I can totally do 4 hours of sleep…if I were at school now that would be, like, excessive amounts of sleep. I’ll add to my update list soon! I promise! Posted by Overdue Update/Benin Trip So! I'm stuck in Benin! After coming here to take a weekend trip to the beach, I discovered the Nigerian visa I have is not valid for a second entry into Nigeria. So after being denied re-entry into Nigeria, here I am in Cotonu, Benin, a wanderer! The process of applying for a new visa here is a bit different than the U.S. so I've spent some time at the Nigerian embassy to work that out. I'm hoping that the new visa will be approved on Thursday, but there's no guaruntees that it will be ready by then. In the meantime, I've made contact with the American Embassy here. The people have been very nice, and although there's nothing they can do to expedite the visa, one of the employees has taken me underwing and has been SO helpful, finding me a safe but inexpensive hotel, driving me back and forth from the embassies and even showing me around Cotonu when I've had nothing else to do. The American embassy told me it's just a matter of waiting for the Nigerian embassy to issue a new visa (an indefinite amount of time, but I have high hopes that Thursday is the day!!), and they even gave me a security brief on living in Cotonu, which, by the way, is MUCH quieter, and MUCH MUCH safer than Lagos. Benin is a French speaking country (so i'm getting some french practice in...i've forgotten SO much!!). Crossing over the border, there is a very distinct difference between Nigeria and Benin. Benin is much much much cleaner, with roads that are much better maintained, and power that is on almost all of the time, versus the few hours a day in Lagos. The white population is much more visible here, unlike Lagos, where most of the expats stay tucked away on the islands. There are quite a few Frenchies around and because of that and the French colonial influence, there are French baguettes sold on every corner (yay!) and small supermarkets with western food are easier to find. People tend to be friendlier and more polite. I'm stared at much less and rarely asked for money. I'm staying in a hotel that's just a few minutes from the embassies. After initially being a bit worried about my situation, I've found that being here is actually a nice break from the craziness of Lagos...I have to admit it would be nicer if I had packed a few more clothes, and if I at least had the option of returning to Nigeria instead of feeling like I've been exiled, but otherwise it's a relief to see that just a couple hours (30 mintues to the border to be exact and then about an 1 and a half back into Lagos) outside of Lagos, there is a world of difference. Africa is NOT one big Lagos, as I was beggining to despair, but instead there are places where life is calmer and cleaner and the lifestlye is very different. Over the weekend I visited an old slave trade castle in a town called Ouidah that is now a museum. There's a very interesting history to this place and I really loved that little town. Under different circumstances, it would have been nice to have a couple more days in that town. Benin is also the birthplace of the original voodoo. Voodoo is actually the official religion of Benin! I really wanted to see a tour of some voodoo temples this weekend, but we didnt have time. Although there are many Catholics here now (Portugese influence before the french got here), there are still a lot of people who follow the voodoo religion, especially in the smaller towns and villages. It seems the the Western idea of voodoo is not quite right because what we know of it is a version of voodoo that was brought over by the slave trade. The practices and beliefs apparently changed over time and with the geographical jump into a new home. Here, it's less sacreligious (although there are lots of animalistic and idolic tendencies) and closer to what we think of as a legitimate religion. There are many things here that are culturally the same as Nigeria...before colonialsim laid down random political borders, they did of course have a fluid relationship due to their geographical proximity. The traditional dress is practically the same, most of the traditional foods are similar if not the same, and despite more development here, there is still that African time mentality, where Western ideas of promptness and politeness just don't apply. There are also still problems of unemployment here, like Lagos, where jobs are not easy to find. Still lots of street hawking, people selling many of the same goods. But there's a more European twist to things. Things feel smaller, a bit more proper, and despite the language barrier, I feel a little less like an outsider and less conspicuous. I'm just accepting my time here as another learning experience. It was an unfortunate and a rather costly mistake to come into Benin without a re-entry visa to Nigeria, but everything's fine for now and so far, I'm glad I've been able to see another side of Africa. SO THAT'S WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW. HERE'S SOME OLD NEWS... An expanded excerpt from my journal: February 15th Yesterday was Valentine4s Day. Bought myself a chocolate bar, but otherwise didn't celebrate. Very popular holiday here, apparently. They call it "Val" and everyone wears red and it's quite counterculture to go without some sort of date or celebration. Drove to Victoria Island to pick up my visa to Benin Republic. Despite sweating without cease in the taxi (no a.c. + stand still traffic in some places + blazing African sun = HOT), I like that drive. Crossing the third mainland bridge to get onto the island is always a thrill. Never know if it might be your last time across - the longest bridge in Africa, or at least West Africa, infamously in poor repair. Crossing the water is an interesting change in scenery. Much more peaceful. A much simpler scene. Water, a few tiny fishing boats, some small makeshift sails on the wooden canoes. I think if I had grown up in Lagos I would want to be a fisherman...although the terribly polluted water is a bit of a deterrent and of course the fact that I'm a woman would mean I could only marry a fisherman...but hey, I can dream about my hypothetical life in Lagos, right? Once you're on Victoria Island you can see little communities that pop up under the shelter of the bridges as you drive past.Usually they look to be communities of young men, probably fishermen who prefer to live close to their "office". They have little huts leaning against the support beams of the bridges. Driving by you can see makeshift football (soccer) fields where they play and designated bathing areas. I know they are bathing areas because driving past you get quite an eyeful. Men stand nude, scrubbing themselves, 50 yards from the interstate. It's hard to comprehend this nudity from the mindset of a Westerner. I haven't quite grasped the culture of the body here. It's still foreign to me. Do native Nigerians notice this nudity? Is it just normal to them, or are these bathers living a rather alternative lifestyle? I'm not really sure. There's such a fervent, conservative religious-ness here that seems like it would condemn such liberal nakedness. My taxi driver, who has driven me before and is quite a jovial guy, had the radio on. We found a radio station that was playing everything from Michael Jackson "Thriller" to the popular 90's r&b hit "Return of the Mack" to John Mayer to Maroon 5. It was really random to hear this stuff, but really fun to hear something I was familiar with. It was so nice to whiz past markets and neighborhoods, getting a glimpse of the daily life of the area. Kind of like a movie or something - nice music, no participation required, just removed observation." Posted by	i don't know
What is Mexico's official name (in English)?	Mexico's Name HOW DID MEXICO GET ITS NAME? by Bob Brooke While the official name of Mexico is Estados Unidos Mexicanos or the United Mexican States, most people know it as just plain Mexico or as Mexicans say it Mejico (The j is pronounced like an h."). The original word for Mexico was probably Meshtleeko. This word was a mine field of pronunciation for the missionaries. Native Spanish speakers have a difficult time pronouncing sh, whether in an English or a Mexican word. As a result, they inserted an x in any word containing sh, thus x came to be pronounced sh. As the first missionaries to come to the New World from Spain, the Franciscans used the x to help commit indigenous Mesoamerican languages to script using Latin characters. Whenever they couldn't translate the sounds of letters to Latin, they used an x, much like an "unknown" in mathematics. As linguists, these friars faced the problem that there were sounds produced in the native languages that didn't exist in Castillian Spanish. The guttural j is an example of this (similar to ch in German, as in Heinrich), and another is the x mentioned above, the case of the sh sound, as in "shoe." The native people, on the other hand, had similar problems with Spanish sounds that didn't exist in their own languages. So the missionaries used an x to stand for many varying sounds--f, guttural j, sh, s and ks. The uncertainty regarding which of these sounds x was meant to symbolize in any given word is what leads to present-day confusion. So, the simplified Mexico evolved from the fact that the original Meshtleeko was truly difficult for native Spanish speakers to render. Within a few generations after the conquest, people replaced the original sh sound that the x symbolized by the more common interpretation of x, the j. This occurred because native Mexica speakers nearly disappeared from the central Valley of Mexico in the first few decades after the conquest and those few remaining weren't influential at all. Those Spaniards across the oceans who administered their new possessions on the basis of written reports issuing from colonial governors didn't have the guidance of native speakers of Mesoamerican languages to properly interpret the "Latinized" versions of native words. Because of this, Spaniards soon began writing the name of the country as it was pronounced--Mï¿½jico. Mexicans themselves have continued to use the Mexico version. Even though both pronunciations are as far from the original Mexica word, the usual reason advanced for this is that this word and its present spelling connect Mexico with its historical past.	Mexico
Mexico is dissected by the?	Mexico city attractions \| VisitMexico Listen Mexico City is a fascinating capital that beguiles its visitors with endless options. One of the largest metropolitan areas in the world, with 16 boroughs and more than 300 neighborhoods, it might seem a bit overwhelming to the first-time visitor, though it doesn’t have to be. Many of the most visited tourist attractions in Mexico City are concentrated in the historic center, including the Plaza de la Constitucion or Zocalo, the National Palace, Metropolitan Cathedral, Templo Mayor, Palace of Fine Arts and Alameda Park. A few blocks north of the Palace of Fine Arts, Plaza Garibaldi is one of the best places in Mexico City to hear live mariachi music. Located west of the historic center, the Plaza de la Republica is home to the newly refurbished Revolution Monument and National Museum. Chapultepec Park, the largest in Mexico City, is divided into three sections and home to several of capital’s top tourist attractions, including Chapultepec Castle, the Modern Art Museum and the National Museum of Anthropology. Keep in mind that, with a few exceptions, most museums and archaeological sites in Mexico City are closed on Mondays. You’ll also want to explore the neighborhoods of Zona Rosa, Roma, Condesa, Coyoacan and San Angel. Home to lovely parks, plazas, shops, markets, cafes and some of the top tourist attractions in Mexico City, these artsy neighborhoods are especially popular among visitors to the city and foreign residents. Nearby, in the trendy posh neighborhood of Polanco you’ll find some of Mexico City’s top nightspots and chic restaurants. Further south, the University City campus of Mexico’s National Autonomous University is known for its modern architecture and impressive murals that are the work of some of Mexico’s top artists. The University Cultural Center hosts a variety of events and performances. Once the ancient Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, Mexico City was originally constructed in the Valley of Mexico over the ancient Lake Texcoco. The Aztecs built an intricate network of canals to navigate the city. After the arrival of the Spanish in 1519, most of the Aztec structures and canals were destroyed and replaced with modern roads and buildings. History buffs will find the best remaining examples of ancient Aztec city planning in the southern Xochimilco borough of Mexico City and north of the city at the Teotihuacán archaeological site. In Xochimilco you can hire a colorful trajinera (wooden boat) to tour the canals and gardens. Plan a day trip to the ancient Aztec pyramids at Teotihuacán, located 50km (31 miles) northeast of the city. Things to do	i don't know
In terms of public footfall, Benito Juárez in Mexico City is Latin America's 2nd busiest?	Mexico City \| World Public Library - eBooks \| Read eBooks online Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata entering Mexico City (1914) Under the rule of Porfirio Díaz—about 30 years formally as president; about 35 years in all, 1876-1911, in effective control—Mexico City experienced a massive transformation. Díaz's goal was to create a city which could rival the great European cities. He and his government came to the conclusion that they would use Paris as a model, while still containing remnants of Amerindian and Hispanic elements. This style of Mexican-French fusion architecture became colloquially known as Porfirian Architecture. During this era of Porfirian rule, the city underwent an extensive modernization. Many Spanish Colonial style buildings were destroyed, replaced by new much larger Porfirian institutions and many outlying rural zones were transformed into urban or industrialized districts with most having electrical, gas and sewage utilities by 1908. While the initial focus was on developing modern hospitals, schools, factories and massive public works, perhaps the most long lasting effects of the Porfirian modernization were creation of the Colonia Roma area and the development of Reforma Avenue. Many of Mexico City's major attractions and landmarks were built during this era in this style. Diaz's plans called for the entire city to eventually be modernized or rebuilt in the Porfirian/French style of the Colonia Roma but the Mexican Revolution began soon after and the plans never came to fruition with many projects being left half completed. One of the best examples of this is the Monument to the Mexican Revolution. Originally the monument was to be the main dome of Diaz's new senate hall, but when the revolution erupted only the dome of the senate hall and its supporting pillars were completed, this was subsequently seen as a symbol by many Mexicans that the Porfirian era was over once and for all and as such, it was turned into a monument to victory over Diaz. Fast modern development eventually led to the Mexican Revolution .[40] The most significant episode of this period for the city was the La decena trágica ("The Ten Tragic Days"), a 1913 coup against President Francisco I. Madero and his vice president, José María Pino Suárez . Victoriano Huerta , chief general of the Federal Army saw a chance to take power, forcing Madero and Pino Suarez to sign resignations. The two were murdered later while on their way to prison.[46] 20th century to present The Angel of Independence , completed in 1910 has become a modern icon of the city The history of the rest of the 20th century to the present focuses on the phenomenal growth of the city and its environmental and political consequences. In 1900, the population of Mexico City was about 500,000.[47] The city began to grow rapidly westward in the early part of the 20th century[31] and then began to grow upwards in the 1950s, with the Torre Latinoamericana becoming the city's first skyscraper.[24] The 1968 Olympic Games brought about the construction of large sporting facilities.[31] In 1969, the Metro system was inaugurated.[24] Explosive growth in the population of the city started from the 1960s, with the population overflowing the boundaries of the Federal District into the neighboring state of Mexico, especially to the north, northwest and northeast. Between 1960 and 1980 the city's population more than doubled to nearly 9 million.[31] In 1980, half of all the industrial jobs in Mexico were located in Mexico City. Under relentless growth, the Mexico City government could barely keep up with services. Villagers from the countryside who continued to pour into the city to escape poverty only compounded the city's problems. With no housing available, they took over lands surrounding the city, creating huge shantytowns that extended for many miles.[40] This caused serious air pollution in Mexico City and water pollution problems, as well as a sinking city due to overextraction of groundwater, groundwater-related subsidence .[48] Air and water pollution has been contained and improved in several areas due to government programs, the renovation of vehicles and the modernization of public transportation. The autocratic government that ruled Mexico City since the Revolution was tolerated, mostly because of the continued economic expansion since World War II. This was the case even though this government could not handle the population and pollution problems adequately. Nevertheless, discontent and protests began in the 1960s leading to the massacre of an unknown number of protesting students in Tlatelolco .[40] Three years later, a demonstration in the Maestros avenue, organized by former members of the 1968 student movement, was violently repressed by a paramilitary group called "Los Halcones", composed of gang members and teenagers from many sports clubs who received training in the U.S. On Thursday, September 19, 1985, at 7:19 am local time , Mexico City was struck by an earthquake of magnitude 8.1 [49] on the Richter scale . Although this earthquake was not as deadly or destructive as many similar events in Asia and other parts of Latin America,[50] it proved to be a disaster politically for the one-party government. The government was paralyzed by its own bureaucracy and corruption, forcing ordinary citizens to create and direct their own rescue efforts and to reconstruct much of the housing that was lost as well.[51] However, the last straw may have been the controverted elections of 1988. That year, the presidency was set between the P.R.I.'s candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and a coalition of left-wing parties led by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of the former president Lázaro Cárdenas. The counting system "fell" because coincidentally the light went out and suddenly, when it returned, the winning candidate was Salinas, even though Cárdenas had the upper hand. As a result of the fraudulent election, Cárdenas became a member of the Party of the Democratic Revolution . Discontent over the election eventually led Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas to become the first elected mayor of Mexico City in 1997. Cárdenas promised a more democratic government , and his party claimed some victories against crime, pollution, and other major problems. He resigned in 1999 to run for the presidency. Geography Satellite view of Mexico City Mexico City is located in the Valley of Mexico, sometimes called the Basin of Mexico. This valley is located in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt in the high plateaus of south-central Mexico.[52][53] It has a minimum altitude of 2,200 meters (7,200 feet) above sea level and is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes that reach elevations of over 5,000 meters.[54] This valley has no natural drainage outlet for the waters that flow from the mountainsides, making the city vulnerable to flooding. Drainage was engineered through the use of canals and tunnels starting in the 17th century.[52][54] The city primarily rests on what was Lake Texcoco .[52] Seismic activity is frequent here.[55] Lake Texcoco was drained starting from the 17th century. Although none of the lake waters remain, the city rests on the lake bed's heavily saturated clay. This soft base is collapsing due to the over-extraction of groundwater, called groundwater-related subsidence . Since the beginning of the 20th century, the city has sunk as much as nine meters in some areas. This sinking is causing problems with runoff and wastewater management, leading to flooding problems, especially during the rainy season .[54][55] The entire lake bed is now paved over and most of the city's remaining forested areas lie in the southern boroughs of Milpa Alta , Tlalpan and Xochimilco .[55] Geophysical maps of the Federal District Topography Cumbres del Ajusco National Park Mexico City has a subtropical highland climate ( Köppen climate classification Cwb), due to its tropical location and high elevation. The lower region of the valley receives less rainfall than the upper regions of the south; the lower boroughs of Iztapalapa , Iztacalco , Venustiano Carranza and the west portion of Gustavo A. Madero are usually drier and warmer than the upper southern boroughs of Tlalpan and Milpa Alta , a mountainous region of pine and oak trees known as the range of Ajusco . The average annual temperature varies from 12 to 16 °C (54 to 61 °F), depending on the altitude of the borough. The temperature is rarely below 3 °C (37 °F) or above 30 °C (86 °F).[56] The lowest temperature ever registered was −4.4 °C (24.1 °F), and the highest temperature on record is 33.9 °C (93.0 °F).[57] However, many municipalities in the metropolitan area and southern boroughs do get temperatures below 0 during winter. Overall precipitation is heavily concentrated in the summer months, and includes dense hail. The central valley of Mexico rarely gets precipitation in the form of snow during winter; the two last recorded instances of such an event were on March 5, 1940 and January 12, 1967. The region of the Valley of Mexico receives anti-cyclonic systems. The weak winds of these systems do not allow for the dispersion, outside the basin, of the air pollutants which are produced by the 50,000 industries and 4 million vehicles operating in and around the metropolitan area.[58] The area receives about 820 millimetres (32.3 in) of annual rainfall, which is concentrated from June through September/October with little or no precipitation the remainder of the year.[54] The area has two main seasons. The rainy season runs from June to October when winds bring in tropical moisture from the sea. The dry season runs from November to May, when the air is relatively drier. This dry season subdivides into a cold period and a warm period. The cold period spans from November to February when polar air masses push down from the north and keep the air fairly dry. The warm period extends from March to May when tropical winds again dominate but do not yet carry enough moisture for rain.[59] Climate data for Mexico City ( Tacubaya ) Month 186.5 2,211.5 Source #1: Colegio de Postgraduados (normals and extremes 1921–1989)[60] Servicio Meteorológico Nacional (extremes 1981–2000)[61] Source #2: NOAA (sun 1961–1990)[62] Environment The city government has encouraged the preservation of green areas of the City such as Tezozomoc Park Situated in a valley, and relying heavily on automobiles, the city suffers from poor air quality Originally, much of the valley laid beneath the waters of Lake Texcoco , a system of interconnected saline and freshwater lakes. The Aztecs built dikes to separate the fresh water used to raise crops in chinampas and to prevent recurrent floods. These dikes were destroyed during the siege of Tenochtitlan, and during colonial times the Spanish regularly drained the lake to prevent floods. Only a small section of the original lake remains, located outside the Federal District, in the municipality of Atenco , State of Mexico . In recent years, architects Teodoro González de León and Alberto Kalach , along with a group of Mexican urbanists, engineers and biologists, have developed the project plan for Recovering the City of Lakes. The project, if approved by the government, will contribute to the supply of water from natural sources to the Valley of Mexico , the creation of new natural spaces, a great improvement in air quality, and greater population establishment planning. The federal and local governments have implemented numerous plans to alleviate the problem of air pollution (such as carbon monoxide), including the constant monitoring and reporting of environmental conditions, such as ozone and nitrogen oxides .[63] If the levels of these two pollutants reach critical levels, contingency actions are implemented which may include closing factories, changing school hours, and extending the A day without a car program to two days of the week.[63] To control air pollution, the government has instituted industrial technology improvements, a strict biannual vehicle emission inspection and the reformulation of gasoline and diesel fuels .[63] Data from the city's 36 air-quality monitoring stations show lead levels down 95 percent since 1990, while sulfur dioxide has fallen 86 percent, carbon monoxide 74 percent, and peak ozone levels 57 percent since 1991.[63] In 1990, Patricia Saad Sotomayor reported in the Mexico City daily Excélsior that "100,000 children die every year as a result of pollution in the Mexico City metropolitan area, 250,000 people suffer from eye diseases...and life expectancy has been reduced by up to ten years, according to the National Environmentalist Groups." in a report to President Salinas. At the time, according to the United Nations pollution scale "which set 100 as the maximum level before grave health problems begin", Mexico City's level was 97.5, compared to 4.5 for New York City, and 2.5 for Milan, Turin, and Los Angeles.[64] In 1986, the non-urban forest areas of the southern boroughs were declared National Ecological Reserves by president Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado . Other areas of the Federal District became protected over the following years. Politics Federal District Apartment towers and gated residential communities make up most of the western areas such as Interlomas and Huixquilucan French style row houses built the 1890s in Colonia Roma The Acta Constitutiva de la Federación of January 31, 1824 and the Federal Constitution of October 4, 1824[65] fixed the political and administrative organization of the United Mexican States after the Mexican War of Independence . In addition, Section XXVIII of Article 50 gave the new Congress the right to choose where the federal government would be located. This location would then be appropriated as federal land, with the federal government acting as the local authority. The two main candidates to become the capital were Mexico City and Querétaro .[66] However, due in large part to the persuasion of representative Servando Teresa de Mier , Mexico City was chosen because it was the center of the country's population and history, even though Querétaro was closer to the center geographically. The choice was official on November 18, 1824, and Congress delineated a surface area of two leagues square (8,800 ac) centered on the Zocalo . This area was then separated from the State of Mexico , forcing that state's government to move from the Palace of the Inquisition (now Museum of Mexican Medicine) in the city to Texcoco . This area did not include the population centers of the towns of Coyoacán , Xochimilco , Mexicaltzingo and Tlalpan , all of which remained as part of the State of Mexico.[67] In 1854, president Antonio López de Santa Anna , enlarged the area of the Federal District almost eightfold from the original 220 to 1,700 km2 (80 to 660 sq mi), annexing the rural and mountainous areas to secure the strategic mountain passes to the south and southwest to protect the city in event of a foreign invasion. (The Mexican–American War had just been fought). The last changes to the limits of the Federal District were made between 1898 and 1902, reducing the area to the current 1,479 km2 (571 sq mi) by adjusting the southern border with the state of Morelos . By that time, the total number of municipalities within the Federal District was twenty-two. While the Federal District was ruled by the federal government through an appointed governor, the municipalities within it were autonomous, and this duality of powers created tension between the municipalities and the federal government for more than a century. In 1903, Porfirio Díaz largely reduced the powers of the municipalities within the Federal District. Eventually, in December 1928, the federal government decided to abolish all the municipalities of the Federal District. In place of the municipalities, the Federal District was divided into one "Central Department" and 13 delegaciones (boroughs) administered directly by the government of the Federal District. The Central Department was integrated by the former municipalities of Mexico City, Tacuba, Tacubaya and Mixcoac. In 1941, the General Anaya borough was merged to the Central Department, which was then renamed "Mexico City" (thus reviving the name, but not the autonomous municipality). From 1941 to 1970, the Federal District was comprised by 12 delegaciones and Mexico City. In 1970 Mexico City was split into four different delegaciones: Cuauhtémoc , Miguel Hidalgo , Venustiano Carranza and Benito Juárez , increasing the number of delegaciones to sixteen. Since then, in a de facto manner, the whole Federal District, whose delegaciones had by then almost formed a single urban area, began to be considered a synonym of Mexico City. However, the lack of a de jure stipulation left a legal vacuum that led to a number of sterile discussions about whether one concept had engulfed the other or if the latter had ceased to exist altogether. In 1993 this situation was solved by an amendment to the 44th article of the Constitution whereby Mexico City and the Federal District were set to be the same entity. This amendment was later introduced into the second article of the Statute of Government of the Federal District.[68] Political structure Offices of the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs Mexico City, being the seat of the powers of the Union, did not belong to any particular state but to all. Therefore, it was the president, representing the federation, who used to designate the head of government of the Federal District, a position which is sometimes presented outside Mexico as the "Mayor" of Mexico City. In the 1980s, given the dramatic increase in population of the previous decades, the inherent political inconsistencies of the system, as well as the dissatisfaction with the inadequate response of the federal government after the 1985 earthquake, residents began to request political and administrative autonomy to manage their local affairs. Some political groups even proposed that the Federal District be converted into the 32nd state of the federation. In response to the demands, in 1987 the Federal District received a greater degree of autonomy, with the elaboration the first Statute of Government (Estatuto de Gobierno), and the creation of an Assembly of Representatives. In the 1990s, this autonomy was further expanded and, starting from 1997, residents can directly elect the head of government of the Federal District and the representatives of a unicameral Legislative Assembly (which succeeded the previous Assembly) by popular vote. The first elected head of government was Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas . Cárdenas resigned in 1999 to run in the 2000 presidential elections and designated Rosario Robles to succeed him, who became the first woman (elected or otherwise) to govern Mexico City. In 2000 Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected, and resigned in 2005 to run in the 2006 presidential elections, Alejandro Encinas being designated by the Legislative Assembly to finish the term. In 2006, Marcelo Ebrard was elected for the 2006–2012 period. The Federal District does not have a constitution, like the states of the Union, but rather a Statute of Government. As part of its recent changes in autonomy, the budget is administered locally; it is proposed by the head of government and approved by the Legislative Assembly. Nonetheless, it is the Congress of the Union that sets the ceiling to internal and external public debt issued by the Federal District.[69] According to the 44th article of the Mexican Constitution, in case the powers of the Union move to another city, the Federal District will be transformed into a new state, which will be called "State of the Valley of Mexico", with the new limits set by the Congress of the Union. Government offices in the Zócalo Elections and government Mexico City's Head of Government Miguel Ángel Mancera In 2006, elections were held for the post of head of government and the representatives of the Legislative Assembly. Heads of government are elected for a 6-year period without the possibility of reelection. Traditionally, this position has been considered as the second most important executive office in the country.[70] The Legislative Assembly of the Federal District is formed, as it is the case in all legislatures in Mexico, by both single-seat and proportional seats, making it a system of parallel voting . The Federal District is divided into 40 electoral constituencies of similar population which elect one representative by first-past-the-post plurality (FPP), locally called "uninominal deputies". The Federal District as a whole constitutes a single constituency for the parallel election of 26 representatives by proportionality (PR) with open-party lists, locally called "plurinominal deputies". Even though proportionality is only confined to the proportional seats, to prevent a part from being overrepresented, several restrictions apply in the assignation of the seats; namely, that no party can have more than 63% of all seats, both uninominal and plurinominal . In the 2006 elections leftist PRD got the absolute majority in the direct uninominal elections, securing 34 of the 40 FPP seats. As such, the PRD was not assigned any plurinominal seat to comply with the law that prevents over-representation. The overall composition of the Legislative Assembly is: 26 66 The politics pursued by the administrations of heads of government in Mexico City since the second half of the 20th century have usually been more liberal than those of the rest of the country, whether with the support of the federal government—as was the case with the approval of several comprehensive environmental laws in the 1980s—or through laws recently approved by the Legislative Assembly. In April of the same year, the Legislative Assembly expanded provisions on abortions, becoming the first federal entity to expand abortion in Mexico beyond cases of rape and economic reasons, to permit it regardless of the reason should the mother request it before the twelfth week of pregnancy.[71] In December 2009, the Federal District became the first city in Latin America, and one of very few in the world, to legalize same-sex marriage . Boroughs and neighborhoods The 16 boroughs of Mexico City For administrative purposes, the Federal District is divided into 16 "delegaciones" or boroughs. While not fully equivalent to a municipality, the 16 boroughs have gained significant autonomy, and since 2000 their heads of government are elected directly by constituent states these services would be provided by the municipalities. The 16 boroughs of the Federal District with their 2010 populations are:[72] Santa Catarina hill seen from Xochimilco Ecological Park and Plant Market in Xochimilco Iztapalapa is the most populated borough as well as the poorest in the city The boroughs are composed by hundreds of colonias or neighborhoods , which have no jurisdictional autonomy or representation. It is plausible that the name, which literally means colony, arose in the late 19th, early 20th centuries, when one of the first urban developments outside the city's core was inhabited by a French colony in the city. The Historic Center is the oldest part of the city (along with some other, formerly separate colonial towns such as Coyoacán and San Ángel ), some of the buildings dating back to the 16th century . Other well-known central neighborhoods include Condesa is known for its Art Deco architecture and its restaurant scene; Colonia Roma , a beaux arts neighborhood and artistic and culinary hot-spot, the Zona Rosa , formerly the center of nightlife and restaurants, now reborn as the center of the LGBT and Korean-Mexican communities; and Tepito and La Lagunilla , known for their local working-class foklore and large flea markets . Santa María la Ribera and San Rafael are the latest neighborhoods of magnificent Porfiriato architecture seeing the first signs of gentrification. West of the Historic Center (Centro Histórico) along Paseo de la Reforma are many of the city's wealthiest neighborhoods such as Polanco , Lomas de Chapultepec , Bosques de las Lomas , Santa Fe , and (in the State of Mexico) Interlomas , which are also the city's most important areas of class A office space, corporate headquarters, skyscrapers and shopping malls. Nevertheless, areas of lower income colonias exist in some cases cheek-by-jowl with rich neighborhoods, particularly in the case of Santa Fe. The south of the city is home to some other high-income neighborhoods such as Colonia del Valle , Sán Jerónimo , Jardines del Pedregal , and the formerly separate colonial towns of Coyoacán and San Ángel . Along Avenida Insurgentes from Paseo de la Reforma , near the center, south past the World Trade Center and UNAM university towards the Periférico ring road, is another important corridor of corporate office space. The far southern boroughs of Xochimilco and Tláhuac have a significant rural population with Milpa Alta being entirely rural. East of the center are mostly lower income areas with some middle-class neighborhoods such as Jardín Balbuena . Urban sprawl continues further east for many miles into the State of Mexico, including Ciudad Nezahuacoyotl , now increasingly middle-class, but once full of informal settlements. These kind of slums are now found on the eastern edges of the metropolitan area in the Chalco area. North of the Historic Center, Azcapotzalco and Gustavo A. Madero have important industrial centers and neighborhoods that range from established middle-class colonias such as Claveria and Lindavista to huge low-income housing areas that share hillsides with adjacent municipalities in the State of Mexico . In recent years much of northern Mexico City's industry has moved to nearby municipalities in the State of Mexico . Northwest of Mexico City itself is Ciudad Satélite , a vast middle to upper-middle-class residential and business area. The Human Development Index report of 2005 [73] shows that there were three boroughs with a very high Human Development Index, 12 with a high HDI value (9 above .85) and one with a medium HDI value (almost high). Benito Juárez borough had the highest HDI of the country (.9510) similar to those in Germany and New Zealand followed by Miguel Hidalgo which came up 4th nationally with a HDI of (.9189) and Coyoacán (5th nationally) with a HDI value of (.9169). Cuajimalpa , Cuauhtémoc and Azcapotzalco had very high values; respectively .8994 (15th nationally),.8922 (23rd) and .8915 (25th). In contrast, the boroughs of Xochimilco (172th), Tláhuac (177th) and Iztapalapa (183th) presented the lowest HDI values of the Federal District with values of .8481, .8473 and .8464 respectively—values still in the global high-HDI range, near those of Costa Rica and Croatia and Mexico ´s mean. The only borough that did not present a high HDI was that of rural Milpa Alta which presented a "medium" HDI of .7984, similar to that of Dominica and Iran , far below all other boroughs (627 nationally while the rest stood in the top 200). Mexico City's HDI for the 2005 report was of .9012 (very high), similar to South Korea 's 2005 rating, and its 2010 value of .9225 (very high) or (by newer methodology) .8307, was similar to those of Qatar and Malta , and Mexico's highest. Metropolitan Area Greater Mexico City is formed by the Federal District , 60 municipalities from the State of Mexico and one from the state of Hidalgo . Greater Mexico City is the largest metropolitan area in Mexico and the area with the highest population density. As of 2009, 21,163,226 persons live in this urban agglomeration, of which 8,841,916 live in Mexico City proper.[12] In terms of population, the biggest municipalities that are part of Greater Mexico City (excluding Mexico City proper) are:[74] 19th Century Porfirian architecture in the Centro Histórico , Cuauhtémoc The above municipalities are located in the state of Mexico but are part of the Greater Mexico City area. Approximately 75% (10 million) of the state of México's population live in municipalities that are part of Greater Mexico City's conurbation. Greater Mexico City was the fastest growing metropolitan area in the country until the late 1980s. Since then, and through a policy of decentralization in order to reduce the environmental pollutants of the growing conurbation, the annual rate of growth of the agglomeration has decreased, and it is lower than that of the other four largest metropolitan areas (namely Greater Guadalajara , Greater Monterrey , Greater Puebla and Greater Toluca ) even though it is still positive.[75] The net migration rate of Mexico City proper from 1995 to 2000, however, was negative,[76] which implies that residents are moving to the suburbs of the metropolitan area, or to other states of Mexico. In addition, some inner city suburbs are losing population to outer city suburbs, indicating continual expansion of Greater Mexico City. According to the Human Development Report of 2005 [77] most metropolitan municipalities had a high human development index. Coacalco de Berriozábal had the highest value in the State of Mexico metropolitan area (.9045), the second highest in the whole state after Metepec ( Greater Toluca ) and the fourth in Greater Mexico City after the boroughs of Benito Juarez , Miguel Hidalgo and Coyoacán making it the 10th nationally. Coacalco was followed by Cuautitlán Izcalli (.9023) which had a very high HDI as well, Cuautitlán (.8919), Atizapán de Zaragoza (.8858) Tlalnepantla de Baz (.8854), Huixquilucan de Degollado (.8843), Jaltenco (.8772), Naucalpan de Juárez (.8754), Tultitlán de Mariano Escobedo (.8700) and Tecámac (.8669). Even though some of these municipalities have some of the wealthier neighborhoods of the city, they often contrast with peripheric low income suburbs known as zonas marginales or ciudades perdidas. This is the case of the wealthy suburb of Tecamachalco contrasting with El Molinito shanty town, both in Naucalpan , Chamapa in Naucalpan next to Bosque Real Country Club in Huixquilucan and Zona Esmeralda residential area in Atizapán with Atizapán de Zaragoza seat and Ciudad Nicolás Romero which also contrasts with the residential area of Bosques del Lago in Cuautitlán Izcalli . Marginal municipalities in the east such as Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl (.8621), Ecatepec de Morelos (.8597), Valle de Chalco (52nd in the state and 452nd nationally) with .8128 and Chimalhuacán with .8086 (56th in the state and 508 nationally) also presented high HDI values, nevertheless the last two fell among the lowest of Greater Mexico City . Municipalities with a Medium HDI were Ozumba (.7983 61st), Temascalapa (.7982 62nd), Otumba (.7932 66th), Jilotzingo (.7908 68th), Juchitepec (.7874 72nd), Isidro Fabela (.7791 78th), Axapusco (.7768 80th), Hueypoxtla (.7666 82nd), Nopaltepec (.7661 83rd), Atlautla (.7624 86th), Ecatzingo (.7291 99th) and Villa del Carbón (.7172 104th). However, all of these municipalities are still out of Mexico City's main urban area and are considered rural. Health Visible smog on a sunrise at 7 am, May 28, 2005 Mexico City is home to some of the best private hospitals in the country; Hospital Ángeles , Hospital ABC and Médica Sur to name a few. The national public healthcare institution for private-sector employees IMSS , has its largest facilities in Mexico City, including the National Medical Center and the La Raza Medical Center, and has an annual budget of over 6 billion pesos. The IMSS and other public health institutions, including the ISSSTE (Public Sector Employees' Social Security Institute) and the National Health Ministry (SSA) maintain large specialty facilities in the city. These include the National Institutes of Cardiology, Nutrition, Psychiatry, Oncology, Pediatrics, Rehabilitation, among others. The World Bank has sponsored a project to curb air pollution through public transport improvements and the Mexican government has started shutting down polluting factories. They have phased out diesel buses and mandated new emission controls on new cars; since 1993 all new cars must be fitted with a catalytic converter , which reduces the emissions released. Trucks must use only liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). Also construction of an underground rail system was begun in 1968 order to help curb air pollution problems and alleviate traffic congestion . Today it has over 201 km (125 mi) of track and carries over 5 million people every day. Fees are kept low to encourage use of the system and during rush hours the crush is so great, that authorities have reserved a special carriage specifically for women. Due to these initiatives and others, the air quality in Mexico City has begun to improve, with the air becoming cleaner since 1991, when the air quality was declared to be a public health risk for 355 days of the year. Economy Expensive homes and apartments surrounding a poor dilapidated neighborhood, an example of the stark difference in incomes amongst Mexico City inhabitants Mexican Stock Exchange in Paseo de la Reforma , Mexico City Mexico City is one of the most important economic hubs in Latin America. The city proper (Federal District) produces 15.8% of the country's gross domestic product.[78] According to a study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers , Mexico City had a GDP of $390 billion, ranking as the eighth richest city in the world after the greater areas of Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Paris, London and Osaka / Kobe , and the richest in the whole of Latin America, as measured by the GDP of the entire Metropolitan area.[79] making Mexico City alone the 30th largest economy in the world.[80] Mexico City is the greatest contributor to the country's industrial GDP (15.8%) and also the greatest contributor to the country's GDP in the service sector (25.3%). Due to the limited non-urbanized space at the south—most of which is protected through environmental laws—the contribution of the Federal District in agriculture is the smallest of all federal entities in the country.[78] Mexico City has one of the world's fastest-growing economies and its GDP is set to double by 2020.[81] In 2002, Mexico City had an HDI index of 0.915[82] identical to that of the Republic of Korea. The top twelve percent of GDP per capita holders in the city had a mean disposable income of US $98,517 in 2007. The high spending power of Mexico City inhabitants makes the city attractive for companies offering prestige and luxury goods . The economic reforms of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari had a tremendous effect on the city, as a number of businesses, including banks and airlines, were privatized. He also signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This led to the decentralization[81] and a shift in Mexico City's economic base, from manufacturing to services, as most factories moved away to either the State of Mexico , or more commonly to the northern border. By contrast, corporate office buildings set their base in the city. Demographics A German-style home, now a restaurant, in the San Angel neighborhood Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral Monument to the indigenous peoples of Mexico City. The Nahua peoples form the largest group of indigenous peoples in the city Historically, and since pre-Hispanic times, the Valley of Anahuac has been one of the most densely populated areas in Mexico. When the Federal District was created in 1824, the urban area of Mexico City extended approximately to the area of today's Cuauhtémoc borough . At the beginning of the 20th century, the elites began migrating to the south and west and soon the small towns of Mixcoac and San Ángel were incorporated by the growing conurbation. According to the 1921 census, 54.78% of the city's population was considered Mestizo (Indigenous mixed with European), 22.79% considered European, and 18.74% considered Indigenous.[83] This was the last Mexican Census which asked people to self-identify themselves with an heritage other than Amerindian. However, the census had the particularity that, unlike racial/ethnic census in other countries, it was focussed in the perception of cultural heritage rather than in a racial perception, leading to a good number of white people to identify with "Mixed heritage" due cultural influence.[84] In 1921, Mexico City had less than one million inhabitants. Up to the 1990s, the Federal District was the most populous federal entity in Mexico, but since then its population has remained stable at around 8.7 million. The growth of the city has extended beyond the limits of the Federal District to 59 municipalities of the state of Mexico and 1 in the state of Hidalgo .[85] With a population of approximately 19.8 million inhabitants (2008),[86] it is one of the most populous conurbations in the world. Nonetheless, the annual rate of growth of the Metropolitan Area of Mexico City is much lower than that of other large urban agglomerations in Mexico,[75] a phenomenon most likely attributable to the environmental policy of decentralization. The net migration rate of the Federal District from 1995 to 2000 was negative.[87] While they represented around 18.74% of the city's population, indigenous peoples from different regions of Mexico have migrated to the capital in search of better economic opportunities. Nahuatl , Otomi , Mixtec , Zapotec , and Mazahua are the indigenous languages with the greatest number of speakers in Mexico City.[88] On the other hand, Mexico City is home to large communities of expatriates and immigrants, most notably from the rest of North America ( U.S. and Canada ), from South America (mainly from Argentina and Colombia , but also from Brazil , Chile , Uruguay and Venezuela ), from Central America and the Caribbean (mainly from Cuba , Guatemala , El Salvador , Haiti and Honduras ); from Europe (mainly from Spain , Germany and Switzerland , but also from Czech Republic , Hungary , France , Italy , Ireland , the Netherlands , Poland and Romania ),[89][90] from the Middle East (mainly from Egypt , Lebanon and Syria );[91] and recently from Asia-Pacific (mainly from China and South Korea ).[92] Historically since the era of New Spain , many Filipinos settled in the city and have become integrated in Mexican society. While no official figures have been reported, population estimates of each of these communities are quite significant. Mexico City is home to the largest population of U.S. Americans living outside the United States. Current estimates are as high as 700,000 U.S. Americans living in Mexico City, while in 1999 the U.S. Bureau of Consular Affairs estimated over 440,000 Americans lived in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area.[93][94] The majority (82%) of the residents in Mexico City are Roman Catholic, higher than the national percentage, though it has been decreasing over the last decades.[95] Many other religions and philosophies are also practiced in the city: many different types of Protestant groups, different types of Jewish communities , Buddhist , Islamic and other spiritual and philosophical groups. There are also growing numbers of irreligious people, whether agnostic or atheist. Landmarks Trajineras at Xochimilco Monument to the Mexican Revolution The Historic center of Mexico City (Centro Histórico) and the "floating gardens" of Xochimilco in the southern borough have been declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO . Famous landmarks in the Historic Center include the Plaza de la Constitución (Zócalo), the main central square with its epoch-contrasting Spanish-era Metropolitan Cathedral and National Palace , ancient Aztec temple ruins Templo Mayor ("Major Temple") and modern structures, all within a few steps of one another. (The Templo Mayor was discovered in 1978 while workers were digging to place underground electric cables). The most recognizable icon of Mexico City is the golden Angel of Independence , found on the wide, elegant avenue Paseo de la Reforma , modeled by the order of the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico after the Champs-Élysées in Paris. This avenue was designed over the Americas' oldest known major roadway in the 19th century to connect the National Palace (seat of government) with the Castle of Chapultepec , the imperial residence. Today, this avenue is an important financial district in which the Mexican Stock Exchange and several corporate headquarters are located. Another important avenue is the Avenida de los Insurgentes , which extends 28.8 km (17.9 mi) and is one of the longest single avenues in the world. Chapultepec Park houses the Chapultepec Castle , now a museum on a hill that overlooks the park and its numerous museums, monuments and the national zoo and the National Museum of Anthropology (which houses the Aztec Calendar Stone ). Another piece of architecture is the Fine Arts Palace , a white marble theatre/museum whose weight is such that it has gradually been sinking into the soft ground below. Its construction began during the presidency of Porfirio Díaz and ended in 1934, after being interrupted by the Mexican Revolution in the 1920s. The Plaza of the Three Cultures in the Tlatelolco neighbourhood, and the shrine and Basilicas of Our Lady of Guadalupe are also important sites. There is a double-decker bus , known as the "Turibus", that circles most of these sites, and has timed audio describing the sites in multiple languages as they are passed. In addition, the city has about 160 museums—the world's greatest single metropolitan concentration [96]—over 100 art galleries , and some 30 concert halls , all of which maintain a constant cultural activity during the whole year. It has either the third or fourth-highest number of theatres in the world after New York, London and perhaps Toronto. In many locales (e.g. Palacio Nacional and the Instituto Nacional de Cardiología are murals painted by Diego Rivera . He and his wife Frida Kahlo lived in Coyoacán , where several of their homes, studios, and art collections are open to the public. The house where Leon Trotsky was initially granted asylum and finally murdered in 1940 is also in Coyoacán. In addition, there are several restored haciendas that are now restaurants, such as the San Ángel Inn, the Hacienda de Tlalpan and the Hacienda de los Morales, all of which embody Mexican history and boast some of the world's best food. Transportation Mexico City Metro , Chabacano Station Metro Mexico City is served by the Sistema de Transporte Colectivo , a 225.9 km (140 mi) metro system, which is the largest in Latin America. The first portions were opened in 1969 and it has expanded to 12 lines with 195 stations . The metro is one of the busiest in the world transporting approximately 4.5 million people every day, surpassed only by subway lines in Moscow (7.5 million), Tokyo (5.9 million), and New York City (5.1 million).[97] It is heavily subsidized, and has some of the lowest fares in the world, each trip costing 5.00 pesos from 05:00 am to midnight. Several stations display pre-Columbian artifacts and architecture that were discovered during the metro's construction. However, the metro covers less than half of the total urban area. Suburban rail A suburban rail system, the Tren Suburbano serves the metropolitan area, beyond the city limits of the metro , to municipalities such as Tlalnepantla and Cuautitlán Izcalli , with future extensions to Chalco and La Paz . A pesero a.k.a microbús Peseros Peseros are typically half-length passenger buses (known as microbús) that sit 22 passengers and stand up to 28. As of 2007, the approximately 28,000 peseros carried up to 60% of the city's passengers.[98][99] Urban buses City agency Red de Transporte de Pasajeros operates a network of large buses. Suburban buses also leave from the city's main intercity bus stations. Metrobús rapid transit bus at Insurgentes station Bus rapid transit The city's first bus rapid transit line, the Metrobús , began operation in June 2005, along Avenida Insurgentes . Line 2 opened in December 2008, serving Eje 4 Sur ,[100] line 3 opened in February 2011, serving Eje 1 Poniente ,[101] and line 4 opened in April 2012 connecting the airport with San Lázaro and Buenavista Station at Insurgentes.[102] As the microbuses were removed from its route, it was hoped that the Metrobús could reduce pollution and decrease transit time for passengers. In June 2013, Mexico City's mayor announced two more lines to come: Line 5 serving Eje 3 Oriente and Line 6 serving Eje 5 Norte .[103] As of June 2013, 367 Metrobús buses transported 850,000 passengers daily.[103] Mexibús bus rapid transit lines serve suburban areas in the State of Mexico and connect to the Mexico City metro. Light rail , Estadio Azteca station Trolleybus, light rail, streetcars Electric transport other than the metro also exists, in the form of several Mexico City trolleybus routes and the Xochimilco Light Rail line, both of which are operated by Servicio de Transportes Eléctricos . The central area's last streetcar line (tramway, or tranvía ) closed in 1979. Roads and car transport In the late 1970s many arterial roads were redesigned as ejes viales ; high-volume one-way roads that cross, in theory, Mexico City proper from side to side. The eje vial network is based on a quasi- Cartesian grid, with the ejes themselves being called Eje 1 Poniente, Eje Central, and Eje 1 Oriente, for example, for the north-south roads, and Eje 2 Sur and Eje 3 Norte, for example, for east-west roads. Ring roads are the Circuito Interior (inner ring), Anillo Periférico ; the Circuito Exterior Mexiquense ("State of Mexico outer loop") toll road skirting the northeastern and eastern edges of the metropolitan area,[104] the Chamapa-La Venta toll road skirting the northwestern edge, and the Arco Norte completely bypassing the metropolitan area in an arc from northwest ( Atlacomulco ) to north ( Tula, Hidalgo ) to east ( Puebla ). A second level (where tolls are charged) of the Periférico, colloquially called the segundo piso ("second floor"), was officially opened in 2012, with sections still being completed.[105] The Viaducto Miguel Alemán crosses the city east-west from Observatorio to the airport. In 2013 the Supervía Poniente opened, a toll road linking the new Santa Fe business district with southwestern Mexico City. There is an environmental program, called Hoy No Circula ("Today Does Not Run", or "One Day without a Car"), whereby vehicles that have not passed emissions testing are restricted from circulating on certain days according to the ending digit of their license plates ; this in an attempt to cut down on pollution and traffic congestion. While in 2003, the program still restricted 40% of vehicles in the metropolitan area,[106] with the adoption of stricter emissions standards in 2001 and 2006,[107] in practice, these days most vehicles are exempt from the circulation restrictions as long as they pass regular emissions tests.[108] Parking Street parking in urban neighborhoods is mostly controlled by the franeleros a.k.a. "viene vienes" (lit. "come on, come on"), who ask drivers for a fee to park, in theory to guard the car, but with the implicit threat that the franelero will damage the car if the fee is not paid. Double parking is common (with franeleros moving the cars as required), impeding on the available lanes for traffic to pass. In order to mitigate that and other problems and to raise revenue,[109] 721 parking meters (as of October 2013), have been installed in the west-central neighborhoods Lomas de Chapultepec , Condesa , Roma , Polanco and Anzures , in operation from 8 AM to 8 PM on weekdays and charging a rate of 2 pesos per 15 minutes, with offenders' cars booted, costing about 500 pesos to remove. 30 percent of the monthly 16 million-peso (as of October 2013) income from the parking-meter system (named "ecoParq") is earmarked for neighborhood improvements. The granting of the license for all zones exclusively to a new company without experience in operating parking meters, Operadora de Estacionamientos Bicentenario, has generated controversy.[110] Cycling Map showing locations of bicycle-rental stands. The current location is circled in red Bicycles available for rental in Mexico City, March 2010 The local government continuously strives for a reduction of massive traffic congestion, and has increased incentives for making a bicycle-friendly city. This includes North America's second-largest bicycle sharing system , EcoBici , launched in 2010, in which registered residents can get bicycles for 45 minutes with a pre-paid subscription of 300 pesos a year. There are, as of September 2013, 276 stations with 4,000 bicycles across an area stretching from the Historic center to Polanco .[111] within 300 meters of one another and are fully automatic using a transponder based card. Bicycle-service users have access to several permanent Ciclovías (dedicated bike paths/lanes/streets), including ones along Paseo de la Reforma and Avenida Chapultepec as well as one running 59 kilometers from Polanco to Fierro del Toro , which is located south of Cumbres del Ajusco National Park , near the Morelos state line.[112][113] The city's initiative is inspired by forward thinking examples, such as Denmark 's Copenhagenization . Intercity buses Retail center in the waiting area of the TAPO bus terminal The city has four major bus stations (North, South, Observatorio, TAPO), which comprise one of the world's largest transportation agglomerations, with bus service to many cities across the country and international connections. Airports Departures waiting area in Terminal 2 of the Mexico City airport Mexico City is served by Mexico City International Airport ( IATA Airport Code : MEX). This airport is Latin America's busiest and largest in traffic, with daily flights to United States and Canada, mainland Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, South America, Europe and Asia. Aeroméxico ( Skyteam ) is based at this airport, and provide codeshare agreements with non-Mexican airlines that span the entire globe. It is used by over 26 million passengers per year.[114] This traffic exceeds the current capacity of the airport, which has historically centralized the majority of air traffic in the country. An alternate option is Lic. Adolfo López Mateos International Airport ( IATA Airport Code : TLC) in nearby Toluca , State of Mexico , with about 4.5 million passengers transported last year. The government engaged in an extensive restructuring program that includes the new second adjacent terminal, which began operations in 2007, and the enlargement of four other airports (at the nearby cities of Toluca , Querétaro , Puebla and Cuernavaca ) that, along with Mexico City's airport, comprise the Grupo Aeroportuario del Valle de México , distributing traffic to different regions in Mexico. The city of Pachuca will also provide additional expansion to central Mexico's airport network. Mexico City's airport is the main hub for 11 of the 21 national airline companies . During his annual state-of-the-nation address on September 2, 2014, President of Mexico Enrique Peña Nieto unveiled plans for a new international airport to ease the city's notorious air traffic congestion, tentatively slated for a 2018 opening. The new airport, which would have six runways, will cost $9.15 billion and would be built on vacant federal land east of Mexico City International Airport. Goals are to eventually handle 120 million passengers a year, which would make it the busiest airport in the world .[115][116] Culture Receptions hall at the Museo Nacional de Arte Jade mask of the Aztec god Chalchiuhtlicue recovered from the main temple at Tenochtitlan Mexico City is an important cultural center. Having been capital of a vast pre-Hispanic empire, and also the capital of richest viceroyalty within the Spanish Empire (ruling over a vast territory in the Americas and Spanish West Indies ), and, finally, the capital of the United Mexican States, Mexico City has a rich history of artistic expression . Since the mesoamerican pre-Classical period the inhabitants of the settlements around Lake Texcoco produced many works of art and complex craftsmanship, some of which are today displayed at the world-renowned National Museum of Anthropology and the Templo Mayor museum. While many pieces of pottery and stone-engraving have survived, the great majority of the Amerindian iconography was destroyed during the Conquest of Mexico. Much of early colonial art stemmed from the codices (Aztec illustrated books), aiming to recover and preserve some Aztec and other Amerindian iconography and history. From then, artistic expressions in Mexico were mostly religious in theme. The Metropolitan Cathedral still displays works by Juan de Rojas , Juan Correa and an oil painting whose authorship has been attributed to Murillo . Secular works of art of this period include the equestrian sculpture of Charles IV of Spain , locally known as El Caballito ("The little horse"). This piece, in bronze, was the work of Manuel Tolsá and it has been placed at the Plaza Tolsá , in front of the Palacio de Minería (Mining Palace). Directly in front of this building is the beautiful Museo Nacional de Arte (Munal) (the National Museum of Art). During the 19th century, an important producer of art was the Academia de San Carlos ( San Carlos Art Academy ), founded during colonial times, and which later became the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas (the National School of Arts ) including painting, sculpture and graphic design, one of UNAM's art schools . Many of the works produced by the students and faculty of that time are now displayed in the Museo Nacional de San Carlos ( National Museum of San Carlos ). One of the students, José María Velasco , is considered one of the greatest Mexican landscape painters of the 19th century. Porfirio Díaz 's regime sponsored arts, especially those that followed the French school. Popular arts in the form of cartoons and illustrations flourished, e.g. those of José Guadalupe Posada and Manuel Manilla . The permanent collection of the San Carlos Museum also includes paintings by European masters such as Rembrandt, Velázquez, Murillo, and Rubens. After the Mexican Revolution , an avant-garde artistic movement originated in Mexico City: muralism . Many of the works of muralists José Clemente Orozco , David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera are displayed in numerous buildings in the city, most notably at the National Palace and the Palacio de Bellas Artes . Frida Kahlo , wife of Rivera, with a strong nationalist expression, was also one of the most renowned of Mexican painters. Her house has become a museum that displays many of her works. The former home of Rivera muse Dolores Olmedo houses the namesake museum. The facility is in Xochimilco borough in southern Mexico City and includes several buildings surrounded by sprawling manicured lawns. It houses a large collection of Rivera and Kahlo paintings and drawings, as well as living Xoloizcuintles ( Mexican Hairless Dog ). It also regularly hosts small but important temporary exhibits of classical and modern art (e.g. Venetian Masters and Contemporary New York artists). During the 20th century, many artists immigrated to Mexico City from different regions of Mexico, such as Leopoldo Méndez , an engraver from Veracruz, who supported the creation of the socialist Taller de la Gráfica Popular ( Popular Graphics Workshop ), designed to help blue-collar workers find a venue to express their art. Other painters came from abroad, such as Catalan painter Remedios Varo and other Spanish and Jewish exiles. It was in the second half of the 20th century that the artistic movement began to drift apart from the Revolutionary theme. José Luis Cuevas opted for a modernist style in contrast to the muralist movement associated with social politics. Museums Museo Soumaya in the Nuevo Polanco district Mexico City has numerous museums dedicated to art, including Mexican colonial, modern and contemporary art , and international art. The Museo Tamayo was opened in the mid-1980s to house the collection of international contemporary art donated by famed Mexican (born in the state of Oaxaca) painter Rufino Tamayo . The collection includes pieces by Picasso, Klee, Kandinsky, Warhol and many others, though most of the collection is stored while visiting exhibits are shown. The Museo de Arte Moderno ( Museum of Modern Art ) is a repository of Mexican artists from the 20th century, including Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros, Kahlo, Gerzso, Carrington, Tamayo, among others, and also regularly hosts temporary exhibits of international modern art. In southern Mexico City, the Museo Carrillo Gil ( Carrillo Gil Museum ) showcases avant-garde artists, as does the University Museum/Contemporary Art (Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo – or MUAC), designed by famed Mexican architect Teodoro González de León , inaugurated in late 2008. The Museo Soumaya , named after the wife of Mexican magnate Carlos Slim , has the largest private collection of original Rodin sculptures outside Paris. It also has a large collection of Dalí sculptures, and recently began showing pieces in its masters collection including El Greco , Velázquez , Picasso and Canaletto . The museum inaugurated a new futuristic-design facility in 2011 just north of Polanco, while maintaining a smaller facility in Plaza Loreto in southern Mexico City. The Colección Júmex is a contemporary art museum located on the sprawling grounds of the Jumex juice company in the northern industrial suburb of Ecatepec . It is said to have the largest private contemporary art collection in Latin America and hosts pieces from its permanent collection as well as traveling exhibits by leading contemporary artists. The new Museo Júmex in Nuevo Polanco was slated to open in November 2013. The Museo de San Ildefonso, housed in the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso in Mexico City's historic downtown district is a 17th-century colonnaded palace housing an art museum that regularly hosts world-class exhibits of Mexican and international art. Recent exhibits have included those on David LaChapelle, Antony Gormley and Ron Mueck.The National Museum of Art (Museo Nacional de Arte) is also located in a former palace in the historic center. It houses a large collection of pieces by all major Mexican artists of the last 400 years and also hosts visiting exhibits. Jack Kerouac , the noted American author, spent extended periods of time in the city, and wrote his masterpiece volume of poetry Mexico City Blues here. Another American author, William S. Burroughs , also lived in the Colonia Roma neighborhood of the city for some time. It was here that he accidentally shot his wife. Most of Mexico City's more than 150 museums can be visited from Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm, although some of them have extended schedules, such as the Museum of Anthropology and History, which is open to 7 pm. In addition to this, entrance to most museums is free on Sunday. In some cases a modest fee may be charged.[117] Another major addition to the city's museum scene is the Museum of Remembrance and Tolerance (Museo de la Memoria y Tolerancia), inaugurated in early 2011. The brainchild of two young Mexican women as a Holocaust museum, the idea morphed into a unique museum dedicated to showcasing all major historical events of discrimination and genocide. Permanent exhibits include those on the Holocaust and other large-scale atrocities. It also houses temporary exhibits; one on Tibet was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama in September 2011. Music, theater and entertainment Mexico City Arena Mexico City is home to a number of orchestras offering season programs. These include the Mexico City Philharmonic ,[118] which performs at the Sala Ollin Yoliztli; the National Symphony Orchestra , whose home base is the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of the Fine Arts ), a masterpiece of art nouveau and art decó styles; the Philharmonic Orchestra of the National Autonomous University of Mexico ( OFUNAM ),[119] and the Minería Symphony Orchestra ,[120] both of which perform at the Sala Nezahualcóyotl , which was the first wrap-around concert hall in the Western Hemisphere when inaugurated in 1976. There are also many smaller ensembles that enrich the city's musical scene, including the Carlos Chávez Youth Symphony , the New World Orchestra (Orquesta del Nuevo Mundo), the National Polytechnical Symphony and the Bellas Artes Chamber Orchestra (Orquesta de Cámara de Bellas Artes). The city is also a leading center of popular culture and music. There are a multitude of venues hosting Spanish and foreign-language performers. These include the 10,000-seat National Auditorium that regularly schedules the Spanish and English-language pop and rock artists, as well as many of the world's leading performing arts ensembles, the auditorium also broadcasts Grand Opera performances from New York's Metropolitan Opera on giant, high definition screens. In 2007 National Auditorium was selected world's best venue by multiple genre media. Other popular sites for pop-artist performances include the 3,000-seat Teatro Metropolitan , the 15,000-seat Palacio de los Deportes , and the larger 50,000-seat Foro Sol Stadium , where popular international artists perform on a regular basis. The Cirque du Soleil has held several seasons at the Carpa Santa Fe , in the Santa Fe district in the western part of the city. There are numerous venues for smaller musical ensembles and solo performers. These include the Hard Rock Live , Bataclán, Foro Scotiabank, Lunario, Circo Volador and Voilá Acoustique. Recent additions include the 20,000-seat Arena Ciudad de México, the 3,000-seat Pepsi Center World Trade Center, and the 2,500-seat Auditorio Blackberry. The Centro Nacional de las Artes ( National Center for the Arts has several venues for music, theatre, dance. UNAM's main campus, also in the southern part of the city, is home to the Centro Cultural Universitario (the University Culture Center ) (CCU). The CCU also houses the National Library , the interactive Universum, Museo de las Ciencias ,[121] the Sala Nezahualcóyotl concert hall, several theatres and cinemas, and the new University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC).[122] A branch of the National University's CCU cultural center was inaugurated in 2007 in the facilities of the former Ministry of Foreign Affairs , known as Tlatelolco, in north-central Mexico City. The José Vasconcelos Library , a national library, is located on the grounds of the former Buenavista railroad station in the northern part of the city. The Papalote children's museum , which houses the world's largest dome screen, is located in the wooded park of Chapultepec , near the Museo Tecnológico , and La Feria amusement park . The theme park Six Flags México (the largest amusement park in Latin America) is located in the Ajusco neighborhood, in Tlalpan borough, southern Mexico City. During the winter, the main square of the Zócalo is transformed into a gigantic ice skating rink , which is said to be the largest in the world behind that of Moscow's Red Square . The Cineteca Nacional (the Mexican Film Library ), near the Coyoacán suburb, shows a variety of films, and stages many film festivals, including the annual International Showcase , and many smaller ones ranging from Scandinavian and Uruguayan cinema, to Jewish and LGBT-themed films. Cinépolis and Cinemex , the two biggest film business chains , also have several film festivals throughout the year, with both national and international movies. Mexico City tops the world in number of IMAX theatres, providing residents and visitors access to films ranging from documentaries to popular blockbusters on these especially large, dramatic screens. Cuisine The now globally popular taco originated in pre-Hispanic Mexico City. It was first eaten by indigenous Nahua people living near the lakes of the Mexico City region who ate tacos filled with seafood and avocado Mexico City offers a variety of cuisines. Restaurants specializing in the regional cuisines of Mexico's 31 states are available in the city. Also available are restaurants representing a spectrum of international cuisines, including French , Italian , Croatian , Spanish (including many regional variations), Jewish , Lebanese , Chinese (again with regional variations), Indian , Japanese , Korean , Thai , Vietnamese ; and of course fellow Latin American cuisines such as Argentine , Brazilian , and Peruvian . Haute , fusion , kosher , vegetarian and vegan cuisines are also available, as are restaurants solely based on the concepts of local food and slow Food . Mexico City is known for having some of the freshest fish and seafood in Mexico's interior. La Nueva Viga Market is the second largest seafood market in the world after the Tsukiji fish market in Japan. The city also has several branches of renowned international restaurants and chefs. These include Paris' Au Pied de Cochon and Brasserie Lipp , Philippe (by Philippe Chow); Nobu, Morimoto; Pámpano, owned by Mexican-raised opera legend Plácido Domingo . There are branches of the exclusive Japanese restaurant Suntory , Rome's famed Alfredo, as well as New York steakhouses Morton's and The Palm , and Monte Carlo's BeefBar. Three of the most famous Lima-based Haute Peruvian restaurants, La Mar, Segundo Muelle and Astrid y Gastón have locations in Mexico City. For the 2014 list of World's 50 Best Restaurants as named by the British magazine Restaurant , Mexico City ranked with the Mexican avant-garde restaurant Pujol (owned by Mexican chef Enrique Olvera) at 20th best. Also notable is the Basque-Mexican fusion restaurant Biko (run and co-owned by Bruno Oteiza and Mikel Alonso), which placed outside the list at 59th, but in previous years has ranked within the top 50.[123] Mexico's award-winning wines are offered at many restaurants, and the city offers unique experiences for tasting the regional spirits, with broad selections of tequila and mezcal . At the other end of the scale are working class pulque bars known as pulquerías, a challenge for tourists to locate and experience. Sports Azteca Stadium , the sixth largest stadium in the world Association football is the country's most popular and most televised franchised sport . Its important venues in Mexico City include the Azteca Stadium , home to the Mexico national football team and giants América , which can seat 105,000 fans, making it the biggest stadium in Latin America. The Olympic Stadium in Ciudad Universitaria is home to the football club giants Universidad Nacional , with a seating capacity of over 63,000. The Estadio Azul , which seats 35,000 fans, is near the World Trade Center Mexico City in the Nochebuena neighborhood , and is home to the giants Cruz Azul . The three teams are based in Mexico City and play in the First Division ; they are also part, with Guadalajara-based giants Club Deportivo Guadalajara , of Mexico's traditional "Big Four" (though recent years have tended to erode the teams' leading status at least in standings). The country hosted the FIFA World Cup in 1970 and 1986 , and Azteca Stadium is the first stadium in World Cup history to host the final twice. Mexico City remains the only Latin American city to host the Olympic Games, having held the Summer Olympics in 1968, winning bids against Buenos Aires , Lyon and Detroit. (This too will change thanks to Rio, 2016 Summer Games host). The city hosted the 1955 and 1975 Pan American Games , the last after Santiago and São Paulo withdrew. The ICF Flatwater Racing World Championships were hosted here in 1974 and 1994. Lucha libre is a Mexican style of wrestling, and is one of the more popular sports throughout the country. The main venues in the city are Arena México and Arena Coliseo . From 1962 to 1970 and again from 1986 to 1992, the track hosted the Formula 1 Mexican Grand Prix . From 1980–1981 and again from 2002 to 2007, it hosted the Champ Car World Series Gran Premio de México . Beginning in 2005, the NASCAR Nationwide Series ran the Telcel-Motorola México 200 . 2005 also marked the first running of the Mexico City 250 by the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series . Both races were removed from their series' schedules for 2009. Baseball is another sport played professionally in the city. Mexico City is currently home to Mexican League baseball's Mexico Red Devils , considered Triple-A by U.S/Canadian Major League Baseball. The Devils play their home games at the Foro Sol sports and concert venue, adjacent to Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez . Mexico City has some 10 Little Leagues for young baseball players. In 2005, Mexico City became the first city to host an NFL regular season game outside of the United States, at the Azteca Stadium . To date, the crowd of 103,467 people attending this game is the largest ever for a regular season game in NFL history. The city has also hosted several NBA pre-season games and has hosted international basketball's FIBA Americas Championship , along with north-of-the-border Major League Baseball exhibition games at Foro Sol . Other sports facilities in Mexico City are the Palacio de los Deportes indoor arena, Francisco Márquez Olympic Swimming Pool , the Hipódromo de Las Américas , the Agustin Melgar Olympic Velodrome , and venues for equestrianism and horse racing, ice hockey, rugby , American-style football, baseball, and basketball. Bullfighting takes place every Sunday during bullfighting season at the 50,000-seat Plaza México , the world's largest bullring. Mexico City's golf courses have hosted Women's LPGA action, and two Men's Golf World Cups . Courses throughout the city are available as private as well as public venues. Education Headquarters of the Mexican Secretary of Education The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), located in Mexico City, is the largest university on the continent, with more than 300,000 students from all backgrounds. Three Nobel laureates , several Mexican entrepreneurs and most of Mexico's modern-day presidents are among its former students. UNAM conducts 50% of Mexico's scientific research and has presence all across the country with satellite campuses, observatories and research centres. UNAM ranked 74th in the Top 200 World University Ranking published by Times Higher Education (then called Times Higher Education Supplement) in 2006,[124] making it the highest ranked Spanish-speaking university in the world. The sprawling main campus of the university, known as Ciudad Universitaria , was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2007. The second largest higher-education institution is the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), which includes among many other relevant centers the Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados (Cinvestav), where varied high-level scientific and technological research is done. Other major higher-education institutions in the city include the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH), the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México , the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (3 campuses), the Universidad Panamericana (UP), the Universidad La Salle , the Universidad del Valle de Mexico (UVM), the Universidad Anáhuac , the Alliant International University , the Universidad Iberoamericana , El Colegio de México (Colmex), Escuela Libre de Derecho and the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica , (CIDE). In addition, the prestigious University of California maintains a campus known as "Casa de California" in the city.[125] The Universidad Tecnológica de México is also in Mexico City. Unlike those of Mexican states' schools, curricula of Mexico City's public schools is managed by the federal Secretary of Public Education . The whole funding is allocated by the government of Mexico City (in some specific cases, such as El Colegio de México , funding comes from both the city's government and other public and private national and international entities). The city's public high school system is the Instituto de Educación Media Superior del Distrito Federal (IEMS-DF). A special case is that of El Colegio Nacional , created during the district's governmental period of Miguel Alemán Valdés to have, in Mexico, an institution similar to the College of France . The select and privileged group of Mexican scientists and artists belonging to this institution—membership is for life—include, among many, Mario Lavista , Ruy Pérez Tamayo , José Emilio Pacheco , Marcos Moshinsky (d.2009), Guillermo Soberón Acevedo . Members are obligated to publicly disclose their works through conferences and public events such as concerts and recitals. Among its many public and private schools (K-13), the city offers multi-cultural , multi-lingual and international schools attended by Mexican and foreign students . Best known are the Colegio Alemán (German school with 3 main campuses), the Liceo Mexicano Japonés (Japanese), the Centro Cultural Coreano en México (Korean), the Lycée Franco-Mexicain (French), the American School , The Westhill Institute (American School), the Edron Academy and the Greengates School (British). Media Mexico City is Latin America's leading center for the television, music and film industries. It is also Mexico's most important for the printed media and book publishing industries. Dozens of daily newspapers are published, including El Universal , Excélsior , Reforma and La Jornada . Other major papers include Milenio , Crónica , El Economista and El Financiero . Leading magazines include Expansión , Proceso , Poder , as well as dozens of entertainment publications such as Vanidades , Quién , Chilango , TV Notas , and local editions of Vogue , GQ , and Architectural Digest . It is also a leading center of the advertising industry . Most international ad firms have offices in the city, including Grey, JWT , Leo Burnett , Euro RSCG , BBDO , Ogilvy, Saatchi & Saatchi , and McCann Erickson . Many local firms also compete in the sector, including Alazraki , Olabuenaga/Chemistri , Terán, Augusto Elías, and Clemente Cámara, among others. There are 60 radio stations operating in the city and many local community radio transmission networks. The two largest media companies in the Spanish-speaking world, Televisa and Azteca , are headquartered in Mexico City. Other local television channels include: XEW-TV 2 XHTV-TV 4 XHGC-TV 5 XHIMT-TV 7 XEQ-TV 9 XEIPN-TV 11 XHDF-TV 13 XHUNAM-TV 20 XEIMT-TV 22 XHRAE-TV 28 XHTVM-TV 40 XHCDM-DT 21 Shopping Mexico City offers an immense and varied consumer retail market, with thousands of options for everything from the very basic foods to ultra high-end luxury goods. Consumers may buy in fixed indoor markets , mobile markets (tianguis) , from street vendors , from downtown shops in a street dedicated to a certain type of good, in convenience stores and traditional neighborhood stores, in modern supermarkets, in warehouse and membership stores and the shopping centers that they anchor, in department stores, big-box stores and in modern shopping malls. Traditional markets Informal markets are found in public spaces throughout the city Multi-storey Sanborns department store with the façade of a 19th-century home being used as an entrance area Decorated façade of the Portal de Mercaderes market building The city's main source of fresh produce is the Central de Abasto . This in itself is a self-contained mini-city in Iztapalapa borough covering an area equivalent to several dozen city blocks. The wholesale market supplies most of the city's "mercados", supermarkets and restaurants, as well as people who come to buy the freshest produce for themselves. Tons of fresh produce are trucked in from all over Mexico every day. The principal fish market is known as La Nueva Viga , in the same complex as the Central de Abastos. Fresh fish from all around the country is available, mainly from the central Pacific coast and Veracruz . The world-renowned market of Tepito occupies 25 blocks, and is known to sell everything and anything except dignity. A staple for consumers in the city is the omnipresent "mercado". Every major neighborhood in the city has its own borough-regulated market, often more than one. These are large well-established facilities offering most basic products, such as fresh produce and meat/poultry, dry goods, tortillerías, and many other services such as locksmiths, herbal medicine, hardware goods, sewing implements; and a multitude of stands offering freshly made, home-style cooking and drinks in the tradition of aguas frescas and atole . Tianguis In addition, " tianguis " or mobile markets set up shop on streets in many neighborhoods, depending on day of week. Sundays see the largest number of these markets. The stalls generally use awnings of a single color or shade (pink and red, for example), making them easily identifiable from several blocks away. Street vendors Street vendors play their trade from stalls in the tianguis as well as at non-officially controlled concentrations around metro stations and hospitals; at plazas comerciales, where vendors of a certain "theme" (e.g. stationery) are housed; originally these were organized to accommodate vendors formerly selling on the street; or simply from improvised stalls on a city sidewalk.[126] In addition, food and goods are sold from people walking with baskets, pushing carts, from bicycles or the backs of trucks, or simply from a tarp or cloth laid on the ground.[127] Downtown shopping Sears store in Downtown Mexico City The Historic Center of Mexico City is widely known for specialized, often low-cost retailers. Certain blocks or streets are dedicated to shops selling a certain type of merchandise, with areas dedicated to over 40 categories such as home appliances, lamps and electricals, closets and bathrooms, housewares, wedding dresses, jukeboxes, printing, office furniture and safes, books, photography, jewelry, and opticians.[128] The main department stores are also represented downtown. Traditional markets downtown include the La Merced Market ; the Mercado de Jamaica specializes in fresh flowers, the Mercado de Sonora in the occult, and La Lagunilla in furniture. Ethnic shopping areas are located in Chinatown , downtown along Calle Dolores, but Mexico City's Koreatown , or Pequeño Seúl , is located in the Zona Rosa . Supermarkets and neighborhood stores Large, modern chain supermarkets, hypermarkets and warehouse clubs including Soriana , Comercial Mexicana , Chedraui , Bodega Aurrerá , Walmart and Costco , are located across the city. Many anchor shopping centers that contain smaller shops, services, a food court and sometimes cinemas. Small "mom-and-pop" corner stores ("abarroterías" or more colloquially as "changarros") abound in all neighborhoods, rich and poor. These are small shops offering basics such as soft drinks, packaged snacks, canned goods and dairy products. Thousands of C-stores or corner stores, such as Oxxo , 7-Eleven and Extra are located throughout the city. Department stores and shopping malls Centro Santa Fe during 2012 expansion Luxury goods retailers are concentrated on Avenida Presidente Masaryk in Polanco ; the Centro Santa Fe mall with its Saks Fifth Avenue branch and numerous luxury boutiques; Paseo Interlomas in Interlomas ; Arcos Bosques, a speciality center in Bosques de las Lomas; Antara Polanco , a high-end mall in Polanco ; Avenida Altavista in the southern neighborhood of San Ángel , including a small shopping center on the street; Altavista 147 in the Colonia del Valle district with its malls Galerías Insurgentes and Centro Coyoacán . Branches of department store El Palacio de Hierro and to a lesser extent Liverpool contain luxury boutiques. Punta Norte Outlet Mall in the city's north has luxury-good outlets. For a more bohemian ambiance, the neighborhoods of Condesa , Roma , Coyoacán and San Ángel emphasize outdoor shopping and dining. Parks and recreation Infinitum roller coaster at La Feria Chapultepec Mágico Chapultepec Park , the city's most iconic public park, has history back to the Aztec emperors who used the area as a retreat. It is south of Polanco district, and houses the city's zoo , several ponds, seven museums including the National Museum of Anthropology , and the oldest and most traditional amusement park, La Feria de Chapultepec Mágico , with its vintage Montaña Rusa rollercoaster. Other iconic city parks include the Alameda Central, Mexico City historic center , a city park since colonial times and renovated in 2013; Parque México and Parque España in the hip Condesa district; Parque de los Venados in Colonia del Valle , and Parque Lincoln in Polanco .[129] There are many smaller parks throughout the city. Most are small "squares" occupying two or three square blocks amid residential or commercial districts. Several other larger parks such as the Bosque de Tlalpan and Viveros de Coyoacán , and in the east Alameda Oriente , offer many recreational activities. Northwest of the city is a large ecological reserve, the Bosque de Aragón , which is also an amusement park with a fine lake, aquarium, watering place, zoo, theater and other attractions. In the southeast is the Xochimilco Ecological Park and Plant Market , a World Heritage site . West of Santa Fe district are the pine forests of the Desierto de los Leones National Park . Besides La Fería Chapultepec Mágico, other amusement parks include Six Flags México (the largest in Latin America), in Ajusco neighborhood, known across Latin America for its thrilling roller coasters. There are numerous seasonal fairs; the main one is held in winter on the main square of the Zócalo , which is transformed into an arctic getaway with ice igloos, slides and a gigantic ice skating rink said to be the world's largest of its kind. This event is free to the public and includes special events such as stage performances and concerts. Additionally there are many temporary fairs with rides throughout the city's neighborhoods. Nicknames Mexico City was traditionally known as La Ciudad de los Palacios ("the City of the Palaces"), a nickname attributed to Baron Alexander von Humboldt when visiting the city in the 19th century, who, sending a letter back to Europe, said Mexico City could rival any major city in Europe. During Andrés López Obrador 's administration a political slogan was introduced: la Ciudad de la Esperanza ("The City of Hope"). This motto was quickly adopted as a city nickname, but has faded since the new motto Capital en Movimiento ("Capital in Movement") was adopted by the administration headed by Marcelo Ebrard , though the latter is not treated as often as a nickname in media. Since 2013, to refer to the City particularly in relation to government campaigns, the abbreviation CDMX has been used (from Ciudad de México). The city is colloquially known as Chilangolandia after the locals' nickname chilangos .[130] Chilango is used pejoratively by people living outside Mexico City to "connote a loud, arrogant, ill-mannered, loutish person".[131] For their part those living in Mexico City designate insultingly those who live elsewhere as living in la provincia ("the provinces", the periphery) and many proudly embrace the term chilango.[132] Residents of Mexico City are more recently called defeños (deriving from the postal abbreviation of the Federal District in Spanish: D.F., which is read "De-Efe"). They are formally called capitalinos (in reference to the city being the capital of the country), but "[p]erhaps because capitalino is the more polite, specific, and correct word, it is almost never utilized".[133] Law enforcement Headquarters of the Mexican Federal Police The Secretariat of Public Security of the Federal District (Secretaría de Seguridad Pública del Distrito Federal – SSP) manages a combined force of over 90,000 officers in the Federal District (DF). The SSP is charged with maintaining public order and safety in the heart of Mexico City. The historic district is also roamed by tourist police, aiming to orient and serve tourists. These horse-mounted agents dress in traditional uniforms. The investigative Judicial Police of the Federal District (Policía Judicial del Distrito Federal – PJDF) is organized under the Office of the Attorney General of the DF (the Procuraduría General de Justicia del Distrito Federal). The PGJDF maintains 16 precincts (delegaciones) with an estimated 3,500 judicial police, 1,100 investigating agents for prosecuting attorneys (agentes del ministerio público), and nearly 1,000 criminology experts or specialists (peritos). Between 2000 and 2004 an average of 478 crimes were reported each day in Mexico City; however, the actual crime rate is thought to be much higher "since most people are reluctant to report crime".[134] Under policies enacted by Mayor Marcelo Ebrard between 2009 and 2011, Mexico City underwent a major security upgrade with violent and petty crime rates both falling significantly despite the rise in violent crime in other parts of the country. Some of the policies enacted included the installation of 11,000 security cameras around the city and a very large expansion of the police force. Mexico City currently has one of the world's highest police officer-to-resident ratios, with one uniformed officer per 100 citizens.[135] International relations ^ "Convenio de amistad entre Ciudad de México y Kiev" (in Spanish). ^ "Acuerdo de Hermandad abrirá horizontes de colaboración" (in Spanish). ^ "Mapa Mundi de las ciudades hermanadas". Ayuntamiento de Madrid. ^ "Convenio de amistad entre Ciudad de México y Nairobi" (in Spanish). ^ "Convenio de amistad entre Ciudad de México y Quito" (in Spanish). ^ "Convenio de amistad entre Ciudad de México y Reykjavík" (in Spanish). ^ "International Cooperation: Sister Cities". Seoul Metropolitan Government. www.seoul.go.kr. Archived from the original on December 10, 2007. Retrieved January 26, 2008. ^ "Seoul -Sister Cities". Seoul Metropolitan Government. Archived from the original on March 25, 2012. Retrieved August 23, 2013. External links	Airport
Alejandro Amaya, Carlos Arruza, Jaime Bravo and Carmelo Torres are famous Mexican?	Mexico – Travel guide at Wikivoyage Cities[ edit ] Plaza de la Constitución, also known as Zocalo, Mexico City Mexico City - Capital of the Republic, one of the three largest cities in the world, and a sophisticated urban hub with a 700-year history. In Mexico City, you will find everything from parks, Aztec ruins, colonial architecture, museums, to nightlife and shopping. Acapulco - A sophisticated urban beach setting known for its top-notch nightlife, elegant dining, and nightmarish traffic. Many of the older (pre-1990s) concrete structures have suffered tropical decay. Cancún - One of the worlds most popular and famous beaches, known for its clear Caribbean waters, its lively party atmosphere, and its wealth of recreational facilities. During Spring Break it is noted for drinking, sunburns, and debauchery. Guadalajara - A traditional city, capital of Jalisco state, and the home of mariachi music and tequila. Guadalajara is blessed with perpetual spring weather and its colonial downtown is graceful and sophisticated. Mazatlan - Lively Pacific coast town, Mazatlan is a shipping port, a transportation hub with ferries to Baja California, and a beach resort destination with miles of sandy shore. It is a popular Spring Break destination due to its variety of affordable lodging options. Monterrey - A large modern city that is the commercial and industrial hub of Northern Mexico. Monterrey enjoys a dry, mountainous setting and is known for its high-quality educational and transportation infrastructure. San Luis Potosi - Located in central Mexico, a colonial city that was once an important silver producer, but today, relies on manufacturing for its economic base. Taxco - In central Mexico west of Cuernavaca, this nice steep mountain town was once a major silver producer, and now has a strong place in the trade of decorative silver, from cheap fittings to the most elegant jewelry and elaborate castings. Tijuana - Mexico's busiest border crossing for pedestrians and private vehicles, and a long-time bargain Mecca for southern Californians due to its proximity with San Diego . Other destinations[ edit ] The moon is rising over Copper Canyon Copper Canyon (Barrancas del Cobre) - An exotic destination for travelers looking for a unique remote adventure! An awesome mountain rail ride -- one of the greatest in the world -- takes you upwards over 8000 feet on the CHEPE, the Chihuahua al Pacifico Railway. Hiking, horseback riding, birding, and Tarahumara Indians. Copper Canyon, the Sierra Madre and the Chihuahuan desert of Mexico. This area is designed for adventurous individuals who will tolerate some rough travel to get to their point(s) of interest (although the famous train ride isn't demanding at all). Copper Canyon, a magnificent remote wilderness is not likely ever to become a mass market destination. Sea of Cortez - See whale birthings, swim with dolphins, and sea kayak in the warm waters of the Sea of Cortez, along the eastern coast of Baja California, near La Paz. And the sunsets at Puerto Peñasco and San Carlos are not to be missed. Monarch Butterfly Breeding Sites - Protected natural areas in the highlands of the state of Michoacán. Millions of butterflies come to the area between November and March of each year, although numbers have declined sharply recently. Sumidero Canyon - From docks on the Rio Grivalva (the only major river within Mexico) near Tuxtla Gutiérrez in Chiapas state, tour launches take you into this steep-walled National Park. You'll likely see vast flocks of flamingos, pelicans, and other waterfowl, as well as crocodiles. Archaeological sites[ edit ] Palenque Chichen Itza - Majestic Mayan city, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988 and recently voted as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. Ek Balam - Recently reconstructed Mayan site, famous for its unique decorated stucco and stone carved temples that you can climb. El Tajín - In the state of Veracruz near the town of Papantla. A UNESCO World Heritage Site. Plazuelas and Peralta - In the state of Guanajuato , two sites making part of the "Tradición él Bajío". Monte Alban - In the state of Oaxaca, a Zapotec site dating from about 500 B.C. A UNESCO World Heritage Site. Palenque - Mayan city in the state of Chiapas, Palenque famous for its elaborate paintings. Also well known for having the largest tract of rainforest in Mexico located in the same area. Teotihuacan - In the state of Mexico, near Mexico City. Enormous site with several large pyramids. Tulum - Mayan coastal city with spectacular Caribbean vistas. Dates from late Mayan period. Uxmal - Impressive Mayan city-state in the Puc Region, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. Understand[ edit ] Mexico is one of the most popular tourist countries in Latin America. Much of the tourist industry is centered around the beach resorts as well as the altiplano in the central part of the country. Visiting the northern interior allows visitors to get off the beaten path a bit. U.S. American tourists tend to predominate on the Baja California peninsula and the more modernized beach resorts ( Cancún , Puerto Vallarta ), while European tourists congregate around the smaller resort areas in the south like Playa del Carmen and colonial towns San Cristobal de las Casas . Climate[ edit ] Mexico uses the metric system for all measurements. All weather forecasts are in Celsius (°C). Varies from desert-like regions on the northwest part of the country (cities like Hermosillo, Ciudad Juárez, or Los Cabos); and temperate in the northeastern part (cities like Monterrey, Nuevo Laredo, Ciudad Acuña), but note that much of the northern Mexican territory gets rather cold during the winter with average day time highs from 8°C (39°F) to 12°C (59°F), overnight lows average around -4°C (24°F) and snow is sometimes frequent in certain northern places like (the Sierra Madre of Chihuahua, Durango, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and northern Tamaulipas) but can also occur at higher altitudes in the temperate forests in the central part of Mexico. Also, northern Mexico gets very hot during the summer with sudden violent storms in the afternoon, with heavy rain and hail, also an isolated tornado can occur with these storms but rarely, and the temperatures during the day can quickly exceed 39°C (100°F). The Bajío region is semiarid (cities like Aguascalientes, León and Zacatecas); and temperate forests in the central part of the country (Mexico City, Toluca), and tropical rain forests in the south and southeast regions like (Chiapas, Cancún). The region stretching from Guadalajara to Morelia enjoys what many consider one of the best climates in the world, with daily high temps 21°C to 26°C (in the high 70s and 80s °F) year round. Hurricanes can be common in the coastal cities specially those near the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. Landscape[ edit ] Pico de Orizaba or Citlaltépetl is Mexico's highest mountain High, rugged mountains; low coastal plains; high plateaus; temperate plains with grasslands and Mezquite trees in the northeast, desert and even more rugged mountains in the northwest, tropical rainforests in the south and southeast Chiapas , Yucatán Peninsula semiarid in places like Aguascalientes , San Luis Potosí and temperate coniferous and deciduous forests in the central part of the country Mexico City , Toluca . Holidays[ edit ] January 1: New Year's Day January 6: The Three Wise Men day, celebrating arrival of the Three Wise Men to see and bring gifts to the baby Jesus (not an official holiday). February 2: The Candelaria Day ("Day of the candles"), celebrated in many places around the country (not an official holiday) February 5: Constitution Day (1917) February 24: Flag Day (not official) March 21: Birth of Benito Juárez (1806) April 30: Kid's Day May 1: Labor Day September 1: Presidential address day September 15: Grito de Dolores September 16: Independence day (celebrates the start of the fight for the independence from Spain in 1810, achieved until September 27, 1821) October 12: Day of the Race (not a public holiday) November 2: Day of the dead (not a public holiday) November 20: Mexican Revolution Day (1910) December 12: Virgin Mary of Guadalupe Day. Not a public holiday, but is one of the most important Mexican holidays December 24: Christmas Eve (not a public holiday, but normally a full non-working day) December 25: Christmas December 31: New Year’s Eve (not a public holiday, but normally a full non-working day) Easter is widely observed nationwide, according to the yearly Catholic calendar (the first Sunday after the first full moon in Spring). Actual non-working days may shift to the Monday before the holiday, so check an up-to-date calendar. Time[ edit ] Mexican time zones The 24-hour clock system is used for time keeping. Mexico uses the same four time zones as the contiguous United States, but three of them are only used in peripheral parts of the country. Northwest Zone (UTC-10, corresponds to U.S. Pacific Time): Baja California (state) Pacific Zone (UTC-9, corresponds to U.S. Mountain Time): Baja California Sur , Chihuahua (state) , Nayarit , Sinaloa , Sonora (Mexico) Central Zone (UTC-8, corresponds to U.S. Central Time): The rest of the country, except Quintana Roo Southeastern Zone (UTC-7, corresponds to U.S. Eastern Time): Quintana Roo Almost all of Mexico observes daylight savings time (DST) the same way as the USA did pre-2007, from first Sunday in April to last Sunday in October. This now includes the tropical regions of southern Mexico as well. Communities on the U.S. border, except in Sonora, now observe DST on the U.S. schedule. The entire state of Baja California also observes DST on the U.S, schedule. Note there will be several weeks each year when the U.S. is on DST, but most of Mexico is not. The state of Sonora south of Arizona , does not observe DST since Arizona doesn't have it either. See also: Indigenous cultures of North America Among the earliest complex civilizations in Mexico was the Olmec culture that flourished on the Gulf Coast in 1500 BCE. Olmec culture diffused through Mexico into formative era cultures in Chiapas, Oaxaca and the Valley of Mexico. In Central Mexico the height of the classical period saw the ascendancy of Teotihuacan, which formed a military and commercial empire. It had the largest structures of pyramids built in the pre-Columbian Americas. During the early post-classic Mexico was dominated by Toltec culture, and the lowland Maya had important areas at Calakmul and Chichen Itza. At the end of the post-Classical period, the Aztecs built a tributary empire covering most of Central Mexico. The Mesoamerican cultural traditions ended in the 16th century and over the next centuries, Mexican indigenous cultures were under Spanish colonial rule. However, contrary to popular misconceptions neither the Maya nor the Aztec culture ever entirely "disappeared" and to this day many Mexicans trace at least part of their heritage to indigenous roots and language such as Nahuatl and numerous Maya tongues are still spoken by hundreds of thousands or even millions of Mexicans. Indigenous elements are visible even today in loanwords in Mexican Spanish, traditional dress, Mexican cuisine, architecture and even religious observances (nominally "catholic" to varying degrees). The eagle and the snake on a cactus depicted on the Mexican flag, for example, refers to an Aztec legend about the founding of Tenochtitlan, the city that now is Mexico City. Colonial and early independence[ edit ] Mexico remained under Spanish colonial rule until 1821 when it declared independence under the terms of "Plan of Iguala". After the short lived Mexican empire of 1821-1823 (former Spanish general and independence hero Augustin de Iturbide brievly declared himself emperor but was overthrown after two years) Mexico became a republic with a fragile balance of powers between liberals (allied mostly with urban merchants) and conservatives (allied with the church and big landholders) and Antonio López de Santa Anna became president several times while also being overthrown by his opponents several times thus having eight non-consecutive terms as president as well as five "permanent" exiles. Independent Mexico[ edit ] The early Mexican state was anything but stable and Texas (under the leadership of US-American immigrants who wanted to make Texas a slave-holding state of the US) as well as Yucatan seceded at several points with Maya rebels fighting against both the Yucatan independence movement and the federal government in the so called "Caste war". After Texas gained de facto independence a disagreement as to its southern border (the Nueces river as claimed by Mexico or the Rio Grande as claimed by Texas) led to the involvement of the US in a brief war that ended in a devastating defeat for Mexico (the line about the "halls of Montezuma" in the marines' song refers to the presidential palace in Mexico city that was conquered by the US) and the loss of Alta California (now the US state of California), Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico as well as the definite loss of Texas north of the Rio Grande. French intervention and Second Mexican empire[ edit ] In 1861, when president Benito Juarez (see below) suspended the payment of Mexico's debt, France decided to invade the country in order to regain some or all of its money. This was only possible because the United States, which had declared in its Monroe Doctrine that it wouldn't tolerate any European intervention in the sovereign states of the Americas, started its Civil War that same year. After overthrowing the government (though Mexican resistance against the occupiers never ceased) the French installed a Hapsburg prince as emperor Maximilian I to act as their puppet. While the Mexican monarchy had some support among conservatives its days were numbered when the French troops were withdrawn after the end of the American Civil war, and in 1867, Maximilian was executed by firing squad. Cinco de Mayo, which in the US is often mistaken to be "Mexican independence day", is celebrated in remembrance of the battle of Puebla that occurred during the French occupation and was decisively won by Mexican republican forces. Benito Juarez[ edit ] Benito Juarez was the first president of indigenous descent in all of Latin America and is one very few figures that is still almost exclusively seen as a positive figure in Mexican history. He was president from 1858 to 1864 and again from 1867 to his death in 1872. His saying "el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz" (respect for the rights of others is peace) is still frequently quoted. Porfirio Diaz[ edit ] Porfirio Diaz, a general during the French intervention rose to power shortly after the death of Juarez and ruled Mexico from 1876 to 1911. While initially willing and able to reform and modernize the country the sheer length of his reign and his corruption led to a lot of unhappiness about his government and in 1911 the Mexican revolution broke out, originally to unseat him from power. The Mexican Revolution[ edit ] Under the PRI[ edit ] Once the dust of the revolution had settled the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI [pronounced /pree/] for its Spanish name) became the dominant political force and all presidents before the early 1990s were members of the PRI. They did not however establish a one party state and other parties were still legal and participated in elections, however the success of the PRI candidate (especially at the federal level) was almost always a given. As such political power struggles mostly took place within the PRI with more conservative or left wing factions gaining the upper hand from time to time. In 1988 during a presidential election that was actually close for the first time in decades a computer that counted the votes supposedly crashed and the words with which this was announced "se cayó el sistema" are noted for their ambiguity as they can mean either "the computer broke down" or "the (political) system fell". Nonetheless according to the official result (which was and still is doubted by many) the PRI candidate won a six year term in office just narrowly surpassing the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff election. In 2000 the PRI finally lost their first presidential election when Vicente Fox of the Conservative national action party (PAN) won a narrow victory in a three way race. In 2006 the PAN won again with Felipe Calderon being elected president but in 2012 the PRI returned to power with Enrique Peña Nieto, who promised to end the drug war being elected to the presidency. Whether this proves temporary or the PRI has indeed regained her once dominant status, remains yet to be seen. Mexico today[ edit ] Despite problems such as corruption and the drug war in the North (with some areas under de facto control of different cartels) Mexico has seen steady growth in recent years and the political system has seen many democratic multiparty elections with peaceful transition of power as well as a somewhat stable three party system with the PAN (conservative) and PRI (centrist, catch all, sometimes leftist) both winning the presidency several times and the PRD (left of the PRI) being a serious contender in almost all elections. The drug war is ongoing and some parts of the country are not entirely safe, but the situation has bettered a lot after the 2000s. Generally the North with cities such as Ciudad Juarez notorious for their violence is more dangerous than the south and Yucatan is among the safest regions in Latin America. For more on the effects of the drug war see the stay safe section of this article and the individual region articles. Get in[ edit ] NOTE: Mexico charges 390 pesos (May 2016) per person that has spent more than 7 days (inclusive) in the country, e.g., 1st to 7th is 7 days. Payable on exit whatever the mode of transportation. N.B. on entrance officials may say that 7 days is non-inclusive but you will find out otherwise when you exit the country. If you flew into Mexico on a commercial flight, the cost of your plane ticket already included the tourism tax and you absolutely do NOT need to pay it again upon exiting. You will need to prove to the border officials that you have already paid, by showing the following: 1) Your FMM card you received upon arrival, and 2) An itemized receipt from your flight purchase showing the Tourism Tax Visa and other entrance requirements[ edit ] According to the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores) , certain foreign nationals who intend to stay in Mexico fewer than 180 days for the purpose of tourism or 30 days for business can fill out a tourist card at the border or upon landing at an airport after presenting a valid passport, for US$22. If arriving via air, it is included in the price of the fare. This service is available to citizens of Andorra , Argentina , Aruba , Australia , Austria , Bahamas , Barbados , Belgium , Belize , Bulgaria , Brazil , Canada , Chile , Colombia , Costa Rica , Cyprus , Czech Republic , Denmark , Estonia , Finland , France , Germany , Great Britain , Greece , Hong Kong , Hungary , Ireland , Iceland , Israel , Italy , Jamaica , Japan , Latvia , Liechtenstein , Lithuania , Luxembourg , Malaysia , Malta , Marshall Islands , Micronesia , Monaco , Netherlands , New Zealand , Norway , Palau , Panama , Paraguay , Peru , Poland , Portugal , Puerto Rico , Romania , San Marino , Singapore , Slovakia , Slovenia , Spain , South Korea , Sweden , Switzerland , Trinidad and Tobago , United States of America , Uruguay and Venezuela (see official list here ). Permanent residents of the United States, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, and Schengen area countries are also eligible for visas on arrival regardless of citizenship. The current Mexican tourist card is formally known as a Forma Migratoria Múltiple (Multiple Immigration Form), or FMM. It has a perforation that divides the card into two parts, of which the right side asks for some of the same information requested on the left side. At entry, after reviewing your passport and filled-out FMM, the immigration officer will stamp your passport and the FMM, separate the FMM along the perforation and give the right side of the FMM back to you with your passport. Keep the FMM together with your passport at all times. It is your responsibility to make sure the right side of the FMM is returned to the Mexican government at time of departure so that the bar code can be scanned, thus showing that you left the country on time. For example, if you are flying with Aeromexico, they will ask for your passport and FMM at check-in for your flight home, then staple your FMM to your boarding pass. You are expected to then hand the boarding pass together with your FMM to the gate agent as you board your flight. If you lose your FMM during your visit to Mexico, you may be subject to substantial delays and fines before you can leave the country. Electronic authorization (Autorización Electrónica) for travelling to Mexico is available on the Internet for nationals from Russia , Turkey , and Ukraine . Other nationalities must contact a Mexican consulate in order to find out the requirements for citizens of their country, and may have to apply for and obtain a visa in advance of travel. If you are in need of other information, Mexico has diplomatic offices in the following cities around the world. The consulates in the USA are typically open for business to non-citizens (by telephone or in-person) only from 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM. If you cross the border via road, do not expect the authorities to automatically signal you to fill out your paperwork. You will have to locate the border office yourself. The immigration officer at your point of entry into Mexico can also request that you demonstrate that you have sufficient economic solvency and a round trip ticket. If you do not intend to travel past the "border zone" and your stay does not exceed three days, U.S. and Canadian nationals require only a proof of citizenship. Reentry into the United States generally requires a passport, but a U.S. or Canadian Enhanced Drivers License (or Enhanced Photo ID) or U.S. passport card is acceptable for reentry by land or sea. Aeromexico planes at Benito Juarez International Airport From the United States and Canada[ edit ] There are hundreds of daily flights linking Mexico to cities large and small throughout North America. This includes legacy carriers such as Air Canada, Aeromexico, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, and Delta, and discount airlines such as JetBlue, Spirit, WestJet, Virgin America and Southwest Airlines. Also to be considered is the Mexican discount carrier Volaris, which operates from several major US cities (including Chicago , Denver , Las Vegas , Los Angeles , Oakland , Orlando , San Diego and Portland ) through their hubs in Mexico City and Guadalajara . The other carrier, Interjet also serve Las Vegas , Los Angeles , Miami , New York City , San Antonio and Houston . In return, United Airlines/United Express (operated by Express Jet and Skywest) fly to additional cities in Mexico besides Guadalajara , Mexico City , Cancun , Puerto Vallarta and other major beach resorts (which are already served by multiple US & Mexican carriers) such as to Aguascaliente, Chihuahua, Ciudad de Carmen, Durango, Huatulco, Leon/Guanajuato, Oaxaca, Merida, San Luis Potosi, Torreon, Tampico, Veracruz and Villahermosa from Houston . Flights to additional Mexican cities are operated by Aeromar on a code-share basis. Note that as with both the United States and Canada, you will have to clear immigration and customs at your first Mexican port of entry, even though that airport may not be your final destination. (For example, many trips on Aeromexico will involve connecting through its Mexico City hub.) You will then have to re-check your bags and go through security again to proceed to your next flight segment. From Australia or New Zealand[ edit ] Fly from Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne or Auckland (NZ) direct to Los Angeles on Delta, Qantas, United, and Virgin Australia. Air New Zealand offers one-stop air service from Australia and non-stop air service from Auckland to Los Angeles. Hawaiian Airlines and Air Tahiti Nui offer one- or two-stop air service to Los Angeles from Australia and New Zealand. Many airlines continue from Los Angeles to Mexico including AeroMexico/Aeromexico Connect, Alaska Airlines, Volaris, Interjet, United and Virgin America, some of which have interline or alliance ticketing and baggage check through. More options are available if connecting through another USA city. Also, make sure to have a good look at visas beforehand - even just for transit you will need something for USA, and if you get a visa waiver, they treat Mexico as part of the USA, meaning if you stay longer than 90 days in Mexico, you will need to travel further south before returning to USA. From Europe[ edit ] Most commercial airlines link Mexico directly from Europe. There are direct flights to Mexico City ( IATA : MEX) and Cancun ( IATA : CUN) from Paris ( IATA : CDG), London ( IATA : LON), Madrid ( IATA : MAD), Amsterdam ( IATA : AMS), Frankfurt ( IATA : FRA). Some carriers will serve both Mexico City and Cancun while other will only serve one and not the other (usually only to Cancun such as those from Russia and Italy). Additional flights to Cancun from Europe may only be available as charters and some may operate during the winter months (Dec-Feb) only. It is always worth to compare flight offers from air carriers and charter companies who can bring you to Mexico City or Cancun via many European hubs. The flight duration from those cities is always approximately 11 hours. By train[ edit ] There are four Amtrak stations on U.S. border cities: San Diego , Yuma , Del Rio and El Paso . Mexico is easily accessible from all of these. From the Santa Fe Depot in San Diego, the trolley runs all the way to the California-Baja California border. In El Paso, the station is a short walk from the border. There are however only rudimentary train services inside Mexico and one crossing any border whatsoever. Plans to change that were shelved by the current PRI government. By car[ edit ] Crossing into Mexico from the U.S. near Tijuana American automobile insurance is not accepted in Mexico; however, it is easy to obtain short-term or long-term tourist policies that include the mandatory liability coverage, theft and accident coverage for your vehicle, and often, legal assistance coverage. Should you decide to drive to Mexico, the Transport and Communications Secretariat website has free downloadable road maps. Foreign-plated vehicles must obtain necessary permits before being allowed into the interior of Mexico. This can be done at the border checkpoints by showing your vehicle title or registration, as well as immigration documents and a valid credit card. It is now possible to apply for your vehicle import permit online. Vehicle permits will only be issued to the registered owner of the vehicle, so the papers will have to be in the name of the applicant. The Baja California peninsula and the northern part of the State of Sonora do not require a permit. Due to the incredibly high volume of drugs and illegal immigration (into the US) and drug money & weapons (into Mexico) crossing the US-Mexico border, expect long delays and thorough searches of vehicles when crossing the border. At some of the busiest crossings, expect a waiting time of 1–3 hours. By bus[ edit ] The Mexican bus system is reportedly the most efficient in the world. Buses are without a doubt the backbone of personal intercity transport in Mexico as private car ownership is a lot lower than in its neighbor to the north and trains mostly serve cargo and tourism purposes. Chances are, you will meet a lot of locals, traveling by bus. There are many different independent companies but all use a central computerized ticketing system. Rates per mile are generally comparable to those of Greyhound in the U.S., but there are more departures and the system serves much smaller villages than its American counterpart. There are many bus companies based in Mexico with branch offices in major U.S. cities with a few such examples noted below. TUFESA Bus Lines A ticket to a major Mexican city from the southwestern U.S. can be bought for as little as $60 round trip (San Antonio TX to Monterrey N.L.). These companies, however, cater mostly to Hispanics or Mexican Nationals living in the U.S. and operate mostly in Spanish. Greyhound offers tickets from the US to major Mexican cities with Grupo Estrella Blanca further south of the border, including Monterrey, Querétaro, Durango, Mazatlan, Torreon, Mexico City. It is best (and cheapest) to buy a round-trip Greyhound ticket since it may be more difficult and expensive to buy a ticket from Mexico to a US destination which is not a major city. When departing from Mexico, the local bus line (usually Futura) will change the Greyhound-issued ticket into its own, free of charge. Get around[ edit ] Travelling in Mexico is most practical by bus, car, or air. Passenger transport by train is almost nonexistent. Except the Chihuahua del Pacifico rail line which pull out every morning at both ends of the line, one from Los Mochis on the Pacific coast, across from Baja California, and the other from Chihuahua in the east (due south of El Paso, Texas). They cross each other roughly midways at Divisadero and Barrancas Copper Canyon stations at an altitude of 2100 m (7000 ft). Main article: Driving in Mexico Highway 120 passing through the village of Pinal de Amoles Due to a government scheme in the early 1990s to create infrastructure, the best roads are toll roads. Toll roads can be relatively costly (M$400-800 is common on longer trips) but are much faster and better maintained. First-class buses generally travel by toll roads (and the toll is obviously included in the ticket price). US vehicle insurance is not valid in Mexico, and while Mexican auto insurance is not required, it is highly recommended, as any minor accident could land you in jail without it. MexiPass and AAA offer Mexican auto insurance. When traveling on Mexican roads, especially near the borders with the United States and Guatemala, one will probably encounter several checkpoints operated by the Mexican Army searching for illegal weapons and drugs. If you are coming from the United States, you may not be used to this, and it can be intimidating. However, these are rarely a problem for honest people. Simply do what the soldiers tell you to do, and treat them with respect. The best way to show respect when entering a checkpoint is to turn your music down, lift sunglasses from your face, and be prepared to roll your window down. They should treat you with respect as well, and they usually do. If you are asked to unpack any part of your vehicle, do so without complaint. It is their right to make you completely unload in order for them to inspect your cargo. Tourists are often warned about traveling on roads at night. Although bandidos are rare in more metropolitan areas, err on the side of caution in more rural areas. The best bet is to drive during only daylight hours. Cattle, dogs, and other animals also can appear on the roadway unexpectedly, so if you do have to drive at night, be very cautious. If possible, follow a bus or truck that seems to be driving safely. The Secretariat of Communication and Transport recently set up a new mapping tool similar to those in the U.S. like Mapquest. Its name is Traza Tu Ruta [dead link], and it is very helpful to find how to get to your destination using Mexico's roads. It is in Spanish but can be used with basic knowledge of the language. Foreign drivers' licenses are recognized and recommended. Speeding tickets are common, and to ensure your presence at the hearing, the officer may choose to keep your license. He is within his rights to do so. Beware though, police officers are known to keep driver's licenses until they are given a bribe. At petrol (gas) stations, make sure the pump is zeroed out before the attendant begins pumping your gas so that you don't end up paying more than you should. There is only one brand of gas station (Pemex) and prices are generally the same regardless of location, so don't bother shopping around. Good maps are invaluable and the Mexico maps included in "North American Road Atlas" books are worse than useless. The Guia Roji maps are particularly good. By plane[ edit ] Mexico is a large country and with the low-cost revolution that started in 2005 following the break up of the CINTRA monopoly new (budget) airlines had came in and expanded, offering competitive fares that rival bus travel over long distances. With increases in fuel costs the bargain days may be gone but the prices are still reasonable than it was when CINTRA operated Mexicana and Aeromexico as a monopoly before 2005. Mexicana Airlines ceased operations in 2010. Major airlines hubs for all or several of the airlines are in Mexico City , Toluca , Guadalajara , Cancun and/or Monterrey and additional point to point service from several other cities. The main airlines providing service to cities within Mexico are: Aeromexico/Aeromexico Connect , ☎ +52 55 5133-4000 (MX), toll-free: +1-800-237-6639 (US). Is the 'national' and 'legacy' carrier with hubs in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey. They're also a member of the SkyTeam Alliance. (updated Apr 2016) Aeromar , ☎ +52 55 51-33-11-11 , toll-free: 01 800 237-6627 (MX). (updated Apr 2016) Interjet , ☎ +52 55 1102-55-55 , toll-free: 01800 01 12345 (MX). Hubs are in Mexico City & Toluca. A member of the One World Alliance using the membership spot left behind by the defunct Mexicana Airlines. (updated Apr 2016) Magnicharters , ☎ (DF)+52 55 5678-1000 & 5678-3600; (MTY) 81 2282-9620 & 2282-9621FORMATNOCC. Hubs are in Monterrey & Mexico City. Used to operate only between Monterrey, Mexico City, Guadalajara & Cancun. They had since expanded to include additional Mexican and U.S. cities. (updated Apr 2016) VivaAerobus . Hubs are in Monterrey, Mexico City & Guadalajara (updated Apr 2016) Volaris , ☎ +52 55 1102-8000 , toll-free: 1 855 865-2747(US)FORMATNOCC. Hubs are in Guadalajara, Mexico City, Toluca & Tijuana. Since the demise of Mexicana in 2010 they had expanded & taken over many of (defunct) Mexicana's routes and airport slots within Mexico & the U.S. (updated Apr 2016) There are also small airlines operating within certain areas such as: AeroCalifia , ☎ +1 213 928-5692 (US), toll-free: 01 800 5603949 (MX). Operates scheduled regional flights between the Baja California Peninsula, Chihuahua, Jalisco, Guanajuato, Sonora & Sinaloa in the northwestern part of the country in the smaller Embraer ERJ & Cessna aircraft. They also offer charters & air taxi services too. (updated Apr 2016) Aerotucán , ☎ +52 952 503-34-11 , 109-51-68 (mobile)NOCC. Flies between Oaxaca City, Huatulco and Puerto Escondido in Oaxaca state. (updated Apr 2016) Mayair . Operates regional flights from Cancun to Cozumel and Merida and from Villahermosa to Veracruz and Merida in the smaller Cessna equipment. (updated Apr 2016) TAR , ☎ +52 55 2629-5272 . Hub in Queretaro with focus cities in Guadalajara, Monterrey, Merida, Puerto Vallarta and Toluca. (updated Apr 2016) By bus[ edit ] If traveling by bus, be sure to take the express (first class) buses (directo, sin escalas, primera clase), if available. First class (directo, sin escalas, primera clase) buses are usually direct routes and are the best option for most. These buses are comfortable, have washrooms/toilets and will generally show movies, which may or may not be in English with Spanish subtitles (or vice versa). Others may even offer a drink and a little snack. First class buses travel over longer distances between cities, and use toll freeways where available. They may make scheduled stops (semi-directo) at specific bus stations en-route otherwise they make NO stops en-route. Other buses such as the second class (economico, ordinario, local) buses may be very similar to first class only they travel along secondary highways through cities, towns and villages and stop anywhere along the road on request. Second class bus routes are typically shorter and will take considerably longer to travel over longer distances (such as from Cancun to Mexico City) with multiple stops and multiple transfers, it is not worth the few pesos saved over first class buses. They are fine for more local travel, such as between Cancun and Playa del Carmen or to somewhere along the highway in between. In other places they may be more frequent and more available than first class such as going to Zempoala (town) from Veracruz (city). Some of the second class buses may even be chicken buses (polleros) in rural, off the beaten track, places. Executive (Ejecutivo) and Luxury (Lujo) lines cost about 60% more than first class, may be faster, usually have larger seats, and they have less frequent departures; they rival flying business class on a plane and are a good option for elderly or business travelers or overnight travel in lieu of a night's stay at a hotel (or hostel). When acquiring tickets for the bus, the local custom is that the passenger comes to the terminal and buys the ticket for next available bus going to the desired destination with first and deluxe class buses unless it is during busy travel times such as Easter and Christmas. During busy travel times tickets can be booked one or two days in advance online or at the station. With second class buses, tickets can be purchased at the station within 2 hours of a departure, no advance reservations prior, at the beginning of a route or the fare paid to the driver if picked up from along side of the road. With the advent of NAFTA, some bus companies are now offering service from multiple US cities in several US states. The major bus companies offering these kind of services are: ABC (Autobuses de Baja California). Bus services up and down the Baja California Peninsula and along Hwy 2/2D to western Sonora (updated Oct 2016) ADO (Autobuses Del Oriente), ☎ +52 55 5133-5133 , toll-free: 01 800-009-9090. They operate the ADO, ADO GL, AU (Autobus Unidos), OCC (Omnibus Cristobal Colon) , and Platino bus lines, and the Boletotal/Ticketbus.com booking site. They are a major bus company in the eastern and southeastern part of the country towards the Guatemalan border in the states of Guerrero, Oaxaca, Puebla, Veracruz, Chiapas, Tamaulipas, Tabasco, and the Yucatan Peninsula (Yucatan, Quintana Roo and Campeche). They offer an once daily trip to/from Belize City via Chetumal from Cancun and Merida and connecting service with Tica Bus , Trans Galgos [dead link] and King Quality in Tapachula for onward travel to/from Central America. Autovias, HDP, La Linea , toll-free: 800-622-22-22NOCC. goes from Mexico DF to the surrounding Mexico state and beyond to Colima, Guerreo, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacan, and Queretaro states. Costa Line AERS , ☎ +52 55 5336-5560 , toll-free: 01 800-0037-635. Serves mainly in Mexico state, Morelos and Guerrero from Mexico City. They also operate the Turistar, Futura and AMS bus lines. ETN (Enlances Terrestre Nacionales), Turistar Lujo . They offer a 'deluxe' or 'executive' class seating with 2 seats on one side of the aisle and one on the opposite side with more leg room and an ability to recline into a lying position. They go to Aguascaliente, Baja California Norte, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Durango, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Mexico, Mexico City DF, Michocoan, Morelos, Nayrit, Nuevo Leon, Oaxaca (coast), Queretaro, San Luis Potosi, Sinaloa, Sonora, Veracruz (Poza Rica, Tuxpan) and Zacatecas states Grupo Estrella Blanca (White Star) , ☎ +52 55 5729-0807 , toll-free: 01 800-507-5500. They operate the Elite , TNS (Transportes Norte de Sonora), Chihuahuanese , Pacifico, Oriente, TF (Tranporte Frontera), Estrella Blanca, Conexion, Rapidos de Cuauhtemoc, Valle de Guadiana and Autobus Americanos bus lines. As the largest bus company they serve much of the northern & northwestern part of the country such as Aguascaliente, Baja California Norte, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Durango, Districto Federal (DF), Guanajuato, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Mexico, Michocoan, Morelos, Nayrit, Queretaro, San Luis Potosi, Sinaloa, Sonora and Zacatecas states, up to the US border. They sell tickets for onward travel to the United States from the border on Greyhound Lines (and vice versa). Estrella de Oro (Gold Star) , ☎ +52 55 5133-5133 , toll-free: 01 800-009-9090. operates mainly between Mexico City and various places in Districto Federal (DF), Guerrero, Veracruz and Hidalgo states. They are now a subsidiary of Grupo ADO but also a separate company and brand. Zina Bus, Excelencia, Excelencia Plus , ☎ +52 55 5278-4721 . goes from Mexico DF to the surrounding Mexico, Guerreo and Michoacan states The above are major bus lines traversing much of the country with some crossing the border into the U.S. No bus company holds a large market share nationwide like Greyhound in the U.S. but some do have a greater market share in certain regions. There are over 200 other companies and drivers' unions operating buses not listed in the above which you will find once there or see (or add to) the specific articles of a region, city or town. On the other hand if traveling within a city, you won't find a pleasant surprise. You will find one of the most chaotic public transport systems full of the popular "peseros". "Peseros" are small buses with varying color codes depending on the city you are in. Usually the route taken is written on cardboard attached to the windshield or with wet and than dried soap or chalk on the windshield listing the local colonias (neighborhoods) and points of interest (Wal Mart, Costco, malls, hospitals, universities, etc.) the route serves and are not numbered. Unlike in many countries, bus stops are uncommon and you are expect to signal the bus to pick you up and drop you off wherever you want. You will rarely find a stop button in a pesero; just shout the word "baja!" for it to stop. Fares are cheap and vary from $5 to 8 pesos approximately. By train[ edit ] Passenger trains are very limited in Mexico with only a few lines in operation in places like the Copper Canyon in the northern state of Chihuahua, that line is also known as the Chihuahua Pacific Railway between the Pacific coastal city of Tobolobampo in the state of Sinaloa to the city of Chihuahua , through the Copper Canyon . In the state of Jalisco there are a couple of lines which travel from the state capital city of Guadalajara to the nearby tequila distilleries in the small town of Amatitlan on the Tequila Express and to the Jose Cuervo distilleries in the town of Tequila on the Jose Cuervo Express . The latter two from Guadalajara operate as part of a weekend day tour to the tequila distilleries then as a form of transportation to get to those towns. It may be possible to hop aboard or on top of freight cars in some parts of the country (if you happen to be an adventurer) as many migrants traveling from Central America to the USA are doing this. The prospect of hopping the freight is dangerous due to the lack of restraints which results in falling off, getting ran over by the wheels, getting hit by an oncoming train (if fallen into the wrong spot), or being robbed by bandits along the way. That being said, there have been talks in recent years of expanding both suburban rail services in several cities and high speed passenger services, but no concrete plans have materialized as of May 2015. Currently Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey have subway and/or light rail services. By thumb[ edit ] One upside of the high petroleum prices is that hitching is beginning to be more common in Mexico again, particularly the rural areas. In areas near big cities, hitching should be more difficult, and is not really advisable due to security reasons. However, in village areas, this will be really possible and most likely a nice experience. Since villagers have always had a hard time affording gas, and nowadays many are turning to picking up paying hitchhikers as a way to afford the next trip into town. Baja California, the Sierra Tarahumara and Oaxaca and Chiapas all have good possibilities for the hitchhiker. Hitchhiking possibilities vary according to region. Mexican culture is often accepting of hitchhiking and it's a common practice among Mexican youngsters going to the beach in Easter vacations, though in some cases a money contribution is expected for gas because of its relatively high prices. You should make it clear that you have no money to offer before accepting the ride, if this is the case. If you're willing to pay, trucks will often provide lifts for about half the price of a bus ticket. Of course you may be able to negotiate a better deal. Hitchhiking is considered fairly safe and easy in the Yucatán Peninsula . See also: Spanish phrasebook Mexico recognizes nearly 70 indigenous languages, many of which are still in active use. Spanish, however, is the de facto national language. Spanish is used by virtually the whole population and all public communications (signs, documents, media, etc.) are conducted in the language. Bilingual signs in Spanish and English might be available in popular tourist destinations. English is understood by many in Mexico City as well as by some tourist workers in popular tourist places, but nevertheless, most Mexicans don't speak English. Educated Mexicans, especially younger ones, and professional businessmen are the people most likely to speak some English. The most popular foreign languages to learn within Mexico after English are French, Italian, German and Japanese. German, French, and Russian may be known by some in the tourism industry, but among clerks, policemen, and drivers (most particularly the last) there is basically no such thing as knowledge of foreign languages. Mexico has one of the richest diversity of languages, with more of 60 indigenous languages spoken within the Mexican territory. These languages are spoken within the communities of these indigenous peoples, who are largely segregated from mainstream mestizo society. In any case, the probabilities of finding a speaker of any of these languages is small, since only half of 20% that comprises Indian population in Mexico speaks indigenous language. On the other hand, most of these communities are fluent in Spanish as well. Therefore learning any of these indigenous languages is not indispensable at all; quite the opposite, unexpected and will gain a lot of respect from these communities. See[ edit ] Popocatépetl's 16th century monasteries are World Heritage Sites There are 32 UNESCO world heritage sites in Mexico, more than anywhere else in the Americas. Most of them are in the cultural category and relate to either the pre-Columbian civilizations in the area or to early cities established by the Spanish conquistadores and missionaries. Much of Mexico is mountainous with some mountains rising higher than 5,000m over the sea level. Canadian $1 ≈ M$16 Exchange rates fluctuate. Current rates for these and other currencies are available from XE.com The currency of Mexico is the peso, denoted in Mexico as "$" (ISO code MXN) and in Wikivoyage as "M$". It is divided into 100 centavos. Prices in US dollars (in tourist areas) are labeled "US$" or sport an S with a double stroke. Coins are issued in 5, 10 (steel), 20, 50 centavo (brass; new 50-centavo coins issued from 2011 on are steel and smaller in size) and 1, 2, 5 (steel ring, brass center), 10, 20, 50, and 100 peso (brass ring, steel or silver center) denominations, but it's extremely rare to find coins valued at more than 10 pesos. Banknotes are produced in 20 pesos (blue), 50 (pink-red), 100 (red), 200 (green), 500 (brown), and 1000 (purple and pink for the latest issue, purple for older issues) denominations. The most recent 20, 50 and 100 peso bills are made from polymer plastic, and there are several different series of all banknotes. Ten-peso notes exist, but are very rare and no longer issued and accepted. "Old" pesos (issued before 1993) are no longer accepted, but are usually collected by numismatists. Merchants may accept US dollars at a lower exchange rate. US dollars are widely accepted in the far north and in tourist locales elsewhere. Other currencies such as the euro, pound sterling, and Swiss franc are generally not accepted by merchants, and even banks headquartered in Europe may refuse to accept euros for exchange. On the other hand, most banks and exchange offices (casas de cambio) will widely accept them. If you arrive from the south and still carry Central American currency around try to exchange them as soon as possible, as outside of the immediate border area not even banks will accept them. As all Central American countries either have the US dollar as their national currency (El Salvador, Panama) or have it circulating to varying degrees as a de facto second currency and virtually all banks in Central America and most banks in Mexico accept US dollars (usually at better rates than any other currency) your best bet is to "triangulate" your money from local currency to dollars and from dollars to pesos rather than exchanging them directly, which can be difficult and expensive. Should you have forgotten to exchange your money and the banks are closed, street money changers (called coyotes or cambistas) don't have fixed opening hours and often have better rates. Be careful however, as they do from time to time rip off foreigners with bogus calculators, wrong rates and counterfeit or outdated (and thus worthless) bills. Banking[ edit ] If you have brought cash in US dollars or euros, the best places to change your money are at an arrival airport (such as MEX and CUN), where many money exchanges are located already in the arrival hall (where you can also compare some exchange rates and choose the most convenient) and, normally, at airports, the exchange rate is usually fair. Be sure to pass through Customs before looking for foreign exchange as inside the customs zone in Cancun the rate is far lower than what the greediest street vendors ask for. If you would like to wait until later to obtain Mexican currency, try not to change at your hotel, as the rates there tend to be extremely disadvantageous for tourists. However, some hotels provide exchanges as a courtesy, in this case it is best to ask just to make sure. Often, you can find money exchanges at strategic places in most touristic destinations and near the hotel (zones). The exchanges rates should not differ drastically from the ones at airport. If you are unfamiliar with Mexican money (bills, coins), try to stick to official foreign exchange booths. In several internationally popular beach destinations like Cancun and Los Cabos, local merchants are accustomed to U.S. dollars and will often accept them as payment (they even have dual-currency cash registers and drawers). However, do bear in mind that the convenience of such “private” money exchange usually comes with a slightly unfavorable exchange rate. Credit and debit cards (with Maestro or MC/VISA affiliation) are widely accepted in Mexico. You can use them at ATMs as well as in most department stores, bigger restaurants, gas stations, but be sure that outside cities you always carry sufficient cash in pesos in your pocket, and generally verify the possibility to pay with card before consumption. Smaller (often family run) businesses often accept only cash. Most of the time, an extra 5% when paying with card is added. Also, you cannot get lower prices if you haggle unless you pay cash. Often, you can pay half or less by acting like you are leaving. While many Pemex stations accept credit cards, especially in locations that have heavy tourist traffic, some do not; travellers who intend to pay by credit card should always ask the attendant if the card is accepted before pumping begins. ATMs are easy to come by. Bank of America customers can avoid ATM fees by using Santander Serfin ATMs. Other banks may have similar policies, check with your respective institution. For example, Banamex bank is owned by Citybank/Citygroup, and Bancomer is owned by BBVA, who is related to Chase in USA. Ask to your bank if they have relation with Mexican banks, and the advantages that such ally can provide. Otherwise, do not be surprised to find yourself with a fee for each withdrawal. ATMs in smaller towns can run out of currency; sometimes this is a regular occurrence. Check with the bank (or locals) about the best time to use the ATM and never wait until the last minute to get cash. Tipping[ edit ] Tipping in Mexico is similar to the United States. It is usually from 10 to 15%. Meals have a 10% to 15% tip (this includes fast food deliveries). This tip is usually left by most people in restaurants, although it is not so common in street restaurants or stands, where the tenders usually have a can or box where people deposit coins. It is generally common to leave a tip on the table after paying and therefore having small change is very useful. In Mexican bars and night clubs it is often seen that they charge directly into the bill the 15% of the total amount (taxes included). That is illegal in most cases because of the imposition of the tip and because they calculate the 15% with taxes included. In large groups, or in nightclubs the barmen expect the customers to deposit their tip in a cup left on the table before serving the drinks so the service they give is in function with the tip they received. It is also customary to give a tip to the person who sometimes guard the car as if they were valet parking; in Mexico these people are often called "viene viene" (literally: "comes, comes") or franeleros and usually people give them M$3-20 depending on the zone, although they sometimes ask for bigger sums of money when the car is left close to a night life area. In medium and large retail stores such as Wal-Mart there are uniformed helpers, usually children or the elderly, who bag the products just after the clerk has scanned them. This role is called cerillo (Spanish for "match"). It is common for these helpers to not have a basic salary, so all the money earned is from the tips people give them. Most customers give M$2-5 depending on the number of products. Cerillos also put the bags in the cart and if the load is large they can even help bringing it to the car and unloading the bags; in these cases, they normally receive more than M$15. Tipping is not expected in cabs or buses, except when it is a tour. In some populated Mexican restaurants wandering musicians enter, play, and expect the customers to pay something, although this is voluntary. In filling stations, the workers usually get M$2-5 for every gasoline load. In stadiums people give a small tip to the person who shows the place where they should sit. Tips are also given to bellboys, barbers and people that work in similar services. Spices for sale at a market in Oaxaca Weights are measured in kilograms. Length is measured in centimeters and meters. For clothes and shoe sizes, the "Continental" measurements are used. Merchants can be picky about the state of your paper money and may scrutinize it and reject anything with rips. Try to keep it in as pristine condition as possible. Reputedly, this is more the case the farther south you go. In any case, you can easily enter a bank with some damaged bill to get it exchanged into another one. Merchants are often reluctant to make change in smaller towns. Try to avoid paying with overly large denominations; the best customer has exact change. In rural areas, your 'change' may consist of chiclets or other small commodities. Merchants, specially those in small markets ("tianguis") and street vendors are no strangers to haggling. Try asking "¿Es lo menos?" ("Is this the smallest price?"), The more rural and less touristic the area you're likely to have more success. Indigenous Art A visit to anywhere in Mexico will give one the opportunity to buy art made in the "old world" manner that reflects the diverse ethnicity of Mexico. Included in these articles would be textiles, wood carvings, paintings and carved masks that are used on sacred dances and burials. Timeshares When visiting the resort cities of Mexico (e.g. Cancun, Puerto Vallarta or similar), it is more than common to be approached on the streets, in bars, in restaurants and anywhere with offers of gifts, free rental cars, free nights, free dinners, free anything that may appeal to you, just for visiting and listening to a presentation to buy a timeshare. Unless you are severely desperate for something to do, you may want to ignore those making the offer and stay away from those free offers. While the properties are very nice, great locations and plenty of amenities, this is not the place to learn about timeshares. Do your homework before even thinking about buying a timeshare, see what the values are in the resale market and understand the rights you are buying as well as the future costs. Collecting on the free offers may be difficult, if not impossible. Automobiles It's certainly worth going over and importing a car back from there, although importing it to the EU/US standards is the hard part. Recommended are the Ford Fusion (like the British Ford Mondeo, but more upmarket) and the Chrysler 200 (the 2.4 model is worth it). Volkswagens can be substantially better-equipped than European or North American counterparts. The Passat sold in Mexico is not the same car as in Europe, and is substantially bigger, however, engines are the same as in Europe, except for the 2.5 petrol. Do[ edit ] Mayan Ruins of Tulum The warm Mexican climate, spectacular nature and long coastline make the country great for outdoor life , especially water sport . See also: Mexican cuisine Mexican cuisine can be described better as a collection of various regional cuisines rather than a standard list of dishes for the whole country. Because of climate, geography and ethnic differences, we can classify Mexican cuisine broadly in 4 great categories according to the region: Northern - Mostly meat dishes done mainly from beef and goat. This includes Cabrito, Carne Asada (Barbecue) and Arrachera. Is influenced by international cuisine (mostly from the United States and Europe), but it retains the essential Mexican flavor. Central - This region is influenced by the rest of the country, but has its own well-developed local flavor in dishes such as Pozole, Menudo and Carnitas. Dishes are mostly corn-based and with different spices. Southeastern - Is known for its spicy vegetable and chicken-based dishes. Caribbean cuisine have influences here because of the location. Coast - Has a strong emphasis on seafood and fish, but corn-based recipes can be easily found as well. Ask for the "platillo tipico" of the town, which is the local speciality that may not be found elsewhere, a variation, or the birthplace of a recipe, also consider that most of the recipes change from place to place, like tamales, in the south are made with the banana plant leaves, and in the Huasteca region tamales are very big (There are called "Zacahuil"), one is OK for a complete family. Traditional Mexican food can often be very spicy; if you are not used to peppers, always ask if your food includes it. "(¿Esto tiene chile? Es picante?)." There are many food carts on the streets of Mexican cities and towns. Travelers are advised to eat from these carts with caution, as hygienic preparation practices are not always reliable. In doing so, you may (or may not) find some of the most unique and genuinely Mexican dishes you've ever had. From these vendors, you may find tacos, burgers, bread, roasted field corn or elote served with mayonnaise, or a light cream, and sprinkled with fresh white cheese, roasted sweet potato called camote, and almost any kind of food and service you would imagine. Chicharrón - Deep fried pork skin. Quite crunchy and if well-prepared slightly oily. Heavenly spread with guacamole. Or sometimes cooked in a mild chili sauce and served with eggs. Enchiladas - Chicken or meat stuffed soft tortillas covered with green, red or mole sauce. Some may have melted cheese inside and/or on top. Tacos - Soft corn tortillas filled with meat (asada (steak strips), pollo (shredded chicken), carnitas (fried shredded pork), lengua (tongue), cabeza (meat from cow skull), sesos (cow brains), tripa (cow gut), or pastor (chili pork beef). In the north sometimes flour tortillas are used. Do not expect the crispy taco shell anywhere. Tamales - corn dough shell with meat or vegetable fillings. Tamales Dulces contain fruit and/or nuts. Tortas - Fancy Mexican sandwich. Bread roll that is grilled lightly, meat fillings are same as tacos, lettuce, tomatoes, jalapeños, beans, onion, mayonnaise and avocado. One is beginning to find tortas with the American styled cold cuts available, as well, in urban areas. Huitlacoche - (wit-la-ko-che) A fungus, much like mushrooms, found in corn. This dish is usually an additive to others. Foreigners might find it hard to stomach but Mexicans swear by it. Although most Mexicans love huitlacoche, most do not prepare it in their own home very frequently. It can be found in most markets or stores. Quesadillas - Cheese or other ingredients grilled in between corn tortillas. Note: heavy on cheese and lighter on other items such as chicken, pork, beans, squash flower blossoms and such. Mole - Mild to medium chili based sauce made with cocoa and a hint of peanut over meat, usually served with shredded chicken or turkey. ('Pollo en mole' and this is known as Puebla or poblano style). There are many regional moles and some are green, yellow, black and can vary greatly in flavor depending on the artistic talent or preferences involved. Pozole - Chicken or pork broth with hominy corn, spiced when served with oregano, lettuce, lemon juice, radish, chopped onion, dried ground chile and other ingredients such as chicken, pork, or even seafood, usually served with a side dish of tostadas, fried potato and fresh cheese tacos. Very fortifying. Gorditas - corn patty stuffed with chicharron, chicken, cheese, etc. topped with cream, cheese and hot sauce. Grillo - Grasshopper, usually cooked and placed inside another dish such as a quesadilla. It is frequently found in markets in the state of Morelos and other central Mexico states. This is not common in Mexico City. Guacamole - crushed avocado sauce with green serrano chile, chopped red tomato and onion, lime juice, salt, and served with somewhat thick (1/8 inch) fried tortilla slices or "totopos". Tostadas - fried flat tortilla topped with fried beans, lettuce, cream, fresh cheese, sliced red tomato and onion, hot sauce, and chicken or other main ingredient. Think a corn chip dippers, on low dose steroids, for salsas and as above. Note that you do not usually get a plate of this automatically in many parts of Mexico as you would in the US, although they are starting to show up in resort areas that cater to US nationals automatically. Huaraches - a bigger (think shoe shaped) version a gordita. Sopes - corn patty topped with a wide variety of ingredients such as chicken, cheese, mashed beans, and various hot sauces. Carnitas - deep fried pork meat served with a variety of salsa", to get them dry with less grease. Chile en nogada - A big green Poblano chile with a beef or pork apple stuffing, covered with a white nut (usually walnut, known as nuez) sauce and sprinkled with pomegranate seeds which happen to be red. The three colors represent the national flag and the dish is served nationwide around Mexican Independence Day 16 September. Barbacoa - Sheep or goat meat cooked with maguey leaves in an oven made at a hole in the ground. Think BBQ heaven without the hickory smoke or catsup based BBQ sauce. Served with condiments and salsas in corn tortilas and sometimes in a torta bread roll. Sopa de Tortilla - tortilla chips soup usually of chicken broth, plain or with a touch of tomato flavor, and usually mild and not at all hot. Commonly served with diced avocado and fresh crumbled white cheese on top. Chilaquiles - tortilla chips with a green tomatillo, or red tomato, or mild chili sauce, usually served with chicken or eggs on top or within. Usually a mild dish. Migas - is a typical dish in the center of the country which is a guajillo chile broth with soaked bread, which you can add the pork bones with meat or eggs. You can measure the quality of food by popularity; do not eat in lonely places, even if they are restaurants or hotels. Consider that Mexicans eat their main meal in the middle of the afternoon (around 3 o'clock), with breakfast or "almuerzo", a mid-morning affair after a very light something, like a small plate of fruit or a roll with coffee, in the very early morning. Although, many Mexicans have large breakfasts in the morning. Later, at night the meal varies from very light, such as commonly sweet rolls or breads, coffee or hot chocolate, to heavy dinner, such as pozole, tacos, and tamales. Schedule your meals accordingly and you will get a better perspective on the gauge of how busy (popular) a restaurant is. Drink[ edit ] Tequila store in Tequila Tap water is potable, but generally not recommended for drinking. Some exaggerated people even claim that tap water is not good for brushing teeth. Hotels usually give guests one (large) bottle of drinking water per room per night. Bottled water is also readily available in supermarkets and at tourist attractions. Absinthe is legal in Mexico. Tequila, distilled from Agave (a specific type of cactus) Pulque, ferment made from Maguey Mezcal, similar to tequila but distilled from Maguey Tepache, made from pineapple Tuba, made from coconut palm tree There are also several Mexican beers, most of which are available outside Mexico, these include Corona (popular, but not necessarily as overwhelmingly popular in Mexico as many foreigners think), Dos Equis (XX) and Modelo Especial. Lighter Mexican beers are often served with lime and salt, though many Mexicans do not drink beer in this fashion. In some places you will find beer served as a prepared drink called "Michelada" or simply "Chelada". The formula varies depending on the place, but it's usually beer mixed with lime juice and various sauces and spices on ice served in a salt rim glass. Other variation called "Cubana" includes Clamato cocktail, soybean sauce, salt and a little bit of hot sauce. Northwestern Mexico, including Baja California and Sonora, also produces wines, and Mexican wine is often quite good, but most Mexicans tend to prefer European or Chilean imports. Champurrado Agua de Jamaica (hibiscus iced tea, similar to karkadai in Egypt) Licuados de fruta (Fruit smoothies and milkshakes) Champurrado (Thick chocolate drink) Refrescos (common sodas, generally sweet and made with cane sugar, not corn syrup as in the United States). The legal drinking age in Mexico is 18, but not strictly enforced. In many places, consumption of alcohol in public ("open container") is illegal and usually punishable by a day in jail. Be aware of waitresses and barmen, especially at night clubs. If you are not aware of your consumption and how much you already spent, they can add a few more drinks to your account. Some do this, not all. Alcoholmeters are widely used in driving roads If drinking, always have a designated driver. Driving under the influence of an alcoholic beverage will result in 1 to 3 days in jail. Mexico, especially the southern state of Chiapas, produces excellent coffee. Café con leche, usually one part coffee to one part steamed milk, is very popular. Unfortunately, many places in Mexico that are not cafés serve Nescafe or other instant coffee - you may have to search for the good coffee, but it's there. Learn[ edit ] Hornos Beach in Acapulco The most important Universities in Mexico include the UNAM, ranked 73rd worldwide, and the best in Latin America. Its main campus is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Murals in the main campus were painted by some of the most recognized artists in Mexican history, such as Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. IPN (Instituto Politécnico Nacional), ITESM (Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, located in Monterrey but with branch campuses in many other Mexican cities) the Iberoamerican University (Universidad Iberoamericana, part of the Jesuit University System) and Universidad Anahuac Chichen Itza, one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world Most of the government-funded universities on mayor cities (state capital) have short courses on history, gastronomy and cultural subjects, most of them are almost free. Other places are the "Casa de la Cultura", (house of culture) that are historical buildings used for cultural related activities (music concerts, theater, paint and other exhibits, they also have "talleres" (workshops). Most places have programs for foreigners to learn Spanish, or even study a whole degree. There are some other courses where you can learn traditional Mexican activities such as handcrafts. The tuition at a public school is rarely over US$200. There are Spanish language schools throughout Mexico. The city with the most schools is Cuernavaca, with more than 50 schools. Oaxaca, San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato also offer a number of schools to choose from. Prices vary; however, most schools are very reasonably priced. Many schools can arrange homestays with local Mexican families. Work[ edit ] Working may require a work visa, which is difficult to get if you just want to freelance for a short time. Many important headquarters are located throughout the main cities of Mexico. Top Mexican corporations such as Televisa, Bimbo, Cemex, Telmex and Vitra are often willing to hire professionals who are native English speakers as much of their business is developed alongside North American corporations. Native English speakers can pick up work as English teachers. The upside is that English speakers with no knowledge of Spanish are sought after, because they will force their students to practice English. The downside is that salaries are somewhat low. Sleep[ edit ] Plaza de liberación and the Cathedral, Guadalajara A number of hotel chains are available throughout Mexico, including Palace Resorts, Le Blanc Spa Resort, Best Western, Holiday Inn, CityExpress, Fiesta Inn, Fairmont, Hilton, Ritz, Camino Real, Starwood (Sheraton, W, Westin, Four Points) and many others. Rates have risen considerably in recent years, though most are still reasonable compared to similar U.S. or European hotels. Chain accommodations are usually clean and comfortable, good for business travelers, but not necessarily for those wanting to experience Mexico itself. Smaller hotels and motels along the roadside may not be safe or comfortable. Boutique hotels are found all over the country; price range varies but all of them are rich in Mexican traditions, elegance and charm, the perfect way to experience the cultural heritage of each state. A great source of information is Melba Levick's book Mexicasa, found in many libraries and online bookstores. There are also many all-inclusive resorts for those visiting the major beach destinations. There is a large backpacker culture in Mexico, and there are many hostels offering dorm accommodation and private rooms. You can expect to pay between M$50 and 150 for a night in a dorm, often including breakfast. Hostels are a fantastic place to share information with fellow travelers, and you can often find people who have been to your future destinations. There are a number of internet sites that allow you to book hostels in advance for a small fee, and this is becoming an increasingly common practice. The most authentic accommodation can usually be found by asking locals or gringos, especially in the smaller towns. If you are unsure about the safety or conditions of the room ask to see it before paying. This will not be considered rude. If you are going to be in cooler areas in the winter consider bringing an electric blanket - as there is power, but no heat in the cheaper hotels. And although it may get quite hot by afternoon outside, adobe and cement are like fridges. An electric tea kettle is also a good idea, hot water might not be available when you want it. If you're traveling with children, use a plastic case (with wheels and a handle) as luggage, and it can be used as a bathtub for the kids if necessary. Budget hotels rarely, if ever, have bathtubs. Stay safe[ edit ] Mounted tourist police, Mexico City United States Since October 3, 2016 the emergency number for the states of Baja California, Coahuila, Colima, Chiapas, Chihuahua, Durango, Guanajuato, Morelos, Nayarit, Nuevo León, Oaxaca, Puebla, Quintana Roo, Sonora, Tlaxcala and Zacatecas is 911. The rest of the country still uses the old emergency number: 066. In January 2017, the whole country will start using 911. In most of the cities, location is very important as security changes from place to place. Areas close to downtown (centro) are safer to walk at night, especially on the "Plaza", "Zócalo" or "Jardín" (main square) and areas nearby. Stay in populated areas, avoid poor neighborhoods, especially at night, and don't walk there at any time if you are alone. Vicious beatings have been reported at resorts by people who have travelled alone, so stay alert for any suspicious-looking individual. If you wish to visit one of the slums, you should only go as part of a guided tour with a reputable guide or tour company. Since 2006 violence related to drug cartels has become an issue; see drug traffic issues below. Political violence in Chiapas and Oaxaca has abated in recent years, and is far less of a threat than drug related crime. However, keep in mind that Mexican authorities do not look approvingly on foreigners who participate in demonstrations (even peaceful ones) or voice support for groups such as the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional and its leader, Subcomandante Marcos, even if their images and slogans are commonly sold on t-shirts and caps in markets. As in any city, do not wave cash or credit cards around. Use them discreetly and put them away as quickly as possible. The Mexican legal system was until recently under Napoleonic code, but if you ever find yourself in trouble with the law in Mexico, the punishments are a lot more severe than in many other countries. Beggars are not usually a threat, but you will find lots in urban areas. Avoid being surrounded by them as some can pickpocket your goods. Giving away two pesos quickly can get you out of such troubles (but may also attract other beggars). Most poor and homeless Mexicans prefer to sell trinkets, gum, sing, or provide some meager service than beg outright. In other cities, such as Guadalajara and Mexico City, are safer than most places in Mexico. However, caution is still recommended. Drug traffic issues[ edit ] States with the most conflict, marked in red (2010) Understand that the country is going through a transitionary period. Past president Felipe Calderon waged war on the drug cartels, and they have waged war in turn against the government (and more often, among each other). Some Mexican northern and border cities such as Tijuana, Nogales, Nuevo Laredo, Chihuahua, Culiacán, Durango, and Juárez can be dangerous if you are not familiar with them, especially at night. Most crime in the northern cities is related to the drug trade and/or police corruption. However, since law enforcement figures are so overwhelmed or involved in the drug business themselves, many northern border towns that were previously somewhat dangerous to begin with are now a hotbed for criminals to act with impunity. Ciudad Juárez, in particular, bears the brunt of this violence, with nearly a fourth of Mexico's overall murders, and travel there requires special attention. Away from the northern states, cartel related violence is centered in specific areas, including the Pacific Coast states of Michoacán and Guerrero. However, exercise caution in any major city, especially at night or in high crime areas. Note that for the most part tourists and travelers are of no interest to the drug cartels. Many popular tourist destinations like Oaxaca, Guanajuato, Los Cabos, Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta, Cancún, Mérida and Guadalajara are largely unaffected by this, simply because there are no borders there. Ciudad Juárez is currently a primary battleground in the drug war, and while foreign travelers are not often targeted here, the presence of two warring cartels, many small opportunistic gangs, and armed police and soldiers has created a chaotic situation to say the least. Although rarely surprising, the drug violence's new victim is Monterrey. The city at one point was crowned the safest city in Latin America, and the hard-working environment and entrepreneurial spirit was what defined the city for most Mexicans. Today, it has been the latest city to fall into the hands of the drug gangs, and deadly shootouts exist even in broad daylight. People have been kidnapped in very high profile hotels, and while the city is still not mirroring Ciudad Juarez, it does not lag far behind. Strangely, Mexico City is the safest city in this issue, and people go there to seek refuge from the border violence because many politicians and the military are there. Consumption of drugs is not recommended while you are in Mexico because although possession of small amounts of all major narcotics has been decriminalized, consumption in public areas will get you a fine and will most likely get you in trouble with the police. The army also sets up random checkpoints throughout all major highways in search of narcotics and weapons. Drug consumption is also frowned upon by a large percentage of the population. Advice for the beach[ edit ] Jellyfish stings: vinegar or mustard on the skin, take some to the beach with you. Stingray stings: water as hot as you can bear - the heat deactivates the poison. Sunburns : Bring sunscreen if going to beaches because you might not find it available in some areas. Riptides: Very dangerous, particularly during and after storms Public transportation[ edit ] When in major cities – especially Mexico City – is better to play it safe with taxis. The best options are to phone a taxi company, request that your hotel or restaurant call a taxi for you or pick up a Taxi from an established post ("Taxi de Sitio"). Also taxis can be stopped in the middle of the street, which is OK for most of the country, but particularly unsafe in Mexico City. As chaotic as it might be sometimes, the subway (Metro) [1] is the best way to move around in Mexico City: it's cheap (5 pesos for a ticket as of May 21, 2014), safe, has a large network covering almost anywhere you'd want to go in the city and it's extremely fast, compared to any on-street transportation, since it doesn't have to bear with the constant traffic jams. If you've never been in a crowded subway, avoid peak hours (usually from 6-9AM and 5-8PM) and do your homework: check first what line (linea) and station (estacion) you want to go to and the address of the place you're trying to reach. Your hotel can give you this information, and maps of the subway system are available on the internet and at the stations. Most stations also have maps of the vicinity. Avoid taking the subway at late hours of the night, but during the day many stations are patrolled by police officers and the subway is safer than taking the public bus, your major concern in the subway are pickpockets; so keep your important belongings and wallets in a safe place. A word of caution for people who are used to European or major American subway systems that operate around the clock: Even in Mexico City the last subway leaves around midnight with service only resuming in the early morning. Taxis are priced accordingly, and you should keep your wits about when moving around during that time. If you are travelling by bus do not put your valuables in your big bag in the storage room of the bus. If the police or the military controls the luggage they might take out what they need. Especially in Night Buses when passengers are most likely asleep. The use of a money belt (worn underneath the clothes and out of sight) is highly recommended. Driving[ edit ] All distances on the signboards and speed limits are in kilometers. Gas is also sold by the liter, not by the gallon, and it's a little bit cheaper than in the United States. If driving in from the USA , always purchase Mexican liability insurance (legal defense coverage recommended) before crossing the border or immediately after crossing. When you are paying for your temporary import permit (for going beyond border areas), often in the same building there are several stalls selling Mexican auto insurance. Even if your American (or Canadian, etc.) insurance covers your vehicle in Mexico, it cannot (by Mexican law) cover liability (i.e. hitting something or injuring someone). You will probably spend time in a Mexican jail if you have an accident without it. And even if your own insurance does (in theory) provide liability coverage in Mexico—you'll be filing your claim from behind bars! Don't risk it, get Mexican auto insurance. Never drive above the speed limit or run stop signs/red lights as Mexican police will use any excuse to pull over tourists and give you a ticket. In some cities you can police can not give you a ticket, but they might warn you. The fine for speeding could be as much as US$100, depending on the city. As of April 2011, Police across the country are cracking down on drunken driving, particularly in Mexico City, the larger cities and the beach resorts. There are random checkpoints throughout the country in which every driver has to stop and take an automated inebriation test. If you fail, you will end up in a Mexican prison. If you wouldn't drive drunk back home, don't do it in Mexico. You will mostly find beggars and windshield cleaners in some red lights; having your windows closed at all times is especially recommendable in some areas of Mexico City. The windshield cleaners will try to clean yours: a strong and firm "NO" is suggested. Stay healthy[ edit ] Some parts of Mexico are known for travelers' diarrhea , often called "Montezuma's Revenge" (Venganza de Moctezuma). The reason for this is not so much the spicy food but the contamination of the water supply in some of the poorer zones in Mexico. In most of the small towns that are less industrialized, only the poorest Mexicans will drink tap water. The best policy is to only drink bottled or purified water, both of which are readily available. Be sure to specify bottled water in restaurants and avoid ice (which is often not made from purified water). Just like in the USA, in most major Mexican cities the water is purified at the cities' water company. In most restaurants in these poor zones, the only water served comes from large jugs of purified water. If you get sick, visit your local clinic as soon as possible. There is medicine available that will counter the bacteria. Medicine in urban areas is highly developed, public hospitals are just as good as public hospitals in US, and just as the American public hospitals, they are always full. It's recommended going to private hospitals for faster service. Before traveling to rural areas of Mexico, it might be a good idea to obtain anti-malarial medications from your health care provider. It is strongly advised that the traveler be sure that any meats they are consuming have been thoroughly cooked due to an increasing rate of roundworm infections, particularly in the Acapulco area. Along with the risk for malaria, mosquitoes have also been known to carry the West Nile virus. Be sure to bring an effective insect repellent, preferably one that contains the ingredient DEET. The rate of AIDS/HIV infection in Mexico is lower than in the US, France and most Latin American nations. However, if you plan on having sex, be sure that you use a latex condom to reduce your risk of contracting or spreading the virus. As with any western location, cases of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome have been reported throughout Mexico. This is an acute, rare (but often fatal) illness for which there is no known cure. The virus is believed to be present in animal feces, particularly feces from members of the rodent family. Therefore, do not wander into animal dens and be especially careful when entering enclosed spaces that are not well ventilated and lack sunlight. Vaccination against Hepatitis A & B and Typhoid fever is recommended. If you are bitten by an animal, assume that the animal was carrying rabies and seek medical attention immediately for treatment. In remote areas, carry a first aid kit, aspirin, and other related items are sold without medical prescription. Respect[ edit ] Mexicans have a somewhat relaxed sense of time so be patient. Arriving 15 minutes late is common. When anyone, even a total stranger, sneezes, you always say "¡salud!" ("bless you!" or more literally, "your health!"): otherwise, it is considered rude. In rural areas, particularly in the Mexican heartland (Jalisco, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, etc.), the even more pious "Jesús te bendiga" (May Jesus bless you) will follow a sneeze. The great majority of the population is and traditionally has been Roman Catholic, and there is still a strong following of this faith among Mexicans from all socioeconomic backgrounds. However, missionary activity from the US has made for a sizable Protestant community, and even the smallest towns seem to have an Evangelical or Pentecostal church. One of the world's largest communities of Jehovah's Witnesses also resides in Mexico. Smaller communities, like Mormons and Jews also live in small concentrated areas throughout the Republic. The irreligious are a small minority compared even to Mexico's Northern and some of its Southern neighbors and they are found mostly among college-educated urban dwellers of the middle and upper middle class. Saying you don't believe in God may simply be shrugged off, or could incite lengthy discussions or even attempts at proselytizing, depending on who you meet. In many respects, Mexico is still a developing country, and attitudes towards LGBT travelers can at times be hostile. However, Mexico City and the State of Coahuila legalized same-sex marriage and the supreme court ruled that these marriages must be recognized by all states in the rest of the republic, thus tacitly making same-sex marriage legal in the whole country (provided the wedding takes place in Mexico City ). Just as it is not wholly accepted in the rural United States or rural Canada , it is not accepted in rural Mexico. But within cities, there is a much more relaxed atmosphere. Southern Mexico City is the best place in terms of tolerance. When entering churches, always take off any sunglasses, caps or hats. Wearing shorts is rarely a problem, but still wear a sweatshirt or sweater to your waist to avoid showing too much skin, which could be disrespectful in such places. However, away from the beaches, or northern areas, shorts are very rarely worn by Mexicans on the street and thus will attract more attention to you and make you stand out as a foreigner. Respect Mexico's laws. Some foreigners feel that Mexico is a place where laws can be broken and the police bribed at all times. Corruption may be common among Mexican police and public figures, but since it is a problem that Mexican society has recently recognized and has been trying hard to fix, when foreign nationals behave in a manner which shows expectancy of this easy bribery, it is considered extremely disrespectful, and so it could be used as excuse for the police to give you "a respect lesson." Remember, offering a bribe to an official could get you into trouble. Like in other countries; politics, economics and history are very delicate issues, yet in México they are also considered good conversation pieces when conversing with foreigners. Just like in Europe, Canada and the US, Mexico's democracy is vibrant and diverse, and people have a variety of opinions. As Mexico only recently became a true viable democracy, however, there is an eagerness on behalf of Mexicans to share their opinions and political ideas with you. Common sense applies like it does in your country: If you don't know enough about Mexico's political landscape, ask as many questions as you like but avoid making any strong statements. Many US citizens (and to a lesser extent other foreigners) make careless mistakes in conversations with Mexicans. Mexicans, while strong and hardy people can be very sensitive people when it comes to their country. Avoid saying anything that will make it seem as if you think Mexico is inferior to your home country. Do not assume that because you are a US citizen, you are an immediate target for kidnapping, since the vast majority of victims are Mexicans. Do not be overly cautious, especially if you have hosts that are taking care of you and know where to go and not to go. It will just insult your host and they will assume you do not respect Mexico or that you do not trust them. Avoid talking about Mexico's flaws. Avoid talking about illegal immigration to the US, the drug trade, or any other contentious issue; Mexicans are well aware of their country's problems and want to forget about them once a while. Instead, talk about the good things of Mexico: the food, the friendly people, the scenery. This will make you a very good friend in a country that can seem menacing to take on by yourself. While overt racism may not be apparent, as a general rule, wealth and social status are historically tied to European ancestry and skin color. Mexican society is sharply divided by social class, with the rich, middle class, and poor often living very separate lives, and can have very distinct cultures. Social practices or tastes of one social group may not be shared by all classes. Clubs, bars, and restaurants may cater largely to one crowd or another, and a wealthier person or tourist may feel out of place or received unwanted attention in a working class cantina; a poor looking person may be blatantly refused service or get unfriendly stares at an exclusive establishment. There are many words in the country according to ethnic background: Do not be offended to be called a "güero(a)" (blonde) and its diminutive form "güerito(a)" (blondie), as its a common way for the average Mexican citizen to refer mostly to Caucasian people, including white Mexicans. The words "gringo" and its synonym "gabacho" are used regardless of the actual nationality of the tourists and should not they be taken as offensive nouns. Actually, they are often used as terms of endearment. If you are East Asian, you will be referred to as "Chino(a)" (Chinese) and its diminutive form "chinito(a)" regardless of whether you are Thai, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Korean, etc. Exceptions are in the capital, Mexicali, and in Monterrey, where a decent-sized Korean community does exist. If you are black, "negro(a)" or "negrito(a)" may seem harsh, especially if you are from the US, but it is not a swear word. Although there are few black people in Mexico in many regions of the country (except in on the east and west coasts in the south), Mexicans, especially the younger generations, are not hateful. In fact, a revolutionary who later became the second president was a man of mixed European and African descent, Vicente Guerrero. Historically, all Middle Easterners were referred to as "turcos" (even if they were from Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, etc.) If you try to use your Spanish to address people be careful about the use of "tú" (informal, friendly, and called tutear; which is a verb, to call someone "tú") and "usted" (formal, respectful) forms. Using "tú" can be demeaning to people, since this is the form normally used for addressing children or close friends. For foreigners, the best way to deal with the "tú" and "usted" problem is to address people using "usted" until invited to say "tú", or until addressed by the first name. Doing so will look perhaps a shade old-fashioned but always respectful, while doing otherwise can be pretty rude and embarrassing in some situations. Always use the "usted" form to a law enforcement officer (or other person of authority), even if he may use the "tú" form to talk to you. Use "usted" unless the person is genuinely your friend, the person is under 16, or the person tells you explicitly to use "tú". People address each other depending on their social status, age and friendship. To refer to a woman always call her "señorita" (Miss) unless you are sure that she is married, then you call her "señora" (Mrs). When talking to an older man use "señor" irrespective of his marital status. If you want to call a waiter address him as "joven" which means "young man". You may call someone by his professional title ("ingeniero", "arquitecto", "doctor", "oficial", etc.). Actually, Mexican people will use the "tú" and "usted", "first name" or "surname" depending on their relationship, and the code is not easy to learn. While the word "güey" is equivalent to "dude" or "mate" among young people, it is still considered extremely vulgar among people older than you. This abrasive term of endearment is used only between people who have achieved a certain level of trust, so avoid using it. In Mexico "estúpido" means far, far worse than "stupid" in English. Due to the highly matriarchal nature of Mexican culture, the combination of words "tu madre" (your mother) is cacophonous and taken offensively by residents, regardless of age or gender. If you must use it, remember to replace it with "su señora madre" at formal situations or the sweeter "tu mamá" at informal ones. Never ever use strong language when talking to a woman. This may refer to male chauvinism, which is falling out of favor, but is still noticed and tolerated in small towns, or cities that receive considerable amounts of rural migrants. It can be defined as a male's strong desire for and skill of the domination and imposition of will, on a wife, sister, or any close female. It can also be identified by a strong desire to prove courage through showy bravado and status through a following of yesmen and henchmen. While it is usually not directed towards visitors, it can be in a variety of strengths. It is best to pretend not to notice it and move on. Another type of machismo, which perhaps stems out of the same desires but does not carry any of the antisocial connotations, is male courteousness towards women. This is manifested in standing up when a lady enters a room, opening or holding a door, conceding preference or rights of way, giving up a seat, offering a hand when stepping down from a steep step, etc. It is generally reserved for older women, or women of great power, merit, and social stature. Rejecting these types of friendly gestures is considered arrogant or rude. Connect[ edit ] You can call from public phones using prepaid tel. cards tarjetas ladatel, bought at magazine stalls. Cards can be purchased in M$30, 50 or 100 denominations. The rate to call the US is roughly equivalent to US$0.50 per minute. Beware these are different than tarjetas amigo, viva, or unefon: they are for cellphones. Some areas have only a few internet cafes; in others, they are plentiful. Common fees vary from M$7 to M$20 per hour. Most of the internet cafes offer calls to the US for a better rate than a payphone, usually via VoIP. If you have an unlocked GSM phone, you can buy a prepaid SIM card in Mexico and have a local mobile phone number for use in cases of emergency. Telcel provides good coverage throughout the country and you can get a SIM card for M$150 with M$75 talk time (send *133# to request available credit). If you have an iPhone, try to get an Iusacell SIM card if you want to use data. You will need your passport to register, and the whole process may take up to an hour. It is often far cheaper than what hotels will charge you and incoming calls may also be free under certain schemes. Mexico operates on the same GSM frequency as the United States, 1900 MHz. There is an Internet wireless connection in almost every restaurant or hotel in the big cities. If you're staying for over a week and don't have an unlocked phone, it might be a good idea to buy a cheap (less than M$200) handset and buy a prepaid card. To Guatemala[ edit ] Over Tenosique, La Palma, by boat on the river Rio San Pedro to Naranja ( Guatemala ). This route is not used by many and still has a touch of adventure. Stay firm when negotiating over the price. Absolutely important! Make sure you get your passport stamped before you leave Naranja or you might catch one of the rare buses back and take a walk through the jungle as the emigrations office is part up the river between the Mexican border and the village. To the United States of America[ edit ] The U.S. generally requires a passport for entry. A few express ID cards and trusted traveler cards are also acceptable. U.S. and Canadian citizens seeking entry or reentry by land or sea may use an Enhanced Driver License in place of a passport. U.S. permanent residents need their permanent resident card and may need the passport from their home country. Foreign nationals entering the United States without a permanent resident stamp, including those on the Visa Waiver Program, typically receive an I-94 Arrival-Departure Record or I-94W Visa Waiver Arrival-Departure Record upon arrival in the United States. So long as the I-94 has not expired, you can use it to reenter the United States with your passport; however, if you hand it in upon exit, you will need to obtain a new card if your visa allows another entry or, if on the Visa Waiver Program, pay a fee of about US$6 to reenter the United States. Unless you are not going to return to the United States, keep your I-94 when leaving the United States of America or you will have a difficult time getting back in, and if your visa is limited to a certain number of entries, you may need to use another entry. Visa Waiver participants cannot reset the 90-day counter unless they leave the Western Hemisphere, so ducking into México will not allow you another 90 days. This country travel guide to Mexico is an outline and may need more content. It has a template , but there is not enough information present. If there are Cities and Other destinations listed, they may not all be at usable status or there may not be a valid regional structure and a "Get in" section describing all of the typical ways to get here. Please plunge forward and help it grow !	i don't know
The Mexican War of Independence 1810-1821 ended colonial rule by which nation, since 1521?	Struggle for Mexican Independence - Mexico - HISTORY.com Struggle for Mexican Independence A+E Networks Introduction On September 16, 1810, a progressive priest named Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla became the father of Mexican independence with a historic proclamation urging his fellow Mexicans to take up arms against the Spanish government. Known as the “Grito de Dolores,” Hidalgo’s declaration launched a decade-long struggle that ended 300 years of colonial rule, established an independent Mexico and helped cultivate a unique Mexican identity. Its anniversary is now celebrated as the country’s birthday. Google Background The land that is now Mexico fell into Spanish hands in August 1521 when Hernán Cortés and his army of conquistadors toppled the Aztec empire, ushering in three centuries of colonial rule and importing new diseases that decimated once-flourishing native populations. Under orders from the Spanish king, Charles V, Cortés founded a capital city—Ciudad de Mexico—on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, and a series of viceroys took command of the territory, which was dubbed New Spain. Did You Know? Despite his traditional education for the priesthood, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla rejected or questioned many of Catholicism’s most fundamental tenets, including the Virgin birth, clerical celibacy and the existence of hell. The earliest revolt against the Spanish colonial government was led by Martín Cortés, the illegitimate son of Hernán Cortés and his translator, a Mayan-born woman known as La Malinche. In the years leading up to the Mexican War of Independence, most plots to end Spanish rule were devised by Mexican-born Spaniards, or criollos, who ranked below native Europeans within Mexico’s highly stratified caste system. The criollos’ approach largely excluded indigenous Mexicans and mestizos—people of mixed ancestry like Martín Cortés—who were often deprived of the most basic political and civil rights. Mexican War of Independence Napoleon’s invasion and occupation of Spain from 1808 to 1813 heightened the revolutionary fervor in Mexico and other Spanish colonies. On September 16, 1810, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a respected Catholic priest (and an unconventional one, given his rejection of celibacy and love of gambling) issued a passionate rallying cry known as the “Grito de Dolores” (“Cry of Dolores”) that amounted to a declaration of war against the colonial government. So named because it was publicly read in the town of Dolores, the Grito called for the end of Spanish rule in Mexico, the redistribution of land and a concept that the criollos’ earlier plans had deliberately omitted: racial equality. Though a criollo himself, Hidalgo extended his call to arms to mestizos and people of indigenous descent; their significant contribution of manpower changed the tenor of the revolt. Hidalgo led his growing militia from village to village en route to Mexico City, leaving in their wake a bloodbath that he later came to deeply regret. Defeated at Calderón in January 1811, Hidalgo fled north but was captured and executed by firing squad in Chihuahua . Others took the helm of the rebellion, including José María Morelos y Pavón, Mariano Matamoros and Vicente Guerrero , who all led armies of indigenous and racially mixed revolutionaries against the Spanish royalists. Known as the Mexican War Of Independence, the conflict dragged on until 1821, when the Treaty of Córdoba established Mexico as an independent constitutional monarchy under Agustín de Iturbide. Just 18 months later, the republican insurgents Antonio López de Santa Anna and Guadalupe Victoria ousted the emperor and established the first Mexican Republic. Celebrating Mexican Independence Although September 16, 1810, marked the beginning of Mexico’s struggle for independence rather than its ultimate achievement, the anniversary of the Grito de Dolores has been a day of celebration across Mexico since the late 19th century. The holiday begins on the evening of September 15 with a symbolic reenactment of Hidalgo’s historic proclamation by the president of the republic and the governor of each state. The next day, typical activities include parades, bullfights, rodeos and traditional dancing. In 2010, the festivities included a special—if somewhat macabre—feature: In honor of the country’s bicentennial, the remains of 12 men who fought for Mexican independence—including Hidalgo, Morelos, Matamoros and Guerrero—were exhumed in a military ceremony led by President Felipe Calderón. Many non-Mexicans, particularly in the United States, often mistake the Cinco de Mayo holiday for a celebration of Mexican independence; instead, it commemorates the Mexican army’s 1862 victory over France at the Battle of Puebla during the French-Mexican War. Tags	Spain
Bolsa Mexicana de Valores is the Mexican?	Chieftains of Mexican Independence Coahuila y Tejas-Index \| Mexican Independence Chieftains of Mexican Independence "The Salvation of our country....do you hesitate to say that it is the purest of all causes?"--Vicente Guerrero Coahuila y Texas Under President Vicente Guerrero (From Vicente Guerrero: Mexican Liberator: A Study in Patriotism by William Forrest Sprague) The removal of President Guerrero and his later capture and execution was a very important early event in the destruction of the dream for independence of the state of Texas and other northern Mexican states within a democratic and Federalist Republic of Mexico. Anti-centralist Texas and the northern border states promised to be the shining star examples for Mexico to become the second democratic and multi-cultural republic on the American continent based on libertarian principles initiated by revolutionary American Creole chieftains. President Guerrero's death was the beginning of the destruction of hope for a democratic Republic of Mexico in the 19th century. It paved the way for the return to viceregalism and domination by racist, self-serving and corrupt Creole dictators who controlled the country through most of the period and held back the development of the Mexican people to well into the 20th century-- WLM 1. THE FEDERAL TARIFF AND COLONIZATION LAWS Although Guerrero served in the revolutionary armies during the entire period of the struggle for independence, 1810-1821, none of his campaigns were in or near the province of Texas. When Moses Austin arrived in San Antonio in December, 1820, for the purpose of securing a grant of land, Guerrero was about to engage in his decisive struggle with Iturbide. At the date of the approval of the senior Austin's petition by the Spanish authorities, January 17, 1821, Iturbide had come to the conclusion that he could not defeat Guerrero and had entered into negotiations with the independent leader. These resulted in Guerrero embracing a proposal of Iturbide for the separation of Mexico from Spain, known as the Plan de Iguala . Moses Austin died on June 10, 1821, and while his son, Stephen Fuller Austin, proceeded at once to carry out the provisions of the grant and later brought in the specified three hundred families, the overthrow of the viceregal government in September of the same year rendered the validity of the grant questionable. Austin was therefore obliged to spend many months in Mexico City in order to prevail upon the officials of Iturbide to confirm his concession. The colonization law passed by the junta instituyente was promulgated on January 4, 1823, and Austin's grant was confirmed by an imperial decree of February 18 of the same year. By that date, however, Guerrero, Bravo, Santa Anna, Ech�varri, and other military leaders had deserted Iturbide, and Austin saw that another change in government was imminent. He waited until the poder ejecutivo had replaced the imperial regime of Iturbide, and then succeeded in having his cedula confirmed by the new executive board on April 14, 1823. Guerrero became one of the alternates of the poder ejecutivo on July 3, 1823, and since the leadership of that body rotated, he was the president at the time when the law exempting Texas from the payment of tariff duties on imports for seven years was promulgated. The following is a translation of the decree: The sovereign congress, taking into consideration the pitiful and deplorable state to which the hostilities of the barbarians have reduced the province of Texas, and in order to obviate in part the misery of the civilized inhabitants, has decided to declare that all goods of whatever class, national or foreign, that enter the province of Texas for consumption of the inhabitants, shall be free from duty for a period of seven years, dating from its publication in that capital. Therefore, we order the tribunals, justices, chiefs, and other authorities, civil, military and ecclesiastical, of every class and dignity, that they observe and have observed, comply, and execute this decree in all its parts. Have it understood and arrange for its printing, publication, and circulation. Mexico City, September 30, 1823. Vicente Guerrero, President Jos� Mariano de Michelena Miguel Dominguez. Austin petitioned the poder ejecutivo on October 1 of the same year for an additional cession of land to enable him to bring three hundred more families into Texas. He sent with this letter a statement explaining and qualifying his request. Nevertheless, the constituent congress had granted statehood to the formerly separated provinces of Coahuila and Texas on May 7, 1824. According to the federal colonization law, therefore, the request was one for the new state of Coahuila y Texas to consider. Whether the petition reached Mexico City before the poder ejecutivo had been succeeded by President Victoria, is not known. But Guerrero, acting for the plural executive, sent a copy of the request and explanatory statement of Austin to the authorities at Satillo, the capital of Coahuila y Texas. This was probably Guerrero's last official act concerning Texas while he was a member of the poder ejecutivo, Guadalupe Victoria became the chief executive of Mexico on October 10, 1824, and Guerrero had no further official contact with Texas until he in turn became the president of the republic on April 1, 1829. 2. GUERRERO AND THE ATTEMPTS OF THE UNITED STATES TO BUY TEXAS Perhaps no Mexican was more concerned over the desires of many Americans to acquire Texas than was Mr. H. G. Ward, the first British envoy to Mexico. He insisted that the United States government had attempted to obtain the cession of the province from both Iturbide and Victoria. When it was known that Guerrero would succeed the latter, Ward remarked: "It is a matter of conjecture whether Guerrero will resist the temptation as his predecessors have done." The Englishman also stated that since Mexico could secure no more sums in Great Britain, her sole recourse would be to pledge Texas for a loan in the United States. Guerrero had been a member of the poder ejecutivo less than seven months when he was afforded an opportunity to become acquainted with the ambition of his country's northern neighbor to acquire the province of Texas. Jos� Anastasio Torrens, representative of the Mexican government in Washington, reported on January 26, 1824, that the desire of the United States to obtain Texas was "without limits." After John Quincy Adams became president on March 4, 1825, members of the Mexican congress and other prominent citizens had still graver apprehension regarding the designs of the Anglo-Americans, since it was known that both the president and his secretary of state, Henry Clay, desired to annex Texas. The American slave-holding interests saw in Texas an opportunity to maintain the "balance of power," while homeseekers and land speculators looked upon the region between the Sabine River and the Rio Grande as an unrivaled field for their operations. Officials of the United States, however, offered these more urgent reasons for their desire to secure Texas: (1) The region would provide protection from the savage tribes of Indians for New Orleans and the Mississippi Valley. (2) Land was needed on which to settle the Indians that must be moved from the eastern states. (3) The desirability of a natural boundary. It is evident that Poinsett hoped to be able to secure the purchase of Texas through his friendship with Zavala and Guerrero. Having heard that Zavala refused the appointment as minister to the United States, Poinsett wrote to Clay: "I was not sorry that he declined it; he is one of the most efficient leaders of the party friendly to the United States, the Yorkinos, and is more useful here than he would be in Washington." In the same communication, Poinsett also made these interesting comments on Guerrero: ......A man who is held up as ostensible head of the party, and who will be their candidate for the next presidency, is General Guerrero, one of the most distinguished chiefs of the revolution. Guerrero is uneducated, but possesses excellent natural talents, combined with great decision of character and undaunted courage. His violent temper renders him difficult to control, and therefore I consider Zavala's presence here indispensably necessary, as he possesses great influence over the general. The United States had relinquished its rather dubious claim to Texas when it concluded the treaty with Spain in 1819. Nevertheless, since no boundary treaty had been concluded with Mexico, Poinsett, in 1827, was instructed to request the Mexican government to accept the Rio Grande, or some other line south of the Sabine River, as the frontier. For this concession, he was authorized to offer one million dollars. But rumors stating the United States had tendered much larger sums for the coveted area had been deeply resented by Mexicans generally; therefore Poinsett did not consider it wise to mention the actual proposal to the officials at Mexico City. Early in 1828 Poinsett reached the conclusion that he could make no progress toward concluding a commercial treaty with Mexico as long as he attempted to secure Texas for the United States. He therefore signed a boundary agreement on January 12, 1828, covenanting to accept the line of 1819. This obstacle removed, the commercial pact was concluded on the following February 14. Both treaties reached Washington on April 21, and soon received the ratification of the United States senate. But the Mexican senate refused to hasten their approval of the two agreements; they were still unratified when Guerrero became president. Poinsett remarked that: "They will delay the dispatch as long as they possibly can, both in the expectation of creating an unfriendly feeling between the two countries, and of wearing out my patience." The envoy reported to Van Buren on July 15, 1829 that Guerrero "told me a few days ago that he was determined the plans of these men should not prevail." In the same letter Poinsett declared Guerrero desired to call a special session of congress, and one of his objects was the ratification of the treaty of commerce and navigation. He called the houses together on August 4, 1829, but the national emergency resulting from the Spanish invasion precluded any opportunity to consider the approval of the treaties with the United States. At about this time, President Jackson decided to attempt the acquisition of Texas. Outlining for Van Buren the instructions for Poinsett, Jackson expressed a willingness to pay five million dollars for the region of Texas to the "great prarrarie or desert." He desired to emphasize these reasons why the Mexican government should consent to sell Texas: The new boundary would be a natural one, the proceeds from the sale would help finance a defense against the Spaniards, possibilities of strife between citizens of the United States and Mexico would end, the problem of governing Texas would be removed, and finally, by agreeing to the proposal, Mexico could be "worthy of that reciprocal spirit of friendship which should forever characterize the feelings of the two governments toward each other." Jackson must have been aware of the hostility of public sentiment in Mexico toward the proposed cession of Texas; likewise that any prudent government must necessarily act with deference for the wishes of the rank and file of its citizenry. A request for the transfer of Texas as a favor and as a means of promoting future amicable relations seems little short of startling. Jackson's petition, however, was not destined for presentment to the Guerrero administration. Poinsett's instructions from Van Buren, dated August 25, 1829, were to be taken to the Mexican capital by Jackson's friend, Colonel Anthony Butler. When Poinsett was recalled, Butler was directed to proceed to Mexico as his successor. Nevertheless, if the legation of the United States in Mexico City knew of Jackson's overture prior to the collapse of the Guerrero administration on December 23, 1829, it refrained from presenting it. The issue of El Sol on January 9, 1830 contained this article: A few days before the departure of Mr. Poinsett from this capital, the American Colonel Butler arrived here, commissioned, it is said, by the government of Washington, to negotiate with ours for the cession of the province of Texas for five million dollars. Since we are not informed so far that the colonel has made any overtures on the subject, we presume that he does the new administration the justice to suppose it incapable of lending itself to a transaction as prejudicial and degrading to the republic, as it would be disgraceful to the minister who would subscribe to it. It may be said with virtual certainty, therefore, that Guerrero was not obliged to consider any plan for the relinquishment of Texas during his tenure in office. But the paper of Carlos Mar�a Bustamante, Voz de la Patria, charged Zavala, Guerrero's treasury minister, had considered requesting a loan from the United States for which Texas would be pledged as security. It was also asserted Guerrero planned to sell Texas to the United States for twelve million pesos, but Zavala denied that Guerrero ever entertained such an intention. Because Guerrero accepted the friendship of Poinsett, some of his compatriots assumed his willingness to cede a part of the Mexican national domain. In other words, the revolutionary hero might be said to have been the victim of American aggression. Bocanegra, whom there is every reason to regard as a reliable source, joined Zavala in refuting the allegation. Nor did the writer find among the personal papers of Mexico's second president, the slightest evidence that he had ventured to alienate any part of the country for whose freedom he fought the Spaniards for eleven years. 3. TEXAS AND THE ELECTION OF 1828 Since Austin's civil and military powers terminated on February 1, 1828, the outcome of the federalist-centralist controversy was certain to affect the future of the Anglo-American settlements. Under a federal regime, the colonists had more reason to hope for the continuation of the right to mold their local institutions after those they had known in the United States. It is not surprising, therefore, that the masonic lodge with federalist affiliations, the yorkinos, should obtain a foothold among the colonists. Austin assisted in the formation of a York Rite lodge at San Felipe in February, 1828. While the Texans were too far from Mexico City to permit their hearing all the campaign arguments, sentiment for Guerrero among them was strong. The legislature of Coahuila y Texas voted unanimously for Guerrero, and the candidate whom he had recommended as his running mate, Anastasio Bustamante . Austin received a brief account of the Acordada revolution, the flight of Gomez Pedraza, and the appointment of Guerrero as minister of war and marine from a letter of J. Antonio Padilla. Evidence as to the reaction of the people of Texas toward the revolution of the Acordada is conflicting. An editorial in the Texas Gazette, written by Austin, reads as follows: It is notorious and publicly known to everyone who knows anything about the new settlers in Texas that they unanimously disapproved of the anticonstitutional and violent measures at the Acordada and the acts of a similar nature in 1828, because they were unconstitutional . . . On the other hand, Austin manifested no disapproval of the acts of Guerrero's partisans when he wrote: The difficulties in Mexico are all settled. Guerrero is the President and Bustamante the vice president. Pedrasa's election was set aside by congress in the manner prescribed by the constitution on the ground of fraud and corruption . . . While some interest in the election of 1828 was displayed by the Anglo-American settlers in Texas, it does not appear that the enthusiasm for either aspirant was intense. Most of the new residents were making an effort to become established in the country of their adoption, and were unacquainted with the personality of either Guerrero or Gomez Pedraza. Nevertheless, the years during which the successful candidate was to serve constituted a very important epoch in the history of Texas. 4. TEXAS AND THE GUERRERO REGIME TO SEPTEMBER 15, 1829 Since most of the clergy had opposed the election of Guerrero, Austin hoped that his administration would not be adverse to the adoption of a more liberal religious code for Texas, including permission to conduct family and neighborhood worship. The colonization grants stated that the settlers should embrace the Catholic faith. Guerrero's address to the country upon assuming the presidency, however, offered the Texans little hope for his countenancing such a change. In regard to religion he said: ...... The vow of fidelity to our native land which I now renew is meant to sustain the fundamental bases of the Constitution of 1824. One of these is the holy religion of Jesus Christ, which the nation professes, condemning fanaticism the same time that it does unbelief. Guerrero's friend, Lorenzo de Zavala, obtained a grant of land in East Texas on March 6, 1829, on which he contracted to settle five hundred families. His entry into the Guerrero cabinet prevented him from giving the colonization project his immediate attention, but the merciless criticism to which he was subjected while serving as minister of hacienda, the cold reception accorded him during the visit to his native state of Yucatan in December, 1829, and the persecution suffered after the overthrow of the Guerrero administration were doubtless among the factors that caused him to decide to cast his lot with the people of Texas. Among Austin's activities was mapmaking, and in July, 1829, he sent President Guerrero a map of Texas through Minister of Hacienda Zavala. The following is a part of his letter to the cabinet officer: ...... I do this service to my adopted country with the desire of fulfilling my duty as a citizen and if by chance His Excellency the President sees fit to have the map engraved and published, I cede to the national Government all rights to the map which according to the law belong to me as the author. I inform you of this and ask that you kindly bring it to the attention of His Excellency the President. I ask that you permit me to take advantage of the occasion to present to His Excellency the President, and to you, my most profound respect and consideration ....... The map apparently was never published by the Mexican government at this time, one explanation being that when it reached Mexico City, the attention of Guerrero was engrossed with the landing of the Spanish expedition. When the governor of Coahuila y Texas received the news of the presence of Spanish forces in the country, he ordered the militia of the state to prepare for a defense. Austin received the order through the departmental chief at San Antonio, and the measures taken by him are set forth in this letter: You will perceive by the enclosed printed proclamation of his Excellency, the Governor, and the official letter of the Chief of Department, that the inveterate enemy of our republic has landed on the coast of Tamaulipas and that the Governor has ordered that the militia of the state should be placed in the best possible state for active operations. In cumlyance with this order, I have directed the Captains to muster their respective companies with the least possible delay and inspect them and return to the first adjutant a full statement of their force, arms, etc. When the Mexican congress gave Guerrero dictatorial powers, the Texans disapproved of the act, according to the following part of an editorial in the Texas Gazette: ........ They (the people of Texas) disapproved of the extraordinary powers given to President Guerrero because they were unconstitutional and an usurpation of power in Congress to give him or any other man such facilities . . . they disapproved of the use made of those extra powers because unconstitutional acts were done under the pretense of this authority.... The people of Texas probably objected to the granting of extraordinary powers to Guerrero because the conflict with the Spaniards proved to be of such brief duration that emergency measures hardly seemed to have been necessary. The majority of the colonists, furthermore, were from the United States, where there was still much sentiment against acquisition of more power by any branch of the central government. Under the Constitution of 1824 the state of Coahuila y Texas enjoyed approximately the same powers as possessed by the states of the Anglo-American republic; these the newcomers were determined to retain. But the most important reason why the people of Texas objected to Guerrero's possession of war powers was that one of his decrees in exercise of this facility threatened them for a time with economic ruin by depriving the planters of their slave labor. 5. GUERRERO'S EDICT ABOLISHING SLAVERY By the autumn of 1829 the free population of Texas was approximately twenty thousand, while the slaves numbered eleven hundred. Many Mexicans feared results unfavorable to them from the steady migration of Anglo-Americans into Texas. Among those apprehensive of the movement was Jos� Mar�a Tornel. He was confident that it could be checked by emancipating the slaves who made possible the production of valuable crops. During the past three years Tornel had made several unsuccessful attempts to have the federal congress pass a law abolishing slavery. Seeing in the chief executive's war powers an opportunity to obtain the desired decree, he drew up the following document and secured for it the signature of the liberal and easily-convinced Guerrero: The President of the United States of Mexico, know ye: That desiring to celebrate in the year of 1829 the anniversary of our independence with an act of justice and national beneficence, which might result in the benefit and support of a good, so highly to be appreciated, which might cement more and more the public tranquility, which might reinstate an unfortunate part of its inhabitants in the sacred rights which nature gave them, and which the nation protects by wise and just laws, in conformance with the 30th article of the constitutive act, in which the use of extraordinary powers are ceded to me, I have thought it proper to decree: 1st. Slavery is abolished in the republic. 2nd. Consequently, those who have been until now considered slaves are free. 3rd. When the circumstances of the treasury may permit, the owners of the slaves will be indemnified in the mode that the laws may provide. And in order that every part of this decree may be fully complied with, let it be printed, published, and circulated. Given at the Federal Palace of Mexico, the 15th of September, 1829. Vicente Guerrero To Jos� Mar�a Bocanegra The number of slaves in Mexico outside of Texas was negligible; hence, only in Texas would emancipation present an economic problem. A copy of the proclamation reached San Antonio on October 16. The departmental chief, Ramon Musquiz, withheld its publication and wrote to the governor of the state and asked that he request the exemption of Texas from the provisions of the edict. He emphasized the fact that the colonization laws had guaranteed the property rights of the immigrants and that the slaves had been considered such before entering Mexico. He also wrote a letter to Austin in which he notified him of the decree and requested his keeping the matter secret for a time. Nevertheless, the news of Guerrero's proclamation reached the alcalde of Nacogdoches. The local military commander, Colonel Piedras, wrote to his superior officer in San Antonio that he had been questioned by many people who wished to know if the rumor was authentic. The excited attitude of the people is well illustrated by this letter which Austin received: Dear Sir: We have received by the last mail a Decree Given by the executive of our Government Liberating all the Slaves in its territory. I have so farr succeeded with the cival and Military othorities to suspend its publication and expose to the Governor the evil arrising from such law should it have effect. You no doubt have it before this and I doubt nott that you have taken Measures to Surpress it, in the Name of God, what Shall we do? For God's sake advise me on the subject by the return of mail. We are ruined for ever Should this measure be adopted. Yours, John Durst. Austin replied that the people should remind the government of the property guarantee in the colonization laws and of the fact that the state constitution expressly recognized the right of property in slaves. He predicted that the people would "defend it (the constitution) and with it their property." Thus the well-intentioned Guerrero provoked what was probably the first serious threat of revolt among the Anglo-American colonists of Texas. In the meantime, the governor of Coahuila y Texas, Jos� Mar�a Viesca, acted upon the request of Musquiz and sent a letter to Mexico City asking that Texas be exempted from the decree of abolition. He said the petition would have been made even if the political chief had not requested it, since the development of the state depended in a large measure on Texas. He also expressed fear that the publication of the law would result in disturbances that the state could not well withstand. The governor was a brother of Guerrero's minister of relations, Agustin Viesca. The latter obtained from Guerrero on December 2 gave the authority to allow the edict of emancipation to be inoperative in Texas. The text of the letter of the minister of relations illustrates the benevolent attitude of the Guerrero administration toward Texas: Most Excellent Sir: His Excellency the President has been informed of the note of Your Excellency, No. 126 of the 14th of last month manifesting conformity with the exposition of the chief of Texas, which you forwarded. The serious inconvenience apprehended by the execution of the decree of the 15th of September last, on the subject of abolition of slavery in that department and the fatal results to be expected, prejudicial to the tranquility and even to the political existence of the state, and having considered how necessary it is to protect in an efficacious manner the colonization of these immense lands of the republic, he has been pleased to accede to the solicitation of Your Excellency and declare the department of Texas excepted from the general disposition comprehended in said decree. Austin was notified by Musquiz that the Texans might retain their slaves, and at about the same time he received similar advice from Jos� Manuel Mier y Terain, the commandant general. Since this letter was dated November 20, twelve days earlier than the communication of the minister of relations to Governor Viesca, it appears that Guerrero may have learned from a source other than the governor that the decree had caused anxiety and agitation in Texas, and thought news of the revision could reach the settlements more quickly through the military authorities. In his reply to Mier y Terain, Austin said: "I have the satisfaction to inform you that there was never the slightest break in the good order of this colony on account of the decree of September 15, because these inhabitants have placed the most blind confidence in the justice and good faith of the government.... A letter of Austin to his brother-in-law reveals the goodwill which he felt toward the Mexican administration of Texas up to that time. He said: This is the most munificent government on earth to the emigrants---after being here one year you will oppose a change to Uncle Sam.... Probably for fear that publication of Guerrero's decree would cause restlessness among the slaves, the newspapers of New Orleans did not print it. Translated copies, however, did appear in many of the journals of the border states, the Northeast, and Middlewest---just at the time William Lloyd Garrison was starting his campaign for immediate emancipation of the slaves of the United States. Guerrero's proclamation, however, provided for eventual compensation to the former owners, while the famous Thirteenth Amendment to the American constitution and the Brazilian law of emancipation did not. The manifesto to end slavery is hardly an indication of Guerrero's desire to thrust a hardship upon the Anglo-American planters of Texas. The slaves to whom he conceived of according liberty were doubtless those whose servitude dated from the colonial period. The grant of freedom to this small group can well be considered the attainment of Guerrero's goal to "perfect the work of liberation." 6. THE EFFECT OF GUERRERO'S DEPOSITION UPON THE HISTORY OF TEXAS By the time that the Texans received news that their holdings in slaves were secure as far as the Mexican government was concerned, the regime of Guerrero had passed into history. Austin's newspaper, commenting on his fall from power, said: We have for our readers today translations of some further documents relative to the events in the capital of the country, and while we deeply deplore the necessity which existed for a check to the misguided proceedings of the Administration, we are happy to find that there exist patriots who, by their vigilance and firmness, are the safeguards of the Constitution. That one so eminently distinguished for his patriotism and who had made so many sacrifices for his country as General Guerrero should have been misled, we sincerely regret...... A later editorial said: ......They (the people of Texas) unanimously approved of the Plan de Jalapa and hailed it as a beam of salvation to rescue the nation from the impending horrors of anarchy and civil War. The news that reached Texas concerning the movements of Guerrero after he left office were almost entirely from sources that favored the party in power, as the following will indicate: "Guerrero is making large offers of advancement to such as will join him, but they are only accepted by a few robbers and fugitives." Equally demonstrative of the prejudicial character of the news received about Guerrero, is this longer article: We have received regular files of the Registro oficial up to the 22d of September. The general aspect of political affairs in Mexico is favorable and is evidently improving daily. The Guerrero party as a party seems to have ceased to exist. In the direction of Acapulco there is still some confusion and that section of the country appears to be suffering severely from the robberies of detached and irregular bands. Considering that such communications were forthcoming, it could not be expected that the people of Texas would lament the execution of the former president. Subsequent events, however, proved not only that the immigrants had lost a friend when Guerrero passed from the political scene, but also that an epoch in the history of the settlements had closed. From the confirmation of Austin's grant by the poder ejecutivo on April 14, 1823 to the overthrow of Guerrero, the government was controlled by veterans of the first period of the struggle for independence. Of those who served in the executive triumvirate of the provisional government, only Negrete had not aided the cause of independence before the announcement of the Plan de Iguala. Then followed the administrations of Victoria and Guerrero, both liberal, both federalists, and both irreconcilable foes of the viceroys. Their non-aggressive policy afforded the colonists ample opportunity for progress and self-assertion. When rumors of a revolt in Texas reached Kentucky in 1827, the editor of the Maysville Eagle declared [issue of February 28, 1827] that such a movement deserved little sympathy, because of the hospitality of the Mexicans. Had such a policy been extended, the majority of the Texans might never have sought independence. On the other hand, the generals who controlled Mexico for the six years following the downfall of Guerrero--Bustamante and later Santa Anna--were veterans of the viceregal army. Their rule clearly indicated a desire for a centralized form of government and the rescission of many of the inducements proffered to expedite the peopling of the fertile expanse in the northeastern section of the country. The removal of Guerrero, therefore, was a very important event in the history of Texas. The Capture and Execution of Vicente Guerrero The New Year's season [1831] witnessed two defeats for the troops opposing the [Bustamente] government. Codallos moved against Morelia late in December, but was turned back by the followers of Ignacio Incl�n at the Hacienda de Loma on the 30th. Two pieces of artillery, powder, and arms were captured by the soldiers of the government. The army of Guerrero and Alvarez took positions between Chilpancingo and Tixtla in a group of hills known as "El Molino" on December 29. A battle with the better equipped and organized forces of Bravo began on the night of January 1, and lasted through a part of the following day. The first attack of the government army was repulsed, but following the second charge, the insurgents fled in disorder. In his report of the engagement, Bravo paid this tribute to the efforts of his friend of other years: "Their resistance was admirable, they struggled with valor; at the end of four hours the result was still indecisive....." For some time following the encounter, rumors were persistent that Guerrero had met death in the struggle. Zavala remained in Texca for several days, making these entries in his journal: During the first day (January 6) I awaited news of the fate of Se�or Guerrero. On the second (January 7) at five o'clock in the afternoon I saw approaching the house where I was lodging, a man dressed in wellworn blue trousers, a mulberry-colored cotton shirt, and a very old straw hat. He was mounted on a very thin brown mule; upon approaching he smilingly called me by name, and then I recognized him as General Guerrero. He told me something of the way in which he had escaped death. Eleven years of fighting the armies of Spain had taught Guerrero to become very proficient in the art of making his escape after a serious defeat. But the battle of Chilpancingo, proved to be the last in which he demonstrated that skill; his enemies had devised a plot for his capture. He prepared to return to Acapulco, in spite of his friends' warnings that enemies there planned his destruction. He spent the 8th resting at Texca, and completed arrangements whereby Zavala would accompany his party to Acapulco. The group left Texca on January 9, arriving at the Pacific port two days later. There Guerrero conferred with Zavala and Primo Tapia, the deputy from the national congress who had come to seek a peace formula. Guerrero stated his terms for a settlement, and in the course of the negotiations, Tapia obtained three or four "blank signatures" from Guerrero. These were later used in the framing of his prosecution. Guerrero later informed Zavala that he had made arrangements with Picaluga whereby he could board the Colombo for the first part of the return journey to Jalisco. Zavala accepted the proposed itinerary, and the captain, with feigned graciousness, told the peace commissioner he would neither "demand nor accept" compensation for the passage. Since there was no suitable sailing wind on either the 12th or 13th, departure was postponed, but on the following day favorable conditions led to preparations for the sailing of the Colombo. That morning (January 14) Guerrero made the following statement to Zavala: "We shall not say farewell yet, because my friend Don Francisco Picaluga has invited me to take dinner on board, and in order to have the pleasure of accompanying the two Manuels, I have accepted." The party, including Guerrero, Zavala, Tapia, and Miguel de la Cruz, collector of the port of Acapulco, went out to the vessel in a small boat. As the general boarded the ship, Picaluga ordered its crew to fire the ship's guns as a salute in his honor. It was the last such mark of respect paid to the hero of the revolution during his lifetime. The Guerrero who had been alert to perceive treacherous moves by his avowed enemies, while remaining blindly trustful of those who appeared to be his friends, had at last walked into a trap. At twelve o'clock noon, rations of brandy were allotted to the crew, including the boatswain and pilot, and they retired to the hold for their mess. One hour later the captain served dinner to Guerrero and his aides, Tapia, Zavala, De la Cruz, and to Faccini, the ship's mate. A very quiet atmosphere prevailed during the meal, the captain had not as yet given any indication of hostility toward the former president. At about three o'clock Picaluga proposed that, following their coffee, the entire party go on deck for fresh air. Guerrero acquiesced, and the group left the cabin. When Guerrero spoke of taking leave, the captain took no cognizance of his statement, but mentioned raising the other prow anchor. Finally Guerrero and De la Cruz determined to depart, and the rowers started down for the small boat of the customs house, which was tied with the launches of the Colombo. At this moment there appeared on deck a large number of men armed with swords, and commanded by a sub-lieutenant of the militia of Acapulco. They had been hiding in the hold and fore hatchway, and soon after reaching the deck they shouted: "To land everybody." They proceeded to attack those who had accompanied Guerrero to the ship, and the advancing darkness of the late afternoon in January added to the confusion. The group sought to save themselves in the manner each considered most expedient. Tapia, Zavala's assistant, a servant and the rowers jumped into the water, while Zavala sought the starboard gangway, and armed himself with an entering rope. Guerrero asked Picaluga for an explanation of this strange turn of events, and the latter replied discourteously: "Why what do you suppose, Se�or General? The ship has been anchored for a very long time. Today she leaves for the open ocean. The crew has become intoxicated." Guerrero, however, felt deep concern for the safety of those who had jumped overboard. He protested to the captain that five or six men should be left in jeopardy of drowning. Picaluga thereupon ordered the pilot to despatch two seamen in a small boat to rescue the struggling men. Hardly had they returned to the vessel, when the disorderly members of the crew and their confederates again displayed a menacing attitude. The captain then suggested that Guerrero and his party retire to the cabin while he quieted the disturbance among the crew. Expecting to be followed by the others, the former president acted upon the advice of Picaluga, and entered the doorway; there the conspirators fell upon him, making the arch foe of the Bustamante regime the ship's prisoner, and consummating one of the most sinister betrayals in history. Picaluga then ordered a hasty departure from the port. Minister of War Facio had issued several orders to insure the delivery of Guerrero to his subordinates. A letter dated December 13 had been sent to the commandant at Oaxaca, Francisco Garc�a Conde, ordering him to despatch a part of the Fourth Regiment to Huatulco, for alleged purpose of seizing boats of the insurgents which might land at the port. In compliance with these instructions, Captain Miguel Gonzal�z left Oaxaca for Pacific harbor mentioned. General Bravo was directed to watch Alvarez closely, in order to prevent him from opening a campaign to aid the captured Guerrero. The Colombo reached Huatulco on January 20, and Guerrero was placed in the custody of Gonzal�z. The former president pleaded that on account of his family he be not executed. The march to Oaxaca began on January 26. The party admired the fund of knowledge possessed by Guerrero, all the more remarkable when his lack of a formal education was considered. Captain Gonzalez was particularly impressed with Guerrero's familiarity with the topography of the country through which they passed. The explanation for this acquaintance with the mountains and the valleys of southern Oaxaca is not difficult to find. During that same month eighteen years before, Guerrero had watched the Pacific ports of that region for Spanish ships with valuable cargoes. The expedition and their captive entered Oaxaca at four o'clock on the morning of February 3. That hour was chosen for the arrival to guard against any demonstration on behalf of Guerrero. by the residents of the city. The former president was confined in the Santo Domingo monastery during his trial. The first of the six principal charges against him was that he had personally directed the Acordada and the plunder that accompanied it. Guerrero replied that the movement had been started by Santa Anna, and that he entered the capital on December 3, 1828, for the purpose of endeavoring to conclude an armistice with Gomez Pedraza. Such a charge against the captured patriot, however, was certainly not justified. They were able to present no proof of his connection with that uprising, but could they have done so, the accusation still should have been ruled out of order, since all participants in the Acordada revolt had been pardoned by an act of congress. The second count was that after his deposition from the presidency, he had refused to abide by the decision of the congress, but had joined Alvarez and his forces in a rebellion against the government. Guerrero's defense was that he did not know of the legalization of the Plan de Jalapa by the congress wl-Len he sought protection from assassins in the camp of the insurgents. He stated also that he spent most of the spring and summer of 1830 hiding in the mountains. That Guerrero had some affiliation with the insurgents there can be no doubt, but it was hardly just that his captors should take his life on such a pretext, since the leaders of the Jalisco and Montafio movements had been accorded clemency. The third charge was that after the battle of Texca he had ordered the shooting of several government officers who were marching under a grant of safe conduct given by Alvarez. This accusation was denied by Guerrero. The fourth misdemeanor alleged by the prosecution was that he had violated the terms of the surrender of Acapulco in October, 1830, and had deprived the federal forces of virtually all their clothing and personal property. He replied that the troops of Alvarez were the first to enter the port after the capitulation, and that they dispossessed the government soldiers to obtain redress for certain grievances. At no time during the eleven years of warfare against the Spaniards had Guerrero been criticized for breaking agreements with the enemy. The government offered no satisfactory proof that the former president personally could be blamed for any excesses committed by insurgent detachments at either Texca or Acapulco. His presence at the battle of Chilpancingo, January 1-2, 1831, was also employed to incriminate him. Guerrero explained that he accompanied the forces of Alvarez for the purpose of holding a conference with Primo Tapia, who had been sent by the government to negotiate with the insurgent leaders. As stated in the previous chapter, the revolutionary hero faced the charge of attempting to negotiate a loan from the United States for which Texas would be pledged as security. The evidence presented at the trial was so flimsy that its acceptance by the court cannot appear other than absurd. Guerrero, of course, gave an unqualified refutal of his complicity in such a scheme. The former president selected Francisco Cosio as his attorney, while Captain Jos� Mar�a Llanes led the prosecution. The latter demanded a penalty of death at the conclusion of the proceedings, and the military group acting as judge rendered such a verdict on February 10. The court stated that the decision was in accordance with the law of September 27, 1823. This act had been signed by the doomed Guerrero during his tenure as a member of the poder ejecutivo. After the approval of the court's decree on the following day by the commandant general of Oaxaca, Joaquin Ramirez y Sesma, Guerrero was required to kneel while the death sentence was read to him. He was given an opportunity during the following two days to make religious preparations for his death in accordance with the Roman Catholic faith. Facilities were also provided for the preparation of his will. During the night of February 12-13, he was removed in brutal fashion from Oaxaca to the town of Cuilapa, two leagues away, where the execution was to be held. Early on the morning of the 14th, a handkerchief was placed over his eyes, and the patriot of the southern mountains was obliged to face the firing squad kneeling. The officer in command of the troops that took him from Huatulco to Oaxaca, Captain Gonzal�z, was also in charge of the detachment which ended his life. Gonzal�z, reported that the execution and burial had been completed by seven o'clock in the morning. History affords many examples of governments and powerful individuals attempting to rid themselves of much-feared opponents by taking their lives, only to result in the loss of their own authority and the enshrinement of their victims. In the same manner, the execution at Cuilapa contributed to the downfall of the Bustamante government and the Jalapa party and placed Guerrero's name among the martyrs for the liberal movement in Mexico.	i don't know
Name the Mexican founder of the vast corporation Grupo Carso, and the world's richest man 2010-13?	Who is the Richest Person in the World Ever - Countries of the World Who is the Richest Person in the World Ever Who is the Richest Person in the World Ever Pinterest3 Various countries are having the good economies and superior lifestyles, but there are also hundreds of people who are considered world’s billionaires based on their wealth. Who is the richest person in the world ever is a common question mostly arising in our minds, so we have been making research on the top 10 richest people in the world 2016 for the last week, so be ready to have the exact answer. The ranks for the world’s top billionaires are assigned after comparing their worth. Once Again, Bill Gates has become the Richest Person in the world The founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates has recaptured the title of world’s richest person with the estimated fortune of $87.4 Billion. With the age of 60 years, tycoon’s fortune has increased by billions during the last year. Accordance with the index, the shares of Microsoft have risen to 40%, and it is the biggest achievement of the Microsoft Company. In accordance to the Bloomberg Billionaires index, that is the daily ranking list of world’s three hundred wealthiest people around the world. Until 2013, a Mexican investor Carlos Slim was considered the richest man in the world but Bill Gates regained the top rank from him during the same year. The latest survey exposed a list of top ten richest people on earth from which Bill Gates is the richest man in the world having the wealth of $87.4 Billion. Following is a list of Top 10 Current Billionaires around the world. List of Top 10 Richest People in the World 2016 Ranking – At a Glance Rank United States 10 . Michael Bloomberg With the Net worth of $42.1 billion, Michael Bloomberg claims to be the 10th richest man in the world as per 2016 rankings. Michael Bloomberg organized his financial-data company in 1981 following a profitable profession at investment bank Salomon Brothers, which he met in 1966 after pursuing his MBA at Harvard Business School. He united a news and media subordinate to his company in 1990, but even today the majority of Bloomberg LP’s $9 billion in earnings still comes from the trade of terminals that Wall Street traders depend on for the most recent financial and market data. He departed the corporation to run New York City as mayor in 2002 and completed three terms. But instead of spending his time after retiring office in 2013 by giving away his enormous wealth, as expected, he alternately rotated to Bloomberg LP to improve the newsroom and turn the business in a different way. Now, Bloomberg may be seeing to revert to the public office. He is reportedly examining the chances of an autonomous regulatory bid. But he meets an upward struggle — he’s a pro-business fiscal traditionalist who also promotes gun control, abortion benefits, and struggles to control weather difference — his personal fight chest will appear in nearby. The previous mayor, who paid $261 million for his operations for New York City office, tells he’d spent as much as $1 billion of his wealth on a presidential period. 9. Mark Zuckerberg In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg, then only 19-year-old student at Harvard, started TheFacebook.com , an initial version of the now everywhere social network known as Facebook. Zuckerberg fell out of college to work full-time as CEO of Facebook, and this social website instantly erupted in demand. Today, it invites over a billion daily users and is worth over $275 billion, beating all-time stock highs in November later surpassing revenue anticipations. At 31, Zuckerberg is by far the youngest billionaire in the 50 richest people around the world. Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, hugged a daughter, Max, in November, and Zuck got two months off from tasks to stay with his daughter, initiating an example of Facebook’s active paternity-Off policy. The pair also promised in December to transfer 99% of their wealth in their lifetimes by a brand-new company called the Chan-Zuckerberg Enterprise, but a few analysts regarded this latest organization wasn’t a generous donation itself and noticed the statement misrepresenting. But this was not their first venture into generosity. They donated $25 million in the battle against Ebola virus during the last year, and they contributed $100 million worth Facebook shares moving to improve a public school system in New Jersey. 8. Larry Ellison Larry Ellison is the Founder and CEO of Oracle. His is 71 years old citizen of United States. He has the worth of $45.3 billion. A few years ago, he was the fifth richest person on the planet. Most of his wealth come from the Oracle where he holds 23% of stocks. 7. Charles Koch He is the Chairman and CEO of Koch Industries. His age is 80 years and the worth of $46.8 billion is making it the seventh richest person in the world. He is also the citizen of United States. Charles Koch has again tied with his brother David Koch. His financial arm gains from the 42% interest in the company he is running. 6. David Koch He is the Executive Vice President of Koch Industries. Having the total worth of $47.4 billion, he is the sixth richest person in the world. He is more active than his brother and operating the chemical wing of Koch Industries from his home. He also owns the 42% shares of the company. He is also 77 years old. 5. Jeff Bezos Jeff Bezos earned his massive fortune by bringing the e-commerce to this planet. After consuming time in investment on Wall Street, Bezos established Amazon.com in the parking of his Seattle house in 1994 and worked it entirely as an online book retailer. The corporation went public three years next and had since developed to carry all from furniture to food to Amazon’s user-electronics goods, making $89 billion in sales in 2014. Similarly, Bezos, chairman, and CEO, suffered a plenty of adverse media concentration last year for news that Amazon’s stockpiles are high-pressure, deadly work conditions — claims he contradicted — the internet retailer remains to increase with the extension of Amazon Network Services, the company’s cloud-computing section, and bold design to overcome India’s “trillion dollars” online-retail market. Apart from Amazon, Bezos also has advantages containing properties in his personally held space organization Blue Origin, that actively started its first satellite in 2015, and The Washington Post, the newspaper he acquired in 2013. And the beginning of last month, he funded millions of dollars in a business that’s generating a simple blood test to identify all forms of cancer. 4. Warren Buffett Warren Buffet is 85 years old U.S. Citizen and with the worth of $60.7 billion, he is the fourth richest person in the world. His designation is CEO, Berkshire Hathaway. The principal amount of his income comes from the textile company. While Warren Buffett was struggling to survive in the market, he began buying shares in the firm in 1962. He called it the Dumbest Stock he ever purchased, but the company has been shedding the vast amounts in his pockets for a long time. One interesting thing, which I want to share with you, he purchased his first stock when he was only 11 years old and filed his initial tax return after two years. He has a deep friendship with Bill Gates and being one of the most generous persons in the world Warren Buffett regularly donates to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 3. Amancio Ortega He is 79 years old 3rd richest person in the world having the worth of $66.8 billion. He has a richest family background, so he is the richest man in Spain, and his ex-wife was the wealthiest woman in the country until she died. All due to the major clothing retailer Inditex, whose 59% shares does Ortega hold. He stepped down as the chairperson of Inditex, the parent organization of Zara in 2011. He quit his school when he was only 13 years old just to labor in a clothing shop in March; Ortega was the world’s third richest billionaires in the list prepared by Forbes for the first time. 2. Carlos Slim Helu Carlos Slim Helu is 76 years old Mexican citizen. Having the worth of $72.9 billion, he is the second richest person in the world. He is the resident of Mexico. Until a few recent years, he remained the richest person in the world for the four years, and now he is the second richest person after Bill Gates. The assets of Carlos Slim Helu are mostly invested in the publically trading companies. He has about 46% shares of his business. Until 2013, his worth was over $73 billion because of the surging stocks at his financial arm, known as Grupo Financiero in Bursa and at his Grupo Carso industrial and retail giant. 1. Bill Gates Bill Gates is the Chairman of Microsoft. $87.4 billion are making him the richest man in the world. He is 60 years old man, and he is living in the United States of America. Bill Gates is not only the richest man in the world, but he is also the most generous person in the world. He donated more than $28 billion just to wipe out the diseases such as Polio and Malaria through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and got the prayers by millions of people living in the world. That foundation is working for the welfare of people co-chaired by his wife, Melinda Gates. Bill Gates is the owner of Microsoft, which is the biggest Software Company in the world and according to Bloomberg, Bill Gates owns about 398 million shares, which is the 4.8% of the firm. He is not limited to Microsoft but also has reasonable investments in diverse sectors such as four season hotels, real estate, energy (sapphire energy) and photography Corbis images through the cascade investment. Billionaires by Country Statistics at a Glance At present, United States has the highest number of Billionaires in the world. It has more than 515 ultra richest people, which is three times more than those in China are. The total net worth of its billionaires is estimated to $2064 billion making it the country with most billionaires in the world. New York City is the first priority of world’s billionaires as the best place for business. Within the few years ago, the number of billionaires has increased. Following image is a comparison between the few years old results and the current billionaires of the world. See the difference now. Never Miss these Interesting Stories :	Carlos Slim
What has uniquely happened twice at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City (1970 and 1986)?	LEADERS Middle East by Lorenzo Jooris - issuu issuu special: uae’s economic and trade outlook Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Ruler of dubai, Uae vice president and prime minister. AN INTERVIEW WITH THE HONORABLE TONY BLAIR Turkey SPECIAL Report LEADERS ME / No. 1 - 2014 “We have achieved a lot over the last 10 years, but still the best is yet to come.” Elegance is an attitude Kate Winslet www.longines.com Asia has the world‘s most billionaires 19 An Interview with Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi 20 Hire Great People – And Exploit Them! 25 Ashoka Chairman Bill Drayton on the Power of Social 32 EDITOR IN CHIEF Lorenzo Jooris [email protected] MKT AND DISTRIBUTION The Future of Retail - Mohammed Alshaya 49 Starbucks a Global Phenomena Howard Schultz 54 Success Breeds Success Interview with 58 HRH Prince Alwaleed bin Tala Inteview with Canadian Ambassador / UAE – CANADA: 62 Strong political and economic ties. Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed shows how powerful branding 64 DISTRIBUTED: TAWSEEL (Distribution and Logistics) PRINTED: MASAR Printing and Publishing can be as a leadership tool 08 Lincoln, Edison and Einstein on innovation 66 Global Cities: A path towards sustainable development 68 KOC looks ahead - Sami Al Rushaid 92 Chamber of one of the world’s busiest cities 96 Successful People Start Before They Feel Ready 104 Cars, The New MBW M5 Sedan 106 The Seychelles, Three hour and a half flight from Dubai 112 One&Only Royal Mirage, Dubai 120 Reproduction in whole or in part of any article without prior written consent from the publisher is strictly prohibited. Leaders Middle East/One World Communications FZE is not responsible for any errors or omissions that might occur. Leaders Middle East is published by One World Communications FZE PO BOX 32429 RAK Media City United Arab Emirates T +971 4 451 7448 F +971 4 330 3365 [email protected] INDEX DUBAI, SPECIAL REPORT 10 In just three decades Dubai has grown from a humble fishing village and trading dock to a world renowned international business center. What was once a sun-scorched village occupied by pearl divers and traders is now a .highway to the world QATAR TODAY - 24 The overall outlook for Oman remains positive in 2013 despite heightened Qatar downside risksToday to global recovery.Gross domestic product grew a real 5.5 percent in 2012, according to an International Monetary Fund estimate, after a 5.0 percent rise in 2010. However, Oman may be adversely affected if oil prices .fall because of worsening global conditions AN INTERVIEW - 30 WITH THE HONORABLE TONY BLAIR Tony Blair is the Representative of the Quartet – U.S., Russia, E.U., and U.N. – to the Middle East, through which he is focused on working with the Palestinian Authority to prepare the institutions and groundwork for statehood, as part of the international community’s effort to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace. The goal of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation is to promote respect and understanding .among major religions and to make the case for religions as a force for good OMAN IN FOCUS - 36 Qatar has successfully demonstrated how visionary leadership, government policies and business can work productively to produce phenomenal economic growth. With each of its projects, be it in sports, infrastructure, culture, education and media, Qatar has firmly placed its footprint on the international .map 10 AN INTERVIEW WITH DONALD J. TRUMP - 40 Donald Trump is the author of 10 best-selling books, including The Art of the Deal, Never Give Up, The Art of the Comeback, How to Get Rich, Think Like a Billionaire, Trump 101: The Way to Success, Why We Want You to be Rich, and The America We Deserve. He serves on the board of the Police Athletic League, on the advisory boards of Lenox Hill Hospital and United Cerebral Palsy, as Chairman of the Donald J. Trump Foundation, and as Co-Chairman .of the New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund KUWAIT STORY - 46 His Highness Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, fourth son of the late Sheikh Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, who was born in Kuwait on June 6, 1929, and educated in the schools of Kuwait and later completed his studies with private tutors. His Highness Sheikh Sabah had been a leading political figure for the past four decades, and headed Kuwait`s diplomacy since 1963 .when he became the country`s foreign minister TURKEY REPORT - 68 It took a decade of political and economic reforms, a strong parliamentary democracy, a customs union with the EU, and a great deal of ingenuity, but Turkey has done what most emerging markets of the world are dreaming of; it tripled its per capita income from US$3,492 to 10,444 US$ and reduced poverty, while growing its economy more than 8 per cent a year, achieving in the last two years the highest rate of GDP growth after China, to become .one of the worldâ€şs fastest-growing economies AN INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT JAMES MICHEL - 88 James Alix Michel is the third President of the Republic of Seychelles, having been elected to office in July 2006 and re-elected for a second term in May 2011. A keen educationalist, President Michel was directly involved in the creation of the University of Seychelles. At the establishment of the university on 17th September 2009, he was named its chancellor. One of his greatest achievements as President has been the revitalization and reform of the .Seychelles economy 11 THIS ISSUE S LEADERS CARLOS SLIM HELÚ Carlos Slim Helú studied Civil Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico School of Engineering, where he also taught Algebra and Linear Programming while studying for his degree. In 1965, at 25 years of age, he began to build the foundations of Grupo Carso. Since the 1980s, Slim has been a noted businessman in various industrial, real estate, and commercial fields. Howard Schultz, 57, is the chairman and CEO of Starbucks. He originally bought the company, then simply a purveyor of high-quality coffee beans, in 1987 and went on to transform it into America›s and the world‘s leading coffeeshop chain: Starbucks currently has more than 16,000 stores in 54 countries and annual revenue of more than $10bn. Having stepped aside from the CEO role in 2000, Schultz famously returned as chief executive in January 2008 after a slump in sales. BILL DRAYTON SHEIKH SALEH ABDULLAH KAMEL Founded in 1980, Ashoka has steadily built a reputation for fostering citizen-led innovation focused on social change. The organization helped originate the concept of social entrepreneurship, working outside of the government and business sectors to find sustainable solutions for societal needs. Sheikh Saleh Abdullah Kamel is a Saudi businessman, chairman and founder of the Dallah al Baraka Group (DBG). Chairman of ABG and he is also the chairman of the General Council for Islamic Banks. He is estimated to be worth about $5.3 billion, ranking number 12 on Arabian Business list of richest Arabs 2008. Most of Kamel’s business work focus on coded TV channels, trade and civil services. DONALD J. TRUMP MOHAMMED ALSHAYA Donald Trump is the author of 10 best-selling books, including The Art of the Deal, Never Give Up, The Art of the Comeback, How to Get Rich, Think Like a Billionaire, Trump 101: The Way to Success, Why We Want You to be Rich, and The America We Deserve. He serves on the board of the Police Athletic League, on the advisory boards of Lenox Hill Hospital and United Cerebral Palsy, as Chairman of the Donald J. Trump Foundation. HRH PRINCE ALWALEED BIN TALAL Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was born in Riyadh and educated in the U.S. He obtained a degree in Business Administration and graduated Magna Cum Laude from Menlo College in 1979 and earned a Master of Social Science degree with Honors from Syracuse University in 1985. Prince Alwaleed was ranked 26th in the 2011 Forbes magazine list of billionaires and is now the largest single investor in Citigroup. SAMI AL RUSHAID Sami Al Rushaid is currently the Chairman and Managing Director (C&MD) of Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) responsible for all Oil & Gas Exploration and Productions Operations in Kuwait. He was C&MD of Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) from October 2004 till October 2007. He had enjoyed a long and illustrious career at KNPC where he had held a number of positions including Corporate Planning Manager. 12 HOWARD SCHULTZ MBA, Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, US. Executive Chairman, Alshaya Group. Chairman, Mabanee, the largest real estate developer in Kuwait. Member: Supreme Council of Planning and Development, Kuwait; Board of Overseers, Wharton; Foreign Director Investment Council, Turkey. Member, Board of Trustees: Arab Thought Foundation; Mentor Foundation International. HE HAMAD BUAMIM HE Hamad Buamim was appointed as a member of the Board of Directors of Dubai World in December 2010 and is the Director General of Dubai Chamber of Commerce & Industry, a post he has held since November 2006. He was the Secretary General of Dubai Economic Council, a corporate manager in HSBC Bank, a lecturer of Finance & Banking in the UAE University’s College of Business & Economics. SHEIKHA LUBNA AL QASIMI Named one of the world’s 100 most powerful women by Forbes magazine, Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi, minister of foreign trade for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and 1981 computer science alumna, was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science at CSU, Chico’s 2009 Commencement ceremony. Sheikha Lubna was one of the first women in the UAE to obtain a technology degree, and in 2004 she was appointed minister of economy and planning. Write to PelĂŠ Montegrappa launches writing competition to celebrate the beautiful game and its king PelĂŠ INFOCUS THE DUBAI STORY In just three decades dubai has grown from a humble fishing village and trading dock to a world renowned international business center. What was once a sun-scorched village occupied by pearl divers and traders is now a highway to the world. D ubai began its meteoric rise into the global community in the early 1970s. Strategically located at the nexus of three continents, Dubai has a vantage proximity to a market of over two billion people making it a natural nucleus of trade and commerce. Under the leadership of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai and Vice President of the UAE, a sophisticated free enterprise environment has been created. World-class infrastructure, ultra-modern facilities, a highly developed financial sector and a westernised business approach, Dubai is now well established as an economic powerhouse alongside London, New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo. 14 THE MAN BEHIND THE VISION: His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum is the United Arab Emirates, Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai. He was born on July 15, 1949, in the Al Maktoum home in Shindagha, near Dubaiâ€˜s famous creek. He is the third of four sons for His Highness Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoumâ€˜, Their Highnesses Sheikh Maktoum, Sheikh Hamdan and Sheikh Ahmed.His parents (Sheikh Rashid and Sheikha Latifa) and his grandfather (His Highness Sheikh Saeed bin Maktoum Al Maktoum, the late Ruler of Dubai). On January 4th, 2006, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum became the Ruler of Dubai following the death of Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum during a visit to Australia, and on January 5th, the members of the UAE Supreme Council elected Sheikh Mohammed the UAE Vice President. Sheikh Mohammed embodies energetic and successful leadership. He is a man of his word; he has insisted on excellence and achieved nothing less; he has defined the role of leadership and fulfilled it. Thanks to his vision, Sheikh Mohammed has competently authored the Dubai success story in record time and put the United Arab Emirates on a unique course, which nations around the world compete to replicate. Since becoming the Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE, and Ruler of Dubai, revolutionary initiatives have been rolled out. The year 2007 witnessed unique achievements for Sheikh Mohammed both locally and regionally. On February 3rd, he announced the Dubai Strategic Plan 2015, which aims to bolster Dubai›s leading position in the region and boost its role as an international economic and financial hub. The strategy will be used as a road map for development over the coming years. The past few years have witnessed significant progress in economic and social development: e-government was introduced; the Dubai Metro, a light rail system that transports tens of thousands of commuters daily -- was inaugurated and a significant number of investment companies were established; these companies have formed global partnerships in the fields of industry, commerce, tourism, ports management and real estate investments. A host of other cultural projects were also launched, including the Muhammad the Messenger Museum, the Universal Museums project and the Mohammed bin Rashid Gardens. Sheikh Mohammed set out his comprehensive world view in his book «My Vision,» where he describes his philosophy and his political and economic vision. The Arabic version of the book continues to be a best-seller throughout the Middle East and elsewhere. He offers a detailed account of how Dubai and the UAE have been guided to their present-day status as international centers, renowned for their high quality commercial and financial services, luxury tourism and their drive towards human development and sustainable structure. Through generosity and dedication, Sheikh Mohammed has achieved notable success while shouldering the great responsibility of leading Dubai and the Federal Government. “The Dubai strategic plan 2015, which aims to bolster dubai leading position in the region and boost its role as an international economic and financial hub.” 303 15 DUBAISTORY DUBAI READY 2020 EXPO CONNECTING MINDS, CREATING THE FUTURE The UAE is bidding to host the World Expo 2020 in Dubai under the theme â€˜Connecting Minds, Creating the Futureâ€™. Every five years and for a period of six months, World Expos attract millions of visitors. The World Expo has never been held in the Middle East, Africa and South East Asia in the history of the event. A World Expo in Dubai in 2020 would be the first to be held in the MENASA (Middle East, North Africa and South Asia) region. As the global community faces ever more complex, and increasingly interconnected challenges, the links between people, societies and ideas have never been more important. Dubai Expo 2020 will be a platform for connectivity to help pioneer new partnerships for growth and sustainability for the future. 16 World Expo 2020, the international event Dubai is bidding hard to bring home, would feature a spectacular exhibition, pavilions, cultures and business gatherings. What Dubai is hoping to do with it is make it a benchmark for human progress and a roadmap for the way forward. Located on 438 hectares, the iconic design of Dubai Expo 2020 will be an additional permanent legacy to leverage the surrounding facilities and fostering innovation, education and global collaboration. The site’s masterplan has been designed to visualise the country’s Expo bid theme: Connecting Minds, Creating the Future. On the southwestern edge of the city, equidistant between Dubai and Abu Dhabi and connected to 300 global destination every day, the site chosen is one of the largest ever earmarked for an Expo world fair. It will be 10 minutes from Jebel Ali Port and situated next to the new Dubai World Central Airport. The designated site will be able to cater for 247 participants and over 25 million visitors with transport and pedestrian circulation strategies prepared accordingly. Moreover, further connectivity offered through emirates such as Sharjah. The site will also have easy access to several of the city’s main expressways, including Shaikh Zayed Road and the Dubai Bypass Road. Inspired by traditional Arab souqs, the design integrates the UAE’s unique architectural heritage and environment of vibrancy, interactive and trade with the requirements of the Expo to foster the fundamental principles of innovation, partnership and collaboration between participants and visitors. From the exciting energy of the souq to the area for the best practices and innovation, opportunities bounce to form partnership for all nations as well as for private and public sectors inside. Mobility, is the second way that weaves into the fabric of the design of Dubai Expo 2020, where state of art, computer central and logistic system are provided. A fully automated underground system will connect all pavilions and support other facilities and enable invisible services along the opening hours. Moreover, Dubai said it plans build an underground railway system to connect the Al Wasl with the outer pavilions. Dubai is competing against four other candidate cities, Sao Paulo (Brazil), Ayutthaya (Thailand), Azmir (Trukey), Ekaterinburg (Russia), bidding to host the 2020 edition of the monumental global gathering. The winner will be announced in November following a vote by the 163 member nations of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), the Parisbased inter-governmental organisation responsible for the World Expo. By 2020, the emirate will be able to offer enough transport links to accommodate about 25 million visitors to Dubai for Expo 2020. The masstransit options will include zero-emission buses, new Metro stations and dedicated lanes on key arterial roads to take visitors to the planned site at Dubai Trade Centre – Jebel Ali. As 80 per cent of the visitors are expected to use the mass transit, the Metro will be able up to ferry more than 75,000 people a day to the site, while commuters can board one of 750 ExpoRider buses from 35 points across the city. The masterplan for 2020 includes construction of an extension to the Red Line that will take passengers from Jebel Ali to the Expo. In addition to all these, Expo lanes will be provided on the key arterial routes leading the site for the use of official vehicles, ExpoRider busses and taxis. Whatever infrastructure will be built it is an investment for the future. The site will serve as a permanent attraction beyond 2020 and will enhance further the UAE’s long-term appeal as a premier destination for high-profile global events. After the six-month event, the facility of 423 hectares would be further developed as a state-of-theart exhibition and convention centre. The first phase of which would be the indoor entertainment venue to be built for Expo 2020. There will be an institute Zone that encompasses research centres and university focused on fostering collaborative thought leadership between academia, corporations and entrepreneurs. The university would form the core of a new “institute zone” and would include research centres. Legacy’ is one of the key words to be reflected through the Expo 2020 theme and post the mega event, the zone of the site will be transferred into a National Museum commemorating the evolution of the UAE and celebrating the first World Expo for the Arab World. 17 303 ASIamoney ASIA HAS THE WORLD‘S MOST BILLIONAIRES Asia has more billionaires than any other continent, followed by North America and Europe, AFP reports according to a survey by a China-based wealth magazine released. There were 1,453 people around the world with a personal wealth of $1 billion or more as of January, said the Hurun Report, a luxury magazine publisher that compiled the list. Asia had 608 billionaires, North America 440 and Europe 324, it said in a statement. Among individual countries, the United States and China dominated with 408 and 317 citizens respectively on the list, followed by Russia, Germany and India. Mexican telecoms czar Carlos Slim, 73, was ranked as the “Richest Man on the Planet” with a personal fortune of $66 billion. Slim also topped the Forbes magazine annual global rich list last year. US investor Warren Buffett and Amancio Ortega of Spain, founder of fashion brand Zara, were second and third in the Hurun Report list with net worth of $58 billion and $55 billion respectively. It estimated the total wealth of the world‘s dollar billionaires at $5.5 trillion, roughly the size of the Japanese economy last year. “This past year has seen a rebound in the wealth of the private sector,” it said, adding the net assets of the 10 richest people on the list rose 22 percent over the year, or $250 million a day. Real estate, telecommunications, media and technology and retail were the most common sources of wealth, it added. Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of the Hurun Report, said the true number of billionaires in the world could be three times higher as some super-rich hid their worth. “Some people deliberately make their wealth a secret because... they gained it through illegal ways,” he told reporters at a press conference. “Some others simply prefer to keep a low profile.” Hoogewerf, an accountant by training, previously compiled the Forbes rich list. 19 UAE’S ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS OUTLOOK SHEIKHA LUBNA AL QASIMI MINISTER OF TRADE AND COMMERCE OF THE UAE Named one of the world’s 100 most powerful women by Forbes magazine, Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi, minister of foreign trade for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and 1981 computer science alumna, was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science at CSU, Chico’s 2009 Commencement ceremony. Sheikha Lubna was one of the first women in the UAE to obtain a technology degree, and in 2004 she was appointed minister of economy and planning, the first woman minister to serve in the cabinet. A member of the royal family of the emirate of Sharjah, she lectures throughout the world on economic, gender, and equality issues, and in 2005 was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. 20 How would you describe the United Arab Emirates to someone who is unfamiliar with it? The UAE is a success story beyond compare. I am proud of our past, our rich culture and heritage, our spirit of enterprise, our political stability, our visionary leadership, our religious and cultural tolerance, and our relentless pursuit of quality and excellence. The UAE is a land of opportunities for everyone, irrespective of your nationality, culture, religion, gender, or ethnicity. From an economic perspective, the UAE has grown at a phenomenal rate in recent years, diversifying significantly from an oil-reliant economy and launching several pioneering development projects, especially in health care, education, real estate, and infrastructure development. The policy of openness adopted by the UAE’s leadership has been the prime driver in establishing the UAE as the second-largest Arab economy. What are your top priorities as minister of foreign trade of the UAE? My first mission as minister of foreign trade was to strengthen our trade relations with key countries around the world, especially within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). That’s why one of my priorities is to make sure that the UAE maximizes the benefits of the GCC Common Market. Aside from the obvious benefit of enhanced regional trade, the common market strengthens our negotiating position with international economic blocs. My ministry is also coordinating at the GCC level as an economic block to achieve free trade agreements with key trading partners and assume a solid role alongside the World Trade Organization. An important factor for convincing our allies to enter into commercial agreements with us is to further intensify our diversification efforts, to expand the number of businesses we engage in. Given the present downturn, another focus is to discourage protectionism within the region and throughout the world. We need further stimulation of the global economy to expedite the recovery process. respect and honor they deserve; women should always be considered equal to their male counterparts. This is another area where the UAE is setting a fine example for regional countries. In the UAE today, women have proved their worth in every domain, be it medicine, engineering, media, sports, finance, or politics. During my first cabinet post as minister of economy, my initial challenge was to demonstrate the ability of women to lead and to participate in governance. Today, women in the UAE hold four seats in the federal cabinet as ministers and occupy nine seats in a total of 40 seats in the Federal National Council, the country’s supreme legislative body. This is in addition to a large number of key posts women hold in various ministries and local governments. Among your many accomplishments is developing a customized manifest documentation system for the Dubai Port Authority, reducing cargo turnaround from one hour to 10 minutes, and devel-oping the leading online business-to- business company in the Middle East. What role did your training at Chico State play in such accomplishments? My professors were consultants in the field who sent us to Silicon Valley for our projects and assignments, so I was exposed to real-life scenarios that taught me to be diligent, disciplined, and accurate. My classes were very competitive, and we had study groups that emphasized teamwork, so I learned a lot about leadership and group dynamics. All of these experiences helped me perform above expectations in the organizations I managed and worked for. What drives you in your work? The fact that I have a rare opportunity to make a major contribution to the growth and sustained progress of my country, which I am so proud of, is inspiration enough. I hope to be a role model who inspires other Arab women to fight all obstacles and pursue their dreams. What is the most important trade issue in your country’s relations with the United States? Today, the UAE is home to more than 30,000 Americans and more than 750 vibrant American-owned businesses. Even in terms of trade relations, we maintain a strong association with the U.S.; we are in fact the single largest export market for U.S. goods and services in the Arab World. Our bilateral trade with the U.S. in 2008 was around $15 billion, representing an increase of 32 percent over 2007’s $11.5 billion. We are also heavily involved in several university and non-governmental organization partnerships with the U.S. that promote knowledge transfer while advancing local capacity. Prominent U.S. universities that have established their own programs and facilities in the UAE include New York University, Michigan State, George Mason, and Harvard University. Moreover, faculty from Johns Hopkins and partnerships with Cleveland Clinic, Harvard Medical School, and Mayo Clinic continue to advise us on public health issues. You have given lectures around the world on gender issues and equality. Why is it important to you to talk about gender issues? What is the most important change that needs to happen to improve the treatment of women worldwide? I am a firm believer that the true progress of a society or a nation can be determined by the way it treats women. Progressive thinking and economic prosperity are meaningless unless women are given the “I am a firm believer that the true progress of a society or a nation can be determined by the way it treats women.” 21 Globalperspectives A CONVERSATION CARLOS SLIM Carlos Slim Helú studied Civil Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico School of Engineering, where he also taught Algebra and Linear Programming while studying for his degree. In 1965, at 25 years of age, he began to build the foundations of Grupo Carso. Since the 1980s, Slim has been a noted businessman in various industrial, real estate, and commercial fields. He currently serves as Chairman of the board of directors of Impulsora del Desarrollo y el Empleo en América Latina, S.A. de C.V. (IDEAL); Chairman of Fundación Telmex, A.C.; Chairman. 22 18 THE SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR Fundación Carlos Slim Helú, A.C.; Chairman of the Executive Committee of Consejo Consultivo de Restauración del Centro Histórico; and Chairman of Fundación del Centro Histórico, A.C. Slim continues to be active in business although his work is primarily focused on education, health, and employment in Mexico and Latin America through the foundations he chairs and companies in the infrastructure arena. His three sons have taken over the reins of his businesses. Slim has lectured at public and private institutions as well as at international organizations such as the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA). He was the first Chairman of the Latin American Committee of the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange. In December 2008, Slim was nominated a member of Research and Development Corporate Executive Board. Company Brief Grupo Carso (www.gcarso.com.mx) has operations in heavy industry, services, retail, and consumer goods through CICSA, Condumex, Hoteles Calinda (now OSTAR Grupo Hotelero), Nacobre, Sears, Sanborns, and Promotora Musical. Grupo Carso currently encompasses the following holding companies: América Móvil, Grupo Financiero Inbursa, Impulsora del Desarrollo y el Empleo en América Latina (IDEAL), Inmuebles Cars, and Minera Frisco. can work hard and efficiently in all sectors of the economy. So we have all the desired conditions to be a very attractive place for investments, both national and international. When you look at countries that need to grow significantly, they require investments of 25 to 30 percent of gross national product. Often, the foreign investments are not more than 10 to 15 percent. But in Mexico, foreign direct investments in recent years have been very active, so the potential for more in the near future is very strong. Foundation Brief The Carlos Slim Foundation (www.carlosslim.com) was created in 1986. With strong social and high impact programs focused on the most vulnerable population, the foundation has directly benefitted more than 29.7 million people. The foundation’s focus is on the following areas: education, health, nutrition, social justice, culture, human development, aid in natural disasters, economic development, protection and conservation of the environment, and aid to Latin America and sister nations, as well as to public and private institutions. For your businesses, do you see growth coming mainly from within Mexico or from international markets? We have strong growth in Mexico. In the mining business, there are many Canadian companies and nati onal Mexican companies involved. We have to invest around $70 or $80 billion a year in infrastructure and that will create a lot of opportunities. There is also potential growth in housing and real estate. Mexico is a place with millions of people in many areas that have great potential for growth and development. In light of economic challenges, is this a time of opportunity or is your outlook more reserved? We have a long-term vision, resources, and a healthy company so there are always opportunities to be found in difficult times. With problems in many developed countries now, the private sector will seek out possibilities for investment. In terms of what is going on in Europe and the U.S., with big fiscal deficits and so much unemployment and lack of economic activity, governments need to defer to private investors, who can create the economic activity and jobs that countries need. Economic activity for the business community is significant, especially with such low interest rates. The private sector can create a lot of projects that have better returns. With very lowcost financing and substantial resources in the banking system, a long-term vision is needed for economic activity in many countries. Is there a good understanding of the opportunities for foreign investment in Mexico? Many people focus on the BRICs without looking at the bigger picture. A country like Mexico has strong potential and we have seen a lot of national investment. Mexico has a healthy banking system, healthy macroeconomics, and a good labor pool – our people have proven they Is the government working closely with the private sector to encourage positive economic activity? Yes. Mexico has instituted a new law regarding public/private partnerships that has been very successful. Many investments have gone in this direction over the past 10 years and, each time, with more intensity. In the future, there will be even more growth of this type of investment. In all areas, public/private partnership is the best way to use private investment for public service. In terms of these issues, what is the public sector role? The only way the public sector can correct a fiscal deficit is by increasing revenues or decreasing expenses. To increase revenues, you can increase taxes, which is tough for people because taxes are already high and further increases crunch a society. “Many people focus on the BRICs without looking at the bigger picture. A country like Mexico has strong potential and we have seen a lot of national investment.” 23 DUBAISTORY Paul Sloane is the founder of Destination-Innovation, a consultancy that helps organisations gain competitive advantage through innovation. He is the author of 17 books on problem-solving and lateral leadership. He was described in the Independent as the ‹King of Lateral Thinking Puzzles›. HIRE GREAT PEOPLE AND EXPLOIT THEM! By Paul Sloane: Talking about his new film , ‘To Rome with Love’, Woody Allen said, ‘I’ve got great people, and they make me look good. That’s the thing; you hire Penelope Cruz, Ellen Page, or Alec Baldwin and they’re great. They were great before they met me, they’ll be great after they leave me. And I exploit them. I look like a hero, but you know, that’s the trick.’ In this quote Allen reveals a secret shared by successful managers, directors and leaders – hire really excellent people and then exploit them. How do you do this? First recruit people who are even smarter than you are. Give them clear goals and then get out of their way. Give them plenty of freedom to develop their own ideas. Work them hard. Give them responsibility. This means that you can do less of the everyday stuff because they will cover it for you. You can then spend more time on highlevel strategic and interesting issues. Maintain a light-touch supervision just to check that they are broadly on the right track. Don’t tell your people what to do. Tell them what the goals are and then ask for their ideas and suggestions. Very often, their best ideas are better than yours. So go with their ideas. Let them implement their own suggestions – they will work twice as hard to prove they were right. Of course you give them the praise and credit for the innovations but it makes you and your department look really good. So there is the secret. Be selfish. Get really talented people to do all the work for you. Harness their ideas. Make them feel empowered and they will drive your organisation and your career forward. Exploit them ruthlessly! The funny thing is, they will love you for it. “Don’t tell your people what to do. Tell them what the goals are and then ask for their ideas and suggestions.” 25 Myopinion WE WILL FAIL TO FEED THE WORLD UNTIL WE FIX THE WATER CRISIS Peter Brabeck-Letmathe led the Nestlé Group from 1997 to 2008, first as CEO, until 2005, and then as Chairman and CEO. In April 2008, he handed over the office of CEO and remained Chairman of the Board of Nestlé S.A. PETER BRABECK-LETMATHE CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD AT NESTLÉ S.A 26 Peter Brabeck-Letmathe serves as ViceChairman of both L‘Oréal and Credit Suisse Group. He is Chairman of the “2030 Water Resources Group”, a Public Private Partnership housed in the IFC/World Bank, Washington. Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe is also the Chairman of the Board of Nestlé Health Science S.A. and of Delta Topco Limited (Formula 1). In addition, he is member of the Exxon Mobil Corporation Board and the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT), where he is part of the Steering Committee and chairs the Foreign Economic Relations workgroup. Born in 1944 in Austria, Peter BrabeckLetmathe graduated from the University of World Trade in Vienna with a degree in Economics. He has received several awards, including the Schumpeter Prize for Outstanding Contribution in Disruptive Innovation, the Austrian Cross of Honour for services to the Republic of Austria and “La Orden Mexicana del Aguila Azteca”. The University of Alberta (Canada) conferred an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws on him and he serves as the Chairman of its External Advisory Board. The world is walking towards a crisis that it barely recognises. In scale and significance, it dwarfs all the others it is intricately connected with. This issue is water. As unbelievable as it sounds, we are running out of it and the window we have to solve this issue is narrow and rapidly closing. O ‪ ver the next 20 years, the world’s thirst for water will grow by 50%. By 2030, water withdrawals will exceed natural renewals by 60%.‪‬‬‬‬ This will have a devastating impact on the quality and cost of the water we all need to survive, but in ways that are perhaps not immediately obvious. The water we drink, clean, and cook with represents only the smallest part of the water we use. Far greater is the 90% of the world’s total supply of water that we use to grow the food we eat.‪‬‬ This is because it takes one litre of water to produce one calorie of food. Compared to the 34- litres of water we drink, the average daily diet requires up to 6,000 litres of water to grow the crops that find their way on to our plates.‪‬‬ Put this in the context of feeding a growing population and you immediately realise that the acute water shortages, that will directly affect a third of the world’s population by 2030, will also ultimately lead to a critical shortage of food the world over. Less food will result in higher prices and plunge millions into poverty and famine.‪‬‬ We face global shortfalls by 2025 If we continue the way we are using water today, and factor in higher food needs for a growing population, competing water users such as oil and thermal energy, as well as municipal water for a rapidly growing number of urban dwellers; we should expect global shortfalls in cereal production in an order of 30% by 2025. This would be a loss equivalent to the entire grain crops of India and the United States combined.‪‬‬ As we can see, the crises affecting water and food are interdependent. Astonishingly, however, it remains absent from international to-do lists. Suggesting solutions to a formidable challenge My aim is to bring greater visibility to the issue, and to dare to suggest solutions to such a challenge. In practice, many of these challenges are intensely local. This was what first and perhaps most powerfully brought to life for me in March 2004 during a conversation with farmers in the Indian Punjab region. With water tables falling across the region one metre per year, these farmers were dealing directly with the effects of an overuse of water to irrigate fields with pumps originally subsidised by the government and electricity provided for free. They knew that if groundwater tables continued to fall, their own livelihood would be at risk. But with neighbouring villages likely to continue withdrawing water, and ongoing government subsidies, the farmers saw the utter futility of changing their own habits without effective joint efforts of all major stakeholders in their watershed; and so they wouldn’t. Played out on an international scale, this is the crux: without partnership between all those who share a stake in the problem we won’t make progress towards any meaningful solution. The enormity of the challenge is great, and the need to act is urgent. Here on LinkedIn, and on my blog, I will share some of the thinking and potential solutions that I come across as part of my job and through my involvement in international groups such as the WEF 2030 Water Resources Group (WRG). Addressing the water challenge should also be part of the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals discussion. There is no silver bullet to solving a challenge of this enormity, so practical thoughts on how we can better address this issue are always welcome.‪‬‬ “If we continue the way we are using water today, and factor in higher food needs for a growing population, competing water users such as oil and thermal energy, as well as municipal water for a rapidly growing number of urban dwellers.” 27 INfocus QATARâ€™S STORY THE QATAR SUCCESS STORY IS ABOUT ENTREPREUNERSHIP, VISION AND THE INGENIOUS LEVERAGING OF COUNTRY RESOURCES. Qatar has successfully demonstrated how visionary leadership, government policies and business can work productively to produce phenomenal economic growth. With each of its projects, be it in sports, infrastructure, culture, education and media, Qatar has firmly placed its footprint on the international map. 28 Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, born 3 June 1980) is the Emir of the State of Qatar. He is the fourth son of the previous Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. He became Emir of Qatar on 25 June 2013 after his father‘s abdication. Sheikh Tamim has held a variety of government posts within Qatar and also worked to promote numerous sporting events within the country. At 33 years old, Tamim is the world‘s youngest reigning monarch. Sheikh Tamim was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Qatar Armed Forces upon graduation from Sandhurst. He became the heir apparent to the Qatar throne on 5 August 2003, when his elder brother Sheikh Jasim renounced his claim to the title. Since then he was groomed to take over rule, working in top security and economics posts. [3] Working in a government security post, he promoted stronger ties with Saudi Arabia, a neighbor and often contentious rival to Qatar. He is believed to have played a key role in Qatar‘s support for the Libyan rebels who ultimately ousted Muammar Gaddafi. In 2009, he was appointed deputy commander-in-chief of Qatar‘s armed forces. Sheikh Tamim promoted sport as part of Qatar‘s bid to raise its international profile. In 2005, he founded Qatar Sport Investments, which owns Paris Saint-Germain F.C. among other investments. In 2006, he chaired the organizing committee of the 15th Asian Games in Doha. Under his leadership, all member countries attended the event for the first time in its history. That year Egypt‘s Al Ahram voted Tamim “the best sport personality in the Arab world”.[2] Under his guidance, Qatar won the rights to host the 2014 FINA Swimming World Championships and the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Tamim is a member of the International Olympic Committee and the National Olympic Committee chairman. He headed Doha‘s bid for the 2020 Olympics. On 25 June 2013, the then Emir of Qatar and Tamim‘s father HH Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani revealed his plans to step down as the Emir in a meeting with his close relatives and aides. Tamim then became the Emir of Qatar after his father handed over power in a televised speech. He was the first ruler, in a succession of three Qatari rulers from the Al Thani family, to ascend to power without resorting to a coup. According to The Economist, of his previous sibling rivals to the throne, “One played too much, the other prayed too much.” The transition of power was expected to be smooth, as family members hold many of the nation‘s top posts. Analysts said he would likely be under immediate pressure to reduce Qatar‘s support for the rebels in the Syrian Civil War, which Tamim had previously supported. He would be tasked with overseeing substantial upgrades to the national infrastructure, which have recently gotten underway. While some view Tamim as more religious than his father, most analysts expect him to retain his father‘s largely pragmatic habits of governing – using Islam to further objectives where useful, but not pushing strictly Islamic agenda items such as outlawing alcohol. Sheikh Tamim heads the Qatar Investment Authority board of directors. Under his leadership, the fund has invested billions in British businesses. It owns large stakes in Barclays Bank, Sainsbury‘s, and Harrods. The fund also owns a share of Europe‘s tallest building, the Shard. 29 The young Emir‘s transition to power was welcomed by leaders across the World, who expected Tamim to continue the good work in the footsteps of his father and increase Qatar‘s role in vital international affairs including the Syrian crisis and Darfur agreement. Qatar’s economic Outlook: In 2010, Qatar was the fastest growing economy in the world - ahead of Singapore and Turkmenistan, with a real GDP growth rate of 19.40 percent. Since 2008, Qatar has been consistently ranked among the top three fastest growing economies in the world. Analysts believe Qatar will continue its double-digit growth trend for the next few years on the back of rising oil and natural gas prices. Qatars oil and natural gas industries account for 50 percent of GDP, 85 percent of export earnings and 70 percent of the government›s revenue. According to 2010 statistics, Qatar produced 76.98 billion cubic metres of natural gas and an average of 1.213 million barrels of oil per day. Prior to Qatar’s discovery of oil in 1940, the country›s economy was primarily focused on fishing and pearl diving. During World War II oil exploration in Qatar was temporarily discontinued. Then in 1949 oil exportation started again and its discovery in Qatar transformed it’s dormant society and economy into a thriving marketplace. Despite a period of rapid growth between the ‹50s and ‹70s, Qatar’s reliance on oil meant it›s economy faced a downturn during the 1980s to mid-1990s due to falling oil prices and reduced oil earnings. Qatar’s economy eventually recovered during the late 1990s, and has since boomed. Qatar’s Natural Gas Qatar’s oil reserves are expected to run dry by 2023 according to estimates of its current rate of production. Consequently, the Qatari government has diverted its focus and resources to the production of natural gas. At present, Qatar possesses 25.47 trillion cubic metres of natural gas in its proven reserves, which amounts to 15 percent of the world’s total reserves. Qatar has the third largest proven natural gas reserves in the world behind Russia and Iran. Increased Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) production in particular has driven Qatar’s recent rapid economic growth. With massive expansion projects still in the pipeline, Qatar’s LNG production is expected to grow exponentially once the projects are completed. Despite already being the world’s largest LNG exporter, 30 Qatar also aims to double their current output of LNG by the end of 2011. Japan›s 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster is also likely to increase Qatar’s LNG exports. As Qatar’s largest export partner, Japan consumes more than 25 percent of Qatar’s total LNG output. With reduced capabilities of Japan›s nuclear power plants, the country will most likely turn to Qatar for their energy requirements as Japan recovers from the catastrophe. Qatar’s Economic Diversification Qatar’s natural gas industry is an important element to their national vision for economic diversification. The economic downturn that Qatar faced during the ‹80s to mid ‹90s exposed the country›s overdependence on the oil industry. Since then, Qatar intends to reduce it›s reliance on oil through a three-fold process: • Maximise the potential of its natural gas industry while producing a trickle-down effect, • where core competencies and competitive advantages gained from oil and natural gas industries can be transferred into other industries. • Expand the service sector, particularly finance and tourism. The Qatar Financial Centre established in 2005 provides a world class financial and business centre for international financial service institutions and major multi-national corporations. Qatar›s successful bid to host the 2022 Football World Cup has also increased Qatar’s global profile and bring an influx of tourists to the country during the event. Qatar Industry Sectors The industrial sector remains Qatar’s key economic driver, 78.8 percent of Qatar’s GDP in 2010 was derived from the industry sector, while services and agriculture sectors contributed 21.1 percent and 0.1 percent to GDP respectively. Qatar’s rapid economic growth is led by its oil and gas industry, as well as other industries such as petrochemicals, steel and fertilisers. The country has maintained positive growth across all its industries. Industries Qatar (IQ) is the Middle East’s second largest chemical producer behind Saudi Basic Industries Organisations. The organisation has also invested in several expansion projects owing to annual profits of (estimated) US$2 billion. Qatar had the world’s fastest industrial production growth rate in 2010, rising by 27.1 percent from the previous year. This followed double-digit growth trends from the past two years. Qatar Export, Import & Trade Qatar’s main exports are derived from the industrial sector. In 2010, Qatar’s total exports were valued at US$57.82 billion; LNG, petroleum products, fertilisers and steel are Qatar’s key export commodities. Japan was Qatar’s largest export partner, making up 34.68 percent of Qatar’s total exports, followed by South Korea (22.4 percent), Singapore (10.3 percent) and India (4.86 percent). Qatar operates with a trade surplus, however much of its revenues earned from exports are reinvested into imports that would help sustain Qatar’s rapidly growing economy. This includes machinery and transport equipment, food, and chemicals. The value of Qatar’s imports in 2010 was US$23.38 billion, with 14.43 percent of the imports coming from the US, 8.34 percent from Italy, 8.33 percent from South Korea, and 8.04 percent from Japan. and urban developments have been built around major oil refineries and seaports. The principality of Mesaieed for example, contains Mesaieed Industrial City, which houses family accommodation as well as the main offices of Qatar Petroleum, Qatar Fertiliser Company, Qatar Steel, Qatar Petrochemical Company, Qatar Vinyl Company, Qatar Chemicals Company, and Qatar Aluminium. Among the 1.7 million people currently residing in Qatar, it›s estimated nearly threequarters are foreign nationals with temporary residency status. Foreign nationals also represented a large majority of Qatar’s 1.202 million labour force. According to a 2008 report by Qatar’s General Secretariat for Developmental Planning, 93 percent of the labour force were NonQataris. Qatar Economic Structure Qatar’s economic success contradicts its physical size. The smallest member of OPEC, both in land area and population, Qatar is also the third smallest state in the Middle East, behind Bahrain and Lebanon. Located in the Persian Gulf, Qatar is a peninsula that shares its border with Saudi Arabia. Its capital, Doha, is situated in the east on the Persian Gulf and is home to 80 percent of Qatar’s population. The Salwa International Highway links Doha to Saudi Arabia and the upcoming Bahrain-Qatar Friendship Causeway will also facilitate transport between two of the largest financial centres in the Middle East. As part of its economic planning, much of Qatar’s major industrial “As part of its economic planning, much of Qatar’s major industrial and urban developments have been built around major oil refineries and seaports.” 31 interviewoneonone THE POWER OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP Founded in 1980, Ashoka has steadily built a reputation for fostering citizen-led innovation focused on social change. The organization helped originate the concept of social entrepreneurship, working outside of the government and business sectors to find sustainable solutions for societal needs. Ashokaâ€™s efforts at launching leaders in social entrepreneurship began in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Central Europe, and have recently expanded to Western Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East. A precursor t? Web-enabled crowdsourcing tools like Kickstarter and Quirky, Ashoka is actively engaged in finding and nurturing young innovators. BILL DRAYTON ASHOKA CHAIRMAN 32 its Youth Social Entrepreneurship Competition culminated at last year’s Techonomy conference, with 19-year-old Eden Full winning the top prize for her SunSaluter solar panel technology. Techonomy’s Adam Ludwig spoke with Ashoka CEO Bill Drayton about the inspirations and aims that guide his work, and the role he sees for technology to accelerate global problem solving. people in the remotest corner of the world can decide to bring change to their community, have access to all the ideas and tools available in the world, and contribute to experimentation and successful change making. Ashoka’s Changemakers pioneered open-source problem solving for the many interests involved in change making. What led you to start Ashoka? In 1962, when I was 19, I visited India. With introductions from people involved in the U.S. civil rights movement, I was able to visit with several of the leading Gandhians there. The hundred-toone difference in average per capita income between America and India at the time was a stark reality for the people who became my friends there. Action was essential, and given the magnitude of the problem, it had to be significant. But as a college sophomore, I had little wealth or power. I knew that finding an approach with maximum leverage was critical.That’s when I started to realize that the most powerful force in the world is a big idea—if it is in the hands of a great entrepreneur. It’s how a very small investment can make a huge difference. Entrepreneurs almost always have to step out of existing institutions that embody old ways of doing things to build their vision. They need space to demonstrate and refine their ideas, to build an organization, and to figure out how to explain what they’re doing in ways that will cause others to follow them. A very modest stipend allows budding entrepreneurs to quit their jobs and work full-time to refine and launch their vision. Ashoka began with this concept and has evolved into a community of mutual help and collaboration that multiplies the individual entrepreneur’s confidence and strength. It’s an idea that allows us to change the world with extremely modest resources. How would you assess the impact of the Ashoka Fellows program? Ashoka has 3,000 leading social entrepreneurs, and over half have changed national policy within five years of their selection and launch. Ashoka’s Corporate Executive Board, in last year’s report, found that within the same five-year period, three-quarters of Fellows had changed the pattern in their field at a national level. In these evaluations, the Fellows overwhelmingly described Ashoka’s role as being critical to their success. One example of an Ashoka fellow bringing about change specific to technology is Fabio Rosa, whose program in Brazil cut rural electrification costs 7090%- and brought electricity to vast rural areas of that country. How have you been able to make this approach successful? We’ve learned how to help hundreds of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs, working on the same problem across the globe, to collaborate. This is a giant step beyond solo practitioner entrepreneurship, and has never been done on this scale in any sector. We look across the work of hundreds of entrepreneurs in a field to identify cross cutting patterns. The old paradigm for successful growth was to master the information and the rules. In a static society that was adequate. But in a world defined by rapid and interconnected change, it is woefully inadequate. The faster things change, the less relevant the rules become. How is Ashoka engaging the influence of rapidly accelerating technology in its work with budding social entrepreneurs? Technology is extraordinarily empowering for Ashoka. Every successful organization has to make the transition from a world defined primarily by repetition to one primarily defined by change. This is the biggest transformation in the structure of how humans work together since the Agricultural Revolution. Organizations must shift away from repetitive-function hierarchies with rules and enforcement and walls. Instead, we must migrate rapidly to becoming a global “team of teams” that comes together in whatever combination necessary to add the greatest value to the changes underway. Building this team would be almost impossible without the web and its associated communications tools. Three I know you have thought a lot about unemployment and have a specific idea for how it could be reduced in the US. Can you explain? One of the simplest ways would be to eliminate payroll taxes, which would lower the cost of labor in the US by roughly 17 percent and offset that loss of revenues with taxes on materials, energy, pollution, and land. The combined effect of these two actions would change the relative price of labor and goods by roughly 30 percent. The best estimate is that doing so would, over the course of a capital cycle, create roughly 40 million new jobs. It would do so without increasing the debt, picking winners and losers, creating a bureaucracy, delay, or corruption. Both the end and the means are acceptable across the political spectrum. Conservative economists point out that no one actually sat down and decided to increase payroll taxes from one percent to 40 percent of federal revenues. This tax-switching program would merely undo an accidental and deleterious price signal. It would be a huge political win. Older people, people with disabilities, women, young people, those who have been institutionalized, minorities, and immigrants would benefit enormously. (For more on this idea, see www. getamericaworking.org.) For half a dozen years, the world has been moving towards recognizing this needed new framework. A study of OECD countries shows that those with payroll taxes over 40% versus those with payroll taxes under 30 have an 11.5 percent smaller share of their population working. Most European governments and increasingly governments in other parts of the world are cutting payroll taxes. The IMF recommends it. Although the U.S. continues to increase payroll taxes, both parties at different times have advocated payroll tax reductions. The citizen sector and its social-entrepreneurial cutting edge are going to be key here. Even before tackling this core problem, the citizen sector is growing jobs at two and a half to three times the rate of the rest of the economy in advanced countries. That is because it is growing productivity and scale, and now globalization, at a far faster rate than the rest of the economy. 33 AN INTERVIEW WITH THE HON. TONY BLAIR 34 OUTLOOK ON FOREIGN POLICY Tony Blair is the Representative of the Quartet – U.S., Russia, E.U., and U.N. – to the Middle East, through which he is focused on working with the Palestinian Authority to prepare the institutions and groundwork for statehood, as part of the international community’s effort to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace. The goal of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation is to promote respect and understanding among major religions and to make the case for religions as a force for good, demonstrated by organizing interfaith education and social action projects to overcome global poverty and conflict. Tony Blair’s Africa Governance Initiative helps some of Africa’s most visionary leaders deliver the change their people need to relieve poverty. Given the recent developments in the Middle East, are you optimistic about positive movement in this area? There has to be movement, because people have been waiting a long time to get this issue resolved. There is an agreement, more or less, that we need two states for two peoples. We should be able to make progress on this and it’s desperately necessary, because the Middle East as a whole is in turmoil. It’s important that the Israeli-Palestinian issue doesn’t get used in that turmoil. Instead, we need to recognize that this embodies this small bit of land where two peoples are living intermingled side by side and that we need to create the circumstances in which they can do so peacefully. The important thing is to get negotiation back on track as quickly as possible, which we’re working on right now, and to combine that with real change on the ground that improves the lives of the Palestinians, lifts the weight of occupation from them, and gives Israel the genuine sense that its security concerns are being taken into account. You’ve been clear that political leadership is key to driving much of what is taking place in the Middle East, especially around conflict resolution. But how tough is it to find that leadership when there is such uncertainty? The great challenge for leaders is to make tough decisions in circumstances where the consequences are unpredictable. This is why leadership is such a challenging business right now. But one of the things that you learn about leadership is that inaction is also a decision; it’s just a decision not to act and it too has consequences, and those consequences are often more predictable. If we do not move this situation forward with the Israelis and Palestinians at the moment, it will move back, and the consequences of that will be greater tension and violence in the region. We’ve come a long way since 2000 in terms of a more peaceful situation on the ground – we don’t want to go back there. What is your vision for your charity, the Africa Governance Initiative? The Africa Governance Initiative works alongside the governments of African countries to build the capacity to govern effectively. The great challenge for Africa today is not aid although that is important, particularly in areas like combatting killer diseases – but governance. It’s not just creating transparent and honest government; it’s also about effective government the challenge for governments today is efficacy. Tony Blair visits Rokupa Government Hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone. So we help governments in Africa prioritize, deliver, and track the performance of the various projects they’re doing. The important thing for all these governments is to create the circumstances in which basic areas like energy, power, agriculture, and infrastructure are working at a level where people see the benefit, which gives them greater faith in politics. Africa has an enormous opportunity now with the development of China, India, and other emerging market countries, which desperately need the resources that Africa has. Africa can develop those resources, but how they do so will crucially effect whether those countries do well or not. What was your vision in creating the Faith Foundation and what are you trying to accomplish through those efforts? The biggest challenge we have toward peace and security in the 21st century is not fundamental clashes of political ideology but fundamental clashes of cultural or religious ideology. If you look not just at what is happening in the Middle East but across the world, there are groups of people who are using religion to further extremism and are creating huge political, cultural, and religious divides. Even in Europe, you now have political parties starting up all over the place that are based on a view that the identity of Europe is under threat; some of those parties are openly Islamaphobic – that is a huge problem. The trouble is that politicians want to say this problem is a political problem, but these people think it is about religion, so if you don’t deal with the religious dimension, you’re not dealing with the problem. 35 Our foundation is about practical interfaith engagement. We have a schools program that, through the Internet and videoconferencing, provides a secure online facility for exchanges among schools of different faiths across the world. We’re operating in 17 different countries. We have strong support from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and we have signed agreements with several governments around the world. We hope to take the idea that, at a very early age, we should educate young people towards religious harmony and interfaith understanding rather than using their religion as a badge of identity in opposition to others. We also have a university program that is focused on research and developing the academic study of religion and its place in the modern world, and that is taking place in about nine universities around the world, starting with Yale in the U.S. We now have an action program that is about using the faith infrastructure in Africa to combat killer diseases, like malaria. So in Sierra Leone, we’re training priests and imams, as well as community workers, to use the mosque or church in the villages, which often won’t have a health clinic or hospital, to train people how to distribute the materials for fighting malaria and to show people how to use it, as well as to encourage them to continue to use it. In the three months that we have been running the program in Sierra Leone, we have reached about a quarter million people. You can mark the difference, because if people use the bed nets and the drugs they’re given, they can significantly reduce death from malaria. So it’s a program based on the notion that we need to encourage harmony among the main faiths and it provides a practical set of programs to do that. In terms of the efforts you and The Climate Group have had on an ambitious post-2012 climate change agreement, is the support there and the dialogue around climate change the right one? Tony Blair talks to female students of The Winchester School, Dubai about interfaith understanding The objective with our climate change plan is to take the commitments countries are prepared to make individually and put them together in a global agreement, and to send a clear direction to their various economies that they’re moving in a green direction. You have to make business a partner in this. And the solution to this will come from science and technology. In countries that are industrializing, like China and India, the people want to consume just as the West has consumed. We have to invent the scientific and technological advancements that will allow us to consume better. Where there are programs in energy efficiency that are effective, we should be implementing them; in those countries where deforestation is rampant, we should be encouraging them to choose a different means of securing their livelihood. So the fight against climate change is to get a global agreement together. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it will send a strong signal to the international business community that this is the direction we’re going 36 in and will encourage the development of science and technology, which is key. Is it sometimes tough to be patient with all the challenges an agreement like this has faced? It can be frustrating, but what I’m trying to do in each of these areas is to demonstrate that there is a different way of looking at things that would be more effective and I’m trying to mobilize governments behind that different view. I’m under no illusion that I can single-handedly change the situations. But what I can do is demonstrate, through my philanthropic work, a new idea or a different way of doing something. So in the Middle East, for example, my theory is that you have to build this concept of peace from the bottom up through the economy, through what happens on the ground, as well as a negotiation top down. In Africa, it’s about showing that if we provide the infrastructure of effective government and decision-making, we will need so much less aid because the countries will then have the potential for wealth on their own. In respect to interfaith, it’s about encouraging people at an early age to see their faith as theirs but to also see that there is a faith community in which many different faiths are involved, and showing governments that this is the right way to go so people can start driving these programs throughout their education systems. Likewise, with climate change, my theory is, you have to make business a partner in this, not the enemy. So in each of these situations, it can be very frustrating, but I’m trying to show that, conceptually, we can do this differently and better. In government, you were known as somebody who got things done. Many today suggest there is a lack of that kind of leadership. What makes a successful leader today and how were you able to bring people together and make such an impact? Leadership has never been tougher than it is now, particularly with the economic and financial crisis we have faced over these past few years. But leadership involves two things: understanding the world is changing fast and understanding that we have to change with it. There is no leader today who is not an agent of change; and leaders need to understand that because change is so difficult. When you try to institute change, you get resistance, and sometimes the things you suggest will not be popular, at first. But the essence of leadership is taking responsibility for engaging in that process even though you know you’re going to be pushed back and it’s going to be tough. Leadership is about understanding that we live in a world whose defining characteristic is change and it’s being prepared to make the difficult decisions to translate that change into reality. leadershipseries Ian Goldin is the Director of the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, and professorial fellow at Balliol College, Oxford. He has served as vice president of the World Bank and advisor to President Nelson Mandela. His many books include Globalization for Development. RETHINKING MIGRATION By Ian Goldin We live in a dynamic age of global integration, where the reconnection and mixture of the world’s people is challenging dominant norms and practices in many societies. Disintegration and integration are simultaneous and interwoven. Cultural codes adapt. New economies emerge. Innovation prospers. Social institutions struggle to adapt. across their borders. Migrants are uncommon people, and they often move several times in search of opportunity and safety. Viewing crossborder movement simply in terms of immigration limits a broader appreciation of how networks and economies function in an increasingly integrated world. To many, the challenges associated with migration are characteristic of our age of postmodernism, multiculturalism, and aspiring cosmopolitanism. Some are nostalgic for an illusory past when people had more in common. Outsiders have always encountered opposition from their adoptive societies. Nevertheless, the direction of history points to the persistent expansion in the boundaries of community. Our cultural and political frontiers have gradually receded. I question the received wisdom that an increase in the flow of international migrants is undesirable. The rapidly growing field of multidisciplinary scholarship on the dynamics, flows, and impacts of migration makes the case that current ad hoc regulations are poorly suited for a world economy that thrives on openness, diversity, innovation, and exchange. In the current period, “migration” is defined as cross-border movement, and it has come to be seen as something to be managed—a cost to be minimized rather than an opportunity to be embraced. My view is that it is a key driver of human and economic development and that our future will be strongly influenced by policies regarding migration. How governments craft and coordinate migration policy will determine whether our collective future is defined by a more open and cosmopolitan global society or one that is unequal, partitioned, and less prosperous. Public debates about migration are limited by a lack of perspective of its historical role, contemporary impacts, and future prospects. Let’s shift discussion on international mobility away from narrow national-level immigration debates, toward a more global view of migration. The terms “immigration” and “immigrant” can obscure more than they reveal, because they imply that people move once, permanently—from outside the country to inside when migration for the most part is temporary, repeated, or circular. This perspective also ignores the dynamism of human movement: countries that accept large numbers of migrants also typically send similarly large numbers Five Principles We propose five key principles that should guide engagement with migrants and migration by governments and international organizations: 1. Extend transnational rights. 2. Promote social and economic advancement for migrants. 3. Widen the umbrella of legal migration. 4. Combat xenophobia and migrant abuse. 5. Improve data collection. A global migration agenda need not be advanced only by official agencies. It should also include businesses, labor unions, diaspora groups, religious communities, and civil society groups. These objectives reiterate recommendations made elsewhere, and there is particular resonance with some of the proposals made by the Global Commission on International Migration (GCIM). Together, they touch on policy areas that require reform in the medium term if the ideal of freer movement will be achievable and sustainable in the long term. 37 INFOCUS OMAN IN FOCUS Qaboos was born in Salalah in Oman’s southern province of Dhofar on 18 November 1940, the only son of Sultan Sa’id bin Taymur (d. 1972) and Taymur’s second wife Mayzun bint Ahmad alMa’ashani (d. late 1990s), a Qara woman of the Bayt Ma’ashani clan of Dhofar. Qaboos’ early life was spent in the royal compound in Salalah, where he received private tutoring. In 1958 he went to England for further private schooling before entering the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in September 1960. Upon graduating from Sandhurst in August 1962, Qaboos served a one-year tour of duty with the British army in Germany. His education was completed with a private course in local government in England and then a world tour before returning to Oman in late 1964. 40 Qaboos is credited with the Omani Renaissance: the political, economic, and cultural rebirth of the country in the late twentieth century following the long period of political repression, instability and economic depression under his father, Sultan Sa’id bin Taymur Al Bu Sa’id (1932–1970). Upon his return to Salalah, Qaboos remained isolated from government affairs, except for occasional briefings by Sa’id’s mostly foreign personal advisors, and devoted his time to the study of Islamic law and Omani history. Personal relationships were limited to carefully selected lace officials, and efforts by Sultan Sa’id’s advisors to include Qaboos in the affairs of state were rebuffed. Qaboos did use his limited contacts to express his displeasure with Oman’s political and economic conditions. Oman’s strong Economic Outlook: The overall outlook for Oman remains positive in 2013 despite heightened downside risks to global recovery.Gross domestic product grew a real 5.5 percent in 2012, according to an International Monetary Fund estimate, after a 5.0 percent rise in 2010. However, Oman may be adversely affected if oil prices fall because of worsening global conditions, the central bank said. In addition, the private sector in the sultanate has yet to regain confidence fully, it said. “Profits earned by the private sector continue to remain sluggish. This is holding back private investment in Oman despite large government expenditure.” Oman, which gets about three-quarters of its government revenue from crude oil exports, faced strikes in the oil sector in May and June. The price of Brent crude plunged $40 to as low as $88 per barrel between March and June but has since recovered to around $98. Oman, where oil and gas account for about half of GDP, sold its crude at an average $103 per barrel in 2012. “Going forward, the major policy challenge before the CBO is to strike a balance between sustained growth momentum and price stability in Oman,” the report said. “Reflecting global slowdown, the overall outlook on domestic prices remained benign in the more recent period.” Annual inflation in the desert country, which has to import essential commodities, eased to a two-year low of 3.0 percent in April from a peak of 5.3 percent in August 2011. Oman lacks a fully independent monetary policy because its rial currency is pegged to the US dollar. Its central bank has been keeping a loose policy stance since early 2009 as inflation slowed sharply from doubledigit rates seen in 2008. “There is scope for the CBO and the government to pursue accommodative monetary and fiscal policies in the rest of 2012 without jeopardising macroeconomic stability of Oman,” it added. The interest rate which it uses to drain excess liquidity from the market has stood at around 0.08 percent at its weekly auctions of deposit certificates. «There may be pressure on the exchange rate if the inflation rate differential between Oman and the US widens further,» the central bank said. Despite a budgeted fiscal deficit of OR1.2bn ($3.1bn) in 2012, the government balance may turn out to be in surplus in 2012 given stillrobust oil prices, the report said. Any shortfall is expected to be financed partly by drawing from reserves, the surplus from the previous year, and issuance of government development bonds, it said. The central bank also said unemployment in Oman was «the single most important problem the country currently faces, but did not provide figures. The IMF said in December that a 2010 census had put the unemployment rate among Omanis at 24.4 percent, although the high number may include many who are not truly looking for work. Omanis accounted for only 14 percent of nearly 1.3 million private sector employees in 2011, the central bank report showed. 41 report OMAN’S OIL SECTOR Oman is famed for its striking scenery born of its dramatic geology, but its subsurface composition has also made it a challenging and exciting hydrocarbon environment too. The country has achieved remarkable success with its enhanced oil recovery programmes, and can lay claim to be one of, if not the only hydrocarbon landscape where all three major enhanced production techniques are in execution, and the results have been astounding. Under the stewardship of His Eminence Mohammed bin Hamad Al Rumhy, Minister of Oil and Gas of the Sultanate of Oman, who took on his current portfolio in 1997, the country has reversed field decline and is actually producing 17% more oil than it was in 2007. An achievement made all the more remarkable when you consider production fell 27% between 2001 and 2009. “Oman has a difficult geology, a difficult terrain, both on the surface and subsurface. It’s intellectually very stimulating and exciting. Financially, its very expensive and technically difficult too,” says Al Rumhy. Just as exciting as the oil developments in Oman is its gas story. Looking back on the journey which has made Oman one of the top ten biggest exporters of LNG in the world, HE. Al Rumhy reflects that fortuitous timing and excellent project execution turned a once benign resource into such an important revenue stream for the Sultanate. “The gas industry is very complicated, and as times have changed so too has the outlook for gas. When we discovered gas over and above material volumes in the early 1990s the main question on everybody’s lips was: How can we monetize that resource for the good of the country?” he says. 42 The conclusion reached was for the Government of Oman to take a majority stake in a new company, Oman LNG, and for partners Total and Shell (5.54% and 30% respectively) as lead upstream shareholders, based on long-term sales agreements with three key Asian buyers. “At that stage the thinking was to go for LNG, and I think that was the right decision at that juncture. We have been very successful, and it was partly down to luck that we discovered gas when we did in the early 90s,” says the Minister. “We began exporting into the LNG world at the end of the century, and ever since the LNG market has been very healthy and probably exceeded, our expectations at that time.” HE Al Rumhy observes that the swift decision-making process enabled construction to begin in the late 90s, which was good timing project-wise, predating the regional mega-project scramble of the 2000s. “We managed to construct the two LNG trains of OLNG, and all that goes with it, including the pipelines and infrastructure at a good time. I really believe the timing of the whole LNG business in Oman came at the right time in our history and since then we’ve never looked back.” The diversification of industries in Oman, whether on the LNG side, the petrochemical side and steel clusters shows the importance attached to gas. Gas-associated industries have contributed to Omani employment, and current estimates suggest LNG and the domestic gasbased industries, including the Oman Refineries & Petroleum Company, which OLNG supports, contribute over 15% of Sultanate’s overall revenue. leadershipseries A TIME FOR HEROES By Adam Lent “We’re not putting this back in the bottle [...] The open world is bringing empowerment and freedom.” The Canadian businessman and writer Don Tapscott is optimistic about digital technology›s potential and, in particular, the transformative possibilities it offers to the people he calls the Net Geners. Tapscott has carried out large-scale studies on the attributes of a cohort that is also known as Generation Y or the Millennials: roughly speaking, those people who are now in their 20s and 30s and have grown up in the digital age. He concludes that they tend to place a high premium on self-reliance and education, are broadly tolerant of difference, are open to collaboration and understand the need for civic responsibility. This echoes the work of US historians William Strauss and Neil Howe, who have identified generational archetypes – prophet, nomad, hero and artist – that repeat themselves every four generations. For Strauss and Howe, the Millennials belong to a hero generation: they experience proactive – rather than reactive – parenting, come of age at a time of societal shocks and, by responding to these, evolve into ‹young adults›. They become institutionally powerful in mid-life, focused on the external world and finding solutions to contemporary challenges. Some argue that generational analyses of this sort are limited or that these accounts are distinctly North American. There is no broad consensus on the particular characteristics of the Millennials, nor does everyone agree with the positive reading of newer technologies. Indeed, this cohort has been variously labelled narcissistic, cynical, hedonistic and brand obsessed. Some see the impact of social media and a searchengine culture as alienating and distracting, reducing our capacity to think deeply about the world. What does seem clear is that recent decades have seen a technologyenabled shift akin to the revolutions wrought by mass production in the first half of the 20th century and by flexible production in the second half. A world of innovation and enterprise is emerging, thanks to a new openness driven initially by the spread of Web 2.0 and, increasingly, by rising consumer expectations of ever-greater control over the products and services they purchase. In the new business paradigm, companies are learning that they cannot create productivity, market share and innovation by keeping a fierce hold on processes and information. Only by giving customers, citizens and external experts access to these processes, and allowing them to participate in their design, can organisations match the speed and complexity of their sphere of innovation. How else do we explain the spiralling interest in 3D printing technology, which gives consumers the power to manufacture goods using opensource software? Or the fact that one of the most potent sources of information in the world is an online, freely available encyclopedia written by its users? This transformation thrives on the resourcefulness, the willingness to engage and the spirit of entrepreneurial collaboration of the millions of people who were once regarded as passive customers or ignorant service users. It is in these very qualities that we find the second reason for optimism. What begins to emerge is a picture of a generation that is more comfortable with taking risks and whose appetite for enterprise is both driven and hampered by economic circumstance. Through research, engagement and practical innovation, the RSA›s project seeks to understand how we can harness and enhance this promise and capabilities and the contribution they will make to pulling us out of the current crisis. As Tapscott argues, unless we understand the Net Geners, we cannot begin to understand the future or how they can shape our world. “Now, more than ever, we need young people to use their collaborative and technological skills to overcome economic challenges and help shape a more prosperous future.” 43 EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP DONALD J. TRUMP CHAIRMAN AND PRESIDENT, THE TRUMP ORGANIZATION 44 Donald Trump is the author of 10 best-selling books, including The Art of the Deal, Never Give Up, The Art of the Comeback, How to Get Rich, Think Like a Billionaire, Trump 101: The Way to Success, Why We Want You to be Rich, and The America We Deserve. He serves on the board of the Police Athletic League, on the advisory boards of Lenox Hill Hospital and United Cerebral Palsy, as Chairman of the Donald J. Trump Foundation, and as Co-Chairman of the New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. Trump is also the Co-Producer of The Apprentice, and in January 2007, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Company Brief The Trump Organization (www.trump.com) encompasses global real estate development and global licensing, sales and marketing, property management, golf course development, entertainment, entertainment and product licensing, and brand development. Holdings include the Trump International Hotel & Tower in New York, Chicago and Toronto, Trump SoHo, Trump World Tower at the United Nations Plaza, Trump Park Avenue and Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. Headquartered in Trump Tower in New York, the Trump Organization also owns twelve golf courses, with a links course opening in Scotland this spring. A recent acquisition is the iconic Doral Hotel & Country Club in Miami, which includes four championship golf courses. Their portfolio of golf courses is international and has won many accolades. Additionally, the organization owns the historic Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach. The mega hit reality show, The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice, is now in its twelfth season and continues to receive high ratings. The Trump Organization also owns the Miss Universe Pageant and Trump Model Management, and the Donald J. Trump Signature Collection of tailored clothing is featured at Macy’s. In February of 2012, the Trump Organization was selected as the developer of the famous Old Post Office Building in Washington, D.C.. There is much debate about U.S. competitiveness in the global economy and the future strength of America. You address many of the major issues the U.S. is facing in your new book, Time To Get Tough. Would you highlight your reason for writing the book and the key messages that you wanted to convey? I love America and to see what’s happening to our country is disturbing. We cannot afford four more years of this mess. Obama does not know what he’s doing and he’s been a huge disappointment. As a businessman, certain things are very clear to me and by writing this book I could make them clear to the public. Key messages include the problem of China taking advantage of us on a large scale, OPEC doing the same thing, and Obama doing nothing about it. We are in an economic disaster and there are some things that can be done to help the situation and yet nothing is being done. We also need a tax system that is fair and smart – one that encourages growth, savings, and investment. It’s time to stop punishing hard work and entrepreneurship. How concerned are you about the future position of the U.S. as a world leader? Very concerned. We are perceived as weak and not too smart, and other countries know we’re in big trouble if we don’t get back on the right track. We have huge debts and our leadership is weak. What needs to be done to spur entrepreneurship in the U.S. and with all of the regulations today, is it more challenging to build a company and to compete globally? Entrepreneurs create jobs and their ability to do so has been hampered. We need an international deal maker in office and Obama is not one. It’s tougher to build a company in the U.S. and to take it global as there are too many roadblocks. Obama’s background in business is not strong and very obvious mistakes have been made. Considering the economy, he has not been a big help. There are great concerns about jobs in the U.S. How can we make an impact on unemployment and what advice would you give to young people entering the job market today? The Keystone Pipeline would create thousands of jobs, for one thing. Why isn’t that going through? I would remind young people that there are always opportunities and to remain positive. When I started as a developer in New York City, everyone said it was a terrible time for real estate and everyone was negative. I went ahead anyway because it’s what I wanted to do and I found opportunities. It’s not easy but you have to be tenacious. You speak often about a lack of leadership in Washington today. What makes an effective leader and are they needed to bring America back strongly? Yes, I speak about it often because it is so obvious. An effective leader needs to know how to negotiate and a certain level of intelligence is required. The President needs to be smart enough to recognize the national security threat China poses in the new frontier of cyber warfare. He has to know what OPEC is doing, to see the benefits of the Keystone Pipeline, and not treat the Chinese like they are royalty. His budget funds the “Arab Spring” with $800 million and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt with $1.3 billion in military aid. A day after he released a trillion dollar budget deficit, he hosted China’s future leader Vice President Jinping at the Pentagon with a full honor ceremony. His choices don’t make sense. Those leaders are out there, but they will be walking into a mess. A strong leader and someone with business experience and international knowledge is a must. He or she must have a very strong agenda and stick to it. There is always a buzz about what you are going to do, whether it relates to politics, business, or television. How do you balance all of the areas in which you are involved and what gives you the most fulfillment? Balancing the three areas gives me fulfillment. I greatly enjoy all of them, so the balance comes naturally. Of course, real estate was my first love and I have a golf course opening in Scotland this July, which has been a labor of love and is spectacular. It’s been a long haul getting it done, considering I spent five years looking for the right place, which I found in Aberdeen, Scotland. My mother is from Scotland so there’s a connection there that goes beyond the sport or the business. 45 highprofileinterview A CONVERSATION WITH Sheikh Saleh Abdullah Kamel is a Saudi businessman, chairman and founder of the Dallah al Baraka Group (DBG). Chairman of ABG and he is also the chairman of the General Council for Islamic Banks. He is estimated to be worth about $5.3 billion, ranking number 12 on Arabian Business list of richest Arabs 2008. Most of Kamel’s business work focus on coded TV channels, trade and civil services. Under the current economic climate, Sheikh Saleh Kamel did not withdraw or pull back but on the contrary, he is still exploring new business opportunities and investing heavily in the banking idustry especially that the Islamic banking industry needs this investment at a time where the price of oil has been rising and the world is on the verge of economic fall down. It seems that almost everything is falling down into bits and pieces. “When I started my career in the trading industry, my mother used to constantly remind me of the values of Islam.” SHEIKH SALEH ABDULLAH KAMEL CHAIRMAN AND FOUNDER OF THE DALLAH AL BARAKA GROUP (DBG) 46 Sheikh Saleh Kamel, How did you build your business empire and what are the reasons for your outstanding success? Sheikh Kamel: Well, let me start by thanking you for giving me the opportunity to host me in your prestigious “think tank” – Business Life. Now, with regard to your question, and for the benefit of your respected readers, let me begin by stating that at the outset any venture requires the blessings of Allah the Almighty. Every success depends on the degree of clarity of the Organizational Vision, sound and equitable management system, and finally the overall organizational governance and control. When I started my career in the trading industry, my mother used to constantly remind me of the values of Islam and would speak of usury as against our values. She would always speak of savings and transactions the Islamic way. This greatly influenced me and I did my first contract in the late 60s using mudharaba and musharaka modes of finance with a conventional bank. This sowed the seeds that were blessed and from which, the tree of Al Baraka grew and expanded. I do not wish to say I am successful, because I believe that I am as yet to realise my dream of having true Islamic economic principles. It is upon this that the entire resources of society should be mobilized - according to the principles of Shari’a – and should be utilized for the benefit of society, again according to the principles of Shari’a. Shari’a focuses on the equitable distribution of wealth and rewards efforts, for the welfare of the entire society. What are your comments on Islamic Banking Performance in the Middle East and in the West? Sheikh Kamel: As you are aware, Islamic Banking has grown in size and numbers in the 80s and 90s and is acclaimed to be one of the most powerful sectors of the banking market in the world today. This is because, markets the world over have shown a huge appetite for Shari’a compliant transactions and investment products even though, until recently many people did not really understand such types of transactions. The growth in this segment in the financial industry presented a new opportunity for financial institutions located n the Middle East to export their business outside of the region to serve the large global Muslim population in other countries. I wish to reiterate that the good performance and growth is the effect of understanding and knowledge about Shari’a compliant finance, not only among individuals and customers, but also within central banks, financial institutions and professional bodies. Today, there is a much deeper understanding about these transactions; so people have greater faith in them. Customers across the globe have started to show interest in and their greater acceptance has resulted in Islamic financial institutions being recognised as fully functional counterparts of conventional institutions. Furthermore, a number of Islamic investments have outperformed conventional investments making conventional banks becoming keen to offer Shari’a based products & services worldwide. crash of the stock exchange there and also after the 2nd Gulf war. After each and every unrest, we always come back more stronger than before… and this is definitely attributed to the accumulative wisdom of our business elites and political leaders in managing the natural resources gifted to us by Allah, Subanahu watallaa. Do you think this growth is related to the resurgence of Islamic feeling in the region and therefore vulnerable to the political mood? Sheikh Kamel: No, the sector has been growing for almost three decades now, and is becoming more sophisticated with its products and services offerings. Today, Islamic financial institutions can match most of the products offered by conventional banks in the international markets. Even in Europe, Islamic finance is being seen as something that is open to everyone, not only for Muslims. Clients look for good service at good rates, and for nonMuslims, whether it is Islamic or not, it does not matter. In fact, for many companies, it is attractive to be able to diversify their borrowing activities. For Muslims there is, of course, the added attraction of Shari’a compliance. So I think this growth will continue for some time, and this is why we see most conventional banks in the region opening Shari’a windows or subsidiaries, and some even converting their full operations. Will there be new Islamic Banks established in Libya, Morocco, Algeria, Tunis and Egypt? Sheikh Kamel: Definitely the answer is yes and as you know, banks are established to meet the financial needs of the societies and as long as these needs exist, the need for banks will exist. I would like to inform you of a good news that I am privileged to have regarding a new bank in Egypt. This bank will be specialised in providing developmental finance and of course in a growing economy like Egypt, the society needs such types of financial institutions. The bank is at an advanced stage of being set up. Riots and revolutions have hit the MENA region in the past few years. Do you think the region will soon be stabilized? The current turmoil and disturbances definitely has had its impact on the overall economic climate. We have seen fluctuations in the oil prices and other commodities and this will indeed cause a slowdown in the economies of the affected countries and to some extent in the rest of the world. Luckily, until this moment, we have not seen harsh slow down at the global level because of what is going on in the Mena region and Japan. Of course, it is very hard to predict a timeline or volumes or size of the losses so far. We have seen some negative reports and analysis coming from the research centres and rating agencies which I believe, would have caused more damage than the crisis itself. For example, one of the countries which has seen unrest has been downgraded by the rating agencies due to political factors only, with total disregard to the intrinsic strength and the support of the rest of the nations in that country’s region. I am always optimistic about the future as has always been the case in the region. I believe that the region has a lot of resilience and strength and will bounce back again to follow a growth path and a bright future for the rest of the world. We have seen this happening in Dubai most recently and in Kuwait in the 1990 s after the Sheikh Saleh, does Al Baraka Banking Group have any plans to set up new banks in the above countries? As you know, we have already in Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria, with a strong presence in these three countries. Recently, we had obtained a preliminary approval for operations in Libya, which will as of now be a representative office. Of course we will be waiting for the current unrest to settle down. How were the financial results of the Group? Yes, we have achieved excellent results despite the fact that the year was characterised by great uncertainties for the economies of the industrial world and mixed fortunes for those of the Group’s areas of operations. The economies have been affected in greater or lesser degree by the impact of commodity and hydrocarbon prices and the value of their local currencies on the international exchanges, Al Baraka Banking Group did well to record a 4% increase in operating revenue at US $ 659 million and another year of increased net profit, which grew by 15% to US $193 million. The rise in profitability reflected a 21% growth in Al Baraka Banking Group’s assets, as all major classes of banking assets rose to meet extensive demand from the growing customer base, itself the result of the continuing expansion of the Group network. Most of our subsidiaries extended their branch networks, such that by the end of the year the Group network had expanded by a total of 81 branches, making it around 400 branches in all - our stellar achievements during the year were undoubtedly the acquisition of Emirates Global Islamic Bank to form one of the largest Islamic banks in Pakistan and the opening for business of our new subsidiary in Syria. 47 This expansion in our representation base across our geographies in turn enabled our subsidiaries to deliver more services and products to their clients, resulting in an increase in our total financings and investments in all major classes. We also maintained progress on our strategy of investing in infrastructure and in strengthening our risk management and operating systems, policies and procedures. Most of the subsidiaries have now completed the transformation to new core banking systems and to achieving Basel II and regulatory compliance milestones, whilst introducing international best practice risk management, AML and Disaster Recovery systems and methodology throughout the group. We were also proud to receive a number of international accolades for our achievements to date – the first “Mediterranean Awards for Global Excellence in Islamic Finance” was awarded at the Malta Islamic Finance Conference, the Hawkamah Union of Arab Banks “Bank Corporate Governance Award” and “Best Regional Bank” at the prestigious Annual Islamic Business & Finance Awards in December. Such tokens of the respect and regard with which we are held by our peers only serve to strengthen our determination and redouble our efforts in our quest for the highest standards in the field of Islamic banking. Unfolding events in a number of countries in the Middle East and North Africa region presage a time of change for many of them. Whilst we cannot know exactly how these events will ultimately impact on the economies of the region nor its business activity in the short term, we nevertheless remain confident that the Group will not be adversely affected in light of its fundamental soundness and financial strength level, as well as meet the three Shari’a requirements for structuring new products at another level. The three Shari’a requirements for structuring being, - the purpose, the mechanism and the end result that adds value to the wealth or income of the societies in which they are operating in. The fast growth of the Islamic finance sector has clearly thrown up some challenges, not least of which is in human resources, both as financiers and to sit on Sharia boards. What are your views on this? Sheikh Kamel: As you said Islamic Banking has always been growing at a fast rate. But with such rapid growth, you need to build supporting institutions at the industry level. These are needed to address non-core challenges such as R&D and shortage of specialists in Islamic Banking. Some people say that Islamic banks have not been creative enough in generating new products and have merely repackaged conventional products. Do you think Islamic banking is creatively challenged? Sheikh Kamel: I disagree. In fact, it is the opposite. It is my belief that Islamic Financial Services Industry itself is an innovative initiative. We are more creative than conventional banks. How many innovative products have conventional banks brought to the market in the past 30 years? But Islamic banks are bringing entirely new Shari’a-compliant products into the market which the others now copying. We are the creative ones. But still there are gaps in our product menu. You can never stop putting forward new ideas. Mortgage loans, for example, is one growing area that Islamic banks have yet to fully explore. I am always supporting the view that the Islamic Finance Industry – despite contemporary challenges – is capable of developing initiatives required to adapt to any economic or legal changes. What other areas are under-developed in Islamic finance; Where would you like to see more innovation, sophistication and growth in Islamic financial products and transactions? Sheikh Kamel: Like any other Banking Business, our Industry faces different challenges that need continuous care. At the top of these is the need to expand the current Islamic Financial basket of Products. There is a need for more Islamic Financial Institutions with investment banking focus to develop Islamic Capital markets and to actively participate in project finance type of activities. The industry needs to expand in Sukuk issuance and other related money market products. I have noticed that the Islamic Financial Institutions have already started addressing the liquidity management issue by introducing new products – they no longer depend on the International commodity Murabaha – which is proof that the sector is improving. Furthermore, patrons and practitioners of the Industry need to pay more attention to Shari’a compliance, and particularly, I want to emphasise on the importance of creating new products that meet the requirements of their customer segments at one 48 “I believe that I am as yet to realise my dream of having true Islamic economic principles. It is upon this that the entire resources of society should be mobilized - according to the principles of Shari’a – and should be utilized for the benefit of society, again according to the principles of Shari’a .” Interviewoneonone THE FUTURE OF RETAIL MOHAMMED ALSHAYA How has the GCCâ€™s reatail sector performed in 2012? As in most markets demand from consumers across the Middle East has declined. This is particularly evident in the luxury sector as consumers show more caution in their spending habits and search for greater value. Though malls continue to be popular destinations there is no doubt that the frequency of purchases has slowed down. My view is that the luxury retailers have seen their businesses decline by as much as 25 per cent. How is the Alshaya business performing across the Middle East? Given the signs of slowdown that were already appearing in the last quarter of 2008 we planned accordingly. We were not surprised by the way things have developed this year so overall we are above our expectations in terms of our half year performance. As a total business we are still experiencing single digit growth during 2009. However productivity measures were under pressure as we all geared ourselves for bigger expansion. Some markets in the Gulf have been impacted more adversely than others. Some developers in my opinion have not acted responsibly in these circumstances and have made a difficult situation immeasurably worse by continuing to demand high rents at a time when retailers can least afford it. I would sincerely urge these developers to review this and help to create a win win partnership. Local authorities and developers also need to be careful in my opinion. There is a real threat of oversupply. Particularly of large expensive malls. I would encourage them to look at developing smaller more accessible and convenient shopping strips that serve local consumers and put a hold on licenses given to developing larger malls. Notwithstanding these challenges we are confident in the long term however and feel that the allure of Dubai as one of the worldâ€™s premier shopping and leisure destinations will prove once again irresistible as the global economy improves and the confidence of consumers returns. Some markets on the other hand continue to grow healthily despite global and regional economic conditions. Our businesses in Kuwait have proved to be robust. In the Avenues shopping centre for example consumer traffic is at an all time high and sales volumes are better than last year. We are also seeing healthy growth in markets such as Lebanon and Russia What is the impact of slowdown on company investment? Clearly because of prevailing economic conditions and in some instances the cancellation or postponement of mall projects we have reduced the number of new store openings. Nevertheless we are still on target to open up 230 stores by year end. These will be mainly in the Middle East but also across the other markets we operate in, namely Russia, central and eastern Europe and Turkey. Next year we are already planning to open 150 stores. One exciting element of this continued growth is that a great number of these stores will introduce new and fresh brands to the markets we serve like Office Depot, Payless Shoesource, American Eagle Outfitters, Express Clothing, Pottery Barn and PF changes to name but a few. Our desire to give our consumers greater and greater choice remains as strong as ever. In some instances we have had to close stores and lay off staff. This was to a large extent due to the brand itself having had problems in their home market. Thankfully the numbers have been small. Because of the breadth of our brands portfolio it is relatively easy for us to redeploy staff and resources to support our strongest brands which continue to grow well and as mentioned before our new ones. We have recruited more than 2700 new staff into the business so far this year. 49 infocus KUWAITâ€˜S STORY His Highness Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, fourth son of the late Sheikh Ahmad AlJaber Al-Sabah, who was born in Kuwait on June 6, 1929, and educated in the schools of Kuwait and later completed his studies with private tutors. His Highness Sheikh Sabah had been a leading political figure for the past four decades, and headed Kuwait`s diplomacy since 1963 when he became the country`s foreign minister. 50 HIS HIGHNESS SHEIKH SABAH AL-AHMAD AL-JABER AL-SABAH His Highness Sheikh Sabah had taken up official duties when he was appointed on July 19, 1954, by the late Amir, Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem Al-Sabah, as member of the Higher Executive Committee assigned with regulating operations in governmental departments and placing plans for their activities. His Highness Sheikh Sabah was then appointed Chairman of the Department of Social Affairs and Chairman of the Department of Press and Publications in 1957, and after Kuwait`s declaration of independence on June 19, 1961, he was appointed director of both the Department Press and Publications and the Department of Social Affairs and Labor. On August 26, 1961, the Higher Executive Committee - which carried out the duties of today`s cabinet - was formed and His Highness Sheikh Sabah became a member as chairman of the two departments, and late became member of the Constituent Assembly assigned with placing the Kuwaiti Constitution. When departments were regulated into ministries in November, 1962, His Highness Sheikh Sabah came to hold a number of ministerial positions, including Minister of Guidance and Information - later changed to the Ministry of Information. His Highness Sheikh Sabah was also appointed head of the Kuwaiti delegationstotheUnitedNationsandtheArabLeague,andbecameMinister of Foreign Affairs and head of the permanent committee of Gulf aid in February, 1963. As minister, His Highness Sheikh Sabah became a member of the National Assembly (parliament) since its establishment in 1963 and up to today, and witnessed the different constitutional events that took place during that period. His Highness Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad AlJaber Al-Sabah, had represented the late Amir, His Highness Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah in many local and international conferences and meetings in recent years. As for the different ministerial positions that His Highness Sheikh Sabah held, he was First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs since the 16th Cabinet formed on October 18, 1998, and the 20th Cabinet formed on February 14, 2001. His Highness Sheikh Sabah was acting Minister of Information from February 2, 1971 to February 3, 1975 in addition to his post as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and was appointed Deputy Prime Minister on February 16, 1978 in addition to his post as Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was appointed Minister of Information on February 9, 1982 in addition to his posts as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of foreign Affairs, and relinquished his position as Minister of Information in 1985. He was appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs on March 3, 1985, and appointed as First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs on October 18, 1992. On July 13, 2003, an Amiri decree was issued appointing him Prime Minister and assigning him to the formation of the new Cabinet. His Highness Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah took oath in a special session after the demise of late amir HH Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, thus becoming Kuwait`s 15th Amir and commencing a new and bright era. Kuwaitâ€™s future economic outlook: Kuwait is a small, relatively open economy with proven crude oil reserves of about 96 billion barrels (15.3 km3), i.e., about 9% of world reserves. Petroleum accounts for nearly half of GDP, 90% of export revenues, and 95% of government income. Kuwait lacks water and has practically no arable land, thus preventing development of agriculture. About 75% of potable water must be distilled or imported. Higher oil prices reduced the budget deficit from $5.5 billion to $3 billion in 1999, and prices are expected to remain relatively strong throughout 2000. The government is proceeding slowly with reforms. It inaugurated Kuwaitâ€şs first free-trade zone in 1999 and will continue discussions with foreign oil companies to develop fields in the northern part of the country. In 2007, hydrocarbon industries accounted for well over 95% of the Kuwaiti economy. Diversification of the economy into manufacturing industries remain a long-term issue. Current GDP per capita reached astonishing peak growth of 439% in the 1970s. But this proved unsustainable and contracted by 58% in the 1980s. However rising global oil demand helped register growth of 91% in the 1990s. Diversification is a long-term issue for this over-exposed economy. Industry in Kuwait consists of several large export-oriented petrochemical units, oil refineries, and a range of small manufacturers. It also includes large water desalinization, ammonia, desulfurization, fertilizer, brick, block, and cement plants. During the invasion, the Iraqis looted nearly all movable items of worth, especially high-technology items and small machinery. Much of this has been replaced with newer equipment. 51 globalprespectives STARBUCKS A GLOBAL PHENOMENA Howard Schultz, 57, is the chairman and CEO of Starbucks. He originally bought the company, then simply a purveyor of high-quality coffee beans, in 1987 and went on to transform it into America›s — and the world›s — leading coffeeshop chain: Starbucks currently has more than 16,000 stores in 54 countries and annual revenue of more than $10bn. Having stepped aside from the CEO role in 2000, Schultz famously returned as chief executive in January 2008 after a slump in sales. He tells the story of the subsequent turnaround in his recently published book, Onward: How Starbucks Fought for its Life Without Losing its Soul. HOWARD SCHULTZ CHAIRMAN AND CEO OF STARBUCKS 54 How’s business? Despite the fragile nature of the economies around the world, business is quite good. We had the strongest year in our history in 2010 and the last two quarters were consecutive record quarters for the company. So we›re quite pleased. But at the same time we need to be extremely thoughtful and disciplined about what we›re doing because of the nature of the world we›re living in. Unemployment in America is still nine per cent, and in the UK it’s eight per cent. Is it fair to say that China is the biggest area of potential growth for you at the moment? We have 800 stores in greater China and about 400 on the mainland, and it’s a fantastically strong market for us. The Chinese have embraced Starbucks as their own and are using our stores literally as a third place between home and work. Given the emerging middle class and how aspirational they are and their understanding of western brands, we have a very significant opportunity to have thousands of stores in China and I’m quite excited by that. Despite the fact there›s no tradition of drinking coffee in China? Not unlike Japan and most of Asia, these are tea-drinking consumers, but in a very short period of time — we›ve been in China 12 years now — we have created an understanding of coffee. If you walk into one of our stores in Beijing you will see exactly what you see in London, and that is people enjoying coffee, socialising, having meetings. People are still drinking tea but the coffee category is growing and we’re going to be a big part of it. When you returned as CEO, there was a sense that the company had been trying to grow too quickly. What›s the difference now? The kind of growth we’re talking about right now is different. It’s not growth to try and hit a number or satisfy any constituency other than our customers. We’ve learned some lessons and put in place new processes to ensure there›s a tremendous amount of analysis both before and after decisions, whereas in the past, when we were involved in hypergrowth, very rarely did we look back, we were always looking forward. So at the age of seven I witnessed a kind of fracturing of the American dream. In a way, the vision for Starbucks was to create the sort of company that my father never got a chance to work for, that would value the worker. That precipitated two unique benefits that had never been created in America before: stock options and health insurance for every employee. What are the main lessons you›ve learnt over the last two or three years about turning a company round? You’ve got to have the right strategy and you have to have great execution. But it’s really about human behaviour and it’s about leadership. We›re not in a business that’s technology based, we’re in the people business and leading an organisation that’s so people based means that everyone has to have a reason to believe, everyone needs to be faced in the same direction, and everyone needs to understand that it’s not about thousands of stores, millions of customers or thousands of employees, it’s about one person and one extraordinary cup of coffee and one customer. I also think transformation doesn’t have a finish line and success is not an entitlement, it has to be earned. So we›re not celebrating. We still have a lot to do. How much longer will you remain as CEO? I’ve told the board and our shareholders that I’m here for the long term and won’t be heading out any time soon. Although I’m not sure that›s what my wife wants to hear. Finally, what›s your favourite cup of coffee? My favourite coffee is Sumatra made in a French press. But I have to make it myself! What’s so special about coffee? It’s a social beverage, it brings people together. I had an epiphany in 1983 walking the streets of Milan and Verona. I was struck not just by the romance of Italian espresso but also by the sense of community that existed in the cafés. It was through that experience that I realised what an opportunity existed, because there was nothing in America like the English pub at the time, there was no social place. The question was, could we create an environment around coffee? You’ve recently been very vocal on the subject of the price of coffee on the commodities market. Why is that? Coffee’s at a 34-year high right now and there is no evidence whatsoever of a supply or demand issue driving that. The question I would ask is: who’s benefiting? In the middle of all this is a litany of different types of very sophisticated financial speculation. It reminds me in a way of the subprime mortgage crisis in America. Perhaps we haven›t learnt our lesson. How has your background informed your business career and your business values? I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. My dad had an accident when I was seven years old, and as a result he was fired. In those days, if you were an uneducated blue collar worker in America and had an accident, there were no benefits or health insurance. 55 highprofileinterview SUCCESS BREEDS SUCCESS Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was born in Riyadh and educated in the U.S. He obtained a degree in Business Administration and graduated Magna Cum Laude from Menlo College in 1979 and earned a Master of Social Science degree with Honors from Syracuse University in 1985. Prince Alwaleed was ranked 26th in the 2011 Forbes magazine list of billionaires and is now the largest single investor in Citigroup. Individually and through his foundations, Prince Alwaleed has made philanthropic grants and donations in over 60 countries, totaling more than $3 Billion over the past 30 years. HRH PRINCE ALWALEED BIN TALAL FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN, KINGDOM HOLDING COMPANY 58 Company Brief Kingdom Holding Company (KHC; www.kingdom.com. sa) maintains holdings in some of the world’s best known companies and brands in an array of sectors including banking, media, information technology, retail, business, health care, entertainment, and tourism. KHC’s investments include stakes in Citigroup and News Corp and real estate holdings including the Four Seasons, Fairmount, and Mövenpick hotel chains, as well as properties like the Plaza Hotel in New York, the George V in Paris, and London’s Savoy Hotel. You have been very vocal about the need for change in the Middle East. What are your thoughts about the changes going on now and what needs to happen to secure a stable future in the region? Several revolutions have taken place in the Middle East and North Africa region, in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, and there are others in the making, such as Yemen. Syria is also developing into a dangerous situation. The common denominator among these revolutions is that the people in those countries would like to have a say and participate in the process of shaping their societies. The Arab countries that now have stability but still haven’t latched onto what is happening in our region have to learn lessons and start adopting at least some of what the people want. What more can be done to achieve a better East/West understanding? Following 911/, the gap between West and East widened, and more importantly, the gap between the Arab world and the United States, and to make it even more dangerous, between Christianity and Islam. We have to do our best to make sure the gap is bridged among those communities. We’re doing our best in the world of academia by having centers at the American University in Beirut and the American University in Cairo educate people in our region about the American system and its way of life. We have two centers in the best universities in the U.K. – Cambridge and Edinburgh – and we have centers at two universities on the East Coast of the U.S. – Harvard and Georgetown. We have also established an Islamic center inside the Louvre in Paris. The sponsor of all these centers is the Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation, whose focus is to find common ground in the worlds of academia, art, and culture in order to bridge the gap as much as we can. HRH Prince Alwaleed bin Talal with Vice President Moody Awori and UNWFP Special Ambassador Abdulaziz Arrukban participate in distribution of UNWFP relief aid packages. What areas are the foundations involved in? We have several areas of concentration: one is focused on bridging the gap between communities and societies and religions; another division focuses on female empowerment in Saudi Arabia; another on alleviating poverty and educating people in our country and our region; and another assists those countries that face catastrophes or natural disasters such as the tsunami in Japan. Has the progress on women’s empowerment been as strong as you had hoped? Any society, community, or country that doesn’t have 50 percent of its population participating in the system and the society or the advancement of its economic development cannot be functioning normally. Since we began this process several years ago, there have been a lot of moves along that front whereby women are becoming incorporated into the society and system. I use my national, regional, and international presence to advance that cause by giving women the platform to be public, to be vocal, and to ask for equal rights. We’re not asking for more rights for them – just equal rights with men so they can perform their duties on the national front in Saudi Arabia. In comparing the Saudi Arabia of today with that of four or five years ago, there has been a big improvement.Have we reached our goals? No. We are way short of them, but we will keep fighting until we reach our goals. You are the largest investor in the U.S. What are the most important characteristics you look for in deciding to invest in a company? You need good management that you believe will be there at least for three to five years. News Corp., for example, is an international media company. There are many local and regional media companies in the States, Europe, and Japan, but you have no international company involved in media like News Corp., which has interests in Australia, Japan, the U.K., Germany, Italy, America, and Latin America. There is not only good management but good profitability as well. The Four Seasons is a unique brand that caters to five-, six-, and seven-star clientele and it’s difficult to find another hotel management company to compete with it. So it’s making sure that there is value, differentiation, good management, good cash flow, and the potential for profitability and increased value of the share price. Were you surprised by the severity of the economic downturn and have the right steps been taken globally for growth? We only began to see an end to the economic tsunami that began in the summer of 2007 in 2010. Things are stabilizing now and it was a good scaffolding that the government put in place with QE1 and QE2, but right now, it has to be taken out. But there is concern that once you take out the QE2, this will again shock the economic system. I don’t believe it will be shocking, because once you take the scaffolding out, you assume the building can stand alone; otherwise, the construction is bad. It was a nasty blow that impacted the whole world, but we are seeing now indications that the worst is over and we’re getting back out from under it. In terms of investing in the future, many suggest the U.S. is no longer the area for growth and the emphasis is being placed on the BRIC markets and Southeast Asia. Are you more focused on those developing markets? The U.S. is down but not out. There is no growth right now, and for that matter, not in the OECD countries or Japan either. But in the BRIC countries and other countries with high growth rates, there are risks – foreign exchange risks, political risks, and tax risks. The investment climate is not as stable as in the U.S. So you may not get good growth at present in the U.S. and OECD countries, but you have stability. And in the BRICs or third-world countries, you have to be ready for some surprises. At the end of the day, it’s high risk, high reward; low risk, low reward. 59 What characteristics make a successful leader today, especially in business? A successful businessman has to have a plan and objectives, as well as a mission statement, and has to have the guts to make decisions that sometimes might not be popular short term. You have to be a leader and sometimes make decisions that may not be appreciated by either the community or your managers. Nevertheless, you can’t just be a one-man show. We established these traits at KHC a long time ago, and we are proud of that. Our corporate governance policies preceded all the scandals and problems that took place in the States and before U.S. companies were forced to reform. For example, the relationship between me and my company, Kingdom Holding, was established since we had our IPO. So it was important to me early on. No matter what corporate governance systems you implement, doesn’t it come down to human nature at the end of the day? Sure. Human nature is full of shortcomings, but a good leader will not accept shortcuts or any of the things that taint his name, because once your name is tainted as a leader, it’s very difficult to recoup. You can build a company for 20 or 30 years and in five minutes, you can ruin it with one scandal or problem, no matter how small. So it’s important to keep your name clean and pure. Many on your management team have worked with you for a long time and know you well. If I was talking to them without you in the room and I asked what it was like to work for Prince Alwaleed, what would they say? With me, what you see is what you get. I’m tough, I’m to the point, and I give a manager a second chance for a mistake, but not a third chance. It’s inevitable to make mistakes, because if you don’t take risks you don’t make mistakes, but you have to learn from them. Plus, we have very high standards of ethics – that is very important to me. The norm in the U.S. now is to have high values and make sure that people are honorable, but that should be a given. You shouldn’t have to go through a crisis to understand that this is necessary. Many around the world say there is a lack of leadership today. Do you agree? It’s an evolving situation. Each era has its own leaders in business and in politics. So I don’t believe good leaders have disappeared. But some leaders are worried now and are being careful not to bring about a scandal or problem. But I don’t think that the world lacks leaders in politics, economics, finance, or business. What are you most concerned with globally to make sure we get on the right path? With what is happening in the Middle East and the problems in the U.S. and Europe, there are a lot of challenges, but also a lot of opportunities. In the U.S. specifically, the challenges have to be faced with good leadership 60 and Congress has to work more closely with the President and resolve the problems. Do you ever turn off the business? I believe in networking, because today business, economics, and finance are intertwined with politics. So in business, you have to be in politics and economics as well, especially in our part of the world. What do you do to relax? You have to have time for work and time for your mind and body. My way of doing business is that no matter how big the crisis, you have to accept it with an open heart and mind; shouting and screaming doesn’t help. Remain composed and absorbed, and be rational in your approach. Any company is only as good as its people. If you don’t have good people, not under you, but with you, each within his or her own field, who are at least equal to you if not better, it won’t work. Because you are working on so many fronts and anyone who claims he can manage all of it simultaneously is going to fail. I believe in what Reagan used to say: “Trust, but Verify”. And if someone does well, you reward him. If he doesn’t do well, you penalize him and give him a warning, but at day’s end, you have to change. What advice would you give to young people today looking for inspiration as to their future? When students graduate, they need an objective and a mission statement, and they need to determine their risk appetite and their direction. It’s the job of the father and mother, as well as the community, to give direction. That is why our communities, societies, and nations have to open up discussion, to give the youth more direction and more opportunity to prepare themselves for being leaders in business, economics, finance, or even in politics. You have touched so many lives through the foundation. Do you ever take the time to appreciate all you have done? I believe in working hard and being successful, because success breeds success and that drives me. But it’s also about helping your immediate community, the society, the nation, and the whole world in general. That’s why we have these different aspects – to help as much as we can in the world. “A successful businessman has to have a plan and objectives, as well as a mission statement, and has to have the guts to make decisions that sometimes might not be popular short term.” 303 23 diplomaticointerview Canada established relations with the United Arab Emirates in 1974. Each maintains an embassy in the otherâ€˜s capital. H.E. ARIF LALANI CANADIAN AMBASSADOR TO THE UAE 62 The ambassador, Arif Lalani, who doubles as Canada’s first Special Envoy to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, has been in the country little under a year, arriving in October last year — “As Emiratis like to say — I haven’t spent a summer here yet.” He lives with his “partner in (his) work here”, New Zealand-born Canadian wife Katie, who, in addition to a private sector career, works as a volunteer for INJAZ-UAE, an organisation of corporate mentors who inspire young people to reach their full potential through various skills programmes. The couple are also involved with the Terry Fox runs around the country, which commemorate the efforts of the Canadian athlete and cancer victim to raise the profile of cancer, and have raised more than $5 million for cancer research in the UAE. Lalani, who sits on the Operating Board of Directors of Canadian think tank Centre for International Governance and Innovation (CIGI) (incidentally chaired by the founder of BlackBerry — “a great Canadian game changing invention”) as well as the board of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, says he has enjoyed every minute of his time in the UAE. Fortunately, the official likes to drive, and says he has been using that vehicle to try to explore all the emirates, which he is still discovering. “I love being in the desert, though I spend a lot of time on the highway between Abu Dhabi and Dubai!” Lalani has also discovered a passion for falconry, and enjoys watching the predatory birds train, race and hunt. He says he is also learning about Emirati poetry, while he has been exploring the local arts scene, including Abu Dhabi Art, Art Dubai and Design Days Dubai. “I would like to have more Canadian artists in the UAE.” What do you think are the successes of the UAE? The UAE is a model of what I call enlightened accelerated development. Through its visionary leaders, it has achieved one of the highest standards of living, anywhere in the world, in just one generation. It is a source of stability, and economic growth throughout the region and globally. It represents for me the “new Middle East” — with a much needed sense of aspiration to be the best in the world. In this respect, Canada supports its efforts to continue to improve on good governance, innovation, education and health. What do you think are the challenges faced by the UAE? I believe the UAE’s major challenge is the diversification of its economy; and concern for stability in an increasingly volatile neighborhood. I also think achieving the Emiratisation goals is a key objective for the UAE. Canadian institutions and Canadians can be partners in this exercise also, in terms of training and capacity building. What are your priorities in your role? To help Emiratis and Canadians understand how important we are to each other — that’s priority one. I believe that the UAE and Canada are strategic partners for the future and I want to help build that foundation. That’s why we announced a shared Strategic Agenda in April where our governments agreed to cooperate on prosperity, security, and development. What are the relations between the UAE and your country? Our relationship is stronger than it has ever been. The UAE is Canada’s largest export market in the Middle East, trade is up this year, and over 40,000 Canadians live and work here, with 150 Canadian companies doing business here; the UAE is amongst the top 10 investors in Canada. Our foreign ministers have visited each other four times in less than a year, and our Trade Minister will visit soon also. We are so pleased the visa regime has been restored by the UAE government, and we have been part of the nation-building story of the UAE. The Higher Colleges of Technology model was based on a Canadian educational system and the design and construction of landmarks like the first Abu Dhabi Airport and the original Maqta Bridge were built by Canadian firms. And of course the Canadian mint produces the UAE’s dirham coins. In modern times – the iconic Emirates Towers were designed by Canadian architects, the fountains at Burj Khalifa are Canadian, and don’t get me started on Tim Hortons! Is it fair to say the Canadian and UAE governments have had a rapprochement of sorts after the visit by Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird in April? As I said, the relationship is stronger than ever and the foreign ministers are friends. My minister sees UAE Foreign Minister Shaikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan as a trusted partner. We understand the strategic potential of the relationship. Canada and the UAE are focusing their efforts on implementing the shared strategic agenda announced in April to cooperate on creating economic prosperity for both countries, strengthening security, and advancing development in third world countries. Is there any intention to review travel visa stipulations for Emiratis travelling to Canada, for ease of travel? It is a fairly easy and simple process for Emiratis to obtain a visa to Canada. We offer a multiple entry visa valid for up to ten years, with a processing time of 5 days, and do not generally request an interview. Emiratis and UAE residents can now also apply through a Canadian visa application centre (VAC), which has longer working hours. Are the UAE and Canadian governments discussing landing rights in Canada for Emirates and Etihad planes, and in the UAE for Air Canada planes? As permitted under our air services agreement, discussions take place periodically between Canadian and UAE civil aviation officials which allow for the review of new market developments. Air Canada and Etihad Airways recently announced a code sharing agreement, which will enhance business and leisure travel between the two countries. Is the Canadian government looking at restoring military personnel in the country? We work very closely with Emiratis on a number of security and military issues here and abroad. For example, the UAE was an important ally for Canada in Nato operations in Libya. I was pleased to see the visit of the Canadian navy ship HMCS Toronto to ports in Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the last few months. We continue to enhance our cooperation. 63 myopinion DUBAI’S SHEIKH MOHAMMED SHOWS HOW POWERFUL BRANDING CAN BE AS A LEADERSHIP TOOL “Sheikh Mohammed and his Dubai could be a source of inspiration for you, if you are a leader, on how you can move your people, customers, and partners by sharing energetic aspirations and walking in front of the joint effort to pursue them.” 64 By Nicolai Tillisch, the author of Effective Business in The Gulf: Mastering Leadership Skills for Greater Success and the founder of Dual Impact, the Dubai-based consulting and coaching company. The tennis match lasted some 20 minutes back on February 22, 2005, yet the event itself is a symptomatic element in a unique story about branding and leadership. Andre Agassi and Roger Federer played each other on the helipad of the Burj Al Arab hotel 650 feet above the ground. The photos became instantly circulated around the world, and they are still remembered by impressively many people around the globe. Meanwhile, branding has been on a long and tortuous journey to reach the top management agenda. John Wanamaker, who was one of the advertising pioneers, did honestly highlight a fundamental dilemma: only about half of advertising actually worked, but nobody knew which half that was. The point is still being brought up as if it were only yesterday, even though it is more than a century old and technology makes it possible today to measure marketing quite well. In my work as an executive coach and facilitator, I experience that many business leaders are much less comfortable with taking bold decisions regarding branding than other aspects of their business. One explanation is that a moderate share of these individuals has worked in marketing while climbing the career ladder. Another is that executives are first and foremost accustomed with quantitative analysis, as opposed to qualitative analysis that is also required when understanding and playing with the emotions in a brand. You would probably never have guessed that Dubai and several of its government-related corporations would represent a case example of how effective branding and leadership can go hand in hand, had you been asked just a few decades back. The city center was then a vibrant– but small–and proud–but not rich–enclave covering the banks of its creek. Dubai has made some noise–particularly with its historical mix of Arab, Indian, and Iranian merchants–but nothing that was heard on the world scene. Rather serious branding has helped Dubai step up, as this has been an integrated part in many of its moves. Branding helped lead the way towards what Dubai is today, and the leaders at the very top have been closely involved in branding the emirate. Business partners, expatriates, frequent travelers, and tourists did all have to be convinced that it was all possible. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai and Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, has very much the honor that Dubai has taken on its magnetic power and reached around the entire world to attract business and people. He became the ruler in early 2006 and started building the foundation for his achievements already as Crown Prince prior to this. Communication is close to the heart of His Highness, who is also an admired poet; a bestselling author with his book, My Vision; and an enthusiastic social networker with more than two million followers on Twitter. Monumental constructions that he is behind, such as Palm Jumeirah, Burj Khalifa, and the previously mentioned Burj Al Arab, do speak for themselves when they are pictured in the international press. Dubai plays on a large register of channels and activities to attract people and to give them a unique experience and a feeling of belonging. One of the other many examples is Emirates Airlines, which helps to promote Dubai on its more than 100 destinations and mesmerizes all of its new visitors with a magic video about the emirate before every one of its landings here. While corporations–and other cities and countries, for that matter– define their brands by nicely packaging what they already have, Dubai is as much building on the dream about its continuous progress. This is irrespectively that the metropolis already has much more to offer to many than most other places. Dubai is the single most popular location among international companies to place their regional headquarters for the Middle East and often also Africa or India. The city is in the absolute top league for places to host large conferences. It is increasingly the natural meeting point between the West and the ever-strong East. Dubai serves also as a kind of new oasis for its large neighbor Saudi Arabia, for whom it is everything from a relaxed family hideout during Eids to an attractive honeymoon destination. Middle-class families from anywhere in the world are also putting Dubai on their holiday wish list. A steady stream of major sporting events within golf, horse racing, and tennis lures fans. At the same time, the international jet set makes their regular–and almost mandatory–visits. All this helps paint an attractive future for Dubai, which has also become a safe haven for people who flee countries in turmoil due to the Arab Spring or who are concerned about their place of living and want to establish an additional home in Dubai. For this same reason, large, foreign investments are currently channeled from various places into new serious real estate and other ambitious projects. Sheikh Mohammed and his Dubai could be a source of inspiration for you, if you are a leader, on how you can move your people, customers, and partners by sharing energetic aspirations and walking in front of the joint effort to pursue them. If you are a brand aficionado, then this is also an illustration of a point made by Bill Bernbach, the father of the creative movement within advertising: “Execution becomes content in a work of genius.” 65 leaders&thinkers LINCOLN, EDISON AND EINSTEIN ON INNOVATION “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” President ABRAHAM LINCOLN, annual message to Congress - Washington, D.C. - December 1, 1862 It is incredible to think that President Lincoln was already talking about change, innovation and reinvention in the 1800’. We tend to think of stormy presents in today’s world where is difficult to keep up with the pace of technology. Thomas Edison invented the first electric bulb as we know it in 1878. What could possibly be seen as a chaotic present where there was no electricity, where air travel did not exist, and mobile communications where difficult to imagine. The same will be for those looking back on us in the year 2100 looking at the internet as we see electricity of the 1880’. Edison was born in Ohio in the USA in 1847. At school his teacher thought his ideas were crazy and that he might have a learning difficulty. After that, his mother taught him at home. He was full of curiosity and she encouraged him to learn things for himself. Thomas Edison is one of the greatest inventors in history and was responsible for more inventions than any other inventor. He created the first research laboratory, which he called The Invention Factory, probably one of his greatest achievements. Altogether he took out patents on 1093 inventions. 66 Taking in consideration that the pace of change multiplies as time passes, we can’t even begin to imagine what the year 2100 will bring; the same way Thomas Edison wouldn’t believe what we have created through his light bulb. In the information age, knowledge is power. Education is recognized as being the single most important path to development and to limiting poverty. With knowledge replacing physical and natural resources as the key ingredient in economic development, education and human resource development policies require rethinking. The fast pace of change, an ever developing information age, is bringing a new paradigm on how nations encourage and promote innovation and creativity. Human capital theory views education and training as an investment that can yield social and private returns through increased knowledge and skills for economic development and social progress. The economic argument in favor of knowledge-based education and training is linked to the perceived need of the global economy. It is based on the assumption that economic growth and development are knowledge driven and human capital dependent. Successful innovation requires an abundance of talent and an environment to support it. Few students emerge from secondary or tertiary education with a strong appreciation of the value of innovation in commerce and its contribution to building economic wealth. Employers also cite the general dearth of graduates across many disciplines with the requisite knowledge, skills and attitudes for taking innovative approaches to problem solving. A kid entering the schooling system today will graduate in the year 2024. The top ten in demand jobs in 2012 - Did not exist in 2005. We are currently preparing kids at school for jobs that don’t yet exist. Albert Einstein on Crises “Let‘s not pretend that things will change if we keep doing the same things. A crisis can be a real blessing to any person, to any nation. For all crises bring progress. Creativity is born from anguish, just like the day is born form the dark night. It‘s in crisis that inventive is born, as well as discoveries, and big strategies. Who overcomes crisis, overcomes himself, without getting overcome. Who blames his failure to a crisis neglects his own talent, and is more respectful to problems than to solutions. Incompetence is the true crisis. The greatest inconvenience of people and nations is the laziness with which they attempt to find the solutions to their problems. There‘s no challenge without a crisis. Without challenges, life becomes a routine, a slow agony. There’s no merit without crisis. It‘s in the crisis where we can show the very best in us. Without a crisis, any wind becomes a tender touch. To speak about a crisis is to promote it. Not to speak about it is to exalt conformism. Let us work hard instead. Let us stop, once and for all, the menacing crisis that represents the tragedy of not being willing to overcome it.” After centuries of lying dormant, information is now considered to be a wealth generator, not just in terms of contributing to economic performance of the organization, but as a major contributor to new service-based and knowledge based industries. The information society now creates one out of four new jobs and the number of job vacancies is increasing. The winners will be those who are willing to devote the time and intellectual energy necessary to understand and influence the forces that are shaping the future of the knowledge society. This is why, in a society of the future, education will play an essential role in creating the new way of life specific to knowledge and learning based society. The introduction in the educational system of new teaching techniques is a prerequisite to national economic and cultural success, as well as to increased economic competitiveness. Increasing the population’s level of education will also create a more stable labor market, by decreasing overall unemployment. It is well known that well educated individuals have a higher participation rate on the labor market. “A successful modern economy is founded on a strong scientific base that has the ability to convert scientific research and knowledge into products and services.” Bill Gates 67 GLOBAL CITIES A PATH TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT As the world moves into the urban age, the dynamism and intense vitality of cities become even more prominent. A fresh future is taking shape, with urban areas around the world becoming not just the dominant form of habitat for humankind, but also the engine-rooms of human development as a whole. Amidst multiple challenges facing cities today, a focus on poverty reduction and/or responses to the economic crisis is gradually shifting to a broader and more general understanding of the need to harness the transformative dynamics and potentials which, to varying degrees, characterize any city anywhere in the world. 68 It is really remarkable that only one century ago, two out of 10 people in the world were living in urban areas. In the least developed countries, this proportion was as low as five per cent, as the overwhelming majority was living in rural areas. The world has been rapidly urbanizing since then and, in some countries and regions, at an unprecedented pace. It was only two years ago that humankind took a historic step when, for the first time in history, the urban outnumbered the rural population. This milestone marked the advent of a new “urban millennium” and, by the middle of this century, it is expected that out of every 10 people on the planet, seven will be living in urban areas. In the last decade, the urban population in the developing world grew an average 1.2 million people per week, or slightly less than one full year’s demographic growth in Europe’s urban areas. Asia dominated the picture, adding 0.88 million new urban dwellers every week. Africa was the second largest contributor with an additional 0.23 million per week, dwarfing Latin America and the Caribbean’s 0.15 million weekly increment. Still, a common set of conditions can be found prevailing in all cities, which enable human beings to flourish, feel fulfilled and healthy, and where business can thrive, develop and generate more wealth. These conditions mark out the city as the privileged locus of prosperity, where advancement and progress come to materialize. Eight key elements found in Global Cities 2 - REYKJAVIK 3 - MALMO Well developed Infrastructure Good Quality of Life Environmental Sustainability Knowledge and Innovation driven economies International Connectivity Compelling Global Identity High levels of Productivity Favorable business environment Well developed Infrastructure - Infrastructure is crucial for the development, functionality and prosperity of urban areas. It provides the foundation on which any city will thrive. Adequate infrastructure – improved water and sanitation, reliable and sufficient power supply, efficient transport networks and modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) – contributes to the sustainability and economic growth of urban areas, promotes the competitiveness of local businesses, improves labor productivity, enhances the investment climate in the city and contributes to its attractiveness. Good Quality of Life - Today no one disputes that quality of life is essential for a city to prosper. The notion is increasingly used by decision-makers, practitioners and urban populations alike. Everyone agrees on its importance, but everyone will also agree that this notion comes with different meanings and facets. Safety and Security are major deterrents to domestic and foreign investment and can cause capital flight. In Africa, more than 29 per cent of business people report that crime was a significant investment constraint. Environmental Sustainability - The prosperity and environmental sustainability of cities are inextricably linked. Urban areas consume huge amounts of environmental goods and services like food, water, energy, forestry, building materials, and ‘green’ or open spaces often beyond their boundaries. This undermines the assimilative capacity of the environment around urban areas.1 For example, the cities of the world generate over 720 billion tons of wastes every year, but in developing regions, even in large, presumably more affluent, cities only 25 to 55 per cent of wastes are collected. 69 Knowledge and Innovation driven economies - In an increasingly knowledge-driven world, positive development in the global economy requires high levels of human capital to generate new ideas, methods, products, and technologies. International Connectivity - Global relevance requires global reach that efficiently connects people and goods to international markets through well-designed, modern infrastructure. Geography has always played an important role in the evolution of cities. Historically, coastal cities and cities in river deltas have been preferred locations – at present, 14 of the world’s 19 largest cities are port cities. However, with advances in transport and communication technologies and also with increasing specialization, other locational factors, beyond positions along waterways, have accelerated the growth and development of cities. Compelling Global Identity - Cities must establish an appealing global identity and relevance in international markets not only to sell the city, but also to shape and build the region around a common purpose. Metro areas that are appealing, open, and opportunity-rich serve as magnets for attracting people and firms from around the world. High levels of Productivity - Enhancing urban productivity is clearly desirable, as it improves competitiveness and, ultimately, the prosperity of any city. More productive cities are able to increase output with the same amounts of resources, generating additional real income that can raise living standards through more affordable goods and services. Favorable business environment - A business-conducive environment is needed for a vibrant private sector, attracting and retaining investment (including foreign direct), creating jobs and improving productivity – all of which are important for the promotion of growth and for expanded 4 - VANCOUVER 70 opportunities for the poor. Cities such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul, Busan, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Yokohama and Osaka all feature favorable business environments, with beneficial effects on prosperity. Attracting investment from a wide variety of domestic and international sources is decisive in enabling metro areas to effectively pursue new growth strategies. Prosperity in Global Cities Never before had humankind as a whole faced cascading crises of all types as have affected it since 2008, from financial to economic to environmental to social to political. Soaring unemployment, food shortages and attendant price rises, strains on financial institutions, insecurity and political instability, among other crises, Prosperity, as defined by UN-Habitat, is a social construct that materializes in the realm of human actions. It builds deliberately and conscientiously on the objective conditions prevailing in a city at any time, wherever located and however large or small. It is a broader, wide-ranging notion that has to do with well-balanced, harmonious development in an environment of fairness and justice. Prosperity remains one of humankind’s most enduring pursuits across time and space. But it is only in the past few decades that decisionmakers, academics, practitioners and populations have started to measure this important dimension of human development. Some cities are enhancing prosperity though strategic thinking and conscious planning policies. This is the case with Dubai in which took advantage of its privileged geographic location to become the largest re-exporting centre in the Middle East, and today is emerging as a cosmopolitan centre. Swift global integration, the rapid expansion of a global consumer class, and the rise of urban regions as the engines of global economic growth have ushered in a new era. The global economy no longer revolves around a handful of dominant states and their national urban centers. Competition among Global Cities is more open than ever before. For most of the twentieth century, Paris, London and New York formed the leading triad. Berlin was sidelined in the course of the two world wars. Moscow stood in the Soviet Bloc apart from economic competition. Tokyo was probably the first strong challenger. London, Paris, Tokyo and especially New York will continue to benefit from their legacy infrastructure, and to trade on their open societies, transparent governance and status as safe havens and knowledge hubs, as well as their technological and travel connections, for some time. But is it realistic to assume that they can retain their leading status, with relatively miserly economic and demographic growth? Going Green: What makes a city green? Thousands of cities, big and small, around the world have embraced the green movement over the last few years, with many more following their lead. From innovative recycling programs to adding more green space, it actually is becoming easy to be green around the world. Although there are not established official criterias for ranking the greenest of all cities, there are several key areas to measure for effectiveness in carbon footprint reduction. These include air and water quality, efficient recycling and management of waste, percentage of LEED-certified buildings, acres of land devoted to green space, use of renewable energy sources, and easy access to products and services that make green lifestyle choices (organic products, buying local, clean transportation methods) easy. Top 6 Green Cities Copenhagen: Roughly one-third of all residents of Copenhagen use a bicycle to commute to and from work! Even with those impressive stats, the city plans to push for more bike usage from residents and visitors by about 50 percent over the next three years. The city also hopes to reduce CO2 emissions by 20 percent by 2015 and become the world‘s first CO2 neutral city by 2025. San Francisco: In 2011, San Francisco beat out 26 other major U.S. and Canadian cities in a report by Economist Intelligence Unit in five out of nine metrics including green buildings, transportation, water, energy and air quality. Vancouver: The greenest city in Canada and second greenest in North America (behind San Francisco), Vancouver is aiming to become the world’s greenest city by the year 2020. Home to over 200 parks, Vancouver makes great use of renewable sources for power, with a majority of it via hydroelectric power. Malmo: Sweden is a country that leads in green electricity solutions. Most of the country’s electricity comes from nuclear and hydropower. A city such as Malmo is contributing to the green project of Sweden with plans to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 25 percent between 2008 and 2012. To achieve the city’s target, citizens across Malmo are transforming into sustainable, eco-friendly cooperatives particularly the areas of Western Harbour, Sege Park and Augustenborg. Reykjavik: Thanks in large part to its location; Reykjavik makes use of geothermal energy generated underground from hot springs. The city is able to generate electricity and heat 95% of all their buildings. By the year 2050, Iceland plans to free itself from dependence on fossil fuels and become a hydrogen economy. Already, Reykjavik is harnessing energy and produces electricity entirely from hydropower and geothermal resources. 71 SCOTLAND - EUROPE‘S GREEN POWERHOUSE Melbourne: Recently named the world’s most livable city, Melbourne is also finding ways to become the greenest. By 2020 they plan to achieve zero-net emissions thanks to a six-goal plan put in place by the city council which includes strict green building codes and improved city planning. Melbourne is home to an impressive transport network that includes low carbon impact transportation such as Melbourne‘s airport/city Skybus Super Shuttle, which is Australia’s first carbon-neutral public transport operator. Green means business There are genuine opportunities for national and city leaders to reduce carbon emissions and pollution, enhance ecosystems, and minimize environmental risks. The competition to attract international Greenfield investments is stronger than ever. For the first time, all continents are represented in the top 10 Global Cities ranking. While international investors have become more volatile worldwide, Global Cities act as anchors. Europe is still the first source and destination of international Greenfield investments, far ahead of America and Asia and the Middle East. Investors continue to focus on essential criteria to select locations, including political stability, market size, economic growth and talents, but they are also paying increasing attention to infrastructure and R&D quality. The process of making the world’s cities and urban fabric greener and maintaining them in a sustainable way will bring considerable employment opportunities. Upgrading to greener infrastructure generates jobs, whether by improving roads and buildings, establishing public transport networks, repairing and enhancing drainage and sewerage systems or creating and managing efficient recycling services. Many of these jobs will require knowledge of new technologies or working practices, for example, in constructing, installing and maintaining local hydrogen fuel-cell power stations or a network of charging points for electric vehicles. Providing training and support is fundamental to the process, within local authorities and for private companies, particularly small enterprises. 72 Renewable energies With the largest oil and gas reserves in the world, the Middle East and North African (MENA) may appear to be an unlikely advocate for renewable energy. However with excellent solar and wind conditions across much of the region, an increasingly tight gas market and a growing recognition that hydrocarbon reserves can be put to better use other than generating electricity, renewable energy is attracting unprecedented attention in the MENA region. Renewable energies have the potential to equip the MENA region with centuries of sustainable and clean electricity. However with a decreasing scope for hydroelectric capacity due to a lack of recent rainfall, the power targets that are being set across the region for renewable energy power capacity means that it will fall to both solar and wind energy projects to meet these specific country targets. With a number of renewable energy projects currently being planned, developed or in execution stage around the region including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Jordan, Syria and Iraq, and more recently the UAE, never has a time been more crucial to provide detailed information about the region’s long-term plans and strategies for renewable energy in the region. KUALA LUMPUR 23 specialreport PERU: THE UNSUNG HERO OF LATIN AMERICA Peru is located in the central part of South America and borders on the north with Ecuador and Colombia, on the east with Brazil and Bolivia, on the south with Chile and on the west with the Pacific Ocean. Peru is the third largest country in South America after Brazil and Argentina and ranks among the 20 largest countries in the world. The countryâ€™s location facilitates the access to markets in Asia and North America. 74 Peru is the unsung hero of Latin America. With an economy on the rise and a stable government, the Andean country has, slowly but surely, found its feet. And it looks like its rise is not slowing anytime soon: International estimates predict that Peru will be the second fastest-growing economy in Latin America in 2014. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Peru will remain one of the most economically dynamic countries in the hemisphere with a GDP growth forecast of 5.5 percent – second only to Panama›s. Forecast Economics› predictions are more cautious, but equally positive, with 5.2 percent. The Peruvian Central Bank is even more optimistic, previewing growth for 2014 at 6 percent; the BBVA Research center takes it even further with an estimate of 6.3 percent. The International Monetary Fund named Peru “the leader of economic drive in Latin America,” with a growth of 6.1 percent and an inflation rate of 2 percent for 2014, the lowest in Latin America. Unemployment reached historic lows in 2013, at 5.8 percent as of December, according to Trading Economics. The main force behind all these predictions is mining. Mining investments are expected to total $14 billion in 2014, an annual record, compared to the $8.6 billion worth of projects started in 2012. Peru, as the fifth-largest gold producer in the world, relies largely on mining and mineral production. The increase in mineral production will support Peru’s economic growth over the next few years, even as metals prices have weakened. The projects include British Glencore Xstrata PLC›s (LON:GLEN) $6 billion Las Bambas copper deposit, a $4.4 billion investment in Sociedad Minera Cerro Verde SAA, and Canadian HudBay Minerals Inc.›s (NYSE:HBM) $1.8 billion Constancia project. Peru’s economic freedom score is 67.4, making its economy the 47th freest in the 2014 Index. Its score is 0.8 point lower than last year, with an improvement in trade freedom outweighed by deteriorations in labor freedom and business freedom. Peru is ranked 7th out of 29 countries in the South and Central America/ Caribbean region, and its overall score is above the world average. Over the 20-year history of the Index, Peru has advanced its economic freedom score by nearly 11 points. It has achieved double-digit improvements in half of the 10 economic freedoms, most notably in monetary freedom and trade freedom, which have improved by over 35 points and provide a stable foundation to improve the economy’s engagement in global commerce. Peru’s economy continues to be rated “moderately free.” 75 specialreport LEADING AHEAD WITH REFORMS Ollanta Moisés Humala Tasso, born June 27, 1962, has been President of Peru since 2011. A former army officer, Humala lost the 2006 presidential election but won the 2011 presidential election in a runoff vote. He was elected as President of Peru in the second round, defeating Keiko Fujimori. Presiden Humala ran on a platform of “integrated nationalism,” which is understood as actively trying to include all of the various ethnic groups and social classes of Peru to forge a stronger nation. Peru continues to be an explosive mix of ethnicities, special interest groups and social classes, which will make achieving Humala’s vision challenging. His party is “anti-imperialist” and “latinamericanist,” which means that he intends to find solutions to Peru’s problems in political and economic unity among Latin American nations, as opposed to the USA and Europe. OLLANTA MOISÉS HUMALA TASSO PRESIDENT OF PERU 76 PERU UAE EXPAND RELATIONS Peru is seeking to harness investment and expertise from Dubai as it plans to build a major logistics zone between its main port and airport. Luis Miguel Castilla, Peru›s minister of economy and finance, was speaking on a trip to the UAE as it looks to bolster inward investment and trade. Mr Castilla held talks with DP World about extending the port company‘s investment beyond its operation of Peru›s leading port, Callao. “They have a concession of one of the terminals in our port. But we are thinking about a broader idea, which is joining our airport and port and creating a large logistics zone. Given the UAE and Dubai‘s particular experience in developing hubs logistically, there may be room for new investments to come along.” Peru has been one of South America‘s brightest economic stars in recent years, recording average annual growth of 6.4 per cent in the decade from 2002 to 2012. But after growth slowed to expand to 4.8 per cent in the first half of the year, the president, Ollanta Humala, has prioritised investments and sped up infrastructure projects. In an effort to drum up funding for such projects, Mr Castilla is on an investment roadshow to the UAE, London and Frankfurt. The UAE is the largest Arab world investor in Peru, ploughing in US$1.3 billion to $1.5bn since 2010. Mr Castilla also met representatives from Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Mubadala Development. “We showed them the $50bn public-private partnership projects we have over the next year and a half in transportation, subway, roads, airports. We also have projects in energy, gas and oil,” he said. Mr Castilla was accompanied by a delegation of Peruvian business people looking for investment to expand their business overseas. He said he was hoping to sign deals on a double-taxation agreement and investment protection with the UAE, as forerunners for a possible freetrade agreement. LUIS MIGUEL CASTILLA Minister Of Economy And Finance 77 Mr Castilla was accompanied by a delegation of Peruvian business people looking for investment to expand their business overseas. He said he was hoping to sign deals on a double-taxation agreement and investment protection with the UAE, as forerunners for a possible free-trade agreement. Last year, Peru exported goods worth $25m to $30m to the UAE after little growth in the previous two years. Mr Castilla hopes to persuade Emirates Airline to start flights to Lima soon. The lack of direct flights mean the flying time between the two countries is more than 20 hours. GDP growth in Peru would be about 6 per cent this year after a â€œdisappointingâ€? start to the year, supported by growth in the United States, China and elsewhere, and domestic reforms, he said. Alvaro Silva-Santisteban, director of the Peruvian trade, tourism and investment office Promperu, seeks greater exposure of his country in the Emirates. Based in Dubai, Mr Silva-Santisteban talks about ways trade and tourism between the two countries can improve. Your office opened in Dubai in September 2011. How has the relationship between the UAE and Peru developed over the past two years? We need to educate both sides - Peruvians and the people in the UAE about the two countries. From the Gulf we estimate 6,000 tourists went to Peru and within 1,000 from the UAE. About 1,000 tourists from Peru visited the UAE last year. In 2012, we had around 19 commercial missions between Peru and Dubai. This year we expect around 24. [Today and tomorrow], a 40-member delegation from Peru will visit Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Among these 30 will be businessmen from Peru. What are the trade figures between the two countries? Last year, Peru exported goods worth between US$25 million and $30m to the UAE. The growth in 2010 and 2011 was very little. But this year is going to be a stepping stone in the relations between the UAE and Peru. From 2010 until now, the UAE has invested between $1.3 billion and $1.5bn in Peru. 78 Director Of The Peruvian Trade, Tourism And Investment Office Promperu specialreport PERU’S TOURISM, MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE A rich cultural and historical heritage, amazing archaeological sites, a great biodiversity (coast, highlands, and jungle) and an ever more internationally recognized gastronomy attract each year more tourists from around the world. Today tourism contributes significantly to Peru›s revenues. In 2007 around 1.9 million foreign visitors came to Peru, in 2009 already 2.1 million visited, in 2010 2.2 million and in 2011 over 2.5 million paid the Land of the Incas a visit. And for 2014 Peru expects around 3 million tourist. Peru is one of very few countries whose inventory of tourism resources includes every type recognized by world tourism specialists: Natural locations, with a variety of eco-systems and a high degree of biodiversity in world terms; it is one the few countries in the world that can offer the traveler sun and beaches, snow sports, and adventure in the tropical jungle at any time of year. Historical structures show the signs of civilization from Paleolithic times through various stages of Andean cultures until they reached their prime in the grand buildings of the Incas. Folklore, with expressions of dance, music, gastronomy and crafts that are unique to each one of the regions. No wonder. Even though many foreign tourists mainly come to Peru to visit the archaeological site of Machu Picchu, there are many more that slowly become known, such as Caral, Chavin de Huantar, the Kuélap Fortress, Lord of Sipan and the Nazca Lines. their surroundings. The agricultural terracing and aqueducts take advantage of the natural slopes; the lower areas contain buildings occupied by farmers and teachers, and the most important religious areas are located at the crest of the hill, overlooking the lush Urubamba Valley thousands of feet below. Hikers, tourists, and the early explorers describe similar emotions as they climb their way through the Inca Trail. Many call the experience magical. Glancing out from the Funerary Rock Hut on all the temples, fields, terraces, and baths seems to take you to another time. Blending in with the hillside itself, many say the area creates a seamless and elegant green paradise, making it a must for anyone who travels to Peru. 7,000 feet above sea level and nestled on a small hilltop between the Andean Mountain Range, the majestic city of Machu Picchu, soars above the Urabamba Valley below. The Incan built structure has been deemed the “Lost Cities”, unknown until its relatively recent discovery in 1911. Archaeologists estimate that approximately 1200 people could have lived in the area, though many theorize it was most likely a retreat for Incan rulers. Due to it’s isolation from the rest of Peru, living in the area full time would require traveling great distances just to reach the nearest village. Separated into three areas - agricultural, urban, and religious - the structures are arranged so that the function of the buildings matches the form of 79 specialreport THE CRESCENT AND STAR IS RISING It took a decade of political and economic reforms, a strong parliamentary democracy, a customs union with the EU, and a great deal of ingenuity, but Turkey has done what most emerging markets of the world are dreaming of; it tripled its per capita income from US$3,492 to 10,444 US$ and reduced poverty, while growing its economy more than 8 per cent a year, achieving in the last two years the highest rate of GDP growth after China, to become one of the worldâ€şs fastest-growing economies. Growth has recently slowed as Turkeyâ€™s largest trading partner, the European Union, which imports half of its goods, is shuddering from the effects of the prolonged eurozone crisis which is projected to continue in 2013. As a result the Turkish economy grew by 3% in 2012, and is estimated for 2013 to remain at 4.1%. 80 UAE IS TURKEY’S BIGGEST PARTNER IN THE GCC The country’s social and economic transformations, which have been led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan since 2003, have become an inspirational model for the Middle East, as Turkey has risen from the ashes of the downtrodden Ottoman Empire to once again become a pivotal player with a strategic role at the crossroads of Europe, the Middle East and Russia. Furthermore its memberships of the G20 and NATO, the European Council, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Black Sea Economic Cooperation have also ensured Turkish prestige in international community. The attraction of Turkey’s domestic market of 75 million, together with a young and skilled workforce, are also proving a strong incentive for increased investment and trade, as Turkey’s population is forecast to grow to 92 million by 2050. There have been some bumps in the road in respect to Turkey’s relations with its neighbors. The escalation of violence in Syria continues to worry the region, and the pressure for protective military measures are growing, however Turkish diplomacy has remained staunchly supportive of the Arab League and United Nations to find an acceptable resolution of the conflict. Indeed Turkish diplomacy has looked eastwards with greater solidarity, trade and cooperation with the Muslim world and this has been furthered accentuated as Turkey’s relations with the EU have cooled following the stalling of its accession talks to the monetary union. Turkey is now increasingly developing closer relations with the Middle East, and the UAE in particular. The UAE is today Turkey’s main trading partner in the GCC, with bilateral trade increasing from US$355 million in 2000 to over US$5,3 billion in 2011, with an expected US$7 billion for 2012. More than US$6 billion worth of construction contracts were awarded to Turkish businesses in the Emirates over recent years, most recently the Turkish construction company TAV was awarded the contract for construction of Abu Dhabi Airport, and Yapi Merkezi recently built the world’s longest fully-automated and driverless metro; Dubai Metro, and Turkish Steel is building much of Dubai’s high rise buildings. Tourism and business travel is also increasing as Turkish Airlines announced new flights to the UAE and GCC countries as it expands its Asian and Middle East network. Trade has also increased in logistics, banking, food and retail, with 850 Turkish companies operating in the UAE. UAE businesses have also penetrated the Turkish market with 193 UAE companies operating there in 2012. Turkey’s Ambassador to the UAE, Vural Altay is confident relations with Turkey’s biggest partner in the GCC will be further enhanced as increased political and economic ties are strengthened. “We are experiencing a significant momentum in Turkish-UAE relations. The boom in trade and investment, coupled with the visit of Turkish President Mr. Abdullah Gul to the UAE in January 2012 and H.H. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan visit to Turkey in February 2012, have ensured a determined improvement of our bilateral relations, which will undoubtedly flourish in the years to come. We share many cultural and historical values, and have a common understanding of the sustaining a prosperous Middle East as a hub for trade, tourism and investment,” he said. “Turkey is now increasingly developing closer relations with the Middle East” 81 countryfocus POTENTIAL INVESTOR’S FIRST PORT OF CALL The country is competitive, prosperous and open to investment. Turkey is ranked the 13th most attractive destination for FDI in the world, and 9th among emerging countries. It attracted US$ 16 billion worth of FDI in 2011, and is ranks43rd among 144 countries for global competitiveness in the World Economic Forum’s global competitiveness index (20122013-). Turkey’s macroeconomic stability and a healthy GDP of US $73.64 million have improved its overall competitiveness, and the Turkish financial sector is assessed as ‘more trustworthy and finance as more easily accessible for businesses.’ Standard and Poor’s gave Turkey an upgrade in 2012 on its local currency sovereign credit rating, to an investment-grade BBB. In the last ten years the Turkish lira has also gained considerable value and maintained stability, and it is today once again an internationally exchangeable currency, which has ensured that the Turkish banking sector remains one of the strongest and most extensive in the Middle East, Central Asia and East Europe. This combination of economic stability, growth and financial prosperity create the optimal conditions for investment. The potential investor’s first port of call is the Republic of Turkey Prime Ministry Investment Support and Promotion Agency (ISPAT), which is responsible for promoting investment opportunities to a global audience. ISPAT gives investors the assistance they need before travelling to Turkey, during their stay, and well as following up on investment opportunities once they conclude their fact-finding missions. International investors can use ISPAT as a reference point and make their business contacts through this agency to all other institutions in Turkey. If travelling to Turkey to explore investment ventures is not an immediate option, ISPAT has a global reach with a network of local representatives in the United Arab Emirates, as well as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar. Other representatives can be reached in several 82 European capitals as well as Canada, China, India, Japan, the Russian Federation and the USA. They offer an extensive range of services through a ‘one-stop-shop’ approach. ISPAT’s services are free-ofcharge and provide for market information and analyses as well as industry overviews and comprehensive sector reports. The agency is able to find Turkish companies for potential partnerships and joint ventures and engages in negotiations with relevant governmental institutions for the facilitation of legal procedures in the establishment of business operations. Investors are also advised on how to obtain incentive applications, licenses as well as work and residence permits. What are the investment opportunities? “UAE businesses already have excellent relations with Turkey’s construction sector, but there exists further room for new ventures as Turkey’s construction and contracting sector is now the second largest export generator in the world after China,” said Mr. Ilker Ayci, President of ISPAT. He adds that there are also opportunities in the manufacturing sectors, as Turkey is among the world›s leading producers of consumer electronics and home appliances, as well as agricultural products, ships and other transportation equipment, motor vehicles, textiles and construction materials. The country is open for investment in infrastructure projects in education, energy, defence, health, transportation and other public services through Public and Private Partnership (PPP). While Turkey’s privatization efforts totalled US$ 44 billion in the last eight years, there are still areas which will be privatized, such as infrastructure and energy generation. Considering Turkey’s growing demand for energy which will require more than US$ 100 billion worth of investment in the next decade, there are numerous investment opportunities for energy companies. “The UAE is an important market for Turkey in terms of its exports of fruits, vegetables and animal products, and with further investment and closer relations between our countries, Turkish food products could in the future play an important role in the UAE’s food security,” said Mr. Ayci. countryfocus TAV: UAE‘S BIGGEST CONSTRUCTION CONTRACT By winning UAE’s largest ever construction contract, TAV is assured of its position as the ‘undisputed leader’ in the airport construction business Given their proximity to the Middle East, Turkish contractors have constructed projects in the UAE to the value of $US5 billion, including hotels, towers, villas and also projects that need high level technical capacity, such as metro transportation networks, airports, pipelines and other infrastructure projects. One of the most successful Turkish contractors, TAV Construction, was awarded the construction contract in June 2012, as part of a consortium, to build the Midfield Terminal at Abu Dhabi international airport, which is valued at $US3,2 billion. It is the UAE’s largest ever construction contract and has given TAV assurance of its position as the ‘undisputed leader’ in the airport construction business. This follows a fifteen year track-record of building state-of-the-art airports in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Georgia, Macedonia, Libya, as well as the Dubai Emirates A380 Hangars Steel Roof, and becoming one of the two contractors for the new Doha International Airport and Muscat International Airport in Qatar . In Dubai, TAV also completed four highrise projects, including the Sharaf DG Shopping Mall (Al Sharaf) and the Majestic Tower (Al Memzar). “We believe in the rapid expansion of air services in the Gulf and we aim to participate in every feasible airport development project in the region in order to capitalise on this growth. The UAE’s aviation sector is thriving, and I believe that we will see a sustained growth in this industry witnessing an increased capacity of up to 400 million passengers,” said Mr. Sani Şener President and group CEO of TAV Construction and its subsidiary TAV Airports (airport management). Mr. Şener has been leading the group since its formation in 1997, and has pioneered its expansion in the GCC since 2003, with $12.5 billion worth of contracts, and operating in 10 countries in the region. TAV can proudly boast to have completed 3 million square metres of projects to date, and has beaten its rivals to lucrative contracts though the use of its advanced technology as well as its highly adaptable and skilled workforce, as well as a good understanding of cultural commonalities. Turkey has the world’s second biggest number of international construction contractors with projects worldwide worth US$206 billion in 94 countries, as well as having 30 of the top 225 construction firms in the world. 83 countryfocus FAST AND FULLY AUTOMATED RAIL SYSTEMS Since its doors opened in 2009, Dubai Metro has revolutionized transportation in the emirate. Turkish railway specialist Yapi Merkezi was behind the construction of this first mass transit system in the Middle East with its modern, fully automated and driverless technology, which was built as part of the Japan-Turkey Metro Joint Venture. It has since been showcased as a landmark project all around the world, becoming a symbol of Turkish engineering. Other projects in the GCC are also succeeding, and recently Yapi Merkezi secured a $2.1bn contract to build Medinah and Meccah Stations of the Haramain High-Speed Rail Network of 450km in Saudi Arabia, as part of a consortium, in a network that will carry three million passengers a year, particularly the Hajj and Umrah pilgrims. YAPI MERKEZI The company specializes in heavy construction and railway projects in Turkey and around the world, especially in United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Algeria, Morocco and Ethiopia. It has also completed tunnels, bridges, viaducts, industrial and general service buildings, water collection and supply systems, restoration, strengthening and repair works, and mass housing and city planning. As the first and largest company of the Yapı Merkezi Group, Yapı Merkezi Construction and Industry Inc., in its half a century history, has realized the design and construction of a wide variety of buildings, heavy construction and 84 railway projects both in Turkey and abroad. Construction of Dubai Metro had started in August 2005 and, with its 75 km length, it is the longest metro project ever constructed in the world under a single contract. The Project is the first mass transit system in the Middle East and it was shown by Construction Week as one of the 10 most important engineering projects constructed in the Arab World. Main contracting entity “Japan-Turkey Metro Joint Venture” (Mitsubishi, Obayashi, Kajima and Yapi Merkezi) has become the biggest Turkish – Japanese partnership ever realized between Turkey and Japan . “Yapi Merkezi will make history as we will connect Europe and Asia, when we complete the new Bosphorous crossing of Istanbul Strait in Turkey. The Eurasia Tunnel will have 5.4km of twin-deck tunnel 25 metres beneath the seabed, and a further 9.2km above ground, linking Kazlicesme and Goztepe, in order to relieve the traffic load of the crossing for Istanbul’s 13 million inhabitants,” says, S. Özge Arıoğlu, Yapi Merkezi’s General Manager . Having completed 1500 km of railways and 275 stations in 34 projects, Yapi Merkezi prides itself in providing safe transport for millions of passengers on daily basis on three continents. countryfocus NETLOG LOGISTICS GROUP From 2 trucks to 2000-truck logistics network It is an incredible story of a Turkish man who had a brilliant vision, and made it happen with just two trucks and a sharp organizational strategy. In 1978 by Şahap Çak started a logistics company with just two trucks, and today he is the President and CEO of Netlog Logistics Group and he runs the international logistics firm with his son Gökalp, with a fleet of 2150 trucks and 3520 employees , as well as over 15,000 subcontractors vehicles as part of its logistics system. Netlog Logistics owns 12 companies, including KTT Container Transport and also has subsidiaries for refrigerated transport solutions as the Intercombi Transport Company for transportation operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. Netlog is responsible for the procurement logistics of the United Nations, and also carried food supplies for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan Netlog Logistics is constructing enormous warehouses in the Gulf countries and has plans for US$250-worth of million investments in Turkey. The group aims for US$550 million in revenue by 2015, and looking to buy other logistics companies, and is planning to invest with US$25 million in the Gulf. In 2012 the group started building warehouses in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Amman, with hopes set high; to dominate the logistics market of the to dominate the Gulf market. “ We load over 16,000 trucks every day and distribute to 81 cities of Turkey. We are also the largest liquid food transporter in Turkey, moving up to 250 bulk tankers a day. This proven track record is an excellent launching pad for our operations in the Gulf, especially in the UAE where large volumes of goods are moved every day. We have the air freight, sea freight and land transport networks established to serve the Gulf with efficiency and speed,” says Gökalp Çak, ViceChairman of the Board of Netlog Logistics Group. “We load over 16,000 trucks every day and distribute to 81 cities of Turkey. We are also the largest liquid food transporter in Turkey, moving up to 250 bulk tankers a day.” 85 countryfocus ASTAY SHOWCASES ONALTIDOKUZ Best known as the hotel developers of the award-winning Four Seasons Resorts ‘Sultanhamet” and “On the Bosphours” in Istanbul, Astay Yatirim has launched its first real estate project “OnaltiDokuz” (SixteenNine) which is billed to be one of the most modern and luxurious sea-side residential developments in Istanbul. The $175 million investment is located at Zeytinburnu and has 496 luxury apartments in three towers that are between 27 and 36 storeys each, together with a 25,000 square metre shopping and leisure area. Apartments have a concierge service, and range from $5,000 to $11,000 per metre in price. “We have been flooded with interest in OnaltiDokuz. Prospective buyers have been able to view 3D visuals, so they can walk around their apartment with 3D glasses, and experience our unique concept of a harmonious living space. With our reputation as a Four Seasons Resort developer, we have been able to given assurance to buyers that the properties we sell rival the quality of the best hotels in the world, said Atilla Öztürk , CEO and board member of Astay Yatirim. With magnificent views of the Marmara Sea and the Bosphorous, the OnaltiDokuz is located on a 30-acre stretch of land, 200 metres away from the sea, and within two minutes walk from a sea-taxi. The property has indoor and outdoor pools, a gym, restaurants, cafeterias, a spa, hairdressing salons, an outdoor sports area and childrens’ playgrounds. 86 23 countryfocus ÇOLAKOGLU METALURJI Colakoglu Metalurji is one of the biggest manufacturers and suppliers of steel and iron products for construction projects in Turkey, which are exported internationally and reputed for the highest quality standards. Çolakoğlu Metalurji is also well known for bringing state-of-the-art technologies to Turkey by investing in a new meltshop and rolling mill for flat products in 2007. At the time the meltshop was commissioned, it had the world’s largest electric arc furnace, modernized by Siemens, and today it is one of the most productive in the world. The steel producer also made the first hot-rolled strip investment of the private sector in Turkey, and has continued to invest in new technologies in order to maintains its position as a pioneer in this industry. “Although in the 20112012- period the demand for steel products slowed down in Europe as a result of the economic downturn, and also in some countries of the Middle East due to the crisis in Syria, I believe the demand will pick up in the coming year in the GCC, where growth in the construction sector is still healthy,”says Ugur Dalbeler, CEO of Colakoglu Metalurji, and also the Vice President of Turkish Iron and Steel Producers’ Association. 88 With its focus on establishing long-term relationships with its customers, Çolakoğlu Metalurji has always been one of Turkey’s most reliable and highest quality industrial companies. It has always taken steps to improve both itself and the sector. “The steel and iron products manufactured in our facility which includes one of the largest electric arc furnaces in the world are used in the most important architectural projects around the world,” says Ugur Dalbeler, CEO of Colakoglu Metalurji. The company is registered for delivery in warehouses monitored by the London Metal Exchange, and has the ISO 9001 quality certificate, as well as similar quality assurance certificates from Germany, the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. countryfocus LIVING LIKE A SULTAN Turkey is a blend of ancient pleasures and modern delights Ancient pleasures, with modern delights Ancient cities, exquisite coastline resorts, unrivalled Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisine, and lavish bazaars, make Turkey an irresistible holiday destination. You will undoubtedly be mesmerized as you walk in the footsteps of Turkey’s three thousand years of civilisation, catching a glimpse of the cultural imprints of the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Mongols, and the Ottomans, or maybe you will prefer to luxuriate in the Turkish baths, the ‘Hamams,’ and then spend hours enraptured in the ultimate shopping experience of the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul. According to travel agencies TUI AG and Thomas Cook, 11 of the 100 best hotels of the world are located in Turkey. The country has a competitive choice of accommodation from the ultra-modern complexes to the historical treasures of bygone eras. It is then no wonder that Turkey has become one of the most popular world tourism destinations, and expected 30 million tourists arrivals in 2012, mainly European travellers, as well as an increasing number of tourists coming from the UAE. In 2011 year, 35,000 UAE citizens visited Turkey and a further 60,000 are expected in 2012 as Turkey becomes an increasingly popular destination for Emirati tourists, especially those seeking to relive the life of a sultan in the luxurious palaces of the Ottomans. Part of Turkey’s tourism success story is Turkish Airlines, which is today known as Europe’s Best Airline, after winning the title at the 2012 Skytrax World Airline Awards for the second year running. One of the fastest growing airlines in the world, Turkish Airlines flies to 200 destinations, including Dubai and Abu Dhabi, as well as cities in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, North and South America. Turkish Airlines continues to distinguish itself as a unique brand, not only popular with the star footballers of Manchester United, the UK football team it sponsors, but has also introduced a ‘flying chef’ on board its flights to prepare meals for its first and business class passengers, as well as ensuring lie-flat seats, and international WiFi. With its emphasis on fine dining, the airline’s new Business Class lounge at Istanbul airport has opened with a delicious array of Turkish delicacies, including a kebab and mezze bar, and a delectable dessert station. In October 2012 Turkish Airlines ordered 15 new A330300-’s from Airbus, becoming its seventh order, and a symbol of its rapid expansion plans. Last year the airline flew 32.6 million passengers and has a projected target of 38 million for 2012. Further aggressive growth is expected as a third airport will be built in Istanbul by 2016, to become one of the largest airports in the world with up to six runways and a passenger capacity of 100 million in the short term, and later expanded to 150 million. The President and CEO of Turkish Airlines, Dr. Temel Kotil, says this will reinforce Istanbul’s status as an international hub, conveniently located at the doorstep of Europe, Asia and the Middle East. “Our target is to link Istanbul to every destination in the world in ten years time, and give the passenger the best options for travel. We believe that we should be the first option for any traveller wishing to go from Europe to the middle east, Africa and even into Asia. The idea is that travellers will check Turkish Airlines connections first, because we have a strong network and the best reputation for comfort and service in the air. As we implement our international hub, we will ensure that Istanbul will be the capital of the airline business,” says Dr. Temel Kotil. Dr Kotil is buoyant about the future as he steers the company towards greater heights in aviation growth. In November 2012, Turkish Airlines saw its net profits in the first three quarters of the year take a phenomenal leap to TL 868 million ($480.8 million), representing a 655 percent increase over the same period a year ago. 89 countryfocus ROMANCED BY THE OTTOMANS Hotel Les Ottomans is charming boutique hotel, set in the opulent backdrop of restored Ottoman palace in Istanbul on the shores of the Bosphorus. The hotel offers the romance and magic of a bygone era in luxury rooms, together with a spa with a hammam and hot tub, two pools, as well as a private jetty. With only ten suites, the emphasis on personalized service in luxurious ambiance has won the hotel World Travel Awards every year since 2007, ranging from titles such as ‘Europe’s Leading Boutique Hotel’ to the exceedingly prestigious ‘World’s Leading All Suite Hotel & Spa’ in 2012. At the Hotel Les Ottomans, you will meet its owner and general Manager, Ms. Ahu Aysal Kerimoğlu, one of Turkey’s most successful and undeniably most glamorous business women. Having won many awards as a businesswoman in her own right, she made headlines in 2012 as it was announced that she would the first Turkish space tourist in 2014, after purchasing a $95,000 ticket for the unique experience. “Turkey is experiencing a boom in tourism, especially in the luxury market. Istanbul is incredibly popular now. It’s very trendy to come here. I travel to New York twice a year for up to two months. Everybody there is crazy about Istanbul. I am also meeting more guests from the Middle East. Everyone wants to experience the lifestyle of an Ottoman pasha,” says Ahu Aysal Kerimoğlu. Ms Kerimoğlu adds that Istanbul was named 2010 European Capital of Culture in 2010 by the European Union, which boosted its reputation as a tourism capital. 90 23 interviewoneonone KOC LOOKS AHEAD In 1934 the Kuwait Oil Company Ltd. was established by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, now known as the British Petroleum Company, and Gulf Oil Corporation, now known as Chevron Corporation. The Company activities had extended to include exploration operations, on-shore and off-shore surveys, drilling of test wells, and developing of producing fields in addition to crude and natural gas exploration. SAMI AL RUSHAID CHAIRMAN AND MANAGING DIRECTOR (C&MD) OF KUWAIT OIL COMPANY (KOC) 92 Sami Al Rushaid is currently the Chairman and Managing Director (C&MD) of Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) responsible for all Oil & Gas Exploration and Productions Operations in Kuwait. He was C&MD of Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) from October 2004 till October 2007. He had enjoyed a long and illustrious career at KNPC where he had held a number of positions including Corporate Planning Manager, Executive Assistant Managing Director (Planning & Projects) and Deputy Chairman and Deputy Managing Director (Manufacturing) before being appointed C&MD of KNPC. He is also Board member of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) & a Council member for College of Graduate Studies in Kuwait University. Kuwait has the fourth largest oil reserves in the world behind only Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq. How do you foresee the role of oil in Kuwait’s economy and is the dependence on oil a concern to you, how do you assess the diversification efforts made by the government? Kuwait Oil and Gas, Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), Chairman and Managing Director, Sami Al Rushaid: In Kuwait we are definitely one of the major oil producers and we play a role in the energy sector. We feel that we are part of the world and when there was a high demand for energy and oil in particular we responded positively by producing the maximum in 2008. In regard to diversification, the long term concerns are there and Kuwait should seriously think about diversifying sources of income for the country. You had an important announcement this year that you had reached 3.15 million barrels a day which was the target for 20132014- but Kuwait would like to reach 4 million barrels per day. What are the main challenges and is this goal achievable? Kuwait Oil and Gas, Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), Chairman and Managing Director, Sami Al Rushaid: The main goal is achievable by 2020. The main challenge is that is may seem easy while there are many challenges. In the oil industry we categorize these as three main challenges. The subsurface- reservoirs and their capabilities to produce the amount we want carry challenges. The surface facilities- gathering center, pipelines, and facilities above the ground- need to be built in a timely manner that is consistent with the development of the fields. Third, export facilities like tankage and export terminals also pose a challenge. All three of these elements make up our production challenge and each of them need to be able to deliver and sustain the four million barrels per day capacity. The main challenge we are facing now is producing heavy oil and the gas reserves needed for the energy sector in Kuwait. We are working on these challenges and seeking assistance from international and service companies to assists us in dealing with these challenges. How much space do you envision for international oil companies to take part in this project and your expansion plans? Kuwait Oil and Gas, Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), Chairman and Managing Director, Sami Al Rushaid: The form that we are advocating is for assistance. Production sharing is not allowed according to the constitution of Kuwait so we only seek assistance from major oil companies. Hopefully we will be able to find a suitable way to reach an agreement with them. For example, recently we reached an agreement with Shell to help assist us in the major discovery of gas. We are also seeking assistance in the areas where we currently do not have enough experience like heavy oil, and Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). What is the effect of the global economic crisis on the depression of oil prices? Are you going to reevaluate any of your current projects? Kuwait Oil and Gas, Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), Chairman and Managing Director, Sami Al Rushaid: The spike in oil prices wasn’t comfortable for us but we knew that it wouldn’t last. Over a long period of time we aim and hope that there will be some sort of stability. We had a clear strategy to reach four million barrels per day by 2020 and we went ahead with our plans. When the prices fell we decided not to change our strategy because it was seen only as a short term issue and we believed soon a recovery would happen. Luckily I think we are able to say the worst is over and now we are seeing some stability in oil prices that we are comfortable with (70 to 80 dollars a barrel) for our plans to fall into place. What is your opinion regarding the future of oil? Is there enough to cater to the world’s needs? Kuwait Oil and Gas, Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), Chairman and Managing Director, Sami Al Rushaid: In my personal opinion I think that the demand of energy is directly linked with economic development. If we are talking about the economic development of the entire world then there is a definite need for energy from all sources in order to cope with the growth. I believe fuel, oil, gas, nuclear, renewables, coal will all be needed although oil will always be a major player in the energy scene. We need to also be environmentally responsible and adhere to the environmental legislations whether its clean up or other environmental measures. “Recently we reached an agreement with Shell to help assist us in the major discovery of gas.” 93 You have a research team dedicated to capturing carbon and you are working on initiatives to develop solar energy. Can you elaborate and do you see yourselves in the future becoming a renewable energy company? Kuwait Oil and Gas, Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), Chairman and Managing Director, Sami Al Rushaid: This is in our 2030 strategy as a part of being more environmentally conscious and addressing renewable energy in order to meet the increased demand for energy. There has been a very rapid increase for power and the demand for energy will more than double in the next ten to fifteen years and this will be a challenge we need to meet in an environmentally friendly manner. We are going to look at renewable sources of energy- solar energy in particular due to the abundance of sun in this part of the world. The economic benefit from this is that every BTU of energy that we can use from renewable sources frees up oil for export. Are you going to play a major role in the future as a major exporter of gas or will you only cater to your domestic needs and power generation? Kuwait Oil and Gas, Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), Chairman and Managing Director, Sami Al Rushaid: Realistically i think it will only cater to our domestic needs although we have been making discoveries and have undertaken a major aggressive exploration program to go after deep gas reserves. We are very optimistic we will be able to find additional reservoirs of gas, however. Although I donâ€™t think we will become major exporters, we are exporting LPG extracted from natural gas in small amounts and this will increase as we increase our production. What is your long term vision for Kuwait Oil Company for 2030 and what is next? Kuwait Oil and Gas, Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), Chairman and Managing Director, Sami Al Rushaid: The 2030 strategy for Kuwait Oil Company 94 calls for four million barrels a day capacity for production that is to be sustained between 20202030-. For non-associated gas we plan to produce one billion standard cubic feet per day by 2015. The additional exploration activities will hopefully allow us to produce another 1.5 billion cubic feet per day to total 2.5 billion standard cubic feet per day by 2030. This is our vision. What are your worries for the future? Kuwait Oil and Gas, Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), Chairman and Managing Director, Sami Al Rushaid: The major challenge that we have is gas. We see the energy demand in Kuwait rapidly increasing and the gas has great value for the country. During peak demand time in the summer due to power consumption we are importing energy and this is a concern. Additionally, it is cleaner for the environment than the fuel we are burning and also, in the non associated gas production we are not limited by OPEC and we can produce what we want to produce. We can replace the oil that is burned and consumed by power plants to free it for export. Another important challenge in Kuwait that is national workforce development from leadership, to experts and to operators ,as we are dealing with the wealth of the country. As an ambassador to your country and with Kuwait Oil Company being one of the most important companies in Kuwait and even globally, what is your final message to our audience about Kuwait? Kuwait Oil and Gas, Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), Chairman and Managing Director, Sami Al Rushaid: We would certainly welcome anyone from anywhere in the world to come to Kuwait. We are not biased towards the west or the east and we welcome all nationalities. I think visitors will find that the people of Kuwait are friendly and Kuwait is easy to adjust to living in and can consider Kuwait their second home. â€œRecently we reached an agreement with Shell to help assist us in the major discovery of gas.â€? 303 23 interviewoneonone CHAMBER OF ONE OF THE WORLD’S BUSIEST CITIES HE Hamad Buamim was appointed as a member of the Board of Directors of Dubai World in December 2010 and is the Director General of Dubai Chamber of Commerce & Industry, a post he has held since November 2006. He was the Secretary General of Dubai Economic Council, a corporate manager in HSBC Bank, a lecturer of Finance & Banking in the UAE University’s College of Business & Economics, and a Senior System Engineer in Dubai Electricity & Water Authority, which he joined in 1996 at the start of his professional career. HE Buamim is currently Vice Chairman of the World Chambers Federation – ICC in Paris, a member of the Board of Emirates Competitiveness Council, a member of the Board of Directors of Emirates-NBD Bank, Chairman of Emirates Financial Services, Chairman of National General Insurance and Board Member of Union Properties. H.E HAMAD BUAMIM DIRECTOR GENERAL OF THE DUBAI CHAMBER OF COMMERCE & INDUSTRY 96 How is the Chamber’s strategy aligned with the 2012- 2016 Federation of the UAE Chambers of Commerce vision? HAMAD BUAMIM The Dubai Chamber was established in 1965 through a decree issued by the late Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum. He realized the important role that a chamber of commerce would play in supporting the economy, and since then the Dubai Chamber has become a major business organization in the UAE. Over the past decade, company profiles have altered dramatically and are now much more sophisticated than what they were 10 years ago. By updating and refining our products and services in line with differing business needs, we have been able to attract new members and better support and protect the wider business community. Our offices are located in key commercial areas in order to make our products and services more accessible to the business community. They can be found in the Jebel Ali Free Zone (Jafza), Dubai Airport Free Zone (DAFZ), and Al Awir area, as well as at the Department of Economic Development (DED), Al Twar Center, and Dubai Industrial City. Our services have also changed to become more complex as doing business becomes more sophisticated. Not only do we offer documentation services for traders, we also provide legal advice and support, business networking opportunities, and economic research to the entire business community. At the same time, we are helping companies meet international standards of sustainable business through our Center for Responsible Business and resolve commercial disputes in an amicable way through the Dubai International Arbitration Centre (DIAC). Helping our members meet best international practice is part of Dubai Chamber’s strategy. Therefore, we are closely aligned with the strategy of the Federation of the UAE Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FCCI) for the 20122016- period. Earlier in 2012, we hosted and participated in the first workshop for the FCCI team responsible for developing the proposed new strategy. The project is important, and the Dubai Chamber will support and contribute in any way possible to accelerate the development of the strategy, which aims to develop technical and administrative policies based on best international standards. As one of the world’s top 10 business destinations, what are the factors that lend credibility to Dubai as an international business hub? Dubai has a number of benefits for international businesses, which help attract new companies every year from all corners of the globe. These include the city’s strategic location in the center of the map. Dubai offers easy access to several major consumer markets and as such is one of the world’s leading re-export destinations. At the same time, Dubai offers companies a safe and stable environment to do business. The city is geared toward helping companies prosper with business-friendly laws, modern infrastructure, and a diverse and predominantly young workforce. One attraction for international businesses specifically is free zones, which are tax free and allow for full ownership and profit repatriation. 97 Which regions have you identified as holding significant potential? The main markets we have identified include India, CIS countries, Africa, and Latin America. Dubai historically has strong ties with India and parts of Africa, and we are working hard to build stronger links with many countries, particularly in eastern Africa, by sending overseas delegations and hosting the Eastern African Community Forum in Dubai in October 2012. Meanwhile, Latin American and CIS countries are witnessing incredibly strong growth, and we believe that our members could benefit from the opportunities being created in those parts of the world. What trends have you witnessed in terms of exports and companies applying for membership? Our members’ exports in 2011 reached AED246 billion, which is 14.5% higher compared to 2010. This total is also higher than the peak in 2008, which was AED213 billion. This expansion demonstrates the strength of the trade sector and its importance for Dubai’s economic growth. As for our membership trends, last year we added 10,092 new members, which took our total membership to over 128,000. This was an increase of 8.5%, which points toward the economic growth that Dubai witnessed in 2011. We have seen our membership increase again to over 130,000 in 1Q2012, as more companies choose to set up in the Emirate. What benefits will the ATA Carnet system bring to Dubai, and what motivated the initiation of the system at this stage? The UAE began accepting ATA Carnets for goods for use at trade fairs, shows, and exhibitions on April 1, 2011. The Dubai Chamber is the national guaranteeing and issuing agency of ATA Carnets in the UAE. Known as a “passport for goods,” the ATA Carnet is an international customs document that permits the duty-free and tax-free temporary import of goods for up to one year. The UAE is the first country in the GCC to implement this system, and we are encouraging our partners across the region to also adopt it. In Dubai, there are many trade shows every year, and the adoption of this system will make importing products and goods for display much simpler and more affordable. This will be a major boost for companies working in the sector. We firmly believe it will help attract more exhibitors to Dubai, which was one reason behind our motivation to use the ATA Carnet system. 98 What lessons were learned from the global liquidity crisis, and how far along the road to recovery would you say Dubai’s economy is? The main lesson learned was about stability. We need to move away from the boom and bust years and focus on achieving sustainable growth over a longer period. And this is not just a lesson for Dubai—this applies to every economy in the world. In terms of recovery, Dubai has come a long way. The country’s key economy drivers trade, tourism, logistics, and financial services have bounced back to their pre-crisis levels. That is not to say we are out of the woods yet, especially considering the financial pressures that continue globally. However, we are certainly on a more even footing. Where in particular can further reforms be implemented to facilitate economic growth? A number of new laws and updates to existing legislation are currently being studied by the UAE authorities, which will help drive business growth. These include a draft of the UAE bankruptcy law, to be ready by the end of 2012. The law is aimed to enable listed and family-owned businesses in the UAE to be rescued, rather than having to go through lengthy liquidation or bankruptcy proceedings should they fall into financial difficulty. This will have the effect of easing restructuring and offering out-of-court negotiations, which in turn will help attract more overseas investments. What is your outlook for 2012 for the Chamber’s activities and the wider economy? In 2012, Dubai Chamber will focus its efforts on enhancing business relations with key emerging markets in India and Africa. In October 2012, we will host the Eastern African Community Forum in Dubai to help build bridges and connect our members with interested companies overseas. This follows delegation visits to Surat and Ethiopia. Generally, we anticipate Dubai’s economic growth to be around 3%-4% in 2012 303 23 PRESIDENT JAMES MICHEL PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF SEYCHELLES James Alix Michel is the third President of the Republic of Seychelles, having been elected to office in July 2006 and reelected for a second term in May 2011. A keen educationalist, President Michel was directly involved in the creation of the University of Seychelles. At the establishment of the university on 17th September 2009, he was named its chancellor. One of his greatest achievements as President has been the revitalization and reform of the Seychelles economy. In October 2008 he embarked on an economic reform programme, undertaken with vigor and far-reaching impact, unprecedented in Seychelles history. As President, Mr. Michel has expanded the Seychelles protected areas to more than 50% of the countryâ€™s land territory, making Seychelles the first country in the world to do so. As co-chair and founder of the Global Island Partnership, he is an active advocate of sustainable development and the leadership role of islands at the global level. President Michel is the recipient of several international awards and decorations, including the UNESCO Gold Medal of the Five Continents in recognition of his work to promote the ideals of peace, tolerance and his work to sensitize the international community about the vulnerability of Small Island Developing States, the Sustainable Leadership Award of the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit 2013, the Most Innovative People Award (for Natural Innovation) and a Honorary Doctorate from TERI University. 100 BRINGING SUSTAINABILITY IN SMALL ISLANDS STATES “The life-giving reef systems in the world are depleting. Weather patterns are changing. Islands do not have the hinterland to save our nations from coastal erosion and rising sea level.” One year into your 2nd elected term in office. How would you compare the Seychelles of today with the Seychelles of 2004 when you first took office? what was your first priority when you assumed office? We are striving to build a New Seychelles. This is my rallying call to the nation. It is with humility that I make a few comparisons. In 2004 Seychelles was emerging from 25 years of heavy investments in the social sector and infrastructure. At the same time we were consolidating our multi-party democracy following the re-introduction of political pluralism. Not all of our foreign exchange earnings were reaching the commercial banks. This caused shortages -- and we are a nation of imports. We had accumulated foreign debt because of the expenditures in the future of our newly independent nation. I said in my inauguration speech in April 2004 that I had confidence in the great potential of our country and its people. We had reached a stage in the development of our small republic. We now have to climb new steps. There was the need to work together to harness this potential. We wanted to realise great things for Seychelles. My first priority when I assumed office was to meet with the various stakeholders in our society, among them the economic operators, the non-governmental organisations, youth leaders, the churches and the opposition political parties. I also travelled around the country told hold consultative town-hall meetings with the grassroots. It was important to bring our people together to work for unity, peace, harmony, stability and prosperity. I had to reassure our people that my government would work to preserve the valuable socio-economic foundation we laid during the first two decades of independence. I needed the support of all to steer Seychelles to a new phase of development, where the private sector creates the country’s economic wealth; where all who is able is productive contributes and benefits. Eight years later Seychelles is not experiencing shortages of goods. The parallel foreign exchange market is the past. Seychelles has its own university. The entrepreneurial spirit is blossoming. The economy is growing at 3% per annum. We have restructured major Stateowned enterprises and continue with the privatization programme. We have a policy of zero-tolerance of corruption. Seychelles is extending its cooperation and friendship network worldwide with its active-diplomacy initiative. This provided us enormous international support during our economic reform undertaking. We have greater fiscal discipline. After the vast investments in social sector and infrastructure in order to render our independence successful, and now with the achievements of the economic reform programme and more educated workers joining the many employment opportunities, I see the realization of the New Seychelles. You have spoken about the need to empower the people of your country. How did you try to do this? Have you been able to achieve this? The basis of empowerment is the education of our people. For a long time education took the lion’s share of the national budget. Through universal education we give equal access to the opportunities of a better life. It is the first big step in empowerment. Now we want our educated people to seize the many opportunities in life. There are many. Government is facilitating access to credit to help people to start small businesses. We also want to help them to grow. Employment possibilities abound. We want our own people to be responsible for their lives, to do productive work, to create wealth and fill the many posts that are now occupied by 101 expatriates. We want all our people to become the real owners of their countryâ€™s development. It is happening in the tourism industry. The New Seychelles we are building fosters participation by all citizens in the development. It is empowerment when government offers shares to the staff members and ordinary citizens during the privatization process of a parastatal. That is why we are successful. We are enhancing the community spirit through support we give to NGOs, in order to facilitate their work. We are boosting the culture volunteerism, which empowers people to care for one another, and to give a helping hand in building a better. Perhaps the biggest empowerment project, ongoing now, is giving the people in the districts more say in running the affairs of their communities. It is based on a local government model. I believe that people in the districts know their neighbourhoods better, and they are the ones who can make good decisions on behalf of their communities. Empowerment has many facets. It is a tool to develop a strong sense of belonging, to foster unity, build a caring society and boost our productive capacity. Your Excellency, you have been recognized by UNESCO and other international institutions for your contributions towards sustainability and environmental conservation of your country. Indeed Seychelles is said to be a world leader environmental protection. What can other countries learn from the Seychelles example? The environment is the giver of life, wherever we may be living on our planet. That is why it is of utmost importance that we value the environment and fit our development into it. Although Seychelles is a fast developing country, and very small in land area, almost half of our territory, including whole islands, is preserved. We have strict environmental guidelines for development. We are happy we have been able to keep the greenery of our mountains, the whiteness of our sandy beaches and the turquoise colour of our sea. 102 We feel our future, and that of our children and grandchildren, are more secure. From our example, other countries can learn that although environmental protection costs, it is the price we pay for our very existence. There is no free lunch for human beings. Environment is a great asset. The more we invest in its protection, the more we will derive from it for generations to come. We must also involve all the people. We have environmental impact meetings with the residents in communities to host a major development project. Fishermen are involved in the monitoring of species under threat. All countries can find the balance between development and environmental protection. We need to be courageous and convincing in our approach. Local knowledge, local feelings, play a crucial role. You have championed the causes of Small Island Developing States during your tenure. Is the world listening to the islands and their challenges, especially in the case of climate change? What more can be done? Iâ€™m not sure if the world is paying enough attention to the plight of small island developing states. What I know is that Seychelles and SIDS will continue to speak loud about the climate change challenges we face. Seychelles has appointed a climate change ambassador at the United Nations to make our voice heard. For as long as there is no reduction in pollution emissions, we may say the world is not listening. The life-giving reef systems in the world are depleting. Weather patterns are changing. Islands do not have the hinterland to save our nations from coastal erosion and rising sea level. Still I am optimistic. The Qatar environmental meeting of November and December last year recognized the need to strengthen international cooperation and expertise in order to understand and reduce loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change. Elsewhere we read that the demand for fossil fuels is reducing, and that there is competition in tapping renewable energy sources. More can be done. We need faster actions. We have to admit that our pollution is affecting the environment. Big polluters should take responsibility for endangering the habitats of island nations. We in Seychelles know it is possible to sustain a high standard of living without affecting the environment. The world needs to adapt, fast, to an environment friendly type of development. You have won two elections, will you be aiming for a third one in 2016? How do you wish your people to remember your legacy? The constitution of the Republic of Seychelles allows for a person to serve up to three terms as President. The New Seychelles -- a country with a modern economy, a hardworking people, with a compassionate society and a united people -- is taking shape. This is what I pledged I would be doing for the Seychellois people when I first assumed office as President in April 2004. Is the work accomplished? It will be up to the people and party to decide when the time comes. In 2020 we will celebrate 250 years of human settlement in Seychelles. What I also told the people is that when we mark the anniversary we want to celebrate it as a people who have achieved progress in all aspects; as a people who have made economic and material progress, and also social and spiritual progress; as a united people who are prosperous and happy, who are a true example to the world. This is the legacy I wish to leave behind with the Seychellois people. Finally, what do you believe is the most important quality that a leader of a nation needs to possess in order to be successful? The leader of a nation has to have firm belief in the potentials of his people, accept that all members of the nation matter equally, listen to them and involve them in decision-making and development. The leader has to make available the space for people to realize their full potentials in nation-building. globalprespectives SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE START BEFORE THEY FEEL READY By James Clear “If there was ever someone who embodied the idea of starting before they felt ready to do so, it’s Branson.” James Clear: An entrepreneur, weightlifter, and travel photographer. He writes about habits and strategies that make it easier to live a healthy life, and share photos and stories on his quest to live healthy around the world. 104 In 1966, a dyslexic sixteen–year–old boy dropped out of school. With the help of a friend, he started a magazine for students and made money by selling advertisements to local businesses. With only a little bit of money to get started, he ran the operation out of the crypt inside a local church. Four years later, he was looking for ways to grow his small magazine and started selling mail order records to the students who bought the magazine. The records sold well enough that he built his first record store the next year. After two years of selling records, he decided to open his own record label and recording studio. He rented the recording studio out to local artists, including one named Mike Oldfield. In that small recording studio, Oldfield created his hit song, Tubular Bells, which became the record label’s first release. The song went on to sell over 5 million copies. Over the next decade, the young boy grew his record label by adding bands like the Sex Pistols, Culture Club, and the Rolling Stones. Along the way, he continued starting companies: an airline business, then trains, then mobile phones, and on and on. Almost 50 years later, there were over 400 companies under his direction. Today, that young boy who dropped out of school and kept starting things despite his inexperience and lack of knowledge is a billionaire. His name is Sir Richard Branson. How I Met Sir Richard Branson Two weeks ago, I walked into a conference room in Moscow, Russia and sat down ten feet from Branson. There were 100 other people around us, but it felt like we were having a conversation in my living room. He was smiling and laughing. His answers seemed unrehearsed and genuine. At one point, he told the story of how he started Virgin Airlines, a tale that seems to capture his entire approach to business and life. Here’s the version he told us, as best I can remember it: I was in my late twenties, so I had a business, but nobody knew who I was at the time. I was headed to the Virgin Islands and I had a very pretty girl waiting for me, so I was, umm, determined to get there on time. At the airport, my final flight to the Virgin Islands was cancelled because of maintenance or something. It was the last flight out that night. I thought this was ridiculous, so I went and chartered a private airplane to take me to the Virgin Islands, which I did not have the money to do. Then, I picked up a small blackboard, wrote “Virgin Airlines. $29.” on it, and went over to the group of people who had been on the flight that was cancelled. I sold tickets for the rest of the seats on the plane, used their money to pay for the chartered plane, and we all went to the Virgin Islands that night. I took this photo right after he told that story. A few moments later I stood shoulder–to–shoulder with him (he’s about six feet tall) and thanked him for sharing some time with us. Here’s what I think makes all the difference: Branson doesn’t merely say things like, “Screw it, just get on and do it.” He actually lives his life that way. He drops out of school and starts a business. He signs the Sex Pistols to his record label when everyone else says they are too controversial. He charters a plane when he doesn’t have the money. When everyone else balks or comes up with a good reason for why the time isn’t right, Branson gets started. Successful people start before they feel ready. If there was ever someone who embodied the idea of starting before they felt ready to do so, it’s Branson. The very name of his business empire, Virgin, was chosen because when Branson and his partners started they were “virgins” when it came to business. Branson has started so many businesses, ventures, charities, and expeditions that it’s simply not possible for him to have felt prepared, qualified, and ready to start all of them. In fact, it’s unlikely that he was qualified or prepared to start any of them. He had never flown a plane and didn’t know anything about the engineering of planes, but he started an airline company anyway. If you’re working on something important, then you’ll never feel ready. A side effect of doing challenging work is that you’re pulled by excitement and pushed by confusion at the same time. You’re bound to feel uncertain, unprepared, and unqualified. But let me assure you of this: what you have right now is enough. You can plan, delay, and revise all you want, but trust me, what you have now is enough to start. Who you are right now is good enough to get going. We all start in the same place: no money, no resources, no contacts, no experience. The difference is that some people — the winners — choose to start anyway. “You can plan, delay, and revise all you want, but trust me, what you have now is enough to start.” What’s the Difference Between Branson and Everyone Else? After speaking with our group, Branson sat on a panel with industry experts to talk about the future of business. As everyone around him was filling the air with business buzzwords and talking about complex ideas for mapping out our future, Branson was saying things like: “Screw it, just get on and do it.” Which was closely followed by: “Why can’t we mine asteroids?” As I looked up at that panel, I realized that the person who sounded the most simplistic was also the only one who was a billionaire. Which prompted me to wonder, “What’s the difference between Branson and everyone else in the room?” 105 lifestyle THE NEW MBW M5 SEDAN Best of Both Worlds Sporty performance and sporty appearance. Exclusive M aerodynamic components, M light-alloy wheels and the BMW Individual high-gloss Shadow Line isn’t everything the M Sport package has to offer. The interior is improved by the addition of sport seats for the driver and front passenger, elegant interior trim in Palladium Grey and the BMW Individual roof liner Anthracite. The leather steering wheel, the M footrests as well as the M door sill finishers with chrome inserts and BMW M emblem round off the sporty and high-quality character of the BMW 5 Series Gran Turismo. There are sport sedans, and then there‘s the BMW M5. No other car in recent memory has been able to represent the ideal for this segment as strongly as the Bimmer. For each of its five generations, 106 the M5 has impressively blended sports car performance, sedan utility and luxury ambience. The M5 is a product of BMW‘s performance-tuning M Division. It‘s based on the 5 Series sedan, and historical calling cards include a unique and more powerful engine, a sport-tuned suspension, more powerful brakes, special wheels and tires, and aerodynamicsenhancing bodywork. Though the most recent BMW M5 is the most powerful of the group, any M5 still represents a fantastic choice for a luxury sport sedan. Even M5s from the 1980s and ‚90s were significant performers for their day, though are much harder to find because of their rarity. The current BMW M5 is all-new for 2012. Like the 5 Series upon which it is based, this M5 is larger than its predecessor, with an improved interior and more traditional BMW styling. Compared to the last M5, however, the current one swapped out the old V10 for a twin-turbo V8, while gaining a more advanced automated manual transmission, a limited-slip rear differential, upgraded brakes and enhanced adjustable drive settings. Unlike the regular 5 Series, the M5 sticks with more responsive and communicative hydraulic power steering rather than electric. Underneath the hood, the M5 packs a twin-turbo 4.4-liter V8 good for 560 horsepower and 501 pound-feet of torque. Rear-wheel drive and a seven-speed dual-clutch automated manual are standard, while a six-speed manual is available. Unlike the high-strung engines that came before it, this turbocharged lump enjoys a mountain of low-end torque and doesnâ€˜t let up as the revs build. This is an astonishingly quick car. How the M5 drives is largely determined by which of the myriad drive settings you choose. Steering weight, suspension firmness, throttle response, transmission shift programming and stability control can all be altered to your exact desire. This differs from regular BMW models with such adjustable settings that conform to three or four combinations programmed by BMW. The overall result is a car that can be docile for a commute and a vicious, corner-attacking machine on a winding road. As always, the current BMW M5 manages to be a high-performance machine that can do double duty as an everyday conveyance. There are several other cars that do a similar trick, but the M5 is the car that arguably inspired them all. Its engine may be a departure from past models, and its size may make it seem a bit unwieldy at times, but thereâ€˜s no denying the current M5 maintains its high-speed cred. 107 lifestyle THE ALL-NEW RANGE ROVER VOGUE For a seamless appearance, the Range Rover Vogue’s exterior features an imposing front grille which combines Dark Atlas and Atlas as well as body-coloured front bumper, vent blades and door handles. A wide choice of interior colours and exterior paints, allow for personalisation and there’s also a selection of striking 20, 21 and 22 inch alloy wheels, with 20 inch 5 Split Spoke wheels as standard. Inside, the interior is upholstered in Oxford leather which provide powered seats, with driver’s memory and front and rear heated seats for additional convenience. The luxury experience is enhanced with a state-of-the-art Meridian* Sound System providing stunning sound quality with 380W. Range Rover Vogue takes capability to new heights with a powerful, state-of-the-art LR-V8 5.0 litre Supercharged Petrol engine. Paired with an eight-speed automatic transmission, the Vogue delivers an exceptional balance of power, torque and improved economy. 108 The all-new Range Rover, the world‘s most refined and capable SUV, has notched up 10 international awards in just three months since production began. The world‘s first SUV with a lightweight all-aluminium body, the new Range Rover takes luxury and capability to a new level, with even greater refinement and enhanced performance and handling on all terrains. The new Range Rover also heralds significant advances in sustainability. The most recent honour came from the AUTOBEST group of motoring writers, naming the all-new Range Rover ‚TECHNOBEST 2012‘. Recent awards also include ‚Dream Machine‘ from Autoweek, ‚Luxury Car of the Year‘ from both What Car? and Top Gear magazines and ‚Best Cars - Import Category‘ from Auto Motor und Sport. The model was also crowned ‚4x4 Category Winner‘ in The Sunday Times‘ Top 100 Cars 2012, among others. Land Rover Global Brand Director, John Edwards, said: “We are proud of the recognition the Range Rover is receiving from international motoring organisations and publications. It is a fantastic achievement and a great endorsement for the model, which has only been in production for three months. “Its revolutionary lightweight construction is the result of unprecedented investment in technology and engineering which makes it the most refined, most capable Range Rover ever. It is enormously satisfying to see that international judges, as well as customers, are recognising this too.” The all-new Range Rover was launched last October to critical acclaim and is the world‘s first aluminium monocoque SUV, which is around 420kg lighter than the outgoing model. The Range Rover is built at Land Rover‘s new low-energy Solihull facility and there is already strong demand across global markets. 109 lifestyle WATCHES MONTBLANC NICOLAS RIEUSSEC RISING HOURS The hour display of this watch is made possible by Montblanc‘€™s new Calibre MB R220, which has a patented mechanism consisting of two rotating discs positioned one atop the other, to show not only the individual 12 hours, but to also indicate whether its day or night. The Arabic numerals 1 to 12 are on the upper disc, which is situated above the bi-color day/night disc. The 12-hour disc rotates continually, while the day/night disc turns in intervals and at variable speeds to produce the desired color change (blue for the night, black for the day) in the cutout numerals. This motion is controlled with the aid of a Maltese cross-shaped mechanism consisting of two cam-like wheels. In addition to this double-disc mechanism, four other disc displays rotate. The day of the week is shown in a window at the 9 o‘clock€ and the date appears in an aperture at the 3 o‘clock This is the latest version of the collection named after the inventor of the chronograph. A. LANGE & SOHNE GRAND COMPLICATION The German watch brand has developed a timepiece with a host of complications that include chiming mechanism with grand and small strikes; minute repeater; a monopusher type split-seconds chronograph, with minute counter and rattrapante function and jumping seconds accurate to a fifth of a second; perpetual calendar with date, day of week, month in four-year cycle; and moon phases. The movement is a Lange manufacture Calibre L1902, manually wound. The white enamel dial reveals a railway-track minute scale and the four characteristic, symmetrically arranged subsidiary dials. This exclusive collectors‘ item is housed in a 50mm pink gold case comes. It is available in a limited edition of six watches. 110 FORTIS MARS 500 CHRONOGRAPH So tough it’s worn over the space suit, this is the official watch of the Mars 500 cosmonauts. It’s got a 42mm titanium case, automatic movement with 25 jewels and an Incabloc shock absorber. It’s also water-resistant to 200m, if you happen across a lake on your red planet travels. TISSOT LUXURY AUTOMATIC If the standard 36 hours of power reserve doesn’t cut it, the Swiss made timepiece features new Powermatic 80 automatic movement which means 80 hours before it needs to be rewound. Made from stainless steel, the Automatic is also waterproof up to 50m, which is perfect for any impromptu diving excursions. OMEGA SEAMASTER What‘s cooler, astronauts or James Bond? It‘s the stuff playground arguments are made of, but when it‘s a toss up between Omega‘s Speedmaster moonwatch or the timepiece flaunted by Britain‘s sheckshiest shecret agent, we reckon its an even match. Features a sapphire crystal face for scratch resistance and a body waterproof to 600m. Does not feature a laser or remote detonator. OMEGA SEAMASTER PLANET OCEAN Worn by Royal navy Commander (retired) James bond in fi lms since 1995, this luxe timepiece is water resistant to 600m and packs scratchresistant sapphire crystal glass on both front and back. It also boasts a helium escape valve for when your nemesis locks you in a deep-sea pressure chamber. AUDEMARS PIGUET ROYAL OAK OFFSHORE GRAND COMPLICATION The mechanical heart of this 44mm timepiece is its three advanced functions, forming what is considered in the industry as the basis of a Grande Complication movement. Its traditional self-winding movement combines minute repeater, split-second chronograph and perpetual calendar functions. In addition to showing legal or civil time, it‘s also equipped with a minute repeater mechanism, enabling it to sound the hours, quarters and minutes on demand. And it houses a perpetual calendar complication which also displays lunar cycles. Last but not least, it affords the possibility of performing timing operations and reading off intermediate or “split” times due to the split-second complication, an authentic Audemars Piguet signature in its Grande Complication models since 1882. The self-winding Calibre 2885 has 648 parts. It is available in a Titanium case (pictured) or an 18K pink gold case. Both models are limited to three pieces each. ROGER DUBUIS EXCALIBUR QUATUOR This deep grey watch is made of silicon, chosen for its low weight and its incomparable hardness. It is half the weight of titanium, which is half the weight of steel, yet it is four times harder. The brand also boasts a technological advancement in which four carefully positioned sprung balances work in pairs to compensate immediately for the rate variations caused by the changes in position of the watch when worn. A classic watch operating at a frequency of 4 Hz is considered to be highly precise. But the Excalibur Quatuor operates at a frequency of 16 Hz. As each balance oscillates four times per second, the frequency of the watch is multiplied by four as the balances do not oscillate simultaneously. The timepiece is limited to a production of three pieces. There is a pink gold version of the watch that has a run of 88 pieces. 111 destinationtravel THE SEYCHELLES THREE HOUR AND A HALF FLIGHT FROM DUBAI Sailing, diving, fishing and relaxing are the main activities for visitors to the 155 islands of this Indian Ocean archipelago. Mahé, Praslin and La Digue are the most popular islands. Mahé boasts 65 silver beaches, plus an array of restaurants, cafés, bars and casinos in the tiny capital, Victoria. The Seychelles are home to UNESCO-designated sites, coral atoll Aldabra and Vallée de Mai, called the Garden of Eden. Creole is the main language, but English and French are widely spoken. 112 This increasingly popular tourist destination continues to attract more and more visitors from all corners of the globe, seeking the holiday of their dreams. Visitors are spoiled for choice when it comes to the Seychelles. The islands each have their own unique charm be it one of the three main islands or one of the remote private resorts, there is sure to be something to suit everyone’s taste. A burgeoning array of new luxurious hotels and exciting new investment projects herald a new dawn of opportunity in the country. Today, more than ever, Seychelles has the possibility of realizing its huge potential as a destination offering tranquility and quality with value for money - all in surrounds of breathtaking natural beauty. Blessed with the unrivalled diversity of granite and coralline islands, a vibrant Seychellois Creole culture and a reputation for political stability and social harmony, Seychelles has its sights set on bright, new horizons. With nearperfect weather, no cyclones and a complete absence of dangerous and poisonous creatures, Seychelles lives up to its reputation of being a modernday ‘Garden of Eden.’ The Republic of Seychelles comprises 115 islands occupying a land area of 455 km² and an Exclusive Economic Zone of 1.4 km² in the western Indian Ocean. It represents an archipelago of legendary beauty that extends from between 4 and 10 degrees south of the equator and which lies between 480km and 1,600km from the east coast of Africa. Of these 115 islands, 41 constitute the oldest mid-oceanic granite islands on earth while a further 74 form the low-lying coral atolls and reef islands of the Outer Islands. The granitic islands of the Seychelles archipelago cluster around the main island of Mahé, home to the international airport and the capital, Victoria, and its satellites Praslin and La Digue. Together, these Inner Islands form the cultural and economic hub of the nation and contain the majority of Seychelles’ tourism facilities as well as its most stunning beaches. Seychelles‘ 115 islands fall under two distinct groups. The tall granite, Inner Islands cluster mainly within the relatively shallow Seychelles‘ plateau, 4° south of the equator and roughly 1800 km. distant from the east coast of Africa while the low-lying coralline cays, atolls and reef islands of the Outer Islands lie mainly beyond the plateau up to 10° south of the equator. These Outer Islands are divided into five groups: the Amirantes group lying 230km distant from Mahé, the Southern Coral Group, Alphonse Group, Farquhar Group and finally the Aldabra Group, some 1150km from Mahé. Seychelles is a living museum of natural history and a sanctuary for some of the rarest species of flora & fauna on earth. With almost 50% of its limited landmass set aside as national parks and reserves, Seychelles prides itself on its record for far sighted conservation policies that have resulted in an enviable degree of protection for the environment and the varied ecosystems it supports. Nowhere else on earth will you find unique endemic specimens such as the fabulous Coco-de-mer, the largest seed in the world, the jellyfish tree, with only eight surviving examples, the Seychelles’ paradise flycatcher and Seychelles warbler. Seychelles is also home to two U.N.E.S.C.O World Heritage Sites: Aldabra, the world’s largest raised coral atoll and Praslin’s Vallée de Mai, once believed to be the original site of the Garden of Eden. From the smallest frog to the heaviest land tortoise and the only flightless bird of the Indian Ocean, Seychelles nurtures an amazing array of endemic species within surrounds of exceptional natural beauty. 113 The Vallée de Mai Located on the granitic island of Praslin, the Vallée de Mai is a 19.5 ha area of palm forest which remains largely unchanged since prehistoric times. Dominating the landscape is the world‘s largest population of endemic coco-de-mer, a flagship species of global significance as the bearer of the largest seed in the plant kingdom. The forest is also home to five other endemic palms and many endemic fauna species. The property is a scenically attractive area with a distinctive natural beauty. The property contains a scenic mature palm forest. The natural formations of the palm forests are of aesthetic appeal with dappled sunlight and a spectrum of green, red and brown palm fronds. The natural beauty and near-natural state of the Vallée de Mai are of great interest, even to those visitors who are not fully aware of the ecological significance of the forest. Shaped by geological and biological processes that took place millions of years ago, the property is an outstanding example of an earlier and major stage in the evolutionary history of the world‘s flora. Its ecology is dominated by endemic palms, and especially by the coco-de-mer, famous for its distinctively large double nut containing the largest seed in the plant kingdom. The Vallée de Mai constitutes a living laboratory, illustrating of what other tropical areas would have been before the advent of more advanced plant families. “ITs ecology is dominated by endemic palms, and especially by the coco-demer, famous for its distinctively large double nut containing the largest seed in the plant kingdom.” Sailing, diving, fishing and relaxing are the main activities for visitors to the 155 islands of this Indian Ocean archipelago. Mahé, Praslin and La Digue are the most popular islands. Mahé boasts 65 silver beaches, plus an array of restaurants, cafés, bars and casinos in the tiny capital, Victoria. The Seychelles are home to UNESCO-designated sites, coral atoll Aldabra and Vallée de Mai, called the Garden of Eden. Creole is the main language, but English and French are widely spoken. 114 “One of the largest congregations of nesting green turtles in the Indian Ocean.” ALDABRA UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE Aldabra was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982 as a prime example of a raised coral atoll and is significantly less disturbed than most other atolls in the Indian Ocean and elsewhere in the world. Aldabra’s unique ecosystems and species make it ecologically and scientifically valuable. Aldabra is the largest raised coral atoll on Earth and is significantly less disturbed than most other atolls in the Indian Ocean and elsewhere in the world. Aldabra is a refuge for many endangered species. These include the giant tortoise, one of the largest congregations of nesting green turtles in the Indian Ocean; the world’s second largest breeding population of greater and lesser frigate birds (Fregata minor and Fregata ariel); the last flightless bird species in the Indian Ocean - the white-throated flightless rail (Dryolimnas cuvieri aldabranus); and a number of endemic taxa of plants and animals. For more information: Seychelles Tourism Board (STB) PO Box 1262 - Victoria, Mahé - Seychelles Tel: +248 4 67 13 00 - Fax: +248 4 62 06 20 - www.seychelles.com 115 destinationtravel WELCOME TO PARADISE Blessed with the unrivalled diversity of 2000 coralline islands Maldives has the reputation for proving holidays of a dream. â€œMaldives resorts are known as some of the best holiday resorts in the world.â€? Maldives, officially the Republic of the Maldives, and also referred to as the Maldive Islands, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean consisting of a double chain of twenty-six atolls, orientated north-south, that lie between Minicoy Island (the southernmost part of Lakshadweep, India) and the Chagos Archipelago. The chains stand in the Laccadive Sea, about 700 kilometres south-west of Sri Lanka and 400 kilometres south-west of India. Maldives has deep blue seas, turquoise reefs, white sandy beaches and palm trees. It is also a place full of character, where its people have long spent their days languishing in the very essence of idyll living. While it is the perfect place to sit on a beach and watch a sunset with a cocktail balanced on your hand, it is also a geographical marvel, knowing that there are thousands of fish swimming around the vivid corals just a few feet away from where you sit. 116 Maldives resorts are known as some of the best holiday resorts in the world. One Resort in particular, Meeru Island Resort & Spa , is surrounded by a beautiful lagoon and long stretches of white, sandy beach, is the only Resort on the island of Meerufenfushi, North Male’ Atoll. It is 1200 meters long by 350 meters wide, about 90 acres. Your speedboat transfer from Ibrahim Nasir International Airport is a scenic, 55 minute ride. With an array of Garden Rooms, Beach Villas, Jacuzzi Beach Villas, Water Villas and Honey Moon Suites, Meeru Island Resort & Spa has an option for every holiday maker. Jacuzzi Water Villas are located over-the-water, in the lagoon…a short walk along your private jetty to this secluded and more spacious hideaway featuring a partial open air bathroom, an outdoor Jacuzzi and stairs into the sea. Two main “sister” restaurants, conveniently located to best serve our guests. The Farivalhu, for guests staying at the Southern end of the island and The Maalan, for guests staying at the Northern end of the island, both featuring the same “all you can eat” buffet style meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner, served in the traditional open-air, sand floor, thatch roof dining rooms with a separate table for each room. 1.5 Kilometers of Beautiful White Sand Beach, a Magnificent Lagoon with plenty of Good Snorkeling, 5 star spa facilities, 2 Sparkling Clear Fresh Water Swimming Pools overlooking the Beach with a Children’s Wading Pool are some of the attractions to this island. For more information: Meeru Island Resort & Spa North Male' Atoll - Meerufenfushi Maldives Tel (960) 664 3157 Fax (960) 664 5946 [email protected] www.meeru.com 117 LIFESTYLE HORIZONS OF INFINITE PLEASURE OUTSTANDING COMFORT AND GREAT SURFACES IPS system, hard top, and new interior designs. While maintaining the highest qualities of the range, the Absolute 43 Sport Cruiser also gives an extra boost to the engines. IPS engines , extended aft platform to enhance outdoor life, pure design for the interiors, and a hard top: with the Absolute 43STC, Cantieri Absolute launched an exclusive project, incorporating some of the highly acclaimed solutions that gave the Absolute 41 Open its success. Maintaining its top-performance features, the vessel creates a fresh way of experiencing the sea in style and elegance, with a high-tech, sporting spirit. NEW TECHNOLOGY. Ever faithful to its philosophy, Absolute introduces not only a new image but also technological innovation: the Absolute 43STC is powered by Volvo Penta engines with IPS transmission, a system that has changed the world of power, creating a new style of navigation: greater manoeuvrability, better fuel economy, lower noise levels, absence of fumes, and minimum volume in the engine room. LIKE OPEN-AIR ROOMS. Elegant and practical exteriors. The comfortable cockpit, the precious teak that accommodate a U-shaped sofa for seven, the generously sized sun pad, the outdoor range, grill and refrigerator unit for a happy hour with friends, through to the practical locker and the concealed electrohydraulic gangway: everything in the Absolute 43 Sport Cruiser is designed to ensure maximum comfort. And to enhance the enjoyment of outdoor life, the dash extends out, while the hard top provides both privacy and a sense of freedom. Absolute has realized an exclusive and refined 56 feet, evolution in an already important range, for the line, model and innovation, confirming his family feeling. In particularly its soft lines but with a net design, and the characteristic side with diamond surfaces are perfectly exalted in this yacht. The style of Absolute 56 Sport Cruiser arises from the Research and Development Lab of the shipyard. The superstructure has got a really aggressive ensemble, thanks to the single details, that characterizes it, and from racy lines well connected between them. The boat presents a high line of gunwale, characterized with a many portholes and purposely realized windows and dimensioned to obtain the maximum light in the inner spaces that well integrates with the totality of the design. The cockpit has been studied to offer an outstanding comfort and great surfaces on the open air. 118 The sun deck in the centre of the stern for 4 person hides a garage that could lodge a classic tender or in alternative a jetsky or a jet rib, that thanks to an easy opening that becomes lifting the garage trapdoor, could be hauled directly into the water, taken it on the sides thanks to the lateral platform sections, that contrarily remains settled. The stern platform is easily reachable from the cockpit by the two lateral access. The stern zone at the shelter of the Hard Top has been made with a circular sofa and a central extendable table, a precious plus for dinners and fresh drinks. On a side a service furniture equipped of several comforts, whom a foldaway LCD television. The side windows, that wraps the cockpit, are really wide and with a futuristic design, realized with a wise mix of lines and in the mean time well marked, that allows, to who is comfortably seated to have a view also of the panorama a side of the yacht. ABSOLUTE 47 DESIGN OPEN AIR Someone waits for the future. Someone has already discovered the Absoluteâ€™s world, and the Absolute 47 communicates the maximum of the glamour. Absolute 47 itâ€™s the boat that captures for its performances , for the first-rate in relation with space/habitability , for style that puts precious details at the service of technique and design. And with a thread running that combines hi-tech and refinement, that today proposes a more versatile way to live the sea: totally freedom but in respect of privacy thanks to the Hard Top. SEDUCTIVENESS OF PURE LINES: the new Absolute 47 shows its strong personality also in the interiors design. Here all it studied at the emblem of the comfort on board; from the Hard Top, with wide windows, to the portholes of superior largeness respect to the standard that widen the light, from the height of interiors, near to 2 mt for extend the volumes, from the bathrooms, ample, comfortable with box showers. ESSENCE OF TECHNOLOGY the boats has been designed for using Volvo Penta engines that, with their propelling IPS technology permit to reach high performances with moderate consumption, less noisiness and absence of smokes. Moreover the joystick for maneuvering gives the mooring an agile and easy maneuver. 119 BESTHOTELSOFME ONE&ONLY ROYAL MIRAGE, DUBAI One&Only Royal Mirage is considered Dubai’s most stylish beach resort, where genuine care and hospitality blend with fantasy and tradition, creating an ambiance of Arabian-influenced refinement. Representing an oasis of calm in the heart of bustling ‘new Dubai’, the resort offers understated elegance and exclusive charm with private coastline and acres of lush gardens. One&Only Royal Mirage consists of three equally distinctive properties: The Palace, the Arabian Court and the Residence & Spa. Within the elegant entrance courtyard of the Residence & Spa lies the Health & Beauty Institute. Architecturally impressive and reminiscent of the great buildings of the region, it captures the values of the environs and ensures each experience is totally distinctive and ceremonial. The Spa and Oriental Hammam offer a service that is dedicated to nurturing beauty and the pursuit of well-being. The resort features some of Dubai’s favorite restaurants, offering a variety of casual and elegant settings, such as the Beach Bar & Grill at The Palace for seafood and grills, Celebrities for international cuisine, Tagine for a truly 120 Moroccan experience and Olives for a Mediterranean buffet. The Residence & Spa offers the exclusive Dining Room, whilst the Arabian Court features Eauzone, casual yet refined with an Asian twist, and Nina, the moody and vibrant Indo-European dining venue. The Rooftop Lounge and The Jetty are among Dubai’s trendiest evening venues. For more information: VIP contact: Olivier Louis, General Manager T: +971 4 399 9999 Jumeirah Beach, P.O. Box 37252 [email protected] royalmirage.oneandonlyresorts.com BESTHOTELSOFME SHANGRI-LA‘S BARR AL JISSAH RESORT & SPA, OMAN The deep turquoise blue water of the Sea of Oman is hypnotic, contrasting vividly with the majestic mountains that rise behind the resort. This is the fascination of Oman. The deep turquoise blue water of the Sea of Oman is hypnotic, contrasting vividly with the majestic mountains that rise behind the resort. This is the fascination of Oman. The experience is elevated at Shangri-La’s Barr Al Jissah Resort and Spa, Sultanate of Oman. Three hotels await your arrival. And each gets better as you explore. Approaching Al Waha, your excitement heightens as a man-made tunnel through the mountain leads you to a sanctuary facing the Sea of Oman. Al Waha lives up to its name with several swimming pools merging to form a serene oasis. Date palms and traditional Dhofari architecture remind you that you are in Arabia. Lunchtime closes in as you head for the resort‘s focal point, Al Bandar Hotel. Like its name suggests, this hotel is akin to a town with a mélange of fine restaurants. After you savour the exquisite Arabian flavours of tender roasted meats at Al Tanoor restaurant, you decide to take home a piece of Oman with the intricately-designed crafts, jewellery and artwork from the gift shop and art gallery. You saved the best hotel for last. The palatial Al Husn is indeed as its name implies: a suitably exclusive castle. Rooms and suites are amongst the largest in all of Oman, and it’s almost as if you have walked into a real Arabian palace. It‘s hard to pull yourself away from it all, but Muscat, Oman’s capital just 15 minutes away, beckons. You leave, knowing that wherever you go, you can return to the indulgent luxury of Shangri-La, at Barr Al Jissah Resort and Spa, Sultanate of Oman. For more information: Phone: (968) 2477 6666 Fax: (968) 2477 6677 Email: [email protected] Location: PO Box 644, Muscat 100, Sultanate of Oman 121 ROYALdinning FINE DINING: HAKKASANABU DHABI Hakkasan Abu Dhabi opened in June 2010, bringing Hakkasan’s awardwinning cuisine and décor to the landmark Emirates Palace. Comprising a restaurant, bar and lounge as well as four private dining rooms, the 16,000 sq ft space is separated by carved wooden screens and latticing that echo the luxurious interior of the London flagship restaurant. Long-time design partner Gilles & Boissier, based in Paris, designed the space with the Hakkasan ethos of the modern ethnic, interpreting it for the United Arab Emirates. Embroidered-finished furniture and marbled Chinese forms enrich the space, and the main dining area is crafted into a wooden, cage-like structure surrounded by stunning blue glass and back-lit by a stainless steel frame. 122 Hakkasan’s signature dishes like Peking duck with caviar and grilled Wagyu beef with king soy sauce are served alongside a set of new dishes created especially for an Emirate clientele. The restaurant is headed by chef Lee Kok Hua, who hails from the London flagship where he worked under head chef Tong Chee Hwee for five years. General enquiries or reservations: Hakkasan Abu Dhabi Emirates Palace West Corniche Road P.O. Box 39999 Abu Dhabi – UAE T: +971 2 690 7999 [email protected] 303 23	i don't know
The highly regarded Mexican organization UNAM, and its popular website unam.mx, is a?	Mexico Websites, recommended by The People's Guide to Mexico: Guatemala Mexico Links: Best of the Web Thanks largely to La Red (the Web), Mexico is no longer the tierra incognita it used to be. On the other hand, sorting the best websites and online resources from the chaff can be a frustrating, time-consuming task. For example, enter the term Mexico in the average search engine, and youll have to sort through at least 234,876 hits, some offering real estate in the state of New Mexico. To help you narrow your search down, I listed some of our favorite web sites . Keeping up with new and changed websites is a major task, however, so your suggestions are appreciated -- dont be shy; if your own website, or one of your personal favorites isnt mentioned, let us know. General Information MexConnect , <http://www.mexconnect.com>. This site and @migo (Mexico OnLine) <http://www.mexonline.com> are among the oldest and most reliable sources of information on Mexico. Azteca Web Page , <http://www.azteca.net/aztec/>. I'm enjoying Aztecas ongoing discussion on ethnicity, Are we Chicanos/Mexicanos or Hispanics? The site includes, What is Mexicos Indian population?, a Pre-Hispanic calendar, US Immigration info, Chiapas updates, Art & Dance. Consulate General of Mexico in New York , <http://www.quicklink.com/mexico/ingles/ing.htm>. Compared to most official government websites, this one is definitely worth a second look. Free Time, tiempo libre , <http://www.tiempolibre.com.mx/>. A weekly lifestyles online magazine, in Spanish, with articles on movies, books, dance, music, tourism, nightlife and so on. This is an excellent place to casually hone your Spanish skills. Also, a wide range of links to gay bars, services, organizations and a glossary of gay Spanish. Wide Wired World , <http://www.worldworks.net/widewiredworld/index.html>. This hard-to-pigeonhole website is like stepping through the looking glass -- follow the links and wherever you end up... there you are! University of Texas , <http://www.lanic.utexas.edu>. "Superb site with links to everything about Latin America -- arts and humanities, discussion groups, magazines, popular culture -- not just the academic areas." (Kay Rafool) It also has links to Mexican Telephone Yellow Pages and Mexican Zip Codes Mexican Government Information , <http://serpiente.dgsca.unam.mx/caleidoscopio/gobierno/>. A Spanish-only site loaded with official documents, links and many dry but useful resources. Excite Travel, Mexico , <http://city.net/countries/mexico/>. Enough travel and information resource links on Mexico and Latin America to overload a Cray Super Computer. Open the institutional size bag of tortilla chips before you visit this one.... Latin America on the Net , <http://www.latinworld.com/norte/mexico/>. Extensive links to Mexican magazines, media and personal web pages in Spanish and English. A genuine cyber-crapshoot. Central America Today , <http://www.centramerica.com>. An attractive business site with good links for Central America. NACLA - North American Congress on Latin America , <http://www.nacla.org/>. Information on major trends in Latin America and its relations with the US. Outstanding links of special interest to scholars, activists, Spanish students and serious aficionados of Latin America. Zapatista Action , <http://www.utexas.edu/ftp/student/nave/>. The Ruta Maya Archaeology of Mesoamerica , <http://www.criscenzo.com/jaguar/>. Jeeni Criscenzo, author of Place Of Mirrors, a self-published, new-age style novel about the ancient Maya, has created a visually striking website on the Maya region of mesoamerica: maps, Mayan glossary, history and more. Los Loros, a Mayan jungle community , <http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~ctennant/EthnoWeb/home.htm>. Created by anthropologist Chris Tennant, this outstanding website is an inspiring blend of ecology, archaeology, history and community action. The site skillfully presents an educational theme with excellent art, photography and an online museum of Mayan artifacts. Belize Corozal: A Belizian Web Site, <http://www.corozal.com>. According to the Bill & Claire Gray, authors of the Belize Retirement Guide , "Most websites in Belize are really tourist brochures, but the "Corozal" site is a true community website." It is the home of Corozal Community College / Corozal Junior College and people, culture, Mayan archaeology, tourism, attractions, schools, business, and other things of Corozal District, Belize. Virtual Lost Cities:El Pilar, Belize , <http://alishaw.sscf.ucsb.edu/~ford/>. If the Mayan ruins of Belize are beyond your reach, take a mosquito-free, online jungle bashing tour of El Pilar. Follow ongoing research at this archaeological site through video clips, scholarly papers, maps and animation. Guatemala Guatemala Living and Retirement Newsletter , PO Box 669004, A-192, Miami Springs, FL 33266. This excellent bimonthly newsletter promises articles, encouragement and tips for retirees and wannabe expats." Their booklet, The Guatemala Bus Traveler's Little Helper is crammed full of bus routes, schedules, travel tips and even hotel information. Email: [email protected] , and a website at <http://www.goguatemala.com>. Honduras Honduras This Week Online , <http://www.marrder.com/htw/>. An online weekly magazine of Honduran news, travel, business, environment and culture. Cuba Havanatour : <http://www.cuba.tc/Havanatur/Havanatur.html> General infomation in both English and Spanish: Air schedules and fares, tours, car rentals, accomodations. The Cuban Connection : Information and Reservation Centre: <http://www.cuba.tc/Havana/> Map of Cuba, Tips for tourists, Advice for U.S. Citizens, Information on various Cuban Cities. Global Exchange : <http://www.globalexchange.org/tours/cubaTravelQuestion.html> Global Exchange does "reality tours" to Cuba. This page has travel info, including how to travel to Cuba 'Legally'. Virtual Voyages: Cuba : <http://www.virtualvoyages.com/carib/cuba/cuba.sht> Lots of practical travel information, extensive links and many articles incuding; "Bicycle Touring in Cuba and Two weeks of Music and Dance. Also TravNet! Bulletin Board and newsgroup: soc.culture.cuba Lonely Planet's website: Destination Cuba <http://www.lonelyplanet.com/dest/car/cub.htm> contains a wealth of articles and links for Cuba, including a Map . Mexicana Airlines to Cuba, in English: <http://www.mexicana.com.mx/mx2/english/destinos/internacional/lahabana/lahabana.asp> Health Mexicos National Parks (GORP) , <http://www.gorp.com/gorp/location/latamer/Mexico/pks_intr.htm>. Eco-Travel & Adventures Trekking in the Copper Canyon , <http://www.peoplesguide.com/1pages/cc/1ccindex.html> Burro assisted treks into the remote Copper Canyon of northwestern Mexico. Guided by Carl Franz and friends, this is the adventure most people only dream about. Eco Travels in Latin America , <http://www2.planeta.com/mader/>. Ron Mader's Eco Travels ranks near the top of my personal WWW favorites. ...the Internet's foremost clearinghouse of environmental news and ecotourism information for the Americas. You'll find short articles and in-depth reports, book reviews, lists of travel providers and Spanish language schools. The best news - all of this is free. Includes the Planeta Platica environmental newsletter, an excellent Directory of Spanish Language Schools and other education resources, as well as one of the most interesting eco-oriented travel archives on the Web. Green-Travel , <http://www.green-travel.com>. Marcus Endicott introduced me to the amazing world of internet travel several years ago when he suggested that I subscribe to an email list that discussed eco-travel. Marcus offers an exceptionally rich website with an almost overwhelming link list. Natural Mexico Volcano World , <http://volcano.und.nodak.edu>. Eruption alerts and good things for children. Everything you ever wanted to know about volcanoes. (Kay Rafool) Did You Feel Anything? <http://www.ssn.unam.mx/> Servicio Sismologico Nacional, Instituto De Geofisica, Unam. Its entirely in Spanish, but if youre interested in earthquakes, check it out. Ive translated their main index below. With a dictionary at hand, you should be able to quickly get an idea of whats happening. If nothing else, you can check the bottom of the home page to learn the location, time and severity of Mexicos most recent quake. ( more ) Fishing Fishing Reports from Mexico Online: Regularly updated fish reports from Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, Cabo San Lucas and Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo. If you like fishing in Mexico, they've got you covered. Mazatlan Report : http://www.mexonline.com/mazfish.htm Puerto Vallarta : http://www.mexonline.com/pvfish.htm. Los Cabos Report : http://www.mexonline.com/cabofish.htm. Ixtapa- Zihuatanejo : http://www.mexonline.com/ixtapafish.htm Shopping Mexican Art Sale , <http://www.folkart.com/~latitude/home/mex.htm>. Mexican folk art and crafts for sale. The colorful online catalog gives a great preview of some of Mexicos fine artesania. Spanish The Spanish Language Home Page , <http://www.el-castellano.com/>. A treasure trove for Spanish students, educators, translators and travelers, with links to online dictionaries, language courses, newspapers and literature. Learn Spanish , <http://www.lingolex.com/spanish.htm>. Useful expressions, live Espanglish Chat," lots of links to very useful Spanish resources, bookshop and more. Language Link , <http://www.langlink.com/>, (800) 552-2051. A very reliable broker for academic Spanish programs and language schools in Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru and Spain. Kay Rafool is also an enthusiastic Peoples Guide reader and has given us many valuable suggestions. NRCSA - The National Registration Center For Study Abroad , <http://www.nrcsa.com/>, (414) 278-7410. One of the oldest, largest and most respected booking services for language schools around the world. Includes Spanish, Mayan and Garifuna. AmeriSpan , <http://www.amerispan.com/>, (800) 879-6640. Spanish immersion and educational travel programs throughout Mexico and Latin America. Latin America Traveler , <http://www.goodnet.com/~crowdpub/>. A Latin America travel and Spanish language school resource, with a subscription-only newsletter. La Pagina del Idioma Español , <http://www.pobox.com/~hispano> Spanish Schools Encuentros , <http://cuernavaca.infosel.com.mx/encuentros/spanish.htm> This is Lorena's favorite language school . She says "As a results of years of learning a bit here and a bit there, my Spanish is a real mishmash. Jeannie designed a study program for me that improved my Spanish very rapidly" Experiencia: The winner of The People's Guide to Mexico 25th anniversay contest studied spanish at Experiencia El Jovel: High quality, one-on-one, Spanish classes while living with a Mexican family. Packing Up & Travel Supplies Walkabout Travel Gear , <http://www.walkabouttravelgear.com>, (800) 852-7085. Essential gear and information for independent travelers. Europe Through the Back Door , <http://www.ricksteves.com/services/accmenu.htm>, (425) 771-8303). Rick Steves sells a good money belt, an excellent carry-on travel pack and other travel accessories. Magellan's , <http://www.magellans.com/>. A major travel accessories catalog, now online. Roadnews.com , <http://www.roadnews.com/>. Accessories and support for laptop computer users worldwide. Ill definitely be checking back here before I take my Mac PowerBook on the road again. Mexico: A to Z	University
The traditional popular Mexican event/skill Jaripeo involves what creature?	Somos Primos: Dedicated to Hispanic Heritage and Diversity Issues Letters to the Editor : ï¿½ Hello Mimi. My name is Juan Vilaubï¿½ Monllaï¿½ and I'm writing you from Spain. Yesterday I found out by chance that a man called Juan Vilaubï¿½ Gisbert was born in California in 1895. He was the first Vilaubï¿½ registered in a US census, and having those surnames I'm 100 per cent sure his parents were from Tortosa, the place were I was born also. Vilaubï¿½ is not a very common surname over here. That's why I was greatly surprised to see that we have such a big family branch in America - afterwards I looked for more American relatives and I found 66 parientes. In case you know any of them: Una abraï¿½ada, cosins, i que tot vaigue molt bï¿½! Esto ï¿½ltimo estï¿½ escrito en catalï¿½n tortosï¿½, la lengua materna de los Vilaubï¿½s, y quiere decir: "un abrazo, primos, y que todo vaya muy bien"). Muchas gracias, Juan Vilaubï¿½ Monllaï¿½, [email protected], ï¿½ Dear Ms. Lozano, I love your publication and would like to continue to receive it my E-mail address has changed. Will you please send this months newsletter and future newsletters to my new address. [email protected] thank you. M. Soto-Hallaran ï¿½ Please delete [email protected] and new e-mail address is [email protected] . The latest email copy of Somos Primos was Dec 05.ï¿½ My wife and I enjoy the articles published.ï¿½ A real awaking of our Texas/Hispanic history the schools don't teach. Keep up the good work .ï¿½ Thanks Jay, [email protected] ï¿½ I continue to be amazed at your work on "Somos Primos". You are doing an absolute great work! Best, Carlos [Carlos Vega, Ph.D. Professor of Spanish, Iona College New Rochelle, New York is the Author of The Truth Must be Told ] ï¿½ Thank for sending Somos Primos. I enjoying receiving and reading all the different articles. Finding ones Roots is so important, and your website sure helps. Gerri . . California researcher, [email protected] ï¿½ Hey Mimi!! I cannot even imagine how to be as comprehensive as your are doing with Somos Primos. It was for me an eye opener. It gives me insight of our movimineto en la NETA. The kind I had been missing and at the same time being unhappy thinking how our gente are missing the boat. How were you able to keep you FOCO so bright. fs [email protected] ï¿½ WHAT YOU HAVE STARTED with SOMOS PRIMOS is priceless for its POTENTIAL. WHICH you are proving with the help of your troopers. Frank Kiko Sifuentes [email protected] ï¿½ Thank you.ï¿½This is really great information on are Hispanic Heritage.ï¿½I found more new family members through your column concerning my genealogy on Somos Primos. Thanks. My new email address will be [email protected] ï¿½ Mimi, Thank you so much for the opportunity to join Somos Primos. I have heard only good things about your organization and look forward to working together in tracing the Pacheco lineage. I'm hopeful other members might assist me in the brick walls I have run up against in researching my Grandfather Fernando Pacheco-born 1885 in Reventadero,Veracruz,Mexico to Domingo Pacheco and Fransisca(maiden name?)ï¿½and my grandmother Maria Demetria Garcia-born 1896 in Silos,San Luis Potosi,Mexico to Juan Garcia and Balbina Plumarejo. ï¿½ I have been told by family members that a family member headed "west" when Fernando came to Texas. Not sure who that relative was.ï¿½Fernando's siblings were Isac,Damian,Juan and Julia Pacheco. It is believed this relative settled in New Mexico. I have searched the New Mexico GenWeb with no luck so far, although there are a TON of Pacheco's with similar names(Domingo,Damian,Fernando etc.) I have even come across another Isaac James Pacheco. (note the extra "a" in Isac) ï¿½ I really appreciate any help I may receive. Thanks again, Mimi. ï¿½ Isac James Pacheco Jr. @ [email protected] ï¿½ ï¿½I read this month's Somos Primos from cover to cover.ï¿½ IT WAS GREAT.ï¿½ Also, thanks for printing our press release.ï¿½ The guys in Texas were thrilled. Again, muchas gracias. Later, Willie, [email protected] ï¿½ I saw the Feb. issue of Somos Primos. Thanks for putting my story in there.ï¿½ I appreciate it. ï¿½ Focus on Veteran Rights For increasing Hispanic federal employment! by Willis Papillion [email protected] ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ 1-Start a federal resume preparedness program, at their local churches-using the federal resume from OPM/Human Resource Dept.ï¿½ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ 2-Obtain copies of the federal civilian/military Helper and Apprenticeship test-from the federal book stores. And teach the youth how to pass these exams!ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ 3-Also, get copies of the Postal exams.ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ 4-Contact the VA and local military bases that are building ships and planes-to put you in touch with the Hispanics that are being discharge-to take advantage of their Veterans priority Vets. Preference, for the federal vacancies on their base! Match up the vacancies-with the recent dischargees, and college Vets.ï¿½ ï¿½ 5-Advise the Hispanic wife's of active duty military men-to enforce the Vets. Preference to the existing base federal vacancies! ï¿½ ï¿½ During my 36 year federal career-I learn that the surest way to increase the hiring of people of Color in the federal Gov. was through strict and continuing enforcement of Veterans preference in federal employment! Even with my Masters'-I still needed my veteran preference-to get my first federal job-in the seventies!ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ ï¿½ During the seventies-we Blacks federal employees of the Office of Education, Region X, SF-along with our Hispanic brethren, gave federal job application training-on Saturdays-at the local Parks. And we provided them with all the news vacancies of: HUD, Dept. of Labor and Dept. of Education. What needs to be done is to contact their Regional Human Resource Office and that of all their local federal agencies-and start an outreach Community Hispanic Federal hiring program. And have these federal agencies provide them with the updated federal vacancies! ï¿½ ï¿½ Also, it should be noted: majority of the military bases-have a continuing free educational program and advancement. Most importantly, the military-especially the Navy and Air Force, has always operated a revolving door policy for it's military people-to federal civilian positions and DOD contracts and hiring-not necessarily Equal Opportunity hiring! ï¿½ ï¿½ Additionally, there are three major Naval Bases, in our Kitsap County: Bangor Subase, Keyport and Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, And the Naval Commanders-are constituency telling me at the Navy League meetings-that they're extremely low in representation of Hispanic and Black-Engineers and Electronic Techs. We need the National Hispanic Engineers Society-to talk to their students-to re-locate out here! The Navy active duty and federal civilians-will always remain a: Old Boy White Man's Country Club. Until we aggressively break it up! ï¿½ ï¿½ And last but not lease-is the Navy League magazine and American Legion magazine, which I've been receiving for the last ten years. Never an article on Hispanic military fighting men and/or heroes-public sentiment is everything! Also, contact ANSO, an active duty Hispanic Officer organization-which help me very much in recruiting Hispanic officers-when I was in charge of Naval Educational programs, in Northern Calif. All of these recommendations will not become a reality -with out commands from the top, and continuing media pressure-especial during an election year.ï¿½ ï¿½ Willis Papillion Naval Academy Summer Seminar (NASS) Program Sent by Willis Papillion: [email protected] On February 1, 2006, the United States Naval Academy will open online for current juniors (current high school class of 2007) to apply for the Naval Academy Summer Seminar (NASS) Program. A series of 6-day immersion programs, running the first three weeks of June in three sessions (Sessions I - 6/3 to 6/8, II 6/10 to 6/15, III - 6/17 to 6/22). Participating in each session will be 600 of the nations top rising seniors. Online application: http://www.usna.edu/Admissions/nass.htm Focus on Interns: Promotion of Hispanic interns to federal employment October 17, 2005 Excerpt from a MEMORANDUM by Dario Prieto, [email protected] Hispanic Employment Manager, Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights, Health Resources and Services Administration TO: National Hispanic Employment Initiative Work Group SUBJECT: Hispanic Employment in DHHS A number of documents generated from the DHHS Office of the Secretary, Presidential Executive Orders, OPM, and news paper articles have all surfaced in the last few years, as a result and recognition that Hispanic Americans remain the only underrepresented group within the DHHS. With the exception of National Hispanic Employment Initiative initiated by Secretary Leavitt, (because it is too early to tell), none of these initiatives have resulted in any significant increase in the number of Hispanics among the DHHS employees. For many of these initiatives, the focus of hiring has been on diversity rather than on Hispanics alone thus allowing managers and supervisors to increase hiring of diverse and ethnic minority groups while Hispanics remain the only underrepresented group. As Hispanic Employment manager, over the years, I have submitted resumes of outstanding Hispanic candidates (M.D. Ph.D. R.N., M.P.H. and J.D. types, etc.) for various positions but due to the limitations of hiring authorities and lack of commitment to hire Hispanics by managers and supervisors, almost none were hired. Each year over the last 8 years, I have worked with the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) to recruit HACU interns (mostly graduates from schools of public health) to work for the summer and although many of them have indicated an interest in staying to work permanently for our agency, only a couple have been able to remain, primarily because they joined the Commission Corp. Again, there are no hiring authorities that would allow the conversion of qualified Hispanic interns to regular employment. By contrast, there are federal programs such as the Presidential Management Internship (which recruits very few Hispanics) that allows the conversion of interns to regular employment upon completion of the internship. I have also been aware of agency agreements with some universities where they take interns and convert them to regular employment once the internship is completed (unfortunately, these programs have lacked adequate Hispanic representation) and most of the hiring is done by individual managers and supervisors who are unaware of Hispanic underrepresentation. Even programs such as the DHHS Emerging Leaders which is partially designed to hire talented college graduates to replace an aging DHHS workforce in the near future has not recruited Hispanics aggressively and therefore Hispanics are very underrepresented among those that have been recruited. HACU has a data base of literally thousands of Hispanic college graduates and undergraduates from over 160 institutions of higher learning with outstanding qualifications. Hundreds of them have worked as summer interns for federal agencies in metropolitan Washington and other federal agencies such as CDC in Atlanta and Texas. This program is an ideal vehicle for the recruitment of Hispanics into DHHS if only a hiring authority would be developed to convert these highly qualified interns into full-time employees. Some agencies have taken steps to move in this direction. USDA for example, has hosted 439 HACU interns since 2001. Of these interns, 21% (92 interns) were converted or hired as permanent employees by USDA. With this information as background, as a Hispanic Employment Manager, I submit the following recommendations for your consideration as you deliberate ways to improve the under representation of Hispanic Americans within the DHHS workforce. My recommendations focus on the three areas of: Recruitment, Retention, and Management Accountability. [[ The full 6 page report by Dario Prieto has been sent to LULAC, La Raza, and the Puerto Rican Coalition. ]] Developing Internal Policies for placing Interns in Federal Employment Please be advised that some agencies, including the Library of Congress, have taken the initiative of developing their own internal appointment policies whereby HACU interns can be hired non-competitively upon successful completion of their internships. These internal policies, tailored to meet the agencies' unique needs, must be vetted and approved by OPM before they can be implemented. The Library's HACU-Cooperative Education Program allows for the non-competitive conversion of HACU interns who have successfully completed a minimum of 640 hours of career-related work at the Library. HACU-COOP interns may be appointed to permanent-conditional positions for which they qualify within one year of completing their academic degree requirements. Sinceramente, Gilbert Sandate HYPERLINK http://www.fas.usda.gov/admin/student This internship program is a great way to get international experience and expose yourself to career fields you may never have considered. Please do not let any part of the application intimidate you! If you need help, that's my job to help you. It is completely doable! Also, the application states that you must pay for your own transportation to your job site. If that is a financial problem, still apply and we'll see how we can find you financial assistance. Again, if you have any questions or you decide to apply PLEASE LET ME KNOW! And please pass this email on to any other students. Thank you! Lillian Gorman, Program Analyst 1. Collect plans from the different agencies to develop overarching agenda 2. Determine challenges, i.e. no funds to do base activity-work 3. Determine opportunities 4. Evaluate systemic institutional barriers, i.e., legal case history interpretations 5. Examine discrimination suits ï¿½ reverse discrimination suits 6. Examine past work to determine what didnï¿½t work, i.e., MOUs are not being applied 7. Find out how many Latinos apply by agency Infrastructure 1. Organize smaller committees to create specific recommendations 2. Establish the NHLA Advisory Commission of Federal Retirees to capitalize on retiree expertise 3. Develop training on federal personnel process to better educate ourselves about hiring practices ï¿½ use federal retirees 4. Ensure follow-up 1. Collect Plans - Gil Sandate - Data and Statistics Prepare Media Strategy and Press Conference on GAO ï¿½ Manny Mirabal 3. Meet with Agencies & Conduct Letter Writing Campaign - Ron Blackburn Moreno 4. Create Legislative Strategy: Senate/House Government Reform Committee Hearings ï¿½ Brent Wilkes, Emma Moreno, and Gabriela D. Lemus 5. Define Accountability Issues for Legislation - Organize structure at the White House and Agencies - Tie accountability to SES Bonus System - Tie accountability to budget Create Commission/Review Board of Federal Experts - Conduct education/outreach effort - Hold seminars on importance of diversity in workplace - Hold seminars on Federal HR processes - Hold Federal career events for young Hispanics - Hold seminars on the Federal application and hiring process - Develop database of Federal experts ï¿½ Harry Salinas 7. Report Card: Federal Service ï¿½ NHLA 8. Education Cesar Chavez & Bernardo de Galvez Cesar Chavez's birthday on March 31st. is being honored by Fred Blanco in a new production, Cesar Chavez y Bernardo de Galvez: Sons and Souls of California. Fred Blanco and Bruce Buonauro, both being educational performers, produced shows individually, predominately for educational venues, such as schools and libraries. They both had an interest in telling Chavez and Galvez' stories. They decided to widen their audience and create versions that contained enough depth to engage older audiences . The production explores the humanity of these two men revealing to the audience, two people, as opposed to just two historical figures. Click for more information. Successful marriages are conferring a remarkable academic benefit on children Source: [email protected] 1/30/2006 A new study published in the Journal of Divorce & Remarriage clearly shows that parents who make their marriage successful are conferring a remarkable academic benefit on their children - especially their daughters. By using data for 265 seniors enrolled in a Colorado Springs public high school, researcher Barry D. Ham assesses "the impact of divorce in relation to students' academic achievement." And the pattern is clear: "Adolescents from intact homes perform better academically and maintain better school attendance than do those students from either single-parent or remarried homes." Ham calculates that in comparison with peers from other family structures, students from intact families earn GPAs that average more than 17% higher. He further calculates a distinctively low rate of absenteeism among students from intact families, who missed 78% fewer class periods than peers from non-intact households. While some have supposed that parental remarriage will erase the harmful effects of parental divorce, Ham finds that, overall, "children in remarried households performed no better than children in either single-mother or single-father families." More careful parsing of the data, however, indicates that "when a stepparent is brought into the home, the males somehow benefit" while females do not. Highlighting it as "one of the most significant findings of this study," Ham points to statistics indicating that "females were more negatively impacted" than males by living in a stepfamily created after parental divorce. Ham does not comment on the irony of his findings in a social world in which feminists generally regard parental divorce and the stepfamilies it produces with indifference. He does see in his findings strong indications that, compared to peers in non-traditional homes, "those students residing with their two biological parents appear to be given an increased chance to excel educationally." (Source: Barry D. Ham, "The Effects of Divorce and Remarriage on the Academic Achievement of High School Seniors," Journal of Divorce & Remarriage 42.1/2 (2004) The Howard Center & the World Congress of Families. 1-800-461-3113 934 North Main Street Rockford, Illinois 61103 Hispanic advocates sue Texas over ESL and bilingual programs, AP, 2-9-06 Sent by JD Villarreal [email protected] Latino advocates filed a federal lawsuit Thursday asking that Texas improve supervision over English as a Second Language and bilingual education programs to ensure students who are learning English don't lag behind others. The lawsuit contends Texas has failed for years to appropriately oversee the programs at public schools, leaving thousands of children with limited English skills to fail exit tests, drop out or be held back. Filed by Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Multicultural Training, Education and Advocacy, Inc., the lawsuit requests that the Texas Education Agency be ordered to establish a system to monitor students who are learning English. It asks for the agency to monitor bilingual and ESL programs on-site, ensure access for students and make sure the instruction offered is appropriate. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens and the American GI Forum, also wants intervention for schools where the achievement gap, retention rate and drop out figures of students learning English is significant. Following a previous lawsuit, the district court in 1981 found inadequacies in the state's bilingual program that were made worse by the state's failure to monitor and enforce local compliance. An appeals court later said the program was unsound, largely unimplemented and yielded unproductive results. A spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency said Thursday night that officials were in a board meeting and she didn't know if anyone had seen the lawsuit. Yahoo discussion Groups Puerto Rican teacher Manuel Hernandez created a Yahoo group for the discussion of literature and education. HispanicVista highly recommends this effort and urges its readers to join and participate. [email protected] or visit and join at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/latinoliterature Sent by [email protected] NALIP-Austin with Cine las Americas present a free, sneak-peek of the HBO film, Walkout Wednesday, March 1 at 8:00 pm at Ruta Maya Coffee House, 3601 South Congress Avenue. By special arrangement with Maya Pictures Directed by Edward James Olmos (American Me) Produced by Moctesuma Esparza (Selena, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge) Silent auction benefiting NALIP-Austin precedes the screening featuring movie posters, DVD sets and other film-fan goodies. Silent Auction: 6:30 to 8:00pm. Screening of WALKOUT: 8-10 pm. Based on actual events, the HBO film tells the story of a Chicano student uprising in 1968 when 12 students organized a peaceful demonstration (a walkout) to call attention to the substandard conditions of their East Los Angeles High school, and ultimately, the systemic discrimination that supported those inadequacies. Students from all five Eastside high schools participated in the peaceful demonstration ï¿½ many, against their concerned parents wishes. But when the second day of the peaceful protest turned violent, the parents joined their children in what becomes a defining moment in Chicano civil rights history. Directed by Edward James Olmos, Walkout stars Michael Peï¿½a (Crash), Alexa Vega (Spy Kids), Bodie Olmos and Yancey Arias (Mi Familia). In addition to directing, Olmos has a supporting role. Austin audiences can see the film movie prior to itï¿½s March 18 HBO premiere. A silent auction benefiting NALIP-Austin occurs prior to the screening at 6:30pm. NALIP-Austin is an approved chapter of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers, a non-profit organization. For more information call (512) 589-7076 or go to www.nalip-austin.org . WALKOUT is based on real events that occurred in 1968. Michael Peï¿½a (Crash, Million Dollar Baby) stars as Sal Castro, a dedicated teacher at Lincoln High School in East Los Angeles. Driven and determined that his mostly Mexican American students learn their cultural history ï¿½ non-existent in their textbooks ï¿½ he takes a group of his students to the Chicano Youth Leadership Conference. There, his and hundreds of students from across the state, learn about their collective history and what it means to claim their heritage. Castroï¿½s brightest students ï¿½ Paula Crisostomo (Alexa Vega), Yoli (Veronica Diaz) and Bobby Verdugo (Efren Ramirez) ï¿½ return from the conference inspired and no longer willing to ignore the inequitable and often draconian conditions of their school ï¿½ no bathroom breaks during lunch, forbidding Spanish from on school grounds. Although parents and even Peï¿½a himself begins to worry about the studentsï¿½ newfound activism, in the end, all come to realize the simplicity and gravity of their demand: that their education be equitable, that their history be taught, and that self-respect is not a luxury. ï¿½I think this film will help inspire kids,ï¿½ Director Edward James Olmos says in press materials. ï¿½I think theyï¿½re going to learn from the experience that these students were trying to understand: self respect, self-esteem and self worth is the single most important aspect of living. Itï¿½s what makes you and gives you the ability to say to yourself, ï¿½I want to move forward to be the best (I) can be.ï¿½ï¿½ Executive Producer Moctesuma Esparza was a key participant in the real-life drama (as portrayed by Bodie Olmos, son of Edward James Olmos). In addition to Esparzaï¿½s Maya Pictures producing Walkout, he is a board member of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers. NALIP-Austin became an approved chapter in 2005. About NALIP and NALIP-Austin: The National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP) is a national membership organization that addresses the professional needs of Latino/Latina independent producers. Founding in 1999, NALIP has since held five national Conferences, developed local chapters, and hosted many regional workshops and networking events that develop the professional skills of film, television, documentary and new media makers. In 2003, three new National Initiatives were launched: a Latino Writer's Lab, a Latino Producers Academy and a Latino Media Resource Guide published in print and online. NALIP's mission is to promote the advancement, development and funding of Latino/Latina film and media arts in all genres. NALIP is the only national organization committed to supporting both grassroots and community-based producers/media makers along with publicly funded and industry-based producers. As an approved chapter, NALIP-Austin follows the mission of the parent organization on a local level. For more info about NALIP, visit www.nalip.org . For more information on NALIP-Austin visit www.nalip-austin.org . About Cine las Americas: Now entering its 9th year, the Cine las Americas International Film Festival provides Central Texas with a diversity of Latino and indigenous film and media entertainment from across the Americas. Cine las A ericasï¿½ education programs enables young filmmakers and musicians who might not otherwise have the opportunity to explore their artistic talents in a constructive atmosphere. The 9th Annual Cine las Americas Film Festival takes place April 19 ï¿½ 23, 2006. For more information about the festival and other Cine las Americas programs visit www.cinelasamericas.org . For more within this issue of Somos Primos article on Sal Castro . . . Click Cover Latino Civil Rights Movement By VALBBIBJ. NELSON- Times Staff Writer Octavio Gomez, a cameraman, whose work put him at the center of the region's Mexican American civil rights movement and placed him by Ruben Salazar's side when the journalist was killed while covering a riot in 1970, has died. He was 71. Gomez, one of the first Latinos to work locally as a television camera-man, died of a heart attack Dec. 30 at a friend's home in Los Angeles. "He was a true pioneer of Hispanic media here in Los Angeles," said Frank Cruz, a former television news anchor and a founder of the Spanish-language network Telemundo. "And he was a gutsy cameraman." Felix Gutierrez, a USC Journalism professor, Called Gomez a "break-through journalist" because he suc-ceeded in the print and broadcasting media, "which very few have done." Shortly after arriving in Los An-geles in 1969, Gomez became a cameraman at the Spanish- language statlon KMEX. Later, he spent several years as a photographer at the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion and freelanced for many broadcast out-lets. "He would stop at no end to get a story, including flying off to Central America with KMEX-TV camera equipment without getting his bosses' permission," Gutterrez re-called. In 1985, Gomez was awarded $195,000 in damages in a press freedom case that accused immigration authorities of interfering with his ability to take photographs for La Opinion. The lawsuit centered on two events a week apart ï¿½ a protest against refugee deportations and a roundup of Illegal aliens ï¿½ in which INS agents confiscated Gomez's camera and press credentials and reportedly made veiled threats about his immigration status. At the time, Gomez was a Mexican national who had been in the country legally since 1968. He became a naturalized citizen in 1994. "It wasnï¿½t that trouble followed him, It's that he was fearless," said his elder son, Michael, who witnessed the second Incident as a 12-year-old riding along with his father in 1981. "Being an immigrant, he was pretty sympathetic to the cause." 701 Texas Ave., El Paso, Texas 79901 Phone: (915) 838-1625 Fax: (915) 838-1635 www.cincopuntos.com "La Tragedia de Macario." Excerpt: Prestigious festival accepts San Antonio filmmaker's maiden effort Elda Silva, [email protected] San Antonio Express-News Sent by JV Martinez "La Tragedia de Macario," film by Pablo Vï¿½liz, a communications major at the University of Texas at San Antonio, was selected to have its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Shot in San Antonio over eight days with a budget of $7,000, "La Tragedia de Macario" tells a story close to Vï¿½liz's heart - that of a young Mexican immigrant who attempts to cross the border illegally into the United States. In search of a better life, the title character contracts with a coyote who promises safe passage in a railroad boxcar. He finds misfortune instead. The movie, in Spanish with English subtitles, is based on the true story of 19 illegal immigrants who died inside a locked tractor-trailer in Victoria in May 2003. The story is set in Sabinas Hidalgo, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. "Los Tigres del Norte are a huge inspiration in my filmmaking," Vï¿½liz says. "They're my No. 1 inspiration, above filmmakers, because they tell the inspiring stories. In songs they tell them in about three minutes. I tell them in about 90 minutes." Vï¿½liz was driving on Interstate 10 when "Josï¿½ Perez Leon," a ballad by Los Tigres del Norte, came on the radio. The song tells the story of a man who dies trying to cross the border into the United States. Listening to the lyrics, Vï¿½liz was moved to tears. "I just literally started weeping, right on the highway," he says. "People (were) looking at me like 'Is this guy OK?'" Vï¿½liz went home and sat down at his computer. He typed in his pj's as he listened to the song over and over. Eight hours later, Vï¿½liz had "La Tragedia de Macario." Vï¿½liz used his savings from working part time for the youth arts program SAY Sï¿½ and videotaping quinceaï¿½eras to buy a digital camera and editing equipment. Filming began in late January."I remember we didn't even have rehearsals," says actor Rogelio Ramos, 29, who plays Macario with a soulful gravity. "We would show up and it was 'You know your lines?' 'Yeah.' 'All right. Go for it.' "It was really guerrilla filmmaking, as Pablo says. It was a guy with a camera, a guy with a light, and a guy with a boom mike and we shot it." The film won an award for best feature at the 2005 Cine Cuauhtemoc Pan American Film Festival in Houston and screened at the 2005 CineFestival en San Antonio in November. Nuestra Familia Unida podcast project http://NuestraFamiliaUnida.com The Nuestra Familia Unida podcast* project needs your help. [podcasting is putting audio files on the internet]. This effort is an attempt to archive as much audio related to our history as possible. Have a look at the website - http://NuestraFamiliaUnida.com and have a listen to audio on these Subjects: Comida DNA (coming soon) Please join the planning committee for the Nuestra Familia Unida podcast project at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/podhi and help us organize as we attempt to find more information about our history and genealogy. Also to be notified when there is new content on the site join the very low traffic notification list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NuestraFamiliaUnida We need your help in finding audio related to our history and genealogy. If there is a Seminar, Lecture, Discussion, Info Session, or Organization Meeting that presents information related to our History or Genealogy please encourage having this information archived at the Nuestra Familia Unida podcast. If you know of a Historian, Genealogist, Professor, Story Teller, or Knowledgeable Individual that has a message that needs to be heard please contact us through the planning committee or through the contact information provided. Your help is much needed please consider lending us your support in this project. Joseph Puentes 206-339-4134 (messageonly) > > > > Dialog of the Dead . . . Readers-Actors Needed for Play < < < < Needed: Actors, Readers, Interested Individuals. Author Historian Rubï¿½n Sï¿½laz Mï¿½rquez has given me permission to produce his play Dialog of the Dead. I'm been given limited permission to produce the play only for the Nuestra Familia Unida podcast. I'm looking for volunteers to read each part. If you have a good voice and can read well I would encourage you to read over the part you are interested in and lets start recording. Parts available: Narrator (female), Chicano, Above-It-All, Marï¿½a (female), Latino, Immigrant (female), Hispano, Heckler, Policeman, Immigration Officer (female) Joseph Puentes, http://NuestraFamiliaUnida.com ps: Podcasting is just a little over one year old. There is much room for a wide variety of podcasts on many subjects related to our people. If you have a message that would benefit the community please contact me and we can work through the technology to get you up and running. The time is ripe. Never has there been an easier and low cost way to get your message out to the community. If you have something to say let's work together in saying it. pps: to subscribe and automatically get new material from the Nuestra Familia Unida podcast delivered to your computer as it becomes available you need to download free aggragator software from the net: iTunes is a good choice. Then when you pick the "subscribe to podcast" option you would insert this RSS feed: http://NuestraFamiliaUnida.com/rss.xml into the subscribe window. Otherwise you can listen to or manually download the podcasts from the website. Excerpt: Adding Color to Red, White and Blue For '06 Winter Games, United States Fields Its Most Diverse Team By Amy Shipley Washington Post Staff Writer, Thursday, February 9, 2006; A01 Sent by Howard Shorr Additional information added from Hispanic Link Weekly report, Vol. 24.8, Feb 20, 2006. TURIN, Italy, Feb. 8 Midwest, The U.S. team is considered the most racially and ethnically diverse in the history of the Winter Games.It will include a Cuban American from Miami, a Puerto Rican American from Chicago, a Japanese American from Seattle and African Americans from Chicago, Alabama and North Carolina, all among the country's strongest medal hopes. At least 23 of the 211-member U.S. team have Hispanic or non-white backgrounds, and the team includes natives of Florida, Georgia and Texas, as well as South Korea, Russia and Japan. Though the U.S. Olympic Committee does not keep official records on race or ethnicity, the number of black, Asian American or Hispanic athletes on the U.S. team is more than double that at Salt Lake City in 2002, which included at least 12 minorities. It is nearly four times the number on the U.S. teams that competed in 1998 in Nagano and 1994 in Lillehammer. "I've definitely seen the winter sport side of it evolve," said men's bobsledder Randy Jones, an African American who has competed in two previous Olympics and won a silver medal in 2002. "There's more color getting involved in all sports." The evolution of the U.S. team has major implications for the U.S. Olympic Committee, whose congressionally defined mission includes increasing the number of minorities in athletics, and its various winter-sport national governing bodies, which for years have fought what was often a losing battle to attract more of the country's top minority athletes. Sports officials say there is no greater recruitment tool than a more diverse lineup of American Olympians. Derek Parra of Carson, Calif., who was the first athlete of Mexican descent to win a Winter Olympic medal when he claimed a gold in 2002; Ryan Leveille, who is part Native American; and Jennifer Rodriguez, who is of Cuban descent and in 1998 became the first Hispanic American to compete in the Winter Games. (Hispanic Link by Miguel Garcia) The five Latinos on the United States Olympic team winter competing in Turin, Italy are: Jennifer Rodriguez, 29, of Miami, Fla., closed the 2005 speedskating season with 14 medals. She set two new track records, became world champion, and hold five U.S. and four track records. Derek Parra, 35, of san Bernardino County, California, qualified for his third U.S. team by finishing third in the men's 1,500-meter competition of the 2006 U.S. Long Track Championships at the Utah Olympic Oval. Maria Garcia, Carson, Calif. will be competing in Short Track Speedskating. She is ranked fourth overall at U.S. Short Track National Championships in 2005. Mason Aguirre, 18, of Mammoth Mountain, Calif., a snowboarder in the men's halfpip event, place fourth. Ben Agosto, 24, of Northbrook, Ill., with Tanith Belbin are entered in ice dancing. Excerpt: The inexorable rise of Latino USA By Ros Davidson in Los Angeles, 22 January 2006 http://www.sundayherald.com/53697 Sent by Juan Ramos [email protected] Hasta la vista, older white America. Young Hispanics are the cutting edge. This coming October, Americaï¿½s population will reach 300 million. The symbolic 300 millionth will probably be a Mexican-American baby in Los Angeles with bilingual siblings and parents who speak Spanish at home. The prediction of a landmark ï¿½Chicanoï¿½ birth may not be exact, given the law of probability, but itï¿½s the new American idiom ï¿½ Latino, urban and multi-cultural ï¿½ says Bill Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institute, a think tank in Washington DC. ï¿½The new baby is symbolic of Americaï¿½s 21st century,ï¿½ he says. Itï¿½s the America of President George W Bush courting Hispanic votes; of singer-actor Jennifer Lopez and ï¿½reggaetï¿½nï¿½ music, a mix of Latin hip-hop, dancehall reggae and salsa that originated in Panama and Puerto Rico and swept the US last year. Los Angeles, the second largest city in the US and the template for its future, is half Latino. Last year LA elected a Latino leader, the first since 1872, not that long after California broke away from Mexico. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, popular, young and a rising political star, is being courted by Democratic bigwigs from Hillary Clinton to Howard Dean. Nationally, Latinos number only about 45 million, a population centered in California, New York and in Miami , where many street signs are in Spanish. But Hispanics are the fastest growing ethnic group and, since 2003, outnumber the black community. By about mid-century, for the first time in almost 300 years of American independence, whites will technically be a minority. For businesses and politicians, Hispanics are the new El Dorado. They may lack political and economic clout, but as a market theyï¿½re young and worth an estimated $363 billion. Next month, Toyota breaks new ground by airing a Spanish-English television advert during the Super Bowl coverage. The $1 million half-minute advert depicts a Latino father and son talking about a hybrid, forward-looking car ï¿½ and about being a bilingual family. And in March, Reebok will launch a Daddy Yankee trainer, named for the Puerto Rican reggaetï¿½n star whose hit single Gasolina spearheaded the breakthrough last year. Major chain stores such as Circuit City, JC Penney, Sears and Target recently added bilingual staff and Latin- oriented product lines. Note this marketing item: El Valiente pictured in a lotteria card carrying a box of Huggies in one hand and a baby in need of a diaper change in the other. New Latina Voz on the Web By Rosalba Ruiz, The Orange County Register www.theLatinaVoz.com At a glance, Online news magazine targeted at U.S. Latinas that covers social, cultural and economic issues in English and Spanish. Subscriptions are free and readers can receive weekly summaries of news relevant to Latinas by e-mail. History on Publisher, Lorraine Quintanar: She and her five brothers were raised by their single mother. She credits the women in her family for her success. Studied political science in college and went on to work in the advertising industry for several years before taking a year off to travel through the United States, Canada and Europe. She also worked as a headhunter. Lorraine Quintanar's grandmothers used to tell her that she should give back to her community whenever possible. When she noticed a lack of coverage on issues affecting Latinas in the '04 election, she wanted to make a difference. In December, Quintanar launched the online magazine theLatinaVoz.com, a bilingual site featuring articles about social, cultural and economic issues targeting U.S. Latinas ages 25 to 45. "I believe we are the only bilingual online news magazine for Latinas," says Quintanar, 41, of Laguna Niguel. "Women are very busy, and the Internet is a quick way for them to stay informed." After conducting research that included women's focus groups and surveys, she opted to use the Internet as a vehicle for her publication. She found out that 59 percent of U.S. Hispanics used the Internet every month, compared to 68percent of non-Hispanics. She decided to target all Latinas, no matter their income or educational level, because "the idea behind LatinaVoz is to provide the information and resources to them so that they can improve the quality of their lives." Excerpt: For Hispanics, Farming is a Growth Industry Jenalia Moreno http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/news/newsbyid.asp?id=27651 January 21, 2006 At a time when many other farmers are giving up, Humberto Moctezuma dreams of increasing production on his cactus farm. "If the market demands it, I can grow with the market," Moctezuma, 48, said on a recent morning as he examined his crop, fertilized by chicken manure. He sells the cactus pads, nopales in Spanish, to mostly Hispanic customers who cook the vegetable, eating it with eggs, salads or meat. Moctezuma is one of a growing number of Hispanic farmers in the nation. Between 1997 and 2002, the number of Hispanic-run farms grew 51 percent. At the same time, the number of farms run by African-Americans and Anglos declined, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service. Like Moctezuma, many Hispanic farmers are immigrants who picked up the skill in their home countries. Moctezuma's father and brother work a 130-acre cactus farm called Rancho El Periocolo in the Mexican state of Hidalgo, where Moctezuma was raised. For many Hispanic immigrants, owning land is a symbol of prestige, said Mario Delgado, a U.S. Department of Agriculture rural development specialist in Georgia, where he is helping to organize a March conference on Hispanic farm operators. "A lot of Latinos have their roots in the land," said Delgado, who added that Hispanic farmers rarely seek government subsidies and other assistance because they don't know about such programs or don't want to deal with more paperwork. "They really go for it with gusto." Some Anglo farmers are quitting the business because it's hard work that pays little. "There's just so many opportunities out there to do other things," said Kevin Kleb, who once raised mustard greens and eggplants in Klein. "You're trying to tie the greens in the cold and at $7 a pound, you think, 'What's the point?' " Many farmers no longer want to put up with the risks inherent to the profession, Kandel said. Fluctuating crop prices, droughts and pests plague small farmers who are increasingly competing with agribusinesses. "It presents an opportunity for people who are willing to incur those kinds of risks and the challenges of running a small farm," Kandel said. Moctezuma decided to take on those risks after years of importing produce from Mexico and facing slowdowns at the border. In 1989, he began his weekly ritual of driving his pickup truck laden with nopales from Hidalgo to the farmers market on Airline Drive near the 610 Loop. By then the farmers market had already become a meeting place for Hispanic vendors and their primarily Hispanic customers. It's a place where haggling over the price of tomatillos, tamarindos and Topo Chico carbonated beverages is done primarily in Spanish. Vendors sell produce raised in Mexico, California, Florida or the Rio Grande Valley, and little of it is grown in Harris County or the surrounding counties. "All that land is getting developed," said Kleb, who is now the manager of the Farmer's Marketing Association of Houston. "There's not much ag left in this area anymore." But back in 1942, when the market opened as a cooperative, it was supplied by local German, Italian and Japanese farmers. By the 1980s, Hispanic vendors and buyers began frequenting the market, and today 90 percent of the customers are Hispanic, Kleb said. And many of these customers are looking for products from their homelands. Mexico City native Reina Hernandez shopped for produce with her children as she sipped coconut juice out of a plastic baggie. El Salvador native Manuel Escobar and his sister drive from Huntsville every two weeks to buy chayote, pineapple and boxes of mangoes and other produce. "It's more fresh and a little cheaper," he said. For Moctezuma, the farmers market was an ideal place to sell his nopales. "It's a tradition for us" to eat nopales, said Elvira Torres, a native of Guanajuato, Mexico, who purchased more than six pounds of Moctezuma's nopales from the market one morning. Small farmers like Moctezuma are realizing that by growing such niche products, they can make a living. "I think that is increasingly the trend among a lot of small farms. They do a lot of gourmet products and a lot of expensive vegetables and specialty crops," Kandel said. "I would bet on nopales before I would bet on carrots." So far, Moctezuma, who believes the market for nopales is growing beyond Hispanics, has cactuses on just one acre of his 98-acre farm near the Big Thicket's Big Sandy Creek Unit. In two months, he plans to plant three more acres. And he envisions ultimately clearing away the tall pine trees that fill his property and replacing them with rows of cactuses and a patch of artichokes. "The American market is very anxious to try new things," Moctezuma said. Excerpt: Some day laborers report being abused and cheated in their pay Researchers surprised by the pervasiveness of wage violations, dangers on job By Steven Greenhouse, New York Times (January 21, 2006) Sent by Howard Shorr [email protected] The first nationwide study on day laborers has found that such workers are a nationwide phenomenon, with 117,600 people gathering at more than 500 hiring sites to look for work on a typical day. The survey found that three-fourths of day laborers are illegal immigrants and that more than half said employers had cheated them on wages in the previous two months. The professors who conducted the study said the most surprising finding was the pervasiveness of wage violations and dangerous conditions that day laborers face. "We were disturbed by the incredibly high incidence of wage violations," said study author Nik Theodore, of the University of Illinois at Chicago. "We also found a very high level of injuries." Forty-nine percent of those interviewed said that in the previous two months an employer had not paid them for one or more days' work. Forty-four percent said some employers did not give them any breaks during the workday while 28 percent said employers had insulted them. "This is a labor market that thrives on cheap wages and the fact that most of these workers are undocumented. They're in a situation where they're extremely vulnerable, and employers know that and take advantage of them," said another study author, Abel Valenzuela Jr., of the University of California at Los Angeles. The study said the number of day laborers has soared because of the surge of immigrants, the boom in homebuilding and renovation, the construction industry's growing use of temporary workers and the volatility of the job market. The biggest hope for day laborers, the study said, are the 63 day-labor centers that operate as hiring halls where workers and employers arrange to meet. These centers, usually created in partnerships with local government or community organizations, often require workers and employers to register, helping to reduce abuses. Many of the centers set a minimum wage, often $10 an hour, that employers must pay laborers. California Gold Rush and the "49ers" The greatest theft in history Smithsonian and the Spirit of Ancient Colombian Gold Latinos in the Smithsonian Revised Targeted Minorities Fuss and feathers at the U. of I. The Orange County Register February 19, 2006 I love to read the daily cartoons, so it was a bit of a puzzlement to read the first frame of Get Fuzzy and a reference to aliens. Gold enduring Mystique Orange County Register, December 11, 2005 Below is example of the easy way that reference to Hispanics/Latinos and the history of the Spanish is included and maligned. The statement under the photo of the article by Robert J. Samuelson, syndicated columnist was published in extremely bold print, such as you see here. File photo: Bloomberg News Brought up in California, I was very aware of the "49ers" presented in school as types of folk heroes, men and women fighting the elements, striving for a better life, etc. etc.. However, that simplistic presentation of California history in elementary school was totally erroneous. January 18, 1998, California State Historian Kevin Starr speaking of the California Gold Rush wrote "It was true that Americans indulged in an orgy of self-seeking. As a matter of social history, the legacy of the Gold Rush was obvious: Thousands upon thousands who otherwise would never have thought of migrating to America's remote Pacific territory poured into California, which in 1848, when gold was first discovered, had a non-Indian population of barely 18,000. Infinitely more tragic, the Gold Rush even further decimated the Indian population, whom the miners frequently cleared from their path like so many vermin. Indians not murdered were frequently enslaved, especially children and adolescents. Only one horrible word, genocide, can be employed accurately to describe the effects of the Gold Rush on Indians in the mining regions. Likewise were the Old Californians (Latinos in current parlance) pushed further to the wall, although they did manage, especially in Southern California, to hold on for another generation." "One moment the California creek beds glimmered with gold; the next, the same creeks ran red with the blood of men and women defending their claim or ceding their bags of gold dust to bandits, "so writes John Boessenecker in his never-before-told tales of the American frontier, Gold Dust and Gunsmoke . "A lust for gold was the driving force behind the conflicts that developed as a diverse group of participants each fought for a share of the promised fortunes. Violence and lawlessness ran rampant in the 1850s, recording the highest homicide rate in the history of peacetime US " writes reviewer: Harry Pandolfino. ". . these people stole from other folks in a wide variety of ways and made an art out of shooting and cutting up friends as well as enemies. " Reviewer: Leon Metz The New York Herald printed news of the discovery in August 1848 and the rush for gold accelerated into a stampede. Gold seekers traveled overland across the mountains to California (30,000 assembled at launch points along the plains in the spring of 1849) or took the round-about sea routes: either to Panama or around Cape Horn and then up the Pacific coast to San Francisco. A census of San Francisco (then called Yerba Buena) in April 1847 reported the town consisted of 79 buildings including shanties, frames houses and adobes. By December 1849 the population had mushroomed to an estimated 100,000. The massive influx of fortune seekers Americanized the once Mexican province and assured its inclusion as a state in the union. http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/californiagoldrush.htm "Quarreling and cheating form the employments, drinking and gambling the amusements, making the largest pile of gold the only ambition of the inhabitants." http://www.cyberwest.com/cw17/goldrush.html Who would have been foolish enough to travel through hell to get to a place where a person's ears were cut off for stealing and murder was commonplace. (No Place for a Woman? Patricia Cronin Marcello) For even more current history of gold lust and inhumanity, the example would be Nazi brutality during World War II. With no regard for humanity, the Nazi got gold - mounds of gold, from the gold fillings taken out of the mouths of Jewish victims. Searching the web for photos and information was easy. The headlines on a Dec 1, 1997 BBC article read: World: Analysis, The greatest theft in history went on to describe Germany's action as:. It was one of the greatest thefts by a government in history; the confiscation by Nazi Germany of around $580 million of central bank gold -- worth around $5.6 billion at today's prices. The gold came from governments and civilians, including Jews murdered in concentration camps, from whom everything was taken down to the gold fillings of their teeth. Yet, with two major relatively recent historical incidents of greed, the unchecked anti-Spanish colonials sentiments continue. New March 2006 issue, Smithsonian, page 42, next to a gold Funerary Mask, 100 B.C. to A.D. 800 "The Spirit of Ancient Colombian Gold" show . . says HURRY IN . . . Spanish explorers would have killed (and did) for a collection of Colombian gold as large as the one on view at the National Museum of Natural History through April. In neither the cartoon, newspaper article, nor the Smithsonian magazine did the anti-Hispanic statement have to be included. It did not augment the statement with facts, but was purely an editorial comment added as a humorous innuendo. The writers apparently feeling safe in thinking that their inclusion was historically correct and therefore generally acceptable, adding their comment, even though clearly the statements are demeaning to the history of the Spanish colonists. These debasing comments appear frequently in the media, reinforcing negative attitudes towards the early Spanish colonizers. It supposes that either descendants of the Spanish colonists do not exist, or because of the accuracy of their comments that we do not take a stand in defense of our ancestors. Notice too in those quotes, one refers to the Spanish as conquistadors and the other as explorers, yet, the English are referred to as colonists, Pilgrims, Puritans. The "49ers" are referred as such, even though most were lusting after gold, adventurers and thugs driven by gold fever. We support the use of those terms when we use them ourselves, forgetting that the colonization took place with Spanish and other Southern Europeans families who immigrated first in the earliest colonization of the Americas. Using the term Spanish conquistadors is inaccurate. They were soldiers, just as all the other armies forces were soldiers. They came as cooks, bakers, tailors, doctors, barbers, etc. They came with families, wives and children. The problem persists because incorrect history has shaped a very negative perspective towards the role played by the Spanish in the American continent. The Smithsonian is suppose to reflect the discoveries and achievements of America, but the Hispanic/Latino is still not an acceptable part of the vision. Our story has not been told because we are telling it in the right places and to the right people. "Latinos in the Smithsonian Revised" In 1997, a 5-year report on the the Hispanic presence in the Smithsonian revealed that in 1996 Latinos were 3.1% of the Smithsonian staff. White The 3.1% represents 167 Latino employees; however, only 3 were in a Senior positions. Out of the approximately 5,387 Smithsonian employees, only 3 Latinos hold Senior positions. Source: Smithsonian Workforce Profile through 3/97; Bradley and Paulino, "Latinos in the Smithsonian Revised"; U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Office of Diversity. In the 1997 study the American Indian were only 1.0% of Smithsonian. However, since that study, the beautiful Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian is in Washington, D.C.. www.nmai.si.edu January 2006, a Black History Museum approved for construction by the Smithsonian, Click We need Hispanic/Latinos on the staff of museums, historical sites, in national parks, concert halls, performing arts centers, PBS and educational channels. Most agencies, public or private reach out with internship programs. For more information about research and scholarship at the Getty in California, go to www.getty.edu/research For information on internship programs at the Smithsonian, Click. Targeted Minorities By Rubï¿½n Sï¿½laz Marquez author of the EPIC OF THE GREATER SOUTHWEST, Click for more information [email protected] In 1972 a group known as the ï¿½Concerned Alumni of Princetonï¿½ was formed to combat entry of women, blacks, and Hispanics to this Ivy League university. This effort was not publicized, of course, so that ï¿½women, blacks, and Hispanicsï¿½ would never consciously realize they were being prevented from attending Princeton by ï¿½Concerned Alumni.ï¿½ This way rejected prospective students would likely blame themselves instead of nefarious societal forces like the ï¿½Concerned Alumni.ï¿½ History has shown that Californios, Tucsonenses, Hispanos, and Tejanos have generally been hospitable, kind hearted people. Most people donï¿½t wish to believe that they are being targeted for exclusion from Princeton (or Stanford or Ohio State or how many other schools or universities that we canï¿½t prove?) but this small slice of history demonstrates what forces are working against anyone designated as a ï¿½minorityï¿½ in the USA. The idealism of the Declaration of Independence must be weighed and considered along with the realities of the Dred Scott Decision. This is crucial for anyone who is a member of a targeted group, minority or otherwise. If we donï¿½t recognize American realities we are doomed to suffer from them and worse, pass the sufferings on to our children and grandchildren. One way to become more aware of what is really going on is to read widely in the field of history. While American historiography is laced with propaganda, if one reads widely enough you will have a good chance of recognizing fact from fiction, analysis from cultural bias, valid history from mere propaganda. Without a strong background in history the ordinary person is intellectually defenseless. You can be told anything and you have no way of knowing if it is true or false. For example, the missions and missionaries of California have been denigrated beyond belief only because most people donï¿½t know much about mission history so just about any assertion can be made without serious contradiction. The same thing has happened to Juan de Oï¿½ate in New Mexico. Many people in the Southwest are passionate about genealogy. The next step, after identifying oneï¿½s ancestors, is to study how our people actually made their personal history. Most Southwesterners will be very proud of those ancestors once you discover how they really lived. But leave history to forces like the ï¿½Concerned Alumniï¿½ and you and yours will be viewed as unworthy, if not vile. Is this being sort of paranoid? Read widely in history and decide for yourself. Fuss and feathers at the U. of I. By George Will Orange County Register, January 5, 2006 The University of Illinois must soon decide whether, and if so how, to fight an exceedingly silly edict from the NCAA. That organization's primary function is to require college athletics to be no more crassly exploitative and commercial than is absolutely necessary. But now the NCAA is going to police cultural sensitivity, as it understands that. Hence the decision to declare Chief Illiniwek ''hostile and abusive'' to Native Americans. The Chief must go, as must the university's logo of a Native American in feathered headdress. Otherwise the NCAA will not allow the university to host any postseason tournaments or events. This story of progress, as progressives understand that, began during halftime of a football game in 1926, when an undergraduate studying Indian culture performed a dance dressed as a chief. Since then, a student has always served as Chief Illiniwek, who has become the symbol of the university that serves a state named after the Illini confederation of about a half-dozen tribes that were virtually annihilated in the 1760s by rival tribes. In 1930, the student then portraying Chief Illiniwek traveled to South Dakota to receive authentic raiment from the Oglala Sioux. In 1967 and 1982, representatives of the Sioux, who had not yet discovered that they were supposed to feel abused, came to the Champaign-Urbana campus to augment the outfits Chief Illiniwek wears at football and basketball games. But grievance groups have multiplied, seeking reparations for historic wrongs, and regulations to assuage current injuries inflicted by ''insensitivity.'' One of America's booming businesses is the indignation industry that manufactures the synthetic outrage needed to fuel identity politics. The NCAA is allowing Florida State University and the University of Utah to continue calling their teams Seminoles and Utes, respectively, because those two tribes approve of the tradition. The Saginaw Chippewa tribe denounces any ''outside entity'' -- that would be you, NCAA -- that would disrupt the tribe's ''rich relationship'' with Central Michigan University and its teams, the Chippewas. The University of North Carolina at Pembroke can continue calling its teams the Braves. Bravery is a virtue, so perhaps the 21 percent of the school's students who are Native Americans consider the name a compliment. The University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux may have to find another nickname because the various Sioux tribes cannot agree about whether they are insulted. But the only remnant of the Illini confederation, the Peoria tribe, is now in Oklahoma. Under its chief, John Froman, the tribe is too busy running a casino and golf course to care about Chief Illiniwek. The NCAA ethicists probably reason that the Chief must go because no portion of the Illini confederation remains to defend him. Or to be offended by him, but never mind that, or this: In 1995, the Office of Civil Rights in President Clinton's Education Department, a nest of sensitivity-mongers, rejected the claim that the Chief and the name Fighting Illini created for anyone a ''hostile environment'' on campus. In 2002, Sports Illustrated published a poll of 352 Native Americans, 217 living on reservations, 134 living off. Eighty-one percent said high school and college teams should not stop using Indian nicknames. But in any case, why should anyone's disapproval of a nickname doom it? When, in the multiplication of entitlements, did we produce an entitlement for everyone to go through life without being annoyed by anything, even a team's nickname? If some Irish or Scots were to take offense at Notre Dame's Fighting Irish or the Fighting Scots of Monmouth College, what rule of morality would require the rest of us to care? Civilization depends on, and civility often requires, the willingness to say, ''What you are doing is none of my business'' and ''What I am doing is none of your business.'' But this is an age when being an offended busybody is considered evidence of advanced thinking and an exquisite sensibility. So, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has demanded that the University of South Carolina's teams not be called Gamecocks because cock fighting is cruel. It also is illegal in South Carolina. In 1972, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst replaced the nickname Redmen with Minutemen. White men carrying guns? If some advanced thinkers are made miserable by this, will the NCAA's censors offer relief? Scottsdale Community College in Arizona was wise to adopt the nickname ''Fighting Artichokes.'' There is no grievance group representing the lacerated feelings of artichokes. Yet. Guy Gabaldon Documentary Finally Completed Texas Vietnam Veterans Texas Vietnam Veterans Memorial Highway, US Highway 83 In gratitude to the thousands of men and women who served our country during the Vietnam war, the people of Texas dedicate this highway which runs across our state from the southernmost tip to the northernmost point. It is our hope that all those how travel US 83 will pause to remember those who gave up their lives or their youth or their hopes in that long and bitter conflict. We vow not to forget those who did not return to us. And we pledge to remember the sacrifices of those who have come home. The Descendents of Doctor Antonio Fernando Lafon Chapa S: Armorial Popular Lafon The surname Lafon is derived from the Old French word fontaine, which means fountain, and served as a mark of recognition for women who lived near such a landmark. First found in Savoie, where this renowned family has been seated since ancient times. Spelling variations of Lafon include: Lafontaine, Lafontain, Lafantaine, Fontaine, Fantaine, Fontain, Fontein, Fanteir, Fantaine, Fonteyn, Lafonteyn, Lafon and many more. Many crests represent different families. Source: http://www.houseofnames.com/xq/asp.fc/qx/la+fontant-family-crest.htm Another surname website said the surname was first found in Languedoc, France, where the family was seated since ancient times. Their list of spelling variations include: Fonds, Fonts, Fond, Fons, Fondes, Fontes, Fondy, De Fondes, De Fonds, De Fonts, De Fontes, Les Fonds, Le Fond, Les Fondes, Des Fonds, Delafond, Delfont and many more. http://search.swyrich.com/searchresults.asp?Licensee=8566&Surname=Lafon&z= The Descendents of Doctor Antonio Fernando Lafon Chapa Compiled by John D. Inclan Generation No. 1 iv. JOSEPHINE LAFON. Endnotes 1. Brï¿½derbund Family Archive #110, Vol. 1, Ed. 4, Social Security Death Index: U.S., Social Security Death Index, Surnames from A through L, Date of Import: Mar 29, 2003, Internal Ref. #1.111.4.132289.73 El apellido Lafon lo he encontrado tambiï¿½n en registros y actas de Nueva Orlï¿½ans, desconozco la historia del mismo, pero veo que algunos de sus primeros miembros fueron bautizados en la iglesia de Nuestra Seï¿½ora del Refugio, en Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mï¿½xico. Posiblemente tengan la misma historia que mi familia. Saludos, Luis G. Dessommes Zambrano From: [email protected] Armorial Popular. Sent by Ignacio Koblischek. [email protected] Estimado Sr./Sra.: Ya estï¿½ a la venta el volumen Nï¿½ 1 del Armorial Popular. Con esta publicaciï¿½n periï¿½dica nos hemos marcado tres objetivos: 1ï¿½.-Estudio de la Herï¿½ldica. En cada volumen se abordarï¿½ un tema dedicado a esta ciencia, con la posibilidad de debatirlo con otros lectores, en el foro creado para este fin en: http://www.armorialpopular.com 2ï¿½.-Recopilaciï¿½n de Escudos de Armas gentilicios. Consultados en los principales armoriales europeos, ofreciendo su descripciï¿½n y dibujo a color. 3ï¿½.-Fomentar las adopciones de Armas. Es decir, mantener la herï¿½ldica viva posibilitando que aquellos que no han heredado un escudo de armas tengan acceso a su uso de una forma legal y gratuita. En ste primer nï¿½mero ofrecemos: 1ï¿½.-Estudio de las distintas teorï¿½aas sobre el origen de la Herï¿½ldica. 2ï¿½.-618 Escudos de linajes sin expresar lï¿½nea expresa. Desde "A"hasta "Abellï¿½n", con sus descripciones y dibujos a color. 3ï¿½.-65 Adopciones de Armas de particulares pertenecientes a nueve nacionalidades distintas. Para mï¿½s informaciï¿½n: DURING WWII, 1944 By: Frank M. Sifuentes My career as a street newspaper boy was brief, sporadic, marked by fear and failure. At first, I was afraid of being out in the streets because in l917 my Uncle Kiko had gotten killed by a truck on the corner of Sixth and Congress crossing the street to sell a paper: And since I had been named after him I thought for sure the same thing would happen to me. This fear kept me from being an aggressive selling newspapers. I sold papers for Alfa who was Austin's distributor of the San Antonio Light. She was a middle-aged lady who talked and walked like a man, and had warts. And big reddish bumps all over her body. She wore pants and a change bag around her waist always bulging with small change. She was patient and fair; very much a woman who treated the younger boys with a motherly affection. Which she demonstrated with lovely dark green eyes. And she also smiled a lot. To rookie newspaper boys like me she would consign the first ten papers and once we sold them, we would pay her for them and buy ten more; which would net us fifty cents if we sold them all. I remember that at times I wouldn't even sell the first ten; mostly because the Light wasn't very popular compared to the Austin American Statesman. The San Antonio Light a low key paper, with small headlines. It was notably thicker and full of news from San Antonio which to many Austinites was light years away. Besides, I had no inclination available to master the art of selling papers. One had to shout, dramatize headlines and be able to shove the paper at people causing them to automatically reach into their pockets for a coin. That was an art. It happened swiftly as if buyer didn't want to be seen. I would often forget I was selling papers surrendering to day dreams. Other times I bolted the boredom and loneliness of standing on a corner and abandoned my corner to wander around the city; something I had not been able to do as a shoe shine boy. I explored tall buildings where I could ride the elevators, or go to the downtown. First I would go to the Capital - the most affordable - on West 6TH St. Then go North on Congress Ave to the Queen, the Paramount and the State. One I spent Alfa's cut because I could not resist going to a movie and buy popcorn & a cold Dr. Pepper: making it urgent I sell the remaining papers. After I looked for grown cousins, uncles, or aunts to shame them into buying a paper since they could see I was a poor raged relative, a fatherless boy making his way in the rugged world of work, selling San Antonio Light. But my luck failed me, and I returned to Alfa with a lie about about how a bully had taken the money away from me. Alfa must have loved me because she never questioned me even though she must have known I was lying. I suppose if I dug deep enough I'd remember incidents, feelings, traumas and disappointments to write about. After all - like most - I experienced street life during a period of our nation's WWII crises. However every time I remember my newspaper boy experiences, the person who come to mind is Mateo Martinez, a man who was in his late fifties who sold the Austin American. Mateo was an awesome sight to see rushing out of the Austin Statesman building loaded down with about l50 papers in a poncho will huge pockets, and about 50 under his arm. He'd rush into the streets shouting almost hysterically the headlines of the war. "It's out!! The latest is out!!! Read all about it! We got the Japs on the run!!. 1000 planes downed!!! Shouting it in such a way no one even stopped to think that human being inside the planes; or that perhaps some of them had killed many of our fighting men as they fell. Mateo was nick-named "The Goat' by some of the paper boys. Maybe it was because some thought he was a 'cabron'. I believe it was because of the how he ran out into the streets pushing forward with the determination and speed. His kinky grey hair was combed straight back also giving him the aspects of a goat. He was not very tall but there was something fierce and awesome about him. He seemed to own the streets. In fact every corner of the city was his to peddle papers on. Most of the other newspaper boys didn't like this at all, but Mateo was much older and his voice commanded the respect of every one. And had the Austin establishment behind him. This made him unofficially a sheriff and he used this authority to break up fights, mediate and settle arguments that erupted among us. My first memory of him was when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor December 7th . And I saw him selling papers in the Eastside where no one ever bought papers. I don't remember seeing him make a lot of sales either. He had realized the tragic and historical significance of the event and had taken off running to from the office of the American Statesman, determined to announce to the sleepy Eastside the beginning of a new era. And Mateo - like many other entrepreneurs - prospered during the war. Because the sales of newspapers soared as great destructive wars raged in the Pacific and in Europe. Austin, sleepy-conservative historical city as the seat of the Lone Star State's government, suddenly became a thriving city: A city of full employment. Benefited from the nearby presence of army and air force bases . Prior to Pearl Harbor the Austin schools religiously focused on legendary war stories of Texas' 'glorious struggle for independence; mainly stories of the battles in the Alamo and San Jacinto. While in the Chicano barrios stories and songs of the Mexican Revolution were still very much alive. But when the War came, attention was drawn away from both Texas and Mexican history. Before Pearl Harbor most people could not bring themselves to spend a hard earned nickel on newspapers that reported stories - of how the local, state, and federal governments were solving the problems of the economy - found themselves with better jobs and were anxious to read about the catastrophic events in the Pacific and in Europe. Hoards of soldiers invades Austin during the week-ends searching for pleasure, tasting their final days of state side existence before going to the wars. Since there weren't too many thrills to be found in Austin, many had to settle for a few beers and for the latest news on the war. The surge in newspaper sales force Mateo to run even faster and to shout more hysterically, for he knew that on every corner he could find the curious, those awed by the raging war, anxiously waiting for the next issue of the Austin Statesman to roll off the press. With each passing year of the war Mateo's shouts grew more hoarse, and the content of the headlines grew more tragic. By l944, Mateo, the enterprising newspaper salesman, had paid a terrible price for his prosperity. One of his sons was killed in the Pacific. A profound change took place in his life. No one called his 'goat' anymore or resented him for being the city's most successful newspaper vendor. The other paper boys didn't complain about him claiming every corner in the city; in fact, the Austin establishment officially recognized him a Austin's leading citizen and made it clear that the streets were his. He didn't have to run as fast anymore, and I'm sure he didn't feel like running fast anyway. People felt obligated to buy their paper from him. It somehow seemed like a way to support the war effort. So they waited to by the papers from him and to give him looks of pity and condolences. He was often seen on the corners crying over the death of the son. And crying over the way the war was going, with so many of our boys dying. When he shouted the news, people were more moved than before. At times he had tears in his eyes as he ran down the streets selling the bad news. He started being considerate of the other newspaper boy. When ever he'd make a sale on someone else's corner he just turned over the nickel to the boy without take a paper back. Small groups would gather around him to hear him tell about how terrible wars were. He would end his sermon-like talks by asking ever5yone to pray for peace so that parents could stop losing sons as he had, and would ask people to pray for the safe return of our American boys. Some people found this offensive; some found it un-American to talked about peace when we had not yet thoroughly and complete licked' Japs' and the 'Krauts'. When this view was expressed he world take out his purple heart of his son and would begin to cry, while making it clear how proud he was to be an American because his son died for America. Soon no one dare openly oppose his prayers and preaching for peace. One day I saw him coming around the corner of 7th and Congress where the Stephen F. Austin Hotel is located. As he rapidly came around the corner, he accidentally bumped into a retire Anglo businessman wear a suit, who had a permanent residence in the hotel. In a fit of anger and irritability of lode shouted. 'With where you are going you black meskin!" Mateo was not black but he was a dark brown Mexican who spent most of his days under the hot Texas sun. The man's words angered Mateo and he shouted back "You crazy fool, you call me a black meskin, and I'm just as American as you are: my people have always been on this land." And then he choked and began to cry uncontrollably. When he recovered he said with desperation in his voice. You stupid man, I gave my flesh and blood for my country, what have you given besides the hate you have for my people. And he held a Purple Hearts In his hands, tragically and pathetically saying, "Look, if you don't believe me, this is all I have left of my son? The cranky old man couldn't even bring himself to say he was sorry or anything. He just growled and mumbled and made his way into the Stephan F. Austin Hotel. Shortly after that Mateo retired from the streets of downtown Austin to the Eastside here with his dead son's insurance money he bought a two story building with rooms to rent and a small store at the bottom level. For years after I remember seeing him as I walked by his place on Six St. on my way to Congress Ave. He seemed serene sitting front of his store, smiling and waving at everyone who saluted him. He didn't sell the Austin Statesman anymore. He only sold papers in Spanish. There was another story told about Mateo. They say that one day shortly after the war was over; he was on a train to San Antonio to visit his daughter. There were a couple of loud mouth gringos of the train referring to the war as the good old day and how they missed it. One of them said he was sorry he was not making much money anymore. And it angered him so much he had to be restrained to prevent him from throwing the man off the train. The following story is from my book, Chicken Chisme: The Fine Art of Gossip. I credited it to the lady who I was interviewing (my brother's suegra). I believe it to be a bitter-sweet story and I hope you take a moment to read it in its entirety. Perhaps you can use it in a future issue. I hope you don't mind the suggestion. Ben Romero [email protected] CHICKEN BREAST By Enriqueta Escajeda My name is Enriqueta Escajeda. I am eighty-four years old and live in Sacramento, California. Like many people my age, I have good days and bad. Today was one of the better ones. My daughter, Sylvia and her husband, Louie played Chinese Checkers with me. I tried to let Louie win, but he is a terrible player. My granddaughter, Syvie, and her husband, Manuel stopped by to see me. We worked on a Betty Boop puzzle for a long while (or was it Lucy?). We held meaningful conversation, which is a treat for me. You see, my memory sometimes fades. But today, my mind was sharp. I asked my granddaughter to fill me in on chisme, but she did not cooperate. You should have seen me at her age. I could put old ladies to shame. ï¿½Mija,ï¿½ I told her, ï¿½how do you expect to have lasting friendships if you donï¿½t know how to gossip?ï¿½ ï¿½I have friends that donï¿½t gossip,ï¿½ is what she replied. I can see having a husband who doesnï¿½t like chisme, but a real seï¿½ora knows how to use it to her advantage. ï¿½And how long do you think these ï¿½friendsï¿½ are going to be around?ï¿½ I asked. ï¿½What will you have to talk about when you get old and your husband has gone to see his maker? If you have no chisme, youï¿½ll have no friends and life will be dull.ï¿½ You know what she said? ï¿½Iï¿½ll just buy me a cat to keep me company.ï¿½ Imagine that! Her words brought back a memory. ï¿½Syvie,ï¿½ I said, ï¿½let me tell you a story about my youth. Mama and Papa didnï¿½t let me keep pets.ï¿½ ï¿½I know,ï¿½ she said. ï¿½Youï¿½ve told me many times.ï¿½ ï¿½Listen anyway, Mija. I have the need to tell it.ï¿½ ï¿½I want to hear too,ï¿½ said Manuel. Now, here is a husband worth keeping. A man who takes the time to listen to a vieja is worth his weight in tacos. ï¿½I was just a teenager,ï¿½ I explained. ï¿½Mama and Papa refused to let me keep a gatito or a small dog. I longed for a pet to talk to and caress and care for. Then one day in 1936 I got a pet chick from a neighbor. I was helping her wash windows and she came outside with the pollito in her hand.ï¿½ ï¿½Abuelita, itï¿½s a good thing you didnï¿½t have a cat,ï¿½ teased Syvie. ï¿½It would have eaten your chick.ï¿½ ï¿½I didnï¿½t know what to name her,ï¿½ I continued, ï¿½I called her Polla and she and I became very close. I used to let her sleep in my bed. At night she settled in my bosom. Even at the age of sixteen I had very large chee-chees.ï¿½ ï¿½Welita!ï¿½ cried Syvie, ï¿½Youï¿½re making Manuel blush.ï¿½ ï¿½Iï¿½m sure he can handle it,ï¿½ I continued, ignoring Manuelï¿½s laughter. ï¿½In those days we did not have electric alarm clocks with snooze buttons and all that basura. People used to get up with the crowing of the roosters. I was lucky. Polla used to wake up early and peck at my nose. Thatï¿½s how she would wake me. Iï¿½ve always been a heavy sleeper, but the moment the chick started pecking at me, I knew it was time to get up.ï¿½ ï¿½Donï¿½t tell the rest,ï¿½ begged Syvie, ï¿½ itï¿½s too sad.ï¿½ ï¿½Mija, it needs to be told,ï¿½ I said. ï¿½I canï¿½t leave Manuel hanging there.ï¿½ I sat up straight and continued sharing my memory. It was as clear as if it just happened. ï¿½One morning I overslept. Bright sunlight from the window is what awakened me. I jumped out of bed and ran to the kitchen. Mama had breakfast ready and shook her finger at me for being late. I would have trouble getting to school before the last bell.ï¿½ ï¿½Where was your chicken?ï¿½ asked Manuel. ï¿½Donï¿½t ask!ï¿½ scolded my granddaughter. ï¿½Youï¿½ll be sorry.ï¿½ ï¿½I looked everywhere for her,ï¿½ I continued. ï¿½Even though Mama was yelling at me for running late, I had to know if Polla was safe. There was only one place left to look, and I almost wished I hadnï¿½t. There on my mattress, partly covered by the blanket lay my little friend. In my sleep I must have rolled over, and smashed the poor thing.ï¿½ Tears ran down my wrinkled cheeks. My granddaughter and her husband sandwiched me with a long, silent hug. For a moment I felt smothered and it made me grieve even more. Sometimes I wonder if a fading memory is a blessing. Other times I am content to remember anything I can, even if it means recalling a tragedy sixty-eight years past. Se trata de dinero..a stab at pure fiction by Frank M. Sifuentes The sounds of Esperanza's rolling pin as she made tortillas de arina kept wakening Efrain.CLOPITY CLOP CLACKILY CLOP..time to get up a ir al trabajo. But the same monotonous rhythm also lulled him back to sleep and steal a few more winks of night's sleep from the day. He was waiting to hear the sounds of the frying pan when Esperanza refried the beans. Before when they lived en el rancho his eyes automatically opened in the first light of day. And he felt refreshed. He quickly would dash to the field nearby after grabbing the long sack, to get the cotton in when it still had the weight of the dew. Now after over fours years living in the outskirts of East Austin, Efrain was seeing it had become more difficult. The pressure of improving production at the AusTex Chili Factory. Its inclement heat during the long Texas summers; and having to come home to three noisey early school aged children was not exactly a reward for being the sole provider of the family. Espi had gotten ideas from English magazines that encouraged parnership in economic matters. Efrain had not accepted the new ways. He knew how to budget and with the exception of dropping in a couple of times a week to have one beer, and the full evening on Saturday, had allowed him to be full of pride, as un hombre cumlido -que no re raja- and attends to all his family's necessidades. Espi however knew how to count too. And had come to the realization that Efrain was spending less and less on their needs at home. After all she couldn't send the children to school without new clothes, and their shoes wore out fast the more energy they used at school and in play. What if they were to get sick. Where would the money for a doctor come. And further more the year before Joaquin had to go to a loan shark to pay for the County property tax. He had bitten the bullet and severely curbed his love of beer and la cantina De los Tres Aces. Once he paid fully he began to reward himself with a couple of nights out on his own. A chance to remember and to forget, and see the world through the gaiety of the many wonderful men and women singers in the Mexican tradition: With top notch musicos en mariachis. When Espi poured the beans in the frying pan - with water and all!- mixing the contents into hot grease, it caused a large flame to shoot up in the air over two feet! Efrain caught the image in his sleeping state and it became the final reminder he had to maintain full consciousness and the brutal awareness of the depth on his hangover. Still he refused to get up reflecting on his borrachera and how hard it was going to be getting through the day at the Chili factory with the summer heat. He made a determined effort to fall asleep again but was aroused by the thought that he was two payments behind on the automatic washing machine he had bought at Montgomery Wards almost a year ago. 'Its not going to hurt them to wait a little more. Besides they know they are going to get all their money!' The day before as Efrain was walking home he passed right by the Cantina de los Tres Aces. And was struck with an absolute thought, that he could at least stop and drink one beer. ever so slowly. Buenas, Vito! Que tal..siveme una Pearl.las mas fria que tienes. 'Sera mi placer, Efrain. Con mucho gusto.' Vito said with grand style and placed the chilled beer in front of him. Pos, como le vas en la Chiliria Efrain..me dicen que tambien van a poner spaggetti en los botes.' Si simon, hace dos meses que empesamos con esto. Mucho mas dificil que poniendo Chile con carne en los botes.' Me imagino, Efrain. me imagino Vito replied with a vivid interest. And then Vito quickly left to go and put a nickle in the Nicolodium. It was as the sly Vito knew Efrain's all time favorite: Una Noche Serena y Escura..a tear jerker of lost love that appealed so much to Efrain though he had not lost Esperanza and was now father of two girls and boy. And was making payments on his own home. No, the nostalgia and of the pain of lost love as the worse a man could endure was a form of mourning: for la vida serena de los campos. And for the Mexico of his early youth so filled with dreams of how he was going enjoy his manly destiny. His breast feeling a full effect of self-pity: Over what might have been, in the sacred land of his ancestors of ancient and brilliant civilizations. He felt the rich blood of the Aztecas through his veins. Suddenly though his revelry was broken by the sounds of his primo Antonio voice as he walked in a shouting: Vito..Otra! Pointing at Efrain. Vito and Efrain quickly realized it was the lst of the month: Antonio's payday. For he worked for the County digging grave in their cemetery. And Antonio had prepared the burial site of Austin' citizens. It was a tough job but secure. And Antonio was daily counting the money he was accumulating in his pension plan, know not many of Austin's workers had that kind of secure future. He made it seem he had Austin's entire governmental agencies behind him. Antonio immediately started his ritual: One for the thirst, the second one to get the smell of death out of his nostrils. And the third, inevitably someone would ask. Poz..!! Pa'la borrachera!! Then he go and put five nickels to play his all time favorites: The vivid stories of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata y las Revolucion! The the last a romantic gesture to his first love, that refused to marry him even though she was caring his baby. A boy! And he had left them behind, never to see them again. That alone was good for one whole night of borrachera. Vita was delighted he was going to have a great Wednesday night, with Antonio's monthly payroll in his pants. And he was counting on Efrain to buy a round in return. And quickly went to place more beer to get chilled in the refrigerator. However, he had a another stroke of luck. In walks Pete Martinez who own all the music machines in East Austin. "Ola, Vito! Como sigue mi vitrola. Ta' functionando? Oh, si Don Pedro como siempre, los homres se mueren si no oyen su musica ranchera! Ta' suave, entonces. Ponles otra a Efrain and Antonio. He told him. Con justo..muy agradecido por los hombres de mi communidad, que son los que hacen todo trabajar en el mundo.' Pete brought in new songs..and place a coin for each to play to test la mas nuevas de los festivales a la musica ardinete mexicana. Efrain had separated his mind from Antonio who was already enjoying gaiety conversing with Pete Martinez and Vito as a peer. While the music kept playing and the others were raising their voices to hear each other, Efrain reflected as he often did on how he and his family ejected from their country to seek refuge and steady work in central Texas. Austin had been hiring during the entire 39 years of the century continued having big construction and building projects. The gas line laid created a big need for ditch-diggers. and that was the way Antonio had gotten his start. The bricks had to be laid along Congress Ave all the way to the Capital and many State, Federal and County lands needed maintenance workers. And the home building kept steady with the addition of State jobs and incoming University students and research and development. Efrain had not been as lucky. Though there were still workers who even envied him. After all he could save a lot of money by the food he got for free, from the bent cans. A real break for Efrain who could feel less guilty for squandering money and do hard labor, 50 hours a week. It was not the hard times which had paid off well, nor loss of opportunity that surrounded Efrain' being. He was still harboring deep resentment and anger over the way they were forced to flee, with a scarce number of belongings after long days of nothing but work from sunrise to sunset. nor even anger over how the troop of Villista that barged in their homestead and took everything they could eat or use one way of another. He had gotten in fact deliriously excited when rebel had captured his imagination over the glories ahead for the soldiers of the Revolution of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata: Men who were going to transformed Mexico into a rich nation that shares everything with the people ..every worker. Efrain never thought he actually would ever been offered a way out of the slavery of farm work. He had not even considered his father was going to have a say, and could already see himself riding a big black horse with a nice saddle. When he ran up to his father, Don Benjamin, to tell him of the great opportunity that had opened up to him to join in liberating the country from the rich. Don Benjamin looked him straight into his eyes and said: Cabron..! Mejor te mata yo..que dejarte ir con esos pingos. And judging from the severe beatings he had been given for simple disobedience he knew he meant what he said. The recruiting sergeant just looked at the disappointment in Efrain's face and didn't even admonish Don Benjamin, he simply eyed a juicy looking goat being raised for Teresita's baptism. The sergeant quickly went shot the goat dead and had his men prepare to load it on a horse, for that evening's supper. Don Benjamin had even withheld looks of hate our of fear for his life. And instead kept giving Efrain the dirty looks instead. A safer option, indeed. Soon after a half dozen of Federales came to their farm, and saw that they had turned their goods over to the Villistas. And cracked Don Benjamin of the head, telling him 'destraciado..tu debes darnos gracias porque somos soldados en defensa de la patria. and porque no te vamos a fusilar! And they left in a hurry to get to the next ranch house still untouched by the Villistas. As soon as they were a good distance away he had the wagon hitched to their two horses: They were going to take as many implements and household items, clothing and remaining edibles and take a 200 mile trip to the Texas-Mexico Border. Efrain remembered it all as nothing but responsibility and devotion as his father demanded. And it was another five years before he was able to leave by falling in love with Esperanza to be on his own. Don Benjamin had only hardened in the new land with strangers from another land. He had the will to survive and was able to assure them he was a money maker. He found satisfaction in having absolute control of his wife and three son and two girls. And though he did not prosper or able to afford luxury, he did well as a share-cropper. Efrain had been a good and loyal son. And when he married he had his full blessing. Efrain's reflective spell and romantic notions of having missed the most important happening his country ever had, ended with the wild laughter of Chensha and Olivia Renteria, hermanas vistitidas con vestidito demonstrados pierna hasta las nalgas. Mas pintadas y chifladas reteready pa' tirarse bialar un alegres, un corrido con cuento de el Tauro que vivio como un cyclone. Antontio hasta le'taba saliendo babas. y hay vay con la Chench chistosas con sus cachetes llenos de su mascara. Vito casi ni lo podia creer que tuvo una noche en la media semana. Al fin Efrain se deconto porque de por si habia gastado los centavos que iba necesitar el dia sigunete. De por si ya se habia puesto bien kikiriki, llengo a su cama bien pedo con haber tomado 8 birongas. Tan pronto que pego el colchon se apago como un foco. Ezperanza se quedo livido con ver a Efrain borracho y apestoso con el horrible olor de cerveza. Hasta se lavanto y se fue a acostarse con las ninas. CARMENï¿½S DREAM OF GOING TO SUMMER CAMP, l941 As told by her brother, Frank "Kiko"Sifuentes [email protected] My sister Carmenï¿½s reputation was so profoundly important to me and all our brothers and sister that if she were nominated she would be odds on FAVORITE as outstanding oldest daughter of a large family in Atzlan. Her destiny was sealed three years after our father had died in l938. (Carmen and Ben were All American, I threw Atzlan in not able to resist the urge to be ethnic.) She stood close to mama all the way: From the time of the first shock upon learning our father Benito Cazares Sifuentes had been mortally wounded. And throughout the 7 days he hang on and remained fully conscious, though steadily losing his struggle to live, without the use of his lower intestines. And she was next to mama ï¿½along with Benny ï¿½ during the worse times: after he died and had been buried. With me observing and still dumbfounded by this thing call DEATH. After the burial where she had thrown herself on fathers coffin as a real express of wishing she was there with him. (This was even before all those Italian movies showing women make an ultimate expression of love. Mama could not be consoled: With Carmen at her side crying over her loss of our father and for the feeling of helplessness at age 7. Then there no longer remained time to weep and be paralyzed by sorrow: Because Tio Nalo had negotiated to buy us a house paid from our dadï¿½s Life insurance of $250; which paid double enmity after Henry argued our dadï¿½s death brought manslaughter charges against Manuel Medrano was an accident. Therefore legally it was called an accident, even if the man had been in a drunken rage. In our family, only Uncle Henry had the pull to have it become $500. He knew the laws, many non-English speaking folks did not. And he also knew about real estate and that because of the Depression houses were cheap. Hence we moved in to l902 East 7th, the 2nd house on the North Side, next to the home of Luis Lopez family. Carmen as the oldest girl - aside from the normal traditional Mexican culture that Mamagrande Juanita wanted he to remain an old maid to take care of her and mama - became the one who had to became a surrogate mother. And particularly because mama had found employment as a maid at the Stephen F. Austin Hotel. So we not only lost our father, but also our mother during the day six days a week; and had to arise early to get ready for work, dropping off Mary to be taken care of by Tio Meme and Tia Lupe. In the meantime Ben as the oldest male and Carmen as the oldest female took over direction of the household. Mama had milk delivered and she gave Ben 15 cents to buy coffee cake. Or she would have a box of Post Tosties. We became Post Tosties addicts..and with mama warning us not to put too much sugar because we would get sugar diabetes. (During the 30ï¿½ï¿½ diabetes was like a death sentence ..a horrible one!!) Mama was more concerned we would run out of sugar, without a strict rule: one teaspoon only! (Kind of making diabetes el cuicui!) Ben headed the ritual of pouring equally portions in five bowls of milk from the quart delivered. And he also sliced five parts of the cake. We watched him like a hawk to assure ï¿½equalï¿½ cuts; and though he tried to be as fair as he could be, he was only human. I remember objecting to his taking a larger part, though it probably only happened once. He rationalized by say it was a larger portion but It was only half cover with icing! He of course does not remember though it was nothing to be ashamed of. I accepted his explanation. Yes, the sugar coating was the best part! It was. However, Carmen who had full time duty as a domestic worker. And in addition, she had to train Juanita and Mary as they got older to some day become housewives. I do not remember seeing Ben help around the house. Though surely he would have to say, "You were never around the house to help in anything. True, true.. so true. Mia culpa, mis culpas!! By l943, Benny already had a paper route and had joined the Boyï¿½s Scouts of America. And eventually he became an Eagle Scout. An amazing feat for a Mexican boy from the depth of poverty. Any bright social psychologist would theorize that for him the shock and trauma of our Fatherï¿½s ï¿½murderï¿½ made him decide he was not going to let that stop him from making something of himself. And a psychiatrist would perhaps suggest that his anger motivated him. I donï¿½t know how many times I hear Ben say, ï¿½ WHAT BUSINESS DID HE HAVE! Out at midnight at the Cantina del Rancho Grande. Carmen on the other hand had had three hard years of mourning the loss of our dad, who called her princess. And during these years she adjusted to her role at home, enjoyed being in the neighborhood and playing, plus learn to enjoy going to our new school, Zavala Elementary. Whereas Ben to this very day says ï¿½he never had a childhood. ï¿½One would have to fully understand what he means: That he never stopped acting like he had the authority and the power our father had. A terrible burden: Especially since he had promised our father during the last hours of his life to make sure and take care of Kiko! Pobre hermano.. To make matters more terrible for him, Kiko was an early role model for ADD kids of the future: FREEDOM to remember and forget whatever you want! Out right disassociation!! I had better make this more low key. Benny may still want to give Me the whipping he never gave me. Though once I remember he wrestled me to the ground and tickled me until I starting crying for him to stop. What a great brother to ï¿½teachï¿½ me how to laugh! Carmenï¿½s adjustment at school was not easy, because she would not stand for any harshness from the teachers no matter how much they claimed it was for her own good. Was she ahead of her own time or not?? At least half of the teachers were still in the l9th Century. Carmen was a model 20th Century at 10 years old. And being a full time surrogate mom did not help in any real way either. She ended up in the 5th grade with me. And because we looked a lot alike, both chubby, we soon became known as boy girl twins. (Hard to imagine, I was just as pretty as Carmen!) From the time we started living in East 7th \Carmen had been hearing and seeing in movies and reading in magazines that going camping was the ultimate experience for young children: being in the out doors, in the wilderness. So did I and I also might have enjoyed the trip Ben made as a Boy Scout too. The truth is that I went camping just about any day of the week I wanted. The Colorado River and los montes all around Austin were a veritable jungle of Cedar trees, Oak and best of all, a smattering of Pecan trees. I should just be grateful and not make myself out worse than a spoiled brat. We had seen pictures in books and scenes in the movies of what going camping was like. Austin was a paradise for a 7 year old to grow. Here is the story as told by Carmen: By Maria del Carmen Moreno Sifuentes Shepard, l988 When I was ten years old I got a chance to go camping. I had been dreaming of going to summer camp for the previous three years. And would picture myself running through the woods laughing with my friends, finding all kinds of treasures, dreaming under the stars! And at last my dream was going to come through. I was going to camp!! The fact that it was only one day camp didnï¿½t matter. I could still make new friends, run through the woods, and who knows what else. We had been given a list of things to bring: a change of clothes, a blanket, an empty oatmeal box, etc. I wondered what the oatmeal box had to do with camping. "Iï¿½ll bet itï¿½s for carrying all the treasures I will find when I go for a walk in the woods." I thought to myself. I hardly slept the night before the event. I kept going over the list in my mind. I would not allow myself to think of the condition of my blanket, or that my clothes were not what I thought one would wear to camp. The important thing was to get there with everything on the list. I was to meet the group at the park by the Colorado River on First St. I knew I had to take the 7:a.m. bus to get there on time. I had to go into town and transfer to the Congress Ave bus South. I was up at six oï¿½clock. Mama had the bathwater warming on the stove. I took a quick bath and dressed in what Mama though were suitable clothes for camping I was ready to leave! As I started for the door, I remembered the bus fare. Oh no! In all the excitement I had forgotten the most important part of all and it was taking Mama too long to find the money. "Iï¿½m going to miss the bus!, I cried. "Iï¿½ll miss camp;!" I barely heard Mama saying that they would wait for me, they knew I was coming. In my heart I knew this was not true , but with her encouragement I started for the bus stop. We lived at the bottom of a hill. the bus goes up the hill, around the neighborhood and down another hill before it gets to our stop, it was full of people going to work. It is ï¿½standing room only" and ï¿½to the rear of the busï¿½ time. I struggled with my bundle, working my way to the back of the bus. It is a hot day, and the humidity was unbearable. I can feel the hopelessness of my situation trying to take over. My head started to pound. I hear a couple of women talking about me. "Where is this fool girl going with that blanket in this heat?" I hug my gear close. Canï¿½t they see I am on my way to camp? I make good connections at 6th and Congress. It is a good ride; the bus is not too full. I can almost feel a breeze. For the first time, I feel like I am on my way. Soon we are at my stop. I ring the bells to get off, and stand by the door. The driver asks if Iï¿½m sure this is where I want go get off. Under any other circumstances, I would question that decision myself. First and Congress is not a place for a ten year old to be all alone. "Yes, yes, I say, ï¿½Let me off. Iï¿½m on my way to camp." I walk a few blocks, struggling with my f\gear. I have to get to the meeting place. My heart begins to pound as I get closer. Maybe Mama was right and they are waiting for me. No, they are gone. I sit under a tree by the picnic tables. A little breeze comes up and I grab a candy wrapper as it blows by. I wonder who the lucky kid was who ate the candy and made it to camp. I try to picture that kid running through the woods with his oatmeal box, filling it with all kinds of treasure. My eyes start to fill with tears. After a while, I know itï¿½s time for the long journey home. I stand up, pick up my bundle, and wonder, "What am I doing with this dumb blanket?" Frank M. Sifuentes says this is his all-time favorite photo, taken at his daughter's graduation from University of Southern California and his 50th Wedding Anniversary, August 7, 2004. What a time of pride in accomplishment, a beautiful family. Belated Congratulations. Uncle Rey Story in Chicken Chisme: The Fine Art of Gossiping by Ben Romero Published with permission, dedicated to all chismosos Slap, slap, slap. That was the sound that woke me on many mornings during my youth. It was the sound of my grandmother making tortillas, the cornerstone of a nutritious Mexican breakfast. The sizzle of a skillet full of hot manteca was music to my ears; fifty thousand calories per serving and more flavor than you could imagine. I loved walking into the kitchen with crusty morning eyes and watching the magical ritual of cooking, and also the fun byproduct of being in my grandmother's midst: chisme. My grandmother was the world's heavyweight champion of gossip, and was proud of that hard-earned title. She would tell me the most scandalous stories about assorted family members and acquaintances. I reveled in the feeling of knowing something secret and forbidden. The more illicit the better. One morning, my grandmother took a seat at the table after finishing breakfast and we enjoyed each other's company over drinks; mine was milk and hers was Mexican coffee, brewed in a pot with black grit floating inside of it. She liked to 'link' her spoon against the rim of the mug as she told about her brothers. None of them was any good except her older brother, Mike. I asked about her younger brother who I once met at a funeral. She laughed and said he was the worst of all. "Could Uncle Rey be that bad? He seemed nice at the funeral." "Mijo," she said, in her raspy voice, "His name is Salvador. My mother called him 'Rey' because he was always the little king in her life. He's a spoiled little man." "He showed me his scar from the war at the funeral." I had seen a large pink area on his back when he bent over to throw dirt onto the casket. That was when Uncle Rey told me he was burned by enemy troops who caught and tortured him in hopes of getting secret U.S. military information. Grandma leaned close and said, "Do you want to know something about Uncle Rey's scar? It wasn't from the war." "What happened to him?" "He was home from the military where he had picked up a smoking habit. My mother was a big smoker herself, but she didn't want her kids smoking. So he hid the addiction from her. One day he went to the outhouse and lit one up. He was reading the JC Penny's catalog while he was there, since the pages would soon become toilet paper. Did you know that is where they got the expression 'shop till you drop'?" I shook my head. She continued, "when he finished his cigarette, he still wasn't finished doing his business, so he lit another and dropped the flaming match between his legs. The outhouse exploded and he went flying into the weeds." I loved that story and repeated it as often as possible. I enjoyed seeing people's reactions and used to tell it to everyone I knew. It became one of the stories I carried in my arsenal of gross and scandalous musings. One day in high school chemistry class, I told the story to the class. The teacher explained that it was impossible for the filth in an outhouse to produce enough methane gas to explode. I told him that my uncle had a scar from it and that it was a very true story. He shook his head. "Some stories are told so often that they become urban legends." I was distraught at the notion that my grandmother was telling me something that was not genuine. I was determined to get to the bottom of the story and spent weeks going over books in the school library in an effort to find any cases of exploding outhouses or theoretical notions that would make it possible. I was obsessed. I found that the school library was inadequate for my needs, so I headed to the city library after school with my red binder and an assortment of writing instruments. I was always interested in chemistry and science, and knew I could write better than most kids in my school. I figured I could make one heck of a report to turn in one day. And any successful student knows that having a backlog of reports is essential to victory in school. I was heartbroken to find there were no case studies proving my theory correct. Chemically speaking, there was no way for sewage to create the methane needed to cause an outhouse to explode. I went over many books and found nothing but urban legends and tales of exploding toilets by fanciful writers. Then came a breakthrough. I saw my Uncle Rey at a family gathering and asked him point blank about the scar. His eyes lit up. The Germans caught me and poured gasoline on me. They said if I didn't translate an Allied code for them, they were going to fry me. I gave my name, rank, and serial number. The next thing I knew, I was on fire. I rolled on the ground to snuff out the flames. They locked me up without water. When it got dark I picked the lock on my cell with a wire coat hanger and killed the guard with a sharpened lid from a tin can. Then I made my way out of enemy territory and used a spoon to send Morse code to the Allied troops with the sun's rays. It was a fascinating story. He told it so passionately that I hated to burst his bubble. I asked about the outhouse and his pride melted away. The once boastful man hunched over and looked like his spirit was broken by my words. "My sister was right," he said. I dropped the match into the mire and BOOM! I was shot out of there like a circus clown getting shot out of a cannon. I got flaming caca all over my back and that is what burned me." "How did it catch fire?" I asked. "My teachers say outhouses can't explode." Uncle Rey smiled. Those teachers must be spoiled rich kids who had flushing toilets all their lives. But we, campesinos know about relieving ourselves in the strangest of places. Let me tell you where your teachers are wrong. The caca-water is not what exploded. It was the kerosene my mother used to dump in there to break up the caca. She had just dropped a gallon can of it into the toilet before I went in. Since I was smoking, I couldn't smell the fumes. And that is what caused the explosion." I must have looked really excited, because he decided that this story was better and more scandalous than the one he'd been telling. From then on, he never used the war story again. And each time he told it after that, the explosion got bigger and the wounds got worse. I guess that shows that even a true story can become an urban legend with enough retellings, and there is nothing greater than a hot tortilla with a side dish of chisme. The Bull Before His Time By Francisco Zamarripa, Ph.D . . . PC (puro Chicano) No day in my life has been as exciting and as funny as the day the bull jumped out of the bull ring into a kitchen. It was around 1957. We had gone to Cedral, San Luis Potosi, to pay homage to La Virgen de La Asuncion on a religious pilgrimage, as we did each year after year before my mother died. We used to visit with my grandfather who lived with his two sons and one daughter, and grandsons. I was tolerated as I used to be quite a spoiled brat - always playing jokes on my little cousins. We played in the giant cactus patch, eating tunas, and shooting the cactus leaves with my BB-gun. We would ride the donkey, drink from the open water well and eat figs from the big fig tree which gave us ripe honey-tasting fruit. We ate the grapes, and ran around all day. playing, cowboys and Indians. What a life it was to be 12 years old and to be carefree. Every night would turn us into religious fanatics who walked with the religious procession throughout town until we reached the church for the daily services and rosary which was customary. Afterwards we would assemble outside the church and see the Matachines dance to the ancient Indian drum and handmade guitars and violins. The grand finale of the night was the daily fireworks. The rotating castillos de polvora, which were wheels within wheels of bamboo spheres embedded with fire crackers which made the wheels rotate and make them light up the night with their magic. The finale was when the entire outline of the church would light up with fireworks. That happened of the last day of the five day affair. At night we would turn into religious goblins and during the day we were carefree kids exploring the surroundings. During the day we would go to the fair and other events that took place for the entire community. The weekend after the 15th of August, which was the last day of the feast, we rented an oxen cart, taxi, or truck, depending on our finances and go El Real de Catorce. This was the ancient meeting grounds for our indigenous people. Our people had been going there for thousands of years before the white man came to spoil it all. It was known as the heart of our world by different related Indian tribes. Ours was the Huachichil tribe. We never mentioned that we were Huachichil, we just went to see San Francisco de Asis, as the ways of worship had changed with the conquest of the white man. The place was still the same, now we still went to fulfill our religious obligations as had been the practice before. During the fiesta, there was always a Corrida de Toros, or bull fight. That year was special. It was the year that we were the actors and the bull was the spectator. It turned out that day, that one of the five scheduled bulls, was not in the mood for fighting. He decided that he was going somewhere else. When he came out of the redilas, like a demon on fire, he did not go for the bullfighter, but ran around looking for an exit. Finally, he found one. Don't ask me how, but he jumped up the protective wall that was made to encircle the fighting, ran around between the bull ring and the bleachers, then jumped about ten feet into the bleachers where the spectators were siting. Not knowing what to do under these circumstances, as the bull was running wild and running into people, my father decided to jump down into the bull ring, taking me along with him. The bull continued circling around the bleachers, each time going higher and higher until the reached the musicians' stand and trampled all their drums and other instruments. I guess he did not like the music and got even that day. After he had scared all the people and had them running around yelling in fright, he decided to jump off the highest part of the bull ring toward the outside. He jumped into a building where there was the kitchen used for cooking the items for sale at the bullring. He fell through the kitchen roof, leaving a hole on top of the building, and ran out the back door of the kitchen, still running wild and scared, but determined not to fight that day. Can you imagine what the cooks in the kitchen must have seen when this tremendous big bull fell on top of them, trampled all their utensils, and ran out the kitchen - hay mama! That was during the time that television adds with bulls breaking the china were not even thought of. He was a bull before his time. No one knows what happened to that bull after that day. No one wanted to know. We were just glad that we got away! Who cares about the bull? Since then I came up with "my" unfunny joke: In Mexico a law has been passed. No longer can bull fighters kill a bull because the SPCA helped pass a new law. Now the bull fighters just sit around and "shoot the bull." Sal Castro, Bringing History to life for students March 4: Story Time for Kids and Adults March 11: SHHAR Meeting: Ruben Salaz "Epic of the Greater South West" March 16: Ruben Salaz to speak at Libreria Martinez Bookstore March 18: MAJOR EVENT: Hispanic Family History Conference, Riverside George Ryskamp, BYU Center for Family History & Genealogy Classes by Spanish/English, Prof. Ryskamp and BYU students Bowers Kidseum Bringing History to life for students The Orange County Register Friday, February 3, 2006 Ana Vengas, The Register Role model: Melva Espinosa, 17, gets her shirt signed by Sal Castro, who spoke at Laguna Hills High School on February 2. "After what he said, I want to go to college," said Espinosa. "I am going to give it my all and accomplish it." Castro, Known for his role in the 1968 East L.A. school walkouts, spoke about Latino contributions and the importance of education. Photo Ana Vengas, The Register Activist Teaches a lesson in Hispanic history By Rita Freeman Sal Castro was a history teacher for 45 years. He is current coordinator of Chicano Youth Leadership Conferences. Castro spoke to about 300 students, teachers and parents on the role of Hispanics in history. "Teachers have to demand high expectations of our kids, but also bring into the class enrichments so that all kids can feel at home. The former teacher was part of a 1968 protest over conditions in L.A. schools. Using visual aids, life experiences and video clips, Castro emphasized looking beyond the history books to learn about the past, particularly when it comes to Hispanic contributions. He pointed out significant Hispanic figures such as Marina Vallejo, one of the first men to serve in California's constitutional convention who later became a state senator. His most powerful message was to stay in school and get a college education. It is one of the only ways they will succeed, he said, noting the high dropout rate among Hispanic students. "I'm really happy that he helps the Hispanic have a voice. We take part in American's history." Karren Hernandez "If you know where you come from and know your history, no one can put you down. Don't be ashamed of who you are." Jennifer Perez March 4th: STORY TIME, FOR KIDS AND ADULTS Sent by Frances Rios [email protected] Yearning to hear a good story? You're in luck if you have the time to sit and listen to a great storyteller...On March 4...at 1pm..... Adrienne Chavaez McMillan will tell stories of the Aztec, Mayan and Amazonian cultures at Libreria Martinez in Santa Ana. McMillan will be joined by Martin Espino, who will play indigenous music on a variety of instruments. The event is free. For more information, call 714-973-7900. Libreria Martinez...1110 North Main St., Santa Ana March 11: SHHAR Quarterly Meeting: Ruben Salaz Marquez No cost, everyone invited!! More Information: 714-9894-861 Ruben Salaz M. has broadened the study of Southwest History to include multicultural aspects as well as important discussion items often neglected by various writers. ..EPIC is a more complete history of the Southwest where documented facts take the reader where they may. EPIC is intended for everyone interested in a valid introductory history to our eight southwestern States but especially for readers young and old who wish to get beyond standard concepts of American historiography... "Seï¿½or Sï¿½lazï¿½s book is definitely a welcome resource for the average person: for the high school student, the college student, the amateur historian, and for persons who have an appreciation of Southwestern and Chicano history in general. As the author states in the Foreword, the intention of this book 'is to lay an introductory historical foundation' to the Greater Southwest. The book is easy to read, succinct and informative, and once read, will make a handy reference guide to be used time and again." By John P. Schmal, Co-author of Mexican-American Genealogical Research: Following the Paper Trail to Mexico; A Mexican-American Family of California, In the Service of Three Flags; and The Indigenous roots of a Mexican-American Family. BOOK: Epic of the Greater Southwest 620 pages, $39.95 Published by: Cosmic House, P.O. Box 7748, Albuquerque, N.M. 87194. Website: http://www.historynothype.com Available online at Borderlandsbooks If you can not make the meeting on Saturday the 11th, Ruben will also be speaking: March 16 at Libreria Martï¿½nez Bookstore, Santa Ana, 6:30 p.m. 1110 N. Main St., Santa Ana, CA 92701. Contact: OC- MANA, Nellie Kaniski 714-836-8290 March 18: Keynote speaker GEORGE RYSKAMP Director of the Center for Family History and Genealogy, BYU It gives me the greatest of pleasure to announce this Riverside conference. The first Hispanic family history conference that I ever attended was Buscando Nuestras Raices, held and organized in Riverside by George in 1985. The experience ignited a torch within me, still burning. He made me realize that I could be successful in searching my Hispanic heritage. Seven Buscando Nuestras Raices conferences were held by George, prior to leaving his law practice to take a teaching position in the Department of Family History at BYU. George is world-renowned, has made presentations all over the world, accepted as the only non-Hispanic in several Hispanic International heritage organizations. George at the Pentagon on the subject of Hispanic research, organized the two Hispanic heritage conferences ever held at the National Archives in Washington (D.C. 2004 and 2005) and travels to Spain yearly to continue researching Spanish language records. Don't miss this opportunity. Free classes in English & Spanish 9:00 AM - 4:30 PM Genevieve Southgete, director of Bowers Kidseum, is charged with teaching Orange County's children to appreciate all cultures. "It's as if I've prepared my whole life to be right where I am." Her father immigrated here from Zacatecas, Mexico. His wife, Ruth, was born in Los Angeles to parents who came from Guanajuato. With his grocery store and her work as a florist, the Barrios were middle class. But some of the middle class wasn't ready for the Barrios. Genevieve remembers when they moved to a white neighborhood near 17th and Haster in the 1950s and a man (who the year before had been given a good neighbor award from a civic club) circulated a petition saying Mexicans weren't welcome. A group of Anglo neighbors showed her father the petition - and then ripped it up in front of him. The Barrios moved in. In 1959, Genevieve was nominated for homecoming queen at Mater Dei High School. Some students weren't happy. But a backlash ensued and she was crowned queen. After school, she got a job as a VIP hostess at Disneyland, escorting every-one from Liberace to the king and queen of Afghanistan to little Ronnie Reagan around the park In the '60s it, was off to Washington, D.C., where she worked as a receptionist for a senator. That's where she met her husband, Bill Southgate, a New England Yankee and descendant of pilgrim John Alden. They; moved to New Jersey and she worked in Fifth Avenue jewelry store, meeting clients the Rockefellers. When it was time to start a family, Genevieve returned to Santa Ana, where her hus-band started a company that distributes business forms. That's when the first opportunity to follow in her father's footsteps presented itself. Her son, Matthew, returned home from first grade one day to report that the kids were saying "bad things" about Mexicans. She recalled "her father's words: "One thing he would al-ways says is: 'Daughter, you've got to do the right thing when you see injustices. But when ever you take a public stand, just do it because it's the right thing to do; Don't ever do it for any other reason. Not for applause or praise for the fight." Genevieve was angry. But I thought, " No, no, no. There's a real positive way to do this." A stay-at-home mom at this point, she offered to go to her son's school, give a simple Spanish lesson to the students, bring them Mexican pastries. She would show the children what a beautiful culture hers was. "I wanted a positive experience related to the word 'Mexican,' " she said. Soon she was introducing kids at other schools and libraries to the Mexican culture. As her outreach grew, she began volunteering at Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, and later started classes toward a degree in Chicano studies at Cal State Fullerton. In the early '80s she helped start the museum's Hispanic Arts Council, putting on festivals and bringing in speakers on Mexican art and culture. When the Kidseum opened 11 years ago, she was offered the job as director. Five years later she put together a free after-school program (funded by the city and corporate sponsors) at the museum for neighborhood children. Sixty-five children are enrolled in the program, all Hispanic, and a waiting list just started. My struggles are not as dramatic now," Genevieve says, comparing her after-school program to the causes her father took up. "The struggle now is to help these children realize that there are opportunities and a world beyond their immediate neighborhood." It's why, she believes, cultural programs like the one she runs are critical. "What held many people back so many years were prejudices of other people and prejudices against themselves. If they're not educated in the beauty and strength of their own culture, they're open to the negative connotations that will inevitably come their way" Children who go to the museum find traditional masks, instruments and clothing from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. They make Mexican clay pots and they listen to folk tales like the Chumash Indian creation tale "The Rainbow Bridge." Walking through, the children realize that "although we have our differences and traditions, the dreams are the same. "That's what I love about my job. It gives me a chance to reach out to my Santa Ana community in whatever little way I can. I really have a love for my people." Actors Wanted: Mexican, Mexican-American, Chicano, Latino, Latin-American, and Multi-Racial New play: "The Mexican OC", A Breath of Fire Theater California Story Grant Collaboration THEATER El Centro Cultural de Mexico www.el-centro.org DIRECTOR Sara Guerrero RUN April 28th - May 6 (7 performances, more may be added) AUDITIONS, Open Call Saturday March 11th 10:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. and Sunday March 12th 11 a.m.- 2:00 p.m. REHEARSALS Read through March 13th. Rehearsals start March 20th. LOCATION 310 W. Fifth St Santa Ana, CA 92701, Broadway/Fifth, above El Curtido, 2nd floor PLEASE BRING Picture and Resume. Cold reading, sides will be provided. Small actor's stipend. Strong actors with wide range required, as each cast member must play multiple roles and ages (from child to elderly). Must be able to switch characters quickly. Spanish/English Bi-lingual a plus, but not necessary. Age range, 30s-40s years old. The "Mexican" OC: Triumphs and Contributions of Orange County's Mexican Communities Few people in Orange County have knowledge of the history, positive contribution, or struggles for social justice of Mexican communities. The rich stories of triumph and survival of our ancestors wait to be told. Our project hopes to address this void by presenting a play based on stories of Mexican people, past and present, who have challenged the status quo to assert the rights of Mexican communities in Orange County. More information, please e-mail [email protected] Sent by Sara Guerrero Hispanics for LA opera, Celebrating the 15th Anniversary of HLAO. New members of the board Hispanics for LA opera Newsletter No.32 January, 2006 All of us in Hispanics for Los Angeles Opera wish to thank Dino Barajas and Carlos Payan for joining Hispanics for Los Angeles Opera as new Board members this season. Their talented contributions to the season's plans are already in motion, and we are are most eager to introduce them to our readers in this section of our Newsletter. Dino T. Barajas is a partner in the Corporate Practice Group of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, LLP. Dino has extensive experience representing lenders, investors and developers in a wide range of domestic and international multi million dollar project financings and was recognized by California Lawyer Magazine as "Attorney of the Year" (energy) in 2004, and by KCET as "Local Hispanic Hero" (Business) in 2005. Dino received his ].D. from Harvard Law School and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree summa cum laude in Communication Studies and the Business Emphasis Program from UCLA. He is a frequent chair and speaker at various international conferences, both in English and Spanish. Dino's charming wife, Patricia is also involved with Hispanics for Los Angeles Opera as Co-Chair of the 2006 Placido Domingo Award Dinner. The are proud parents of six year old Maya and reside in Pasadena, California. Carlos Payan is Vice President, Loan Officer of Commercial Asset Management at Banco North America. Carlos has eleven years of experience in banking, banking including business promotions and commercial credit analysis, and is fluent in English and Spanish. After graduating from LISC in Administration Business Administration, he received his Masters Degree from Loyola Marymount University in 2003. Carlos is a strong believer in volunteer work on behalf of his community, and serves as such in the Last Los Angeles College Puente Project, in the Holy Family Services Adoption and Poster Care Center, and in the "65 Roses" charity club. In recognition of his financial background he was offered and enthusiastically assumed the position of Treasurer of Hispanics for Los Angeles Opera. Carlos is married to Michelle Hernandez and resides in Alhambra, California. They are proud parents of their 15 month old son, Gabriel. Hispanics for Los Angeles Opera is fortunate to count with these wonderful contributors. Welcome aboard Dino and Carlos! $9.95 + $4.95 The Original California Constitution was a Spanish-English document. Nurturing the California Spirit, a Word about a Petition: Galal Kernahan, Somos Primos' Constitutional consultant, has already met with the Orange County Department of Education and is in contact with the California State Department of Education concerning the need to make a simple inclusion in the 4th grade curriculum. Our State began when voters approved its Original Constitution and elected our first officeholders on November 13, 1849. Recognizing this Constitution, the U.S. Congress admitted California to the Union, September 9, 1850. We became the 31st Star in the America Flag. The Father's of the State Constitution drafted and submitted the Original Constitution in Spanish and English. For two of the signers, neither English nor Spanish was a first language. Some of the rest spoke only English or only Spanish. Some spoke both. Their proceedings and the Original Constitution were officially published in Spanish and English. Los Amigos of Orange County want California children to relive the same intercultural goodwill that those who wrote our Original State Constitution demonstrated. Almost half of California's public school children are Hispanic. The State-mandated Fourth Grade California History-Social Science Standards ignore the very important fact among its 32 sub-expectations. The important fact: In bilingual balloting, the Spanish Californios and newly arrived non-Spanish approved the Original State Constitution their elected delegates had written in English and Spanish. The simple story of how they worked their way through this bicultural civic joint venture remains a vivid human relations lesson to this day. Taught simply, it is one ten-year-olds can understand. Please join Los Amigos of Orange County in their effort to unite Californians, send a quick email to supporting the need to include in the 4th grade curriculum this very simple fact: The Original California Constitution was a Spanish-English document. [email protected] or write to Los Amigos, 1585 W. Broadway, Anaheim, CA 92802 Please include your zip code. Requested by the Department of Education. NORIEGO WHO? by Galal Kernahan ï¿½ Who is Noriego? ï¿½ The "Birth Certificate" of the State of California was composed at the 1849 Monterey Constitutional Convention. In discussions there, someone named "Noriego" spoke of mean-spirited court cases where money talks. (There is no "Noriego" on the official roster of delegates.) ï¿½ Consider to whom he grumbled: the 47 other fathers of our state-to-be.ï¿½ Eleven were attorneys from Back East.ï¿½ Only one had been in California more than three years. Six had been here less than eight months. A few were stretching things claiming four. No lawyerï¿½delegates had been elected south of San Luis Obispo.ï¿½ The Gold Rush wasï¿½not in the south. ï¿½ California-born "Noriego" (then 36 years old) came from Santa Barbara.ï¿½ Answering a lawyer, who argued against limiting (in the California-to-be) higher court case jurisdiction no matter how small the matter in dispute, "Noriego" said, ". . .very often. . .rich persons. . .do not care much aboutï¿½how a case goesï¿½on account of the money. . .I have known persons to appeal merely on the subject of a calf, and send it up to the Supreme Court in Mexico City . . .to gratify a malicious feeling towards the opposite partry. . ." (Wednesday, September 26, 1849, Page 225. PROCEEDINGS of the Convention as published in English and Spanish.) ï¿½ Richard Henry Dana, author of TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST, wrote a 1859 postscript to his book about 1835-36 California.ï¿½ During his 24-years-later return visit, he ran into an old sea captain he had known in those earlier days.ï¿½ They reminisced. ï¿½ Dana was told: "The descendants of Noriego had taken the ancestral name of 'De la Guerra' as they were nobles of Old Spain by birth. . ." (There is indeed a "De la Guerra" among signers of the 1849 Constitution.) ï¿½ Did Noriego's candor and outspoken style cause him trouble later on?ï¿½ Apparently not.ï¿½ The old captain continued his update ". . .and the boy (in 1836) Pablo. . .is now (in 1859)ï¿½don Pablo de la Guerra, a Senator in the State Legislature from Santa Barbara." ï¿½ Before he went home, Dana made a swing through the State Capital and chatted with thisï¿½respected political leader a decade after heï¿½signed California's Original Constitution. Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation By Sally Fouhse The Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation continues to benefit from its unique partnership with the State of California Department of Parks and Recreation. Enabling legislation enacted in 1988 by the State of California authorizes the Trust to both reconstruct and operate El Presidio de Santa Barbara State Historic Park under a series of multi-year operating agreements with State Parks. El Presidio State Historic Park receives nearly 50,000 visitors annually. These guests include not only locals interested in their history, but also visitors to Santa Barbara from around the world. In addition to income from a modest fee to tour the site, the Park is financially supported by rental income generated by commercial and residential properties located on State property and administered by the Trust. This income supports Park operations, as well as maintains these properties for their tenants. The annual operating budget for the State Park for fiscal year 2005-06 is approximately $665,000. The Trust is currently actively pursuing the sale of three properties to the State of California. Complex negotiations will likely result in the sale of the Presidio Properties parking lot, on Santa Barbara Street across from the Rochin Adobe, to the State. This parcel contains the foundations of the front gate of EI Presidio, and the sale will advance the goals of the General Plan by placing this important resource under the protection of the State. Additionally, the Trust is in the process of transferring ownership of the parcel just northwest of the Rochin Adobe to the State. This parcel also contains foundations from the original Spanish fort. Finally, the Trust has begun discussions with State officials to transfer ownership of the Mills property, near Solvang, to the State, with the intention of ultimately creating a State Historic Park, so that the historic Mills might more easily be enjoyed by the public. 2005 saw completion of the new restrooms at EI Presidio. Also in this past year, work began on reconstruction of the Northwest Comer of El Presidio. When completed, later in 2006, this project will include a new visitor center, new handicapped entrance ramp, and additional period rooms for interpretation of the site. The Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation values its long collaborative relationship with State Parks and looks forward to many future joint endeavors. Time Capsule and New Life Honorary Members of the Trust Part of the ceremonies for this yearï¿½s Annual Meeting of the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation was to dedicate and place a time capsule in the floor of the of one of the buildings in the Northwest Corner of the presidio which is currently under construction. The time capsule is to be opened in 2082, exactly 300 years after the original founding of the Royal Presidio of Santa Barbara. Various items are included in the capsule, among them is a copy of an 1808 Manual of Arms for the firing flintlock muskets. This drill was translated, implemented, and is regularly used by Los Soldados in ceremonies as a living history exhibit. Jarrell Jackman with his new grandchild (baby India) and board member Barbara Lindemann watch as time capsule is placed in position Two very dedicated volunteers were also honored at the Annual meeting. George W. (Bud) Decker and Jim Elwell Martinez were appointed as Life Honorary Members of the Trust. Included are the proclamations for these men which highlight their accomplishments. Jim Martinez poses with award as soldados Jack Romero, David Martinez, Rene and baby India, and Ben Valenzuela look on Bud Decker and wife, Pam, show award proclamation Proclamation for Jim Martinez Whereas, Jim Elwell Martinez began his involvement with El Presidio de Santa Bï¿½rbara over fifteen years ago as a founding member of Los Soldados del Real Presidio de Santa Bï¿½rbara in April of 1990; and Whereas, Jim translated and implemented the Spanish Manual of Arms of 1808 from an original document obtained from the Los Angeles County Museum and took it upon himself to be drill instructor for Los Soldados to implement historic marching evolutions with the authentic firing of period muskets; and Whereas, Jim Martinez located the first model 1757 Spanish reproduction muskets from suppliers in Historic Saint Augustine, Florida, and made it possible to purchase and acquire them for use at Trust events; and Whereas, Jim for a number of years has served as the president of Los Soldados del Real Presidio de Santa Bï¿½rbara and was responsible for naming the group; and Whereas, Jim Elwell Martinez has served Los Soldados since its inception as Sergeant of the Guard adopting the first person interpretive role of Pablo Antonio Cota, who was with the Portolï¿½ expedition in 1769, Sargento at Santa Bï¿½rbara in 1782, and Alfï¿½rez at Santa Bï¿½rbara in 1788; and Whereas, Sargento Martinez (Cota) directed the military escort for Prince Felipe de Borbï¿½n y Grecia, Prince of Asturias, in June of 1995; and Whereas, Jim Elwell Martinezï¿½s interest in presidio soldiers is rooted in his military background, as well as in his familyï¿½s history since he is related to soldiers who served in the American Revolution and is a direct descendant of Lieutenant Josï¿½ Francisco Ortega, founder and first Comandante of the Royal Presidio of Santa Barbara in 1782; and Whereas, Jim Martinez is currently serving in the interpretive role as teniente (Lieutenant) Josï¿½ Francisco Ortega with Los Soldados in honor of his ancestor; and Whereas, teniente Martinez (Ortega) continues to volunteer as a distinguished soldier of Los Soldados del Real Presidio de Santa Bï¿½rbara and has participated in literally hundreds of events contributing unselfishly of his time, energy, and expertise in the finest tradition of military excellence in honor of the original soldiers of the Royal Presidio of Santa Bï¿½rbara, and Whereas, Jim Elwell Martinez, is a military veteran and served in the US Army as a Green Beret during the Vietnam Conflict Therefore, in recognition of these accomplishments, the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation designates Jim Elwell Martinez a Life Honorary Member. Jim Martinez (Lt. Ortega) instructs Soldados in musket drill Sacramento pioneers reinterred in Sacramento County Cemetery By Mary-Ellen Jones Liaison, California Historic Cemetery Alliance California Historian, Vol. 52, No. 2, Winter 2005 On Friday, February 4,2005, some 50 people gathered at the Sacramento County Cemetery, adjacent to St. Mary's Cemetery, to memorialize 72 early Sacramentans who were removed from the Sacramento County Hospital Cemetery, now part of the UC Davis Medical Center, during the expansion of the Cancer Center early last year. The history of the Sacramento County Hospital Cemetery dates back to September 4, 1877, when the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors authorized the chairman of the Hospital Committee to enclose "with a good and substantial fence one acre of ground on the Hospital Farm for the pur-pose of burying the county dead." The board further directed that on or after the 15th, all persons buried at the expense of the county shall be buried within said enclosure. No records for this one-acre site have been located, but burial records from Sacramento County books list over 100 burials from 1903 to 1912 and from 1926 to 1927. No hospital records have ever been found listing burials for the 50-year period the Hospital Cemetery was used. In 1927, burials were started at the Sacramento County Cemetery and continued until 1961. During these years, well over 10,000 indigents were interred by the county. In the early 1970s, this property was acquired by St. Mary's Cemetery and the Catholic Diocese of Sacramento. The gap in burials during the years 1912 to 1926 at the County Hospital Cemetery was probably related to a situation that made headlines in 1912. The Sacramento Bee re-ported in an article titled "Cesspool Bier of Dead" that indigents were "homeless in life, buried in slime, bodies weighted to insure interment." There are anecdotes of trenches being dug for burial during the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 but no firm evidence exists to document that this occurred. However, the method of burial of about half of those re-interred here was comparable with such burials, and these appear to be more recent burials than those in surrounding areas. Thanks must go to UC Davis Medical Center for their cooperation and dedication in the disinterment and re-interment of these pioneers. They have already had archaeologists explore sites of future expansion to ensure there is no cemetery in these areas and will involve archaeologists in future excavations. Thanks must go to St. Mary's Cemetery and the Diocese of Sacramento. They have provided four concrete vaults to hold the remains and have provided all necessary services. They will donate a granite marker to be placed on this site, which will memorialize the 72 persons buried prior to 1927 in the Sacramento County Hospital Cemetery and re-interred in February 2005. Thanks are due also to Pacific Legacy for their exhaustive research on the Sacramento County Hospital Cemetery, and for their dedication and extra efforts to try to determine sex and approximate age of each person disinterred and to ensure that those re-interred receive the respect they deserve. Each person has been placed in an individual, numbered box within double concrete vaults. The Sacramento County Cemetery is continually being beautified by the Catholic Diocese of Sacramento. The area has been leveled, lawn established and maintained, and about 300 trees have been planted by the Sacramento Tree Foundation. It has become a beautiful nature area, a peaceful site where people can come to meditate and pay their respects to those who lie here. New Latina Court Commissioner : Ana Bravo Sent by Dorinda Moreno [email protected] I wanted to share with everyone that our good friend and colleague Ana Bravo has been appointed to serve as Commissioner for the Sacramento County Superior Court. Commissioner Bravo has been a very active leader of La Raza Lawyers Association of Sacramento since she graduated from law school in 1985, including being past president, vice president and secretary. She has won a number of awards and was recognized by the Sacramento Unity Bar for her community leadership. She is completely bilingual and is very sensitive, sympathetic, understanding and yet tough when appropriate. In addition to being an accomplished prosecutor with the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office since graduation from law school in 1985, Ana and her husband Alvaro also have raised three beautiful and wonderful daughters who are now in their 20's. Please join me in congratulating our friend. The Sacramento community has a new commissioner who surely will treat litigants, witnesses and all present respectfully and fairly. Gabriel Vivas LOS CALIFORNIANOS RECOMMENDED READING LIST by Maurice L. "Duke" and Marcy Bandy I. COMPLETE OVERVIEW Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewitz. Lands of Promise and Despair. Heyday Books, 2001. $23. A compilation of excerpts of letters, reports and reminiscences about California. Each entry has an introduction by the editors. Some of their comments are more critical of the Hispanics than we find substantiated by the record. Not an easy read, but fairly complete coverage of the entire time period. It stands alone, and if only one book is read, this should be it. II. BEFORE THE FOUNDING AND THE FOUNDING 1. Harry W. Crosby, Antigua California. University of New Mexico Press, 1994. reprint $57. A readable and complete history of Baja California from the first Spanish settlement to 1768. Contains brief biographies of many of the Hispanics there, who became ancestors of later Alta California soldiers and settlers. Considered the preeminent authority on Baja California. 2. Donald Garate, Juan Bautista de Anza. University of Nevada Press, 2003. $34. A biography of the father of the Juan Bautista de Anza, who led the 1775 expedition to found San Francisco. It gives a broad view of Spanish activities leading up to the Portola expedition of 1769. 3. Harry W. Crosby, Gateway to Alta California. Sunbelt Publications, 2003. $37 A very readable day-by-day account of the first land party of the 1769 expedition, led by Rivera. Profusely illustrated, with highly detailed topographical maps of the route from Velicata to San Diego. Short biographies of soldiers of the land parties. III. THE MISSION PERIOD AND LIFE OF THE INDIANS 1. Thomas E. Chavez, Spain and the Independence of the United States. University of New Mexico Press, 2004. $20. What was going on in the world at the time of the founding of the Presidios and first missions. Should be of great assistance to teachers trying to make California and Spain relevant to students whose roots are Mexico or the East Coast. A lengthy book in very small print makes it less suitable for casual reading. ï¿½ 2. Robert Hoover, "Another view of the California Missions." Article in Los Californianos' Noticias, April 2005. $1.50. Also available on our Web site. Written as a response to a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed article badmouthing the missions, Spanish soldiers and priests. A general refutation of the oft repeated allegations that the Missions were slave labor camps and the soldiers raped the Indian women and brutalized the men. 3. Jack S. Williams, 'Review of Robert H. Jackson and Edward Castillo, Indians, Franciscans and Spanish Colonization H-Net, October 1995. Available on line at http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=9109851380190 Another lengthier article on the same topic refuting the allegations of gross abuse and enslavement of the Indian neophytes. 4. David Weber, The Spanish Borderlands of North America, a Historiography. Organization of American Historians Magazine of History, Summer 2000. Available on line at http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/spanishfrontier/weber2.html An excellent quick review of our history with comments on why it has been underrepresented or misinterpreted. Some very dubious sources are quoted, so must be used with care. 5. Barbara Linse, Live Again Our Mission Past. Arts' Publications, 1983. original price $20, available on net $4. Sasha Honig reviewed this book for California Mission Studies Assn. most favorably. "This edition, which is bi-lingual, is approved by the California State Dept. of Education and would be a fine addition to any fourth [grade] teacher's personal/professional library. It is chock-full of ideas " We also found this book charming and can be used by parents and/or grandparents at home. There are a few comments that I wish were not there and a few errors or misinformation. However these do not make a serious effect on the story told. One caution is necessary. On page 141, acorn nut mush is made without the week long rinsing in running water as done by the Indians. The result will be unpalatable at least, if not actually upsetting to the digestion. IV. THE MEXICAN PERIOD 1. Antonio Maria Osio, (translated by Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz), The History ofAlta California. University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. $24.35 (paperback), also available hardback and used. Most probably the first history of California, this was written in 1851 in the form of a letter, as Osio did not feel qualified to write a book as requested. His manuscript did not fall into the hands of Bancroft or other Anglos, who might have edited it to change it's emphasis. It is sometimes rambling; nonetheless it is one of the very few accounts strictly from the Califomio view. 2. David J. Langum, Law and Community on the Mexican California Frontier. University of Oklahoma Press, 1987. out of print. A good study of Mexican law at that time and the response of the Anglo-American immigrants. Includes specific cases with names. ï¿½ 3. Charles B. Churchill, Adventurers and Prophets: American Autobiographers in Mexican California, 1829-1847. Arthur H. Clarke Co., 1995. $30 A good and readable book about the impressions and actions of the American and other non-Hispanics coming into California during the years leading up to the MexicanAmerican War and the years thereafter. Thus a foreshadow of what was to come and why. Combined with Langum above, it helps us maintain our balance of outlook. Juan Francisco Permission to Marry December 6, 1782 Translation and submitted by Mercy Bautista Olvera [email protected] I'm sending a requested document of marriage for the future groom, who had requested this document last year, he would like to marry. If this soldier comes to this mission, I have written and give my permission to Juan Francisco Reyes to do so. I believe that you could run or walk to follow the diligence and the announcement. Here in Monterey we would continue on its time, I would give my permission if they come on time. If they don't come on time I'd allowed it as long as the church does not give them a discount. Of course many friends from this department would attend. If anyone knows why this couple shouldn't marry, let us know Our Lord with his grace Bless you, San Carlos Mission, Monterey Colonial Life in Spanish California During the North American Revolution By Leon G. Campbell. http://www.americanrevolution.org/cal.html Leon G. Campbell received his Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 1970. An authority on Spanish American and California history, he is the author of several works, including The Military and Society in Colonial Peru, 1750-1810, American Philosophical Society Press, Philadelphia, PA, 1978. This essay was written while he was a Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside. He has since moved to Northern California, where he may be contacted by clicking on his name, above. Observation of the North American Revolution offers historians and others the opportunity to retell the dramatic story of Anglo-American cultural development. From beachheads at Jamestown and Plymouth and Boston, pioneers valiantly established colonies and secured independence. Then began their march westward across the Appalachian barrier, over the interior valley, and through the Great Plains. Ultimately, they planted settlements in the valleys of California and Oregon, during the nineteenth century, fulfilling a destiny which had been manifest years earlier. The entire "frontier hypothesis," announced in 1893 by historian Frederick Jackson Turner, pictured a population stream flowing east to west across the continent, English in character, dynamic in spirit.1 But while Turner correctly identified this as the main artery of our national civilization, his research implied a continent devoid of other civilizations. Neglected were the subsidiary streams which have contributed fundamentally to the American character: French Canadians moving south in the seventeenth century into Michigan, Illinois, and throughout the Great Plains; Spaniards from the Caribbean Islands of Cuba and Hispaniola traversing Florida into Carolina and Virginia, in the sixteenth century, and others radiating north from Mexico throughout an area from Louisiana to California in the eighteenth century, continuing unbroken a process of conquest which had been begun in the Caribbean two centuries earlier. By the nineteenth century the Spanish empire in America was of awesome size, stretching unbroken from the Cape Horn to San Francisco. As Robin A. Humphreys has observed, "the distance from Stockholm to Cape Town is less extensive. Within the area ruled by Spain in America," he noted, "all western Europe from Madrid to Moscow might lie and be lost."2 The virtue of Spanish America as a field for historical inquiry in the United States was recognized and explored, thanks in large part to the efforts of Herbert Eugene Bolton, who evolved the concept of the Americas, North and South, as a single geographic unit, and urged that the United States be recognized not as simply an outpost of England, but rather a complex region understandable only in terms of the Anglo-French and Anglo- Spanish intrusions that had altered its culture and behavioral patterns.3 Despite the efforts of Bolton and his students, all were not convinced of the importance of studying remote borderlands regions such as Alta California, the furthest removed and smallest of Spanish provinces, which, within half a century of Spanish American independence, was absorbed by the relentless drive of the westward-moving Anglo-American pioneers. Zoeth S. Eldridge, for example, delivering the presidential address to the California Genealogical Society on July 13, 1901, admitted that the Spanish period of California history was an interesting chapter in the state's development and that the Californios seemed to have been "a brave and generous, honest and kindly people." Yet, because they did not possess "the restless energy and enterprise of the Americans," he predicted they would soon disappear as a race and their cultural traditions would be lost.4 And Bernard De Voto, in The Year of Decision, 1846, concluded that "if one is to sympathize with the (old) Californians, it must be only a nostalgic sympathy, a respect for things past." Implicit in his remarks was the feeling that Spanish and Mexican California was a small, culturally backward area, governed by a group which contributed little that was new or original to mankind, more destined to become the preserve of antiquarians than scholars.5 Because the Spanish archives were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, much speculation and considerable mythology has surrounded early California history. On one hand, Spanish California has been held up as an example of the fact that Spain failed to develop true settlement colonies in the United States, while the British succeeded in doing so. This inattention to Spanish colonial endeavor helps to propagate a Black Legend of Spanish corruption, bigotry, inhumanity, and inferiority, according to which the Spanish came to California as they had come earlier to Peru and Mexico, lusters after wealth and glory, content to explore and conquer but less willing and able to sow the seeds of permanency and progress.6 Equally misleading is the school of historiography which has attempted to rescue Spanish California from its detractors. Nellie Van Der Grift Sanchez' Spanish Arcadia is a prime example of this genre of historical literature. Comparing Spanish California to the isolated mountain kingdom of Arcadia in Ancient Greece, Sanchez paints an idyllic picture of a quiet, simple, pastoral area, peopled with wealthy rancheros, many of them titled Spanish Dons, and saintly mission fathers.7 It is understandable why this myth was taken to heart by Californians of a later day.8 Many found it comforting to remember, during the rapidly modernizing twentieth century, a simpler agrarian society which lacked the impediments of imperfect modernization - urban sprawl, squalid slums, class struggle, and of course smog. There are, however, at least three sounder reasons for re-examining Spanish California during the era of the North American revolution. First, other historical experiences offer us insights into our own past. Like their Anglo counterparts, Spanish pioneers moved north from Mexico across rugged, treacherous lands, and faced Indians who threatened the permanent occupation of these frontier regions. Both shared problems of converting and assimilating Indian nations; both faced conflicts between civil, military and ecclesiastical authorities over the control of conquered regions; and the societies which emerged on the Anglo and Spanish frontiers were both products of isolation and deprivation. Accordingly, they were as different from their metropolitan counterparts, perhaps more so, than they were from each other. Second, Hispanic culture contributed fundamentally to the development of California society. We cannot be unaware, for example, of the plaza, grid systems in town planning, and Spanish architectural styles. At a more individual level, persons of Spanish heritage preserve an intense localismo, or respect for one's own locale or district, a deep belief in personalismo, which glorifies the individual over an abstract principle, religious and familial practices, and an intense preoccupation with the present, not generally shared by their Anglo counterparts. Finally, we should be aware, as Leonard Pitt has noted, that California history is largely a story of immigration and nativism, of cultural confrontation, and of the submergence of California's alien cultures into the American melting pot.9 The very unfamiliarity of westward-moving Anglos in the mid-nineteenth century with Hispanic culture and society led to conflicts and open warfare in Texas and elsewhere. Throughout the southwest, the defeat of relatively static, traditionalist societies by those more oriented to technology and the ideal of progress, produced cultural shock waves of seismic intensity. Ironically, the dominant Yankees arriving in 1848 were for once cast in the role of immigrants, while the native-born Californios were reduced to the status of foreigners, veritable strangers in their native land. The relegation of Spanish and Mexican Americans to minority status in areas where they once constituted overwhelming majorities has its origins in the late Hispanic period and continues to remain the most important problem resulting from the cultural intersection of 1848. I should like to concern myself here with the nature of presidial society in Spanish California during the revolutionary era, and more specifically with the common soldiers and their officers, who, for nearly a century, stood watch over this remote outpost of empire. Considerable attention has already been paid to the missions and mission fathers, men of no small amount of talent and influence. Some has also been given to the intrepid explorers of California, such as Juan Bautista de Anza and Gaspar de Portola, yet little attention has been given to the presidial institution, which historian Charles E. Chapman has called "the backbone of the province of California." Nor has any composite picture been drawn of the soldiery, which the same author refers to as "a sine qua non, or absolute essential, of the system."10 Lest it smack of the antiquarianism against which De Voto and others have warned, let me justify this restriction of field. First, there exists a considerable body of primary materials on these men in the archives of Spain and the Bancroft Library. These data allow us to reconstruct, to use historian James Lockhart's words, the history of a society, to deal with "the informal, the unarticulated, the daily and ordinary manifestations of human existence, as a vital plasma in which all more formal and visible expressions are generated."11 Second, the fact that the presidial soldiery was a small, well-defined group of about 200 men, makes it possible to examine this body rigorously and form a collective social profile of the soldiers. Since immigration to California was almost completely ended by the Yuma Massacre of 1781, which closed the land route from Sonora, marriage patterns were endogamous and family groups remained largely intact. Third, and most important, the particular situation of California meant that the soldiers functioned not primarily as fighters, but rather as administrators, artisans, and rancheros, a complex of activities which may have been typical of the larger society of which they formed a part. Hence, the pattern of activities emerging at the presidial level seems to shed considerable light on society and economics at the provincial level, and points up peculiarities of both which manifest themselves to this day. Alta California was settled for defensive purposes rather than out of any belief in the profitability of the area. Following the French and Indian War in 1763, Englishmen were free to move westward and involve themselves in the lucrative fur trade of the Pacific Northwest which had for so long been in French hands. This created a potential challenge to Spanish claims. And, thanks largely to the efforts of Jose de Galvez, the dynamic Visitor-General of New Spain (Mexico), a process of defensive modernization was begun in the northern provinces, which were consolidated and placed under separate command. Playing upon his sovereign's fear of an English, Dutch, or Russian attack upon the rich silver mining districts of northern Mexico, which constituted the lifeblood of empire, Galvez obtained permission from Charles III to occupy the ports of San Diego and Monterey, projects which had long been considered and periodically given up as hopeless. In 1769 Galvez assembled the so-called "sacred expedition," a handful of Spanish soldiers and a group of Franciscan missionaries, who together made an overland and seaborne journey to the area north of Baja. Logistically, the group faced tremendous difficulties, but equally as serious a threat to the success of the venture was the animosity existing between the military and religious members of the expedition. This was a long-standing problem. Galvez and the Crown, distrusting the independence of the Jesuit fathers who had earlier colonized the Baja Peninsula, had turned the missionary duties in Alta California over to the grey-robed Order of Friars Minor. Unlike the Jesuits, the Franciscans were not given full control over military and civil matters, but were limited to the control of religious affairs only. Alta California was to be placed under military governorship. The missionaries and military, then, had quite different ideas about what they were doing and why, assuring that the process of colonization would be punctuated with disputes.12 In 1774, the same year that Bostonians resisted the Intolerable Acts of the English government, Spanish authorities in Mexico dispatched Captain Juan Bautista de Anza (left) from the Tubac presidio south of Tucson to blaze a trail overland to Alta California. De Anza reached Monterey in the spring of 1774. The following year, on his second expedition, he pushed further north to the Bay of San Francisco; and, shortly after the Americans penned their Declaration of Independence, the mission and presidio of San Francisco were founded, on September 17, 1776. With this established, the Crown decreed the following year that the capital of the Californias should be transferred from Loreto, in Baja, to Monterey.13 With the founding of the presidio of Santa Barbara in 1782, the province of California was divided into four presidio districts. The presidio, or fort, was Spain's defensive arm of colonization. Throughout the southwest the sword moved in tandem with the cross, with missions and presidios being established next to one another, the latter affording the former the protection it required to enable it to Christianize and acculturate the Indians. The presidial district of San Francisco extended from the northern frontier about as far north as Santa Rosa, to the Pajaro River to the south; the Monterey presidial district stretched between the Pajaro and Santa Maria Rivers, while that of Santa Barbara covered the region from the Santa Maria River to and including the Mission San Fernando. That of San Diego comprised the region between San Fernando and the Tia Juana River to the south. The 1781 Regulation, which was established for the government of Alta California, provided for a 202-man presidial force to be divided among the four districts. The primary responsibilities of the soldiers were to defend the 600-mile coastline and the missions within their districts. To this end, small detachments of soldiers were established in each mission and civil pueblo.14 Although the missions, due to the presence of Indian neophytes who worked the lands and the agricultural expertise of the fathers, became generally self-supporting within a matter of years, the problems of feeding the presidios remained critical. Because supply lines from San Blas were difficult to maintain and the mission fathers protested against requisitions on their crops and herds to feed the garrisons, it was decided to establish two civil towns in the northern and southern regions of the province. These were to be populated by settlers drawn from northern Mexico who were to develop the agricultural resources of these areas. In 1777, Governor Felipe de Neve collected men from the presidios of Monterey and San Francisco and in that year established the town of San Jose de Guadalupe southeast of the Mission of Santa Clara de Asis which had been founded the previous year. In 1781 the pueblo de Nuestra Senora de la Reina de Los Angeles del Rio Porciuncula was founded to the south. Thereafter, only one other civil town, that of Branciforte, located in 1797 near the Mission Santa Cruz, was founded in Alta California.15 Surviving data on these earliest frontier settlements in Alta California indicate that the region was among the smallest outposts of Spanish America, populated by poor, unskilled, largely illiterate members of the lowest strata of Mexican society. Major South American cities such as Potosi in Upper Peru had populations in excess of 100,000 persons as early as 1575, unequalled by cities such as Philadelphia until 1830. Yet census figures show that as of 1781, the four presidios, two pueblos, and eleven missions of the province of Alta California were populated by no more than 600 persons exclusive of the indigenous groups. While this number grew to 3,700 just prior to independence in 1822, the closing of the Anza Trail in 1781 meant that this increase was due largely to the birth of descendents of the earlier colonists rather than to the arrival of new ones. By independence, then, most of the inhabitants were Californios, or natives of the province. The presence since 1777 of the capital in Monterey caused this region to become the hub of social and political life in the province and by 1830 the city had a population of 950 persons, the largest urban area in the region. San Diego, with a population of 520 persons at independence, was the next-largest area, although slightly less favored agriculturally than Monterey because of the infertility of the soil. Santa Barbara, which had a population of 237 persons in 1790, grew rapidly in the last years of Spanish rule as the ranching economy developed, having a population of 850 persons in 1810 and rivalling Monterey in importance. San Francisco remained a small hamlet of 130 persons in 1787, maintained primarily to defend the northern perimeter of the province from a Russian or English attack.16 Census data taken in Alta California confirm the fact that the first Californios were largely non-whites, or mestizos, of mixed Spanish and Indian parentage, drawn from the presidial towns of northern Mexico or forcibly conscripted from the jails of the same regions to relieve overcrowded conditions. Men of wealth could not be expected to make the journey, not only because the hardships were many and the chances of material gain small, but also since the Spanish hidalgo, or gentleman, refused to idealize agricultural pursuits, preferring instead to enter the religious, military, or civil bureaucracies in more metropolitan areas where promotional opportunities were more assured. Nor did men of good family seek regular army careers which took them to the frontiers, but chose rather to receive militia commissions which allowed them to serve closer to home. Since persons of moderate and even poor circumstances also clung to these gentlemanly pretensions only the mixed-blood and the misbegotten ventured north from Mexico. While some skilled workers accompanied the sacred expedition of 1769, as a group the entrepreneurial did not come to Alta California in large numbers. The original settlers of San Jose and San Francisco were, by their own admission, totally lacking in skills and drawn from the poorest elements of Sinaloa. In Los Angeles the same applied, with not one of the pobladores being able to sign their names to grants of land made to them in 1786. Only Jose Tiburcio Vasquez, out of nine heads of families in San Jose, could read or write. The same general situation held true in the presidial garrisons. Only fourteen of the fifty soldiers in Monterey were considered literate by their superiors, while only seven out of thirty in San Francisco were accorded this ability.17 Because the few literate and educated persons in the colony were the Franciscan friars, men of cultivated birth and a sense of purpose which the soldiers did not share, it was common for the soldiers and settlers to be depicted as a lazy and dissolute lot, good for nothing but drinking, gambling, and pursuing Indian women. Although the mission fathers grudgingly recognized the need for presidial protection, they resented having to share authority with the military governor in Monterey, whose conception of good government frequently diverged from their own. They also begrudged the governor's land grants which permitted the soldiers to raise livestock on properties which the fathers purported to hold in trust for the Indians. They considered the mixed-blooded soldiers and their officers of little Christian virtue and hence a threat to their spiritual mission. Not infrequently, mission fathers refused to allow the soldiers to attend Mass or conversed among themselves in Latin to prevent their eavesdropping, adding to the tensions between the two groups.18 For their part, California governors and presidial commanders found the mission priests to be a haughty lot who sometimes considered themselves superior to the military. Commandants disliked being required to use their scarce resources to chase runaway Indian neophytes and resented the economic dependence of the presidios on the missions. Although requisitions made to the presidios by the missions were covered by situados or subsidies from the government in Mexico, these were frequently in arrears, causing the mission fathers to assert that they were forced to feed the soldiers gratuitously. During the early years of the colony, so deep did the conflict become between Father Junipero Serra and Governor Pedro Fages that Serra removed the Mission San Carlos Borromeo in Monterey to a site along the Carmel River farther removed from Fages' jurisdiction. In response, Fages refused to affirm Serra's requests to establish additional missions on the grounds that he lacked a sufficient number of soldiers to protect them.19 Unfortunately, the picture of the presidial soldiery which most often emerges is that usually given by the mission fathers with whom they were constantly at odds. While wrongdoing and mistreatment of the Indians were not exceptional among the presidials, other data give a more accurate picture of the California military during this period. Most of them were of low birth, born of presidial families along the northern Mexican frontier. For lack of alternatives they entered the presidial companies, being too poor to secure commissions or cadetships. Most had served as soIdados de cuera (left), or leather jacket soldiers in Northern Mexico, so-named for the several thicknesses of deerskin which they wore to protect themselves against Indian arrows. Theirs was dangerous and unrewarding work, especially in areas like California where promotions were likely to be slow and commissions difficult to obtain. As the grizzled Sergeant Pedro Amador wryly commented in his service record, the only compensation he had received for eighteen year's service in California was fourteen Indian arrows in his body.20 Nor was California service well-regarded by Mexican authorities who most often chose to use the province as a dumping ground for reprobates and criminals. In 1773, for example, two soldiers were tried in Mexico for assaulting an Indian girl and her soldier companion in San Diego. After the case dragged on for five years, the men's lives were spared on a technicality. As punishment, however, the court condemned them to spend the balance of their lives as citizens of California.21 Because the California Indians posed no continuing military threat as did the tribes of Texas and New Mexico, promotional considerations within the presidios after 1769 came to be based more upon a soldier's literacy and administrative talents than his military capacity. The fragile nature of the presidial economy dictated that commandants and paymasters be men of unquestioned honesty, possessed of managerial and administrative skills. Since California was almost completely dependent upon supplies and subsidies from Mexico which arrived on a yearly basis, corrupt and/or inefficient management might incapacitate the defense of an entire region by making it impossible to pay and feed the soldiery or provide them with equipment. Presidial records indicate that California governors after 1769 passed over soldiers of unquestioned bravery in favor of retaining men of administrative capacity on the payroll. Portola's intrepid trailblazer, Lieutenant Jose Francisco de Ortega, for example, who enjoyed the powerful patronage of Father Serra, was considered unsuitable for command, and found others of lower rank promoted over him. Conversely, Hermengildo Sal, an ordinary soldier who had been forcibly conscripted into the ranks and sent to California as punishment for some undisclosed crime, apparently taught himself to read and write, a prerequisite for promotion above the rank of corporal. Showing a flair for management when placed in charge of the presidial warehouse in San Francisco, he was given the rank of sergeant in 1782 and sent to Santa Barbara. When the commandant there was dismissed for illegal activities two months after his arrival, he found himself commissioned as an ensign and placed in command of the fort. Sal later became commandant in San Francisco and was praised by Admiral George Vancouver as a man of considerable education and business acumen. In a similar fashion, presidial commands were bestowed upon Jose Dario Arguello and Felipe de Goycocoechea, both former enlisted men, as the result of their success in distributing public lands to the settlers of Los Angeles and in transferring the presidial treasuries during the general reorganization of 1781.22 A further key to the character of the presidial soldiery can be obtained through the marriage and baptismal certificates retained in the mission archives. Because enlistments were for ten-year periods, many soldiers chose to settle down and marry within the district. Fully two-thirds of the California soldiers were registered as married, while those remaining single were often living with Indian women whom they had taken as common-law wives. Observers have remarked that the soldiers were an optimistic lot who aspired to marry their commandants' daughters or other women of equally elevated station. Because there seems to have been an easy air of familiarity among the officers and men, this was not impossible by any means.23 Contemporary accounts indicate a lack of social distance within presidial society which, after all, was ethnically more homogenous than in Mexico, where the officer corps was white and well-born. A surviving case in which a commandant's wife released a group of soldiers whom her husband had jailed, implies that a relaxed atmosphere pervaded the garrisons, one with strong familial overtones. Governors and commanders assumed that the soldiers would remain in California following their tours of duty and local marriages and land grants were strong inducements to this end. As historian Max Moorhead has found in a lifetime of studying the frontier soldiery, the presidial was neither a swashbuckler nor a carefree teenager, but a mature man, usually married and with children to support.24 We might simply conclude that the California presidial, through marriage and land holding, rapidly made the transition from soldier to settler within a short time of his arrival in California. Because of the need to physically occupy unsettled regions and the constant requirement to make the colony agriculturally self-sufficient, presidial soldiers were granted lands and given a pension following an eighteen-year term of enlistment. This was an uncommon practice in other areas, where defensive considerations outweighed economic ones, since it was difficult to assemble soldiers living off the post and land was already closely held.25 Although a relatively small number of mercedes, or Royal grants of land, were made during the Hispanic period of California history, records indicate that former presidial soldiers were the primary recipients of these awards. For example, Juan Jose Dominguez, a scout for the Portola expedition, was granted a rancho of 74,000 acres for his services to the Crown, while Luis Peralta, a former presidial sergeant, was given control of lands which today encompass the cities of Berkeley, Alameda, and Oakland. Similarly, presidial commanders such as Ensign Jose Maria Verdugo held sixty-four square leagues (166 square miles) of land on which he ran 5,000 head of cattle, while Ensign Jose Francisco Ortega, the commandant in Santa Barbara, controlled the huge Refugio rancho nearby. An 1831 listing of the larger California ranchos indicates that most of the rancheros were ex-soldiers, controlling private grants up to 300,000 acres in size.26 Foreign affairs were of only minimal concern in this isolated settlement. Spain had already been at war with England six times since the beginning of the century and was to wage war against her three more times prior to 1822. Thus, the Royal Order of July 8, 1779, by which Governor Felipe de Neve was notified of the state of war between the two countries, hardly provoked a reaction in California. No declaration of war had ever brought troops to California nor was there a sufficient number of settlers to adequately defend the province from attack; hence, the Crown's order to the Californios "to make war by land and sea" against the British made little sense. Letters between members of the California priesthood indicate that this group was aware of the war but make no mention of the fact that the North American colonies were in revolt against the mother country or that the Spanish Crown was in support of their actions. This was probably because officials in Madrid and Mexico provided provincial governors with no more information than was absolutely necessary. Whatever the case, provincial administrators would have made no mention of the fact, it being considered improper for local authorities to comment upon policy matters in their correspondence. Their business was to comply with Royal orders, not comment on them. Unofficially, however, one can gain some reaction about the war. Father Pablo Mugartegui referred to Governor Neve as a "malicious reprobate" in his letters to Serra, and questioned the ability of the presidials to defend the province in any event.27 While no direct connection can be established to link California more closely to the Revolution, other events tie the two together. In 1778 the English Captain James Cook had sailed to the Pacific on what was ostensibly a scientific expedition. While the Crown had ordered Cook not to interfere with the Spaniards, he was given secret instructions to reconnoiter areas of future colonial interest as part of a scheme which possibly sought to secure new colonial territories in the Pacific Northwest. With the outbreak of the North American Revolution the Mexican government was forced to suspend its costly explorations up the Pacific Coast in 1779, thus averting a confrontation with England in the Pacific which would likely have become entangled with other aspects of the revolution. With the publication of Admiral Cook's journal following the war, there was unleashed, to use the words of Warren Cook, a "flood tide of empire" throughout the Pacific Northwest. American and British merchants and explorers increasingly moved into the area to engage in the lucrative sea otter trade and the very profitability of this venture caused a renewal of European rivalry which had lain dormant since the days of Drake. In 1789 a Spanish expedition dispatched from Mexico to Nootka Sound, located on the western shore of Vancouver Island, found British, American, and Portuguese ships lying at harbor. Although the Spanish drove them off, when England threatened war Spain was forced to renounce its claims to the area and pull back its borders to San Francisco, primarily because it could secure no aid from the French, then embroiled in their own Revolution. In 1790, with the signing of the Nootka Treaty, Spain reversed a foreign policy which had been aggressively expansionist since the sixteenth century. In so doing, it caused California to become more exposed to the threat of attack.28 As the Pacific Northwest opened to foreigners after 1790, European, and later North American, visitors became more common in Alta California, and their collective observations provide us with a closer look at the tiny Spanish province. French, Russian, English and American visitors alike were astonished at the frailty of the Spanish hold over the area: they found Alta California to be a society without schools, without manufactures, without defenses, administered by a military governor and a quasi-feudal mission system, and inhabited by a population that barely exceeded 1500. Travellers complained of difficulties in obtaining supplies, lack of transportation, and absence of skilled workmen, poor houses and furniture, sour wine, indifferent food, and persistent fleas. So backward was the region, they sniffed, that the plows and oxcarts seemed holdovers from medieval times. So disorganized were the Californios that dairy products had to be secured from the Russian colony at Fort Ross and leather shoes were shipped from Mexico, and later Boston. George Vancouver, the British commissioner sent to implement the Nootka Treaty, visited California three times between 1792 and 1794, and appeared scandalized that the tiny presidios of San Diego and Monterey, Santa Barbara and San Francisco, should represent the European presence in California. Few of their cannon were functional, due to exposure to the elements and neglect, and so scarce was the supply of gunpowder that Commandant Sal in San Francisco had been forced to borrow enough from the Russians to fire a salute in Vancouver's honor. Earlier, in 1786, the Comte Jean Francois Galaup La Perouse, a French geographer, echoed the same sentiments. Perouse felt that California needed intervention if it were to have a society worthy of its beauty, but predicted that another century would pass before this occurred since California was so isolated.29 As first expressions of how California struck the foreign imagination, these accounts went far to shape the expectations of those who followed these explorers to California. Taken together, they allow us to make certain conclusions regarding the society of late Spanish California. First, California society was poor, backward, and small. While the Californios remained confined to a small coastal strip, within that area, however, they were widely dispersed, thanks in large part to the development of the rancho economy. Taking Santa Barbara as an example, by 1800 nearly half of the 850 residents were reported to be living on ranchos outside the city, a situation duplicated throughout the province. Thus, California was far more rural than metropolitan areas such as Mexico which were dominated by a network of towns.30 Because most of the Spanish land grants were located in the central part of the province, where sufficient water and excellent grazing conditions were available, this area progressed at the expense of the northern and southern regions, antedating a regionalism which is still evident in the state to this day. The failure of the Spaniards to explore the Central Valley of the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range meant that gold was not discovered until after the period of Spanish control and insured the preservation of this ranching and agricultural economy. Second, Californio society was far from aristocratic and only nominally Spanish, being populated almost exclusively by the poor and low-born of Mexico. While a large plebian group characterized societies as different as those of Bourbon Mexico and Tudor England, the ability of this group to transcend its social limitations made California society unique. Unlike most socially stratified areas, the availability of land and the need for trained administrators allowed certain members of the lower social groups exceptional opportunities for upward social mobility, well beyond the prescribed limits generally granted to plebians. Although rank and skin color counted in the definition of social status, they were not absolute determinants. An excellent example of this is the presidial soldier, who rose largely on the basis of talent and loyalty to the Crown. Arriving in California with a status which was both ethnically and corporatively-derived, the presidial achieved considerable mobility through the presidial command structure, due in large part to the military nature of early California. Through the grant of land from the King, the soldiers gained new prestige as a provincial aristocracy. Lacking competition from a commercial or entrepreneurial group, the soldiers married and began large families which retained a pre-eminent position in the province long after Spanish rule had disappeared. A list of the most influential men in the late Spanish and early Mexican periods of California history indicates this upward mobility. Jose Dario Arguello, for example, arrived as an enlisted man from Queretaro, Mexico where he had been born of undistinguished parentage. After serving eight years in the ranks his administrative talents won him a commission and command in Santa Barbara and later San Francisco. He was later appointed interim governor. This process was followed by his son Luis Antonio who was able to secure a cadetship and a commission within two years of entering service, becoming the commandant of the four Southern California missions and the owner of a 50,000 acre ranch in the Mission Valley area of San Diego. The Arguello story is typical, it would seem. The fathers of the Mexican governors Alvarado and Pico and of the Generals Vallejo and Castro had all begun as presidials, as were the founders of the important California houses of De la Guerra, Ortega, Peralta, Valencia, Sanchez, Bernal, Alviso, Galindo, Carrillo, Moraga, and others. Finally, and perhaps most important, this extreme social mobility infused California society with certain characteristics which have continued to persist long after the Spanish period. Foreign visitors and Spanish governors alike recognized that California was a unique area, although they disliked and disagreed with many of its features. In 1794, the jovial Basque Governor Diego de Borica filed glowing reports on the province to his Mexican superiors, calling it "a great country, the most peaceful and quiet in the world," where "one lives better than in the most cultured courts of Europe." Blessed with sufficient water, fertile soil, and a good climate, Borica noticed that all who remained there "are getting to look like Englishmen."31 Although it is likely that Borica's remarks were designed to help in finding him a willing replacement, his conception of the province probably squared more nearly with that of the first Californios themselves than did the European travellers' generally unfavorable accounts of the province. Because of their poor backgrounds and the almost complete lack of opportunity afforded these soldiers and settlers in their native Mexico, they were grateful for the opportunity to receive land and remain in California. Not only did the Crown offer them a chance to improve themselves, but the granting of land transformed these men into rancheros which immeasurably improved their social position and allowed them an opportunity for profit through trade with foreign visitors who began to arrive in increasing numbers after 1800. Within the space of a single generation the presidial group at least had begun to transform itself into something quite resembling a provincial aristocracy, although a relatively poor and remotely located one to be sure. Many historians have developed the story of Mexican and Anglo-California after 1846 as the ultimate frontier, or, to use the words of Kevin Staff, "the cutting edge of the American Dream."32 This short paper has attempted to illustrate that dreams of a better future and the hope of self- determination, while usually associated with the Anglo-American culture, are not the exclusive preserve of that civilization. This is a point well worth remembering, not in order to diminish our own achievements, which were formidable indeed, but simply to extend them to include persons of other climates and cultures who struggled in a sometimes quite similar fashion to achieve a better life for themselves. Spaniards in sixteenth century New Spain had created California as a province of the mind, both a concept and an imaginative goal, immediately following the conquest of Mexico. For two centuries afterwards the dream was sorely tested as Spain moved forth into other areas in pursuit of mineral wealth and high Indian civilizations. With the exploration and conquest of the Pacific Coast in the eighteenth century the dream was revived by a small group of presidial soldiers who successfully transformed themselves into a ranchero aristocracy. Far from the metropolitan capital of Mexico City, California largely avoided the revolutionary movement which had swept Spanish South America.33South American independence had occured in 1826 partially at least as a result of the conquistadores' failure to establish a seigneurial society, something their creole descendents continued to demand from the Spanish ruling groups. In California, however, the inhabitants were able to create a pale image of a landed society almost free of Spanish control. Located far from Mexico, on the very rim of Christendom, the province was freed from the vicissitudes of imperial politics. For this reason as much as any, Mexican rule was quietly accepted in California in 1822. The Californios had successfully created a way of life that met their expectations. It is one which has symbolically been preserved to this day and one to which many Californians still aspire. FOOTNOTES March 10-11, 2006 The Division of Continuing Education is pleased to announce the eighth annual Computerized Genealogy Conference March 10-11, 2006, in the BYU Conference Center at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. The conference is sponsored by BYU Religious Education, BYU History Department, BYU Center for Family History and Genealogy, LDS Family History Library, and Division of Continuing Education. The theme for this conference is "Building a Lasting Legacy." Sessions will cover such topics as operating genealogy software programs, working with databases, finding useful tools on the Internet, organizing your computer files, and many other topics. Conference information is located at http://genealogyconferences.byu.edu . This work will strengthen the ties that bind families together forever. Sincerely, Ku Klux Klan Had Short Life in El Paso Alien Arrivals to El Paso click Book: Ringside Seat to a Revolution by David Dorado Romo Book: Cottonwood Saints Tunnel underneath the US/Mexico border Ku Klux Klan Had Short Life in El Paso By Vanessa Mendoza, Melissa A. Case, Yvonne Garcia, Yazmine Contreras, Alejandra Garcia and Cristal N. Spradling, Borderlands Supplement to the El Paso Times 2002-2003 Vol. 21 Sent by: Ivonne Urveta Thompson [email protected] The Ku Klux Klan in El Paso? Yes, it did exercise some influence in the city in the 1920s. With their white sheets and hooded faces, the Klan settled in El Paso and affected the city politically and in religious and race issues as well. After the Civil War, six Irish Americans began the organization as a social club for ex-confederate soldiers I from the poverty-stricken town of Pulaski, Tennessee. The name may have derived from the Greek word for circle or band, kuklos. Its numbers grew rapidly as Southerners attempted to regain control of their region. Nathan Bedford Forrest, legendary Confederate cavalry officer, became the Klan's first Imperial Wizard, establishing new chapters all over the South. With over a million members by 1870, the Klan's purpose became political. The KKK believed in native white, Protestant supremacy, and aimed its invective at Jews, Catholics, anti-Prohibitionists and any person of liberal or radical views. The Klan's mission, to prevent newly enfranchised black Southerners from putting Republicans in power in the Southern states, soon came to be carried out with hatred, evil j and pride. Its members, sworn to secrecy, wore white robes, pointed hoods and masks and adopted the burning cross as their symbol. They were most active during elections, when their nighttime rides to murder, rape, beat and warn were designed to overcome Republican majorities in their states. In 1872, Forrest left the Klan, denying responsibility for the violent turn the Klan had taken. By this time, the Klan had lost its earlier power as segregation laws took effect in the South. In April 1868, the Klan appeared in northeast Texas, terrorizing and murdering freedmen, burning houses and crops and intimidating officials. By 1871, the Klan offi-cially ceased to exist because of national laws against secret conspiracy and the refusal of the South to tolerate violence. In 1915, William J. Simmons reorganized the national Klan at Stone Mountain, Georgia, to fight new threats, especially immigration and social ills. By 1922, Texas had as many as 150,000 Klan members, and by 1924, Texas had more Klansmen in public office than any other state. El Paso became vulnerable to the Klan's efforts at creating conflict within the city. The impact of the Mexican Revolution and World War I were still strongly felt in El Paso during the 1920s. El Paso's experiences during the Mexican Revolution were different from those of any other city in the United States because it was the only large border city at the time. Frightened by the confusion and anti-American sentiment in Mexico, many Anglos became prejudiced against Mexicans, feeling that they had no place in an American city. After World War I, thousands of new Anglos arrived in El Paso. Many of these newcomers were natives of the racially intolerant South. So with these hostile attitudes the border was vulnerable for the Ku Klux Klan to establish a chapter in El Paso. In May 1921, Klan recruiter C. C. Kellogg set up office in the Sheldon Hotel. By late summer 1921, the KKK had established the Frontier Klan No. 100 in El Paso. Besides racial problems, issues concerning law and order and social morality provided the Klan the opportunity to recruit law-abiding and respectable citizens, including attorneys, physicians, bankers and businessmen. The Klan also controlled members of the Herald Post's editorial staff, allowing for the society to print its beliefs in the newspaper. Members were able to publish one editorial on their goals in El Paso and how they would make El Paso flourish. In public statements, the Klan claimed it had a purpose: "to make El Paso a better and cleaner city, a better place in which to live and rear our children." The Klan claimed to be against crime of all types. The social ills of El Paso, which included prostitution and gambling, were the first that the Klan promised to eliminate. Other crimes the Klan vowed to attack were home burglaries and car thefts. Juveniles drinking across the border and returning late at night were other targets. Klan members would record names or take pictures to show the parents of the young people. Their concerns weren't limited to social ills. The Klan was also concerned with the political issues in the community. In order to arouse enthusiasm in one school board election, the Klan planned to parade through town dressed in sheets and hooded masks. They had to be threatened with jail before they would cancel their plans. The Klan's main reason for the entry into the school board election was their belief that the Roman Catholic Church was trying to gain control of the public schools. Samuel J. Isaacks, a well-known attorney, clearly asserted his position on Catholics to his listeners. He said, "This is a country of religious tolerance, but not a country where any sect can come in and run our educational system." In April, the ticket of Klan members consisting of Charles S. Ward, Hal Gambrell and Isaacks beat W. H. Burges, U. S. Stewart and J. B. Brady, gaining control of the school board. Many residents and other anti-Klan organizations were stunned to see the final results of the election. This election marked the high point of Klan power in El Paso politics and was the first indication that the Frontier Klan had the popular vote. Since they were free to make changes within the school system, Isaacks suggested changing the names of the schools to commemorate Texas heroes. Highland Park became Fanin, El Paso High became Sam Houston High School (later changed back due to strong protest), Manhattan Heights became Crocked, and Grandview;: became Rusk. The schools that were under construction! were named Austin and Bowie and Burleson Elementary. The school board held secret meetings to vote out two school principals and other staff members who were Catholic. Even a librarian, Edith Cony, was dismissed because she had protested the removal of a Catholic encyclopedia from the library. Many people started to grow concerned about the Klan taking over. Nevertheless, in March 1922, the Klan initiated 300 men near Kem Place. After the initiation, Klaasmen drove up Scenic Drive on Mount Franklin, where they burned a wooden cross. About 3,500 El Pasoans joined the Klan in the few years of its existence here. Lawyer William H. Fryer, a personal enemy of Samuel J. Isaacks, made a major assault on the Klan. At the Odd Fellows Hall, the Catholic Fryer pointed his finger at the hooded audience and said, "I know who you are and one day you will be unmasked before the public." In October 1922, Fryer filed an injunction to remove four candidates from ballots in the upcoming election who had sworn allegiance to the Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan's membership roster and other materials were made public, exposing lists of outstanding citizens who had taken the Klan's secret oath. Fryer accused the Klan of believing their oath took precedence over the Constitution and the United States. Later, Fryer dropped the action since his purpose to expose membership had been accomplished. Other anti-Klan residents followed members to secret meetings. They wrote their license plate numbers down, eventually identifying these members to the community. Others who opposed the Klan included El Paso Times editor James Black. Backed by his paper, Black called the Klan "anarchists and public enemies" who "seize the purpose of the State." Police Chief Peyton J. Edward he would do everything in his power to oppose Klan actions and dismissed officers who were members. By February 1923, the Klan was soundly defeated at the polls when El Pasoans elected anti-Klan candidate R. M. Dudley mayor over Klan member P. E. Gardner. In April, the Klan also lost the school board elections. The Klan's member base rapidly decreased to a handful of individual advocates and the KKK eventually retreated from El Paso. Many residents believed that it was important to keep good relations with the resident Mexicans for business purposes, leading to the weakening of the Klan. The Ku Klux Klan's membership dwindled in the state as it did in El Paso in the late 1920s. The Klan became active again in the 1950s and 1960s once the civil rights movement gained impetus. Among the largest groups still active in Texas are the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Camellia Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. In South Texas, the Vietnamese were the targets of Klan violence in the 1980s, and in the 1990s various groups of the Klan united with neo-Nazis. The influence of the Klan in El Paso lives on in the names of several city schools, but little outward sign of any other influence exists. Book: "Ringside Seat to a Revolution," by David Dorado Romo, Sent by Dorinda Moreno [email protected] Source: http://www.texasobserver.org The following excerpt is adapted from Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juï¿½rez: 1893-1923 (Cinco Puntos Press, 2005) by David Romo. I was raised in both Juï¿½rez and El Paso, but I've spent a large part of my life trying to get as far away from both of these cities as possible. If you walk through downtown El Paso after 5 p.m., you'll find that the place is dead. Mostly there's just a lot of loan shark agencies and trinket shops inside neglected old buildings. There's more action in Juï¿½rez. But it didn't appeal to me either. There was too much suffering there. So pretty much from an early age I wanted out. I wanted to go some place where things were happening-where matters of significance occurred. I didn't want to live on the border, on the edge of the world. I wanted a cosmopolitan cultural center, a city with a busy nightlife, museums, bookstores, theaters, lots of history and no Border Patrol. I didn't know back then that the Border Patrol is everywhere. But as soon as I graduated from high school, I split. I spent four years in northern California, two-and-a-half in Jerusalem and five years in Florence. But something kept drawing me back to this desert, this place that so many consider nothing more than a vast cultural wasteland. My family and friends had a lot to do with me coming back, of course. But there was something else. If geography is destiny, as they say, then I felt I had to come to terms with my own geography. I've been looking for Pancho Villa for the last four years. I didn't intend to. When I began writing this book, it was meant to be a psychogeography, not a history. In 2001, I was the artistic director of El Paso's Bridge Center for Contemporary Art and had just received a grant to chart the underground cultural life of El Paso and Juï¿½rez. The first rule of psychogeography is to walk through the streets without preconceived notions; just drift and let the city's underground currents take you where they will. The areas that drew me the most at first were the Tex-Mex dives along Alameda Avenue, neglected cemeteries, the Santa Fe International Bridge, the seedy hangouts on Avenida Juï¿½rez, and the old buildings around downtown El Paso. Almost everywhere I went, Pancho Villa had been there before me. I ordered an elote and a lemonade near a Korean-owned store on Mesa and Texas Streets where everything costs a dollar. It had once been the Elite Confectionary. Villa and General Pascual Orozco, who headed Madero's troops during the Battle of Juï¿½rez, had been there in 1911. Pancho and Pascual didn't like each other very much, but they had posed for Otis Aultman's camera anyway, sitting stiffly next to each other. Pancho, famous for his sweet tooth, had ordered the Elite Baseball, a scoop of chocolate-covered vanilla ice cream, for ten cents. Pascual didn't want anything. I walked two blocks down from the Elite Confectionary to the First National Bank Building on the corner of Oregon and San Antonio. In 1914 Villa had his Consulado de Mexico there. El Paso Detective Fred Delgado, who moonlighted as Villa's secret agent, worked out of Room 418. When the U.S. recognized Venustiano Carranza in 1915, Pancho Villa shut the consulate down. I looked around the place, maybe something had been left behind. Villa's offices were empty. The whole building was empty. No one had even bothered to at least put up a little sign reading: "Pancho Villa was here." Pancho Villa had been across the street at the El Paso del Norte Hotel as well. That's where my Latin Jazz band, Fronteras No Mï¿½s, used to play at the hotel's Dome Bar every Saturday night for tourists and hip Latinos. Villa didn't like that place too much though. He thought too many perfumados-sweet smelling dandies-stayed there, like the Guggenheims (who owned one of the ASARCO smelters Villa threatened to confiscate in Chihuahua), General Pershing, Alvaro Obregï¿½n and the Terrazas clan. He preferred to lodge at the Roma Hotel, on the corner of Paisano and El Paso Street, during his American exile in 1913. It was a more down-to-earth place. Villa and his number one wife Luz Corral stayed there after he escaped from a Mexico City prison. She had a soft spot for El Paso too. Pancho would walk around coddling pigeons in his arms. People thought he was a little eccentric but he told them pigeons were the only thing he could eat, on account of his delicate stomach. The truth was he was using them as homing pigeons, to send messages to his rebel friends in Chihuahua. Almost every evening, Pancho Villa would walk downstairs to the Emporium Bar, which was also a little strange since Pancho was a teetotaler. He would order nothing but strawberry soda pop, his favorite drink, and hang out with all kinds of characters. One evening, he met with alleged German secret agent Maximilian Kloss at the bar. Apparently, the agent wanted to buy the rights to some submarine bases in Baja California just in case Germany went to war against the United States. After a few months of walking through the city, I realized my aimless wanderings had transformed themselves into an obsessive, very focused manhunt. I'd somehow entered a zone I couldn't leave. I followed every clue, no matter how insignificant. I wanted to know about Villa's eating habits: He loved canned asparagus and could eat a pound of peanut brittle at a time. I wanted to know where his offices and headquarters were: the Mills Building, the Toltec and the First National Bank in El Paso. In Juï¿½rez, his headquarters were in the Customs House and on Lerdo Street. How much money he had in the bank on this side of the line: $2,000,000. What kind of jewelry his wife wore to high-toned Sunset Heights tea parties: five diamond rings, a double-chained gold necklace with a gold watch and diamond-studded locket attached, a brooch, a comb set and earrings with brilliants. Villa's musical tastes: He enjoyed "El Corrido de Tierra Blanca," "La Marcha de Zacatecas," "La Adelita," and "La Cucaracha." Pancho Villa took me to places where I never expected to go-I traveled throughout the United States and Mexico. But although Villa is everywhere in this book, it's ultimately not about him. He's merely my tour guide. Instead Ringside Seat to a Revolution is about an offbeat collection of individuals who were in El Paso and Juï¿½rez during the revolution. Many crossed Pancho Villa's path at one time or another. More often than not, they were both spectators and active participants during one of the most fascinating periods in the area's history. This book is about insurrection from the point of view of those who official historians have considered peripheral to the main events-military band musicians who played Verdi operas during executions in Juï¿½rez; filmmakers who came to the border to make silent flicks called The Greaser's Revenge and Guns and Greasers; female bullfighters; anarchists; poets; secret service agents whose job it was to hang out in every bar on both sides of the line; jazz musicians on Avenida Juï¿½rez during Prohibition when Villa tried to capture Juï¿½rez for a third time; spies with Graflexes; Anglo pool hustlers reborn as postcard salesmen; Chinese illegal aliens; radical feminists; arms smugglers; and, of course, revolutionaries, counterrevolutionaries and counter-counterrevolutionaries. Ringside Seat to a Revolution deals not so much with history as it does with microhistory. A surprisingly large number of the events related to the Mexican Revolution took place within a five- square-mile area between downtown El Paso and the Juï¿½rez customhouse. Microhistory at its best is more about small gestures and unexpected details than grand explanations. It's a method of study that focuses more on the mysterious and the poetic than on the schematic. It's like prospecting for gold or exploring underground mazes-those honeycombed tunnels underneath Oregon Street in El Paso's Chinatown that the U.S. customs officials raided during the turn of the century. Elderly Chinese immigrants opened secret doors for them. In one underground chamber the border agents found cans of opium; in another, they found a young man playing an exotic stringed instrument the American officials had never heard before. Several excellent historical works about the Mexican Revolution on the border served as my guides. But the one historian who is perhaps the most responsible for getting me to write about my own city is Leon Metz. I've run into him a few times at historical conferences. The former law enforcement officer turned historian is an amiable man. He looks a little like John Wayne and a little like Jeff Bridges. Everybody likes Leon Metz. He's almost as popular as the UTEP football coach. His books sell very well too. If you go to the history section at any Barnes & Noble in El Paso you probably won't find any of the books that served as my guides to the revolution. But you're likely to find more than a dozen books written by Leon Metz about local gunfighters, sheriffs and Texas Rangers-John Wesley Hardin, Pat Garrett, John Selman and Dallas Stoudenmire. Occasionally Metz writes about the Mexican Revolution too from that Wild, Wild West cowboy perspective of his. Let me give you an example. In Turning Points of El Paso, Texas, he is highly critical of the revolutionary Spanish-language newspapers that flourished in South El Paso around the turn of the century. Metz-who doesn't read or speak Spanish-denounces many of them as badly written "handbills" full of "emotional, oftentimes hysterical overtones" whose content "sounded impressive only to other social-anarchists." He expresses displeasure with these publications that "frequently denounced the United States (which protected their right to publish) as savagely as they did Dï¿½az." One of those anarchistic newspapers he mentions is Regeneraciï¿½n, which Metz claims was published out of the Caples Building in El Paso by Ricardo Flores Magï¿½n. (I'm not sure how Magï¿½n-who established his headquarters in El Paso in 1906-could have published his newspaper out of the Caples Building. The Caples wasn't constructed until 1909.) The Old West historian describes Magï¿½n as a friend of "bomb-throwers," a man with "enough real and imagined grievances to warrant psychotherapy for a dozen unhappy zealots." Ay, ay, ay! Talk about bomb-throwers. Them's fightin' words, as the Hollywood gunslingers used to say. They're the kind of outrageous distortions that would spur any self-respecting microhistorian worth the name to reach for his laptop and write his own version of the past. Which I did. But I guess I shouldn't be too irritated by Metz' take on things. Historians are like the blind men who touched different parts of the elephant and thought it was either a wall, a snake, a tree trunk or a rope, depending on what they touched. We all have our biases and our limited viewpoints. It all depends on where we stand. Microhistorians, I think, are just a little more honest about it. We tend to believe that there is no such thing as a definitive History-only a series of microhistories. El Paso probably had more Spanish-language newspapers per capita during the turn of the century than any other city in the United States. Between 1890 and 1925, there were more than 40 Spanish-language newspapers published in El Paso. They provided a counter narrative of the border not found in the mainstream press on either side of the line. The periodicals printed not only news and political manifestoes but serial novels, poetry, essays and other literary works. The cultural milieu created by a large inflow of political refugees and exiles-which included some of Mexico's best journalists and writers-set the stage for a renaissance of Spanish-language journalism and literature never before seen in the history of the border. The first novel of the revolution, Los de Abajo, was published in serial form in 1915 in the Spanish-language daily, El Paso del Norte. Mariano Azuela, a former Villista doctor, wrote it while he lived in the Segundo Barrio. Yet politics was indeed most of these publications' bread and butter. Because they were published on the American side of the border, the Spanish-language press could be aggressively anti-Dï¿½az. Many publications were openly revolutionary. Victor L. Ochoa, the first El Pasoan to launch a rebellion against the government of Porfirio Dï¿½az in 1893, was the editor of El Hispano Americano. In 1896, Teresita Urrea was listed as the coeditor with Lauro Aguirre of El Independiente. She had moved to El Paso that year and was already called the "Mexican Joan of Arc" because of the various uprisings her name had inspired throughout northern Mexico. In 1907, Aguirre's press also printed La Voz de la Mujer. It was a fiery, aggressive weekly, which called itself "El Semanario de Combate," written and edited by women who had no qualms about denouncing their political enemies as "eunuchs" and "castrados" (castrated men). The anarchist Prï¿½xedis Guerrero-who coined the phrase that is often attributed to Emiliano Zapata, "It is better to die on your feet, than to live on your knees,"-published Punto Rojo out of El Paso in 1909. Silvestre Terrazas, the black sheep of the Chihuahuan oligarchic family who at one time helped smuggle weapons for Pancho Villa from El Paso, published La Patria between 1919 and 1924. It was one of the more successful Spanish language papers in the border city. Silvestre Terrazas had been sued 150 times, imprisoned 12 and had received a death sentence under the government of Porfirio Dï¿½az for his writings. In Mï¿½xico, Dï¿½az imprisoned Ricardo Flores Magï¿½n various times as well. Each time Magï¿½n and his fellow radicals got out of Mexican prison, they would stubbornly republish their old newspaper under a different name-first as El Ahuizote, then El Hijo del Ahuizote (The Ahuizote's Son), El Nieto del Ahuizote (The Ahuizote's Grandson), El Bisnieto del Ahuizote (The Ahuizote's Great-Grandson ) and El Tataranieto del Ahuizote (The Ahuizote's Great-Great Grandson.) Things were somewhat better for journalists in El Paso. But that's not to say that the U.S. was a paradise for free speech either, as Leon Metz would have us believe. Spanish-language editors were frequently harassed, censored, and imprisoned by the American authorities for what they wrote. Flores Magï¿½n was sued and arrested several times in the U.S. for his articles. Ultimately, censorship ended up being more severe for him north of the border than south of it. He died in an American prison in the 1920s while serving a 20-year sentence for questioning, in one of his publications, the needless loss of life of American soldiers during World War I. Spanish-language newspapers were suppressed on numerous occasions in El Paso during the revolution. In March 1916, Mayor Tom Lea, Sr., ordered the suspension of four "Mexican dailies" published in the city: El Rio Bravo, La Justicia, Mexico Nuevo and El Paso del Norte. Their crime was to report on and give their own version of Pancho Villa's raid of Columbus a few days before. The editor of El Paso del Norte, Fernando Gamiochipi, a resident of the American border city for 14 years, was thrown in jail for having written "something of a political nature." That same month, the El Paso City Council passed an emergency ordinance which stated: It shall be unlawful for any persons within the city of El Paso to transmit for the purpose of publication any report about the conditions existing in the city of El Paso which would be calculated to injure the general business or reputation of the city of El Paso. Newspaper reporters who wrote negative articles about the city that the authorities deemed false were to be "punished with a fine of not less than $25 nor more than $200." In June 1919, the editor and business manager of El Paso's La Republica were arrested for failing to provide an English translation of their newspaper. They were subsequently deported to Mexico. Despite this kind of repression, the proliferation of radical journalism in El Paso helps explain why the border city was such a hotbed of insurrection. On the border, journalist and revolutionary were often synonymous. Journalists planted the ideological seeds of rebellion. They held secret meetings in their newspaper offices. They were the first to call for armed uprising. They drafted the insurrection's blueprints. And usually, the periodistas were also the first to take up arms themselves. Yet these fronterizo journalists were more than mere agitators. Many lived lives full of unexpected twists and turns; they were often revolutionary beyond just the political sense of the term. Despite being listed as coeditor of El Independiente, Teresita Urrea was not exactly a journalist. She also never publicly called herself a revolutionary. Yet she inspired journalists and revolutionaries in El Paso for many years to come. In many ways, the revolution on the border began with her. A woman of many contradictions, she defied all the reigning stereotypes of a 19th-century mexicana. She was the illegitimate daughter of a rich Sonoran hacendado, Don Tomï¿½s Urrea. Her mother, Cayetana Chï¿½vez, was a poor Tahueco-part Cahita, part Tarahumara Indian-woman who had once been employed as Don Tomï¿½s' maid. Don Tomï¿½s impregnated Cayetana when she was 14 years-old. Teresita dedicated her life to healing the poor. She had been a healer since her early adolescence. While at her father's ranch, Teresita had been the apprentice of a Yaqui curandera named Huila. From her, Teresita learned the medicinal uses of more than 200 herbs and folk remedies, many of which are still used among the Indian communities along Mexico's northern border today. One observer claimed that more than 200,000 people had visited her home in Rancho Cabora, Sonora; she had healed 50,000 of them. Most of them couldn't afford a physician. Yet she intermingled comfortably with high society on both sides of the border although she had practically no formal schooling. The Catholic church considered her a heretic, and the Mexican government considered her a dangerous subversive. She was opposed to the spilling of blood, yet the rallying cry "Viva Santa Teresa" was heard during several uprisings throughout northern Mexico. According to a Mexican official quoted by the New York Times, Teresita was responsible for the death of more than 1,000 people killed during those uprisings. At 19, Teresita was forced into exile by President Porfirio Dï¿½az. She first crossed the border in Nogales, Arizona, in 1892, the year that the soldiers of Porfirio Dï¿½az massacred and burned down the entire village of Tomï¿½chic, a Chihuahuan village about 200 miles south of El Paso. Four years later Teresita Urrea passed through El Paso like a comet-a heavenly portent that shone brightly for a brief period then vanished. In March 1896, hundreds gathered at the Union Depot train station to wait for the 22-year-old miracle worker known on both sides of the line as "Santa Teresa." "But the young lady," the El Paso Evening Telegraph reported, "did not come." When she finally did arrive on June 13, 1896, about 3,000 pilgrims camped outside her new home on the corner of Overland and Campbell Streets. They had traveled by foot, wagon and train from all over the U.S.-Mexico border. Soon the El Paso Herald was comparing her to Jesus Christ. "El Paso has the distinction of having a live saint within its borders. It is understood that she has commenced her work of healing, but here comes the rub. Strange as it may seem, dominant religions never welcome one that comes to do good in individual lives. The Nazarene had the experience, and Santa Teresa will find that she is no exception to this rule," the evening newspaper predicted. The El Paso Herald's prophecies weren't far off the mark. Within a year, Teresita would suffer three assassination attempts and be forced to leave the city in search of safer grounds. The El Paso that Teresita passed through in 1896 was a booming border town. Railroad lines from the four cardinal directions-connecting it to Mexico City, Santa Fe, Los Angeles and San Antonio-had transformed the town into the main gateway between the United States and Mexico and a major center for smelting, cattle, mining and other products of binational trade. City boosters claimed El Paso's geographic location made it "the best pass across the Continental Divide between the equator and the North Pole." It was one of the fastest growing cities in the Southwest and had a population-according to the 1896 El Paso City Directory-of 15,568. About 60 percent were of Mexican descent. For the next few decades, El Paso's railroad connections and the concentration of Mexican residents would make the city an ideal location from which to plot a revolution. Teresita soon became the most famous woman in El Paso. Her name appeared regularly in the gossip columns of the local newspapers. El Pasoans couldn't get enough of her. One postcard salesman did a "hefty business" selling pictures of Teresita throughout the area, as far as the neighboring town of Las Cruces. It wasn't just "Mexican peons"-as the Anglo press called them-who gathered around Teresita. The sick of all races, the curious, the insane, thieves, peddlers, upper-class admirers, anti-Dï¿½az rebels, newspaper reporters, law-enforcement officers and paid government informants from both sides of the border, all hovered around Teresita's Segundo Barrio home. The newspapers kept their readers informed about every new development. They published regular dispatches about her healings, her dress, and about every important guest who stopped by to chat with her-such as El Paso Mayor Richard Campbell or the ex-governor of Chihuahua, Lauro Carrillo. Reading about Teresita in the El Paso newspapers was almost like watching a modern day soap opera, except with an added dose of international political intrigue. News of the young lady's suitors immediately made the front pages. But Teresita was not just a celebrity at the local level. Her fame spread like wildfire throughout the rest of the United States as well. Newspaper correspondents came to the border from San Francisco, Austin and New York to interview the young Mexican miracle worker. Later, when she left El Paso and toured throughout the United States, she also made headlines wherever she went. Many of the out-of-town journalists that visited Teresita in the Segundo Barrio reported that they thought some kind of healing was actually taking place, but they all had different explanations for this phenomenon. A news correspondent from Austin, for example, declared that without knowing it, Teresita was using the techniques of some of the best known hypnotists in the world. Many of her healing methods, however, were grounded on the indigenous culture that she had grown up with. When many of her predictions came to pass, the villagers took it as another sign that Teresita was divinely inspired. In the fall of 1896, when a rebellion broke out in several towns along the U.S.-Mexico border waged in Teresita's name, rumor had it that the young miracle worker had used her powers of astral projection to lead the revolt against the soldiers of Porfirio Dï¿½az. Although she was hundreds of miles away in El Paso, federal soldiers claimed they saw Santa Teresa leading a group of rebels at Nogales, Sonora. They said she was riding upon a white horse that hovered above the ground. Acclaimed Chicano-Irish-German-American author Luis Alberto Urrea-a fellow research freak whom I consider a friend-sent me an e-mail when he found out that I was going to write about Teresita Urrea's revolutionary activities in El Paso. He's Teresita's great-nephew and was working at the time on a historical novel, The Hummingbird's Daughter, that focuses on Teresita's life before her American exile. He heard that I was looking into rumors that Teresita, while in El Paso, not only helped prepare an uprising against the government of Porfirio Diaz but even blessed the revolutionaries' rifles. Luis Alberto didn't believe that Teresita could have ever done such a thing. In Mexico she was all about compassion and healing. She opposed bloodshed. It's just not possible that she could have ever blessed rifles, he argued. He warned me to be careful of what I wrote. He's seen terrible things happen to people who have written about her in the past. One woman who wrote a fictionalized novel about his great-aunt-with a few passages that weren't entirely flattering-ended up getting kidnapped in Mexico. Others have suffered serious injury. It must be the avenging spirit of the Yaquis, who were devout followers of Teresita during her life, Luis Alberto explained. With Luis Alberto, it's not always easy to tell how much of his rollo-that part-college professor and part-mixed-blood-vato-loco spiel of his-is up front and how much is tongue in cheek. I thanked him anyhow for the warning about the curse of the Yaquis. I assured him that I wasn't about to libel his Great Tï¿½a. I told him I thought his Tï¿½a Abuela comes off smelling like roses-literally. (People said that during a healing Teresita smelled like roses.) But at the same time Santa Teresita is a lot more complex than some of the hagiographical accounts that have been written about her in the past. Teresita may have been a pacifist during her Mexican period, but by the time she reached El Paso she was no longer the same woman. It appears that the massacre of Tomochic radicalized her, like it did many other fronterizos. There are just too many firsthand accounts-from many different sources-about her underground activities in support of the revolution. It could be that they're mostly just rumors, puro chisme. But those historians who completely excise this chisme from their accounts leave out an important part of the picture. With Teresita Urrea, fact and rumor often blend into one. I've explored the zones where Teresita left her mark as carefully as I could, but I must admit that I can't always distinguish clearly between the two. At the risk of life, limb, and incurring the wrath of the Yaquis, I've given it my best shot. David Romo, the son of Mexican immigrants, is an essayist, historian, musician and cultural activist. He lives in El Paso. This is his first book. Book: Cottonwood Saints by Gene Guerin describes the book as "90% fiction and 100% fact!" Sent by Reviewer: Gloria L. Cordova, Ph.D. [email protected] 'Intimacy and familiarity' is the sense I experienced throughout my reading of COTTONWOOD SAINTS. Intimate and familiar because it seemed as though Guerin knew my Spanish-Mexican family experience in describing his in this novel; my family migrated from northern New Mexico to southern Colorado in the mid-1800s. The characters and episodes are so wonderfully described that the reader feels as though s/he is there -- interacting with the characters and experiencing the events. I heard that Guerin described his novel as "90% fiction and 100% fact." The story reads just like that! The chapters read easily and beautifully into a wonderfully woven story. In 2004, I completed a doctoral dissertation on the phenomenology of "The Lived Experience of Nortenas de Nuevo Mejico: Finding Voice and Claiming Identity." Had Guerin's novel been published when I was doing my literature chapter, this marvelous novel would have been included in my bibliography because Guerin's mother is so descriptive of my research findings regarding the 'nortena de nuevo mejico.' Reviewer: Constance M. Gotsch "Cottonwood Saints" by Gene Guerin came about when the author asked his mother to write her memoirs about growing up in northern New Mexico during the early part of the 20th Century. He found her recollections so compelling, he turned them into a novel. "Cottonwood Saints" begins with the birth of this mother, whom he calls Margarita Juana, then follows her growing up, marrying, having children of her own, and dying. Sometimes books based on family history end up a personal narrative with meaning for the authors, but few others. Gene Guerin avoids this trap by focusing his story on universal issues. His mother copes with things everyone faces. She just happens to do it in a unique part of the Southwestern United States. At the same time, Gene Guerin offers a vivid picture of life on one of the last American frontiers, describing in vivid detail the rutted roads over which Margarita Juana and her father drive to bring loads of lumber into town, trips to an Indian Pueblo to visit friends, and the arduous process of washing clothes and preserving food in a time before electricity and refrigeration. Labor is back breaking both in the barn and in the house. Tempers flare. Parents slap. Children learn to obey, and help do chores without argument. When someone gets sick, people cope as best they can. On-the-job safety doesn't exist. The wise woman, or curandara, brings herbs and teas to the rescue. The doctor comes as a last resort, often when it's too late. Strong personalities, not all of them likeable, fill "Cottonwood Saints." Margaritia's mother, Tama, is about as nasty as they come. Margarita's husband, Miguel redefines bland and meek. Nash, Margarita's Indian nanny, is a woman anyone could love, as are Margaritia's doting aunts and uncles. The reader sympathizes with Margarita's feelings of abandonment when these kindly people die. Bit by bit, Margaritia learns to cope with her life, and make what she can of it, just as everyone does. Her varying degress of success and failure make her an everyday hero, and keep the reader turning the pages of "Cottonwood Saints." Author Guerin tells Margaritia's over-arching story in the first person, the voice of Michael, her son. But he also has the knack of stepping into the third person to relate portions of the novel that happened before Michael was born. The technique gives "Cottonwood Saints" a wonderful flow. The reader can smell the chili roasting, and see an old family hacienda crumbling. By the end of the book, Guerin has summed up the triumphs, failures, glories, and horrors of a woman's life. It happens to be Margarita Juana's, but it could be anybody's. New Mexico's frontier families were tough. But so is human nature, or their descendants wouldn't be around to write qbout their ancestors. Reviewer: JLB "JLB" (Ohio) "Cottonwood Saints" is a wonderful book, full of vivid characters and descriptions. The narrative transcends geography and time - it is a universal story of mothers and sons, love and loss, and dreams deferred. I read this book in two sittings. I couldn't put it down and didn't want it to end. This is by far one of the best new fiction books on the market. Reviewer: L. Esquibel "Author's boyhood friend" (Mountain View, CA USA) The author seems to have closed his eyes and remembered in fascinating detail how his mother recalled her childhood. He then projects this experience into describing her adulthood which the mother probably never directly revealed to the author but could not remain hidden since he had the early matrix. The childhood years are likely factual; the adulthood years are conjectural, including her reaction to her author- son's "defection" from the priesthood, the loss of two other sons and finally her fading into the fog of Alzheimer's disease. The story is lovingly told and laid at the mother's feet as a tribute with a note saying, "Mom, I understand and thank you." It is the author's first novel but I predict not his last. Tunnel (New York Times, 01/26/06) - One of the longest, most sophisticated tunnels was discovered in recent years along the Mexican border. The tunnel is 60 feet below ground at some points, five feet high, and nearly half a mile long, extending from a warehouse near the international airport in Tijuana, Mexico, to a vacant industrial building in Otay Mesa, Calif., about 20 miles southeast of downtown San Diego. The sophistication of the tunnel surprised officials, who found it outfitted with a concrete floor, electricity, lights and ventilation and groundwater pumping systems. The authorities said a tip led to the discovery. The tunnel is one of the latest to be found along the border. Most are attributed to Mexican drug cartels searching for ways to move contraband into the United States, but some appear to be the work of smugglers of illegal immigrants. Since Sept. 11, 2001, when border security was tightened, agents have uncovered 21 tunnels of varying degrees of length and sophistication, from "gopher holes" to engineered marvels. The tunnel is almost like a mineshaft. The builders, had to have access to money and somebody with a strong construction and the engineering background. Also, several miles west of big tunnel, the authorities found a smaller one ï¿½ about two feet underground and extending 30 feet across the border near a storm drain ï¿½ after a United States Border Patrol vehicle hit a sinkhole. The African Presence in Mï¿½xico From Yanga to the Present Book: My Soul To His Spirit: Soulful Expressions From Black Daughters To Their Fathers Research shines spotlight on an unsung L.A. pioneer, John Ballard At Burial Site, Teeth Tell Tale of Slavery Taking 'Roots' to a DNA level, PBS series Family Tree Magazine E-Mail Update v 6. To break the cycle of dysfunctional relationships that plagues our community v 5. To love ourselves v 4. We need to know that true love is possible v 3. You are the standard by which we judge all men v 2. So we donï¿½t fill your void with others v 1. Because we love you. Research shines spotlight on an unsung L.A. pioneer , John Ballard by Eric Leach, Daily News Staff Writer, http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_3509634 Sent by Johanna De Soto SIMI VALLEY - More than a decade before the Civil War bloodied the South, a former slave from Kentucky made his way to Southern California, eventually settling in the isolation and rugged beauty of the Santa Monica Mountains. John Ballard was among the region's pioneers, homesteading 300 acres after the war near what is now Westlake Village. But California's third-graders won't find Ballard - the area's first African-American settler - in their textbooks as they wade through California history. Patricia Colman, a history professor at Moorpark College who came across Ballard's story and delved into his life, wants to change that. "Yes, L.A. was founded and built upon the backs of men like Pico, Keller, Banning ... but also on the back of John Ballard," Colman said. "I think he deserves to have his story told and credit given. "In all of the literature I've seen on early L.A., no one talks about him, yet he was one of the pillars of the tiny 19th-century African-American community." As part of Black History Month, Colman will presented her findings at a lecture February 15th during a lecture at Moorpark College. Besides teaching history, she is a historian for the National Park Service. There's no question Ballard remained bound by the shackles of prejudice after he moved West. "We can assume without a doubt that he faced intense racism," Colman said. "There was institutional racism against blacks in California during the 1850s, and the state had a law that said blacks could not homestead in California." But by the 1860s, the prohibition had ended. Ballard was allowed to homestead in the Santa Monica Mountains. Colman found in her research that he helped establish the First AME Church in Los Angeles, yet died with little record or recognition for his contributions. It was an astute eye that uncovered his story. Colman found a 1900 Census for Calabasas and came across Ballard's name, along with an "N" for Negro designating his race. She also found a book published by J.H. Russell, who was a boy when he met Ballard around 1900. Ballard's story as pieced together by Colman and Russell's accounts in his book, "Heads and Tails and Odds and Ends," helps illustrate the struggles of the 19th-century black community in the Los Angeles area. "I began researching the Ballards and over time I realized that I had stumbled upon true pioneers in Los Angeles history," she said. After his wife died, Ballard and his daughter, Alice, put roots down in what became known as the Seminole Hot Springs area of the Santa Monica range, near what is now Mulholland Highway and Kanan Road. Historians and officials at First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles say the church was officially founded in the early 1870s by Bridget "Biddy" Mason and her son-in-law, Charles Owens, at a site Mason purchased at 331 S. Spring St. for $250. The Rev. Brenda Lamothe of First AME, the oldest African-American church in Los Angeles, said she was unfamiliar with Ballard's connection, but that Mason was a slave when she came to California from Mississippi and Utah with a Mormon family. But Colman said Ballard is listed in real estate records with Owens and others who helped found First AME. "He was part of a core group of African-Americans who fought for getting a school opened for black children and getting the AME Church set up," she said. Ranford Hopkins, another Moorpark College history professor who has researched blacks in Los Angeles, said Colman's work on Ballard is groundbreaking and will help change the image of African-American pioneers. "This is all new, but what is new is not that it happened, but where it happened," he said. "That is what is so significant about professor Colman's work." Ballard was listed in an 1860 Census as a teamster, Colman said, and Russell wrote that he was known throughout Los Angeles and Ventura counties, where he used to drive a team of mules. He was known to be a wealthy man at one time and was extremely strong - easily able to lift a 100-pound sack of barley with one arm, according to Russell's book. "He made a good living, that's for sure," Colman said. "He had an Indian servant living with the family and lived in the downtown area, around Temple and Spring, and later moved toward Washington." In 1880, Ballard chose for his homestead a rugged part of the mountains that includes what became the Seminole Hot Springs Resort. The springs were likely his reason for stopping there, Colman said. The area is near the site of Holy Family Catholic Church, the old Lake Enchanto Resort and Peter Strauss Ranch, now part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Homesteading for Ballard involved building a sprawling makeshift house and raising crops. The Ballards were always willing to help their neighbors, and Ballard's second wife was known as a great cook, wrote Russell, who loved to stop by their home and eat her biscuits with wild grapes preserved in honey. But when Ballard's wife died, his daughter married, leaving him alone. As successful as he had been in Los Angeles, he grew old and wound up with a meager existence before dying in 1905. "They talked about how he was basically living off rabbits he could hunt," Colman said. One of Ballard's friends was John Fredericks, the district attorney of Los Angeles, who recommended that he move back to the city, where the county government could take care of him. Russell wrote that the last time he saw Ballard, he brought him some food and told him, "You are liable to starve to death here sometime." "The Lord will take care of me," Ballard responded, telling Russell he wanted to die and be buried in the mountains. Eric Leach, (805) 583-7602 Patricia Colman's talk was broadcast live on the Internet at http://video.moorparkcollege.edu so it is possible that a copy is available. At Burial Site, Teeth Tell Tale of Slavery by John Noble Wilford OC Register December 18, 2005 Grand View By Jay Clarke Knight Ridder Newspaper Artist Rendering Courtesy of Destination Grand Canyon The Hualapai Indians are building a glass walkway that will extend out over the canyon floor 4,00 feet below. Plans are for a glass skywalk almost a mile over the floor of the Grand Canyon's West Rim. Nothing but a piece of glass between you and the Colorado River almost a mile below. Called the Skywalk, the glass structure will cantilever out in a semicircle 70 feet from the cliff wall. Originally scheduled to open in January, the one-of-a-kind structure is now slated to open to the public in late spring or early summer. Along with the Skywalk, the Indians are constructing a new visitor center, restaurant, amphitheater, authentic tribal dwellings and an arts and crafts market Some of these are already in operation, as is the Hualapai Ranch, a western "town" offering Wild West performances, cookouts and horseback and wagon rides along the Grand Canyon rim. For more information Destination Grand Canyon (877) 716-9378 Sioux woman defended rights of fellow tribal members by Candy Hamilton, 1/19/2006 Geraldine High Wolf Janis, Zinkta Maniwin, was born May 18, 1928, the first child of Raymond High Wolf and Leta Goings High Wolf. Leta's mother was Julia Nelson, who danced for the Queen of England when she worked for the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. After the show, the Queen gave Julia a ring. Leta also worked for the Coleman Brothers Circus as a wild horse racer. Her father Frank Goings was a judge. Geraldine's grandfather, Clayton High Wolf of Porcupine was an Episcopal minister. Geraldine had two younger brothers, Raymond, Jr., and Leonard. When Geraldine was 14, her mother died of pancreatic cancer while Raymond was in prison. She and her brothers lived mainly with their grandparents who owned a lot of land around Porcupine and always planted large gardens. Her grandfather always shared food from the garden with all the people. Her Grandma Julie taught her to feed people whenever they came to her home, and up until her last days, Geraldine continued to make sure people who came to see her had something to eat. The High Wolf children wore moccasins and rode horseback with their Aunt Jessie. Her grandmother bought Geraldine all the candy she wanted and spoiled her in other ways too. If her grandfather told Geraldine to wait to get something or to go somewhere, her grandmother would make him do whatever Geraldine wanted immediately. Her grandparents often took Geraldine and her brothers along when they traveled by wagon to visit friends, including Frank Fools Crow and Nicholas Black Elk (of Black Elk Speaks). Grandmother High Wolf put Geraldine in school so young that she could not yet talk plainly. She told the teacher her name was Geraldine Wawa, and her classmates teased her about being Geraldine Wawa long after she was an adult. Geraldine was always very protective of her younger brothers. Once when her brother Buck ran in the house after a man had hurt him, Geraldine ran out, hit the man, and then stabbed him. Throughout her life she continued to protect her relatives and friends. She continued to be protective of those she loved all her life. Her daughter Eileen recalls running into the house pursued by older goon children trying to fight her during the 1970s wars and finding Dennis Banks, Lenny Bellecourt, and Russell Means, who had also taken refuge there. In high school Geraldine and her close friends became known as the Gangbusters, known for having a good time and pulling some crazy stunts. Later as a Grandma she was "Daisy Duke" driving her grandsons everywhere--no matter the weather--mud or snow, they'd be at East Dam or some other place and never got stuck. In 1943, Geraldine married Ival "Spot" Janis, and they had nine children, Charles "Chuckles," Ival, Jr., Patrick, Vee, Emerald, Francine, Terry, Cora, and Eileen. Geraldine also had an adopted son, Jesse Mendoza and two adopted daughters Valerie Hernandez and Jan Coulton. Geraldine and Spot now have 31 grandchildren and 47 great-grand children. Having had to live without many necessities when she was growing up, Geraldine was determined her children would have all they needed. She cleaned houses and washed other people's clothes for fifty cents an hour to buy her kids new clothes, shoes, and other necessities. By working hard and managing their resources, Geraldine and Spot were eventually able to build their own house in Pine Ridge, where they each remained until their deaths. After working with a 1960s federal program to provide health care to outlying communities, Geraldine became director of the Community Health Representatives Program when it was established on the reservation in the late '60s. After the murder of Raymond Yellow Thunder in Gordon, Geraldine supported the long boycott of Gordon stores along with her close friends Evie Deon and Lesanne Killer. Those three became the real AIM militants of the reservation during the years of struggle for honest tribal government, traditional ways, and treaty rights. When she opposed Tribal Chairman Dick Wilson's leadership and refused to take orders from him that would be detrimental to the CHRs' purpose, he had her thrown out of her office and replaced. She had already been active with Pedro Bissonette in the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization and helped organize the effort to impeach Wilson. Once, when Wilson asked her in front of a lot of people, including many goons, if she was going to vote for him, she stood right up to him, saying, "Hell no, I won't vote for you." She then helped with OSCRO's nightly meetings at Calico Hall and was part of the decision to invite the American Indian Movement to the reservation to assist with the opposition to Wilson, the goons, and their lawless behavior. After the ensuing siege at Wounded Knee began, Geraldine along with other women demonstrated everyday in front of the BIA building in Pine Ridge while marshals with assault weapons watched from the roof of the building. Despite threats from the police and goons, she never backed down. She would stand up for the rights of the tribal people when many others were afraid to. She once said the hardest part of opposing the goons was seeing her children get harassed by the goons and their children. However, even as protective as she always was of those she loved, she never wavered in her determination to end the goons' violence and mistreatment of the people. When Wilson fired Geraldine, she made this attack an advantage by going to college to study nursing. She received her nursing degree at age 55. As a member of the first board of trustees of Oglala Lakota College, she made sure the college offered a nursing program so Oglala nurses could take care of Oglala people when they were ill. She and three others who were fired sued the tribe over their illegal removal. Their case eventually made it to the Supreme Court, where they won, and that case now provides an important precedent for others who are illegally fired. However, by the time they won their case, Wilson was out of office and had left the tribe penniless. Geraldine was immediately re-hired as director of the CHR program and remained in that position until she retired 30 years later. She also served on the first Oglala Sioux Public Safety Board, the enrollment committee, and the credit board. After her retirement from the CHRs, she continued to serve on the Oglala Sioux Tribal Housing Board and other tribal boards. Geraldine also continued to be a strong supporter of Leonard Peltier, attending court hearings related to his appeals, distributing Christmas gifts the Peltier Support Committee sends to the reservation ever year, and assisting those who work for the support committee. Geraldine was a life-long defender of Oglala Lakota treaty rights. She was a sun dancer who believed in her traditional Lakota religion, a source of her strength to face hardships and difficulties always with courage and a good spirit. Many, many people looked to her for advice, guidance, strength, and friendship. Although she will be sorely missed, she has left a rich legacy for her friends, family, and tribe. Chiapas / Mayan Indians Recommended websites sent by John P. Schmal [email protected] According to Ethnologue, there are 69 Mayan languages. Many are in Guatemala, many in Mexico, one in Belize. 7th Annual Southern California Indian storytelling Festival Saturday, March 25, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Story as Song performances: 7:00p.m.-9:00p.m. The Pavilion Sunrise Park, 401 S. Pavilion Way The Spirit Vol. X No. 4 Dec. 2005/Jan./Feb. 2006 The California Indian Storytelling Association and the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum present the 7th Annual Southern California Indian Storytelling Festival, Saturday, March 25, 2006. Native storytellers from California and Hawaii will showcase storytelling presentations and performances based on indigenous oral traditions and language. This year's event will also include children's activities, basket weaving circles, children's story time, and Native American vendors. This festival is made possible by funding from the Arts, the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum, the California Indian Storytelling Association, and audience donations. Health disparities among Native Americans "A typical American Indian is 650 percent more likely to die from tuberculosis, 420 percent more likely to die from diabetes, 280 percent more likely to die in an accident, and 52 percent more likely to die from pneumonia or influenza than the rest of the U.S. population," said Joe Garcia, president of the National Congress of American Indians at a National Press Club presentation. Source of the Information: 2006 DiversityInc.com, February 04, 2006 The Texas Connection to the American Revolution participated in the February 17th Washington Parade in Laredo, Texas In answer to the question circulating among Texas researchers why a George Washington Parade would be held in Laredo, Texas . . . the following was shared: "here is an interesting comment from a good friend of mine,ï¿½from Laredo, Tx, which adds a different prospective.....regards, David Benavides: ï¿½ "David, I donï¿½t doubt that this is partially true if not completely! I say partially, only because of many of the stories I had heard over the many decades a part of my family lived there. My grandfather and his older friends told me, the festivities had more to do with the settling of the boundary issues between the US and Mexico. While Texas had established its Independence in 1836 it wasnï¿½t until over a decade later that the Mexican-American war actually clarified what river was the border between Mexico and the US. Mexico had asserted the Nueces River was the Northern Border, and of course Texas and then the US asserted the Rio Bravo (Mexican Name) or the Rio Grande was the southern border of Texas, then the US (when Texas became a State). While the Mexican/American war settled all claims and Nuevo (New) Laredo was created, with the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo; Mexican Nationalist & Mexican Revolutionary troops continued to cross virtually unimpeded for the next fifty years. I do not believe that the influx of US nationalists had much to do with it as Laredo is unique in its blended society. The Martin, Mann, Bruni, Werner, Leyndecker and many other non-Mexican families had been in the area for generations. ï¿½ Additionally, I think that the records of the Laredo Lodge would have, at the least, reflected some of the premise in your story. They donï¿½t. Laredo Lodge was founded in 1883 and co-existed with another recognized Lodge (sanctioned by the Grand lodge of Tamaulipas, Mexico) in Laredo for many years. In searching sir-names No Hispanics were members if Laredo 547 for almost 100 years, and it wasnï¿½t until the 1960ï¿½s that we find the first Hispanic Master of Laredo Lodge 547 (If I remember correctly, I was only the third). Why? The language barrier! Originally, even my grandfather was a member of the Mexican Lodge in Laredo, Texas. In my studies of Laredo Lodge transcripts, I find no overt acts of discrimination as most of the 547 members were married to Hispanics! It was the language and that is reflected in the History! They (forefather brethren) couldnï¿½t do the work in Spanish, so they formed their own lodge. Likewise the members of the (now, not then) Clandestine Lodge couldnï¿½t do the work in English! All were friends and worked for the good of the order until the local schools brought English to Laredo. The Grand Lodge of Texas refused to recognize the Mexican lodge, after repeated applications by them for recognition, due to the language of the work and the Grand Lodge of Tamaulipas eventually withdrew its recognition, due to lack of jurisdiction. That Lodge still exists today, but it is totally clandestine. Additionally and in support of my account, Laredo had also been the center of another less known 19th Century revolutionary movement, which was short-lived, under the banner and flag of the Republic of the Rio Grande (please note the non-Mexican name for the river). Had that separatist movement been based in and by Mexican Nationalists, it would have been the Republic of the Rio Bravo (The Mexican Term). This is the point where I believe my history separates from your account. I believe the people of the area revered Honored Revolutionaries. George Washington is the most revered and hence the celebration. Curiously, if you travel to Monterrey Mexico and study its oldest identified highways and byways, you will find George Washington Blvd in downtown old Monterrey, a city which is over 250 years old. Finding absolutely NO designed social separation, other than where language was practical, within the Laredo community, I can only surmise that the Celebration is, as it appears (Occamï¿½s Razor); to honor North Americaï¿½s greatest Revolutionary & our brother Mason; ï¿½George Washington!ï¿½ Regards, Rick George Gause [email protected] recommended the following book on the subject: A history of the Washington Birthday Celebration / edited by Stanley Green. E312.6.G74 1999, Available at the University of Texas,PanAmerican, UTPA LRGV (Room 112) ï¿½ San Antonio, Texas Ties That Bind, Part 2 Josefa De La Garza, And The Laredo Connection George Farias, M.B.A. - Copyright 2005 Another connection to royal lines can be found in the ancestry of Josefa de la Garza, mother of Tomï¿½s Sï¿½nchez, who founded Laredo, Texas in 1755. Sï¿½nchez , who had eleven children, has thousands of descendants many of whom have stayed close to home over the years, increasingly taking interest in their historic past. Nuevo Laredo Perhaps the first major note of their royal ancestry was made by Nuevo Laredo, Mexico historian and genealogist Rodolfo Gonzï¿½lez de la Garza when he discussed these connections (La linea de los reyes - The lineage of kings) in his book on surnames Apellidos de Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila y Texas, (Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, 1980 Ed., privately published). One connection he discussed was her ancestry to Alonso de Estrada -- one of the first four arriving royal officers -- who claimed to be a descendant of Ferdinand, husband of Queen Isabel. Carl L. Duaine in his book With All Arms, A Study of a Kindred Group, (New Santander Press, Edinburg Texas, 1980 Ed., Austin, Texas 2004 2nd Ed.) used some of Gonzï¿½lez de la Garza's research to explain the Ferdinand relationship. Estrada claimed that he was an illegitimate son of Ferdinand through a liaison with Luisa de Estrada whose father was Fernï¿½n, Duke of Estrada.Fernï¿½n was the man sent by Isabel and Ferdinand to arrange the marriage of King Henry VIII of England to their daughter Catherine of Aragon. Duaine referenced as further proof certain information in the Inquisition files. Many historians, however, dispute this story. Ferdinand And Isabel Picture from: http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0582218160.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg While a member of a noble family whose children had famous marriages -- Jorge de Alvarado and Francisco Vï¿½zquez de Coronado among them -- Estrada was not considered a great administrator and was somewhat of a braggart. Most recently Josï¿½ Antonio Esquibel of New Mexico discovered whom he believes are the real parents of Alonso de Estrada, naming them in an article written in the genealogical journal of The California Society of Hispanic and Historical Ancestral Research (SHHAR) Vol. IV, 1998. In spite of his research the controversy continues over Estrada's parentage. Josefa de la Garza is also a descendant of another of the first four New World administrators, Gonzalo de Salazar. Gonzalo's daughter, through his marriage to Catalina de la Cadena, was Catalina de Salazar. She married Ruy Diaz de Mendoza who was a descendant of King Alfonso XI " El Justiciero" ("The Rigid Justice" ), King of Castile and Leon (Josefa's 6th great grandfather). Alfonso's father was Alfonso X "The Wise" and his father was Ferdinand III -- not only king of Spain -- but a saint of the Catholic Church, San Fernando. What a surprise it must be to some of the worshippers at San Antonio's San Fernando Cathedral that they may have direct ancestral ties to one of the patron saints of the city! Alfonso X The Mendozas were one of the wealthiest and most powerful of the noble families of Spain. Catalina de Salazar's daughter, Magdalena de Mendoza, (Josefa de la Garza's 3rd great grandmother) therefore, supplies the direct royal linkage to the American descendants. Interesting to note, one other of Josefa's ancestors who came to the New World was Andrï¿½s de Tapia, perhaps Hernï¿½n Cortï¿½s' most trusted captain, who wrote a brief chronicle pertaining to the Aztec conquest. Another notable aspect of Catalina's life is that she had a famous second marriage when she came with her daughter Magdalena to New Spain/Mexico. She was suspected of bigamy since her first husband, Diaz de Mendoza, was rumored to still be alive in Spain. She claimed, however, that he was deceased. At any rate, her second marriage was to Cristobal Pï¿½rez de Oï¿½ate, one of the founders of Zacatecas, Mexico and its rich silver mines. Their son was Juan de Oï¿½ate who led the first colonization of New Mexico mostly financed by his family's huge wealth. Captain-General Oï¿½ate wed Isabel de Tolosa, granddaughter of Cortï¿½s and great granddaughter of Moctezuma, the last Emperor of the Aztecs. Juan De Oï¿½ate Colonel Ernest A. Montemayor, U.S. Air Force, (Retired), of Hispanic American Genealogical Associates, is one of the pioneers of Hispanic genealogy research in the United States having dedicated over fifty years to this effort accumulating in the process an extensive personal library of over 10,000 volumes and files. His large collection of books, journals, and other investigative materials of Hispanic families, covers the United States, Mexico, Central and South America, The Caribbean, the Philippines, and Spain and Portugal. Don Diego De Montemayor Col. Montemayor's wife, Ana Estela Ramirez, is a Tomï¿½s Sï¿½nchez descendant; and Col. Montemayor is a direct descendant of don Diego de Montemayor, founder of Monterrey, Mexico in 1596. Diego de Montemayor's wife, Juana Porcallo de la Cerda, purportedly descends from two royal lines. While the lines seem to be well-documented Col. Montemayor, utilizing his high standards requiring exact confirmation of any ancestral ties, is currently conducting his own investigation to verify the connections. More on these genealogical "detective stories" in Part Three. SAL, San Antonio Lightning Newspaper, And www.SanAntonioLightning.Com (Borderlands Bookstore Inc. www.BorderlandsBooks.com Canary Islanders Symposium is part of the events planned for the weekend of Mar. 3-4-5, 2006 to celebrate the 275th Anniversary of the Arrival of the Canary Islanders to the Presidio de Bejar where they founded La Villa de San Fernando on Mar.9th, 1731. For complete information email Alicia Burger, [email protected] . or call 210-999-8119. Writing Historical Fiction March 29th, Lila Guzman, Ph.D. will be giving a workshop sponsored by TCARA. The topic is writing fiction using historical information. It will be held at the main San Antonio Library at 10:00. For more information, please contact Dr. Guzman directly at [email protected] Book: My Grandfather's Grandfather: Tomï¿½s Rodrï¿½guez Benavides. by Mauricio J. Gonzï¿½lez Extensive historical and genealogical information on Zapata County (with emphasis on San Ygnacio), Guerrero Viejo, Tamps., and Saltillo, Coahuila. It is also the story of a Tomï¿½s Rodrï¿½guez Benavides who according to legend shot a Texas Ranger around 1890 and then had to leave Zapata County forever. A person-based index. 174 pages, $9.95, plus $1.75 S&H. To order a copy call Marina Gonzï¿½lez at (956) 718-2577 or send a check payable to Mauricio J. Gonzï¿½lez, 126 Otaï¿½es, Laredo, TX 78046. To contact Mauricio Gonzï¿½lez email him at [email protected] . Sent by Elsa Herbeck [email protected] Thirty-Five Years of Struggle and Triumph: Mexican Americans in Tejas A Photographic Exhibition by Alan Pogue Alan Pogue is a world renowned documentary photographer. His first great body of work resulted from living and marching with Texas migrant farm workers as they struggles for better working conditions in the face of violent resistance from growers and law enforcement agencies. For more information about this exhibition and/or other Center for Mexican American Studies of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin public programming events, please contact either Dolores Garcï¿½a or Clarisa Hernï¿½ndez at 512-471-4557 or visit the CMAS web site at www.utexas.edu/depts/cmas . The exhibit was mounted by Dolores Garcï¿½a and Virginia Raymond. Sent by Elvira Prieto TEXAN PATRIOTS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION Some time ago I was driving between New Orleans, my hometown, and a little town called Vacherie. My car was the only vehicle for miles and I was really enjoying the solitude of that road. The view of the landscape, the wide fields of green grass bordered by pine trees in the distance, made my mind travel back in time where, perhaps, life was simpler. Little did I know that a turn in that lonely road would indeed bring the past, a past that was so critically important yet widely unknown, a past that was so personal, bursting into the present! With lunch-time approaching, the empty feeling in my stomach compelled me to veer off the main highway into a smaller road to the right to find a place where I could stop and eat my brown bag lunch. After driving perhaps a couple of miles, I noticed an old church along River Road, just across the street from the levee and the mighty Mississippi. It caught my attention, as I am usually interested in historical sights, so I decided that in front of the church was a good place to park and eat my lunch. As I ate my sandwich I noticed an historical marker in front of the church. I walked over to read what was on the marker and found out that this was one of the oldest churches in Louisiana. The town, or hamlet, or group of houses really, with the big historical church in the middle, Edgard, Louisiana, was just as deserted as the road. Fortunately, the gate to the cemetery was open. With this being one of the oldest churches in Louisiana, I figured I had to take a look at the grave markers. As I walked through the cemetery, with each step I began to travel back in time through American history! There were the graves of Vietnam veterans and Korean Conflict soldiers, there were WWII and WWI heroes buried there! All of a sudden, one grave marker stopped me in my tracks! It was a plain grave, perhaps the most plain of all, just a slab of white concrete on the ground, but the words inscribed on the marker made my head spin around at least 3 times! "Luis Bethancourt, Colonist and Patriot, served with the Galvez Expedition for American Independence" I had attended good, perhaps among the very best American schools for 24 years, and not once had I heard what my eyes were reading; that Louisiana had participated in the war for independence of the United States! Urged by my discovery, I began to research and study the subject, and I found that in some sort of injustice to Luis Bethancourt and his descendants, a vital, I would say essential, chapter of the history of the United States had been buried and forgotten along with this American Patriot!ï¿½ When George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Hanckock and the rest of the American Patriots had signed the Declaration of Independence of the United States on July 4, 1776, Benjamin Franklin is reputed as having said, in his characteristic bright humor, "Gentlemen, now we must all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately" . By 1779, the citizens of Texas and Louisiana had joined these American Patriots in their "hanging together". Ever since the beginning of the war, Spain, which at that time owned all the land west of the Mississippi River from the Isle of New Orleans to the Canadian tundra, had had "observers" to monitor the status of the war, and had covertly been aiding the American Patriots. Through the efforts of two of these observers stationed in Philadelphia, Juan de Miralles and Francisco Rendon, Spain was able to bring substantial aid to the Americans. As Robert Thonhoff documents on page 2 of his "The Vital Contribution of Spain In the Winning of the American Revolution", in 1777 the Spanish firm "Jose Gardoqui and Sons", at the request of Benjamin Franklin through Arthur Lee, sent "215 bronze cannons, 4,000 field tents, 12,826 grenades, 30,000 muskets, 30,000 bayonets, 30,000 uniforms, 51,314 musket balls, and 300,000 pounds of gunpowderï¿½ Later, in one of his letters, Franklin thanked the Spanish minister, Count of Aranda, for 12,000 muskets sent to Boston by Spain". Granville W. Hough and his daughter N.C. Hough recently discovered the reports of Arthur Lee in which they found the manifests of twelve ships loaded with war supplies which had sailed from Cadiz, Spain to Boston and Philadelphia (Granville W. Hough in a personal email to me dated Aug. 5, 2005, Papers of the Continental Congress, Records Group MO247, Item #83, Roll 10, "Letters from Arthur Lee, 1776-1780"). Although such help was obviously very significant, it was far from being the only help given by Spain to the independence effort of the 13 British Colonies. Because the British had blockaded the Atlantic coast, the Mississippi and Ohio River system became vital to the survival of George Washingtonï¿½s and George Rogers Clarkï¿½s armies. Using the port of New Orleans as a back door and the services of Diego de Gardoqui in Bilbao and Oliver Pollock in New Orleans (who, by the way, was the 3rd single largest financial contributor to the American cause), Spain sent badly needed medicine, money, muskets, munitions and military supplies to the embattled colonials. At a critical juncture on September of 1776 when General George Washington was assessing how much gunpowder and lead he had left and was trying to decide when to fight and when to retreat based on his available resources, General Bernardo de Galvez of Louisiana sent a flatboat flotilla up the Mississippi River carrying medicine, cloth, lead, muskets and 9,000 lbs. of gunpowder, to help meet George Washingtonï¿½s need through the backdoor of the Mississippi and Ohio River system. In addition to this Galvez sent an extra 1000 lbs. of gunpowder by ship with George Gibson around Florida and up the East Coast. When the Continental Congress authorized the first issue of American currency on May 9, 1776, before the Declaration of Independence, it was the Spanish treasury that backed up and guaranteed it. For this reason the new American currency took the name "dollar" from the Spanish milled "doblas" (Maria Angeles Oï¿½Donnel, Honorary Consul of Spain in San Diego, in a speech delivered June 28, 2003). In fact, although some theorize that the dollar sign ($) is composed of the letters U.S. for United States with a broken U on top of the S, Robert Thonhoff explains that what is thought as a broken U is not a U at all, but the two pillars of Hercules, and the S actually stands for Spain. Whatever the case may be, however, Spainï¿½s help in the war for American Independence would become more involved. While Galvez was sending badly needed help to the Continental Army, at the same time he was developing a letter writing relationship with several American Patriots including Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry. Patrick Henry, the fiery Patriot Governor of Virginia who said "Give me liberty or give me death!", suggested to Galvez that Spain should get more involved in the war and regain East and West Florida, which Spain had lost to England in 1763, back from the British. On May 6, 1778, Bernardo de Galvez wrote a letter back to Patrick Henry that, though mentioned just briefly by historians, had extremely far reaching implications in the history of the United States! This letter, I believe, is without a doubt one of the most important documents in American history! Robert H. Thonhoff writes concerning Galvezï¿½ closing remarks in this letter: "Galvez concluded the letter by assuring Henry that he would not spare any effort or trouble which may redound to the benefit of the colonies, on account of the particular affection he had for them." (Robert H. Thonhoff, The Texas Connection with the American Revolution, p. 26, emphasis mine) This letter is absolutely crucial to American history because in it Bernardo de Galvez expressed just how committed he was to the American cause, how much he wanted the benefit of the 13 American Colonies, "on account of the particular affection he had for them". This last statement might just as well be the statement that was heard around the world! The reason I say this is because Bernardo de Galvez was always a just and a kind man well loved by all. While he had served in Chihuahua and West Texas, for example, he was known, respected and feared for his bravery, plunging into battle to defeat his enemies, but he was loved for his kindness, which he demonstrated when he enrolled in school fourteen young Apaches he had taken captive in one of his last campaigns. Bernardo de Galvez was well known and trusted, and deeply loved by the people, consequently what he said and did, the attitude he espoused, had a tremendous effect on the people he led. The point is that when Galvez told Henry about his commitment not to spare any effort or trouble for the benefit of the United States at the time the U.S. was being born, "on account of the particular affection he had for them", Galvez expressed to Henry an attitude he communicated to the people involved in the fight, including the people of Texas. This statement by Galvez, in my opinion, is an absolutely essential statement to American history, truly a statement that was heard around the world, because in this statement is found the foundation and the explanation of the love and sense of destiny of being Americans the Spaniard Texans had, which I will examine later in this book, and which they later expressed at the time of the Texas Revolution which caused them to pursue freedom from Spain in 1813 and freedom from Mexico in 1835 which culminated in the annexation of Texas by the United States in 1845 and the setting of the American border in 1848. In other words, this "particular affection" Bernardo de Galvez had for the United States, which he showed by his deeds, was communicated to the Spaniards of Texas and the American Southwest and it eventually resulted in the United States of America being extended to the Pacific Coast. In this statement, Bernardo de Galvez laid the foundation for the Continental United States to exist as it does today. For this reason it is not too much that Bernardo de Galvez, the unsung hero of the American Revolution, should rank way higher than Lafayette and Pulaski and Von Steuben and de Grasse and the other Europeans who helped the United States during the American Revolution. Their help, though appreciated, was not as extensive as the help that Galvez and the Kingdom of Spain brought to the American colonies. But beyond that, their help was limited to the physical realm of the war itself and/or any other help they may have given. On the other hand, Bernardo de Galvezï¿½ influence in the hearts of the Spaniards of Texas and the Southwest through getting them involved in the birth process of the United States while communicating to them a sincere and special affection for the United States caused them to feel American even then which resulted in the expansion of the United States to the Pacific Coast. The participation of Spain, Texas and Louisiana in the American Revolution and the leadership Galvez provided paved the way for this expansion. George Washington is the Father of our country, the United States, and, the truth be told without diminishing George Washington in any way, Bernardo de Galvez is the Father of our country as it extends to the Pacific Coast today. Keep this in mind and it will become evident as you read the rest of this book, particularly chapters 8-18, chapter 29 and chapter 31. On June 21, 1779, King Carlos III of Spain declared war on England and issued a decree ordering his American vassals to fight the British anywhere they could find them, whether on land or at sea. The British had been preparing for war with Spain in Louisiana before this declaration of war and for this purpose they had sent Colonel Dickson with an army from the British settlement at Pensacola to strengthen British positions along the Mississippi River. Governor Bernardo de Galvez, who had not yet taken the oath of office, responded by building a gunboat to patrol the Mississippi River and by fortifying the river, he also required some recently arrived British refugees to take the oath of allegiance to Spain (J. Ben Meyer, Sr., Plaquemines The Empire Parish p. 15). At the same time Galvez encouraged the immigration of Spanish colonists from the Canary Islands whom he established in settlements strategically located around New Orleans. These Canary Islanders, as well as the French Acadians known as Cajuns, were encouraged to move to Louisiana by offering them land grants, farm animals and money enough to last them four years, for the purpose of increasing the Spanish presence around New Orleans as a line of defense against the British in case war broke out. Interestingly enough, only six years after Spainï¿½s war with England during the American Revolution was over in 1783, the town of San Elizario, Texas, located 15 miles east of El Paso, was founded with the same strategic purpose as the purpose for which these French Acadians and Spaniards had been encouraged to settle around New Orleans: "In 1789, Spain sought to protect its interests in the growing Paso del Norte region. A presidio named after San Elcear, the French patron saint of the military, was established at the old hacienda, and the settlement that grew up around it became known as San Elizario." (Booklet "A Walking History of San Elizario", Los Portales Museum & Information Center, San Elizario, Texas) Considering how slow news travelled in those days, considering that Bernardo de Galvez had been the commander of the Spanish forces in the El Paso del Norte area and had fought the Apaches in West Texas on numerous occasions, and considering, as we will see, the direct relationship the Indian Wars of Texas at that time had to the American Revolution, it seems evident, at least to me, that the founding of San Elizario, Texas, and the encouraging of families to move to the site as a strategic move, was directly related to the events of the American Revolution in Texas and Louisiana. The coincidences seem too strong to be accidental! Apparently, the founding of San Elizario, Texas, in West Texas was a direct consequence of the American Revolution. It almost has to be so! At any rate, acting as the appointed provisional Governor of Louisiana, Galvez closed off the Mississippi River to British vessels, allowing only Spanish, French and American vessels to use the Mississippi trade route, all the while expediting the flow of supplies to the 13 Colonies. In the spring of 1777 Galvez seized eleven British ships. By the time the King of Spain declared war on Britain, the British had built forts in Natchez, Manchac and Baton Rouge. British West Florida extended all the way from Florida west through Alabama, Mississippi, what today is known as the New Orleans Northshore (where my babies were born 220 something years later) across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans proper and all the way through Baton Rouge. In Louisiana, Bernardo de Galvez kept the declaration of war a secret until he had assembled a fleet of riverboats loaded with supplies and ammunition, assembled military units and commenced drill sessions. Finally, he called a general assembly at the Plaza de las Armas (Jackson Square) and as he formally took the oath of office as Governor of Louisiana (although he had been appointed provisional governor two years earlier on Jan. 1, 1777), he announced to the general public that Spain was now at war with England. Ten months after the King of Spain declared war on England, on April 21, 1780, Domingo Cabello, Governor of Texas, read this Declaration of War to the citizens of San Antonio de Bexar, effectively involving Texas in the American Revolution. Governor Bernardo de Galvez of Louisiana, as I mentioned, had previously served as a Lieutenant of the Spanish forces in Chihuahua where he had led several campaigns against the Apaches, effectively linking West Texas and Chihuahua to Louisiana since West Texas and Chihuahua were both part of Nueva Viscaya (Nueva Viscaya adjoined New Mexico in West Texas). Because of this he became aware of the large cattle herds that roamed the plains of South Texas. In 1778 Bernardo de Galvez had sent Athanese de Mezieres from Louisiana to Texas to determine the availability of horses and cattle in case war erupted against England. De Mezieresï¿½ report was favorable, the large herds of cattle that Galvez remembered were indeed roaming the plains of Texas and were available to supply the Louisiana army in the event of war against England. The next year, on June 20, 1779, Governor Galvez of Louisiana sent Francisco Garcia as an emissary to San Antonio de Bexar to meet with Texas Governor Domingo Cabello and to deliver to him a letter requesting and authorizing the export of cattle from Texas to Louisiana, a business move that was previously unauthorized, for the purpose of feeding Galvezï¿½ army. So were Texas and Louisiana joined in their common effort against the British and for American Independence. Galvez mustered up a 7000 man army plus a navy which included Spaniards, Canary Islanders, Germans, Frenchmen, Acadians, Indians and Blacks, both free and slave, from Louisiana, a contingent of about 30 First Continental Marines from Fort Pitt, a part of the South Carolina Navy,ï¿½ and a few soldiers from Texas. By law, all men between 14 and 60 years of age had to serve in the militia in the Spanish possessions. Let me stop here for just a minute and meditate a little more on what is invariably mentioned just in passing, that 30 (some sources say 26) American Marines served with Bernardo de Galvezï¿½ Louisiana and Texas Army. Much has been speculated as to why the French contribution to the American Revolution is well remembered when, according to Granville Hough, all of the French contribution to the American Revolution was always 50-50 in conjunction with Spain, and Spainï¿½s contribution to the American Revolution was historically more significant. Some have thought it is perhaps because Spain and the Spaniards came to be mistakenly associated in the American mind with the Mexicans and other Latin Americans who, generally, were of a foreign race to the Americans with which the Americans could not identify. A less sinister explanation is because the French, though not as helpful to the Americans as the Spaniards, actually fought side by side with the Americans in the 13 Colonies, as opposed to the Spaniards who fought in the South and up the Mississippi River outside the borders of the 13 original states. Whatever the case may be, we need to stop here for just a minute and meditate on what it means that 30 American Marines from Virginia, George Washingtonï¿½s home state, fought with and under Galvez. Considering the battles in which the Spaniards of Louisiana and Texas defeated the Waldeckers and the Maryland Loyalists and the British Forces under Colonel Dickson, fighting directly alongside those 30 American Marines, those 30 American Marines were the flesh and blood link between Galvezï¿½ Army and the Continental Army that made the two armies one. Those 30 American Marines were the flesh and blood union that made the American Colonials and the Spaniards of Louisiana and Texas one people at the time America was born as an independent nation, those 30 American Marines brought, in real life, the people of Texas and Louisiana, their Army and militia, under the American Yankee Doodle fife and drum. After Louisiana and Texas entered the war for independence of the United States, the citizens of Texas joined in full support of the American Revolution in several capacities. First, public prayers were immediately offered to secure the help of Almighty God in the struggle against England and for the victory of Spain and of her ally, the 13 British Colonies struggling for independence. Second, a voluntary tax was collected to help the war effort. At least half a million pesos were contributed by the citizens of Texas and the other provinces of New Spain which were directly used to re-supply the legendary French Fleet which came to the aid of George Washingtonï¿½s Continental Army right in the nick of time during the Battle of Yorktown. Third, as I mentioned, there were a few Texans who served as soldiers in Governor Galvezï¿½ army, and, fourth, all Texan men between the ages of 14 and 60 would have been activated to serve in the militia, which during the war years was primarily involved in fighting Indians, who stole Spanish cattle and horses and traded the latter to the British in the Great Lakes region for guns. The war effort of the Texas militia directly contributed to the war effort in the South, where America would later be embroiled in that painful War of Brothers known as the Civil War. I will discuss the Indian Wars of Texas as they relate to the American Revolution in more detail in chapter four. This issue is so significant and so essential to American history that it really deserves to be discussed in a chapter all its own! After King Carlos III of Spain commanded his American vassals to fight the British and Governor Galvez mustered up his army and navy, Spanish Texas ranchers, escorted by Spanish Texas soldiers, trailed some ten to fifteen thousand head of Texas cattle to feed the Spanish forces under Galvez. They followed a trail up Nacogdoches, Natchitoches and on to Opelousas, where the cattle was distributed to Galvezï¿½ forces, one hundred years before the famous Texas cattle drives to Kansas, Nebraska and Montana. Supported by several hundred Texas head of horses which were used in the cavalry and artillery, Governor Bernardo de Galvez created a third front in the American Revolution. By creating this third front in the war, Galvez relieved the forces of George Washington and George Rogers Clark of pressure to fight the British more effectively in their respective two fronts. This assertion is not just something that those of us who study history have recently discerned, General George Washington acknowledged this fact in a letter dated February 27, 1780 which he wrote to King Carlos III of Spain through Jose Monino, Count of Floridablanca, the Kingï¿½s Secretary of State, congratulating him for Galvezï¿½ victories along the Gulf Coast: " Sir: I have the honor of your letter of the 18thï¿½ I am happy in congratulating you on the important successes it announces to the Arms of His Catholic Majesty, which I hope are a prelude to others more decisive. These events will not only advance the immediate interest of his Majesty, and promote the common cause, but they will probably have a beneficial influence on the affairs of the Southern states at the present junctureï¿½ It appears that General Clinton was expected to be in South Carolina so early as Novemberï¿½ It would not be surprising if the British General on hearing of the progress of the Spanish Arms in the Floridas should relinquish his primitive design and go to the defence of their own territories." (General George Washington to King Carlos III of Spain, through the Count of Floridablanca, the Kingï¿½s Secretary of State, in a letter dated Feb. 27, 1780 delivered by the hand of Juan de Miralles. De Reparaz, Carmen I. "Yo Solo, Bernardo de Galvez y la Toma de Penzacola en 1781" Editorial Serbal, Madrid, Spain, 1986.) Washingtonï¿½s realization of the strategic diversion the Spanish Arms would create was effectively fulfilled when the British had to draw supplies and troops from the 13 Colonies to fight Galvez, including the Pennsylvania Loyalists, the Maryland Loyalist Forces, the Waldeckers and other such units whom Galvez defeated. Incidentally, George Washington was a distant cousin of the King of Spain because he, George Washington, was a direct descendant of King Fernando III of Spain through his daughter Leonor of Castile who married King Edward I of England. If one thinks about it, that makes the participation of Spain in the American Revolution even more significant and direct, seeing that the Father of the American Revolution himself, George Washington, was also in part a Spaniard: "ï¿½George Washington, ï¿½The Father of Our Country,ï¿½ was abundantly endowed with some good Spanish genes that trace back to the great Spanish king and saint, San Fernando, and beyond". (Robert H. Thonhoff , "Essay on the San Fernando-George Washington Bernardo de Galvez Connection")! George Washingtonï¿½s genealogical chart showing his descent from Eleanor or Leonor of Castile, born in Castile, Spain, daughter of King Fernando III of Spain, born near Salamanca, (himself the son of King Alfonso IX, King of Leon and Berengeria, daughter of Alfonso III, King of Castile), through her marriage to King Edward I of England. That General George Washington, First President of the United States and the man who became the Father of our Country, was in part a Spaniard, and a Spaniard who was a descendant of the marriage that united the Spanish Kingdoms of Castile and Leon and of the king, King Fernando III, who indefatigably fought the Arabs in the Reconquista of Spain until he reduced their presence in Spain to Granada, adds significance to the contribution of Spain and her citizens to the American Revolution. It seems also Providential that the First President of the United States was himself of Royal descent in both his English and Spaniard sides. (Genealogical chart from Marcus Cunliffe, Leslie Hume Cunliffe and David Williamsonï¿½s "Burkesï¿½s Presidential Families of the United States", courtesy of Robert H. Thonhoff ) As I mentioned, as soon as Spain had declared war on England, the British began to plan a two pronged attack on Spanish New Orleans. Like I said, the British at that time controlled the Great Lakes area, and they planned to send a large force to attack New Orleans down the Mississippi River. At the same time they would send another large military force against New Orleans, up the Mississippi River from Pensacola, Florida. Besides this, Simon Girty was evidently charged with expediting the flow of English guns for Spanish horses to the Indians, making it quite evident that the provision of arms and ammunition in exchange for horses stolen from the Spaniards in Texas was a British strategic move in the American Revolution all along. Governor Galvez, however, beat them to the punch. Although eventually Galvezï¿½ army grew to be 7000 men strong, Galvez didnï¿½t wait for the British to attack, he immediately marched against the British stronghold at Baton Rouge with a force of only 600 men. As Galvez and his little army force-marched up the Mississippi River towards Baton Rouge despite the extremely bad condition of the roads, he recruited volunteers and purchased supplies. By the time Galvez reached Baton Rouge, his army had grown to about 1,400 men, and they had captured Fort Bute (J. Ben Meyer, p.16). Beginning with the Battle of Baton Rouge in 1779, Governor Bernardo de Galvezï¿½ Spanish forces defeated the British all along the South. The British seemed to have found the Spanish Army, composed in large part by Louisianans and Texans, invincible! Suffering only a relatively low number of casualties, the Spanish-Louisianan-Texan Army defeated the British not only in Baton Rouge in 1779, but also in Manchac, also in Louisiana just a few miles northwest of New Orleans, and Natchez in Mississippi. The following year on March 14, 1780, in an advance they could not stop, the British were defeated by Galvezï¿½ combined forces at Mobile, Alabama, after a month long siege of the British stronghold of Fort Charlotte. Wherever he was successful, Bernardo de Galvez required the inhabitants of the land to take the oath of allegiance to Spain, which they joyfully did (J. Ben Meyer, Plaquemines; The Empire Parish, pp. 16-17). Governor Galvez demonstrated a tremendous tenacity in his campaign against the British during the American Revolution. As early as March 7, 1780, Galvez had attempted to invade Pensacola, the capital of West Florida, but had been hindered by several human and natural hurdles. Originally, his army and navy had not been able to agree on how to attack Pensacola, so they had been forced to call the invasion off. Then on October 16, 1780, as Galvezï¿½ army and navy set out to attack Pensacola for the second time, a terrible hurricane scattered his forces. After Galvezï¿½ forces were beaten and scattered by the hurricane, the British tried to take advantage of the situation and set out to recapture Mobile, Alabama, from the Spaniards. General Campbell from the British stronghold at Pensacola, sent a force of 600 men to accomplish the task. The Spaniards holding Fort Charlotte at Mobile fought gallantly, however, and although they sacrificed the lives of fourteen Spaniards and suffered over twenty wounded, they successfully repelled the British attack (Thonhoff, The Texas Connection With The American Revolution, p. 34). Galvez, however, was a man made of the same steel as Winston Churchill during WWII and he refused to surrender to the circumstances. Finally, on February 28, 1781, the Spanish forces under Bernardo de Galvez were mobilized to try to capture Pensacola yet a third time. Spanish soldiers from New Orleans were transported by sea to meet the Spanish Fleet that had issued from Havana at Pensacola. Meanwhile, General Galvez ordered Spanish soldiers stationed at Mobile to march over land to join the rest of the Spanish force gathering around Pensacola. At this point, yet another unexpected hurdle "reared up" in Galvezï¿½ strategy to dislodge the British and take Pensacola. Victory in Pensacola was wholly dependent on the Spanish fleet entering Pensacola Bay through a narrow and shallow bar that was located directly under the British battery. The foot soldiers were able to accomplish the mission without the aid of the Spanish fleet. Unfortunately, Admiral Joseph Calvo de Irazabal, who was directly responsible for the Spanish fleet, was not directly under General Galvezï¿½ authority and he was, as my little ones sometimes say at night, scared. Admiral Calvo refused to send the Spanish fleet through the shallow bar fearing that the British cannon would decimate the Spanish ships. At this point, General Bernardo de Galvez did something that sets aside true heroes from the general population; leading the attack, he forced his way into the Bay of Pensacola with only his own vessel. The British cannon opened up upon Galvezï¿½ brigantine, the Galveztown, and on three smaller boats that followed. Contrary to Admiral Calvoï¿½s expectation, the British cannon balls did hardly any damage to Galvezï¿½ private flagship, punching holes only in the sails. Galvezï¿½ troops cheered and, having been thoroughly shamed, Admiral Calvo finally followed Galvez, "The next day, the rest of the squadron entered the bay" (Thonhoff, The Texas Connection With The American Revolution, p. 36). Almost three months later, on May 10, 1781, the British were, once again, defeated by Galvezï¿½ Spanish Colonial Army and Navy in "a two pronged land and sea attack on Pensacola, the British capital of West Florida" (Thonhoff, The Vital Contribution of Texas in the Winning of the American Revolution, p.10). The Spanish Louisiana-Texas Forces under Governor Galvez had dealt a deathblow to the British forces in the South, swiftly penetrating deep into British held territory, capturing Fort George, killing over 100 British soldiers and taking 1100 British prisoners after a two and a half month siege in which, true to his good character, and in a gesture that American forces would always express, he had sent flour to the besieged British so that they would not starve to death. Governor Galvez had added to Spain almost all of the Mississippi Valley and all of the land westward from East Florida to the Sabine River, for which accomplishment the King of Spain made him Viscount of Galveztown and allowed him to write on his coat of arms "Yo Solo", I alone. While Galvez was leading his army in this gloriously undefeated campaign against the British in the South, British forces attempted to gain the upper hand in the North along the Mississippi River. Ever since, as a consequence of the French and Indian War, Spain was given all the land west of the Mississippi, including New Orleans, by the Treaty of 1763, after which Spain had established military posts at strategic locations along the river. In May of 1780 British soldiers attacked the Spanish stronghold at San Luis (St. Louis), Missouri. St. Louis was defended by a combined force of Spanish soldiers and civilian militia under the command of Fernando de Leyba. Spanish troops from St. Genevieve reinforced Leybaï¿½s men and the British attack on St. Louis was successfully repelled. Although this battle is hardly known, it was one of the most important battles of the American Revolution because it secured Spanish control of the Mississippi River for the remainder of the American Revolution. Consequently, the Mississippi and Ohio River system remained open as a main line of supplies for the American forces through the war. The Spaniards had set up a strategic post on the juncture between the Arkansas and Mississipi Rivers called Arkansas Post. Before Spain got militarily involved in the American Revolution, Arkansas Post had been used as a refuge for the American Patriots. In the winter of 1777 William Linnï¿½s "Gibsonï¿½s Lambs" had been welcomed to stay out of the freezing weather on their way back from New Orleans when they transported supplies to Fort Pitt. The following year the First Continental Marines under James Willing took refuge in their expedition within the Spanish fort. "On November 22, 1780, Spanish Officer Baltasar de Villiers crossed the Mississippi River from Arkansas Post and took possesion of the lands east of the Mississippi River in the name of the King of Spain" (Robert H. Thonhoff in a personal letter to me dated December 30, 2005). The British did not appreciate de Villiers claim to the land for the King of Spain east of the Mississippi, and they began to plan to try to take St. Louis a second time. Fortunately for the American cause, Lt. Governor Antonio Cruzat got intelligence about the British plan to take St. Louis. Like Governor Galvez had done at the beginning of military hostilities between the Spaniards and the British, Cruzat took the initiative and beat the British to the punch. Putting Lt. Eugenio Pouree in command of 151 armed men, including 91 militia and 60 Indians, Lt. Governor Cruzat sent an expeditionary force to take possession of the British fort at San Jose (St. Joseph), Michigan (Robert H. Thonhoff in a personal letter to me dated December 30, 2005). Lt. Pouree and his men left St. Louis, Missouri, on January 2, 1781 on their way to St. Joseph, Michigan. They traveled by water up the Mississippi River and then up the Illinois River. Enduring incredible hardship in the freezing northern winter, like good soldiers, they then marched overland over two hundred miles of ice and snow to accomplish their mission! Finally, one month and ten days after they had set out in this expedition they reached their destination. On February 12, 1781, Lt. Pouree and his Spanish militia, with the sixty Indians that assisted them, attacked the British fort at St. Joseph, Michigan. Being completely surprised by the attack the British surrendered, they had been caught completely unprepared for the attack, not expecting the Spaniards to travel that long distance in the unforgiving northern winter. With these military campaigns up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, Missouri and St. Joseph, Michigan, the Spaniards had fought for the Independence of the United States literally from Texas to Louisiana through Mississippi, Alabam and Florida, and up north through Missouri and Michigan. Besides this, the Spaniards directly helped George Rogers Clark and his army with war supplies in the battles at Vincennes, Indiana and at Kaskaskia and Cahokia, Illinois. Two months after the victory of the Spaniards over the British at Pensacola, Francisco de Saavedra y Sangronis, the personal representative of King Carlos III of Spain, arrived at St. Domingue (Haiti) to meet with French Admiral De Grasse. At their meeting in July of 1781 Saavedra and De Grasse developed the De Grasse/Saavedra Convention or Accord in which De Grasse, representing the French, and Saavedra, representing the Spaniards, together, developed the strategy on how they would wage the war in the American Theatre and the Western Hemisphere. "In the de Grasse/Saavedra Accord, the three-part strategy was: 1. Aid the American cause so powerfully that the English cabinet would lose hope of subduing them; 2. Take positions in various points in the Windward Islands where the English fleet lay in protected forts; 3. Conquer Jamaica and eliminate England from the West Indies. After they agreed on these aims, de Grasse told Saavedra of the Chesapeake Bay plans, which fitted well into the first aim. They made six copies of their accord in French and Spanish and sent them to their respective governments, where they were ratified." (Granville W. Hough in a personal email to me dated August 5, 2005). Although De Grasse and Saavedra did not know at this time that British General Cornwallis had selected Yorktown as his point of exit, they knew it would be somewhere in or around Chesapeake Bay. Accordingly, they proceeded to pursue the Chesapeake Bay Campaign that culminated at the Battle of Yorktown. Working together, De Grasse and Saavedra laid out the strategy for the Chesapeake Bay Campaign. The French Fleet under Admiral De Grasse would proceed to Chesapeake Bay to help General George Washington, while the Spanish Navy would protect the West Indies in De Grasseï¿½s absence, covering his back. In addition to this, the Spaniards would pick up most of the tab for the Chesapeake Bay Campaign. A problem arose when Admiral De Grasse found out that there was no French money available for the campaign, leaving him on the lurch. He tried to raise money from the French citizens of Saint Domingue, but they refused to give of their cash for the American cause. At this point, Admiral De Grasse plainly told Saavedra that he could not proceed to Yorktown without more Spanish money. Francisco de Saavedra y Sangronis immediately sprung into action and personally raised, in two days, from among the Spanish citizens of Havana, the money necessary for Admiral De Grasseï¿½s French Fleet to be able to sail to George Washingtonï¿½s aid at Yorktown. Saavedra also dipped into some money that had been assigned to Spanish Haiti (Santo Domingo) and reassigned it to the Yorktown naval French expedition. R. H. Thonhoff states that at least $500,000 (pesos) that had been raised from the Spanish citizens of New Spain were also used to directly aid the French Fleet in this predicament enabling De Grasse to proceed to Yorktown. Bernardo de Galvez, who had been appointed Captain General of Louisiana and West Florida arrived at Havana where he approved of Saavedraï¿½s plans with De Grasse and began, with the French, to prepare to invade British Jamaica. The rest, as they say, is history; the legendary French Fleet under Admiral De Grasse arrived at Yorktown in the nick of time to help General Washington and the Continental Army defeat the British Army under General Cornwallis, making Yorktown the most decisive battle of the American Revolution. "It can be accurately said that what put us over the top at Yorktown was Spanish money, as de Grasse told Saavedra plainly that he could not sail there without itï¿½ Yorktown was thus the result of Spanish financing of cooperative efforts of the French Expeditionary Force, the de Grasse Fleet, and the American forces." (Granville W. Hough in a personal email to me dated Aug. 5, 2005). After their surrender at Yorktown, however, the British held Detroit, New York, Charleston and Penobscot Bay for two more years as bases from where they could reinvade the United States and again bring it under the British crown. Bernardo de Galvez, however, had raised an army of 10,000 men to invade British Jamaica and, together with the French, expel the British from the West Indies and the Western Hemisphere. The British, being more concerned with holding Canada and the West Indies, sued for peace and were thus kept at bay by the Spaniards and the French from reinvading the United States. George Washingtonï¿½s words in his letter to King Carlos III, which I quoted earlier, regarding Galvezï¿½ success in his Southern Campaign, also applied to the permanency of the success of the United States "ï¿½It would not be surprising if the British General on hearing of the progress of the Spanish Arms in the Floridas should relinquish his primitive design and go to the defense of their own territories". As I stood by the Patriotï¿½s Grave, Luis Bethancourt, I was standing by an essential chapter of American history without which, evidently, it is possible the United States of America would never have been born, or would have been still born. In saying what I just said, I am not inflating the role of Spain and her American Colonials in Texas and Louisiana, I am simply asking the necessary question; what if? What if the Texas militia had not fought the Indians who were stealing the cattle meant for Galvezï¿½ Army? Well, Galvezï¿½ Army would not have been able to march against the British and it would not have won itï¿½s victories at Baton Rouge, Manchac, Mobile, Natchez, Pensacola, and up the Mississippi River to Michigan. What if Galvezï¿½ Army would not have been able to fight those battles for lack of food supplies? Well, the British already had plans to take New Orleans and invade Spanish Louisiana, they would have done so. Consequently, New Orleans would have been closed to ship supplies for the American Colonies causing both the Mississippi River system and the East Coast to be blockaded and the American supply lines to be dried up. The Mississippi River would have instead been used to supply the British and attack the Americans through the back door. What if the Spanish had not raised the money for DeGrasseï¿½s Fleet? Well, Admiral De Grasse plainly told Saavedra that without Spanish money he could not sail to Yorktown. Consequently, the French Fleet would never have arrived to Washingtonï¿½s rescue and the British would not have surrendered at Yorktown. Quite the opposite would have happened: the British would have beaten the Continental Army and the Americans would have lost the American Revolution. What if on top of all of this Spain had not had plans to invade Jamaica? Well, then the British would have been free to reinvade the American Colonies from their bases in New York, Detroit, Charleston and Penobscot Bay. But really, the British would not have had to reinvade the United States because if the things I mentioned above had happened, the Americans would not have been successful. Evidently, without the participation of Spain, Texas and Louisiana in the American Revolution, the United States of America would have been still born. As I continued to stand by the Patriotï¿½s Grave, a sense of awe and respect, as well as a sense of injustice, welled up inside of me. This chapter of American history was so essential, and so intimately personal to me and to all other original Texans and Louisianans, yet it was unknown to most of us! Since all men in the Spanish Colonies had to serve in the militia in times of emergency, all male ancestors of original Texans and Louisianans would have to have served in the militia during the American Revolution in one capacity or another. Providence would have it that through the series of events of the American Revolution just described, a family that had been separated in the old continent would be united, albeit without knowing it, in the common cause of American Independence. While the list of Soldiers and Sailors of the American Revolution includes two individuals from Massachusetts bearing the surname Loya, first name unknown, and their, presence in the 13 British Colonies is also attested by the record of Jonathan Loya from Middleburgh, New York, in one of the very first U.S. Federal Census (which started in 1790), and by the listing of Pierre Loya in a list of French immigrants to Acadia in 1772, the record of the Loya in South Texas does not stop with Enrique Loyaï¿½s birth in 1820. Granville and N.C Hough in their book "Spainï¿½s Texas Patriots in its 1779-1783 War with England During the American Revolution" list at least three members of the Loya family in their listings of Patriots who were part of the Texas militia which was activated during the American Revolutionary War. On pages 100 and 109 of their book, Granville and N.C. Hough include in the lists of Patriots from South Texas one Isidro J. Loya , son of Francisco J. Loya, and Fermin Solis Loya and Gerardo Solis Loya, both sons of one Ma. Luisa Loya, all from the town of Revilla, Guerrero, an Escandon settlement which had land on both sides of the Rio Grande. They would have been directly involved in fighting the Lipan Apaches who were hampering Spainï¿½s efforts in the American Revolution by stealing horses and cattle needed to support the fight against the British from Louisiana to Florida. And here is where this chapter of American history becomes so intensely personal to me and to every descendant of original Texans and Louisianans, and here is what is so great about history, I was there in the loins of my fathers! And here also is something that is extremely significant that is brought to light by the presence of the Loya family in the 13 Colonies, in the oldest, American Revolution significant towns of New York State and Vermont; Chazy, Ticonderoga, Middleburgh, Orwell and Rutland around Lake Champlain, and their participation in the War for American Independence. And here it is where this extremely significant point is brought into reality by the presence of the Loya family in the oldest towns of Texas; Penitas, Revilla, Presidio (San Juan Bautista) and San Elizario, and their participation in that same War for American Independence. From the very beginning, as evidenced by at least this one family group, the Loya family, there had been family ties, blood ties, uniting one end of our country with the other, Texas and the Southwest to the 13 Colonies, at the point and event of conception of the United States. Louisiana State Museum Grand Opening in Downtown Baton Rouge! "They Came in Ships..." Regimiento de Infanteria de Luisiana This page is part of Google's ï¿½ FOTW, Flags Of The World website http://flagspot.net/flags/es^1779.html Description shared: Michael Bunn, of the Old Capitol Museum of Mississippi History, asked about the flags used by Spanish military forces in America, specifically De Soto ca. 1540 and Gï¿½lvez ca. 1780. I received the following information from Spanish vexillologist Eduardo Panizo: An image of this flag exists in the Spanish Archivo General de Indias, in the city of Seville. It is a battalion flag of the Regimiento de Infanteria de Luisiana 1779-1781. This was the flag used by this regiment, commanded by Bernardo de Gï¿½lvez, at the battle of Pensacola on May 8th 1781, where the Spanish Army defeated the British one. Josï¿½ Carlos Alegrï¿½a, 16 July 2000: I suppose this may shed some additional light on the origin of the state flags of Florida and Alabama. This white square flag features the traditional red burgundy cross used by the Spanish army, cornered by four identical coats-of-arms, and over all the latin writing Honor et Fidï¿½litas, meaning Honour and Loyalty. Josï¿½ Carlos Alegrï¿½a, 6 September 2000. Yahoo group - Canary Islanders of Louisiana. Wade Falcon sends an invitation to join a free new Here, we can share all the information that we find and it will all be archived in one place for easy access. If you have a Yahoo account (which is free), feel free to begin adding links and post genealogy questions and information. Alien Arrivals at El Paso Sent by George Ryskamp The National Archives and Records Administration announces the completion of A3396, Index to Manifests of Permanent and Statistical Alien Arrivals at El Paso, Texas, July 1924-July 1952 (19 rolls). RG 85. 16mm. A3396 has been placed in the National Archives Building Robert M. Warner Research Center in cabinet 31A / 2, and it is being provided to NARA Regional Archives at Anchorage, Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Fort Worth, Kansas City, Laguna Niguel, Pittsfield, San Francisco, and Seattle. Descriptive material is on all rolls of the microfilm publication. CLAIRE PRECHTEL-KLUSKENS Archives I Research Support Branch (NWCC1) National Archives and Records Administration 700 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Mall Site Is Chosen for Black History Museum by Lynette Clemetson Sent by Win Holtzman WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 ï¿½ After nearly a century of political infighting and delay, the Smithsonian Institution on Monday selected a prominent space on the Mall near the Washington Monument as the site of its National Museum of African-American History and Culture. Supporters of the project, including many black cultural, political and academic leaders, who labored for years to have the museum approved, greeted the selection by the Board of Regents, the institution's governing body, with elation. High-profile advocates of the museum, the institution's first dedicated to a comprehensive study of the black American experience, had told Smithsonian officials that any site off the Mall would be viewed as a slight to African-Americans. In September 2004 the National Museum of the American Indian opened to much fanfare and high visibility on the eastern edge of the Mall near the Capitol. Some groups responded to the announcement on Monday with disappointment, arguing that the project would clutter the Mall, the grassy expanse stretching from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol. Smithsonian officials said the vote on the site was not unanimous but would not give details. Officials said they hoped to open the new museum within the next decade. "My first task for tomorrow is to stop smiling," said Lonnie G. Bunch, director of the museum. The selection of the five-acre site allows Mr. Bunch to move forward with choosing an architect, as well as to begin raising money and acquiring collections. Cost estimates for the museum, the 19th in the Smithsonian complex, range from $300 million to $500 million. Fifty percent of the cost will be paid by the federal government, the other half by private sources. The building will probably be at least 350,000 square feet, roughly the same size as the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian officials said. Mr. Bunch, former director of curatorial affairs for the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, left a position as president of the Chicago Historical Society in July to lead the new project. He said it was "quite fitting that the experience of African-Americans take its place among the museums and monuments that make the National Mall a world-renowned location." Fund-raising has already started and will be greatly aided by the site selection, Mr. Bunch said. Lawrence M. Small, secretary of the Smithsonian, said the institution was committed to building "a remarkable museum that will inspire generations of future visitors from around the world with truly American stories of perseverance, courage, talent and triumph." Richard D. Parsons, chairman and chief executive of Time Warner Inc. and a co-chairman of the museum's advisory council, said he planned to use America Online, which Time Warner owns, to create a virtual connection between the museum and potential donors, by offering links to the kinds of material and artifacts that the museum will contain. "We are going to try to hit this at several levels," Mr. Parsons said in a telephone interview after the announcement. "We will reach out to the entire corporate community and the philanthropic community, but also just folks at very large levels and at the $5 and $10 level. And you can use online communities to reach these people in new and unique ways." Supporters said the highly visible spot, adjacent to the Washington Monument across the street from the National Museum of American History, acknowledged the centrality of the African-American experience in the country's development. Efforts to build a national museum of black history began in the early 1900's but were repeatedly thwarted by political and social opposition well into the 1990's. In 1994 Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, passionately blocked Senate passage of a bill authorizing the museum, saying Congress should not have to "pony up" for such efforts. "Thank God," said Robert L. Wilkins, a Washington lawyer who headed the site selection committee on a presidential commission formed in 2002 to make recommendations for the museum to Congress. "Even though the building has not yet been constructed, I feel like we have finally fulfilled this long quest in an honorable and appropriate way." Many opponents of the site had lobbied heavily for one south of the Mall, arguing that the new museum would help bring about a much-needed physical and psychological expansion of the Mall beyond its current boundaries. "It is a lost opportunity," said Judy Scott Feldman, chairwoman of the National Coalition to Save Our Mall, a group founded in 2000 to oppose the location of the World War II Memorial between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. "We believe that there was a possibility here to make this museum not the last museum on the 20th-century Mall, but the first museum on the 21st-century Mall. It could have motivated the nation to move the Mall into the future." Detractors said they had long suspected they were waging a difficult battle. The advisory council ï¿½ which includes numerous influential black leaders, including E. Stanley O'Neal, chairman and chief executive of Merrill Lynch &Company; Robert L. Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television; and Oprah Winfrey ï¿½ recommended the monument site to the Board of Regents in early December. They based their recommendation on a review of a 198-page engineering evaluation, commissioned by the Smithsonian, of four potential sites. Two were on the Mall; two were not. "We were very clear and unanimous in our recommendation," said Michael L. Lomax, president and chief executive of the United Negro College Fund and a member of the advisory council. "The site articulates not just the kind of recognition the museum will receive, but ultimately what kind of recognition African-Americans will receive for their contributions to the country." In an interview, Mr. Johnson said he had told Mr. Small that he would resign from the advisory council if the board chose a site off the Mall. "The symbolism of denying African-Americans the same treatment as museums like the Museum of the American Indian, the Holocaust Museum and all of the great museums on the Mall would have been too much," he said. "To have relegated this museum to another site, when people are looking to it to answer everything from the need for an apology for slavery to reparations, would have been the ultimate dismissal." [[ The Holocaust was built on Federal land with funds donated by private citizens.]] The 17-member board includes several politicians, as well as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Vice President Dick Cheney was the only member not in attendance for the announcement, made in a lecture hall near the Castle, the Smithsonian's main administrative building. President Bush, who signed the bill authorizing the museum in December 2003, also endorsed a site on the Mall last February at a Black History Month event at the White House. "We have a chance to build a fantastic museum, right here in the heart of Washington, D.C., on the Mall," the president told those in attendance, including Mr. Small. Mr. Bunch said in an interview that he awoke at 4 a.m. on Monday, the day of the announcement, in a fit of excitement and anxiety over the vote. "I have always thought that the honor of creating this museum would make any place that it is located sacred ground," he said. "My focus has just been let me know what the decision is, and off to work I will go." He is quickly hiring staff members to fill his temporary offices, near the site south of the Mall that the board rejected. Lakiesha Carr contributed reporting for this article. My trip to Juanchorrey by Helen Mejia Z.-Savala S: Otra vista del viaje a Juanchorrey S: Personajes de la historia, Obispos de Zacatecas S: Homenaje; A Jose Leon Robles de la Torre S: March 27-29 IV Seminario: Reforma, Intervenciï¿½n francesa y Segundo Imperio Mexico City Aerial view Homenaje; A Jose Leon Robles de la Torre Reconocen a Don Josï¿½ Leï¿½n Robles de la Torre Sent by Mercy Bautista Olvera [email protected] 22 de enero de 2006 EL SIGLO DE TORREï¿½N TORREï¿½N, COAH.- El pasado miï¿½rcoles 11 de enero el Club Toastmasters Pioneros de La Laguna, en su sesiï¿½n ordinaria 358, realizï¿½ un merecido homenaje a nuestro colaborador Josï¿½ Leï¿½n Robles de la Torre, por su distinguida trayectoria como escritor, investigador, historiador y periodista en el marco de su 62 aniversario como notable escritor. En dicha sesiï¿½n se dieron cita los socios activos del club, quienes se mostraron orgullosos por tener la posibilidad de convivir con Josï¿½ Leï¿½n Robles de la Torre, zacatecano de nacimiento, lagunero de corazï¿½n, y mucho mï¿½s de disfrutar de una amena plï¿½tica que titulï¿½ Mis Recuerdos, mismo nombre de su ï¿½ltimo libro editado con la recopilaciï¿½n de sus vivencias e infinidad de anï¿½cdotas de su andar por este mundo. Vï¿½ctor Rubï¿½n Garcï¿½a Gastï¿½lum, presidente del Club Pioneros de La Laguna, fue el encargado de dirigir unas palabras de felicitaciï¿½n por su trayectoria y de igual forma, en emotivo acto entre aplausos y el total de la membresï¿½a de pie, entregï¿½ en nombre del club un reconocimiento a Josï¿½ Leï¿½n Robles de la Torre, quien en todo momento se mostrï¿½ agradecido y conmovido con la sencillez que lo caracteriza. Al invitado de honor lo acompaï¿½aron su esposa Ana Marï¿½a de Robles y familiares. Honor a quien honor merece Josï¿½ Leï¿½n Robles de la Torre, quien desde 1987 es colaborador de este diario, se ha hecho merecedor de infinidad de reconocimientos, entre los que destacan: 1987: Develaciï¿½n de su busto en bronce en la Calzada de los Escritores de la Alameda Zaragoza. 1988: ï¿½El Capullo de Oroï¿½ y el pergamino de Ciudadano Distinguido de Torreï¿½n. 1992: Ponen su nombre a una calle en Tepetongo, Zacatecas y de igual forma a la Biblioteca Pï¿½blica de Buenavista, Zacatecas. 2001: La UAL le entrega el reconocimiento Al Mï¿½rito Acadï¿½mico. 2004: Es nombrado Huï¿½sped de Honor en la ciudad de Zacatecas. 2004: Cronistas de Zacatecas le otorgan el Blasï¿½n Zacatecano. FUENTE: Investigaciï¿½n de El Siglo de Torreï¿½n Extraordinary collection of aerial views of Mexico City Cuarto Seminario Internacional de Especialistas sobre la Reforma, la Intervenciï¿½n francesa y Segundo Imperio, Marzo 27-29th Marzo, lunes 27 registro de participantes Informa: Centro de Estudios de Historia de Mï¿½xico Condumex: Plaza Federico Gamboa, Chimalistac, San Angel, Mï¿½xico DF. 53.26.51.71/51.74, 52.03.01.49 10:00 hrs Inauguraciï¿½n, Bienvenida Manuel Ramos, Director del Centro de Estudios de Historia de Mï¿½xico CONDUMEX Presentaciï¿½n, Patricia Galeana Presidenta de la Asociaciï¿½n de Estudios sobre la Reforma, Intervenciï¿½n francesa y el Segundo Imperio, El indio Juï¿½rez, Miguel Leï¿½n Portilla 1ï¿½ sesiï¿½n, 12:00 hrs Juï¿½rez frente a Santa Anna, Enrique Gonzï¿½lez Pedrero Dos proyectos liberales: Juï¿½rez y Josï¿½ Fernï¿½ndez Ramï¿½rez, Enrique Krauze El proyecto econï¿½mico del liberalismo juarista, Enrique Semo 2ï¿½ sesiï¿½n, 16:00 hrs Juï¿½rez frente a la Santa Sede Luis Ramos La Iglesia frente a Juï¿½rez, Manuel Olimï¿½n El clero liberal, Francisco Morales La religiosidad de los liberales, Brian Conaunghton El laicismo / Juï¿½rez masï¿½n, Roberto Blancarte Martes 28 de marzo, 3ï¿½ sesiï¿½n, 10:00 hrs El imperio britï¿½nico frente a la escisiï¿½n mexicana, David Brading Juï¿½rez en Estados Unidos, George Baker Juï¿½rez frente a Estados Unidos, Patricia Galeana Imagen de Juï¿½rez en las memorias de un voluntario imperial Emb. Walter Astiï¿½ - Burgos 4ï¿½ sesiï¿½n, 12:00 hrs. Juï¿½rez frente al imperio napoleï¿½nico, Alaine Boumier y Luis Napoleï¿½n Bonaparte Juï¿½rez en el imaginario austriaco, Konrad Ratz Espaï¿½a frente a la intervenciï¿½n en Mï¿½xico, Marï¿½a Teresa de Borbï¿½n Noticias de Juï¿½rez en los Archivos belgas, Gustaaf Janssen El Juï¿½rez de Carlota, Susanne Igler 5ï¿½ sesiï¿½n, 16:00 hrs Presencia de Juï¿½rez en Amï¿½rica Latina, Adalberto Santana La doctrina Juï¿½rez, Graciela Arroyo (Historiadores latinoamericanos) Colombia, Repï¿½blica Dominicana, Perï¿½, Argentina Miï¿½rcoles 29 de marzo, 6ï¿½ sesiï¿½n, 10:00 hrs El Juï¿½rez de Mendivil, Evelia Trejo Juï¿½rez en la Ciudad de Mï¿½xico, ï¿½ngeles Gonzï¿½lez Gamio Benito Juï¿½rez, Aurelio de los Reyes Benito Juï¿½rez, Omar guerrero 7ï¿½ sesiï¿½n, 12:00 hrs La historiografï¿½a juarista, ï¿½lvaro Matute, El primer centenario de Juï¿½rez, Clementina Dï¿½az y de Ovando, Iconografï¿½a juarista, Elisa Garcï¿½a Barragï¿½n Juï¿½rez en la literatura, Vicente Quirarte 14:00 hrs Reflexiones finales, Patricia Galeana, Clausura, Manuel Ramos . Black Hispanics, Lane College, Tennessee Conference Diario de la Marina: The Jaruco Articles The Birth of a Puerto Rican Lane College, Tennessee, Black Hispanics Sent by Margarita Tapia In observance of Black History Month, February 23rd lecture was delivered concerning Carlos Manuel de Cï¿½spedes and Cuba's war for independence.. In Cubaï¿½s war for independence, slavery and racism were a part of the struggle. On October 10, 1868, Carlos Manuel de Cï¿½spedes freed his slaves before beginning the war for freedom. General Antonio Maceo, known as the Bronze Titan; and Juan Gualberto Gï¿½mez, a civil rights advocate, were among the Blacks who fought alongside Whites for liberty in Cuba. As most Americans may be unfamiliar with these and other Afro-Cubans, this lecture will enlighten students and the general audience about the accomplishments of these heroes. The presenter will be Lane College Faculty member Blanca Acosta from Cuba who teaches Spanish. Location: Lane College, 545 Lane Avenue, Jackson, TN 38301 Diario de la Marina: The Jaruco Articles by Eduardo Ramos Garcia C.G.C. Journal Winter/Spring 2005 Thanks to the efforts of our friend and colleague, Mayra Sanchez-Johnson, president of the Cuban Genealogica Society in Salt Lake City, Utah, we know that Francisco Javier de Santa Cruz y Mallen, in addition to writing the important "Historia de Familias Cubanas" volumes, also wrote a series of articles published in the newspaper "Diario de la Marina". In her quarterly magazine, "Revista", Mayra Sanchez-Johnson, identified a total of 164 articles by Francisco Xavier de Santa Cruz y Mallen written during a span of seven years: from 1945 through 1952. For a complete listing of these articles, please refer to the April 1988 edition of "Revista" (volume I, issue number 2). For a copy of this issue, you may visit: www.rootsweb.com\~utcubangs or write Mayra at P.O. Box 2650, Salt Lake City, UT, 84110. In this issue, Mayra states there may be more articles and that the articles are not all genealogical in nature. In order to assist you in your research, The CGC Journal staff would like to offer a summary of each of these articles with the hope that many may contain information or clues concerning your family lines. These summaries will run as a feature article in each successive issue of "Raices de la Peria" until we have covered all 164 known articles. Our staff will also conduct research as to whether or not any more arti-cles exist; summaries of those will be published as well. If any of you are considering reviewing these articles on your own, we can offer one time saving tip. While viewing the microfilms, our board member, Mariela Fernandez, noted that several of the first few articles were found on page 33 of the "Diario de la Marina". Try that page first before skimming the entire paper. If anyone would like to contribute a summary of an article, we would greatly welcome and appreciate your efforts. 1. "Un Cubano Principe de la Iglesia" - December 27, 1945 The subject of this article is Monsenor Manuel Arteaga y Betancourt , the first Cuban priest to hold the post of Cardinal in The Roman Catholic Church. The author describes Monsenor Arteaga's rise in the church, his own relationship with the Cardinal and makes note of his ancestors, starting from the first Arteaga to arrive on Cuban shores from Sevilla, Spain, over 300 years earlier, Martin Arteaga y Erasu, "capitan de Navio de la Real Armada", through to the Cardinal's father, Rosendo Arteaga y Guerra-Montejo, who held the rank of Comandante during the Cuban War of Independence. 2. "Nobleza Cubana - Los Origenes" - July 7, 1946 This article is a general piece dealing with the origins of the Cuban nobility, breaking it down into two classes. The first and oldest being the descendants of the original conquistadores and settlers; the second those descended from the later immigrants. El conde de Jaruco also offers his own personal view on the relevance between these two classes. Unfortunately, no families in particular are dealt with in this article. 3. "Historia del Real Tribunal de Cuentas" - July 21. 1946 The Real Tribunal de Cuentas were tax centers established by law in 1605 and confined to three administrative centers in Spain's colonies: Peru, Colombia and Mexico. At first, Cuba, along with Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico, Jamaica and Florida, reported to the tribunal in Mexico but due to distance and growth, Cuba received its own center in 1639. In this article, Francisco Xavier de Santa Cruz y Mallen names the first ten contadores and pro-vides genealogical information on most, some in great detail. These first ten were: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz y Beitia, Juan Ortiz de Gatica y de la Barrera, Bartolome de Arriola y Garcia de Londoho, Agustin Valdez y Cordova, Pedro de Arango y Monroy, Diego de Torres-Ayala y Quadros, Manuel Garcia Palacios, Juan Francisco Zequeira y Ramallo, Jose Antonio Gelabert y Garces, and Manuel Jose Aparicio del Manzano y Justiz. 4. "El Morro" - July 28. 1946 Just after the discovery of the New World, word of the riches brought over from the Spanish colonies spread throughout the other European powers. Pirates sponsored and protected by Spain's enemies, began raiding ships and Spanish ports. La Habana, unfortunately, was one of these ports and did not escape looting by pirates. The fortress of "El Morro" was built in the latter part of the XVI century to defend the city of La Habana against these foreign aggressors and pirates. The fort had its own Alcalde del Castillo de la Fuerza who besides governing its activities, was also charged with the important duty of serving as the acting Captain and Governor General of Cuba whenever a vacancy occurred until a new governor was named and officially took control of the island's leadership. This practice was first petitioned in 1615 by one of the alcaldes del Morro, Jeronimo de Quero, and continued until 1715 when a change was made and the post of lieutenant governor of the island was created. This article briefly covers the creation of "El Morro", its designers, the re-edification process started by Antonio Fernandez-Trevejo y Zaidivar, and backgrounds and exploits of a couple of its more illustrious alcaldes: Luis Chacon y Castellon & Vicente Gonzalez de Bassecourt. The author also covers the family of one of the military entrusted with the defense of the city, Alejandro O'Reilly Y MacDowell, Inspector General de la Tropa Reglada Y Milicias de las islas de Cuba y Puerto Rico, brother-in-law of Luis de las Casas y Aragorri, one of Cuba's Governor Generals. His son, Pedro O'Reilly y de las Casas, born in Madrid, married the habanera, Maria Francisca Calvo de la Puerta y del Manzano. Also mentioned is one of their children, Manel O'Reilly y Calvo de la Puerta, who married Maria francisca Nunex del Castillo y Montalvo. The Birth of a Puerto Rican By Manuel Hernandez copyright@2006 Book: La Identidad Vasca en el Mundo: Books Recommended in the Center for Basque Studies Newsletter Fall 2005, Number 72 Basque Diaspora: Migration and Transnational Identity Migration and Diaspora by Gloria Totoricaguena. (Basque Textbooks Series). 640 pages. Hardcover, $24.95 (ISBN 1-877802-46-8); paper, $14.95 (ISBN 1-877802-45-X); Transnational Identity CD, $4.95. Introduces the historical, sociological, political, and economic factors which led to Basque migration to over twenty countries. Includes data results from years of field work regarding Basque identity and cultural maintenance. Combining theories from sociology, political science, history, and anthropology, the book investigates the specifics of Basque migrations, cultural representations, diasporic politics, and ethno- nationalism. The author analyzes the Basque Autonomous Government's international relations with various Basque communities abroad and compares them with other similar homeland- ethnic diaspora groups' relations. La Identidad Vasca en el Mundo: Narrativas sobre Identidad mds alia de las Fronteras (Basque Identity in the World: Identity Narratives beyond Frontiers) (Bilbao: Erroteta, 2005), co-authored by Basque Ph.D. student Pedro Oiarzabal and his brother, Agustin M. Oiarzabal, is a pioneer study that addresses the classical question: what is the meaning of being Basque today? The book is the result of research that took place in 2002 in twenty countries where Basques have an institutional presence in either the diaspora or the Basque Country. Basques of various ages, generations, socio-economic, and political backgrounds define in their own words the meaning of being Basque in a globalized world. For more information, www.euskalidentitv.corn . The book is available through Amazon.com, are in bookstores in the Basque region. Recommended sites sent by Alfredo Valentin [email protected] Kohut, Karl; Mackenbach, Werner (eds.) Para decir al Otro. Literatura y antropologï¿½a en nuestra Amï¿½rica. Acercamiento interdisciplinario y comparativo a las letras hispanoamericanas examinando el diï¿½logo entre literatura y antropologï¿½a: la "traducciï¿½n" de culturas como tradiciï¿½n literaria y la literatura como "creaciï¿½n" cultural. 506 p., Mï¿½s informaciï¿½n Literaturas centroamericanas hoy. Desde la dolorosa cintura de Amï¿½rica. Mï¿½s de una veintena de especialistas conforman una imagen multifacï¿½tica de las literaturas centroamericanas contemporï¿½neas contextualizï¿½ndolas histï¿½rica y socioculturalmente. News From My Uncle in El Salvador by Jaime Cader In the March 2005 issue of Somos Primos, I presented biographical facts about my uncle, a retired university teacher in El Salvador. That article included the following website which shows photographs taken by my "tio" Rafael Granados: http://www.lybelula.net/alfa/barraNav/index.htm Most of these photographs depict scenes in El Salvador. Granados taught in the agronomy department at the University of El Salvador. Every so often we e-mail each other and he has been generous with his time and resources in acquiring for me information that I need for my family genealogical work which I have been working on for years. In two recent e-mails that I received from Granados, he tells of his newest websites. One is for viewing photographs of El Salvador that were taken via satelite (parts of Mexico, etc. can also be seen) and the other one is for individuals wanting to improve their internet and English skills. The website addresses are 1) for the satelite photographs: http://geoelsal.50webs.com/ and 2) for the internetlessons: http://conozcamosinternet.terminus1.com/ I was very impressed with the "Geografia: El Salvador visto desde el cielo" website. It has maps and photographs of population centers, volcanoes, lakes, coastal areas, etc. One can really appreciate the greenery of that country in the photos. Many years ago I decided that if for some reason I could not return to El Salvador soon, I could remember that land by simply remembering the color green. I feel that in a sense this has worked for me as unfortunately I have not visited Cuzcatlan (the Indigenous name for El Salvador) since 1978. In other photos the outlines of streets can be seen along with buildings seen from a distance. On February 6, 2006, I received yet another message from my Uncle Rafael. In that communication he adds that he has transferred all of the images in the "El Salvador as seen from the Air" website to a CD-Rom. He said, "Con efectos de varios dias de anticipacion, te cuento que he trasladado las imagenes de satelite de El Salvador a un CD. Intento distribuir el tema por medio de CDs, inicialmente, de manera gratuita, y ya veremos si le gusta al publico, especialmente a los salvadoreï¿½os en el exterior." Referring to the website with its corresponding CD-Rom, I believe that the photographs and the included information are excellent tools that can be used at education centers. I have directed some high school students to the website and I observed that they became interested in viewing the scenes depicted. I wish my uncle much success with his latest projects. We highly recommend that you take the time to visit the websites mentioned in this write-up. Esteban Gomes Hay diferencias sobre su lugar de nacimiento, porque unos historiadores dicen que naciï¿½ en Cï¿½diz, Espaï¿½a, en el aï¿½o 1478 y otros, como el portuguï¿½s Barbosa Machado, dice que fue en Oporto en 1474. Desempeï¿½ï¿½ trabajos para Portugal como piloto de la flota de la India, hasta que se enrolï¿½ tambiï¿½n como piloto de la nao ï¿½San Antonioï¿½, en la expediciï¿½n de Fernando de Magallanes. No estaba de acuerdo con la forma de dirigir la expediciï¿½n por parte de Magallanes y fomento una insurrecciï¿½n, por lo que Magallanes lo apartï¿½ de sus servicios, si bien, como era buen piloto y su trabajo era necesario no lo apartï¿½ del todo. Pero en la primera ocasiï¿½n que tuvo, se amotinï¿½ en uniï¿½n de otros marineros apoderï¿½ndose de la ï¿½San Antonioï¿½ y huyeron. En su huida pasaron por unas islas en medio del ocï¿½ano, donde estuvieron unos meses. Esas islas eran las que hoy conocemos por Las Malvinas, por lo que podemos considerar a Esteban Gomes y sus compaï¿½eros los descubridores de ellas. Ciando llegï¿½ a Portugal, en marzo de 1521 fue encarcelado, aunque la libertad le llegï¿½ muy pronto y propuso el emperador Carlos V dirigir una expediciï¿½n para buscar un nuevo paso para llegar a Indias, que fue aceptada, partiendo de Sanlucar de Barrameda en noviembre de 1524 al mando de una carabela. Alcanzï¿½ la costa de Florida en 1525 y al no descubrir el deseado paso, navegï¿½ hacia el norte en la bï¿½squeda del nuevo paso, explorando todas las entradas que se le ponï¿½an a su alcance, por lo que cuando emprendiï¿½ la vuelta capturï¿½ a unos indios y los trajo a Sanlucar de Barrameda, donde los vendiï¿½ como esclavos. Cuando fue a visitar al Emperador Carlos para relatarle su viaje, fue recibido de forma desfavorable por el Monarca que le reprochï¿½ que hubiese capturado a esclavos. En 1530, convenciï¿½ a varios comerciantes y volviï¿½ a partir, esta vez con dos barcos, para efectuar una nueva exploraciï¿½n en el continente americano. No se volviï¿½ a hablar nada de Esteban Gï¿½mez, aunque tambiï¿½n los historiadores estï¿½n divididos sobre las circunstancias de su muerte, porque aunque Barbosa Machado dice que muriï¿½ en Toledo en 1534, segï¿½n otros el 17 de agosto de 1535 partiï¿½ de Sevilla autorizado por Pedro de Mendoza y una vez en Buenos Aires el 16 de enero de 1537 emprendiï¿½ una expediciï¿½n, con dos bergantines, en busca de Juan de Ayolas por aguas del rï¿½o Paranï¿½. Se sabe que volvieron los dos barcos, pero no se dice nada de Esteban Gomes, por lo que no podemos asegurar que volviese a Espaï¿½a o si perdiï¿½ la vida en aguas del Paranï¿½ o en las selvas paraguayas. ï¿½ngel Custodio Rebollo [email protected] SIMON DE ALCAZABA Y SOTOMAYOR Naciï¿½ en 1470 en Portugal, aunque iniciï¿½ su carrera en la marina del emperador Carlos V, por lo que fue recusado por su patria. En 1534 se traslada a Sevilla para organizar la escuadra que le llevarï¿½ a la zona del estrecho de Magallanes donde el rey le ha nombrado Adelantado de la nueva provincia de Nueva Leï¿½n. El 21 de septiembre de 1534, al mando de dos barcos viejos, ï¿½Madre de Diosï¿½ y ï¿½San Pedroï¿½, y con unos 250 hombres, partieron de Sanlucar de Barrameda, llegando a finales de aï¿½o al sur del continente. Entre los componentes de esta expediciï¿½n iban; Alonso Fernï¿½ndez de Villamarim, Nuï¿½o ï¿½lvarez, Gonzalo Rabelo y Gonzalo de la Vega, de Orense; Florencio de Colmenara, del Valle de Ojeda; Alejo Garcï¿½a, de Paradinas; Ochoa de Meï¿½ate, de Munguï¿½a; Juan Caï¿½ada, de Cuenca; Antonio Sï¿½nchez, de Carriï¿½n de los Condes; Martï¿½n de Chaoz, de Calahorra; Juan de Sarabia, de Arnedo; Juan Rodrï¿½guez, de Sevilla; Jerï¿½nimo de Fonseca, de Ayamonte y Francisco de Medina, Dionisio de Monroy y Andrï¿½s de Toro, de Medina del Campo. El 9 de marzo de 1535 Simï¿½n de Alcazaba eligiï¿½ el lugar donde iba a construir su ciudad y diseï¿½ando el trazado de la fortaleza, solemnemente instala un toldo y fundï¿½ la primera poblaciï¿½n de la Patagonia y futura capital de su adelantazgo. Ese mismo dï¿½a parte una expediciï¿½n para el interior y tras veinte dï¿½as de marcha con muchas dificultades, dos marineros llamados Arias y Sotelo, se sublevan y apresan a Rodrigo Isla y Juan de Mori, que marchaban al mando de la expediciï¿½n. Cuando regresan a la costa, los sublevados asesinan a Simï¿½n de Alcazaba que se encontraba a bordo de su nave. Despuï¿½s de la perdida de mas de 80 vidas, Isla y Mori logran imponerse y Arias y Sotelo son degollados y Rodrigo Martï¿½nez, piloto de la nave ï¿½San Pedroï¿½, Nuï¿½o ï¿½lvarez y Alejo Garcï¿½a, son abandonados a su suerte por haber participado en la revuelta. Las dos naves se hacen a la mar y la ï¿½Madre de Diosï¿½ naufraga, pero la ï¿½San Pedroï¿½ logrï¿½ llegar a la bahï¿½a de Todos los Santos ï¿½ngel Custodio Rebollo [email protected] [email protected] writes: BOSTON PASSENGER LISTS, 1820-1943 (Update adding 1820-1891) This database is an index to the passenger lists of ships arriving from foreign ports at the port of Boston, Massachusetts from 1820-1943. In addition, the names found in the index are linked to actual images of the passenger lists, copied from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) microfilm, T843, rolls 1-454. Information contained in the index includes given name, surname, age, gender, ethnicity, nationality or last country of permanent residence, destination, arrival date, port of arrival, port of departure, ship name, and microfilm roll and page number. If a name of a friend or relative whom the individual was going to join with, or a place of nativity was provided, that information is included in the index as well. Many of these items may be used to search the index in the search template above. It is important to note that the port of departure listed on these passenger lists is not always the original port of departure for these individuals. A ship could make several voyages throughout the year, making several stops along the way. Oft times the port of departure found on these lists is the most recent port the ship was located at prior to arriving at the port of Boston. Therefore, if your ancestors emigrated to the U.S. from Germany, they could be found on a passenger list coming from Liverpool, England (if, in this case, the ship left from Bremen, Germany then continued on to Liverpool, England before arriving in Boston). The microcopies of the passenger lists found at NARA are arranged chronologically by arrival date of vessel. If you do not wish to search this database using the search template, the images may be browsed following the chronological arrangement. To browse the images first select the "Year" in which you would like to search, followed by the "Month", and finally the "Ship Name". To learn about researching in passenger records consult John P. Colletta's book, They Came In Ships (Salt Lake City: Ancestry, 1993). Free genealogy databases http://www.freesurnamesearch.com/ Sent by Janete Vargas [email protected] Access thousands of free genealogy databases and record transcriptions. And much more ..... FREE Genealogy Forms and Charts Ancestry Research Registry : List the surnames you are researching. Contact other researchers who have similar research interests. Whether you're looking for quality websites to surf or searching, or for a free place to list your website to get the right visitors to maximize your site's exposure., for free. Thousands of Rings already listed in all the major, and minor, search engines. Janete Vargas [email protected] www.NYTimes.com Sent from John Inclan [email protected] Peru has asked for the return of many of the artifacts in "Machu Picchu," an exhibition now back at the Peabody Museum at Yale University. Yet instead of cementing an international partnership, the exhibition, which returned to the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale in September, has brought a low ebb in the university's relations with Peru. At issue are a large group of artifacts that form the core of the show, excavated at Machu Picchu in a historic dig by a Yale explorer in 1912. The government of Peru wants all of those objects back. Peru contends that it essentially lent the Machu Picchu objects to the university nearly a century ago and that the university has failed to return them. Yale has staunchly rebuffed Peru's claim, stating that it returned all borrowed objects in the 1920's and has retained only those to which it has full title. The dispute is inflamed by the swashbuckling exploits of Hiram Bingham III, a Yale professor, aviator and later senator, and the special dispensations he brokered with the Peruvian government to take Inca bones and ritual tomb objects out of Peru. "The irony is that for years the collection was just left in cardboard boxes," said Hugh Thomson, a British explorer who has written about the early-20th-century Yale expeditions to Machu Picchu. "It's only when they rather conscientiously dusted it off and launched this rather impressive exhibition that the whole issue has surfaced again." Both Yale and the Peruvians say they hope for an amicable resolution, and talks continue. In December, Yale even offered to return numerous objects to Peru and help install and maintain them in a Peruvian museum. Up to now Peruvian officials have not responded to this proposal, saying that recognition of Peru's title to the entire collection must be the basis of any agreement. Peru did have laws in force at the time governing archaeological finds, and its government in theory had ownership of any artifacts unearthed from Peruvian soil. As a result, the dispute has become something of a test case for the limits of cultural property claims against American institutions. Yale's recent research on the Bingham collection has been pivotal to cracking the mystery of Machu Picchu, a site whose purpose had eluded scholars for decades. Bingham argued variously that the site was a fabled early capital of the Incas or one of the empire's most important religious complexes where "virgins of the sun" were regularly sacrificed. Others have speculated about its possible astrological significance. But research led by Dr. Salazar and her husband, Richard L. Burger, a professor of anthropology at Yale and also a curator of the show, suggests that the site was simply one of many royal estates used as a country retreat away from Cuzco, the Inca capital. Other researchers, citing the Yale team's extensive scientific work on the burials and the scholarly exhibition it assembled, suggest that Peru's campaign to get back the collection is politically motivated. As the first indigenous Peruvian to hold the office, Alejandro Toledo has saluted the country's Inca heritage, even choosing to have part of his inauguration ceremony held at Machu Picchu in 2001. "Machu Picchu has tremendous symbolic value to Peru," said Johan Reinhard, an Inca specialist who is explorer in residence at the National Geographic Society. "By refusing to acknowledge Peruvian ownership, it may be losing the cultural battle."	i don't know
Meaning 'conquerors' what name was given to the 16th century soldiers and pioneers who invaded Mexico?	America, Spanish conquest \| South African History Online South African History Online European expansion, conquest and the slave trade 15-18th century Related articles The content below has been modified to align with the 2011/2012 curriculum changes Conquest, warfare and Spanish early colonialism in the Americas The Caribbean Islands On his first voyage, Columbus claimed San Salvador, Cuba and Hispaniola as Spanish possessions. He built a fort and left behind Spanish soldiers to hunt for gold on Hispaniola, while he returned to Spain. (These men were later murdered by the inhabitants of the island for mistreating them.) On his second voyage, Columbus took a thousand Spanish colonists to settle in Hispaniola. This was the first European colony in the ‘New World’. These colonists fought among themselves and with the inhabitants of the island. They were greedy and complained that there was not enough gold to make them all rich. They were given land and allowed to force the indigenous people to work for them, but they were still not satisfied. The colonists were also responsible forintroducing foreign epidemic diseases such as influenza, smallpox, measles and typhus, which drastically reduced the indigenous population in the Caribbean within 50 years. Columus’ First Voyage to San Salvador, Cuba and Hispaniola. Source: wikipedia Spain Conquest After Christopher Colombus 'discovered' the Americas in 1492, he was made governor of the new territories. These conquests were soon followed by the colonisation of most of South and Central America, parts of the Caribbean, Mexico and much of the United States of America (USA). In 1494 Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordisillas, which was meant to divide the globe in two spheres of influence, so that the two empires would not interfere with each other's explorations and conquests. West of the line would be Spain's sphere of influence and east would be Portugal's. The line ran through what is today South America and particularly Brazil. The result was that most of South and Central America fell into the hands of Spain. Portugal colonised Brazil, which they discovered in 1500 and lies east of the line of Tordisillas. In the early 16th century, the Spanish began their conquest of the Americas. As far as they went, they subjugated local populations and imposed Christianity upon them. The Spanish soldiers, explorers and other adventurers who conquered these lands were called 'conquistadors', which means conquerors. Many came hoping to make a fortune. The Caribbean islands Hispaniola (which means 'Little Spain' and is today divided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Puerto Rico and Cuba were among the first American lands to be conquered. In 1512, the first Spaniards to settle on the American mainland did so in Panama. But not all the American land was brought under Spanish control. In many cases, the conquistadors had to fight against stronger local adversaries before land could be claimed for the Spanish crown. In Mexico, it took Hernán Cortés and his men over 2 years to subdue the Aztec empire. In 1521 he succeeded with the help of Native American allies and called Mexico "New Spain". The fall of the mighty Inca empire followed and was complete the by 1533. The conquistadors were notorious for their cruelty and ferocity. Local populations were enslaved, abused and killed. In 1542, colonial laws were introduced to protect the Amerindians. In 1552 a book about the conquistadors' abuse was published by Bartolomé de las Casas. It was called a Short Account of the Destruction of the West Indies. The American mainland In the early 1500s the Spanish began to conquer the mainland of Central and South America. Vasco NÁºÁ±ez de Balboa, a Spanish merchant, was considered the first of the conquistadors. Balboa is best known as the first European to see the Pacific Ocean. However, his expedition did not end well as one of his rivals, the newly appointed governor of Darien (Panama) had him executed. Today, Panama honours Balboa by naming its monetary unit, the balboa, after him. America’s timeline 300 - 900 The Mayan civilisation. 900 - 1200 The Toltecs and Chichimec peoples establish the city of Tula. 1100 - 1530 The Inca civilisation. 1345 -1530 The Aztec civilisation. 1492 Christopher Columbus arrives in Latin America. 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. 1497 Voyage to North America by John Cabot. 1500 Discovery of Brazil by Pedro Cabral. 1519 Magellan sails around the world. 1519 -1521Conquest of New Spain (Mexico) by Hernán Cortés. 1524 Council of the Indies established in Spain. 1531 - 1538 Conquest of Peru by Francisco Pizarro. 1549 Permanent settlement of Brazil begins. 1550 - 1690s Jesuits explore the South American interior. Activity: Write these events on the board or projector, but in the WRONG order. The students should try to recall the correct order in their notebooks Conquering the Aztec and Inca Empires: The processes of conquest and colonialism In the mid-fifteenth century, the powerful empires of the Aztecs and Incas dominated large areas of the Americas. There was no trade across the Atlantic Ocean at this stage. Before European exploration and colonisation, Arab merchants traded with the countries in the East. The Arabs had a monopoly or complete control over the overland trade routes across the land to the East. The Arabs charged high taxes on all the trade that passed through the overland routes they controlled. These high taxes made the price of products like gold, silk and spices that Europeans wanted, more expensive for them to buy. Europeans wanted to find their own sea route to the East that did not cross Arab lands. The Europeans knew very little about Africa and the East, and in order to find another trade route, they went on voyages or journeys of exploration across the sea. European countries fought with each other on sea and land to control the trade routes and the countries they discovered. There were two ancient civilisations in central and South America which the Spanish were particularly interested in. Both the Inca Empire of Peru and the Aztec Empire of Mexico held many riches. The Aztecs were the first great Native American civilisation with which the Spaniards came into contact. Conquering the Aztec Empire Before we can examine the conquest of the Aztecs, we need to understand who the Aztecs were. The Aztecs In 1345 the Aztecs travelled south to central Mexico, where they founded a large lakeside city called Tenochtitlán. The Aztecs were a warlike, bloodthirsty poeple and through their violent conquests of other groups they grew wealthy and powerful. They demanded that those they conquered pay tribute to them. By the early 16th century, the Aztecs dominated Mexico, especially the southern part. It is believed that the Aztec empire of over 10 million people had a strong military tradition and a well established trading network. Merchants travelled through the whole empire, trading as well as serving as ambassadors, spies and sometimes soldiers. The Aztec monetary system was based on cocoa seeds, and the markets were very well organised. More than 60 000 people came to the market in the capital daily. When the Spanish came to Mexico and saw these markets, they declared that they had never seen anything like it in Europe. A mural by Mexican artist Diego Rivera (1886-1957), showing his impression of the building of the Aztec city Tenochtitlán. Source: www.downtheroad.org The Aztecs were influenced by an earlier civilisation, the Toltecs, who ruled the area between 900 and 1200 AD. Toltec workers and merchants taught the Aztecs how to make objects from feathers and gold, how to interpret the stars and how to use a calendar. The Aztecs knew how to restore land from the lake – in other words, to dry up sections of the lake in order to expand the islands. This was done by piling mud onto beds of straw inside wooden fences. In this way, they also built new land areas. They followed a hieroglyphic writing system, and wrote documents on paper made from tree bark. Documents included tax lists, legal documents, religious texts and historical writings. These documents reveal much about the Aztecs. The modern Mexican flag bears an eagle with a snake in its beak. The symbol comes from an Aztec legend. According to this legend, the gods had promised the Aztecs land they would be able to recognise through the presence of an eagle sitting on a cactus, holding a snake in its beak. They found the eagle on an island in Lake Texcoco, where they settled. According to another Aztec legend, the god Quetzalcoatl had been defeated by an evil god and disappeared into the eastern (Atlantic) sea. He had foretold that he would return from the same sea, leading a group of white-skinned, bearded men, to defeat his enemies. When the Spaniards came from the east, white-skinned and bearded, the Aztecs did not fear them. Instead, they welcomed them as their deity and his group of warriors, which made it so much easier for the Europeans to conquer the Aztecs. Who were the Mayans, and how do they relate to the Aztecs? Between 300 and 900 AD, the Mayas were a very strong and developed civilisation in Central America. They are often compared to the Romans. They had a complicated hieroglyphic writing and a mathematics system, and their calendar was more exact than the European's calendar. Civil wars and invasions weakened the mighty empire. In around 1200 the Mayas were conquered by the Toltecs, who absorbed Mayan architecture, art and religion. Even later, the Aztecs took over and at the same time took over aspects of Toltec and so Mayan culture. By the time the Europeans came, the grand Maya civilisation had collapsed. All that was left were small groups. These were unable to unite against the European invaders, and the Spaniards conquered the groups one by one. Conquest Case Study 1 Modern-day Mexico City is situated on the site of the great Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. The Emperor headed a very complex society that was ruled partly by religion and fear. The Aztecs believed they were the chosen people of the gods. Their chief god was Huitzilpochtli who represented the sun. The victorious sun rose each morning, drove off the moon and stars and captured the daytime sky. But the sun's victory was short-lived. Each afternoon and evening, the sun sank in tired defeat. For the sun to successfully rise each day, it had to be nourished with human blood. This blood was supplied by victims were captured during war. The Aztecs therefore went to war continuously. Those who were defeated and incorporated into the Empire were never happy with Aztec rule. The Aztec calendar had 365 days. It was used more than 100 years before the Gregorian calendar (used in our world today) and shows the level of sophistication of Aztec science. The Aztec calendar is recorded as a carving on the Aztec sun stone currently on exhibit in Mexico City. The sun stone is filled with symbols that refer to human sacrifice. At the centre is a sacrificial knife sticking out from the mouth of the central deity and talons on either side of the deity's face which grasp human hearts. The Spanish king sent a general called Hernando Cortes to find the Aztecs. The Aztecs lived in a fertile valley 2000 metres above sea level, the water from the surrounding mountains watered their crops, which included maize, cotton, beans and chili peppers. The capital was at Tenochtitlin (today called Mexico City), a vast city with causeways and bridges and huge stone buildings and temples. Their leader at the time that Cortes and the Spanish soldiers arrived, was Montezuma. Montezuma at first welcomed the Spanish as the Aztecs thoughts they might be holy men, but they were soon to realise this was not so. The Spanish conquistadors were only interested in the gold. Cortes came with 16 horses (which the Aztecs had never seen before), 14 cannons, steel swords and crossbows. This made them stronger in battle against the Aztecs. The Spanish were also made stronger by being able to get help from the oppressed enemies of the Aztec Empire who were willing to assist them. They were also helped by an interpreter called Dona Marina. Her birth name was Malinalli. After a battle with Cortes, the defeated native Americans gave her to Cortes as a peace offering. The Spanish baptised her into the Catholic faith and she was renamed. She learnt Spanish, lived with Cortes and later gave birth to his son. She could speak the Aztec language and told Cortes everything she knew about the Aztecs. In 1521, after two years of resistance, the Aztec Empire fell to the Spanish. Montezuma was killed, and many Spaniards and Aztecs lost their lives. The following information will still be developed for this ‘Aztec’ topic: – Slavery and its impact on the Aztecs – Consequences on the Aztecs Please contribute activities and content for this section by clicking on the ‘contribute’ button. Conquering the Inca Empires Before we can examine the conquest of the Incas, we need to understand who the Incas were. The Incas Around 1100 AD, the Incas came to the Andean region from the south and founded the city Cuzco. They began the expansion of their empire by conquering small groups in what is today southern Peru, and eventually subjugated the entire Andean coast and highlands. At its height, the Incan empire stretched from modern northern Ecuador to central Chile and included territory in modern-day Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile and Argentina. An Inca artifact: a knife handle made from solid gold. Source: www.theincas.com The emperor was called 'Inca', and it was believed that he was the son of the sun, the most important Inca god. Society was organised in clans. The Incas had a vast network of roads that crossed the whole empire, altogether about 40 000 km long. This made it easier for the Inca's officials to travel through the empire to keep an eye on all the clans. However, since they had no horses or wheeled vehicles, all travelling was done on foot. Messages and news were sent across the land in a relay system: there were small buildings called 'tambos' all along the roads. A messenger would run with his news to the next tambo, where another messenger would take over. The Incas had a system of writing called 'quipo'. It was not an alphabet, but a system of strings and knots. A number of strings hung from a main string, and each one was knotted. Each knot or series of knots represented an event or a number. In Inca society, every person had to work without pay, because labour was seen as a form of tax. Shortly before the Spaniards came to Peru, the Inca emperor died. This was followed by a civil war between his two sons. The Spaniards, led by Francisco Pizarro, arrived in 1532 and were able to exploit the situation and capture the already weakened state. Conquest Case Study 2 Francisco Pizarro was the Spanish conqueror of Peru. He left Spain for the West Indies in 1502 and lived on the island of Hispaniola. He was also part of Balboa’s expedition to the Pacific Ocean. Pizarro heard tales of a southern land rich in gold. During the 1520s Pizarro led two expeditions down the west coast of South America and saw the golden ornaments worn by Native Americans of the Inca Empire of Peru. He got permission from the emperor of the King of Spain, Charles V to conquer this land and become its governor. Pizarro raised an army of 180 men to take with him to Peru. Atahualpa, the Inca, or emperor, was captured by the Spaniards, who held him hostage. His followers were tricked into paying a large ransom of silver and gold. Instead of sparing his life as promised, Pizarro executed Atahualpa on 29 August 1533 and took control of the town of Cajarmaca. Pizarro then marched south and captured the Inca capital at Cuzco. After looting Cuzco, the Spaniards went on to establish control over the rest of the land of the Incas. Without an emperor to lead them, the Incas found it hard to resist the Spanish invasion. They were divided among themselves and their weapons were no match for the guns of the Spaniards. Only one Inca community, which was high up in the mountains and difficult to reach, held out against the conquistadors. It survived as the last Inca stronghold until the Spanish conquered it in 1572 and executed its ruler, Tupac AmarÁº. In 1535, Pizarro set up a new capital at Lima and, as governor, was responsible for bringing many settlers to Peru. Most settlers were involved in mining the vast amounts of silver and gold that existed in Peru. The Spanish were allowed to force the Incas to work for them for low wages. They used forced labour in the army, to build new cities and to mine silver and gold. You have already heard that conquistadors often fought among themselves. Diego de Almagro, Pizarro’s former partner, fought with Pizarro over Cuzco. The power struggle between Pizarro and Almagro led to the War of Las Salinas in 1538. Almagro was executed, but his son, known as Almagro the Lad, continued the war. Pizarro was murdered in his palace in Lima by followers of Almagro in 1541. This is a portrait of Atahualpa, drawn from life, by a member of Pizarro's detachment, 1533. Source: wikipedia The following information will still be developed for this ‘Incas’ topic: – Slavery and its impact on the Incas – Consequences on the Incas Please contribute activities and content for this section by clicking on the ‘contribute’ button. Resistance to Spanish colonialism The Aztec and Inca Empires covered very large areas and consisted of millions of people. It was only after long and bloodied battles that they gave up their capitals to the invaders. The European diseases that reduced the population of the indigenous people of the Caribbean islands also affected the Aztecs, and to a lesser degree the Incas. The Spanish were less successful against the people who occupied other areas of Central and South America. These people attacked unexpectedly and took advantage of the fact that they outnumbered the Spanish. In 1542 the Spanish founded the city of Mérida in the north-western corner of Mexico, but they controlled only some of the areas around this city. The biggest part of the peninsula was still ruled by Mayan communities. Resistance Case Study 3 The Spanish encountered particularly fierce resistance from the Auracanian tribes. After the conquest of the Inca Empire, a Spanish force moved southward to found the city of Santiago in 1541. They gained control over the fertile central region of present-day Chile. The Araucanians lived in the southern part of Chile, and resisted Spanish control until well into the nineteenth century. The Spanish built a line of forts to defend their settlements against continuous Araucanian attacks and raids. The Araucanians adapted to the European style of warfare by making spears to fight the Spanish while they were on their horses. The Araucanians were finally defeated at the end of the 1870s and forced to live in reservations. Resistance Case Study 4 A slave revolt in Haiti: A distinct type of resistance in exploitation colonies was the slave revolt. The most dramatically successful was the Haitian Slave Revolt, on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, led by Francois Dominique Toussaint Louverture. The revolt, lasted from the early 1790s until 1804, when Haiti received its independence. There were many other slave revolts throughout the Caribbean and Brazil. Some of these revolts failed and many slaves who had participated in revolts were brutally tortured and executed. Activity Decide as a class whether you will do this activity on your own or in groups of 5-6 people. Find as much information as you can on ONE of the following civilisations: the Mayas, Aztecs or Incas. Use books in the school or community library as well as the internet. (There are some links in this section that you can use.) The consequences of Colonisation of European expansion on the American indigenous population and the World The arrival of the Europeans and their conquest and colonisation of the Americas transformed this land forever. Its people were subjugated and with them, hundreds, thousands of years' culture and civilisation were suppressed. Many died of the new diseases the Europeans brought with them. Indigenous religions did not die out, but often had to make way for the European's new religion of Christianity. Shortly after the colonisation, a phenomenal trade in humans began across the Atlantic Ocean, as slaves were needed to work the land and plantations in the Americas. The trans-Atlantic slave trade become one of the most significant and for many, traumatic, periods in world history. But colonial rule was not destined to last in the Americas. By the end of the 18th century, the European settlers of American colonies began to rebel and press for independence. The American War of Independence, or American Revolution, freed the 13 eastern coast colonies from British rule, and paved the way for the establishment of one of the biggest 20th century powers, the United States of America (USA). This revolution was soon followed by liberation struggles all over Latin America in the beginning of the 19th century. By about 1826, most of the Latin American countries were free from colonial rule. The effects of conquest and colonisation on Native Americans Tthe arrival of the Europeans in America meant that the numbers of the native populations diminished rapidly. For example, the first Native American group that Columbus came into contact with was the Arawaks of Haiti. At that time, about 1502, there were 250 000 Arawaks. But barely 50 years later, had their numbers drastically been reduced to 500. Another 100 years later, they completely died out. The reasons for the decline of the Native American population include warfare with Europeans, enslavement by the conquerors, and the diseases brought from Europe. These diseases might not have been life-threatening in Europe, where over centuries people had built up natural immunity to diseases like chicken pox and measles. But these diseases were unknown in America, and so the Native Americans had not had chance to build up any resistance to them. Those that were fatal to even Europeans, like smallpox, proved to be especially dangerous to the Native Americans. In some cases whole villages were wiped out by European diseases and it is believed that far more than half the Native American population died in this way. Other diseases that were brought by the Europeans include dysentery, malaria and hookworm. Not only did millions of Native Americans die. The European conquests meant the end of civilisations that were more advanced than those in Europe. Gold, silver and other treasures were taken and a most of these minerals was sent to Europe. Filled with religious zeal, the conquistadors often destroyed temples and other buildings and burned documents, so that a great deal of cultural and historical materials was lost. Enslavement was also common. When the Europeans began to settle in America, they needed slaves to work on their cotton, tobacco and sugar plantations. In many cases whole communities were violently enslaved, like the Arawaks encountered by Columbus. Weakened by disease, the Native Americans were unable to cope with hard manual labour. The Europeans needed alternative labour and Africans slaves proved to be the answer. African workers were strong, worked hard, were immune to many diseases and were easily obtained. How colonization led to the practice of slavery and its impact on these societies The trans-Atlantic slave trade brought millions of African slaves to the Americas. The trade began in the early 16th century. By the end of the 17th century, about 30 000 slaves were being shipped to the Americas each year. By the end of the 18th century, the number had increased to nearly 80 000 per year. In total, about 11 or 12 million African slaves were taken to the Americas. The Europeans bought the slaves from African traders, mostly in West Africa. The slaves were often prisoners-of-war taken in battles between indigenous African groups. The slaves were kept in forts on the African coast before being transported to America. The conditions in the forts and on the ships were horrendous. There was little space to move or even to go to the bathroom. About 13-30% of the slaves died on the ships. In America, they were auctioned off to their future owners. These slaves often had to work for 10-11 hours per day, six days per week. The conditions and treatment of the slaves were not the same everywhere in the Americas. In some areas, like Brazil, they were often treated worse than in the American South, because there were many more slaves and so they could be easily replaced if they died. There were a number of revolts against slave masters, but they were usually crushed violently. Detail from a mural by Mexican artist Diego Rivera, which shows an African slave brought to the New World. The mural is called 'Colonial Domination'. Source: www.jlhs.nhusd.k12.ca.us Early in the 19th century, the slave trade was banned. This led to some improvement in the treatment of slaves to ensure that they would survive longer. Later that century slavery was banned completely. The legacy of the slave trade and slavery lasted much longer. For many African Americans, who do not know where their African ancestors came from, the slave trade means that a huge part of their background remains a mystery. Slavery in the New World played an enormous role in the economies of America and Europe. People became very wealthy through their plantations, worked by slaves, and through trade with Africa and Europe. For more on History of Slavery and early colonisation Religion Another important aspect of conquest and colonisation is the religion brought by the Europeans, namely Christianity. There were several reasons why the Europeans were eager to conquer the Americas. One was South America's legendary treasures in gold and silver. The other was religious zeal. Many Spaniards claimed to have gone to the Americas to spread the gospel and convert the Native Americans. It is debatable whether religion or greed played the most important role. For example, in Mexico, the conquistador Hernán Cortés was welcomed by the Aztec emperor, probably because the Aztecs believed that it was their god Quetzalcoatl returning from the eastern sea, as he had promised. The emperor sent Cortés presents of gold and silver. In return, Cortés made alliances with the Aztecs' enemies, destroyed Aztec temples and cities, and erected crosses, a symbol of Christianity, on the ruins. Furthermore, when the Aztecs saw the crosses they became even more convinced that this was the return of their god, since he was the god of crossroads. When the Aztecs realised their mistake, it was too late. The Spaniards defeated them in battle, and finally had not only their land, but their gold and silver as well. But not all Christians who came to the Americas were out to conquer and suppress. Not too long after the Europeans set foot in the Americas, the first Christian missionaries arrived. The Jesuits were especially active in South America. When Portuguese descendants in Brazil wanted to enslave the indigenous people to work on their sugar plantations, Jesuit priests defended them against the slave masters. The missionaries also did not always impose their own European languages on the people they wanted to convert, and in some cases preached and worked in certain indigenous languages. This helped to expand the local languages and put them into writing. Many of the indigenous people did convert. Today, Christianity is the main religion of Latin America and the Roman Catholic Church the main church, although traditional religious practices still exist. The famous statue of Jesus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is 30 metres high and was built in the 1920s. Today, Christianity is the main religion in Latin America. Source: library.thinkquest.org Activity Write an essay of 1-2 pages on the following topic: ‘Despite the negative aspects of conquest, the colonisation of America was positive in the long run because it transformed America from a primitive and undeveloped land to one that is civilised and developed’. Do you agree? Remember to structure your essay well. There has to be an introduction, stating the question which you will answer in the essay; a body in which you give your argument; and a conclusion that brings your argument together and give your opinions on what was asked whether you agree with the statement or not. Your answer does not necessarily have to be right or wrong because you are presenting your opinion with evidence and historical views to support it! Summary of Consequences on the indigenous society and the world Consequences on the indigenous society Disease and forced labour drastically reduced the population of Central America. It is estimated that the population of Mexico was reduced by ninety per cent in the first fifty years after the arrival of the Spanish. In Central and South America, the Spanish settlers eventually intermarried with the Incas and Aztecs as most of the settlers were men. The people of mixed racial descent are known as mestizo and now form the majority of the population. The official language of the former Spanish colonies in the Americas is Spanish but there are many people who still speak their indigenous languages. The indigenous people were also converted to Catholicism which remains the dominant religion in Central and South America. For further reading on ‘Spaniards in a new world: 16th century AD’ visit : www.historyworld.net Consequences on the World The expansion of European trade resulted in the colonisation of five continents over a period of five centuries. Using military force, each of the European colonial powers dominated world trade at different times. When one colonial power became weak, another challenged it and replaced it as the dominant power. What was the effect of colonialism on the World Colonial empires became rich and powerful as their empires grew in size. However, colonies were expensive to run, especially if wars were involved. Wars were fought between rival empires who wanted the same land or to defeat rebellious indigenous inhabitants. Europe, in particular Britain, was able to industrialise because of raw materials obtained from colonies and because colonies provided markets for manufactured goods. Slavery did not start because of colonialism; slavery has always existed. However, European powers were able to exploit their colonies and increase their wealth by using slave labour or very cheap indigenous labour. Colonialism did not cause racism, but it helped to reinforce the belief that Europeans were the dominant race and therefore superior and that other races were subordinate and therefore inferior. On the other hand, colonialism provided opportunities for people of different races, religions and cultures to meet, live and work together. The result of this has been an exchange of ideas, technology and traditions. The spread of Christianity throughout the world was made possible by missionary activities. This was assisted by the expansion of European colonial empires. Church and state worked together to change the indigenous belief systems of the people they ruled. Colonial expansion also brought Christianity into conflict with Islam as European powers challenged Muslim rulers and traders.	Conquistador
Comprising 100 centavos, and derived from 'gold/silver weights' what is the currency of Mexico?	Querétaro, Mexico - Reynosa Lightning Querétaro, Mexico Querétaro ( Spanish pronunciation: [keˈɾetaɾo] ), officially Free and Sovereign State of Querétaro ( Spanish : Estado Libre y Soberano de Querétaro), is one of 31 states that, with the Federal District , comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico . It is divided into 18 municipalities . Its capital city is Santiago de Querétaro . It is located in North-Central Mexico , in a region known as Bajío . It is bordered by the states of San Luis Potosí to the north, Guanajuato to the west, Hidalgo to the east, México to the southeast and Michoacán to the southwest. The state is one of the smallest in Mexico, but it is also one of the most heterogeneous geographically, [9] [10] with ecosystems varying from deserts to tropical rainforest , especially in the Sierra Gorda , which is filled with microecosystems. The area of the state was located on the northern edge of Mesoamerica , with both the P’urhépecha and Aztec empires having influence in the extreme south, but neither really dominated it. The area, especially the Sierra Gorda, had a number of small city-states, but by the time the Spanish arrived, these had all been abandoned, with only small agricultural villages and seminomadic peoples inhabiting the area. Spanish conquest was focused on the establishment of the Santiago de Querétaro , which still dominates the state culturally, economically and educationally. Contents [ edit ]Geography, climate and ecology Sotano de Barro in the Sierra Gorda Querétaro is located in the north-central area of the country of Mexico, connecting the wetter climes of the south with the drier deserts of the north. The state is divided into 18 municipalities: Amealco de Bonfil , Arroyo Seco , Cadereyta de Montes , Colón , Corregidora , El Marqués , Ezequiel Montes , Huimilpan , Jalpan de Serra , Landa de Matamoros , Pedro Escobedo , Peñamiller , Pinal de Amoles , Querétaro , San Joaquín , San Juan del Río , Tequisquiapan and Tolimán . [10] Three of Mexico’s geographic zones cover parts of the state. The Mesa del Centro is in the center-west of the state, and mostly consists of small mesas with an average altitude of 2,000 m above sea level (ASL). A few elevations reach over 3,000 m. The Sierra Madre Oriental occupies the northeast of the state and includes the cities of Huasteca area. The topography of this area is rugged, with long mountain chains and narrow valleys. Elevations here range between 900 and 3,000 m ASL. The Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt occupies about half of the state in the center and south. The area is mostly volcanic rock with peaks and mesas between 2,000 and 3,000 m and valleys between 1,800 and 1,900 m ASL. [10] The state is divided into five geographical regions: The Sierra Gorda , El Semidesierto Queretano, Los Valles Centrales, El Bajío Queretano and La Sierra Queretana. The Sierra Gorda is located in the north of the state and is part of the Sierra Madre Oriental, specifically in a subprovince called the Huasteco Karst . It is found in the municipalities of Arroyo Seco , Jalpan de Serra, Landa de Matamoros, Pinal de Amoles and San Joaquín and covers an area of 3,789km2 or 32.2% of the state. The topography is rugged, with high elevations and steep valleys. [11] It is a conjunction of mountains and hills formed mostly by limestone, with wide contrasts in climates and vegetation. They range from near desert conditions to forests of pine and holm oak to the tropical rainforests of the Huasteca area in the state of San Luis Potosí . [12] The Sierra Gorda was made a biosphere reserve in 1997, the Reserva de la Biosfera de la Sierra Gorda, to protect its abundance of species and ecosystems. In 2001, the area was registered with the Man and the Biosphere Programme of UNESCO. This area is managed by la Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas of the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources federal agency. [13] Semidesert area in the municipality of Peñamiller El Semidesierto Queretano (Querétaro Semidesert) is a wide strip that crosses the state from east to west, which is dry due to the blocking of moist air from the Gulf by the Sierra Madre Oriental . The area is found in the municipalities of Cadereyta de Montes , Colón , Peñamiller and Tolimán , with an area of 3,415.6km2 or 29% of the state. As it is near the mountain range, its topography is relatively rugged. Los Valles Centrales (Central Valleys) is in the center of the state, overlapping almost all of the area formed by the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt , with the exception of the north of the El Marqués municipality, which is in the Mesa del Centro. The continental divide runs through here marked by the Sierra Queretana, the El Macizo and El Zamoarano mountain chains. This area occupies the municipalities of Ezequiel Montes , El Marqués, Pedro Escobedo and San Juan del Río with an extension of 2,480.2kmw or 21.1% of the state. El Bajío Queretano is in the western part of the state, which is a low elevation area that extends into neighboring Guanajuato . This area covers 1,005.7km2 or 8.5% of the state, and contains low hills and small mountain chains that are part of the Trans Mexican Volcanic Belt. La Sierra Queretana (Querétaro Sierra Mountains) is in the extreme south of the state, and also part of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt. It is mostly found in the municipalities of Amealco de Bonfil and Huimilpan , covering an area of 1,078.3 km or 9.2% of the state. The area has high peaks and plains that narrow into valleys and canyons. Some of the flat areas border the Lerma River . [11] The state contains two river basins: the Lerma/Santiago and the Pánuco . The first is represented by the Lerma and La Laja Rivers and the second is represented by the Tamuín and Moctezuma Rivers . Other important rivers include the Santa María and the San Juan. These rivers contain 16 dams, including the Santa Catarina, El Batán, Constitution de 1917 and the San Ildefonso. [10] Most of the state is dry, with the exception of the north, which is temperate and rainy. The average temperature is 18°C. [9] Three well-defined climate areas are in the state. The south has a temperate and fairly wet climate. Temperatures are relatively stable through the year, ranging from an average of between 12 and 18°C, with most rain falling in the summer. This region includes the municipalities of Amealco, Huimilpan, Pedro Escobedo, San Juan del Río and Corregidora . The center and west have drier and hotter climates, especially in areas under 2,000 m ASL. Here, the Sierra Madre Oriental and parts of the Trans Mexican Volcanic Belt impide moist air from arriving. This dry area includes the municipalities of Querétaro, Corregidora, El Marqués, Peñamiller, Esequiel Montes, Cadereyta, San Juan del Río, Tolimán and Tequisquiapan. The Sierra Madre Oriental area has climates that range from temperate to cold, varying significantly from north to south and even more due to altitude. The north tends to be warmer than the south, but average temperatures can range from 18 to 28°C in lower elevations and between 14 and 20°C in higher elevations. [10] The state’s ecosystems have 18 different classifications ranging from tropical rainforest to arid scrub brush. Deciduous rainforest is found in parts of the north, center and west of the state such as Jalpan de Serra , Arroyo Seco and Landa de Matamoros. Small deciduous forests are found in Jalpan de Serra and Landa de Matamoros. Oyamel forests are found in the highest elevations of El Zamorano in the municipalities of El Marqués and Colón. Pure pine forests are found in Cadereyta de Montes, Pinal de Amoles, San Joaquín and Landa de Matamoros. Mixed pine and holm oak forests are found in the Sierra de El Zamorano and the El Lobo region, opposite the Sierra Madre Oriental. Deciduous oak forests are found in the municipalities of Amealco de Bonfil , Landa de Matamoros, El Marqués, and a number of others, but only at altitudes between 1,600 and 2,800 m ASL. Juniper and cedar forests are found in Pinal de Amoles, Landa de Matamoros, San Joaquín and Cadereyta de Montes at altitudes of between 1,390 and 2,500 m, generally on low hills. Mesquite forests are scarce given that they tend to grow on land suitable for agriculture, but some can still be found in Pedro Escobedo, San Juan del Río, Cadereyta de Montes and other municipalities. The two types of grasslands are those with some trees and those with none. The latter is much more common and found in various parts of the south of the state. Grasslands dotted with trees are found only in the municipality of Querétaro. The other five ecosystems are dominated by various types of arid scrub brush, ranging from those dominated by thorns, without thorns and intermixed with various types of cactus. [10] The Cerro del Cimatario , on the borders of the municipalities of Corregidora, Querétaro and El Marqués, has been declared a national park and biosphere reserve due to its forests. [10] Quakes are not uncommon in the state, so there are monitoring stations in Peñamiller, Extoraz, Peña Blanca and 10 in the Sierra Gorda, including Jalpan de Serra, Landa de Matamoros, Arroyo Seco, Pinal de Amoles and San Joaquín. More are planned for Tolimán and Cadereyta. In January 2011, about 70 small quakes caused some damage in the Peñamiller area, in the north, causing a certain amount of panic in the area, because the tremblers continued, with an average strength of 3.5 on the Richter scale . This is not normal for this area. The quakes are believed related to mining in the area, but the government denies this. [14] [ edit ]Demographics As of 2005, the state had a population of 1,598,139 and a population density of 137 inhabitants per square kilometer. [9] Over the 20th century, from 1900 to 2005, the state’s population has grown from 232,389 to the current figure. Growth rates were highest in the 1970s at over 4%, but since have come down to 1.9%. [15] [16] The fastest rates of population growth in the state now are in Querétaro and San Juan del Río at about 4%. Two, Arroyo Seco and Peñamiller , have lost population in the previous decades. [16] The capital city of Santiago de Querétaro has nearly half of the state’s population. [17] Other major cities include San Juan del Río (208,462) Corregidora (104,218) El Marqués (79,743) and Cadereyta de Montes (57,204). [18] About 37% lives in the 1420 communities with between 1 and 1,999 inhabitants, and 16% in communities of between 2,000 and 14,999. The population of the state is sparse in most areas, concentrated in only one true urban center and some smaller communities. Living standards are higher than average for Mexico in and around the city of Querétaro , but diminish significantly in the rural areas. [15] One important factor in the population growth has been migration into the state from other parts of Mexico due to the state’s industry, low crime rate and other factors. [16] [18] One recent phenomenon has been the influx of families from northern border states migrating south to escape drug-related violence. An estimated 49 new families move into the state every 24 hours, on average. This has made attendance at private universities climb 11% especially at ITESM -Querétaro, Universidad Anáhuac and the Universidad del Valle de México . Most of the families are moving to the area in and around the capital. [19] Over 96% of the population is Catholic, with very small percentages reporting as Protestant or Evangelical. [16] The state is not culturally or socially homogenous. The first large distinction is between those who live in the mountains and those who live in the valleys. Those in the mountains are closer culturally to those living on the Gulf Coast, with the latter having more in common with cultures found in the west of Mexico and the central highlands . [20] There are indigenous communities in seven of the 18 municipalities of the state, mostly Otomi and Pame . These communities are divided into three regions: South, Arid Center and Sierra Madre Oriental, with the Otomis dominating in the first two and the Pames in the last. [16] The most important indigenous group in the state is the Otomi. These people have inhabited central Mexico for over 5,000 years and were part of cities and empires such as Cuicuilco , Teotihuacan and Tula . Their language is part of the Oto-mangueana family , which includes Pame, Mazahua , Matlatzinca and the Chichimeca-Jonaz languages. They have maintained their language, which is called hñahñu, which literally means to speak with nasal sounds. However, most Otomi speakers are bilingual. Their name for themselves varies in the different areas of central Mexico where they live, but in southern part of Querétaro, they call themselves the Ñano. Otomi communities in the state have their own authorities, in addition to Mexican ones, in both the civil and religious arenas, who are elected annually. Most profess the Catholic faith, but it is influenced by indigenous beliefs. The trading of goods is still an important part of the economy of many Otomi communities, and they are known for their abilities with herbal medicines. A number who live in rural areas can still be seen in traditional dress. For women, this includes a hand-embroidered blouse and skirt, a garment called a quexquemetl and huaraches . For men, this includes shirts and pants of undyed or white cotton, tied with an embroidered belt, huaraches and a hat made with palm fronds. [21] These communities are located in south in Amealco de Bonfil . Here, over 25,000 people live in 31 communities, such as San Ildefonso, Tultepec, Santiago Mexquititlán, Chitejé de la Cruz and San Miguel Tlaxcatltepec. In the arid parts of the center of the state, indigenous communities are found in the municipalities of Tolimán , Cadereyta, Colón and Ezequiel Montes , with about 21,500 Otomis in 56 different communities. [16] In the Sierra Madre Oriental, about 3,775 people, mostly Pame with an important group of Huastecas are found in three communities in the municipalities of Jalpan de Serra and Arroyo Seco. [16] However, of all the people in these indigenous communities, only a total of 23,363 spoke an indigenous language, primarily Otomi, as of 2005. Most (94.8%) of these were also speakers of Spanish. [9] [16] [ edit ]Culture Scene at the 2011 National Huapango Dance Competition in Pinal de Amoles Western painting developed in the state during the colonial period, when artists such as Pedro de Rojas López, Tomás Noriega and Diego Sanabria produced primarily religious art. More diverse production came into being in the 19th century forward; José Mariano Perrusquia y Rubio, Mariano Montenegro and Germán Patiño Díaz produced paintings and even photography. Patiño Díaz was the director of the old Academia de Dibujo y Pintura de San Fernando, which trained more artists in the state such as Agustín Rivera Ugalde. The 20th century produced artists such as Braulio Rodríguez Granda, Jesús Rodríguez de la Vega, Jesús Águila Herrera and Restituto Rodríguez Camacho. The current generation of Querétaro artists includes Rafael Rodríguez , Virginia Ledesma, Ramsés de la Cruz and Juan Eduardo Muñoz . [22] The state has produced a large number of writers. Major writers from the 19th century include poet and journalist Juan María Wenceslao Sánchez de la Barquera y Morales , poet and short story writer Néstora Téllez Rendón , poet and orator Celestino Díaz Domínguez , journalist and playwright Luis Frías Hernández , writer and doctor Hilarión Frías y Soto and poet and academic Juan B. Delgado . The early 20th century produced poet and translator Francisco Cervantes , arguably the most important literary figure from Querétaro internationally; poet and journalist José Dolores Frías Rodríguez , songwriter Carlos Cabrera Pedraza , novelist Alfredo Coéllar Gómez and poet Carlos Septién García . The current generation of writers includes poets Román Luján , Luis Alberto Arellano , Benjamín Moreno , César Cano and Tadeus Argüeyo . [23] Indigenous music can be found in Otomi areas, such as in the municipalities of Amealco and the arid central areas of the state. Often this includes trios consisting of two flutes or two violins with a drum, most often played for community celebrations. The Otomi of Tolimán have a variant of Otomi music called viñuetes, which is played with one large drum, one small drum and a violin. [24] Huapango is a dominant musical form in the Sierra Gorda and some of the arid areas of the center of the state. Two types are generally played: Huasteco and Arribeño. Huasteco is played in trios with two guitars called huapanguera and the smaller jarana huasteca and a violin. The songs consist of stanzas of four to six verses sung in falsetto, often with improvisation. The Arribeño is most common in the mountains areas bordering the states of San Luis Potosí and Guanajuato . It is played in groups of four with a huapanguera, a vihuela and two violins. Lyrics tend to be poetic and sung from memory or improvised. Some are religious in nature. Another indigenous form of music, called comesolos, played with a flute and drum has almost completely died out. [24] In the mountain village of San Joaquín in April is the Concurso Nacional de Huapango Huasteco (National Huasteca Huapango Contest) . [25] This event attracts thousands of visitors and participants each year, as it is the most important Huapango contests in the country. [18] Most traditional festivals are tied to the Catholic religion, with some of the most important being Candlemas, Holy Week and Day of the Dead. Locally important are the myriad of festivals to patron saints of towns, villages and municipalities. In addition, ta number of civic and economic festivals and fairs include celebrations of the founding of the various cities, regional fairs in Cadereyta, El Marqués , Jalpan de Serra and others to showcase local products and culture. [24] México Folklórico is a dance group created in 1990 within the Academia de la Cultura of the state teachers’ union. It consists of teachers’ children, who are studying high school or above, as a extracurricular activity. Its repertoire includes dances and other traditions from various parts of Mexico. It has performed in many parts of Mexico, as well as in the rest of the Americas and Europe. [26] The cooking of the Sierra Gorda region is strongly influenced by the Huasteca cuisine of neighboring Hidalgo and San Luis Potosí states. One notable dish is sacahuil, which is a large tamale wrapped in the leaves of a plant called a papatla. This dish is most prevalent in Landa de Matamoros and Jalpan de Serra. [24] During festivals in San Miguel Tolimán, the main dish is chickpeas with saffron accompanied by tortillas in a number of colors. In Peñamiller, they celebrate with goat meat, accompanied by pulque . Another common dish in this areas is a variety of tostadas calledarriero (donkey handler) . [24] Simichol is a fermented corn drink prepared in Santiago Mexquititlán. In San Joaquín, the drink is called charape, made with piloncillo . In this and other central municipalities, gorditas de migajas (literally crumb gorditas) is a common dish. [24] Traditional food products include a candy made of guava fruit and sugar, jams, and sweets made from pulque, milk candies from Bernal, a hard bread called mezquitamal, which is made by the Otomis, and various types of mole sauces made in Amealco. In the Sierra Gorda area, gorditas can be prepared with sugar, cheese, and piloncillo. The zacahuil, a large type of tamale , is filled with chicken, turkey or pork with dried chili pepper. A number of insects are used, especially in indigenous dishes such as tantárreas (ants from a type of mesquite tree) and escamoles , often cooked with cactus flowers. One native beverage, called mejengue, made with piloncillo, banana, pulque and corn. [27] [ edit ]History The official name of the state is “Estado Libre y Soberano de Querétaro de Arteaga” (Free and Sovereign State of Querétaro de Arteaga). The formal name of the capital is Santiago de Querétaro. However, both are commonly referred to simply as Querétaro. [28] The most likely origin of the name is from the P’urhépecha word “Crettaro” which means “place with crags .” However, there have been other explanations of the name including that it comes from Nahuatl and means Mesoamerican ball court , or event "island of the blue salamanders." [28] [29] Nevertheless, other scholars suggest that it can mean "place of the reptiles" or "place of the giant rocks." [30] The city received the title of Noble y Leal Ciudad de Santiago de Querétaro in 1656, but after Independence, it was changed to simply Querétaro. It was returned to Santiago de Querétaro in 1996, when it was named a World Heritage Site . [31] The ending of “de Arteaga” was added to the state’s name in 1867 in honor of General José María Cayetano Arteaga Magallanes . Originally from Mexico City , Arteaga became governor of Querétaro and distinguished himself as a soldier in the middle of the 19th century. [28] Agricultural settlements dated to about 500 BCE have been found in the San Juan del Río and Huimilpan areas, which was during the Teotihuacan era. The ancient city had interest and influence in the area because of its agriculture, but did not dominate it. [20] [32] After the fall of this city, the Querétero area had its highest rate of development of both agriculture and social structure. The area was inhabited early on by a number of ethnicities, including the Otomi , Toltecs , Chichimecas , P’urhépechas and Mexicas . In the 10th century, the area experience population shifts which did not stabilize until the 12th century. Much of this migration moved south from the Querétaro area into the Valley of Mexico . Those who remained by the end of the 12th century were mostly in hunter-gatherer communities and small agricultural settlements. The region’s agriculture and minerals continued to attract the interest of more powerful neighbors. In the 15th century, both the Aztec and P’urhépecha empires had strong influence parts of the state, especially in the south, but would never incorporate the area completely into either empire. [20] [32] The Aztec’s interest in the area was mostly to use it as a bulwark against marauding northern Chichimeca tribes, and it never became a tributary state. [9] During this time, as well, a number of new peoples entered the state, most likely from the north, primarily the Pames and the Chichimeca Jonaz . The first group practiced agriculture in the valleys and the latter in the mountain areas. [20] [32] When the Spanish conquered the Aztec Empire in the early 16th century, the largest indigenous group in the state was the Otomi, many of whom were living more or less under P’urhépecha rule. This population would increase with Otomi refugees from Aztec lands fleeing the Spanish. [20] [32] Another significant group was the Chichimecas. [9] With the fall of Tenochtitlán, then the P’urhépecha Empire, the Spanish gained some control over the southern portion of the state. However, the area was still very independent, filled with peoples who lived in small isolated villages or nomadically. There were no major cities, nor large societies here or north. [20] [32] Cathedral of Querétaro The conquest and colonization of Querétaro began with the Spanish settlements at San Juan del Río, Querétaro and Huimilpan between 1529 and 1531. Conquistador Herán Pérez de Bocanegra joined forces with a local Otomi lord from Jilotepec named Conín , also known as Fernando de Tapia, to enter Otomi areas in what is now the city of Querétaro. There would be only one major battle as part of the conquest in 1531. [20] [32] The Spanish and their Indian allies were battling the local Otomi and Chichimecas at a hill now known as Sangremal, which was then called Ynlotepeque, and considered sacred in pre-Hispanic times. Chronicles of this event, such as those written by Friar Isidro Félix de Espinoza, state that the natives were at the point of winning when a total eclipse of the sun occurred. This supposedly scared the natives and the Spanish claimed to have seen an image of Saint James (the patron saint of Spain) riding a white horse carrying a rose-colored cross. This event caused the natives to surrender. [33] This event is why the city is called Santiago (Saint James) de Querétaro, with James as patron saint [34] [35] A stone cross imitating the one the Spanish supposedly saw was erected on the hill, which later was accompanied by a church and monastery. [9] [34] During the rest of the 16th century, the Spanish city of Querétaro would form the northern extension of known lands to the Spanish conquerors. [32] The Spanish initially shared power in the area with local indigenous leaders until well into the 17th century in many areas. However, indigenous power waned over time, eventually disappearing completely. [31] However, the Spanish would not subdue and evangelized the last of the resistant peoples, the Chichimec Jonaz until the end of the 18th century. [20] During this time, Spanish power was mostly concentrated in the city of Querétaro, which became the starting point for expeditions, missions and conquests heading north. [32] Atrim with cross at Tilaco, Landa de Matamoros, one of the five missions attributed to Junípero Serra Most of the north of the state consists of an area known as the Sierra Gorda , which is an area of very rugged terrain, with widely varying climates. From the 16th to 19th centuries The Spanish would slowly dominate the lands around it, south in Querétaro, west in Guanajuato and east in Hidalgo , with only military and missionary incursions into the area's interior. This was due to the fierce resistance of the local native peoples. Unlike those in the south, the Pames , Chichimeca Jonaz and other groups were mostly hunter gatherers, not city dwellers already used to a hierarchical governing system. Attempts to militarily pacify and evangelize the area had little success, with a number of missions never completed or destroyed shortly after they were built. In the mid 18th century, the colonial government in Mexico City decided to made a concerted effort to bring the territory into submission, as it contained important routes to mining areas such as Zacatecas and Guanajuato . José de Escondón was sent in 1740 to militarily subdue the area, which culminated in the 1748 Battle of Media Luna , in which the Chichimeca were decisively defeated. This paved the way for the establishment of five principle missions in the heart of the Sierra Gorda of Querétaro, attributed to Junípero Serra, which today are a World Heritage Site. [13] [36] Even though the area was pacified in the mid 18th century, a district called an "alcaldía mayor" was established in San José de Escandón, today in the municipality of Pinal de Amoles, which governed what is now the northern half of the state. Decline of mining in the area would have this seat of government moved to Cadereyta in 1675, but this territory would be joined with the alcaldía mayor of the city of Querétaro to form the modern state. [37] Mission church at Tancoyol The territory of Querétaro was consolidated during the 17th century. Santiago de Querétaro was declared a city in 1655. [20] The coat of arms granted to the capital city that year is now the state coat of arms, with the substitution of an eagle on a cactus to replace the section referring to the Spanish royalty. [28] Over the colonial period, the Querétaro area became important strategically and economically as it connected the newly explored and conquered lands to the north and west to the center of New Spain in Mexico City. Various trade routes converged here and the city became a cultural crossroads. [9] The activities of Franciscan missionaries were a decisive factor in building the economic, social, political and religious institutions of the state. They were also mostly responsible for the building of most of the religious buildings and the acquisition of paintings and sculptures that can still be seen. These works gave the city an image of richness. The buildings from this era of the city’s history include the Plaza de Armas, The Casa de Ecala, the Casa de los Septién, the Cassa de los Samaniego, the Casa de los Fernández de Jáuregui, the Palacio de la Corregiduría de Legres de Querétaro as well as the Congregación and San Antonio churches. However, the most important structure from the time is the Aqueduct . [20] Much of the evangelization efforts in the Sierra Gorda area was done by Junípero Serra . These efforts left behind a number of missions which exist to this day in Jalpan de Serra , Tancoyol, Concá, Tilaco and Landa de Matamoros . [9] [20] This development made the city wealthy for the rest of the colonial period. [31] Querétaro reached its height of the colonial period during the 18th century due to its strategic position with the northern territories and because of its livestock production. There was also a significant textile industry for local and regional markets. Querétaro was the first major producer of wool cloth in New Spain. At the end of the century, The Real Fabrica de Tabaco (Royal Tobacco Factory) was established, the second most important of its type in New Spain. There was also some mineral production, especially silver in an area called El Doctor. [20] The city of Querétaro was strategic in the development of events just before the start of the Mexican War of Independence . It was the site of the conspiracy among Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla , Ignacio Allende , Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez and her husband the Corregidor of Querétaro Miguel Domínguez . The plot was uncovered when another conspirator, Epigmenio González was caught with a stockpile of weapons to start the war. Ortiz de Dominguez sent word to Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla in Dolores, Guanajuato that the plot was discovered. At that point, Hidalgo decided to begin the revolt against colonial rule in on 15 September, rather than in December as planned. Gonzalez was imprisoned in the Philippines from 1810 to 1838 for his role. The Corregidor and his wife were caught and imprisoned for their parts as well. [9] [31] Soon after, the city of Querétaro was taken by royalist forces and would stay that way for much of the war. The only fighting in the state were skirmishes fought in the mountain areas. The city of Querétaro would be one of the last royalist bastions to fall. [20] After the war, Querétaro was made a state with the 1824 Constitution . [38] However, the city and state would lose the economic and cultural prominence it had during the colonial period. The political instability of the 19th century took its toll on commerce, which made the area’s economy suffer. The status of Querétaro would change between state and department, depending on whether Liberals or Conservatives were in power nationally. Within the state, battles for power between the two groups would lead to the state having twenty five governors between 1824 and 1855. [20] During the century, the capital city was the scene of a number of important events. During the Mexican American War , the capital was moved from Mexico City to Querétaro. At the end of that war, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed here. The 1857 Constitution was published in the city as well and a coalition of states including Querétaro, Jalisco , Aguascalientes , Zacatecas , Guanajuato and Michoacán formed a coalition to defend this constitution against the Plan of Tacubaya . [20] During the short reign of Maximilian I , there were battles between Liberals and Conservatives (with the latter supporting the emperor) in Querétaro. However, Maximilian lost the military support provided by Napoleon III , leaving only four states loyal to the emperor. Querétaro was one of them. Maximilian still resisted Liberal forces which eventually surrounded him at Cerro de Campanas, then outside the city of Querétaro. The emperor was caught and executed on 19 June 1867. [38] Afterwards, the state wrote a new constitution based on Liberal principles. Another new state constitution would be written at the beginning of the Porfiriato in 1879. Despite the turmoil, there was still economic progress in the state, with the establishment of textile mills such as Hércules, Casa Rubio and two other factories in San Antonio and La Purísma. There was also some mining, especially in El Doctor, Río Blando, Maconí and Escanelilla with a total of 216 mines producing silver with some producing gold, copper, lead and more. [20] [39] Before the end of the century, modern infrastructure such as electricity, telegraph and telephones began to appear. Industry grew and modernized, with El Hércules becoming the largest textile factory in the country. Haciendas and agricultural production also grew, especially in the north of the state. [20] The capital was modified and expanded, and it was linked to the rest of the country via rail in 1882. Public education began in the state at the beginning of the 20th century with fifty four primary schools and the first graduates of the state’s first teachers’ college. [20] However, at the same time, strikes and other movements against the Diaz regime had begun in the state and elsewhere in the country. The largest strike in the state was against the El Hércules factory in 1909. [20] At the start of the Mexican Revolution , there were revolts in Jalpan de Serra and Cadereyta along with protests in the capital. Govener González de Cosío resigned in 1911, replaced by Joaquín F. Chicarro who was allied with Victoriano Huerta and more authoritarian. In 1916 and 1917, the federal government of Venustiano Carranza had to abandon Mexico City moving the country’s capital to Querétaro. The country’s current 1917 Constitution was promulgated from Teatro de la República in the city of Querétaro. [9] [20] [40] After the war, the economy of the state recovered slowly. Between 1940 and 1960, economic progress came more rapidly, with the industrial infrastructure growing and modernizing. During the same time period, the population grew substantially as well. Much of industrial growth from then to the present can be seen in the various industrial parks located north of the capital city. In the following thirty years, the city would then grow to over four times its previous size. [20] [40] However, the state managed to conserve the city’s historic center, which was declared a World Heritage Site in 1996. The city’s official name, which had been changed simply to “Querétaro” was restored to “Santiago de Querétaro” the same year. [20] [39] In 1997, the National Action Party (PAN) won the gubernatorial elections and Ignacio Loyola became the first non PRI governor of the state since the Revolution. In 2008, the state’s constitution was amended to make Querétaro the official state name. [39] The aqueduct Acueducto II was inaugurated in 2011 by President Felipe Calderón and state governor José Calzada Rovirosa . It transports water over 122 km from springs in El Infiernillo to the city of Querétaro. This is to supplement local water sources which are no longer able to meet the city’s needs. [41] [ edit ]General description Economic activity in the state is closely tied to trends at the national level. This includes the declining contribution to GDP of the agricultural sector and an increase in manufacturing and commerce/services. [15] The city of Querétaro is by far the most important economic center in the state, followed by San Juan del Río . Not only is Querétero the population center of the state, it has high-quality soil for irrigation farming and cattle. It is directly connected by highway to Mexico City, the country’s largest market, as well as the north of the country and the United States. This makes the city an almost obligatory stop for most people and goods traveling north and south. This geographical advantage has spurred industrial development in the state, especially since the 1970s. [15] Another advantage the state has is its stable social and political situation. It has a low crime rate and also noted by NGO Transparencia Meixcan as having the lowest levels of corruption among all of Mexico’s states. [18] Of the three main sectors of the economy: agriculture, mining/industry and commerce/services, the percentage each employs and contributes to the GDP varies significantly from municipality to municipality, with agriculture making up a higher percentage of local employment and GDP in rural municipalities than in the Querétaro metropolitan area. [15] However, overall, the state has one of the country’s strongest economies. Government authorities report an increase of 4,602 jobs in the state for January 2011, accounting for a quarter of the gain for the country. Some related to Bombardier. [42] The municipalities of the state are grouped into five economic regions centered on Amealco de Bonfil , Cadereyta de Montes, Jalpan de Serra , Querétaro and San Juan del Río. The Amealco region includes this municipality and the municipality of Huimilpan. Most of its economy is based on cereal production with only minor industry such as maquiladoras and textiles. There are also handcrafts produced by indigenous groups. [43] The Cadereyta región includes this municipality, Colón , Peñamiller and Tolimán . Agriculture is limited to the rainy season, but there is significant production of livestock such as goats. There is also some forestry activity. Industry is not common, but some technically advanced factories exist. There are also maquiladoras , textile and recycling operations which primarily employ women. [43] The Jalpan de Serra region includes this municipality and Arroyo Seco , Pinal de Amoles , Landa de Matamoros and San Joaquín . Agriculture is limited, mostly producing fruits such as citrus, mangos, coffee, peaches and apples. Fish farming is a growing and promising enterprise for the areas. Industry is also very limited. [43] The Querétaro región includes the capital and the municipalities of Corregidora and El Marqués . This area has the second most productive farms in the state, much of which is irrigated. Crops include sorghum , wheat, barley , alfalfa , oats with some vegetables, corn and beans. This area is also an important producer of all kinds of livestock. Industry is limited to the industrial parks located just north of the capital, but they employ most of the industrial workers of the state. [43] The San Juan del Río region includes this municipality and Ezequiel Montes , Pedro Escobedo and Tequisquiapan . This is the most agriculturally production region of the state, with most farmland irrigated. There is intensive farming of sorghum, wheat, barley, alfalfa, and oats, with some vegetables, corn and beans. Large areas of natural pasture supports a large livestock industry. The region is second in industry behind Querétaro, concentrating on paper products and food processing. Most industry is located in San Juan del Río. [43] [ edit ]Agriculture and forestry Vineyard belonging to Cavas Freixnet in Ezequiel Montes Agriculture and livestock have been traditionally important for the state, and while it only provides about four percent of the state’s GDP, down from eighteen percent in 1970, it employs a far larger percentage of the population, with it being the basis of the economy in many rural areas. [15] [43] 28,24% of state land is used for agriculture, mostly raising corn, wheat, alfalfa , sorghum and squash . [10] There is also intensive farming in areas of a number of important crops. Much of the large scale farming is irrigated and is supported in part by the state government, with loans and help with infrastructure such as water and roads. However, most farmland is seasonal, meaning it is worked only during the rainy season. Grains such as barley, wheat, oats and alfalfa are almost exclusively planted on irrigated land along with certain vegetables such as broccoli , garlic, carrots, lettuce, onions and cauliflower . Most non irrigated land is planted with corn, followed by beans mostly for auto or local consumption. [43] Leading cash crops are beans, cabbage , alfalfa , onions, lettuce and sorghum. [18] Within agriculture, production of crops has decreased while the production of animal products has increased. Crops as a percentage of agricultural production dropped from 34% in 1988 to 25.8% in 1993. [15] One of the leading milk producers in the country, Querétaro farms also breed livestock and dairy cows. Livestock production is important and growing, mostly consisting of cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, horses and domestic fowl. Querétaro is one of the top producers of chicken in Mexico. The largest producers of livestock in the state are Jalpan, Cadereyta, San Juan del Río and Querétaro. [43] Forest land is one of the state’s two main natural resources. These forests contain commercial species such as pine, oak, cedar , juniper , mesquite and more. Most of these are found in and around the Sierra Gorda area. There is about 70,000 hectares of possible productive land but only 17,000 have been studied for management. [10] Land actively involved in forestry operations equals 9,358m2, most of which is in the municipalities of Landa de Matamoros and Amealco de Bonfil . [43] 20.7% is used for grazing. 24.22% is forest; 3.95% is rainforest and 40.62 is arid scrub brush. [10] [ edit ]Mining and industry Mine in Vizarrón Mining, manufacturing and construction accounts for about 39% of the GDP, with manufacturing alone accounting for 32%. [18] [43] This has remained steady for the past few decades. [15] Minerals is one of the state’s two main natural resources. Mining is a traditional economic activity for the state. There are ten mining districts in the Sierra Gorda alone producing lead, silver, zinc , copper, gold, mercury and antimony . Non metallic products include marble, kaolin , sandstone , and more. Opals are a distinctive state resource. [10] [18] State and local governments, in partnership with private industry, actively promote foreign investment into the region. The priority of the state government is to encourage industries which use low levels of water for environmental reasons. These have mostly been auto parts, food processing and electronics. Other major industries include chemicals, plastics, textiles, paper products and printing and wood products. Most are micro and small sized operations. [17] [43] Querétaro’s major cities are home to industrial complexes that produce machinery and other metallic products, chemicals and processed foods. [18] However, most of the state’s manufacturing companies are located in or around the city of Querétaro. Carnation and Purina are among the best-known food processing companies with facilities in the state, and numerous textile mills manufacture clothing made of wool, cotton and henequen . One of the biggest employers is Tremac , an auto parts manufacturer. [18] Currently, there are 392 companies with direct foreign investment and 238 exporting companies that have located in the state. Exports in 2002 totaled $3.35 billion USD, and direct investment in 2003 reached $169 million. Many of these companies are headquartered in modern industrial parks, one of the newest and most technologically advanced being El Marques Industrial Park . This facility was inaugurated in 2003, with an initial investment of $13 million USD. The park occupies a space of 274 acres (1.11 km2) with international tenants from Italy, Germany, Spain, the US, Taiwan as well as Mexico representing real estate, automotive, carton packing, food processing and some high tech enterprises. [17] One of these tenants is Siemens whose 4,000 sq ft (370 m2) plant is dedicated to manufacturing equipment for high voltage systems. [44] The city of Querétaro has become the most advanced center of the aeronautics industry in Mexico, anchored by plant belonging to Canadian conglomerate Bombardier , which opened in 2005. This plant manufactures fuselages and electrical system, recently adding wing production for the Learjet 85 , a non metallic plane. This plant is the largest of the 189 aeronautics facilities in Mexico, employing about 2,000 people. There are eight other aeronautics enterprises located in the state. [45] The state is known for dairy products and wine. Two of Querétaro’s cities, San Juan del Río and Ezequiel Montes , have thriving vinicultures . Some of the best comes from the Rancho Santa Marina just to the south of the capital in the municipality of El Marqués . This ranch specializes in sheep milk cheese such as feta , ricotta , picodon and criollo/crottin . Rancho Hondonada is another reputable producer as well as Quesos Vai, which specializes in Mexican cheeses such as Oaxaca and panela. The best known winery is Freixenet which is on the highway between Tequisquiapan and San Juan del Río. The 45-hectare vineyard grows four varieties of grapes: Saint Emilion, Macabeu, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir. A cave 25 meters (82 ft) below ground maintains a constant and ideal climate for wine cellaring. Other producers include La Redonda and Rancho Los Azteca. [18] [27] [ edit ]Traditional handcrafts Marble objects at a shop in Vizarrón Handcrafts produced in the state include baskets, textiles, metal objects, pottery and items made from wood, leather and paper. Basket making is common in many parts of the state, and similar fibers are also used to create hats, decorative items and more made from various materials such as reed, willow branches and palm fronds. In Jalpan de Serra , they make various items from palm fronds such as bags, hats and mats. Fine woven hats can be found in Tequisquiapan as well as baskets made with a variety of willow. Baskets are made in San Juan del Río as well as in Cadereyta with willow and with reeds. [46] Basket making and rope are made in most areas of the state. In Ezequiel Montes, ixtle fiber is used to make sisal and rope. In Peñamiller henequen is used. In San Juan del Río reeds are used to make baskets. In Tolimán , furniture and more is made with willow branches. Tequisquiapan makes crafts with rattan, roots, juniper and pine branches along with ixtle. [24] Tolimán is known for its traditional clothing, especially quexquemetls made of silk and embroidered with colored thread for men and quexquemetls made of cotton for women. The ones made here are the largest in the country, made on backstrap looms. They also weave and embroider bags and linens such as tablecloths and napkins. Another area for traditional Otomi dress is Amealco de Bonfil , where blouses, skirts and more are embroidered with designs from this ethnicity. They also make cloth dolls dressed in traditional clothing. [24] [47] In Tolimán, Pame influence is noted in the textiles, which are mostly woven to make tablecloths and napkins. [24] Colón , Cadereyta and Bernal are known for items made of wool which has been naturally dyed, such as rebozos, blankets and more. [24] [47] Sculpting and building with sandstone is a major business and craft due to the material’s abundance in the mountains. Various types of sculptures as well as building blocks are created from it. In the communities of Escolásticas and Ejido de Ajuchitlancito in the Pedro Escobedo municipality, families, associations and cooperatives work with the stone. The work from Pedro Escobedo has been exported for many years. Various communities in the Huimilpan municipality do as well. The items create range from ashtrays to large columns for buildings. Much of the stonework of La Cañada in the El Marqués municipality is exported. Another stone that is worked is marble, especially in Vizarrón in Cadereyta municipality and in Tequisquiapan . Onyx, marble, opal and turquoise are worked in San Juan del Río and in the capital city. Opals are mined in the state and come in a variety of colors and sizes. They are mostly made into jewelry. [24] [48] There are various communities in the state which specialize in pottery. Products include every day utensils and cookware to architectural elements, figures and sculptures. The clay from Cadereyta is valued for its quality. In the community of San Juan de Guedío in the municipality of Amealco they specialized in storage containers as well as the figures of saints and those for nativity scenes. Other areas noted for their pottery are Colón and Ezequiel de Montes. [49] Other items are made from materials such as wood, leather and paper. Wood items include furniture, toys and musical instruments, especially guitars and violins and include miniature musical instruments, which are made in San Joaquín . Leather is fashioned into belts, pistol holders, handbags, wallets and cowboy boots. These are mostly available in Cadereyta Landa de Matamoros and San Vicente Ferrer in the municipality of El Marqués . Cardboard is used to fashion masks and items related to mojiganga theater mostly for use in parades and traditional festivals. Mojiganga figures are made with a reed frame to which the cardboard is applied. Bernal is noted for its masks made of paper and plaster which are often molded. In the city of Querétaro they make masks and mojiganga items, as well as large paper sculptures such as the Judas figures, which are burned. [50] [ edit ]Commerce, services and tourism Wine cellar at Cavas Freixnet, Ezequiel Montes Commerce, services and tourism accounts for 57% of the state’s GDP, led by commerce at 19% and services at 18% both related and not to tourism. [18] [43] This is an increase from 45% in 1970. [15] Since the 1990s, the state has promoted its tourism industry, with attendance at international forums, and building of hotels and other infrastructure. [43] The Centro de Congresos (Convention Center) of Querétaro was inaugurated in 2011 to attract more business travel to the state. The facility contains ten halls, with a capacity of 9,000 people. [51] There are two areas declared as historic monuments by the Mexican federal government, the historic center of Querétaro and the historic center of San Juan del Río. The historic center of Querétaro has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO . Most historic and cultural attractions are located in the capital. Museums include the Museo de Arte de Querétaro, the Museo Regional de Querétaro, the Museo de la Ciudad, the Museo del Sitio de Querétaro and Museo de la Matemática. Outside of the capital, there are the Museo Histórico de la Sierra Gorda, Museo Arqueológico y Minero de la Sierra and the Museo de la Muerte in San Juan del Río. [24] Another major attraction is its 74-arched aqueduct built in the early 1700s. The aqueduct rises 23 meters (75 ft) above street level and conveyed drinking water to the city from regional springs until 1970. [18] The founding of the city of Querétaro is celebrated in July with various cultural and gastronomic events. Conchero dancers go in procession to the La Cruz Church to commemorate the appearance of Saint James. [25] Querétaro has a number of areas which lend themselves to ecotourism. [18] One area especially promoted is the Sierra Gorda region. [43] The area is a complex of canyons and mountains extending over 400,000 hectares with a well conserved biological diversity. In the deep canyons there are grottos, valleys, ravines and arroyos. In the higher areas there are forests of pines and holm oak, and tropical forests in the lower elevations. The area was declared a biological reserve and contains about 1,700 species of plants, some endemic only to the area. There are also 360 species of birds, 130 of mammals, and just over 100 of amphibians and reptiles. A number of these are in danger of extinction such as macaws , the black bear, the porcupine and the spider monkey . [52] The state promotes its wine and cheeses with a Ruta del Vino or Wine Route. This connects three major wineries, Freixenet, La Redonda and Los Aztecas, along with various cheese producing facilities and some small towns chosen for their charm, such as Tequisquiapan and Bernal. There is also a Cheese and Wine Museum. At the wineries, one can observe how the product is made, which includes both sparkling and normal wines. The cheese producers make their products from goats’, cows’ and sheep’s milk, and in the two villages, one can enjoy both wine and cheese at the same time. At the end of July and the beginning of August, there is the first harvest, called the Vendimia. At the end of May and beginning of June, Tequisquiapan hosts the National Cheese and Wine Fair. [53] The Feria del Queso y el Vino (Cheese and Wine Fair) is held at the end of may and beginning of June in Tequisquiapan featuring wine producers from various parts of the world. Grape harvest festivals are held at Freixenet and La Redonda at the end of June. [25] Peña de Bernal Querétaro has one Pueblo Mágico , San Sebastián Bernal . [25] It is best known as the home of the Peña de Bernal , the third largest monolith in the world after the Rock of Gibraltar and Sugarloaf Mountain in Río de Janeiro . It was considered sacred by the Chichimeca and dates back to the Jurassic Period more than 100 million years ago. [18] The community was originally occupied by the Otomi . Many colonial structures in the town of sandstone have survived to the present day. It also was a scene of a battle during the French Intervention in Mexico . [54] The El Cerrito pyramid is here climbed by those dressed in White for the spring equinox. [25] Today, tourism is an important part of the area’s economy, attracting both those interested in history and those interested in ecotourism activities. [18] [54] Mission church at Jalpan de Serra In addition, there are a number of old haciendas which have been converted into hotels, spas and other recreational facilities. The Juriquilla Hacienda is one of nine haciendas which dominated the municipality of San Rosa. The largest was Juriquilla, founded in 1707. In the 19th century, it belonged to Timoteo Fernando de Jaurgui and later to a number of entrepreneurial families. Since 1993, the main house has been converted into a 196 room hotel, maintaining the buildings colonial architecture. The best conserved structure is the hacienda chapel. The Jurica Hacienda is known for its fresh water springs. The main house is a hotel with 182 rooms. The former chapel is intact, all original except the flooring. The Galindo Hacienda was converted into a hotel and restore in the 1970s after decades of abandonment. The San Gil Hacienda is traditionally said to have been a property of La Malinche. Today it is a hotel and spa surrounding the original gardens of the main house. The La Venta Hacienda has its origins in the late 16th century as a land grant to Baltasar de Salazar to build lodgings for those traveling to the unexplored northern lands. It is the smallest of the hacienda resorts with only 51 rooms in its hotel. [55] The state has a number of colonial era missions, mostly in the Sierra Gorda region. The early ones were founded by the Augustinians and Franciscans with the aim of evangelizing of the area, but they were shut down soon after their founding by the hostility of the Chichimeca. Most were unfinished and/or destroyed. The first successful missionary in the area was Jesuit Junípero Serra because colonial authorities began to militarily control the area. The best known is Bucareli Mission in Pinal de Amoles founded in 1797. Other missions are found including Santiago de Jalpan, San Miguel Concá, Santa María del Agua de Landa, San Francisco del Valle de Tilacoal and Nuestra Señora de la Luz de Tancoyol, all established in the 1750s and 1760s. After restoration efforts between 1979 and 2002, there have been efforts to register these missions as a World Heritage Site . [13] [ edit ]Education Basic Education is defined as the levels from preschool to middle school and includes other types of education such as special education, indigenous schools, bilingual school and adult remedial education. The state contains nearly 2,000 schools at this level including 1,225 preschools, 1,392 primary schools and 364 middle schools. Education Media Superior includes high schools, vocational schools and technical schools for those who graduate middle school. There are 115 campuses of this type located in all the municipalities of the state, but it covers less than 80% of the demand for this kind of education. The average number of years of schooling in the state is 7.5 years, meaning the completion of primary school and a little over a year in middle school. Levels of schooling increase with younger generations, with nearly all under 5 attending preschool before primary school. Nearly all children of age attend and finish primary school, and nearly all of these begin middle school. [56] However, 8.8% of the population fifteen and older have not enrolled in school at all. 19% have completed primary, 27.2% have completed at least middle school/technical school, 17.9% have completed high school and 14.5 have gone onto higher education. [9] Logo of the Universidad Tecnológico de San Juan del Río The state’s cultural and educational center is the capital, with a variety of universities, technological schools and institutes of higher technical studies, with include. These institutions supply highly trained graduates for the work force. This is one factor that contributes to the higher socioeconomic level of the state. [17] University level education has been the fastest growing level, with the most recent additions being the Universidad Tecnológica de San Juan del Río and the Instituto Tecnológico de Querétaro , Jalpan Campus. In total, there are twenty two public and private institutions. These include the Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro with 43 bachelors, 36 masters and ten doctorate programs, the Instituto Tecnológico de Querétaro with eight bachelors and two masters programs, ITESM -Querétaro with 23 bachelors and seven masters programs, the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional with 19 bachelors programs and the Universidad del Valle de México with 18 bachelors and two masters programs. Other institutions include the Universidad Internacional de México , Universidad Cuauhtémoc , Universidad Contemporánea (UCO), Universidad Mesoamericana , CUMDES , campus Corregidora , Escuela Normal del Estado, Escuela Normal de Jalpan, Escuela Normal Superior, Escuela Normal Queretana, Instituto 5 de Mayo, Normal Instituto la Paz de Querétaro, Universidad Tecnológica del Estado de Querétaro, Centro Interdisciplinario de Investigación y Docencia en Educación Técnica, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA), Conservatorio Libre de Música “J. Guadalupe Velázquez” and Centro Nacional de Danza Contemporánea.These together cover about eighty percent of the demand for education at this level. [56] The state university is the Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro . Its origins are in two colonial era colleges of San Ignacio and San Francisco Javier. These were Jesuit colleges established at the urging of Vasco de Quiroga. The first, San Ignacio, was established in 1625. The two were run by the Jesuits until they were expelled from New Spain in 1767. From then until 1832, the schools were run by regular clergy. The two were converged and reorganized into the State Civil College in 1868 and operated as such until 1950. This college was closed and reorganized again to open as the current institution. [57] The Universidad Tecnológica de Querétaro (UTEQ) was founded in 1994 with 146 students with majors in Administration, Business, Industrial Maintenance and Production Processes. The first classes were taught in rented as facilities were being built on a 25 hectare campus in Colonia San Pedrito Peñuelas. Today the school has eight majors at the undergraduate level. [58] The Instituto Tecnológico de Querétaro is part of the National System of Technological Institutes in Mexico. It was founded in 1967, and today it offers six engineering majore and technical training in electrical items, machines and automotive. [59] There are also thirty one research centers with the most prominent being: el Instituto de Ciencias de la Tierra de la UNAM, Campus Juriquilla, Centro Nacional de Investigación en Fisiología y Mejoramiento Animal (CENIF-MAI), Centro de Investigación y Asistencia Técnica del Estado de Querétaro (CIATEQ), Centro Interdisciplinario de Investigación y Docencia en Educación Técnica (CIIDET), Instituto Mexicano del Transporte (IMT), Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo Tecnológico en Electroquímica del Estado (CIDETEQ), Laboratorio de Materiales Unidad Querétaro del CINESTAV-I.P.N., Centro de Neurobiología, Instituto Tecnológico de Querétaro, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Campus Querétaro (ITESM), Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo Condumex, Transmisiones y Equipos Mecánicos (TREMEC), Centro Queretano de Recursos Naturales (CQRN), Centro de Ingeniería y Desarrollo Industrial (CIDESI), MABE Tecnología y Desarrollo, Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales y Agropecuarias (INIFAP), Instituto de Física UNAM, Escuela Normal del Estado de Querétaro “Andrés Balvanera” (ENEQ) and the Centro de Investigación en Ciencia Aplicada y Tecnología Avanzada I.P.N. (CICATA). [56] A number of these facilities support manufacturing and other industrial sectors of the economy. This also permits partnerships and alliances. [17] One of the most important research center in the state is the National Metrology Center (CENAM), which is a dependency of the Secretariat of Economy. The main function of the center is to bring together science and technology to support the country’s economy. It is the second most important of its kind in the Americas. [44] [ edit ]Transportation and communications Highway 57 in Querétaro The state has a total of 3,349.5 km of highways, almost all of which is paved. 571 km of this is federal highway, 880.90 is state highway and 1,885.70 are rural roads. This includes a section of the Pan American Highway. The highway system centers on the capital and connects the state with Mexico City, Guadalajara , Ciudad Valles and north to Ciudad Juárez and the United States. Much of the rural highway infrastructure, especially in the Sierra Gorda area, is for the benefit of mining, agriculture and forestry. [56] The most important of the interstate roads links the state with Mexico City metropolitan area and its market of 20 million people as well as 25 other million customers within 200 miles (320 km). The US border is a nine hour drive. To support the international transportation of goods, Querétaro has an inner customs office that facilitates the shipment of manufactured products to foreign countries. [17] However, the highway system is most concentrated in the municipalities of Querétaro and San Juan del Río and the corridor in between. Fifty five percent of the traffic along this corridor begins or terminates within the state. [15] Other infrastructure includes water systems, public buses, rail lines, an international airport and radio and television stations. Most of the irrigation and water-storage areas are also concentrated in the Querétaro and San Juan del Rio municipalities. [15] The capital is home to the state’s largest public bus terminal called the Terminal de Autobuses de Querétaro . This station is a transfer point for many who travel north or south in the country. Other major terminals exist in Colón , Tequisquiapan , Jalpan de Serra, San Juan del Río, Cadereyta and Amealco de Bonfil . The state has 338.9 km of rail line, much the same as it had when they were initially built in the early 20th century. They mostly carry freight and connect the cities of San Juan del Río, Tequisquiapan, Pedro Escobedo , Querétaro, Colón and El Marqués. [56] The Querétaro International Airport began operations in 2004, replacing the older Ing. Fernando Espinosa Gutierrez Airport. Located in the capital, the facility handles both cargo and passengers. [60] The state has twenty radio stations, seventeen of which are commercial enterprises. Stations include XHUAQ, XHORT, XHOZ, XHOE, XHQTO, XHMQ, XHJHS, XHZQ, XHRQ, XEUAQ, XEQG, XEKH, XEXE, XWGV, XEQUE, XEJX, XEHY and XENA. Television stations are mostly repeaters of national channels such as Televisa and TV Azteca . Televisa has a local operation called Televisora Queretana . Only TV Q is a fully local station. Cable television for the state is provided by Telecable. Major newspapers and magazines include Noticias, Diario de Querétaro, Sol de San Juan, Financiero Regional, Nuevo Amanecer, Futuro de Querétaro, Para Comentar, Nuevo Milenio, Rotativo, Año 2000, Mundo de Querétaro, Agora, Cabañuelas, El Imparcial, El Informador, Mass, Magazine, Reporte (Q), Rincones Queretanos, Radar and El Informador de Santa Rosa Jáuregui. [56] [ edit ]Government The state government is divided into the Legislative, Judicial and Executive branches under Article 23 of the state constitution. The executive branch is headed by the governor, under whom are a number of agencies, including the state secretary and the state attorney general. The Legislature is unicameral made up of representatives popularly elected in districts of th state. This legislature has a number of committees tasked with certain types of legislation. The Judiciary consists of a state supreme court and a system of various lower courts. [61] [ edit ]Archeology Ruins at Las Ranas Humans have been living in the area for between 4000 and 6000 years, with the oldest settlements in the southern part. In the pre Hispanic period the area was important for its commercial routes which linked the Gulf Coast, the Huasteca Region and the central highlands of Mexico principally, but there is evidence of commercial traffic from much further away. This made the area one of cultural exchanges with various ethnicities. When the Spanish arrived, the area was inhabited by the Chichimeca Jonaz , the Huastecas , the Ximpeces and the Pames .(arqueomex) Four archeological sites are open to the public: Las Ranas, Toluquilla, El Quirambal and El Cerrito. [24] Las Ranas and Toluquilla are two sites located near each other in the southwest of the Sierra Gorda , about ninety km northwest of Tequisquiapan , in San Joaquín . Both controlled the important commercial routes of the area which linked the Gulf Coast and the central highlands of Mexico , principally, but there is evidence of trade through here from even farther away. One economic activity important to both was the mining of cinnabar (mercury sulfate) which was highly prized as a red pigment in the pre Hispanic period. [13] [62] [63] Las Ranas was established first, reaching its height between the years 200 and 600, but remained an inhabited city until 1000. The main political buildings were constructed on two natural elevations that form a corner. These elevations were terraced to accommodate buildings of stone and mud, then covered in stone plates or tiles to form facades. Other significant buildings include various temples and five Mesoamerican ball courts . [62] Toluquilla is a smaller site, occupied from 300 CE to 1300CE. This site was a ceremonial, political and administrative center, located on the upper part of an elongated hill, surrounded by ravines. The structures consist of a series of pyramid bases of stone and mud covered in stone plates or tiles. It also contains four Mesoamerican ball courts, one of which is much larger than other similar ones in the area from the same time. There is also a building which shows evidence of stucco work. [63] Later in its history, the area was invaded by the Chichimeca Jonaz , but when the Spanish arrived both sites were abandoned. [13] El Quirambal is located in the Sierra Gorda between Pinal de Amoles and Jalpan de Serra , in the small community of San Juan. The ruins lie top of a hill and their construction is similar to other sites in the Huasteca region from the end of the Classic into the Post Classic periods (800-1200CE) . One important structure is a Mesoamerican ball court which measures forty by twenty meters. On one side of this court, there is a temple with a pyramid base fourteen meters long and seven meters high. All along this flat topped hill, there are structures such as pyramid bases and dwellings and semi circular structures whose purpose has not been determined. The area was inhabited as early as 200 CE and stayed there until it was abandoned in 1200CE. During that time, much of the economy was based on primitive mining. [64] Pyramid at El Cerrito El Cerrito is located in the municipality of Corregidora , only ten minutes from the historic center of the municipal seat. Twenty three million pesos has been budgeted for its restoration. Only part of the site is open to visitors, which focuses on the El Cerrito pyramid, which is illuminated on certain occasions. This pyramid’s dimensions are similar to that of the Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacan . This is one of the main tourist attractions of the area. The name comes from the fact that the site was part of the El Cerrito Hacienda, named after the site, which then was only a “hill” covered in vegetation. The site was an important Toltec influenced ceremonial center, later occupied by the Chichimecas. Later, the area was converted into the sanctuary of the “Virgen de El Pueblito” Virgin Mary image for about a century. Besides the pyramid, another significant structure is called “El Fortín (The Small Fort), which was built over a pre Hispanic pyramid base in 1876, with Neo Gothic doors and windows . [65] The La Campana archeological site has been sacked and severely damaged. The site is the most important in the northwest of the state, corresponding to the Huasteca culture dating from the year 600 CE. The site was discovered in the mid 20th century, but has not been excavated due to the lack of funds. It contains 160 structures including platforms, plazas, patios, and more. [66] Other discoveries in the state have included that of a 2,300 year old mummy of a female child, with accompanying fabric, hair, feathers and plant remains. The find was at a cave in a dry, cold, high-altitude site in the Sierra Gorda region. It is one of the oldest mummies found in Mexico, and was due to natural causes rather than by any preservation technique. The girl is estimated to have died around 320 BCE. [67]	i don't know
What iconic Mexican item is named from the translation of 'shade maker'?	Why Mock Spanish is a Problem \| Politic365 Why Mock Spanish is a Problem Twitter Borrowing is a linguistic phenomenon that we encounter when two languages come into contact. Basically, it is the adoption of a word from one language into another. Spanish, which has over the years come into contact with more than a few languages, has a vast number of borrowings or préstamos. Many of these borrowings are not even recognized (or recognizable) by native speakers as ‘foreign linguistic material’, such as bodega (grocery or winery) and escuela (school) from Greek, almohada (pillow) andajedrez (chess) from Arabic, and aguacate (avocado) and chocolate (I don’t think this needs a translation) from Nahuatl. English, too, has encountered its fair share of other languages and, as a result, is chock full of borrowings from around the globe. Over the years, Spanish has loaned quite a few words that now go unnoticed in the English lexicon, from patio to canteen, to tobacco, to canoe. Some Spanish words used in English, however, are still quite marked as ‘foreign’ in the minds of many English speakers, although they understand and maybe even use them. These include a great number of food and drink-related vocabulary items from tacos to tequila, titles like don, señor/señora and jefe, and other culturally-loaded words like machismo. The foreignness of these words is often used strategically in media and advertising, and this is where the age-old process of borrowing runs headlong into language ideologies, or sets of beliefs about language held by groups of people to justify and further their own sociopolitical and economic interests. Many of these words are from a special variety of language that anthropologist Jane Hill calls ‘Mock Spanish,’ which is the inauthentic often incorrect use of Spanish by non-speakers of the language to, for example, name and advertise pseudo-Mexican fast food items. Hill explains that while allegedly harmless and all in good fun, Mock Spanish is actually a problematic practice as its very humor relies on negative stereotypes of Latinos, particularly Mexicans. In other words, Mock Spanish is the linguistic equivalent of the Frito Bandito or that Mexican caricature wearing the large sombrero and a colorful sarape enjoying a siesta under the shade of a saguaro cactus who shows up on paving tiles, bookends and everything in between. Cinco de Mayo has spawned many examples of mock Spanish, from the verbal-visual gag t-shirt with five jars of mayonnaise to a certain iconic Mexican beer being advertised a few years back as The Drinko for Cinco™. This last example employs the ever-popular ‘just add o’ rule for creating Mock Spanish nouns from English words. These days, the holiday is frequently referred to as the Cinco de Drinko . In fact, it seems ‘Cinco de’ has become a productive phrase, generating no end of slogans around this time of year. So far this year, I’ve seen the Cinco de Gato , a local humane society cat adoption event with a sombrero-wearing cat shaking maracas logo, and the Cinco de Miler , a 5-mile road race the logo of which features a running stick figure with sombrero and maracas. The borrowing of Spanish words into English and the growing understanding of Spanish words by the English monolingual public are surely indicators of a widespread and flourishing Latino influence in the U.S. It’s important, however, to ask how Spanish is being used and why, what it reflects about the sociocultural context and what stereotypes it encodes and reproduces. As a linguist, I cannot help but see Cinco de Mayo as an annual celebration of Mock Spanish, with new items added to the repertoire every year. TAGS	Sombrero
What disease, introduced by invading forces, killed millions of indigenous Mexican people in the early 1500s?	Food Timeline--Mexican and TexMex food history Food historians tell us TexMex cuisine originated hundreds of years ago when Spanish/Mexican recipes combined with Anglo fare. TexMex, as we Americans know it today, is a twentieth century phenomenon. Dictionaries and food history sources confirm the first print evidence of the term "Tex Mex" occured in the 1940s. Linguists remind us words are often used for several years before they appear in print. TexMex restaurants first surfaced ouside the southwest region in cities with large Mexican populations. The gourmet Tex Mex "fad" began in the 1970s. Diana Kennedy, noted Mexican culinary expert, is credited for elevating this common food to trendy fare. These foods appealed to the younger generation. What is Tex-Mex? "Tex-Mex food might be described as native foreign food, contradictory through that term may seem, It is native, for it does not exist elsewhere; it was born on this soil. But it is foreign in that its inspiration came from an alien cuisine; that it has never merged into the mainstream of American cooking and remains alive almost solely in the region where it originated..." ---Eating in America, Waverly Root & Richard de Rochemont [William Morrow:New York] 1976 (p. 281) [1940s] "Tex-Mex. A combination of the words "Texan" and "Mexican," first printed in 1945, that refers to an adaptation of Mexican dishes by Texas cooks. It is difficult to be precise as to what distinguishes Tex-Mex from true Mexican food, except to say that the variety of the latter is wider and more regional, whereas throughout the state and, now, throughout the entire United States." ---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 325) [1950s] "Mexican restaurants, whos popularity coincided with the arrival of large numbers of Mexican immigrants after 1950, have for the most part followed the from and style of what is called "Tex-Mex" food, and amalgam of Northern Mexican peasant food with Texas farm and cowboy fare. Chili, which some condsider Texas's state dish, was unknown in Mexico and derived from the ample use of beef in Texan cooking. "Refried beans" are a mistranslation of the Mexican dish frijoles refritos, which actually means well-fried beans...The combination platter of enchiladas, tacos, and tortillas became the unvarying standards of the Tex-Mex menu, while new dishes like chimichangas (supposedly invented in the the 1950s at El Charro restaurant in Tucson, Arizona) and nachos (supposedly first served at a consession at Dallas's State Fair of Texas in 1964...) were concocted to please the American palate....One Tex-Mex item that may someday rival the pizza as an extraordinarily successful ethnic dish is the fajita...introduced at Ninfa's in Houston on July 13, 1973, as tacos al carbon. No one knows when or where it acquired the name fajita, which means girdle' or'strip' in Spanish and refers to the skirt steak originally used in the preparation...Only in the last decade has refined, regional Mexican food taken a foot-hold in American cities, reflecting not only the tenets of Tex-Mex cookery by the cuisines of Mexico City, the Yucatan, and other regions with long-standing culinary traditions." ---America Eats Out, John Mariani [William Morrow:New York] 1991 (p. 80-1) [1970s] "In the good old days, Texans went to "Mexican restaurants" and ate "Mexican food." Then in 1972, The Cuisines of Mexico, an influential cookbook by food authority Diana Kennedy, drew the line between authentic interior Mexican food and the "mixed plates" we ate at "so-called Mexican restaurants" in the United States. Kennedy and her friends in the food community began referring to Americanized Mexican food as "Tex-Mex," a term previously used to describe anything that was half-Texan and half-Mexican. Texas-Mexican restaurant owners considered it an insult. By a strange twist of fate, the insult launched a success. For the rest of the world, "Tex-Mex" had an exciting ring. It evoked images of cantinas, cowboys and the Wild West. Dozens of Tex-Mex restaurants sprang up in Paris, and the trend spread across Europe and on to Bangkok, Buenos Aires and Abu Dhabi. Tortilla chips, margaritas and chili con carne are now well-known around the world." --- Houston Post , 6 part series, all online: America's First Cuisines, Sophie D. Coe American Food: The Gastronomic Story, Evan Jones [chapter III "Padres and Conquistadores"] Cuisines of Mexico, Diana Kennedy Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [separate entries for specific foods--fajita, tamale, chalupa...] Food Culture in Mexico, Long-Solis& Vargas The History of Food, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, "The History of Cereals, Maize in the West" (pages 164-176) New Mexico Cooking: Southwestern Flavors of the Past and Present, Clyde Casey Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Mexico] Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew J. Smith [Mexican American Food] Pre-Hispanic Cooking, Ana M. Benitez Que Vivan Los Tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity/Jeffrey M. Pilcher The Story of Corn, Betty Fussell You Eat What You Are, Thelma-Barer-Stein ("Mexico") The history of bunuelos and churros can be traced to ancient peoples. fritters were known to many cultures and cuisines; each evolving according to local tastes and customs. These foods were introduced to Mexico by Spanish settlers. There are several foods closely related to bunuelos and churros: sopaipillas & fry bread . In other countries, simliar recipes evolved as doughnuts, funnel cake, and waffles . About bunuelos "Most countries have their version of bunuelos, or fritters, either sweet or savory, and they are certainly great favorites throughout Spain and Latin America. In many parts of Mexico bunuelos are made of a stiffer dough, which is rolled out thin anywhere up to 12 inches in diameter and then fried crisp and staked up ready for use. In Uruapan...they are broken into small pieces and heated\ quickly in a thick syrup of piloncillo, the raw sugar of Mexico. These of Veracruz are very much like the churros of Spain, but flavored with aniseeds, and served with a syrup." ---The Cuisines of Mexico, Diana Kennedy [Harper Row:New York] 1972 (p. 329-330) About churros "At every Spanish festival or carnival, one is sure to find a huge cauldron of bubbling oil where Churros are quickly fried, shaped into loops, and threaded into reeds that are then knotted for easy carrying. They are meant to be purchased immediately after frying, usually by the dozens, and are munched on by visitors as they wander about taking tin the sights. Churros are nothing more than fried batter of flour and water, but they are essential to a Spanish breakfast, dipped either in sugar or in a cup of coffee or thick hot chocolate...If one is out on an all-night binge--a juerga, as it is called--it is the custom to end the evening by eating Churros and hot chocolate at the churreria, or churro store, which opens by dawn." ---The Foods and Wines of Spain, Penelope Casas [New York:Knopf] 1982 (p. 342) [NOTE: this book has a recipe for churros, we can send you a copy if you like] RECOMMENDED READING: The Foods and Wines of Spain/Penelope Casas ---recipes for several different kinds of bunuelos; pages introducing desserts (p. 340-1) sum up the ingredients used and holiday connections. Chili peppers: quick & general . Origins "The fruits of Capsicum species seem to have a magnetic attraction for confusing colloquila nomes. It began with Columbus discovering them on his first voyage and calling them peppers of the Indies, initiating a mix-up which has lasted to this day... This fruit with many names brows on plants of the genus Capsicum, members of the Solanacae family like the tomatoes and potatoes... There were three species, or species groups, of cultivated chiles in ancient America...The white-flowered and white seeded Capsicum annum, chinense, Capsicum annum was in Mexico to be found, wild, in cultural deposits in the Tehuacan valley dating from 7200 to 5200 B.C..." ---America's First Cuisines, Sophie D. Coe [University of Texas Press:Austin TX] 1994 (p. 60-61) "Wild chillies were being gathered and eaten in Mexico c.7000BC, and were cultivated there before 3500 BC." ---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2nd edition, 2007 (p. 171) Chile pepper migration "Interestingly...it was not the Spanish who were responsible for the early diffusion of New World food plants. Rather, it was the Portuguese, aided by local traders following long-used trade routes, who spread American plants though the Old World with almost unbelievable rapidity...Unfortunately, documentation for the routes that chilli peppers followed from the Americas is not as plentiful as that for other New World economic plants... it is highly probable that capsicums accompanied the better-documented Mesoamerican food complex of corn, beans, and squash, as peppers have been closely associated with these plants throughout history...The fiery new spice was readily accepted by the natives of Africa and India...From India, chilli peppers traveled...not only along the Portuguese route back around Africa to Europe but also over ancient trade routes that led either to Europe via the Middle East or to monsoon Asia...In the latter cakes, if the Portuguese had not carried chilli peppers to Southeast Asia and Japan, the new spice would have been spread by Arabic, Gujurati, Chinese, Malaysian, Vietnamese, and Javanese traders...In the Szechuan and Hunan provinces in China, where many New World foods were established within the lifetime of the Spanish conquistadors, there were no read leading from the coast. Nonetheless, American foods were known there by the middle of the sixteenth century, having reached these regions via caravan routes from the Ganges River through Burma and across western China..." ---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Ornelas [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge], Volume One, 2000 (p. 282) Chile peppers travel to Europe "Despite a European 'discovery' of the Americas, chilli peppers diffused throughout Europe in circuitous fashion. Following the fall of Granada in 1492, the Spaniards established dominance over the western Mediterranean while the Ottoman Turks succeeded power in northern Africa...the Mediterranean became...two separate seas divided by Italy, Malta, Sicily, with little or no trade or contact between the eastern and western sections. Venice was the center of the spice and Oriental trade of central Europe, and Venice depended on the Ottoman Turks...From central Europe the trade went to Antwerp and the rest of Europe, although Antwerp also received Far Eastern goods from the Portuguese via India, Africa, and Lisbon. It was along these avenues that chili peppers traveled into much of Europe. They were in Italy by 1535...Germany by 1542...England before 1538...the Balkans before 1569...and Moravia by 1585...But except in the Balkans and Turkey, Europeans did not make much use of chilli peppers until the Napoleonic blockade cut off their supply of spices and they turned to Balkan paprika as a substitute. Prior to that, Europeans had mainly grown capsicums in containers as ornamentals." ---Cambridge World History of Food (p. 282) "We know that Columbus was the first European to see Native Americans consuming capsicum peppers, and our word for them reveals that he was really searching for black pepper and called these 'pimiento' with as much enthusiasm as he called the natives 'Indians.' But the very fact that they could also be found far away as China within a few years has led some scholars to suggest that they may have reached Asia even before they did Europe. It is certain though that the Portuguese brought peppers to their colonies in Asia. Peppers were first described in Europe in the German herbal of Leonard Fuchs in 1542, but he thought they came from India. Like several other New World imports though, it appears that poor people were the only ones willing to eat them; they are not even mentioned in cookbooks which naturally catered to a literate and elite audience." ---Food in Early Modern Europe, Ken Albala [Greenwood Press:Westport CT] 2003 (p. 32) "Chile is historically associated with the voyage of Columbus (Heiser 1976). Columbus is given credit for introducing chile to Europe, and subsequently to Africa and to Asia. On his first voyage, he encountered a plant whose fruit mimicked the pungency of the black pepper, Piper nigrum L. Columbus called it red pepper because the pods were red. The plant was not the black pepper, but a heretofore unknown plant that was later classified as Capsicum. Capsicum is not related to the Piper genus. In 1493, Peter Martyr (Anghiera 1493) wrote that Columbus brought home "pepper more pungent than that from the Caucasus." Chile spread rapidly across Europe into India, China, and Japan. The new spice, unlike most of the solanums from the Western Hemisphere, was incorporated into the cuisines instantaneously. Probably for the first time, pepper was no longer a luxury spice only the rich could afford. Since its discovery by Columbus, chile has been incorporated into most of the world's cuisines. It has been commercially grown in the United States since at least 1600, when Spanish colonists planted seeds and grew chile using irrigation from the Rio Chama in northern New Mexico (DeWitt and Gerlach 1990)."--- SOURCE Chile peppers in Britian "A few new spices reached Britain after the end of the Middle Ages. The Spaniards brought back from Central America several members of the capsicum family, which were naturalized in southern Europe. The larger fruits were imported thence into England under the name of Guinea pepper. The smallest, reddest and hottest of the American capsicums, when dried and powdered, produced cayenne pepper, the 'chyan' of English eighteenth century recipe books." ---Food & Drink in Britain From the Stone Age to the 19th Century, C. Anne Wilson [Academy Chicago:Chicago] 1991 (p. 293) "The use of the term pepper for fruits of the capsicum family dates from the eighteenth century, an allusion to the similar pungency of taste. In particular it refers to the Capsicum annuum, a native of tropical America, which is generally called more fully the sweet pepper (an alternative name in American English is bell pepper)." ---An A to Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 251) "The word "cayenne" seems to come from kian, the name of the pepper among the Tupi Indians of northeastern South America. The pod type probably originated in what is now French Guiana and was named after either the Cayenne River of the capital of the country, cayenne. It owes its spread to Portugal, whose traders carried it to Europe, Africa, India, and Asia. Although it probably was introduced into Spain before 1500, its circuitous route caused it to be transferred to Britain from India in 1548...In 1597, the botanist John Gerard referred to cayenne as "ginnie or Indian pepper" in his herbal, and in his influential herbal of 1652, Nicholas Culpepper wrote that cayenne was "this violent fruit" that was of considerable service to "help digestion, provoke urine, relieve toothache, preserve the teeth from rottenness, comfort a cold stomach, expel the stone from the kidney, and take away dimness of sight." Cayenne appeared in Miller's The Gardener's and Botanist's Dictionary in 1768, proving it was being cultivated in England--at least in home gardens." ---The Chile Pepper Encyclopedia, Dave DeWitt [William Morrow:New York] 1999 (p. 68-69) "The melegueta pepper enjoyed great popularity during the Elizabethan Age in England, primarily through trade with Portugal." ---ibid (p. 23) Gerard's Herbal 1633: "Peppers - pages 364-366. "Capsicum. Ginnie or Indian Pepper. ...Ginnie pepper hath the taste of pepper, but not the power or vertue, notwithstanding in Spaine and sundrie parts of the Indies they do vse to dresse their meate therewith, as we doe with Calecute pepper: but (saith my Authour) it hath in it a malicious qualitie, whereby it is an enemy to the liuer and other of the entrails... It is said to die or colour like Saffron; and being received in such sort as Saffron is usually taken, it warmeth the stomacke, and helpeth greatly the digestion of meates." Chile peppers in coolonial America "Peppers of the annuum species were transferred into what is now the American Southwest--first by birds and then by humankind. Botanists believe that the wild annum variety known as chiltepins spread northward from Mexico through dissemination by birds long before Native Americans domesticated peppers and made them part of their trade goods. These chiltepins still grow wild today in Arizona and in South Texas, where they are known as chilipiquins. According to most accounts, chile peppers were introduced the second time into what is now known the United States by Calitan General Juan de Onate, who founded Sante Fe in 1609. However, they may have been introduced to the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico by the Antonio Espejo expedition of 1582-83. According to one of the members of the expedition..."They have no chile, but the native were given some seed to plant." But by 1601, chiles were not on the list of Indian crops, according to colonist Francisco de Valverde..But soon chiles were being grown by Spanish and Indians alike.. We do know that soon after the Spanish arrived, the cultivation of peppers in New Mexico spread rapidly and the pods were grow both in Spanish settlements and native pueblos...During the 1700s, peppers were popping up in other parts of the country. In 1768, according to legend, Minorcan settlers in St. Augustine, Florida, introduced the datil pepper, a land race of the Chinese species...Other introductions were also occuring during the eighteenth century. In 1785, George Washington planted two rows of "bird peppers" and one row of cayenne at Mount Vernon, but it is not known how he acquired the seed. Another influential American, Thomas Jefferson, was also growing peppers from seed imported from Mexico. By the early 1800s, commercial seed varieties became available to the American public. In 1806 a botanist named McMahon listed four varieties for sale, and in 1826, another botanist named Thornburn listed "Long' (cayenne), "Tomato-Shaped' (squash), 'Bell' (oxheart), 'Cherry' and 'Bird' (West Indian) peppers as available for gardeners. Two years later, squash peppers were cultivated in North American gardens and that same year (1828), the 'California Wonder Bell' pepper was first named and grown commercially." ---The Chile Pepper Encyclopedia, Dave DeWitt [William Morrow:New York] 1999 (p. 13-4) [NOTE: This book contains far more information than can be paraphrased here. Your librarian will be happy to help you obtain a copy.] "Bell pepper is a large, flesh mild green pepper, turning into red or gold when fully ripe. Sturtevant cites Lionel Wafer in 1699, who mentions Bell-pepper and Bird-pepper as growing in the Ithsmus of America, and Edward Long in 1774, who lists nine varieties of Capsicum as being under cultivation in Jamaica; of these, "the Bell is esteemed most proper for pickling," Sturtevant repeats. Among numerous references to Capsicum by Jefferson, one unmistakably refers to bell pepper, seeds of which were sent from Mexico in 1824: 'Large Pepper, a good salad the seeds being removed." Plantings of Piperoni in 1774 and Capsicum Major in 1812, among others, would seem to refer to bell pepper as well. Cayenne pepper (Capsicum frutenscens L. var. longum Bailey) was planted by Jefferson as early as 1767. The presence of hot peppers in the West Indies had been chronicled since 1494, according to Sturtevant. Long pepper was a popular name for the elongated cayenne, but it had been appropriated from the eastern Piper longum, the fruit spikelet of which had fallen into disuse by the time of the voyages of discovery. The use of capsicum peppers seems to have come to Virginia by way of the West Indies (see Pepper Pot an Gumbo, for instance). The choice of pepper for Pepper Vinegar is not altogether clear. I opt for cayenne because of the implied heat in comparing the flavor to that of black pepper; also Jefferson correspondence in 1813 (Garden Book) refers to vinegar in which cayenne is steeped brine used as seasoning. (This must have been the basis for later southern barbecue mixtures.) However, some argue for the use of mild pepper in this recipe, but I think that Mrs. Randolph would have so specified. In any event, the use of hot peppers in traditional Virginia cookery was highly skilled and discreet, just enough to brighten the taste, not to set it afire." ---The Virginia Housewife, Mary Randolph, with historical notes and commentaries by Karen Hess, facsimile 1824 edition [University of South Carolina Press:Columbia] 1984 (p. 282-3) [NOTE: This book contains several additional notes and selected recipes for Capsicum, Bell and Cayenne peppers.] People have been stuffing vegetables with a variety of minced mixtures for thousands of years. Ancient Greek dolma (stuffed vine leaves) is one of the most famous "Old World" examples. Aztec and Maya cooks stuffed tamales with all sorts of fillings. Chiles Rellenos (stuffed chilies) descend from this delicious tradition. About chile peppers . Stuffed pepper recipes published in early USA sources reflect the dichotomy between Old and New world interpretations. Recipes titled Chiles Rellenos are sometimes noted as "Mexican" or "Foreign." The farther the distance from Mexico and California, the more Anglicized the recipe. Think: pickled peppers . [Pre-Hispanic Central America] "Chilis...are stuffed with different mixtures... Capon Green Chilis. Choose big, green chilis, toast them and peel them. Make a cut in the chilis below the stalks, being careful not to split them. Devein the chilis. Crumble some fresh cheese, chop some chenopodium leaves and mix with the cheese, chopping up the mixture thoroughly. Stuff the chilis with the mixture and fry them in lard. When they are well-cooked, remove from the fat and drain them. Dip very thin tortillas in boiling hot salted butter or lard and then wrap each chili in a tortilla and place on a serving dish." ---Cocina Prehispanica: Pre-Hispanic Cooking, Ana M. de Benitez [Ediciones Euroamericanas Klaus Thiele:Mexico] 1974 (p. 75-77) [19th century California] "Chiles rellenos (stuffed chiles) Prepare the egg for the chiles: separate the whites from the yolks. Meat the whites with a fork or a wicker spoon, but by no means with a beater. When the whites are beaten to snowy peaks, add three tablespoons of flour and fold in the eggs to incorporate the flour. The yolks are not added to the whites until the moment the chiles are fried. Take this precaution. The other way makes the batter very think and the chiles don't fry well, because they have to be coated well with the egg to come out right. For fifteen chiles you should use 10 eggs. Don't beat the yolks until they are ready to be added to the whites at the moment you fry the chiles. When the yolks are added to the whites, give them half a turn, pouring them on the chiles, turning them in the batter, then putting them in the already hot lard." ---Encarnacion's Kitchen: Mexican Recipes form Nineteenth-Century California, Encarnacion Pinedo, edited and translated by Dan Strehl [University of California Press:Berkeley CA] 2003 (p. 121) [NOTES: (1) Encarnacion Pinedo lived was born 1848. Her book, El cocinero espanol, was published in 1898. (2) This book also offers a version stuffed with scrambled eggs and cooked artichoke bottoms, picadillo (minced meats & spices), shrimp, salt cod, cheese, canned French sardines & white cabbage. Also, Stuffed verdes rellenos (stuffed green chiles)] [1880: Boston] "Stuffed Peppers. Get large bell peppers. Cut around the stem, remove it, and take out all the seeds. For the stuffing use two quarts of chopped cabbage, a cupful of white mustard seed, three table-spoonfuls of celery seed, two table-spoonfuls of salt, half a cupful of grated horse-radish. Fill each pepper with a part of this mixture, and into each one put a small onion and a little cucumber. Tie the stem on again and put the peppers in a jar, and cover with cold vinegar." ---Miss Parloa's New Cook Book, Maria Parloa [Estes and Luariat:Boston] 1880, 1886 (p. 344) [1896: Boston] Chili, a new world recipe, originally meant beans served in a spicy tomato sauce. This nutritionally balanced combination was known to ancient Aztec and Mayan cooks. Food historians generally agree chili con carne is an American recipe with Mexican roots. "Con carne" means with meat (Carne is the Spanish word for meat). Our survey of historic newspapers suggests the original recipe was just chili (powder) and meat. Today in the United States, chile con carne is usually a combination of beans, sauce and ground beef. It can be made at home, selected from restaurant menus or purchased (ready-made or in kits) from food stores. Dedicated southwestern chili afficionados concentrate on spices, not the meat. Unless? Of course, they live in Texas. "Chili con carne sounds authentically Spanish, which it could hardly be, for the Spaniards had never seen a chili before they reached America; it was an element of Indian, not of Spanish, cooking. The Spanish name could have been explained by a Mexican origin, but the only persons who deny that provenance more vehemently than the Texans, who claim credit for it, are the Mexicans, who deny paternity with something like indignation...This dish is believed to have been invented in the city of San Antonio some time after the Civil War; it grew in favor after the developement of chili powder in New Braunfels in 1902." ---Eating in America: A History, Waverly Root and Richard De Rochemont [William Morrow:New York] 1976 (p. 277-8) "Instinctively, one knows that chili originated in the Southwest, was of Mexican inspiration, and that it moved eastward to the southern states in the early part of the century. Although American Indians used for one dish or another such chilies as could be found in various parts of America, chili con carne was not an Indian invention. Carolyn Niethammer, in her book American Indian Food and Lore, states that the tiny round chili called chillipiquin was known in New Mexico and Arizona, but the Indians did not know the large, domesticated chilies such as those used in chili con carne "until the Spaniards brought them [here] after passing through Mexico." The late Frank X. Tolbert, perhaps the nation's leading historian on the subject of chili, indicates in his book, A Bowl of Red, his assurance that chili originated in San Antonio, Texas." ---Craig Claiborne's The New York Times Food Encyclopedia, compiled by Joan Whitman [Times Books:New York] 1985 (p. 88) "Chili con carne is a stew that consists of meat, hot chile peppers, a liquid such as water or broth, and spices. It may or may not contain such ingredients as onions, tomatoes, or beans. Everything about chili con carne generates some sort of controversy- the spelling of the name, the origin of the dish, the proper ingredients for a great recipe...Although archaeological evidence indicates that chile peppers evolved in Mexico and South America, most writers on the subject state flatly that chili did not orginate in Mexico. Even Mexico disclaims chili; one Mexican dictionary defines it as: "A detestable dish sold from Texas to New York City and errouneously described as Mexican." Despite such protestations, the combiantion of meat and chile peppers in stew-like concoctions is not uncommon in Mexican cooking...Mexican caldillos (thick soups or stews), moles (meaning "mixture"), and adobos (thick sauces) often resemble chili con carne in both appearance and taste because they all sometimes use similar ingredients: various types of chiles combined with meat (usually beef), onions, garlic, cumin, and occasionally tomatoes. But chili con carne fanatics tell strange tales about the possible origin of chili. The story of the "lady in blue" tells of Sister Mary of Agreda, a Spanish nun in the early 1600s who never left her convent in Spain but nonetheless had out-of-body experiences during which her spirit would be transported across the Atlantic to preach Christianity to the Indians. After one of the return trips, her spirit wrote down the first recipe for chili con carne, which the Indians gage her: chile peppers, venison, onions, and tomatoes. An only slightly less fanciful account suggests that Canary Islanders, transplanted to San Antonio as early as 1723, used local peppers nad wild onions combined with various meats to create early chili combinations. E. De Grolyer...believed that Texas chili con carne had its origins as the "pemmican of the Southwest" in the late 1840s...The most likely explanation for the origin of chili con carne in Texas comes from the heritage of Mexican food combined with the rigors of life on the Texas frontier. Most historians agree that the earliest written description of chili came from J.C. Clopper, who lived near Houston. Hew worte of visiting San Antonio in 1828: "When they [poor fmailies of San Antonio] have to lay for their meat in the market, a very little is made to suffice for the family; it is generally cut into a kind of hash with nearly as many peppers as there are pieces of meat--this is all stewed together." Except for this one quote, which does not mention the dish by name, historians of heat can find no documented evidence of chili in Texas before 1880. Around that time in San Antonio, a municipal market--El Mercado--was operating in Military Plaza. Historian Charles Ramsdell noted that "the first rickety chili stands" were set up in this marketplace, with bols o'red sold by women who were called "chili queens."...A bowl o'red cost visitors like O. Henry and William Jennings Bryan a mere dime and was served with bread and a glass of water...The fame of chili con carne began to spread and the dish soon became a major tourist attraction...At the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893, a bowl o'red was availabe at the "San Antonio Chili Stand." ---The Chile Pepper Encyclopedia, Dave DeWitt [William Morrow:New York] 1999(p. 76-8) [NOTES: (1) Smith's book is online . Smith defines Chili Con Carne thusly: �Chile con came � a popular Mexican dish � literally red pepper and meat.� (p. 99)] [1880] "Twice a week they can afford a stew of chili con carne (our old friend hash, made fiery hot with red pepper)." ---"The City of the Pueblo," The Journal [Muskogee, Indian Territory, OK], March 25, 1880 (p. 3) [1882] "The secretary of war ordered the inspector general of the army to place on the supply list for the use of the army the Americanized Mexican food, 'chili con carne.' It has been recommended by officers of the army as a most valuable diet, and for its anti-scorubic properties." ---"Brief New Items," Albert Lea Freeborn County Standard [Albert Lea, MN], January 19, 1882 (p 2) "A chili con carne factory is among the contemplated enterprises of our city." ---"Local Dots," Daily Light [San Antonio TX] April 14, 1882 (p. 1) "If you want a nice dish, take two tablespoonsful Tobin's Chili Con Carne to four eggs, beat up well together, and make into omelette." ---"City Items," Daily Light [San Antonio TX] May 16, 1882 (p. 4) "Chili Con Carne. An Article of Commerce--Adopted by the Army and Navy--And Sold in your Leading Houses...In this section of the country, where it is claimed the food called Chili-Con-Carne originated, it sounds strange to hear it said that a dish of really nourishing and palatable Chili-Con-Carne is quite a rarity; this long felt want has finally been supplied by Tobins' canned Chili Con Carne. It is put up by Tobey & Booth, of Chicago, after the recipe and under the directions of our fellow-townsmen, Capt. W.C. Tobin, and is proving itself worthy of the large and increasing sale that it is now enjoying; it is without a doubt the finest canned meat put up; being anti-scorubic and very nourishing, it has been adopted by both arm and nave, and may be found at the head of the list of stores of these departments. It is handsomely and attractively put up in full 2 lb. cans bearing an elegant three colored label. Like all canned goods that we sell, we guarantee it to keep, and will make good any can that may be spoiled. Those our friends who have not yet tried these goods we would suggest their ordering a sample case; we are sure your customers will like it, and that you can build up a large and profitable trade for the same. Price, $3.75 per doz." ---Chili-Con-Carne," The Evening Light [San Antonio TX], May 27, 1882 (p. 1) [NOTE: Product testimonials occupy 2/5 of the first page of this newspaper. The piece is referred to as the "Chili Con Carne Manifesto" on p. 4 of the paper.] [1885] "From the other side of the Rio Grande we want consignments of chili con carne, tamales and frijoles, the genuine stuff, none of your American imitations." ---"At the Old Stand," Galveston Daily News [TX] September 26, 1885 (p. 8) [1887] "Chili Con Carne. On one of the plazas, or public squares, [in San Antonio, TX] will be found each evening, a large number of Mexicans with what are called Chili Con Carne stands. They are something after the style of the refreshment stands at the county fairs in Iowa. They remain there until 8 o'clock the next morning, and strange to say there are patrons around them more or less all hours of the night and even when it rains...The prepare Mexican dishes, the chief of which is Chili Con Carne, which means pepper and meat, and the pepper they use is Cayenne. A 'tenderfoot' who dares to take a seat and a dish of this hot and ready lunch will never forget it." ---"A Trip to the South," Evening Gazette [Cedar Rapids, IA] March 24, 1887 (p. 2) [1889] "...the supper of frijoles and chili con carne couldn't have been better." ---"Long-Range Jack," Webster City Tribune [IA] September 13, 1889 (p. 3) [1890] "A novel feature of the Alamo and military plazas by lamp light is the numerous tables stationed about them and lit up by huge lanterns, at which whole Mexican families preside, particularly the senoritas vending the peculiar dishes of hotly peppered chilli seasoning, for which they are notoriously famed. I am told they depend upon this trade for their sustenance. The tables are always brought out and spread at sundown, a kettle of coals is set in the background or a fire built upon the hearth, where everything is kept hot and from dusk until daylight, the transient passerby can stop and order tamales, chili con carne, hot coffee and other dishes, which are wonderfully appetising with the stimulating condiments." ---"From the Mountains to the Gulf: Trade, Travels and Trials in Texas," Sandusky Daily Register [OH], February 10, 1890 (p. 2) [1899] "Chile Con Carne Cut or chop into small slices two pounds of beef, add a little chopped tallow and salt; place the above in a covered pot, in which you have previously heated 2 or 3 tablespoons of lard, and steam till about half done; now add two quarts of hot water, and one or two tablespoonfuls of Gebhardt's Eagle Chili Powder, according to strength desired; stir well, then boil slowly until meat is tender." "Chile Con Carne No. 2. Use cold beef roast or soup meat; chop fine, add a little salt, 1 level tablespoonful of flour, 1 tablespoonful of lard, and 1 tablespoonful of Gebhardt's Eagle Chili Powder. Then add a cup of warm water, and cook several minutes. Serve with frijoles." ---The Capitol Cookbook, facsimile Austin 1899 edition [State House Press:Austin TX] 1995 (p. 29) [1934] Tex-Mex ). "Cinco de Mayo almost always means a huge fiesta, with the attendant food, music and dancing to attract a multicultural audience, savoring such Mexican culinary delights as gorditas (thick corn tortillas sliced like pita and stuffed with lettuce, tomato, beef, chicken, or cheese) and bueuelos (deep-fried pastries topped with cinnamon and sugar)." ---The Latino Holiday Book, Valerie Menard [Marlow & Co.:New York] 2004 (p. 29-30) [1929: local community celebration] "Mexican independence will be celebrated at Lincoln Park tomorrow with a Cinco de May celebration, featuring Spanish music, dances and games." ---"Mexican Plan Independence Fete Tomorrow," Los Angeles Times, May 4, 1929 (p. A9) [1938: chamber of commerce sponsorship] "Cinco de Mayo, one of Mexico's greatest holidays...will be celebrated by Los Angeles' 185,000 Mexicans, it was disclosed yesterday. Major observances will be at the third annual Mexican exposition, sponsored by the Mexican Chamber of Commerce, to open Wednesday afternoon for five days of festivities under canvas at 4800 Brooklyn avenue...Samples of Mexican foods will be distributed." ---"Mexican Plan May 5 Fete," Los Angeles Times, May 2, 1938 (p. 10) [NOTE: This article does not describe which kinds of foods were served at this event.] [1964: food company backing] "'Feliz Cinco de Mayo!'...Which means, simply: Happy Fifth of May as the Mexicans would say it. We hope it's a happy day for all of you. But we particularly want to extend our greeting to those of our people of Mexican ancestry and our friends out of the border. According to the folks at Rosarita Mexican Foods, the Fifth of May is a legal national holiday in Mexico...much like our Fourth of July. It celebrates to Battle of Puebla which took place against the French forces that had invaded Mexico in order to impose Austrian Archduke Maximillian and Carlotta as emperor and empress of Mexico. A gallant band of Mexican troops under General Zaragosa defended the city successfully. To the Mexican people, that decisive victory years ago has stood for one hundred and two years as a symbol of the will of our neighbor nation to resist European efforts to dominate Mexico. In a broader sense, that battle signified Mexico's resistance to any foreign intervention...Cinco de Mayo is a day for the inevitable round of speeches...and a day for fun and food...fiesta time. It's a great day for those who love liberty. So, let's get out those sombreros, serapes and maracas and join the fun. Even if you don't want to go dancing in the streets...you can treat your family to a real Mexican feast--United States...style. It's the food that interest us. Just thinking about a table laden with tempting tacos, tasty tamales, enchiladas, crisp tortillas, refried beans, and empanadas makes me want to celebrate...You can whip up a Mexican dinner in no time...since almost all of these delicacies are available at the frozen food cases or among the canned specialty foods at your nearby store. Rosarita, for example, packs a full line of them, modified to our palates...Even though meals of Mexican origin are common in the Southwest, particularly California, Arizona and Texas, about eighty per cent of our people have never tried them. They're growing like Topsy in popularity, though. For example, Rosarita now turns out more than one hundred and fifty thousand tortillas each day." ---"Mexican Dishes for Cinco de Mayo," Chicago Daily Defender, April 30, 1964 (p. 21) [NOTE: This article offers recipe for Enchiladas Con Chile Con Carne, Almendrado, Almendrado Custard Sauce, Tacos ad Ensalada Guacamole, presumably featuring Rosarita products.] [1971: sharing cultures & cuisines] "'What's this, do you know? I'd love to learn how to make it. Doesn't taste like the food in Mexican restaurants, does it?'...'If they're out of nopales and azado at that table, they're probably all gone. Last year the nopales didn't even last this long.' There was little doubt in anyone's mind about the stellar attraction at the Cinco de Mayo celebration. It was the home-cooked Mexican food, pungent and spicy and, as the lady said, is not like anything in a Mexican restaurant. This was Cinco de Mayo, north-of-the-border style, a second-year repeat project of the mothers with children in Westminster School District's Title 1 compensatory education program. American potluck, augmented by such gringo mainstays as macaroni salad and Boston baked beans. Rather fittingly, it took place at Sigler Park, third oldest public park in Orange County. Westminster also has one of the oldest Mexican-American communities in the county--most Chicano families have lived in the area four or five generations...Mississippi-born and an expert on 'way down South' cookery, Mrs. Easley had been intrigued with Mexican cooking and tried Mexican foods ever since she came west. 'When I came to California I thought cactus plants were weeds and I couldn't understand why so many Mexican-American families cultivated them--right along with the roses--in their gardens. 'Now I know--they're used to make nopales--a very delicious and traditional vegetable dish. You take a few of the smaller leaves and strip off the stickers with a sharp knife, then fry them with garlic and onion.'" ---"Fiesta Serves Culture on a Platter," Marjie Driscoll, Los Angeles Times, May 11, 1971 (p. E1) [1972: industry promotion] "Friday will be the Mexican holiday, Cinco de Mayo, and the way to celebrate is with a taco, says the National Taco Council. The council is an affiliate of the Mexican Food Institute, which is headquartered in San Antonio, Tex., and dispenses taco lore in connection with National Taco Week, held each year at this time...The taco is the most important use of the tortilla...The best known version of the taco is the crispy taco, a tortilla folded in half, fried and stuffed with meat or other filling. This taco is usually garnished with lettuce, tomatoes, grated cheese, or a combination of these. Another version is the soft taco. The tortilla is not fried but simply folded around a filling or mixture that includes gravy or sauce...The National Taco Council was established in 1964 by Roberto L. Gomez. It goals include creating in Mexican-Americans a greater pride in their own cuisines and enhancing the reputation of Mexican food and culture everywhere." ---"Everything You Wanted to Know About Tacos," Los Angeles Times, May 4, 1972 (p. K9) [1974: American home party menu 1] "Turn Sunday dinner this weekend into a fiesta in honor of Mexico's colorful holiday, Cinco de Mayo...An extravagant Cinco de Mayo dinner might feature mole poblano, a luxury dish of turkey in a sauce that includes a little chocolate...But mole is complicated...As an alternative, we recommend an informal party built around a buffet of simpler foods. The main dish will be tacos which the guests make themselves. These are not the typical tacos of the franchise stands around Los Angeles, but tacos more like those at stands in Mexico...They are made with tortillas heated until soft, then folded around meat and a choice of other ingredients. There's no deep-frying involved and no need for commercial taco shells so crisp they crack apart and spill their contents. In Mexico, a soft taco often includes nothing more than a little seasoned meat. A stand at the beach in Veracruz dispenses some of the best tacos in Mexico. They contain only slivers of barbecued pork and chopped onion mixed with a little chopped cilantro. Hot sauce is added only upon request. The meat for our Cinco de Mayo tacos is shredded pork, not the ground beef of American tacos. The condiments, set out in separate bowls, include chopped tomato, shredded cheese, shredded lettuce and salsa, either bottled or homemade. Chopped green onions can be combined with cilantro in one bowl or the cilantro served separately for those not accustomed to its distinctive flavor. The party starts with margaritas accompanied by Nachos, and appetizer of tortilla chips topped with cheese and sliced chile and heated until the cheese melts. We suggest ceviche or a shrimp cocktail, but in either case the sauce should be seasoned generously with lime juice. If preferred, a green salad could be substituted for this course. Along with the tacos there are refried beans, but flavored in a different way. The beans are mashed and mixed with bacon and onion and spiced with chili powder. It takes something cooling, like Sangria, t refresh palates form this meal. And something even cooler, Helado de Aguacate, or avocado ice cream, is the dessert. Far out? Not if you've spent any time in Mexico where the store sell ice creams made not only with avocado but with corn, cheese and chiles and such fruits as guanabana and mamey." ---"A Cinco de Mayo Menu for Your Very Own Fiesta," Barbara Hansen, Los Angeles Times May 2, 1974 (p. F1) [Note: This article offers recipes for Nachos, Make-Your-Own Soft Tacos, Spice Frijoles, Sangria and Helado De Aguacate.] [1978: American home party menu 2] "Parties are in order throughout the weekend to celebrate Mexico's colorful holiday, Cinco de Mayo...Here is a dinner menu tailored for the holiday. The main course is Mole Poblano, the dish invented in Puebla where the battle commemorated by Cinco de may took place. Mole Ponblano is ordinarily made with a variety of dried chiles that must be soaked and ground. This recipe simplifies the procedures by substituting chili powder and canned enchilada sauce. The the other ingredients--tomato, onion, raisins, nuts, sesame seeds,, spices and chocolate--are much they same as they would be in Puebla. Accompaniments include rice dotted with vegetables, a bright avocado-tomato salad and, for dessert, an almond-flavored flan." ---"Border Line: A Dinner Tailored to Cinco de Mayo," Barbara Hansen, Los Angeles Times, May 4, 1978 (p. J30) [NOTES: (1) This article includes recipes for Mole Poblano, Arroz A L Jardinera, Avocado and Tomato Salad and Flan De Almendra (Almond Flan). (2) What is Mole poblano ?] SOURCE . [1982] "[Skirt steaks]were stacked a foot deep in a six-foot wide display. But they don't call them skirt steaks in San Antonio--they call the fajitas. From what I was able to learn, it seems fajitas are something of a Southern Texas--or Tex-Mex-phenomenon. They have become popular only in the past few years, but they have become very popular. According to one meat buyer I talked to, "When I put fajitas in the ad, I'll go through between 100,000 and a quarter of a million pounds in a week...They even have fajita cooking contests in Southern Texas. I learned that the champion for the past five years was Red Gomez, a butcher from Brownsville, Texas. I called him to see if he would be willing to share his award-winning recipe with me. He was not." ---"The Butcher: The Skirt Steak is Still in Style," Merle Ellis, Los Angeles Times, November 11, 1982 (p. M23)[NOTE: article includes recipe.] [1984] "The original fajitas were created out of necessity, not a desire to have something new. Ranchers, who usually butchered their own meat, kept the steaks and roasts for themselves and gave their hands what they considered the less desirable cuts, including the so-called skirt steak, which is a section of the diaphragm. The long, narrow, beltlike strip would be marinated overnight in lime juice to tenderize it. The next day it was grilled over mesquite, a cheap, plentiful wood that itself has become a cooking fad. The meat was then cut into thin strips, each diner filling a flour tortilla with it and with pico de gallo, a spicy relish of onions, green chilies, tomatoes and cilantro. Those familiar with Mexican dishes may notice the striking similarity between fajitas and tacos al carbon and carne asada. But tacos al carbon, a fad that preceded fajitas, are made with a better cut of meat that does not need to be marinated and they reach the table already rolled in tortillas. As for carne asada, it is grilled meat and vegetables. The view around here is that fajitas made their way north from the border to Austin about five years ago and began arriving in Dallas two years ago." ---"De Gustibus: Fajitas-In Texas They Love Them," Marian Burros, New York Times, August 4, 1984 (p. 8) [1985] "The hottest dish in town, in more ways than none, is a Texas export called fajitas. For the uninitiated, fajitas...are strips of grilled skirt steak served with flour tortillas, guacamole and salsa and eaten wrapped in the tortillas, taco style. If they don't come to the table sizzling from the grill, they are not fit to be called fajitas. In a trend sense, they are even hotter. The Houston Restaurant Assn. celebrated Cinco de Mayo by staging its First Annual Fajita Meet Sunday. In Pasadena, a restaurant called Manana Mexican Food and Drink of Arroyo parkway has erected a large sign inquiring 'Have you had your fajitas today?'..'They used to be dirt cheap. They used to almost throw them away, like junk,' said Bud Smith, a Texan who grew up in Pharr, near the Mexican border...In Los Angeles, the fajitas trend is so new that the name is virtually unknown outside of restaurants...According to Texan sources, fajitas originated in San Antonio. However, others day the idea came directly from Mexico. Under a different name, arrechera, skirt steak has a venerable history in California. The late Elena Zelayeta , who popularized Mexican cooking in California, included a recipe for Arrechera Adobada in her first cookbook, 'Elena's Famous Mexican and Spanish Recipes,' published in 1944. 'I find skirt steak to be one of the best flavored, less expensive cuts of meat,' she wrote. In the early version of fajitas, Zelayeta marinated the meat with vinegar, oil, garlic, oregano, salt and pepper, then added tomato sauce and broiled it. By 1958, when 'Elena's Secrets of Mexican Cooking' was published she dropped the tomato sauce and cooked the meat over the coals instead of under the broiler...Fajitas have crossed the ocean to Paris, where they are served in Tex-Mex restaurants along with flour tortillas shipped from Amsterdam. They are also popular in New York and San Francisco...Beer is a popular accompaniment to fajitas...Welche commented on the meteoric popularity of skirt steak. 'Five or six years ago, you couldn't find skirt steak in the market. They ground it into hamburger." ---"Fajitas," Barbara Hansen, Los Angeles Times, May 9, 1985, (p. K1) Gifted cook, inspirational leader, respected teacher, social motivator, mom. Elena was born to innkeeping parents living in a small Mexico mining town. Food played an important role in Elena's early life. When she was young, the family relocated to San Francisco. Details of these early years unfold like an interesting menu. Elena married and had children. Her eyesight was compromised early on; soon after her second son was born Elena was totally blind. She re-learned her kitchen and took life one day at a time. When Elena's husband passed away unexpectedly, she found strength in her culinary experience and used it to support her young sons. Elena opened a restaurant, taught cooking classes, wrote books, started her own business, partnered with major USA food companies, and hosted a TV cooking show . Characterized by contemporaries as charismatic and fun-loving, Elena's legacy touches every one of us on a deeper human level. Food is the fuel of physical sustenance. Zest for life enables us to savour the meal. [1944] "Guided by her fingertips, Elena Zelayeta moves with assurance through a world of complete darkness. Besides keeping house for her family of four, she teaches cooking, gives lectures and writes on cooking. Baking a cake requires precise knowledge of the exact location of everything in the kitchen. The recipe is memorized and special measuring cups are used, one for one third cup, another for one-fourth cup, another for one-half cup. Eggs are broken into her hand and then the white drains through her spread fingers into the bowl while the yolk remains in the palm of her hand. After ingredients are mixed, the cake is popped into the oven. After two 15-minute radio programs the cakes is done. Her daily routine includes cleaning her own house, darning, cooking and washing. Her delicate sense of touch tells her where there is dirt or dust. Stockings are darned over a china egg, her spools of colored thread being marked in Braille. She know foods by their odors, and spices by taste. In one year., Elena Zelayeta canned 225 quarts of fruits and tomatoes. That year, also, she made her own Christmas presents--50 pounds of Mexican pressed quince paste, cut and wrapped in cellophane. Mrs. Zelayeta believes that it is fear that prevents many accomplishmebnts, and that a handicapped person is slowed down by never defeated." ---"Blind Woman's Courage Makes Her Culinary Artist," Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1944 (p. C5) [1945] "Elena Zelayeta, expert in Mexican cuisine, author and teacher of the blind, returns for a 'comman performance' at the Times College of Wartime Cookery...Since her first appearance here in October, Elena has obtained a guide dog, and Chulita will appear at The Times with her new mistress...Elena, although blind for 10 years, conducts a cooking school in San Francisco in addition to caring for her home and family. She is a charming, vivacious woman who has become popular as a lecturer because of her vivid personality and gayety. Watching her grace and sureness as she goes about preparing delightful Mexican and Spanish food in The Times stage kitchen, it is difficult to believe that she is guided only by her amazing sense of touch...She has a talent for teaching others how to duplicate her masterpieces, and at The Times class wil show how to mix and cook such favorites as tamales, chili rellenos, tacos de gallina, enchiladas and ante. Ante is a delectable custard, cake and fruit dessert concoction." ---"Food Class Again Books Blind Expert," Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1945 (p. B10) [1968] "Elena Zelayeta, well-known for her cookbooks on Mexican food, lrelated of few of her recipes for happy living during a recent luncheon in the Costa Mesa County Club. The 71-year-old blind authoress and food consultant delighted about 100 members of the Friends of the Costa Mesa Library by revealing an ability to be light-hearted about tragedies she has experienced. 'There is little we can do about our problmes,' she explained, 'but I have learned there is a great deal we can do about ourselves.' Mrs. Zelayeta lost her sight when her youngest son was 1 year old. After experiencing a normal amount of self-pity she decided to start serving her family. She discharged a housekeeper and cooked her first meal since the loss of her sight. 'I looked for a scouring pad just before sering the meal and coulnt' find it, she said. 'I put the ladle in the soup and up it came full of scouring pad. I won't tell you what I did next but we're all still alive.' She relearned cooking techniques...She makes sure tortillas don't burn by turning them until they 'smell' done. Mrs. Zelayeta began tacing cooking to other blind adults at the San Francisco Center for the Blind. 'I learned that serving others is living,' she said. 'When we stop doing things for other people we stop existing.' Ten years later her husband was killed in an automobile accident and 'I took inventory of what I could do. It was cooking so I wrote my first cookbook with the intention of buying a seeing eye dog with the profits.' Mrs. Zelayeta was born in Mexico of Spanish descent and all her cookbooks deal with the Mexican food with which she is so familiar...Soon she was asked by the U.S. Government to teach a course in 'practical living' at a Lion's Club camp in Montana. 'I was certain I couldn't do it. I never had a course in psychology.' The she read some and decided. 'Why not? Each of the ones I read disagreed with the others and I thought no one would be able to tell if (what I taught) was right wrong anyway.' But, she was afraid. 'How do you deal with fear?' the woman--who stands about 4 feet 6 inches--asked the group. 'It's done by trusting that your needs will be met if you take the human footsteps to find the hapiness you're seeking.' The happiest person, she said, it the one who entertains the most interesting thoughts...Mrs. Zelayeta is consultant for a large food- seasoning concern and has served as food adviser for a New York restaurant." ---"Blind Cook Tells Happiness Recipes," Anne La Riviere, Los Angeles Times, October 24, 1968 (p. H5) [1974] "Elena Zelayeta was blind, but she opened many eyes to the delights for her native Mexican cookery. More than that, she inspired others to overcome a handicap which once had plunged her into months of despair. And she won the affection of countless admirers, to whom she is known simply as Elena. Mrs. Zelayeta died in San Francisco March 31 at the age of 76...Although Elena is gone, her recipes and happy philosophy will live on in her four cookbooks and other writings...Born in in Mexicto City, Elena was raised in the mining town of El Mineral del Oro, where her parents were innkeepers. Her mother and the employes at the inn taught her to cook. The family moved to San Francisco when Elena was a young girl. The came marriage and economic troubles caused by the Depression. When her husband, Lawrence, lost his job as an assistant superintendent in the power department of Bethlehem Steel, Elena sought a way to help. She began by serving lunch in her apartment. And the response was so great, she opened a restaurant in the King George Hotel in downtown San Francisco. Called Elena's Famous Mexican Restaurant, it was a great success bu kept Elena working 16 to 18 hours a day. She had been operated on for a cateract and had suffered a detached retina. And in 1934, shortly before the birth of her second son, Bill, she went blind. Despair, depression and helplessness followed until Elena realized that no one was about to cook and care for her family as she could. Without the aid of Braille implements, she learned how to measure ingredients, how to separate eggs...how to judge the temprature of hot oil by its smell and how to measure cooking time by 15-minute radio intervals. In six months, Elena was again ahppy and functioning. 'If you learn to be useful and keep busy, no handicap can hold you down,' she was once quoted as saying. Elena spoke to high school and college groups and to many organizations. She gave cooking demonstrations and she taught cooking at the San Francisco Center for the Blind...Elena was name California Mother of the Year in 1963...Twenty-three years ago, Elena wnt into the fozen food business. Her son, Lawrence, is now president of the business which is called Elena's Food Specialties Inc. The firm distributes frozen Mexican products to retail and institutional customers in Northern Calfiorina...Elena also served for about 10 years as a consultant to Lawry's Foods Inc. in the development of its Mexican products. Her last appearance in Los Angeles in this capacity was at a Cinco de Mayo party held at Lawry's California Center in 1972." ---"Border Line: Legacy of Elena Zelayeta," Barbara Hansen, Los Angeles Times June 6, 1974 (p. G26) Elena Zelayta's cookbook legacy "Her philosophy will live on in her four cookbooks and other writings. The first book, 'Elena's Famous Mexican and Spanish Recipes,' was edited by a group of San Francisco home economists and published in 1944. At least half a million copies have been sold... Her second book, 'Elena's Fiesta Recipes,' was published by the Ward Ritchie Press in Los Angeles in 1952. 'Elena's Secrets of Mexican Cooking' appeared in 1958 with an introduction by the late Helen Evans Brown, an authority on Western cookery. Her last cookbook, 'Elena's favorite Foods California Style,' with an introduction by James Beard, came out in 1967. Elena also wrote an inspirational book, 'Elena's Lessons in Living,' following a stay at a camp for blinded war veterans at the request of the government." ---"Border Line: Legacy of Elena Zelayeta," Barbara Hansen, Los Angeles Times June 6, 1974 (p. G26) Helen Evans Brown on Elena Zelayeta "Elena (everybody calls her that) is the gayest, dearest bundle of energy I have ever known. She is interested in everything and everybody. Her eyes twinkle, as does her laugh. She moves quickly and surely in her kitchen, her tiny hands skillfully preparing the wonderful dishes for which she is so famous. To watch her work, to see her quick smile as she looks at you, to hear her merry chuckle, you'd swear she had not a trouble in the world. Yet Elena is blind...First she learned to conquer fear. The kitchen was full of terror--fire, sharp knives, hot fat, can openers. She had to learn all over again how to handle them." ---Elena's Secrets of Mexican Cooking, Elena Zelayeta, introduction by Helen Evans Brown [Prentice Hall, Inc.:Englewood Cliffs NJ] 1958 (p. xv-xviii) James Beard's tribute "One is at a loss to describe that quality, except to say that Elena combines unusual warmth with a striking creative instinct. Few people who meet her fail to fall under her spell...Cuisine Zelayeta is distinctive as well as distinguished. It has imagination along with a fine alance of flavor and texture. In a sense, Elena is a traditionalist, but she can also pull an inspired new combination of foods out of the air--and make you feel it is the most authentic dish you ever ate...In shot, she has greatness." ---"Elena's Favorite Foods California Style," Elena Zelayeta, introduction by James Beard [Prentice-Hall, Inc.:Englewood Cliffs NJ] 1967 (unpaged introduction) In Elena's own words "I hope that the readers of this book will be as happy in using it as I have been in writing it...I was aksed to do it because of the growing interest in Mexican and Spanish food in this country. I hope that I have, in my small way, furthered that interest and that this new book will multiply it. In it I want to accomplish three things: To those who know nothing of Mexican cuisine except what they have heard--that it's always searingly not, exotically and overly spiced, and heavy--I hope to convince that it just isn't so! And to those who know something, but not everything, about South-of-the-Border food, I hope to show that tamales and enchiladas, good as they are, are not the only dishes Mexican cooks know how to prepare. And I wish to convince everyone that Mexican dishes may be served harmoniously with American ones, and that even one Mexican dish can do much to add interest to what might otherwise be a very dull meal...The dishes of Mexico, as well as the methods or preparing them and the names by which they are known, vary from state to state, from region to region. And to make it even more confusing, some Mexican dishes common in the Southwestern part of the United States, are little known in Mexico, and others, though known, bear different names. Thus you may not always find the recipe you want under the name by which you know it...I have tried, wherever possible, to give both names, or at least an accurate enough description so that you will recognize it...As for me, I have been an American for many years...my mother was a wonderful cook, one who knew food well and had a genius for bringing out the best in every dish. It was from her that I learned Spanish cooking. The Mexican cooks who worked at the inn taught me how to prepare their dishes. We came to San Francisco when I was a young girl, and because I...loved to cook, I soon learned how to do it in the manner of my new countrymen...Because of m many years in this country, I have learned what Americans like to eat. These recipes have been adapted to suit the palates of my American friends and my American sons." ---Elena's Secrets of Mexican Cooking, Elena Zelayeta [Prentice-Hall, Inc.:Englewood Cliffs NJ] 1958 (preface p. vii-xi) "I love to cook. It's a way I can be creative withhout sight. I can't paint and have no talent for music, but give me a full refrigerator and my pots and pans, and I'm happy as an artist with a new canvas and palette. I raterh regret the great use of convenience foods these days--though I shouldn't, for I make a living selling frozen Mexican foods! But it's spoiled some of the most pleasant parts of homemaking for women. I hope the day never arrives when all food comes ready to pop into the oven." ---Elena's Favorite Foods California Style, Elena Zelayeta, introduction by James Beard [Prentice-Hall, Inc.:Englewood Cliffs NJ] 1967 (unpaged author's preface) "Adios, Amigos. May your tables be filled with bounty, your days with sunshine, your hearts with joy. Elena." ---Elena's Famous Mexican and Spanish Recipes, Elena Zelayeta [Dettners Printing House:San Francisco] October 1944 (p. 127) Tea." (p. 297) Elena's Very Favorite Salad It's always hard for met to choose my favorite dishes, because I love food--a food--and whatever I'm eating at the moment is the thing I like best. But the dinner salad I'd choose most times would be just crackling-crisp greens. Romaine is one of my favorites, though we have a choice of excellent varieties of lettuce, all good. I often combine two or more. The dressing I use most often is simply olive oil and wine vinegar, a touch of garlic and plenty of salt and pepper. But I like a few extras. Sometimes it's a sprinkling of crab, shrimp or lobster; another time it's slices of hard-cooked egg. Or some tomato or cucumber, or thin rounds of radish. Or a diced avocado. Or orange or grapefruit sections, or halves of crisp Todays. A topping of crisp pork cracklings is also interesting and delicious. So you see, my favorite salad is basic greens, but the costume jewelry gives it a different look from day to day." (p. 49) ---Elena's Favorite Foods California Style, Elena Zelayeta [Prentice-Hall, Inc.:Englewood Cliffs NJ] 1967 FoodTimeline library owns these Zelayeta cookbooks. Happy to share recipes. Let us know what you need. [1944] Elena's Famous Mexican and Spanish Recipes (October) [1947] Elena's Lessons for Living [1958] Elena's Secrets of Mexican Cooking [1961] Elena's Fiesta Recipes (new & revised edition) [1967] Elena's Favorite Foods California Style Avocados, guacamole & mole Food historians generally agree avocados originated in Central America. There is much debate regarding the exact origin and subsequent dispersion of this fruit. Notes here: "The avocado (Persia americana) apparently originated in Central America, where it was cultivated as many as 7,000 years ago. It was grown some 5,000 years ago in Mexico and, but the time of Christopher Columbus, had become a food as far south as Peru, where it is called palta. Legend has it that Hernando Cortes found avocados flourishing around what is now Mexico City in 1519. The English word "avocado" is derived from the Aztec ahuacatl, which the Spaniards passed along transliterated as aguacate." ---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Ornelas [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge] 2000, Volume Two (p. 1725) "The avocado tree, a member of the laurel family, is native to subtropical America, where it has been cultivated for over 7,000 years, as archaeological remains demonstrate. There are three original races of species. The Mexican type, which was called by the Aztecs ahuacatl...The Guatemalan type...and the West Indian type." ---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 43) "We are also told that the avocado is a native of Peru...this is an error...caused because it was in Peru that the Spaniards found it first. But Pizarro entered Peru only in 1527, while th avocado had already been described in 1519 in the Suma de geografia of Margin Fernandex de Encisco, who discovered it near what is now Santa Marta, Colombia. We are told too that avocados were first cultivated in Peru during what is called the 'Formative Period' of Peruvian agriculture, which runs from 650AD to the beginning of our era...however, Garcilaco di la Vega...wrote more plausible that it was brought from Ecuador into the warm valleys near Cuzco by the Inca Tupac Yupanqui, who reigned in the fifteenth century AD..." ---Food, Waverly Root, [Smithmark:New York] 1980 (p.17-18) Foods America Gave the World, (A Hyatt Verrill, page 168) concludes "We have the ancient pre-Incan races of Peru, the Mayas of Yucatan and Guatemala and the Aztecs of Mexico to thank for having given us this splendid fruit...Whether the pre-Incans, the Mayas or Aztecs were the first to see the possibilities in the development of the aguacate [avocado] will probably never be known, for the fruits are depicted on pottery and sculptures of all these immeasurably ancient races." "The small, nearly spherical seeds of wild avocados are found in archaeolgical sites in Oazaca and the Tehucan valley of Mexico at dates of 8000 to 7000 B.C. They are seeds of the cold and drought-toleratant upland avocado...tree...By 6000 to 5000 B.C. they were being cultivated in Tehuacan, as shown by the increasing size of the fruit and the change in seed shape from the round wild type to egg-shaped. The two other races are the Guatemalan...and the misnamed West Indian race, which was not found in the West Indies until after the arrival of the Europeans." ---America's First Cuisines, Sophie D. Coe [University of Texas Press:Austin] 1994 (p. 44-5) Notes regarding regional dispersion are chronicled here: "One of the first Europeans to taste the avocado was Fernando de Oviedo, who noticed its external resemblance to a dessert pear, so ate it with cheese; but other Spaniards preferred to add sugar, or salt and pepper...The same applies to the first mention in English, in 1672, by W. Hughes, a royal physician, after a visit to Jamaica...However, despite such favourable comments, the avocado was slow to spread from its native region. For Europeans, it remained for a long time no more than a tropical curiosity; and commercial cultivation in N. America only began in California in the 1870s and in Florida from about 1900." ---Oxford Companion to Food (p. 43) "The Spaniards ate avocados with sugar, salt, or both, and introduced them into other parts of the Americas as well as other tropical parts of the world. But until the end of World War II, avocados were virtually unknown in Europe." ---Cambridge World History of Food (p. 1725) "The avocado, which originated in Mexico, Guatemala, or South America...its cultivation spread slowly from the New World to the Old, but in recent times it has been grown in nearly all countries where the climate was suitable. Among these may be mentioned India, where it has been cultivated cince 1860, the South Sea Islands, and the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea." ---Food Products from Afar, E.H.S. Bailey and Herbert S. Bailey [The Century Co.:New York] 1922 (p. 213-4) There is also some controversy as to where (in the United States) avocados were first grown for commercial purposes. Waverly Root states "I have no reason for doubting the report that a horticulturist named Henry Perrine first planted avocados in Florida in 1833, but avocado culture did not get un way on a commercial scale in the United States until about 1900, when Florida fruit growers became interested in its possibilities."(Food, page 18). Eating in America: A History, (Waverly Root & Richard de Rochemont, page 297) adds: The first person known to have taken it [avocado] seriously was a horticulturist named George B. Cellon, who, circa 1900, learned by experimentation that grafted trees could be induced to perpetuate superior strains of this fruit in Florida...The tree grew well on the slightly sandy soils of Florida, and an avocado industry was launched in that state, an example followed shortly afterwards by California." This claim is disputed by the California Avocado Commission, which dates their industry beginning in the 1870s. Davidson also cites this information, "Commercial cultivation on N. America only began in California in the 1870s and in Florida from about 1900." (Oxford, page 43). "This fruit was introduced into California at Santa Barbara in 1870, and since that time many orchards of from five to ten acres have been planted," confirms Food Products from Afar, Bailey & Bailey (p. 215). What is Guacamole? This avocado based salsa is a gift from Ancient Aztec culinary traditions. "There is good reason for the popularity of the avocado. The diet of pre-Columbian America was what we would consider low fat. The avocado is one of three fruits that contain large amounts of oil in their flesh...In addition to fat, avocados also contain two or three times as much protein as other fruits, and many vitamins as well. We know little about how avocados, or paltas, as they are called in Peru, were eaten in pre-Columbian America. The one recipe that we may be sure of is the Aztec ahuaca-hulli, or avocado sauce, familiar to all of us today as guacamole. This combination of mashed avocados, with or without a few chopped tomatoes and onions, because the Aztecs used New World onions, and with perhaps some coriander leaves to replace New World coriander...is the pre-Columbian dish most easily accessible to us...If few pre-Columbian recipes for the avocado survive, the European writers more than make up for the lack. The Europeans fell into three camps. There were those who ate their avocados with salt, those who ate them with sugar, and those who liked them both ways." ---America's First Cuisines, Sophie D. Coe [University of Texas Press:Austin] 1994 (p. 44-45) [1886] Avocado Pears, commonly called 'alligator' are delicious for breakfast or lunch. Quarter them, and remove the pulp with a silver knife; spread it on slices of bread, and season with salt and pepper to taste." ---"The Household," Albert Lea Freeborn County Standard [MN], February 17, 1886 (p. 15) [1905] "Alligator Pear Salad (Recipe from Mexico.) Mrs. S. Y. Yglesias, 7 Albany Street, Los Angeles.--Take two large alligator pears, peel and remove the stone; cut in one-half-inch cubes, sprinkle with salt, add two tablespoons or more of the best olive oil, with or without a very small piece of onion minced fine to flavor. Put in a salad dish already prepared with crisp lettuce leaves." ---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Ornelas [Cambridge University Press: Cambridge] Volume Two, 2000 (p. 1805-6) Maya & maize "The Maya creation legend in the Popul Vuh, describes how man was made from corn. Corn is the most important ingredient in any of the agricultural offerings to the deities and plays a crucial part in the daily diet of the village Maya. The average adult consumes at least to kils of corn each day--more than four pounds. Every part of the plant is put to use. The husk is utilized as the wrappings for tamales and cigarettes. It also serves as a dish or pot scourer and is used to remove stains from laundry. Husks may serve a s afilling for stuffing pillows or other soft objects and even provide a medicinal tea. The stigmas from the maize plant serve as a diuretic. Bakal, the cob, is used as fuel for fires, bottle stoppers and toilet paper. Ground and mixed with honey dregs, the cob becomes forage for the animals. The leaves, green stalks and roots serve as fertilizer. A few Maya still remember how to use their maize kernels to divine the future. This method of foretelling the future is called xixte and means 'to separate the good from the bad.' Xixte was at one time a principal method used by the xmen to determine the outcome of an illness. To ascertain a prognosis, a portion of grains is singled out from a container and arranged in piles of four. A favourable outcome for the problem at hand can be predicted if the piles of four are even in number and the remaining pile of kernels is also even. If both of the piles are split, one even and one uneven, then the outcome of the event is difficult to ascertain. There is another method of using maize to predict the course of an illness. When corn kernels are dropped into a bowl of atole or Saka, floating kernels indicate a favorable prognosis. When corn sinks to the bottom of the bowl, the outcome of the situation appears grim. Ix K'anle'ox, the goddess of corn and mother of all the gods, is associated with the color yellow and the cardinal direction, South." ---Mayan Cooking: Reciepes from the Sun Kingdoms of Mexico, Cherry Hamman [Hippocrene Books:New York]1998 (p. 340-1) "Maize gods native to Central and South America were far more ancient than Christian saints...For these Maya descendents, the association of maize with blood is as old as the oldest Maya memory, as old as the first planted seed. As their culture evolved, ancient Maya feritlized seeds of corn with the sacrificed blood of their enemies and the blood of their own kings. For the Maya a single kernel of corn is symbolic of what Christians smubolize as the holy cross-the tragic and monstrous truth that the seed of life is death. Today, in the Maya ruins of Palenque in the Yucatan jungle, the Temple of the Foliated Cross reveals in its carvings what Christians call the Tree of Life. For the Maya, it is the World Tree in the shape of a cross, where the crosspiece or branches are formed by leaves and silk-topped ears of corn, each ear a human head. The corn sprouts from a trunk of blood rooted in the head of the Water-Lily Monster that floats on the primal waters of the Underworld. Here out of the monster's mouth a god is born--God K, the Young Lord, the Maize God...So subtle and complex is the ancient Maya language of corn, carved in stone, painted on walls and pottery and screen-folds made of beaten bark, that only in recent years have its mysteries begun to be decoded. We now see that the Maya maize God, like the medieval Christian God, stands at the center of a cluster of images and symbols that evolved slowly but took primary shape in the third to ninth centuries after Christ, a period rich in Christian saints and Maya maize gods. Rich also in Maya script which recorded the history and destiny of a people...Maya hieroglyphs, once we can read them, may help us learn what 'discovery,' 'growth' and 'begining' meant to a civilization built on the symbolic as well as the physical potency of maize...The life cycle of maize was the great metaphor of Maya life, the root of its language, its rituals and its calendar. We now see that the many configurations of the Maize God evolved from the seed of life embodied in the Kan sign. Kan is only one of the twenty named days of the Maya calendar, but wherever the kan sign appears in conjunction with a god, it refers to crops and the powers for good and evil that affect them. Kan is also the syllable wah, which denotes bread, tortilla, tamale. Bowls holding Kan sins may represent offerings of maize, and therefore blood offerings and other precious things..." ---The Story of Corn, Betty Fussell [North Point Press:New York] 1992 (p. 30-34) The dishes we Americans enjoy today as "Mexican Casserole" (aka "Mexican Lasagne") are hybrid culinary creations featuring Old and New world traditions. Recipes are all over the map. Combinations of native Central American ingredients baked casserole style were documented in the 16th century. Contemporary USA interpretations resemble Italian lasagna: substituting tortillas for pasta, salsa for tomato sauce, beans/ground meat/chilies for protein/flavor/color. Dairy component varies from Spanish to German to TexMex to Southern California to processed American cheddar. 16th century Spanish settlers tell us they witnessed wealthy Ancient Aztec diners consuming casseroles . Then, as today, ingredients varied. Father Bernadino Sahagan listed several casseroles consumed by Aztecs in Montezuma's court. When reading these early accounts, we must remember European chroniclers used words from their native language to describe "foreign" dishes. They also do not share how these dishes were crafted, method (time/temperature) or final presentation. "The lords also ate many kinds of casseroles;...one kind of casserole of fowl made in their fashion, with red chile and with tomatoes, and ground squash seeds, a dish which is now called pipian; they ate another casserole of fowl made with yellow chile. They ate many kinds of casseroles, and they ate roast birds...They also ate fish in casseroles: one of white fish made with yellow chile and tomatoes, and with ground squash seeds which is very good to eat. They eat another kind of casserole made of frogs and green chile; another kind of casserole of those fish which they call axolotl with yellow chile; they also ate another kind of tadpoles with chiltexpitl. They also ate another casserole of large-winged ants with chiltexpitl. Also another casserole of locusts, and it is very tasty food; they also ate maguey works, with chiltextpitl molli [sauce]; also another casserole of shrimps made with chiltecpitl and tomatoes, and some ground squash seeds. Also another casserole of the kind of fish which they call topotli, made with chiltecpitl as the above said. Another casserole they ate was of large fish, made as above...they ate another casserole made of unripe plums [Spondias spp.], with some little white fish, yellow chile, and tomatoes. (Sahagun 1982: 463-463)." ---America's First Cuisines, Sophie D. Coe [University of Texas Press:Austin] 1994 (p. 115-116) "Casseroles. There is an assortment of Mexican budines (puddings), sopas secas ('dry soups' or pastas), taquitos al horno (baked tacos), and chilaquiles, which have one thing in common--they are all cooked the same way. All are tortilla dishes--tortillas filled and rolled, cut into strips, fried, and baked in layers with sauces, cheese, and meat or vegetable fillings. They are all rather concentrated, some of them rather rich. Some could be served with just a salad, a meal in themselves, while others would make a good accompaniment to plainly cooked meats, poultry or fish." ---The Tortilla Book, Diana Kennedy [Harper & Row:New York] 1975 (p. 72) [NOTE: This book offers recipes for Tortilla Casserole (a 'dry soup' in tomato soup), Tortilla and Vegetable Casserole, Bakes Tacos Lagunera, Torta Moctezuma (aka Moctezuma pie, budin Aztexa, and torta Huateca), Sweet Red Pepper Casserole.] "The word chilaquiles comes from chil-a-quiltitl, meaning 'herbs or greens in chili broth'--colloquially, 'a broken-up old sombrero.' It is, in fact, one of the many recipes devised to use up stale tortillas. The purists say that the tortillas must be torn up into large pieces, but the dish is easier to serve and eat if smaller. Like so many other recipes in Mexico, every cook has her own way of preparing them." ---The Cuisines of Mexico, Diana Kennedy [Harper & Row:New York] 1972 (p. 67) Our survey of USA sources confirms a wide variety of interpretations titled "Mexican Casserole." Dishes range from traditionally inspired to quickie Americanized creations featuring Mexican staples chilies and tortillas. [1925] 1 1/4 pounds lean pork 6 large onions 1/3 cup grated American cheese 1 cup tomato sauce Traditional mole is a complicated concoction composed with "New World" ingredients. It added flavor, texture, and color to several casserole-type dishes. "The sauce dishes or casseroles contained a wide sample of the animal kingdom, as well as some purely vegetarian mixtures. The lords also ate many kinds of casseroles;...one kind of casserole of fowl made in their fashion, with red chile and with tomatoes, and ground squash seeds, a dish which is now called pipian; they ate another casserole of fowl made with yellow chile...They ate many kinds of chile stews...one kind was made of yellow chile, another kind of chimolli (sauce with chile) was made of chiltecpitl (a kind of chile) and tomatoes; another kind of chilmolli was made of yellow chile and tomatoes'." ---America's First Cuisines, [University of Texas Press:Austin] 1994 (p. 115) [NOTE: this book has much more information than can be paraphrased. If you need additional details about early American foods ask your librarian to help you find a copy.] "Mole. The most famous Mexican sauce, takes its name from moli, a Nahuatl word meaning mixture or concoction; and it is indeed a mixture of many ingredients. The constant factor among the numerous different versions is the starring role played by chili peppers and the fact that the mixture is always cooked." ---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 511) Mole poblano Mole is a tasty component of many Central American dishes. While this food is ancient and traditional, some variations are not. Mole poblano de guajolote(turkey in mole poblano), combining chocolate with chili, is a classic example. Despite the rumors, this is not an ancient Aztec dish. The Aztecs used chocolate for religious ceremonies and medicinal purposes. They did not cook with it . Mole poblano is now traditionally associated with Mexican Christmas traditions, thanks to the Spanish. "The idea of using chocolate as a flavoring in cook food would have been horrifying to the Aztecs--just as Christians could not conceive of using communion wine to make, say, coq au vin. In all of the pages of Sahagun that deal with Aztec cuisine and with chocolate, there is not a hint that it ever entered into an Aztec dish. Yet today many food writers and gourmets consider one particular dish, the famous pavo or mole poblano, which contains chocolate , to represent the pinnacle of Mexican cooking tradition...[mole poblano] has no Aztec foundations...regardless of what food writers may say. Its true, creolized and Hispanicized nature is given away by...the list of ingredients from an authentic recipe...Ten of the 19 ingredients are Old World." ---True History of Chocolate, Sophie D. Coe & Michael D. Coe [Thames & Hudson:London] 2nd edition 2007 (p. 214-215) [NOTE: this book offers much more information than can be paraphrased here. Your librarian can help you obtain a copy.] "Mole poblano de guajolote...or Pabo in mole poblano...is a dish of some antiquity and has achieved some fame for the inclusion of bitter chocolate in the sauce, although the quantity is small and the effect not separably discernable. Some have thought that the dish was made, with chocolate already added, in pre-Columbian times, but the lack of evidence for pre-Columbian use of chocolate as an ingredient in any food dish tells against this conclusively; and indeed the attitude of the Aztecs to chocolate was such that they would have been no more likely to use it in cooking than Spaniards would have been to cook with communion wine. Quite apart from this particular question, it is doubtful whether mole poblano dates as far back as the 17th century, as has been generally believed." ---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 511) "The wild turkey or guajalote is indigenious to Mexico and the New World. For centuries before the Spaniards arrived, the nobility ate roasted turkey, quail, and casseroles of turkey prepared with chilies, tomatoes and ground pumpkin seeds. The turkey is still one of the most important foods in Yucatan....No special festival is compelte without mole poblano de guajolote. It is prepared with loving care, and even today, more often than not, it is the one dish that brinds out the metate: chilies, spices, nuts, seeds, and tortillas are all ground on it...It would be impossible to say just how many versions there are; every cook from the smallest hamlet to the grandest city home has her own specials touch--a vew more mulatos here, less anchos, or a touch of chipotle cooke with the turkey; some insist on onion, others won't tolerate it. Many cooks in Puebla itself insist on toasting the chilies, often mulatos only, over an open fire and grinding them dry...The world mole comes from the Nahuatl word molli, meaning "concoction." The majority of people respond, when mole is mentioned, with "Oh yes, I know-that chocolate sauce. I wouldn't like it." Well, it isn't a chocolate sauce. One little piece of chocolate (and in Mexico we used to grind toasted cacao beans for the mole) goes into a large casserole full of rich dark-brown and russett chiles... There are many stories attached to its beginnings but they all agree that the mole was born in one of the convents in the city of Puebla de los Angeles. The most repeated version...it that Sr Andrea, sister superior of the Santa Rosa Convent, wished to honor the Archbishop for having a convent especially constructed for her order; trying to blend the ingredients of the New World with those of the old, she created mole poblano. Yet another story goes that the Viceroy, Don Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, was visiting Puebla. This time it was Fray Pascual who was preparing the banquet at the convent where he was going to eat. Turkeys were cooking in cazuelas on the fire; as Fray Pascual, scolding his assistants for their untidiness, gathered up all the spices they had been using, and putting them together onto a tray, a sudden gust of wind swept across the kitchen and they spilled over the cazauelas." ---The Cuisines of Mexico, Diana Kennedy, [Harper & Row:New York] 1972 (p. 199-200) [NOTE: this book contains recipes for other moles with history notes.] Recommended reading: Que vivan los tamales!/Jeffrey M. Pilcher...best source for tracing the role of Mole Poblano within the context Mexican (social/political/culinary) culture. Nachos Nachos, as we know them today, descend from traditional Central American culinary traditions. Tortillas , versatile and cheap, provided the base for daily meals in endless combinations. What makes Nachos different? It has an inventor: Ignacio "Nacho" Anaya and a specific creation story. In sum: The year? 1943. The place? Piedra Negra. For whom? ladies who lunch. We're not here to judge. Based on our survey of historic sources, we choose to celebrate the story and the honor the man. We're also asking for your help with obtaining the original recipe . The "original account" is generally adheres to contemporary legend, except: it provides an earlier date (1940), a different name for the restaurant (Victory Club), another job title for the inventor (executive chef) and an alternative spelling of the inventor's name (Amaya). Presumably, over time, the story was corrected. ---"Nacho's? Natch!," Clarence J. LaRoche, San Antonio Express and San Antonio News, May 23, 1954 (p. 3H) [1969: updated story reveals additional details about the man behind the invention] "It's been almost 30 years since Ignacio (Nacho) Anaya whipped up his first 'Nachos Especials,' and he has yet to realize a single penny from his invention of the popular appetizer known from Texas to Saudi Arabia. 'The only man who's making money on Nachos (as they are popularly known) is the man who's selling cheese and jalepnos,' Anaya smiles and says. At 74, the diminutive Anaya could pass for a man little more than half his age, despite the fact he has been waiting tables since 1918. Born in 1895 in Chihauhua, Mexico, Anaya was raised by a foster mother after his parents died 'when I was real young.' It as in his younger days that Anaya began to get the idea for his Nachos. 'This woman who raised me used to feed me quesadilas,' Anaya said, then when time to explain that quesadilas are folded tortillas with melted cheese inside. With this in his mind, the stage is set for mid 1943 when Anaya was a waiter at the old Moderno Restaurant which has since been torn down and replaced with a swank, new Moderno. 'There four ladies were sitting at a table drinking chicos then relates how they asked for some fried tortillas after about four rounds of drinks. 'Well, since no one was in the kitchen for about an hour, I went in, sliced a tortilla in four pieces, put some cheese and a slice of jalapeno on top and stuck it in the oven for a few minutes,' Anaya said. After being served the new treat, the women commented on how tasty they were and asked 'What do you call them?' On the spur of the moment, Anaya replied, 'Just call them Nacho's Especial,' and one of the world's top appetizers was born. Since then, the apostrophe has long been dropped form the word 'Nacho's' on menus, depriving Anaya of even that bit of possessive fame. Today, many restaurants have the simple listing, 'nachos,' on their menu, although admittedly, there are several variations. Some cooks add a bit of lettuce and tomato salad, transferring Nachos into miniature taco-like creations, while others begin with a base of refried beans. But, a true Nacho today is as it as in the beginning...a tortilla quarter, Wisconsin cheese and a sliver of jalapeno pepper. Once, a lawyer friend offered to take Anaya to San Antonio to silent a patent on his creation, but Anaya refused. 'I didn't' go with him or want to do it,' Anaya explained, 'I thought it would be too much trouble, but of course then I didn't know how popular they were going to become.' Spread of the creation has been mostly by world-of-mouth, Anaya explains. After someone would eat a platter of Nachos in the old Moderno or old Victory Club, where Anaya worked until 1961, he would pass the simple recipe on in restaurants where he lived or traveled. 'Now," Anaya says, 'They've got them as far away as Chicago and Saudi Arabia. 'And,' he says,' It's been the biggest boost for the jalapeno business there ever was...at the Morderno they used to use maybe one gallon of jalpenos per week, now they use six or seven cases (six gallons per case) per week...Since Nov. 18, 1961, he has operated Nacho's Restaurant two miles from Eagle Pass-Piedras Negras International Bridge...And, while Anaya admits that it hasn't been particularly profitable, he says it beats waiting tables at the equivalent of about 70 cents per day plus tips which was the going rate when he began at the old Moderna...despite the hardships, Anaya and his wife (who died of cancer in 1964) raised nine children...and one son now works as a waiter at the new Moderna carrying on the Anaya tradition...Even though, as Anaya says, 'It's too late to make the millions...maybe not millions...but a lot of money...I might once have made,' he still smiles about it. 'If you'll just send me a bunch of customers, 'I'll be happy, he remarked as he set down a platter of sizzling 'Nachos Especial.'" ---"'Nacho' Inventor Hasn't Profited," Bill Salter, San Antonio Express and News [TX], June 15, 1969 (p. 97) [NOTE: This article was published in several regional USA newspapers.] ? ? [1995: family claims & media challenge] "Some rise to greatness. Some have greatness thrust upon them. For Ignacio Anaya, greatness came with cheese and jalapenos. For out of necessity and the desire to please, Anaya invented the nacho. In a border town restaurant in 1943. His son said so. So does the government tourism office in the Mexican state of Coahuilua. By formal decree, Saturday was International Day of the nacho and a bronze plaque was installed in Anaya's honor. Then, the First Annual Nacho Cook-Off was held in Piedras Negras' main plaza. Over the years, the singular combination of fried corn chips, cheese and jalapenos has blossomed into a culinary staple in the United States. it...But the details of how it all started have been shrouded in time. For some of us, anyway. 'My father invented the nacho in 1943,' said Ignacio Anaya Jr., a retired banker in the cross-border town of Eagle Pass...It was the senior Anaya, maitre d' at El Moderno, had welcomed a group of U.S. Army officers' wives from Eagle Pass at the restaurant, the younger Anaya said. They wanted some 'hotanas' or snacks. Anaya rummaged in the kitchen, grabbed some tostadas (fried corn chips), shredded some cheese and heated them in the oven, topping each chip with a slice jalapeno...they were...a hit...'By the time my father returned with a second platter, the ladies had named the dish 'Nacho's Special,' Anaya said. 'That is the Spanish nickname for Ignacio.'...'I am very proud of the recognition being paid my father...it was not something he did for fame, but simply to serve his guests.'...David Garcia, vice president of B. Martinez and Sons. in San Antonio doesn't want to rain on Anaya's parade. But he finds the concept of inventing the nacho a little hard to swallow. 'I've heard this story before, about the nacho being invented in Piedras Negras. But in my opinion, this is just a very old custom along the border, melting cheese on fried tortilla chils...It's like saying someone invented the fajita. It's just something people have been doing all their lives.' Garcia brings a certain historical perspective to his opinions. his firm has been making tortillas, tamales and other Mexican food products in San Antonio since 1895...Like the invention of the margarita, the convergence of the nacho as a cultural icon is typical of folkloric events, said Dr. Jay Ann Cozz, a writer and authority on food and folklore in Austin. 'The actual event of creation was an isolated event. The producer was just trying to please customers...but the cultural importance is attached later, usually by a consumer who is searching for cultural authenticity, the real thing.'...Bob Guildry recalls eating something similar to the nacho as a boy growing up in El Paso during World War II. Except it was a corn tortilla, fried whole, and covered with cheese and peppers. And it's called a quesadilla....Guidry...doesn't remember seeing the more bite-size nacho until he returned to El Paso in the 1950s...'Maybe this guy in Piendras Negras came up with the idea of cutting the chips into smaller pieces...That's pretty imaginative. But it doesn't really matter. Nachos are popular because they taste good. not because where they were invented.' In Piedras Negras, they might argue that point. Especially at Restaurant El Moderno, which sits where it has since 1936, just across from the central market, only a few bolcks from the International Bridge...[the] chief bartender and impromptu historian, confirms that this is the birthplace of the nacho.... Back in Eagle Pass, the inventor's son recalls how he and his brothers sought to patent the nacho in the early 1960s, but learned that the dish had already fallen into the public domain. 'It did not bother my father. He opened his own restaurant in Piendras Negras and worked there until he died in 1975 at age 81.'" ---"South of the border origins of Nachos debated," The Brownsville Herald [TX], October 24, 1995 (p. 2) ? [2006: contemporary reconciliation] "According to nacho lore, it all began in 1943, when several military wives at Fort Duncan in Eagle Pass, Texas, decided to go on a toot in Mexico. This did not require much pluck. Eagle Pass is just a short bridge over the Rio Grande from Piedras Negras in the state of Coahuila. In Piedras Negras (black stones, from the coal once mined there), they took shelter in the Victory Club, demanding food as well as drink. The only employee present, the maitre d', grabbed some fried corn tortilla chips from the bar, melted Wisconsin yellow cheese on top of them and then set a slice of canned jalapeno peppers on each snack. This Escoffier of la frontera was Ignacio Anaya, nicknamed Nacho. The Army brides gobbled his improvisation up and spread the word about the dish their leader Mamie had dubbed Nacho's especiales. Eventually people all over southern Texas were calling them nachos. The evidence for this tale is less solid than what we might demand to prove that, say, George Washington threw a silver dollar across the Potomac. The most convincing account comes from Ignacio Anaya Jr., not a disinterested party, in an interview in the San Antonio Express-News in 2002. Long before then, the Victory Club restaurant had closed and Nacho Sr. had moved to the Moderno." ---"Cooking & Dining -- Snack Food: The Search For the Perfect Nacho," Raymond Sokolov, Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2006 (p. 1) What was the original nacho recipe? Mr. Anaya's original 1954 account describes his ingredients and method. Some food historians mention the recipe first appeared a church cookbook published that year. Coincidence? Maybe. "...an article by Dotty Griffith, food editor of the Dallas Morning News...says a reader, Eleanor H. Magnuson, sent her a copy of St. Anne's Cookbook, published in 1954 by the Church of the Redeemer in Eagle Pass, just across the border from Piedras Negras. The book contains an advertisement for the Victory Club, which called itself the birthplace of 'Nacho Specials.'." ---The American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century, Jean Anderson [Clarkson Potter:New York] 1997 (p. 41) We are convinced, based on Ms. Anderson's research, the cookbook exists. Unfortunately, none of "original" recipe(s) published on the Internet provide a page number or scanned copy of the page. Without that evidence, we are not satisfied they are the "real" thing. We are looking for a print copy of the original text. If you can help, please let us know ! As such, quesadillas are a blend of Old World tradition and New World foods. Recipes for turnover-type foods (aka portable filled pastries, both sweet and savory) were popular fare in Medieval Spain. About portable pies . Chicken (chicken quesadillas) is also an Old World food, introduced to Mexico by the Spanish settlers in the 16th century. New World fowl included turkey, strikingly similar in flavor and composition. The turkey, however, was not used for simple snacks. It was saved for special holidays. Cheese (queso/quesa) is also an Old World food. [1944] "Quesadilla (Tortilla Stuffed with Cheese) Take fresh tortillas (bought in a Mexican store), place generous piece of Monterey cream cheese (or American cheese) in the center, and fold it over as you would a turnover. Pin top with toothpicks to hold. Place in hot, ungreased skillet and cook lightly, turing often until cheese is melted. Delicious with refried beans." ---Elena's Famous Mexican and Spanish Recipes, Elena Zelayeta [Dettners Printing House:San Francisco] October 1944 (p. 35) The origins of salsa (combination of chilies , tomatoes and other spices) can be traced to the Ancient Aztecs, Mayans and Incas. Salsa recipes evolved according to place and taste. Salsa origins "...the Indians, tens of centuries ago, cultivated the tomato and the pepper plants and improved and developed them until the tiny hot and pungent berries of the latter had been transformed into a number of varieties of peppery fruits, and the little red sourish berries of the other had become big luscious scarlet tomatoes....Long centuries before Columbus landed on the shores of the New World, the tomato and the peppers had spread from the land of the Incas to Central America and Mexico where they were cultivated by the Mayas and the Aztecs who called the tomato "tomatl," which the Spaniards under Cortez corrupted to the name by which the fruit is know to us today...Very probably they [chilies] are of real value and aid in warding off fevers and other maladies, as the natives claim, for they stimulate the digestive organs, especially the liver." ---Foods America Gave the World, A Hyatt Verrill (p. 34-5; 37) European encounter "The Spanish first encountered the tomato after their conquest of Mexico in 1519-1521, yet few references to tomatoes have been located in Spanish colonial documents...Sahagun was the first European to make written note of "tomates." According to Sahagun, Aztec lords combined them with chile peppers and ground squash seeds and consumed them mainly as a condiment served on turkey, venison, lobster, and fish. This combination was subsequently called "salsa" by Alonso de Molina in 1571." ---Souper Tomatoes: The Story of America's Favorite Food, Andrew F.Smith (p. 26-7) USA introduction "Salsa is the Spanish word for sauce--an indication of this condiment's origin in Spanish-speaking countries of the Western Hemisphere, particularly Mexico and the countries of Central America. In these countries, the word "salsa" encompasses a wide range of culinary concoctions, from sauces that are smooth, cooked, and served warm or hot, to condiments that are chunky, raw, and served at room temperature. In the United States, the consumptino of condiment salsas began to expand beyond the local Hispanic communities during the 1940s, initially in those parts of the American Southwest wehre Mexican food was traditionally eaten. The msot common type of salsa was--and still is--a version of Mexican salsa cruda (raw sauce), also known as salsa fresca (fresh sauce) or salsa Mexicana (Mexican sauce), made with chopped tomatoes, onions, and fresh green jalapeno or serrano peppers...Salsa's popularity nationwide is generally attributed to Americans' increasing consumption of hot-and-spicy foods during the second half of the twentieth century...Salsa are also perceived as healthy foods, because many of them are low in calories, high in fiber, and full of vitamins." ---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 2 (p. 389) USA commercial production "In Texas, salsa manufacturing began in 1947. dave and Margaret Pace operated a small food-packing operation in the back of their... store in San Antonio. They were manufacturing syrups, salad dressings, and jellies and sold their products door-to-door. Dave, by trial and error, began to make picante sauce and test it on his friends...By 1992, the top eight salsa manufacturers were Pace, Old El Paso, Frito-Lay, Chi-Chi's, La Victoria, Ortego Herdez, and Newman's Own..." ---The Chile Pepper Encyclopedia, Dave DeWitt [William Morrow:New York] 1999 (p. 259-60) What is the oldest known recipe for salsa in existence? Excellent question with no simple answer. Food historians generally agree New World style salsas (spicy mashed chili/tomato combinations) originated in Aztec Central America. Accurate/authentic evidence & early recipes is sketchy because this cuisine was first recorded in print by Spanish scholars (missionaries, mostly). Father Sahagun recorded a salsa-type food (no recipe) in 1529. First mention of salsa in recipe in USA print is even more challenging. Our survey of early "salsa" recipes in USA cookbooks and newspapers reveals these interesting points: (1) The term "salsa" in USA print has been used over the years to denote several items, including Italian-style tomato sauce. (2) Some early Mexican-style "salsa" recipes were given "Americanized" names, as in "Sauce for Tostatas." (3) Salsa (Mexican style) crossed the USA print border in the early 20th century, starting with bordering states (Texas, California). (4) 1930s/1940s mainstream print happens. The concept is regional & exotic. Think: Elena Zelayeta (5) 1950s TexMex launches mainstream USA marketing campaigns. (6) 1970s TexMex ragingly popular. Raw salsa & chips become standard bar fare & supermarkets snacks. Think: Diana Kennedy Also worth exploring? The multicultural/cuisine connection of salsa-type recipes served by different cultures. Cajun/Creole, Indian, and Chinese cooks offer interesting twists in this tasty theme. [19th century California] "Salsa picante de chile colorado (Spicy red-Chile sauce) Remove the crowns, then flatten and devein ten or twelve chiles; toast them in a warm oven, and when they are quite toasted, take them out and put them in cold water, then hot. Wipe them off and put in a casserole. Bathe the chilies in boiling water; let them soak for one or two hours, or let them simmer. Then take them out of the water in which they have been soaking; add a small amount of fresh water so the sauce will have a uniform consistency. After grinding the chilies well in a mortar, pass the sauce through a heavy strainer." ---Encarnacion's Kitchen: Mexican Recipes form Nineteenth-Century California, Encarnacion Pinedo, edited and translated by Dan Strehl [University of California Press:Berkeley] 2003 (p. 156) [NOTE: This is one of several recipes included in the chapter titled "Salsas."] [1934] Recipes for sopaipilla/fry-bread foods were known to ancient old world cooks. Deep fried doughs with flavored with honey, nuts and spices were enjoyed by peoples of Greece, Rome and Egypt. In many places they were called fritters . The Spanish word "sopaipa" (from which sopaipilla is derived) means honey cake. "Sopaipilla. A deep fried fritter usually served with honey. Sopaipillas, whose name is from the Spanish, are a staple of Mexican-American menus...history reveals they originated in Olde Town, Albuquerque, [New Mexico] about 300 years ago...Diana Kennedy, in her Recipes from the Regional Cooks of Mexico (1978), writes "For years I have been denying to the aficianados of the sopaipillas of New Mexico that they have a Mexican counterpart. I have now disvovered that they can be found, though rarely, in the state of Chihiahua...I have yet to see them on an restaurant menus in the north." A good sopaipilla is supposed to resemble a puffed-up pillow; if cut into a round shape, it is called a "buneulo." "Sopaipilla" was first found in American print circa 1940." ---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 303)	i don't know
Which small dog breed originated in Mexico and is named after a central northern state?	Chihuahua - Mexico - HISTORY.com Chihuahua A+E Networks Introduction The largest state in Mexico, Chihuahua is headquarters for the world’s fifth largest oil company, Pertróleos Mexicanos. It is also where one of the smallest canine breeds, the Chihuahua, originated. After railroad travel to the Copper Canyon area was upgraded following privatization of the railroad in 1998, tourism became an important and growing segment of the economy. Attractions include the beautiful Copper Canyon region and Pancho Villa’s mansion. History Early History When the Spanish first arrived in Chihuahua, more than 200 indigenous groups, including Native Americans, already inhabited the area. Although little of this period’s history is recorded, archeologists have found evidence of inhabitants dating as far back as 3,000 years. Some of these tribes include the Tarahumara (Raramuri), Apache, Comanche and Guarojío. For several thousand years, indigenous groups living in Chihuahua maintained trading relations with groups in other areas. Perhaps the most notable inhabitants were the Tarahumara (Raramuri), a people whose rich spiritual ideology, passive resistance and strong cultural identity enabled them to persevere despite foreign intrusions. Other tribes, like the warlike Apache, were overwhelmed and eventually assimilated after the arrival of the Spaniards. Did You Know? During the Mexican Revolution,Chihuahua was a central battleground. Peasant revolutionary leader Francisco "Pancho" Villa fought throughout Chihuahua, demanding that the peasants be apportioned land and be recognized as legitimate participants in Mexican politics. Villa’s famous Northern Division was first assembled in Chihuahua. Middle History Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was the first Spaniard to visit the area. His expedition spanned the territory between Florida in the United States and the Mexican state of Sinaloa . As early as 1567, silver mines were established in Santa Barbara, a region occupied by the Conchos Indians. Many Spaniards poured into the region, forcing the indigenous population to work the mines. Throughout the 16th century, the first Spanish settlements were established around haciendas (country estates) and mining operations. Some Franciscan missions and Carapoa villages were also founded in the mid-1500s. Although the military garrisons at El Paso and Ciudad Juárez were both built in 1598, the Spanish colonizers exerted fairly loose control over the region during most of the 16th century. With the mining industry growing steadily into the 17th century, Chihuahua was named the capital of the province of Nueva Vizcaya. From 1640 to 1731, the area experienced increased economic activity and, concomitantly, frequent indigenous uprisings. Tensions developed between the miners and the hacienda owners who continued to force indigenous groups into slavery. Recent History In the Mexican War of Independence, Chihuahua hacienda owners and miners sided with the royalist forces against the independence movement. However, Mexico’s independence in 1821 forced leaders in Chihuahua to join the new country. The 1821 Plan of Iguala established the framework that consolidated the new republic; later, the region of Durango separated from Chihuahua and became an autonomous province. Chihuahua officially became a Mexican state in 1824; the state constitution was ratified the following year. In 1830, an ethnic war broke out in Chihuahua that nearly exterminated the indigenous Apache and Comanche tribes. During the Mexican Revolution , which began in 1910, Chihuahua was again a central battleground. Peasant revolutionary leader Francisco “Pancho” Villa fought throughout Chihuahua, demanding that the peasants be apportioned land and be recognized as legitimate participants in Mexican politics. Villa’s famous Northern Division was first assembled in Chihuahua. Following the revolution, Chihuahua remained a hub of Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) influence. Because of its proximity to the United States, Chihuahua was strategically important to Mexico . The region was also central to the oldest and most important opposition party during PRI rule, the National Action Party (PAN). State leader Luis H. Álvarez became the PAN presidential candidate in 1958 after an unsuccessful run for governor. In 1992, Chihuahua became one of the first states in Mexico to elect a governor who was not a member of the PRI. In 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), designed to encourage trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico by eliminating tariffs and lifting many restrictions on various categories of trade goods, went into effect. Because Chihuahua shares a border with the United States, the state experienced tremendous economic growth as a result of the treaty. However, small farmers found that participation in the well-established and competitive North American market was quite difficult. Chihuahua Today Since the advent of NAFTA in 1994, relations between Chihuahuan management and labor have been strained. Union membership has declined, and much of the state’s labor force has resisted the implementation of the agreement. Nevertheless, Chihuahua continues to have one of the fastest-growing economies in Mexico. Today, the primary economic drivers in the state are assembly plants (called maquiladoras) that produce electronic components, automobile parts and textile goods. Manufacturers such as Toshiba, JVC and Honeywell have facilities in the state’s recently developed industrial parks. Timber production and livestock ranching in Chihuahua were once staples of the economy; however, as of 2003, they represented less than 10 percent of the total economic activity. Facts & Figures Major Cities (population): Juárez (1,313,338) Chihuahua (758,791) Cuauhtémoc (134,785) Delicias (127,211) Hidalgo del Parral (103,519) Size/Area: 94,571 square miles	Chihuahua
What two-word name given to Mexico's mountain ranges means 'Mother Mountains'?	Hot Dogs! Top Dogs for Hot Climates Hot Dogs! Top Dogs for Hot Climates Hot Dogs! Top Dogs for Hot Climates Dogs Last Modified: December 10, 2014 Share This Article Read by: 115,865 pet lovers In February, living in a place like South Florida is a sun-drenched, balmy heaven. In August, though, it resembles that "opposite place." Although any breed can live in hot climates with proper care and grooming, some breeds tend to fare better than others. Dogs living in areas known for high temperatures require special attention because they cannot handle temperature extremes as well as people can. When selecting a breed of dog, consider your outside environment, especially if he will spend a lot of time outside. What to Look For When selecting a breed for hot climates, three main characteristics should be considered: hair coat, facial conformation and size. Hair Coat. Dogs with thick, heavy, double hair coats, such as chows and Alaskan malamutes, easily overheat. Without periodic shaving, these dogs tend to retain body heat and can struggle through the hottest times of the day. Dogs with very little hair, such as Chinese crested and Mexican hairless, are prone to sunburn. Facial Conformation. Panting is one method used by dogs to eliminate excess body heat. Dog breeds with short noses and pushed-in faces, such as English bulldogs, pugs, Pekingese and boxers, tend to have a more difficult time in hot weather. Size. Giant breed dogs, such as Newfoundlands and St. Bernard's, cannot handle exercise in hot weather as well as smaller dogs. This results in sluggishness. Without appropriate exercise, these dogs are prone to obesity. Suggested Breeds After considering hair coat, facial conformation and size, there are many breeds that would do well in hot climates. Shorthaired dogs with normal facial structure and medium to small size are abundant. Here is a short list of just a few breeds that could live with minimal problems in hot climates: Beagle . A wonderful family companion, the beagle is also a popular hunting dog. As with other hounds, the beagle needs plenty of exercise to keep him occupied and out of trouble. Schnauzer . The standard and miniature schnauzer are wonderful family pets. Eager to please and to keep the family safe, this breed usually requires regular grooming and daily exercise. They thrive on human companionship. Parson Russell terrier . A lively breed, the Parson Russell has recently become very popular. Unfortunately, many people do not realize that it takes a special and understanding individual to own a Parson Russell. Greyhound . These sleek dogs are mostly associated with the controversial sport of greyhound racing. But they also make great, all-around pets. They are grateful, affectionate and, contrary to what you might expect, don't necessarily want to run all the time. Australian cattle dog . Unlike the Aussie, the Australian cattle dog is truly from Australia. Developed to herd cattle, this dog needs lots of mental stimulation and physical activity. Border collie . Considered one of the most intelligent dog breeds, the border collie loves to herd anything and everything. A natural instinct, the border collie is unrivaled in herding competitions and agility. Vizsla . Also known as the Hungarian pointer, the vizsla is a multi-purpose, swift and quiet hunter. Miniature pinscher . Contrary to the belief of some, the miniature pinscher is not bred down from the Doberman pinscher. In fact, the breed is the older of the two and is something of a cross between the greyhound and the terrier. They are alert and like to investigate, so they typically roam the household. Weimaraner . Called the gray ghost, the Weimaraner is thought to be one of the best gun dogs. His short hair coat allows him to live comfortably in hot climates. Doberman pinscher . The regal looking Dobie hails from Germany. A natural protector, the Doberman excels in guarding and police work. Dalmatian . Well known for his characteristic spotted coat, the Dalmatian is an old breed often associated with firehouses. Cairn terrier . Despite their small size, the cairn terrier is a tough little dog. This breed does well in any living environment as long as there are people around. Chihuahua . What the Chihuahua lacks in size he certainly makes up for in personality. Faithful and protective, this dog fits in great in warm areas of the world. Whippet . As a moderate-sized greyhound look-a-like, the whippet enjoys racing around a track just as much as he likes to cuddle next to his owner. Italian greyhound . As the smallest member of the sighthound group, the Italian greyhound is thought to have originated in Greece and Turkey. Eventually popular with Italians in the 16th century, this diminutive dog looks just like a miniature greyhound. (?)	i don't know
What is the international telephone dialling code for Mexico?	How to call Mexico: country code, area codes, phone books The time in Mexico City is now 08:12:34pm This country uses multiple time zones Calling Mexico from the United States explained: 011 - US exit code; dial first for international calls made from the USA or Canada 52 - Country Code for Mexico	52
The official national sport of Mexico, the charreada (or charrería), involves?	World Telephone Numbering Guide Mexico +52 Number Format Area Code: 1-3 digits (see note below) Subscriber Number: 5-7 digits (see note below) Trunk Prefix: 01 (see note below) International Prefix: 00 (see note below) Mexico numbering notes Area Code plus Subscriber Number on the conventional service has sum of 8 digits total. However, the Mexican numbering plan is to be expanded to 10 digits total; 800 toll-free service already follows a 10-digit sum (800 + 7-digits, exclusive of long distance prefixes). For person-to-person calls, trunk prefix 02 is used instead of 01 on domestic calls, and 09 is used instead of 00 on international calls. Area codes begin with any digit except 0. Subscriber numbers can begin with any digit except 0 or 9 (but may begin with 1 in many cases). While Mexico City area code is 55 (i.e. numbers are in form +52 55 xxxxxxxx), some suburbs of Mexico City use area codes in the 59x format (i.e. +52 59x xxxxxxx format). Area code in Mexico is called 'NIR' (Region Identification Number) or "Clave Lada". Area code information Mexico Online 4 November 2006 - cell phone calling changes Within Mexico, calls from fixed/wireline phones to wireless phones of most carriers now require the prefix 045 before the area code and subscriber number. The previous mobile access prefix was 01, which was still required for mobile carriers Alestra, Avantel, Axtel and Maxcom. Callers using the 045 prefix were charged an increased rate per minute with this change (details unclear). The mobile/cellphone user who is called will not be charged for incoming calls through 045. 045 access applies to the carriers Baja Celular, Iusacell, Iusatel, Portatel del Sureste, Telcel, Telecomunicaciones del Golfo Telefonica, Telefonia Celular del Norte, Telefonos del Noroeste, Telmex, Unefon. From outside Mexico, mobile numbers are reached by +52 1 before the area code and subscriber number, rather than +52 45. (News courtesy Juanita Boutwell) Lee Iwan bulletin on Mexico cell phone dialling changes (12 October 2006) 1997-2002 National Numbering Changes Mexico implemented a national numbering change to increase national number lengths from 8 digits to 10 (area code plus subscriber number, exclusive of long distance prefixes). Most of the renumbering programme is expected to be completed when the new number lengths must be used from other countries as of 16 February 2002. Explanations of the national renumbering may be found on CFT site (government regulator, in Spanish language). The Comision Federal de Telecomunicaciones (COFETEL) is the national telecom regulator, responsible for Mexico's telephone numbering. Mexican Consulate notes on renumbering . First Phase - to December 2000 - realignment of subscriber numbers The first phase (to be completed by the end of 2000) is a realignment of numbering to no area code and 8 digits in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey. Other areas will have a 1-digit area code and 7-digit subscriber number. There is some confusion regarding when this phase concludes - some references indicate an October 2000 date for this, but local numbering changes continue until December 2000. Mexico City subscriber numbers became 8 digits by prepending 5 to all local numbers as of 27 February 1999. Details are available (in Spanish) at: http://www.cofetel.gob.mx/html/1_cft/9cam/base.html Second Phase - to December 2001 - national addition of 2 new digits The second phase will take the 8-digit national numbering to a 10-digit system with the assignment of new area codes: Numbers in Guadalajara, Mexico City and Monterrey will have 2-digit area codes and 8-digit subscriber numbers. Numbers in other areas will be changed to 3-digit area codes and 7-digit subscriber numbers. Total Telecom had reported that calls from outside Mexico would be required to use the new area codes as of 17 November 2001. A list of the new area codes can be found at the following URL (Note: NIR is assigned by Local Calling Area number): The national renumbering process will conclude December 2001 when the national number is finally expanded to 10 digits. December 2001: Reports of last-minute code changes Some December 2001 Mexico notes from Hugh M. Hamilton: "There seem to have been some last-minute changes to the new area codes. I downloaded the conversion program from Cofetel ; the program is provided by Iusacell, a major cellular carrier. Where it gives 666 as the new code for Tijuana, Cofetel's new table gives 664, as did the original Cofetel tables. The Iusacell program shows 646 for Ensenada, as does Cofetel's new table, but the original Cofetel tables showed 611. ?? Meanwhile, the old +52 plus eight digits still work from here, via Sprint at least." (Telmex at one point had two downloadable programs: 100principales.exe (100 biggest cities) and claveslada.exe (whole country). However, these links no longer seem to exist). 1 July 1999 to June 2002 - local area consolidations A consolidation of local calling areas started on 1 July 1999, to conclude June 2002. This consolidation is done in parallel with the national numbering changes. This consolidation is based on municipal boundaries in the majority of the cases - a local calling area will resemble the boundaries of towns and cities. Additionally, this action reduces the number of calling areas from 1464 to 406. A map containing all the new calling areas and the dates of their consolidation can be found on the following URL: http://www.cofetel.gob.mx/html/1_cft/bol99/2_Consol/mapacons.html April 2002 report from Hugh M. Hamilton regarding Sprint's handling of the Mexican numbering changes: "Sprint is really shining with the Mexican renumbering. Now, when an old 011 52 + eight-digit number is dialled, an announcement in English (with a Spanish-language option) allows as how the area codes have all changed, then reads off the new 10-digit number, and then completes the call to the new number. Pretty slick." Examples of renumbering The following table has examples of the numbering changes. For each Locality listed, there are three columns: 1) Numbers as they were initially structured prior to the start of the national renumbering process; 2) The First Phase to be completed by the end of 2000; 3) The Second Phase which adds the two area code digits beyond 2000. The new area codes will eventually relate to the restructured local calling areas. In some cases (such as Guaymas and Tecate below), the Second Phase area code will be the same as before this renumbering. Older numbering structures (in effect many years prior to 1999) are noted in brackets for historical reference. Locality Initial First Phase Second Phase ======== ============ ============ ============== Durango, Dgo (18) 123-xxx (1) 812-3xxx (618) 812-3xxx Ensenada, BC (61) 78-xxxx (6) 178-xxxx (611) 178-xxxx [old: (617) 8-xxxx] Guadalajara, Jal (3) 613-xxxx 3613-xxxx (33) 3613-xxxx [old: (362) 3-xxxx --> (36) 13-xxxx] Guaymas, Son (622) 1-xxxx (6) 221-xxxx (622) 221-xxxx Mexicali, BCN (65) 62-xxxx (6) 562-xxxx (655) 562-xxxx [old: (656) 2-xxxx] Mexico, DF (5) 518-xxxx 5518-xxxx (55) 5518-xxxx [old: (25) 18-xxxx --> (55) 18-xxxx] Monterrey, NL (8) 343-xxxx 8343-xxxx (81) 8343-xxxx [old: (83) 43-xxxx] Tecate, BCN (665) 4-xxxx (6) 654-xxxx (665) 654-xxxx Tijuana, BCN (66) 85-xxxx (6) 685-xxxx (664) 685-xxxx [old: (668) 5-xxxx] The Mexico Telecom Regulator has made available a Spanish-language document for the Fundamental Technical Numbering Plan of 20 June 1996. (info courtesy Mark J Cuccia). Telmex expanded the two-digit '0X' service codes (for emergency, directory assistance, etc) to a three-digit '0XX' format. Introduction of competitive long distance carrier selection began 1997 in major centres. Three-digit carrier identification codes will be used to select particular carriers for calls. Long distance prefix codes (domestic and international) are also changing to accommodate competitive long distance carriers. The international calling prefix, at least in the Tijuana region, has been changed to the international standard 00+ as from 6 March 1997 (from 95+ for North American calls, 98+ for other nations). (Source was Telnor , which may no longer have details on its site). Telmex is another Mexican carrier which may have additional information on numbering changes. (Mexico news and detail courtesy courtesy of Mark Cuccia, Hugh M. Hamilton and Antonio Romo Fragoso). 24 July 1999 - Mexico City local area consolidation On 24 July 1999, the Mexico City metro area was consolidated into a single calling area. See this announcement from COFETEL: http://www.cofetel.gob.mx/html/1_cft/bol99/jul99/bol29_22jul.html . 15 January 1999 - mandatory new long distance prefixes, special codes As from 15 January 1999, long distance calls in Mexico can only be dialed with the following new prefixes: 00 - international direct dialling (00 + country code + nat'l number)] Includes USA and Canada. 01 - domestic direct dialling (01 + area code + number) 02 - domestic person-to-person (02 + area code + number) 09 - international person-to-person (09 + country code + nat'l number) Includes USA and Canada. For details, see the COFETEL website http://www.cofetel.gob.mx/html/1_cft/9cam/index.html (in Spanish). Also as from 15 January 1999, a new scheme for calling the following special service and operator codes became mandatory: 020 - long distance operator (domestic) 030 - time For information on operator/special codes, see the COFETEL website: http://www.cofetel.gob.mx/html/1_cft/9cam/seresp.html (in Spanish). (courtesy Antonio Romo Fragoso) 1 July 1997 - Toll-Free Numbers Expanded Numbers in the toll-free 800 service were 5 digits until the July 1997 expansion to 7-digit numbers. Depending on the number range of the former 5-digit number, 71 was prepended or 00 was appended to the number to form the new number. In international format, the new numbers are of the form +52 800 xxxxxxx. February 1991 - inbound North American area code access discontinued Callers in the North American Numbering Plan were once able to call specific areas in Mexico using area codes 706 (northwest Mexico) or 905 (Mexico City). These were officially removed from service in February 1991 in favour of international dialling using country code 52. The former Mexico access area codes were reassigned within the North American Numbering Plan : 905 to Ontario, Canada in 1993 (to split the former area code 416 territory); 706 to Georgia, USA 1992 (to split the former area code 404 territory); 903 to Texas, USA in 1990-91 (to split the former area code 214 territory). 18 October 1980 - NANP Northwest Mexico 903 changed to 706 903 was assigned as an NANP area code approximately 1962-3 for North American access to certain northwestern Mexico border towns, prior to widespread availability of international dialling (011+ or 01+ in the NANP). Use of 903 area code was changed to 706 as of 18 October 1980. The +1 706 nxx xxxx numbers would correspond to Mexican numbers of the form +52 6nx xxxxx. There were some modifications to the northwest Mexico numbering ranges since 1980. since 1980. [Information courtesy Mark Cuccia and his various sources]. No information is available on when area code 905 was originally assigned for North American access to Mexico City. Other Information Some special area codes used in Mexico's domestic network (prior to the 1997-2000 renumbering): 300 - calling/called parties share charges 500 - personal numbers with call-transfer (caller pays local charge) 700 - virtual private network carrier access 800 - toll-free	i don't know
The drink Tequila is named after a Mexican?	How to Drink Tequila Like a Mexican \| Indiana Jo How to Drink Tequila Like a Mexican Published on 22 August, 2014 Do you have a (completely rational) fear of tequila? Do you flat-out hate the stuff? If so, I can almost guarantee that you’re drinking it wrong. After spending a year in Mexico, I finally learned the secret: how to drink tequila like a Mexican… and actually enjoy this potent drink. How to drink Tequila like a European /American /Canadian /Australian [insert your home country]* (*delete as appropriate) Photo by: scani Before we get into the details of how to drink tequila like a Mexican, let’s take a good hard stare at how the rest of us tend to approach the subject of tequila drinking…or should I say tequila slamming. More often that not, it goes a little something like this: Enter bar, consume a dozen or so other drinks. Realise it’s past midnight and a) you want to dance or b) you still feel too sober to call it a good Friday night. Shout to your friends, “Tequilas?!” After a mixed reactions of “hell yeahs” (from the people who think they’re sober but definitely aren’t) and “urghhh, I hate tequila” (from the people who are actually sober), head to the bar. Ordering process: “[x number of] tequilas please.” Return to friends with tray full of evil clear liquid in shot glasses complete with a scattering of lime wedges and salt. Add salt to back of hand. Deep breath. Get a wedge of lime ready to drown out the tequila pain. Take another deep breath. Get beer bottle within grabbing distance, in case the lime doesn’t work. Double deep breath. Round of chanting with friends. “One…” Try to swallow as your throat closes in protest. Swallow harder while trying to breathe through your nose. Finally swallow the liquid which burns all the way down to your stomach. Shove a ridiculously large amount of sharp citrus into your mouth and suck on it like you’re a new-born given your first dummy/pacifier. Discard lime, take huge swig of beer and wipe tears from your eyes. Cheer at the round of empty glasses and breathe a secret sigh of relief that it’s over… Until some b@stard (who think’s they’re sober but really isn’t) shouts “Another round!” Often, after the first tequila, this process is repeated until your memory turns blank in the way it would do if you were hit in the back of the head by a shovel – which actually feels as though it might have happened when you wake up the next morning, fully clothed, lying face down in the running position wondering why, why, why and swearing never again. “Tequila, it makes me happy. Tequila, I feel alright.” Lyrics from chart hit “Tequila” by UK band Terrorvision . The problem was tequila didn’t make me happy and it certainly didn’t make me feel alright…until I learned how to drink tequila like a Mexican. The above is a formula I’ve seen played out in bars, clubs and even restaurants around the world. Hell, I’ve drunk tequila that way in bars, clubs and restaurants around the world. So much so that when I went to Mexico, I was adamant I didn’t want to touch the stuff. No longer in my 20’s, the tequila hangovers were not worth it and I’d long disqualified this Mexican spirit on the grounds it simply didn’t taste good. When I explained this to my Mexican friends there was a unanimous response – the reason I didn’t like tequila was because I was drinking it all wrong. And, with that realisation, I was booked in for some intense re-education – I was sent to the town of Tequila, Jalisco; the town that is home to Jose Cuervo; the birthplace of tequila; and the town where I finally learned how to drink tequila like a Mexican. How to drink tequila like a Mexican Beautiful blue agave plants decorating the city of Guadalajara. If I had to identify where us non-Mexicans go wrong in our tequila drinking, I’d say right at the very first step. Because, for the most part, tequila is a drink we use to accelerate the D in Drunk (or P in Pissed if we’re being really British about it). But there’s a more fundamental reason why people drink tequila as a quick shot – because tequila outside of Mexico simply doesn’t taste good. The stuff that we guzzle down in bars or pick up in supermarkets is low-grade, filthy booze that does nothing other than give tequila a bad name (and us a bad head). The good news is that with online purchasing opportunities ever expanding, it’s not so difficult to get your hands on good tequila (it’s even easier in the USA which already imports a much broader range of tequilas than we get in Europe). And with a good tequila in your glass, the drink completely transforms from something you might throw down your neck with a wince, to something you can sip and savour like you might a fine whisky. So, how do you choose a good tequila? Most people un-schooled in tequila give very little thought to to what they are buying, opting for either the “fun” bottle (the one that features a plastic sombrero on the top together with an offensive caricature of a Mexican man) or, for a more serious occasion, a generic bottle of Jose Cuervo. However, much the same as a brandless bottle of whisky off the supermarket shelf isn’t going to taste as smooth as a 25 year Talisker, choosing a good tequila involves quite a bit more understanding and thought. Here are the two main things to look for when choosing a good tequila. Always buy 100% Agave Agave (pronounced agar-bay), is the plant that tequila is made from and is the very foundation of a good tequila. Yet, despite growing in abundance in Mexico, not all tequilas are made using 100% blue agave. Why is that a bad thing? Well, let’s think for a moment about a packet of pork sausages that only contain 50% pork. Did you shudder? I did too. The same kind of applies to tequila (minus the pig eyeballs). The non-agave ingredients are usually lower quality, less natural, affect the taste of the drink and can often contribute to those tequila hangovers that are so hard to handle (because the blend includes sugar as an additive). In short, if you make only one change in your tequila drinking habits, then make it this: only ever drink tequila that is made from 100% agave. Pro Tequila Tip: some brands may state they are made “with blue agave” but unless they say 100%, you are still getting a blend. Drink the oldest tequila you can find (and afford) Like a fine whiskey, tequila is one of those drinks that improves with age. And, the longer tequila has been aged, the more mellow and, yes, the more drinkable, it will be. The clear tequila that we most commonly slug back in bars is usually fresh out of the vat and as a result is pretty rough to drink – even in Mexico. Hence the need to chase this baby brew with lime and salt. However, drink a tequila that is even a little bit older and the taste and drinkability increases dramatically. Tequila usually falls into these categories: Blanco – completely unaged tequila that has spent less than 2 months in steel or neutral oak barrels Joven – as above but is often gold coloured (see below) Reposado – aged more than 2 months but less than 1 year in oak barrels Añejo – aged 1-3 years in oak barrels Extra Añejo – aged more than 3 years in oak barrels A word on golden tequila As tequila ages in the barrel, the colour of the liquid changes, creating the difference between white tequila (blanco) and gold tequila (oro). However, don’t be fooled – unless the tequila is añejo (aged), then any golden colour has been added artificially to give the illusion that you’re drinking a premium (older) product. Some joven tequila may get its gold colour from being blended with añejo tequila – read the label. If you’re looking for a drink that can be sipped instead of taken as a shot, but without spending a huge amount of money then look for tequila that is “reposado”. In Spanish that translates as “rested” meaning the tequila has sat in the barrel a little while allowing the sharpness to dissipate, the flavour to develop and the drinkability to enhance. If you can, try añejo or extra añejo for a smoother taste. A word on the worm Photo by: mugley Most people are familiar with the concept of the worm in tequila bottles. Reputed to be hallucinogenic, the tequila worm is a trademark for daring drinkers. And yet, there are two common misunderstanding when it comes to tequila worms: i) the worm is actually associated with Mezcal (a sister drink of tequila), not tequila; and ii) in any case, the worm concept was a marketing ploy dreamt up in the 1940s to rebrand and enhance excitement about the drink. Tequila is not produced from worms. Worms play no part in the flavouring or colouring of tequila and if you want to drink to tequila like a Mexican, you’ll steer clear of any worm based products (which have been put on the shelves for clueless tourists). Tequila quality scale To recap, here is what tequila looks like on the quality scale from low to high grade. Tequila (no statement about it being 100% agave) 100% agave tequila (blanco or joven) 100% agave tequila reposado 100% agave tequila añejo 100% agave tequila extra añejo In addition to all of this, there are obviously different tequila brands that offer different tastes. Whether you prefer one to another will always come down to personal taste, so you have full permission to experiment. How do Mexican’s drink tequila Photo by: Bobbymond Until I tasted good tequila, the idea of sitting and sipping tequila, as Mexican people commonly do, seemed like an absurd activity. Yet the truth is that good tequila is to be savoured, not slugged down at speed. Here’s how to drink tequila like a Mexican. Pick a tequila that is 100% agave and at least reposado. Fill a shot glass in the normal way (the Mexican shot glasses tend to be taller and thinner than the squat, stubby versions in the UK and the USA and are called caballito, meaning little horse). To drink, simply take a small sip of tequila straight and enjoy. If you feel the need as a new tequila drinker, you can try your tequila with some lime (called limon in Mexico) and some (finely ground) salt. After every sip or two, dip your wedge of lime into a small amount of salt and suck on it. However, don’t use too much as you will drown out the flavour of the tequila. Ideally, try to buy the tiny limes that are light green because they are sweeter and juicier than their larger, darker counterparts. And there you have it: how to drink tequila like a Mexican. Is there room for the lick, swallow, suck style of tequila drinking in Mexico? The westernised way of drinking tequila where you lick some salt off the back of your hand, swallow an entire shot of tequila in one go and finish off with a quick suck on a lime wedge does actually originate from Mexico – it is how Mexican people drink very young tequila i.e. not reposado or añejo. However, this style of tequila drinking in Mexico has a party vibe to it and is more common amongst younger drinkers. As smoother tequilas are more readily available and affordable, this white, rougher tequila seems to be drunk less frequently. Taking a Tequila tour in Mexico: Useful information Guadalajara in Jalisco state is a great, affordable base for visiting the town of Tequila. Guadalajara is around 6 hours (by road) northwest of Mexico City and the town of Tequila is around a further 1 hour (by road) from Guadalajara. The two main choices for a tequila tour are a coach tour (which I took, and which is the cheaper option) or the Tequila train (called the Tequila Express which looks like it would be amazing fun complete with Mariachi bands). Of course, you can drive too, but you’ll need a designated driver. The coach tour will generally include a visit to a distillery to see the tequila making process from the harvesting and trimming down of the agave plant to the entire distillation process. Afterwards you will visit three or four additional distilleries for tastings as well as stopping in the sleepy town of tequila where Jose Cuervo has a significant presence. During the day you will learn about agave and the tequila ages. You will also be introduced to something we simply don’t get in the UK – cream based tequila blends. For the record, strawberry cream tequila is both real and divine. Expect the day to be long and get ready for some insanely early tequila tasting (I had my first tequila in hand way before midday). A word on hangovers There is something very beautiful about the tequila distillation process. The day after my tequila tour I was hangover free and I was absolutely staggered by that fact. The tequila tasting had been liberal and the drinking period extended, however I’d (largely) stuck to the tour guides tequila tasting rule: never mix tequila with sugar. Long island ice teas (laden with coke), orangey tequila sunrises, sugary margaritas… our westernised tequila consuming ways are intrinsically linked with the one substance that should be avoided to keep a clear head the next day. If you want to keep the hangover at bay, don’t feed your body sugar and tequila in the same sitting. For now, tequila tours haven’t hit the stage of mass tourism outside of Mexico (but see below). For that reason, I was one of only two non-Mexicans on a 52-seater coach tour. Don’t worry if your Spanish isn’t great – the guide on the bus and the tour guide at the distillery could speak good English. Plus, drinking tequila with 50 Mexicans is the perfect time to learn some new words. I stayed at Guadalajara Centro Hospedarte Hostel and booked my tour through them at a cost of $400MXN (around £20/$30 including transport and tastings). A word on Guadalajara Guadalajara is a beautiful and lively city north of Mexico city where Mariachi bands still play for the enjoyment of the locals (not just as a tourist attraction), the street food is stomach expanding, the salsa clubs are packed, and the prices are noticeably lower than other parts of Mexico. Guadalajara is also know as the “gay capital” of Mexico if you’re looking to experience Mexico’s gay scene. The town of Tequila and the changing face of tourism Occupying little more than two dusty streets, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the town of tequila retained a sleepy, small-town vibe. Of course, the peace was interrupted each day when a coach load or two rolled a bunch of tourists into town, but Tequila was otherwise absent the mass tourism that has bulldozed through other parts of Mexico (I’m looking at you: Cabo san Lucas and Cancun). Taking pride of place and owning much of the main street in tequila is Jose Cuervo.. and boy do they have some big plans . Before leaving the town of tequila I tried to burn the image of the street into my memory because Jose Cuervo has announced its intention to pump around USD$25 million into developing the town of Tequila with the intention of driving international tourism to the town. Of course, it has to be a good thing that more people visit tequila and taste this drink in its home location, but I fear it will be at the expense of the town’s authenticity. So, if there were ever a place to visit sooner than later, tequila is it. And why not – because there is no better place to learn how to drink tequila like a Mexican? What’s your relationship like with tequila? Love it? Hate it? Prepared to give it a try the Mexican way? Sharing is caring	Town
In Mexico how many cheek kisses are customary in greetings between women friends, or a woman and man?	Tequila: Which Came First, the Drink or the Town that Makes it? Share Was the Mexican town of Tequila named after the Mexican drink or the drink named after the town? To get the answer, Betto Arcos visited La Tequileï¿½a located in the town of Tequila. Itï¿½s one of the oldest distilleries in Mexico. Thatï¿½s where he found Sergio Mendoza, who says he comes from a family of four generations dedicated to the business of cultivating the agave plant, the raw material for the production of this amazing spirit, tequila. It is a well-known fact that the blue agave, the raw material for tequila, has been harvested and cultivated for many, many, centuries before the Spanish came. Mendoza describes Mexicoï¿½s famous liquor this way: "When you drink tequila, itï¿½s like drinking sunshine in a very literal sense. Because youï¿½re drinking 10 years of a plant receiving the heat of Mexico, very hot days, very cold nights, so itï¿½s not that tequila is stronger, but it certainly has this much more energy than other spirits." Then Arcos asks him todayï¿½s Geo Quiz ï¿½ why is this drink called tequila? Mendoza considers the question for a moment and says that itï¿½s something that has evolved over time. Tequila comes from agave, which is also commonly referred to as mescal. There are over 200 kinds of agaves. "To produce tequila, we only use one kind, which is Agave Azul," Mendoza says. "So mezcal is the generic name. Tequila is actually a mezcal. All tequila is a mezcal, but not all mezcal is a tequila. People started to realize that a specific mezcal or mezcal wine from the region of Tequila was very particular. It had a lot of complexity, and a lot of smoothness. And to distinguish it from other mezcals, they started referring to it as the mezcal wine of Tequila. Now, we know it as tequila." So the city of Tequila gave the name to the drink. It gave the specific name to the mezcal wine of Tequila. But if you call it Mexico moonshine, devilï¿½s water, or 100 percent agave, you wonï¿½t be too far off the mark.	i don't know
Indonesia's name derives from Greek 'indos' for India, and 'nesos' meaning?	Indonesia's name derives from Greek 'indos' for India, and 'nesos' meaning: Sea; Island; Fish; or Volcano? View the step-by-step solution to: Indonesia's name derives from Greek 'indos' for India, and 'nesos' meaning: Sea; Island; Fish; or Volcano? This question was answered on May 31, 2016. View the Answer Indonesia's name derives from Greek 'indos' for India, and 'nesos' meaning: Sea; Island; Fish; or Volcano? phyllispearson34 posted a question · May 31, 2016 at 4:51am Top Answer rampsaud answered the question · May 31, 2016 at 4:52am Other Answers {[ getNetScore(29837803) ]} phely answered the question · May 31, 2016 at 4:53am The name Indonesia, meaning Indian Islands, was coined by an Englishman, J. R. Logan, in Malaya in 1850. Derived... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29837828) ]} View Full Answer or ask a new question Related Questions I would like to know the answers I attached a file Susan Recently Asked Questions Need an Ancient History tutor? Jordan-M 4 Ancient History experts found online! Average reply time is 213 mins Get Homework Help Why Join Course Hero? Course Hero has all the homework and study help you need to succeed! We’ve got course-specific notes, study guides, and practice tests along with expert tutors and customizable flashcards—available anywhere, anytime. - - Study Documents Find the best study resources around, tagged to your specific courses. Share your own to gain free Course Hero access or to earn money with our Marketplace. 890,990,898 Question & Answers Get one-on-one homework help from our expert tutors—available online 24/7. Ask your own questions or browse existing Q&A threads. Satisfaction guaranteed! 890,990,898 Flashcards Browse existing sets or create your own using our digital flashcard system. A simple yet effective studying tool to help you earn the grade that you want!	Island
Garuda Indonesia is the country's official national?	Wild Indonesia \| GreekVoyager Explore a spectacular archipelago! Wild Indonesia Indonesia is a sovereign island country in Southeast Asi. It is the largest island country in the world. Indonesia has 34 provinces, of which five have Special Administrative status. The nation's capital city is Jakarta. The country shares land borders with Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and the Malaysian Borneo. The name Indonesia derives from the Greek words Indós and nèsos, meaning "Indian island". The population is more than 255 million people and the dominant religion is Islam. The currency is the Indonesian Rupiah (IDR). Come with us and explore this spectacular archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, stretching 3,000 miles along the equator, bridging Asia and Australia. Indonesia’s natural habitats vary widely. Indonesia, a land teeming with natural beauty, is home to a staggering 15 percent of the world's species. On some islands, tropical forests climb from steamy lowlands to mountain slopes. Coral reefs line thousands of tranquil atolls, while relentless waves batter rocky cliffs on other shores. These wildly ranging habitats are home to an incredible number and diversity of living creatures. Spectacular locations and incredible wildlife!	i don't know
What 'dragon' is the world's largest lizard, named after its unique Indonesian island habitat?	What 'dragon' is the world's largest lizard, named after its unique Indonesian island habitat? View the step-by-step solution to: What 'dragon' is the world's largest lizard, named after its unique Indonesian island habitat? This question was answered on May 31, 2016. View the Answer What 'dragon' is the world's largest lizard, named after its unique Indonesian island habitat? dawnwright43 posted a question · May 31, 2016 at 4:54am Top Answer The answer to this question... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29837824) ]} rampsaud answered the question · May 31, 2016 at 4:55am Other Answers The way to approach this... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29837832) ]} profsakim answered the question · May 31, 2016 at 4:55am The Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis), also known as the... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29837837) ]} Komodo island's Lizard named... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29837842) ]} Need a World History tutor? rahulbansal 2 World History experts found online! Average reply time is less than an hour Get Homework Help Why Join Course Hero? Course Hero has all the homework and study help you need to succeed! We’ve got course-specific notes, study guides, and practice tests along with expert tutors and customizable flashcards—available anywhere, anytime. - - Study Documents Find the best study resources around, tagged to your specific courses. Share your own to gain free Course Hero access or to earn money with our Marketplace. - Question & Answers Get one-on-one homework help from our expert tutors—available online 24/7. Ask your own questions or browse existing Q&A threads. Satisfaction guaranteed! - Flashcards Browse existing sets or create your own using our digital flashcard system. A simple yet effective studying tool to help you earn the grade that you want!	Komodo
Indonesia is dissected by the?	Monitor Lizard (Varanus Indicus) - Animals - A-Z Animals Five groups that classify all living things Animalia A group of animals within the animal kingdom Chordata A group of animals within a pylum Reptilia A group of animals within a class Squamata A group of animals within an order Varanidae A group of animals within a family Varanus Comprised of the genus followed by the species Varanus Indicus The animal group that the species belongs to Reptile What kind of foods the animal eats Omnivore How long (L) or tall (H) the animal is 12-310cm (4.7-122in) The measurement of how heavy the animal is 1-166kg (2.2-366lbs) The fastest recorded speed of the animal 45km/h (28mph) How long the animal lives for 8-30 years Whether the animal is solitary or sociable Solitary The likelihood of the animal becoming extinct Threatened The colour of the animal's coat or markings Tan, Brown, Grey, Green The protective layer of the animal Scales The specific area where the animal lives River banks and coastal forests The average number of babies born at once 10 Other animals that hunt and eat the animal Human, Snakes, Wildcats Large, powerful body and sharp claws Monitor Lizard Location Monitor Lizard Monitor Lizards are large reptiles found in Africa and all across Asia , including the surrounding seas. The monitor lizard is mainly found in jungle areas although some species of monitor lizard are water-bound. Some species of monitor lizard are thought to carry a fairly weak venom, for example, the komodo dragon which is the largest of the species . The komodo dragon is native to the small Indonesian island that it is named after and is the largest species of lizard in the world. According to legend, monitor lizards were a sign that there were crocodiles close by, possibly due to their standing on their hind legs to monitor their surroundings. Monitor lizards do this so that they are aware of any approaching predators. Although many species of monitor lizard are quite big, some species of monitor lizard are smaller than 20 cm in length. Monitor lizards are extremely versatile animals and monitor lizards adapt well into different environments. Most species of monitor lizard have a predominantly carnivorous diet , eating eggs, smaller reptiles , fish , birds and small mammals . Some species of monitor lizard also eat fruit and vegetation depending on where they live. Female monitor lizards bury their eggs in holes or hollow tree stumps that the female monitor lizard then covers with dirt in order to protect her eggs. Monitor lizards can lay up to 30 eggs at a time, although many monitor lizards lay less, and only a lucky few of the monitor lizard babies tend to survive. Monitor lizards are thought to be fairly intelligent animals , with some people claiming that monitor lizards are able to recognise numbers up to six, therefore meaning that monitor lizards are able to count! Monitor lizards mainly use their intelligence in the wild by surveying areas for oncoming danger and for hunting their prey . Share This Article	i don't know
Indonesia's bad-smelling Rafflesia Arnoldii is the world's largest (what?), and a national emblem?	Indonesia's bad-smelling Rafflesia Arnoldii is the world's largest (what?), and a national emblem? View the step-by-step solution to: Indonesia's bad-smelling Rafflesia Arnoldii is the world's largest (what?), and a national emblem? This question was answered on May 31, 2016. View the Answer Indonesia's bad-smelling Rafflesia Arnoldii is the world's largest (what?), and a national emblem? wilberjacobs posted a question · May 31, 2016 at 5:04am Top Answer Please see the attached... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29837954) ]} rampsaud answered the question · May 31, 2016 at 5:05am Other Answers Here is a detailed explanation... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29837955) ]} Please see the attached... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29837970) ]} . It has a very strong and horrible odour of decaying flesh, earning it the nickname "corpse flower". It is endemic to the rainforests of Sumatra and possibly Borneo. peterkivuva61 May 31, 2016 at 5:07am {[ getNetScore(29837972) ]} View Full Answer or ask a new question Related Questions Need a World History tutor? jood.amc 8 World History experts found online! Average reply time is less than an hour Get Homework Help Why Join Course Hero? Course Hero has all the homework and study help you need to succeed! We’ve got course-specific notes, study guides, and practice tests along with expert tutors and customizable flashcards—available anywhere, anytime. - - Study Documents Find the best study resources around, tagged to your specific courses. Share your own to gain free Course Hero access or to earn money with our Marketplace. - Question & Answers Get one-on-one homework help from our expert tutors—available online 24/7. Ask your own questions or browse existing Q&A threads. Satisfaction guaranteed! - Flashcards Browse existing sets or create your own using our digital flashcard system. A simple yet effective studying tool to help you earn the grade that you want!	Flower
Indonesia's governing constitution since independence is a?	National Flowers and national animals of 10 ASEAN Countries - SAOWAKON SUEDEE SAOWAKON SUEDEE National Flowers and national animals of 10 ASEAN Countries ''National Flowers of 10 ASEAN Countries'' Simpor is the national flower of Brunei. The Simpor (Dillenia Suffruticosa) tree has large bright yellow petals and large leaves. When fully in bloom, the petals spreading out like an umbrella. The image of the Simpor flower is found on the Brunei one-dollar bank note. It is also widely used in Brunei in art design for traditional handicrafts. The Simpor is commonly found along the rivers in Brunei, especially the Temburong River, and also at swamp or white sand areas. Most parts of the tree have multiple uses, for instance, the treatment of wounds. Rumdul is the national flower of Cambodia. The Rumdul (Mitrella Mesnyi) bears a small yellowish-white flower with a single alternate leaf. The flower produces a distinctive fragrance which is prominent in the evening. Due to its attractive scent, the Khmer women had often been compared to the Rumdul flower during the ancient times. The Rumdul tree, which grows to a height of 8 -12 meters, can be seen almost everywhere in Cambodia, and is often planted as a decorative tree in public parks. Moon Orchid is the national flower of Indonesia The Moon Orchid or Angrek bulan (Phalaenopsis Amabilis) is one of Indonesia’s three national flowers. The other two are Jasminum sambac and the Rafflesia arnoldii. The Moon Orchid is one of the longest blooming orchids. The inflorescence are branched and can last from two to six months before dropping. The Moon Orchid usually blooms two to three times a year once it has reached maturity. It thrives in moist temperature so it is widely found in the lowlands of Indonesia. Champa is the national flower of Laos the Dok Champa (Plumeria) is the national flower and official symbol of Lao PDR. The waxy flower with a sweet scent can be found in many colors: red, yellow, pink and multiple pastels. For the Lao people, Dok Champa represents sincerity and joy in life. The flower is often used as a decoration in ceremonies or made into a garland to welcoming guests. The Dok Champa blooms everyday and lasts a long time. The trees are planted throughout the country and in particular, can be seen near the monastic areas. Bunga raya is the national flower of Malaysia The five-petaled Bunga raya (Hibiscus Rosa-Sinensis) has been Malaysia’s national flower since 1960. Symbolically, the five petals of the bunga raya represent the “Five Principles of Nationhood” – Malaysia’s national philosophy in strengthening national unity and tolerance -- while the red colour represents courage. The flower can be found throughout the country and parts of the Bunga raya’s shrub have medicinal and cosmetic uses. Paduak is the national flower of Myanmar The Padauk (Pterocarpus Indicus) blossoms in tiny fragrant yellow-gold flowers after the first showers in April, coinciding with the Myanmar New Year festival. Once in bloom, the entire tree turns gold overnight. The Myanmar people regard the Paduak tree as the symbol of strength and durability. The beautiful flower also signifies youth, love and romance. The flower plays an indispensable part in traditional and religious ceremonies. The Padauk can be found throughout the country. The wood of the tree is also used for making furniture. Sampaguita Jasmine is the national flower of the Philippines The Sampaguita Jasmine (Arabian Jasmine) was adopted as the national flower of the Philippines since 1934. The Sampaguita bears a white, star-shaped flower which blooms for the full year. The flower opens at night and lasts for about one day, producing a unique sweet scent. For the Filipino people, the flower is the symbol of purity, simplicity, humility and strength. Its blossom is celebrated in Philippine legends, stories and songs. It is believed that the flower was brought from the Himalayan areas to the Philippines in the 17th century. Vanda Miss Joaquim is the national flower of Singapore The best known orchid in Singapore is the national flower, Vanda Miss Joaquim. The orchid is a hybrid and was named after its breeder. The orchid bears an exquisitely beautiful (purple) color and shape. It blooms throughout the year. Its unique features won it the status of the official national flower of Singapore, over forty contenders, in 1981. Vanda Miss Joaquim is commonly planted in Singapore. Ratchaphreuk is the national flower of Thailand The Ratchaphruek (Cassia Fistula Linn) tree bears beautiful yellow cluster-shaped flowers. The Thai people regard its yellow hue as the colour of Buddhism and the colour of glory. Ratchaphruek blooms annually from February to May and symbolises the unity and harmony of the Thai people. While the flowers are blossoming, the tree sheds its leaves, leaving only bright yellow flowers hanging on its branches. The Ratchaphruek is widely known in Thailand and is grown in abundance along the roadsides. Lotus is National flower of Vietnam The people of Viet Nam regard the Lotus as one of the four graceful flowers and plants, along with the pine, bamboo, and chrysanthemum. Known as the ‘flower of the dawn’, the Lotus is found throughout the country at lakes and ponds. To the Vietnamese, the lotus is the symbol of purity, commitment and optimism for the future. The elegance of the lotus is often cited in the Vietnamese folk songs and poems. ''National animals of 10 ASEAN Countries'' The national animal of Thailand The elephant is the national animal of Thailand. Elephants are an important part of Thai culture and the Thai way of life. The flag of Thailand used to be a white elephant on a red background. In May 1998, the Cabinet approved the designation of March 13 as Thai Elephant Day to raise and sustain public awareness of the importance of elephants. The national animal of Indonesia The Komodo Dragon is the national animal of Indonesia. They are the biggest and heaviest lizard on Earth. They are found on Komodo island in Indonesia. The national animal of the Philippines The national animal of the Philippines is the carabao, the Asian Water Buffalo.The carabao (water buffalo) is still a very important draught-animal on the rice-fields. The carabao is also used for pulling activities in the forest. If not working, the water buffalo can be seen while it is resting, many times in a place of water and mud. The national animal of Malaysia The Malayan Tiger is the national animal of Malaysia. It habitats the southern and central parts of the Malay Peninsula. A tiger is depicted in the coat of arms of Malaysia. It symbolizes bravery and strength to Malaysians. It is also the nickname of the Malaysian national football team. The national animal of Cambodia. The kouprey is the national animal of Cambodia.It is a wild-ox like creature. It lives in herds of up to 20. The kouprey is one of the world's rarest mammals. Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia designated the kouprey as the country's national animal in 1960. The national animal of Singapore. The lion is the national animal of Singapore. Singapore is the English word for "Singapura", which means Lion City. The lion is significant as Singapore's name is derived from the old Sanskrit term simha orsingha,meaning "lion". The national animal of Laos is Indian elephant. The national animal of Laos is Indian elephant. Laos is historically known as Lan Xang, or Land of a Million Elephants. But today there are as few as 1,500 including both wild and domesticated elephant in Laos. The national animal of Myanmar The tiger is the national animal of Myanmar. The Hukaung Valley Tiger Reserve in Myanmar is the world's largest tiger sanctuary. The national animal of Vietnam. The water buffalo is the national animal of Vietnam. It is common in the southern regions of the country. It is a large black animal with huge curving horns. The national animal of Brunei The national animal of Brunei is White-bellied Sea Eagle	i don't know
What is Indonesia's 'Sang Saka Merah-Putih' (The Sacred Red-and-White)?	What is Indonesia's 'Sang Saka Merah-Putih' (The Sacred Red-and-White)? View the step-by-step solution to: What is Indonesia's 'Sang Saka Merah-Putih' (The Sacred Red-and-White)? This question was answered on May 31, 2016. View the Answer What is Indonesia's 'Sang Saka Merah-Putih' (The Sacred Red-and-White)? vincentwenger posted a question · May 31, 2016 at 5:34am Top Answer Please see the attached... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29838354) ]} rampsaud answered the question · May 31, 2016 at 5:35am Other Answers Please see the attached... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29838370) ]} profpatoz answered the question · May 31, 2016 at 5:36am The Flag of Indonesia Sang Saka Merah - Putih (The Lofty... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29838399) ]} View Full Answer or ask a new question Related Questions Describe the Vietnamese Refugee History and its significance. Recently Asked Questions Need a World History tutor? Lynettehero 9 World History experts found online! Average reply time is 3 mins Get Homework Help Why Join Course Hero? Course Hero has all the homework and study help you need to succeed! We’ve got course-specific notes, study guides, and practice tests along with expert tutors and customizable flashcards—available anywhere, anytime. - - Study Documents Find the best study resources around, tagged to your specific courses. Share your own to gain free Course Hero access or to earn money with our Marketplace. - Question & Answers Get one-on-one homework help from our expert tutors—available online 24/7. Ask your own questions or browse existing Q&A threads. Satisfaction guaranteed! - Flashcards Browse existing sets or create your own using our digital flashcard system. A simple yet effective studying tool to help you earn the grade that you want!	Flag
Indonesia has the world's largest area of what vegetation?	Modern Indonesia \| Home Welcome to Modern Indonesia! Before we start exploring what is Modern Indonesia, we have provided a short overview of Indonesia. Q: Where is Indonesia? Q: What is so interesting about Indonesia? Fourth most populous country in the world with 250 million people One of the founding members of the ASEAN 9th largest GDP (based on PPP calculations) in 2013 according to IMF and the World Bank The whole country is an archipelago and yet: 15th largest in terms of land and 7th largest in terms of combined land and sea. There are around 300 distinct native ethnic groups that created 742 different languages and dialects. Javanese is the largest ethnic group. Sundanese, ethnic Malay, and Madurese are the largest non-Javanese groups. World’s most populous Muslim-majority nation and officially the country recognizes other five religions which include:Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. For more details, please visit History page. Q: How does an Indonesian flag look like? The Indonesian flag is quite simple – red and white aligned parallel to each other, both equal in ratio of its’ height. In Indonesian, this flag is called “Sang Saka Merah Putih” (meaning “the Mighty Red and White”). The red symbolizes human blood of courageous men and women in fighting for the nation and the white represents the purity of the human soul. Both stand together as a complete human being. The design of this flag is based on the 13th century Javan Majapahit Empire flag that had nine red and white stripes. You might have seen similar flags to this, for example: Monaco, Poland. Each flags, although comprised of the same colors, have different ratios and different positioning of the colors. When in doubt, double check the color ratios! Q: Ever heard of Komodo dragons? Of course we have! The Komodo island in Indonesia is particularly notable as the habitat of the Komodo dragon. Being the largest lizard of Earth, the Komodo can be quite scary up close, we recommend observing the beast from a safe distance. Q: What is this website about? Please head to our About page for further information. Q: Can you tell me more about the website’s header image? Good eye! It is an aerial shot of Jakarta’s skyscraper scene. We chose this picture because this website discusses topics in regards to Modern Indonesia and we want to present this modern side of Indonesia. Indonesia is commonly portrayed as a rural country filled with colorful ethnic culture made by people in the villages that are always happy (They are always smiling and are very content in these pictures). These are true but these are also false. Those iconic Indonesian pictures did not capture the entirety of the Indonesianhood. These intentional editing often neglect to capture the ‘moving’ Indonesia, the progressing nation. Although by showing the skyscraper sight of Jakarta is also contributing to this rural-modern Indonesia dichotomy, we want to present the other part of Indonesia that does not get a lot of exposure. This picture portrays the Indonesia that we grew up in. This is Indonesia, now.	i don't know
Indonesia's international telephone country code is?	Indonesia Country Code 62 Country Code ID About Indonesia Hide CountryCode.org is your complete guide to make a call from anywhere in the world, to anywhere in the world. This page details Indonesia phone code. The Indonesia country code 62 will allow you to call Indonesia from another country. Indonesia telephone code 62 is dialed after the IDD. Indonesia international dialing 62 is followed by an area code. The Indonesia area code table below shows the various city codes for Indonesia. Indonesia country codes are followed by these area codes. With the complete Indonesia dialing code, you can make your international call.	sixty two
Which nation occupied most of modern Indonesia during the 2nd World War, 1942-45, effectively ending colonial rule? Germany; China; Japan; or USA?	Indonesia Mobile Code - How to call a Indonesia cell phone from United States How to call a Indonesia mobile phone: 011 - United States exit code to dial first when calling international 62 - Indonesia country code must be dialed next Mobile Code - Indonesia mobile code must be dialed next 011 + 62 + Mobile Code + Local Number - Overall dialing format World Times: The time in Indonesia is now (CLICK FOR TIME ZONES) More Ways to Call a Indonesia mobile phone: - From 0.4¢ per Minute Tips for calling a cell phone in Indonesia: To call a Indonesian cell phone from a land line, simply follow the mobile country code dialing instructions above to place your call. To call a Indonesian cell phone from your cell phone, you may need to first use the + (plus) sign prior to entering the Indonesia mobile code and telephone number. If you are calling Indonesia from your cell phone, you may incur additional charges or fees from your mobile carrier. We recommend trying out a service, such as SpeedyPin Calling Cards - From 0.4¢ per Minute	i don't know
Home to most of Indonesia's Hindu minority, what tourist haven is Indonesia's smallest province?	Home to most of Indonesia's Hindu minority, what tourist haven is Indonesia's smallest province? View the step-by-step solution to: Home to most of Indonesia's Hindu minority, what tourist haven is Indonesia's smallest province? This question was answered on May 31, 2016. View the Answer Home to most of Indonesia's Hindu minority, what tourist haven is Indonesia's smallest province? celiahansen67 posted a question · May 31, 2016 at 5:44am Top Answer rampsaud answered the question · May 31, 2016 at 5:45am Other Answers Attached is a detailed explanation... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29838491) ]} Please see the attached... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29838498) ]} The island of Bali is... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29841125) ]} Need a World History tutor? mathtutor1983 3 World History experts found online! Average reply time is less than an hour Get Homework Help Why Join Course Hero? Course Hero has all the homework and study help you need to succeed! We’ve got course-specific notes, study guides, and practice tests along with expert tutors and customizable flashcards—available anywhere, anytime. - - Study Documents Find the best study resources around, tagged to your specific courses. Share your own to gain free Course Hero access or to earn money with our Marketplace. - Question & Answers Get one-on-one homework help from our expert tutors—available online 24/7. Ask your own questions or browse existing Q&A threads. Satisfaction guaranteed! - Flashcards Browse existing sets or create your own using our digital flashcard system. A simple yet effective studying tool to help you earn the grade that you want!	Bali
Goreng, Bakar, Tumis, Rebus, and Kukus are major Indonesian?	Malindo Air To Launch first Kuala Lumpur – Lahore flight Malindo Air To Launch first Kuala Lumpur – Lahore flight Compiled by Imtiaz Muqbil & Sana Shamsi A compilation of progressive, positive, inspiring and motivating events and developments in the world of Islam for the week ending 18 January 2016 (08 Rabee’ al-Thaani 1437). Pls click on any of the headlines below to go to the story. ============ A WORD FROM MY SPONSORS: TOURISM MALAYSIA HERBAL ASIA TO BE HELD IN KUALA LUMPUR OCT 5-8 Herbal Asia, Asia’s Premier Herbal, Green & Natural Exhibition & Conference, will be held from 5 – 8 October 2016 at MATRADE Exhibition Convention Centre (MECC), Kuala Lumpur. This is 10th consecutive year, the Herbal Asia show is organized in Malaysia. Herbal Asia this year features more excitement in business opportunities and trade networking. Natural, Green & Herbal Product & Services received great interest by consumers, trade buyers & professionals. Herbal Asia is organized by and GITEX Global Exhibition Services (M) Sdn Bhd. This timely event will showcase the industries finest, from Herbal, Natural and Green products and services, technology to the latest in traditional and alternative medicine now seen as potential markets in health tourism industry. It will be a global platform for producers, manufacturers, investors, health and industry-related professionals to meet, exchange ideas and promote this rapidly growing industry. Click here for more information. Or contact: Safinah Yaakob, Project Director, +6017.326.3715 [email protected], Ms. Nur Athirah Hamdan, Event Secretariat, +6019.205.1003 [email protected] For more information about what makes Malaysia one of the most popular destinations in the Islamic world, as well as on planning your next holiday or MICE event in Malaysia, please click: http://www.tourism.gov.my/ or http://www.tourismmalaysia.gov.my Blog: http://blog.tourism.gov.my ========== Watch Islamic Travel Newswire Executive Editor Imtiaz Muqbil’s landmark TEDx lecture on “Peace through Tourism” on YouTube — the first travel industry journalist in Bangkok invited to speak at this prestigious forum. CLICK HERE . =========== STORIES IN THIS DISPATCH. PLS CLICK ON ANY OF THE HEADLINES BELOW TO GO DIRECTLY TO THE STORY Malaysia Airlines To Codeshare Emirates On Kl-Dubai Route KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia Jan 13 (NNN-Bernama) — Malaysia Airlines will code-share Emirates on the four times daily service to Dubai from Kuala Lumpur, effective Feb 15, as part of the partnership sealed between both airlines in early December 2015. In a statement Wednesday, Malaysia Airlines said the Kuala Lumpur to Dubai flight frequency will therefore increase from one to four times daily. All flights will be operated on Emirates aircraft. “The new codeshare will give customers convenient connections to Emirates’ more than 90 global destinations. “This includes 38 destinations in Europe on a daily and even double daily basis for key European cities such as Paris, Rome, Munich, Frankfurt, Madrid, and Barcelona, as well as Canada and Latin America,” it said. The partnership will also see the Malaysia Airlines and Emirates frequent flyer programmes aligned, giving customers expanded opportunities to earn and redeem points. Chief Executive Officer Christoph Mueller said the partnership allows guests to travel seamlessly to major cities around the world, whilst enjoying increased rewards through the loyalty programmes. “We will be able to offer Kuala Lumpur as a hub to connect to South East Asia and Dubai for connections to Europe, Middle East and North and South Africa,” he added. The details of the benefits will be shared progressively over the next quarter. The service to Dubai will be operated thrice daily on a Boeing 777 and once, on the Airbus 380. Malaysia Airlines will also suspend its Kuala Lumpur-Dubai route by Feb 15 and re-accommodate passengers on the codeshare flights with Emirates. Back to top Turkish Textile Firms Eye Malaysia, Aec Markets For Growth FRANKFURT, Jan 15 (NNN-Bernama) — Faced by the loss of their traditional export markets because of political and security problems in their neighbourhood, Turkish textile companies are looking to penetrate into new markets to sustain their export growth. At the ongoing four-day Heimtextil show of Frankfurt, the world’s biggest trade fair for the home-textile and contract textile industry, Turkish exhibitors are trying to intensify their links to Malaysia and the ASEAN markets. Turkey, as Turkish exhibitors and representatives of various textile and garment associations were saying, is surrounded by a violent neighbourhood: a war-ravaged Syria, an unstable Iraq and a sanction-plagued Russia. The number of Turkish exhibitors at the show has sharply increased from 159 in 2015 to 211 in 2016. M. Atilla Bulut, the deputy general coordinator (fairs) of the Turkish Home Textile Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association, said in an interview at the show that Turkish exhibitors occupy the second largest display space — about 16,000 sq. m. — after Germany. “Our advantage over China is our proximity to Europe — we know and understand Europe’s needs and are familiar with the region’s economic and cultural idiosyncrasies. Turkey has a problem on its borders with Syria, Iraq and Russia, even though it has no internal security problem,” Bulut told Bernama. As a result, Turkish exporters are forced to look for markets beyond their borders to Southeast Asia, where the ASEAN Economic Community was recently formed. Malaysia, as one of the so-called ‘core countries’ of the community, is seen as an attractive market by many Turkish exporters, some of whom said they plan to visit Malaysia and other ASEAN countries in the near future to promote their exports. Turkey’s total global textile exports in 2015 amounted to US$14 billion, of which home textiles accounted for US$3 billion. Turkey’s home-textile exports in 2014 amounted to US$3.3 billion. The 2015 shortfall in exports is attributed to the crisis in Russia, which has faced huge sanctions because of the Ukraine crisis, resulting in less buying by its consumers who could not afford to buy more from the U.S. “We are looking at markets such as Japan, the ASEAN region and Canada,” Bulut said. Turkey is also organising its own textile trade fair called EVTEKS, the Istanbul International Home Textiles Exhibition, on May 17-21. “We are launching a promotional campaign to attract buyers from Europe, the ASEAN region and other Asian countries,” he added. Luks Kadife T/C Ve San, AS, of Istanbul, which manufactures curtains, upholstery and fabric material for garments, is already exporting to Malaysia and has built up contacts over the year. However, the company is now keen to increase its exports to Malaysia and other ASEAN countries in the face of uncertainties in other markets. It has been shipping mainly to the United States, the European Union and the Middle Eastern and North African countries. “Though our business with Malaysia has been smaller than with our major markets, we consider Malaysia a stable country. China is passing through turbulent economic times. We expect Malaysia, along with Singapore and Indonesia, to grow in the future. We are going to actively increase our contacts with the Malaysian textile sector. Some 30 per cent of our production is sold in the domestic market while 70 per cent is exported,” general manager Feramin Celiktas told Bernama. Osman Canik, the chairman of the Uludag Turkish Exporters’ Association and the vice president of Elvin Tekstil San Vetic A.S., headquartered in Turkey’s textile city Bursa, pointed out that some 1.5 billion potential consumers live within its reach in the direct neighbourhood. He expressed hope the war in Syria would soon end and the reconstruction of the country would begin immediately so that hotels, buildings and other infrastructure could be constructed, generating demand for home and other textiles. He said there will be some “good news” in regard to Syria in the second half of 2016. “The slowdown in Europe has adversely affected our business but it is improving gradually. Our major markets are Europe and the Middle East, but we are exporting to the USA, South America and the Far East,” Canik said, emphasising after the latest deadly bomb attack in Istanbul that Turkey is a “very safe and hospitable place, as any other place elsewhere”. Back to top Malaysia Urged to Tap Potential In Wellness Tourism KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia Jan 11 (NNN-Bernama) — Malaysia’s wellness and fitness industry has the potential to become a big revenue earner for the tourism sector, according to Minister of Youth and Sports Khairy Jamaluddin. He said Malaysia should try to capture a slice of the market by developing wellness tourism alongside medical tourism, which the country has been promoting aggressively. Medical tourism, which was introduced in Malaysia in 1998, was among the strategies taken by the government to diversify the economy during the Asian economic crisis. “Health or medical tourism focuses on healthcare like seeking treatment or undergoing surgeries or checkups (at private hospitals). We need to have a broader context by inserting the wellness aspect,” he told Bernama. Khairy said programmes like Malaysia Urban Retreat Festival (Murfest), yoga and spiritual retreats, as well as fitness weeks, could be organised in Malaysia on a regular basis to lure tourists from all over the world who were interested in such activities. “There’s much potential for wellness travel to be turned into a revenue-generating industry. Tourists coming to Malaysia for medical treatment can be given an opportunity to participate in wellness and fitness programmes offered by the industry players here,” he said. Murfest 2015, held in November last year, had attracted some 5,000 local and international participants. Attaining health and well-being through physical, psychological, or spiritual activities has now become an international trend among health-conscious people. Citing Bali in Indonesia as an example, Khairy said the authorities there organised a yearly international yoga festival to attract visitors who were into fitness and spirituality. He said Malaysia could also come up with similar offerings as it has the infrastructure, as well as numerous tourist attractions. Khairy, meanwhile, said his ministry would continue to grow the Fit Malaysia brand, launched in September 2014, by combining sports activities with other elements that enhance mind-body connection, similar to some of the programmes presented during the three-day Murfest. Fit Malaysia is the brainchild of Khairy, who wants to use the brand to encourage Malaysians to adopt healthy lifestyles and to excel in sports. “Murfest is a very suitable platform to start with… we work with Murfest as a strategy to broaden Fit Malaysia’s concept. At the moment, we are focusing on the physical aspect but we want to incorporate the mental aspect as well. “We want to see fitness in a wider scope and more comprehensively too. (So it’s) not (going to be) all about physical sports, running, cardio, boxing, self-defence or cycling, but also (about) mind-body wellness,” he said. He said for a start, fly yoga or aerial yoga, a new form of exercise that makes use of hammocks, was being considered as one of the activities for this year’s Fit Malaysia event. “I’ve noticed that Murfest’s holistic activities are not only great for the young generation but also people from all walks of life who want to maintain a healthy mind and body,” he said. Meanwhile, Malaysia Major Events (MME) General Manager Tony Nagamaiah said to promote wellness tourism, there has to be an active partnership between the tourism authorities and wellness industry players. MME is a division of Malaysia Convention & Exhibition Bureau (MyCEB), an agency under the Ministry of Tourism and Culture. “We want to grow this (wellness tourism) business so that it will become a big product, which we can showcase to not only this region, but the whole world. “To do this and enable wellness tourism to contribute to our economy, there must be a collaboration between the tourism and wellness sectors,” said Tony. He added that Murfest could be a good platform for the international market to get to know Malaysia’s wellness and fitness industry. Tony also said that Malaysia’s medical tourism industry was growing fast and the country was one of leading destinations for health tourism in the region. “We’re also committed to promoting wellness travel… we believe that we’re already on the right track and will be successful in a couple of years,” he said. Back to top LEAD STORY: Malindo Air To Launch first Kuala Lumpur – Lahore flight KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan 12 (NNN-BERNAMA) – Malindo Air, winner of the Airline of the Year award and Top Performing Airline 2015, by Travelport, becomes the sole airline to offer direct flights between Kuala Lumpur and Lahore, the capital city of the province of Punjab in Pakistan, via four times weekly flights, which will commence from Mar 2, 2016, onwards. Lahore is the second largest metropolitan area in Pakistan and the 16th most populous city in the world. Bookings can be made online at malindoair.com or for smartphone devices at mobile.malindoair.com or via the Malindo Air App, available for download on Google Play and App Store. The flight will depart KLIA2 on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 5.30 pm (local time) and touch down at the Allama Iqbal International Airport, Lahore (LHE) at 8.15 pm (Pakistan time). The return flight will depart from Lahore at 9.05 pm and arrive in KLIA2 the next morning at 5.50 am. The flight time is 5 hours and 45 minutes. Malindo Air’s CEO, Chandran Rama Muthy, said, “We are elated to extend our reach to Lahore and for being the only Malaysian-based airline to offer direct services between Kuala Lumpur and Lahore. The route will also signify one of our furthest route yet from Kuala Lumpur, using our young fleet of Boeing 737-900ER aircraft. Malaysians and transiting visitors from neighbouring Singapore can now look forward to a smooth flight to Lahore via Kuala Lumpur whether for business, leisure or religious purposes. Lahore is also an important religious centre, as it is home to hundreds of temples, mosques, churches and shrines.” The city of Lahore is also referred to as the cultural heart of Pakistan, as it hosts most of the arts, cuisine, festivals, music, film-making, gardening and intelligentsia of the country. The city has always been a centre for publications, where most of Pakistan’s books are published, and it remains the foremost centre of literary, educational and cultural activity in Pakistan. Forget the hassle of paying a hefty penalty for flight change! Malindo Air’s new No Change Fee policy that allows unlimited date and time change up to 24 hours before departure, at no extra charge is a first of its kind in Malaysia. Only non-promo fares are applicable and subject to higher fare difference. For bookings and enquiries, visit malindoair.com, write in to Customer Care at [email protected] or contact the Call Centre at (60)3-7841 5388 from 9.00 am to 9.00 pm daily. Malindo Air is a Malaysian airline with main hubs at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 (KLIA2) and the convenient KL down town city airport, Subang Skypark in Selangor, Malaysia. The airline took to the skies in Mar, 2013, with domestic flights and has since grown to operate routes to all major airports in Malaysia and across regional destinations in Indonesia, Thailand, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Southern China and Australia. The fleet itself has grown leaps and bounds to 11 ATR72-600 and 16 Boeing 737NG, as of Dec 31, 2015. Today, the airline operates over 800 flights weekly across a continuously growing network of about 40 routes in the region. More recently, the airline won Airline of the Year (Passenger) at the KLIA Awards 2014, and Top Performing Airline 2015, by Travelport. Back to top Malaysia Invests in Skyscanner Travel Search Engine KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 12 (NNN-Bernama) — Khazanah Nasional Bhd, the Malaysian government’s sovereign wealth fund, is among five new investors which have invested US$192 million (RM824.35 million) in Edinburgh-based Skyscanner. (US$1 = RM4.38) The other four partners in the travel search engine company, which provides free search of flights, hotels and car hire around the world, are Artemis, Baillie Gifford, Vitruvian Partners and Yahoo!Japan, said Skyscanner in a statement. Founded in 2003, Skyscanner has enjoyed high double-digit growth rates for some years now and has been profitable since 2009. Back to top Malaysian Tourism Chief Urges More Domestic Tourism KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA Jan 13 (NNN-Bernama) — Malaysians are encouraged to visit more local tourist spots instead of holidaying abroad to help boost the country’s economy and domestic tourism industry. Tourism Malaysia director-general, Mirza Mohammad Taiyab said domestic tourism could not be stepped up without the participation of the local populace. “Domestic tourism had generated encouraging income for the national economy with the 11.6 per cent increase in local tourists from 54.4 million in 2013 to 60.7 million in 2014. “Domestic tourists’ expenditure also increased by 16.3 per cent from RM35.6 billion in 2013 to RM41.4 billion in 2014, and we hope for a bigger increase this year,” he said at the MITA Tourism Fair 2016 (MTF) press conference, here, Tuesday. Mirza said MTF 2016 from this Jan 29 to 31, promised visitors exciting domestic holiday offers by 150 display booths put up by 100 tourism operators to market their products. The event, organised by the Malaysia Inbound Tourism Association (MITA), targets 20,000 visitors and sales worth RM10 million. On the holding of the tourism fair, Mirza said Tourism Malaysia welcomed such an initiative to create a local travel culture in a planned manner. “This fair will also enable all levels of our society to purchase directly the domestic tourism packages at reasonable and competitive prices. “Besides that, the small tourism product suppliers could expose their products and services to the public,” he added. Back to top Jakarta Bomb Attacks Not Affecting Tourism to Malaysia KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia Jan 17 (NNN-Bernama) — The terrorist attacks in Jakarta on Thursday has not stopped the public and foreign tourists here from frequenting popular areas in the capital such as the Petronas Twin Towers and the Suria KLCC and Pavilion shopping centres. Ovaeall, those met by Bernama yesterday did not express any fear for their own safety, on the contrary they were confident of the ability of the authorities in curbing terrorist activities in the country. A tourist from Indonesia, Yan Sugianto, 40, said he knew of the terrorist attacks as its happened a day before he flew from the Indonesian capital to Malaysia. “I had planned to holiday in Kuala Lumpur for three days and have no fear because I’m confident with the level of security in the country. “In fact, Malaysia is already well known as a safe destination to visit and I have never heard of any violent incidents involving foreign tourists here,” he said. However, Yan Sugianto, who is a pilot, said at the same time said he would take precautions by avoiding going to places that could trigger violence such as entertainment centres. A tourist from Bangladesh who gave his name as Moulik, 20, who had come with his family, said he was taking a cautious view of every tourist location that he visits after the incident. “We were already in Malaysia when the bomb attacks took place… so we just have to be cautious and take precautions at all time. We just avoid being near persons wearing something that hide their faces or with suspicious luggage or bag,” he said. Meanwhile, a tourist from Brazil, Miguel Sousa, 40, said he had no choice because he had made early plans to travel to several countries in Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. “Actually, it is an isolated incident and will not happen all the time. I believe the Malaysian authorities have increased security in public places and will be monitoring in order to avoid such an incident from occurring here,” he said. In the meantime, security has been bolstered at public spots by motorcycle patrolling units and patrol cars (MPVs) constantly conducting periodic patrols and the number of policemen has also been intensified compared with normal days. Back to top Jakarta Attacks’ Impact on Tourism Is Limited JAKARTA, Indonesia, Jan 16 (NNN-ANTARA) – Indonesia is a safe state and the negative impact of Thursday’s terrorist attacks in down town Jakarta to tourism industry is limited, Indonesian tourism minister said. The Islamic State-linked attacks, which involved deadly bombings and gun blasts, left seven people dead, including one foreigner, and 24 others injured. In an exclusive interview, Minister Arief Yahya said that, there have been no cancellations for hotel reservation and travel bookings, so far, in Jakarta and other big cities in the country. Arief stressed that, the attacks only happened in a small part in Jakarta and the situation is fully under control. “The vast Jakarta and Indonesia at large are safe and comfortable for foreigners,” though the terrorist attacks in Jakarta could mean a dip in foreign tourist arrivals, at the start of the year, he said. The Indonesian capital city is not the main entry gate for overseas visitors, who prefer Yogyakarta in Central Java and Bali, the other tourism destinations in the archipelago. Indonesia has set an ambitious target to attract 12 million foreign tourists in 2016. The country is now mainly relying on the sustainable growth of Chinese visitors, Arief said, adding that, the Indonesian tourism ministry is expecting more direct and charter flights during the Chinese New Year holiday, in the coming weeks. The ministry will hold calligraphy and lantern-flying competitions and other Chinese New Year-related events, in some cities, to attract more Chinese visitors, he said. Official data show that China is Indonesia’s third largest source of foreign tourists, after Singapore and Malaysia, with around 1.3 million arrivals a year. The tourism ministry expects the figure to become 2 million this year. Back to top Majalengka’s Kertajati Airport to open in 2017 14 January 2016 Jakarta (ANTARA News) – Kertajati Airport in Majalengka District, West Java, is set to become operational in 2017, according to President Joko Widodo (Jokowi). “I have given a target for the Kertajati Airport to become operational next year,” the president stated while inspecting the construction site of the airport in Majalengka on Thursday. President Jokowi expressed hope that the Kertajati airports physical construction, which had lasted for six years, would be completed as soon as possible, so that it becomes operational next year in order to improve the economy of the surrounding community. Built on a 1.8 thousand-hectare plot of land, the airport will have a three thousand-meter-long runway after completion. In the meantime, Transportation Minister Ignatius Jonan remarked that the airport will be able to accommodate wide-bodied aircraft such as Airbus A380 as it will have a runway measuring three thousand meters in length and 60 meters in width. The minister has set a target that by no later than the start of 2018, the airport should become operational, with a passenger capacity of some 8-10 million per year in the first phase. Back to top Palembang LRT project to be completed on time 9 January 2016 Workers of Light Rail Transit (LRT) project in the Sultan Mahmud Airport Badaruddin (SMB) II, Palembang, South Sumatra, on December 20, 2015. (ANTARA/Nova Wahyudi) Palembang (ANTARA News) – Transport minister Ignasius Jonan assured here Saturday that the Palembang Light Railway Transit (LRT) development project now in progress would be completed on time as no obstacles have been found. So, before the Asian Games 2018, the LRT will be open for use, he said after meeting with South Sumatra Governor Alex Noerdin at the Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin II airport here. Based on the report, construction of the light railway lines has progressed as expected, and this showed that the program would be finished as planned, he said. He emphasized the importance of coordination because development projects are very much connected with public facilities. Many public facilities could be affected due to the project such as gas pipes, the electricity network as well as clean water supply lines, and so coordination must be prioritized, he said. After the meeting, the minister and entourage inspected the development of LRT project site in front of the airport. On the occasion the minister held a dialog with Waskita the contractor, regarding the progress of the project before heading to Kertapati railway station to continue his journey to Prabumulih. South Sumatra and Jakarta will co-host the Asian Games in 2018. Back to top Plan mulled to establish Toba Tourism Authority 11 January 2016 Jakarta (ANTARA News) – Five ministers have met to discuss a plan to set up Lake Toba Tourism Authority to improve the management of the tourism destination in North Sumatra. The meeting held at Del Institute of Technology in Laguboti, Toba Samosir on Saturday was led by Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs Rizal Ramli. In a press statement received here on Sunday four ministers attending the meeting included Tourism Minister Arief Yahya, Public Works Minister Basuki Hadimulyono, Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Luhut Panjaitan and Minister of Forestry and Environment Siti Nurbaya. It was also attended by acting governor of North Sumatra, Tengku Erry Nuradi, North Sumatra police command chief and seven heads of districts located around Lake Toba. Rizal said he has full commitment to set up the agency to assure better coordination in the management of Lake Toba so that it would become a “Monaco of Asia” or an international standard tourism destination and attract more foreign tourists. He appealed to the people of North Sumatra as well as regional administrations to support the governments to make it the icon of Indonesian tourism. Luhut Panjaitan hailed the initiative to develop Lake Toba tourism destination saying that it had been awaited for tens of years by the indigenous Batak community. “I have also reported it to President Jokowi (Joko Widodo) and he welcomed it. He said that it was part of the most important governments programs,” Luhut who hails from the Batak community said. He said besides Lake Toba the government also plans to set up tourism authorities in nine main other tourist destinations in the country this year, namely Tanjung Kelayang, Tanjung Lesung, Kepulauan Seribu, Borobudur Temple, Mt Bromo, Mandalika, Komodo Island, Wakatobi, and Morotai. Back to top Indonesia, Singapore to boost agricultural trade 12 January 2016 Jakarta (ANTARA News) – Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi and Singaporean Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan held a bilateral meeting to discuss efforts to boost agricultural trade. “To strengthen our economic cooperation, we discussed the possibility of boosting the export of Indonesian agricultural products to Singapore. We believe that we have the capacity to fulfill Singapores need of agricultural products,” Marsudi stated here on Tuesday. Moreover, Indonesia has also encouraged increasing cooperation to provide jobs to Indonesian skilled migrant workers who could be employed as caregivers and therapists in Singapore. The Singaporean foreign minister lauded the improvement in economic cooperation between the two nations, especially referring to the proposed visit of Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Long to Indonesia this year. “We can see that the relationship between the two nations has grown over the years. There are several areas of potential to be developed in future,” he stated. Singapore is Indonesias second-largest economic partner after China, with trade reaching nearly US$42 billion in 2014. Singapore became the largest investor in Indonesia in 2014, with total investment reaching US$5.8 billion. In the field of tourism, nearly 1.5 million Singaporean tourists visited Indonesia. Back to top Komodo Island named Indonesia’s main marine tourist destination 12 January 2016 Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara (ANTARA News) – The Ministry of Tourism has mapped Komodo Island as one of the 12 major marine tourist destinations in Indonesia. The other destinations included in the list are Wakatobi in Southeast Sulawesi, Derawan in East Kalimantan, Raja Ampat in Papua, Nias in North Sumatra, Mentawai in West Sumatra, Ujung Kulon in West Java, Anak Krakatau in Sunda Strait, Tomini in Central Sulawesi, and Bali and Lombok in West Nusa Tenggara. “The twelve islands are included in the blueprint of the marine tourism development plan for natural resources and creative economy in promoting the brand Wonderful Indonesia,” Welly Rame Rohimone, acting head of the provincial tourism and creative economy office, stated here on Tuesday. Komodo Island, the natural habitat of the Komodo dragon (Varanus kommodoensis), has been selected as one of the new seven Wonders of Nature. The tourist area is ideal for diving and cruise tourism. “East Nusa Tenggara will be developed as Indonesias tourism gateway besides Bali, West Nusa Tenggara, and ten other islands,” Rohimone noted. The Komodo dragon in Komodo National Park can be found on the islands of Rica, Padar, and Komodo. “Sail Indonesia, being held since 2009, has also been organized in East Nusa Tenggara in 2013 under the name of Sail Komodo,” he emphasized. Komodo Island, with a land area of 390 square kilometers, has a population of over two thousand. The island has a beach with sand that appears pink as it contains a mixture of white sand and red sand, formed from pieces of Foraminifera. Back to top Garuda opens another flight route to China 14 January 2016 Denpasar, Bali (ANTARA News) – The nations flag carrier Garuda Indonesia has opened a new route to China between Balis Denpasar and Shanghai starting on Wednesday. Earlier Garuda already had regular flights between Denpasar and Beijing and between Denpasar and Guangzhou. Commercial Director of Garuda Indonesia, Handayani, said in a statement on Thursday China has been one of the focuses for international flights of the airline aiming to facilitate tourists from the worlds most populous country. China is one of the most potential tourism markets in the world with around 100 million Chinese traveling abroad every year. The number of Chinese visitors to Indonesia has increased from year to year – up 25 percent on year in the first eight months of 2015. “Chinese are the second largest in number after Australians visiting Bali every year. Certainly China is a potential market for Garuda,” Handayani said. Garuda Indonesia serves the Denpasar – Shanghai route three times a week round trips every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday using A330-300 aircraft with a seat capacity of b360 passengers. The first flight by GA 858 took off at 16.15 local time from Balis Ngurah Rai airport and arrived in Shanghai at 23.30 local time on Wednesday. Meanwhile, GA 859 took off from Shanghai at 01.00 and landed at Denpasar at 08.35 local time on Thursday. The opening of the new route is expected to contribute to reaching the countrys target of increasing the number of foreign tourists to 12 million in 2016 and 20 million in 2020. From Denpasar as a hub of Garuda Indonesia, foreign tourists could proceed to other tourist destinations in the country such as Lombok, Makassar, Menado, Labuan Bajo, and Yogyakarta, Handayani said. Including from Jakarta, Garuda serves 10 direct flights per week from Indonesia to Shanghai. Altogether Garuda serves 26 flights from Indonesia to China a week with the three destinations – Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai, via Jakarta and Denpasar. In the flights to the Chinese cities, Garuda uses Chinese nationals as cabin crew to make it easier in communications with Chinese passengers. Garuda also plans to serve charter flights from Chinese cities like Chengdu, Chong Qin, Hefei, Kunming, Ningbo, Zhengzhou, Shenyang, Jinan, Tianjing, Taiyuan, and Xian to Indonesia in January and March, 2016. In February, 2015, and July in the same year, Garuda Indonesia already opened charter flights from Chengdu, Chong Qin, Ningbo, Kunming, Junan, Harbin, Xian, Shenyang dan Chengzhou to Denpasar and Menado. Back to top Indonesian President to encourage more mass transport systems 15 January 2016 Jakarta (ANTARA News) – President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) has said he supports the development of mass transport system not only in Jakarta and Bandung but also in other big cities in Indonesia. “I will continue pushing for the development of mass transport system not only in Jakarta or Bandung but also in other big cities in Indonesia. Light Rapid Transit system has already been developed, for example in Palembang, and it will probably be developed later in Bandung, Surabaya and other cities,” he said at a meeting on high speed railway projects. President Jokowi said he wished to know what were the obstacles being faced by current projects. “I want to receive reports regarding the Jakarta-Bandung high speed train system as well as licensing and setting up of the state-owned railway company,” he said. He also wished to know issues related to environmental impact analysis and sought an assurance that everything is ready to start the development, including a consortium for the train service. He also asked about the state of preparation for capital participation and other aspects. “I wish to know the detailed concept, its connection with the LRT and other preparations,” he said. He said areas that the high speed train must pass must be prepared well. Back to top Zarb-e-Azb paves way for self-empowering of women in tribal areas Jan 17 (APP): Minister of State and Chairperson Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) Marvi Memon Sunday said the operation Zarb-e-Azb has not only brought peace but also paved way for self-empowering of womenfolk in the tribal areas. The BISP chairperson, who visited here to formally launch “Beneficiaries Outreach and Communication Strategy said that the government would also provide interest free loans and training to the women in order to empower them. Back to top Pakistan to establish two new universities in capital’s rural areas Jan 13 (APP): Minister of State for Capital Administration and Development Division (CA&DD) Dr Tariq Fazal Chaudhary announced that two new universities one each for men and women will be established in rural areas of federal capital. He stated this while inaugurating the newly Constructed Building of Islamabad Model College for Boys, Sihala here Wednesday. Back to top Pakistan to prioritise Urdu as official language Jan 13 (APP): The government has started work on adoption of Urdu as official language on priority, Advisor to Prime Minister on National History and Literary Heritage Irfan Siddiqui said here Wednesday. Addressing the meeting of officers of National Language Promotion Department (Idara Faroogh-e-Quami Zuban), he said that implementation of Urdu as official and office Language in the country is a constitutional obligation. Mr. Siddiqui also said that a nationwide drive was being launched to promote the culture of book reading and encourage positive trends in society, especially the youth. “In view of the current scenario we need to join hands to inculcate positive spirit and constructive tendencies in society and most importantly among the youth,” he said during a briefing session held in NBF as head of the newly created division of NH&LH. Back to top Islamabad Airport to be operational by year end ISLAMABAD, Jan 16 (APP): Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Aviation Shujat Azeem said on Saturday that the newly constructed Islamabad International Airport would be fully operational by year end. “The previous government had allocated Rs 36 billion for PC-I in which only runway, taxi tracks and building was planned but an international airport can never be complete by merely with these features,” he said this while talking to a news channel. Back to top Pakistan to be 25th big economy in 10 years LAHORE, Jan 16 (APP): Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Reforms, Prof. Ahsan Iqbal on Saturday said that efforts were afoot under Vision 2025 for making Pakistan 25th largest economy of the world in next ten years. Addressing the three-day Pakistan Coating Show (January 15-17) here at Expo Centre, he viewed that export sector had the key to achieve this goal and private sector’s role was very crucial for expansion of exports. Back to top Bangladesh PM calls for direct air link with Canada DHAKA, Jan 17, 2016 (BSS) – Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today put emphasis on introduction of direct air link between Bangladesh and Canada for mutual benefits of the two countries. The Prime Minister expressed this view when newly appointed Canadian High Commissioner to Bangladesh, Benoit-Pierre Laramee, paid a courtesy call on her at her office here this morning. After the meeting, PM’s Press Secretary Ihsanul Karim briefed reporters. Sheikh Hasina congratulated the newly elected government of Canada and hoped the relations between Dhaka and Ottawa would reach a new height under the leadership of new Prime Minister Justin Pierre James Trudeau. She said a huge number of expatriate Bangladeshis are living in Canada and they are contributing a lot to the economy of both the countries. The Prime Minister appreciated the contribution of the Canadian government to Bangladesh’s development efforts and said her government has given top priority to education to achieve desired development. In this connection, she mentioned that her government has also taken steps to strengthen private sector and local governments to this end. Mentioning readymade garments as the main export product, the Premier said Bangladesh is exploring new areas like IT and software for diversifying its exports. Spelling out her government’s measures for development of the garment sector, she mentioned that the government appointed inspectors to look into the security issue in the garment industries. Sheikh Hasina said the gap between the rural and urban people is narrowing down while migration to urban areas is declining due to creation of employment at villages. Appreciating Canada’s cooperative system, the Prime Minister noted that Bangabandhu had introduced such a system in Bangladesh. She said her government is trying to encourage setting up small- and medium-scale argo-based industries in the country. When the Canadian envoy raised the issue of airport security, the Prime Minister assured him that her government had already taken necessary measures in this regard. The Premier also recalled the invaluable support of the Canadian government during the Great War of Liberation in 1971. At the meeting, Laramee said Ottawa values partnership with Dhaka to ensure regional security. “We want to work with Bangladesh in a number of sectors like gender equality and health,” the envoy said. He also mentioned that the newly elected Canadian Prime Minister explicitly wants to work with Bangladesh on clean environment and climate change issue. In this regard, the envoy said the Canadian Prime Minister is keen to work with the Bangladesh Premier to combat adverse impact of climate change. Highly appreciating Bangladesh’s contribution to UN peacekeeping missions, the Canadian high commissioner said Bangladesh is the leader of UN Peacekeeping. Laramee highly appreciated the significant measures undertaken by the Bangladesh government for ensuring security in diplomatic zone. He also lauded Bangladesh’s stunning successes in various sectors, saying the country is marching forward towards economic development and prosperity under the charismatic leadership of the Prime Minister. The Canadian envoy stressed the need for holding of high-level policy dialogue between the two countries. Back to top Dhaka to host South Asian meeting on boosting sanitation DHAKA, Jan 10, 2016 (BSS) – Bangladesh is set to host a three-day South Asian sanitation conference called SACOSAN drawing over 500 officials and experts in the three-day meet beginning tomorrow. Officials said the theme of the 6th South Asian Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN-VI) at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre(BICC) was set to be “Better Sanitation, Better Life” in the city. “More than 500 delegates and participants from our South Asian neighbours and foreign development partners are to join the SACOSAN,” a spokesman of the Local Government Division (LGD), the host of the meet told a media briefing at Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE) auditorium here. Deputy Secretary of LGD Khairul Islam added that SACOSAN aimed to develop a regional sanitation agenda, enable neighbours to share experiences and set a coordinated regional action plan to expedite expansion of sanitation coverage for hygiene promotion in South Asia. President Abdul Hamid is expected to inaugurate the conference. Delegates of the participating countries spoke at the briefing while they expected the SACOSAN-VI to provide a scope to review the development of sanitation campaign in the past several decades at the end of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015. They, however, noted that the sanitation campaign achieved a remarkable progress in South Asia particularly in the past 15 years in the region compared to its success in the other parts of the global. DPHE’s additional chief engineer M Waliullah and heads of delegates from South Asian countries Engr. Ghulam Qader of Afghanistan, Rinchen Wangdi of Bhutan, Balasubramaniam Govindasamy of India, Mohamed Musthafa of the Maldives, Rajan Raj Pandey of Nepal, Ranjit Balssuriya of Sri Lanka spoke at the briefing. SACOSAN is a government-led biennial convention on sanitation in South Asia, which is held on a rotational basis in each SAARC country. Back to top Digitisation to accelerate Bangladesh development RANGPUR, Jan 11, 2016 (BSS) – The digitisation programme has factually become the driving force in accelerating development speeding up the process of building a middle income nation and improving life standard of the common people. The digitisation has made civic life easier and completely dependent on online services creating social renaissance in the process of building a Sonar Bangla as dreamt by Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. According to development experts, academics, officials, professionals, educationists, IT specialists and students, everybody at all levels in the society is reaping tremendous benefits from digitised facilities available in the country. Launching of the union digital centres (UDCs) and web portals at upazila and district levels has turned digitisation into an irreversible process making the common people completely dependent on the digitised internet facilities. The massive activities, being implemented by the government through different ICT based-projects as part of its digitisation initiatives, has been producing skilled workforce to build an economically and technologically developed country. In addition, launching of the multimedia classrooms at the secondary level educational institutions has been contributing a lot in promoting utilisation of ICT in education sector to ultimately produce a digital nation as the programme. The government through the ICT division has already set up thousands of multimedia labs at the educational institutions in the process establishing over 3,000 multimedia labs to enhance use of ICT by the young students in the education sector. The government has also been imparting training to the students at higher education levels to turn them into IT professionals in meeting their growing demand in the job markets both at local and international arena. Talking to BSS, university students Borhan Uddin, Sukumar, Fatema, and Abul Hossain said they got admitted to different public universities and seats of higher education using online digital facilities in applying to take part in the admission tests in recent years. Educated youths Lokman Ali, Jewel Hossain, Amirul Islam, Mominul Haque and Parul Rani and Abul Khayer said they got training on computer, internet and other digitised facilities at different UDCs three to four years back. Presently, they have set up their own computer centres to earn well through outsourcing and providing ICT and digital services to the common people to contribute their own part in the process of building a middle income nation. Farmers Abul Kalam, Musfikur Rahman and Lokman Mian said they are easily getting information on crop farming, pests management, cropping pattern, technologies, seed, fertiliser, fertiliser dealer, pesticide and e-purjee from the UDCs in their areas. Senior journalists Chitta Ghosh and Rafik Sarker and System Analyst and Programmer of RangSoft ICT Services Mahbubul Huda said the digital facilities have made admission process and access to all other government services easier and hassle-free. Associate Professor Dr Tuhin Wadud of Begum Rokeya University said the youths have become dependent on digital internet facilities as the process of digitisation has become an irreversible making life easier for every citizen. Social workers Akbar Hossain and Nasima Akhter said the common people are getting immense benefits from UDCs on e-agriculture, e-health, e-education,e- purjee, e-employment, human rights, marketing produce and all other services. Executive Director of Northbengal Institute of Development Studies Dr Syed Samsuzzaman said digitisation has become driving force to accelerate development by reducing poverty, producing skilled human resources and preventing social curses. “Digitisation has become a reality now creating renaissance in all sectors to speed up development in the process of building a middle income nation and, subsequently a developed Bangladesh, as envisioned by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina,” he said. Back to top Bangladesh Cabinet okays draft of Hajj Package-2016 DHAKA, Jan 11, 2016 (BSS) – The cabinet today approved the drafts of the ‘National Hajj and Omrah Policy-2016’ and ‘Hajj Package-2016’. The approval was given in the weekly meeting of the cabinet held at Bangladesh Secretariat with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair. Briefing reporters after the meeting Cabinet Secretary Mohammad Shafiul Alam said the cabinet also approved a proposal of the Minister of Public Administration to fill up some 2,475 technical/professional posts of the government from 34th and 35th Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) examination. Under the Hajj Package-2016, a total of 1,13,868 pilgrims including 5,000 ballotee hajjis could perform holy hajj this year under two packages. In the first package a pilgrim would cost Taka 3,60,028 including Kurbani and in the second package cost will be Taka 3,04,903 without Kurbani. Private hajj agencies would ascertain the hajj package separately under certain government conditions. Identical costs for both ballotee and non-balottee pilgrims has been fixed at Taka 1,55,441, the cabinet secretary said. This year every pilgrim must register online and they will be given pilgrim identification card by Saudi government. Shafiul Alam said the cabinet discussed negligence of some private hajj agencies this year caused suffering of the pilgrims particularly carrying and receiving their belongings timely. The civil aviation minister assured the cabinet of looking into the matter seriously, the cabinet secretary said. About the filling up the government posts through 34th and 35th BCS, the cabinet secretary said the decision was taken due to unavailability of suitable candidates for the reserved posts of technical/professional cadres. He said 672 posts would be filled up from the candidates of 34th BCS and 1,803 posts would be filled up from the candidates of 35th BCS. The cabinet also discussed a report placed by the Cabinet Division on the scenario of adopting and implementing the decisions of the cabinet during the fourth quarter (October-December) of 2015. The cabinet expressed satisfaction over the execution of the decisions of the cabinet, the cabinet secretary said. Back to top Bangladesh charts 10-year roadmap to run e-government DHAKA, 15 Jan, 2016 (BSS)- The government has taken initiatives to prepare a 10-year ICT roadmap under Bangladesh National Enterprise Architecture (BNA) to operate e-Government activities smoothly, official sources said. The World Bank financed Leveraging ICT for Growth, Employment and Governance (LICT) Project of Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) under ICT Division is implementing it. The LICT project has already appointed the UK based firm ‘Ernst and Young’ to prepare the 10-year ICT roadmap. It is preparing the roadmap following the internationally recognized ‘The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF)’ standard 9.1, the officials said. Workshop will be held on 17 January with the participation of experts and stakeholders about BNA and 10-year ICT roadmap. Talking to BSS State Minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak said that firstly a 10-year roadmap is being prepared for the ICT division and it is being done in a structured and such a way that other ministries, divisions, departments and directorates could use it as a model. “The plan and policy are being formulated under ICT roadmap by incorporating all initiatives and the opportunities created so far on way to journey towards digital Bangladesh in a coordinated and structured way,” he said. Palak said the ICT Division is putting emphasis on internationally recognized standard to establish Bangladesh Enterprise Architecture and prepare the 10-year ICT roadmap. “If BNA is established and 10-year ICT roadmap is prepared, the implementation of the operation of e-government activities will be smoother and the information and data of ministries, divisions, directorates and departments will be interoperable,” he said. BCC Executive Director S M Ashraful Islam said as part of preparing a 10-year roadmap initiative has been taken to digitize the info and services of Food Directorate and the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education. Primarily the food procurement system of food directorate and pension giving system of the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education are being digitized, he said. LICT deputy project director Tarique M Barkatullah said TOGAF 9.1 standard is the internationally recognized and many countries of the world are following the same to establish National Enterprise Architecture and ICT roadmap. Back to top Azerbaijan simplifies visa regime with Japan 15 January 2016 – TODAY.AZ – Citizens of Japan will be able to travel to Azerbaijan on a simplified procedure starting from February 1. Japanese can obtain entry visa upon arrival, valid for 30 days’ stay, at the Baku’s Heydar Aliyev International Airport. Azerbaijan and Japan enjoy fruitful cooperation in various fields and their mutual relations are developing both in the political, economic and cultural fields. The diplomatic relations between the two countries were established in 1992. Japan was one of the first countries to support Azerbaijan’s forward-looking oil strategy. Today two major Japanese companies Itochu and Impex are involved in the Contract of the Century. Leaders of Japanese business, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Marubeni, and Sojits are involved in energy and infrastructure projects in the country. Azerbaijan is considering further cooperation with Japan in the field of high technology, particularly in the field of manufacture of innovative production, with their further entering the regional markets. So far, Japanese companies were involved mainly in projects in the energy sector, but in recent years their interests to cooperate in areas such as petrochemicals, oil refining, energy, medicine, high-tech and space industry have increased. Back to top Azerbaijan National History Museum acquires valuable jewelry 15 January 2016 – TODAY.AZ – The National History Museum of Azerbaijan has added precious jewelries and decorative items to its collection. The Museum acquired a national adornment, particularly a woman necklace entitled Sinaband, as well as a silver perfume vial from Russia and a handbag made in Europe. These precious objects date back to the 19th-20th centuries. One of the adornments of women of these centuries, used in Azerbaijan was necklaces, including sinaband, bogazalt, jajik, qarabatdaq and others. The gilded silver necklace Sinaband acquired by the Museum is made in the form of shebeke, one of the most delicate and difficult ornaments. To achieve the desired ornament, a jeweler should well know the math, and not to miss any smallest detail. The center of the necklace is convoluted from double shebeke. The necklace has a pendant which depicts a crescent-star decorated with colored stones, embellished with pearls and also hanging on the pendant in the form of a flower. The necklace also has a number of small pendants in the form of fish. Since ancient times, the jewelry making was one of the most developed fields of handicraft in Azerbaijan. Jewelers in comparison with other masters occupied a privileged position in the society, since their main customers were the dominant class, especially the women of rich families. Although gold was among the most preferred precious metals among the buyers and masters, silver and platinum were also widely used. Earlier this month the Museum also obtained a gold necklace dating back to the 20th century. The jewelry consists of 31 gold beads, with a coin medallion related to the Austrian Empire. The Azerbaijan National Museum of History is one of the architectural pearls of the country, dating back to the 19 century. Built in 1895-1896, the largest museum in the country, was originally the private residence of Haji Zeynalabdin Taghiyev, who was the famous national oil baron remembered for his generous philanthropy. Over 300,000 items are assembled in 10 collections in the museum, including a valuable library consisting mainly of unique books. The collections allow visitors and researchers to investigate the history of the country and the daily life and culture of the nation from ancient times to the present. In recent years the Museum were restored, which enabled to return many invaluable art samples, lost abroad, back to the country. A total of 4,000 new exhibits were purchased and 1,200 exhibits gained a second life after restoration. Back to top Azerbaijan strives to become medical tourism destination 15 January 2016 – TODAY.AZ – Health tourism is one of the developed forms of traveling around the world. While some countries experience lack of credible healthcare institution, prices for medicine in others force people to seek medical help abroad. This type of tourism is well developing in the modern world, as it combines health with pleasure: recreation combined with medical check-ups or treatment if needed. The CIS residents prefer Germany, Israel, Austria, Switzerland, the U.S. and South Korea countries whose medical institutions offer regular checkups, targeted diagnostics, conservative and surgical treatment and complex rehabilitation. Azerbaijan that is developing its tourism potential has a lot magnificent places to show to visitors. Turning the country into the international center of medical tourism is a win-win idea, as it will be profitable for the state and advantageous for the population. The country having a number of professionals in the field strives to provide its population with well-deserved medicine. “We have to make sure that people throughout Azerbaijan can receive quality medical care,” Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said while opening the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic Hospital last December. The head of state noted that despite the fact that some people travel abroad to receive treatment, Azerbaijan should aim to become a country, where people come for examination and treatment from abroad. The country has long-term plans to focus on further developing the medical facilities, which can be privatized, according to Deputy Prime Minister Ali Ahmadov. He noted that in recent years the government reconstructed and renovated hospitals and supplied them with the most modern equipment. “Azerbaijan spent huge funds and they (hospitals) must be sold at enough high prices. Therefore, these health facilities will remain in state ownership; at least until their depreciation period expires,” he believes. “If there evolves a need for the reconstruction of medical institutions, the country will decide on the transfer of its major part to the private sector in consistent with the practice of neighboring countries.” Many health facilities have been renovated in the country. More than 500 objects related to this area were built and renovated in Azerbaijan over the past 10 years. The National Health Center is expected to open in Baku in 2016. However, Azerbaijan has all conditions to develop health tourism. Azerbaijani nature, which attracts several millions tourists a year, can also be healthy. The fresh mountain air, pure water, organic fruits of the Azerbaijani regions and beach recreation on the Caspian Sea Shore have already known among many tourists. The oil producer Azerbaijan also offers unique medical institution that treats with Naftalan crude oil, renowned for its curative properties. This center of medical tourism in Azerbaijan has unique natural treatments that cannot be seen anywhere else in the world. Medical specialists believe that this oil kills viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Numerous scientific studies along with more than 100 years of treatment experience confirm curative properties of this oil. Ashraf Hasanzadeh, PhD, surgeon, graduate of the First Moscow Medical University after I.M. Sechenov, said there is a prospect in turning Azerbaijan into the center of medical tourism. “There is a prospect and in some areas it is already topical. This applies to cardiovascular surgery, particularly surgery in Azerbaijan. This direction is at a high level. There are prospects in other areas as well and the price of treatment can be of a particular importance here. The price for treatment in our country is not very expensive. So, I think, certain results can be achieved if we work in this direction,” he noted. The special attraction of Azerbaijan is not only in price for treatment, Hasanzadeh believes, but also in the aspiration of the Azerbaijani doctors to learn and gain experience abroad. “Speaking of the neighboring countries, we can compete in a certain area with Iran, especially in terms of oncology. With Georgia, it is difficult to compete due to comparably lower service prices. We probably can leave them behind, but it will take a lot of time,” he added. Moreover, return of the Azerbaijani specialists who studied abroad could add incentive. The state has sent a very large number of different professionals, not just doctors, to study abroad, Hasanzadeh said, noting that he also studied in the framework of this program in Russia. “In general, in the coming years up to 1,000 physicians studying in Germany, the U.S., UK, and France will return to Azerbaijan with the most advanced technology and knowledge,” he noted. The surgeon believes that their return will be an additional incentive to attract patients from abroad. “First, it will be our compatriots living abroad, then their neighbors, friends and so on. I think that such a scheme is possible.” Speaking about the current situation in medicine, Hasanzadeh said it also depends on certain areas. He also noted a problem that is running into the lifestyle of Azerbaijanis, who refuse to anatomize dead body of their relatives. For this reason, it is very difficult to judge the causes of morbidity and mortality in the country. Hasanzadeh said that Azerbaijanis are free to go abroad for medical purpose especially with certain diseases which treatment have not succeeded yet in the country as compared to the best European, American or Japanese clinics. However, he believes that there are diseases where good results have been achieved in Azerbaijan. Now it is difficult to say that the whole system is well built, but the system is young, 20 years old, and it could not mature during this time. “Now in Azerbaijan it is difficult to say that the whole system is well built, the system is young, it is not mature yet. Today it is at the stage of maturity and there are certain medical conditions where success has been obtained,” he added. For instance, 10 years ago there were no specialists in Azerbaijan dealing with eye ground pathology, he said, while today there are at least two specialists who treat this disease at the level of the best clinics of Israel and Canada. Moreover, the price is lower. “The price is definitely lower, but even if the price is the same as there, people do not pay for the road, visa, and stay abroad,” he stressed. Back to top Ihlara Valley in Cappadocia breaks tourist record AKSARAY – Anadolu Agency – The number of tourists visiting the Ihlara Valley, one of the most important routes of Cappadocia in the Central Anatolian province of Aksaray, increased by 12 percent to 491,380 last year compared to 2014. The Ihlara Valley is a site of stunning natural beauty and is home to a series of ancient Christian churches and frescoes tucked away in stone caves. Located between the Ihlara and Selime neighborhoods of Aksaray’s Güzelyurt district, the valley is nearly 14 kilometers long and 100-150 meters deep. “Tourists visiting the Ihlara Valley see churches with frescoes and trek on the shores of the Melendiz River,” said Aksaray Culture and Tourism Director Mustafa Doğan, adding that the route was “indispensable” for tourists visiting the Cappadocia region. “It is one of the indispensable routes for Cappadocia tours. Ihlara is a symbol for the region. Those coming to the valley see nature and history together. The Ihlara Valley is also a proper place for trekking, especially thanks to arrangements that have recently been made. Many visitors use the four, seven, and 14-kilometer-long tracks to walk to Belisırma and Selime,” Doğan stated. He also said the number of local and foreign tourists visiting Ihlara was increasing every year. “We have seen a 20 percent increase in the number of tourists every year. Ihlara was visited by 344,418 people in 2013 and saw a 27 percent increase in 2014 with 438,903 tourists. Although overall regional tourist numbers dropped in 2015, the Ihlara Valley’s visitors increased by 12 percent and reached 491,380. That marks the highest number of people visiting the valley ever,” Doğan stated. Back to top Sagalassos artifacts enchant visitors BURDUR – Anadolu Agency – Artifacts unearthed during excavations at the ancient city of Sagalassos in the southern province of Burdur’s Ağlasun district and put on display at the Burdur Archaeology Museum draw thousands of visitors every year. According to written sources, the history of Sagalassos dates back to 333 with the conquest of Alexander the Great, and the city had been one of the five most important ceramic production centers in the Roman era. Excavations in the city were initiated in 1989 by Belgian Professor Marc Waelkens. After Waelkens retired two years ago, he was replaced by his deputy head of the excavations, Professor Jeroen Poblome from Belgian Leuven Catholic University. A team of Turks and foreigners led by Leuven University have been continuing excavations in the ancient city of Sagalassos for 26 years, with their work inspected by the Culture and Tourism Ministry. Among the artifacts unearthed were five-meter-tall sculptures of Emperor Marcus Aurelius and Emperor Hadrian. Among the other significant artifacts unearthed in the city are friezes of a dancing girl, the goddess of victory Nike and Dyonisos, Nemesis, Asklepios and Kronis sculptures. Burdur Archaeology Museum Director Hacı Ali Ekinci said the museum where Sagalassos’ ancient artifacts were on display was one of Turkey’s most significant museums. He said after the ancient city was abandoned, the artifacts there were not moved to other cities but rather protected in the ancient city, which helped them survive. Ekinci said the Roman bath had been excavated between 2007 and 2008 and the statues of emperors Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius were discovered. The Burdur Archaeology Museum was visited by 11,134 people last year, while the number of visitors to ancient Sagalassos was 27,058. The ancient city was founded on the slopes of the Taurus mountain range and was the metropolis of the Roman province of Pisidia. It is seven kilometers away from the Ağlasun district. The city is on the UNESCO Tentative World Heritage List. Back to top Ara Güler biopic to premiere at Washington Film Festival ISTANBUL – Hurriyet Daily News – “The Eye of Istanbul,” a feature-length documentary film on the life and works of legendary Turkish-Armenian photographer Ara Güler, has been nominated for the Washington Film Festival. The movie was chosen as a finalist in the official selection of the Washington D.C. Independent Film Festival, the oldest independent film festival in the U.S. The film, apart from screening in the competition, will also be making its U.S. premiere at the film festival in March. The “Eye of Istanbul” tells the story of Guler in conjunction with the preparatory stages of a retrospective exhibition of his in Istanbul. The documentary follows a non-linear narrative and explores the artistic process and impulses which lead to his works of art. Guler’s curiosity, resourcefulness and fearlessness – all of which play a part in making him who he is – are showcased through a series of stories in the film. Even at the age of 87, Guler remains a complex and unforgettable character; he is still sharp, irreverent, witty and philosophical. The core team members behind “Eye of Istanbul” include Producer Umran Safter, Co-directors Fatih Kaymak and Binnur Karaevli, Director of Photography Zafer Bir, Script Writer Ahsen Diner, Editor Engin Yıldız, Composer Derya Türkan and Project Consultant Nezih Tavlas. Back to top Muğla’s ancient sites, museums increasingly popular among tourists MUĞLA – Anadolu Agency – The Bodrum Underwater Archaeology Museum, located inside the Bodrum Castle, received the highest number of visitors last year in Muğla. The Bodrum Underwater Archaeology Museum, located inside the Bodrum Castle, received the highest number of visitors last year in Muğla. Museums and ancient sites in the western province of Muğla were visited by nearly 850,000 people last year, with the revenue from these visits topping 6 million Turkish Liras. Home to many ancient sites on UNESCO’s temporary list of world heritage sites, Muğla’s Sedir Island and Bodrum Underwater Archaeology Museum were the most popular places for tourists in 2015. Muğla Mayor Amir Çiçek said Muğla was important in terms of tourism as well as its historical heritage and natural beauty. He said the city was home to 192 ancient sites, noting archaeological excavations were carried out in at least 10 ancient sites every year. He also said work was continuing to open the city’s Beçin Castle, Kayaköy, Lagina, Kaunos, Stratonikeia and Tloss to tourism. “Visitors prefer to see the artifacts in their original places,” he said, adding that the number of visitors increased in 2015 compared to the previous year. “The Bodrum Underwater Archaeology Museum, located inside the Bodrum Castle, built by the Saint John knights, is the one and only in Turkey. “It was visited by 206,091 people last year. It was followed by the Marmaris Museum with 50,168 people and the Zeki Müren Museum with 32,964 people,” the mayor said. Çiçek said Sedir Island, around 25 kilometers away from Marmaris, also draws interest from tourists, adding it was visited by 149,984 people last year. “Fethiye’s Kayaköy and Dalyan’s Kaunos ancient city follow the Sedir Island in terms of the number of visitors,” he said. Back to top Istanbul to host World In Love Festival ISTANBUL – Anadolu Agency – The 360 Degree Love Festival, which features various art disciplines, will be organized in Istanbul between Feb. 9 and 29 around the theme “World in Love.” The 8th edition of the festival was launched at a press conference on Jan. 13. The curator of the festival, Işık Gençoğlu, said they had started eight years ago as a small event and now hosted more than 100 artists. Gençoğlu said the festival supported the Audrey Hepburn Foundation and they had created joint projects for children. “Audrey Hepburn’s son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer, is a producer and has a company in Los Angeles. He believed in us and this festival. He believed that the world could see better days through love. This is why he will bring his production team. They will make a 45-minute film to promote Istanbul. He will also attend a conference at the Kadir Has University to talk about Audrey Hepburn and her goals,” she said. Noting that children would be at the center of the festival, Gençoğlu said it would also be organized in the same term with the Feb. 14 Valentine’s Day events. She said, “We don’t deny Feb. 14 but we will make all of February the month of lovers with a critical view. Istanbul will be the center of it.” The festival events will be organized at Pera Palace Hotel Jumeirah, Uniq Istanbul, Uniq Gallery, Paladium AVM, Capacity AVM and Adahan Hotel. “Divine Love Night,” “Lover’s Bazaar,” “Love concert with Mercan Dede and Hayko Cepkin,” “Love Films Marathons,” “Wishing Balloons” and a conference on love will be among the events of the festival. Back to top China, Egypt Launch Joint Cultural Year CAIRO, Egypt, Jan 15 (NNN-MENA) – The Egyptian Ministry of Culture and the Chinese Embassy in Cairo, launched the 2016 Sino-Egyptian Culture Year, which marks the 60th anniversary of joint diplomatic relations. “The Chinese-Egyptian cultural year is a mean to intensify the already strong cultural ties,” The Minister of Culture, Helmy al-Namnam said. The announcement came during a press conference, at Egypt’s National Archive and Documents House in Cairo. “We will hold cultural events in both countries throughout this year. Our cultural events will tour China, and the Chinese events will be held everywhere is Egypt,” the minister said. Marking 2016 as a cultural year was the fruit of agreement between Chinese President, Xi Jinping and his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, during their meeting in Beijing in Dec, 2014. “It is also meant to celebrate six decades of the two countries’ bilateral diplomatic relations,” the minister said. Egypt was the first Arab and African country to recognise the People’s Republic of China. China and Egypt are among the oldest human civilisations and their relations have deep roots back in history, he added. The cultural year will boost friendly ties and enhance mutual understanding and future development between the peoples of the two nations, the minister said. For his part, Minister Counsellor of the Chinese Embassy, Qi Qianjin, said that, the Chinese-Egyptian cultural exchange has always been rich and expanding. “Since the start of the mutual diplomatic relations, China and Egypt have signed dozens of cultural agreements that are meant to enable fruitful cultural exchange,” he said. Qi added that, Egypt embraced the first cultural Chinese centre outside the borders of China, adding that, Egypt has been the link between China and the Arab countries. More than 100 cultural events will be held throughout the cultural year, with China alone holding more than 60 activities covering music, folkloric dance, cinema, literature, food, seminars and exhibitions. The Egyptian minister said that, artistes from China and Egypt will perform in the huge opening ceremony of the cultural year in Luxor, later this month. During his meeting with Sisi in Beijing in Dec, 2014, Xi Jinping decided to elevate the bilateral relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries. Back to top Nigeria: Tourists Enjoy Visit to National War Museum 15 January 2016 – This Day (Lagos) – Charles Ajunwa Tourists from all over the world visit the National War Museum, Umuahia, Abia State, to enjoy the serene atmosphere and also to satisfy their curiosity about the Nigerian Civil War. The documentalist in the National War Museum, Mr. Julius Ogar, told THISDAY they are doing everything to ensure that the place is well maintained. “Our dream is to make this place a tourist haven since there are no much tourist sites in Umuahia. We have a tall dream to make this place very attractive, tourists are invited to the National War Museum because it’s a public centre and anybody that wants to know about the Nigerian Civil War, the unity of Nigeria should endeavour to visit here. The National War Museum, Umuahia is one of the seven wonders of Nigeria. The museum was established some 25 years ago. Initially this place was run by the military before it was transferred to the National Commission for Museum and Monuments, which is holding it in trust for the Ministry of Defense,” Ogar said. According to him, the museum has well furnished gallery, recreation centres, multi-purpose hall, museum kitchen, children play ground. “We are proposing to open an exhibition hall where our visitors will watch films, power points and slides. “We have three sections here, the army section, the air force section and the navy section. In the army section, we have both hardwares used by the federal troop and the secessionist troop. The famous one being the Biafran Red Devil, Ogbunigwe, relics of Radio Biafra and Biafran cooking pot which is the local refinery. “In the air force section, we have the eye-catching aircraft which is the unicorn known as the Biafran mosquito, we have the Egyptian donated aircraft, locally made anti-air craft gun, rocket launchers. “In the naval section we have the NNS Bonny (the craft ship), assault boat that was locally made by the Ministry of Transport, patrol boat guns and the anti submarines,” he noted. According to Ogar, the relics of the war are preserved and maintained by the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM). The Nigerian-Biafran war, was a political conflict caused by the attempted secession of the Southeastern provinces of Nigeria as the self-proclaimed Republic of Biafra. The war, which started on July 6, 1967, came to an end on January 15, 1970. Back to top Foundation Stone Laid of EGP14 Billion Tourist Project 10 January 2016 – Egypt State Information Service (Cairo) – Matrouh Governor Alaa Abu Zaid on Saturday 9/1/2016 laid down the foundation stone of an EGP 14 billion mega tourist project in Marsa Matrouh in Egypt’s north coast. The project is planned to include seven hotels, 25,000 residential units, a hospital, schools, and a public university. Services facilities, water and electricity stations, sports and entertainment areas and a police station will be established as part of the project. Back to top Africa: Ugandan Firm in First Virtual Brochure 10 January 2016 – East African Business Week – Kampala — Matoke Tours has unveiled what it claims to be the travel industry’s first true virtual reality (VR) travel brochure designed to be experienced in your home or on the go with an Android app. “This app enables us to convey the intensity and emotion of the travel experience before the journey has even started. Travellers are then better able to decide which excursions they want to book.” Wim Kok the Director of Matoke Tours Uganda said. The VR experience offers many benefits for travellers who are considering Uganda as a destination. According to a release last week, the “Virtual Gorilla” app provides six unique chapters that provide a stunning experience of a trip through Uganda. Track gorillas in the Bwindi rainforest, explore Uganda in a hot air balloon, and traverse land and water on safari. Become fully immersed in the beauty of Uganda and meet “Big Sam,” your tour guide who highlights real-world lodges where you can spend the night on your follow-up vacation. The VR experience from Matoke Tours is designed to work with Android smartphones and multiple VR systems. For the best user experience, we suggest the Samsung Gear VR or Google Cardboard VR device designed for smartphones. Begin your virtual experience by placing your smartphone in the viewer and firing up the Virtual Gorilla app. Users of Apple’s iPhone can expect a similar experience in February when the technology is expected to become compatible with iOS devices. Now all users can enjoy the 360° videos on the Matoke Tours website that provides a look at experiences and lodges. Back to top Egyptian PM Opens Nile Museum in Aswan 12 January 2016 – Egypt State Information Service (Cairo) – Prime Minister Sherif Ismail inaugurated on Sunday 10/1/2016 Nile Museum in Aswan in a large ceremony attended by Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Hossam Moghazi and a host of senior officials, public figures as well as a group of media men, writers and journalists. The inauguration of the museum is clear evidence that Egypt is keen to establish its relations with Nile-basin countries. The museum features hundreds of photos and exhibits about the history of the Nile and the Egyptian projects built on it. Also, it includes displays of the civilizations and traditions of the Nile Basin member states.The opening of the museum coincides with Aswan National Day and the anniversary of building the High Dam, he said. Back to top Gambia’s Sand Beach Hotel & Resort Making its Mark 12 January 2016 – The Daily Observer (Banjul) – With Gambia Tourism Board, (GTB), tourism industry in the Smiling Coast of Africa has witnessed many a major boost in terms of product development at resort level. One among the resort developments is Sand Beach Hotel and Resort (SBHR), located in the serenity of Point Zone Kotu. Sand Beach Hotel and Resort is a brand new exquisite facility that proudly joined the stock of emerging new and trendy resort facilities already hitting a mark in the tourism sector, since fully joining the market this season. This cute, trendy and exquisite resort facility is the home-grown and brainchild of Farimang Max Mane, a dynamic Gambian entrepreneur with vast experience in the hospitality industry. He’s a proprietor and CEO who has earned a name for himself as a leading travel specialist in the dynamic Scandinavian travel scene, and a savvy tourism entrepreneur. Set on its own private beach and nestled within the pristine surroundings of Kotu tourism cluster, just a stone’s throw from the Palma Rima Junction, Sand Beach Hotel and Resort offers guests luxury accommodation, fine food and wine; while also providing access to the latest in spa technology, and an extensive range of holistic therapies and entertainment at the Galaxy- a mega entertainment complex located on the main Senegambia Highway. Sand Beach Hotel and Resort has all it takes to satisfy the appetite of the most discerning and active tourists, as well as the laidback sun craver, given the range of cosy facilities available in the hotel and on the vast expanse of the unspoilt beach. It is therefore no surprise to see delightful holiday makers frolicking leisurely around the beach front and near the pool side, which serves as a magnet for those who just want to chill out in the Gambian sun. The design and decor of the hotel has put on board the latest imagination in hospitality with 30 spacious villas and 20 comfortable air-conditioned rooms, a functional swimming pool, including the African inspired “Bantaba” restaurant, all designed to suit the taste, and budget of all categories of guests from the trendy holidaymakers, discerning tourists to the savvy businessmen yearning for a break. Among the villas are Dolphin, Monkey, Kingfisher, and Crocodile. Among the faciltities in Sand Beach Hotel and Resort is a mini market, clinic with doctors, gym, and full wifi. All these and more make it a convenient place for your different activities. Apart from relaxation it is a place for hosting events such as conference/seminar, birthday party, reception, shooting of movies with panoramic stage. “Tourists are becoming more discerning”, thus the felt need to craft a more imaginative product that suits the taste and needs of all category of tourists and other visitors to the Smiling Coast says, Farimang Mane, General Manager of the resort. This is all the more reason “the Galaxy – a major entertainment and spa complex has also been developed alongside the resort, managed by Musa Mane, who is also a partner in this family venture. The motivation for this investment is purely because “tourists and related clientele are beginning to realize the need to invest more in themselves. They want their holidays to have a purpose to relax, to eat well, to have fun and to unwind the body and soul. When it comes to hospitality; we are second to none and we strive hard to exceed guests’ expectations by providing not only high quality service, but service with a smile, recognising that guests from diverse socio-cultural orientations come to the resort with different objectives and we focus on achieving them, whatever they may be.” the general manager was quoted as saying. “This and more reasons we are making a foray into Halal tourism, which has recently become an increasingly popular niche within the travel and holiday industry. The product is tailored around the needs of Muslim tourists and travellers, which has become a lucrative tourism niche. In this regard we want to take a cue from Sheikh Professor Alhaji Dr Yahya AJJ Jammeh, who has exhorted us all to be in-ward looking and value our heritage. This is our inspiration and we are ready to develop Halal Tourism as an emerging niche to complement our already existing tourism products and services with a view to making The Gambia a world class tourism and business centre.” He revealed. Accordingly, Mane fondly called Max further disclosed that a brand new company, Al- Baraka Halal Hotels and Resorts Gambia Ltd has been launched to develop and promote halal hotel concept, and already plans are in the pipeline to attend the 4th Conference on Halal Tourism slated to take place from the 16th – 18th January 2016 in Istanbul, Turkey with a view to networking with the global private sector Halal and Islamic Tourism stakeholders and investors. In that regard, the Embassy of Turkey has been very supportive in terms of providing the necessary contacts and information about Halal Tourism, given that Turkey is one of the foremost destinations for Islamic friendly tourism.” Mane further emphasised that the brand value and essence of Sand Beach Hotel and Resort Ltd and Al-Baraka Halal Hotel Group is premised on innovative service delivery “The travelling market is tired of going for a beach holiday, they want more and we should recognise this and provide a holiday with a purpose”. Back to top Kenya Opens the Only Marina Between Cape Town and Cairo 12 January 2016 – Kenya Presidency (Nairobi) – The tourism industry today received a major boost as President Uhuru Kenyatta opened a marina in Mombasa, the only one of its kind between Cape Town in South Africa and Cairo in Egypt. And the President announced a raft of incentives that will revitalise the industry. He said the Government has set aside Sh1.2 billion incentives for charter planes to stimulate demand at the Coast by that category of tourists. “This will encourage those already flying in to increase the frequency of their flights,” President Kenyatta said. The President disclosed that visa fees for children under 16 will also be waived with effect from February 1. To bring park entry fees down, President Kenyatta directed the National Treasury Cabinet Secretary to initiate the amendment of the VAT Act and incorporate the amendments in the Finance Bill for financial year 2016/2017. “With this measure, the Kenya Wildlife Service will cap the park entry fees at $60 (Sh6,000) down from $90 (Sh9,000),” President Kenyatta said. The Head of State spoke on Tuesday when he opened the English Point Marina, a multi-billion shilling landmark resort in Mombasa County. First Lady Margaret Kenyatta and Cabinet Secretaries Judy Wakhungu and Eugene Wamalwa were also at the event. President Kenyatta said the resort is a major endorsement of the recovery strategy of the country’s tourism and hospitality industry, adding that it heralds good tidings in the sector. The four-acre ocean view resort features a 26-room hotel, conferencing facility, a roof-top restaurant, a casino, swimming pool, 96 serviced apartments – including 8 penthouses – seafront restaurant, gym, spa, a boardwalk with retail outlets, water-sports centre and fully-serviced 88-berth marina. This will diversify Kenya’s tourist products. President Kenyatta also said the waiver of the landing fees at Mombasa and Malindi airports for charter planes will be extended to June 30 2018 to help the industry regain its full strength. “In return, I must ask all players to respond to these initiatives, and to the ongoing consultations, with the seriousness they deserve. It is time to make the most of our heritage and our gifts,” President Kenyatta said. He said the Government has also supported tourism in three key areas: infrastructure, security and renewal of partnerships with stakeholders in the industry. “The improvements in security are there for all to see. We dare not allow that momentum to be lost,” he said. On infrastructure, President Kenyatta cited the recent launch of the construction of the Port-Reitz-Airport Road in Mombasa, and the planned Dongo Kundu bypass – that will allow tourists to get from the mainland to the South Coast without using the ferry – as some of the measures that will promote tourism. “Even as we work on the bypass, I have instructed the Kenya Ferry Services to step up their management of passenger transportation through Likoni Channel,” President Kenyatta said. He said the ongoing expansion of Malindi Airport and the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) will enable the facilities to cater for more visitors, noting that JKIA will soon receive direct flights from the US. The President thanked the United States, United Kingdom and French governments for the recent lifting of travel advisories. “They recognise, as well as we do, that security here has vastly improved, and that there is much to be gained by partnering with Kenya and the region,” the President said. Tourism Cabinet Secretary Najib Balala praised the President’s commitment to the Government’s tourism revival strategy, saying the future looks brighter. “We are developing a programme to make our tourism products affordable and attractive,” CS Balala said. Other speakers were Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho, Kenya Commercial Bank Chief Executive Joshua Oigara and English Point Marina Director Alnoor Kanji. Back to top Nigeria: Ooni Declares Ife Tourism Zone 15 January 2016 – Vanguard (Lagos) – A new dawn in the history of Ile Ife occasioned by the recent appointment of 40 years old Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi Ojaja 11, as the Ooni of Ife, has continued to resonate with the Ooni set to declare Ife as a tourism zone in furtherance of his promise to foster peace and unity and bring economic prosperity to his people by opening up Ife to the world through tourism. The Ooni who is a business czar and owner of Inagbe Resort, one of the few privately run resorts located across Lagos waters, has from the first day of assumption of office not hidden his resolve to elevate the historical and abundant cultural wealth of his people and town by opening it to the world through massive investment in tourism related projects, which are aimed at transforming Ife from a mere tourism attraction to a mega tourism destination. To this end, the Kabiyesi, his newly appointed chief tourism adviser and consultant, Otunba Wanle Akinboboye, who is the Founder of La Campagne and Motherland Beckons, disclosed that Oba Ojaja 11 is set to declare Ife a tourism zone on February 26 and to kick start the development of the zone into a tourism destination of world class standard has concluded plans to build a N7.6 billion Ife Grand Resort. Also in line with his resolve to foster peace and unity amongst his people, a major ingredient for sustainable tourism development, and put to rest the ghost of the over 200 years old conflict between Ife – Modakeke, the Ooni over the week brushed aside all protocols and barriers to attend the Modakeke Day celebration even as he announced the employment of 20, 000 widows from the over 40, 000 widows recorded in the last Ife – Modakeke crisis to work in the tourism zone project with a promise to absolve the remaining 20, 000 widows alongside the teeming population of unemployed as the project gathers traction. The Ooni’s attendance at the Modakeke Day celebration has been hailed by many people as a deft move by the Kabiyesi to finally bury the Ife – Modakeke intermittent conflict that has lingered for over 200 years as this has never been done by any Ooni in the past 200 years, as attending Akoraiye Day Modakeke, is a way of not only healing the wounds of the past but also clearing the negative past and replacing it with a prosperous future through tourism. As part of the grand design to secure life and property in Ife, the Kabiyesi has approved the construction of a watch tower with standby rapid response squad that is fully equipped and which response time to any distress call should not be more than 10 minutes and this time frame hopefully would be cut to five minutes in the days ahead. Speaking on these new initiatives by the Ooni, Akinboboye, who has also announced the Kabiyesi as the grand patron of Motherland Beckons, said it is a grand design by the Ooni to redesign the tourism map and agenda of Ife by drawing the attention of Africans, the Diaspora and the entire globe to it in a way that has never been done in the history of the former Ife Kingdom, which is not only regarded as the Source of Yoruba but the cradle of South west civilisation. According to him, “the glory of Ife is finally coming to light. Ife is now the new destination in Africa as the sleeping giant of tourism in Africa wakes up to a new reality,” insisting that henceforth the whole world would come to Ife on religious, cultural, economic, educational, and archaeological tourism among others, as the new Ooni constructs a new agenda for the kingdom of Ile Ife. Akinboboye revealed that the declaration ceremony and the kick off for motherland beckons has been fixed for February 27 with the president of Black Lawyers in England and Wales, Peter Herbert, billed to deliver the key note address while the chairman of Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation (NIDO) America, among a host of other dignitaries are expected at the event. This development from the palace, he said is in partnership with La Campagne with Motherland Beckons serving as a multi – purpose vehicle for bringing to fruition the agenda of the Ooni. Back to top Iran gives big welcome to Russian tourists Tehran, Jan 16, IRNA – A significant increase in Iranian tourists visiting Russia was witnessed in 2015, the Association of Tour Operators said on its website. Nearly 34,000 Iranian tourists visited Russia in the first nine months of 2015, a rise of 111 percent when compared to the same period a year ago. In November, Iran and Russia agreed to reciprocally launch tourism offices in their countries. A world leader in the number of historical and artistic highlights, Iran boasts over a thousand world-class hotels and nearly as many recreational facilities are now under construction. During a meeting with Mortaza Rahmani Movahed, Rostourism head Oleg Safonov said that Iran was one of the safest places for Russian tourism and that Russia was ready for closer cooperation in this field. “There are many beautiful places in Russia and Iran that tourists could visit and I hope that, with the visa regime lifted, there will be more tourist exchanges between our two countries… Today we invited the heads of Russia’s leading tour companies to come to Iran and see for themselves what we can do to have more Russian tourists traveling to our country and Iranians to Russia,” Mortaza Rahmani Movahed told Radio Sputnik. He also said that Iran could fill the void Russia’s tour industry has experienced as a result of worsening relations with Egypt and Turkey. “Russian tourists are welcome to come any time of year and enjoy any kind of service they possibly need. We carefully study the Russians’ mentality and tastes and will try to offer them the very best service money can buy,” Mortaza Rahmani Movahed emphasized. Meanwhile, an official with the Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization said that Iran planned to inaugurate a tourism representative office in Russia in the near future. The head of the organization’s marketing and publicity department, Mohammad Kazem Kholdinasab, added that Iran was keen on hosting Russian tourists and would work out the details. Iranian Ambassador to Russia Mehdi Sanaei said on Thursday that Iran could abolish its visa regime for tourists arriving in the country from Russia on a unilateral basis. Iranian airline Mahan Air will launch direct flights between Moscow and Tehran beginning January 21. Back to top World music managers heading to Iran Tehran, Jan 17, IRNA – A number of managers of important world festivals will travel to Iran during the 31st Fajr International Music Festival to exchange music information and increase cultural cooperation with Iranian musicians. The foreign managers are heading to Iran to choose the best music pieces to get them performed in the world festivals, IRNA reported. Fouzia Saeed from Pakistan, Joseph Eichinger from Austria, Camille Jones and Francois Degeorge from France are among the foreign guests of the festival. The 31st Fajr International Music Festival is scheduled for February 13-20. Back to top Bahrain Launching Little India Market MANAMA, Bahrain, Jan 9 (NNN-BNA) – Bahrain’s “Little India Market” will be officially launched today (Saturday), in the heart of the Manama Suq, near the Indian Temple. Held weekly, between 4:00 pm and 8:00 pm, the Little India Market will host a variety of Indian food, crafts and music, for the whole family to enjoy. “The ‘Little India in Bahrain’ project, celebrates and documents the contribution of the Indian community to the history and progress of Bahrain, with almost 4,000 years of history shared between the two countries. According to BNA, Little India in Bahrain is tantamount to Bahrain’s Cultural Tourism (and part of the “Seven Experiences” of the Kingdom). “The project will give back to the Indian community, while promoting the area to cultural tourists and locals, through a series of site-specific interventions along Al Hadrami and Al Muatasim Avenues,” the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities (BACA), said. Back to top Muscat Festival Under Way MUSCAT, Oman, Jan 14 (NNN-ONA) – Muscat Festival will open today (Thursday), under the theme “Live Oman“ in all its details and beauties, in the greatness of man, place and time, within the spacious splendour bouquets of events and pleasant atmosphere, during the period from Jan 14 to Feb 13. The Al A’mirat and Al Nassim Public Parks, will be open from four in the afternoon until 11:00 in the evening, during the festival days, except weekends, when it will be extended until 12:00 midnight, to enjoy the activities of the festival. The festival will launch daily firework shows for a few minutes each day, in Al A’mirat and Al Nassim Public Parks, at half-past-eight in the evening, to bring more dazzling and interesting atmosphere for visitors. Muscat Festival sites are numerous for this year, in addition to Al A’mirat and Al Nassim Public Parks. These sites include the city’s theatre, Oman Automobile Club, Kalbouh Park, Oman Tour’s courses, in a number of governorates, Omani Society for Writers and Literati, Photographic Society, Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque, Cultural Club and a number of galleries and arcades and squares. This festival is also intended for those interested in the revival of the Omani heritage, cultural heritage, the preservation of the traditional identity and the traditional heritage, as a prominent feature of Oman Renaissance and originality, and the attention to inventions and creations, which manifested itself during an era of Islamic civilisation. Back to top Jordan to Launch Heritage Village Project AMMAN, Jan 11 (NNN-Petra) –– Jordan’s Council of Ministers has approved a JD6 million loan to the Petra Region Authority from the Cities and Villages Development Bank to bankroll the launch of a heritage village project, which will showcase traditional products. The decision is within a series of steps the government had recently taken to boost the world tourist destination of Petra and the Kingdom’s tourism sector, which had witnessed a slump in the past years due to the regional turmoil. Authorities had cut the hotel electricity tariff, abolished visas for tourists of all nationalities arriving via Jordanian tours agents, gave Arab tourists equal treatment to Jordanians when entering tourist sites and revoked other visa fees and reduced the fees for arrivals via land crossings from 40 dinars to 10, in addition to other exemptions. The measures would largely help to upgrade services to visitors, diversify the tourist product and prolong a visitor’s stay that will reflect positively on improving the economic and living situation of the local community and spur tourism. The ministers also discussed other items on the agenda during the meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour, including the national health strategy, and also endorsed protocols to increase the trade volume with Tunisia. Back to top ‘Shop Bahrain’ Attracts More Visitors, Shoppers MANAMA, Bahrain, Jan 14 (NNN-BNA) – ‘Shop Bahrain,’ the largest event in the Kingdom, has attracted a vast amount of visitors and shoppers, to take part in the various events and activities for the entire family, since its launch on Dec 24 last year. The event, taking place in Seef District, drew shoppers and mall visitors, who enjoyed a unique shopping experience, combined with the sounds of authentic songs performed by well renowned Moroccan singer, Asma Lmnawar. Meanwhile, ‘The Taste Tour’ event encouraged visitors to try the most delicious sampler dishes, presented by the participating restaurants in Adliya, a district well known for culture and entertainment, and is considered as one of the four centres of Manama’s night-life. The multicultural aspect of Bahrain, such as traditional souqs and modern tourist attractions, were also presented. The largest outdoor ice-rink in the region, also opened its doors during the launch, and instantly witnessed a huge interest, receiving more than 10,000 visitors from Bahrain and abroad, while the market surrounding the ice-rink provides opportunities for local businesses to showcase their products to a larger audience. This year’s edition involved the participation of 18 malls and more than 2,000 retail outlets, that attracted more than 32,000 shoppers. The ‘Family Fair’ event took place at Prince Khalifa Bin Salman Park in Hidd, a town in Bahrain, during the New Year’s weekend, to introduce them to the festival and its events. ‘Shop Bahrain’ aims to mirror the Kingdom’s position as an accessible and welcoming destination for families and visitors from across the region, by providing a distinctive shopping experience filled with special offers and entertainment. It is the largest nationwide festival with a unique 30-day celebration of Bahrain’s heritage, hospitality and tourism offering the entire family, running until Jan 23, 2016. Back to top Egypt’s banks to launch 4-year financing programme for SMEs Cairo, Ahram Online, 11 Jan 2016 – Egypt’s central bank has called on banks to increase financing of small and medium-sized enterprises nationwide, key contributors to the state’s investment and production sectors. In a release issued on Monday on the bank’s website, the bank said it would require lenders to apportion 20 percent of their total loaning portfolio for SMEs, with interest rates below 5 percent imposed on firms generating between LE1 and LE20 million a year in revenue. The banks participating in the four-year programme will be able to deduct the loans from their required reserves at the central bank, according to the statement. The bank’s new SME financing programme was announced as part of an ambitious plan by President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi on Saturday to assist smaller businesses. El-Sisi said that the loans, which will total an estimated LE200 billion, could benefit up to 350,000 projects, providing jobs to over four million employees. Egypt’s 2015/16 GDP growth rate is expected to register 5.5 percent compared to 4.2 percent recorded in the 2014/15 fiscal year, according to the planning minister. The most populous Arab nation has been suffering from an ailing economy since the toppling of president Hosni Mubarak in 2011, which spooked investors and tourists. Small enterprises employing less than 10 workers account for 97 percent of Egypt’s businesses, according to a 2012/13 census published last year by state-run statistics body CAPMAS, while medium-size businesses account for 2.7 percent, and large firms with over 50 employees account for 0.4 percent. Art Alert: ‘The sciences of Islam, between repetition and innovation’ in Cairo Ahram Online , Monday 11 Jan 2016 Bringing together international speakers and researchers, “The sciences of Islam, between repetition and innovation” conference will be held in Cairo over three consecutive days, between 14 and 16 January. The event is organised by the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies (IDEO), Cairo, in partnership with Bayt al-Sinnari, an affiliate of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Lectures will tackle several topics, focusing on texts and traditions. The topics of the lectures include: the oral origins of commentaries on early Islam, commentary on post-classical Kalām; commentary on Ashʿarī creeds in 17th century Medina; Phrenitis in the Arabic Hippocratic Aphorisms; and studies on tafsīr d’al-Qurtubī. The event will host representatives from Egypt, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, Italy, France, USA, Pakistan, Indonesia and Australia. The lectures will be delivered in French, Arabic or English. No translation will be provided. The complete programme can be found here. Back to top Mahan Airlines to set up Sari-Aktau flight Sari, Jan 13, IRNA – Representative of Mahan Airlines in Northern Province of Mazandaran Reza Toyserkani said on Wednesday that the company decided to set up flight between Sari, capital of Mazandaran province, and Aktau city in Kazakhstan. He made the remarks in a meeting to study tourism problems in Mazandaran. He said that the northern province of Mazandaran has plenty of capacities in the field of tourism and that the company is ready to increase its flights to help boost tourism of Mazandaran. Aktau Port is on Caspian Sea shore and close to Mazandaran, in south of Caspian Sea. Back to top Bangladesh Folk Arts Festival begins Jan 14 DHAKA, Jan 12, 2016 (BSS) – The “Folk Arts Festival and Fair” will start from January 14 at the Folk Arts’ and Crafts’ Foundation at Sonargaon, Narayanganj. Cultural Affairs’ Minister Asaduzzaman Noor told a press conference at the Secretariat here today. Begum Simin Hossain (Rimi), chairperson of the parliamentary standing committee on Cultural Affairs, will inaugurate the festival at 11 in the morning. The festival will continue till February 12. As many as 48 craftsmen from the rural areas will participate in the festival. It includes the arts of Naogaon and Magura, decorative bowls from Rajshahi, palm fans from Chittagong, carpets from Rangpur, wooden dolls, embroidered quilt and rattan furniture from Narayanganj, cold mats from Munshiganj, copper crafts from Comilla, products of the ethnic groups of Chittagong Hill Tracts and terracotta from Kishoreganj. There will be a special exhibition of embroidered quilts and 12 best artists of the particular art will be present in the festival. As President, Donald Trump will be good for Travel & Tourism? Yes, he will be great No, he will be a disaster Who cares?	i don't know
The popular Indonesian sport Pencak Silat is a form of?	The popular Indonesian sport Pencak Silat is a form of: Martial Arts; Triathlon; Boating; or Netball? View the step-by-step solution to: The popular Indonesian sport Pencak Silat is a form of: Martial Arts; Triathlon; Boating; or Netball? This question was answered on May 31, 2016. View the Answer The popular Indonesian sport Pencak Silat is a form of: Martial Arts; Triathlon; Boating; or Netball? irmaarnold posted a question · May 31, 2016 at 5:52am Top Answer Attached is a detailed explanation... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29838587) ]} The following items need to be identified:Please identify all items on the list in 25 words or more . Minorities in Early American History Definition of Recently Asked Questions Need a World History tutor? expert786 3 World History experts found online! Average reply time is less than an hour Get Homework Help Why Join Course Hero? Course Hero has all the homework and study help you need to succeed! We’ve got course-specific notes, study guides, and practice tests along with expert tutors and customizable flashcards—available anywhere, anytime. - - Study Documents Find the best study resources around, tagged to your specific courses. Share your own to gain free Course Hero access or to earn money with our Marketplace. - Question & Answers Get one-on-one homework help from our expert tutors—available online 24/7. Ask your own questions or browse existing Q&A threads. Satisfaction guaranteed! - Flashcards Browse existing sets or create your own using our digital flashcard system. A simple yet effective studying tool to help you earn the grade that you want!	Martial arts
Indonesia has the world's (what ranking?) biggest national population?	Pencak Silat: Violence Prompts East Timor to Ban Local Form of Martial Arts \| The Diplomat Pencak Silat: Violence Prompts East Timor to Ban Local Form of Martial Arts In a bid to curb violence, East Timor is cracking down on pencak silat. By Luke Hunt for The Diplomat September 25, 2013 Discipline within martial arts dictates self-restraint. Its popularity has never been based upon the art of hurting and bullying a weaker opponent but on the ability to defend and attack strictly when needed. By and large, serious fighting is reserved for the ring or the mats among equals, and not for the streets. Such attitudes have earned martial arts – from Kung Fu and Karate to Judo, Ju Jitsu and even cage fighting – a wealth of respect and millions of adherents around the world. Few would entertain the idea that martial arts are anything more than a codified system of traditional combat. But there are always exceptions to the rule, like the goons in East Timor who took their limited knowledge onto the streets. Twelve deaths and 200 injured from their antics have prompted the government to ban a local form of martial art that evolved in Indonesia and was glorified by East Timorese who fought Jakarta’s occupation of the former Portuguese colony. Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month. "Any martial arts clubs members that violate the government resolution will be dealt with under the law," Armando Monteiro, a senior Indonesian police officer, told the Associated Press . He added there would be zero tolerance for home-spun martial arts activities in East Timor. He was referring to pencak silat – a popular term that encompasses most forms of martial arts in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, the Southern Philippines and Thailand. Such forms are a fusion of Japanese and Chinese martial arts with local characteristics. Pencak silat has remained popular across the region, but in East Timor has led to increased violence, prompting Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao to warn two months ago that clubs practicing the fighting arts would be banned. Gusmao also told police and members of the military who belong to pecak silat clubs that they had to leave or risked being fired. Other forms of martial arts like karate, kung fu, taekwondo and judo have somehow evaded the ban. Street violence has plagued East Timor and its capital Dili since independence in 2002 and has become a constant source of irritation for Gusmao who added that he had lost patience with gang violence and would not permit it anymore. Outbreaks of violence have also tarnished the tiny country’s reputation. Additionally, internal security has been seen as a major obstacle to East Timor joining the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – a cherished dream for East Timorese governments hoping to find solutions to the country’s massive economic problems. Luke Hunt can be followed on Twitter at @lukeanthonyhunt . Topics	i don't know
The vast majority of Indonesian people adhere to what religion?	The vast majority of Indonesian people adhere to what religion: Buddhism; Islam; Christianity; or Hinduism? View the step-by-step solution to: The vast majority of Indonesian people adhere to what religion: Buddhism; Islam; Christianity; or Hinduism? This question was answered on May 31, 2016. View the Answer The vast majority of Indonesian people adhere to what religion: Buddhism; Islam; Christianity; or Hinduism? tamataerickson posted a question · May 31, 2016 at 6:03am Top Answer Attached is a detailed explanation... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29838699) ]} rampsaud answered the question · May 31, 2016 at 6:04am Other Answers The answer to this question... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29838720) ]} Describe the Vietnamese Refugee History and its significance. Recently Asked Questions Need a World History tutor? mathtutor1983 5 World History experts found online! Average reply time is less than an hour Get Homework Help Why Join Course Hero? Course Hero has all the homework and study help you need to succeed! We’ve got course-specific notes, study guides, and practice tests along with expert tutors and customizable flashcards—available anywhere, anytime. - - Study Documents Find the best study resources around, tagged to your specific courses. Share your own to gain free Course Hero access or to earn money with our Marketplace. - Question & Answers Get one-on-one homework help from our expert tutors—available online 24/7. Ask your own questions or browse existing Q&A threads. Satisfaction guaranteed! - Flashcards Browse existing sets or create your own using our digital flashcard system. A simple yet effective studying tool to help you earn the grade that you want!	Islam
Bandung, Tangerang, Palembang, Semarang and Serang are popular Indonesian?	Religious intolerance in Indonesia Religious intolerance in Indonesia Sponsored link. Background: Indonesia is a vast archipelago comprised of some 13,700 islands spread over 1,475,000 square kilometers. It is also the fifth most populated country on earth, with 220 million people, and the third largest democracy in the world -- trailing only India and the U.S. 1 Indonesia has about 210 million people of whom about 90% are Muslim. In fact it has the largest Muslim population of any country in the world. There are many Christian enclaves in the country. Indonesia had been noted for its relatively high level of religious tolerance, until recent years when many conflicts between Muslims and Christians have occurred. Violence was particularly intense in the Maluku islands (a.k.a. Moluccas or Spice islands) a chain of 17 islands about 250 miles west of New Guinea. At the end of the 20th century. Indonesians suffered massive violence at the hands of fellow Indonesians. These were generally motivated by religious hatred -- largely between Muslims and Christians. Unfortunately, once started, such attacks tend to be self-sustaining as former victims retaliate against former attackers with the latter becoming the new victims who plot new retaliation. 1998: Conflict in the Poso district: The Poso district is in central Sulawesi, about 1,000 miles northeast of Jakarta. Christians originally settled the district. Muslim immigrants have since arrived. Christians still retain a slight majority in that area. A dispute started between Muslims and Christians over the control of the local government in late 1998. It rapidly escalated into widespread clashes between the two religious groups. Hundreds died. According to Foreign Affairs magazine, in 2000-MAY, 70 Muslims who had surrendered at a school were murdered in cold blood by Christians wielding homemade guns and machetes. Christians later hunted down other Muslims, slashed their throats, and tossed their bodies into rivers. Others were strung up on homemade wire nooses. In early 2001, the Laskar Jihad, a terrorist radical extremist Muslim group, established a training camp near Jakarta. They claim to be a militia whose purposes are to defend Muslims, engage in social work, and teach religion. However, the Indonesian government has stated that the: "Laskar Jihad is trying to seize territory from Christians. Lt. Gen. Abdullah Hendropriyono, head of the national intelligence service, was quoted...as saying that Laskar Jihad fighters were receiving aid from the al Qaeda network" 2 The latter is the group that organized the terrorist attack on New York City and Washington. There are allegations that Jihad has had "informal links" with Indonesian military officers. In 2001-OCT, Laskar Jihad "holy warriors" arrived in Poso. Between NOV-27 and 29, they had seized five villages and killed five Christians. More than 8,000 Christians were displaced from their homes. Sponsored link: 1999 to 2000: Other instances of violence -- : 1999-NOV-26: Ambon: According to Newsroom: Church lawyers representing Catholics and Protestants in Ambon have asked the United Nations and the United States to intervene to stop escalating violence in the Indonesian province. Christian commercial districts and residential areas have been targeted in recent months, and up to 700 Christians killed. As repatriation of refugees from East Timor proceeds, religious extremism is being blamed for more bloodshed in Ambon. The province is one of several that may seek independence in a trend that some nationalists feared would lead to the breakup of Indonesia. 1999-DEC-2: Ambon: According to Newsroom: More than 30 people were killed in further rioting in the troubled Indonesian province of Ambon. According to witnesses, many died at the hands of Indonesian troops who were taking an active role in the rioting... About 20 of the dead were Christians and 10 were Muslims, according to a report from a British human rights group Jubilee Campaign. An Indonesian military spokesman insisted that armed forces intervened only to pacify the area, identifying the dead as 20 Muslims and 12 Christians. Witness accounts, however, including a local reporter quoted in the Italian newspaper Avvenire, say many of the dead were deliberately gunned down by army soldiers as fresh violence erupted between Christian and Muslim communities. More than 70 people were being treated for their injuries in hospitals.... Some observers claim the riots were started deliberately by militants intent on Islamizing the province. They include factions in the armed forces. In a statement, Jubilee Campaign says that "... the process of Islamization is already well under way, with Christians forced by Muslim rioters to flee the Banda islands in southern Moluccas." The Moluccas islands are also known as the Malukus and Spice islands. 1999-DEC-3 Indonesia army & Muslims vs. Christians: According to the Maranatha Christian Journal for DEC-5: "The Rev. John Barr, secretary of Indonesia and East Timor for the Uniting Church of Australia, reported that although Indonesia is no longer prominent in the headlines of the American media, Christians in Indonesia and East Timor still face violence and widespread desolation." He mentioned: Brutal fighting between Muslims and Christians in the island of Ambon. Major violence over the Christmas period was anticipated. 30 people killed and 2,000 Christians driven out of Halmahera Island. Their churches and homes were destroyed. Maltreatment and fear in Indonesian concentration camps. Rev. Barr warned: "Be aware that the vast majority of people in Indonesia do not support the terror and violence that has been going on. We should be careful with any criticism not to label or blame ordinary Indonesians. Many Indonesians have actually fought with courage and integrity to bring about change in their country. They have also stood in solidarity with the people of East Timor." 2000-JAN-11: Malukus Islands: According to ReligionToday: "Harming innocent Christians is a sin, Indonesian Muslim leaders said, rejecting demands for a holy war. Thousands of Muslim protesters are demanding jihad [struggle] against Christians in response for Muslim deaths in the Moluccas (a.k.a. Maluku) islands. Some 1,500 Christians and Muslims have been killed in the past two weeks, news reports said. ...'I reject jihad if it means to collect thousands of people to gather around and cry out expressions of hate to take revenge,' Muslim cleric Umar Shihab said. He is co-chairman of the Indonesian Ulemas Council, Islam's top official body in the country. War that is conducted in revenge is a sin, Shihab said. President Abdurrahman Wahid, also a Muslim scholar, also rejected the calls for jihad....A jihad against those who provoke violence against Muslims is allowable, and people who are fomenting the violence should be restrained, Shihab said." 2000-JAN-12: Malukus Islands: According to ReligionToday: "Hundreds of Muslims have died, some in mosques, in religious violence in the Moluccas (a.k.a. Malukus) islands. Scores of charred corpses reportedly were recovered from burned-out mosques on the chain of islands 1,550 miles northeast of Jakarta, Indonesia, CNN said. 'It's very difficult to count the bodies,' which were 'torched and burned by unidentified people,' said Mursal Amal Tomagola of Medical Emergency, an aid group. Authorities believe nearly 1,000 people have died in the past two weeks after a Christian bus driver accidentally killed a Muslim boy. At least 1,500 have died in similar outbursts of violence since last January, CNN said. The Moluccas are traditionally Christian..." 2000-MAR-1: East Timor: According to DayWatch: "In a historic gesture, the president of Indonesia, Abdurrahman Wahid has apologized for violence carried out by Indonesian troops during the 24-year occupation of East Timor, specifically referring to the victims of the Santa Cruz cemetery massacre in 1991, when Indonesian troops opened fire on civilians on a funeral march." 2000-APR-7: Maluku Islands: According to Newsroom: and ReligionToday: Sectarian tensions in Indonesia's Maluku Islands are escalating according to church leaders who report the details of recent atrocities by radical Muslim groups and Indonesian military troops. About 3,000 people, most of them Christians, have died in the past 14 months as a result of religious violence, news reports say. The islands were once mostly Christian, but the Muslim population has increased in recent years with a "radical minority" causing unrest, news reports said. Christian clergy in North Maluku province and the island of Buru claim that 'jihad troops' determined to expunge Christians from the areas have slaughtered many believers and burned down churches and homes." 2000-MAY-16: Ambon: According to Maranatha Christian Journal: Violence erupted in the Moluccas Islands on MAY-16. During the following six days, 40 were killed and over 100 injured. There are allegations that 10,000 Muslims received military training elsewhere in Indonesia in preparation for the attack, and that the government closed down the military training camp in April. Most Muslim leaders in Indonesia have condemned the violence. Apparently most of the casualties were caused by the government security forces attempting to disperse the rioters. 2000-DEC-4: Maluku province: According to Newsroom: In Indonesia's eastern Maluku province, attacks on Christian villages by Muslim warriors have left more than 50 people dead. "The most deadly attack came on the same day that provincial leaders were planning ways to stop bloodshed during the upcoming religious holiday season, when sectarian attacks often are sparked." 2001-MAR-1: Kalimantan provinces According to the Associated Press: The Dyaks make up about 40% of the population in the Kalimantan provinces of Indonesia. They are a Christian group, although many still hold some Animist beliefs. They feel that they are discriminated against in education and jobs in this predominately Muslim country. About 8% of the population are Madurese. They are a strict Muslim group who began to be relocated to the province in the 1960, in order to relieve population pressures elsewhere in Indonesia. Many of the Muslims are troubled by the customs of the Dyaks including the keeping of dogs as pets and the eating of pork. Both practices are forbidden in Islam. During the latter third of 2001-FEB, inter-religious rioting resulted in the deaths of at least 428 people. Aid workers estimate that up to 1,000 may have been killed. For many days, about 2,000 Madurese hid in the jungle; most were without food or water. Roving gangs of Dyaks slaughtered many of them on sight. The government was able to negotiate with the Dyaks to allow the Madurese to be evacuated to safety. Having received a government guarantee of protection, many Madurese came out of the jungle. But the Dyak Christians broke their promise and trucked 118 Madurese to a local soccer field. Six Muslims were beheaded. Others, including the elderly, women and babies, had their limbs chopped off and stomachs slashed open. None survived. 2001-OCT-1: Klaksanaan village: According to Crosswalk/Religion Today: Churches and homes were attacked on 2001-SEP-17 in Klaksanaan village. Two church buildings and 23 Christian houses were burned. Fifty-eight Christian families were made homeless. "No one was killed or seriously injured in the attack, according to The Voice of the Martyrs (Canada). But Muslim militants in Indonesia have killed 10,000 Christians in just the past two years, according to reports by The Persecution & Prayer Alert service of VOM." The report did not include an estimate of the number of Muslims killed by Christians over the same time period. 2002-APR-28: Soya village; Ambon, Maluku province: According to the Associated Press: "Black-masked assailants armed with guns, grenades and daggers stormed a village in Indonesia's religiously divided Maluku province Sunday, killing 14 Christians in a brutal pre-dawn attack that threatened a fragile peace pact. Shouting 'kill them all,' a dozen men entered the mostly Christian village of Soya on the outskirts of Ambon, the provincial capital and the focus of three years of sectarian violence that killed 9,000 people, witnesses said." 3 2002-OCT-12: Bali: Three massive bomb blasts, apparently planted by terrorists, killed over 180 people; over 200 are missing. Most were vacationers from Australia. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said: "We are dealing with these extremist groups whose activities know no frontiers, and whose evil knows no limits." French President Jacques Chirac, said during a speech: "The mass crime which was just committed in Indonesia confronts humanity once more with the unspeakable." 2002-OCT-16: Maluku province: A peace pact has been signed between Christians and Muslims. Jafar Umar Thalib, leader of the Laskar Jihad group, has decided to disband his group and to pull all 3,000 of his Muslim fighters out of the Malaku province. 4 Relative peace was eventually restored to the region. References used:	i don't know
Gamelan is a major Indonesian style of?	Gamelan is a major Indonesian style of: Cooking; Music; Martial Arts; or Fishing? View the step-by-step solution to: Gamelan is a major Indonesian style of: Cooking; Music; Martial Arts; or Fishing? This question was answered on May 31, 2016. View the Answer Gamelan is a major Indonesian style of: Cooking; Music; Martial Arts; or Fishing? noelgray768 posted a question · May 31, 2016 at 6:11am Top Answer rampsaud answered the question · May 31, 2016 at 6:12am Other Answers Here is the explanation for... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29838826) ]} The answer to this question... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29838848) ]} View Full Answer or ask a new question Related Questions Need a World History tutor? Lynettehero 9 World History experts found online! Average reply time is 3 mins Get Homework Help Why Join Course Hero? Course Hero has all the homework and study help you need to succeed! We’ve got course-specific notes, study guides, and practice tests along with expert tutors and customizable flashcards—available anywhere, anytime. - - Study Documents Find the best study resources around, tagged to your specific courses. Share your own to gain free Course Hero access or to earn money with our Marketplace. - Question & Answers Get one-on-one homework help from our expert tutors—available online 24/7. Ask your own questions or browse existing Q&A threads. Satisfaction guaranteed! - Flashcards Browse existing sets or create your own using our digital flashcard system. A simple yet effective studying tool to help you earn the grade that you want!	Music
Representing about 100 million people and 40% of the population, which is the largest ethnic group of Indonesia?	Article - Javanese and Balinese Gamelan Music Javanese and Balinese Gamelan Music All Music Guide - July 2002 (Used by permission - © 2002 All Music Guide) by Bruno Deschênes When music lovers talk of Gamelan music, they generally refer to Balinese Gamelan music, some important types of which came from Java to Bali around 14th or 15th century after Islam had taken root in Java. In the Western world, Balinese Gamelan music is more popular and more known than Javanese Gamelan. Although Balinese music has obvious similarities with Javanese, it as well evolved quite differently from it. This article gives a brief description of both Javanese and Balinese musics, showing their similarities and their differences. Javanese Gamelan Music (Main sources: Brinner, 1995 & Susilo, 2001) The word "gamelan" is a Javanese word meaning "orchestra," referring to the instruments that make up the ensemble. Although we find similar types of music and ensemble all around Southeast Asia, as in Thailand and Cambodia, for example, gamelan music as is known today is particular to four nearby islands: Java, Madura, Bali, and Lombok. There are a large number of different types of gamelan ensembles, as much in terms of instruments used as in sizes, as much in styles of music performed as for occasions when they are performed, as well for whom they perform. These ensembles can range from few portable instruments, played by three or four musicians, to a large ensemble with as many as twenty-five musicians and between ten to fifteen singers. Large gamelan are own by wealthy patrons, shadow play puppeteers or particular institution such as banks, schools or government offices. For their part, musicians own smaller and more portable ensembles. Javanese Gamelan music has been performed for and enjoyed by people of all walks of life, from beggars to kings, although the sizes and types of ensembles, as well as the styles of music differs depending from which social class the audience is and on the occasions. Most of the times, Gamelan ensembles accompany dance and theater, and especially "wayang kulit", the well-known Javanese (and Balinese) shadow puppet theater. The "dhalang", or puppeteer, and the ensemble sits behind a white screen generally lit up by a coconut oil lamp. (The audience may see the show from both sides of the screen.) Another theater is the "wayang wong", in wich the actors sing, dance and act. As for dance accompaniment, Gamelan accompanies a wide range of types of dances, which vary with the social context (e.g., from court dance to performances linked to folk dance). Gamelan, without dance and theater, are heard during particular events such as weddings, circumcisions and birthdays, for example, as well as on radio. In a typical Javanese Gamelan, the instruments can be divided as follow: time-marking instruments (gongs of different sizes), melodic instruments (the "suling", an end-blown flute; and the rebab, a bowed spike fiddle, which plays the balungan, or fixed melody), elaborating instruments (all other metallophone instruments, which create the sound so typical of Gamelan music; the rebab and suling are also part of these groups). Singers can join in, either to sing solo songs or simply to add to the musical texture, normally during the soft moment of the piece. But there is a lot of variations between different ensembles, depending on their uses and purposes (as well as the wealth of the owner). For example, court ensembles will greatly differ in instrumentation and repertoire from more general ensemble used in weddings, or other social events. Three types of metal are use to make these metallic instruments: bronze, brass and iron, bronze being the most preferred. Javanese music uses two tuning systems (or "laras"): sléndro and pélog. Sléndro has five pitches to the octave, while pélog has 7 pitches. With sléndro, the octave is divided in more or less 5 equals intervals; while with pélog, the octave is divided in 7 unequal intervals. Although pélog has 7 notes, usually only five are used in a given composition. The tuning can vary from one ensemble to the other, and from one instrument to the other. For our Western ears, this music may sound out-of-tune. These two laras will not be heard together during a performance. Out of these tunings, modes (or "pathet") are used, in a quite complex interrelated system and theoretical system. The Javanese pathet are associated with times of day, moods or theatrical conventions. One particularity of Javanese music, compare to Balinese, is that the musicians somewhat "improvise". It is not an improvisation in the Western sense of the terms, but more in the sense of being able to develop, embellish and "improve" a piece as it is being performed. Yet, musicians are not allowed to go beyond certain traditional rules, they "do not express personal feelings, but, rather, perform their personal interpretations of the tradition" (Susilo). They even have 5 different types of improvisations. In this sense, musicians do not learn a particular score, but a piece structure plus a traditional way to treat it. For this reason, musicians who never played together can often performed without much practice. Balinese Gamelan Music (Main sources: Tenzer, 1991, & www.balifolder.com) Balinese music evolved from a complex mixture of local and Javanese sources. Hindus fled Java after the 14th-century collapse of the Javanese Majapaht dynasty to establish in Bali, bringing along their music and musical instruments. One thing that has always seemed remarkable to ethnomusicologists and historians is that Bali was able to sustain its Hindu culture, despite its proximity to Java. On the one hand, Balinese Gamelan music has still strong similarity with Javanese music. For example, some Balinese gamelans share important traits with older styles of Javanese Gamelan, which are no longer heard in Java. Yet, on the other, there are major differences. Balinese have exceptionally active composers, writing new pieces for their ensembles, but also, have created, especially in the 20th century, new styles of music as well as new ensembles, involving either typical Gamelan ensembles, the voices or other musical instruments. As in Java, music in Bali is used to accompany ritual activities, as well as other non religious occasions. Religious events are surely the most prominent. Balinese being highly religious, they have set all around the island thousands of temples. When there is music there is also dance. For Balinese, both music and dance go hand in hand. As in Java, Balinese Gamelan music does not seem to be as influenced by the music of the Western world than in some other countries. The instruments used, such as gongs, all kinds of metallophones, drums, the suling and the rebab, are closely related to those found in Java; and as well as the tuning system and modes, though with some slight differences. Contrary to Java where Gamelan are commonly own by musicians, patrons, the court or institutions, in Bali each village are divided by wards, and most wards own at least one Gamelan. It is the responsibility of the people to take care of the instruments. There may thus be several orchestras in each village and town. And the style of music may as well vary from one village, town or region from the other. As Michael Tenzer indicates, “Music is ubiquitous in Bali; its abundance is far out of proportion to the dimension of the island” (Tenzer, 1991). The major difference between Balinese Gamelan music in regards to Javanese music is that Balinese music is strictly composed. There is very little space for improvisation, although there is some at times. Each piece is written and practiced as such to attain a “unified musical expression” (Tenzer, 1991). This possibly gave the opportunity to composers to broaden the orchestral complexity of their Gamelan music. Balinese musicians “rehearse to perfect their music more than any other large ensembles in the world” (Tenzer, 1991). While Javanese gamelan does not possess these features, its great complexity comes from the many strands of performers’ improvisations. Balinese music went through major changes and developments in the 20th century. When the Dutch seized power in 1908, the Balinese court lost much of its power. By 1930, the court was becoming some kind of remnant and the court gamelan were in storage. Unable to maintain its role as patrons of the arts, court Gamelan were sold or given to village musicians. This had a major impact. The arts, their fostering, creation and development, could now be taken of by the people. Many of the court orchestras were melted down and recast as into new and more versatile instruments better suited to the tastes of the villagers. By leaving the court, Balinese music became louder, faster, more dramatic and flamboyant, with sudden changes in tempo and dynamics. While in the south the music is often said to be more refined, in the north it is sometimes more aggressive. New styles of and types of ensembles developed, in particular the Gong Kebyar, which merged different older styles. We have also seen the emergence of a large number of composers, with their own individual style of music. Yet, although Balinese musicians have had many interactions and collaborations with Western musicians, their music remains distinctively their own. This flamboyance and matchless creativity have surely been two of Bali’s trademarks for the attraction and interest Westerners have shown about their music. Javanese music is subtler, less obviously showy, and often remains more mysterious to those encountering it for the first time. Acknowledgements I want to sincerely thank Mr. Michael Tenzer and Prof. Pak Susilo for kindly accepting to review this paper and correcting my many mistakes. If some remains, they are my own. Suggested CDs of Javanese and Balinese Music Java Java, Javanese court gamelan, Elektra Nonesuch, 1971, 9 72044-2 Indonesia, The Angklung Group, Arion, 1991, ARN 64183 Java: Historic Gamelans, Philips, 6586 004 Java: Music of Mystical Enchantment, Lyrichord, 1993, 7301 Java: Palais Royal de Yogyakarta, Vol. 3: Spiritual and Sacred Music, Ocora, 2000, C 560069 Java: Music of the Theater, Auvidis/Unesco, 1999, D 8078 Java, Vocal Art, Auvidis/Unesco, 1989, D 8014 Ida Widawati, Java – Tembang Sunda, Sundanese Sung Poetry, INÉDIT, 1994, W 260056 Musiques d’Asie, Inde, Japon, Chine & Indonésie, Auvidis Naïve, 2001, Y 226129 Bali Bali, Gamelan & Kecak, Elektra/Nonesuch, 1989, 9 79204-2 Gamelan Semar Pegulingan of Binoh Village, King Record, 1992, KICC 5155 Geguntangan Arja “Arja Bon Bali”, King Records, 1994, KICC 5183 Anthology of the Music of Bali, Volume 3: Music for rituals, BUDA Records, 1997, 92602-2 Gamelan Semar Pegulingan of Binoh Village, King Record, 1992, KICC 5155 Magic Bali, le Ramayana, Playasound, PS 65003 Geguntungan Arja « Arja Bon Bali », King Record, 1994, KICC 5183 The Earth Greets the Sun, Gamelan Music from Bali, Deutsche Grammophon, 1972, 447 499-2 Bali, Musique du nord-ouest, Auvidis Ethnic, 1991, B 6769 References Benjamin Brinner. Knowing Music, Making Music. Chicago: The University Of Chicago Press, 1995. T.M. McComb. Central Javanese Gamelan. www.mediaval.org/music/world/java.html, 1999. Hardja Susilo, University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Toward an appreciation of Javanese Gamelan. 2001. www.cba.hawaii.edu/remus/gamelan/uyonuyo2.htm Javanese Music. Encyclopedia.com, www.encyclopedia.com/printable.asp?url=/ssi/J/Javanese.html. Bali Catherine Basset. Anthologie des musiques de Bali. BUDA Records, 1997, 92602-2. Ingrid Klune. Balinese Music as an Aspect of Art in Southeast Asia. Department of Anthropology, Northern Illinois University. www.niu.edu/cseas/outreach/balimus.htm. Michael Tenzer. Balinese Music. Periplus/University of Washington Press, 1991. Excerpts found at www.gsj.ord/library/bm_index.cfm. Gamelan, Balinese Music. www.balifolder.com/reference/dance/09,01.shtml. Balinese Music. Encyclopedia.com, www.encyclopedia.com/printable.asp?url=/ssi/B/Balinese.html.	i don't know
Indonesia shares which island with Brunei and Malaysia?	Indonesia shares which island with Brunei and Malaysia: New Guinea; Borneo; Timor; or Java? View the step-by-step solution to: Indonesia shares which island with Brunei and Malaysia: New Guinea; Borneo; Timor; or Java? This question was answered on May 31, 2016. View the Answer Indonesia shares which island with Brunei and Malaysia: New Guinea; Borneo; Timor; or Java? ellenellis posted a question · May 31, 2016 at 7:30am Top Answer Here is the answer... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29839830) ]} rampsaud answered the question · May 31, 2016 at 7:31am Other Answers The answer to this question... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29839840) ]} The island is divided among three countries: Malaysia and Brunei in the north, and Indonesia to the south. Dr.Mitch May 31, 2016 at 7:33am {[ getNetScore(29839844) ]} Here is the solution... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29839845) ]} {[ getNetScore(29839993) ]} owala answered the question · May 31, 2016 at 7:45am The island is known as the Bruneo.It is known as the largest island in Asia.It si located at geographic... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29840051) ]} ProfAndrianBen answered the question · May 31, 2016 at 7:49am Borneo island. This is how the third largest island is shared among... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29840058) ]} View Full Answer or ask a new question Related Questions 100-150 words reply We've discussed how European kingdoms were evolving into Nation-States as a result of the Reformation and the Renaissance. Do you think Recently Asked Questions Need a World History tutor? mathtutor1983 5 World History experts found online! Average reply time is less than an hour Get Homework Help Why Join Course Hero? Course Hero has all the homework and study help you need to succeed! We’ve got course-specific notes, study guides, and practice tests along with expert tutors and customizable flashcards—available anywhere, anytime. - - Study Documents Find the best study resources around, tagged to your specific courses. Share your own to gain free Course Hero access or to earn money with our Marketplace. - Question & Answers Get one-on-one homework help from our expert tutors—available online 24/7. Ask your own questions or browse existing Q&A threads. Satisfaction guaranteed! - Flashcards Browse existing sets or create your own using our digital flashcard system. A simple yet effective studying tool to help you earn the grade that you want!	Borneo
Kelut and Merapi are among famous Indonesian (what?) in the 'Circum-Pacific Belt' or 'Ring of Fire'?	Borneo City Information and Travel Guide - Borneo.com Borneo » City Info Borneo, the third largest island in the world is situated north of Java Island, at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia. The giant island is divided among three countries: Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia. According to the political division, up to 73% is Indonesian territory, while 26% of island is occupied by the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak in the north. However, the remaining 1% of Borneo’s land area is the sovereign state of Brunei located on the north coast. With an area of 743,330 square kilometres, Borneo is the largest island in the Malay Archipelago. The island is beautifully set in the nature, surrounded by the South China Sea to the north and northwest, the Sulu Sea to the northeast, the Celebes Sea and the Makassar Strait to the east, and the Java Sea and Karimata Strait to the south. The Mount Kinabalu (4095m), situated in Sabah, Malaysia, is the highest point of Borneo and the third highest peak in South East Asia. This highest peak makes Borneo the third highest island in the world. The island enjoys being bestowed with 130 million years old Borneo rainforest, which is around 70 million years older than the Amazon rainforest. Therefore, it has been crowned the title of the oldest rainforest in the world. It is very rich island because of excellent biodiversity compared to other regions. There are about 15,000 species of flowering plants, 3,000 species of trees, 221 species of terrestrial mammals and 420 species of resident birds in Borneo. Photo Credit: Creative Commons/Tony Jones Division of Borneo Brunei Brunei is officially known as the Nation of Brunei, the Abode of Peace. The place situated in South East Asia, is a sovereign state located on the north coast of the island of Borneo. Embodied with prudent beauties, the country is completely surrounded by the state of Sarawak, Malaysia on three sides with one side bordering the South China Sea. It is separated from Malaysia by the border town of Limbang. Indonesia Indonesia, officially known as the Republic of Indonesia, lies between Southeast Asia and Oceania. It is an archipelago consisting of 17,508 islands. Jakarta is the capital city of Indonesia, which comprises 33 provinces as well, occupies the world’s fourth most populous country’s position. The country shares land borders with Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and Malaysia. With an array of islands, you get a chance to know distinct ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups. Above all, the island is richly endowed with natural resources as well supports the world's second highest level of biodiversity. Malaysia Malaysia, a federal constitutional monarchy in Southeast Asia, comprises thirteen states and three federal territories. It is divided by the South China Sea into two similarly sized regions, Peninsular Malaysia and Malaysian Borneo. Kuala Lumpur is the capital city of Malaysia, whose land border touches Thailand, Indonesia, and Brunei. Putrajaya, the federal administrative centre of Malaysia, is the third federal territory after Kuala Lumpur and Labuan. The city has been named after the first Malaysian Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra, where “putra” or “putera” means “prince” while “jaya” means “success” or “victory”. Search news:	i don't know
According to biblical tradition what came to rest on the Mountains of Ararat, now in eastern Turkey?	1000+ images about NOAH'S ARK on Pinterest \| Robert ballard, Underwater and Hieronymus bosch Forward A full-sized replica of the biblical Noah's Ark has been built by a Dutch man, complete with model animals, and a four story theatre. Dutch creationist Johan Huibers built the ark and finished it in 2012 as testament to his literal belief in the Bible. After three years of building the Ark he finally finished this July and attempted to sail it to London for the Olympics but could not get the proper permits. He expects to get around 400.000 visitors a year. This is the second ark he has… See More	Noah's Ark
Recep Erdoğan, Abdullah Gül, Bülent Ecevit, and Turgut Özal are notable Turkish?	Hiking Tour Long Hiking Tour Long Day 1 Flight - Yerevan early arrival. Transfer to the hotel in Yerevan. Day 2 Yerevan - Garni - Geghard - Khor Virap – Noravank – Jermouk (resort town) Depart for the region of Kotayk to visit the fortress of Garni (III c. B.C – XIII c. A.D.) located on the edge of the picturesque gorge – the summer residence of the Armenian kings. The only remaining pagan temple in Armenia is preserved in the territory of the fortress built in the 1st century A.D. It was dedicated to the God of Sun Mithra. Continue to the Monastery of Geghard-Ayrivank situated in a spectacular deep canyon. The monastery is famous for its rock chambers and represents the masterpiece of the Armenian architecture in the XIII c. According to the tradition, the holy spear was kept in this monastery brought to Armenia by the Apostle of Thaddeus. Leave for Khor Virap monastery situated in front of the Biblical Mt. Ararat (5165m), on the left side of Arax River. The monastery of Khor Virap is famous for its dungeon where St Gregory the Illuminator was imprisoned for preaching Christianity. Visit Noravank Monastery (XIII-XIV cc.), nestled among the spectacular mountains - the religious center of Syunik province. Continue to Jermuk for overnight. Day 3 Jermuk – Jeeping to Murat Sar – Hermon Depart from Hermon to the mountain of Murad (3214m,) by jeeps which houses over 200 stones with petroglyphs. From the road leading to the petroglyph site, opens wonderful scenery of the surrounding mountains. Picnic at natural mineral sprig water. Continue to Hermon village for overnight. Day 4 Hermon – Artabuynk – Smbataberd – Tsakhats Kar –Selim Caravanserai – Sevan A trip to the village of Artabuynk and hike to the fortress of Smbataberd (1938m, the path length - 1,8 km, journey time - 1 hour) and the monastery of Tsahats (the length of the path to the monastery - 3,1 km, the ascent - 1,5 hours, the descent into the village - 3 km, the descent - 1 hour). Lunch at the monastery. Continue via Selim Pass (2400m) and visit to the caravanserai (XIV c.). Afterwards drive to the pearl of Armenia - Lake Sevan (1900m) which i the largest lake in the Caucasus. Overnight in the hotel , at lake Sevan. Day 5 Sevan – Shorzha – Mt Artanish – Transfer to Aragats Depart for the settlement of Shorja. Hiking to Artanish mountain (2480), situated on the Sevan shore (ascent – 2.5 hours, descend – 2 hours). A wonderful view over the lake is revealed from the top of the mountain. Transfer to Aragats the highest peak in Armenia (4090m). Visit the medieval fortress of Amberd situated at 2300 m above sea level on the slope of Mt. Aragats. Continue to Lake Kari at 3200 m above sea level. Overnight in the tents. Day 6 Lake Kari –Northern and Southern Peaks of Aragats –Gyumri Climb the southern peak (3887m) of extinct volcano Aragats. Descend to the crater (3683m), through the saddle of the southern and the western peaks. Climb to the highest (northern) peak of Aragats mountain (4095m). Back to camping point at lake Kari (Stone) . Rest, dinner and continue to Gyumry for overnight.. Day 7 Yerevan – Gyumri – Akhaltsikhe – Doghubayazet Depart for the town of Gyumri and continue to Bavra to cross the Armenian - Georgian border. A trip to a historical region of Chavakhque. Cross the Georgian – Turkish border at Vale. From here, continue to Ani a medieval capital of Historical Armenia. Excursion in the territory of Ani to include: the Mother Cathedral, the church of Gagkashen, the Mosque of Manuche, the palace of Sargis and other outstanding monuments of medieval period. Continue to Bayazet. Dinner and overnight in Bayazet. Day 8 Doghubayazet – Elle – Ascent to Ararat to 3200 m Equipment and food preparation, instruction. Passing through official control before the ascent. Transfer to the village of Elle in the truck. Here we will put all equipment on horses and donkeys. (Because of very difficult and inaccessible roads, the transfer is not possible by other means of vehicles, such as 4-wheeled or other.). From here starts the trekking. Reaching the 1st camping site at an altitude of 3200, set up tents. Lunch preparation. Overnight in the tents. Day 9 Ascent to Ararat to 4200m After breakfast take off tents and continue hiking to reach the 2nd camping site (4200m). Duration 3 hours. The way is very rocky, though the panorama is astonishing. Instruction after lunch. From the camping site opens view to Iran, Doghubayazet, Big and Small Ararat. Dinner and get ready for the night with special clothing to be protected from the cold. It should be noted that, because of the cold to sleep at this level is difficult. Overnight in the tents. Day 10 Ascent to the top of Ararat 5165m – descent to 3200m Ascent starts at 2 or 3 A.M. in the morning depending on weather. After the preparation and instruction, we will start to hike to the top. Ascending speed is rather slow. A wonderful panorama opens with the rise of the sun. Glacier starts from 4200m. From here, we will need to wear your special clothes and boots. The group climbs with the special rope one after another with the safety belt. Finally we get to the top – 5165m, this is the highest peak of Turkey. Because of very strong wings, we can’t stay on the top for a long time. Descent to the 2nd camping site at an altitude of 4200m. Descent duration is about 8 hours. Then continue descent to the 1st camping site at an altitude of 3200m. Overnights in the tents. Day 11 Bayazet - Kars – Yerevan Depart for the medieval Armenian capital of Kars. Tour of the city to include: Kars Fortress, Church of St. Apostles (X c.). Lunch in the city of Kars. Cross the Turkish - Georgian border and continue to Akhaltsikhe. Overnight in Akhltsitsikhe. Day 12 Visit the cave town of Vardzia in Georgia. Return to Yerevan. Day 13 Departure. Transfer to the airport. Health This tour is not recommended for high-risk groups, such as heart and lung patients. If you are taking any medication, consult your family doctor whether it is safe to take this trip. Food and drink during the trip (FB) IMPORTANT This tour does not require any special climbing or alpinist skills. However, good physical condition and required equipment are important. Experience in hiking is always desirable. High altitude is contraindicated for the persons with hypertension, obesity, heart disease and blood pressure. Mount Aragats Mount Aragats, considered the highest peak in the South Caucasus at 4,091 meters, has become a permanent home for mountaineers. With its unique nature, this mountain has sub-alpine and alpine zones as well as four peaks and one of the biggest craters in the world, created by a volcano eruption in the distant past. The crater of Mt. Aragats is a sub-polar zone, 750 meters below the rim of the mountain. There is no lake inside the crater, though in particularly warm summers, as ice melts, it forms shallow ponds. There is a high altitude lake nearby called Kari Litch (Stone Lake), well known in the country and a favorite campsite for climbers. Mt. Aragats is accessible to most mountain climbers and naturalists wanting to explore its four peaks. From the top of the mountain you can see most of the Lesser and Great Caucasus Range, even as far as Mt. Elbrus, Europe's tallest mountain at 5642m. The mountain top has several «hidden» pagan and early Christian shrines, hardly surprising given it was considered a cauldron of the gods, its brooding cone generating storms and fair weather several times a day. Local and foreign tourists have shown great interest towards hiking tourism in Armenia lately. It is no surprise as this «mountainous island» is an irresistible country for those who like conquering natural heights. Mount Ararat From north to south and east to west, Armenia is simply bound by chains of mountains. Ararat rises from a flat plain and dominates the skyline of Armenia’s capital, Yerevan. Since ancient times, Ararat has been revered by the Armenians as their spiritual home and as the home of the gods of the Armenian pantheon. Ararat is the national symbol of Armenia though it is located in Eastern Turkey on the borders of Iran, Armenia (formerly USSR) and Nakhijevan. This volcanic mountain rises 5,165 meters or 16,945 feet high, far above the plains that are at 2,000-3,000 feet high, and is the highest location in the ancient kingdom of Urartu, a region which covered thousands of square miles with hundreds of mountains. The summit of Mt. Ararat is 5,165 meters above sea level. It is higher than any mountain in the continental United States except for Alaska or in Europe outside the Caucasus. On the north side, Ararat has its roots in the Araks River valley. There it rises from the valley elevation of about 760 meters above sea level. In that area the Araks River is the border demarcation between Turkey and Armenia. The top of the mountain is only about 30 kilometers from the border. Ararat, an inactive volcano capped year round with ice and snow, reaches 5137 meters. Serdarbulak plateau which is 2687m high divides the area into two peaks: Great Ararat (Buyuk Agri) which is 5137m (16,495 feet) and the Little Ararat (Kucuk Agri) which is 3896m (12,877 feet). Over the years various groups have explored Ararat in the hopes of finding remains of Noah's Ark. The story of Noah's ark, as it is told in Bible, is a reworking of an earlier Babylonian myth recorded in the Gilgamesh Epic. Clothing and Equipment General Information On this trip you´ll need a small backpack (of 25-35l.). The group is always accompanied by experienced instructors. All heavy backpack are carried by car or horses during Ararat trekking . Accommodation along the route is arranged in tents, guesthouses and hotels. This itinerary also includes visits to the cultural and historical places. Our employees carry out all arrangements, including accommodation and food supply. Weather Weather in the mountains is very changeable. If it is windless and the sun is shining, the temperature can reach about +25C, maybe more. If the sun is gone, and it’s windy, the temperature can sometimes go to almost 0C. There is always a chance of rain, hail, and maybe even snow. In the night, the average temperature is about +5C. Personal equipment recommended: - Waterproof mantle for a backpack - Backpack for climbing of 25-35 liters - A rubber mat for sitting on the rocks - Altitude sunglasses - Socks (several pairs) and warm socks for sleeping - Swimwear Equipment: (Provided by Armenian Travel Bureau) - Tents - Sleeping bag (t comfort -10) - A mat for sleeping - Personal utensils: cup, spoon, bowl, knife. Complimentary equipment: (Provided by Armenian Travel Bureau) - Gas burner - First aid kit (basic essential medicines) - Electricity 220 volts (in the parking places and in the vehicle) - Internet Wi-Fi (in the parking places and in the vehicle) General information The mountainous nature of Armenia results in a series of highly diverse landscapes, with variations in geological substrate, terrain, climate, soils and water resources. These landscapes support a great variety of habitats, which in their turn support distinctive flora and fauna. Armenia has mountainous steppe, semi-desert, high rocky mountains, grasslands, temperate forests, sub-alpine meadows, lush valleys, lakes and rivers as well as old oak forests. From north to south and east to west, Armenia is simply bound by chains of mountains. The Sevan Mountains are the oldest standing in Armenia, weighing in at 380-1,200 million years old. Volcanoes and massive earthquakes formed the base of the mountainous region, carving mountains, valleys and plateaus on a land that now has an average altitude of 2000 meters (6,560 ft), with less than 10% of the country lying below 1000 meters (3280 ft.). For the biologist, Armenia is heaven for exploration. It is rich with fauna and flora, but what is amazing is the biological diversity of wild life. It varies from dry semi-desert species of flowers and insects to typical temperate forest inhabitants like bears and wolfs. Special attention should be given to flora, insects, birds and reptiles of Armenia. Some of them are endemic to Armenia. Armenia's flora is so diverse and rich it seems all you would have to do is add cacti, palms and a rain forest, and you would pretty much complete the world's diversity of plant life. The weather changes according to the great variety of geographic terrain. While it may be sunny and hot in the Ararat valley, 60 kilometers away in Sevan it may be cold and rainy, and snowing in the upper regions of Aragats. The climate varies from subtropical to continental; temperatures can range from -41OC to +42OC. In the southern plain regions, the climate is arid and extremely continental. The climate of northern mountainous regions is milder and damper. Annual rainfall is about 570 mm, ranging from 114 mm in the semi-desert zone to about 900 mm in the high mountains. The wide variety of Armenia climate makes it one of the most popular destinations in the southwestern Asia. Data Lake Sevan: This unique natural reservoir is one of the biggest and highest freshwater lakes in the world. Mount Aragats: It is considered the highest peak in the South Caucasus at 4,091 meters, has become a permanent home for mountaineers. Mount Aragats: 4,090m above sea level. Lake Kari: It is located 3,190 m above the sea level and has a perimeter of 1,150 m. Monastery of Geghard: In 2000, UNESCO designated Monastery of Geghard as World Heritage. Artanish Mountain: 2480m above sea level. Murad Mountain: 3214m above sea level. Ararat Mountain: 5165m above sea level. Ararat Mountain: Over the years, various groups have explored Ararat in the hopes of finding remains of Noah's Ark. Araks River: Its length on the territory of Armenia is 158 km (total length: 1072km). The Name Historically, the name Armenian was first used by neighboring countries of ancient Armenia. It is traditionally derived from Armenak or Aram (the great-grandson of Haik's great-grandson, and another leader who is, according to Armenian tradition, the ancestor of all Armenians). However, Armenians call themselves Hay (pronounced Hye; plural: Hayer). The word has traditionally been linked to the name of the legendary founder of the Armenian nation, Haik, which is also a popular Armenian name. History of Armenia Human beings have inhabited the Armenian Plateau and Caucasus Region since over 100,000 years ago. Little is known of them, however, drawings in caves and on rocks attest to their existence. Immodestly, Armenians consider themselves the direct descendants of Noah, survivors of the Biblical flood. According to Genesis, the boat came to rest on a mountain in the Ararat range. The history of Armenia begins with Neolithic cultures of the South Caucasus, such as the Shulaveri-Shomu culture, followed by the Bronze Age Kura-Araxes and Trialeti cultures. The first significant state of the Armenian Highland was the highly advanced the Iron Age Kingdom of Ararat (with the capital in Tushpa, today's Van), better known under its Assyrian name Urartu (Ararat), lasted from the 9th century to 585 BC. In 301, Arshakid Armenia was the first sovereign nation to accept Christianity as a state religion. The Armenian Apostolic Church later became a great defender of Armenian nationalism. The Armenians later fell under Byzantine, Persian, and Islamic hegemony, but reinstated their independence with the Bagratuni Dynasty kingdom of Armenia, rival to nearby Atropatene. Before the fall of the Bagratuni kingdom, a number of Armenian princes managed to escape from Armenia and found refuge in Cilicia, a region at the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea, where Armenians were the majority of population. In 1080, their leader, Prince Ruben, founded in Cilicia a new kingdom, which became known as Cilician Armenia or Armenia Minor (Little Armenia where Armenians established cordial relations with the Europeans and prolonged their existence as an independent entity to 1375. Greater Armenia was later divided between the Ottoman Empire and Russia. Armenians then suffered in the genocide that was inflicted on them by the Ottomans. As a result, 1.5 million Armenians were killed, and the rest of the Western Armenians were dispersed throughout the world. Armenia, from then on corresponding to much of Eastern Armenia, once again gained independence in 1918, with the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Armenia, and then in 1991, with the Republic of Armenia. Geology In Armenia, some rare earth metals as bismuth, gallium, indium, selenium, thallium, tellurium, and rhenium occur. Tuffs (orange, yellow, pink, black), marble, travertine, limestone, (which mountains of Armenia consist of), are construction supplies and finish materials. Agate, jasper, amethyst, beryl, ruby, obsidian, onyx, turquoise stand out among the semi-precious and precious stones. There are approx. 7500 supplies of fresh water and 1300 mineral water springs, many of which are used in spa purposes (Jermuk, Arzni, Dilijan, Bjni, Hankavan, Sevan, and others.). Flora and Fauna With 17 vegetation zones, the variety of plant-life in Armenia is truly astounding. The country has everything from desert plants to oak, beech and pine forests, wet marshland and sub-tropic plants to alpine meadows teeming with wild flowers. There are even virgin fields of wild grain, the forebears of the first wheat in the ancient world, believed to have been cultivated in Armenia 12-15,000 years ago. Known by their genus names Triticum Urartu and Triticum Araraticum, the wheat is native to the Ararat valley and can be found in small-protected fields between Yerevan and Garni. Armenia holds a large diversity of fauna, including the Wild Armenian Goat, Deer, Wild Ram, Leopard, Caucasian Bear (all endangered), lynx, wildcat, Reed Wildcat, Wild Bore, Porcupine, Squirrel, Jackal, Mole, Prairie Dog, Marten, Royal Stag and Nutria. Other species normal to vegetation zones elsewhere will be found in Armenia. Unique fish found in Armenia are the Ishkhan (red-spotted trout) and Sig. Group or individual travel You can choose from a group tour or an individual trip. A professional multilingual guide always accompanies a group or an individual traveler. For booking or more information and prices about this tour please fill in contact form below. In the field "Message" you can give up de date of arrival and depart, number of adults. Subject *	i don't know
'Magnificent Century' is among what hugely popular Turkish export to Arab and Balkan regions in the 2000s?	Transnationalization of Turkish dramas: Exploring the convergence of local and global market imperatives Article (PDF Available) in Global Media and Communication 11(1):43-60 · April 2015 with 24 Reads DOI: 10.1177/1742766515573274 3.22 · City University of New York - College of Staten Island Abstract Since the mid-2000s, an ever-increasing number of Turkish dramas have been exported to several markets and commanded high prices and ratings. To explain the transnationalization of Turkish dramas, this article explores the political economic imperatives as opposed to the commonly cited cultural proximity thesis. Based on in-depth interviews with television producers, distributors and executives, it analyses the burgeoning of the Turkish production sector, the search for additional revenue streams in foreign markets by Turkish producers, their integration into global networks of television trade, governmental support and the converging local and global dynamics that created favourable export conditions for Turkish dramas. Discover the world's research the convergence of local and global market imperatives College of Staten Island, The City University of New York (CUNY), USA Abstract Since the mid-2000s, an ever-increasing number of Turkish dramas have been exported to several markets and commanded high prices and ratings. To explain the transnationalization of Turkish dramas, this article explores the political economic imperatives as opposed to the commonly cited cultural proximity thesis. Based on in-depth interviews with television producers, distributors and executives, it analyses the burgeoning of the Turkish production sector, the search for additional revenue streams in foreign markets by Turkish producers, their integration into global networks of television trade, governmental support and the converging local and global dynamics that created favourable export conditions for Turkish dramas. Keywords Cultural proximity, political economy, television trade, transnationalization, Turkish dramas Since the mid-2000s, there has been a conspicuous rise in the exports of Turkish televi- sion dramas, also referred to as soap operas or telenovelas. These weekly, big-budget productions have been sold to dozens of countries in the Middle East, Balkans and Central Asia and, more recently, in Latin America, Europe and Asia. According to avail- able data, the first Turkish television drama to be exported was Deli Yurek (Crazy Heart) in 1997, which was sold to the Kazakhstan state television for only US$30 per episode. Corresponding author: Bilge Yesil, Media Culture, College of Staten Island, The City University of New York (CUNY), 1P 226, 2800 Victory Boulevard, Staten Island, NY 10314, USA. Email: [email protected] at COLLEGE OF STATEN ISLAND on June 15, 2016gmc.sagepub.comDownloaded from 44 Global Media and Communication 11(1) By 2001, the number of exported dramas had risen to 65, with buyers concentrated mostly in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. In 2005, Yabanci Damat (The Foreign Groom) had made its way to a commercial Greek channel and become a ratings hit (Today’s Zaman, 2012). But the real breakthrough came in 2008 when the pan-Arab network, the MBC, began to air Gumus (Noor in Arabic), which became a huge hit with Arab audi- ences, its final episode drawing an estimated 85 million viewers (Rohde, 2012). Prompted by Noor’s unforeseen popularity, Turkish producers, broadcasters and distributors began to venture into global markets. In 2010, the distribution company, Global Agency, entered the Balkan markets with Binbir Gece (A Thousand Nights), and sold Muhtesem Yuzyil (Magnificent Century) to a number of Balkan and Middle Eastern countries the follow- ing year (Oxford Business Group, 2012). By 2013, Magnificent Century had become Turkey’s most significant cultural export with approximately 200 million audiences in 50 countries, from Italy to China. According to the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Turkey exported 36,000 hours of television to 76 countries between 2005 and 2011. At the time of writing, more than 100 Turkish dramas are being exported to 80 countries, bringing in US$100 million to the Turkish economy (Ozedincik, 2013). With this increas- ing popularity and demand, Turkish dramas now command amounts of between US$15,000 and US$150,000 per episode (Ozedincik, 2013). Turkish producers and broadcasters sell not only original programming but also their remake rights. For exam- ple, in 2011, the broadcast channel, ATV, sold Ezel and its remake rights to a number of markets, including Belgium (McDonald, 2012). In 2013, it sold Son (The End) to a Swedish broadcaster as well as to a US production company (Clarke, 2012; Whittock, 2013). The deal was celebrated by Sabah newspaper, ATV’s sister company, with the headline, ‘The End of Hollywood’ (Ulker, 2013). With the Turkish drama sector now emerging as a key player in transnational televi- sion flows, so, too, would a celebratory discourse develop in the local and foreign press. Journalistic reports heralded the ‘heyday of Turkish content’, calling attention to the addictive nature and ‘unstoppable boom’ of Turkish dramas (Holdsworth, 2012; McDonald, 2012; Ros, 2012; Zalewski, 2013). Policy analysts and Turkish govern- ment officials embraced the country’s expanding ‘soap power’ in neighbouring regions, and explained how the popular appeal of Turkish dramas was getting a boost from the so-called cultural similarities, historical relationships and/or religious connections between Turkey and the Middle East, Balkans and Central Asia (Oxford Business Group, 2012; Oymen, 2012). A think-tank report declared Turkish dramas to be ‘an important part of Turkey’s soft power’ and having ‘the potential to have a lasting effect on Turkey’s image’ (Turkish Social and Economic Studies Foundation (TESEV), 2010). Egemen Bagis, the then Minister of European Union (EU) Affairs, praised Turkish television producers for assuming the important mission of projecting a posi- tive image of the country (Temizkan, 2013).1 While the cultural proximity argument (Straubhaar, 1991) has come to dominate the discourse on the transnational flow of Turkish dramas, it has left several questions unan- swered. For example, it primarily attributes the popularity of Turkish content to ‘face value’ affinities between Turkey and the Middle East, yet ignores the appeal of Turkish modernity for Arab audiences (Kraidy and Al-Ghazzi, 2013).2 Second, the cultural prox- imity thesis assumes that the reception of Turkish dramas is generally favourable and at COLLEGE OF STATEN ISLAND on June 15, 2016gmc.sagepub.comDownloaded from Yesil 45 overlooks negative reactions from audiences and regulatory authorities in various coun- tries.3 Last but not least, it fails to account for the outflow of Turkish dramas to markets such as Romania, Poland, Brazil, Japan and Vietnam, none of whom share with Turkey any linguistic, cultural or historical commonalities. The notion of ‘multiple proximities’4 might offer a more nuanced analysis as it considers the shared cross-cultural genre struc- tures (melodramas) and narrative themes (family, romance, power, etc.) to be contribut- ing factors to the transnational popularity of Turkish dramas. As a Turkish television executive interviewed for this study observed, For years, we imported Brazilian telenovelas. And now our writers come up with similar storylines, but set in a Turkish context. Different country, different city, different names, but similar storylines: Love, money, romance, family relationships. So the Arabs watch it, the Russians watch it, and the Pakistanis watch it. (Executive 1, 3 July 2013, Istanbul, Turkey, personal communication) Yet, the proximity theses, whether they centre on cultural, historical, genre or the- matic affinities, still fail to address the flow of Turkish dramas in its full complexity. To remedy this gap, I offer a political economic analysis and explore the underpinning mar- ket imperatives. To this end, I situate the phenomenon within the context of the transfor- mation of the Turkish television industry in the late 1990s and 2000s and explore the shifts in both the local and global markets that created the export opportunities for Turkish dramas. More specifically, I analyse the burgeoning of the production sector and the growth of the advertising market in Turkey, the search for additional revenue streams in foreign markets by Turkish producers, the integration of these actors into the global networks of television trade and the governmental support given to producers and dis- tributors. I draw upon analyses of surveys, reports and news stories as well as interviews with television executives, producers and distributors. Among the reports I analyse are those published by the Turkish Ministry of Tourism and Culture, the Directorate General of Press and Information, the Istanbul Chamber of Certified Public Accountants (ISMMMO) and the TESEV. News stories and op-ed columns included in this analysis come from industry publications such as Variety, Variety Arabia, Hollywood Reporter, Television Business International and World Screen and from industry websites such as C21Media and TTVNews. In order to contextualize these documents, I draw upon a total of 28 unstructured interviews with Turkish producers, distributors and executives con- ducted during June–July 2013 as well as interviews with distributors and buyers at the Istanbul Television Forum and Fair (iTVF) on 20–21 June 2013.5 The significance of the transnationalization of Turkish dramas is evidently associated with the multidirectional media flows. As several scholars have shown (Bielby and Harrington, 2008; Iwabuchi, 2002; Kraidy, 2005; Sinclair et al., 1996; Straubhaar, 2007; Thussu, 2007), the rise of non-Western production centres, the emergence of regional broadcast and satellite enterprises and the increase in geo-cultural and geo-linguistic flows have challenged the cultural imperialism thesis and the associated process of homogenization. The shifts from dominant flows to contra-flows (Thussu, 2007) and from homogenization to hybridization have also been studied in detail, with the foci on the interaction between global standards and local diversities (Iwabuchi, 2008; Kraidy, at COLLEGE OF STATEN ISLAND on June 15, 2016gmc.sagepub.comDownloaded from 46 Global Media and Communication 11(1) 2005; Pieterse, 2009 [2003]; Straubhaar, 2007). Given the expansive literature in global media studies, my objective is not to review these theoretical issues, but to direct atten- tion to the capitalist imperatives beneath the transnationalization of Turkish dramas and to tease out some implications for a political economic analysis. I argue that the transna- tional flow of Turkish dramas is not primarily an outcome of any cultural affinities between Turkey and other countries, but, rather, it is a by-product of those political eco- nomic factors in the mid–late 2000s that increased the drama output in Turkey and cre- ated a favourable environment for its distribution. By analysing these dynamics that remain hidden in the cultural proximity argument, this article makes a contribution to the study of transnational television flows. Political economic forces In this section, I offer a political economic analysis to account for the influx of Turkish content in world markets, and explore how it has been facilitated by the boom in local production, governmental support, the growth of the advertising sector, the integration of Turkish producers into global networks, the favourable export conditions and the histori- cal conjuncture. Growth of local production To understand the rise of Turkish dramas in world markets, one must start by examining the historical background of local production in Turkey. Until the early 1990s, television broad- casting in Turkey was under the monopoly of the state broadcaster – the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT). However, with the proliferation of commercial channels, Turkish airwaves went through a transformation. In stark contrast to the TRT’s program- ming strategy, the commercial channels offered viewers lively talk shows, news pro- grammes, game shows and foreign content that crossed the cultural and political boundaries set by the state broadcaster. The early years of commercial broadcasting were marked by heavy reliance on imports, a result of the newly established channels’ need for cheap content and their lack of programming resources and trained personnel. Daytime and primetime schedules were inundated with Brazilian and Mexican telenovelas and American series. But it must be remembered that the heavy presence of Latin American and US content did not necessarily mean a total absence of local material. The channels produced news and enter- tainment programmes in their studios and turned to local production companies for dramas and comedy series. Beginning in the late 1990s, an important shift took place from imports to local fare, which subsequently led to the ‘primetime supremacy of local series’ and the relocation of foreign content to thematic channels or non-primetime slots. In the late 1990s, there were about 40 local series on air; in the early 2000s, this number jumped to more than 100 (Executive 2, 5 July 2013, Istanbul, Turkey, personal communication). The rise of local production was prompted by several dynamics in the Turkish media and cultural industries. The migration of film and theatre talent to television due to finan- cial setbacks and the consequent exploitation of the labour, know-how and technical expertise of this talent by commercial broadcasters played a significant role in the devel- opment of the production sector.6 To get a share of the growing market and to meet the at COLLEGE OF STATEN ISLAND on June 15, 2016gmc.sagepub.comDownloaded from Yesil 47 increasing demand from broadcasters, film production companies (TMC and Plato Film) entered the television business even as wholly new television production companies were established (Medyapim, Bocek Yapim, Mint–Made in Turkey Produksiyon, Pana Film, TIMS Production, Ay Yapim), which are among the leading players in the market today. The growth of local production was also facilitated by the presence of skilled writ- ers, actors, producers and directors; the availability of programme formats and produc- tion models; and the increase in television and film school graduates. In the early 2000s, the overall economic growth and specifically the expansion of the advertising market generated a favourable environment for local producers. After the recurring economic crises of the 1990s, the advertising market began to expand signifi- cantly. According to available data, advertising expenditures grew from US$953 million in 2002 to US$1.6 billion in 2010, marking a 30 per cent increase (Dogan Haber Ajansi, 2011). In 2011, they jumped to US$2.5 billion. The Advertisers Association of Turkey projects the market to grow up to US$5 billion by 2015 (Hurriyet, 2012). According to an executive at the state broadcaster, TRT, ‘as advertising revenues began reaching gigantic levels, the producers naturally headed towards productions with mega budgets, and that itself meant even higher quality productions’, which translated into an increase in exports for Turkish producers (Jay, 2013). Today, Turkish television is a creative hub. At the time of writing, there are a total of 63 series on the nine major broadcast channels. Given the fact that each programme runs approximately 90 minutes, Turkish television producers roll out close to 6000 hours of original programming every week (Table 1). Aside from primetime dramas, other local productions include news programmes, politi- cal talk shows and game and reality shows – most of which are format adaptations. Imported (read American) content is mostly relegated to thematic channels, both terrestrial and digital, and appeals to a niche market of young, urbanized, upper middle class audiences. Conditions in the home market The Turkish television market is extremely competitive and ratings-driven. Commercial broadcasters pour enormous sums of money into productions with the hopes of garnering Table 1. Number of series broadcast on major channels.a Channel Number aData have been gathered from the channels’ websites at the time of writing in 2013. at COLLEGE OF STATEN ISLAND on June 15, 2016gmc.sagepub.comDownloaded from 48 Global Media and Communication 11(1) high ratings and advertising revenues, and production companies strive to deliver big- budget series with star actors to secure those ratings. An outcome of this stiff competition is the high production quality, a commonly cited reason for the appeal of Turkish dramas in foreign markets. ‘The quality of the production, casts and scripts is very high. All [productions] are HD. These factors are usually highly recognized by the audiences around the world’, says a Turkish television executive (Jay, 2013). The rivalry among commercial channels is so intense that it has led to huge investments in sets and cos- tumes. For example, Magnificent Century, popular in more than 40 countries, is the most expensive television programme in Turkish history. With its elaborate set – a 15-room re-creation of Topkapi Palace – and silk and velvet gowns, an episode costs approxi- mately US$500,000. According to a television executive involved in Oyle Bir Gecer Zaman Ki (Time Goes By), another popular export item, ‘producers are spending incred- ible amounts of money when they launch a new [series]. We spent more than $1.3 million for just the first two episodes of our series’ (McDonald, 2012). Yet, while the ‘ratings war’ among broadcasters spawns big-budget series and a subsequent increase in produc- tion quality, there is another side to the story. The quest for ratings and advertising rev- enues is so aggressive that broadcasters immediately cancel a new programme if it ‘loses the ratings war’, no matter how high in quality or remarkably innovative it is (Distributor 1, 20 June 2013, Istanbul, Turkey, personal communication). Approximately 60 dramas are produced in a given year, with half of them cancelled after six episodes due to low ratings (Ros, 2012). As one television executive told me, ‘[T]he home market is not sta- ble. Seventy percent of the series are cancelled within a year, and they never make it’ (Executive 1, 3 July 2013, Istanbul, Turkey, personal communication). Even the high- budget or artistically high-quality dramas are not immune from this cut-throat competi- tion.7 An outcome of this volatile situation is the re-orienting of producers to start targeting foreign markets to recoup their costs: If you fail in Turkey and your show is cancelled – which is very likely by the way – you can still break even with the money from international sales. Over the last 5-6 years, we have seen that we can sell to other countries and make money there. This is a new revenue source for us. (Producer 1, 23 June 2013, Istanbul, Turkey, personal communication) Governmental support To grasp the incorporation of Turkish dramas into world markets, one must also analyse how the role of governmental support, as seen in the financial and logistical aid provided by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to the television industry, fulfils the aim of generating economic revenue and soft power. Under the Ministry of Economy, for example, the Foreign Trade Department not only provides financial assistance to content producers and distributors to attend international trade shows, it also organizes trade tours to countries that might serve as potential markets for television content (ISMMMO, 2010: 411). Moreover, in an effort to promote Turkey as a strategic locale for the global content business, several government ministries and agencies provide logistical support to the organizers of trade shows based in Istanbul, such as Discop West Asia, Discop Istanbul and the iTVF, which annually bring thousands of television professionals to the at COLLEGE OF STATEN ISLAND on June 15, 2016gmc.sagepub.comDownloaded from Yesil 49 country (Discop Istanbul, n.d., iTVF, n.d.). The Turkish government is also engaged in plans to develop a regional film-making hub in Istanbul, with talks already involving Entertainment Development Partners, a Los Angeles based entertainment consortium and a US$3-billion project (dubbed ‘Hollywood on the Bosphorus’) designed to attract producers to Istanbul with its planned Hollywood-style films studios and theme parks (Anadolu Agency, 2013). Meanwhile, offering producers, distributors and actors legal assistance with registering their ownership rights is the General Directorate for Copyright. And the Ministry of Tourism and Culture offers awards to producers and actors for their role in promoting Turkey (Hurriyet Daily News, 2013) – quite ironic, given the govern- ment’s oppressive attitude towards media in general. It is difficult to trace the exact beginnings of governmental support or to ascertain its role in the transnational success of Turkish dramas. However, interviews conducted for this study point out that government officials’ awareness of drama exports increased in tandem with the increase in economic revenues. In other words, it was not the govern- ment that first initiated or encouraged commercial television exports; rather, it was gov- ernment officials who saw a way to capitalize on the popular dramas and actors after the fact, given that distributors and producers had already been able to establish their pres- ence in the global marketplace (Producer 2, 19 June 2013, Istanbul, Turkey, personal communication). When asked whether governmental support was a determining factor in the entry of Turkish content into global markets, a television executive said, The remarkable increase [in exports], especially in 2008–2009, didn’t have much to do with the government. The turning point occurred when Kanal D sold Noor in 2008 and it became a huge hit. Then others decided to enter the game and exploit markets in the Middle East and Balkans. The government [support] came in later. (Executive 1, 3 July 2013, Istanbul, Turkey, personal communication) A content distributor echoed, When our programs and stars became popular in the Middle East and the Balkans, which was back in 2008 and 2009, this opened our eyes to the economic value of exports. I would say that’s when the government started paying attention and started supporting us. Don’t get me wrong; we are very appreciative [of their assistance]. But I think we can take some credit for laying the groundwork. (Distributor 1, 20 June 2013, Istanbul, Turkey, personal communication) Regardless of the chronology, it is clear that the AKP government supports the drama sector in order to translate the documented success of Turkish television into concrete economic gain for the country. To promote Turkey and Turkish brands, government agencies, in collaboration with business associations, both support and capitalize on its popular actors. A fitting example of this relationship can be found in efforts to promote Turkey as a medical tourism destination and to attract foreign investment to the booming private health-care sector. In 2012, the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Economy announced that the government was ready to support television and film projects that featured storylines about medical services and suggested, ‘Why not have Kivanc Tatlitug [the hugely popular actor of Noor] play a doctor? Or maybe he could play someone who has an accident and then has plastic surgery at a hospital in Turkey?’ (Aktif Haber, at COLLEGE OF STATEN ISLAND on June 15, 2016gmc.sagepub.comDownloaded from 50 Global Media and Communication 11(1) 2012a). In the past, Tatlitug did indeed serve to promote Turkish brands, if not medical services. Government agencies and trade associations appointed Tatlitug, as well as Songul Oden, Tatlitug’s partner in Noor, as brand ambassadors. One trip in 2012 sent them to Dubai, Baku and Belgrade to attract an additional set of tourists to Turkey through their promotion of the Istanbul Shopping Fest (Hurriyet Daily News, 2012b). In tandem with the government’s promotional agenda, businesses, too, have tapped into the popularity of Turkish actors. For example, Vestel, a major electronics manufacturer, launched an advertising campaign with Tatlitug, who is referred to as the ‘Halal Brad Pitt’, to reach out to consumers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Kaleseramik, Turkey’s largest manufacturer and exporter of ceramic tiles, used Magnificent Century and the Ottoman palace as inspiration for its new tile collection and saw its sales explode in Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia (Benmayor, 2013). Obviously, Turkish businesses are seeking to profit from the surge in Turkey’s global visibility. As the chair of the Turkish Exporters Association notes, Wherever audiences watch [our] television series, they also see our products, and the demand [for our products] increases. Our exports to the Middle East, the Balkans and Central Asia are on the rise. The television dramas help to increase the brand awareness of our products and improve our sales. (Aktif Haber, 2012b) In addition to economic factors, the government is attentive to the transnationalization of Turkish dramas because of what it sees as their soft power potential. ‘[W]ith [these] television series [Turkey] can enter every house and spread the influence of Turkish culture’, observes a government official, noting that ‘two or three television series accomplish a publicity campaign [worth of] millions of dollars’ (Bahadir and Kutlay, 2012, p. 31). Indeed, the AKP government has paid special attention to expanding Turkish media in regions where Turkey has strategic interests, such as in the Balkans, the Middle East and Eurasia.8 The government has enabled the state broadcaster, TRT, to broadcast in languages other than Turkish and to reach audiences in its ‘near abroad’. To this end, the TRT launched the TRT Avaz television service in 2009 with the aim of ‘forming a unity of language and opinion between Turkey and the Turkish-speaking communities’ in Central Asia (Tokyay, 2012). The government also expanded the ser- vices of Voice of Turkey, a radio channel, under the auspices of the TRT, which now broadcasts in 35 languages and is the world’s fourth largest radio station in terms of the number of foreign languages broadcast (Tokyay, 2012). Thanks to the AKP’s public communication efforts, the state-run Anatolia News Agency (AA), which until recently only published in Turkish and English, is now available in Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian through a bureau in Sarajevo. The agency also launched its Arabic service and a new bureau in Cairo in 2012. By 2020, it plans to begin services in Azeri, Russian, Kurdish, Chinese, French, Spanish and German (Tokyay, 2012). Historical conjuncture In connection with governmental support, one must also consider the historical conjunc- ture during which Turkey’s economic growth and activist foreign policy were able to at COLLEGE OF STATEN ISLAND on June 15, 2016gmc.sagepub.comDownloaded from Yesil 51 create favourable conditions for Turkish businesses. Following a series of economic cri- ses in the previous decade, the Turkish economy began to improve in the mid-to-late 2000s. The economic growth rate increased from 3 per cent in 2003 to 9 per cent in 2010 (World Bank, 2013a). Gross national income rose from US$3810 in 2003 to US$10,830 in 2012 (World Bank, 2013b). Similarly, exports of goods and services increased from US$63 billion in 2004 to US$134 billion in 2011, and foreign direct investment grew from US$94 million in 2006 to US$2.5 billion in 2011 (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2013). Although, by 2012, the growth rate had slowed to 2 per cent, Turkey continues to be a key economic player in its region and around the globe. At the same time, on the political and diplomatic fronts, Turkey has been following an activist foreign policy and asserting itself as a ‘vocal actor in an increasingly multi-polar global order’ (Onis, 2012: 144). In an attempt to diversify its external relations beyond the Western world, Turkey follows a new foreign policy that is based on the recognition of its ‘strategic depth’ (historical, cultural, political links with the MENA and Central Asia) and the intensification of diplomatic relations with coun- tries in these regiosn. Whether or not this policy has been successful is open to debate, but the Turkish government continues its efforts to position Turkey as a global player and regional leader. Despite its chronic problems such as the Kurdish issue, ethnic minority rights, human rights and democratization, Turkey has enjoyed a rising international pro- file in the 2000s, its economic growth and activist foreign policy boosting the confidence of its citizens in engaging with the world (Quilliam Foundation, 2013). As a matter of fact, in several interviews, Turkish television executives, producers and distributors made references to the ‘new Turkey’ and noted how the ‘globalization of Turkish con- tent’ happened at this historical conjuncture of economic growth, ‘independent’ foreign policy and a new sense of achievement and aspiration. A distributor noted, Turkey has come a long way in the 2000s. Our economy, our foreign policy have improved. There are Turkish embassies all around the world now. Turkish Airlines flies to hundreds of cities every day. Turkish retailers, manufacturers are successful in global markets. Turkish television is in global markets, too. (Distributor 2, 20 June 2013, Istanbul, Turkey, personal communication) Impulse to globalize In light of the volatility of the home market and the prospect of new revenue sources in foreign markets, Turkish producers have focused on developing the kinds of universally appealing themes and genre elements that I mentioned earlier. In general, these produc- ers pointedly avoid associating their characters with any particular Turkish national, eth- nic or cultural referents, but, instead, emphasize markers such as physical beauty, modern lifestyles and consumption.9 Globally successful series such as Forbidden Love and A Thousand Nights are lavish productions set in affluent locations narrating the trials and tribulations of the young, rich and beautiful. Magnificent Century, needless to mention, bears upon the opulent Ottoman palace and beautiful concubines. In terms of narrative themes, these series are primarily about love, passion and intrigue, not merely the Turkish national character. Forbidden Love follows an evil mother, a vengeful daughter and their at COLLEGE OF STATEN ISLAND on June 15, 2016gmc.sagepub.comDownloaded from 52 Global Media and Communication 11(1) intersecting stories of betrayal and adultery, whereas A Thousand Nights is the story of a beautiful architect who sleeps with her boss to find money for her son’s cancer treatment, then falls in love and marries him. Magnificent Century, which has been likened to The Tudors, is a historical costume drama, but its emphasis is on the romantic relationships, rivalries and intrigue in the Ottoman harem (Matthews, 2012). The de-emphasis on national identity and the focus on universal markers and themes are borne out of the needs of Turkish producers to increase the marketability of their products. As one pro- ducer interviewed for this study put it, ‘too much focus’ on Turkish national identity may be a liability: Since 2008 – the year when Noor became a huge success in the Arab world – we have been very conscious of the international markets. We are not only thinking about the domestic audience. We want to make sure that we develop characters and stories that appeal to both Turks at home and to foreigners around the world. If the characters are too Turkish, then we cannot sell it to Arabs, Bulgarians or Brazilians. And we want to be able to sell to all these audiences. That’s why we want stories and characters that can attract anyone and everyone. (Producer 3, 2 July 2013, Istanbul, Turkey, personal communication) A content distributor echoed this perspective: [Producers] have the domestic market in mind. But lately they also started thinking globally. Because they have to. The home market is full of uncertainties. Imagine, you are a producer and you make an expensive drama with star actors, but it does not get enough ratings. The channel cancels it. What are you going to do? Kiss all that investment goodbye? So now [producers] are naturally thinking about the foreign markets. They are paying more attention to human stories, global stories, and not just Turkish stories. Because they want to be able sell abroad. (Distributor 3, 21 June 2013, Istanbul, Turkey, personal communication) The presence of melodramatic storylines and universal themes, and the de-emphasis on national identity along with the market reorientation are all aligned with the concept of delocalization – that is, the ‘minimization of certain kinds of cultural specificities in a cultural product to lower the possibility of a cultural discount by the foreign audience’ (Straubhaar, 2007: 170). If characters are ‘too Turkish’, they might ‘turn off’ global viewers and ‘decrease the show’s marketability’ (Producer 3, 2 July 2013, Istanbul, Turkey, personal communication). This is why storylines and characters are made ‘odor- less’ and intended to avoid ‘the smell’ of any Turkish national identity, to borrow Iwabuchi’s (2002) term.10 Another important factor to consider is the market conditions in countries which import Turkish dramas. Due to space limitations, I cannot make a full-fledged market analysis of importing countries, but, based on interview findings and available data, I note that the transnational flow of Turkish dramas is partly an outcome of global and regional shifts, both economic and political. For example, in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, many Balkan and Eastern European markets witnessed a decline in local production and at COLLEGE OF STATEN ISLAND on June 15, 2016gmc.sagepub.comDownloaded from Yesil 53 an increase in demand for foreign programmes to fill the newly available airtime, pre- senting an invaluable business opportunity for Turkish producers and distributors to show their wares. As a television buyer from the Balkans said, the sovereign debt crisis in Greece and the budget cuts and closing of local production companies in small coun- tries such as Croatia led to an increase in demand for Turkish dramas, which the buyers in these countries found to be of high quality and affordable, especially as compared to US productions (Buyer 1, 21 June 2013, Istanbul, Turkey, personal communication). Elsewhere in the Middle East, the Arab Spring and the subsequent political turmoil led to a decline in traditional production centres such as those in Cairo and Damascus and created new opportunities for Turkish producers and distributors. And, yet, while the Arab Spring negatively affected local production, it ironically led the way to the emer- gence of new channels, which translated into potential customers for Turkish exporters. As dozens of new local and satellite channels got launched, and television viewership and ad spending increased, Turkish dramas were able to provide ‘high-budget attrac- tions’ that helped Arab television executives to fill airtime (Buyer 2, 20 June 2013, Istanbul, Turkey, personal communication). Integration into the global television trade As mentioned earlier, the increase in production output and quality, the need to globalize on the part of producers and the favourable market conditions in importing countries have all played a role in the transnationalization of Turkish dramas. However, one must also acknowledge that this would not have been possible without the integration of Turkish distributors into the global networks of television trade. As Havens (2006), Bielby and Harrington (2008) and Kuipers (2012) note, buyers and sellers are the main actors in the ‘diffusion of programs and practices into national television industries and, from there, to people’s living rooms’ (p. 554). Although it would be ideal to explore the role of both the buyers and the sellers of Turkish content, for reasons of accessibility and logistics, I focus primarily on sellers in this article. Given that the three leading distribution companies in Turkey – that is, the Global Agency, ITV Inter Medya and Calinos Entertainment – comprise the major players in the outflow of Turkish content, it might be useful to take a closer look at their global networking.11 Global Agency started in 2006 by selling reality TV formats and made its big break in 2008 when it sold A Thousand Nights to a number of Balkan countries in 2008. In 2011, it sold Magnificent Century to the Middle East and, within two years, expanded its roster of buyers to more than 50 (Marka, Lisans ve Medya Dergi, 2013). In 2012, it acquired the Australian company, World Wide Entertainment, to distribute English-language content worldwide (TTVNews, 2013). That same year, it sold the rights for Forbidden Love to Telemundo, which adopted the series as Pasión Prohibida and is now broadcasting it in the United States and Latin America (Mezzera, 2013). The com- pany also has deals with Venevision International, a Venezuelan production house; with Mega, a leading Greek channel; and with Miditech, an Indian production company. ITV Inter Medya, founded in 1992 as a film distribution company serving the Turkish domestic market, began selling television content to Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, Central Asia and the Baltic states in 2001 (ITV Inter Medya, 2013). More at COLLEGE OF STATEN ISLAND on June 15, 2016gmc.sagepub.comDownloaded from 54 Global Media and Communication 11(1) recently, the company has been focusing on the Latin American market and sold Derin Sular (Deep Waters) to a Latin American distribution company in 2013 (Gazeteciler, 2013). Taking a slightly different path is Calinos Entertainment, which was founded in 1997 in Los Angeles to sell American and Latin American content to Central Asian republics. In 2001, it opened an office in Istanbul and began selling Turkish content to Central Asia, the Middle East and the Balkans, thus exploiting the fact that ‘Turkey serves as a bridge between European and Asian cultures’ (Calinos Entertainment, 2013). The company was the first distributor to export a Turkish drama, Deli Yurek (Crazy Heart), to Kazakhstan in 2001. Since then, Calinos Entertainment has sold close to 26,000 hours of programming to 61 countries ranging from Russia to Malaysia, Austria to Brunei (Calinos Entertainment, 2013). Aside from these three major distributors, leading broadcast channels and production companies have also entered the export business. Since the late 2000s, channels such as ATV, Kanal D and Star TV have launched their own sales units and major production companies have struck exclusive deals with global distributors. For example, the sale of broadcasting and remake rights of Son (The End) is the result of the partnership between Turkish producer Ay Yapim and the global distributor, Sparks Network/Eccho Rights. Conclusion There is no doubt that Turkey has recently emerged as a key player in transnational tel- evision flows. Since the mid-2000s, an ever-increasing number of Turkish dramas have been exported to several markets and commanded high prices and ratings. To explain the global popularity of Turkish television, media analysts have generally relied on the notion of cultural proximity and assumed that Turkish dramas are being received posi- tively in any given culture/society, thanks to shared cultural values, vastly underestimat- ing the potential negative responses arising out of the particular historical contexts and/ or internal differences within that society.12 Some of the issues that get overlooked in the cultural proximity discourse include the lingering feelings of resentment towards Ottoman rule in the Balkans and the Middle East; the misgivings about Turkish dramas’ Westernized, secular and liberal vision (Yusuf, 2013); and the concerns about both the so-called damage these dramas pose to moral and religious values (Jafar, 2012) and/or the negative economic impact they have on the local television industry. More impor- tantly, the unduly narrow focus on the notion of cultural proximity has led to the omis- sion of the economic imperatives behind the transnationalization of Turkish content, most prominently those having to do with the development of the Turkish television industry and its global integration in the late 1990s and 2000s. To understand the ascend- ancy of Turkish dramas in the transnational field, I explored this broader context which facilitated the circulation of Turkish dramas, and focused on the changes in the Turkish television industry; the convergence of global standards, formats and genres with local elements in Turkish dramas; the governmental support and the historical conjuncture; and the global networking and market orientation of Turkish producers and distributors. While this article has attempted a preliminary look at the transnationalization of Turkish dramas, obviously, there is more research to be done. In-depth analyses of the media markets in countries which import Turkish dramas as well as qualitative field at COLLEGE OF STATEN ISLAND on June 15, 2016gmc.sagepub.comDownloaded from Yesil 55 research on global viewership can provide a more nuanced discussion of the appeal of Turkish dramas. In addition, the soft power argument that associates Turkish television exports with Turkey’s so-called increasing cultural, political, economic influence in the MENA region merits further research. At the same time, it is likely that the global popu- larity of Turkish dramas has not yet run its full course. Despite some over-confident statements by Turkish producers and distributors, there are those who warn against the likelihood of Turkish dramas losing ground because of rising prices, for example. At a panel discussion I attended at the 2013 iTVF, panellists noted that Turkish dramas have become economically ‘unsustainable’ and will likely lose market shares in coming years. Moreover, geopolitical shifts in the Middle East might also impact Turkey’s drama exports. In August 2013, several Egyptian channels launched a boycott against Turkish dramas to protest the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s criticism of the Egyptian mili- tary (Erdogan had urged the United Nations (UN) to intervene in Egypt after the military removed Mohammed Mursi from office). Egyptian television executives said they were upset with Erdogan’s intervention in Egypt’s domestic affairs and wanted to send Turkey a message by halting the broadcasts of Turkish programmes (Alreedy, 2013). In light of the changing economic dynamics of global television trade and the shifting power align- ments in global affairs, then, there is no doubt that scholars will need to revisit the trans- national flow of Turkish dramas. Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. Notes 1. Foreign policy analysts and Turkish government officials have claimed that the popularity of Turkish dramas is both an instrument and an outcome of Turkey’s expanding soft power – especially in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and Eurasia. The associa- tion between Turkish popular culture and soft power definitely merits further research, but, because of space limitations, I am not able to discuss it here in detail. 2. Kraidy and Al-Ghazzi (2013) direct attention to the fact that Turks and Arabs do not speak the same language and their relationship has been mostly fraught with tension because of the four-century-long Ottoman rule in the region. Instead, they note that Turkish dramas – espe- cially those with social themes – are popular among Arab audiences because they conjure up an ‘accessible modernity’ and offer them a ‘seductive “package” of European, Muslim, secular and capitalist identities’, which blends elements of Western modernity, secularism, religion and economic prosperity (p. 26). 3. For example, Salamandra (2012), in her analysis of the reception of Noor in the Middle East, shows that the series created not only a media sensation but also a backlash among Arabs. According to Salamandra, the panic caused by Noor was primarily the result of the ‘social discomfort provoked by Arab women’s erotic spectatorship’, which centred on the male character (47), but, at a deeper level, it also illustrated Arabs’ anxieties around Turkish modernity and their sense of suspicion towards Turkey. Other Turkish dramas also elicited unfavourable reactions in different parts of the world. For example, in Iran, officials blamed Turkish dramas for the increase in divorce rates, destabilization of the Iranian family and the erosion of taboos around premarital sex and adultery, and in Uzbekistan, state-owned TV at COLLEGE OF STATEN ISLAND on June 15, 2016gmc.sagepub.comDownloaded from 56 Global Media and Communication 11(1) channels removed Turkish dramas because of their ‘inappropriate material’ (Jones, 2013). In Greece, the ultra-nationalist Golden Dawn Party condemned Magnificent Century for its so-called Turkish propaganda, while a Greek producer blamed the show for the ‘de-Helleni- zation’ of Greek television and for shrinking the local production sector (Moore, 2013). In 2012, Macedonia passed a bill to restrict the broadcast of the various Turkish series during primetime and replace them with ‘national’ programmes. Referring to the Ottoman rule of the Balkans, the Minister of Information and Society said, ‘[Turkish shows] are all fascinating, but to stay under Turkish servitude for 500 years is enough’ (Hurriyet Daily News, 2012a). 4. In his analysis of the Eastern Europeans’ and Russians’ penchant for Brazilian telenovelas, Straubhaar (2007) uses the term “multiple proximities” to account for television flows between cultures that do not necessarily have similar make-ups. “Multiple proximities” refer to the shared appeal of certain genre structures (e.g. melodramas), themes (e.g. family, romance, power, money) or social values (e.g. religious values, hard work, upward mobility). (pp. 199–202). 5. Although the total number of interviews is 28, in this article, I do not necessarily use direct quotes from all of them. To protect the anonymity of the participants, I identify them as ‘pro- ducer’, ‘distributor’, ‘executive’. 6. I want to thank Beste Atvur for bringing this to my attention. 7. A telling example is Fatih, the series about the life of the Ottoman sultan who conquered Istanbul. Launched in October 2013, the series was shot on a US$10 million sound stage complete with palace, port, Turkish bath, palace gardens and lavish costumes (Producer 4, 18 July 2013, Istanbul, Turkey, personal communication), but was cancelled after five episodes because of low ratings. 8. It is important to remember that the AKP government is not the first to merge public com- munication and foreign policy. In the 1990s, the then government launched transnational television channels, the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT)-INT to reach out to Turkish immigrants in Europe and the TRT-Eurasia to target Turkish-speaking audiences in Caucasus and Central Asia. 9. Exceptions include Valley of the Wolves, the televised political drama and its film versions. While the series deals with Turkey’s internal political issues, the film, Valley of the Wolves: Iraq (2006), is about the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq and portrays American char- acters as occupiers and Turks as guardians of the Middle East. The other film, Valley of the Wolves: Palestine (2011), revisits the Israeli flotilla raid of 2010 and tells the story of the Turkish hero who avenges those who died during the raid, and predictably depicts the Israelis as murderers. The films have been popular with Middle Eastern audiences, but have not been exported on a global scale. 10. Iwabuchi (2002), in his analysis of the global success of Japanese popular culture in the 1990s, argues that Japanese producers minimized the ‘Japanese-ness’ of video games, Manga comics, animated television and film to make them more marketable to global audiences. 11. 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The letters C and S in the Turkish alphabet feature which diacritical mark?	Season Screen TV Review 2016 № 5 by MK Media Group - issuu issuu Season Screen TV Review NEWS, BROADCASTING, SALES NEWS, INTERVIEW, MEDIA REPORTS “Cinema and TV consist of team work, that`s why everybody’s contribution is vital” Vladimir Zelenskiy, Studio Kvartal 95 ISSUE 5, FEBRUARY 2016 Analytical 6 8 THE ENDLESS WORLD OF TV SERIES Drama production`s analyzing. Identifying of series market`s tendencies. Experts Opinion 23 “WE WILL NOT GO TO THE CINEMA. THE CINEMA WILL COME TO US” Leonid Mazor, TV-producer, about key differences in TV series production in the countries of the CIS and USA. Interview ‘‘THE SERVANT OF NATION’’ Interview with Vladimir Zelenskiy, Studio Kvartal 95. Genre Trends BACK TO CLASSICS Top-chart of classics’ adaptations! Off-Camera HOW TV SERIES DICTATE FASHION 26 34 42 Andre Tan, Ukrainian designer, about modern stylish TV series. Report ATF SINGAPORE 2015 WHAT IS MK MEDIA GROUP GOING TO PRESENT? ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 3 EDITORIAL Denis Mikheev MK Media Group Founder 4 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 A famous Scottish writer and producer, Steven Moffat, once said: “I do not want to think that storiescometo an end, I want to feel that they can go on forever.” In our time, they do not only continue, but also firmly enterinto aregular life. Stories from the screen are so intertwined with the real world that sometimes a person does not remember - where exactly he was going through this situation. However, now there exists a sharp human need to live at the present moment. Due to economic and political instability, people have no confidence in the future, and to think of the past, no longer makes sense. Therefore, everyone wants to enjoy his life now and only now. Whatever people see watching their favorite movies and TV showstheybringintotheir real world: they copy the behavior of the characters they like, eat the same food, go through the emotions displayed on the screen and follow modern trendsset in the series. Heroes are very important. They tell us something about ourselves. The history books tell us the stories of who we were but documents tell us about who we are right now. The heroes tell about who we want to be. Naturally, if there is demand, then there is an offer. Now the TV series market is quite saturated with diverse content, and the quality of this product is becoming higher and higher year in and year out. Sometimes the quality of the product is not dependent on how much spent on production millions or only a few thousands. In this issue we will tell about the wealth of the TV series Universe and what is behind the pretty pictures on television. ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 5 NEWS 360 Degrees of Skill. You’ve already got your doctor’s degree and know what a Reaumur degree is, but you’ve never watched smart video in 360 degrees? It can be helped! You see, in the age of fast-moving industries, like digital marketing and social media, more and more new forms of communication with viewers emerge. Major platforms like YouTube, Vine, Facebook, Twitch, etc. are always looking for new methods of storytelling. So, what novelties of technological evolution are waiting for us? They say we’re expecting the rise of 360-video and development of virtual reality storytelling. Google posted the world’s best opera and theatre productions in the format of 360 degrees! If you’ve always dreamt to know what it is like to perform at Carnegie Hall stage, Google Cultural Institute gives you such opportunity. On Performing Arts project website there are different video items: with music performances, opera rooms, theater productions of the most famous concert halls in the world, – and they all are in the form of 360 degrees. Currently available for view are recording performances of the Orchestra of Philadelphia, recording productions of Shakespeare’s play Henry V and others. To 4K or not to 4K? Finally Huawei has announced its partnership with Etisalat. These companies are going to launch the first 4K Ultra HD TV service in the Africa and MENA countries.They will start from the UAE, where it will be available already in the first quarter of 2016. And let’s read what the leaders of both companies said on this subject: “We were the first to bring IPTV solution to the UAE a few years ago, and now we are introducing the 4K technology, which is another revolution in home entertainment and video. As leaders in home entertainment, we are delighted to work with Huawei, enabling our customers to enjoy an IMAX-like experience at home”, commented Rashed Al Abbar, VP of consumer product innovation at Etisalat. Besides that, PengXiongji, general manager of Huawei UAE, said, “This cooperation is a great opportunity to serve Etisalat’s customers who are looking for immersive and engaging video experiences. We believe that the mix of Etisalat and Huawei innovations in the 4K realm will ultimately provide the best services to customers in the region.” Next Big Thing? There are a lot of rumors which point out that Apple is working on something new connected with virtual-reality technology. Their aim is to immerse viewers in a totally computer-generated world. It is known that company has already invited Doug Bowman, a scientist from Virginia Tech. He studies human-computer interaction, andparticularly 3D interfaces. Another invited person is Nick Thompson, who previously developed Microsoft’s HoloLens. Besides, some Asian component makers in Asia claim they have recently got very large orders for dual-lens-camera components for Apple. It means that having two separate lenses and sensors, such camera could provide different advantages, especially those associated with augmented reality. While Apple is trying to do something, other top giants of the tech world also have been working on similar products for years. At the moment, Microsoft’s HoloLens can already achieve incredible feats like projecting an NFL game onto a coffee table. And what about Facebook’s Oculus? It is the system of choice for gamers, and this year it will be on sale. Besides, there is Google’s inexpensive Cardboard, which has enough momentum that even Apple has already decided to sell a version. Well, who knows, maybe Apple will manage to make a real splash in virtual reality, or, on the contrary, it will be a little bit late for the party. 6 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 NEWS Machines Will Get Oscars? The Hollywood Reporter recently announced that a brand new programfor analyzing screenplays has already been created! The tandem of Scott Foster and Brian Austin invented Script Hop. It candetermine Oscar bait, character’s cathartic peaks and valleys, as well as screen time and shooting days! Scott Foster told that during his work at a story department for almost 12 years, he had to read about 5,500 screenplays. “Even if it was the worst script ever, I had to read it cover to cover,” he claims. Well, it seems he was fed up with all that reading, so he started to develop Script Hop, an artificial intelligence system which can analyze screenplays. Such software is certainly in high demand with every agency or studio. ScriptHop can look through a script and make complete character breakdown in just 4 seconds! To compare, you can only imagine how many seconds a man would need to read it! As for the operating principles used in the program, the inventorskeep silent. “There’s a lot of sauce in the secret sauce,” Foster said. By the way, both guys aren’t the first to develop an AI for screenplay analyzing. There was ScriptBook with algorithmic assessment to estimate prospective box-office potential or the Dewey Decimal System for film and TV. “If you’re an agent looking for roles for minority clients, it’s hugely helpful,” added Foster. Well, who knows, maybe in the nearest future only machines will write scripts and therefore get Oscars? And straight to some Legendary News… Mister Wang Jianlin, who is a chairman of Wanda Group (China) and one of China’s richest businesspeople, hasrecently turned his attention to the film industry. With a business net worth of 34 billion dollars, Wang decided to buy Hollywood’s Legendary Entertainment for 3.5 billion dollars. Everybody knows the famous movies of the Legendary’s studio, such asThe Hangover, Batman, and Inception. The company confirms its movies have earned more than 12 billion dollars worldwide. “Wanda will help Legendary increase its market opportunities, especially in the fastgrowing China market,” informed Wang. Wanda said Legendary’s Thomas Tull would remain chairman and chief executive, holding responsibility for day-to-day operations. “Wanda and Legendary will create a completely new international entertainment company,” added Tull in the Wanda statement. It is also remarkable that ticket sales in Chinaincreased by nearly 50%during last yearup to 6.8 billion dollars. So, differentmajorfilm, music, and television companies consider China and its fast-growing prosperous population of 1.3 billion potential viewers as one of their most promising markets. Even despite global economic changes, China’s consumer spending is growing faster than in the USA or any other Western markets. An Apple doesn’t fall far from the Warner tree. Our version of the proverb hints that Apple Company is actually rolling around the Warner, and it seems the “circles of rolling” becoming closer and closer. The problem is that Warner Time has recently found itself under pressure from shareholders to sell it or spin off assets. The Post reported on Sunday “that two of the media giant’s largest longtime investors are running out of patience and would support a sale or a breakup of the company.” Both companies’ representatives declined to comment on it. But anyway, it is obvious that Apple is going to eye Time Warner’s assets to ease the launch of a stand-alone streaming TV service. Besides, it’s pretty clear that such deal with Time Warner would grant Apple its innermost desire: CNN news, Turner Sports, and such hugely popular shows as Game of Thrones and Sesame Street from HBO, not to mention Warner Bros. movies and TV shows. Meanwhile, the pressure is growing to agree to a sale — or tame the antsy shareholders and activist investors threatening a proxy fight. Some of the analysts, however, believe that a merger of the companies is in both their best interests, no matter what the management says. ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 7 ANALYTICAL \| THE ENDLESS WORLD OF TV SERIES THE ENDLESS WORLD OF TV SERIES The importance of the series in the world of TV & cinema is undisputed. At the moment it is also one of the most requested product among any multicultural audience. We’re going to trace the development path of the TV series: when & why it appeared, main stages, types and local differences. Besed upon surveys and polls, we remember the best & famous series of the world. Besides, our TV experts from various lands tell us about special aspects of the series production in the MENA countries, Caucasus & Europe. “About 15,000 TV channels, including regional, national, international and IPTV, broadcasting different content”. One might ask how long have series already existed? The answer is as long as humanity exists. It was ancient Greeks who invented the basis of storytelling. Aristotle described its structure in his Poetics (335 BCE), which is the earliest work of dramatic theory, and we can still apply those principles today! But the way to modern TV series was a long one: fables, ancient theatre, medieval romances, then, by the end of the 19th century, people eagerly bought numerous penny dreadful novels, next, so-called printed series took place on the radio, and finally, in the first half of the 20th century viewers watched them on TV. Why are dramas so popular today? First of all, people tend to identify themselves with protagonists or sometimes with real life situations they see on the screens. And of course, it’s simply human nature to wonder what happens next. Besides usual TV dramas, soap operas gained huge popularity as well. Have you ever thoughtwhere the term comes from? At the beginning, such format started on radio. It was a 15-min children show focused on young mothers and sponsored by Procter & Gamble or Colgate-Palmolive. That’s why the name of soap companies stuck to the shows. According to some unofficial figures, during all TV era there were (some of them still are) about 15,000 TV channels, including regional, national, international and IPTV, broadcasting different content, but series & TV dramas always enjoyed the highest demand. So let’s start our journey from the beginning and to the present time! FIRST & BIGGEST Among other candidates for first & famous, we should probably remember The Lone Ranger, an American western TV series that aired on the ABC Television network from 1949 to 1957with Clayton in the leading role. The story tells about six Texas Rangers who were shot, except one. This lone survivors wore revenge. He found an Indian companion, called Tonto, and together they travelled through Texas in search of the offenders. 8 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 THE ENDLESS WORLD OF TV SERIES \| ANALYTICAL “Translator of Santa Barbara, Vladimir Chekurda: «Those were the cruel 90s. My work was hard, but funny. The most interesting part was that I knew in advance everything about the next episodes. A lot of people came to me and asked what was going to happen further in the series. What about Cruz? What about Eden?.. People even treated metocoffee and other delicious things in exchange for the valuable information...I felt like Iwas selling something under the counter!» “Santa Barbara launched the careers of numerous present Hollywood stars, like Leo di Caprio (Oscar is crying), Tim Robbins, Tea Leoni, and others! ” Tonto was played by Jay Silverheels, a real member of the Mohawk tribe in Canada. In fact, The Lone Ranger was a very famous and one of the highestrated TV program on ABC at the beginning of the 1950s. According to the Nielsen ratings, the series was number 7 during the 1950-1951 seasons, then number 18 in 1951-1952, and finally edged down to number 29 in 1952-1953. As for the longest TV series, it is certainly Guiding Light. At the end of the series (September 18, 2009), it had 15,762 episodes. It was even listed in Guinness World Records as the longest-running TV drama (the longest series shown on TV). If you decide to shed Guiding Light on your life and resolve to watch at least one episode a day, it will take you about 42 years to watch the entire series… Who’ll take the risk? That being said, ask anyone in the CIS countries about the longest TV series, and you will get the one and only answer –Santa Barbara! SANTA BARBARA Oh yes, it’s the iconic TV series for the entire post-Soviet area. Almost nine years of filming and 2137 episodes! It was one of the first foreign soap operas which viewers could watch after the collapse of the USSR. Anyone who didn’t live there during that period cannot even begin to imagine the hysteria this series awoke: all women rushed from their work in order to come home on time and watch the new episode; all men laughed at the exotic name Sisi and wondered how all those Americans could live in such big mansions and have so many beautiful servants; all grandmothers kept calling the TV channels when there were rumors that the show would be canceled... In one word, it was incredible! The phenomenon, of course, was that, after the soviet Iron Curtain, it was something fresh and new. And people, after the collapse of the Union, were astonished by those rich Americans changing their hairstyle and clothes every day, and their women spending the whole day thinking not about money, but about love! Remarkably, the first episodes of Santa Barbara appeared on the Russian TV, but a bit later new episodes were aired faster on Ukrainian channels, so people turned their attention to them. The author of this article (Denys Kushnarov) spoke with the translator of Santa Barbara, Vladimir Chekurda, who experienced major pressure and huge public interest during the time. Vladimir Chekurda remembers: “Those were the cruel 90s. My work was hard, but funny. The most interesting part was that I knew in advance everything about the next episodes. A lot of people came to me and asked what was going to happen further in the series. What about Cruz? What about Eden?.. People even treated me to coffee and other delicious things in exchange for the valuable information... I felt like Iwas selling something under the counter!” Another factor was the popularity of new words borrowed from the series. For example, fazenda was widely used for country houses or backyards with garden. The name of the series itself, Santa Barbara, has already become a common name in several Slavic languages where it means ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 9 ANALYTICAL \| THE ENDLESS WORLD OF TV SERIES “Yet, kids’ channels still have problems with content selection: choice between native and external content may be not so easy”. something endless and intricate. Furthermore, don’t forget: Santa Barbara launched the careers of numerous present Hollywood stars, like Leo di Caprio, Tim Robbins, Tea Leoni, and others! Incredible as it may seem, but in spite of Santa Barbara’s worldwide popularity, it never achieved the same heights in the USA. During its first season (1984–1985), it ranked only 11thamong daytime soap operas. The next year it rose to the 10th place. By 1987, however, it started to generate respectable ratings: it was still the 10th, but managed to achieve the highest rating in the history of the show. Well, anyway, soap operas are only part of the story. Let’s have a look at the best of the best among quality drama series! TOPs It is absolutely in human nature to try to find out who is the best of the best. For this reason we’re always trying to make top-lists, calculate ratings, or hold an opinion poll. Well, The Hollywood Reporter has already done it. They asked about 2,800 people, and not just 2,800 strangers. The list of participants included: 268 distinguished film directors, 365 producers, 779 actors and other experts from the cinema industry. Of course, one can find Simpsons, Lost, The Sopranos, Twin Peaks, House of Cards, etc. at the top of the list. But whatare the top three? If you still don’t know, let us announce the winners: 3rd place – X-Files, 2nd place – Breaking Bad, and the 1stplace – Friends! “Native content, because of its natural comprehensibility for children, can be the best solution for local channels – no translation or adaptation required”. FRIENDS This popular American series was created by David Craneand Marta Kauffmanin association with Warner Bros. Television. It has 10 seasons and aired on NBC from September 22, 1994, to May 6, 2004. Starring Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer, the show revolves around six friends living in Manhattan. Remarkably, Crane and Kauffman began creating Friends under the title Insomnia Cafe between November and December 1993. They presented the idea to their friend and production partner Kevin Bright, and together they pitched a seven-page treatment of the show to NBC. After several script rewrites and changes, including a second title change to Friends Like Us, the series was finally named Friends. Filming took place at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California. All ten seasons of Friends ranked within the top ten of the final television season ratings; ultimately reaching the No.1 place with itseighth season. The series finale on May 6, 2004, was watched by around 52.5 million American 10 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 THE ENDLESS WORLD OF TV SERIES \| ANALYTICAL “Native content, because of its natural comprehensibility for children, can be the best solution for local channels – no translation or adaptation required”. “NBC, in its turn, informs that possible Friends reunion in 2016 could be a part of a special event to pay tribute to the legendary comedy director James Burrows”. viewers, making it the fifth most watched series finale in the television history, and the most watched television episode of the 2000s decade. Funny, but this series, in terms of ranks and awards, looks like good old wine: its value grows with time. Let’s trace all the way: sitcom was nominated for 62 Primetime Emmy Awards, also winning the Outstanding Comedy Series award in 2002 for its eighth season. The show ranked No.21 in TV Guide’s 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time and No.7 in Empire magazine’s The 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. In 1997, the episode The One with the Prom Video was ranked No.100 in TV Guide’s 100 Greatest Episodes of All-Time. In 2013, Friends ranked No.24 in the Writers Guild of America’s 101 Best Written TV Series of All Time and No.28 in TV Guide’s 60 Best TV Series of All Time. In 2014, the Mundo Estranho magazine named Friends the Best TV Series of All Time! The Hollywood Reporter’s poll, as you can see, showed the same result. Of course, now, when the rumors about Friends possible return are widespread, most of the fans are really happy and waiting for this comeback. But Friends co-author Marta Kauffman made it clear that she does not want “to go back to that territory again.” Perhaps, it is because she has much to do with her Netflix series Grace & Frankie. NBC, in its turn, informs that possible Friends reunion in 2016 could be a part of a special event to pay tribute to the legendary comedy director James Burrows, who has been working in television since the 1970s and directed many series. Burrows also shot some episodes of Friends, so in order to pay tribute to the popular director all main actors are going to reunite. Unfortunately, it is already not a secret that Matthew Perry probably won’t be able to join the team, thus making the possible reunion not so perfect, but anyway… It’s clear that Friends is still really popular among its fans, and that a reunion might one day happen with the cast members, even if it doesn’t come in the form of a reboot. In terms of revisiting Friends, however, it’s very clear that Marta Kauffman is out. EXPERTS & INTERVIEWS Now let us switch from legendary series to modern ones. Due to increasing series production all over the world, it is really difficult to cover everything, but viewers’ request for quality dramas is still high everywhere. Netflix surveys showed that about 60% of viewers stick with one show at a time and manage to finish a season approximately in two weeks, and then start again with a new series. Another 25% of respondents watch up ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 11 ANALYTICAL \| THE ENDLESS WORLD OF TV SERIES “Industry experts announced that the MENA region and surrounding countries have a tradition of high content consumption and are currently growing at a faster rate than almost any other emerging market in the world.” Drama Production Manager on MBC (United Arabian Emirates). He worked in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia. Ghaith Ballani “The most requested genres are Modern Drama, Historical, or International. The local budget variesin the range between 2-8 million dollars”. to two series in a row, and others can watch more than 3 series during one week. So, viewer’s appetite comes with watching! But where is the series consumption the highest? Of course, USA, China, India, and EU are still showing high consumption. However, last year, during the Ultra-Broadband Summit 2015, which took place in the UAE, industry experts announced that the MENA region and surrounding countries have a tradition of high content consumption and are currently growing at a faster rate than almost any other emerging market in the world. More information on this issue was given by our expert, Syrian Drama Production Manager Ghaith Ballani, who works in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and UAE. He said there is no doubt that the Egyptian Drama is now dominating the local industry because it’s a really important market. For Syria, which is the main competitor, it is not like before due to the current development, which created new trend of Drama that can be called Pan-Arab. Khaliji (GCC) Drama is focused only on GCC area, so it comes third or fourth in the Arab Drama ranking. The most requested genres are Modern Drama, Historical, or International. The local budget variesin the range between 2-8 million dollars. MBC is considered the market leader for all international TV shows, and now they have enough experience to adapt those formats to Arabic countries, taking into account all details and cultural issues. UAE is still an expensive country for production in comparison to Egypt/Syria and Lebanon. We thank our expert, and now we’re going to start our info-journey by interviewing experts from the countries close to MENA, and then go west! TURKEY, GLOBAL AGENCY Introduction. Please welcome: Global Agency. It was established in 2006, it is the world’s leading ‘independent’ TV content distributor of TV series, formats and films for global markets. Remarkably, Global Agency was founded with only 1 project and a team of 2 people (imagine!). By now it has 120 projects and a team of 25 people. The company slogan is Content that Creates Buzz, and their content really does. Their works include: Magnificent Century, 1001 Nights, Keep Your Light Shining, Perfect Bride, and Shopping Monsters. In just a few short years Global Agency has become one of the fastest-growing distributors in the industry, thanks to 12 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 THE ENDLESS WORLD OF TV SERIES \| ANALYTICAL the strong line-up of content and a very experienced team. Their catalogue includes formats and series from around the world, and due to the longestablished relationships with some of the world’s most creative individuals and companies, they are able to offer buyers the hottest new content throughout the year. With an international team and bases in Turkey, UK, and the USA, their knowledge of the global entertainment industry allows finding and selling cutting-edge formats that can be adapted to different territories around the world. In September 2012, Global Agency entered the business of finished content distribution, trading under the label of World Wide Entertainment, after acquiring the brand rights to the leading Australian factual entertainment distributor. “Magnificent Century is the first Turkish drama series to enter China and the US. It won the Stars of the Export Awardby being the highest earning television series”. DENIZ TUZUN Sales Director Global Agency TV (Turkey) So, see our interview with Global Agency below. SSTR: Tell us, please, what genres of TV shows are the most popular in the world now? Does it depend on the territory? Global Agency: In terms of formats, talent and cooking shows are in really high demand. Regarding the series, romantic dramas and sit-coms are doing well. These types of shows usually work in every territory all around the world. “As for formats, Europe and Asia are the best buyers. As for drama, Middle East, CEE, and Latin America are the best. In these 3 regions, 80% of the programs on prime time are dramas.”. SSTR: Which countries are your best clients? What percentage share of TV series is there on channels compared to other programs? Global Agency: As for formats, Europe and Asia are the best buyers. As for drama, Middle East, CEE, and Latin America are the best. In these 3 regions, 80% of the programs on prime time are dramas. SSTR: As you know, the budget of the series Magnificent Century was about 1 mln dollars. By Turkish standards, it is a large amount of money. Were you initially confident in the success of the project? Why? Global Agency: Even before the broadcast of the series, we were confident about the success. By now, we have reached 75 territories. This is the biggest production ever in Turkish television industry. One of the reasons is that it has a great script based on true historical events. The cast was so famous and talented. It had the perfect combination for a big show. The most important thing I would like to note is that the show is produced by Turkish leading production company, TIMS Productions. ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 13 ANALYTICAL \| THE ENDLESS WORLD OF TV SERIES SSTR: How profitable was the series? In which countries has it been shown? Has the series been acquired by China and the US? Global Agency: Magnificent Century is the first Turkish drama series to enter China and the US. It won the Stars of the Export Awardby being the highest earning television series. SSTR: Tell us the most interesting and unusual facts about the series. Global Agency: After the series broadcasted in each country, it doubled the number of foreign tourists in Turkey. Also, Ottoman jewelry became high-trend in different lands. In some countries, people were making Ottoman theme parties. Channels more than doubled their share on time slot. “After the series broadcasted in each country, it doubled the number of foreign tourists in Turkey. Also, Ottoman jewelry became hightrend in different lands. In some countries, people were making Ottoman theme parties. Channels more than doubled their share on time slot”. Conclusion. We’re very grateful to Global Agency for their illuminating answers. And in favor of Turkish series we’d like to add another interesting fact: as you know, India and Pakistan are permanently belligerent states (at a frozen war conflict with each other), but Indian soap operas are extremely popular among Pakistan families. Local authorities could not accept this, so the Supreme Court of Pakistan officially banned films and TV series from the neighbor state. Meanwhile, Ukraine faces almost the same situation with many Russian series banned under the current circumstances. But the most interesting question is: who filled the vacant niche in both states? There were many candidates, but only Turkish series managed to win. So, do not be surprised if Ukrainians and Pakistanis decide to combine watching TV with a cup of Turkish coffee and some delicious Turkish sweets! Well, our next stop is not far from our Turkish experts. Let us travel straight to the neighbor country, Azerbaijan. The country, which historically has close relations with Turkey, both culturally and linguistically, nevertheless, always chose its own way of state development in general and in filmmaking in particular. AZERBAIJAN, KHAZAR TV Introduction. Television was first introduced in Azerbaijan in 1956. Our guest and expert for the present edition is Khazar TV, which is a public television channel in Azerbaijan. It was founded in February 2009 by Ahmet Gül, Turkish entrepreneur, who had previously worked for Samanyolu TV, Turkey, supervising various major projects. The most interesting fact for 14 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 THE ENDLESS WORLD OF TV SERIES \| ANALYTICAL “The most interesting fact for us is that local TV channels don’t buy foreign series at all, since they have enough of their own content!” us is that local TV channels don’t buy foreign series at all, since they have enough of their own content! At present, the most demanded TV products in Azerbaijan are family dramas and comedies, though the latter enjoy slightly less popularity. Why family dramas? Because, for historical reasons, family ties are extremely important in this region. So, if a serious family problem occurs, every member of this family is concerned. That’s why family breakdowns and family relations problems have always been and will be interesting for local viewers. In 2016 Khazar TV is planning to film at least two series: a family drama and a comedy. So let’s speak about production process and especially about their two most popular series: My Family and Life – You’re Wonderful. TARANA MURADOVA “At present, the most demanded TV products in Azerbaijan are family dramas and comedies, though the latter enjoy slightly less popularity”. “We’re shooting 20-25 episodes per month, with an average budget of 50,000 Azn”. “We spend 6 months on preparation: we’re writing the script and calculating the budget. We spend another 3 months on selection of actors and locations. Then we’re shooting the show by ourselves, without any further assistance or co-production”. Khazar TV Coordinator For Foreign Televisions Interview. SSTR: Which TV series for the last year did you make by yourself ? How did you determine what genre and what kind of idea would be successful? Khazar TV: Well, we keep shooting our TV series Life – You’re Wonderful (478 episodes) and My Family (376 episodes). Comedy and drama are the most popular genres of the Azerbaijan television. But our viewers also like romances and something connected with revenge. And, you know, all these: rich-poor, love, revenge, wrong decision of the head of a household, a foreign law, - we believe exactly these topics are interesting for our viewers. SSTR: How much do you spend to produce one of the series? How many TV series are you shooting per year? Khazar TV: We’re shooting 20-25 episodes per month, with an average budget of 50,000 Azn. As for the last year, we focused on two series: the series Life – You’re Wonderful and My Family. SSTR: How much, approximately, does it take you to produce TV series? Do you practice co-production? If yes, can it be international? Khazar TV: We spend 6 months on preparation: we’re writing the script and calculating the budget. We spend another 3 months on selection of actors and locations. Then we’re shooting the show by ourselves, without any further assistance or co-production. ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 15 ANALYTICAL \| THE ENDLESS WORLD OF TV SERIES SSTR: How do you cover the expenses of production? In which countries the viewers are already watching your series Life – You’re Wonderful and My Family? Khazar TV: Advertising revenues and state aid form a major part of the budget. We have been shooting our TV series Life – You’re Wonderful and My Family since 2013. They were already shown during the MIPTV 2015 in Cannes, World Content Market 2015 in Moscow, and ATF 2015 in Singapore. To this day, our series are broadcasting only in Azerbaijan, but there are negotiations with some foreign televisions underway. Conclusion. As always, it was quite interesting to communicate with our partners from Azerbaijan. Moreover, we found out that this channel is planning to show a lot of new products in 2016, there are features, documentaries, and animated films, which they have already bought at Japan Content Showcase - 2015 in Tokyo. All that is left now is to wish them prosperity and high ratings! And we’re moving to the next neighbor country! “One of these studios with the motto More interesting than TV really got our attention! It is called GDS and produces perhaps one of the best Georgian drama series”. GEORGIA, GDS TV Surely, our keen readers know Federico Fellini, and thus would believe all wise words the maestro once said. His comments always had something special about them, particularly when they concerned the things he really liked. So, what do you think about the following Fellini’s statement: “Georgian film is a completely unique phenomenon, vivid, philosophically inspiring, very wise, childlike. There is everything that can make me cry and I ought to say that it (my crying) is not an easy thing.” We think he was right, and the poetic land of Mikheil Chiaureli, Otar Iosseliani, Sergei Parajanov, etc. will certainly continue to amaze the world with new films. And, since our present edition is devoted to TV series, why don’t we take a glance at one of the Georgian series? Dictum factum – what is said is done! It is assumed that Georgian TV appeared in 1956, when the First Channel (1TV) was established. Now there are about 10 channels and 16 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 THE ENDLESS WORLD OF TV SERIES \| ANALYTICAL some major studios. One of these studios with the motto More interesting than TV really got our attention! It is called GDS and produces perhaps one of the best Georgian drama series. The company always tends to experiment and is not afraid to produce new series, which might be unusual for local viewers. At the moment, they have three successful original series: Tiflis, Kerch: The Lost Heroes, and Paradox. We decided to focus on the zombie series Paradox, because they were made in co-production with a Ukrainian TV-channel NLO. So, the journalists of SSRT immediately got in touch with Tamara Edgar, programming director of the GDS. “We are open to discuss any project, because it is very cheap to film in Georgia compared to any other place. We have: tax incentives of 20% for foreign production, huge stock of talented professionals waiting for the next project, and wonderful locations”. TAMARA EDGAR GDS TV Programming Director Interview. SSTR: It is known that your series was created under the direction of high-level professionals, including Levan Bakhia, who won the New York Film Festival in 2015 with his horror film Mina. So, would you tell us, please, about your leaders, directors, and products? GDS: Our highest value is quality. So, whatever GDS is trying to produce, films, drama series, or sitcoms, it always strives to attain the highest quality. I think this was one of the reasons of our success. Of course, our current CEO Jaba Mekladze, who is the creator of Paradox, and later the most talented Levan Bakhia contributed a lot to the series’ success. GDS is very lucky to have extremely talented directors. Tiflis and The Lost Heroes, which are filmed by Levan Dabrundashvili, were also lucky to get the most talented crew and director. Paradox is my favorite because it is not another zombie survival series, and it is not another vampire saga. We have a new and different version of an apocalyptic virus and a new race of monsters. Paradox is a drama series, which talks about life and death, and what the world would be like once the current order is changed. It is so much more than just a Sci-Fi series. SSTR: Could you remember something interesting about your series? Were there any unusual or comic situations during the filming? GDS: Of course there were. Tiflis and The Lost Heroes are period dramas, while Paradox is set in a post-apocalyptic world, ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 17 ANALYTICAL \| THE ENDLESS WORLD OF TV SERIES so any bit of today’s normality would cause trouble on the set. In the Paradox world the infected attack and kill animals as well as humans, so occasional stray dog or cat walking or even barking on the background had to be shooed away. A fun fact about Kerch is that most of the characters’ names are taken from actual relatives of the actors. We have several people playing a character with the name of their grandfather, who fought and died in the battles for Kerch. SSTR: How come that you partnered with a Ukrainian channel? GDS: Georgia and Ukraine share many things both historically and in current years. It was always obvious for GDS that Ukraine would be one of the strongest partners in the region. The series Paradox was sold in Ukraine to NLO TV in 2014, and they decided to team up for coproduction of the second season. We have two Ukrainian characters in the second season, so, when we thought about distribution, MK-Distribution was a natural choice. I worked with the company as a buyer before and knew that their level of professionalism was very high. Therefore, we were more than happy to sign the deal. SSTR: Which series and films are going to be on your channel in 2016? GDS: We are currently working on those decisions. We hope for Paradox to come back for the 3rd season, but it might happen in early 2017. A sci-fi series post production takes a long time, and we don’t want to rush. The second season is still on air now. Tiflis was always planned as a story that would finish in 2 seasons. Tiflis is the first Georgian product that has not just viewers but fans, and they are not happy with the series being completed, but we would rather have a quality story than make it longer and damage the storytelling by turning it into a boring soap opera. As I said, we go for quality. Husbands and Wives is coming back with another 30 episodes starting in March 2016. We have some major ambitious projects planned for 2016, but I would rather talk about them after everything is confirmed. SSTR: Do you plan any new co-production projects? What are they about? GDS: At the moment we have only co-production with the Ukrainian channel NLO, but we hope for more. We are open to discuss any project, because it is very cheap to film in Georgia compared to any other place. We have: tax incentives of 20% for foreign production, huge stock of talented professionals waiting for the next project, and wonderful locations. We hope for more projects from Ukraine and hope to work with Turkish companies, but as I said, we are 18 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 THE ENDLESS WORLD OF TV SERIES \| ANALYTICAL open to any project from any country as joint talents mean better content. Conclusion. Well, once again we were enchanted by Georgian charisma. So, we wish them to find a lot of new companies for co-production and to expand the horizons of TV dramas! Last year a group of Swedish documentary filmmakers created a B2B organization. It is a network of documentary filmmakers living or working in various countries from the Baltic Sea in the North to the Black Sea in the South. It builds connections among filmmakers from Georgia through Ukraine and Baltic countries up to Sweden. Such route is not only logical, but also has historical grounds, if you remember the famous way: from the Varangians to the Greeks. Unfortunately, there were no cameras at that time; otherwise it could produce a great documentary series! But anyway, from the Georgian banks, we’re moving to Europe, more precisely – to the Baltic region! “The main focus here is for locally produced content: big shiny shows, local series and realities, special one-offs dedicated to actualities in the country. Besides, series marathons are quite a popular t hing in Latvia, when in one weekend you can see the whole season of a series you like. It is a great possibility for smaller channels to grab viewers and hold them for longer than usual.” LATVIA, MTG TV Television in Latvia was first tested in 1937 and introduced in 1954. At the moment, TV industry not only Latvia, but in all Baltic countries is ata very interesting stage. Things are changing fast, and therefore local TV markets are very dynamic. They pay serious attention to viewer habits, needs, and of course global trends. It’s clear that people desire to consume both entertaining and informative content. Actually, it was always so, the only difference now is that necessary video product is broadcasted not only on TV, but through different platforms and devices. MTG TV, as a multiplatform company, has two inseparable focuses: strong and high quality content, which must be offered and provided to the viewers on time, and platforms they are ready to use. The main focus here is for locally produced content: big shiny shows, local series and realities, special one-offs dedicated to actualities in the country. Besides, series marathons are quite a popular thing in Latvia, when in one weekend you can see the whole season of a series you like. It is a great possibility for smaller channels to grab viewers and hold them for longer than usual. GITA PĒTERSONE MTG TV Latvia Head of ACQ/ Programme planning / Research Interview. SSTR: What series and films are going to be broadcasted by your TV platform in 2016? (films/series/programs? genres? etc.) MTG TV LATVIA: Speaking of the acquired content, we have deals ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 19 ANALYTICAL \| THE ENDLESS WORLD OF TV SERIES “If we take a look at the program top from year 2015, along with Ice Hockey World Championship games, some one-offs, and Eurovision song contest, locally produced programs are the highest rated ones”. with almost all the major studios, and all the best series and movies available will be provided to our viewers. Representing 6 channels in Latvia, let me name just some of the titles – Quantico, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Arrow, The Flash, How to Get Away with Murder, The Blacklist, House of Cards, The Affair, Code Black. Due to historical background of our country, Russian products are quite popular in Latvia: new seasons of Interns, Fisruk, and Kukhnya (Kitchen) are what our audience will be happy to see again in 2016. Apart from our regular own productions, News, infotainment No Taboo, and local drama Fire Sin, there will be produced world-wide popular format shows like I Love My Country, Your Face Sounds Familiar, Farmer Wants a Wife, Upgrade, etc. February 8, 2016 been a very special date for us and our viewers, as it is the launch date of TV3 and NBC Universal International created wedding format Wedlocked. This is a brand new reality, where the main prize is money for a dream wedding for the couple with just one extra condition – the wedding has to be fully organized by parents. Sounds quite exciting, don’t you agree? SSTR: Your TV platform has already broadcasted 14 seasons of FireSin, and it is still at the top of the most popular and ‘watchable’ series. Does this mean that the national product is still closer to the Latvian audience? MTG TV LATVIA: Yes, indeed! If we take a look at the program top from year 2015, along with Ice Hockey World Championship games, some one-offs, and Eurovision song contest, locally produced programs are the highest rated ones. Only few of the acquired programs were able to reach the same rating level last year, e.g. Home Alone movies and animation premieres of Frozen and Rio. As to FireSin, it’s the backbone of TV3 high seasons’ schedule, and it works across all the platforms. It reached more than 10 million video views last year. SSTR: What is the TV3’s budget for production of its own projects? Do you get contractors to complete projects or do you work on co-production terms? MTG TV LATVIA: Information about programming budget is confidential; however, the split of the acquired and own produced expenses may be revealed: it’s 40% vs. 60%. We are looking for the best possible cooperation model for each of our projects: it might be an in-house production team, partly in-house production where technical part isdone by an in-house team and creative part is done by a production company, or fully outsourced production. SSTR: Are there supposed to be technical changes within the channel at the beginning of this year? Any new trends? MTG TV LATVIA: No technical changes are planned. Content usage on digital platforms will keep growing. We are open and ready for new challenges and opportunities the year 2016 might bring us. It is important to keep up with the rapidly changing media industry. 20 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 THE ENDLESS WORLD OF TV SERIES \| ANALYTICAL Conclusion. Surely, the Baltic region, uniting often with Scandinavian countries, has put together a powerful market, which is interesting to look into. But although European countries have been already coexisting for a long time in the European Union, often sharing the same trends or common features for local TV and film production, we decided to hear another European voice to make the picture complete. So, weâ€™re going to reach our last station in this chain of interviews, and there will be not just experts from Europe, but from Cineuropa! EUROPE, CINEUROPA. Cineuropa is the European Cinema Portal, dedicated to European cinema, films, actors, filmmakers, professionals, producers, distributors, sales agents, scriptwriters, film finance, and the film industry in general. It was created in 2002 in order to provide up-to-date information about the European cinema world: it means everything from the biggest film festivals up to very specific information, which still might be interesting to the huge number of cinephiles and movie goers. Promotion of the European audiovisual industry at international market places and cinemas is also one of the main goals of Cineuropa. It is noteworthy that the company has a lot of representatives in different EU states and posts its news in 4 languages. Cineuropa is powered by professional journalists from all across Europe. Notably, they try as much as possible to have at least one reporter in each member state of the EU, and they ask that person to stay in touch with the national industry, but also to keep a pan-European vision in every submitted article. The author managed to speak with Editor-in-chief of Cineuropa, Domenico La Porta. In spite of intense schedule, while attending Berlinale 2016, he graciously consented to answer a few questions. DOMENICO LA PORTA Cineuropa Editor-in-Chief Interview. SSTR: What do you think, what kind of trends in European movie and series production do we have now, and how will the situation change in the nearest future? Cineuropa: Genre films are coming back strong in recent years, but European production is mainly characterized by its diversity in themes, styles and budgets. Therefore, it is very difficult to identify the type of ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 21 ANALYTICAL \| THE ENDLESS WORLD OF TV SERIES trends that are much easier to highlight in Hollywood or in the American indies that are screened at Sundance, for example. Europe has been fighting for that diversity that is being threatened in many ways because of the danger of globalization, digital single market, and on demand audiences who tend to request what the mass channels have been feeding them with massive doses of overseas marketing. The change won’t come from the content but rather from the way that content is consumed. Virtual Reality is here and it implies new forms of storytelling, but those experiences are not ready to be called films just yet. SSTR: Is Cineuropa interested in co-operation and coverage of events only within EU? What about neighbor-countries: Ukraine, Belarus, etc.? Cineuropa: We try to limit our editorial scope to the films (co)produced by the countries that are part of Creative Europe, but we are open to potential collaboration with any event that is related to those productions wherever they might be located, within or beyond the borders of Europe, starting with our direct neighbors for sure. SSTR: Are there some brand new projects you (or your organizations) would like to offer for co-operation? Cineuropa: We would like to collaborate more on content partnerships. Our newsletter is reaching out to 50,000 subscribers, and we would be happy to license that database to events from which we could produce relevant content for our readers. This visibility offer extends to our important social media presence. I am not talking about marketing but really focusing on journalist work to strengthen our industry bonds. SSTR: And as a post-scriptum: would you like to share some fresh experience from Berlinale 2016? Cineuropa: It has been a very good edition from the market perspective and the EFM is definitely expanding. We’re up for a lot more surprises next year, but 2016 has been kind of a turning point with the acknowledgment of TV series, Virtual Reality, and more. Filmwise, the quality of the curation has been maintained to the highest level in every section, and the Berlinale programmers have even managed to avoid big Hollywood mishaps such as Monument Men last year. Conclusion. Well and good, after recalling the drama history, speaking with many honored experts of series productions, and investigating tons of analytics, it is needless to say how popular TV series are. And of course, demand begets supply: according to the most recent figures of that very Nielsen, adults tend to spend approximately 39 hours a week watching TV or watching different shows via DVRs or streaming technology. Most companies usually don’t disclose precise rating information, but after all, it seems more important not how many people watched this or that drama, but, perhaps, how useful the experience was for them. We wish producers and viewers: sow the good seed and think what you’re going to watch! 22 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 “WE WILL NOT GO TO THE CINEMA. THE CINEMA WILL COME TO US” \| EXPERT OPINION LEONID MAZOR: “WE WILL NOT GO TO THE CINEMA. THE CINEMA WILL COME TO US.” SHORT STORY In the USA Leonid actively taught video technology and acting, he studied at Memphis State University and became a Bachelor of Arts with a degree in “Film and television production.” In the US Leonid staged 20 different shows, among them there were comedies and musicals. He became the winner of the “Emmy” award six times. From 1993 to 2005 he worked as a professor at several schools specializing in television (including the Department of Art at Rhodes College, Academy of Fine Arts in Nashville and County School Shelby). Leonid is the winner of Russian awards “Golden Eagle 2011” for his TV series “Doctor Tyrsa”. Now he is implementing his ideas abroad again. He has built fruitful career thanks to his own hard work. Now Mr. Mazor is sharing his experience and opinion with our readers. We have talked with famous TV-producer Leonid Mazor, who used to work both in the USA and in Ukraine and CIS countries. About main tendencies inTV-series industry. The fact that movie industry is finally becoming serious about TV production is above all. It changes the approach to TV series as a whole. Even famous cinema-men are now making series. No one thinks it is shameful. There are many brilliant examples both abroad and in CIS countries –Martin Scorsese with his “Vinyl” and “Boardwalk Empire”, Steven Soderbergh`s “The Knick”and “Girlfriend Expierence”, Steven Spielberg with “Extant”, “Smash” and “Red Band Society”, Valeriya Gai Germanika and her series “Brief Guide To A Happy Life”, “School” (“Shkola”). “Flat” TV picture is now becoming three-dimensional. All characters start talking and feel like normal, ordinary people. We will not go to the cinema. The cinema will come to us. About key differences in TV series production in Ukraine and CIS countries and abroad. The fundamental difference is in organization of production. The preparatory period takes 2/3 of the whole production process. It enables to allow all the things that could be necessary during shooting filming and postproduction. Such an approach discipline. It doesn`t mean to limit the imagination and creative process. Nobody prevents to begin to create behind-the-scenes to be sure that on the scene everything would be perfect. It is necessary to start working with actors much earlier than the shooting begin. One more important thing is that the influence of screenwriter is really huge. And the last moment, but not the list – very high level of professionalism. Abroad professionalism at first point means a set of basic knowledge. But there is almost no place to acquire this knowledge in CIS countries and Ukraine. Some advice for young TV series producers • You should learn and study as more as you can. It is really very important. • You should only have strong desire to get education. You`re lucky –you have Internet, where you could find almost everything. • These days there are many talented people who are self-educated. • The other thing – you should find your own Master, someone, who is a moviemaker. • It won`t be easy for an ambitious person, but this experience worth your while. • I made a strike, because I had had such teacher. I`ve learnt a lot while standing behind his back during movie making. Well, here is the following structure: 1. To get basic knowledge. 2. To learn more through practice on large production. 3. To be lucky. In our profession His Majesty Luck means a lot. 4. To tell the truth, without my own efforts I would be nobody. About new projects The premiere of the “Ivanov” full-length film, shot in my script is coming soon. It was co-written with Michael Marfin. In USA I`ve led the public educational channel, also I`m teaching and staging performances. I started serious work with documentary. Now I`m working on screenplay about forgotten for some sake incident “A Massacre in Memphis”. It is the story about the race riot that shook the nation one year after The Civil War. It is something unusual for me. But as I said, you should try and be brave, without looking to the past. But you shouldn`t forget to analyze what you`ve done. ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 23 24 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 45 min, 2016, HD ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 25 26 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 ‘‘THE SERVANT OF NATION’’ \| INTERVIEW “THE SERVANT OF NATION” “When things are really bad, the only thing you can do is to laugh” – said once Jim Carrey & was pretty right! For many centuries the topic of social problems of humanity has been raised by artists and writers. And it’s really good, when with the help of irony one could affect the problem or even contribute to problem’s solution. Ukrainian people set heart on getting rid of corruption, so sooner or later some creative work with this topic should appear. And recently it occurred! So we are really glad to write in this edition about “The Servant of Nation”TV series by famous & successful Ukrainian studio Kvartal-95. The motto of the series is “The History of the next president”. The premiere of the first season (24 episodes) was held at the Ukrainian TV channel “1 + 1” November 16, 2015. The story is about ordinary divorced history teacher, who lives with his parents, but suddenly begins a completely new life… as a president! Even after the first series of “public servants” appeared on TV screens, the results exceeded all expectations - the series has become the leader of TV broadcast and scored the highest rating of the fall season in its slot (approximately 10.4%, and 26% of the audience aged 18-54). So we decided not to postpone the opportunity to meet the authors, and they gladly agreed to answer our questions. Vladimir Zelenskiy Studio Kvartal 95 “The humor is considered to be authentic and hard to sell. Let me disagree here. If the humor is about core values – love, family, friendship, relationships, desire for normal life and honest leaders – it’s about humanistic standards obvious worldwide”. SSTR: For Ukrainians, the series The Servant of Nation is like laughter through tears. How did you come up with the idea? Should it be regarded as a wish to show how we look from some distance away while falling into the same trap? Kvartal 95: An idea of this project occurred to us (let`s emphasize it is original) about 8 years ago. It is based on our wish to live in country without all-level corruption, in a country where authorities respect people and where politicians work not to enrich themselves but for the nation. Hence our first working title was The Young Country. The idea ripened, we grew older, wiser and more experienced, and the country went through some dramatic events. One moment we realized this topic is of national current interest. That is how our history teacher – an honest rankand-filer – went down in history too, when he suddenly became a President. For now only in series (smiles). Our aim was not to show us falling into the same trap. We were to show people who want honest government without corruption and nepotism. All of us have to change somehow for our society to be civilized. For instance, not to bribe, not to graft and work honestly. ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 27 INTERVIEW \| ‘‘THE SERVANT OF NATION’’ “Our TV-format Crack Them Up is sold to 14 countries, and our series The In-Laws were thrice was nominated in Monte Carlo Television festival as the series viewed by the largest audience on five continents, reaching the top three positions in the comedy category along with the Desperate Housewives and The Big Bang Theory”. SSTR: Last season series became the highest rated project in Ukraine. How is it accepted by foreign audiences? Do they understand humor (perhaps different angle)? Kvartal 95: People from different countries all over the world want honest and fair people to be in power. This wish does not have boundaries. But humor also does not have them. In this sense The Servant of Nation has, as for me, perfect chances for international distribution. Firstly as a format. Undoubtedly, the series have certain social local context understandable in Ukraine and other CIS countries. The humor is considered to be authentic and hard to sell. Let me disagree here. If the humor is about core values – love, family, friendship, relationships, desire for normal life and honest leaders – it’s about humanistic standards obvious worldwide. Otherwise why Friends are considered to be the most popular series in the world for many years and recently have led TOP-100 most successful series of all time in the rating of Hollywood Reporter. We do have own experience of selling comedy projects. Our TV-format Crack Them Up is sold to 14 countries, and our series The In-Laws were thrice was nominated in 28 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 ‘‘THE SERVANT OF NATION’’ \| INTERVIEW Monte Carlo Television festival as the series viewed by the largest audience on five continents, reaching the top three positions in the comedy category along with the Desperate Housewives and The Big Bang Theory. The Servant of Nation successfully appeared on Estonian ETV+ channel in prime time. It resonated with viewers and was actively discussed in social media, well then our idea is clear. Because it is not just a political comedy, I`d say it is ‘a comedy of manners’, a story about temptations and human weaknesses. This week series came out on 31st Channel in Kazakhstan. We negotiate with Moldavian and other foreign colleagues about selling both ready-made product and format. Our project aroused the interest of one of the world biggest online-platforms for video content. We bet on this product and believe in its potential. That is why we plan to shoot both - a full-length movie and the second season. SSTR: Could you share some interesting unknown facts about series? Perhaps, some funny situations during shooting? Kvartal 95: Shooting process had lot of those moments; we made a lot of decisions on the set. We were constantly hoaxing each other. It was a lot of fun on the stage… For me it was a surprise how people reacted to a viral video teaser of The Servant of Nation. During a week it has collected more than 15 millions views. Somebody have taken my speech at face value and decided I`m going to become a real politician, and that my electioneering starts with this video. After a premiere it was widely discussed in social media that I really have to go for it (laughing). The Servant of Nation has become a great event in the country, that`s “Because it is not just a political comedy, I`d say it is ‘a comedy of manners’, a story about temptations and human weaknesses”. SSTR: It is well-known fact that team that worked on project was really huge. Was it easy or difficult to collect these people? And so that success would be guaranteed. Kvartal 95: It is not the first our project, that`s why the team was experienced and professional. Amazingly talented film director Alexey Kiriushchenko worked on our other projects – series Girls Talk and Looking for a Wife with a Child. Both these series were successful and high-rated on the biggest channels of Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Belarus etc. Kvartal 95 has perhaps the biggest and the strongest team of scriptwriters. In The Servant of Nation starred brilliant Ukrainian actors – Natalia Sumskaya, Stanislav Boklan. Katerina Kisten`, Viktor Saraykin, guys from the main cast of Kvartal 95. Cinema and TV consist of team work, that`s why everybody’s contribution is vital – I mean costume designers, illuminators, and those who feed camera crew. I`m thankful to all, who was involved in this project. To be continued… SSTR: When to expect the second season of “The Servant of Nation”? How will it differ from the first one? Kvartal 95: We plan to shoot not only second season, but also a full movie for the cinema release. Shooting will take place this year. Speaking about premiere, I`d suggest it will be in the beginning of 2017. What is the difference? Well story develops. I hope, unexpectedly for the audience. But I won`t spoil. ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 29 INTERVIEW \| ‘‘THE SERVANT OF NATION’’ “We plan to shoot not only second season, but also a full movie for the cinema release”. “We have few interesting screenplays for feature-length fiction of various genres – comedy, psychological thriller, drama. We`re looking for partners for its production”. SSTR: What other projects do you plan to realize in 2016? Kvartal 95: We have a lot of plans. Firstly, we actively develop our animation studio. It is one of the priorities. Few projects are launching – animated adaptation of series The In-Laws and The Kitchen. Also we have feature-length animated projects, including modern fairytale Gulliver returns. And we really want to produce animation for children because today it`s a highly demanded content worldwide. We have few interesting screenplays for feature-length fiction of various genres – comedy, psychological thriller, drama. We`re looking for partners for its production. Very possibly our super successful series The In-Laws will be continued. A screenplay of the seventh season is already finished. “In the nearest future we plan opening a representative office of our company in Europe and USA”. We`re working on new TV projects and formats. A new format Crack Them Up. Children is coming out soon. A second season of The Laughter League, the national humor festival, is on now. BOTTOM LINE We are very grateful to Kvartal 95 for kind & interesting reply. And moreover it is really great that besides the fact our viewers have got a strong & quality TV product, the series itself hopefully could be a kind of another brick in the forming of anti-corruption public opinion. SSTR: To sum up, is your production focused on overseas markets? Which exactly? Kvartal 95: Now we focus on Western markets – Eastern, Western Europe and USA. In countries of so-called “Russian-speaking region” our content is already recognized, beloved and demanded. Now we strike for the West. Although we have a successful experience in cooperation with China. Several TV formats are sold there, for example, Crack Them Up and Claim to Meladze. We are actively expanding internationally, that`s why we participate in the biggest industry forums like MIPTV or MIPCOM in Cannes, where we`ve been recently represented by an own stand. In the nearest future we plan opening a representative office of our company in Europe and USA. 30 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 INFOTOY 26X7 MIN, 2015, HD 32 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 FRAPA AND DISCOP ISTANBUL PARTNER ON ‘THE FORMAT DAY’ Format association strengthens its ties with key industry events FRAPA and DISCOP’s Basic Lead are to co-organise this year’s The Format Day, the dedicated conference and pitching programme to be held on Tuesday, March 1, during the sixth edition of the DISCOP Istanbul multiplatform content market. The co-operation marks the next step in FRAPA’s mission to create a safer, better-regulated format industry founded on free expression and the right to fair trade. About FRAPA www.frapa.org The Netherlands-based FRAPA – the Format Recognition and Protection Association — is an international body dedicated to the protection of formats. Established in 2000 by a group of key industry professionals, FRAPA now represents numerous companies from within the television and broadcast industry. Its members include format creators, producers, distributors and broadcasters. As an independent, nonprofit association, FRAPA’s key services include registering format proposals; mediating disputes arising out of claims of format plagiarism; creating guidelines for fair competition; and educating the industry and the law regarding the protection of formats. About Basic Lead Headquartered in Los Angeles and Johannesburg, Basic Lead is a B2B event production and marketing agency servicing various sectors of industry across fast-growing regions of the world. For press information, please contact: Cheryl Clarke at Mushroom Media on: T: +44 (0)9739554109 E: [email protected] Debbie Lawrence at The Lippin Group – London on: T: +44 7771 850580 E: [email protected] For information on FRAPA and/or FRAPA membership, please contact: Viktoria Bodrovaat FRAPA T: +31 (0)6-46070599 E: [email protected] For more information on Discop, please contact: T: + 1 (323) 782 13 00 E: [email protected] www.discopistanbul.com Now in its second year, The Format Day — one of DISCOP’s major anchor events —will include three conference sessions on IP protection, and the trends, challenges and opportunities to be foundin the buoyant CEE and MENA markets. It will also feature The Formats Showcase, during which new formats across all genres will be presented to a panel of top industry executives. FRAPA will be closely involved in the organisation of The Format Day with DISCOP Istanbul organiser Basic Lead, helping to set the agenda in terms of both content and speakers. Missing Link Media’s Jan Salling, who was appointed FRAPA co-chair with The Gurin Company’s Phil Gurin last March, will moderate the first conference of the day: Why Protecting Your IP Will Build Your Business. The session will examine the creative, copyright and protection issues in a global formats industry changing at warp speed. Following their appointment last year, Salling and Gurin pledged to strengthen FRAPA’s structure, effectiveness and impact, while uniting the format industry under a common code of conduct. DISCOP Istanbul, which is expected to attract 1,500-plus high-ranking delegates from some 85 countries this March, is seen as the perfect platform from which to spread this message of creative unity, commercial freedom and tolerance. Jan Salling said: “This co-operation with DISCOP is a significant step in our mission to put FRAPA at the heart of our community. To be an effective player, we need to be where the formats industry is — and in early March, that place is Istanbul.” Phil Gurin added: “FRAPA has a clear global mission to support the format industry and speak out on behalf of creatives everywhere. Attending DISCOP demonstrates our continued effort to advocate for industry best practices. In supporting the creative community in Istanbul, we hope to make a clear stand for fairness to all through international tolerance and co-operation.” Patrick Zuchowicki, CEO of Basic Lead, said: “We are happy to renew our partnership with FRAPA and provide DISCOP Istanbul’s independent producer community with a strong and relevant conference and pitching programme centered on the continuing popularity of formats.” ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 33 GENRE TRENDS \| BACK TO CLASSICS BACK TO CLASSICS Got tired from ultra modern series? Not inspired by hi-tech dramas with weak plots? Never mind, because it’s never too late to turn back to classics! Or do you still have some doubts? Don’t worry, we’ve already prepared our series top-chart for you! But before we go straight to it, one ought to imagine all advantages of watching and reading classics: 1) you can improve your vocabulary (classic masterpieces have a lot of borrowings from Greek and Latin and exquisite words); 2) it improves your social skills (the study claims that classics, in contrast with commercial fiction and even non-fiction, lead to better social perception and emotional intelligence); 3) it helps to understand history and culture in context (it will enrich you and certainly boost your IQ)… We could continue this row of arguments, which everybody certainly admits, but what do we have in reality? TOP 10 of classic masterpieces, which, according to the survey, people claim to have read, but haven’t: In reality, in order to look more intelligent, approximately 60% of people tend to lie about reading classic novels! Special research team worked with 2,000 members of the British public to show the tactics people use to seem smarter. The most popular trick is to pretend you are a fan of classic novels. For this purpose, 42% of people use film and TV adaptations, or summaries from the Internet to feign knowledge of the novels. Remarkably, 50% of adults admit they do nothing but simply display books on their shelves without even trying to read them. The most honest members of the surveyed group, 3% even admit they hide yellow press and tabloids they are reading inside classic books, which perhaps should make them look more intelligent! 26% Lord of the Rings J R R Tolkein 19% War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 10% To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee 18% Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 8% Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 15% Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger 5% Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 12% A Passage to India by E M Forster 3% The Bible and Homer’s Odyssey 34 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 BACK TO CLASSICS \| GENRE TRENDS We decided to make a top ten of series based upon those good old-fashioned stories. Sure, there are more at the moment, but we’ve made a random selection according to the average rating information. Welcome to our hit-parade of classics’ adaptations! BATES MOTEL Our candidate #10, Bates Motel is an American drama-thriller TV series. The series is actually a prequel to famous film Psycho by a modern but already classic artist Alfred Hitchcock. Bates Motel depicts the lives of Norman Bates and his mother Norma prior to the events portrayed in the film, albeit in a different fictional town. The series lead actors, Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore, have received particular praise for their performances throughout the series. Farmiga even won Saturn Awards for best actress on TV. Critics’ reviews were quite favorable, though ratings, which are often inexplicable, showed certainly average results, so the series hardly gathered 3 mln viewers. Info: Started in 2013; 2 seasons (20 episodes x 42 minutes) ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND Miss some weird and funny characters? High time to remember Alice and The White Rabbit! Here is an American fantasy-drama series that aired on ABC from October 10, 2013, to April 3, 2014. The series is based on the Lewis Carroll novels Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, but with a different twist. So, Alice returned to Victorian London where she was immediately taken for a madwoman and sent for treatment. Reviews for the show were quite favorable, but if the first episode gathered 5.82 mln viewers and had rating 1.7% (18-49), all episodes after the 4th one hardly gathered 3.7 mln and 0.9%, so you get to choose! Info: 2013–2014; 1 season (13 episodes x 60 minutes) ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 35 GENRE TRENDS \| BACK TO CLASSICS DRACULA Do you like to drink deeply red tomato juice thinking you are vampire? Then, especially for you, there is another take on the immortal story by Bram Stoker. At the end of the 19th century Count Dracula arrives in Victorian London, where he pretends to be an American businessman, standing up for progress. He seems to be interested in experiments with electricity, but also seeks revenge against those who betrayed him centuries earlier. Having started to implement his plan, Dracula suddenly falls hopelessly in love with the woman he takes as the reincarnation of his dead wife. So here we have classic Dracula with the star of The Tudors Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Thomas Kretschmann of Stalingrad. Everything else is exactly as it should be: blood, sex, and Victorian Gothic. The series was nominated for People’s Choice Awards. Although it had very modest rating, 1.8%, which means only about 5 mln (18-49) watched it. Therefore, NBC has already decided to cancel it. Info: 2013–2014; 1 season (10 episodes x 42 minutes) GRIMM That’s a good choice to watch, though a somewhat scary fairy-tale for the night. It is an American police fantasy television drama series. It started on NBC in 2011. The show has been described as “a cop drama with a twist... a dark and fantastical project about a world in which characters inspired by Brother Grimms’ Fairy Tales exist,” although the stories and characters inspiring the show are also drawn from other sources. The plot: homicide investigator Nick Burkhardt of the Portland Police Department finds out he descends from a line of guardians known as Grimms, charged with keeping balance between humanity and the mythological creatures of a world called Wesen, a German word for “being” or “creature.” Throughout the series, he must battle again and again with numerous and dangerous creatures, with help from his reformed Wesen friend Monroe, and his partner Detective Hank Griffin. During the 1st season the series gathered about 6.4 mln U.S. viewers, which is really not bad! According to the results of Nielsen Media Research, with the beginning of the 2nd season Grimm has increased its adult audience 18-49 by 1.14 points (from 1.58 to 2.72). Info: Started in 2011; 4 seasons (71 episodes x 43 minutes) 36 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 BACK TO CLASSICS \| GENRE TRENDS A YOUNG DOCTOR’S NOTEBOOK If you’re fed up with House, M.D. – try A Young Doctor’s Notebook. It’s English mini-series based on the eponymous cycle of short stories by Mikhail Bulgakov about a young doctor who finds himself in a remote village of Smolensk region on the eve of the October Revolution in 1917. The show tells the story of doctor’s struggle not only against numerous diseases, but also against his morphine addiction. In the early 20th century, a young doctor arrives in a small Russian village around the time of the Russian Revolution to work in the local hospital. In the lead roles are: Daniel Radcliffe (by the way, a real admirer of Bulgakov) and Jon Hamm from Mad Men. The series was nominated in Shanghai TV Fest and Magnolia Award for Best Television Film or Miniseries. Unlike American TV channels, Sky, where this series was shown, does not publish exact ratings, but critics valued it high, so let’s put it in the middle of our top. Info: 2012; 2 seasons (8 episodes x 25 minutes) WAR & PEACE It is a six-part adaptation of the work by Leo Tolstoy, in which the audience’s attention will focus on human relationships and the stories of four aristocratic families. The story begins during the reign of Alexander I. In the spotlight there is a love triangle between Natasha Rostova, Pierre Bezukhov, and Andrei Bolkonsky. The series was filmed in Russia, Lithuania, and Latvia. It has already received very positive reviews. A world-premiere press screening of the first episode was held in London on December 14, 2015. The six-part series proved a hit with critics and was enthusiastically received by viewers, with an average of 7.2 mln watching each episode despite claims of historical inaccuracy. And another word has already spread: scriptwriter Andrew Davies would like to return to the BBC1 Sunday evening slot with another epic and classic – a music-free adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables! Info: 2016; 1 season (6 episodes x 60-82 minutes) ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 37 GENRE TRENDS \| BACK TO CLASSICS SLEEPY HOLLOW In the CIS countries it was a very widespread situation at schools, when a pupil forgot something and a severe teacher asked then about the head of the pupil, whether it was forgotten too. Well, after such questions in the childhood, it’s clear now why the stories about the Headless Horseman are so popular across the population! Now, let’s look at the Sleepy Hollow: after dying in the War of Independence, Ichabod Crane is resurrected and turns up at the present time. He is going to team up with detective Abby Mills in order to fight the Headless Horseman, who is terrorizing a small town. Only the key characters follow the original Washington Irving’s story in the series. Here you can find the very Gothic fantasy, where the wildest mysticism is entwined with modernity and the plot is absolutely deviating from the literary source. But this is the rare case when all these absurdities engage and enchant. The first episodes gathered up to 10 mln viewers with 3.5 rating – and that’s really good! During 2014 and 2015 Sleepy Hollow had numerous nominations for different Awards. Info: 2013; 2 seasons (31 episodes x 60 minutes) ELEMENTARY Another noteworthy attempt to move the heroes of Conan Doyle to the present world, this time in New York. Consultant of Scotland Yard, neurotic Holmes, discharged from the clinic where he was treated for drug addiction, settles in Brooklyn. His companion-nurse turned to be Dr. Watson, the surgeon who has lost the license due to medical error. They eventually begin to work together on the cases, and she becomes Holmes’ apprentice. This series also shows Holmes’ basic conflict with his immortal nemesis Moriarty (Natalie Dormer). Before the series started, it was awaited with some criticism due to the BBC’s modern adaptation Sherlock. Nevertheless, after the premiere, it was picked up for a full season and later an extra two episodes. The second season was even partly filmed in London. The series has since been well received by critics, who have praised the performances, writing, and novel approach to the source material. Debut season showed really good figures – 13.4 mln viewers! Next seasons gathered less audience, but the series is still strong. Info: 2012; 3 seasons (49 episodes x 43 minutes) 38 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 BACK TO CLASSICS \| GENRE TRENDS SHERLOCK Oh, that Sherlock, incredibly popular all over the world. This variation of Sherlock Holmes is played by Cumberbatch – a nervous, but extremely sharp freak with iPhone, who teams up with Doctor Watson, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, and pulls him into the world of private investigation. At the moment ten episodes have been produced, with three-part series airing in 2010, 2012, and 2014, and a special episode airing on January 1, 2016 (Victorian era special issue). It should be noted that Sherlock has been nominated for numerous awards including: BAFTAs, Emmys, and a Golden Globe, winning several awards across a variety of categories. Info: Started in 2010; 4 seasons (10 episodes x 90 minutes) THE BIBLE Info: 2013; 1 season (10 episodes x 44 minutes) Of course some Sherlock fans can be very disappointed with our decision to put The Bible at the first place. But after all, Bible itself is a keystone and ground basis for almost every literary work. So, you’re welcome to watch an adaptation of the best-known stories of the Holy Writ, from the Flood to the resurrection of Jesus, retold in the popular language of brutal historical fantasy. It is considered a religious hit from The History Channel, which, of course, cleverly mimics the severe style of Game of Thrones and Spartacus, but in fact remains a reverent illustration of the Bible. The series has been so popular that some parts of the telecast, including unaired footage, have been turned into a feature film about the life of Jesus titled Son of God. The series received three Emmy Award nominations for best miniseries, sound editing, and sound mixing on July 18, 2013. Besides, it won the honor of Home Media Magazine’s Best Miniseries or TV Movie on Disc for the year. Critics’ reviews were totally mixed: from negative to positive (such screen adaptations of strong masterpieces always cause controversy), but the ratings were high. The miniseries gathered something about 13 mln viewers! The second episode showed some ratings slippage, but still gathered 10.8 mln viewers, which means the top in all television for the 8–10 p.m. time period. The third installment on March 17, 2013, was once again the No.1 show on all of Sunday night television with 10.9 mln total viewers. In addition, the series gathered 4.2 mln adults 25–54 and 3.5 mln adults 18–49. In total, with subsequent airings, The Bible has shown the result of more than 100 mln cumulative views! ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 39 100x3 min, 2015, 4K 40 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 41 OFF-CAMERA \| HOW TV SERIES DICTATE FASHION HOW TV SERIES DICTATE FASHION When any new idea of a film or a series starts to bud, every producer is already trying to determine the key to its inevitable success. Everybody bets on one’s own specific feature that will take the audience by storm. Some people are open to experiments and others prefer to rely on experience. Now we’d like to draw your attention to a tendency that is becoming more and more popular year by year. Due to this tendency, movies win Oscars and famous fashion designersget inspiration for new collections. It gave birth to a completely new caste of modern style experts. Nowadays housekeepers are the best critics and stylists. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” “Boardwalk Empire” In reality, in order to look more intelligent, approximately 60% of people tend to lie about reading classic novels! Special research team worked with 2,000 members of the British public to show the tactics people use to seem smarter. The most popular trick is to pretend you are a fan of classic novels. For this purpose, 42% of people use film and TV adaptations, or summaries from the Internet to feign knowledge of the novels. Remarkably, 50% of adults admit they do nothing but simply display books on their shelves without even trying to read them. The most honest members of the surveyed group, 3% even admit they hide yellow press and tabloids they are reading inside classic books, which perhaps should make them look more intelligent! As you may have already guessed, we’re talking about fashion. Yes, about the fashion that contemporary movies and series are dictating. Sometimes images turn out to be the factor of success every creator is dreaming about. The costumes come into particular prominence and eclipse everything, from the idea to actors’performance. In these days, it is especially important, because there is so much information around that our brains overload. A picture is the one and only thing that still can attract people and get their attention. The history of high fashion in movies dates back to the fiftieths. Everything started when legendary Givenchy won his Oscar for Best Costume Designin Sabrina. Don’t forget the ingenious Breakfast at Tiffany’s – that’s where the vogue of little black dresses began. Thanks to those movies, unsurpassed Audrey Hepburn became a fashion icon. There were so many experiments since that time (from bandages on naked bodies to extravagant and elegant costumes of the ladies of London). But in this article we’d like to pay tribute to the most bright, bold, stylish, and memorable images that, without a twinge of conscience, can say that they are making history. All the male members of the top-management chose Lucky Luciano from famous series Boardwalk Empire as their style icon. Men 42 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 HOW TV SERIES DICTATE FASHION \| OFF-CAMERA “The Grand Budapest Hotel” “Gossip Girl” attempted not only to imitate the business acumen of this character, but also to try on his fashion. Even nowadays not every man looks so stylish. Of course, nobody is wearing boutonnieres, but chequered suits are still in fashion. What about women? Of course, it would be a mistake not to mention the iconic Sex and the City. Costume designer Patricia Field created bright, unusual, and memorable costumes for the main character Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker). All Carrie’s besties looks were also created by Patricia. Sex and the City had enormous influence on the world fashion. The show has created so many trends over the years. Among them are stilettos, great coats, flower pins, initial necklaces. And it is not the whole list! If you look at the latest Oscar winners, at first you’ll think that their fashion varies greatly from the oldest one. But if you pay more attention, you’ll see that it is still the good old classics. Yes, one would hardly wear the purple livery of the Concierge in The Grand Budapest Hotel, but classical costumes in the same tone are there in many men’s collections in 2016. A couple of years ago TV series Gossip Girl became the Bible of style for all schoolgirls and students. Banal story line wasoutshined bystylish and bright looks. All the girls dreamt about being like Blair or Serena. Each girl tried to pile up money to buy such beautiful dress or at least make it herself. Lead fashion houses (such as Valentino), in their turn, at once presented different variations based on school uniforms like in Gossip Girlin their collections. The actors of the series were the people who promoted them. While watching Game of Thrones or The Hunger Games you immediately imagine all these dresses on a red carpet. This is true, because Hollywood A-list stars and their designers use these films as a plentiful source of inspiration. Ordinary girls are waiting for a chance to wear similar dresses and to wow others completely. These ways of fashion are still popular. It won’t be a surprise if The Hunger Games wins the Oscar this time. If you’re creating a look, you should pay attention to shoes. Those ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 43 OFF-CAMERA \| HOW TV SERIES DICTATE FASHION “Sex and the City” “War and Peace” accessories are very important for every person (from fairy-tale princesses to modern business-ladies). Carrie from Sex and the City and her magnificent Manolo Blanics is one of the brightest examples. It is impossible to imagine Carrie without her stilettos. By the way, stilettos became very popular thanks to this character. What about TV industry? Dorothy’s famous ruby shoes became the most expensive pair ever. The copy of them cost 1.6 million Euro. We think it could be a rather good way to cover production costs by launching batch production. With no help of shoes, British women were caught by the chaste style of The Downtown Abbey, which is full of aristocratic elegancy. This series became for them a real style adviser. By the way, it is necessary to note that the fashion of the last decades or even centuries is now coming back! These style trends are obvious in new BBC screening of War and Peace. The most gorgeous clothes completed with elegant jewelry keep viewers glued to their screens. As Edward said,“Jewelry is still all about impact and making a statement. For me in War and Peace it’s a great way to accessorize the very simple gowns that we wanted to create - free from too much surface decoration and unnecessary ornamentation.” Edward K Gibbon, the costume designer, combined traditional looks of that time with modern and fresh fashion tendencies. All the looks that were created are incredible. It wouldn’t be a surprise if soon we see women in such dresses on the streets of our cities. Everybody knows that housewives are the main audience of TV series. You should notice that housewives constitute a third part of the whole world population! An incredible number of people! They became modern experts in world fashion, which they study by the movies. It is very convenient to dictate the high fashion through TV series. Also it comes withgreat responsibility, without a doubt. It is one of the best marketing tools to popularize your product (both for male and female audience). If you decide to bet on costumes, you must find a very talented fashion designer to become you co-producer. It can be a smart decision, beneficial for both sides. It is also very important to create costumes thatwould suit ordinary women. The main thing in the process is not to forget about acting and producing. It would be even better if you create a special blog with all the details about your character’s look. You can tell how a woman could make the same dress by herself or, at least, where she could buy something similar. Believe us: it would only double your audience. Because every woman wants to be beautiful and attractive, especially if she associates herself with any series character. We are greatly surprised that none of the world productions have created such a blog. It is necessary to use all ways to recover production costs. 44 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 This article won`t be complete without the expert opinion. Our expert is one of the most famous and successful Ukrainian designers Andre Tan. He invented the Smart Couture style. Now eminent designer Andre Tan likes to say that it was hard work to become successful. The ability to dream helped him succeed. What could he say about fashion in TV series and films? “Our expert is one of the most famous and successful Ukrainian designers Andre Tan. He invented the Smart Couture style”. “Rzhevsky against Napoleon” “If you want your looks being copied, they have to be extra-extraordinary and mixed with street fashion that’s when it gets mad resonance with the public. Now it is a separate area, If you`d like your show to be remembered, it should contains a symbiosis of extraordinary crazy looks with clothes that is ready-towear.”. About work on TV series or movies. Now I am focused on creation of my new collections. It is a very special feeling when I see the clothes I made on real people when they walk down the street, ride the subway, the cars or come to the celebration. But I am experienced in working with film production. The movie “Rzhevsky against Napoleon” is one of the most interesting examples. It is a comedy, some kind of historical fiction. I think, the result surpassed all hopes. This film is very cheeky, funny and stylish. That`s what we underlined with costume design. About modern stylish TV series. Now “Scream Queens” is the most discussed and popular TV series. Of course, it intended on western target audience. However, I am quite sure that “Scream Queens” has very good, talented and professional stylists. I keep watching this series only because of fashionable looks of main characters. Even despite the fact that they have bloody hands, they always wear pink fur coats and mint green. (Andre laughs) About modellers who succeeded in film costume design It seems to me that Jean-Paul Gaultier most clearly displayed his own style in the movie “5th Element”. These flight attendants with a coneshaped bodice made to excite the imagination of so many men. And indeed, Jean-Paul worked on every look by his own, so you could feel his irony in every detail. The second film, which impressed me a lot is a film “Dolls”. This film I watched only because of costumes made by Yohji Yamamoto. Beautiful clothes in the divine entourage - this game is definitely worth the candle. About ways to create the look everybody would like to copy If you want your looks being copied, they have to be extra-extraordinary and mixed with street fashion - that’s when it gets mad resonance with the public. Proof: Dolce & Gabbana and Yves Saint Laurent have been always inspired by streetstyle. Now it is a separate area, If you`d like your show to be remembered, it should contains a symbiosis of extraordinary crazy looks with clothes that is ready-to-wear. ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 \| SEASON SCREEN TV REVIEW \| 45 REPORT \| ATF SINGAPORE 2015	i don't know
"In Turkish language/custom ""teşekkür ederim"" and ""sağ olun"" mean?"	Turkish thank you BING: Turkish - How to say Thank you! Teşekkür ederim Thank you this is used in all normal situations. The reply for teşekkür ederim is Bir şey değil or Rica ederim You are welcome. sağol [familiar] or sağolun [polite] [Lit: Health to you.] equates to thank you but is more sincere than Teşekkür ederim. sen de sağ ol is the response for sağ ol and siz de sağ olun is the reponse to sağ olun. The difference in usage of teşekkür ederim thank you and the more sincere sağ olun stay healthy. sağ ol [familiar] sağ olun [polite and/or singular] sağ olunuz [public and/or plural] A simple teşekkürler also means a very informal thanks and is used in shops and for small duties performed. What are the services being rendered to us? Use sağ olun be healthy, be strong is used as thank you for a service which: A - Did necessarily needed to be performed. B - For someone who has gone out of his way to help you. Many tourists use sağ olun wrongly instead of using teşekkür ederim. They copy the boy waiter's way of thanking as the waiters often use sağ olun for misguided effect. The rule is: if in doubt then use teşekkür ederim. Turkish "thank you" Scenarios. The waiter puts a nice meal in front of you. Your thank you is teşekkür ederim it is his job. The waiter puts a bottle of wine in front of you. Your thank you is teşekkür ederim it is his job. Then the waiter uncorks the bottle of wine and pours it in your glass. Your thank you is sağ olun he need not have performed this service. You ask someone the time. He looks at his watch and says "Half past three". Your answer is sağ olun [You have caused him to perform a service to you.] You drop your handkerchief a stranger picks it up and hand it to you. Your answer is sağ olun [He need not have done it.] Turkish answer to "thank you" The answer to teşekkür ederim is bir şey değil It is nothing or rica ederim I request! [same as "bitte schön" in German] Also used is ne demek? what does it mean?. This expression ne demek? sounds quite comical in English. But it actually means something like: It doesn't matter at all. The answer Rica ederim is the politest one. The recipient of your gratitude will often answer your sen sağol with the rejoinder sen de sağol health to you too. Other forms are sen de sağ ol or quite short siz de or sen de you too Turkish Be happy! Gözün aydın [familiar/singular] or Gözünüz aydın [polite/plural] [LIT: "May your eyes shine."] When something which the speaker longing for comes true, he tells the others about it. Their response is Gözün(üz) aydın Your eyes shine to the speaker. The expression indicates that the others share the speaker's happiness, and that they are also happy about it. The reply for Gözünüz aydın is Teşekkür ederim Hayırlı olsun Let it be with goodness Used when someone opens a shop or starts a new business, others say Hayırlı olsun to him. The expression indicates the speaker's wish that the new business will bring him prosperity, and it will be profitable. The reply for Hayırlı olsun is Teşekkür ederim Güle güle kullan/kullanın Use it with a smile. When someone buys a thing, such as a new clothes, shoes or a car his friends say Güle güle kullan / kullanın This indicates the speaker's wish that use it with joy. Sometimes Hayırlı olsun is said in such condition. The reply for both expressions is Teşekkür ederim. A caveat "take care..." Many people when first learning Turkish are tempted to use the present continuous tense: teşekkür ediyorum. This form sounds quite comical to the Turkish ear and can also be construed as being sarcastic. Always use the present simple tense teşekkür ederim and you will not go wrong or be misunderstood. Turkish Daily Talk İyi akşamlar Good evening İyi geceler Good night In English the expressions Good evening and Good night are singular. In Turkish they are plural [as is the Spanish Buenos Dias.] Turkish Hello Merhaba Hello!, Hi! Merhaba corresponds to Hello!, Hi! in English. Its usage is identical in either language. The reply for Merhaba is Merhaba Merhaba is not used for Hello! on the telephone. This type of Hello is Alo Selam Hello!, Hi! Selam is more informal than Merhaba Selamünaleyküm: literally means May God's peace be upon you and is used by Muslims as a greeting. Aleykümselam is said in reply to the greeting Selamünaleyküm. Hoş geldin (familiar/singular) or Hoş geldiniz (polite/plural) corresponds Welcome! in English. The reply for Hoş geldin(iz) is Hoş bulduk. We found it well. Turkish Goodbye. Hoşça kal (familiar) or Hoşça kalın (polite) corresponds to Stay well. /Keep happy.. in English. Güle güle Goodbye [lit: Smiling, smiling.] The person staying behind, says Güle güle The person is leaving leaves, says Allahaısmarladık or Hoşca kalın . Güle güle corresponds Go well. in English. Allahaısmarladık Goodbye [Lit: I leave you to God's care.]. Either Allahaısmarladık or Hoşca kalın is correct in informal situations. But in formal situations Hoşca kalın is better. İyi günler Good day, [or: Have a good day.] . Its usage is almost the same as in English. It is also the formal of Allahaısmarladık and Hoşca kalın . The reply for İyi günler is either İyi günler or Size de To you also. Görüşürüz See you later. [Lit: We will see each other.] The reply for Görüşürüz is Görüşürüz. Allah rahatlık versin This is an informal expression for Good night. [Lit: May God give you peace and comfort.] This is generally used by the members of the family at home or friends before going to bed. The reply for Allah rahatlık versin is Sana da (sing.), Size de (pl.) And to you also. Turkish Have a good jouney! İyi yolculuklar / Hayırlı yolculuklar Have a nice journey. İyi tatiller Have a nice holiday İyi şanslar Good Luck İyi eğlenceler Have a nice time İyi seneler / yıllar, Mutlu seneler / yıllar Happy new year Doğum / Yaş günün kutlu olsun! Happy birthday! Afiyet olsun Bon appetite, Enjoy your meal. Turkish Well done! and Take it easy! Kolay gelsin May it come easy. Used when the speaker sees someone working, busy with something. It can be a physical, or mental work. It indicates the speaker's wish that whatever that person is doing at the moment, may be easy for him. The reply for Kolay gelsin is Teşekkür ederim Aferin Bravo, Well done! Very often used in competition and especially to congratulate young children. Turkish Sorry about it! Afedersin (singular/familiar) or Afedersiniz (plural/polite): Excuse me./Pardon me. Affedersin(iz)! Merkeze nasıl gidebilirim? Excuse me! How can I get to the city centre? Özür dilerim: I am sorry. Sometimes Affedersin(iz) is used instead of Özür dilerim. However Özür dilerim is more formal, it sounds better in formal situations. Bir şey değil, Rica ederim: You are welcome Used in reply to Teşekkür ederim Ways of saying "Yes" in Turkish Evet : Yes in the sense of answering yes / no questions in English. Tamam : Yes in the sense of O.K Peki : Yes in the sense of All right, O.K, If that's so then. Oldu : Yes in the sense of That's good, agreed. Evet, efendim : Yes, sir or madam. Var : Yes there is. [Answers questions which contain var mı.? Is there.?] Ways of saying "No" in Turkish Hayır : No in the sense of answering yes / no questions in English. Olmaz : No in the sense of That's not possible, I don't agree with you, That won't do Yok, Yo : informal and gentle saying of No. [Also answers questions containing Yok mu? Isn't there?] Hayır efendim : No sir. / No madam. "Efendim" must be used in this case else this answer could be construed as being curt. Turkish Words of Condolence What a pity! Geçmiş olsun May it pass away This expression is used when a friend is ill or has had an accident, like Get well soon. in English The reply for Geçmiş olsun is Teşekkür ederim. Başın sağ olsun (singular/familiar) or Başınız sağ olsun (plural/polite) : Health to your head. This equates to My condolences to you., So sorry about it. in English. The reply for Başınız sağ olsun is Siz de sağ olun, Dostlar sağolsun Çok yazık! / Ne yazık! : What a pity! Çok üzüldüm : I'm sorry to hear that.	Thank You
Equating broadly to Asia Minor/Turkey what is the old term for this region, from ancient Greek meaning 'sunrise' and 'east'?	Tashakor/teşekkür \| WordReference Forums Dictionary and thread title search: WordReference Forums In spitting distance of the Medici aqueduct usa english I've learned over the past few years that some form of the word "tashakor/tesekkur" is used in several lanuages, including Iranian Farsi, Afghan Farsi and Turkish. So it would seem to be a common word shared by many people from different - if mutually influenced - languages. Is some form of that used in your language(s)? Is it an old-fashioned or out-of-use word, or a common everyday one? Who can lay claim to its origins? For any forthcoming responses, teshakor, tesekkürler... English - England It means "thanks". I mentioned the word to a Jordanian, who implied that a variant of it exists in Arabic, if I remember rightly, but I stand to be corrected by native speakers of that language. In spitting distance of the Medici aqueduct usa english From what I found on the web, tashakor is of Arabic origin... But I'm not sure. It does seem to be used in many languages. ANy info would be welcome as I'd like to find out just how widespread the use of the word is... I mean, who will understand me if I use it on them? Derby (central England) English - England "Tesekkur ederim" (= I thank you) is still widely used in Turkey despite competition from the supposedly more Turkic "sag olum". Turkish sound shift said: ↑ "Teşekkür ederim" (= I thank you) is still widely used in Turkey despite competition from the supposedly more Turkic "sağ olun". Click to expand... A Turkish keyboard help here. In fact, it's slightly more common to hear "sağ ol," or a little bit formally "sağ olun," in everyday life. I, personally, dislike "teşekkür," but I sometimes use, especially when my interlocutor is a non-native. They are usually used to teşekkür. Indeed, "sağ ol" has a Turkic origin. "Sağ," contains g-breve, which we never see in loanwords and it looks perfectly Turkic to me. Olmak, of course is another Turkic word. Its earliest form should be bolmak, I remember reading this form on a very old Turkic saga. In spitting distance of the Medici aqueduct usa english I had no idea about "sağ ol", I have always used teşekkür ederim and teşekkürler, which is somewhat long to say, sağ ol does sound more casual. I am surprised to learn that teşekkür is not used so much. But I can see where it doesn't look very Turkish - it has two k's in row, for Pete's sake! Chicago, IL US English/Palestinian Arabic bilingual The Arabic word for "thanks" is "shukran" which obviously shares its roots with the Turkish word. The root "sh-k-r" means "to thank" so we have mutashakkir/mutashakkira: thankful shukran: thanks (inflected) shaakir/shaakira: he/she who is thankful (thanker) I take it most Arabs would understand "teşekkür" if it's pronounced slowly and clearly, by analogy with our word. Turkish badgrammar said: ↑ I had no idea about "sağ ol", I have always used teşekkür ederim and teşekkürler, which is somewhat long to say, sağ ol does sound more casual. I am surprised to learn that teşekkür is not used so much. But I can see where it doesn't look very Turkish - it has two k's in row, for Pete's sake! Click to expand... No, teşekkür is still used much, especially on a notice, I might say. However, in daily life, if somebody does something that deserves a "thank" I'd say "sağ ol." And it's what I migh well expect to hear as well. It literally means "be right," in other words "don't die." Of course, nobody thinks of its meaning when they hear it. They will know that you appreciate them. If you say "çok sağ ol," it will sound much better. It's always the best way to thank in Turkish. It will make you sound like a native. It's short enough to be Turkish. You see, all Turkic-originated words are usually monosyllabic: gel, git, yap, sus, vur, öl, ol, bul, bak, at etc.i P.S: "Mersi", which you know what it is, is also used in very polite situations. Turkish In addition to Turk, Although I know what müteşekkir means, I've personally never heard using in my life. TDK suggests it's archaic, out-of-use. Şükür is generally used in religious context, as in "Tanrı'ya/Allah'a şükür!" (Thank god!) Otherwise, it's almost never used to thank somebody in Turkish. Never do I hear şükran meaning thanks, TDK suggests it's archaic as well. Şakir is not a word used in Turkish, rather an old male name. These days, I don't think anyone dares to give this name to their baby anymore, because it rings funny thing in the mind, probably because of a movie character called Şakir. Turkiye Turkish I personally use "sağol" to thank somebody that I know before. But If I want to thank somebody ,I don t know well, I definently use "Teşekkür Ederim" It sounds more polite. But As Chazzwozzer said before, Using "sağol" in daily life, will make you sound like a native. "Müteşekkir olmak" means "being greatful to somebody"Altough It is not widely used, It can be come across.It show your gratitude,For instance If Somebody saves your life, It can be little bit impolite to say just"Teşekkürler" or "Sağol",You had better say "Size müteşekkirim,Benim hayatımı kurtardınız Ömrümün geri kalanında sizin hizmetinizde olacağım." means"I am greatful to you, You saved my life,Thats Why I will serve you forever" Şakir; A male name that I will not give it to my baby By the way, You all learned what to say When you want to thank somebody,But If theh thank you Here We are When sombody thank you with using "sağol" You can easily reply with "sağol" like "Sen de sağol" means "Ok you too".Or You may want to answer in a more polite way ,with saying "Rica ederim" means "You are welcome" Turkish aslan said: ↑ "Müteşekkir olmak" means "being greatful to somebody"Altough It is not widely used, It can be come across.It show your gratitude,For instance If Somebody saves your life, It can be little bit impolite to say just"Teşekkürler" or "Sağol",You had better say "Size müteşekkirim,Benim hayatımı kurtardınız Ömrümün geri kalanında sizin hizmetinizde olacağım." means"I am greatful to you, You saved my life,Thats Why I will serve you forever" Click to expand... Wouldn't "minnettar olmak," a Perso-Arabic word, sound much better in this context? I mean, I doubt if one whom I saved his life tells me that he's müteşekkir, I migh expect to hear he's minnettar.(=grateful) What do you think? aslan said: ↑ When sombody thank you with using "sağol" You can easily reply with "sağol" like "Sen de sağol" means "Ok you too".Or You may want to answer in a more polite way ,with saying "Rica ederim" means "You are welcome" Click to expand... Bir şey değil (not at all) or önemli değil (not important) are very widely used as well. Turkiye Turkish Chazzwozzer said: ↑ Wouldn't "minnettar olmak," a Perso-Arabic word, sound much better in this context? I mean, I doubt if one whom I saved his life tells me that he's müteşekkir, I migh expect to hear he's minnettar.(=grateful) What do you think? Bir şey değil (not at all) or önemli değil (not important) are very widely used as well. Click to expand... Yes, You changed my mind by showing "Minnettar olmak" which sounds better. "Müteşekkir olmak" sounds like a word coming from old Turkish films ( 1960,1970). (It is maybe that much polite, If You even saved my life I would not say it ) US English/Palestinian Arabic bilingual Thomas F. O'Gara said: ↑ To amplify on what Elroy said, I believe that the original is supposed to be the verbal noun for form 5 of the Arabic root shakara. It would imply "showing thanks", and it would be pronounced tashakkir (feel free to correct me, Elroy). Click to expand... It would be "tashakkur" but you are otherwise right. I just didn't want to complicate matters by listing words that we don't really use. "Tashakkur" is an intense "shukr" - something like "(an) elaborate or repeated (display of)thanks." As I said, this is not used too frequently and would be substituted for by "shukran jaziilan." I should have probably mentioned it, though, since it's the closest structurally to the Turkish word. Turkish Comma Splice! said: ↑ In a book that I read, "The Kite Runner", by Khaled Hosseini, about Afghanistan before it went bad, to present day, used "Tashakor" often, meaning thank you. As far as I understood, the language used was Farsi. Farsi is from Iranian languages and is spoken spoken in Iran (Persia), Afghanistan and Tajikistan and by minorities in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Southern Russia, and neighboring countries. Its derived from Persia.... does anyone else know more about this? I'd love to hear it from a native speaker of any of those languages. Click to expand... Did not you read the older posts? yes, it means "thank you" but in turkish , it is "teşekkürler" ( the plural form) not "teşekkür" (the singular form) because "teşekkür" simply means "thank" whereas teşekkürler is "thanks" United States, English, Persian Comma Splice! said: ↑ In a book that I read, "The Kite Runner", by Khaled Hosseini, about Afghanistan before it went bad, to present day, used "Tashakor" often, meaning thank you. As far as I understood, the language used was Farsi. Farsi is from Iranian languages and is spoken spoken in Iran (Persia), Afghanistan and Tajikistan and by minorities in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Southern Russia, and neighboring countries. Its derived from Persia.... does anyone else know more about this? I'd love to hear it from a native speaker of any of those languages. Click to expand... Persian doesn't use "tashakkor", per se, as a word for "thank you". We use "tashakkor" to mean "the act of thanking". Ways that Persian-speakers say "thank you" are as follows (by the way, I'm an Iranian Persian speaker, so these are the words that the speakers of the Tehrani dialect use): Mersi (from French's "merci") Kheyli mamnun ("kheyli" means "very", mamnun means "thankful". I'm pretty sure that "mamnun" was gotten from Arabic.) Mamnunam (I'm thankful.) moteshakkeram ("I'm thankful." From the Arabic root word "shokr", which is ALSO used, though rarely, to mean "thank you", though I'm fairly certain it means "thankfulness") Normally pronounced "mochakkeram" in colloquial Persian. Sepâsgozâram (Pure Persian word for "I'm thankful.") or, more commonly, "Az shomâ sepâsgozâram." ("I'm thankful of you.") The apparently-Persian word sepâs is apparently equal to the Arabic word "shokr". I've heard that our Tajik brothers and sisters use "sepâs" in their thank-yous, but I'm not absolutely certain, yet. Türkçe, Türkiye Abbassupreme said: ↑ Kheyli mamnun ("kheyli" means "very", mamnun means "thankful". I'm pretty sure that "mamnun" was gotten from Arabic.) Mamnunam (I'm thankful.) moteshakkeram ("I'm thankful." From the Arabic root word "shokr", which is ALSO used, though rarely, to mean "thank you", though I'm fairly certain it means "thankfulness") Normally pronounced "mochakkeram" in colloquial Persian. Click to expand... Kheyli mamnun probably means hayli memnun (rather content) in Turkish. Moteshakkeram is also found in Turkish as müteşekkirim. By the way, i have noticed that the -am suffix at the end of the words. What do they signify? I am asking because -im suffix is the suffix of first person singular in verb conjugations and possesive adjectives and pronouns. Honour said: ↑ Kheyli mamnun probably means hayli memnun (rather content) in Turkish. Moteshakkeram is also found in Turkish as müteşekkirim. By the way, i have noticed that the -am suffix at the end of the words. What do they signify? I am asking because -im suffix is the suffix of first person singular in verb conjugations and possesive adjectives and pronouns. Click to expand... It's an abbreviation of "moteshakker hastam/mamnum hastam". Normally, -am signifies possession of something. Exempli gratia: Ketaabam= My book. In THIS case, the -am works very much like English's "I'm". Instead of saying "I am", we say "I'm" Moteshakker hastam= I am thankful. Moteshakkeram= I'm thankful. -im would be the "we" form in Persian: Mamnunim= We're thankful. Mamnun hastim= We are thankful. Persian - Iran Abbassupreme said: ↑ Persian doesn't use "tashakkor", per se, as a word for "thank you". We use "tashakkor" to mean "the act of thanking". Click to expand... You're right Abbassupreme. In Persian, tašakkor means thanking but it's also used to mean thank you however it's contraction of tašakkor mikonam (similar to Turkish: teşekkür ederim). Abbassupreme said: ↑ Ways that Persian-speakers say "thank you" are as follows: Mersi, Kheyli mamnun, Mamnunam, moteshakkeram (Normally pronounced "mochakkeram" in colloquial Persian), Sepâsgozâram, sepâs Click to expand... Thanks. We laso have: kheyli mamnunam, [kheyli] mochchakker (from: [kheyli] mochchakkeram). Among all of these expressions, kheyli mamnun and mersi are used commonly however mersi is not appropriate for a formal conversation as in TV news. Abbassupreme said: ↑ The apparently-Persian word sepâs is apparently equal to the Arabic word "shokr". Click to expand... No. sepâs means "thank you". It was used in middle Persian. And I think it's cognate with Russsian spasiba. Abbassupreme said: ↑ I've heard that our Tajik brothers and sisters use "sepâs" in their thank-yous, but I'm not absolutely certain, yet. Click to expand... Yes, and also dear Kurds. Uzbek badgrammar said: ↑ I've learned over the past few years that some form of the word "tashakor/tesekkur" is used in several lanuages, including Iranian Farsi, Afghan Farsi and Turkish. So it would seem to be a common word shared by many people from different - if mutually influenced - languages. Is some form of that used in your language(s)? Is it an old-fashioned or out-of-use word, or a common everyday one? Who can lay claim to its origins? For any forthcoming responses, teshakor, tesekkürler... Click to expand... TashAKkur (تَشَكُّرٌ) is an arabic word is also used in different other languages and nations that are influenced by Islam. The root word - shukr /sh-k-r/ (شكر) - offers a sense of gratitude, appreciation. Roots that form transitive verbs in Form I remain transitive in Form II (sh-k-k-r), but also create causative or intensified actions. For example, the root /d-r-s/, which offers a sense of learning, becomes "darasa," which means "to study," in First Form. In the Second Form, "darrasa" is derived from the root /d-r- s/ and means "to teach," which is a more causative action. Instead of a student studying to learn, a teacher teaches and causes a student to learn. An example of an intensified action is the root /ž-r-H/ for which the First Form "žaraHa" means "to wound" while conjugated into the Second Form "žarraHa" means "to inflict many wounds." The action of causing injuring is intensified in Form II. So, Form II shukkar /sh-k-k-r/ - to thank someone very much, to appreciate a lot Tashakkur /t-sh-k-k-r/(تَشَكُّرٌ) - Form V of the Arabic verb is formed by adding the prefix /ta-/ to Form II (sh-k-k-r). Adding the prefix /ta-/ to Form II creates a reflexive verb in the Form V that "expresses the state into 'which the object of the action denoted by the Second Form is brought by that action, as its effect or result.'" The Fifth Form is similar to the passive voice in English but more comparable to the reflexive form in Romance languages like Spanish and French. For example, the root /k-s-r/ becomes "takassara" meaning "to get broken". A few verbs in Form V are not obviously reflexive but are reflexive nonetheless because the direct objects of these kinds of verbs are actually the subjects. An example is "taHaqqaqa," which literally means "to ascertain" but is actually reflexive because "something is ascertained." As well as reflexive verbs, Form V also forms verbs that express "an act is done to a person, or a state produced in him by another person or by himself", both of which render the subject submissive. For example, the verb "ta'allama" meaning "to become learned" indicates that learning occurred for one because of the teaching by another. Similarly, some verbs in Form V show "the acquiring of an attribute, complaining, the avoidance of an action, or repetition". "Takabbara" meaning "to become haughty," indicate the acquisition of new characteristics.," indicate the acquisition of new characteristics. So, Tashakkur /t-sh-k-k-r/(تَشَكُّرٌ) - to get (make) someone appreciated (thanked) a lot (very much), or just, to appreciate someone a lot. Mutashakkir - the one who gets (makes) someone appreciated (thanked) a lot (very much), or just, the one who is very much thankful (grateful)	i don't know
Turkey's international vehicle registration code (typically shown on vehicle registration plates) is?	What do the characters on a number plate mean in India? - Quora Quora Close up of a licence plate used in Mangalore , Karnataka . The current format of the registration index consists of 4 parts, They are: The first two letters indicate the state to which the vehicle is registered. The next two digit numbers are the sequential number of a district. Due to heavy volume of vehicle registration, the numbers were given to the RTO offices of registration as well. The third part is a 4 digit number unique to each plate. A letter(s) is prefixed when the 4 digit number runs out and then two letters and so on. The fourth part is an international oval "IND" and the top of it is a small blue square. This scheme of numbering has some advantages: The State or District of registration of a particular vehicle. In the case of a police investigation of an accident or vehicle-related crime, witnesses usually remember the initial area code letters - it is then quite simple to narrow down suspect vehicles to a much smaller number by checking the database without having to know the full number. Licence plates on the back of a taxi in Calcutta . Written Nov 13, 2014 The average license plate in India goes, for example, GA 01 AB 1234. GA represents the state or union territory where the car was registered; in this case, the state of Goa. 01 represents the specific Regional Transport Office (RTO) where the car was registered; in this case, the RTO is in the city of Panjim (I think). The rest are randomised, but in the form of two alphabets and four digits. The only place which breaks from this pattern is Delhi; I'm not sure about the system there, which gives us such numbers as DL 3C. I hope someone else can explain it properly.	TR
Established in 1923, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, is Turkey's oldest?	Turkish Car Plates Turkish Licence Plate Numbering System Turkish Car Plates Turkish Cars are licensed locally in the owner's home province. Turkish Licence Plate watching is a an interesting hobby, as you can always tell the stranger or visitor from the locals by the the first two numbers of their licence plate. Where is that car from? But before you read on, this is our own car that you will see in Kawerau, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, and our number plate does tell a story. Turkish Licence Plates It is easy to see where a Turkish vehicle come from once you know the province codes on the number plate. The Turkish Car Licence Plate System. Halt the Traffic Monster which is inside yourself! The text format on Turkish Plates is one of the following: PPX####, PPX##### or PPXX###, PPXX#### or PPXXX##, PPXXX### PP is a 2 digit numerical prefix denoting the province code number of the main residence of car holder. X is 1/2 or 3 letters. # is a 2/3 or 4 digit suffix depending on the size of letters before, not exceeding than six letters and digits together. In some provinces, numbering is categorized in groups for tax collecting offices of different districts. The colouring and alphabetical coding of Car Licence Plates also indicates what type of user the owner may be. These codings are discussed at the end of this web page. There are 81 province codes as listed below: Turkish Province Codes Private Vehicles Car Plate from Ankara (06) TR 06 K 0274 The 67 Provinces from Adana code 01 to Zonguldak code 67. Some towns were re-named and kept their original province number so the alphabetical series was broken. Maraş (code 46) became Kahramanmaraş Car Plate from Istanbul (34) TR 34 ZD 8866 PP X 99999 to PP XXX 999 (Black characters on white background) - where PP equates to the Province Number and X or XX or XXX is alphabetic. A Taxi plate from Aydin (09) TR Black characters on white background, with Letter "T" in first position as alphabetic identifier Turkish Official Vehicles Zabita plate from Manisa (45) TR 45 M 3767 PP X 99999 to PP XXX 999 (White characters on black background) where PP equates to the Province Number and X or XX or XXX is alphabetic. Used by Town Corporations and Officials on business. The Zabita are local corporation uniformed officers for control of prices etc. Province Government Vehicles A Province Government plate from Aydin (09) TR 09 AA 115 PP A 9999 (Red characters on white background, with single or double letter "A" in red as identifier for Provincial Official Car Licence). This car a Province Government Vehicle for Aydin (Province Code 09). It is parked in the Provincial Government Office car park. Police Vehicles A Police vehicle plate from Aydin (09) TR 09 A 8953 PP A 9999 or PP AA 9999 or PP AAA 999 (White characters on Blue background - with single letter "A" or double letter "AA" or triple letter "AAA" as alphabetic Identifier for police vehicles.) This vehicle is parked outside a local police station in the Province of Aydin. Turkish Military Vehicle Car Plates Turkish Jandarma vehicle plate. 709133 Black characters on white background in 999 999 format.The Turkish Jandarma are military forces of law enforcement. They are trained and supplied by the army but they assume duties under the Minister of Interior. Their area of jurisdiction is outside city centres in the country where population density is low Most tourist sites are also areas of Jandarma’s jurisdiction because their average population throughout the year are not high enough to fall under the police departments. Special Licence Plates where PP is the Province Code No. in this case 45 for Manisa Province Turkish Personalized Plates - Özel Kişisel Plâkalar Here are some examples of Turkish Personalized car plates. They are more expensive then normal issue. Bursa Spor (1963) Football Club The Turkish shown above the number translates as: The Mad Crocodiles Antalya Youth Spor (1966) Football Club The Turkish shown above the number translates as: 07 Youth Beşiktaş JK (1903) Football Club Beşiktaş Jimnastik Kulübü (commonly Beşiktaş JK - Beşiktaş Gymnastics Club) is a professional sports club founded in 1903 and based in Beşiktaş district in Istanbul, Turkey. Their nickname is the "Black Eagles" and their playing strip is Black and White stripes. The Turkish written above the number says The Eagle's Nest Turkish Province Codes	i don't know
Invented by Haci Bekir Effendi at his Istanbul shop in 1777 what is the globally consumed 'lokum' more famously called?	gebze 101 Jeopardy Template Which creature was a threat to holiday makers in Jaws? 100 How many legs has a spider got? 100 Who painted the Mona Lisa? 100 In which city is Hollywood? 100 What is Turkish delight Invented by Haci Bekir Effendi at his Istanbul shop in 1777 what is the globally consumed 'lokum' more famously called? 200 what famous rapper appeared in the movie 8 mile? 200 which animal lays the biggest eggs 200 Who wrote Julius Caesar, Macbeth and Hamlet? 200 What's the name of the famous big clock in London? 200 What falling fruit supposedly inspired Isaac Newton to write the laws of gravity? 300 Which Tom played spy Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible? 300 What is the alternative common name for a Black Leopard? 300 What is Hula Hoop One of the most popular toys of all time is a plastic ring with a Hawaiian name. What is it? 300	Turkish delight
In 1993 the Turkish economist and academic Tansu Penbe Çiller became the country's first?	Recipes \| Tavë Kosi Tavë Kosi can be considered one of Albania's most famous dishes. It is basically baked lamb and rice served in a delicious yoghurt sauce. Technically a very simple dish to make, but Tavë Kosi is very filling and flavourful, and is a favourite comfort food for Albanians. Serves 4 - 6 Byrek Byrek me Spinaq (Spinach Pie) Albanian pies (maddeningly delicious!) are generally made of thin pastry leaves which can be rolled out at home or bought as FILO dough at a supermarket. Most of the pies prepared by Albanian cooks are not sweet; instead, pie fillings are almost always salty. Thus, a piece of such a pie may well serve as the main dish of a meal. Serves 4 - 6 Escudella Escudella is a classic Andorran dish.It is basically a stew made from gelatinous bone broth, with the proteins in it coming from poultry, ham and chicken, along with veal or beef bones. There are many variations of Escudella, which is anticipated since it is considered a conventional peasant dish, and is a comfort food to a lot of Andorrans. Some cooks discover the Escudella lacking in color comparison and vibrancy, but that is just a visual element: once you've tasted this, you'll be coming back for more and more and more. It's certainly a hearty, one-dish question. Serve with bread to mop up the juices. Serves up to 8 Wiener Schnitzel Few foods are more evocative of Austrian cuisine than the humble Wiener Schnitzel, or Viennese Cutlet. As with many simple recipes, the quality of the ingredients are what will make or break your experience with this golden fried treat. Old oil or meat should be avoided and watch your schnitzel carefully, to avoid burning. Eating it fresh is also important, this is not a dinner which gets better the next day. Serves 4 Apfelstrudel Legend has it that the Apple Strudel was the favorite dessert of Empress Sisi and Crown Prince Rudolf. Even the Emperor, whose fondness for sugared pancakes with raisins and baked apples (known to Austrians as “Kaiserschmarrn”) is well-documented, was said to be avid fan of the Apple Strudel. It was this imperial pleasure which allegedly prompted him to say, “All good things come in threes.” Draniki Draniki is a Belarusian style shallow fried potato pancake made of grated potatoes. It is a traditional Belarusian dish and still very popular in present day Belarus. They are served hot with cold sour cream, garlic sauce or berries (cranberries are especially good). The name draniki means “having been grated” because the potatoes are not cut but finely grated. There are many variations of this simple recipe, this is one of the most popular. Serves 2. Waffles Authentic Liege waffles are one of life’s great indulgences — caramelized sugar glistening on the most delicious buttery-sweet treasure beneath. Unfortunately the only way to make a Waffle is by using a waffle iron – these are either traditional cast iron and oven heated or electric non stick and rather expensive. This is an authentic Belgian Waffle recipe, it is fairly complicated and takes time and patience as the waffles need time to prove, but the result is well worth it. The only caveat is that the iron's temperature is very crucial in making an exceptional Belgian waffle. It helps to have an infrared thermometer handy, as there’s a fairly narrow range in which the sugar will caramelize perfectly and not burn. You can make do without one though. It may take some trial and error, but you’ll get it right. Makes 5 large Waffles Moules-frites Moules frites is a serious classic in Belgian and French bistros, and for good reason: Mussels and crispy fries go together like toast and butter, spaghetti and meatballs, ebony and ivory — well, you get the idea. The moules part — the mussels — are easy to make. The key is to clean these bivalves thoroughly. Plunge them in cool water and then remove the beards — those stringy, fuzzy bits attached to the shells — then run under cool water for good measure. Nothing ruins a big bowl of mussels faster than the crunch of grit between your teeth. Cevapi The word ćevapi comes from the Persian word kebab. Cevapi are served in a spongey flat pocketed bread known as somun ( similar to pita ). Traditional sides are chopped fresh onion and kaymak, a thick and slightly cheesy cream ball that melts over the cevapi. This is the classic Sarajevo cevap: a small cylinder of meat, a mere morsel of amino acids and proteins and is now a masterpiece, a high point of world cuisine, the excelsior of the grilled arts. Lonac Lonac or Bosnian Pot is an authentic Bosnian culinary speciality, appreciated for its rich taste and flexibility. It is impossible to define the recipe for Bosanski lonac, as there are many variations, but the main ingredients are mostly the same: meat and various vegetables. It has been on tables of both the rich and the poor for hundreds of years. Rich people used more meat and other expensive ingredients, while the poor used what was available. Typical ingredients are: beef, lamb, cabbage, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, parsley, garlic, peppercorns (whole, not ground). Many different vegetables or meats may be used. Lonac is prepared by layering meat and vegetables (alternating layers of meat and vegetables until the pot is full) into a deep pot, then adding water or white wine. The ingredients should be cut into large pieces rather than finely chopped or minced. Originally, Bosanski lonac was made in ceramic pots, that were then put in the fireplace or pit in the ground. That would be perfect, but today, not everyone has a fireplace available for cooking, so cooks may use a regular pot and their kitchen stove. Since the pieces of meat and vegetables are rather large, it takes about 3 - 4 hours till the meal is cooked. 4 – 6 servings Shopska Salata Shopska salad is a traditional Bulgarian cold salad made from tomatoes, cucumbers, onion, raw or roasted peppers and sirene (Bulgarian cheese, feta cheese, white brine cheese). Shopska salad is a very distinctive Bulgarian dish. It is named after a group of very frugal people called shopi who live in the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia. Kavarma This meat-based stew is one of the most popular and widely-known Bulgarian dishes that is prepared in many variants throughout the country. Typically it is cooked in an earthenware bowl or dish with a lid and is eaten as a hearty main course with rice. Serves 4 Brodet There are recipes that seem to wander all over the landscape before settling down to become associated with a specific region. Brodet is one of these. Ideally, brodet should evoke a kind of Adriatic bouillabaise -- the best of the day's catch, simmered fresh in a flavorful stock. Its long residence in the region is suggested by the fact that brodet is often served with that favorite south-central European side dish, polenta. One hint: many brodet recipes suggest that the soup should never be stirred -- this being the best way of keeping the chunks of delicate fish intact. The furthest one may go, in some versions, is to pour fish and stock gently from one pot to the next. Paski Sir Produced exclusively from the milk of the autochthonous sheep on the Island of Pag, Paški Sir is the most awarded ewes’ milk cheese in all of Croatia. Paski Sir is a protected source product and has received numerous awards and honours. Gligora Paski Sir has a peculiar and subtle piquant taste and smell, it crumbles and melts in your mouth. You can find it at only at some specialist cheese shops Halloumi The cheese is often used in cooking and can be fried until brown without melting, owing to its higher-than-normal melting point. This makes it an excellent cheese for frying or grilling (e.g. in saganaki) or fried and served with vegetables, as an ingredient in salads. Cypriots like eating halloumi with watermelon in the warm months, and as halloumi and lountza – a combination of halloumi cheese and either a slice of smoked pork, or a soft lamb sausage. Available from all good supermarkets and cheese shops. Vepro Knedlo zelo The success of this quintessentially Czech dish depends not so much on the cook's skill as on the quality of the pork. It should be well marbled, not lean; this will result in a succulent, moist roast. The dumplings and cabbage are the perfect accompaniment, though mashed potatoes would do as a substitute. Beer is a must with this meal. Wienerbrod Many people think of a “danish” as a type of iced donut with jelly in the middle, but in Denmark it is known as wienerbrød and they will have many varieties at the local konditori. In 1850 Danish bakers went on strike, so the bakery owners hired foreign workers from Austria to replace them. The Austrians brought their own recipes, which became very popular, and when the strike ended the pastries continued to be made as “Vienna bread” or wienerbrød. The base of wienerbrød is a dough rolled with butter in many thin layers making the finished pastry very light and airy. It can be shaped in many different ways and filled with marzipan or preserves or topped with nuts, seeds, or chocolate. Smorrebrod Smørrebrød dates back to the 19th century when, for many agricultural workers, lunch was the main meal of the day. It began when bread was used to wipe the plates clean of any remaining food, eventually the food was placed on the bread instead as topping. Smørrebrød is a daily staple for many Danes, and a truly classic taste of the nation's traditional cuisine. Invariably based on rye bread, smørrebrød can have an almost limitless number of different toppings, from herring, to raw beef, seafood and egg. Here's one to try: Smørrebrød ~ Skagen Sild Note: Skagen (pronounced skay-en) is a beach town on the most northern tip of Denmark. Sild is the Danish word for herring. Smørrebrød means buttered bread. Frickadeller Frikadeller are Danish meatballs and are commonly eaten as part of the evening meal, and served perhaps with boiled potatoes. They are also great placed either warm or cold atop smørrebrød (open sandwich). Flavourful and oh so light, there are as many frikadeller recipes in Denmark as their are households - and these treasured family secrets are passed on from one generation to the next. Pork Pie The Melton Mowbray pork pie is named after Melton Mowbray, a town in Leicestershire..Melton pies became popular among fox hunters in the area during the late nineteenth century. The uncured meat of a Melton pie is grey in colour when cooked; the meat is chopped, rather than minced. The pie is made with a hand-formed crust – this style of production gives the pie a slightly irregular shape after baking. As the pies are baked free-standing, the sides bow out, they are not vertical like mould-baked pies. Melton Mowbray is considered the traditional source of commercial and artisan made pork pies, and the geographic range of British pork pies tends to centre on the English Midlands. Nevertheless, other regions of England also have small artisan, premium pork pie makers, notably Norfolk and Lincolnshire. In Yorkshire, artisan pork pies are known as Growlers, however, a Growler . An annual competition is held in April at The Old Bridge Inn, Ripponden, Yorkshire to find the best pork pie. We would urge you to seek out a Melton Mowbray pie or another artisan pie made by a proud pie maker, failing that here is a recipe so that you can have a crack at making a pork pie of your own. Scones The original scone was round and flat, usually the size of a medium size plate. It was made with unleavened oats and baked on a griddle (or girdle, in Scots), then cut into triangle-like quadrants for serving. Today, many would call the large round cake a bannock, and call the quadrants scones. In Scotland, the words are often used interchangeably. When baking powder became available to the masses, scones began to be the oven-baked, well-leavened items we know today.[Modern scones are widely available in British and Irish bakeries, grocery stores, and supermarkets. A 2005 market report estimated the UK scone market to be worth £64m. If you are ever in Devon don’t miss out on their crean teas, fresh scones with jam and clotted cream Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding Whatever the reason for the undeniable quality of our beef, Britain wouldn't be so great without its roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.. Batter puddings are traditional all over the British Isles, and Yorkshire pudding is the most famous, originally cooked in the tray of dripping under the meat as it turned on the spit. Why it became so associated with Yorkshire, is not fully known. Perhaps it was because of the renowned thrifty nature of Yorkshire folk: the pudding was served first, before the meat, in order to fill people up so that they would then eat less meat! But nowadays main purpose is to soak up the meat juices and gravy. Fish and Chips Fish and chips became a stock meal among the working classes in Great Britain as a consequence of the rapid development of trawl fishing in the North Sea, and the development of railways which connected the ports to major industrial cities during the second half of the 19th century, which meant that fresh fish could be rapidly transported to the heavily populated areas. Deep-fried fish was first introduced into Britain during the 17th century by Jewish refugees from Portugal and Spain, and is derived from pescado frito. In 1860, the first fish and chip shop was opened in London by Joseph Malin. Fish and chips in Brighton, England Deep-fried chips (slices or pieces of potato) as a dish may have first appeared in Britain in about the same period: the Oxford English Dictionary notes as its earliest usage of "chips" in this sense the mention in Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities (published in 1859): "Husky chips of potatoes, fried with some reluctant drops of oil". The modern fish-and-chip shop ("chippy" or "chipper" in modern British slang originated in the United Kingdom, although outlets selling fried food occurred commonly throughout Europe. Early fish-and-chip shops had only very basic facilities. Usually these consisted principally of a large cauldron of cooking fat, heated by a coal fire. During World War II fish and chips remained one of the few foods in the United Kingdom not subject to rationing. We have provided a recipe for homemade fish, chips and mushy peas but to be truthful theres nothing like the real thing bought from a decent chippy and eaten from the paper. Verivorst Because of the complex ingredients and cooking of Verivorst it is not practical for most home cooks to make this dish. You will have to travel to Estonia to sample this sausage or nmaybe you’ll find them at a specialist grocer or on a webshop. Verivorst is a variety of blood sausage native to Estonia. It is made using pig blood . The color of the sausage varies from dark red to black and it is shaped like a typical sausage. It is also referred to as the Estonian national dish and It is most popular as a winter-cum-Christmas dish. When slaughtering a pig, the meat was used as food and the blood was considered as a by product. Blood sausages and variants were made to utilize all the possible parts effectively. Pork blood is the main ingredient of verivorst. Other ingredients like pork fat or lard, onions, and garlic are also used. Spices and herbs like black pepper, bay leaves, paprika, parsley and cassia are used to enhance the flavor of the sausage. All the ingredients, including the casing, should be chilled when used. Onions and spices are cooked in lard till fragrant. It is then frozen till set. Cubes of lard are cut and stored aside. Pork pieces and liver are boiled along with blood. It is then cooled and frozen. Lard and blood are then coarsely processed and ground using a food processor. This mixture is stuffed into the chilled casings and tied using sausage links. It is then cooked in a bain marie for about 40 minutes and served hot or cold often with sauerkraut. Pulla Pulla is traditionally made at Christmas time in Finland, but it's a delicious, brioche-style bread to tuck into at any time. It's best the day it's made, though slightly stale slices make wonderful toast. Grind your own cardamom (10 pods worth of seeds makes about a teaspoon of ground cardamom). Poronkaristys A classic dish from Finnish Lapland. Its simplicity is what makes it so good. Slice some reindeer meat as thinly as possible. Sauté in oil and butter. If you like, add some onion or leeks. If chantarelles are in season, throw in a handfull or two. Serve with mashed potatoes, lingonberry jam, and pickle slices. If you can't find reindeer meat at your local butcher, you can substitute it with venison. Serves 4 - 6 Crème brulee The first printed recipe for a dessert called crème brûlée is from the 1691 edition of the French cookbook Le Cuisinier Royal et Bourgeois by Francois Massialot, a cook at the Palace of Versailles. That version was a sweet custard of egg yolks and milk with a burnt sugar crust. It is similar to the modern versions. Camembert Camembert was reputedly first made in 1791 by Marie Harel, a farmer from Normandy, following advice from a priest who came from Brie. However, the origin of the cheese known today as Camembert is more likely to rest with the beginnings of the industrialization of the cheesemaking process at the end of the 19th century.[3] In 1890, an engineer, M. Ridel, invented the wooden box which was used to carry the cheese and helped to send it for longer distances, in particular to America, where it became very popular. These boxes are still used today. The cheese was famously issued to French troops during World War I, becoming firmly fixed in French popular culture as a result. It has many other roles in French culture, literature, and history. Here’s an idea for baked camembert. Escargots Snail shells have been found in archaeological excavations, indicating snails have been eaten since prehistoric times.[ A number of archaeological sites around the Mediterranean have been excavated yielding physical evidence of culinary use of several species of snails. It may sound a bit yucky bit give them a go, there deliscious! Bouillabaise There is no dispute that the best bouillabaisse is cooked in the city of Marseille , but where does that leave the home cook with no access to fresh seafood from the Mediterranean? The trick is to look for the freshest local fish you can find and not to be afraid of improvising. That's what we've done here (forget serving the dish in two courses). The fish remains firm, the broth clear, the flavor sublime. Cassoulet Cassoulet is a rich, slow-cooked casserole originating in the south of France, containing meat (typically pork sausages, goose, duck and sometimes mutton), pork skin (couennes) and white haricot beans. The dish is named after its traditional cooking vessel, the cassole, a deep, round, earthenware pot with slanting sides. Boeuf Bourguignon Boeuf bourguignon is the classic dish from Burgundy, and French comfort food at its finest. It is one of many examples of peasant dishes being slowly refined into haute cuisine. Most likely, the particular method of slowly simmering the beef in wine originated as a means of tenderizing cuts of meat that would have been too tough to cook any other way Crepe Sold in creperies and from street carts throughout France, crepes are commonly served at home to celebrate certain holidays and the first shimmers of spring. But they're enthusiastically received any time of year or day-at breakfast, brunch, lunch, tea, or dinner. One caveat that's crucial to bear in mind each time you make crepes: The first attempt out of every batch is inevitably a dud, even in the most experienced hands. Makes about 12. Black forest gateau The cake is named not directly after the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) mountain range in southwestern Germany but rather from the specialty liquor of that region, known as Schwarzwälder Kirsch(wasser) which is distilled from tart cherries. This is the ingredient, with its distinctive cherry pit flavour and alcoholic content, that gives the cake its unique flavour. Stollen This traditional German recipe makes a great alternative to Christmas cake. The early Stollen was a different pastry to the one we enjoy today, the ingredients were very different - flour, oats and water and oil. As a Christmas pastry, Stollen was baked for the first time at the Saxon Royal Court in 1427, the Advent season was a time of fasting, and bakers were not allowed to use butter, only oil, and the cake was tasteless and hard. Over the centuries, the cake changed from being a simple, fairly tasteless "bread" to a sweeter cake with richer ingredients, such as marzipan, fruit and nuts. Enjoy it with a glass of brandy. Sauerbraten Sauerbraten means "sour roast" from sauer for "sour" or "pickled" and Braten for "roast meat" its a German pot roast that can be prepared with a variety of meats—most often beef, but also from venison, lamb, mutton, pork, and horse It is regarded as one of the national dishes of Germany. It is one of the best known German meals. Because of German immigration to the New World (the United States, Argentina, etc.) it is frequently found on the menus of German-style restaurants outside Germany. Several regions' variations on the dish are well known, including those from Franconia, Thuringia, Rhineland, Saarland, Silesia, and Swabia. Sauerbraten is traditionally served with traditional German side dishes, such as Rotkohl (red cabbage), Knödel or Kartoffelklöße (potato dumplings), Spätzle (an egg and flour noodle), and boiled potatoes. While many German-style restaurants in America pair potato pancakes (either Kartoffelpuffer or Reibekuchen) with sauerbraten, this is common only in a small part of Germany. Currywurst Currywurst is a staple of German fast food. Nearly anywhere you go, you’ll find a currywurst stand. And no matter what city or nationality of the owner, the currywurst always tastes pretty much the same, sliced sausage with a soicy curried tomato sauce.Your choice of sides are usually French fries or a Kaiser roll (or something similar). Some currywurst have become famous like the Best Worscht dealer of Frankfurt which people will drive for hours to taste. Mind you, they have to queue for another hour once they get there, because an hour wait is pretty standard. If it’s a really busy day, prepare to wait up to 3. It’s just a kiosk trailer by the way, with a few stand up tables nearby. Really. Nothing fancy. But the currywurst is legendary! Souvlaki Souvlaki is the term used to describe “little skewers” of meat that are marinated in a wonderful red wine marinade and then grilled. Souvlakia are traditionally wrapped in flatbread or pita and then topped with a variety of condiments - lettuce, tomato, onion, and of course, the famed tzatziki sauce. They are also quite delicious without the pita and trimmings. You will need to plan ahead and allow at least 2 – 3 hours for the meat to really absorb the flavors. Goulash From the country's varied culinary repertoire Hungarian goulash is the most famous and often cooked dish outside the borders of Hungary, still many confusions and misconceptions surround its exact preparation method. Even in Hungary every other housewife or chef has its own way of cooking it by adding or omitting some of the ingredients, or changing something in the preparation process, however they would all call their gulyás the most authentic. Authentic gulyás is a beef dish cooked with onions, Hungarian paprika powder, tomatoes and some green pepper. Potato and noodles (csipetke in Hungarian) are also added according to some recipes. Hungarian goulash is neither a soup nor a stew, it’s somewhere in between. Though in Hungary it’s considered rather to be a soup than a stew, so look for it among Soups on restaurant menus. If cooked in the proper way goulash has a nice and evenly thick consistency, almost like a sauce. Hideg meggyleves Sour cherry soup is a traditional summertime treat in Hungary, where it is known hideg meggyleves (chilled sour cherry soup). Every Hungarian family has its own unique recipe for sour cherry soup. In Hungary, this soup is generally served before the main course and the cherries are un-pitted, but many outside Hungary consider it a dessert and prefer pitted cherries and whipped cream. This recipe is simple to make and the result is a truly refreshing and delicious soup, it calls for pitted cherries which make for easier eating! Hangikjot Hangikjöt is a traditional Icelandic delicacy that is an important part of Iceland's food culture and culinary tradition. It is a festive food, served most often at Christmas as a part of the main course. It is also an important preparation on special occasions. The dish, the name of which literally translates as 'hung meat', is essentially smoked lamb, or mutton. Apparently dried sheep’s dung makes the best smoking fuel! Because the meat is brine pickled for two days and then hung and smoked in a smokehouse for two weeks this is not really a recipe to prepare at home. If you are an adventurous gourmet who happens to have a smokehouse then there are some guidelines to follow online. If not then I’m afraid that to sample this delicious lamb dish you will have to travel across the Norwegian Sea to Iceland to sample it. Skyr Skyr is the traditional yogurt of Iceland. It is made by incubating skimmed milk with live active cultures. The whey, the water naturally found in milk, is then strained away to make for a much thicker, creamier, concentrated yogurt. So to make just one cup of skyr, with all that water going out, you need 3 - 4 times the amount of milk required to make a regular cup of yogurt. As a result of this process skyr comes out with 2-3 times the protein count of standard yogurt. According to the Sagas, the original stories of the Norse Vikings, Icelanders have made skyr since settlers from Norway first arrived on the island in the 9th century. The word skyr is probably derived from the Icelandic word skera, which means to cut or slice–– a reference to the ideal thickness of Skyr perhaps? The authentic skyr is hard to duplicate in a home setting as, due to the need for specialized active cultures, this is a recipe for an approximation of the authentic product. It could’nt really be called Skyr but gives you an impression as to the consistency. It is possible to find Skyr in some specialist stores and delis now. Irish Stew Ireland's national dish is Irish stew. A traditional Irish stew was always made with mutton, but more often nowadays, is made with lamb. Controversy reigns over whether vegetables other than potatoes should be added; adding onions, leeks and carrots not only adds extra flavour but also nutrition to the stew. The choice is yours. Colcannon Colcannon is a favorite Irish recipe and a particular St Patrick's Day favorite. As you can see from this Colcannon recipe, it is quick, easy and simple to make. Colcannon was traditionally used for predicting marriage on Halloween. Charms were hidden in the Colcannon and any unmarried girl who found one would place socks with spoonfuls of Colcannon and the charms on their front door handle. The first man to enter the house was their intended. Coddle Coddle (sometimes Dublin coddle) is an Irish dish consisting of layers of roughly sliced pork sausages and rashers (thinly sliced, somewhat fatty back bacon) with sliced potatoes and onions. Traditionally, it can also include barley. Coddle is particularly associated with the capital of Ireland, Dublin and appears in several Dublin literary references including the works of James Joyce. The name comes from the long, slow simmering or ‘coddling’ of the dish. It has been suggested the popularity of coddle arose because it can be left simmering on the stove till the man comes in from the pub long after the wife had gone to bed. Serves 4 as a starter, 2 mains. Mozzarella Mozzarella is a fresh cheese, originally from southern Italy, traditionally made from Italian buffalo and later cow's milk by the pasta filata method. The term is used for several kinds of Italian cheeses that are made using spinning and then cutting (hence the name, as the Italian verb mozzare means "to cut"): Mozzarella di Bufala (buffalo mozzarella), made from domesticated Italian buffalo's milk in Italy it is used for many types of pizza and several pasta dishes, or served with sliced tomatoes and basil in insalata caprese. Unfortunately there isn’t a recipe for mozzarella that you can easily replicate at home. We suggest that you try the classic Insalata caprese, a salad of mozzarella, basil and tomato – mirroring the colours of the Italian flag. Pesto Genovese No matter what herbs go into it, pesto has a long history. Ancient Romans pounded together garlic, cheese, and herbs, a paste they called moretum. In the Middle Ages, Italians mashed walnuts with garlic, a mix that was especially popular among Liguria’s seafaring culture: The paste was thought to help ward off sickness during long sea voyages. Still, the most famous pesto—and the one we tend to think of when we hear the word—is pesto alla genovese. The first recipe for this kind of pesto can be traced to 1863 in the first major book of Ligurian cuisine, so it’s relatively new. But it already has a very carefully-defended tradition! In fact, pesto alla genovese is D.O.P.-protected, meaning that in Italy and Europe, only sauces made in this precise way, and with these ingredients, can even call themselves pesto genovese. The ingredients must include D.O.P. basil from Genoa, for example, because the soil and climate in that particular area gives the basil a flavor that’s impossible to replicate elsewhere. The word Pesto is is the contracted past participle of the Genoese word pestâ (Italian: pestare), which means to pound, to crush, in reference to the original method of preparation, with marble mortar and wooden pestle. The ingredients in a traditionally made pesto are ground with a circular motion of the pestle in the mortar Prosciutto di Parma Prosciutto is a dry-cured ham that is usually thinly sliced and served uncooked; this style is called prosciutto crudo in Italian and is distinguished from cooked ham, prosciutto cotto. Commonly associated with Friuli and Emilia, the most renowned and expensive legs of prosciutto come from central and northern Italy, such as those of Parma, and San Daniele, in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. The production of genuine Parma Ham is the story of a special relationship between man, nature and location. Since Roman times, the unique conditions of the Parma region have made it possible to produce the highest quality hams that have been appreciated by gourmets for centuries. 'Prosciutto' is from the Latin 'perexsuctum' meaning 'dried' - an indication of the purity of Parma Ham production and its ancient roots. It was in 100 BC that Cato the “Censor” first mentioned the extraordinary flavour of the air cured ham made around the town of Parma in Italy; the legs were left to dry, greased with a little oil and could age without spoiling. A tasty meat was obtained which could be eaten over a period of time while maintaining its pleasant flavour. Proscuitto is not a product that you can prepare at home so we suggest that you but authentic proscuitto di parma from an Italian deli and try it at home. It can be used in hundreds of dishes or in simple salads. Here’s a favourite: Wrap slices of proscuitto around pieces of sweet melon and eat with your fingers. Risotto a la milanase Risotto is one of the staples of northern Italian cooking, nowhere more so than in Lombardy. Here is the risotto that typifies the cooking of Milan, the capital of Lombardy region and the economic and financial capital of Italy. This simple risotto follows the classic method for making risotto, and has has two defining ingredients that give it its special flavor and character. As many of you will already know, it is flavored with saffron—which gives it a beautiful gold color—but perhaps fewer people know that in a true risotto alla milanese, the soffritto must include beef marrow. The marrow lends a beefy background flavor to the dish, as well as a subtle richness and unctuousness. Now for those of you who may be a bit squeamish about bone marrow, it can be left out of the dish, adding perhaps some additional butter during the mantecatura to make up for it. What you will have made is more properly called risotto allo zafferano rather than a true risotto alla milanese—but it will still be delicious! Tagliatelle alla Bolognese While the dish has been a staple for millions of diners around the world for decades, Italians claimed the original reciope has become so corrupted it is in urgent need of culinary rescue. Gourmands insist that the popular dish's apparent simplicity is deceptive, and throw their arms up in dismay when they see chicken or turkey used as a substitute for the key ingredient, minced beef. Authentic ingredients include pancetta, carrots, celery, onions, tomato paste and a dash of wine. They have to conform to a recipe set down in 1982 by the chamber of commerce in Bologna - the home of bolognese. Most people, particularly foreigners, get the recipe wrong from the very start, purists insist. Instead of spaghetti, they say it is tagliatelle that should be cooked to go with the rich meat and tomato sauce, making it "tag bol" rather than "spag bol" Pizza Margherita Pizza Margherita is to many the true Italian flag. According to popular tradition, in 1889, 28 years after the unification of Italy, during a visit to Naples of Queen Margherita of Savoy, wife of King Umberto I, chef Raffaele Esposito of Pizzeria Brandi and his wife created a pizza resembling the colors of the Italian flag, red (tomato), white (mozzarella) and green (basil). They named it after the Queen - Pizza Margherita. Descriptions of such a pizza recipe, however, can be traced back to at least 1866 in Francesco DeBouchard book “Customs and Traditions of Naples” .There he describes the most popular pizza toppings of the time which included one with cheese and basil, often topped with slices of mozzarella. Whatever the real origins of this pizza recipe are, all we know for sure is that Raffaele Esposito's version for Queen Margherita was the one that made it popular. Since then it has grown into one of the most recognisable symbol of Italian food culture in the world. Flija Flija is traditionally a very plain large bread/cake slowly cooked outside near a campfire with loads of family and friends around.The campfire is used to heat a special lid covered in charcoal, which is actually what cooks the flija. Makes one 10″ Flija cake. Piragi A pīrāgs (plural - pīrāgi; diminutive - pīrādziņi) is an oblong or crescent-shaped baked Latvian bread roll or pastry, often containing a filling of finely chopped bacon cubes and onion. Pīrāgi range from 5 centimetres in length to 13 centimetres, depending on if they are intended as a snack or a more substantial meal. Smaller pīrāgi are often prized for their daintiness and are considered the work of a skilled cook. Pīrāgi were not a seasonal dish in Latvian society, because most ingredients needed to make the different varieties were available from the pantry year round. After potatoes had infiltrated Latvian society from the New World, sometime potatoes were also used to replace flour in the dough, allowing the pastries to be baked even when flour was unavailable. This means that pīrāgi could be baked any time and are historically associated with Latvian celebrations year round. The two biggest historic Latvian celebrations are for summer solstice and winter solstice: Jāņi (June 24 - St. John's Day[disambiguation needed]) and Ziemassvētki (Christmas). One of the most popular and familiar Latvian Ziemassvētki folk songs mentions pīrāgi: Rosols Rosols, the special potato salad served on birthdays, holidays and all other special occasions. In Latvia the saying goes "even boys know how to make it! Rosols differ from home to home and dependant on who the cook has in store, the use of sausage is optional, it can be left out for a vegetarian dish. Käsknöpfle Traditional Käsknöpfle – tiny golden cheese dumplings – are the national dish of Liechtenstein. Freshly made, they are typically served accompanied by spicy grated cheese, crisp fried onions and fresh apple sauce. The dish invariably goes down well enjoyed on a sunny terrace in summer or in front of a log fire in the depths of winter, truly a dish for all seasons! Cepelinai Cepelinai or Didžkukuliai are a Lithuanian national dish. They are a type of dumpling made from grated potatoes and usually stuffed with minced meat, although sometimes dry cottage cheese (curd) or mushrooms are used instead. So named because their shape resembles that of a Zeppelin airship, cepelinai are typically around 10–20 cm long, although the size depends on where they are made: in the western counties of Lithuania cepelinai are made bigger than in the east. After boiling, the cepelinai are served with sour cream sauce and bacon Quetschentaart The Quetschentaart is Luxembourg's most popular specialty dessert. Normally made in the autumn when damson plums are in season and can be picked for free from the laden fruit trees that . The recipe probably originated in Germany, but quickly became adopted by Luxembourg as a national dish. Tavce Gravce Tavce Gravce is one of the most traditional Macedonian meals! It's been cooked for centuries, can be eaten as a main or a side dish and goes with pretty much anything. There is something super delicious and very comforting about Tavce gravce they are a Macedonian version of baked beans. Serves 2 Ensaimada The ensaimada, a typical artisan dessert dating back to the 17th century, is made from flour, sourdough, eggs, sugar, water and lard. The dough is rolled up into a long cylinder which is then wound up into a snail-like shape with two or more clockwise turns. The name "ensaimada" comes from the Catalan word "saim" for pork lard. Apparently the lard gives it a distinctive taste and texture. Many people now use butter in place of lard while making ensaimada, even though traditionalists still swear by lard. Majorca takes its ensaimada so seriously that they have a regulating council which has laid down very definite parameters regarding measurements of the ingredients used to make ensaimadas. Manufacturers of this sweet bread in Majorca have to maintain these standards, for approval by the country's regulatory council, in order to label their product "Ensaimada Malloorquina/ Ensaimada de Mallorca". Ensaimadas come in many varieties these days, depending on what they are filled with. Two very popular ensaimadas are the "Llisa" or plain ones with no filling, and the "Cabell d’àngel" or angel's hair which is filled with candied stringy orange strands which found inside pumpkins. Fenek – stuffat tal-fenek Malta is a country with a small land mass so large stock holding farms were always rare, consequently rabbit became a popular source of protein. Stuffat Tal-Fenek or, Maltese rabbit stew, is a succulent slow cooked dish: the meat so tender it falls off the bone. Maltese families love to use the rich tomato sauce with pasta as a first course and serve the rabbit with vegetables as a main. One dish, two courses! Mamaliga It's not surprising this Romanian cornmeal porridge or mamaliga is similar to Italian polenta. In the 16th century, the Turks introduced corn brought by Venetian merchants from the New World to northern Italians and Romanians, who planted the corn and made mush with it. This mush became Italian polenta and Romanian mamaliga. Mamaliga is a staple and is served on peasant tables and in the fanciest restaurants. It can be made in so many ways -- boiled in water, stock or milk, with cheese or sour cream, herbs, butter, and on and on. This is a basic soft mamaliga recipe. Makes 6 servings. Socca This traditional dish is very simple and easy to make, although some practice will no doubt be necessary to get it just right, and modern ovens and implements can replace the wood ovens and copper plaques of yesteryear. Socca and Cade are Provençal pancakes that go back at least to 1860. In those ancient times there were socca sellers at the marchés and at work sites where they provided the favorite morning meal of the workers. The socca sellers used special wagons with built-in charcoal ovens to keep their wares hot while they announced them with the appropriate cries of "socca, socca, socca caouda". Some of the ambulatory socca sellers (or their descendents) are still to be found in the markets where the slices are served in paper cones. Socca is made on a large round (50-70 cm diameter) copper "pie tin" (plaque) and cooked in a very hot wood-fired oven for about six minutes, until the top is golden. The copper is important for spreading the heat evenly. At home a hot stove and a cast iron pan will do the trick Vla This popular dairy product made from fresh milk first appeared in the 1950s. Traditional vla is made of cooked milk with custard, but modern vla uses cornstarch rather than eggs. It is sweetened with sugar and vanilla is often added. It has the viscosity of yogurt and is served cold. Vla is available in many different flavours. Plain vanilla vla is the most widely available and served with fruit, however it comes in many flavours, such as chocolate, caramel, vanilla, banana, etc. and some are limited editions like orange sold only at the time of national events in the Netherlands such the world and European football championships (as long as the Netherlands is still in the competition). Dairy producers will also regularly experiment with unusual variations. Vla found in all Dutch supermarkets and was originally sold in glass bottles ,the consistency made extracting the complete amount difficult, so a special bottle scraper ("flessenschraper" or "flessenlikker") was specifically designed. Despite the fact that vla is now normally sold in cartons, these scrapers are still common in Dutch family kitchens Stamppot & Rookworst The staying power of the stamppot is truly mind-boggling. The dish is said to be one of the oldest, and yet still one of the most popular Dutch dishes, originating in the early 1600s. (Hmm…is that why the Dutch are so tall?) On a cold, chilly, rainy, grey Amsterdam winter evening – a stamppot does seem to hit the spot, it’s a classic comfort food a little like the Irish colcannon. Serves 4. Ulster Fry The Ulster Fry is available all over the North both for breakfast and (in cafes and casual restaurants) as a lunch and dinner dish. It's as close as this island comes to the "all-day breakfast" concept. The Fry is meant to be hearty and substantial, and any attempt to render it in low-calorie form is destined to fail, as the ingredients (except for the potato farl and soda farl) are already too high-cholesterol for grilling them to make much of a difference if you're going to be eating them all at once. The key to keeping an Ulster Fry from doing long-term harm to your cardiac health or your waistline is simply not to eat it every day, or maybe even every week. But if you're going to make it, make it the old-fashioned way. Rommegrot Rømmegrøt is a porridge where the base used is sour cream, and is a delicious, creamy sweet and tangy porridge which, in the old days, traditionally were served at special occasions such as the birth of a child, midsummer night and when the farmers would cut the grass in the early and late summer. Porridge is the oldest hot dish in Scandinavia and it is also thought that the Vikings would eat porridge during midsummer. While this type of food based on rich dairy product was considered a luxury in the 18th century, today we eat it more frequently, and is also a staple during the Christmas holiday, either for lunch on Christmas Eve or the surrounding days. We tend to call this dish “julegrøt” (Christmas porridge) when it’s served in December, and it is thought that only about 6% of Norwegians do not indulge in some sort of Christmas porridge every year. Rømmegrøt would be put out for Santa the night before Christmas to make sure he was fed and ready for his journey delivering presents for all the children. October 23rd is national porridge day, and while Norwegians eat porridge all year round, consumption doubles in the month of December. Many people think porridge should become the national dish, as it has been a staple in Norwegian households for thousands of years. Farikal There's nothing better to celebrate this wonderful bounty than making fårikål, a traditional Norwegian meal of lamb and cabbage (in fact the name, "får i kål", means just that - "sheep in cabbage"), which was voted the country's national dish in a radio programme in the 1970s. In fact, the last Thursday of September is Fårikålens Festdag (Fårikål Feast Day), and Norwegians celebrate this day by making this simple, but delicious dish. Such is their passion for this dish that Norwegians even have a National Fårikål Society, which opines on all things fårikål. Fårikål is made from just two main ingredients: cabbage and lamb, but you can also use mutton instead (the older the animal, the stronger the taste). Therefore, the quality of each is imperative. The meat should be taken from the shoulder, neck or shank and should always be left on the bone and include some fat, which will soak into the cabbage, making them meltingly tender. The cabbage should be the best quality green cabbage you can find. Don't be tempted to use fancier varieties such as Savoy – fårikål is not a pretty dish, but what it lacks in visual appeal, it more than makes up for in flavour. This is one of those dishes that benefits from a day or two maturing in the fridge after you have made it, so make sure you make extra to save for later. Brunost The famous Norwegian brown cheese.So what exactly is brown cheese? It's quite unusual. Visitors often say that it tastes like a sweet-savoury, fudgey Caramac, which may sound unpromising.Its described as a deeply savoury dulce de leche, and as such it can be a challenge to non-Norwegians. The sweetness comes from overcooking whey until a Maillard reaction kicks in and the milk sugars caramelise. Brown cheese doesn't go through any maturation process, and it keeps in the fridge for a few months. Suffice it to say, this is the Norwegian version of Marmite: you either love brown cheese or you hate it. No one has ever tried it and been indifferent to the stuff . Unfortunately we cant provide a recipe for brunost due to the complex manufacturing processes, however it can be tracked down through specialist cheese shops so seek it out and give it a try. You’ll either love it or hate it! Paczki Paczki are a kind of like jelly doughnuts, except that they are made from an especially rich dough containing eggs, fats, sugar and milk. They usually have some sort of fruit or cream filling and are coated in sugar, however, if you ask any Polish person, it’s not a real paczki unless it has prune filling. Now, the whole reason that paczki were originally made for Fat Tuesday was to use up the lard, sugar, eggs and fruit in the house, because their consumption was forbidden by the Catholic Church during Lent. Paczki have been known in Poland since at least the Middle Ages during the reign of August III. Pierogi Pierogi are one of the most well-known, traditional Polish dishes and can be found around the world. They are small dumplings, also known as Pierożki, similar to Italian ravioli or Asian dumplings or gyoza. They are sold as street-food in Poland and can also be found in most traditional Polish restaurants or in a ’Milk Bar’ or Bar Mleczny as they are called in Poland, prevalent during the economic struggles of the 1930′s and throughout the war. They have recently made something of a comeback, offering cheap and affordable eats or as something of a nostalgic alternative to fast-food. Pierogi is a really creative food, there are countless possibilities to serve it. It can be boiled-only, additionally fried or baked, It can be dished up with many additions you like, including dips and sauces. Number of fillings are countless and limited by your imagination : either sweet or savoury.. You can change the taste of a pierogi dough by using some milk instead of water or applying a yolk. You can also make a colourful pierogi dough… yellow, green, pink and orange (using natural juices Bigos Bigos is considered the national dish of Poland. It's a hearty, long-simmered meat-and-sauerkraut stew that goes back centuries. It was traditionally served at the start of the hunting season, from fearly autumn through to Shrove Tuesday, or until the family's supply of barrel-cured sauerkraut ran out! Today, it's enjoyed year-round. Any combination of game, beef, pork, poultry and vegetables works. This recipe is just one version. Bigos also is an excellent way to use up leftover cooked meats, and for the family hunter's quota of venison. Makes 6 to 8 servings Caldo verde Considered by many to be Portugal’s national dish, caldo verde is found everywhere—in the dining rooms of Lisbon’s most luxurious hotels to the humblest of country homes. It’s a versatile dish: Serve it as a one-course meal at lunch or as a light supper in the evening. What’s crucial when preparing it is that the kale is cut into extremely fine slices; that’s what creates the soup’s distinctive character. Pasteis de nata It is believed that pastéis de nata were created before the 18th century by Catholic monks at the Jerónimos Monastery in the civil parish of Santa Maria de Belém, in Lisbon: for this reason, they are alternately known as Pastéis de Belém .During Portuguese medieval history, the convents and monasteries of Portugal produced large quantities of eggs, whose egg-whites were in demand for starching of clothes (such as nuns' habits) and also in wineries (where they were used in the clearing of wines, such as Porto). It was quite common for these Portuguese monasteries and convents to produce many confections with the leftover egg yolks, resulting in a proliferation of sweet pastry recipes throughout the country. Bacalhau Bacalhau dishes are common in Portugal and Galicia, in the northwest of Spain. There are said to be over 1000 recipes in Portugal alone and it can be considered the iconic ingredient of Portuguese cuisine (but curiously the only fish that is not consumed fresh in this fish-loving nation). It is often cooked on social occasions and is the Portuguese traditional Christmas dinner in some parts of Portugal. There are numerous bacalhau recipe variations, depending on region and tradition. In Portugal, it is said there are more than 365 ways to cook bacalhau, one for every day of the year; others say there are 1,001 ways. Whatever the exact number, bacalhau is a ubiquitous and iconic food in Portuguese cuisine Papanasi The original papanasi are always served with high fat sour cream and sour cherry compote (jam ) toppings they are a kind of sweet dumpling. Papanasi can be found in every Romanian restaurant across all the regions of the country without much differences, being one of the few Romanian foods without any regional aspect to their nature. Pasca Pasca is a,soft, yeast braided bread baked in a 10 inch tin and filled with a sweet cheese mixture. Like a cheesecake in a bread. It is traditionally served after 7 weeks of fasting (abstinence from any kind of food derived from animals) with Good Friday being the absolute fast (where nothing allowed is consumed the entire day) then comes Easter, one of the two most celebrated Greek Orthodox religious holidays. This sweet Easter bread is served as part of the celebration all across Romania. Mititei Mititei or “mici” as they are also known are the “hot dog” of Romanian culture, the most ubiquitous form of “the common man’s meat” and are generally extremely inexpensive to buy, often sold in large packs (in grocery stores) precisely so you can cook them on your grill during a summer’s picnic. It is extremely common to eat mici with a healthy dollop of “plain” yellow mustard, usually served on the side so that the eater can swirl each bite of mici in the sauce as desired. If you ever order mici, whether at a fast-food or “proper” restaurant, the mustard will always be served with it. Unlike most of the concoctions you will find at a fast-food restuarants, mici truly are a Romanian, domestic creation, the story of the origin being that many years ago a well-known restaurant in Bucharest ran out of casings and so had to create a “sausage” right there on the spot to feed their hungry customers. Ciorba Ciorbă from Arabic, via the Turkish word çorba is a general Romanian word describing sour soups consisting of various vegetables and meat. Most Romanians differentiate between "supă" (soup) and "ciorbă" by the fact that soup has no added acid and Ciorba is soured is usually withsauerkraut juice, lemon juice, vinegar, sour grape leaves or green sorrel leaves. Selyodka Pod Shuboi This recipe for Russian dis known widely as Herring under Fur Coat Salad,is a traditional layered salad made of finely chopped pickled herring, eggs, beets, carrots, potatoes and some type of dressing, either mayonnaise or a sour cream base. The recipes vary from cook to cook. Here is my version. It gets its fur coat (shuboi) moniker from the beet layer that completely covers the salad. Make sure to prepare this salad at least 6 hours in advance so it can be chilled properly and sliced to show off the layers. Rassolnik A pickle soup?! This recipe is for Russians or and traditionally pregnant ladies. However, if you’ve never heard of such a bizarre concept as a pickle soup. If you’re Russian, you probably grew up eating this soup, and don’t see anything unusual about it but if you’re not accustomed to it give it a try. Rassolnik is very comforting as it has potatoes and creamy barley in it, but it also doesn’t taste heavy at all, the pickles give it a really unusual twist. Salat Olivier The original version of the salad was invented in the 1860s by Belgian Lucien Olivier, the chef of the Hermitage, one of Moscow's most celebrated restaurants. Olivier's salad quickly became immensely popular with Hermitage regulars, and became the restaurant's signature dish. Olivier cooked by recipe of Hermitage restaurant The exact recipe — particularly that of the dressing — was a jealously guarded secret, but it is known that the salad contained grouse, veal tongue, caviar, lettuce, crayfish tails, capers, and smoked duck, although it is possible that the recipe was varied seasonally. The original Olivier dressing was a type of mayonnaise, made with French wine vinegar, mustard, and Provençal olive oil; its exact recipe, however, remains unknown. At the turn of the 20th century, one of Olivier's sous-chefs, Ivan Ivanov, attempted to steal the recipe. While preparing the dressing one evening in solitude, as was his custom, Olivier was suddenly called away on some emergency. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Ivanov sneaked into Olivier's private kitchen and observed his mise en place, which allowed him to make reasonable assumptions about the recipe of Olivier's famed dressing. Ivanov then left Olivier's employ and went to work as a chef for Moskva, a somewhat inferior restaurant, where he began to serve a suspiciously similar salad under the name "Capital Salad," (Russian: Столичный, "Stolichny"). It was reported by the gourmands of the time, however, that the dressing on the Stolichny salad was of a lower quality than Olivier's. Later, Ivanov sold the recipe for the salad to various publishing houses, which further contributed to its popularization. Due to the closure of the Hermitage restaurant in 1905, and the Olivier family's subsequent departure from Russia, the salad could now be referred to as "Olivier." One of the first printed recipes for Olivier salad, by Aleksandrova, appearing in 1894, called for half a hazel grouse, two potatoes, one small cucumber (or a large cornichon), 3-4 lettuce leaves, 3 large crawfish tails, 1/4 cup cubed aspic, 1 teaspoon of capers, 3–5 olives, and 11⁄2 tablespoon Provençal dressing (mayonnaise). As often happens with gourmet recipes which become popular, the ingredients that were rare, expensive, seasonal, or difficult to prepare were gradually replaced with cheaper and more readily available foods. Today's popular version of "Salade Olivier" — containing boiled potatoes, dill pickles, peas, eggs, carrots, and boiled beef/chicken or bologna, dressed with mayonnaise — is a version of Ivanov's salad, and only faintly resembles Olivier's original creation. Kasha A Long time ago, kasha was ceremonial meal, often cooked for weddings and royal feasts. Very soon kasha became a common meal in Russia. It could be easily cooked to feed many people at once, and, because kasha is very versatile product and could be cooked using all types of ingredients, it became very popular among villagers. What can be better on cold winter day than a bowl of hot borsch with garlic, plate of buckwheat kasha and big piece of still warm rye bread! Interestingly, hundreds years ago because of lack of sophisticated milling equipment villagers used what we call now "whole grains" as kasha main ingredient. So many old Russian kasha recipes can be called whole grain recipes as long as whole grains are used for cooking. Kasha was loved by Russian nobles too - there are many recipes which include ingredients not easy found in Russia 300 years ago. Such kashas also require longer and more complicated cooking processes.. This is a recipe for the most basic buckwheat kasha porridge which can be eaten as a warming breakfast dish. Pashka Pashka, the Russian word for Easter, is one of a few ritual foods served at an Orthodox Easter in Russia. Pashka is traditionally spread on kulich (an Easter coffee cake) and served on Easter Sunday. Both the pashka and the kulich are taken to church on the Thursday or Friday before Easter to be blessed. Traditionally, once pashka has been unmoulded, the letters XB (which stand for "Christ has risen" in Cyrillic script) are pressed into the side with extra nuts and glace fruits. Shchi Shchi has been a Russian countrystaple for centuries for many reasons. It is very cheap, easily changed according to what ingredients are available, keeps well, and has many vitamins and minerals in each serving. It can be made with meat or vegetarian. Coulibiac This is one of the best fish pies ever invented. It's perfect for entertaining as it can all be made well in advance. Provided everything is cooled thoroughly first, all you have to do is cover it with clingfilm and leave in the fridge until needed, then pop it into the oven just before you serve the first course. The dish was so popular in Russia in the early part of the twentieth century that Auguste Escoffier, the famed French chef, brought it to France and included recipes for it in his masterwork, The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery. Salmon coulibiac is a traditional Christmas holiday dish in Russia becauseit looks like a present,all gift-wrapped in puff pastry. Blini and caviar Blins or blini were symbolically considered by early Slavic peoples in pre-Christian times as a symbol of the sun, due to their round form.[1] They were traditionally prepared at the end of winter to honor the rebirth of the new sun (Butter Week, or Maslenitsa, also called "pancake week").[1] This tradition was adopted by the Orthodox church and is carried on to the present day. Blini were also served at wakes to commemorate the recently deceased. Traditional Russian blini are made with yeasted batter, which is left to rise and then diluted with cold or boiling water or milk. When diluted with boiling water, they are referred to as zavarniye blini. The blini are then baked in a traditional Russian oven. The process of cooking blini is still referred to as baking in Russian, even though these days they are universally pan-fried, like pancakes. Caviar, that infamous lightly salted sturgeon roe, is a bit of a dirty word these days, and not necessarily because it has long been thought of as a snack for the filthy rich. Overfishing has reduced much of the world’s wild sturgeon stocks to the verge of extinction, and not just in the Baltic and Black Seas, but in North America as well. There are now strict regulations in place, however, and imports of the endangered species, like beluga, are currently prohibited, sustainably farmed sturgeon (and caviar) is the best choice. Serves 4-6. Torta tre monti La Serenissima is a cake factory in the Republic of San Marino. A landlocked country within Italy's borders, San Marino is only slightly larger than Vatican City. Since 1942 the same traditional recipe has been used with natural ingredients. Every product is made completely by hand with special pastry making techniques. La Serenissima's formula is simple. The rarest varieties of cacao, hazelnuts, almonds and coffee are used to bring out the fragrance and unique flavors. Five fragrant layers of round wafer filled with chocolate and hazelnut cream and crowned with a delicious rich dark chocolate. Su Porcheddu One of the most favorite meat cooking methods in Sardinia is roasting it on the spit. Su Porcheddu, meaning sucking pig, is a widespread meat dish on the island and is always prepared during farm holidays. The pig, which is going to be roasted, must be about 40 days old – the meat is young and tender. Before the roasting, hair removal process with boiling water must take place. The most traditional way of roasting the pig involves a fire pit lined with hot coals, the pig is cooked underground with myrtle leaves. Some timeshe second method is to roast the pig on the spit – it is faster and the meat gains more crunchiness. Common ingredients to enhance the flavor are olive oil, salt, pepper and fennel. Aromatic and mouthwatering Su Porcheddu dish goes well with a glass of red Cannonau wine. Unfortunately cooking a whole suckling pig in a hole in the ground is not practical for most home cooks, it can be attempted with care and skill by the adventurous chef, details are available if you search online. It is a dish that will feed a crowd of hungry people. Alternatively be sure to order it if you visit the beautiful Island of Sardinia. Cranachan Cranachan was originally a summer dish and often consumed around harvest time, but is now more likely to be served all year round and on special occasions. A variant dish was ale-crowdie, consisting of ale, treacle and whisky with the oatmeal - served at a wedding with a ring in the mixture: whoever got the ring would be the next to marry. Cullen Skink This rather odd name is said to come from the Gaelic word "Essence". Initially, Cullen Skink referred to a type of broth made with the scrapings of beef from the front legs of cattle. Hard times in the early 1890s left the Northern people unable to buy this product. By this time, Cullen Harbour (completed in 1819) had become the thriving centre of herring fishing and the village also specialised in the production of smoked haddock. With many families in the local villages having a fishing background, they turned to smoked haddock which was in plentiful supply. By using smoked haddock and various other products all put together, a distinctive delicious soup was made. Haggis Haggis is a traditional Scottish dish, considered the national dish of Scotland as a result of Robert Burns' poem Address to a Haggis of 1787. Haggis is traditionally served with "neeps and tatties" (Scots: turnip and potato), boiled and mashed separately and a dram (a glass of Scotch whisky), especially as the main course of a Burns supper. For hundreds of years Haggis was a way for a Scottish farmer or crofter to use up the lights (lungs) of a sheep, together with the heart and liver – ingredients which will quickly spoil and go off, unlike the denser meat of the animal. And while to modern sensibilities offal is now no longer eaten in the same quantities, nothing in the Highlands of Scotland could be afforded to be wasted, and this was especially true of food, where starvation and malnutrition was common. So Haggis is offal based, but it is actually a very tasty, satisfying and savoury dish, one which should be tried in its authentic guise. Please try and source a traditional Haggis from a reputable Scottish butcher or manufacturer. We have provided a traditional Haggis recipe too , perhaps the most adventurous recipe on the Gastro scratch map. This one is for the most brave cook. Talking to your butcher: there is no way you can make this recipe without first talking to your local butcher,your butcher needs to be able to source and certify the specialist offal that you are buying from his suppliers, and this needs advance notice. You need to order the lamb paunch (stomach), lights (lungs), heart and liver, as well as the beef suet (if deciding to use fresh suet). By ordering it in advance you can also save time and ask your butcher to clean and trim all the offal up and wash out the paunch ready for you to use. Note: You also need all the ingredients at least the day before serving. The following recipe is faithful to a Scottish Haggis, those eaten by the richest Laird and the poorest crofter. All the ingredients are boiled in a sheep’s ‘paunch’ (or stomach) and when cooked the paunch is split open and the Haggis filling is eaten, traditionally with boiled and mashed swede, (Haggis and Neeps) and a dram of course! Pljeskavica Pljeskavica are Serbian hamburgers popular in one form or another throughout the Balkans. The name for these meat patties comes from pljesak, a word meaning "to clap the hands," the motion used to form these thin, large burgers. They can be made with any combination of pork, lamb and beef and can be grilled, baked or pan fried, in this recipe a ridged griddle pan is used on the hob. Proja This recipe for Serbian corn bread or a proja was a staple among Serbian peasants and more common than white wheat bread. Proja is served warm often with yogurt, soft cheese or sauerkraut. The bread has many forms, this recipe uses a muffin tin to make individual cornbread muffins. Kiflice Cheese rolls called kiflice are very popular savory little treats in Serbia. They are usually served as a starter at family meetings, or as a finger food at parties and they are standard offer at city bakeries. Almost each family has it's variation of the recipe, some with chili or paprika. Caponata This is a typical Sicilian dish based on vegetables, above all on aubergines. The vegetables are fried and then simmered in a sweet-and-sour sauce. The origins of the word caponata are unclear, although some say it is Catalan. It could derive from the Latin caupona, meaning osteria (bar), where you would always find a caponata ready to eat. Whatever its origin, this dish, served cold as an antipasto or can be eaten warm as an accompaniment to meat and poultry or used as a pasta sauce. Bryndzove Halusky Bryndzové Halušky is one of the national dishes in Slovakia.This hearty meal consists of Halušky (boiled lumps of potato dough similar in appearance to gnocchi) and bryndza(a soft sheep cheese), optionally sprinkled with cooked bits of smoked pork fat/bacon. Žinčica is traditionally drunk with this meal, it’s a sheep’s milk whey and is served in a wooden cup. There is an annual Bryndzové Halušky festival in Turecká that features an eating contest. Prekmurska Gibanica Prekmurska gibanica (Prekmurian layer cake) is a type of gibanica or layered cake.[1] It contains poppy seeds, walnuts, apples, raisins and ricotta fillings. Although native to Prekmurje, it has achieved the status of a national specialty of Slovenia. The unique sweetmeat shows the variety of agriculture in this region using diverse native ingredients. The name gibanica comes from dialectical expression güba which refers to a fold. For centuries prekmurska gibanica was served as a festive and ritual dish in Prekmurje. The exact origin of the recipe is not clear. Early sources suggest that it evolved over centuries. The oldest recorded document is found in the description of a wedding by József Kossics and dated 1828. Be warned the recipe is quite labour intensive but the result is well worth it! Chorizo Spanish chorizo is made from coarsely chopped pork and pork fat, seasoned with smoked pimentón (paprika) and salt. It is generally classed as either picante (spicy) or dulce (sweet), depending upon the type of smoked paprika used. Hundreds of regional varieties of Spanish chorizo, both smoked and unsmoked, may contain garlic, herbs and other ingredients. Spanish chorizo is known for its rich red colour and tangy, smoky flavour, equally delicious eaten in slices as tapas or used in cooking to give wonderful depth to a bean stew or egg dish. Chorizo in its present form has only been enjoyed in Spain for the last few centuries, as pimentón was introduced to Spain in the sixteenth century from the Americas by the explorers and conquistadors. Depending on the variety, chorizo can be eaten sliced without further cooking, its used in many tapas dishes, sometimes sliced into a sandwich, or barbecued, fried or baked alongside other foodstuffs, and is also an important ingredient in several dishes. Although its not really practical to attempt to make your own chorizo at home it is widely available from both supermarkets and deli’s. Here’s a recipe for a simple tapas dish Gazpacho This popular soup from the Andalusian area , (an autonomous community of Spain), mostly known now for being served cold, has many different influences from Greece and Rome, but also from the Moor's and Arab culture. The original soup was blended stale bread, olive oil and garlic, with some liquid like water or vinegar that was pounded together in a mortar. Different vegetables and almonds that were available were also added. This soup evolved into different varieties, the most popular around the world is a tomato based variety, served cold. It is often served heated in certain regions in Spain. A Spanish refrain says, De gazpacho no hay empacho-You can never get too much of a good thing or too much Gazpacho, It is great for any meal or snack and the left over can be used as a sauce for pasta. Tortilla de patatas No doubt about it, Tortilla de Patatas or Potato Omelet is the most commonly served dish in Spain. According to legend, during the siege of Bilbao, Carlist general Tomás de Zumalacárregui created the "tortilla de patatas" as an easy, fast and nutritious dish to satisfy the scarcities of the Carlist army. Although it remains unknown whether this is true, it appears the tortilla started to spread during the early Carlist wars. Another tale is that during the war, Zumalacárregui was in the field and happened upon a farmhouse and demanded a meal from the farmwife. All she had were a few eggs, a potato and an onion, so she combined all three, making an omelette. Surprisingly, Zumalacárregui was pleased and took the idea with him. It is. Bars and cafés serve it as a tapa or appetizer, but it is often served as a light dinner in Spanish homes. Because it is easy to transport, the Spanish make bocadillos or sandwiches by placing a piece between two pieces of a baguette. Paella de Marisco Paella is probably the most famous and recognizable Spanish dish, in fact, it is so famous that many people outside of Spain regard it as the national dish. In Spain, however, it is considered to be a regional speciality and it origins can be traced back to the 15th century when rice became a staple ingredient in Valencia. The Valencian people are passionately proud of their paella and it has become one of the defining symbols of the region. The Catalan word paella actually describes the shallow, double-handled pan that is used to cook the dish and is originally derived from the Latin word patella which means pan. There are many versions of Paella but the three most recognizable are Valencian (paella valenciana: meat and vegetable based), seafood (paella de marisco: fish and shellfish based) and mixed (paella mixta: a combination of meat, seafood and vegetables). Each version has many variations and Valencians will happily debate until the end of time about the correct ingredients and methods that should be used to make the perfect paella. Therefore, it can be quite difficult for a non-Valencian to even suggest a Paella recipe without suffering the scorn, mockery and indignation of an entire region Saffranspannkaka Saffranspannkaka (Saffron pancake) is a Gotland specialty. Gotland is Sweden's largest island and the largest island in the Baltic Sea, the population is around 57,000,[2] of which about 22,200 live in Visby, the main town. This rich and satisfying pudding is served traditionally with dewberry jam. Dewerries are related to blackberries and raspberries and grow wild in on the island. Try stewed raspberries or even a good fruit jaminstead. Janssons frestelse Janssons frestelse or Jansson’s temptation − a creamy potato and anchovy casserole − is said to have been named for Pelle Janzon, a food-loving Swedish opera singer of the early 20th century. The recipe was published for the first time in 1940, and this rich casserole quickly became a classic of the Swedish Christmas dinner table. But Jansson’s temptation can just as easily be eaten at any time of year. It is quite remarkable that something as simple as potatoes, onions, anchovies and cream can taste so very good. Ostkaka Ostkaka, literally cheese cake in Swedish, is a specialty of the Småland region. Swedish cheese cake bears very little resemblance to the New York kind. Historically its earliest mention is in the 1520s in a list of foods served on New Year’s Day in the household of Bishop Hans Brask in Linköping. Today you can buy it ready-made in any supermarket making it an easy and popular dish to take to parties and Christmas celebrations. If made in the traditional way, rennet is needed to convert milk into cheese that is broken up and mixed with eggs, cream, flour, sugar and almonds. But the preparation can be greatly simplified by utilizing cottage cheese. (Serves 5-6) Inglagd sill Herring used to be considered as food for the poor in Sweden. But when the resort culture flourished in the late 1800s it became fashionable to serve herring and vodka together. The combination has survived and is now a Swedish classic. In fact, today Swedish pickled herring of different kinds have a prominent place on the dining table in Sweden. Especially at festivals such as Christmas, Easter and Midsummer. It was mainly in Bohuslän herring fishery used to play an important economic role. Even today many large and small herring canneries still exist there. Like Klädesholmen, a small fishing village on two islands, where herring has been handled since the late 1500s. There is one herring factory left that manufactures canned herring based on tradition. In the early 1800s the herring disappeared suddenly and was gone for over half a century the industry collapsed. But one winter day in 1877 it turned it up again, the herrings were larger than before and pickled herrings preserved in vinegar have been a favourite food of the nation ever since. Gravad lax During the Middle Ages, gravlax was made by fishermen, who salted the salmon and lightly fermented it by burying it in the sand above the high-tide line. The word gravid lax comes from the Scandinavian word grav, which literally means "grave" (in Swedish, Norwegian, Danish), and lax (or laks), which means "salmon", thus grav lax ( or gravad lax )means "buried salmon". Today fermentation is no longer used in the production process. Instead the salmon is "buried" in a dry marinade of salt, sugar, and dill, and cured for a few days. As the salmon cures, by the action of osmosis. Kottbullar The content of the Swedish meatball may vary, depending on where in the country it is made. In southern Sweden many people prefer their ground meat with a little more fat, but the further north you go, the less pork you will find in the meatball mixture. Of course there are probably as many versions for Swedish meatballs as there are chefs. Every Scandinavian cookbook has at least one recipe, usually several.However, bread or rusk crumbs allowed to swell in milk are as important as the lingonberries on the side. They give Swedish meatballs their special soft consistency. This is a traditional recipe for meatballs Bircher Muesli "Birchermüesli" was invented by Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benner (1867-1939), a pioneer of the biological health medicine and whole foods diet. Dr. Bircher was active in Zürich and he had a great impact on our feeding habits. Around 1900, he suggested that cereals, fruits and vegetables are more valuable food than meat, but his colleagues did not agree with his points of view. But even if the public opinion did not follow his ideas, he had more faith in his own experiences than the current doctrine. While at that time meat was regarded as the best suited and most valuable food for humans, vegetables and fruits were considered food of the poor people. But Dr. Bircher continued to believe in what he called "food of the sunlight", meals based on biological, natural ingredients. He created a recipe which is known today worldwide as "Birchmüesli". He was also convinced that health care should be much more than just medical treatments. In 1897, Dr. Bircher founded a health clinc in Zürich, where he practiced a holistic therapy which included whole foods diet, a daily walk, bathing and sunbathing. He even set up exercise equipment, so we can see his health clinc as a kind of a fore runner of the gym and fitness centers as we know them today. His original muesli recipe has certainly spawned a whole muesli inspired breakfast cereal industry, but this is the original recipe just as it was presented over 100 years ago. Rosti Rösti consisting mainly of potatoes. It was originally a common breakfast eaten by farmers in the canton of Bern, but today is eaten all over Switzerland and also in many restaurants in the western world. Many Swiss people consider rösti a national dish. Today, rather than considering it a complete breakfast, it is more commonly served to accompany other dishes such as "Spinat und Spiegelei" (spinach and fried eggs, sunny side up. In Swiss popular consciousness, rösti is eaten only in the German-speaking part of the country. It is portrayed as a stereotypical identifier of Germanic culture, as opposed to the Latin one. The line separating the French and German speaking sides is jokingly called the Röstigraben, literally the "rösti ditch". Kaesefondue Fondue was popularized as a Swiss national dish by the Swiss Cheese Union (Schweizerische Käseunion) in the 1930s as a way of increasing cheese consumption. The Swiss Cheese Union also created pseudo-regional recipes as part of the "spiritual defense of Switzerland". After World 47/ Switzerland War II rationing ended, the Swiss Cheese Union continued its marketing campaign, sending fondue sets to military regiments and event organizers across Switzerland. Fondue is now a symbol of Swiss unity. You’ll need a fondue set with an under burner to make this recipe. Recipe for 6-8 persons Lahmacun Lahmacun, also known as 'Turkish pizza', is a spicy Turkish/Middle Eastern dish consisting of a ground meat/vegetables/spice mixture, spread on a very thin bread/cracker-like crust. Although lahmacun may look somewhat similar to Italian pizza (and is referred to as Turkish pizza outside of Turkey), their tastes are completely different. Lahmacun is spicy, the dough is very thin, there is no cheese and it's main ingredient is the ground meat. Lahmacun is especially famous in the Southern and Eastern parts of Turkey where it's traditionally eaten with salad and lots of red hot pepper flakes!. SERVES 4–6. Baklava Baklava is like the combination of an Iranian dessert made of dough filled up with nuts and peanuts and baked in ovens with the thin layered bread of the Turks. In every Turkish pastry shop, supermarket and household, you'll find endless varieties of baklava made with walnuts, hazelnuts, pistachios and more, all in shapes and sizes you'd never dream of. Squares, diamonds, rolls and spirals. It's a baklava-lovers paradise. We must mention that there's a special reason for baklava being the top choice of pastry for the Turkish Sultans with their large Harems, as well as for the wealthy and their families. Two principal ingredients, the pistachio and honey, were believed to be aphrodisiacs when taken regularly. Certain spices that were added to baklava, have also helped to augment the aphrodisiac characteristics of the pastry, depending on male or female consumer. Cinnamon for females, and cardamom for males and cloves for both sexes. Try adding a little to your recipe! Lokum Lokum or Turkish Delight as we know it is a sweet that originated in Turkey in the 1700's. The gummy, sugarcoated candy was invented in 1777 by famous confectioner Bekir Effendi (known as Haci Bekir after the Muslim hajj pilgrimage). Haci Bekir owned a candy shop in the Bahcekapi district of Istanbul. Amazingly Haci Bekir’s shop is still open today in the exact same location. Run by his descendents, Haci Bekir Confectioners is in its fifth generation. It is the oldest company in Turkey to operate from its original location. The ingredients are melted together, boiled, then poured in a pan and allowed to cool. Lokum has a soft, gelatin-like texture, sometimes with chopped nuts inside, and is its flavoring is very subtle and fragrant. It is cut into bite-sized cubes and covered with confectioners’ sugar. Through the years the original recipe for Lokum has changed very little. Lokum became extremely popular among Turks and soon Haci Bekir was appointed chief confectioner for the Ottoman Court and awarded a medal of honor by the Sultan. Doner Kebab Doner kebab is a Turkish dish usually cooked on a vertical spit, commonly made of lamb but can also contain a mixture of veal and beef, or sometimes chicken. The sliced meat may be served wrapped in a flat bread or on a sandwich. Serves 4. Cherry Vareniki In Ukraine many people go cherry picking in the summer, and preserve the cherries just so that they can make cherry vareniki, all year round. Vareniki make a great fast food because if you have some of these in your freezer, and they freeze well, you can have vareniki in probably 15 minutes (10 minutes to bring water to boil, 5 minutes to cook). In fact, a lot of expecting mums stuff their freezers with vareniki, so that when the newborn’s hectic schedule interferes with their inner gourmet soul, delicious food it close at hand. Borscht Ukraine is cited as its place of origin. Its name is thought to be derived from the Slavic word for the cow parsnip, or common hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium), or from a fermented beverage derived from that plant. The more-palatable cultivated beetroot eventually replaced the wild cow parsnip as the basis of the soup. Holubtsi Ukrainian cabbage rolls, these are a favourite of Ukranian children and are fun to prepare. Typical Ukrainian cabbage rolls can be made from either pickled or parboiled cabbage leaves. Fillings traditionally contain rice only, since the typical peasant diet was largely vegetarian due to the higher cost of meat. In this updated version of a traditional dish fresh cabbage leaves are used and the filling is meat based. Vegetarian versions can be easily made by leaving out the meat and increasing the quantity of rice along with chopped mushrooms and herbs. Bara brith Is bara brith a bread? Or is it a cake? Feelings run almost as high in some parts of Wales about this tasty issue as they do about the rugby scores. Some say bara brith is definitely a bread given that, made the traditional way, it is made with yeast and smeared liberally with salted Welsh butter. But others argue that since it’s packed with fruit and takes pride of place at any Welsh tea table, it’s indisputably a cake. Whatever the case, bara brith is delicious. In Welsh, bara brith means ‘speckled bread’, the speckles being the raisins, currants and candied peel that go into it. Laverbread Laverbread, or bara lawr in Welsh, is a traditional Welsh delicacy, mainly found clinging to exposed rocks and is harvested on the West Coast of the British Isles and Southern Ireland. After being gathered, the seaweed is thoroughly washed and cooked until it becomes soft. It is then minced to convert it into a thick black/green paste like texture. In the early 19th century, laverbread, bacon, mushrooms and sausages became a staple breakfast for hard-working Welsh pitmen who needed plenty of energy. Even today, hotel guests across Wales are often greeted with the traditional Welsh breakfast with laverbread and cockles (bara lawr a chocos), another Welsh delicacy harvested from the Gower coastline. Welsh chefs also use laverbread as an ingredient in other regional recipes. Eating Laverbread is not only tasty; it is scientifically proven to be beneficial to your health. Many studies have confirmed the positive qualities of the mineral rich Laverbread. It is nutritious, very low in calories, rich in protein and contains over 50 known minerals and trace elements regarded as essential body requirements. We cant provide a recipe for this natural ingredient, you can buy it online though so track it down and serve it for breakfast with your bacon and sausages. Cawl Cawl can be made throughout the year, just adjust the vegetables according to the season. Chopped runner bean, broad beans and peas are wonderful during early summer, add a little chopped mint at the end of cooking. During cooking the stock will reduce somewhat, so top up with more water, or some wine. You may also wish to add pulses such as lentils, pearl barley is also good during the winter months. Cawl was traditionally eaten during the winter months in the south-west of Wales. Today the word is often used to refer to a dish containing lamb and leeks, due to their association with Welsh culture, but historically it was made with either salted bacon or beef, along with potatoes, carrots and other seasonal vegetables.With recipes dating back to the 14th century, cawl is widely considered to be the national dish of Wales. The meat in the dish was normally cut into medium-sized pieces and boiled with the vegetables in water. The stock was often with either oatmeal or flour, and was then served, without the meat or vegetables, as a first course.The vegetables and slices of the meat would then be served as a second course. Cawl is generally made with lamb nowadays and served as a single course is today the most popular way to serve the meal.	i don't know
What is modern Turkey's capital city?	What is the Capital of Turkey? - Capital-of.com Dates of religious and Civil holidays around the world. www.when-is.com Capital of Turkey The Capital City of Turkey (officially named Republic of Turkey) is the city of Ankara. The population of Ankara in the year 2008 was 71,517,100 (12,573,836 in the metropolitan area). Turkey is a Turkish speaking country on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, Sea of Marmara and the Aegean Sea. Additional Information	Ankara
Name Turkey's major 'Istanbul (Who?) Airport' after the founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey?	Turkey in the Bible If You Know Your Bible, You Know More About Turkey Than You Thought! OLD TESTAMENT In 2002, we were privileged to spend two weeks in Turkey. Although I knew that this country played a major role in the New Testament, I was surprised to learn how frequently the region of Turkey is mentioned in the Old Testament. Turkey is a Cradle of Civilization, as verified by early cave drawings and archeological artifacts which have been discovered in this region. Wedged between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, Turkey has always been an important center of civilization and trade. Camel caravans have crossed this region for thousands of years and you can find many impressive ruins of ancient ï¿½caravan hotelsï¿½, which provided accommodations and food for camel caravans. Some of these have been restored and are used for cultural functions today. The Tigrus and Euphrates River, often mentioned in the Bible, have their beginnings in Turkey and flow through Iraq. Noahï¿½s arc landed on Mt. Ararat (Genesis 8:1-5) and after leaving Ur, Abraham and his family lived for a while in Haran (Genesis 11:31). Many other ancient peoples named in the Bible were entirely or partly in Turkey. The Hittite Kingdoms (Gen. 10:15; 15:19ï¿½21), are especially worth mentioning. Until the twentieth century, the Hittites were known only from biblical accounts and skeptics pointed to these references as proof of the Bibleï¿½s unreliability. Secular Egyptian and Assyrian texts have been recently found and confirmed by archaeological discoveries. The Hittites are identified as the Kheta or Hatti. Their capital was at Hattusas (modern Boghazkoï¿½uy), east of Ankara in Turkey. Hittite history is divided into two basic periods: the Old Kingdom (to c. 1500 B.C.) and the Empire (beginning c. 1460 B.C.). The two great periods of power and influence were around 1650 until 1500 and about 1380 to 1200 B.C.. Assyrians, mentioned frequently in the biblical narrative, have vanished from the face of the earth, but in the same region lives a mysterious people without a national government or territory. These are called Kurds and the area in which they live is called Kurdistan. Kurdistan covers the same area as ancient Assyria, partly in Iraq and Syria, but most Kurds live in Turkey. One of the most fascinating unfulfilled prophecies in the Bible is found in Isaiah 19:23 25. According to this prophecy, Assyria, Egypt and Israel will become friendly allies, enjoying the Lord's favor and worshiping together! NEW TESTAMENT Except for a brief stay in Egypt as an infant, Jesus lived, ministered and died within the borders of Israel, but much early church history following Pentecost took place in Turkey. The birthplace of the Christian Church may be Jerusalem, but Turkey is where the Church first thrived. In fact, many of the Jewish pilgrims who were on hand at Pentecost had traveled from Turkey (Mesopotamia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia and Pamhylia). The first recorded persecution of Christians was carried out by a radical Jewish Pharisee named Saul, who later converted to Christianity and became known as the Apostle Paul. Paul was born in Tarsus, ï¿½no mean cityï¿½ in what is now Turkey. Timothy was from Lystra, not far from Tarsus. The disobedient prophet, Jonah, also set out for Tarsus instead of Nineveh (in modern Iraq). The Apostle Peter wrote his first epistle to Christians scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bythinia. All these places are found in Turkey. The region of Cappadocia is particularly interesting. Thousands of Christians fled bitter persecutions in Jerusalem and Rome under Nero, reaching a climax under Marcus Aurelius, and finally ending when Constantine decreed the Peace of Milan in 313. Many of them found refuge in Cappadocia, where they carved homes out of the unusually shaped lava-stone mountains. Or they built and occupied underground cities, 100 of which still exist. Paul was not only born and raised in Turkey, but most of his ministry took place in Turkey! With the exception of Salamis and Pathos (in Cyprus), all the places Paul visited on his first missionary journey were in Turkey (Perge, Antioch in Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe and Attalia). Most of his second and third missionary journeys were also in Turkey. Paul wrote epistles to the Galatians, Ephesians and Colossians, churches in Turkey. Philemon, I & II Timothy were written to recipients in Turkey. Colossae is now buried beneath a large mound of dirt on which sheep graze. It has not yet been excavated and only a bullet riddled sign marks the site. After Paul visited Paphos on Cyprus (where a sorcerer named Elymas was blinded), he sailed to Perge in Pamphylia, which was an important port city. Today, Perge lies several miles from deep water, but you can still visit a large amphitheatre, a stadium used for chariot races, and the well-preserved agora (market place). Tourists may also inspect the spring of water and watering system which flowed through the main thoroughfare, providing drinking water, cool baths on hot days, and water for cleaning the streets. In addition to the ruins of an Artemis Temple, there are ruins of two Christian churches dating back to the fourth and fifth centuries in Perge. When Paul preached all night in Troas, a young man fell asleep and plunged from an open window to the ground below. He was taken up dead, but Paul revived him and continued his sermon until daybreak. After all this stress, Paul insisted on walking 25 miles to Assos on the following day while his companions took a ship. Talk about physical fitness! Paul changed ships in the port of Patara on his voyage from Miletus to Tyre. Patara has magnificent city gates and a large theatre. Paul encouraged the elders of Ephesus in Miletus before sailing off to Jerusalem. Miletus boasts a theatre seating 25,000. Near Miletus, one can view the ruins of Xhanthos. Here, stands a mysterious stone monument covered with hieroglyphics, which have never been deciphered. There is also a large theatre where they had bull fights and other events. On the voyage to Rome, with Paul as prisoner, the Roman Centurion found a ship from Alexandria sailing to Italy in the port city of Myra. This city boasts a gigantic theatre and extensive cliff graves. Aspendosis, which means ï¿½Horse Place,ï¿½ is not far from Myra. It has a well-preserved theatre seating 20,000, which is still used for cultural events. Another nearby city is Didyma, where there is a very large Apollo Temple. We were amazed at the immensity of the marble pillars and stones. One marble block was about 5 feet square and 30 feet long! Attalia, Bithynia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, Cnidos and Cos (Islands), Derbe, Galatia (Galatians), Hierapolis, Iconium, Pamphylia, Lysia, Lycania, Phrygia, Pontus, Lydia, Mysia, Perga are just a few places in Turkey mentioned in the New Testament. Iconium (Acts 13-16 and II Tim. 3:11) is now called Konya. A large Muslim monastery is located here, where the famous Whirling Derwishes learn their dances. At least 16 places in ancient times were called Antioch, including Antioch of Pisidia (in Turkey) and Antioch in Syria near Damascus, which are mentioned in the Bible. According to reliable traditions, the Apostle John left Jerusalem to become the Bishop of Ephesus. In obedience to Christï¿½s command, he took Mary, the mother of Jesus with him and cared for her until her death. John was later banned to exile on the Turkish Island of Patmos. It was here that he had a vision and wrote the book of Revelation. We can thus conclude that a major portion of the New Testament was either written to Christians in Turkey or written on Turkish soil. LETTERS TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES (Revelation 2-3) One of the most extensive and well-preserved archeological sites is the ancient city of Ephesus, where Paul spent more than two years (Acts 19:1-10). The Apostle John was bishop of the Ephesian church before he was exiled to Patmos. The traditionally accepted tombs of John and Mary, the mother of Jesus, are located in Ephesus. The oldest church dedicated to Mary is located here, dating to around 350! There is a large 8-sided baptismal pool clearly intended for adult baptisms in this church! Once an important seaport with 250,000 citizens and 50,000 slaves, the ruins of the city now lie 5 miles from water. It was in the theatre of Ephesus that Paul was accused by members of the silversmith gild of ruining their trade by his preaching. More than 24,000 people could be seated in this theatre, but the public toilet in Ephesus only seated 20 persons judging by the number of keyhole-shaped openings in the stone benches! Men of the city would sit here and talk politics or close business deals. The latrine even had running water and was pure luxury compared to a typical Turkish toilets today (holes in the floor that you squat over). Tourists can recognize the prevailing wickedness of ancient Ephesus in the ruins of a large brothel located across the street from the ornate and well preserved library. (now read Revelation 2:1-7) Smyrna, is now the thriving seaport city Izmir. It is located on the Aegean Sea and only a few marble columns, the remains of a heathen temple, are left from Bible times. (read Revelation 2:8-11) According to Revelation 2:13, ï¿½Satanï¿½s throneï¿½ was located in Pergamum. Today, one can view a large theatre and several heathen temples in the extensive ruins of this city (read Revelation 2:12-17). Thyratira (now Akhisr) was the home of Lydia, the purple seller who helped the Apostle Paul. A small enclosed area in the center of the modern city contains what is left of the ancient city (read Revelation 2:18-29). Sardis had a reputation that it lived, but was dead. Today, one can view the well-preserved and partly restored ruins of this once magnificent city. It contains a large Apollo Temple, perhaps the largest synagogue in Asia Minor, a fantastic gymnasium, sports arena, bath house and theatre (read Revelation 3:1-6). Philadelphia, now called Alasehir, received the highest praise and no negative comment from the Lord. All that is left of the ï¿½City of Brotherly Loveï¿½ today, however, is the ruins of an early Christian church dedicated to St. John (c. 600 AD - read Revelation 3:7-13) The acres of ruins in what was once Laodicea give an idea of the former size and importance of this city. Water was piped from the hot springs of Hierapolis to this city, but it was lukewarm and contaminated by the time it reached Laodicea. The poor water quality of the city was renowned and we can begin to realize why Christ said that Laodicea would be "spewed out" because it was neither cold nor hot (read Revelation 3:14-22). TURKEY IN CHURCH HISTORY Except for the Jerusalem Council recorded in Acts 15, the fist eight important church councils were all held in Turkey. Emperor Constantine made Byzantium capital of the Roman Empire in 330. It was then renamed Constantinople. Contrary to popular belief, it was not Constantine, but his successor to the throne, Emperor Theodosius, who made Christianity the official religion of the empire. Turkey became a bastion of Christianity and Constantinople the religious heart of the Holy Roman Empire until 1453. During this period, a great part of Eastern Europe was evangelized by missionaries from Turkey. The famous Christian basilica Hagia Sophia was built in 537 by Emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora. When the Muslims took control, it was converted into a mosque, but it has since been declared a museum in order to show it off to millions of Christian tourists. The nearby ï¿½Blue Mosqueï¿½ (the name foreigners use, but it is actually called the Sultan-Ahmet Mosque) was built 500 years later, but both are marvels of architecture. The famous limestone terraces of Pamukkale and thermal baths of Hierapolis (Colossians 4:13) have been popular tourist attractions and goals of pilgrimages for centuries. The cemetery of Hierapolis (called ï¿½city of the deadï¿½) was larger than the ï¿½city of the living!ï¿½ Although not mentioned in the Bible, Demra was the birthplace of St. Nicholas, patron saint of fishermen. He is better known in America as Santa Claus. A Basilica named after him and built in the first half of the 4th century is located here, but his casket is empty. Italians stole his body and reburied it near the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy. Alexander the Great conquered Turkey in 334 BC and controlled this land until his death in Babylon in 323 BC. Greek culture has had a great influence on Turkey, especially in its architecture. In 284, the Roman Emperor Diocletion, set up his throne in Nicomedia near Istanbul and the territory remained under Roman rule until Justinian. Constantine legalized Christianity in 313 and made Byzantium capitol of the Roman Empire in 330. By the middle of the fifth century, Mohammedï¿½s followers had conquered much of Turkey including the present day capital, Ankara. They also laid a four year siege on Constantinople 654-658, but were unable to take the city until 1453. The cityï¿½s name was then changed to Istanbul. MODERN TURKEY Istanbul, with its 7 million inhabitants, is the major city of modern Turkey. A small part of Istanbul is located on the European continent, but the bulk of the country is in Asia (called Asia Minor in New Testament). Still, Turkey would like to join the European Union. With 67 million inhabitants and an area twice the size of unified Germany, it would become the EUï¿½s most populated member nation if admitted. The initial request for acceptance was turned down by the openly godless EU in 2002, which argued that Turkey was intolerant of other faiths and therefore did not fit. The present government is under tremendous pressure to change this situation without causing an uproar among influential Muslim clerics. These are opposed to membership, for the Islamic religion recognizes only one form of government and that is an absolute Islamic dictatorship. When one considers the fact that Turkey is 99% Islamic, one can not help but wonder why Turkey should want to belong to the EU. One answer of course is the desire for economical advantages, but that cannot completely explain this phenomenon. Most Turks, especially young people, want to be recognized as Europeans, and the main reason is a man called Atatï¿½rk. Atatï¿½rkï¿½s real name was Mustafa Kemal Pascha. Although he died in his thirties, Atatï¿½rk (a title which means ï¿½Father of Turkeyï¿½) is the beloved founder of the modern Turkish Republic. He came to power in 1922 after the country had been reduced to great poverty under the rule of the last Sultans. He was convinced that there was no viable future for Turkey unless the nation could wrench itself from the death-grip of Muslim fanaticism and tradition. Soon after coming to power, Atatï¿½rk formed a Republic (1923) and although he ruled only 15 years (his early death in 1938 was at least partly due to heavy drinking), he succeeded in turning Turkey toward Europe. He did away with the Arabic alphabet and introduced Latin letters. For this reason, Turks now have computer skills that are unmatched in the rest of the Arab Muslim world. Wearing of the traditional Muslim ï¿½fesï¿½ headpiece was forbidden. He adopted the Gregorian calendar, forbade polygamy, closed Muslim religious training centers and ordered the people to take last names. Women were allowed to unveil their faces, to vote and even hold office. These changes paved the way for a woman (Mrs. Ciller) to become President of Turkey in 1993, something that would be impossible in most Muslim nations today. Cillerï¿½s greed and alleged corruption, however, didnï¿½t make her very popular with the people. ï¿½Religion: Muslimï¿½ is still printed in every Turkish passport, but this will have to change when Turkey joins the EU. It is estimated that there are perhaps 3,000 true born-again Christians in Turkey. There are only 51 protestant ï¿½churchesï¿½ and many of their members are foreigners. Turkish Christians are allowed to assemble and have meetings, but they may not be called ï¿½churchesï¿½. The legal name of the Christian church in Antalia, for example, is ï¿½Cultural Club of St Paul.ï¿½ Although Turkey claims to grant religious freedom and earns much money from Christian tourists who follow the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul, missions is virtually impossible today. Three years ago, the ï¿½Cultural Club of St. Paulï¿½ received permission to purchase and restore the ruins of an ancient Orthodox church, but they were forbidden to use it for worship! Officially, there are no Christian missionaries in Turkey, but around 1000 foreign Christians work as ï¿½tent-makersï¿½ in hopes of leading Turks to Christ. Christians are no longer being persecuted openly, however, and the government is gradually giving more freedoms in order to improve their standing with the European Union. Other Interesting Facts About Turkey The ruins of Troy (actually several cities built on the same site) date back at least 5,000 years and according to Homer, Troy was taken by the Greeks through trickery - sneaking the proverbial Trojan Horse through the gates of the city. Most of us have heard about King Midas and the ï¿½Midas touchï¿½, of flying carpets, Ala Baba and the thirty thieves and other tales. The ï¿½Whirling Dervishesï¿½ are male dancers that still perform their rituals today. They can spin for hours without getting dizzy. The learn how to do this in the large monastery of Konya (Iconium). Emperor Marc Anthony and Cleopatra were married in Turkey. Turkeyï¿½s most famous industry is making Oriental carpets. They even raise silk worms, capture the silk thread and made it into carpets. Most carpets, however, are of wool and cotton. Angora wool is named after Ankara, the capital city of Turkey. One of the finest museums in the world is located here. The ï¿½Topkapi,ï¿½or Sultanï¿½s Palace of Istanbul, has many elaborate rooms, a harem, several museums and a park overlooking the Golden Horn and Bosphorus Strait. The museums contain among other things, a large collection of rare ceramics, the Kasikey Diamond and a hair from Mohammedï¿½s beard. FINAL THOUGHTS Turkey is proud to be a nation of stark contrasts which manage to co-exist and sometimes thrive side by side. In the cities, one can find old architecture and modern skyscrapers, women with head scarves and young girls in jeans and sweaters, ornate Mosques and modern businesses, all existing side by side in seeming tranquility. But there is still an underlying fear of the Muslim clerics. Islam came to power through violent means and the threat of violence is still its most effective weapon. There have been violent attacks against Kurds and Armenians in the past, which brought much bloodshed and suffering. The tension between the government and Kurds in the East remains to some extent, but many Kurds have been assimilated into the Turkish culture and all aspects of life. Some of the highest ranking government officials are Kurdish. The government has recognized the error of neglecting to invest in the eastern part of the nation where many Kurds live. Large irrigation projects and hydroelectric plants are being built to encourage industrialization and agriculture. For photos of Turkey, click here: PHOTOS	i don't know

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