The Cure: My nose vs. Shackleton

Laying down on the operation table, I could see the colorful fishes painted on the ceiling, swimming gaily. Why fishes? Are they the most relaxing thing you can see before surgery? What about threes, or the moon and the starts? I blinked.

When I opened my eyes, I was already in the recovery room. Crap! I was hoping to experience a gradual transition from conscious to unconscious and back, maybe some light at the end of the tunnel. But no, I just blinked and two hours went by, I was in a different room… ah! And there was this pain on my throat and nose.

This was hopefully the last battle on my long war against laryngitis and all throat related diseases. They have been like land mines on my path that too often have ruined my plans. I had already tried everything you can think of: homeopathy, allergy shots, hypnosis, and an amount of drugs that could keep a hip-hop group happy for a year.

So this septoplasty & turbinate reduction was the only thing left, short of voodoo rituals or ceremonial sacrifices in an Aztec pyramid. But there again… have you tried to push needles into a voodoo doll the size and shape of a flu virus? Or for that matter, using an obsidian knife to open my archenemies the dust mite just to find that, like bankers, they don’t have a hearth to offer? So septoplasty it was.

Experiencing hunger and poverty help you understand other people’s actions and motivations. But septoplasty is an experience that had rendered me utterly incapable of understanding why on earth would anyone go through this just for cosmetic reasons! I can’t breathe (like in Mexico city); I can’t talk (like in a nightclub), and I feel just half alive (like when you work and live in Mississauga).

In my particular case most of the pain doesn’t come from the nose, funny enough. It comes from the throat, the very muscle I’m doing this for. Seemingly during the operation they ram a plastic tube down your throat so you can breathe. They were not too gentle.

But there again, hours after the surgery I was watching the documentary “Endurance” about Shackleton’s 1916 expedition to Antarctica. Things started bad when their ship got trapped and then crushed by the ice, and they just got worst: Two years trapped in that white desert, uncommunicated, surviving on seals and penguins, drifting on ice planks, then sailing in precarious lifeboats through violent storms, waves 10 meter high pounding on the small boats. Their clothes soaking in frozen water for days on a row, hungry, tired.

And their final adventure, when the group parted ways on an empty, bare rock island: Shackleton and five others went out to look for help, leaving the rest behind. With barely any food or water, they sailed once more through violent storms for days. Miraculously, they reached the wale hunting island they were looking for, But to get to the wale post they still needed to cross the island, through frozen, bare, rocky mountains. No food, tired, drenched, they started the climb. They could not stop one minute, or they would die right there. Finally, after climbing all night, they found themselves at the peak of a mountain, with a cliff ahead of them. Too late to go back, impossible to move forward. Yet, they knew that if they give up and die, no one would ever know about their friends waiting to be rescued somewhere on a bare rock in the Antarctic. They had no choice but to go on. They peaked into the darkness and jumped, totally blind to what it may lie down below.

At dawn, in the wale hunting post, there was some loud knock at the door. Three semi-human figures stood there, their clothes were just rags from tumbling and sliding down all the way down the mountain. They were asking for a ship to rescue their chums.

I reached out for the remote and paused the documentary, rearranged 3 or 4 of my pillows and pulled the blanket closer to my chin, then I sipped my cup of broth. Yes, quite admirable for Shackleton and company. Still, my throat is in pain. So where is that Tylenol 3, again?

Historical revisionism

Have you ever wanted to travel back in time and change a key event? I have, quite a few times… I mean: I have wanted to do it, quite a few times.

When Hollywood travels back in time (see "Back to the Future") they undo 'evil' by rebuilding the self esteem of a bourgeois suburbanite who still resents not getting the girl in high school, or something along those lines. Utopia can be at hand's reach if your world is narrow enough!

Of course, I can think of a few selfish fantasies for me: maybe go back to the early sixties, create a band and "write" all the hits by the Stones, Beatles, U2, Nirvana, et al.

But that’s not really my cup of tea. Actually, my time travel fantasies are much more megalomaniac. Or I should say my fantasy, since is mainly one, recurring, almost haunting. I've had it since elementary school, when we learned about the demise of the Aztec empire and the eventual genocide of our nation by the Spanish invaders.

“If I could have been be there to warn Emperor Moctezuma! I would have told him that the comet was not an omen. I would have explained that Cortez was a greedy assassin, a religious fanatic, not the fulfillment of the ancient prophesies! Even give some military advice!” And the idea never went away.

How could I help think about it 15 years latter when I stood in the citadel of Monte Alban, that magical complex of stone on the top of a mountain? When I saw see the altered bone fragments in the museum and the guide mentioned that the way they healed proves they were skilled surgeons, including brain surgery. "Alas" he said "we can't really know much more than that, because the extensive libraries of this city were burned by the Spanish after the conquest, claiming that all native writings were diabolic".

The first time I visited Mexico city’s National Museum of Anthropology, an American tourist asked me: “We’ve seen a lot of ceramics, but… where is all the gold?” I uttered bitterly: “In Spain, madam, in Spain”.

A couple of months ago I was watching a documentary about the book "Guns, Germs and Steel", which provides an anthropological explanation for Caucasian race's monopoly on world's power. An explanation that makes a lot of sense: showing the circumstances that enabled white man's colonization of the Americas, South Asia, and Africa.

Very logical, but not less painful.

The documentary dramatized the assassination of Inca's emperor, the brutal butchering of the very same people who created Machu Picchu. I was twisting on my seat, thinking that even if the destruction of Inca and Aztec cultures was logical, it was not inevitable. I watched the actors re-enact play by play, word by word the brief encounters between Atahualpa and the Spanish before the monstrous killing spree started, something inside me was hurting like an echo of an old wound. Like an adult that recalls their parent’s fights and the memory hurts the little kid inside the adult.

My fantasy, thus, was to walk into Atahualpa’s court, tell him about the cruelty, the diseases. But also the science, the science at the other side of the ocean. I could have steer all the continent’s cultures into a powerful league: Incas, Aztec, Maya, Tolteca, Olmeca and Tlaxcatlecas. I would have illustrated the doom awaiting those who took the side of the Spanish: they would suffer slavery for centuries, perhaps millennia. Because of the color of their skin, the shape of their nose, rewarded only with a handful of presents from their soon to be slave drivers. The conquerors gave the ‘new’ world a taste, not just a metaphor, of the apocalypse they brought along with their Bible.

I could have helped their states grow and adopt the science of the west, promote literacy, ecological sustainability, foster an alternative culture, an option to the monolithic power of European countries in the world. A world with a strong, rich culture, unique roots, completely different, totally American.

And then, a few weeks ago I was walking on the Avenue of the Dead in Teotihuacan, just north of Mexico City, I was mentally editing my master plan for XV century Tenochtitlan, polishing subtle points such as intercontinental trade, state vs. private owned industries, and foreign investment. Lord Tonatiuh was shinning bright in the middle of the sky as I walked by his pyramid, leaving behind me the temple of the Moon… it was right then, right there, with such witnesses that I realized that my utopia was race based.

The conquerors were brutal and diabolical not because they were Spanish, but because they were ignorant and powerful. The state I was dreaming of would be utopian not because it would be formed by the likes of Moctezuma and Atahualpa, but because the ideas that would shape them (ideas with the benefit of five centuries experience). The massacre and slavery of the American cultures was a catastrophe because it was an extreme case of abuse of the powerful over the powerless, an extreme case of cultural devastation, not because victim’s blood was my own.

So, what exactly would it change if I could travel back in time, one step ahead of the genocide?

Perhaps today we would see the same universal difference between haves and not haves. Same story, different characters. Perhaps time and power would have made the Aztecs as corrupt as the Spanish were. If such was the case: what would have been gained? What difference does it make if the richest person on the world is the white geek Bill Gates or the complex Mexican with Syrian background Carlos Slim? Does it make a difference to the millions condemned to poor education and poor health care due to the corruption and inefficiency of their statesman? When hundreds of millions are systemically doomed to misery generation after generation, it doesn’t really matter if they are white, maya or black.

If the point is to be in a time and place where you can help avoiding great suffering, then there is no need to go back in time. Construction of utopia can start from so many places when ‘we’ becomes a vastly populated word.

So maybe I could use my ticket to the world than once was to visit the sixties, after all. How would you like to hear Strawberry Fields Forever with a Mexican accent? Oh, well… in some other page I may discuss a couple of characters from the past that I would love to meet. One is Jesus Christ, influential guy to say the least. But more than him, I would give anything to be able to look into the eyes of the man or woman who, dozens of thousands years ago, was the first person to realize that there is such a thing called “time”. The very first one to think about Chronos.

Toronto November 2007

Democracia apiaira, o ‘Voto por voto, colmena por colmena’

Democracia apiaira, o ‘Voto por voto, colmena por colmena’

Ésta va para mi hermano Fausto, por una conversación que dejamos a medias. Un comentario sobre poder y democracia en el mundo de las abejas. Del libro “Animal Minds” (2001) de Donald Griffin, capítulo 10:

Digamos que eres una abejita trabajadora, inspiradora de sellos para recompensar a los alumnos de kindergarten laboriosos. Pero la crisis está dura, por más que vuelas a diestra y siniestra, llevas horas sin encontrar buen polen y las otras trabajadoras, las que se encargan de procesar la comida que traes al panal, te están mirando malencaradas, con las patas delanteras cruzadas y pateando el piso con rítmica impaciencia.

En eso, otra de tus compañeras exploradoras se para en el techo del panal, y comienza a hacer un complicado paso de conga con mucha enjundia. Tú y todas las otras abejas tienen que prestar mucha atención a la coreografía. Porque la danza apiara es su medio de comunicación, con tanta riqueza semántica como un mapa del metro.

Básicamente, la longitud de la coreografía indica la distancia del panal a la comida; el ángulo de la trayectoria descrita al bailar indica la posición de la fuente alimenticia, siendo el mismo ángulo que el ángulo entre la posición actual del sol y el objetivo descrito (es decir, no ‘apuntan’ a una dirección, sino la codifican de acuerdo a un referente de orientación). Finalmente, la energía del baile indica qué tan prometedor es el alimento de acuerdo a qué materia prima es más necesaria para el panal en ése momento.

¿Y qué tiene que ver esto con el poder y la democracia?

Pues bien, cuando un panal está saturado. La Reina decide que es momento de establecer una nueva colonia. Aquí suceden dos cosas interesantes. Una: las obreras comienzan a alimentar a ciertas larvas con un tipo de comida distinto. Y como resultado, algunas de ésas larvas no se desarrollan como obreras, sino como Reinas. La misma larva, que en cualquier otra circunstancia hubiera crecido para ser obrera, ésta vez es nutrida para convertirse, fisiológica y funcionalmente en un ser distinto: La Reina. No voluntad propia ni sed de gloria, sino porque eso es lo que la sociedad necesita.

Más de una larva se empieza a desarrollar como Reina, el viejo panal no puede arriesgarse a quedarse sin reina cuando la vieja parta a establecer una nueva colonia. Por ello requieren varias candidatas. Pero una vez que la primera Reina se ha desarrollado, su primera función es irrumpir en las cámaras de las otras reinas en desarrollo y asesinarlas. El panal no puede tener más de una Reina.

Y aquí es cuando el ejercicio de la democracia comienza:

La vieja reina y una parte significativa del enjambre salen del panal. Y comienza la búsqueda por un nuevo hogar. Mientras el grueso del enjambre se queda esperando, varias exploradoras van y buscan una cavidad suficientemente limpia, seca, segura y sin insectos, como para establecerse.

Al regresar, comienzan una danza similar a la que hacen para indicar comida, pero ahora claramente hablan sobre posibles refugios. Las distintas exploradoras bailan con distintos grados de excitación de acuerdo a la calidad del lugar encontrado. Varias exploradoras van a visitar los otros sitios descritos por sus colegas y al regresar “bailan” su reporte. Progresivamente, muchas cambian su baile para indicar la locación más idónea, aunque no sea la que ellas encontraron. Y en muchos casos, las abejas que se unen al baile del sitio ganador nunca lo han visitado. Se rigen por la información proveída por sus colegas. Finalmente, cuando la mayoría está bailando al mismo son durante un rato, La Reina y el enjambre se dirigen a la locación indicada a construir su nuevo hogar.

Los pacientes (demasiado quizá) investigadores, notaron que nunca una abeja que haya empezado a bailar sobre la localidad más deseable (y eventualmente ganadora) cambia a indicar otra menos deseable. Y las abejas que bailaban por un sitio menos deseable, o cambiaron su baile al que se refería al sitio más deseable, o simplemente dejaron de bailar.

Creo que en sus decisiones, la premisa de que lo que es bueno para la colmena es bueno para el individuo nunca entra en consideración. El individuo jamás es elemento en la ecuación. Cada abeja busca solamente lo que es mejor para la colmena.

Faltaría saber cómo logró la evolución producir un comportamiento tan complejo, cuáles fueron sus pasos intermedios. ¿Hubo algún Pericles de la democracia apiara hace veinte millones de años? ¿Dónde está su estatua de cera?