Mortality and the Utopian Quest

It's been about a year since I posted an article on the Center for the Study of the Americas web site Global Alternatives . Some of you have written me, inquiring what has happened. The simple truth is that life is catching up with me. Twenty two years ago I suffered a back injury in Nicaragua that put me in a wheel chair. Then in 2004, while on a return trip to Nicaragua I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. an incurable blood cancer. The prognosis was that I had three to five years to live. I defied the odds, actively pursuing and participating in a number of promising clinical trials that have kept me alive. By late last year, however, the chemo-like drugs had taken their toll. My last treatment had me flying to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona once a month to see a doctor for 20 minutes in order to pick up my designated drug. On winter solstice of last year I elected to undergo a stem cell transplant at the University of California at San Francisco medical center. I expected to be out in mid-January but the treatment didn't go as planned. I wound up spending four months in hospitals and convalescent centers, experiencing some dark days in a state of delirium. I had trouble conversing with friends, often unable to utter a complete sentence. On my journey back through time 1989 stood out as a particularly traumatic year. I relived the moment when a humongous wave of the Pacific Ocean that I was trying to body surf threw me face down into the retreating undertow, busting my back and sucking me out into the sea. I couldn't keep my head above water and was on the brink of drowning when a fisher boy in his teens came and dragged me on to the beach. My accident occurred as Nicaragua and much of Central America were caught up in their struggles for a revolutionary utopia. I had worked with the Sandinistas since 1978, writing on the revolution, advising the Nicaraguan government on US foreign policy, working with an agricultural think tank on agrarian reform issues, and collaborating with solidarity organizations in the United States. By 1989 the US backed counterrevolutionary war had taken its toll on Nicaragua. People were more concerned with their day to day survival than with building utopia. The economy was in tatters with shortages in food, basic commodities, and medical supplies. The hospitals in Managua were under supplied and under staffed.

Canids, foxes, wolves, jackals, and dogs

This land of highly fragmented forest is used for cattle grazing and wood ... Bush dog [VU] 3.1 [Project] Bush dog ecology in Paraguay* Objectives: To ...

Paraguay and the United States, distant allies

In 1913 the New York and Paraguay Company reorganized under a Maine incorporation as the Paraguay Land and Cattle Company, still controlled by the Farquhar ...

Pigs, peccaries and hippos, status survey and conservation action plan

Thus, a possible explanation for the population crash in the largely virgin bush of northwestern Paraguay may be that the peccaries previously had little ...

Latin American regional report, Brazil & Southern cone

Reports abounded in local press in mid-October about an alleged purchase made by US President George W Bush of 40000 hectares of land in northern Paraguay. ...

Landscapes of devils, tensions of place and memory in the Argentinean Chaco

The Paraguayan bush, however, is a contradictory wilderness. ... he and three friends were once denied permission to hunt iguanas on the land of a ranch. ...