el Jefe

It always happens with my job that the coldest week of the year coincides with the busiest time. The last fifteen days I spent tied to my desk, right through my nights and weekends. Dark, cold, lonely days writing TPS reports and cranking up the old RiskMaster3000. Despite all this I did manage, with some starts and stops, to plow through a title. Deprive me of sunlight, exercise, healthy meals and companionship, but don't keep me from my books! What kind of uncivilized brute would I be without them?



Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican History by Richard Lee Turits

This book was an eye-opening history of the foundation of Generalissimo Trujillo's long-lasting power. For those unfamiliar it is hard to top Junot Diaz's description of Trujillo as an 'infamous fuckface ... one of the dictatingest dictators that ever dictated'. He was absolute master of the Dominican Republic between 1930-1961. There are some really wild stories out there about the excesses and atrocities carried out under his watch. Those lurid tales weren't what interested me though. I sought to know HOW and WHY Dominicans put up with the guy for thirty years. As with Fidel Castro that long a reign takes much more than troops and torture to maintain. Turits' book offered many lessons on statecraft, nation-building and Trujillo's role in their development in DR. The largest lesson from this book was that despite the cruel and twisted aspects of his story Trujillo was actually a highly effective head of state whose early policies did great good to the infant nation. His regime sped up and solidified economic processes that unshackled DR from being a marginal backwater. Principally this meant 'domesticating' our grandparents who were for the most part stubbornly nomadic ranchers and/or subsistence farmers gatherers. No leader of any stripe had succeeded in encouraging this sedentarization for centuries, despite many attempts. Trujillo also drew and enforced the Dominican national boundaries, both territorially and tragically in the sense of identity. He almost literally created the state apparatus of DR. Most shockingly to me he successfully redistributed land to the common man the way so many Lat-Am movements promised and failed to deliver. This last point is the one around which Foundations is centered. Clearly Trujillo acted out of greed and self-interest, but his cunning was in seeing where his interests aligned with those of our then often impoverished, landless grandparents.

Foundations is written in an academic, densely foot-noted style and doesn't have a thrilling narrative. Unless you bring your own curiosity as I did you won't find it as gripping as titles on Trujillo's dark side. Still all histories ultimately begin with the material and economic facts, the broad determinants as illustrated by documented particulars. Read this book to begin to understand the structural reasons why DR generated, accepted and even needed a Generalissimo Trujillo. Dominicanos you will be surprised to find that contrary to stereotypes around our history the Trujillo regime was not just a puppet government installed over a hapless banana republic by the US State Department. Alongside El Jefe, in this piece of history the unlikely co-protagonist was the Dominican campesino and not the big bad empire.

Visionaries

We all know what Plato said to us ugly beastmen about life in the caves: it's all good fun as long as you never point out to your fellows about the sun. By doing so you risk death by their furry hands; perhaps even rightfully deserved death, for after all staring into the light can blind one and here you are promoting such insanity! For this reason we have to be grateful for the daring visionaries amongst us. They risked staring into that light, and then also coming back down into the caves to share. They are able to see past the puppetmaster's shadows to the potential & bright paintings we could put on our cave wall.

In that spirit I thought I'd share this, found by way of ManhattanKids. In it Martin Luther King, Jr, a true visionary, loosely predicts yesterday's inauguration of President Obama. Could you have foreseen this even a decade ago? Would you have shared such a conviction publically? Sadly, as per Plato's allegory, neither MLK nor RFK were tolerated for long by us primitive cave-folk.

Introduction

To all who come through, welcome to my new digs! Or perhaps more appropriately my new cave as Blogger seems about as rudimentary and primitive as I intend to keep things on this blog. I'm a migrant from LJ and brought along a few filler posts from my long past there to give a taste. My goal here is to keep things simple and local: simple off the cuff observations about books, films, sports + local flavor from Washington Heights/Inwood, my hometown neighborhoods in uptown Manhattan NYC.

After my exit from LJ I was chiefly prompted to start this in reaction to various posts from other local bloggers expressing insights about changes in the Heights, and blogging perspectives on offer (or lack thereof) . As a WaHi lifer, 2nd gen Dominican-American, and soon to be uptown daddy I thought I'd throw my own perspectival grunts into the ring. Apologies ahead of time if they turn out coarse or smelly!

degenerate entertainment

At this stage the obituaries for American pro boxing are mandatory not just for the boxing pundits, but even us slobs in the stands. As a 'hardcore' fan I'm obliged to fill my annual quota so here goes.

A Saturday evening without televised fights seems strange after a recent spate of action. The last quarter of this year had plenty great shows for everybody, whether your tastes run to MMA or boxing. I heard rumors carried by the winds of a heavyweight championship being fought out in the hinterlands of Europe. Pacquiao v. DeLaHoya a few weeks back was circus enough for me to choose to skip ordering it, as it involved Evander Holyfield's shadow facing a shadowy Russian giant. Holyfield's shadow was apparently robbed in a terrible decision. I don't really think US boxing is dying but they are making it hard to be a paying fan. If I have to start pinching PPV pennies I'm promised a much bigger bang from stacked cards like this one. Still I'm slowly learning to stop storming around the apartment claiming 'that was it, I'll never order another one'. That tantrum is a fraud, as legit as that decision. HBO's veteran commentator Larry Merchant summed it up perfectly in a recent interview:

"For the hardcore fans you can't discourage 'em, we're all degenerates, and we'll come back no matter what."

Not sure who that reflects on worse; fight junkies like me who keep paying or the cable exec jerks serving up the overpriced boxing shows. Either way it entertains me so I have to mute my whining about it and just enjoy. In that cheerful spirit here is lovable old vodka breath Larry Merchant himself employing other 'strong-arm tactics' on the fans.

finance geekery

Watch the buffoon gallery of commentators from across the talking head "news" networks shut down Mr. Schiff's warnings of a looming financial crisis as though he were a conspiracy theorist. 2008 and he was totally right...take that Ben Stein!





BTW I share the best finance, econ, poli, and fightsport blog entries I come across online here for any of you who are geeks for that stuff.

where's the wrestling?

Saturday night I stayed in for what has become a common occurrence in the last couple of years. It was a combo PPV championship boxing and free, televised MMA courtesy of SpikeTV and the UFC. The boxing match was a 170lb catchweight fight between legendary veteran Bernard Hopkins and undefeated middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik. If you like boxing make sure you find your way to HBO this Saturday night for the replay. Against most pundit's opinions the snaggle-toothed vet put on a clinic you have to see to believe, solidifying himself as one of the all-time great middleweights.

Whenever one of these nights occur you can't help but notice the difference between boxing and MMA striking. It's a difference of range & style, and at the moment also a difference of quality. Joe Rogan even dropped some commentary about the room for improvement in MMA striking. Personally I'm pretty proud for the MMA athletes I follow because most are advancing the game steadily and surely on the boxing front. It showed Saturday night as the leather was flying all over the cage. But nonetheless I'm posting to bitch about that show. My complaint is actually the lack of grappling we saw Saturday night! See if I want to see hellacious power shots and masterful combinations I know where to go; between the ropes. I like the heavy punches and big kicks in MMA, but what makes it unique are the explosive takedowns, scrambles & reversals, clever escapes, and of course the submissions. There was almost nil grappling Saturday (exception and props to Davis for the choke). To me that makes for a disappointing card.

So here's my personal suggestion to UFC matchmakers: on those nights when you are going up against elite caliber boxing telecasts, please make sure to schedule and televise some matches featuring accomplished wrestlers and BJJers. Against each other. Guarantee you'll deliver one ground war on these nights, Dana. This way your commentator doesn't have to apologize that your fighters aren't Hopkins, and more importantly I can feel satisfied.


For boxing champs it's a matter of inches:


For the UFC main-eventers it's improving with a ways to go: