The Archbishop Leaves Victorious

Well, the archbishop won.

Readers of this blog will remember the 19-month long inquisition of the archbishop, who was alleged to have committed various wrongs: selling a school without permission, covering up pederast priests, supporting legislation that would allow straight or gay couples living together to get insurance, and—here was the real dirt—setting up an altar to the patria—or motherland—in the cathedral.

Archbishop Roberto González Nieves is an independentista, and is perfectly happy to have everyone know it. So he set up the altar in the cathedral—take a look:

OK—not a problem, right? Well, seen through Puerto Rican eyes, there was just a little omission, namely the absence of another flag, called la pecosa, or the freckled one. Puerto Rico, you see, has but one star on its flag—the US flag has fifty. Hence, freckles—see?

Nor was that all. González conceived the wonderful idea of digging up the bones of a long dead statesman, Ramón Power y Giralt, a man who had represented Puerto Rico in a fledgling attempt at representation in Spain. And there he had died, and there he was buried—away from his beloved Puerto Rico, and away from his beloved friend, the first Puerto Rican bishop, Juan Alejo de Arizmendi. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if these two great Puerto Ricans at last could be united, these many centuries later, here at the Altar to the patria, in the land which they had loved so much, and for which they had battled so arduously?

“He was buried in a mass grave,” sputtered Mr. Fernández, referring to Alejo de Arizmendi, “he died of yellow fever, or some such thing. So the damn Spaniards dug up some old bones, and sent them over here! They’re probably still laughing!”

Well, it was true—the Spaniards sent over their training ship: it docked; a troop of cute Spaniards got out in their best ornamental uniforms; trumpets and fifes and drums got played; the Spaniards carried with great formality the “remains” to the state capitol, where they were received with Caribbean effusion. 

Well, the other music in the room—or on the island—was the collective gnashing of the teeth by those who favor statehood. The archbishop, they frothed, was injecting politics into religion; he was shoving his belief down their throats. They complained to the papal nuncio, who lives on the next island over. Being a territory, Puerto Rico cannot have a nuncio of its own, so we have to share.

And apparently the nuncio, Jozef Wesolowsky, was all too happy to launch an investigation, which he did by calling in a bishop from Ecuador, Guayaquil Antonio Arregui Yarza. Letters flew back and forth, leaked to the press—and in May, it was rumored that the archbishop had been asked to resign.

Ah, but by then the archbishop had gotten his break—Benedict decided to thumb his nose at half a millennium of church history and resign. And guess who got the job? A fellow Latin American—a guy who was both a pana and a pala.

Translation—a buddy and a connection.

In June, the archbishop was crowing victory. And in August?

Well, this is a dish that was served on ice, if not completely deep-frozen. For the papal nuncio, Jozef Wesolowsky, has been sacked, and charged with molesting young boys.

Here’s an account from Pedro Espinal, the bird who decided to sing:

“Nosotros una vez fuimos a Juan Dolio con 48 monaguillos de lo cual, eeehh, yo dormía en la parte afuera de la casa del Nuncio apostólico, que está en  Juan Dolio, de vacaciones. Y  nos repartimos, como entre cinco adultos que estábamos, los niños; cinco dormían conmigo, cinco con otro y cinco con otro, y así sucesivamente. Pero él (el padre Wojciech) siempre escogía  los niños más pequeños.”

Translation: Once we went with 48 altar boys to Juan Dolio, where I slept outside of the house of the Papal nuncio, who was there on vacation. We shared, among the five of us adults, the kids: five slept with me, five with the other, and five with another, and so on. But he (father Wojciech, a friend and fellow priest) always chose the youngest.

And so on the 21^st of August, the papal nuncio was stripped of his positions. And where is he? Nobody knows. Oh, and the friend mentioned above, Wojciech? He went on the lam to his native Poland.

Nor, apparently, did Wesolowsky engage in this behavior only while on vacation—he was well known in the old city of Santo Domingo, where he plied kids with alcohol, and then had sex with them in an abandoned monument to Fray Antón de Montesinos. Here’s an account:

SANTO DOMINGO, República Dominicana.-La periodista Nuria Piera denunció que el hasta hace poco embajador del Vaticano en Santo Domingo, Joséf (o Joseph) Wesolowski, era un habitual visitante de la Zona Colonial, lugares donde tomaba alcohol y luego pagaba a niños para sostener relaciones sexuales en el abandonado   a Fray Antón de Montesinos, en el malecón de Santo Domingo.

Well, the district attorney in Santo Domingo, Yeni Berenice Reynoso, has decided to open an investigation, even without having spoken with the victims. So Wesolowsky, if they can find him, is cooked.

Anybody want to bet he’s in the Vatican?

La Madre de las Estafas

Well, it’s starting to look as if Mr. Fernández is right.

“It’s the damn Spaniards,” he’d say, when I asked him why, in Puerto Rico, spectacular frauds are committed to the accompaniment of shrugs and yawns. Our secretary of health, who formerly was the medical director and executive vice president of Triple-S, recently awarded a juicy (think it was $200 million) contract to a health provider—and guess who it was?

Triple-S!

But wait, cried the secretary, it’s saving us 43 million!

Sure, but Triple-S has declined to accept liability—leaving the government stuck if any Triple-S patient sues. The previous health provider—Humana—had accepted liability.

The Trinidadian writer V. S. Naipaul once propounded a theory—corruption was the national sport of Trinidad and Tobago. As proof, he told the story of a concert promoter, who came to town promising an extraordinary gala of unbelievable names—the greatest singers of Europe and America would be there. He published lavish ads, he spoke on radio, he showed pictures of himself with Sinatra and Carlos Gardel. He sold zillions of tickets and then….

Those points of ellipsis kinda tell the story, right?

OK—you saw that coming. But what might surprise you is the reaction—all of the Trinidadians walking around the next day shaking their heads and saying, “wow, that guy was great! Hey, that was the best scheme I’ve seen in YEARS! Totally cool!”

That said, let me whip out my pistol and shoot myself in the foot. Because, as you can see in the video below, the Spaniards themselves are anything but amused by the estafa or con that got practiced on them—a con perpetrated by the Spanish government.

If you’re living in the United States, you may not be aware of how dire the situation in Spain is. Unemployment is around 25% (unofficially), but unemployment of Spanish youth is nearing 50%. The economy has contracted wildly, and Spanish banks, which had expanded aggressively, were hit hard. So they needed cash, and fast.

Into this picture steps Rodrigo Rato, whose last name means what you think it does, and who cooks up the perfect scheme.

Rato came from money, and has made money his profession. He got an MBA from Berkeley, went on to become first deputy prime minister of Spain, and later served as managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

In 2003, Rato was vice president of the government minister of the economy, and he was facing bad news: the banks had to be shorn up. So what did he do?

He legalized a practice, and allowed banks to begin selling preferentes, a financial instrument that you and I—assuming you’re as dumb about money as I—don’t want to touch.

In fact, it’s hard to see why anyone would, except under very special circumstances. Essentially, you’re lending money to the bank, but have no voting rights, no say in the corporation, no guarantee of interest, and no rights to withdraw your money. Oh, and you’re pretty much last on the list of debtors to get paid. In short, you’re giving your money away, and hoping that you’ll get something back. I’d only do that if I controlled 51% of the company….

They are called high-risk investments for a reason, and that makes it all the more galling that the banks began to sell the preferentes to the very people who should never have bought them—middle aged or older modest savers who put all their money into these investments.

You can argue—they should have known better, they should have read the fine print. Confession—I am writing this in an apartment bought through a mortgage which was only given to us after we signed well over twenty documents, not one of which we read. And Mr. Fernández has an MBA, to boot.

Right, so if we—with our twelve years of higher education—were infernally stupid and trusting, who can fault the elderly Spaniards, who listen as that nice bank manager they’ve known and trusted all those years calls them up and tells them about a really great deal. 7% interest!

They fell for it. But it’s not just that the banks had sold them a questionable investment—one writer alleges that the banks had in fact set up subsidiaries in paraísos fiscales (don’t have to translate, do I?) The only thing the subsidiary did was to collect the money and ship it off to the main bank, but the fiscal paradise was considerably sunnier for the bank than the small investor, trying to retake his money. The bank, in short, was in the Cayman Islands; the investor was on the street.

Quite literally on the street, with their whistles and pots and pans, as well as hand-written placards. Thousands of protestors; perhaps a million people out 80% of their money. And then, according to El País, the police responded to the protests, fining the organizers for various supposed infractions to the peace.

El País also reports that the Supreme Court has just told one large Spanish bank (BBVA) that it has to return almost 300,000 Euros plus interest to a couple who had invested in preferentes. And that the bank had the obligation to assess the couple’s financial status and acumen.

Seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? Oh, and what happened to Rato, who legalized this particular fraud?

Forbes named him worst CEO of the year in 2012.

Do You Know Where Your Prócer Is?

Well, having taken care of the decision, yesterday, of whether to charge the Boston bomber in civilian courts or treat him as an enemy combatant—thanks, Barry, for following my guidelines—we can turn our heads to local news.

Not much of which, typically, is particularly cheerful. We have fallen arms (brazos caídos) in the police department—which is to say that almost 1000 cops called in “sick” today. This, states the chief, is putting us all in danger.

This is questionable, at least for me, since the principal activity of our local force seems to be chatting. But my mind may have been poisoned, those decades ago before I moved to Puerto Rico, by the descriptions of the police given to me by my friend Harry, who also told me the following joke, common throughout Latin America.

An old lady hears noises in her living room late at night. She peers through the keyhole and sees two robbers stealing her silver. She then rushes to the window and cries out, “Thieves in the house, call the police!” The next night, she again hears noises, peers through keyhole, and rushes to the window. She shouts, “Police in the house, call the thieves!”

Right—Harry tells it better.

I will say, however, that I caught myself thinking, absentmindedly one day, “Wow, I can’t believe they give those guys guns….”

Well, the police are protesting because of changes to the retirement plan, which is broke, and which had to be amended by a recent law—an action that was basically forced on us by the likes of Moody’s and Standard and Poors. We are, sadly, one small step away from junk bond status, and any degradation would be, if not fatal, at least quite sickening. So we passed a law pretty much in the dark, since, in fact, we have absolutely no knowledge of how much money we need. Why not? Because nobody has ever done any actuarial work on the plan. In fact, it may be that nobody could do actuarial work—it’s not clear that we have the data.

So we passed a bad law and now people are, to say the least, grumpy. Actually, some people are predicting that there will be a massive retirement before the new law goes into effect on June 1, and nobody is quite sure what that will do.

People in our gated communities are grumpy, too—a federal judge has just told them that the Jehovah’s Witnesses have a constitution right to enter their communities, walk the neighborhood, knock on doors, and spread the good news. Well, churlish individuals don’t, apparently, want the news—“how do I know,” they are thundering, “that the Jehovah’s Witness isn’t really a delinquent?” (or delincuente, as it works better in Spanish….)

Well, it raises all sorts of questions. The Witnesses are allowed in because they sued, and won. But what about the Mormons? Or what about just Marc—shouldn’t I be allowed to walk down a street provided and maintained by the government? Among the many things that I never quite got, the right of a community to gate themselves in is one.

Right, so The New Day (El Nuevo Día, the local rag) reports that the Archbishop of San Juan, Roberto González Nieves, is very likely grumpy, too. Or maybe not—he’s a scrappy guy, always up for a fight. And what is it, this time? Well, two years ago he decided to name one of the chapels in the cathedral the Altar de la Patria.

Time for a language break—patria has a particular meaning. It’s the motherland, the homeland, the native land. It also, unfortunately, may mean nation, and here the battle starts. The archbishop has made no bones about his views on the status of Puerto Rico—he supports independence. No problem, says some of his parishioners, but don’t drag it into the church.

What González did drag in, a couple of weeks ago, are the remains of a guy—all right, a prócer or patriot—named Ramón Power y Giralt and another guy named Juan Alejo de Arizmendi.

OK—Power first. He was born in 1775 in Ponce, and then was sent at age 13 to Spain, to continue his studies. He joined the navy, and distinguished himself in the blockade of Santo Domingo against the French. None of that is controversial.

What is controversial—at least potentially—is his work as a prócer / statesman. He was appointed to represent Puerto Rico in the Spanish Cortes, a parliamentary assembly meeting in 1810 in Cádiz. And he must have impressed—he was named vice president of the assembly, and fought hard for more autonomy for Puerto Rico. He succeeded in passing the Power Act, which established five tax-free ports on the island, eliminated the monopoly on flour, reduced tariffs, and provided for economic reforms.

The Cortes also wrote a constitution, passed in 1812, and called—get ready—The Constitution of 1812. It was the most liberal of its time; it established universal male (of course) suffrage, freedom of the press, constitutional monarchy and—here you really should get ready—national sovereignty.

This was not a great time in Spain—the French controlled much of the country, what they didn’t control were controlled by juntas—, Bonaparte had deposed Ferdinand and installed his own brother Joseph as king. The Constitution of 1812, says Wikipedia, was never really enforced. At any rate, Ferdinand regained power in 1814, and guess what the first thing he did was?

Right—tear up the constitution.

For those people who support independence, Power y Giralt is a major figure since, for two tumultuous years, it was through him that Puerto Rico enjoyed autonomy. The rest of the island, of course, doesn’t spend much time on him.

Important—Ramón Power y Giralt died and was buried in Cádiz, Spain, in 1813.

Right—on to Arizmendi. First important fact—he was the first native-born bishop in Puerto Rico. He was a strong defender of the poor, and made straw baskets, sold them, and used the proceeds to buy food and clothes for the poor.

He was also a strong supporter of Power y Giralt, and most famously gave his bishopric ring to him, saying it was "as sure pledge that will sustain you in the memory of your resolution to protect and maintain the rights of our fellow countrymen, as I myself am resolved to die for my beloved flock."

Seems pretty innocuous, right? Well, I’ll step back from the controversy and let Wikipedia tell the story:

A modern day interpretation, which has no historical foundation that can be found in the footnote, is that for Arizmendi this was also a national symbol of Puerto Rico by joining his country and God in his heart.  

Well, two years ago the current Archbishop of San Juan dreamed up the idea—why not dig up the remains of Power, over there in Spain, and bring him over to be re-united with the remains of his old friend, Arizmendi? We could have the two great próceres together and put them—guess where?—¡en la Altar de la Patria! Wow—who could object?

If you don’t know, you’re not Puerto Rican. And since there is a group that is both Catholic and pro-statehood, they began petitioning the Vatican, which last year sent over a guy from Ecuador, Antonio Arregui Yarza, to check into the matter.

And Arregui—what did he find?

Not known, says the New Day, but what is known is that the Archbishop of San Juan has been told twice—enough with the Altar de la Patria and nix to the idea of interring the remains of the two patriots in the chapel.  

And so it was that on 6 April 2013, the remains of Ramón Power y Giralt were escorted solemnly into the old city by a group of very dignified—you can see them below—young sailors from the Spanish navy training ship. The remains went first to the capitol, where everybody received them with much formality and respect and protestations of good will. Then, they went to the Department of State, where the process was repeated.

And now?

Well, the New Day doesn’t quite say where the remains are, but…

…I’m running up to the Cathedral to see….

The Dying of the Light

Here’s the good news first: not having to do much of anything (one thinks of work), I have plenty of time to learn about wonderful, fascinating places.

And the bad news?

They’re usually being bombed, looted, and destroyed.

And so it is, apparently, with Timbuktu, which I have invoked a gazillion times without being sure if it really existed.

Well, it’s cultural snobbery, I guess, that’s afflicted me all these years, because the city has an old and illustrious heritage. It was founded in the twelfth century, at the crossroads of several African trading routes. Here’s Wikipedia on the subject.

In its Golden Age, the town's numerous Islamic scholars and extensive trading network made possible an important book trade: together with the campuses of the Sankore Madrasah, an Islamic university, this established Timbuktu as a scholarly centre in Africa. Several notable historic writers, such as Shabeni and Leo Africanus, have described Timbuktu. These stories fueled speculation in Europe, where the city's reputation shifted from being extremely rich to being mysterious. This reputation overshadows the town itself in modern times, to the point where it is best known in Western culture as an expression for a distant or outlandish place.

All of this was taking place well before it got into Columbus’s head to check out whether he could get to the Orient by boat.

In fact, in almost exactly the same year that Columbus set sail, Leo Africanus was being expelled from Spain.

It was a disaster for Spain, the Reconquista—it robbed the country of a significant part of its cultural and intellectual life. Think of the Jews who fled Germany in the years before and during Hitler, and then got together to make that little bomb we dropped on Nagasaki….

And Leo Africanus must have been a character. He was born El Hasan ben Muhammed el-Wazzan-ez-Zayyat (don’t blame me if this isn’t right—I copy / pasted from Wikipedia) in Grenada and then, in 1485, gets kicked out of the country. Right, so he goes to Africa, studies, and then accompanies his uncle on diplomatic missions in Northern Africa. Then—here comes the fun part—he gets captured by pirates who decide to present him as an brilliant slave to Pope Leo X.

Speculation break—did the pirates reveal their professional activities to the pope? I can imagine it: a group of pirates wandering into the Vatican, turning a corner, and discovering the pope deep in prayer in the quiet gardens of his palace. “Yo, pope, wanna take a little look-see at this slave we captured,” one of the pirates calls. Head jerks up, “hey, bring him on,” shouts back the pope….

All right, historical fiction may not be my strongest point. Leo talks to the slave, decides to free him, baptizes him as Johannis Leo de Medici (sorry, it may be my cultural bias, but I think it’s a step up from El Hasan ben Muhammed el-Wazzan-ez-Zayyat….) and commissions him, shrewdly, to write an account of his travels in Africa.

Isabel, dear? That’s what you should have done with all those guys….

(Sorry, can’t help it—one wonders how Johannis felt about being baptized. Did he welcome it? Did he have any say in it? Does being captured by pirates lead to a sort of philosophical equanimity about such life events? One imagines him shrugging and saying, “oh well, what the hell…”)

Shrewd because for the next several centuries, all that anyone knew about Northern Africa came from Leo Africanus. Who had been, by the way, to Timbuktu at its heyday, and described it thus:

The rich king of Tombuto hath many plates and sceptres of gold, some whereof weigh 1300 pounds. ... He hath always 3000 horsemen ... (and) a great store of doctors, judges, priests, and other learned men, that are bountifully maintained at the king's cost and charges.   

Sounds like a place you’d want to be, hunh? Here’s more….

The inhabitants are very rich, especially the strangers who have settled in the country.  But salt is in very short supply because it is carried here from Tegaza, some 500 miles from Timbuktu. I happened to be in this city at a time when a load of salt sold for eighty ducats. The king has a rich treasure of coins and gold ingots.

Well, forget the salt, it was—more speculation—those gold ingots that grabbed the attention of the Western World. The city was closed to non-Muslims, and there’s certainly nothing like gold and mystery to whet the imagination. So finally, in 1824, the Société de Géographie puts up a 10,000 franc prize for the first non-Muslim to enter the city. Four years later, the reward is claimed by René Caillié, who enters the city alone and disguised as a Muslim.

Time passes, Timbuktu is no longer rich, no longer influential. North Africa falls under French rule in the Scramble for Africa (and yes, that’s an historical event—the big boys of Europe having decided that it was better to get together, drink some port, smoke cigars and decide among them how to slash up a continent—rather than waste their sons’ blood fighting wars about it. This is civilization, see?). Eventually, Timbuktu became part of Mali. And that was one of the beacons of democracy in African.

One of the tragic things about a civilization is the speed at which “is one of the beacons of democracy” can become “was one of the beacons of democracy.” Timbuktu has or had things like this:

It’s the Djinguereber Mosque, built in 1327. Or how about these?

It’s one of a famous set of tombs that the fundamentalist Islamists who overtook the city months ago decided was idolatrous. And you know what happens when those guys get that idea in their heads? Remember the Buddhas? Well, here the tomb is today….

Oh, and all that learning, all that intellectual activity? Those documents that one scholar had compared to the Dead Sea Scrolls? Those documents, some of which had not been examined or even catalogued, much less photographed?

Might be there, might not. On their way out, just before fleeing the city, the militants set fire to the library. Even now, the damage is unclear. But we may never know what we lost.

It’s a story of fanaticism, hatred, stony refusal to come anywhere near reason. Only Pope Leo gets it. Once, the Islamic world was the center for learning and culture. Once, Spain had a Golden Era. Once, Timbuktu was a city of riches and scholarship.

Dylan Thomas had it right: rage, rage against the dying of the light.