January 2012 by The Washington Diplomat

■ INSIDE: EDUCATION AND HOTELS & TRAVEL SPECIAL SECTIONS

A World of News and Perspective

EDUCATION Q A Special Section of The Washington Diplomat

Q January 2012

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■ VOLUME 19, NUMBER 1

■ JANUARY 2012

CARIBBEAN

Post-Earthquake Haiti Opens Its Doors to Business Haiti, propped up by peacekeepers, foreign aid and NGOs two years after the earthquake that buried its capital, is trying to climb out of its perpetual misery by opening itself to foreign investment and laying the groundwork for a completely new business mindset. PAGE 8

NORTH AMERICA

Mexico’s Criminals: Behind Bars But Ahead of the Law While often lumped under the broad label of “the war on drugs,” the dimensions of Mexico’s security landscape are far more complex. But beneath the tangle of problems lies an inescapable fact: Mexico’s prisons are a haven of crime. PAGE 13

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CENTRAL AMERICA

A recent U.N. report confirmed what Central America’s 43 million inhabitants sadly know: Their seven nations are among the most violent on Earth. In an in-depth report, the ambassadors of these embattled governments talk about how they’re fighting to reclaim their region from from drug traffickers, criminal gangs and rampant violence. PAGE 15

OUT OF CONTROL? PEOPLE OF WORLD INFLUENCE

DIPLOMATIC SPOUSES

Global Development Better Than Ever

Ex-TV Producer Finds New Role

Charles Kenny of the Center for Global Development is challenging the prevailing narrative of unchecked wretchedness in the developing world with a dose of counterintuitive optimism to show that things aren’t so bad — and in fact are better than ever. PAGE 6

Susie Annus credits her organizing skills as a former award-winning TV producer with helping her keep up with the constant campaigning of her husband, veteran politician and current Australian envoy Kim Beazley. PAGE 45

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January 2012

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January 2012

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A World of News & Perspective

January 2012

CONTENTS THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT

January 2012

13 Mexican jails

21 Indian students

[ news ] 6

PEOPLE OF WORLD INFLUENCE

COVER PROFILE: CENTRAL AMERICA In an exclusive group cover, the ambassadors of Central America reflect on the violence that’s battering their region, making it one of the most dangerous places in the world.

DIPLOMACY

BOOK REVIEW

INNOVATION The One World Youth Project aims to fight ignorance about the world by tapping into email, Skype and Facebook to connect U.S. schools with classrooms in other countries.

[ travel & hotels ] 37

COVER: Photo taken at the Heritage Foundation by Lawrence Ruggeri.

DINING The Charlotte Restaurant, nestled in Onancock, Va., is a hidden gem of Eastern Shore splendor.

FILM REVIEWS George Smiley plays a clever game of espionage in “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.”

FILM For Washington film critics, silence is apparently golden.

Winter in Washington can be a dull affair, but there are some offbeat oases in the city that offer relief from the cold.

CINEMA LISTING

EVENTS LISTING

DIPLOMATIC SPOTLIGHT

ART

WORLD HOLIDAYS / APPOINTMENTS

“30 Americans” offers countless viewpoints of not only African American history but of the singular American experience as a whole.

CLASSIFIEDS

REAL ESTATE CLASSIFIEDS

[ culture ] 44

SCULPTURE Power, history and culture in all their glory are on display in “Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley.”

LOCAL ESCAPES

MEDICAL A new online hearing test that’s cheaper and more convenient sounds like a great idea, but it’s fallen on deaf ears in the medical community.

53 40

HISTORY To mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, “Manifold Greatness” at the Folger Library retells the story of the book that became the definitive word of God.

HOTEL DESIGN

PHOTOGRAPHY “Conversación” and “Maremágnum” at the Mexican Cultural Institute offer snapshots of digital innovation and old-fashioned skill.

Hotels are constantly trying to outdo the other in price and creative packages, but deep down, it’s design and style that help a property’s personality shine through.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, cofounder of J Street, continues to challenge Washington convention with “A New Voice for Israel: Fighting for the Survival of the Jewish Nation.”

D.C. PUBLIC SCHOOLS Local embassies are bringing a taste of their culture — and cuisine — to all D.C. Public Schools as part of a new partnership called International Food Days.

Gay rights have come a long way, in large part because of people like James Hormel, who had to prove he was “fit to serve” as America’s first openly gay ambassador.

FOREIGN EXCHANGES The economic climate hasn’t dampened the recent surge in higher education exchanges, with a record number of students from India coming to study at U.S. colleges and universities.

DIPLOMATIC SPOUSES Labor Party stalwart and Australian Ambassador Kim Beazley has relied on his wife, Susie Annus, to stay on top of political campaigning down under.

RULE OF LAW Beneath Mexico’s tangle of problems lies an inescapable fact: Any effort to improve security will require putting more criminals behind bars — and keeping them there.

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Two years after an earthquake plunged it into despair, Haiti’s new government is looking to the private sector to help the country rebuild and fundamentally rethink its future.

Nigerian mask

[ education ]

The developing world is typically framed as a land of misery, but Charles Kenny is out to prove that things aren’t as bad as they seem — and, in fact, are getting better every day.

P.O. Box 1345 • Silver Spring, MD 20915-1345 • Phone: (301) 933-3552 • Fax: (301) 949-0065 • E-mail: news@washdiplomat.com • Web: www.washdiplomat.com Publisher/Editor-in-Chief Victor Shiblie Director of Operations Fuad Shiblie Managing Editor Anna Gawel News Editor Larry Luxner Contributing Writers Rachael Bade, Michael Coleman, Carolyn Cosmos, Patrick Corcoran, Julie Poucher Harbin, Rachel G. Hunt, Stephanie Kanowitz, Ky N. Nguyen, Fresia Rodriguez, Gail Scott, Gina Shaw, John Shaw, Gary Tischler, David Tobenkin Photographer Jessica Latos Sales Account Managers David Garber, Chris Smith Graphic Designer Cari Bambach The Washington Diplomat is published monthly by The Washington Diplomat, Inc. The newspaper is distributed free of charge at several locations throughout the Washington, D.C. area. We do offer subscriptions for home delivery. Subscription rates are $29 for 12 issues and $49 for 24 issues. Call Fuad Shiblie for past issues. If your organization employs many people from the international community you may qualify for free bulk delivery. To see if you qualify you must contact Fuad Shiblie. The Washington Diplomat assumes no responsibility for the safe keeping or return of unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, artwork or other material. The information contained in this publication is in no way to be construed as a recommendation by the Publisher of any kind or nature whatsoever, nor as a recommendation of any industry standard, nor as an endorsement of any product or service, nor as an opinion or certification regarding the accuracy of any such information.

January 2012

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PEOPLE OF WORLD INFLUENCE

Charles Kenny

Development Expert Offers Dose Of Counterintuitive Optimism by Patrick Corcoran

harles Kenny is out to prove that things aren’t as bad as they seem. The developing world is typically framed as a land of misery and woe, with hundreds of millions of unlucky citizens in nations from Somalia to Haiti to Burma scraping by on dollars a day, if that, or just struggling to feed themselves.

The tragedies are true enough, but to Kenny, they are only a part of the story. Kenny, currently a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, was a longtime development expert at the World Bank, where he worked on everything from compiling the institution’s World Development Reports to consulting with governments on telecom competition. His work at the World Bank also sent Kenny on long deployments to Afghanistan and various countries in Africa. He saw the hotspots of global poverty up close and came to believe that the picture was far muddier than the prevailing narrative of unchecked wretchedness.The truth is that while citizens of the undeveloped world remain burdened by low incomes that aren’t growing nearly fast enough, most poor countries, even those unable to escape the so-called poverty trap, are constantly improving. Fewer babies are dying, literacy rates are higher than ever before, girls are going to school, and erstwhile scourges of the developing world like polio have been all but eradicated. So since 2010, Kenny has been making his case for a more nuanced take on the developing world in a regular column for Foreign Policy and in a 2011 book called “Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding – And How We Can Improve the World Even More.” As Kenny writes in the “Getting Better” intro, “Despite counterclaims and hand wringing, things are getting better, everywhere…. [T]hose countries with the lowest quality of life are making the fastest progress in improving it — across a range of measures including health, education, and civil and political liberties.” Kenny backs that claim up with a bevy of statistics over the course of almost 200 pages. For instance: Between 1974 and 2000, the immunization rate for six diseases increased from 5 percent to 80 percent of the world’s newborns. Or another illustration: In 1900, the average level of education in undeveloped countries was roughly 1/40th of the level for the wealthiest nations; in 2000, the proportion was just one quarter. So why does such a sense of futility prevail? Much of the problem, Kenny argues,

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stems from the limitations of the most basic statistic in development economics: per-capita gross domestic product. Of course, no statistic is perfect, but per-capita GDP has grown quite common as a shorthand formulation for national well being. From a certain standpoint, it makes sense: Income reflects a person’s capacity to buy the goods and services we typically associate with a prosperous existence. But such a measure of income ignores a large number of factors in living standards and feeds the dystopian narrative of the rich countries moving ever onward while poor regions lag behind. “Just looking at income is a terribly narrow way of looking at global progress,” Kenny told The Washington Diplomat. “You’ve really got to look at a bunch of other things too in order to properly measure.” Furthermore, he says that comparing incomes across different eras and regions confuses more than it enlightens. For instance, saying that today’s Vietnamese have the same incomes as 19th-century Englishmen is inherently problematic, because a wealth of products — from antiPHOTO: NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION

“

Despite counterclaims and hand wringing, things are getting better, everywhere…. [T]hose countries with the lowest quality of life are making the fastest progress in improving it.

”

— CHARLES KENNY, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development biotics to the iPod —are readily available in many parts of the world today that didn’t exist 150 years ago. Per-capita GDP though is a simple figure easily understood not only by academic economists, but by untrained politicians and regular voters as well. This makes income a very convenient conceptual tool, notwithstanding its limitations, and efforts to broaden our notions of development would be greatly aided by a similarly easyto-use substitute. So what does Kenny propose in its place? “My first and unsatisfactory answer is, life’s just more complicated than that,” he said.“The second thing is life — how long

people live is an awfully good measure. It’s really hard to enjoy your yacht and your mansion if you’re dead. Life expectancy is a pretty good ultimate measure. And it’s one that tells a dramatically different story.” Kenny also points out that experts have long been searching for the key to economic growth and equality, but have never found a convincing answer — and they probably never will.“What’s the answer to growth? We’ll never know,” he admits. But there are still plenty of reasons for optimism around the world and ways to build on improvements, a guiding principle of Kenny’s work. “[M]y reading of the past 100 years is

that there is a lot less suffering now than there used to be, and that we’ve overcome some immense challenges to achieve that,” he said. “That’s what gives me hope that we’ll make further progress in the future.” This positive attitude is also evident in his Foreign Policy column titled, appropriately enough, “The Optimist.” Here, the perennial optimist often flips conventional wisdom on its head, with intriguing takes on topics ranging from income inequality to the links between conflict and extreme weather, with the ultimate message usually paralleling the thesis of his book:The world is not going to hell in a hand-basket. One of the pieces he wrote for the magazine, titled“Best. Decade. Ever,”focused on the last 10 years as the “Naughty Aughties,” which you may remember with something less than fondness as the decade of the Iraq War, Darfur and the global financial meltdown, among other seminal events. But while the period from 2001-10 doesn’t inspire warm, fuzzy memories, Kenny says the negative headlines mask a great deal of progress in the developing world. Among the tremendous gains: average worldwide

January 2012

incomes are at their highest levels ever, agricultural productivity is climbing, telecommunications is spreading, infectious diseases are being curbed, and conflicts are on the wane. On the whole, people’s lives are better off today than they ever were in history. As “Best. Decade. Ever” suggests, Kenny’s Foreign Policy column tends toward the counterintuitive. Recent columns have argued that China’s rise is good for the United States, while a decline in U.S. imperial overreach is also good for Americans, redirecting resources back toward the home front, from high-speed rail lines to better health care. He argues that modern-day famine is mostly the result of poor governance and should be prosecuted as a crime against humanity. In “Got Cheap Milk?” he outlined why consumers’ preference for organic foods is “positively terrible” for the world’s poor, debunking common myths that locally grown foods are necessarily better for the environment. Just the opposite, Kenny intricately explains: “For example, it is twice as energy efficient for people in Britain to eat dairy products from New Zealand than from domestic producers,” he writes. “That’s because transporting the final product accounts for only a small part of the energy consumed in the production and delivery of food. It’s far better to eat foods from places where production itself is more efficient. For example, New Zealand cattle eat clover from the fields while British livestock tend to rely on feed — which itself is often imported.” And he argues that contrary to popular belief about growing global populations, the more people around the world the merrier. Kenny points out that suicide remains relatively rare around the world, and that even in poor countries like Bangladesh, an overwhelming number of people suggest they are happy. “Simply put, having the opportunity to be alive is a good thing, and the more such opportunity exists, the better,” he says, noting that U.N. projections show average worldwide life expectancy will rise from around 68 years today to 81 in 2100,“so we’ll all have a little bit longer to enjoy it.” But what about exploding populations exacerbating already-stressed resources? That’s the crux of the dilemma, Kenny says, but only from the viewpoint of certain populations. “It is growing consumption per person that is the problem,” he contends. “The blame lies with wealthy countries that do nearly all of the consuming. The poorest 650 million people on the planet live on about 1 percent of the income of the richest 650 million. Each year, we add 1 percent or more to the incomes of those richest people — GDP per-capita growth rates in wealthy countries are at least that high.And that 1 percent growth has the same impact on global consumption as would doubling the number of people living on the income of that bottom 650 million of the world’s population. So, those people sitting in rich countries pontificating on unsustainable global populations might want to start off with the bit of that population they see in the mirror every morning.” Kenny says that his time at the Washingtonbased Center for Global Development has given him greater insight into a plethora of different topics.“What’s amazing about it is that there are people who know a lot about pretty much everything,” he said. He added that the interaction with the resident experts has had an important impact on his writing.“I write this weekly column for Foreign Policy, and most of the ideas come from discussions in the hallways,” he said. “I wrote [“Getting Better”] before I arrived here, but the book has grown legs because of being here. I continue having discussions around it and feeding off new ideas because of this place.” While “Getting Better” spends most of its words explaining why things aren’t that bad, it also dedicates space to recommendations on how they can get even better. In Kenny’s estimation, a big part of the equation is immigration. “It’s an incredibly powerful tool for development,” he said. “It’s definitely a net positive for the United States. It is cer-

January 2012

tainly a net positive for the people migrating; it is certainly a net positive for the countries they leave behind.” In fact, Kenny is not particularly worried about the effects of the phenomenon known as brain drain, in which, according to the criticism, higher salaries in developed countries entice the most talented citizens of poorer nations to leave their homelands. This, in turn, handicaps the underdeveloped nations by depriving them of their most capable minds. But Kenny argues this complaint overlooks all the good that comes to the nations on both sides of an immigration pipeline.“Doubling the number of people who have migrated between two countries raises trade between those countries by 10 percent,” he recently wrote.“And if the number of skilled immigrants doubles in a recipient country, subsequent foreign direct investment to their countries of origin climbs 25 percent.” Many in the developed world, from Republicans in Arizona to France’s far-right National Front, are a bit less sanguine about the economic benefits of immigration. Both sides of the debate can cite their favorite studies that back up their claims, but according to Kenny, the weight of the evidence points to a very slight impact on wages, which leads him to conclude that the virulent hostility toward immigration is motivated by other factors. “There’s no economic reason why migration causes this level of angst, [but] there are social reasons,” Kenny said. “It’s a natural tendency in people when something goes wrong to look for somebody to blame.And migrants are a group that are sometimes at least reasonably identifiable as different, so it’s easy to group them, and blame them.Thankfully, that’s something that is happening less with race and less with religion, but is still happening far too much with migration. I can only hope, and I assume, that over time that will drop down. One of the reasons for thinking that is when people in countries see that this stuff works, it becomes less of an issue over time.” Kenny is somewhat less positive about another of the most controversial topics in development: foreign aid.Advocates say that drastically increased levels of foreign aid could be the key to unlocking the potential of developing economies, but Kenny, true to unorthodox form, is not convinced. “The evidence on what aid has done for GDP growth is mixed,” he said. “It’s certainly not what we had hoped. It is at the very least very contextual.” This skepticism puts Kenny in the camp of aid pessimists, the most famous of them being William Easterly, with whom Kenny worked at the World Bank. However, as in his book, Kenny draws a distinction between income and economic growth on the one hand and living standards on the other. When he discusses assistance independently from growth, Kenny is far more positive. “I definitely think that aid has had an impact on health and education,” he said. “Smallpox was eradicated with the help of a lot of aid money. Polio went down to a few hundred cases a year, and that’s got quite a lot to do with the Rotary Club over the last 30 years, which did incredible work…. The money, the time, the attention that these people put in the issue has had a massive effect.” To that end, Kenny said he’d like to see a significant increase in governmental aid budgets, as unlikely as it seems in today’s bleak economic climate.The U.N. target for foreign aid from developed nations is 0.7 percent of GDP, but currently just five nations reach that benchmark.The United States devotes less than 0.2 percent of its budget to foreign aid — which accounts for less than 1 percent of total government spending. While most wealthy nations do better, none of the largest developed nations spend even 0.5 percent of their economy on aid. And with budget pressures rising, the U.S. figure is likely to drop further in the not-too-distant future. So given the constraints, how does one make the case for greater spending on other nations?

While he is under no illusions, Kenny does have an idea for how to frame the argument. “If you poll people in the United States or Britain, and doubtless other places as well, and you ask them, ‘Do we have a moral responsibility to help people who are living in poverty all over the world?’ — 80 or 90 percent say yes.You then say,‘Are you in favor of providing more aid?’ People don’t want to spend more on aid; they want to spend less. “We should be playing not to people’s self interest. I would play to the moral argument more. And the second thing is I would say, ‘Oh by the way, this has really worked,’” he added, noting that this moral duty also has practical dimensions, with assistance being far cheaper than propping up failed states after the fact or large-scale military interventions. But more important than boosting the size of the budget is improving the way the money is spent. Kenny laments that most aid is tied to purchasing goods and services in the donor nation, often resulting in an expensive, slow-moving bureaucracy. “At the moment, U.S. food aid has to be bought from U.S. farmers; it has to be [mostly transported on] U.S. ships. If you have a famine in Somalia, the closest place to get food is not Baltimore,” he said. “As corn is a global market, if you buy the food anywhere, you will be raising the price of corn, and that will help U.S. farmers, if that’s what you are interested in.” Likewise, intellectual property rights, taken too far, can strangle aid delivery.“Pharmaceutical companies need to make money, and pharmaceutical companies are the ones producing these pharmaceuticals that are saving millions of lives, so it’s a delicate balance here. But some of these things have gotten ridiculous. You have U.S. government representatives running around very poor developing countries, complaining that U.S.-authored

textbooks are being photocopied in primary schools in Laos,” Kenny said. “The whole intellectual property rights regime has gone loopy.” He adds that developed nations can exponentially help poor nations just by adjusting domestic policies, notably loosening barriers to trade.“Divert just four years’ worth of EU agricultural subsidies to pay off pretty much all of Greece’s public debt, and we could stave off a second global financial crisis while helping some of the world’s poorest people all at the same time,” he proposed in one article. While “Getting Better” is not an overtly political book, Kenny doesn’t shy away from discussing the spread of liberalism, both as an informal system of norms and a formal one of democratic politics. As he notes, much of the progress in the developing world has been accompanied by the spread of liberal democracy and other Western social values. “There does seem to be somewhat of a convergence in global values toward, for lack of a better word, liberal ones. Sorry, I wish I could be more complicated, but I think that’s just a good thing.” He adds:“I’m hopeful at least that in 2050 we’ll have a planet where, as is true today, more of the world than even before is democratic, more of the world than even before is literate, more of the world than even before is at peace.”

Patrick Corcoran is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

Caribbean

Two Years After Earthquake, Haiti Lobbies for Investment by Larry Luxner

ORT-AU-PRINCE — It’s been awhile since Haiti occupied the front pages of newspapers and captured the attention of TV viewers. Two years have gone by since that awful afternoon of Jan. 12, 2010 — when the ground beneath Port-au-Prince suddenly began shaking, and it seemed that it would never stop.

The magnitude-7.0 earthquake killed anywhere from 220,000 to 300,000 people (no one knows for sure), made more than a million Haitians homeless, and reduced most of the capital city’s landmarks to rubble. Since then, hundreds of thousands of people are still jobless and living in makeshift tent cities, though the rubble has largely been cleared and hope is definitely in the air. Port-au-Prince is buzzing with construction activity, and a new president, former Creole pop singer Michel Martelly, has taken charge, adapting as his mantra the slogan “Haiti’s open for business.” Indeed it is, judging from the 1,000 or so potential investors from 29 countries who crowded into the capital city’s 87-room Karibe Hotel & Convention Center to attend a two-day conference organized by the InterAmerican Development Bank. Highlighting the Nov. 29-30 event was “Sweet Micky” himself, along with IDB President Luís Alberto Moreno and the star attraction: former U.S. President Bill Clinton. “Much has happened in these past two years,” said Moreno, formerly Colombia’s ambassador to the United States. “There’s always a time when countries find the right stars that begin to align. I will never stop thanking President Clinton for what he did in my country. Twelve years ago, Colombia was considered a failed state. ALSO SEE: Today, it’s considered one Q&A: Haiti’s Foreign of the most attractive Minister PAGE 10 places to invest in Latin America. It happened U.N. Downsizes because of President Peacekeeping Clinton’s belief that when Mission PAGE 12 people work together and look at what unites them — not what divides them — and when leadership creates the atmosphere for a better tomorrow, countries can prosper and build the dreams of the new generation.That is why we are here today.” Clinton, a longtime advocate of U.S. assistance for Haiti, is already the United Nations

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PHOTOS: LARRY LUXNER

Haitian President Michel Martelly’s helicopter lifts off from the earthquake-ravaged presidential palace in Port-au-Prince. Despite lingering damage, most of the rubble from the 7.0-magnitude quake two years ago has been cleared, and the focus is now turning to business and foreign investment. Martelly, right, recently joined former U.S. President Bill Clinton, a U.N. envoy to Haiti, at a two-day conference for about 1,000 potential investors.

“

In my relatively long experience dealing with this country in one capacity or another, this government is the first I have dealt with that seems more concerned about getting something done every day than with the continuous political wars that have gone on.

”

— BILL CLINTON, former U.S. president and current U.N. envoy to Haiti special envoy for Haiti. He also co-chairs — along with Haitian Foreign Minister Laurent Lamothe — the Presidential Advisory Council on Economic Growth and Investment (PACEGI), whose goal is to create 500,000 jobs over the next three years. “In my relatively long experience dealing with this country in one capacity or another, this government is the first I have dealt with that seems more concerned about getting something done every day than with the continuous political wars that have gone on,” Clinton said, eliciting thunderous applause. “Everybody on this stage wants prospective investors to make money.We don’t think it’s a bad thing to make a profit.We just want you to make money in a way that helps the

Haitians, too,” said the 42nd president.“That’s why the government has taken concrete steps to make doing business here easier. President Martelly has actively sought out investors and business leaders, and he understands that we have to do more to make Haiti more business-friendly.” Besides Clinton, PACEGI’s 32-member board has several other ex-heads of state, including Spain’s José María Aznar, Panama’s Martin Torrijos, Bolivia’s Jorge Quiroga, Costa Rica’s José María Figueres, Jamaica’s P.J. Patterson and Colombia’s Álvaro Uribe. Karl Jean Louis, executive director of PACEGI, told The Washington Diplomat that his council will use various mechanisms to promote Haiti’s image and attract foreign

investment. “We’ve been participating in several forums to showcase how the new government is conducting serious reforms that will have a positive impact on Haiti’s business environment,” he said. “We’re also working with the Haitian Diaspora, with the IDB and USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development] and with our own board members, who can tap into their networks of investors to make them aware of the opportunities we’re offering.” Louis, 43, spent 10 years doing development work in Rwanda, Burundi and other African countries. He said that in January, he plans to host a national dialogue on investment in Port-au-Prince and will later launch a website on doing business in Haiti. The day before the IDB conference, Clinton, Martelly and Moreno broke ground on the $257 million Caracol Industrial Park along Haiti’s northwest coast — in what represents the largest foreign investment

January 2012

since the earthquake. The 608-acre free zone will be anchored by Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd., a South Korean textile firm that has committed to hiring 20,000 people in the manufacture of garments for export. By so doing, Sae-A — a major supplier to U.S. retailers such as Walmart, Gap and Target — will become the largest private employer in Haiti. Eventually, said Martelly, the free zone, located 15 miles from the port city of Cap-Haïtien, could provide jobs for 65,000 people, boosting Haiti’s garment workforce by more than 200 percent. Sae-A is pumping $78 million into the project’s initial phase, while the U.S. government is contributing $124 million and the IDB $55 million. “It’s not a very pleasant time in American politics. The only thing that the two parties and Congress agree on is helping Haiti,” Clinton said, again sparking applause. “The HELP Act and the HOPE Act are working, giving Haiti more access to the American market than any other country.” Operations at Caracol Industrial Park should begin next March; the Haitian government is hoping to attract other clothing manufacturers that could benefit from U.S. trade preferences for madein-Haiti apparel, as well as companies that make electronics and furniture. The IDB estimates the project will create more than $500 million in wages and benefits over the next 10 years, boosting the number of jobs in Haiti’s formal private sector by at least 20 percent. “Jobs are the engine for driving growth, so we must turn the key and start the engine,” Martelly told his audience. “It is critical that the current forms of foreign investment, which are well intended but not always directed to job creation, be replaced with support for projects such as modernizing Haiti’s infrastructure and electricity grid.” In addition, he said, “certain trade policies as they relate to Haitian goods must be renegotiated. Securing greater access to manufacturing in Haiti will enhance your investment returns. The Haitian people are not looking for handouts, but for jobs

January 2012

PHOTO: LARRY LUXNER

that will restore their dignity.” Tourism is another area being pursued by the Presidential Advisory Council. During the conference, Bethesda-based Marriott International and Digicel, the country’s largest mobile phone operator, announced they would jointly finance construction of Haiti’s first hotel since the earthquake. The $45 million Port-au-Prince Marriott Hotel will have 173 rooms, about 4,600 square feet of meeting space, a 1,600-square-foot fitness center and other amenities when it opens in 2014. “Haiti is in great need of quality hotels today, and for the foreseeable future,” said Arne Sorenson, Marriott International’s president and chief operating officer. “We believe we can make a difference in Haiti by injecting capital, creating jobs, and developing the human talent that can help lift this country over time back to its rightful place as one of the top destinations in the Caribbean.”

A heavily armed Guatemalan soldier with the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti (known by its French acronym Minustah) patrols the streets of Port-au-Prince, where some 8,900 peacekeeping troops, 4,000 police officers and 500 administrative staffers are deployed to maintain order throughout the Caribbean nation.

Digicel is the country’s largest private investor; its Haiti revenues account for more than $400 million of its total annual sales of $4.5 billion, says CEO Denis O’Brien. “We’ve had a great experience investing in Haiti,” O’Brien told The Diplomat on the sidelines of the IDB conference.“Haiti today is a really great opportunity for foreign investors, especially in light of manufacturing such as apparel, the [information communications technology] arena and in tourism. Haiti has to play to its strengths. It’s not going to get Intel at this stage of its development, but in focused

areas, it can be really competitive. For example, Haiti can be a producer of apparel for companies like Walmart.” In telecom, Haiti has a penetration rate of 65 percent to 70 percent. Nearly all of that is mobile, since the country has only 35,000 fixed lines. Digicel claims around 3.65 million subscribers, or 71 percent of the total, followed by Trilogy International’s Voilá, with 900,000 subscribers, or 18 percent. The remaining 11 percent of the market is split between Haitel and Natcom, which was recently purchased for $59 million by, curiously, the Vietnamese military. “We took the view that if you build a very big network, people will come,” said O’Brien, a PACEGI member, noting that Digicel entered the Haitian market only four years ago. It already has 1,170 cell towers and has invested half a billion dollars here. “We’re interested in having customers of all ages. That’s why we’re subsidizing handsets for $7 or $8 to people who’ve never had a handset before,” he said.“These handsets also include an FM radio and a flashlight. And we’re rolling out charging stations to power the phones to make sure there are enough charging facilities.” Digicel, which has 12 million subscribers in 32 countries, says Haiti is the biggest in number of subscribers and will overtake Jamaica in terms of revenue this year, followed by Trinidad, El Salvador and Panama. Last year, O’Brien spent more than $18 million of his own personal fortune to rebuild the bright red Iron Market in downtown Port-au-Prince after it was destroyed in a fire and then the earthquake. “In the weeks after the quake, we were looking for a very symbolic project that would help the local economy. We looked at rebuilding the cathedral. Spiritually, that would have been great, but wouldn’t have done much for the economy. So we decided on the Iron Market, which is the most

See HAITI, page 11

The Washington Diplomat Page 9

SIDEBAR

Q&A: Laurent Lamothe, Haiti’s Foreign Minister ORT-AU-PRINCE — Laurent Lamothe, 39, is Haiti’s foreign minister. A championship tennis player who represented his country at the Davis Cup in 1994 and 1995, Lamothe earned degrees from two Miami institutions — a bachelor’s in political science from Barry University and an MBA from the University of St. Thomas. He went on to co-found Global Voice Group, a telecommunications firm whose rapid growth in emerging markets earned him a 2008 nomination as “Entrepreneur of the Year” from Ernst & Young.

younger and more positive about the country. We have a can-do attitude. Past Haitian governments didn’t have a business-minded approach. In the two and a half months since this [presidential advisory] council was established, we’ve already received four major international investors.

Last September, Lamothe and former President Bill Clinton were selected to cochair Haiti’s Presidential Advisory Council on Economic Growth and Investment. In October, he was appointed to his current position by President Michel Martelly.

Q: What are you specifically doing to attract foreign investment?

“Haiti is a young democracy, and as a young democracy, things usually take time. This is a mid- to long-term project, but we feel it’s the only way for Haiti to get out of the misery that it’s been in for the last 200 years.”

Q: What distinguishes the Martelly government from those of its predecessors?

A: “This is a work in progress. We are introducing new laws in parliament that will make it easier to open a company, reducing the number of steps from 13 to two. For a long time, Haiti has been a closed country because of political and social instability. It took five months and three tries to form a government. Finally, we have a new prime minister [Garry Conille] who’s an expert in international development, and a legitimate government with a philosophy of attracting private business to create sustainable development.”

A: “The governments of the past identified problems. We try to find solutions. This is the main difference. This administration is

Q: Jan. 12 marks the second anniversary of the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that destroyed Port-au-Prince. Since then,

Lamothe spoke to The Washington Diplomat on the sidelines of a Haiti investment conference in Port-au-Prince organized by the Inter-American Development Bank. Here are excerpts from our Nov. 29 interview:

what has the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission accomplished, and what is the future of this commission? A: “The reconstruction commission was and is still on our agenda to be renewed. The president has asked for a 12-month extension. There have been some delays, but we’re confident. Haiti has enormous tourism opportunities. The government has developed a plan that focuses on two key areas: our virgin coastline in the north, and the southern coast including Jacmel. The opportunities are there for investors to come. And the will is there from the government. And this meeting in Port-au-Prince is a wonderful platform to showcase what we have to offer the world.” Q: What sectors of the economy will you be focusing on? A: “Our goal is to create sustainable jobs, and we feel the apparel industry is the quickest sector for creating those jobs. We’re starting with 20,000 jobs in the northern industrial park, but we’re not limiting ourselves to the apparel sector. Every sector is a priority for us. The earthquake caused over $6 billion in destruction. That creates opportunities. The word ‘impossible’ doesn’t exist for us.” Q: How would you describe relations between the United States and Haiti? A: “We feel that relationship is at its best moment ever. It’s more of a true, genuine partnership right now. The Obama administration really cares for Haiti. They showed that during the earthquake and after the earthquake, and they show it every day. We’ve gotten significant assistance from the State Department on different aspects including the training of our police officers and the industrial park, in security matters, and in the energy sector.” Q: Haiti has been without an ambassador in Washington for several months. When do you expect to fill that position? A: “We’ve already selected a candidate, but there’s a process of 60 to 90 days before we get all the approvals. By the beginning of February, you will know who he is.” Q: Last month, President Martelly flew to Havana and met with Raúl Castro. What is the nature of Haiti’s ties with the Castro government? A: “We have a very good relationship with Cuba. The Cubans were especially good to us after the earthquake, and after the cholera outbreak. Cuban doctors have made 4 million consultations and have treated 76,000 cases of cholera. They are present in most of the rural clinics. Cuba is helping us, along with Venezuela, to fix the airport in Cap-Haïtien, and there’s a tripartite agreement with Cuba and Venezuela to provide energy. We’re also working with Cuba in the education sector, where they’re teaching 250,000 illiterate people to learn the basics, especially in the merchant sector. Some of our merchants don’t know how

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PHOTO: LARRY LUXNER

to read and write.” Q: Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, and there’s a long history of tension and hostility between your two countries. How do relations with Santo Domingo stand at the moment? A: “There are some points of interest we want to resolve. The treatment of Haitians is one of those issues. President [Leonel] Fernández has helped us on numerous occasions, but in order to better defend the interests of the Haitian people, it’s important to have good relations with the leaders of the Dominican Republic.” Q: Many Haitians are unhappy with the presence of thousands of United Nations peacekeepers under the Minustah banner, yet does it make sense for Haiti to have its own army, as President Martelly has proposed? A: “Minustah has an annual mandate that expires every year. In order to create longterm stability, you need to have a force that can replace Minustah when their term ends. Businessmen want to feel secure, and their physical buildings need to be secure. In order for them to feel safe, you must have the manpower to safeguard them. Nobody will invest in this country if they cannot drive down the street. We want to keep the Haitian people safe against all types of destabilizing factors. We are working to find the right formula to have a force in place when Minustah leaves. “The crime rate has gone down, so have the number of violent attacks. Gang members have been disarmed, so the general security situation has greatly improved. We want it to improve even more. That’s why we want to strengthen the police force, increase the number of police officers on the streets, and increase the amount of information coming to the police.” Q: How long do you expect the United Nations to remain in Haiti? A: “As long as they’re needed to keep the country safe.” — Larry Luxner

January 2012

PHOTO: LARRY LUXNER

Trash fills a street in downtown Port-au-Prince. Garbage pickup and sanitation is only one of many urgent problems confronting Haiti’s overpopulated capital city, which has yet to recover from the January 2010 earthquake that killed anywhere from 220,000 to 300,000 people.

“To a great degree, people should invest in what makes Haiti most competitive.The amount of work that can be created with tourism is enormous,” he said. “You’ll have to create infrastrucfamous building in Haiti. In 10 months we rebuilt ture and destinations.Today it’s a lot easier than it it.We had people working on this 24 hours a day, used to be.” During the IDB conference, González, CEO of because we promised to finish it in time for the Basic Energy Ltd., and Gregory Mevs, chief execuanniversary.” Asked why Digicel is investing in the Marriott tive of Haiti’s WIN Group, signed a memo of understanding for the construction of a 250project, O’Brien said it makes sense. “The view of the board is that we will invest room hotel adjacent to Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint in non-core businesses here if it’ll make a differ- L’Ouverture International Airport. The Hotel des ence,” he explained.“We believed we need a busi- Artistes, with total investment of $38 million, will ness hotel in Port-au-Prince, and that if Digicel led feature a traditional Haitian arts-and-crafts motif. the way, it would encourage other foreign inves- It’ll be managed by a private company; groundtors. My job is to pitch foreign investors to come breaking is planned for December, with completo Haiti. I hope there are 10, 20, 30 others who tion set for early 2013. “This hotel will serve many Haitians returning will invest in tourism.That’s why we did it.” Digicel’s chief rival is Voilá, whose parent com- to their country who will transit overnight on pany, Trilogy International Partners LLC, is the their way to the cities where they came from,” largest U.S. investor in Haiti to date.Trilogy, which said Mevs, noting that 50 of its rooms will be for operates mobile networks in Bolivia, New extended stays. Marc-Antoine Acra is general director of Zealand and the Dominican Republic, has been present in Haiti since 1999 but appears to be los- Industries Acra. His company is among several working to restore the El Rancho Hotel in ing ground to its more aggressive rivals. Petionville. Before the earthquake, it Indeed, many of Haiti’s cell had 150 rooms — the quake took out phone users spend only $1 or $2 50 of them.Acra said it will cost $6 milALSO SEE: a month on phone calls; some of lion to $8 million to rebuild El Rancho, them are refugees still living in U.N. Downsizes not including an additional 50 rooms tents who have no money for Peacekeeping that weren’t there to begin with. food or clothing but somehow In addition, a 130-room Best Western Mission come up with the cash to keep is being rebuilt in downtown Petionville, their phones going.And the rivalPAGE 12 a project that is worth around $20 milry between Digicel and Voilá has lion. Ironically, the original structure led to massive advertising campaigns and brightly colored red and yellow — Haiti’s first new international-brand hotel in a umbrellas that protect shoppers from sun and decade — had been inaugurated only a few days rain while blanketing the outdoor markets with before the earthquake. The venue for the IDB investor conference, their respective logos. “We’ve seen over $1 billion invested in tele- the Karibe, finished in February 2008, suffered com in Haiti over the last eight years,” said Trilogy considerable quake damage but has since been President and CEO Brad Horwitz.“It accounts for restored. Meanwhile, the world-famous Hotel 25 percent of Haiti’s GDP, and between ourselves Montana — which first opened in 1947 and was and my competitor, we pay over 20 percent of completely destroyed in the quake — may also the country’s tax revenues. While impressive, be rebuilt. But tourism investment isn’t limited just to those last two statistics are unsustainable. It’s my own view that we need to think of a new para- hotels. “The government is looking at aggressive airdigm in Haiti where poverty alleviation through job creation and investment really is the top pri- port promotion efforts and offering concessions to build regional airports,” said Mevs, whose comority.” Horwitz added:“The poor state of Haiti’s infra- pany is also involved in a planned $200 million structure today — power, roads, ports and sew- expansion of Port-au-Prince’s commercial port. age — is the single greatest inhibitor to private “Tourism is a factor of transportation. Everybody sector investment in Haiti. It’s also the area that in the Caribbean has beautiful beaches, but Haiti has an added value: culture. Still, you must build offers the greatest opportunity for investment.” Argentine entrepreneur Rolando Gonzalez access to these beaches and historical monuBunster, a longtime Clinton friend who is also a ments. It’s all about logistics.” member of the Presidential Advisory Council, said tourism will be the key driver of Haiti’s Larry Luxner is news editor of The Washington Diplomat. economy.

from page 9

Haiti

January 2012

The Washington Diplomat Page 11

Amid Scandal, U.N. Downsizes Peacekeeping Mission in Haiti by Larry Luxner ORT-AU-PRINCE — As the United Nations prepares to draw down its massive peacekeeping operation in Haiti, the chief of that mission, Mariano Fernández, says his top priority is to help the country rebuild its earthquake-ravaged security institutions. Fernández is a former Chilean foreign minister who served as Chile’s ambassador to the United States from 2006 to 2009. The chief of the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti (known by its French acronym Minustah) for the past seven months, this world-savvy diplomat ultimately hopes to make his mission unnecessary. “We don’t want to stay in the country against anybody’s will,” he told The Diplomat. “Once we leave Haiti, we hope never to come back. This is the main goal of any peacekeeping mission: to contribute in such a way that you don’t have to come back.” He noted that Minustah was established in 2004 because of the turmoil and instability in Haiti, following the removal of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. “By the end of the [Réné] Préval government, the United Nations thought it was time to reduce the mission because Haiti was much more stable,” said Fernández, interviewed recently on the sidelines of a conference on international assistance to Haiti (see

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main story). “But then the earthquake struck, and that was a huge setback. It destroyed Port-au-Prince and killed more than 200,000 people.” In response to the January 2010 tragedy, the United Nations authorized Minustah to boost its strength with a surge of military, civilian and police personnel. Its fiscal 2011 budget is about $793 million, and the mission currently has about 8,900 peacekeeping troops, 4,000 police officers and 500 administrative staffers deployed throughout the Caribbean nation. Though critical to maintaining security — current President Michel Martelly recently said the force needed to be preserved despite moves by the U.N. to reduce its numbers to pre-quake levels — Minustah has not been received warmly by many Haitians, to put it mildly. Quite the opposite: Its continued presence in the country remains a matter of enormous controversy. A cholera outbreak that’s killed some 6,600 people and sickened an estimated 475,000 more in a country that hadn’t seen cholera in half a century is widely believed to have been brought to Haiti by Nepalese peacekeepers serving under the Minustah banner. In early November, a coalition of U.S. and Haitian grassroots organizations sued the United Nations, charging that it didn’t properly screen peacekeepers for cholera, allowed untreated waste from a U.N. base to be dumped into Haiti’s main river system, and failed to adequately respond to the epidemic.

And a recent incident involving four Uruguayan peacekeepers accused of raping a teenage boy, an episode that was caught on tape and surfaced on the Internet, enraged Haitians, sparking violent protests in Port-au-Prince. “We have zero tolerance in the case of the Uruguayans. We punished them immediately, and they were repatriated to Uruguay,” said Fernández, freely acknowledging that “many people don’t feel comfortable with Minustah, people who think we should not be in Haiti.” Fernández, 66, took over Minustah’s mantle from Edmond Mulet, a Guatemalan lawyer who now directs U.N. peacekeeping missions worldwide (and who took over the Haiti post after his predecessor, Hédi Annabi of Tunisia, was killed in the earthquake). Coincidentally, Minustah’s first chief was fellow Chilean diplomat Juan Gabriel Valdes, a classmate of Fernández. And like Mulet, who was an exile during the Guatemalan military dictatorship, Fernández fled Chile during the Pinochet regime. “I transformed myself into a journalist, came back to Chile in 1982, and became involved in opposition politics as a member of the Christian Democratic Party,” he told The Diplomat. “Then when we restored democracy, I was appointed ambassador to the United Nations.” As Minustah’s top official, Fernández oversees a peacekeeping force comprised 70 percent by soldiers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile and other Latin American countries. “Peacekeeping operations are very expensive,” he said, estimating that Minustah spends $120 million annually on contracts with Haitian companies and vendors. The mission has eight helicopters at its disposal — four from Chile, two from Argentina and two from Ukraine — as well as one Dash 7 commuter plane and a C-140 transport. Fernández said Minustah’s biggest challenge is building up the country’s historically weak police and security forces. “We have seen success in two areas: cooperation with the Haitian National Police has improved a lot, and the operation against gangs has also been successful, particularly Operation Phoenix in July, when we hit some gangs in critical areas of Port-au-Prince. This is a success story,” he said. “We are also working on a plan for reforming the police. There are now 10,000 police officers, in much better condition than two or three years ago. We’re in the process of setting up a superior police academy in Port-au-Prince, to provide them with new professional skills. They will have to attend the academy and pass examinations.” In addition, said Fernández, “Minustah is fostering collaboration between Haitian and Dominican police. The general director of the Dominican National Police visited Haiti for the first time ever and met with his Haitian counterpart, who also came to the DR. There is also close political cooperation between the two presidents, Martelly and [Leonel] Fernández. In the end, it’s one island.” The U.N. official said he typically wakes up around 6 a.m., because it takes him one hour to get to his office. Minustah’s old headquarters at the Christopher Hotel in suburban Petionville was destroyed in the earthquake; it has since relocated to new facilities at Log Base, adjacent to Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint L’Ouverture International Airport. Fernández devoted his entire first month in Haiti to Port-au-Prince; more recently, he’s spent a considerable amount of time visiting Le Cayes, Cap-Haïtien and other outlying regions — as well as meeting members of Haiti’s parliament and coordinating

PHOTO: LARRY LUXNER

Minustah’s activities with other U.N. agencies operating in Haiti. “We are building a special cholera treatment unit in Cap-Haïtien and providing eight smaller cities with multipurpose halls, because the earthquake destroyed so many public buildings,” he explained. “We are also setting up street lamps in a country that goes dark at night because there is no light in the streets, especially in Cité Soleil [a crime-ridden slum of Port-au-Prince]. Wherever you have street lamps, you have more security. “Once Haiti has the institutions in place to protect its citizens, then Minustah will be much closer to leaving,” he added. “We hope that with the new prime minister in office, we can collaborate on getting these institutions not only approved but really working in the way they need to work for society.” But that’s easier said than done. It took four months after Martelly’s election as president for parliament to give its blessing to a new prime minister, having rejected two earlier candidates. “We have a paradox in Haiti: a popularly elected president, but with no strength in parliament because there’s almost no real support,” said Fernández, who’s met Martelly four or five times since arriving in Haiti. “The two existing institutions — the head of state and parliament — must be accepted by Haitians as the legitimate government and must work together for the good of the country. At the moment, Haiti’s institutions are either very weak or not working properly.” Fernández said newcomers to Haiti “learn immediately that institutions are crucial. If you look at countries that have experienced crises and are now success stories — Uruguay, Chile, Spain, even El Salvador — they’re always the countries that agreed to set up strong institutions.” To that end, Martelly has recently pushed to reinstate Haiti’s military, sparking fears about reviving a body notorious for decades of human rights abuses that led to its disbanding in 1995. Martelly though has called for an initial force of several thousand to bolster the weak national police. Does Haiti, with its history of dictatorship and coups, really need an army? “In principle, every state has the right to have an army,” Fernández said. Asked if Costa Rica and Panama are examples to follow, he added: “This could be a model, but I’m not pushing for it. We are analyzing the information, and when I have an opinion, I will share it in private with the president.” But looking toward the future, Fernández said Minustah does plan to reduce its total force by roughly 1,800 soldiers, 1,200 police officers and 350 civilians. Its budget will be cut accordingly, though exact figures haven’t yet been determined. “I have a positive view of what will happen in Haiti, compared with how it was after the earthquake. The [U.N.] Security Council felt very comfortable with our approach to reduce troops now. If we continue working in a positive way, you will see the country stabilize.” Larry Luxner is news editor of The Washington Diplomat.

January 2012

RULE OF LAW

Mexico

Locked Up But Let Loose: The Sorry State of Mexican Jails by Patrick Corcoran

hile often lumped under the broad label of “the war on drugs,” the dimensions of Mexico’s security landscape are far more complex.

There is the local drug trade, transnational smuggling networks led by notorious villains like Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the growing prevalence of kidnapping and extortion, gun trafficking from the United States, the political collusion with criminal groups, the dead weight of local governments, the ineffectiveness of federal security agencies and, of course, the beheadings and shocking violence that has taken the lives of an estimated 45,000 people since 2006. Though there is obviously quite a bit of overlap, each of these issues — and there are many more — presents a separate challenge. But beneath this incredibly complicated tangle of problems lies a simple fact: Any effort to improve security in Mexico will require that authorities put more criminals behind bars — and keep them there. And therein lies another Herculean challenge, because Mexico’s prisons are in a state of shambles, and oftentimes a haven of crime. “It’s a catastrophe,” said Alejandro Hope, a Mexican security analyst, of the nation’s penitentiaries.“There’s no other way to describe it.” Mass escapes, for instance, are strikingly common. In 2008, security cameras caught one of the most flagrant flights when 56 gang members of the notorious gang Los Zetas drug cartel walked out the front door of a prison in the central state of Zacatecas as though it was their vacation home. The problem has recently been most severe in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, where more than 300 inmates escaped from prisons in five different incidents in 2010. In a single December escape, 141 inmates slipped out of a facility in the border city of Nuevo Laredo. Those criminals unable to escape are often at risk of violent death inside the prisons, where massacres have also become quite frequent. Seventeen people were killed in a Juárez jail in an August attack that was carried out with firearms, including assault rifles, and caught on video. It was at least the fifth such jailhouse bloodbath since 2009. Prison officials are often in the crosshairs as well. Isolated attacks on wardens or prison guards don’t receive a great deal of attention, but there has long been a steady drumbeat of such killings in Mexican papers.To take but one example, the warden of a minimum-security facility in Chihuahua was murdered by an armed group after a highway chase last January. Serving time isn’t supposed to be a pleasant experience, but the situation in Mexican prisons has deteriorated to a point where it threatens not just those unlucky enough to be housed inside, but rather represents a danger to society as a whole.

CRIMINALS IN CONTROL What all of the mayhem reflects is a system in which criminals are often capable of imposing their will on the officials nominally tasked with running prison facilities. Though analyst Hope says the worst of the cases are limited to about half a dozen or so jails, the manifesta-

January 2012

PHOTO: PAULO JORGE CRUZ / FOTOLIA

“

Mexico, despite the rhetoric, has yet to make a big push to fundamentally reform and professionalize its prison system. — SHANNON O’NEIL

”

Latin America fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations

tions of this problem are common. Often, the stories of criminal control behind bars are more head-scratchingly shocking than they are scary. In November, for instance, a surprise inspection in an Acapulco jail uncovered the presence of 19 prostitutes, in addition to 100 fighting cocks and two peacocks. Similar tales have spilled out from jails around the nation. In May, a makeshift bar, offering everything from tequila to heroin to billiards, was discovered in a minimumsecurity facility in the border state of Chihuahua. An August massacre in Juárez came hours after one of the gangs operating within prison walls hosted a party with dozens of women, again including alleged prostitutes brought in from the outside. The more egregious cases of criminals controlling prisons have less to do with extracurricular partying than with gangs conducting brazen criminal activities from within cell walls. Earlier this year, authorities discovered that a kidnapping ring was operating from a prison in Nuevo León. Not only were they carrying out the planning and execution of the crimes while locked up, which

is not particularly uncommon, but they were also storing the victims inside the actual facility. Probably the most glaring example of jails serving as criminal bases came from the northern city of Gómez Palacio in 2010, when inmates were evidently given permission to leave the prison at night and slaughter their enemies one town away, before sneaking back into prison while authorities cleaned up after their handiwork. The Mexican government was tipped off only after the third such massacre in July, at which point the rival gang uploaded a video online of someone connected to the jailhouse crew confessing to the scheme. So what has led Mexico’s penal system to this sorry state of affairs? The sheer quantity of inmates has a great deal to do with the problem. According to a recent report from the Mexico City newspaper El Universal, the nation’s 400plus prisons and jails collectively suffer from 25 percent overcapacity. In Mexico City’s massive federal prison, more than 42,000 inmates are stuffed into a space built for no more than 19,000. As a result, inmates are more restless, it’s more difficult for guards to keep rival gangs separated, and there is less ability to monitor individual prisoners, all of which contributes to an atmosphere of chaos. Another problem is not the size of the population, but rather the composition of its inmates. President Felipe Calderón’s aggressive approach to confronting the drug cartels head-on has resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of federal prisoners linked to organized crime, a group that includes the most brutal and powerful figures in the nation. Consequently, federal prisoners have been

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Continued from previous page farmed out to state and local facilities that are ill equipped to handle them and are now living alongside, and influencing, small-time crooks who would previously have not rubbed elbows with drug kingpins and assassins.“Everyone gets mixed up,” Hope said. Some of the most aggressive groups have taken advantage of this situation to build their jailhouse empires. As Alejandro Gertz, Mexico’s former secretary of public security, recently told the Mexico City daily El Universal, “Organized crime has penetrated many of the jails in the country.”

The danger has been furthered by a growing sense of impunity, as the boldest crimes largely go unpunished. The most notorious prison escape came in 2001, when El Chapo Guzmán fled a maximum-security prison called Puente Grande. He remains on the loose. While a significant number of those who left prison in mass escapes have been re-apprehended, many others remain on the outside. Official responses to jailhouse illegality often target the guards, though without doing much to break the cycle of impunity inside the prison system.According to Hope, criminals have “realized that they can escape, they can commit acts of violence.” Getting them to un-learn that lesson will require fundamental-

ly breaking the get-out-of-jail-for-free cycle.

PRISONS AND POLITICAL WILL One obvious solution is more jails. Here, President Calderón’s record is spotty. More than two years ago, his administration announced plans to create 12 new prison facilities, including a “super-max” prison in Veracruz that will house thousands of inmates. But several of the dozen are just the conclusion of already-existing projects, and it’s not clear that even with the new facilities up and running, there will be enough room for all of the federal prisoners, should the aggressive approach to organized crime continue.

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Mexican authorities have also used extraditions to lesson their burden. Under Calderón, the number of prisoners extradited to the United States has ticked up from previous administrations, with 94 in 2010, according to the Congressional Research Service. (In contrast, during the last full year in office of his predecessor,Vicente Fox, just 42 people were extradited.) That figure includes some of the most notorious inmates in Mexico, such as former Gulf cartel boss Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, who ran his operation from a maximum-security prison until his 2007 extradition. Nonetheless, further improvements are clearly necessary to reverse the stubborn trend. Penal reform legislation has been bandied about by opinion page columnists and politicians alike, but with so many other pressing security issues, fixing the prisons isn’t an area where any politician is going to invest a great deal of capital.“[Prison] reform hasn’t found its champion,” Hope noted. The lack of interest, however, belies the importance of improving the penitentiary system.“Everyone has an interest in this,” Hope said. “A great deal of the nation’s crime comes from prisons.” The United States could also play a larger role in fostering improvement in Mexico’s prisons. Despite a multi-billion dollar flow of aid to Mexico under the Merida Initiative, the U.S. government has not placed much emphasis on the state of Mexico’s prisons.“While mentioned, the prison system has been decidedly second fiddle in U.S. security assistance to Mexico, and in ongoing U.S.-Mexico cooperation more generally,” said Shannon O’Neil, the Latin American expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.“The focus has been on the military, federal police force and justice system.Whether for equipment or training, these areas dominate.” O’Neil said that the lack of U.S. interest has quite a lot to do with the absence of a “champion” in Mexico.“Mexico, despite the rhetoric, has yet to make a big push to fundamentally reform and professionalize its prison system,” she said. “Until the political will [backed by resources] exists domestically, there is little the United States can do.” A final element of an improved penal system is a more effective trial process. Mexico’s judicial system is infamous for the long wait periods between arrest and trial. Indeed, Hope says that 40 percent of the population behind bars has not even been sentenced; reducing that lag time could mean less overpopulation and a more manageable group of prisoners. Hope also says that Mexico should seek alternative avenues for punishment, such as parole and electronic bracelets. Many of the people occupying space behind bars today are simply there because they were unable to afford a fine, and were given a prison sentence instead. Special drug courts and prisons that would expedite trials and separate drug traffickers from ordinary criminals have also long been proposed, as has a greater emphasis on rehabilitation to free up prison space. Of course, enduring changes to the prison system require more money, but it’s clear that cash alone won’t be enough. In fact, a report from the lower house of the Mexican Congress recently determined that under Calderón, government spending on prisons nearly quadrupled, and yet the problem has worsened. As former security secretary Gertz told El Universal: “They think that by handing over more money to the jails the problem will be resolved, and it’s not like that.”

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January 2012

COVER PROFILE

Central America

Central America: World’s Most Dangerous Place Fights Back by Larry Luxner

he last few months have been downright horrible for Central America. Torrential rains lashed the region for 10 days in midOctober, leaving 105 people dead and causing billions of dollars in damages to countries whose fragile economies are already suffering the effects of the global economic downturn.

The misery for average families has been compounded by a steep drop in remittances that once flowed freely from the United States — home to millions of working-class centroamericanos, both legal and illegal, who’ve been slammed by the U.S. recession. As if that’s not enough, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) recently made official what Central America’s 43 million inhabitants have known for a long time: their seven nations are among the most violent on Earth. UNODC, in its first-ever Global Study on Homicide released in October, showed that the world’s most dangerous countries —ranked by 2010 murder rates per 100,000 inhabitants — are Honduras (82.1); El Salvador (66); Cote d’Ivoire (56.9); Jamaica (52.1);Venezuela (49); Belize (41.7); and Guatemala (41.4). The rising homicide rates in Central America and the Caribbean are “near crisis point,” according to the report, which attributes the rise to the use of firearms. It also notes that in countries with high murder rates, especially involving firearms, such as in Central America, one in 50 males age 20 will be killed before they reach the age of 31 — several hundred times higher than in some parts of Asia. Earlier this year, Gen. Douglas Fraser, chief of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, declared that “the northern triangle of Central America — Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras — has become probably the deadliest zone in the world outside of active war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.” The bloodshed, fueled increasingly by Mexican drug cartels using Central America as a transit point, makes Mexico itself (with a murder rate of 18 per 100,000) look tranquil by comparison — even though drug violence in Mexico seems to be grabbing all the headlines. “This is a regional phenomenon,” said Francisco Roberto Altschul Fuentes, El Salvador’s ambassador to the United States.“In a sense, we are victims of our own geography.We’re right in between South America, where the drugs are produced, and North America, where the drugs are consumed. So the drugs have to come through our countries.” But the spiraling violence is also caused by the rise of gangs (maras), which have about 70,000 members throughout the region. As UNODC states in its global homicide report: “Increases in the activities of drug trafficking groups have no doubt played a role in the escalation of homicide, but in some Central American countries there are other important contributing factors such as the lethal violence perpetrated by gangs.… Mara gangs and drug January 2012

PHOTO: LAWRENCE RUGGERI

From left, Ambassadors Jorge Ramón Hernández Alcerro of Honduras, Muni Figueres of Costa Rica, Francisco Roberto Altschul Fuentes of El Salvador, and Francisco Obadiah Campbell of Nicaragua recently spoke at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation on improving security in Central America, whose seven nations are among the most violent in the world.

“

[T]he northern triangle of Central America — Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras — has become probably the deadliest zone in the world outside of active war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. — GEN. DOUGLAS FRASER head of the U.S. Southern Command

”

trafficking groups have traditionally been quite distinct, although the former may also sometimes act as local drug distributors and possibly as contract killers for some of the latter.” Surprisingly, the record-breaking violence hasn’t deterred investors — at least not yet. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Panama received $1.426 billion in foreign direct investment in the first six months of

2011, up 17 percent from the year-ago period. Costa Rica, meanwhile, received $1.057 billion (up 45 percent);Honduras $486 million (up 15 percent);Guatemala $485 million (up 54 percent); El Salvador $376 million (up 1,404 percent) and Nicaragua $284 million (up 30 percent). In fact, a recent report by the United Nations showed that the poverty rate in Latin America is at its lowest level in 20 years, dropping from 48.4 percent in 1990 to 31.4 percent in 2010. To that end, the San Salvador-based Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana (SICA), an influential bloc that promotes regional integration, has identified not the economy but climate change and insecurity as the two biggest challenges facing Central America today. SICA has outlined 22 specific projects aimed at reducing violence in Central America. These fall within broad categories such as preventing crime, building up the region’s prison and rehabilitation systems, and strengthening regional institutions. The issue has also begun to attract more attention on Capitol Hill and among Washington think tanks. It’s no surprise the region’s drug-related violence has become

Continued on next page The Washington Diplomat Page 15

Miami

da ri Key West

Str

Cay Sal Bank

(THE BAHAMAS)

Yucatan Channel

Long Island

Ba nk Cay Lobos

Samana Cay

Crooked Island

RAGGED ISLAND RANGE

Mayaguana

Turks and Caicos Islands

Acklins Island

(U.K.)

Isla de la Juventud

Grand Turk

Great Inagua

Cozumel Isla Cozumel

Guantánamo

U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay

Cayman Islands

A CAYM

H TRENC

Navassa Island

Montego Bay

SWAN ISLANDS (HONDURAS)

Belmopan

P U E R TO

Windward Passage

George Town

(U.K.)

JAMAICA

HAITI Port-au-Prince

(U.S.)

Mona Passage

Santo Domingo

Kingston

R I CO

Puerto Rico

St. Croix

(U.S.)

(FRANCE) Saba and Sint Eustatius (NETH.)

Martinique

NICARAGUA Managua ER

Lago de Nicaragua

A TR

Ridge

Coa st

Isla de la Providencia

San Salvador

Caribbean Sea

Cayos Miskitos

EL SALVADOR LE

(FRANCE)

Marie-Galante

Basse-Terre DOMINICA Roseau

HONDURAS Tegucigalpa

Guadeloupe

Plymouth

(VENEZUELA)

R E Guatemala City

ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA

Saint John's

Montserrat (U.K.)

GUATEMALA

The Valley Anguilla (U.K.) Philipsburg Saint Maarten (NETH.) Gustavia Saint Barthelemy (FRANCE)

Basseterre

ISLAS DE LA BAHÍA

Isla de Aves

(U.K.)

Charlotte Road Town Amalie Marigot Virgin Is. Saint-Martin

San Juan

(U.S.)

Isla Mona

TREN

Anegada Passage

British Virgin Is.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

SAINT KITTS AND NEVIS

BELIZE A

Rum Cay

Great Exuma

(THE BAHAMAS)

MEXICO

San Salvador

CUBA

Cancún

No rth Atlantic Oc ean

Cat Island

Andros Island

Guinchos Cay

Bahía de Campeche

SIE

Eleuthera

Nassau

(THE BAHAMAS)

Havana

of its

New Providence

c pe

n Ba

THE BAHAMAS

BIMINI ISLANDS

(COLOMBIA)

Aruba Isla de San Andrés

(NETH.)

(COLOMBIA)

Oranjestad

ISLAS DEL MAIZ (Corn Islands)

Curacao (NETH.)

Bonaire

Isla de Margarita

Bridgetown

Tobago

Port-ofSpain

TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO Trinidad

Gulf of Paria

Caracas

COSTA RICA

BARBADOS

Kingstown

Lago de Maracaibo

Panama Canal

No rth Pacific Oc ean

(FRANCE)

Castries

Saint George's Isla La Tortuga

San José

SAINT LUCIA

GRENADA

(NETH.)

Golfo de Venezuela

Fort-de France

SAINT VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES

Willemstad

Panama City

PA N A M A S

Gulf of Panama

Río

E TA L

Río M agd ale na

GUYANA G U I A N A

RA LE

Bogotá

H I G H L A N D S

ILE

COLOMBIA

- C H PE RU

(COLOMBIA)

Georgetown

VENEZUELA

TRENCH

Isla del Coco

Isla de Malpelo

Orinoco Embalse de Guri

(COSTA RICA)

• Establishment from existing resources of narcotics affairs sections in U.S. embassies in Central America, particularly in Honduras and El Salvador.

Great Abaco

Freeport

Gulf ooff Mex Mexic ic o

• Elimination of unnecessary red tape by allowing security assistance destined for Central America to be managed directly by each of the U.S. embassies in Central America, rather than the U.S. Embassy in Mexico.

Grand Bahama

• Expansion of first-rate, vetted law enforcement units that work with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) — such as those in Guatemala and Panama — to all seven countries in the region.

UNITED STATES

Great

fodder for the Heritage Foundation, Brookings Institution,Inter-American Dialogue,American Enterprise Institute and the Hudson Institute — with no less than 12 conferences on this very subject scheduled over the next two months. In September, the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control — co-chaired by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) — issued a 55-page report urging the Obama administration to make security in Central America a greater priority across all U.S. government agencies. “This report does not call for large amounts of new foreign aid. Instead, it encourages the State Department and U.S. law enforcement agencies to focus on key programs that have proven to be effective both in Central America and in other areas of the world,” said the document, which specifically calls for:

Central America and the Caribbean

Mosqu ito

Continued from previous page

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• Increased support for witness, judge and prosecutor protection programs in Central America that would help empower individuals to utilize their countries’ justice systems.

2010 Global Homicides

• Greater encouragement of extraditions of high-level criminals from Central America to the United States.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) first-ever Global Study on Homicide shows the number of homicides (count) and the rate of homicides per 100,000 people in the population of individual nations around the world. Honduras had the highest homicide rate, at 82.1 per 100,000 inhabitants.

• Collaboration with all seven countries to map the causes and sources of violence to better understand the interactions between Mexican and local drug trafficking organizations, transnational youth gangs and other illegal criminal networks. Some efforts have been made toward greater U.S. security cooperation and assistance.At a SICA conference in Guatemala City over the summer, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged some $300 million as part of the Central America Regional Security Initiative and the Mérida Initiative, up from $260 million in 2010. Yet the sheer scale of the problem remains daunting.That $300 million remains a drop in the bucket compared to the estimated $400 billion that transnational criminal organizations take in annually. In fact, the value added of cocaine shipments that pass through the Central American isthmus is more than 100 times the funds allocated to the region under the Mérida Initiative for 2011, according to the World Bank. As Caitlin Watson recently wrote in “Central America’s Costly Drug Dilemma” for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, until recently, U.S. funding for antidrug efforts had focused on interdiction. “However, those efforts have generated only episodic success. Consistently reducing trafficking and attendant ills in Central America will demand an integrated multinational approach with an emphasis on strengthening justice institu-

Page 16

The Washington Diplomat

Country

Count

Rate

Belize

130

41.7

Costa Rica

527

11.3

El Salvador

4,085

66.0

The deserted beaches of Geoff’s Caye are a 16-mile boat ride from Belize City. The many uninhabited islets off the coast of Belize provide a tempting target for regional drug traffickers.

Guatemala

5,960

41.4

Honduras

6,239

82.1

Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. “The evolution of the program into a global enforcement arm reflects the United States’ growing reach in combating drug cartels and how policy makers increasingly are blurring the line between law enforcement and military activities, fusing elements of the ‘war on drugs’ with the ‘war on terrorism,’” wrote Charlie Savage in the Times article. Despite high-profile successes capturing drug kingpins and disrupting major smuggling routes, the increasing militarization of the drug war raises troublesome concerns. For one thing, any form of U.S. intervention is likely to be seen as an encroachment of national sovereignty. There’s also the danger of an American backlash if any U.S. agents are hurt or killed in another country. And while professionalizing

Nicaragua

766

13.2

Panama

759

21.6

PHOTO: LARRY LUXNER

tions and civil society as well as decreasing America’s still considerable appetite for drugs,” she wrote, adding that, “Colombia’s emerging role as a source of security training and assistance to the Central American countries offers a hopeful example of burgeoning regional cooperation.” Yet the Colombia model, predicated on a military approach to dismantling criminal and rebel networks, also generates controversy, with critics arguing that the never-ending war on drugs is beginning to look too much like a real war. As the New York Times reported in the November article “D.E.A. Squads Extend Reach of Drug War,” commando-style squads known as Foreign-Deployed Advisory Support Teams, first launched to combat Talibanlinked drug trafficking in Afghanistan, have quietly expanded to countries such as

SOURCES: BELIZE, OAS; COSTA RICA, MINISTRY OF JUSTICE; ALL OTHERS, NATIONAL POLICE

foreign troops is a lofty goal, many Central American militaries have notorious histories of human rights abuses, sometimes worse than the drug traffickers themselves. Above all, outfitting a nation with the latest helicopter or surveillance equipment to take out the cartel leader du jour (whose successor is often waiting in the wings) doesn’t address the many deep-seated issues behind the drug trafficking industry and the rampant crime that it fuels, from the need for legal and judicial reforms in transit nations, to corruption and poverty, to America’s insatiable

January 2012

“

Some people have referred to our peculiar situation as being victims of geography. But that’s nothing new. What’s new is the magnitude of the problem.

”

— NESTOR MENDEZ, ambassador of Belize to the United States PHOTO: JUAN MANUEL HERRERA / OAS

demand for drugs. The response will have to be both wide-ranging and tailored to each nation’s individual circumstances. So here’s a look at Central America’s nations, as viewed by their ambassadors in Washington and other experts searching for ways to battle the onslaught of drugs and crime that have made the region a front line of violence.

BELIZE With barely 330,000 people inhabiting a country larger than El Salvador, Belize is Central America’s most sparsely populated nation — making it especially difficult to police. Like its vastly bigger neighbor, Guatemala (which still claims 60 percent of its Belizean territory despite years of talks aimed at resolving the issue), Belize shares a land border with Mexico and is increasingly becoming the smuggling route of choice for Los Zetas and other ruthless Mexican drug cartels. Nestor Mendez, the country’s ambassador in Washington, said the violence has begun to hurt Belize’s reputation as a tranquil vacation getaway known for white-sand beaches and scuba diving. “Some people have referred to our peculiar situation as being victims of geography. But that’s nothing new.What’s new is the magnitude of the problem,” Mendez told The Washington Diplomat. “Over the last five or 10 years, the capacity of organized traffickers seems to have exceeded the capacity of governments to adequately confront the challenges. We don’t have any verifiable evidence of the presence of cartels in Belize, but considering our large territory and small population, it’s possible to assume they have a presence in our country.” In fact, recent drug and weapons seizures near Belize’s 251-kilometer-long border with Mexico show that the Zetas and other drug cartels are forging new smuggling routes through Central America’s only English-speaking nation. In November 2010, Guatemalan drug lord Otoniel Turcios Marroquín — who’s allegedly linked to the Zetas — was captured in Belize and turned over to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. He had been sought by the United States since 2003 for allegedly smuggling 1,600 kilos of cocaine, which was subsequently distributed on the streets of New York. After the Zetas beheaded 27 people in a farmhouse in Petén earlier this year, Guatemalan authorities reported that a diplomatic vehicle with Belize license plates had been used by Zetas members and found on the ranch. Police said the four-wheel-drive had been stolen from a driver assigned to an outpost of the Organization of American States along the disputed GuatemalaBelize border. “Everybody knows what the Zetas are doing in El Petén,” said Mendez.“It’s no secret that over the last three or four years, we have had increasing incursions into our territory.” Belize has 450 offshore keys and islets, most of them uninhabited. Stories of drug-toting tourists are common in this country once known as British Honduras; every day, backpackers are busted with packs of cannabis in their pant pockets. “Many have been arrested for openly smoking marijuana on the keys such as San Pedro and Caye Caulker,” said Belize News 5 analyst José Sánchez.“They think it’s OK.” The biggest concern, of course, is for the larger amounts of hard drugs that pass by undetected. Belize not only has seen increases in cocaine trafficking, but in marijuana and precursor chemicals January 2012

en route to Mexico as well. In 2010, Belize seized 97 metric tons of marijuana alone. “The government has always taken a very aggressive position on dealing with drug traffickers. We have dedicated a lot of our internal security capacity to deal with drugs and gun violence. We have roadblocks in strategic places throughout the country where vehicles are stopped and searched,” said Mendez. “But we’re extremely under-resourced in comparison to our neighbors. Our police force is very small, and so is our army.”

COSTA RICA In Costa Rica, 527 people were killed in 2010, giving the country a homicide rate of 11.3 per 100,000 inhabitants. While that’s still twice as high as the U.S. homicide rate of 5 per 100,000, it also means that Costa Ricans are less likely to be murdered than their counterparts anywhere else in Central America. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Costa Rica also abolished its army in 1948, and has by far the region’s highest literacy rate and per-capita income. But those accomplishments — which have turned Costa Rica into the so-called “Switzerland of Central America” — bring little comfort to Muni Figueres, San José’s ambassador in Washington. “We lived in peace for so long that we kind of fell asleep at the wheel on the security front,” said Figueres, speaking Nov. 16 at a Heritage Foundation forum on security in Central America that also featured the ambassadors of Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras (pictured at Heritage on the cover).

“

We lived in peace for so long that we kind of fell asleep at the wheel on the security front.

”

— MUNI FIGUERES

ambassador of Costa Rica to the United States

“We did have the intelligence to create a number of police forces that take care of law enforcement,” she said. “Looking back, we’ve concluded that that was a good move because it prevented concentration of power and corruption.We don’t face a crisis of corruption in the police force, but we do face the need to significantly strengthen it.” Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla, whose government is pushing for a proposed “security tax” to bring down violence, recently invited Colombia’s former president, Álvaro Uribe, to San José to explain to lawmakers how a similar tax passed in 2002 helped rescue his country from the depths of despair. “In Colombia, we knew that it was necessary to increase security resources, so we established a new tax for the wealthiest sectors of the country,” Uribe told Costa Rican legislators, conceding that despite initial resistance to the tax, most businesses agreed to pay, given Colombia’s grave security issues at the time.

Continued on next page The Washington Diplomat Page 17

Continued from previous page Within a few years, Colombia saw dramatic improvement. During Uribe’s eight years as president, the homicide rate plummeted from 68 per 100,000 inhabitants to 32 per 100,000. Meanwhile, national police forces doubled from 70,000 to 140,000, and Colombia’s reputation was transformed. “The tax didn’t only increase security, but it also increased education, health and social well being,” Uribe said. “Those who paid the tax were rewarded by improvements in the national economy.” Figueres — the daughter of one former Costa Rican president and the half-sister of another — said that while Colombia is definitely a success story,“it’s still an originator of drugs, a transit point. They have achieved fantastic results, but the problem has been shifted north rather than eliminated. We absolutely have to stop this, and we need all the equipment we can get.” At the moment, Costa Rica’s national police force makes do with fewer than 300 vehicles.The National Coast Guard, which patrols 1,290 kilomePHOTO: LARRY LUXNER ters of Caribbean and Pacific coastline, has only 26 Congested traffic fills the streets of La Unión, El Salvador, which is Central America’s most densely populated boats.As for aerial patrols, demilitarized Costa Rica country, and one of its most violent as well. possesses only one helicopter and six airplanes. “There is no way we can adequately confront national security issues and drug trafficking with such a lack of resources,” said Mauricio Boraschi, This is a regional phenomenon…. In a vice minister of national security issues and director of Costa Rica’s Drug Control Police. “If this sense, we are victims of our own geography. country is going to solve these problems, we’re We’re right in between South America, where going to have to dig into our own pockets and fund the fight. It will require an investment in secuthe drugs are produced, and North America, rity this country historically has never had to match.” where the drugs are consumed. So the drugs If passed, Costa Rica’s proposed “Impuesto a las Personas Jurídicas” tax would levy an annual $300 have to come through our countries. surcharge on every one of the country’s 485,000 businesses, large and small. The tax would raise — FRANCISCO ROBERTO ALTSCHUL FUENTES approximately $145 million annually, with half that ambassador of El Salvador to the United States amount going toward improving security forces and acquiring equipment, vehicles and training. Finally, she said,“we’re creating fast-track courts scene. “This will go through in the next few months,” Said Figueres:“We’re sort of betting on the instiFigueres predicted. “We’ve received no objections in which if a crime is committed in front of many from the private sector, because there’s a sense of witnesses and there’s no doubt about the guilt, tutional strength we’ve inherited and are building then there’s a process whereby the supposed on it, while sticking to our core principles of urgency on the need to go ahead.” In the meantime, she said, “we are creating a criminal is tried quickly. We have created victim respect for human rights.” But the ambassador conceded that “we don’t school for policemen for the first time and dou- and witness protection programs, and we’re bling the number of police officers, providing upgrading our legislation on human trafficking and know if any of this is going to work. Whether a disarmed democracy like Costa Rica can really them with equipment and technology to hope to smuggling.” Public Security Minister Mario Zamora, who said defend itself is a thesis we’ll have to prove.” catch up with the tremendous advantages that drug traffickers and organized criminals have over he hopes legislators “make the right decision with the best interests of the country in mind,” already EL SALVADOR us.” In addition, “we’re financing the judiciary to has plans for how the potential tax bonanza will be El Salvador is by far Latin America’s most densely enable it to intercept communications in a way we distributed. populated country. It’s also one of the most violent: Topping his list are patrol vehicles. Costa Rica did not know how to do before,”Figueres explained. 4,085 of its 6.3 million citizens were murdered in “We’re getting ourselves equipped to better moni- has about 270 police vehicles, which explains the 2010. tor what goes on. We’re also installing electronic increased sense of insecurity on the streets and In one especially horrifying incident, 20 passcanning equipment at the border and, in coopera- notoriously slow response times to crimes in progsengers traveling in a microbus north of San tion with Panama, exchanging information and ress. In some rural areas, depending on the terrain, Salvador were burned alive by two gang members police can take several hours to arrive at a crime doing joint operations.” in retaliation for the murder of their friend at the hands of the rival Mara Salvatrucha, also known as the MS-13. Last month, the two defendants were found guilty and sentenced to 66 years in prison. It was a case that galvanized the people of El Salvador, who have been plagued by civil unrest and poverty for years. Yet poverty and crowding alone cannot explain the skyrocketing violence. Consider that more people were killed last year in El Salvador than in desperately poor Bangladesh, whose 164 million inhabitants are squeezed into an area the size of Wisconsin. Despite its skyrocketing homicide rate, Ambassador Francisco Roberto Altschul Fuentes told The Diplomat that his country has not yet been taken over by Mexican drug cartels or criminal organizations, both of which are increasingly partnering with one another. “The cartels have made some incursions into El Salvador, but to say they have a foothold there is not true,” said Altschul. “However, that doesn’t mean they won’t in the future.” Because of geography — and the fact that El Salvador is the only country in Central America that doesn’t have a Caribbean coastline — El PHOTO: LARRY LUXNER Salvador’s security needs are different. “Unlike Guatemala or Honduras, we have cerA police officer inspects a motorist’s ID at a highway checkpoint outside San José, Costa Rica. Despite a shortage of uniformed security personnel and the absence of a military, Costa Rica enjoys the lowest homicide and crime rate tain advantages. We are a small, densely populated country, so there are no places like Guatemala’s in Central America.

“

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The Washington Diplomat

Petén or the north coast of Honduras where you can have clandestine airstrips. But that doesn’t mean we’re not doing anything. We have a base at Comalapa Airport to detect aerial traffickers,” said Altschul. “We’ve also been working very hard at cleaning up corruption in the national police. And we’ve done a lot of work in prisons. Even from jail, gang leaders were ordering extortions,” he continued. “One prison, Zacatecoluca, was so bad that in one night, all the guards were fired and replaced immediately by another contingent of guards.We’ve also introduced cell-blockers; a direct result is that extortions have declined by 30 percent.” Since President Mauricio Funes took office in June 2009, spending on security has jumped dramatically and now accounts for just over 3 percent of the country’s current budget. This past June, El Salvador hosted the 41st General Assembly of the Organization of American States. The theme of the three-day gathering was “Citizen Security in the Americas,” and it came just two months after the historic visit of President Obama, who pledged $200 million to help El Salvador fight drug trafficking and gang violence. That’s independent of the U.S. program called the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI).Yet since that program’s establishment in 2008, funds allotted to CARSI’s seven members amount to $361 million — less than a third of Mexico’s share of counternarcotics assistance. The irony is that Central American nations have confiscated more than three times as much cocaine as has Mexico — about 100 metric tons per year. “The international crisis has hit us hard, particularly in El Salvador because of our dollar economy,” said Altschul. “But even in the middle of this serious economic situation, we’re doing our share and making efforts to solve this problem.” Altschul says Colombia’s success in reducing violence linked to drug trafficking is a shining example for El Salvador; that’s why Funes recently met with Uribe to see what lessons could be applied to Central America. One such lesson is a security tax of the same type now being debated in Costa Rica. “El Salvador is considering a tax only on the top 1 percent of the wealthiest population. It would affect no more than 2,000 Salvadorians. It would be transitory, lasting only until the end of Funes’s term, and it would raise $150 million per year,” he said. The government would like to get the approval of Congress for the move. “Nobody likes more taxes, but they are probably paying more in private security than they would with this new tax,” the ambassador reasoned.“It would be earmarked only for security programs, so this money wouldn’t go into the general budget.” Altschul said El Salvador cooperates very closely with the DEA as well as the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. El Salvador has more of its citizens living in the United States — about 2.5 million — than any other Central American country. More than 80 percent of these salvadoreños have some sort of legal status here; tens of thousands fled to the United States during El Salvador’s 12-year civil war, in which 75,000 people died. They were eventually granted legal status through NACARA (Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act) and TPS (Temporary Protected Status), which has been extended periodically due to earthquakes and other natural disasters. Yet each year, U.S. authorities deport thousands of Salvadorans, many of them with dangerous backgrounds and a long history of involvement in gang warfare.The deportations are aimed at stemming the growing gang violence in the United States, although conversely, they contribute to the crime wave back home. “Organized crime, drugs and gangs need weak institutions in order to survive, so it’s in our interests to strengthen our institutions,” said Altschul. “This is a fundamental issue for us. Of course, organized crime and drug trafficking do not respect borders or laws. They move from one country to another, so apart from what any effort individual countries can make, we must have a regional, comprehensive approach to the problem.”

January 2012

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Guatemala’s Tikal National Park is located in El Petén, a sparsely populated department that has become a haven for Los Zetas and other murderous Mexican drug cartels.

GUATEMALA On Nov. 6, retired right-wing general Otto Pérez Molina, promising a crackdown on violent crime, won Guatemala’s presidential election with 54.5 percent of the vote — becoming the first military man to lead Guatemala since the country’s return to democracy in 1986. Pérez, 60, won the runoff after promising voters he’d deploy troops on the streets and boost the size of Guatemala’s understaffed, corrupt-ridden police force. Yet military experts say Mexican drug cartels such as the Zetas control 40 percent of the territory of Guatemala, which, like El Salvador, is still suffering the effects of a brutal civil war that raged for 36 years. That explains to some extent why Guatemala — Central America’s largest nation in both size and population — remains such a brutal place. “Unfortunately, after the 1996 peace accords, we did not follow the blueprint to improve security in our country, and although our homicide rate has been statistically going down in the last 37 months, we are still among the highest in the hemisphere,” said Julio Armando Martini Herrera, who was appointed Guatemala’s ambassador to the United States in August. “Among the many problems we faced was that we lacked a sustained and systematic plan to reinsert ex-combatants (both from the guerrillas and the army) into civilian life, which ultimately contributed to what was then a relatively small network of organized crime,” he explained. “This has developed into what today is the biggest threat to security in the hemisphere — drugfueled organized crime.” Martini told The Diplomat that drug trafficking organizations alone rack up more than $100 million a year as payment for hauling narcotics through Guatemala. Even so, he says his country has made “significant steps” to strengthen judicial institutions, combat organized crime, and fight poverty among its poorest citizens (some 40 percent of Guatemala’s 14.3 million people are indigenous, one of the highest percentages in Latin America). At present, Guatemala struggles with a 30 percent unemployment rate and annual per-capita GDP of under $3,000 — making the easy profits of the drug trade very tempting to those in desperate straits.At the same time, Guatemala spends only 1.4 percent of its budget on security and law enforcement, compared to the regional average of about 2 percent. “One of the reasons the president-elect won the vote is that he put a lot of emphasis during his campaign on the security issue,” said Martini, Guatemala’s former vice minister of foreign affairs. “The whole country is looking for a solution.” Recently, Guatemala’s Congress passed the Asset Forfeiture Law, which aims to confiscate assets acquired by criminal organizations and use

January 2012

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Among the many problems we faced was that we lacked a sustained and systematic plan to reinsert ex-combatants (both from the guerrillas and the army) into civilian life, which ultimately contributed to what was then a relatively small network of organized crime. This has developed into what today is the biggest threat to security in the hemisphere — drug-fueled organized crime.

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them to combat those very same illicit networks. Since 2008, claims Martini, seized assets have come to around $10 billion, though that number cannot be independently verified. He said that six out of the 10 most-wanted Guatemalan narcotraffickers are now behind bars and awaiting extradition to the United States. In addition, said the envoy, Guatemala is reforming its police force and has boosted its size by 50 percent in the last eight years, while increasing police salaries by 33 percent since 1996. Martini said he expects to have a 60,000-man police force over the next five to 10 years,“with professional, trained and vetted personnel who can provide the security that is essential to our development.” Yet even if the new president is able to boost tax collection to 14 percent of GDP from the current 11 percent, as Pérez suggested in a postelection press conference, security consultancy Stratfor has concluded that a full-fledged confrontation with organized crime “will require significant help, most likely from the United States.” The Zetas, armed with rocket-propelled grenades and even their own jungle airstrips, have been more aggressive than any other drug cartel in expanding to Guatemala and other countries,

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Continued from previous page where their path is made easier by underfunded and ill-equipped armed forces compared to the Mexican military. Last December, the government imposed martial law in the northern department of Alta Verapaz for several months and had some success in halting cartel advances. President Álvaro Colom, who hands over power to Pérez on Jan. 14, told the Economist magazine that since then, only a few illicit flights have landed in Alta Verapaz, where “before it was like an international airport.” But in El Petén, which abuts Guatemala’s 871-kilometer-long border with Mexico, it’s been far more difficult to take back what the Zetas have seized; in short, prevention has better success than dislodging once a foothold has been gained. El Petén, which covers one-third of Guatemala, is difficult terrain for counternarcotics. Inhabited by only 500,000 people, its northern half has long been home to smugglers, and dense tropical forest cover makes clandestine runways hard to locate. The remote department was the site of the May 2011 massacre in which 27 people were beheaded. Yet Guatemala is not a failed state, insists the embassy’s civil attaché, Edgar Villanueva. “When you talk about a failed state, you talk about a state that has absolutely no control over its own territory. The election itself proves that Guatemala is not a failed state, and that although it faces significant challenges, things have not gotten to the extent that there is no state presence over anything,”Villanueva told us. “There is a state presence in Guatemala; municipal authorities still function.The reason it feels that it’s getting out of hand is the fact that drug trafficking networks have such large amounts of money, and their influence on government structures is very big. So until we’re able to tackle the source of funding and the demand for drugs, it will be very difficult to defeat this.”

CREDITS: ABOVE-LARRY LUXNER; AMBASSADOR-JUAN MANUEL HERRERA / OAS

An armed security guard patrols a banana plantation south of San Pedro Sula. Last year, Honduras was ranked the world’s most dangerous country, with a homicide rate of 82.1 per 100,000 inhabitants — and San Pedro Sula is considered one of the most violent cities in the country.

HONDURAS Home to some of Central America’s most impressive Mayan ruins and its most beautiful offshore islands, Honduras is more recently grabbing headlines as the murder capital of the world. In the last 10 years, the country’s homicide rate has nearly tripled, from 31 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2006 to just over 82 per 100,000 in 2010. Put another way, says the Honduras National Commission for Human Rights, an average of 20 people are killed every day in Honduras. Ten years ago, the daily homicide rate was 8.7. “We are facing an epidemic,” said Ramón Custodio López, the country’s national commissioner for human rights.“To think that in 10 years, the national average for homicides has grown by

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Page 20

The Washington Diplomat

“

We are lodged between countries to the south that supply the drugs, and the world’s biggest drug market to the north.

”

— JORGE RAMÓN HERNÁNDEZ ALCERRO ambassador of Honduras to the United States

over 11 murders per day is harrowing. Our security systems have been simply unable to control the fierce escalation of crime caused by drug trafficking and gangs.” Jorge Ramón Hernández Alcerro,Tegucigalpa’s ambassador in Washington, said that traditionally, the country’s geographical position has been one of its main competitive advantages — given the fact that Honduras has land borders with three other countries and 10 maritime borders in the Caribbean and Pacific. “But in the past few years, this competitive advantage has turned into a curse. We are lodged between countries to the south that supply the drugs, and the world’s biggest drug market to the north,” said Hernández, speaking at the Heritage event. Moreover, the first cocaine-processing lab ever discovered in Central America was found in Honduras earlier this year, raising fears that the region will eventually become a processing point for drugs, in addition to a transit zone. “As a result of the shifting of drug routes from the Western Caribbean and Pacific to our region, 95 percent of the drugs coming from South America to North America now transit Central America,” Hernández pointed out.“With this shift in routes, our crime rate has skyrocketed, and the economic burden for Honduras is appalling.” He noted that the total cost of crime and violence comes to almost 10 percent of his country’s GDP.“According to a recent study published by UNDP, over the last five years Central America has increased its security expenditures by 38 percent to reach almost $4 billion in 2010,” said the ambassador. “Think of what this amount could do to combat poverty in our countries.” Indeed, rural poverty in Honduras ranks among the worst in Latin America. Some 53 percent of the nation’s 7.6 million people live in rural areas, and it’s estimated that 75 percent of the rural population lives below the poverty line. Its alarmingly high rates of infant mortality, child malnutrition and illiteracy make it the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere after Haiti. In early November, Honduran President

Porfirio Lobo launched a crime-fighting initiative known as “Operation Lightning.” It involves the deployment of 2,000 army and 14,000 National Guard troops to the area of San Pedro Sula — the country’s second-largest city — as well as to the capital of Tegucigalpa, about 240 kilometers to the south. Later that month, the Honduran Congress approved the use of the army to fight drug cartels, similar to the methods employed in Mexico. “Operation Lightning will install a large police presence in the areas and sectors of high conflict,” said Lobo. “Hundreds more officers will be monitoring, supervising and evaluating these regions. Urgent action is required in this country and we hope Operation Lightning will provide a solution.” But human rights activists fear the solution may compound the problem.As recently as 2009, the Honduran military helped to oust leftist President Manuel Zelaya in a widely condemned coup. Yet leaders are clearly grasping for ways to stanch the violence, and the public has so far supported the use of soldiers to do so. In 2010, more than 1,800 murders were reported in San Pedro Sula and the nearby Caribbean port city of Puerto Cortes. Crime is so bad in San Pedro Sula that Honduran media outlets have dubbed it the “Ciudad Juarez of Central America.” “We don’t want open war between our security forces and the drug traffickers. In our case, we could avoid that by effectively preventing drugs from entering our country,” said Hernández. “This is why I refer to the urgent need for highticket air and naval equipment and sophisticated detection equipment and information-gathering technologies that my country doesn’t have.” Honduras hopes to tap into CARSI funds, though according to Hernández, only 18 percent of the $361 million allocated by Congress has actually been disbursed.Another potential source of money could come from a so-called “security tax” on companies, which the ambassador said “comes at high political cost for our executive branch and Congress.” “Honduras has also passed laws against money laundering and asset forfeiture, and a communications intercept law is now pending in Congress. We have invested in police training and highsecurity detention facilities. We’ve captured increasing amounts of cocaine, nearly 12 tons just this year. One of our last seizures came from a makeshift sub that was transporting 7.5 tons.And cash confiscation last year came to $14.7 million.” But Honduras won’t see progress unless it tackles another serious problem: corruption. “We as a country have to recognize that we are a part of a very fragile society in Honduras,” said former security minister advisor Alfredo Landaverde. “The country is penetrated by corruption across all sectors. It is rampant in the police, in business and in politics.” Within the past 12 months, 176 police officers have been arrested on suspicion of being linked to drug trafficking organizations. Only one week after Operation Lightning kicked off, members of the Honduran government as well as top ministers, law enforcement officials and educators announced the formation of a Truth and Reconciliation Committee to reduce instances of institutional corruption.

NICARAGUA The United States and longtime Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega — who on Nov. 6 was reelected president of Nicaragua for another five years — have distrusted each other for decades. Yet when it comes to cooperation in the fight against drugs, relations between Washington and Managua couldn’t be better. Francisco Obadiah Campbell, Nicaragua’s ambassador here and a longtime activist in the leftist Sandinista party, said his country will do whatever it takes to get rid of narco-traffickers. “We have had extraordinary success in interdicting drugs. Our navy is recognized as being the most effective in Central America, because we work very closely with our neighbors and with the United States and its various institutions,” said Campbell, speaking Nov. 16 at the

January 2012

PHOTO: LARRY LUXNER

Boats crowd the harbor at Brig Bay, Corn Island, a major transshipment point for narcotics smuggled along Nicaragua’s sparsely populated, English-speaking Caribbean coast.

Heritage seminar. “It is important that we strengthen institutions in Nicaragua to be more effective in this fight against drug trafficking. That means our police must become even better.” Despite Ortega’s historic friendships with such figures as Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi and North Korea’s Kim Jong-il, the 66-year-old socialist has embarked on a clearly capitalist path that’s given Nicaragua the fastest growing economy in Central America. It’s also the only country in Central America to not only recover the free trade zone jobs it lost during the 2008-09 global economic slump, but to surpass previous employment highs in that sector (also see “Nicaragua’s Capitalist Comrade Consolidates Political Power” in the November 2011 issue of The Washington Diplomat). Revenues from free-zone operations, tourism and the export of subsidized oil from Venezuela are being used to beef up the country’s defense and security budget, which is the lowest in Central America. Even so, last year, the United States named Nicaragua, Honduras and Costa Rica as major drug trafficking nations; Nicaragua in particular is a key transit point for cocaine shipments bound for Mexico. Drug runners, known in Spanish as transportistas, utilize the Corn Islands off the Atlantic coast as a refueling stop. Other areas of concern are the Río San Juan and the waterways surrounding Lake Nicaragua, in the southwest. Nicaragua has already enjoyed impressive success in the war on drugs. In 2010, according to the State Department, its police and military confiscated 17.5 tons of cocaine, nearly double that of 2009. In addition, it destroyed thousands of marijuana plants and arrested more than 1,800 suspected drug traffickers. In mid-May, police burned 861 kilos of cocaine seized by the Nicaraguan Navy from a fishing boat in the Caribbean — marking the country’s largest drug haul since the Navy confiscated 1,643 kilos of cocaine in January. Nicaragua and Costa Rica have even agreed to establish liaisons to fight traffickers operating in the uninhabited border area of forests and wetlands along the Río San Juan, despite a bitter dispute over ownership of a 17-mile stretch of that river that both countries have asked the International Court of Justice to resolve. In September, the Navy established a new battalion tasked with apprehending drug smugglers off its Caribbean and Pacific coastlines.The first of its kind in Nicaragua’s naval history, it consists of three companies totaling 300 sailors and represents a troop increase of 74 percent in the Navy’s war on drugs. The battle against drug traffickers has also brought spoils to Nicaragua’s armed forces. Last year, its soldiers confiscated 24 vehicles, seven airplanes, 34 boats, 96 weapons and nearly $5 million in cash. The police, meanwhile, captured 175 vehicles, 113 weapons, 14 boats, two planes,

January 2012

“

We have had extraordinary success in interdicting drugs. Our navy is recognized as being the most effective in Central America, because we work very closely with our neighbors and with the United States and its various institutions.

”

— FRANCISCO OBADIAH CAMPBELL ambassador of Nicaragua to the United States

one helicopter and nearly $2 million in cash. “But we have to be clear,” Campbell stressed. “For this strategy to be successful, we need to simultaneously combat our fundamental historic threat: poverty. Invariably, no matter how effective we might be, a part of those drugs will make it to the Nicaraguan coastline.” Campbell was born and raised in the town of Bluefields, along Nicaragua’s predominantly English-speaking Caribbean coast, so he knows the region quite well. He pointed out that even if the new naval battalion stops 80 percent of marijuana and cocaine from washing up on Caribbean shores, some drugs will manage to seep through. And because Nicaragua doesn’t have an air force, it can’t stop the air drops that smugglers frequently use to get even locals hooked on the stuff. “Planes can take off from Caribbean islands and clandestine airstrips, and by the time we respond, they’ve already made their drop and returned to wherever they came from. The drugs make it to communities along Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast,” Campbell said. “These villages are inhabited by poor, isolated people of African descent where the government doesn’t have any presence. They live a life of subsistence farming, growing food and fishing. Drug traffickers find safe haven in these communities. Traffickers come in, and all of a sudden, there is hope and access to money. That’s how they’re able to exploit them,” he continued. “We must find ways of eliminating vulnerability, creating opportunities in those communities, and denying drug traffickers the social base they need in order to move their products from south to north.”

Larry Luxner is news editor of The Washington Diplomat. The Washington Diplomat Page 21

DIPLOMACY

United States

First Openly Gay U.S. Ambassador Reflects on Being ‘Fit to Serve’ by Rachael Bade

ames Hormel’s hands shook as he fumbled with a video labeled “Pat Robertson.” It was 1998, and Hormel, an openly gay presidential appointee awaiting confirmation to serve as U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg from a Republican-controlled Senate, dreaded watching the reel of the rightwing Christian televangelist.

Robertson was exactly the type of person who’d inadvertently pressured Hormel to remain “closeted” for so many years.The not-so-subtle conservative preacher proudly touted his disgust for homosexuality and was notorious for making outrageous accusations (more recently suggesting that God punished Haiti with the 2010 earthquake, something the almighty apparently also did with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which Robertson said was retribution for America’s tolerance of abortion and homosexuality). What would Robertson say about Hormel — the homosexual grandson of the founder of Hormel Foods, which includes the iconic Spam meat products — whom President Bill Clinton had nominated to serve as America’s first openly gay ambassador? Popping in the video, a copy of a broadcast that appeared on the Christian Broadcasting Network that morning, Hormel heard the word “pedophile.” “A wealthy tycoon with ties to homosexual groups that promote sex with children may soon be a United States ambassador,” said one of Robertson’s co-hosts. Hormel sat frozen on the couch, dumbfounded by the malevolent accusations — every one a blatant lie. In his quest to become the first openly gay U.S. ambassador, Hormel had to answer to Congress for more than just his credentials; he had to answer for his sexual orientation. A Minnesota native, Hormel had spent the first three decades of his life hiding from society and himself, shameful of his feelings for other men. But by age 65, he had become a symbolic figure in the gay rights movement, enduring a nasty smear campaign in the hopes of shattering a glass ceiling. Stories such as the Robertson anecdote and many more about Hormel’s transition from a closeted young man to diplomat to gay rights leader are detailed beautifully in his memoir,“Fit to Serve.” Co-authored by Erin Martin, the book hit the shelves in November and “enables people to see how the lesbian-gay-bisexual-and-transgender [LGBT] constituency is struggling to gain its own first-class citizenship,” Hormel said. “I wanted to tell a story about what it’s like being gay in a society that is hetero-normative, and how people make assumptions about others because of misconceptions about what kind of choices homosexuals have in their sexual orientation,” Hormel told The Washington Diplomat. Hormel rails against the belief among some religious hardliners that homosexuality is a choice. Hormel’s personal experience taught him otherwise. He spent most of his life trying to be straight. He even married and had five children. But some things have a way of coming out. And in the mid 1960s, during his late 30s, Hormel decided it was time

Page 22

The Washington Diplomat

“

All the nonsense in Washington over my nomination, the carryingon, the hand-wringing, and the nasty behavior, the charges, the accusations and the dirt that didn’t stick — none of it mattered…. No one considered my race, my gender, my religion or my sexuality. I was an honorable person representing an honorable country. — JAMES HORMEL former U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg

”

to stop living by other people’s rules and to shed the constant dread of discovery. At the time, many people likened homosexuality almost to a plague — feared and not discussed. Some congressmen even claimed there were no gay people in their districts (reminiscent almost of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s boasts that Iran doesn’t have any homosexuals). When they weren’t ignored, homosexuals were often taunted as they still can be today, with insults such as “faggot,” physical threats or worse. Growing up, Hormel said he felt he was “marked” as gay in his hometown of Austin. But with the support of his children and ex-wife, he joined the gay rights movement to fight LGBT discrimination and hatred with education. He helped found the

In his new memoir “Fit to Serve,” James Hormel, the grandson of the founder of Hormel Foods and a former U.S. envoy to Luxembourg, talks about becoming America’s first openly gay ambassador.

Human Rights Campaign and used part of his inheritance to open the James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center at the San Francisco Library to preserve documents and books about LGBT history. During the height of the AIDS epidemic, he also donated millions to various organizations to combat the disease. Some may wonder why Hormel, a stakeholder in a giant food conglomerate and a former dean at the University of Chicago Law School, would pursue an ambassadorial bid, which he first did in 1992 when Clinton nominated him to the top diplomatic posting in Fiji. That nomination bid sputtered after the GOP takeover of Congress a year later. So why go under the political microscope with a successful private sector career to fall back on? Senate confirmation is his answer. “I thought it was important to put senators to the test in facing the issue of gay rights,” Hormel told The Diplomat. In his memoir, he writes that the confirmation process would “oblige 100 U.S. Senators — and, in all likelihood, the media and the American public — to decide whether a gay person was fit to serve as a direct representative to the President.” It was a win-win, he argues: If the Senate confirmed him, he’d open doors for hundreds of gay people seeking highlevel positions. If he lost, he’d bring into focus the discrimination gay people faced. But Hormel ran into a few unexpected obstacles. After Clinton declared his intentions to nominate Hormel to Fiji, the Pacific Island nation, which outlawed sodomy, implored the president to pick another candidate. Clinton caved after Paula Jones filed a sexual harassment suit against the president and nominated someone else, perhaps to avoid the congressional headache.

January 2012

SIDEBAR

Perils of Being Gay Around the World

Still on the shortlist of names for potential nominations, however, Hormel waited.And waited. And waited. As the years passed â&#x20AC;&#x201D; five years since he sought the Fiji appointment â&#x20AC;&#x201D; he served as a delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, where he spoke before the body about HIV/AIDS. He also worked as a U.S. delegate to the U.N. General Assembly. And he waited some more. Finally, in October 1997, the White House nominated Hormel to be U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg. Then came the smear campaign. â&#x20AC;&#x153;People cooked up stories to vilify me and turn me into a political pariah,â&#x20AC;? Hormel wrote, reflecting on the time span following his Luxembourg nomination. Opponents accused Hormel of harboring a â&#x20AC;&#x153;gay agendaâ&#x20AC;? because he was a high-profile activist.They called him anti-Catholic after he was found in a 1996 video laughing during San Franciscoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s LGBT Pride Parade at a comic troop wearing nun habits. One of Robertsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s colleagues found a brochure from the NorthAmerican Man/Boy LoveAssociation at the Hormel Center of the San Francisco Public Library and claimed that Hormel himself had put the pamphlet in the library. (Hormel denied the accusation and has since retorted that even â&#x20AC;&#x153;Mein Kampfâ&#x20AC;? sits in public libraries.) Although his opponents were successful in delaying Hormelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s confirmation â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Republicans Tim Hutchinson of Arkansas and James Inhofe of Oklahoma blocked the vote after accusing Hormel of blasphemy against the Catholic Church and criticizing his activism â&#x20AC;&#x201D; they failed to keep him from the Luxembourg post. Clinton used his recess

appointment powers to bypass Senate confirmation, and in June 1999, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright swore Hormel into the position. Looking back, Hormel called the process â&#x20AC;&#x153;arcane.â&#x20AC;? Although he wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t able to force the Senate to vote on his confirmation, Hormel believes his campaign further dented the glass ceiling for LGBTs in the United States by allowing an openly gay man to serve in such a high-level position. â&#x20AC;&#x153;All the nonsense in Washington over my nomination, the carrying-on, the hand-wringing, and the nasty behavior, the charges, the accusations and the dirt that didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stick â&#x20AC;&#x201D; none of it mattered,â&#x20AC;? wrote Hormel in his memoir while reflecting on his Luxembourg experience. â&#x20AC;&#x153;All the distinctions that had been assigned to me and used to define me fell away.â&#x20AC;Ś No one considered my race, my gender, my religion or my sexuality. I was an honorable person representing an honorable country.â&#x20AC;? The gay rights movement has made tremendous strides since Hormelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s childhood â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in part because of people like him. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I had my childhood in a space where sexuality wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t discussed,â&#x20AC;? Hormel recalled.â&#x20AC;&#x153;There were no references to gay people in any public way. It was as if gay people didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t exist.â&#x20AC;? But over the decades, attitudes â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and society â&#x20AC;&#x201D; have changed. In the United States today, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s illegal to discriminate against homosexuals in the workplace. Samesex marriage is now recognized by a handful of U.S. states, including New York and Washington, D.C. In September, the infamous Clinton-era â&#x20AC;&#x153;donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t ask, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t tellâ&#x20AC;? (DADT) policy that effectively prohibited gays from serving in the U.S. military was

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officially lifted after a years-long battle. On the diplomatic front, just last month the White House put into place the first U.S. government-wide strategy to combat human rights abuses against LGBT persons abroad, building on the steady progress that the State Department has made in tackling gay rights issues. The strategy would, among other things, use foreign aid funds to promote the protection of LGBT rights, enhance efforts to protect vulnerable LGBT refugees and asylum seekers, pressure foreign governments that criminalize homosexuality,

January 2012

and enlist international organizations in the fight against discrimination, according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who spoke at length about LGBT rights in Geneva on International Human Rights Day. Clinton, calling the issue â&#x20AC;&#x153;one of the remaining human rights challenges of our time,â&#x20AC;? also announced $3 million toward a new Global Equality Fund to support civil society groups working on gay rights.â&#x20AC;&#x153;A great deal of work lies before

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on the books (even some U.S. states have vestiges of them). In late 2010, Foreign Policy magazine highlighted the policies of some of the most anti-gay countries in â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Global Gay Rights Battlefields,â&#x20AC;? including Iran, Nigeria, Malaysia, Uganda, Jamaica and Senegal. Many had anti-sodomy laws that carry punishments of prison sentences that range from a decade to life, or even the death penalty. Africa has many harsh anti-homosexuality laws on the books. Uganda grabbed headlines in 2009 when a parliamentarian introduced a bill that would have not only put anyone engaging in acts sodomy in jail for life, but also executed gay people with HIV/AIDS. The bill died at the close of the legislative session in 2010, though homophobia in the country remains rampant. More recently, Nigeriaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s senate passed a bill calling for 14-year prison sentences for anyone convicted of homosexuality, drawing condemnation from countries like Britain, which has threatened to withhold aid from Nigeria. Iran has frequently attracted sharp criticism from human rights advocates for hanging gay men solely because of their sexuality. Being gay in Malaysia can get you locked up for 20 years (opposi-

n 2010, some Saudi Arabian diplomats squirmed when one of their own, recently discovered to be gay, pleaded for the United States to save him from his own country. Ali Ahmad Asseri, a Saudi national representing his country in a Los Angeles consulate, had gone into hiding after his coworkers found out he was gay (and that he was close friends with a Jewish woman). He asked for U.S. asylum contending that his life was in danger because Saudi Arabia, which had called him back to the Middle East, outlaws homosexuality. The punishments for gay sex in the kingdom can include death by lashing, and men can also be flogged for â&#x20AC;&#x153;behaving like women.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;If I go back to Saudi Arabia, they will kill me openly in broad daylight,â&#x20AC;? Asseri wrote in the letter he sent to various news outlets, including the New York Times, after receiving death threats following his request for asylum. The defection renewed attention on the discrimination, and lifethreatening dangers â&#x20AC;&#x201D; from lashings to lynching to lengthy jail sentences â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that gays and lesbians face around the world. Saudi Arabia is hardly alone in having anti-homosexuality laws

tion leader Anwar Ibrahim has perpetually had to battle sodomy charges, which he says are politically motivated). Writing in the Population and Development Review, Joseph Chamie, former director of the U.N. Population Division, and Barry Mirkin, former population policy section chief at UNPD, point out that while private homosexual acts between consenting adults are legal in some 100 countries â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 60 percent of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population â&#x20AC;&#x201D; more than 70 countries, the remaining 40 percent of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population, criminalize such behaviors. Same-sex marriage strikes an even more contentious chord around the world, and not surprisingly is only recognized by a small number of countries, although that number is rising. Chamie and Mirkin conducted a study that found only 32 countries representing 15 percent of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population legally recognize same-sex couples in some form. Some of those, oddly enough, are a growing number of traditional conservative Catholic nations in Latin America such as Brazil, Argentina and parts of Mexico. Chamie and Mirkin write that, â&#x20AC;&#x153;In the coming years, same-sex marriage will remain a controversial and salient part of the legal, political and cultural landscape locally, nationally and internationally.â&#x20AC;?

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BOOK REVIEW

Jeremy Ben-Ami

J Street Tries to Become ‘A New Voice for Israel’ by John Shaw

rom the moment J Street arrived on Washington’s political and policy scene in 2008, it has shaken up longstanding dynamics — and challenged conventional thinking — in the U.S.-Israeli alliance. The self-described pro-peace, pro-Israel advocacy group has been praised by those on the political left as a welcome and much-needed voice for moderate Jewish Americans. They say it has been a forceful advocate for a two-state solution and a strong champion for a wideranging policy debate in the United States about the future of Israel and a rapidly changing Middle East. Conversely, J Street has been reviled on the political right as a wrong-headed attempt to shape the foreign policy debate and condemned for being quick to target one of America’s closest allies, but too reticent to challenge Israel’s adversaries in the region. Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, has said several times that J Street has backed policies that would hurt Israel. Critics have also questioned the nonprofit lobby group’s financial credibility and its national loyalty, while supporters counter that a more evenhanded U.S. approach in the region would ultimately benefit an increasingly isolated Israel. In the middle of this sharp divide is Jeremy Ben-Ami, cofounder and president of J Street and the author of “A New Voice for Israel: Fighting for the Survival of the Jewish Nation.” Part memoir, part political manifesto and part history of J Street, Ben-Ami’s 2011 book makes the case for a broader political debate in the United States regarding Israel and the Middle East that can help break the Israeli-Palestinian logjam, and he says J Street wants to be the missing voice in that discussion. Ben-Ami also implores Israel to take a fundamentally different tack to resolving its longstanding differences with the Palestinians to survive as the national home of the Jewish people and maintain its status as a vibrant democracy. Born in New York City, Ben-Ami has extensive ties to Israel. Both of his parents were born in Israel and one set of grandparents was among the 66 founding families of Tel Aviv in 1909. Ben-Ami has frequently visited Israel, where much of his family resides, and considered living there himself. He says he admires Israel and relishes the liveliness of its domestic debates, but believes it now faces perilous challenges. “Like a train hurtling toward a cliff, Israel must act now to change its current trajectory. The unsustainability of the present course seems clear to just about everyone except the present Israeli government and some of the leadership of the American Jewish community,” he writes. In “A New Voice For Israel,” Ben-Ami makes four central arguments. First, he says that Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians is dangerously off track and threatens the nation’s character and security. Second, he contends that one of the main reasons Israel continues to embrace policies that are contrary to its long-term interests is because the United States has become a reflexive supporter of all Israeli policies, including those that are misguided and even self-destructive. Third, he claims the American Jewish community, while fundamentally progressive, is dominated by a conservative minority that is politically powerful but does not reflect the views of the overall community. Finally, he

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PHOTO: MACMILLAN

“

Like a train hurtling toward a cliff, Israel must act now to change its current trajectory. The unsustainability of the present course seems clear to just about everyone except the present Israeli government and some of the leadership of the American Jewish community. — JEREMY BEN-AMI president and cofounder of J Street

”

argues that a moderate voice should be heard in the U.S. political debate advocating for balanced American policies regarding the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and the entire region. Pervading Ben-Ami’s book is the fear that time is running out for a reasonable compromise between Israel and the Palestinians — a fear that’s been amplified by the Arab Spring and concerns over how it will alter the region’s political makeup, potentially further isolating Israel. “Israel’s very existence is in fact threatened by a progressive, terminal illness. Without defining its borders and ending the occupation, Israel is living on borrowed land and time. And time is no longer on the side of those seeking a peaceful resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict,” Ben-

Ami writes. “If things don’t change pretty soon,” he warns, “chances are that the two-state solution to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict will slip through our fingers. As that happens, the dream of the Jewish people to be a free people in their own land also slowly disappears.” Ben-Ami argues that the United States is now supporting Israeli policies that are contrary to the best interests of both nations. In his view, the current Israeli government is taking an intractable, hard-line stance that makes a peace agreement with Palestinians increasingly unlikely. Ben-Ami says the current Palestinian leadership, while hardly perfect, is the best Israel is likely to deal with in the foreseeable future. And he charges that in their unquestioning support for Israel, some in the American Jewish community have turned a blind eye to the moral and ethical implications of the occupation and its impact on the both the Palestinian people and Israel. He also contends that the U.S. domestic debate has become so badly distorted that anyone with the temerity to challenge Israeli policies is excoriated. One example he cites pertains to former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 (Ben-Ami was a Dean aide). Early in that campaign, Dean told several reporters the United States should not “take sides” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and instead should adopt a balanced approach to the dispute. For this seemingly innocuous statement, Dean was vilified by supporters of Israel. Some leading Democrats said that Dean’s plea for a more evenhanded approach was tantamount to political suicide by siding with the Palestinians. It was this incident, coupled with others, that prompted Ben-Ami to question why the major national organizations of the Jewish American community were able to foist right-of-center-views regarding Israel on American candidates for president and other federal offices.Whom, he wanted to know, gave these groups and their leaders the exclusive right to set the rules on the Israeli debate in American politics? And why didn’t the rules call for a fair-minded American approach that would actually help Israel secure its future? Ben-Ami is at his most provocative when he discusses the Jewish American community’s stance toward Israel. He argues that the political dialogue on Israel in the United States is badly skewed and far more constrained than it is in Israel. He cites groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations as unflinching supporters of Israel that aggressively discourage more open debate in the United States. Armed with polling data, Ben-Ami tries to demonstrate that only a small minority of American Jews view Israel as the main political issue in the United States. But this passionate and forceful “8 percent” dominates the public discourse on Israel and shapes the perception of where the Jewish community stands on most issues. He credits these established groups for building support for Israel in America over the decades and securing generous financial aid from the U.S. government, but he says the views of this minority are out of date and don’t reflect the broader Jewish American public. Ben-Ami criticizes the “loudest 8 percent” for creating the impression of a Jewish American community with a single-minded focus on Israel

See BOOK REVIEW, page 26 January 2012

MEDICAL

Hearing Aids

Cheaper Online Hearing Tests Sound Great, But Not Worth Cost by Gina Shaw

earing aids aren’t cheap. If you buy a high-quality hearing aid from an audiologist, by the time all is said and done it will probably run you well over $2,000 — nearly double that if you need aids for both ears. So what would you say if you could buy hearing aids for a fraction of that — between $650 and $950 — from a company affiliated with a nationally known health insurer, and do it all online, including your hearing test? That’s what Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare (UHC) is now offering through its business affiliate, hi HealthInnovations. As of October 2011, consumers can go to the company’s website (hihealthinnovations.com), take an online hearing test, and order their hearing aids for less than $950. If they choose to sign up for UHC’s Medicare Advantage plan, the aids might even be free or virtually so. Sounds great, right? There’s just one problem:Virtually every organization involved in hearing health thinks it’s a bad idea. Organizations that have spoken out against the new program include the Academy of Doctors of Audiology, the American Academy of Audiology, the International Hearing Society and several state organizations for speech, language and hearing. Even the Minnesota Department of Health took action, warning consumers in a release that, “Before hearing aids can be sold to consumers, (state and federal) laws require practitioners to … visually inspect the consumer’s ears and ear canal.” That’s just one of the problems, says Gregory Frazer, owner of California-based Pacific Hearing Inc. and director of audiology at Pacific Eye & Ear Specialists who has written to UHC with a litany of concerns about the new plan. “First of all, no one is looking in the person’s ear to see if they have earwax,” he pointed out. Earwax? You bet. About one-third of people with hearing loss may just have a massive buildup of wax, called cerumen, in their ears. If you don’t get the wax out, a hearing aid isn’t going to help much. “People doing a hearing test online also don’t have the benefit of a professional consultation to pick up pathological problems that may be related to the hearing loss,” Frazer added. “Our ear mirrors our health, and between 5 percent and 10 percent of people with hearing loss are going to have a condition that requires some type of medical or surgical treatment.” But if you’re doing an online hearing test, nobody is examining you to see if you have other symptoms that might point to underlying medical problems. And how accurate is that online hearing test? Not very, say many professionals. Most audiologists will test your hearing in a specially designed sound room, and they will test more than just the “pure tone” thresholds that the hi HealthInnovations test uses. Even though the online program recommends taking the test in a quiet place, many people can’t really create a soundproof environment in their home. (When I tried to take the test, jets from a nearby airport were zooming overhead.) Some

January 2012

PHOTO: LISA F. YOUNG / FOTOLIA

Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare is now offering online hearing tests and hearing aids for less than $950, but numerous health groups have spoken out against the new program, arguing that patients need to have their hearing inspected by professionals.

“

First of all, no one is looking in the person’s ear to see if they have earwax…. People doing a hearing test online also don’t have the benefit of a professional consultation to pick up pathological problems that may be related to the hearing loss.

”

— GREGORY FRAZER

director of audiology at Pacific Eye & Ear Specialists

people have taken the test twice, both passing and deliberately failing, and in both cases hearing aids were recommended. There’s also a question as to whether or not the practice is even legal. The International Hearing Society has requested a meeting with the Food and Drug Administration about hi HealthInnovations because the sale of hearing aids is federally regulated. The Medical Devices Act requires that a seller will not sell a hearing aid unless the prospective user has presented a written statement signed by a licensed physician (preferably one who specializes in diseases of the ear) within the last six months. Some companies skirt this requirement by mar-

keting their products as “personal sound amplification devices,” which are not aimed at treating hearing loss. But the Hearing Industries Association (HIA) believes that by utilizing a hearing test — and then presenting consumers with results that suggest specific devices for varying levels of hearing loss — the hi HealthInnovations program steps over the line. “In our view, this isn’t just an implied claim, but an out-and-out statement that these products are intended to compensate for impaired hearing,” said Carole Rogin, executive director of HIA. Whether or not the FDA shuts down hi HealthInnovations (we were unable to get a comment from the company), it’s important that people who have hearing problems get accurate and complete care. Obviously, everybody’s dealing with a difficult economy and the lure of a good product at a cheaper price is difficult to resist. But is it really so cheap? It’s unlikely that the hearing aid you bought online is going to be professionally fitted for you, or come with a warranty, or with someone who will teach you how to insert the aid in your ear properly or change the batteries. These things are often more complicated than they sound. Frazer says that a good third of his patients have trouble changing batteries in their hearing aids even with assistance from his office. So before you consider buying a hearing aid online, ask yourself:Am I trying to get a bargain on a hearing aid, or am I trying to hear better?

Gina Shaw is the medical writer for The Washington Diplomat. The Washington Diplomat Page 25

from page 24

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that insists U.S. officials cannot pressure Israel in any respect, and he believes it’s time for a more honest debate in the United States about the alliance with Israel — one that reflects the views and values of most Jewish Americans. In 2004, Ben-Ami and his J Street cofounder, Daniel Levy, began to discuss creating a different kind of pro-Israel group.They envisioned J Street as providing a new voice from the center-left mainstream of the Jewish community that would advocate for a two-state solution and a larger peace accord in the region. It would lobby policymakers, distribute campaign contributions, and rewrite the rules of American Jewish politics. “Believing that active American diplomacy is essential to ending the conflict, our core mission is to change the political dynamics that prevent its resolution, while opening up a greater space for debate and discussion on Israel in the Jewish community,” Ben Ami writes. According to its cofounder, J Street has grown impressively in its first three years. Launched in the spring of 2008 with a full-time staff of four and an annual budget of $1.5 million, the group now has a staff of 50 and a budget of almost $7 million. J Street has 170,000 online supporters, a presence in 50 college campuses, and 600 rabbis who are members of its Rabbinic Cabinet, Ben-Ami says. J Street’s first national conference in the fall of 2009 attracted 1,500 people, 200 media outlets and 150 members of Congress. Its second meeting drew more than 2,000 participants. In the 2010 election cycle, it distributed more than $1.5 million to congressional candidates. J Street’s goal, Ben-Ami insists, is to be a new voice for Israel, but not the only voice of the American Jewish community. “We want a voice in the American political debate that reflects the progressive and liberal tendencies of that community and that is consonant with the values on which we were raised,” he writes. He also believes that unless the U.S. debate about Israel becomes more robust, Jewish Americans will lose interest in Israel. “Until the American Jewish establishment welcomes debate and dissent, no amount of improved ‘messaging,’ advocacy training or even free trips [to Israel] will overcome the disconnect that many Jewish Americans of all ages feel between the values with which they were raised and the national homeland of their people. Without fundamental change, the long-standing Jewish institutions of the United States will see their support base shrink until there’s only one pole standing.” Ben-Ami says that most in the American Jewish community want Israel to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians that ensures the long-term security and survival of Israel as the democratic home of the Jewish people, establishes borders for Israel that the world recognizes, and gives the country enduring legitimacy in the international community. He adds that the basic compromises between the Israelis and Palestinians have been apparent for more than a decade, since President Bill Clinton tried to broker the Camp David accords in 2000. That agreement calls for the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea to be divided into two states, Israel and Palestine. The borders of the two states would be based on 1967 lines with some land swaps to reflect current population realities. The new Palestinian state would be as large as the area captured by Israel in 1967. Under this accord, each nation could establish its capital in Jerusalem, where there would be a special administrative regime for the city’s holy sites. Palestinian refugees would not have the right of return to their former homes, but there would be financial compensation and resettlement programs for them in the new Palestine state or in third countries. The new state of Palestine would be demilitarized and rigorous security would be established. “The leaders of both peoples understand the general contours of the likely deal, and polling on

PHOTO: J STREET

Jeremy Ben-Ami, cofounder and president of J Street, offers a history of his advocacy group and his political philosophy in the book “A New Voice for Israel: Fighting for the Survival of the Jewish Nation.”

both sides indicates that, even after a generation of unfulfilled promises and overblown expectations, a strong majority prefers the two-state solution over available alternatives,” Ben-Ami writes. Reaching that elusive solution, he adds, is more urgent than ever because increasingly lethal weapons and sophisticated weapons technology are abundant in the region, religious tensions are intensifying, and demographic trends are in place whereby the 5.7 million Jews in Israel proper, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza are now almost equaled by 5.2 million Arabs. “Israel finds itself at a critical fork in the road, facing a choice of existential proportion: Either end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict now through a two-state solution or cling to an untenable status quo that leads to the decline of its Jewish character, its democratic values and its international standing,” he writes. “The creation of a political home for the Palestinian people at some point in the coming years is inevitable. The question is whether the Israeli political system can muster the will to swallow the compromises necessary to achieve this outcome peacefully and diplomatically now, or whether it will take years or decades, not to mention thousands more lives lost.” “A New Voice for Israel” is a compelling and persuasive book. Ben-Ami has strong views but presents them calmly and respectfully. He avoids personal criticisms or gratuitous attacks. I would have preferred a fuller discussion about how and why the so-called 8 percent minority in the American Jewish community has become so powerful and influential. Many political observers have noted that passionate minorities often wield enormous influence when the views of the majority are held less forcefully. Ben-Ami’s call for “passionate moderates” to assert themselves seems laudable, but only time will tell if that passion truly materializes. It would also have been helpful for Ben-Ami to explain how the “passionate moderates” in the Palestinian community will sustain power and broker a deal with Israel. Ben-Ami does not address another reality that must be troubling from his perspective. While J Street has grown in size and reach over the past three years, American policies toward Israel have arguably become even more hard line and less balanced. A number of commentators have observed that the U.S. Congress has taken a hostile stance toward the Palestinians while full-throatily embracing the conservative government in Israel, which many in the international community blame for the current deadlock.Why is this so? How can this be changed? And when will J Street begin to see the fruits of its labors? These are hard and important questions that Ben-Ami does not answer, and perhaps does not have any answers for.

John Shaw is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat. January 2012

EDUCATION ■ A Special Section of The Washington Diplomat

■ January 2012

Indian Influx by Carolyn Cosmos

Higher Education’s Frequent Flyers: International Students Flock to the United States Although times are tough around the world, the economic climate hasn’t dampened the recent surge in higher education exchanges, with internationally minded students increasingly crossing borders to seek their college degrees and broaden their cultural horizons. The influx is bringing top talent from emerging nations to U.S. colleges and universities, which, despite constant bad press about America’s flailing education system, remain among the best in the world. Many of these students return to help their homelands prosper, leading to some controversy that the U.S. government should be investing more in visas and incentives for these foreign recruits to stay and build up the U.S. economy. But regardless, their presence, even if only temporary, provides a much-needed financial boost to U.S. schools, with international students often able to pay full or higher levels of tuition. Moreover, it contributes to the prestige and diversity of U.S. colleges and universities, who are training some of the world’s brightest minds and its future leaders. The Washington area, as an international, cosmopolitan destination and center of power, has naturally benefited from this boom. In a continuing series profiling the foreign populations that are flocking to U.S. schools, The Washington Diplomat took a look at students from India, one of the most peripatetic groups, and why so many are winding up on the shores of the Potomac. “I’ve learned a lot living in the United States,” said Nishant Bafna, a University of Maryland-College Park engineer from India working on a master’s degree in information management. He said he chose the university because the area is the “information technology capital of the world and Maryland is a top school — its name has ‘brand value.’”

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Students perform at an international bazaar last year at American University, where more than half of all students have studied abroad. ■ INSIDE: D.C. students sample international food thanks to local embassies. PAGE 31 ■ One World uses social media to connect classrooms. PAGE 34 ■

January 2012

EDUCATION

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Continued from previous page The nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s capital offers international cultural events and cuisine, all the embassies, and fellow students from around the globe, he added. Bafna previously lived with his family in Indore, a cosmopolitan city of 2 million in central India. His information about studies in the United States came in part through word of mouth â&#x20AC;&#x201D; family and friends living here â&#x20AC;&#x201D; plus a short visit. Ever entrepreneurial, Bafna told The Diplomat that heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll probably go back to India and â&#x20AC;&#x153;join a start upâ&#x20AC;? when he graduates. Bafna is fairly typical of international students coming to the United States in general and those arriving from India in particular. University administrators describe Indian students as academically strong, â&#x20AC;&#x153;driven,â&#x20AC;? typically engaged in campus life, and most often studying business or STEM programs (science, technology, engineering, math). Bafna and his compatriots are also part of a notable global growth spurt: The number of international students in the United States shot up to a record high of 723,277 students last year, a 32 percent increase since 2000, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE) based in New York City. IIE notes that these international students contribute more than $21 billion to the U.S. economy, through their expenditures on tuition and living expenses, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. In fact, higher education is among Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s top service sector exports, as international students provide significant revenue not just to university campuses but also to local economies of the host states for living expenses, including room and board, books and supplies, transportation, health insurance, and support for accompanying family members. The 104,800 students here in this country from India are exceeded only by Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 127,600, with South Korea, Canada,Taiwan, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Mexico,Vietnam and Turkey rounding out the top 10. Most are here for STEM or business degrees, IIE reports. India is also second to China in the remarkable increase of students coming to study in the United States, with the U.S. Embassy in India reporting that the number of student visas it issued rose by 18 percent between 2010 and 2011. Situated in or near the capital city of the United States and boasting excellent academic reputations, the major universities in the D.C. area can typically attract heavy-hitters â&#x20AC;&#x201D; not only top-notch students, but eminent scholars, politicians and global leaders who come to a campus as speakers and professors (also see â&#x20AC;&#x153;Campus Diplomacy:Ambassadors Reach U.S. Students With Regular Visits to Universitiesâ&#x20AC;? in the November 2011 issue of The Washington Diplomat). Case in point: Last fall, Georgetown University in the District hosted a U.S.-India Higher Education Summit where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered the opening remarks

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alongside the new Indian Ambassador The American Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s International Student Nirupama Rao. and Scholar Services (ISSS) has â&#x20AC;&#x153;AU diplomatsâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;This summit brings together more who are paired who new students from foreign than 300 presidents, chancellors and nations to help them adjust to campus life and other leaders from across the higher find international groups such as the South Asian education spectrum in our nation,â&#x20AC;? Student Association. Clinton told the Georgetown audience. â&#x20AC;&#x153;[F]or those of you who are watching the great rise of India, I hope you share our excitement that this largest of all democracies, this wildly pluralistic nation, is on the path to providing greater benefits for their citizens within the context of freedom and opportunity. And they know, as we know from our own experience, that a democracy depends upon education, an educated citizenry. And we therefore at the highest levels of our two governments are committed to this,â&#x20AC;? Clinton added, noting that a joint initiative between President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh provides $10 million for increased university partnerships. Such partnerships are already flourishing, not only with India. Further south, Virginia Techâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Blacksburg faculty includes Wu Feng, the electrical engineering and computer science whiz who co-created the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Green500,â&#x20AC;? an energy efficiency list that annually ranks the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s top supercomputers. The American Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s School of International Service last December hosted Egyptian Ambassador Sameh Shoukry â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the same month that University of Maryland President Wallace Loh took part in a trade delegation to India led by Maryland Gov. Martin Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Malley. This kind of academic star power and practical enterprise helps to draw students from other countries to the area: A combined total of nearly 16,000 are enrolled in schools of higher education in Virginia, the District and Maryland, IIE reports. The University of Maryland at College Park tops the local numbers with its 3,514 international students, nearly 600 of them from India.The George Washington University in D.C. and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore each have about 2,800 foreign students, while Virginia Tech in Blacksburg boasts the biggest numbers in that state, with about 2,400 foreign students, 460 of them from India this year. The flow is not just one way: During the 2009-10 school year, the D.C. area sent more U.S. students to other countries than it took in â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 18,500 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; according to IIE data.And these student exchanges, along with faculty and institutional collaborations, are growing. At American University, more than half of all students have studied abroad. Georgetown offers student, faculty and alumni research and study opportunities in at least 13 locations in India alone, while Virginia Tech has seven official student exchange, research or cooperative work agreements there. There are two other prime reasons this area attracts foreign students, university administrators say. First is the wealth of innovative, forward-looking, hands-on, cross-disciplinary

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January 2012

programs offered here. Second, universities in this area provide sophisticated and comprehensive cross-cultural training and support services that can counter culture shock and help foreign students, some of them very young, navigate the different academic and social expectations they encounter attending an American school. According to Bafna of the University of Maryland, there are more degree options and a freedom to fashion studies to your particular interests in the United States than elsewhere. There are also more practical possibilities: Some study programs here are “industry specific and tailored to what you’re going to do when you graduate,” he noted. Perhaps nowhere is that flexibility better illustrated than at American University, where undergraduate honors student Priyadarshini (Pinkie) Komala, 21, is majoring in a STEM discipline and getting a minor in studio art. “I wanted to get in a school that had good computer science and art programs as I was interested in both and AU sounded perfect for me,” she said in an email sent during exam week. Komala, who speaks four languages — Hindi, Telugu, Tamil and English — is originally from Chennai, where her father is a lawyer and her mother an entrepreneur. She has an older sister with an AU degree and her parents were supportive of her U.S. study plans, although they had initial “concerns about my food and living arrangements,” she said. Helping her adjust and settle in was the university’s International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS). “It’s important that students know this is their ‘home away from home,’” said ISSS Director Fanta Aw.“We are in regular touch with them before they get here so they know what to expect.”The group also reaches out to the parents, explaining courses and options as well as other features of U.S. academic culture, along with important calendar dates such as university breaks and holidays. When international students get to the campus, they have their own orientation session before joining the general one.“We are holistic,” Aw said, noting that ISSS connects students to both the AU community as well as to specific international groups. In the case of students from India — there are 71 enrolled this year — it’s the South Asian Student Association, which Aw describes as “vibrant.” “It’s a fun group,” Komala said. “We join together and perform for events like Diwali [the festival of lights], have Bollywood movie nights, and also celebrate Holi [a religious spring festival].” Common cultural issues that can arise,Aw said, include how to conduct research here, the structure of a paper with citations, British English versus American dialects, the less formal interaction between faculty and students, and the importance of speaking up in class. While most international undergraduates at AU major in business or international relations, graduate students often gravitate toward professional training courses or the university’s innovative degree combinations,Aw said.There’s an interdisciplinary master’s in global environmental policy, and the law school offers a degree combined with a master’s in international affairs. At AU’s School of International Service, graduate students can also earn a “first of its kind” master’s in comparative and global disability policy or in peace building.They can combine advanced teaching degrees, divinity studies or communication coursework with conflict resolution training or global ethics research.They can even get a degree in “social entrepreneurship” and work on start-up funding as part of their degree work. Georgetown had 102 students from India during its 2010-11 academic year, and the university website even includes an “India and Georgetown” page. Offerings include undergraduate and graduate certificates in Asian studies, a bachelor’s of science degree in international health, a global executive MBA, and a program for law students at the National Law School of India University in Bangalore, among many other eye-widening options. A four-hour drive from D.C., Virginia Tech is an area outlier. But it has stellar science, technology, engineering and math offerings, along with an architecture program that’s highly ranked in the United States. The school hosts students from 110 countries, with 600 new students arriving last August and 433 students from India on campus, said Kim Beisecker, director of the

PHOTOS: UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK

From left, the University of Maryland’s Jonathan Wilkenfeld, associate provost for international programs; Gayatri Varma, executive director of the Office of Technology Commercialization; Anand Anandalingam, dean of the Robert H. Smith School of Business; University President Wallace Loh; and Patrick O’Shea, vice president for research (also pictured, left, at the Taj Mahal), visit the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi. The University of Maryland at College Park is home to 3,514 international students, nearly 600 of them from India.

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British School of Washington Inspired. Successful. Empowered. 202.829.3700 www.britishschoolofwashington.org admissionsbsw@wclschools.org

January 2012

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Continued from previous page school’s Cranwell International Center.The center offers new arrivals personal attention and “information about practical, day-to-day kinds of things,” she said, such as grocery shopping or dealing with legal issues, as well as adapting to a new education system. “They learn to call a full professor by a first name but must understand that doesn’t mean that a teacher is a friend or won’t grade them strictly,” she noted. Virginia Tech doesn’t recruit internationally. It depends on global recognition of its programs and word of mouth, Beisecker said, although some undergrads will use commercial services in their own countries to help with choices and applications. The University of Maryland’s Bafna relied on such services to help him make his U.S. move. He said some students in India will have a private consultant when they look for schools overseas, but most rely on their school counselors, websites, and personal and professional networks. That was the case for Shree Narayanan, a doctorate student from India who’s also president of Virginia Tech’s graduate student assembly. He is an electrical engineer working in microfabrication and technologies with applications in smart phones and the detection of toxic gas.Hailing from southern India,Narayanan speaks Malayalam and English and can understand and read Hindi. “International graduate students usually know what they’re getting into” when they study abroad, he said, adding that like his friends, he is above all looking for an academic

“It’s important that students know this is their ‘home away from home.’ We are in regular touch with them before they get here so they know what to expect.” — FANTA AW, director of International Student and Scholar Services at American University challenge. “My parents always want me to aim higher.” Narayanan noted that he’s been pleasantly surprised by how “welcoming” Americans are to foreign students and by their knowledge of Indian culture, including dietary preferences and restrictions. Narayanan heard about Virginia Tech through word of mouth, and like most advanced students, he’s financially self-supported and has a university assistantship. According to Monika Gibson, director of graduate student services at Virginia Tech, most international undergraduate students are selffunded, while 65 to 70 percent of grad students do have fellowships or university teaching or research jobs. “A full assistantship at Virginia Tech will include tuition, health insurance and a stipend,” she said. Graduate students from India are generally dedicated, easy to work with, tend to join student organizations and go to cultural events, she added. “They’re quite a visible group on campus,” and several have won academic and service awards. The international higher education industry does have its problems though, with most critics honing in on the finances. A November

opinion piece in India’s Hindu daily published from Chennai with a readership of 4 million termed these exchanges as little more than a way for American schools to raise money. While acknowledging that the United States has “one of the world’s most successful academic systems,” the piece criticized U.S. universities’ low graduation rates and high costs while questioning whether American academies had much to offer India’s homegrown education challenges. The rapid growth in international studies has also created questionable practitioners and practices. The U.S.-based National Association for College Admission Counseling has criticized schools that pay per-student cash commissions to outside agents who recruit foreign students, noting the potential for abuse and exploring a ban on such payments. Secretary Clinton, along with Indian officials and commentators, has expressed concern about U.S. “fly-by-night” schools offered online or on the ground in India, and said there would be increased efforts to crack down on unscrupulous characters in any country who give international students misleading recruitment information or useless advice. But on the whole, Clinton says “there are so

many wonderful stories.” “A few years ago, a small group of American and Indian classmates at Stanford University decided to work together to build a better baby incubator. Four hundred and fifty premature and low-weight babies die every hour, and traditional baby incubators can cost as much as $20,000. So the students developed the Embrace baby warmer, a portable incubator for use in poor and rural areas that doesn’t require electricity and only costs around $100,” Clinton said at the U.S.-India Higher Education Summit at Georgetown. “After graduating from Stanford, this Indian and American team moved to Bangalore to continue working on their idea and launched their project.And it’s now in use in hospitals in India and saving babies’ lives,” she added.“Now, this is a simple idea born out of conversations between students from both of our countries talking about shared hopes for a better world that led to action. And it took these American and Indian students from diverse backgrounds and perspectives working together to make it happen.” Carolyn Cosmos is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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[ exchanges ]

Hungry to Learn D.C. International Food Days Offer Students Culinary-Cultural Adventure

PHOTO: EMBASSY OF INDONESIA

by Julie Poucher Harbin

t’s not every day that you get to meet a real prince. But on Oct. 26, the students of Miner Elementary School in Northeast D.C. did just that when 500 school children between the ages of 6 and 11 got a taste of Swedish food, culture and royalty firsthand. Swedish Prince Daniel Westling, as part of his first official visit to the United States, visited Miner Elementary on the occasion of Nordic Food Day, the first of four new International Food Day events being held this school year by D.C. Public Schools Food Services in partnership with the longstanding Embassy Adoption Program, itself a partnership with the Washington Performing Arts Society. Fifth-grader Keith Herbert and fourth-grader Julisa Williams, the official Miner student hosts, dressed as a Viking and Swedish storybook character Pippi Longstocking, respectively, to welcome the prince. Julisa held a card that said “god dag” — good day in Swedish. Keith, who had been studying Sweden for weeks in his classroom as part of the Embassy Adoption Program, said he’d already gotten a small taste of Swedish culture that morning — traditional lingonberry juice for breakfast in the school cafeteria. Upon his arrival, Prince Daniel, along with Swedish Minister for Health and Social Affairs Göran Hägglund, Swedish Ambassador Jonas Hafström and his wife Eva, warmly greeted the excited pair of youngsters. More than 100 students and teachers waited inside with blue and yellow balloons and Swedish flags. The prince, a former gym owner and personal trainer who married Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria in June 2010, was greeted as if

January 2012

The Indonesian Embassy is planning to let D.C. students from its Embassy Adoption Program partner school Nalle Elementary School try the gamelan and angklung instruments during Indonesian Food Day in January. Visitors to the Indonesian Embassy during Passport DC last year, above, learned to play the gamelan, a set of traditional musical instruments consisting of a gong and a metallophone.

he was a rock star with squeals, screams and camera clicks — and he worked the hallway like a seasoned politician. The media could barely get a photo in as he knelt down to shake hands and hug some of the students. After the fanfare, the Swedish group of dignitaries was treated to a performance of the U.S. and Swedish national anthems by the Miner Glee Club, and then the charming prince entertained the students by talking with them about his life and country. “They sang the anthem beautifully; their pronunciation was perfect,” said newly appointed Swedish Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission Karin Höglund, who admitted the festivities were making her homesick. On Nordic Food Day, the Embassies of Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway also sent their own cultural ambassadors, chefs and musicians to D.C. schools that they partner with through the Embassy Adoption Program. Even though only five D.C. schools had access to the special cultural programs that day, students in all 126 D.C. public schools got to sample the culinary offerings in the form of various Nordic breakfasts, lunches and dinners, including Icelandic yoghurt, lingonberry juice, whole wheat pancakes with jam, Swedish meatballs with lingonberry jam, Norwegian salmon in dill sauce with roasted root vegetables, Danish potatoes and Wasa crispbread, and open-faced

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“It’s overwhelming to see the enthusiasm and the happy faces. For us Nordic embassies, reaching out to the D.C. schools, if we can pay back to the community and the school system in a way like this, it’s very, very good.”

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Danish sandwiches. Since 1974, the Embassy Adoption Program, in conjunction with the Washington Performing Arts Society, has matched embassies with fifth- and sixthgrade classrooms in the D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) system — giving the students, through classroom programming and local field trips, the opportunity to learn about a country’s history and culture directly from the source (also see “Successful Adoption” in the September 2010 issue of The Washington Diplomat.) This year has seen the biggest participation yet, according to Kate McNamee, Embassy Adoption Program coordinator with DCPS, who noted that 61 embassies are working with 46 schools and 69 classrooms. “It’s a way to utilize the community here,” McNamee said. “We have such a resource in our local embassies.” Serving traditional dishes of the featured country in all school cafeterias on each International Food Day extends the embassy adoption experience to even more students, she explained. “We are using food to introduce students to new cultures and also demonstrate to them how they can make healthy food choices across cuisines.” Whitney Bateson, the senior dietician for Chartwells School Dining Service, the foodservice provider for DCPS, said that “teamwork” made Nordic Food Day possible. “It’s been quite an undertaking,” said Bateson, who was behind the scenes in the buzzing Miner kitchen making sure the Nordic meals were just right. “It’s great to start partnering with the embassies.” In Miner’s cafeteria, students were feasting on salmon — with mixed reviews — while a large screen played a slideshow of idyllic Swedish landscapes and lifestyles, complete with berries, cows, salmon, arti-

chokes, pigs, raspberries, pastries, scenic ocean views, flower fields and colorful houses. Over in the gym, different leaflets about life, food and the monarchy were neatly stacked on an information table, and pictures representing Swedish culture hung on the walls. Meanwhile, students donning Viking caps, crowns and scepters had their pictures taken in a photo booth brought in for the occasion. Prince Daniel even got in on the action, popping into the booth with student hosts Julisa and Keith. The Swedish ambassador’s wife Eva Hafström and embassy interns (all wearing “Hug a Swede” T-shirts), as well as women in Swedish traditional dress dished up donut-hole-size “chocolate delights” — a healthy dessert beloved by children in Sweden. Ambassador Hafström tasted a chocolate delight (“I haven’t had one of these in 10 years. This feels like old times!”), and washed it down with a smoothie-like blueberry soup, which, he explained, can be taken as a drink or dessert.“Skall,” he toasted, clinking plastic cups. “It’s overwhelming to see the enthusiasm and the happy faces. For us Nordic embassies, reaching out to the D.C. schools, if we can pay back to the community and the school system in a way like this, it’s very, very good.” Marsha Parker, an instructional aide at Miner Elementary School and a retired DCPS principal,toldThe Diplomat:“Through our research we learned so much about Sweden, the demographics, the culture. Every child in Sweden goes free to college, even preschool.… Sweden is a country that they usually don’t go into. Now they know so much about it.They are so excited.” D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray, who had dropped by for the program, agreed. “It’s fantastic,” he said. “I knew that it would be wildly successful. The kids were very

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January 2012

excited….The food idea has value in itself, and then the This means that Indonesia, for example, will whole program has value in terms of solidarity between be precluded from offering fried food and using our two countries.” the popular peanut satay sauce in its dishes. According to Subolo, the team has already For the upcoming Indonesian Food Day in January, the agreed on several menu items to be offered Indonesian Embassy, which was “adopted” by a Miner across D.C. public schools on Indonesian Food Elementary School classroom last year, will also share its Day, including sate ayam bumbu kecap (chickfood, music and other cultural offerings with D.C. Public en satay with sweet soy sauce), baked white fish Schools. with coconut milk and spices, orak-arik This year the embassy staff will partner with Nalle sayuran (Indonesian coleslaw), gulai ayam Elementary School. Plans include letting students play (chicken curry), and semur bola-bola daging traditional Indonesian instruments (the gamelan and angdan sayuran (Indonesian meatball stew with klung), try on native costumes, color Indonesian pictures, vegetables). and sample desserts at a tasting table. Indonesian Panama is next on the list, set to host a Food Ambassador Dino Patti Djalal will attend the program and Day in March. Gina Della Togna, the Panamanian interact with the students. Embassy’s cultural and scientific attaché, said Over the next few months, staff will also be teaching that choosing foods that weren’t fried was a the Nalle students about Indonesian language and culparticular challenge because most typical ture, and in the spring, as the Embassy Adoption Program Panamanian foods are fried. A Panamanian chef does every year, the students will come to the embassy PHOTOS: JULIE POUCHER HARBIN is currently working with DCPS to determine and perform what they have learned. “Nordic Day benefited students by providing them Eva Hafström, wife of the Swedish ambassador, offers fruit and traditional Swedish the menu, which might feature rice with chickwith exposure to new foods and new styles of prepara- cuisine to students at D.C.’s Miner Elementary School as part of Nordic Food Day, the en, potato salad and corn tortillas, among other tion and by engaging them in culture through their first of four new International Food Day events being held this school year by D.C. things. school meal,” said Paula Reichel, program coordinator Public Schools Food Services in partnership with the longstanding Embassy Adoption Panama, which has been participating in the with the DCPS Office of Food and Nutrition Services. “It Program. Embassy Adoption Program for the past two is our hope that Nordic Day and other International Food years, will also present an introductory program Days inspire students to become adventurous eaters while making students hungry for informa- about the country and put on a Christmas party this month at its partner school, West tion about the world around them.” Elementary. Staff will come to the school once a month for the next few months and explore “We really hope the Indonesian food program will not only introduce Indonesian food to such topics as the Panama Canal and Panamanian culture, folklore, music and food. Then in the students, but also to introduce Indonesia as a diverse, plural and multicultural country, as March, on Panamanian Food Day, they will put on a special cultural and food program at the well as to share Indonesian culture with them,” said Heru Subolo, the Indonesian Embassy school. counselor for press and information affairs.“We also hope it will help bring the people of our International Food Days, featuring cuisines from Europe, South America and Asia this year, nations closer and also help cultivate mutual understanding between people from different will be held quarterly every school year from now on. cultures.” “It’s important to schedule International Food Days with regularity so that students begin However adventurous the food, it still must conform to DCPS Food Services standards. to anticipate the events, making them more apt to try the new foods on the menu,” said Meals produced for the International Food Day events must meet the same standards as the Reichel. “The way the program is scheduled raises awareness about many embassies’ great regular meals, which, besides including protein, grains, vegetables and fruit, means nothing work in the D.C. area and the opportunities available to schools through the Embassy Adoption fried or anything containing nut ingredients. Program. Having quarterly programs also allows us to feature truly distinct cuisines from “Our biggest challenge in determining the menus is finding foods/dishes that represent the around the world.” culinary tradition of the country and that meet our nutritional standards, can be procured easily, and are suitable for production in a school cafeteria setting,” explained Reichel. Julie Poucher Harbin is an editorial assistant for The Washington Diplomat.

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Connected Classrooms One World Makes Planet Smaller for D.C. Students

PHOTO: LARRY LUXNER

by Larry Luxner

ore than 1,700 U.S. soldiers have died in Afghanistan, yet nine in 10 American high school students can’t find that war-ravaged country on a world map. Fewer than 40 percent of young adults know that China and India are the only two countries with more than 1 billion inhabitants each. Equally troubling, 74 percent of American students believe English is the world’s most commonly spoken language (Mandarin is). And while just about every teenager in America has a Facebook account, only 11 percent of these kids use the Internet to follow current events around the world. These findings, taken from the latest National Geographic Literacy Survey, deeply worry Asjed Hussain, an 18-year-old freshman at Georgetown University — and one of three local “project ambassadors” with the One World Youth Project. OWYP, a nonprofit organization founded in 2004, aims to fight ignorance about the world by using email, Skype and Facebook to pair U.S. secondary schools with classrooms in other countries, and eventually by broadening the program internationally. “Our mission is to foster cross-cultural understanding,” said Hussain, a native of Pakistan who’s among the cadre of university students who regularly visit classes in person to assist teachers in implementing OWYP’s high-tech cultural exchange. “We come into an eighth-grade classroom in D.C. once a week, and we teach them about the United Nations, international organizations and com-

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From left, Quabanah Abdelaziz, Ashley Boykin, Zena Craig, Quela’h Simms and DeMarco Green, who attend Charles Hart Middle School in Anacostia, learn about foreign cultures as part of the One World Youth Project, which uses email, Skype and Facebook to pair U.S. secondary schools with classrooms in other countries.

munity involvement. We also connect our classroom to an eighth-grade classroom in Kosovo through Skype and YouTube, so the kids get a sense of internationalism.We can talk about different cultures, but this way, they actually get to see these other cultures.” Hussain talked to The Washington Diplomat during our visit last month to Charles Hart Middle School, which is located in Anacostia — one of the District’s toughest neighborhoods. There, teacher Nijma Esad watched as her six students engaged in a lively discussion with Hussain and his two fellow project ambassadors: Brian Potochney and Stephanie Arzate. The topic at hand: illiteracy, poverty, hunger, sexually transmitted disease and other issues addressed by the U.N. Millennium Development Goals. Granted, these aren’t likely subjects for underprivileged kids who have never ventured far beyond the District of Columbia, let alone internationally. But these kids are different, said Esad. “This is our third year of working with One World,” she explained.“Ours is a leadership elective class where I interview the students to see if they’d be a good fit for our program. We focus on life skills, career development, anger management. We try to help students at risk of dropping out of school early. Being a part of the One World project allows them a glimpse of the world at large.They’ve had sister schools in Qatar and Kosovo — and now their eyes are opened to a bigger world.”

EDUCATION

January 2012

Indeed, she said, “last year, some of these ambassadors taught my students how to use chopsticks. Later, after the earthquake and tsunami, I took them on a field trip to the Japanese Embassy, and my students were the shining stars.” One of those kids, DeMarco Green, said that thanks to OWYP he learned about Kosovo, an Albanian-speaking nation that declared its independence three years ago. “I never heard of Kosovo before,” said the 14-year-old, who lives five blocks from school.“I learned that they dress differently and they have different ways of life.They speak our language but they have an accent. And they seem enthusiastic about how we live.” Added classmate Zena Craig, also 14: “Some people say education is a waste of time, but they’re teaching us stuff we didn’t know about, like the Millennium Development Goals, or that today was AIDS Day.” Under the pilot program, Esad’s students have organized recycling programs and created public service announcements about teen pregnancy. Esad, who’s originally from Chicago and has a master’s degree in inner city education, said OWYP’s project ambassadors have helped to arrange Skype conversations between her students and their counterparts in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital city. “Our interactions are becoming greater, though because it’s a six-hour time difference, they meet at night to be able to talk,” she said.“The last time, a girl from Kosovo sang a Beyoncé song to her guitar, and one of my students did a ‘Beat Your Feet’ dance which is indigenous to Southeast D.C.” Jess Rimington, the organization’s founder and executive director, says youths who don’t receive a multicultural education are likely to view globalization and the interconnected economy as a threat rather than as an opportunity. “It’s not just about Skype or the real-time connection. It’s about preparing students to connect with other young people across borders, to teach one another about their rapidly changing world,” said Rimington.“What’s happening is that textbooks cannot update themselves fast enough. But because of the digital divide and time-zone differences, we can’t have live Skype conferences every day.And because of the kids’ writing levels, when you connect in real time, kids tend to focus on little things like music, types of food and dress styles.We’re trying to dig deeper.” Rimington was 18 years old when she founded OWYP as a link between her high school

Nijma Esad, a teacher at Charles Hart Middle School, helps student DeMarco Green find Kosovo on a map. The middle school participates in the One World Youth Project, a nonprofit that aims to fight ignorance about the world by using social media to interact with students abroad.

in Brewster, Mass., and a school in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.The project grew as educators around the world began emailing her, asking for their classroom to be linked with a partner abroad.Within a year, OWYP became a nonprofit group run by a volunteer group of university students in 17 countries. By 2009, the organization had connected 67 schools in 26 countries using email and social media to coordinate efforts. Today, One World operates on an annual budget of $400,000. The money comes from a combination of corporate partnerships, individuals and foundations; the universities also pay a fee to participate in the program. A key component of OWYP involves its unique 30-week curriculum, which covers everything from the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa to “the secret life of cell phones.” Units have titles such as “Cross-Cultural Questions and Communication,” “Interconnectedness and Collaboration” and “Community Worth and Being a Positive Change Agent.”The program gets kids to talk about such things as identifying assets and challenges in their specific communities (in this case, Anacostia), as well as what countries the clothes they’re wearing came from. PHOTO: LARRY LUXNER That curriculum is taught to university students in three training sessions over two semesters. One of them, the summer training conference, brings together all university student managers to West Virginia for a one-week comprehensive training, allowing students to meet their OWYP colleagues from around the world for the first time. So far, Georgetown University students have been leading once-a-week global education sessions at Hart Middle School and also downtown Washington’s Columbia Heights Education Campus. Students at Kosovo’s University of Pristina have been doing the same at Elena Gjika Elementary School in Pristina. “One World Youth Project is different than the other university mentor programs because it places such an importance on the middle and high school students who really navigate and explain their community organically and in their own words,” said Georgetown

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;Being a part of the One World project allows them a glimpse of the world at large. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve had sister schools in Qatar and Kosovo â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and now their eyes are opened to a bigger world.â&#x20AC;?

Continued from previous page University student Corey Cameron.â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a two-way street of knowledge where middle and high school students educate the Georgetown students about what life is like in their community.â&#x20AC;? With each partner university, OWYP establishes a service-learning program â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a One World Hub â&#x20AC;&#x201D; on campus for the benefit of students as well as the surrounding secondary school system. OWYP engages these students in a leadership experience over three semesters and helps them connect local secondary school classrooms with classrooms abroad. Bryce Honsinger, a longtime OWYP educator and 2010 winner of Ontarioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Premierâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Award forTeaching Excellence, said heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s seen his studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; behavior change dramatically over the course of a school year due to the OWYP curriculum. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s because his innovative teaching methods have allowed him to merge that curriculum and conversations with classrooms abroad into the Canadian Education Ministryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s learning standards, bringing academic topics to life in his own classroom. â&#x20AC;&#x153;In Ontario right now, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a huge push for character education,â&#x20AC;? he said.â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve seen measurable evidence that bullying has decreased since my students have been exposed to the OWYP curriculum and these concepts.â&#x20AC;? Rimington said One World Youth Project will soon expand to schools in Guyana,Turkey and Pakistan. By 2015, OWYP will also incorporate secondary schools in a dozen U.S. cities including New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as more than 100 schools overseas. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Sometimes we get caught up in our own little bubble and fail to see how our talents can help benefit the community,â&#x20AC;? project ambassador Zenen Jaimes recently told the Georgetown student newspaper the Hoya. â&#x20AC;&#x153;A lot of us can

PHOTO: LARRY LUXNER

Charles Hart Middle School in Washingtonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Anacostia neighborhood is a participant in the One World Youth Project.

spout off the challenges facing South Sudan or recount the details of the Libyan conflict, but many Georgetown students still see anything beyond Georgetown as one big mystery.â&#x20AC;? The program hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been without its challenges, however. Despite general support from the schools involved, Jaimes cited bureaucracy and budget cuts within the D.C. public school system as recurring problems â&#x20AC;&#x201D; not to mention unruly classroom conduct that disrupts the virtual learning process. Yet back at Hart Middle School, we saw no evidence of bad behavior; quite the contrary. Asked why he was motivated to join OWYP, project ambassador Brian Potochney said he went to high school in the District and that service was a big part of what he did there.â&#x20AC;&#x153;But a lot of these services and human rights organizations on campus were really focused on raising awareness, and I wanted something more hands on. One World, I thought, offered the perfect combination.â&#x20AC;? Hussain added: â&#x20AC;&#x153;The most successful movements are multilateral movements where countries work together. If

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; NIJMA ESAD teacher at Charles Hart Middle School

youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re starting in middle school teaching kids to work together, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going to make a huge difference later on. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nice that weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re directing this toward the kids who are our future.â&#x20AC;? But perhaps the most enthusiastic observation came from Stephanie Arzate, 19. â&#x20AC;&#x153;These kids are absolutely amazing. I just love how involved we can get in conversations,â&#x20AC;? she said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll ask them a question and only have five minutes planned, but they keep going and going. I learn so much from them. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s so refreshing coming from these kids who are incredibly intelligent for their age.Ten years from now, I hope our kids can look back on this with pride.â&#x20AC;? Larry Luxner is news editor of The Washington Diplomat.

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The Washington Diplomat

EDUCATION

January 2012

HOTELS T R A V E L &

■ A Special Section of The Washington Diplomat

■ January 2012

Hay-Adams guestroom

PHOTO: THE HAY-ADAMS

Signature Style Design Lets a Property’s Distinct Personality Shine by Stephanie Kanowitz

Washington, D.C., has no shortage of hotels running the gamut of international chains to mom-and-pop boutiques. Within its 68 miles, the District has 28,304 rooms in 119 hotels serving about 17 million tourists each year, according to Destination DC, the city’s tourism marketing arm. With that much competition, hotels are constantly trying to outdo the other in service, amenities, price and creative packages to set themselves apart. But ultimately, a hotel’s personality is what makes or breaks it, and the easiest way to convey character is through style — that signature design and ambience that define a property. The Diplomat takes a look at three hotels with completely different and distinctive styles to see how their décor expresses the message they want to send. Their looks embody the inherent variety of Washington’s hospitality scene: classic elegance, trendy luxury and Asian Zen.

Continued on next page

■ INSIDE: Hidden city treasures offer a quick escape from the Washington winter blues. PAGE 40 ■

January 2012

TRAVEL & HOTELS

The Washington Diplomat

Continued from previous page The W’s WOW Suite features sleek, modern furnishings punctuated by whimsical elements such as recessed ceilings rimmed with a colored light.

THE HAY-ADAMS: WASHINGTON CLASSIC 800 16th St., NW; www.hayadams.com The Hay-Adams hotel’s “understated elegance,” as Director of Operations Colette Marquez describes it, has attracted a political who’s who since opening in 1928. The most recent president to stay there was Barack Obama ahead of his inauguration in 2009. The draw is logical.The hotel — in addition to being located on Lafayette Square directly across from the White House — was once the site of the homes of two men with presidential ties. One was John Hay, private secretary to President Abraham Lincoln, ambassador to Britain and secretary of state under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. The other was Henry Adams, a descendant of Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams. When Henry Adams died in 1918, his home was leased to the Brazilian Embassy. Washington developer Harry Wardman bought and razed both homes in 1927 and an Italian Renaissancestyle apartment/hotel building called the Hay-Adams House took their place. Designed by a Turkish architect, the 138-room house cost $900,000 and featured Doric, Ionic and Corinthian orders; walnut wainscoting; and carved ceilings with Tudor, Elizabethan and Italian motifs — most of which are still present today. Wood paneling from Hay’s house was used in the ground-floor public space today called the John Hay Room. In 2001, the hotel closed for several months to undergo a $20 million renovation overseen by D.C. designer Thomas Pheasant. (A more recent renovation added a new 3,200-square-foot rooftop event space known as Top of the Hay.) The result is a 146-room hotel with an average price per night of $475 and a classically Washingtonian look. Much of the original European influences remain, including the intricate ceilings and wainscotings. “We obviously left all the historical details alone,” Marquez said. “We augmented it with a very simple but very elegant look.” The palette is monochromatic with creams and light grays dominating, a far cry from the deeper reds and blues that were there before, Marquez noted. “The feedback that we get from our guests a lot is that it’s really calming,” she said.“You come from a hectic day dealing with business or politics and then you come here and it’s warm and calm and soothing. There’s not a lot of pattern. That’s very important because it goes with what we want to portray as a residence.You want to feel at home.” But there are some unusual touches, such as sepia-tone photographs of D.C. by local artist Sora

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DeVore. “It’s not the artwork you would expect in a traditional hotel environment,” Marquez said.“I think that makes it really interesting because you have these really classical details and then some of these fun and unexpected little touches.” A stand-alone hotel with no big chain owner, the Hay-Adams can be deceiving. Despite the original brass doorknobs, air-conditioning grills and fireplaces in guestrooms, the hotel is decidedly upto-date. Rooms have iPod docking staPHOTO: W WASHINGTON D.C. tions, the whole building is wired for Wi-Fi, and automated shades on windows in meeting rooms at the Top of the Hay can be operated with the swipe of an iPad. For all of the Hay-Adams’s inner beauty, the one aspect that is truly unparalleled is its view, an enduring characteristic of the property’s appeal. Lower floors have an unencumbered view of Lafayette Park while higher floors and the Top of the Hay look down on the White House, Old Executive Office Building and St. John’s Cathedral.

W: ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING 515 15th St., NW; www.whotels.com/washingtondc If the Hay-Adams is a who’s who of politicians, the W is the place for celebrity sightings. Pop singers Lady Gaga, will.i.am and Sean “Diddy” Combs have been seen within the hotel’s modern-luxury environs. When the W opened in July 2009, the building’s look was transformed from D.C. classic to urban chic to match its hipster guest list. On the National Register of Historic Places, it had been for 90 years the more subdued Hotel Washington, whose own hip claim to fame was being the only hotel in which Elvis ever stayed in Washington. (He penned a letter to President Richard Nixon asking to become a Drug Enforcement Administration agent from his room.) Marilyn Monroe also laid her blonde locks here, and “No Way Out” and “Godfather 2” were filmed here. But the glam factor was taken to a whole new level when the trendy W hotel brand came to town. Designer Dianna Wong preserved the historic building’s Beaux Arts architecture while adding plenty of stylish touches in line with her theme: pinstripes and lace,“her theory being that while everybody thinks the power in Washington comes from a pinstripe suit, in actuality all power in this town comes from the negligee,” a hotel spokesperson said. The building dates to 1917, with parts going as far back as 1888, and many of the original features remain intact — now even more striking as they stand alongside the funkier elements for which the W brand is known. For instance, in a front meeting room hang two paintings that where in that section of the building when it housed the Washington Stock Exchange.They’re in stark contrast to the large, glittery Marilyn-esque close-up piece of art hanging in the hallway outside the room. A ceilingmounted stained-glass window, plaster moldings on the ceilings, and tall marble planters in the lobby are original, as are the chandeliers, although they were redone with LED lights that change color throughout the day, ending in a midnight blue. And the lobby is no longer called a lobby — it’s the “living room,” a room that would make Alice in Wonderland proud. At the living room’s entrance is a faux fireplace with a screen showing a video of beautiful women where a fire would be, exuding a different kind of heat. The room runs the length of the first floor with the glitter-studded Jewel Box bar — which plays off the reception area designed to look like the inside of a jewel box — at one end and seating in bold black, white and gray with splashes of red patent leather. Many of the chairs have a pinstripe fabric while the rugs evoke lace. Every W, operated by Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, has what the company calls a secret space. In D.C.’s hotel, it’s the former check-in desk, which was gutted and filled with a bronze booth and outlets in the floors for laptops. It’s secret because the curvature of the former desk prevents passersby from seeing what’s on the other side. Corridors and guestroom doors continue the pinstripe-negligee premise. The doors have a lacey paint job while the carpeting incorporates both lace and pinstripes in its pattern. Furniture is sleek, simple and modern, but the rooms (starting at $299 a night) still surprise. For instance, WOW suites have a recessed ceiling rimmed with a colored light. W raised the bar — literally. It transformed the rooftop into P.O.V. (point of view), a rooftop outdoor bar adorned with red tree branches dripping in crystals as well as an indoor space providing some of the best views of the Washington Monument in the city. “It’s that one hotel that’s at that cross-section of luxury and modern,” the spokesperson said. “This is the new Washington. When Obama brought in ALSO SEE: staff from New York, L.A. and Chicago, it kind of changed everything.” On Cloud Nine Over Dupont MANDARIN ORIENTAL: ASIAN OASIS Circle 1330 Maryland Ave., SW; www.mandarinoriental.com/washington

PAGE 42

2117 E Street NW, Washington DC 20037 • 202.861.8200

Perhaps the area’s best-known Asian connection comes in the form of tiny pink flowers that blossom every spring, and the Asian-infused Mandarin Oriental is perfectly poised across from the Tidal Basin for a view of the annual cherry blossom bloom. Of course, the hotel’s ties to the East are obvious without even seeing the interior. “You’re coming to a place called the Mandarin Oriental.That infers there’s going to be some Asian influence, but you’re still going to come in here and say, ‘Oh, this is furniture I would have in my house,’” said Linda Beltran, communications director at the hotel. The Asian infusion starts at the check-in desk, where two large contemporary Mandarin riding jackets hang. Upon arrival, guests receive a hot or cold drink and hot or cold oshibori towel, depend-

See DESIGN, page 42

Page 38

TRAVEL & HOTELS The Washington Diplomat

January 2012

YOUR URBAN OASIS AWAITS

Immerse yourself in the elegance of our newly renovated rooms. Located in the stylish West End minutes from world-class dining and shopping, The Fairmont Washington, D.C. offers a luxurious and personalized experience in the heart of the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s capital. 2401 M Street, NW Washington, D.C. 20037 Tel: 202.429.2400 Reservations: 1.800.441.1414 or www.fairmont.com/washington www.facebook.com/thefairmontwashingtondc @FairmontWashDC

January 2012

TRAVEL & HOTELS

The Washington Diplomat

[ getaways ]

Winter Hotspots Escape the Cold With D.C.’s Season-Round Oases

PHOTO: HUGH TALMAN, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

The Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard, left, is an architectural gem that links two Smithsonian Institution museums, the American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, whose “American Origins, 1600-1800” room is pictured above.

by David Tobenkin

h, the depths of a Washington winter. The skies are blue and one could almost, almost forget the icy hand of Old Man Winter.That is until one steps outside, inhales a frosty breath, and looks around to see nary a leaf on the forlorn trees. Of course, not everyone can escape the nation’s capital for warmer climes. So wouldn’t it be nice to stay in Washington in a place where one could be outside, not cooped up, yet not subjected to the rigors of the season? A sort of in-city vacation from winter. Is such a combination possible? Fortunately, there are two Washington locations that combine outdoor-indoor beauty, are jam-packed with other sensory and intellectual payoffs, are located near other tourism icons, and, better yet, are absolutely free.

THE ROBERT AND ARLENE KOGOD COURTYARD at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery Step out of a neoclassical building into a city-block-size courtyard where the sky opens up above but you will never get wet or cold. The Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard is an architectural masterpiece that links two separate Smithsonian Institution museums, the National Portrait Gallery, which tells the nation’s story through portraits of the presidents and other great Americans, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which features leading American artists who also paint a picture of the nation’s history.

Page 40

PHOTO: TIMOTHY HURSLEY

The Kogod Courtyard features a wavy, transparent glass-and-aluminum canopy that floats 86 feet above a 28,000-square-foot open space, allowing visitors to look up at blue skies as clouds drift by overhead. Designed by Foster + Partners and opened in 2007, the canopy, made of 864 individually shaped glass panels set in a steel grid and supported by eight aluminum columns along the courtyard’s perimeter, does not rest its weight on the historic building it encloses, and instead gently floats over it like a

rippling cloud. The courtyard, kept at a mild 70 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit, is landscaped with a 32-foot-high ficus tree and 16 smaller, delicate black olive trees, housed within elegant, smooth white marble planters that double as benches for sitting.The impressive Greek Revival exteriors of the two museums frame all four sides of the open space. Four one-quarter-inch-deep scrim fountains in the gray granite floor feature flat, rectangular, and well-behaved planes of water that make a gentle gurgling sound. It’s the perfect place to decompress and have a snack. The Courtyard Café, open from 11:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., features casual dining options including soups, a salad bar, sandwiches, panini and antipasti. Desserts and snacks, including ice cream, fruit and yogurt parfait, are also available. Beverages include coffee, espresso, beer, and white and (unusual for a museum) red wines. Free public wireless Internet service is also available throughout the courtyard. In addition, the space hosts a wide variety of public performances. Every third Thursday of the month from 5 to 7 p.m., including Jan. 19, 2012 and Feb. 16, 2012, the Smithsonian American Art Museum offers live jazz performances in its “Take

TRAVEL & HOTELS The Washington Diplomat

January 2012

The U.S. Botanic Garden Conservatory’s two courtyards and 10 enclosed greenhouses feature gardens, jungle canopies, fountains and some 60,000 plants.

Five!” performance series in the courtyard. The January and February performances will also feature printmaking demonstrations by artists from George Mason University in conjunction with the museum’s “Multiplicity” exhibition. Movies are sometimes screened in the courtyard, too, such as the Feb. 9 screening at 7 p.m. of the Charlie Chaplin classic “Modern Times.” One could easily spend the better part of a day at one or both museums. The Portrait Gallery features a complete collection of presidential portraits, including the famous “Lansdowne” portrait of George Washington by painter Gilbert Stuart. Some of the most important presidents, including Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, are given expanded treatment. Another exhibit, “American Origins, 16001900,” uses images in 17 galleries to guide visitors through U.S. history, from early contact between Native Americans and European explorers through the Gilded Age. A particularly strong collection in three galleries illustrates the Civil War, including photographic prints from frontline war photographer Mathew Brady. Two other exhibitions highlight particularly American themes. “Bravo!” spotlights American entertainment performers, while “Champions” celebrates American sports figures, both with the aid of portraits, artifacts, memorabilia and videos. “The Struggle For Justice” uses photographs, paintings and posters to highlight efforts to end discrimination against different groups of Americans, with portraits of women, Native American, Latino and other groups’ civil rights leaders. Temporary exhibits at the National Portrait Gallery include: • “The Black List: Photographs by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders” (through April 22) displaying portraits of 50 influential and powerful African Americans. • “Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories” (through Jan. 22), featuring photos and artistic depictions of the famed expatriate American author that depict her many identities, including renderings of her by many famous artists. • “Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter” (through Oct. 14), with works by seven Asian and Asian American artists reflecting on the Asian American experience. • “One Life: Ronald Reagan” (through May 28), paying tribute to the charismatic president’s life and accomplishments. • “Mementos: Painted and Photographic Miniatures, 1750-1920” (through May 13), celebrating the small painted and photographic depictions of individuals given as tokens or mementos, including miniatures of famous Americans. • “150th Commemoration of the Civil War:The Death of Ellsworth” (through March 18), which examines the death of Col. Elmer Ellsworth, the first Union officer to be killed in the Civil War. Felled by a local innkeeper in Alexandria, Va., Ellsworth became a hero to the North. The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s permanent collection galleries are divided up into exhibits on American art before 1945, illustrating key aspects of U.S. history such as colonization, westward expansion, the Civil War and the Depression, as well as movements and works created after 1945, including the Abstract Expressionism, Color Field and Pop Art movements. A third permanent exhibit,“The American Experience,” features landscapes, street scenes and other location-based depictions that highlight the role of place in the American experience. It features traditional landscape artists such as Winslow Homer but also more modern artists such as Hans Hofmann, Isamu Noguchi and Georgia O’Keeffe, along with photographs by Lee Friedlander. A separate gallery highlights modern and contemporary art, with works by Deborah Butterfield, Duane Hanson, Jenny Holzer, James Rosenquist and Sean Scully. Folk art galleries also celebrate ordinary Americans’ efforts to express their creativity. Temporary American Art Museum exhibits include: • “Inventing a Better Mousetrap: Patent Models from the Rothschild Collection” (through 2013), featuring 32 models illustrating a variety of patent inventions submitted by inventors throughout the country. • “Multiplicity” (through March 11), which uses 83 works from the museum’s collection to explore the concept of making multiple images from the same matrix. • “The Great American Hall of Wonders” (through Jan. 8), highlighting 161 paintings and drawings by prominent artists of inventions and scientific discoveries related to the American belief in innovation. •“Annie Leibovitz: Pilgrimage” (Jan. 20-May 20), with photographs by the famed photographer of objects and locations that have shaped Leibovitz’s national sense of American culture.

PHOTOS: U.S. BOTANIC GARDEN

The American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery are also historic, as they are housed in a building that originated in 1840 as the Patent Office Building, where 200,000 models by inventors, including those in the “Inventing a Better Mousetrap” exhibit, were displayed in nine-foot-high cases. During the Civil War, the building served as a makeshift hospital, where leading poet Walt Whitman visited the wounded. Abraham Lincoln also held his second inaugural ball in the building. Located literally on top of the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metro station at 8th and F Streets, NW, the museums are surrounded by a plethora of other sights. Immediately south is the International Spy Museum and the neoclassical Monaco Hotel, which used to be the Washington General Post Office, and to the east is the glittering, modern-day entertainment complex at Verizon Center.

THE U.S. BOTANIC GARDEN CONSERVATORY Step out of the cold and into the U.S. Botanic Garden Conservatory’s two courtyards and 10 enclosed greenhouses, whose glass windows and roofs allow you to see the sky above and whose temperatures range all the way up to a balmy 72 degrees Fahrenheit in some rooms.Above, misters

Continued on next page

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Step out of the cold and into the U.S. Botanic Garden Conservatory’s two courtyards and 10 enclosed greenhouses, whose glass windows and roofs allow you to see the sky above.

January 2012

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The Washington Diplomat

Continued from previous page spray gentle droplets of water that disperse far overhead. A trip to the Conservatory is many trips in one. Its centerpiece is a jungle room that lets you roam among trees and vines soaring 90 feet into the sky, including a catwalk that lets visitors walk at the level of the jungle’s canopy. A beautiful orchid room houses a dazzling variety of the tropical blooms. Want to visit Hawaii? Swinging doors open to reveal a small room housing plants from the Aloha State.Then walk through the Hawaii room’s doors into the adjacent world deserts room, which houses a spectacularly varied collection of cacti, succulents and other plants adapted for life in arid conditions. The central Garden Court houses a wide collection of some of the most beautiful and useful plants, such as orchids, coffee trees and banana plants. The Garden Primeval is a verdant, sprawling section that features ferns and primitive trees that make you think a dinosaur is just beyond the next bend. A separate room is dedicated to medicinal plants. From Feb. 18 through April 29, the Conservatory’s Garden Court and East Gallery will house the 17th annual orchid exhibit, in collaboration with Smithsonian Gardens, showcasing orchids from around the globe. The collection will honor the 100th anniversary of Japan’s gift of the cherry blossoms to Washington by presenting orchids in settings evocative of Japanese gardens. If the day is not too cold, step outside and enjoy the two outdoor components of the Botanic Garden. To the west is the National Garden, with meandering paths that wind through a regional garden of mid-Atlantic native plants and a collection of organically grown roses. Tables line the sides of the First Ladies’ Water Garden, a beautiful fountain complex that doubles as a lovely place for a picnic. To the south, across Independence Avenue, is Bartholdi Park, created in 1932 to showcase

a sculptural fountain designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, creator of the Statue of Liberty. The Bartholdi Fountain features three graceful women in billowy tunics supporting a water basin and surrounded by a landscaped garden. Like the American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery building, the Botanic Garden is also historic. Early in America’s history, the founding fathers, many of whom were farmers or plantation owners, discussed the creation of a center to house plants and seeds of value to the nation. An earlier botanic garden was established on the National Mall in 1820 and the current location has been in operation and open to the public since 1850. The Conservatory was built in 1933 and renovated in 2001. Unlike the National Mall, the Botanic Garden reports to the Joint Committee on the Library of Congress through the Architect of the Capitol, rather than the National Park Service. There are 60,000 plants in the garden’s collection, some dating back to an 1842 naval expedition that gathered plants to provision the garden. The U.S. Botanic Garden is located at 100 Maryland Ave., SW, just southwest of the U.S. Capitol Building. Nearby, the vast expanse of the National Mall and its Smithsonian museums beckon. Closest is the National Museum of the American Indian, which also happens to have one of the best cafeterias among the Smithsonian Institutions.To the north is the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial, the sprawling bronze memorial to the Civil War general and president that took sculptor Henry Shrady more than 20 years to design and build.To the east, behind the U.S. Capitol on First Street, NE, is the U.S. Supreme Court building and, to the south, the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. David Tobenkin is a freelance writer in Maryland and licensed D.C. tour guide. He can be contacted at dtobenkin@yahoo.com.

SIDEBAR

On Cloud Nine Over Dupont Circle The Dupont Circle Hotel is standing a little taller these days. As part of a $52 million renovation in 2009, the hotel gained a ninth floor — and more than 10,000 square feet devoted to luxury. Level Nine, as the hotel’s new vices, and in-room beverages that section is called, is billed as a are included in the room price, hotel within a hotel. The floor is which ranges from $550 to dedicated to 15 suites — the only $1,500 per night. The bathrooms ones in the property aside from are also slightly fancier, sporting two on the eighth floor — a comjetted bathtubs with televisions mon area and event space. Just built into the wall, heated towel one of the hotel’s three elevators racks and two sinks instead of goes to the ninth floor, which is one. accessible only with a room key. The artwork that hangs in each PHOTO: THE DOYLE COLLECTION The Doyle Collection, which suite is different and hand picked A balcony in the Dupont Circle Hotel’s new Level Nine owns the hotel, decided to add by the owners. As a result, no two overlooks Dupont Circle below. Level Nine shortly after buying suites are the same. “The rooms, the property, which was formerly all of them are different, so you the Jurys Washington in 2008. The reasoning was to meet the feel almost as if you’re in a home away from home,” Gillespie demands of Washington visitors, said Aaron Gillespie, area said. director of sales and marketing for the Dupont Hotel and sisThe crème de la crème of the rooms is the bi-level ter Normandy Hotel. About 40 percent of the hotel’s business Presidential Suite, which can be reserved as two or three comes from group bookings, so a bank of suites was a sensi- rooms, including one on the ninth floor and two on the eighth, ble addition. connected by a private staircase. The best part is the Level “We just didn’t have the suites in the hotel prior,” Gillespie Nine suite’s walk-out balcony overlooking bustling Dupont explained. “It allows us to go after the diplomatic market — a Circle. group, a delegation coming in. It allows us to go after the law All of the suites share a 900-square-foot living room comfirm market, people that want to stay for a long period of mon area complete with food prepared by a sous-chef that’s time.” available throughout the day, including breakfast, snacks and For years, D.C. has been evolving and establishing itself as beverages. The Heights, a meeting space that can accommoa metropolitan destination renowned for restaurants and good date up to 75 people, is also located on the top floor. It feashopping in addition to monuments and government. “It’s just tures a terrace that provides sweeping views of the city, kind of changing the scene versus it’s always been a political including the National Cathedral. city,” Gillespie said. If guests prefer not to dine in the common area, they can The décor of the hotel’s lobby and 327 rooms, including the choose from two on-site eateries. Café Dupont is a full-sersuites, reflect that shift. It eschews the classic European look vice restaurant serving French-style food for breakfast, lunch of many D.C. lodgings for a tasteful modern look with clean and dinner in an upscale space almost completely enclosed lines, earth tones and the occasional pop of color. “They’re by glass. Try the moules marinière, mussels in white wine, streamlined rooms, so I think this is unusual for Washington, cream, shallots and herbs, to start and follow them with a rib which makes it more interesting,” he said, referring to the eye steak served with a light but creamy béarnaise sauce. absence of ornate frill. “It’s modern but it’s not kitschy.” Across the hall from the café is Bar Dupont, serving lunch The efforts have not gone unnoticed. Fodor’s added the and dinner in addition to drinks. Formerly an Irish pub, it too hotel to its top 100 list in November in the category of was renovated with a modern, urbane look and plenty of out“Clubby Atmosphere – Hip Urban Pied-A-Terre.” door seating, including a nook of comfy couches. Level Nine’s suites feature upgraded amenities not found in “Once again, it’s that major interaction between the hotel the hotel’s other guestrooms. They include 10-foot floor-toand the circle and the people in the area,” Gillespie said. ceiling windows, glass balconies, wide-plank hardwood floors, daily fresh flower delivery, packing and unpacking ser— Stephanie Kanowitz

PHOTO: MANDARIN ORIENTAL HOTEL GROUP

Contemporary Asian influences abound in the Empress Lounge of the Mandarin Oriental in Washington, D.C.

from page 38

Design ing on the weather, which is common practice abroad. “That’s something that is pretty unique to Mandarin or is actually quite universal at any hotel in Asia,” Beltran said. “I think our ultimate goal is to provide a luxury experience in Washington, D.C., but I think you always want to try to elevate the customer experience by using our influences. That includes an Asian-inspired service level as well.” As you walk toward the elevators, it’s tough to miss a huge oil painting of the Empress Dowager dressed in Chinese kimono swinging over D.C.’s iconic sights. The hotel, run by the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group based in Hong Kong, commissioned the painting, which is a reproduction of a painting showing her swinging above Shanghai. The 400 guestrooms are laid out according to the principles of feng shui, a Chinese system of arrangement to promote the positive flow of energy. And over the beds in each standard room is a different hand-woven silk Thai obi panel. “That’s somewhat of a signature for us,” Beltran noted. Other touches in the standard deluxe rooms, which go for $695 during the week and $495 during the weekends, include drapery with pictures of pagodas and shrines, books about Asia and traditional teapots. In addition to sweeping views of the Jefferson Memorial, Tidal Basin and Washington Monument, the 3,500-squarefoot, $15,000-a-night presidential suite is a prime example of the Mandarin’s East-meets-West philosophy. Two black lacquer cabinets with traditional gold inlay bookend the foyer, while in the powder room sit a vase and tissue box with Japanese women and cherry blossoms on them, with Asian-inspired pillows flanking the bathtub. In the corridors is artwork with Asian characters. “It’s modern but it’s not kitschy,” Beltran said, “which is the décor throughout the hotel.” Stephanie Kanowitz is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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TRAVEL & HOTELS The Washington Diplomat

January 2012

culture & ■ WWW.WASHDIPLOMAT.COM

DIPLOMATIC SPOUSES

New Campaign A former television producer and veteran of her husband’s political campaigns, Susie Annus is taking on her latest production: showcasing the Australian Residence in Washington. PAGE 45

PHOTOGRAPHY

arts

entertainment

■ JANUARY 2012

ART

SINGULAR

‘30’

Embodying the work of some of the most influential African American artists of the past 30 years, the Corcoran Gallery’s “30 Americans” is linked by a common theme: identity — not only African American identity but the full spectrum of the American experience. PAGE 44

Cameras Speak The Mexican Cultural Institute’s “Conversación” offers an innovative back and forth of ideas, while “Maremágnum” offers a glimpse of the past through a wide-ranging lens. PAGE 47

HISTORY

Epic Proportions “Manifold Greatness” at the Folger Library takes a sweeping look at one of the most sacred texts of all time, connecting the King James Bible to the king of rock ‘n’ roll, the Bard and even the Simpsons. PAGE 48

DINING The Charlotte Restaurant is an Eastern Shore destination that’s off the beaten track. PAGE 50 PHOTO: COURTESY OF RUBELL FAMILY COLLECTION, MIAMI

[ art ]

Thought-Provoking ‘30’ African American Artists Ponder Full Spectrum of American Experience by Stephanie Kanowitz

ndividually, each work in the newest exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art freezes moments of not only African American history but of U.S. history into single modern interpretations. Together, the pieces show how those histories continue to evolve and interact as emerging artists learn from seasoned ones and offer fresh viewpoints on racial, sexual and historical identity in contemporary culture. “The art history there has not been concluded; it’s still being written,” Henry Thaggert, chairman of the museum’s advisory committee, said of “30 Americans,” on display through next February.“That’s very, very excitPHOTOS: COURTESY OF RUBELL FAMILY COLLECTION, MIAMI ing.” Selected from the Rubell Family Collection, the group of 76 photographs, Kehinde Wiley’s “Sleep,” above, and Nick paintings, drawings, sculptures and videos represents the work of 31 of the most Cave’s “Soundsuit,” below, as well as iona influential African American artists of the past 30 years and is linked by a com- rozeal brown’s “Sacrifice #2: It Has to Last” pictured on the culture cover, are among mon theme: identity. “It’s also, of course, specifically about African American history and the very nearly 80 photographs, paintings, drawings, particular ways the history of slavery, human rights and the popular imagery in sculptures and videos by 31 of the most influmusic shape what it means to be black in America, and how individuals embrace ential African American artists of the past three or reject or twist that tradition to create their lives and their work,” said Sarah decades in the show “30 Americans.” Newman, curator of contemporary art at the Corcoran and the show’s organiz2008, is reminiscent of the classical image er. For artist Shinique Smith, identity can be defined through memorabilia. In “a of a chiseled body strategically cloaked in bull, a rose, a tempest,” a tied-up collection of various items that hang from the white sheets and lying on a bed of flowceiling, such as a handbag, a shoe and military fatigues, Smith honors the late rap ers, only this body is black and the chin goateed. In “Equestrian Portrait of the artist Tupac Shakur, whom she knew as a schoolgirl. “I find it really interesting how the public sees them through what merchan- Count-Duke of Olivares” from 2005, a dise they create to remember them,” Smith said.“I use the materials I use — the black man clad in a red sweatshirt, khaki dresses and purses and things that represent who we are or what we believe in pants and Nike sneakers sits astride a through the merchandise we buy and the myths that are attached to these things. bucking white horse against a backdrop All those things that we subscribe to can be distilled into the objects that we’ve of regal blue and gold — a hip-hop twist used. They’re imbued with the energy. When I collect them and put them all on the original royal Spanish painting together and tie them up, I feel like I’m also bringing different economic back- from 1634. Still others are more solemn. Carrie Mae grounds, different cultural beliefs” together. The show greets you with two larger-than-life pieces by Nick Cave — “Untitled Weems’s deep red monochromatic prints with sand-blasted text titled“Descending 2006” and “Soundsuit” from 2008.Their brightly colored, patterned forms peaking the Throne” offer an in-your-face snapshot of the journey of blacks from upperin a papal mitre-like shape call to mind entertainers’ costumes and provide lively class citizens to slaves, mammies, foot soldiers, cooks, anthropological debates bookends to a more somber piece in the rotunda: Gary Simmons’s 1992 “Duck, and “anything but what you were,” according to one piece in the provocative series. Kara Walker’s “Camptown Ladies,” 666-inchDuck, Noose,” with Ku Klux Klan hoods topping nine wide black decals against a white backdrop, depicts wooden stools encircling a rope noose dangling from 30 Americans silhouetted acts of disturbing violence and sexual the ceiling. through Feb. 12, 2012 taboos in a paradoxically graceful manner. From there, the exhibit winds through several Although “30 Americans” is the latest of about 40 upstairs galleries. A jewel-toned room houses two Corcoran Gallery of Art shows at the Corcoran to focus on African American photographs by Hank Willis Thomas. His “Basketball 500 17th St., NW art, race is omitted from the title to reflect that the and Chain” and “Branded Head,” prints from 2003, are For more information, please call (202) 639-1700 issues the artists deal with are not just black issues, simple in their power and blunt message. The first or visit www.corcoran.org. Newman explained. She also wanted to show how shows just the ankles of a black man wearing Nike the works create a community and how subject matsneakers, one of which is chained to a basketball, while the other is a faceless profile of a black man’s shaved head literally branded ter crosses generations. “You can see Barkley Hendricks’s vision of style and self-presentation from the by branding, as he sports the Nike symbol made permanent by scarring — a visual statement that draws parallels between the historic culture of lynching and 1970s wind its way through the work of Thomas,” for example, Newman said. “The work just kind of spreads out and seeps into nearly every corner and nook slavery and the commodification of today’s professional sports. Bright, bold colors dominate much of the exhibition. Barkley L. Hendricks’s and cranny of the American experience — from reminders of our darkest “Noir,” an oil and acrylic on canvas from 1978, shows a dapperly dressed man moments in our collective history, to completely joyous celebrations of bodies straight out of the 1970s — right down to the afro, cigarette and aviator-style and lives, to philosophical investigations of language and meaning.” sunglasses. Other pieces play on tradition. Kehinde Wiley’s “Sleep,” an oil on canvas from Stephanie Kanowitz is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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January 2012

[ diplomatic spouses ]

Campaign Vets Producer Helps Politician Husband Stay on Top of Life Down Under by Gail Scott

hen Susie Annus and her husband,Australian Ambassador Kim Beazley, first arrived in February 2010, Washington was at a standstill. “Five days before we landed, you had this tremendous snowstorm and there was still four feet of snow on the ground,” Susie recalled. “It was hard getting around and we had to get Ally, our 13-year-old Rhodesian Ridgeback, used to going out into the snow and ice outside.” However, it was the walk her husband made up the narrow, steep path from the front gate back to the official residence to retrieve a forgotten document that sealed their fate for the next six months. “I was fine on the way up,” the ambassador said, “but downhill was something else. I didn’t see the black ice when I stopped to open the car door. I fell twice, tearing the ligaments in both my patellae [knees].” For Susie, having her husband — who used to play rugby and spent most of his childhood swimming away the effects of the polio he contracted when he was 5 — lying on a hospital bed in their home library for the first three months of his posting made for a unique start to D.C. diplomacy. “Essentially, the ambassador’s office moved here and we had to somehow find ways to unpack and settle in without interfering,” she remembered. “Plus, our daughter Rachel was trying to figure out how and where to file late college PHOTO: DANIEL ROSENBAUM applications and getting more and more anxious. Susie Annus joins her husband, Australian Ambassador Kim Then she decided it wasn’t Washington she was Beazley, and Ally, their 13-year-old Rhodesian Ridgeback, in interested in but California — another major hurdle! Since we had to deal with getting front of the Australian residence, which she has been working to And toilet training the dog in the snow. It was an showcase with contemporary Aboriginal art inside, while elected every three years, we’ve always interesting time. We were all bouncing off the walls revamping the extensive grounds outside. by the time the first six months was over. I couldn’t operated in short-term packages…. It get anything else done.” Art from private collections and institutions But this couple knows how to get things done, has been loaned to different Australian ambashelps to deal with what is present and do especially in the face of adversity — though most of sadorial residences before, however, “the size the time it’s related to politics, not the weather. and caliber of this loan is unique.” as much as you can in that timeframe. Kim Beazley is a veteran politician and longtime Today, the brightly colored works are promiLabor Party stalwart who served in the Australian nently displayed in the residence and feature — SUSIE ANNUS Parliament for 27 years. He was a minister under thickly dotted patterns, while others are more wife of Australian Ambassador Kim Beazley Prime Ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, holdsubdued; the two by well-known Aboriginal arting, at various times, the portfolios of defense, ist Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri are the most finance, transport and communications, employment education and training, aviation, valuable. and special minister of state. Beazley, who narrowly lost out on becoming prime min“I wasn’t sure that this art would work in this more traditional house with very ister himself in 1998, also served stints as deputy prime minister and leader of the traditional furnishings,” Susie admitted, “but as soon as the seven canvases went up, I Australian Labor Party and leader of the opposition before retiring from Parliament in loved them. And so does everyone else. They are mesmerizing. There has not been a 2007.Two years later, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tapped him for the Washington post- function where someone hasn’t been overwhelmed with the art — the reaction has ing given his extensive political background. been totally positive.” Meanwhile, Susie Annus, formerly an award-winning television producer, credits her The residence, a Georgian Revival home built in 1923 and originally called White professional organizing skills, which include “running another campaign every three Oaks, was leased in the mid-1920s by Gen. George S. Patton before it was bought by years,” for helping her jump into diplomacy for this latest temporary appointment. the Australian government in 1941.Today, the residence, with a pool and tennis courts, “Since we had to deal with getting elected every three years, we’ve always operated sits like a crown on top of a hilly block with several porticos and a gracious drive in short-term packages [of time],” she explained.“It helps to deal with what is present down to the gate. and do as much as you can in that timeframe.” The Australian enclave also includes the handsome red brick residences of the She added: “We came here ready to entertain and show everyone what Australians embassy’s deputy chief of mission and three others for the consul general as well as do best. We wanted to make an instant impact when someone came to this resi- the heads of defense and treasury. Susie is also hoping their plans for a new back terdence.” race to the residence to accommodate larger events will be ready before they — and Among their first visitors were a couple from their hometown of Perth who are the art — return down under in less than two years. prominent art collectors of contemporary Aboriginal art. The ambassador has two older daughters from a previous marriage who live back “When they saw the small prints we had on the wall in the dining room, they in Australia: Jessica, 32, lives in Perth and has three boys, and Hanna, 30, has a sixoffered to give us a small part of their collection to have on display while we are here,” month-old baby boy who visited Washington for the first time this past Christmas.The Susie explained.“Together, we picked out seven canvases from the Lepley Collection, couple has a daughter together, Rachel, 19, who’s attending the Annenberg School for they took care of getting them here, and three months later, the couple flew back to help with the installation.” Continued on next page

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The Washington Diplomat Page 45

“This time, we arrived with 1,600 books, a third of our collection,” she said.“We’ll probably triple that by the time we leave. We have books everywhere, all over the house, Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern not just here in the library. California. “Kim reads three and four books at the same time — I “Rachel’s good in drama and writing and she’s better suited can’t. I read only one at a time,” she continued.“I love ficfor being on camera.That was the last thing I wanted to do is be tion.Two of my favorites are ‘Birdsong’ and ‘Cold Mountain.’ on the air,” Susie said. He loves history and biographies of the world’s greatest The future TV producer and politician met while at univerleaders like FDR’s ‘Funeral Train’ and ‘The Last Campaign.’ sity but afterward had gone their separate ways. Years later He is often asked to write a book review for the though, when the ambassador became single again in the 1980s, Australian. he discovered that Susie wasn’t married as he had thought and “We’d still prefer to buy our books at a good bookstore he called her up. Susie, never married before, was 38 then. than online and would rather hold a real book,” she added. “We lost contact and, as a TV producer, I didn’t have a life,” “We always take a book along on the plane.” she recalled.“I’d work from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. and did almost nothThat’s her secret for making the 19-hour, two-leg trip ing apart from my work.” back and forth to Australia more enjoyable. Canberra, Today, Susie is enjoying focusing her energies on Washington Australia’s capital, is almost 10,000 miles away from diplomacy and the Australian residence. In addition to installing Washington and, according to the time of year and your artwork, her second project has been improving the extensive location in the vast country (roughly the size of the grounds of their temporary home. As soon as the snow melted United States), there can be a 14- to 16-hour time differthat first winter, it was obvious that “the garden had been PHOTO: RAY STRANGE, NEWS LIMITED ence from here. neglected and needed attention, although the house itself had “Kim handles the business with America during the been remodeled about five years ago after then Australian Prime A former award-winning television producer, Susie Annus has long helped Minister John Howard came to stay for security reasons after 9/11 her husband, Kim Beazley, a Labor Party stalwart who served in the Australian day and then at night he works with Australia as their day begins,” Susie explained. “When it’s 6 p.m. here, they are and saw the need for repair in person,” she said. Parliament for 27 years, campaign for office down under. just starting to open offices there. Most of the work with “We got in the car and drove around Georgetown to find a garden we liked and, hopefully, a gardener,” she recalled, noting that they found retired landscape Australia gets done between 8 to 10 p.m., Washington time. If we have an evening event, he tries architect Gordon Riggle and convinced him to fix up the grounds along with his former student, to get to the phone by 9:30 p.m. or so. He seldom has to stay up late to be available unless there is Lela Fredericks, who have brought new life and distinction to the residence’s boxwoods, holly trees some urgent business.” Although Aussies and Americans have plenty in common — language, culture, governance — and classic design. Susie’s third project will be to compile a photographic record of the house and how it evolved Susie sees intriguing differences in politics, education and health care and even humor. “We are definitely more casual, not as formal as Americans, more laidback,” she observed, citing under different ambassadors. “I’ve already been in touch with everyone and they’ve all promised to send photos, but I haven’t really received any yet.We have no pictorial record and I want to show her daughter’s first experience living on an American college campus. “Our humor is completely different. We’re much more robust, almost mocking. As my daughter learned, you can be easily the changes through photos and written comments of what happened when.” The couple is very familiar with Washington, having visited multiple times over the years during misunderstood.” As for her own style, Susie, a veteran political wife, says, “Although I spent a small fortune to the course of Beazley’s long political career. “We never stayed longer than five days though,” Susie said, explaining how she plans to relish always look nice during the [political] campaigns, there was never any discussion about what I was wearing, who the designer was, like here. It was only important that I wore the ‘Australian the extended opportunity to explore the nation’s capital. “We had a real routine,” she said of those brief business visits.“We’d arrive about 10 p.m. at what brand.’” When I asked the ambassador to sum up what it means to have Susie by his side, whether during was then called the ANA Hotel, take our showers, and head out to Kramerbooks. They have a range [of books] that we don’t see at home; you have such a larger and diverse population than we political campaigns in Australia or embassy functions here in Washington, he smiled and simply said, do and you have wonderful American authors. It was a chance to see what else was new, what “She’s my life.” would be featured here. We’d always get five or six new books each and then stop for a late-night Gail Scott is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat and lifestyle columnist for the Diplomatic Pouch. coffee or something on the way home,” she told us.

Continued from previous page

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The Washington Diplomat

January 2012

[ photography ]

Visceral Conversation Images at Mexican Cultural Institute Engage, Challenge by Fresia Cadavid

[

o walk through the “Conversación” and “Maremágnum” photography exhibits, concurrently on display at the Mexican Cultural Institute as part of FotoWeek DC 2011, is a wonderful exercise in international voyeurism that both engages and challenges. “Conversación” is an innovative back and forth of ideas and images, built on numerous photographs taken and exchanged by the artists Pablo Ortiz Monasterio and Muriel Hasbun. The novel exhibition is the culmination of a year-long collaboration between Monasterio and Hasbun, who serves as the chair of photography and associate professor at the Corcoran College of Art + Design. It all began when Monasterio, who is also a visiting artist at the college, sent a single photograph as a digital file to Hasbun, who replied by sending back one of her own. “This exchange went on for months. Each responded to the next image in his or her own way, not knowing where the accumulating sequence was leading or what its narrative content ultimately might be. Other than agreeing on the ground rules, they did not discuss what they were doing while the exchange was taking place,” explained curator, writer and teacher Andy Grundberg. The outcome of this exchange is a boundless interchange of perspective and insight. That is obvious in two portraits of children’s clothing, both interpreted distinctively. Monasterio’s image captures the colorful outfits busily hung outside as store merchandise, while Hasbun’s creates a picture dominated by white, focusing on more formal children’s clothing draped in a similar fashion as in Monasterio’s image, but on a bar. “The show thus uses photography to probe the possibilities of cultural and visual exchange in a digital age.Taking place over the Internet, with one artist in Mexico City and one in Washington, D.C., the conversation is a wordless interplay of information and meaning,” said Grundberg. The conversation continues in two complementary but vastly different pictures where the simplicity and divinity of nature is depicted, on the one hand in a view of far-off mountains seen through a beat-up tire, while in a second shot, the white-tipped mountain forms the background of an enigmatic landscape whose main subject is a girl holding a cloth of Jesus. Each image does a mesmerizing, thought-provoking dance with its counterpart and viewers are invited to watch. “Indeed,‘Conversación’ is ultimately about how art is made and how meaning is constructed. Every move the artists make is smart in an intellectual sense but also deeply intuitive, a gesture of not knowing more than it is of knowing,” Grundberg said. Upstairs, “Maremágnum” is a more traditional though no less cutting-edge photo exhibition, co-organized by the Embassy of Spain and its “SPAIN arts & culture” fallwinter 2011 programming.The show is a wide-ranging visual parade through the last four decades in Spain and Europe guided by an icon of photojournalism, the self-taught Conversación and Maremágnum Jordi Socías. through Feb. 4 Influenced by masters such as Richard Mexican Cultural Institute Avedon, Socías turned his lens on a variety of 2829 16th St., NW subjects, alternately photographing Spain’s For more information, please call (202) 728-1628 transition to democracy, city shots, surreal or visit www.instituteofmexicodc.org. scenes and, most notably, key personalities in For more information on “SPAIN arts & culture,” striking portraits. please visit www.spainculture.us. Weaving in and out of the exhibit, it’s hard to fathom that his photography career almost never was. After co-founding the Spanish news agency API-Agencia Popular Informativa, which distributed news that the Franco regime censored, he worked for the magazine Cambio 16 and subsequently for other well-known periodicals, some of them no longer available. Not happy with how his photographs were being published, Socías started working as a publisher, though fortunately, he never abandoned the camera.

January 2012

]

PHOTOS: MEXICAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE

Muriel Hasbun’s photograph, above, was part of an innovative digital exchange with Pablo Ortiz Monasterio whereby both artists traded and responded to the other’s images for one year, the results of which are on display in “Conversación” at the Mexican Cultural Institute. A separate exhibit at the institute, “Maremágnum,” highlights the photography of Spanish photojournalist Jordi Socías, whose images such as “Mayte,” left, offer a striking snapshot of everyday life.

Decades later, Washingtonians will relish his singular vision in about 80 pictures, the majority of which are black and white yet still offer a colorful, vibrant look at history, pop culture, and both ordinary and extraordinary scenes. We see snapshot of everyday life, such as Madrid’s famed Gran Via, a funeral procession, and an engaging Amsterdam café streetscape that frames the eatery’s architecture, its décor and a revealing minute in the lives of its patrons. The wonderment conjured by Socías is also evident in his photo of a large brass tuba, which he transforms from a simple musical instrument into a sinewy movement of metal using an unusual, in-your-face angle that makes viewers do a double take. With his edgy photographic storytelling composition, Socías has collaborated with leading Spanish magazines since the 1970s, producing images of famous Spaniards such as actress Penélope Cruz and director Pedro Almodóvar, which strike a familiar chord. “Almodóvar’s modernity is such that I picture him as one of the members of the [1930s] vanguard movement in Paris or in the New York of the [1970s], among Picasso, Matisse, Pollock or Warhol,” the artist said of the director last year.“His, is the most stormy brain of our days and at the same time, the proof that one can reach universal meaning from the local scene.” Socías too has derived meaning through images that are honest yet subjective and serve as a testimonial to his commitment to his craft, as well as the profound impact he has had on it. Fresia Cadavid is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

The Washington Diplomat Page 47

[ history ]

God’s Everlasting Word ‘Manifold Greatness’ Illuminates the Holy Grail of Bibles by Gary Tischler

[ Page 48

en burned at the stake, dueling Bibles, the Simpsons and the Messiah, and perhaps the most startling typo ever printed and the harsh punishment for it. It all sounds like high drama or melodrama, a mash-up of pop culture and dark religious history, but it’s also an intriguing way of adorning an exhibition that consists primarily of centuries-old pages, parchments and books with a little jazz, verve and color. Then again, perhaps the visual embellishment isn’t really needed for certain literary legends to shine on their own.After all,“In the beginning was the Word.” Words — including that iconic biblical phrase — are at the heart of “Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible,” a stolidly splendid, self-described blockbuster exhibition now at the Folger Shakespeare Library to mark the 400th anniversary year of the publication of the King James Bible in 1611. When people think, read, recite or talk about the Bible these days, the King James Bible is usually what they’re referring to, in all of its manifestations throughout history. It is not the first nor the only Bible in the English language, but it is quite simply the Bible, one of the world’s most famous texts and a project that was begun at the behest of James I, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots. King James I was the head of a basically Protestant England when religious strife in the Christian world was still commonplace and horrendous. Such a book would offer an English translation of the Christian Bible and would spread the plainspoken yet lyrical word of God and the Christian religion across the whole of Great Britain, and eventually the New World in America. It was a revolutionary project that changed the world and how we perceive Christianity itself. Moreover, it has had remarkable staying power in its language, which has pervaded our most common conversations as well as our highest, holiest occasions of worship. “Manifold Greatness” spends a good deal of time documenting this “afterlife” of the King James Bible in public life, literature, entertainment and the arts — from the Folger’s own first edition of the King James Bible, to Handel’s “Messiah” (based largely on the King James Bible), to Bibles owned by Frederick Douglass and Elvis Presley, to the voices of the Apollo 8 astronauts as they read verses from Genesis on Christmas Eve 1968 while orbiting the Moon. The language of the Bible was meant to be spoken and was originally intended primarily for church use. But thanks to the printing capability of the 1600s that had a democratizing effect on everything, the King James Bible soon spread into homes, becoming treasured personal possessions that not only contained the word of God, but the history of his people, who recorded their births, deaths, marriages and forPHOTO: WW. NORTON & COMPANY mal progress through life in the pages of the holy book. Manifold Greatness: The Creation and “Manifold Greatness,” curated by the Afterlife of the King James Bible Folger’s Steven Galbraith and Hannibal Hamlin of Ohio State University in lively through Jan. 15 and intelligent fashion, has depth, focus Folger Shakespeare Library and an impressive ability to connect the 201 East Capitol Street, SE Bible from King James to the king of rock For more information, please call (202) 544-4600 ‘n’ roll and beyond. or visit www.folger.edu. In a sense, the words of the King James Bible have become so established in our minds that we take them for granted, making it difficult to envision just how arduous an endeavor it was to translate the Bible, when previous attempts had failed. In fact, it is impossible to understate both the beauty of the Bible, and the pain and difficulty that led to its creation — men literally gave their lives to put the gospels and Old Testament in print. To contemplate producing an English Bible during a period of religious civil wars between Catholics and Protestants was a dangerous idea for any number of reasons.

]

The Washington Diplomat

PHOTOS: FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY

In “Manifold Greatness,” the Folger Shakespeare Library documents 400 years of the King James Bible and its many reincarnations throughout history, from the Folger’s own first edition of the 1611 English language Bible, above left, to John Foxe’s 1570 “Actes and Monuments,” an account from a Protestant point of view of Christian Church history, to R. Crumb’s 2010 “The Book of Genesis Illustrated,” bottom left.

When King James herded together England’s church leaders in an effort to reform the institution as a whole, he decided to commission a new Bible. Dozens of scholars worked on translating and putting together elements of previous bibles, including those written in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. It took more than six years to complete the job, with scholars separated into different groups as they sought to make the Bible more poetic yet also more accessible, more precise and plainspoken but soaring with beauty. And there were mistakes, including an unfortunate printer who left out the word “not” in the “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery” passage. The printer who forgot the critical word escaped execution, but languished in debtor’s prison for the rest of his life. In addition to various copies of the Bible throughout the ages, the exhibition is also full of manuscripts and earlier biblical renditions, which in their centuries-old script and style of writing, as well as the sheer age of the pages, bring history to vivid life.There is the Caedmon Manuscript, an Anglo-Saxon manuscript going back to the year 1000, when, perhaps not coincidentally, the Normans conquered Anglo-Saxon England in 1056. It is not a Bible per se but a series of biblical stories told in verse, including drawings of God creating Eve from Adam’s rib. We also see the famous text’s enduring influences.The King James Bible emerged in the time of Shakespeare, and it’s hard to think of two greater works with more influence on the English language and literature than the plays of the Bard and the passages of the Bible. Rumors persist that Shakespeare had a hand, or word, in the King James Bible, but like the lingering controversies over the authorship of his plays, there is little substance in the idea that Shakespeare wrote a portion of the Bible. You can see where the idea might attach itself: Abraham Lincoln, it was said, read both the Bible and the Bard frequently and anything after that might fall a little short in content, glory, solace and beauty. People throughout time have found inspiration in the Bible, from John Milton and his epic poem “Lost Paradise,” to Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, to today’s cartoon characters, surfacing in “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and “The Simpsons.” And this exhibition itself, in celebrating the creation and the words of the King James Bible, seems to have also pulled a reverent piece of history out of the dusty past and put it solidly back into our present, intact and illuminating as ever. Gary Tischler is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

January 2012

[ sculpture ]

Torrent of Creativity ‘Central Nigeria Unmasked’ Puts Face on Benue River Valley by Fresia Cadavid

[

ower, history and culture in all their glory are on display in “Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley,” on view at the National Museum of African Art through next year. This wide-ranging, international exhibition presents an inclusive view of the arts produced in the region and boasts some of the most abstract, dramatic and inventive sculpture in all of sub-Sahara Africa. Nearly 150 objects drawn from Nigeria’s Benue River Valley reflect the historic relationship between the region’s people and their art, the results of which include alluringly sleek statues, maternal imagery, striking facemasks and more. The exhibit takes visitors on a journey down the 650-mile-long tributary of the great Niger River, the main river in West Africa, to see the incredible diversity that thrived around the waterway through the spectrum of art, explained curator Karen Milbourne. Around every turn, the vastness and richness of the area is “unmasked” through statues, bells, masks, ceramic vessels and elaborate regalia used in a variety of ritual contexts. The show introduces visitors to the major artistic expressions that represented 25 ethnic groups living along the river’s lower, middle and upper reaches. But that’s not the only journey on which the exhibit takes visitors.“Central Nigeria Unmasked” is the brainchild of Arnold Rubin, a researcher of African art at UCLA who spent decades studying the area and conducting fieldwork. His goal was to create an all-encompassing exhibition featuring Central Nigerian artifacts, but with his death in 1988, his dream remained unrealized — until his student, Marla Berns, who today serves as director of UCLA’s Fowler Museum, continued his work. Today, Rubin’s dream has become a reality — one that brings together historical artifacts made of clay, wood, iron and copper on loan from 47 different private and public collections. Although the medium varies, all of the objects played a meaningful role in the lives of the Benue Valley people. “This exhibition is a treasure trove of outstanding works of art, placed for the first time within a broader context,” said Milbourne, adding that it “tells the story of how individual artists have experimented with styles and communities have exchanged ideas and objects. It sheds light on a heretofore little-understood but long-admired art-producing region.” One of the centerpieces is a giant elephant mask. Described as a metaphor for greatness and for the chief’s potential for destructive power, the mask, which required four gallery staffers to lift it into place, was clearly used to exude power. It was found with an indigo burial cloth worn as a kind of cloak over other clothing layers to increase a person’s size. The regal mask is showcased on a raised platform with shadows of rippling water on the dark wall behind it — encapsulating the imposing mystique it must have lent to the person wielding it at ceremonies. On display from the Upper Benue are intriguing ceramic healing vessels presumed to be created by the Central Nigeria Unmasked: Chamba people and believed to cure illness. Nearby, Arts of the Benue River Valley elaborately carved wooden staffs commissioned by through March 4, 2012 elders are adorned with human forms, including men National Museum of African Art on horseback, women seated on stools and full-bodied 950 Independence Ave., SW maternal figures. These staffs are a rich accompaniment to the other artifacts and stand as a strong yet For more information, please call silent symbol of the communal reverence for the (202) 633-4600 or visit http://africa.si.edu. region’s traditions. All throughout, dynamic videos demonstrate how objects similar to the ones highlighted in the exhibit are still creatively used in the area today. Milbourne said she is particularly spellbound watching videos of the ancestral mask. “The way figures elongate and drop to the ground and change form — I can watch [the video] for hours,” she said. Also, a learning space outside the exhibit offers an artistic outlet for children and families to record their impressions of the exhibit. Colored drawings by students line the walls as evidence of the show’s aesthetic appeal and inspired history.

]

Fresia Cadavid is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

January 2012

CREDIT: FOWLER MUSEUM AT UCLA / NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN ART; DOUBLE FIGURE - VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS

The Washington Diplomat Page 49

[ dining ]

Lucky Route 13 Charlotte Hotel in Onancock Offers Delectable Eastern Shore Escape by Rachel G. Hunt

intertime in Washington, especially after the holiday madness winds down, can be a bleak, even boring time. But that’s all the more reason to venture out of town for a short daytime excursion. Local getaways are not only for the prime spring and summer months — they also make for nice wintry escapes, especially when there’s good food at the end of your destination that offers a welcome change of pace to D.C.’s frenetically ultra-trendy dining scene. Blink twice though and you may miss the turn off Route 13 that takes you west and back through time to the small former colonial tobacco port of Onancock, Virginia. Located at the southern end of the Delmarva Peninsula, Onancock sits on a small area at the head of Onancock Creek. With easy access to a natural deep-water harbor off the Chesapeake Bay, the town grew quickly after its charter in 1680 as Port Scarburgh, a name that was changed to Onancock to reflect the Native Americans who used to call the area “auwannaku,” or foggy place.Wake up early in the morning and stroll the docks and you will see just how aptly the town is named. Slowly drifting fog softens the silhouettes of the pleasure crafts that have replaced the sailing vessels, barges and riverboats that once plied the waters of the Chesapeake, but the timeless cries of the gulls and salty fresh air bind visitors to Onancock’s long and rich history. While Onancock did not share the same decline that some other Eastern Shore towns suffered, for many years it was more of a passingthrough point for people making their way to the Tangier Island ferry than a destination in its own right. But over the past decade, it has experienced a marked renaissance. Despite having a permanent resident population of under 2,000, Onancock sports several excellent restaurants, hotels, art shops, a bakery, a community stage, movie theater, stunning churches and a historical museum housed in a beautifully preserved 18th-century federal-style mansion. With its revitalization, Onancock has also attracted an eclectic crowd.A renowned master leather craftsman, a noted botanical artist and a retired glass inventor compete with each other, but as restaurateurs. Meanwhile, chefs Charlotte Hotel play guitars for their guests, and 7 North Street, Onancock, Va. a retired attorney and former (757) 787-7400 spice executive run a gourmet www.thecharlottehotel.com food shop and sponsor dinner and movie nights. Dinner: Wed.- Sun., 5 - 9 p.m. And one of the biggest surprises is that Breakfast: Wed. - Fri., 8 - 10 a.m.; unlike many other larger resort towns on Sat. and Sun., 8 - 11 a.m. the shore, Onancock offers diners (wanting something other than fried fish) excelAppetizers: $7 - $15 lent dining options, several in fact. One of Entrées: $15 - $35 the best is the Charlotte Hotel and Desserts: $3 - 7 Restaurant, a slightly funky spot just off the Reservations: Strongly suggested main drag in downtown Onancock. In 2003, Charlotte Heath and Gary Cochran moved from Pennsylvania to Onancock in search of their next big project after finishing up a long-term farmhouse renovation. They found it when they discovered an empty building for sale and decide to try their hand at inn keeping. The spot, built originally as the White Hotel in 1907, hadn’t been used as lodging since the original hotel closed many years earlier. After months of backbreaking renovation and decoration, much of which they did themselves, the couple opened the Charlotte Hotel with eight guest rooms, two dining

want to

[ ] go?

Page 50

The Washington Diplomat

PHOTOS: THE CHARLOTTE HOTEL AND RESTAURANT

The Charlotte Hotel and Restaurant in the quiet town of Onancock, Va., offers solid, well-balanced dishes without the fried fish monotony of other Eastern Shore eateries. Seafood is of course a highlight, but the menu offers a range of choices, from eggplant braciole, above, to panko-crusted chicken.

rooms, a small bar and plenty of charm. Doubling as a gallery, the walls are covered with artist Heath’s exquisitely rendered botanical illustrations. As bed and breakfast food is part of the deal, the pair opened a fine dining restaurant that serves dinner and breakfast five days a week. Advocates of the buy local movement, Cochran, Heath and veteran Eastern Shore chef Ted Cathey, who oversees the kitchen, have put together a small but nicely balanced menu featuring products from local watermen, farmers and other area businesses.The menu changes frequently with availability but typically offers meat, fish, fowl and a vegetarian choice. To complement the dishes, the bar offers an extensive international wine list that the team uses to good effect when putting together parings for all of the dishes, including dessert. Since you are on the Eastern Shore, it’s naturally tempting to focus on seafood, a temptation that will be amply rewarded. Perfectly fresh local oysters, lightly breaded, pan fried and served with corn cakes and remoulade, double deliciously as an appetizer or entrée.They are perfect in their simplicity and straightforward presentation, pairing delightfully with the fried green tomatoes when they are available. Keeping in the same robust vein, the pork dishes justify skipping the seafood. On a recent visit, the chargrilled tenderloin was an inspired combination, featuring smoked gouda polenta, spinach, crispy onions and an apricot cider glaze.

January 2012

YOU SAY “I DO”... WE DO THE REST.

PHOTO: THE CHARLOTTE HOTEL AND RESTAURANT

The steaks are also typically prepared well, though one might find the version of a traditional béarnaise sauce slightly bland. For a more sophisticated turn, the signature lobster bisque, accented with a nutty Spanish cream sherry, is the perfect partner for the warm goat cheese tart, which arrives garnished with sliced pear and baby spinach. Perfectly seared Atlantic salmon rounds out the meal, whether prepared with a tarragon citrus beurre blanc or an avocadocandied ginger salsa. Chef Cathey has a real talent for turning chicken into something special. On a recent visit, panko-crusted chicken breast cutlets served Napoleon style with grilled portabella mushrooms, mozzarella, oven-dried local tomatoes, gnocchi, and red wine pan sauce were the table’s favorite. Dinner finishes with other crowd-pleasing favorites such as crème brûlée, coconut layer cake, a dense flourless chocolate cake, and an ever-changing array of homemade ice creams that prove Cathey is as adept

At the Charlotte Hotel and Restaurant, veteran Eastern Shore chef Ted Cathey serves up fresh local oysters, lightly breaded, pan fried and served with corn cakes and remoulade.

with the sweets as he is with the savories. While not everyone thinks of heading to the shore as winter sets in, the moderating effects of the bay and the ocean make for gentler weather that offers an appealing weekend respite from the city cold. Many things do shut down in town for the first few months of the year, though there are still good places to eat and stay, and the quiet adds to the feeling of stumbling on an undiscovered treasure. Come spring, the weather and the action pick up, and the lovely floral Onancock landscape begins to bloom, welcoming the lucky travelers who’ve uncovered this hidden gem just off Route 13. Rachel G. Hunt is the restaurant reviewer for The Washington Diplomat.

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[ film reviews ]

A Thinker’s Thriller The Anti-Bond Brainy Espionage of ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ both made history analyzing and advancing theories in mental illness. A large part of the story depicts written letters between the two doctors — largely based, respectively, in Zürich and Vienna — which are supplemented by meetings in the flesh about their professional opinions. he movie version of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Perhaps both actors are playing their reserved Spy” has long been anticipated by dedicated characters with historical accuracy, but it’s disapfans of the 1974 Cold War classic novel by prepointing to watch such flat performances from eminent spy thriller author John le Carré. Its the likes of Fassbender and Mortensen, who’ve bestselling success was followed by British been known to command the screen with their director John Irvin’s exceptionally well-received charismatic presences. “A Dangerous Method” 1979 miniseries adaptation, in which Sir Alec might be one of the tamest of Cronenberg’s films, Guinness’s legendary portrayal of British spy George leaving a result that is modestly interesting on an Smiley almost eclipsed the British thespian’s then recent intelligent level, but lacking enough passion to blockbuster fame as Obi-Wan Kenobi in “Star Wars.” really be inspiring. Guinness’s giant footsteps are more than amply filled by Most of the emotion that does appear comes British actor Gary Oldman with his quietly powerful percourtesy of Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), a formance in the new film “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” buildreal-life Russian-Jewish patient of Jung. Making ing buzz that Oldman may finally garner an Oscar nomiher first appearance in the asylum, she’s such a nation or even a win after a career full of respected if raving lunatic that Knightley’s performance PHOTO: JACK ENGLISH overlooked roles. approaches caricature.The startling impression is Be warned that the middle-age, über-keen Smiley is no British actor Gary Oldman plays the taciturn, middle-age spy George Smiley in “Tinker so jarring that it can lift the viewer — at least this James Bond, Ian Fleming’s famous character who defined Tailor Soldier Spy,” the latest film adaptation of John le Carré’s bestselling novel. writer — out of the movie’s suspension belief, not the public image of dashing British spies through the the best mindset to begin a historical movie. long-lasting action movie franchise. In “Tinker Tailor After Jung cures her by experimenting with Freud’s then cutting-edge technique of psychoSoldier Spy,” not a whole lot of action takes place, and the little that does happen is sporadic. Sometimes though, less is more. Swedish director Tomas Alfredson’s first English-language film analysis, Jung writes to Freud, the world’s most famous psychiatrist, about Spielrein’s case. As a (enabled by the international sensation over “Let the Right One In,” his Swedish sleeper hit) suc- fledgling young psychiatrist, Jung is afraid Freud might ceeds in translating to the big screen an intelligent vision of le Carré’s world of brainy espionage, be indifferent. Though Jung started their relationship A Dangerous Method somewhat in awe of Freud, Jung eventually disagrees brought to life by an all-star British ensemble cast. (English; 99 min.) At the height of the Cold War in 1973, Control (John Hurt), the chief of the U.K. Secret more and more with Freud, particularly about his insistence on defining every mental problem through sex. Intelligence Service (SIS), more colorfully known as the Circus, dispatches loyal agent Jim Landmark’s E Street Cinema Jung freely expresses his philosophical frustration Prideaux (Mark Strong) to Budapest for a special ★★★✩✩ operation. When it unfortunately disintegrates into a with Freud to Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel), a fellow Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy wild disaster, the public fallout forces Control and his psychiatrist and patient referred by Freud to Jung. He’s (English; 128 min.; scope) inner circle out to pasture into early retirement, content in a monogamous marriage to Emma Jung (Sarah Gadon), so he is shocked by Gross’s promotion of polyamory as a natural way of life, including practicing public sex acts. Let’s face it, including George Smiley. Landmark’s E Street Cinema any character played by Cassel must be a little nutty. Undersecretary Oliver Now Playing As Jung’s professional confidence and reputation grow, the Lacon (Simon McBurney), AFI Silver Theatre uneven balance of power becomes more level over time. The whose ministry oversees Opens Fri., Jan. 6 pair jointly depart for a professional tour of the United States. the Circus, then finds new After boarding the transatlantic cruise ship, Jung abruptly evidence confirming ★★★★✩ apologizes that he must leave Freud behind on his floor; Jung Control’s suspicion of a slyly explains that his wife unfortunately booked him a firstRussian mole at its top echelons, the basis for the failed special mission, class cabin. As he walks away with a wisp of a smile, Freud a secret Control hid even from Smiley, his right-hand man. Lacon asks stares at his “junior” colleague with a perplexed look, providing Smiley to quietly ferret out the double agent, with help from Peter one of the film’s few chuckles. Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch), an active young intelligence offer Meanwhile, Spielrein goes to medical school, where she who can roam the halls of the Circus as Smiley’s trustworthy proxy. wants to become a psychiatrist as well. She feels her academic They discover Control’s usual suspects for the mole mapped out on studies teach inadequate lessons given her own personal lack chess pieces: “tinker” Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), “tailor” Bill Haydon of practical experience in love and sex. So she attempts to (Colin Firth), “soldier” Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds), “poor man” Toby PHOTO: LIAM DANIEL / SONY PICTURES CLASSICS seduce Jung, who initially rebuffs her. Perhaps inspired by Esterhase (David Dencik) and even “spy” Smiley himself.The trail eventually leads Smiley to once again battle his long-time Soviet nemesis, Michael Fassbender, left, plays psychiatrist Carl Jung, who is Gross, Jung eventually succumbs to her advances.Their intense affair includes some distantly viewed bondage and whipping Karla. In the steadily played chess game of meticulous movements, vic- content with his wife Emma (Sarah Gadon) until a new scenes that excite them both, but they’re ultimately rather blasé, tory is claimed by the patient Cold Warrior whose wiles last throughout patient comes into his life in “A Dangerous Method.” again, especially for a Cronenberg film. the endgame. That’s really about all that I can really recall about the mayhem in and out of the mental institution. If there’s much more excitement that I’m missing, it can’t be very memorable.

by Ky N. Nguyen

M [

[

]

Tamely ‘Dangerous Method’

Peculiar Canadian director David Cronenberg’s infamous body of work (“Eastern Promises,”“A History of Violence,” “eXistenZ,” “The Fly”) typically delves deep into macabre territory, earning him the infamous nicknames Baron of Blood and King of Venereal Horror. Yet he isn’t a hack making slasher films for teenagers; he’s a respected art house director well traveled on the international film festival circuit making arty films that are usually difficult and often perverse. So a veteran Cronenberg watcher might expect that his latest film, “A Dangerous Method,” would be full of signature Cronenberg craziness. After all, writer Christopher Hampton (“Atonement,”“Dangerous Liaisons”) adapted the script from his own play,“The Talking Cure,” based on real events in the interconnected lives of legendary psychiatrists Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), who

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The Washington Diplomat

Nasty ‘Carnage’ Let’s cut straight to the chase. “Carnage” turns out to be my least favorite film directed by renowned Polish-French director Roman Polanski (“The Ghost Writer,”“The Pianist,”“The Tenant,” “Repulsion”), whose body of work I greatly admire. Polanski’s brilliant film career has been inhibited by his notorious legal issues preventing him from working freely in the United States, where his Hollywood career included “Chinatown” and “Rosemary’s Baby.” Yet his prestige has drawn Hollywood and international stars to Europe for the opportunity to work for him.

See FILM REVIEWS, page 54

January 2012

[ film ]

Silence is Golden Washington Area Film Critics Association Spreads the Wealth

by Ky N. Nguyen

2011 WAFCA Award Winners:

he Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), heading into its 10th year, recently declared its film picks for 2011 — and silence won the day. Of particular interest to fans of international cinema, French writer-director Michel Hazanavicius’s “The Artist” won Best Film, the first time ever that WAFCA’s top prize was claimed by a silent picture, an exceedingly rare production in modern times. The film, set in 1920s Hollywood, follows silent movie actor George Valentin, who meets a young dancer set for a big break while wondering if the arrival of talking pictures will cause his own star to fade into oblivion. The film’s French composer, Ludovic Bource, won Best Score, a particularly notable achievement since the original music completely dominates the audience’s ears in the absence of the audible speech and sound mix heard on a typical talkie’s soundtrack. The Best Film winner usually claims Best Director, more often than not, but WAFCA split its top awards in 2011. Famous Italian-American Martin Scorsese was named Best Director for “Hugo,” itself a talkie ode to silent cinema.The film’s gorgeous look was also honored with Best Art Direction, awarded to the legendary Italian production designer Dante Ferretti and Italian set decorator Francesca Lo Schiavo. “We in D.C. know what it’s like to live and work in a city dominated by a single industry. In honoring both ‘The Artist’ and ‘Hugo,’ WAFCA is spotlighting two films that are love PHOTO: THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY letters to the film industry that we all love so Jean Dujardin as well,” quipped WAFCA President Tim Gordon. silent film star He added: “This is WAFCA’s 10th anniversary, and as an George Valentin, left, organization we are very proud of the choices that our memand Bérénice Bejo as Peppy Miller star bership made throughout this process.There were no sweeps this year. No ties. Just a surprisingly diverse spread of awards in “The Artist.” that highlights both the exceptional films nominated and the distinct makeup of our great organization.” WAFCA’s membership includes 43 film critics from D.C., Maryland and Virginia working in print, online, television and radio — including yours truly. Unlike previous years in which a few films — or even just one — dominated the WAFCA awards, most 2011 winning films took home only one prize, except for three films that won two awards. Best Foreign Language Film went to Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Skin I Live In,” reuniting the maverick with Spanish heartthrob Antonio Banderas after the latter’s self-imposed exile in Hollywood. German iconoclast filmmaker Werner Herzog’s mesmerizing 3D images in “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” nabbed him the Best Documentary nod. And Mexican director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki earned Best Cinematography shooting Terrence Malick’s philosophical “The Tree of Life.” Ky N. Nguyen is the film reviewer for The Washington Diplomat.

Repertory Notes

Best Film: “The Artist” Best Director: Martin Scorsese (“Hugo”) Best Actor: George Clooney (“The Descendants”) Best Actress: Michelle Williams (“My Week with Marilyn”) Best Supporting Actor: Albert Brooks (“Drive”) Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer (“The Help”) Best Acting Ensemble: “Bridesmaids” Best Adapted Screenplay: Alexander Payne and Nate Faxon and Jim Rash (“The Descendants”)

2011 WAFCA Award Nominees: (The winners in each category are listed above.)

of the Apes”) Best Supporting Actress:

Best Film: “The Descendants” “Drive” “Hugo” “Win Win” Best Director:

Bérénice Bejo (“The Artist”) Melissa McCarthy (“Bridesmaids”) Carey Mulligan (“Shame”) Shailene Woodley (“The Descendants”)

Woody Allen (“Midnight in Paris”) Michel Hazanavicius (“The Artist”) Alexander Payne (“The Descendants”) Nicolas Winding Refn (“Drive”)

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2” “The Help” “Hugo” “Margin Call”

Best Actor:

Best Adapted Screenplay:

Jean Dujardin (“The Artist”) Michael Fassbender (“Shame”) Brad Pitt (“Moneyball”) Michael Shannon (“Take Shelter”)

Tate Taylor (“The Help”) John Logan (“Hugo”) Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin (“Moneyball”) Bridget O’Connor & Peter Straughan (“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”)

Best Actress: Viola Davis (“The Help”) Elizabeth Olsen (“Martha Marcy May Marlene”) Meryl Streep (“The Iron Lady”) Tilda Swinton (“We Need to Talk About Kevin”) Best Supporting Actor: Kenneth Branagh (“My Week with Marilyn”) John Hawkes (“Martha Marcy May Marlene”) Christopher Plummer (“Beginners”) Andy Serkis (“Rise of the Planet

Best Documentary: “Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey” “Buck” “Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life” “Project Nim” Best Foreign Language Film:

Best Acting Ensemble:

“13 Assassins” “Certified Copy” “I Saw the Devil” “Pina” Best Art Direction: Lawrence Bennett and Gregory S. Hooper (“The Artist”) Stuart Craig and Stephenie McMillan (“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2”) Jack Fisk and Jeanette Scott (“The Tree of Life”) Rick Carter and Lee Sandales (“War Horse”)

Best Original Screenplay:

Best Cinematography:

Woody Allen (“Midnight in Paris”) Michel Hazanavicius (“The Artist”) Tom McCarthy (“Win Win”) Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig (“Bridesmaids”)

Guillaume Schiffman (“The Artist”) Robert Richardson (“Hugo”) Manuel Alberto Claro (“Melancholia”) Janusz Kaminski (“War Horse”) Best Score:

Best Animated Feature: “The Adventures of Tintin” “Arthur Christmas” “Puss in Boots” “Winnie the Pooh”

Cliff Martinez (“Drive”) Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) Howard Shore (“Hugo”) John Williams (“War Horse”)

by Washington Diplomat film reviewer Ky N. Nguyen

Please see Film Clips for detailed listings available at press time.

(202) 289-1200, www.goethe.de/ins/us/was/kue/flm/enindex.htm

GOETHE-INSTITUT

FREER GALLERY OF ART

The “Homage to Christoph Schlingensief” series (Jan. 3-9), honoring the late German film, theater and opera director, concludes with “Egomania – Island Without Hope” (Jan. 3, 6:30 p.m.) and “Menu Total” (Jan. 9, 6:30 p.m.).

The ever-popular Iranian Film Festival 2012 (Jan. 6-Feb. 19) kicks off with “This is Not a Film” (Jan. 6, 7 p.m.; Jan. 8, 2 p.m.). Secretly shot by co-director Mojtaba Mirtahmasb on an iPhone and smuggled into France on a USB drive hidden in a cake, the last-minute Cannes

January 2012

Best Original Screenplay: Will Reiser (“50/50”) Best Animated Feature: “Rango” Best Documentary: “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” Best Foreign Language Film: “The Skin I Live In” Best Art Direction: Dante Ferretti, Production Designer, and Francesca Lo Schiavo, Set Decorator (“Hugo”) Best Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki (“The Tree of Life”) Best Score: Ludovic Bource (“The Artist”)

Film Festival entry looks at the isolated life of leading director Jafar Panahi (“The Circle,” for which The Washington Diplomat interviewed him). After his 2010 arrest, which caused an international outcry of protest, he cannot make films, provide interviews or travel. The Global Lens 2012 film series presents Turkish director Tolga Karaçelik in person with his film, “Toll Booth” (Jan. 14, 2 p.m.). (202) 357-2700, www.asia.si.edu/events/films.asp

The Washington Diplomat Page 53

[ film ]

CINEMA LISTING *Unless specific times are listed, please check the theater for times. Theater locations are subject to change.

Bosnian In the Land of Blood and Honey Directed by Angelina Jolie (U.S., 2011, 127 min.)

During the Bosnian War, Danijel, a soldier fighting for the Serbs, re-encounters Ajla, a Bosnian who’s now a captive in his camp he oversees, but their once-promising

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT

January 2012

connection has now become ambiguous as their motives change.

Haddock’s ancestor, but someone else is in search of the ship as well.

Opens Fri., Jan. 13

Hungarian and French)

Area theaters Opens Fri., Jan. 6

Area theaters

Contraband

Carnage

Directed by Baltasar Kormákur (U.S./U.K., 2012, 110 min.)

AFI Silver Theatre Opens Fri., Jan. 6 Landmark’s E Street Cinema

English

Directed by Roman Polanski (France/Germany/Poland, 2011, 79 min.)

The Adventures of Tintin

Two pairs of parents hold a cordial meeting after their sons are involved in a fight, though as their time together progresses, increasingly childish behavior throws the evening into chaos.

Directed by Steven Spielberg (U.S., New Zealand, 2011, 107 min.)

Tintin, accompanied by his dog Snowy, and Captain Haddock set off on a treasure hunt for a sunken ship commanded by

In the cutthroat underground world of international smuggling — full of desperate criminals and corrupt officials, high-stakes and big payoffs — loyalty rarely exists and death is one wrong turn away. Area theaters Opens Fri., Jan. 13

Area theaters

A Dangerous Method Directed by David Cronenberg (U.K./Germany/Canada/France/Ireland, 2011, 99 min)

War Horse Directed by Steven Spielberg (U.S., 2011, 146 min.)

Steven Spielberg’s epic adventure is a tale of loyalty, hope and tenacity set against a sweeping canvas of rural England and Europe during World War I, built around the remarkable friendship between a horse named Joey and a young man called Albert. Landmark’s E Street Cinema

Zurich and Vienna on the eve of World War 1 is the setting for this thriller, drawn from true-life events, that explores the turbulent relationship between psychiatrist Carl Jung, his mentor Sigmund Freud, and the beautiful but disturbed young woman who comes between them.

Farsi

Landmark’s E Street Cinema

Three years after Abbas Kiarostami filmed “Where is the Friend’s Home?” the Koker region was devastated by a massive earthquake. In this meta-fictional investigation of truth and representation, actors playing Kiarostami and his son return to Koker to track down the boys who starred in the previous film, mixing fiction and reality.

The Darkest Hour Directed by Chris Gorak (U.S., 2011, 89 min.)

In Moscow, five young people lead the charge against an alien race who have attacked Earth via our power supply. Area theaters

And Life Goes On (aka Life and Nothing More…) (Zendegi va digar hich) Directed by Abbas Kiarostami (Iran, 1992, 95 min.)

Freer Gallery of Art Sun., Jan. 29, 1 p.m.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Directed by David Fincher (U.S./Sweden/U.K./Germany, 2011, 158 min.)

Based on the bestselling novel, journalist Mikael Blomkvist is aided in his search for a woman who has been missing for 40 years by Lisbeth Salander, a young computer hacker. Area theaters

Kinyarwanda Directed by Alrick Brown (U.S./France, 2011, 96 min.)

Six different tales that together form one grand narrative are based on true accounts from survivors of the 1994 Rwanda genocide who took refuge at the Grand Mosque of Kigali and the imams who opened their doors to give refuge to the Tutsi and to those Hutu who refused to participate in the killing. West End Cinema

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol Directed by Brad Bird (U.S., 2011, 133 min.)

The IMF is shut down when it’s implicated in the bombing of the Kremlin, causing Ethan Hunt and his new team to go rogue to clear their organization’s name. Area theaters

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Directed by Tomas Alfredson (France/U.K./Germany, 2011, 128 min.)

Gary Oldman stars as British spy George Smiley, the brainy anti-James Bond hero of John le Carré classic novel who must outmaneuver his Soviet nemesis in a game of Cold War espionage. (English, Russian,

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The Washington Diplomat

Circumstance Directed by Maryam Keshavarz (Frace/U.S./Iran, 2011, 107 min.) A wealthy Iranian family struggles to contain a teenage girl’s growing sexual attraction to her female friend while her newly religious older brother, a failed musician and recovering drug addict, becomes obsessed with their relationship. Freer Gallery of Art Fri., Jan. 13, 7 p.m., Sun., Jan. 15, 2 p.m.

This Is Not a Film (In film nist) Directed by Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, Jafar Panahi (Iran, 2010, 75 min.)

Secretly shot by co-director Mojtaba Mirtahmasb on an iPhone and smuggled into France on a USB drive hidden in a cake, this last-minute submission to the Cannes Film Festival depicts the sequestered life of famed director Jafar Panahi, whose 2010 arrest by Iranian authorities sparked an international outcry. Freer Gallery of Art Fri., Jan. 6, 7 p.m., Sun., Jan. 8, 2 p.m.

Through the Olive Trees (Zire darakhatan zeyton) Directed by Abbas Kiarostami (Iran, 1994, 103 min.)

An actor playing director Abbas Kiarostami looks for amateur actors to star in a film called “And Life Goes On,” but the couple he chooses has a history that humorously thwarts the filmmaker’s ambitions: The woman recently spurned the man’s marriage proposal and is forbidden by family and tradition from speaking

January 2012

to him â&#x20AC;&#x201D; except within the fiction of the film. Freer Gallery of Art Sun., Jan. 29, 3 p.m.

Where is the Friendâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Home? (Khane-ye doust kodjast?) Directed by Abbas Kiarostami (Iran, 1987, 83 min.)

A young boy accidentally takes home a friendâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s schoolbook and, afraid of being punished by his teacher, journeys to his classmateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s village to return it, encountering adults who alternately ignore, scold or assist him along the way.

Le Havre Directed by Aki KaurismĂ¤ki (Finland/France/Germany, 2011, 93 min.)

When an African refugee boy arrives by cargo ship in the French port city of Le Havre, an aging shoe shiner takes pity on the child and takes him in, standing up to officials doggedly pursuing the boy for deportation. Landmarkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s E Street Cinema

Justin de Marseille Directed by Maurice Tourneur (France, 1935, 95 min.)

AccusĂŠe, Levez-Vous!

The murky atmosphere of the Marseille docksides provides a choice backdrop for this crime drama as a professional gangster concerned with imposing his rules of conduct on the underworld settles scores with small-time pimps who treat women badly.

Directed by Maurice Tourneur (France, 1930, 110 min.)

National Gallery of Art Sat., Jan. 7, 12:30 p.m.

Freer Gallery of Art Fri., Jan. 27, 7 p.m.

French

Gaby and AndrĂŠ, a knife-throwing duo of music-hall artists in the Folies BergĂ¨res, are torn apart when Gaby is accused of murdering Yvette Delys, the showâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s star attraction. National Gallery of Art Sun., Jan. 15, 4:30 p.m.

Tomboy Directed by CĂŠline Sciamma (France, 2011, 82 min.)

A 10-year-old girl, settling into her new neighborhood outside Paris, is mistaken for a boy and lives up to this new identity to

keep her new friends, while being a girl at home with her parents.

zombies.

Landmarkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s E Street Cinema

Goethe-Institut Mon., Jan. 9, 6:30 p.m.

German

Norwegian

Egomania â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Island Without Hope (Egomania â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Insel ohne Hoffnung)

King of Devilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Island (Kongen av BastĂ¸y)

Directed by Christoph Schlingensief (Germany, 1986, 83 min.) The eerie, vampire-like baron Tante Teufel reigns on a bleak island in the Baltic Sea where peace and joy have been replaced by hopelessness and discord, but when true love suddenly threatens the islandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sadness, the baron starts to panic.

Directed by Marius Holst (Norway/France/Sweden/Poland, 2010, 120 min.)

At a boys home correctional facility in early 20th-century Norway, a new inmate leads the boys to a violent uprising against the facilityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s brutal governor. West End Cinema

Goethe-Institut Tue., Jan. 3, 6:30 p.m.

Silent

Menu Total

The Artist

Directed by Christoph Schlingensief (West Germany, 1985/86, 81 min.)

Directed by Michel Hazanavicius (France, 2011, 100 min.)

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Menu Totalâ&#x20AC;? doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t follow a narrative structure and challenges the viewer to generate a story on his own, as a young boy is transferred to a mental hospital where a doctor is vomiting incessantly and another person runs around in a Nazi uniform, while at an improvised picnic in a meadow, two people are pursued by white

Set in 1927, silent movie star George

Valentin wonders if the arrival of talking pictures will cause him to fade into oblivion, as sparks fly with Peppy Miller, a young dancer set for a big break. (Silent with limited English and French) AFI Silver Theatre Landmarkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s E Street Cinema

Turkish Toll Booth (Gise Memuru) Directed by Tolga KaraĂ§elik (Turkey, 2010, 96 min.)

A taciturn 35-year-old tollbooth attendant shuffling between the home he shares with his ailing but domineering father and his monotonous work remains determined both to resist his fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s attempt to marry him off to a neighbor and to prove his worth by fixing his fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s idle old car. Freer Gallery of Art Sat., Jan. 14, 2 p.m.

from page 52

Film Reviews At least off the top of my head,â&#x20AC;&#x153;Carnageâ&#x20AC;? also happens to be my least favorite film from any of its four well-regarded stars so celebrated by the Academy Awards. The high-wattage cast features British actress Kate Winslet (Oscar winner for â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Reader;â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Titanic,â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Sense and Sensibilityâ&#x20AC;?), Austrian actor Christoph Waltz (Oscar winner for â&#x20AC;&#x153;Inglourious Basterdsâ&#x20AC;?), American actress Jodie Foster (Oscar winner for â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Silence of the Lambs,â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Accused;â&#x20AC;? nominee for â&#x20AC;&#x153;Taxi Driverâ&#x20AC;?), and American actor John C. Reilly (Oscar nominee for â&#x20AC;&#x153;Chicagoâ&#x20AC;?). With this caliber of acting, the perPHOTO: GUY FERRANDIS / SONY PICTURES CLASSICS formances are not bad and could even be considered good, but I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stand any of the vile characters in the end! Roman Polanskiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;Carnageâ&#x20AC;? features an Oscar-celebrated cast: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Carnageâ&#x20AC;? opens in what appears to be a distant shot of a from left, John C. Reilly, Jodie Foster, Christoph Waltz and Kate Brooklyn park, in which one child assaults another with a Winslet. stick. The attackerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s parents, Nancy Cowan (Winslet) and Alan Cowan (Waltz), visit the luxury apartment of the bat- pieces of it could have worked as shorts that are tolerable in tered boy, whose injuries include broken teeth, to discuss small doses. I actually rather enjoyed the building nervous the matter with his parents, Penelope Longstreet (Foster) tension of the opening 15 minutes or so. and Michael Longstreet (Reilly). The Cowans try to leave One might wildly speculate that if Polanski was able to several times, but they only make it into shoot in the United States instead of in the hallway before being sucked back Paris, he might have co-written and directinto the apartment for more conversaed a different adaptation with exterior Carnage tion â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and a serving of cobbler, which Brooklyn shots that opened up the scenes, (English; 79 min.; scope) may not be for the best. The discourse which might have resulted in a less clausTheater TBA and actions become nastier over time. trophobic experience for the audience. Opens Fri., Jan. 13 Everybody becomes upset and hates Then again, he and co-writer Yasmina Reza each other, but nobody can escape the adapted the screenplay from her own play, â&#x2DC;&#x2026;â&#x2DC;&#x2026;â&#x153;Šâ&#x153;Šâ&#x153;Š suffocating prison of the apartment. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Gods of Carnage,â&#x20AC;? so maybe they were Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a shame that viewers also must never going to stray far from the original endure the claustrophobic experience. Such shared suffer- source. ing could possibly have been intended by the filmmakers, Perhaps massive rewriting would be in order. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve enjoyed but why put fans through this? I felt dirty, but I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stop multiple viewings of Spanish writer-director Luis BuĂąuelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s watching in good conscience because I had to assess it. surrealist classic, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Exterminating Angel,â&#x20AC;? a similar story Nonetheless, I did have to hit pause for a recovery break and in which dinner party guests can never manage to leave the power nap when I just couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t take it any longer. house. So itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s possible to successfully execute a similar conâ&#x20AC;&#x153;Carnageâ&#x20AC;? is classified as a comedy-drama, but I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t cept, albeit one in which the roomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inhabitants may not act laugh much. The film is too well crafted to necessarily be quite so nasty to each other as in â&#x20AC;&#x153;Carnage.â&#x20AC;? described as terrible, but it became completely unappealing as it progressed, delivering diminishing returns.Theoretically, Ky N. Nguyen is the film reviewer for The Washington Diplomat.

[

January 2012

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The Washington Diplomat Page 55

[ around town ]

EVENTS LISTING

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT

January 2012

PHOTO: INTER-AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK ART COLLECTION

**Admission is free unless otherwise noted. All information on event venues can be found on The Washington Diplomat Web site at www.washdiplomat.com. Times and locations are subject to change. Unless listed, please call venue for specific event times and hours of operation.

ART

some of the world’s finest collections, this exhibition traces ballet in Edgar Degas’s art from the 1870s to 1900, while also celebrating “Dancers at the Barre” as a crowning achievement in the artist’s fourdecade career — prompted by discoveries from a recent conservation treatment of the masterpiece, which took 16 years to create. The Phillips Collection

Through Jan. 1

Wedding Belles

Through Jan. 8

Four gowns belonging to heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and those of her mother and daughters, along with bridesmaid dresses, a royal veil, and a stunning Cartier bag carried by Post’s daughter tell the story of 20th-century wedding style through the lens of one of America’s most notable and fashionable families.

The Invention of Glory: Afonso V and the Pastrana Tapestries

Through Jan. 2

The Pastrana Tapestries—among the finest surviving Gothic tapestries—will be on view together for the first time in the U.S. and will showcase the recently restored set of four monumental tapestries that commemorate the conquest of two strategically located cities in Morocco by the king of Portugal, Afonso V (1432–1481).

Warhol: Headlines

National Gallery of Art

Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens

Andy Warhol had a lifelong obsession with the sensational side of contemporary news media, and his source materials for his artwork — headlines from the tabloid news — will be presented for comparison, revealing Warhol’s role as both editor and author. National Gallery of Art Through Jan. 7

A Celebration of Life Nigerian artist Stanley Agbontaen’s newest body of work includes 23 oil paintings and seven wood block panels featuring richly colored, vibrant scenes that celebrate Nigeria’s resilient people, the beauty in their daily rituals, and the energy of their bustling urban centers and marketplaces. International Visions Gallery Through Jan. 7

A Song for the Horse Nation The story of the relationship of Native Americans and horses is one of the great sagas of human contact with the animal world, as evidenced by this array of 122 historic objects, artwork, photographs, songs and personal accounts that tells the story of how the return of horses to the Americas by Christopher Columbus changed everything for Indians. National Museum of the American Indian Through Jan. 8

Degas’s Dancers at the Barre: Point and Counterpoint Bringing together about 30 works from

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The Washington Diplomat

of Oxford draw on their deep resources to uncover the little-known story of one of the most widely read books in the history of the English language. Folger Shakespeare Library Through Jan. 15

Visions of the Orient: Western Women Artists in Asia 1900–1940 “Visions of the Orient” features 125 prints and paintings by four female Western artists exploring Asian cultures between 1900 and 1940, all of whom trained as painters but, while living in Japan, also designed woodblock prints. National Museum of Women in the Arts Through Jan. 22

Contemporary Art from Chile

Through Jan. 15

In this dual exhibition, “Traveling Light” features five contemporary Chilean artists who’ve installed site-specific work at the museum, while “Common Place” highlights the evolving subordinate relationship between Latin American housekeepers and their housewife employers.

Andy Warhol: Shadows

OAS Art Museum of the Americas

Created in the last decade of Andy Warhol’s life, “Shadows” comprises 102 silkscreened and hand-painted canvases featuring distorted photographs of shadows generated in the artist’s studio — forms that at once suggest and mock the bravura brushwork of the abstract expressionists. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Through Jan. 15

CHINA Town: Contemporary Ceramic Painting from Jingdezhen This unprecedented exhibition of porcelain art — the sixth in a series of exhibits organized over the last decade by the Meridian Center’s Art for Cultural Diplomacy program with Chinese partners — highlights objects from Jingdezhen, a city of 1.6 million people that has produced the finest Chinese porcelain for more than 1,000 years, especially the world-renowned blue and white decorative motifs. Meridian International Center Through Jan. 15

Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible Marking its 400th anniversary this year, the 1611 King James Bible still echoes in books, movies, songs, speeches and sermons today. But who translated it? The Folger Shakespeare Library and University

“Los Meseros (The Waiters),” a 2007 photograph by Ecuadorian Geovanny Verdezoto, is part of “New Visions: A Selection of the Latest Acquisitions from the IDB Art Collection, 2008-2011” at the Inter-American Development Bank Cultural Center.

Through Jan. 22

The Graphic and Fine Art of Jerzy Janiszewski Poland’s most famous graphic artist, Jerzy Janiszewski created the Solidarity shipyard union’s logo in 1980 when he was only 28 years old. This powerful image, together with Lech Wal sa, became a symbol of freedom from Communist rule. In addition to a rare Solidarity poster from 1980, buried underground for seven years to safeguard it from Poland’s secret police, this first exhibition of Janiszewski’s work in the United States will include collages and other fine art never before exhibited. Charles Krause / Reporting Fine Art Through Jan. 27

On the Lakeshore… and Other Stories Photographer Iris Janke’s work treads a fine line between reflection and intuition, between control and chance, as she records her daily experiences in a visual diary from which she selects the images that have the strongest narrative power. Goethe-Institut Through Jan. 29

Power/Play: China’s Empress Dowager Following China’s disastrous Boxer

Rebellion, the Grand Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) used photographic portraiture to rehabilitate her public image, allowing a young aristocratic photographer to take elaborately staged shots of her and her court. As the only photographic series taken of the supreme leader of China for more than 45 years, these images represents a unique convergence of Qing court pictorial traditions, modern photography and Western standards of artistic portraiture. Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Jan. 29 to May 6

Picasso’s Drawings, 1890–1921: Reinventing Tradition Through some 55 works, this exhibition presents the dazzling development of Pablo Picasso’s drawings over a 30-year period, from the precocious academic exercises of his youth in the 1890s to the virtuoso works of the early 1920s, including the radical innovations of cubism and collage. National Gallery of Art Through Feb. 1

Parallel Worlds by Marcelo Novo Argentine artist Marcelo Novo creates a series of paintings whose bold grays and strong, strange subjects coexist between two worlds of reality and subjectivity.

photograph was sent by Pablo Ortiz Monasterio as a digital file to Muriel Hasbun, who replied by sending back one of her own. This exchange went on for months, the results of which reveal how photography can probe the possibilities of cultural and visual exchange in a digital age. Mexican Cultural Institute Through Feb. 10

Forces of Nature Investigating the intricacies of land and sea, flora and fauna, 13 acclaimed Australian artists specializing in jewelry and small sculpture reflect on the complex relationship between contemporary Australia and its unique natural environment. Embassy of Australia Through Feb. 12

30 Americans Provocative and confrontational, this exhibition showcases works by many of the most important African American artists of the last three decades, focusing on issues of racial, sexual and historical identity and exploring the powerful influence of artistic legacy across generations. Corcoran Gallery of Art

Embassy of Argentina

Through Feb. 12

Through Feb. 3

Weaving Abstraction: Kuba Textiles and the Woven Art of Central Africa

New Visions: A Selection of the Latest Acquisitions from the IDB Art Collection, 2008–2011 The Inter-American Development Bank’s art collection comprises 1,722 artworks that include paintings, sculpture, photography, works on paper, ceramics and handcrafted objects. These works showcase the region’s creativity and highlight the achievements of its distinguished artists.

Ingeniously woven from palm fiber, Central African textiles distinguished the wealthy and powerful. Woven art from the Kuba kingdom in particular makes playful use of a language of over 200 patterns. “Weaving Abstraction” is the most comprehensive exploration of this art form to date in the U.S., with 150 objects ranging from small, exquisite baskets to monumental skirts. The Textile Museum

Inter-American Development Bank Cultural Center

Through Feb. 24

Through Feb. 4

Lost Worlds” Ruins of the Americas

Conversación: Photo Works by Muriel Hasbun and Pablo Ortiz Monasterio In conjunction with FotoWeek DC, this exhibition represents a yearlong collaboration between two artists, one from Mexico and one in D.C., whereby a single

Photographs by Arthur Drooker offer a powerful visual narrative of the cultures, conflicts and conquests that forged the New World, spanning significant ruins in Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America and South America. OAS Art Museum of the Americas

January 2012

Through March 4

Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley This international exhibit features more than 148 objects used in a range of ritual contexts, with genres as varied and complex as the vast region of Central Nigeria, that demonstrate how the history of the area can be “unmasked” through the dynamic interrelationships of its peoples and their arts. National Museum of African Art Through March 4

Harry Callahan at 100 Celebrate the centenary of the birth of Harry Callahan (1912–99), one of the most innovative and influential photographers of the 20th century, with some 100 photographs that explores all facets of Callahan’s art. National Gallery of Art Through March 11

Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro: Are We There Yet? In the first U.S. exhibition of Australian artists Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro — and the third exhibition in the “NOW at the Corcoran” series showcasing emerging and mid-career artists — a gallery-transforming installation draws on American history, literature, pop culture, current affairs and the Corcoran’s architecture to explore the symbolism of space exploration and the paradoxes of food consumption. Corcoran Gallery of Art Through March 24

The Wild Horses of Sable Island Photographer Roberto Dutesco reveals the fascinating beauty of a fragile sliver of sand more than 100 miles off the coast of Nova Scotia. Sable Island, known as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” is the site of more than 475 shipwrecks since the 17th century. Yet the barren, windswept island is also home to more than 400 wild horses, abandoned there by sailors long ago — a feral herd that has managed to thrive in an unforgiving environment. Embassy of Canada Art Gallery Through April 8

Antico: The Golden Age of Renaissance Bronzes This exhibition is the first in the United States devoted to the Mantuan sculptor and goldsmith Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi (c. 1455–1528), known as Antico for his expertise in classical antiquity. National Gallery of Art

DANCE Jan. 17 to 22

Mariinsky Ballet: Les Saisons Russes Boasting an artistic legacy that spans more than 200 years, St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Ballet returns with “Les Saisons Russes (The Russian Seasons),” featuring three works by Michel Fokine: “Chopiniana,” “Scheherazade” and “The Firebird.” Tickets are $29 to $150. Kennedy Center Opera House

January 2012

DISCUSSIONS Thu., Jan. 12, 8 p.m.

George Mason University Center for the Arts

Classic Conversations with Michael Kahn

THEATER

The Shakespeare Theatre Company presents an evening of in-depth discussion on classical theater and the craft of acting with James Earl Jones joining Artistic Director Michael Kahn for the third installment of the Classic Conversations series held at Sidney Harman Hall. Tickets start at $35. The Shakespeare Theatre Tue., Jan. 17, 10 to 11:30 a.m.

Legal Research Seminar for Embassy Personnel

Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater Jan. 20 to Feb. 12 Through Jan. 1

In 1605 London, the worlds of King James and the Gunpowder Plot collide with William Shakespeare and his renowned theatrical troupe as the Bard, commissioned to create a calculated piece of propaganda, must find a way to please the king while avoiding the gallows in this cat-and-mouse game of politics and art. Please call for ticket details. Arena Stage Through Jan. 1

Library of Congress James Madison Building

Theater J celebrates Helen Hayes Awardwinning local playwright Renee Calarco with her new comedy about Mo and Brian, a picture-perfect D.C. couple. But when Mo’s best friend announces she’s found Jesus and is putting her career on hold to be a wife and mother, Mo must take a closer look at the harder truths surrounding her own marriage. Please call for ticket information.

Silence! The Alliance Française presents this unique, thought-provoking event, “Silence!” — which bends the boundaries of artistic expression and asks the audience to find meaning in the absence of sound. The evening features a silent DJ set where guests are equipped with wireless headphones to hear live performances, a screening of the finest French silent films, a Marceau-inspired mime performance, and a silent poetic interactive performance in French sign language. Tickets are $20; reservations can be made at (202) 234-7911 or www.francedc.org.

Necessary Sacrifices

Equivocation

The Law Library of Congress — founded in 1832 — is offering a series of legal research seminars designed specifically for relevant staff at embassies in the United States to facilitate their legal research needs. The seminars include information on how to access U.S. federal laws, administrative regulations, court cases, treaties, and a host of other print and electronic sources and databases. To register, call (202) 707-3812 or visit www.loc.gov/ law/opportunities/embassy-form.php. Fri., Jan. 20, 8 p.m.

the test when their son brings his fiancée’s conservative parents home to meet the flashy pair. Tickets are $65 to $130.

Tickets are $19, $30 or $38.

You, Nero As Rome collapses beneath Nero’s outrageous narcissism, a forgotten playwright tries to restore order by trying to convince the world’s most famous debaucher to choose virtue over vice. Please call for ticket details. Arena Stage Jan. 4 to 27

The Religion Thing

Washington DCJCC Through Jan. 7

Jersey Boys This Tony and Grammy Award-winning production is the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and how a group of blue-collar boys from the wrong side of the tracks became one of the biggest American pop music sensations of all time. Tickets start at $66.50.

PHOTO: SCOTT SUCHMAN

David Selby as Abraham Lincoln and David Emerson Toney as Frederick Douglass star in the Ford’s Theatre world premiere play “Necessary Sacrifices,” by Richard Hellesen. Jan. 12 to 29

Hedda Gabler In this classic by Henrik Ibsen, reset by Scena Theatre in 1938 Norway — a tenuous period in Europe — Hedda returns from a long honeymoon bored by her academic husband and fears a life of tedious convention, manipulating the fates of those around her with devastating and tragic consequences. Tickets are $27 to $35. H Street Playhouse Through Jan. 15

Ann Emmy Award-winning stage and screen actress Holland Taylor brings audiences a hilarious, inspiring, and no-holds-barred look at Ann Richards, the unforgettable governor of the Lone Star State. Tickets are $54 to $95. Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater Through Jan. 15

Billy Elliot the Musical

Through Jan. 7

In this Tony-winning musical with heart and humor, Billy stumbles out of the boxing ring and into a ballet class, discovering a surprising talent for dance that inspires his family and his whole community, changing his life forever. Tickets are $25 to $150.

Inspired by Vienna’s world famous “Neujahrskonzert,” this holiday tradition brings the same splendor, charm and beauty to Washington with a brilliant new cast of European singers and dancers performing famous Strauss waltzes, polkas and operetta excerpts. Please call for ticket information.

Much Ado About Nothing

Kennedy Center Opera House

Music Center at Strathmore

Barber & Barberillo

Napoleon Lounge

MUSIC

National Theatre

Mon., Jan. 2, 3 p.m.

Salute to Vienna

Fri., Jan. 13, 7:30 p.m.

Schubert’s Birthday Celebration The Embassy Series presents five outstanding artists performing two magnificent piano quintets: the famous “Trout” quintet and the rarely performed “Vaughan-William” quintet, written in 1898. Tickets are $50, including postconcert reception; for information, visit www.embassyseries.org. Embassy of Austria Sun., Jan. 29, 7 p.m.

Russian Rapture: Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky Pianist Jeffrey Siegel performs the soaring melodies and sumptuous sonorities of two of the greatest Russian composers of all time, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky.

Everyone can see that Benedick and Beatrice are meant for each other except Benedick and Beatrice in one of the Bard’s most romantic comedies ever written. Please call for ticket information. The Shakespeare Theatre

Jan. 17 to Feb. 12

La Cage aux Folles Georges (George Hamilton), the owner of a glitzy nightclub in lovely Saint-Tropez, and his partner Albin, who moonlights as the glamorous chanteuse Zaza, are put to

Playwright Richard Hellesen explores the two documented encounters between Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln during a period of national crisis, as Lincoln searches for a way to end slavery, while Douglass’s rhetoric and conviction challenges the president to envision a post-emancipation world. Please call for ticket information. Ford’s Theatre Jan. 20 to March 4

Red At the height of his career, Mark Rothko is struggling with a series of grand-scale paintings for the elite Four Seasons restaurant, and when his new assistant challenges his artistic integrity, Rothko must confront his own demons. Please call for ticket information. Arena Stage Jan. 24 to March 4

The Gaming Table The thrills of the gaming table stylishly play out against the eccentricities of English manners in Susanna Centlivre’s comedy as an independent widow with a penchant for gambling leads a nightly card game, which bankrupts some and entertains all. Tickets are $30 to $65. Folger Shakespeare Library Sun., Jan. 29, 4 p.m.

The Importance of Being Earnest Acclaimed British-American touring company Aquila Theatre presents Oscar Wilde’s deliciously witty comedy detailing the escapades of the fashionable British upper crust. Tickets are $24, $32 or $40. George Mason University Hylton Performing Arts Center Through Jan. 29

Hairspray In 1960s Baltimore, Tracy Turnblad, a big girl with big hair and an even bigger heart, wins a spot on the local TV dance program and, overnight, is transformed from outsider to irrepressible teen celebrity in the Broadway sensation “Hairspray.” Tickets start at $63. Signature Theatre

Jan. 7 to 22

The In Series present its first “pocket opera” production of 2012, “Barber & Barberillo,” a double-bill of Samuel Barber and Giancarlo Menotti’s “A Hand of Bridge” (1959) coupled with Francisco Asenjo Barbieri’s “The Little Barber of Lavapies” (1874). Tickets are $40. Source Theatre Through Jan. 8

Spoiler Alert: Everybody Dies Woolly Mammoth artists flew to Chicago to work with the Second City’s comedians in this unprecedented collaboration. Their mission? Bring back the most gleeful anti-holiday celebration of doom ever — a mind-bending and hilarious new show exploring the twists of fate that propel our universe. Tickets start at $30. Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

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DIPLOMATIC SPOTLIGHT

The Washington Diplomat

From left, President of the George Washington University Steven Knapp, Ambassador of the Arab League Hussein Hassouna, Ambassador of Algeria Abdallah Baali, Ambassador of Egypt Sameh Shoukry, and former U.S. Ambassador Edward Gnehm, now Kuwait professor of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula affairs at George Washington, attend the Omani National Day reception.

Omani National Day

January 2012

Palestinian Solidarity

From left, Jumana Areikat and Maen Rashid Areikat, chief representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization to the United States, welcome Ambassador of South Africa Ebrahim Rasool to the reception marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City, Va.

From left, former Saudi Ambassador Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, Ambassador of Oman Hunaina Sultan Al-Mughairy, Deputy Chief of Mission of the Omani Embassy Abdullah Hamed Saif Al-Riyami, and Defense, Military, Naval and Air Attaché at the Omani Embassy Commodore Mohamed Al-Rawahi attend the Omani National Day reception held at the Four Seasons.

PHOTO: GAIL SCOTT

The Palestinian Solidarity reception honored, from left, Yousef Khanfar, an award-winning author and photographer; Hussein Al-Araj, chief of staff to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas; Rula Jebreal, author of the novel and film “Miral”; and Julian Schnabel, a Golden Globe winner and Oscar nominee; who were joined by Palestinian Representative to the United States Maen Rashid Areikat. PHOTO: GAIL SCOTT

Ambassador of Saudi Arabia Adel A. Al-Jubeir, left, greets Defense, Military, Naval and Air Attaché at the Omani Embassy Commodore Mohamed Al-Rawahi at the reception marking the 41st anniversary of Oman’s National Day.

Ambassador of Kuwait Salem Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, left, talks with Ambassador of the Arab League Hussein Hassouna at the Omani National Day reception held at the Four Seasons.

Wife of the Arab League ambassador Nevine Hassouna, left, joins Ambassador of Bahrain Houda Nonoo at the Omani National Day reception held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown.

Latvian Independence Day From left, President of Fahmy Hudome International Randa FahmyHudome, consultant Walid Maalouf, prominent Palestinian attorney George Salem, and Ambassador of the Arab League Hussein Hassouna attend the Palestinian Solidarity reception at the Pentagon City Ritz-Carlton.

Muslim Women’s Association PHOTO: GAIL SCOTT

PHOTO: GAIL SCOTT

From left, Ambassador of Iceland Gudmundur Arni Stefansson, Ambassador of Latvia Andrejs Pildegovics, Ambassador of Estonia Marina Kaljurand, Ambassador of Cyprus Pavlos Anastasiades, Ambassador of Slovenia Roman Kirn, and Ambassador of Kazakhstan Erlan Idrissov attend the Latvian Independence Day reception.

Ambassador of the European Union João Vale de Almeida, left, joins Ambassador of Latvia Andrejs Pildegovics for the Latvian Independence and Armed Forces Day reception, which also marked 20 years since Latvia freed itself from Soviet occupation.

British Embassy Political Counselor Ian Bond, left, joins Deputy Chief of Mission at the Irish Embassy Kevin Conmy at the Latvian Independence Day celebration held at the embassy.

PHOTO: GAIL SCOTT

From left, Mrs. and Defense Attaché at the Estonian Embassy Col. Aivar Salekesin join Mrs. and Defense, Military, Naval and Air Attaché at the Latvian Embassy Col. Juris Bezzubovs at the Latvian Independence and Armed Forces Day reception.

Page 58

The Washington Diplomat

From left, Ambassador of Cyprus Pavlos Anastasiades, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Swedish Embassy Karin Höglund, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Estonian Embassy Kyllike Sillaste-Elling, and Ambassador of Macedonia Zoran Jolevski attend the Latvian Independence Day reception.

PHOTOS: GAIL SCOTT

From left, Sandy Buchanan, wife of Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla); Linda Bond, wife of former Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.); Rosa Rai Djalal, wife of the Indonesian ambassador; Sultana Hakimi; wife of the Afghan ambassador; and Susie Annus, wife of the Australian ambassador, attend a gathering of the Muslim Women’s Association at the Indonesian Embassy.

Ambassador of Latvia Andrejs Pildegovics, left, welcomes recently appointed Ambassador of Finland Ritva Koukku-Ronde to a reception at the Latvian Embassy in honor of Latvia’s Armed Forces Day and the 93rd anniversary of its proclamation of independence.

From left, wife of the Libyan ambassador Naima Aujali, wife of the Indonesian ambassador Rosa Rai Djalal and Carmen Stull attend a gathering of the Muslim Women’s Association at the Indonesian Embassy.

January 2012

Sweden Honors Nobel Laureates

From left, U.S. Chief of Protocol Capricia Penavic Marshall, Ambassador of Canada Gary Doer, Jeffrey Bader of the Brookings Institution, Rohini Talalla, and Ambassador of Israel Michael Oren attend a dinner in honor of the 2011 Nobel Laureates held at the Swedish residence.

PHOTOS: INSTITUTE FOR EDUCATION / PASCALE DUMIT

From left, 2011 United States Nobel Laureates Bruce A. Beutler (who won the Nobel Prize in physiology/medicine), Saul Perlmutter (physics), Brian P. Schmidt (physics), Christopher A. Sims (economic sciences), and Adam G. Riess (physics) attend a dinner in their honor held at the Swedish ambassador’s residence.

Meridian Insights and Service

From left, Ambassador of Norway and Mrs. Wegger Chr. Strommen join Mrs. and Ambassador of Sweden Jonas Hafström at a dinner in honor of the 2011 Nobel Laureates held at the Swedish residence.

From left, Institute for Education CEO and founder Kathy Kemper, Sally Oren, and Ambassador of Israel Michael Oren attend a dinner in honor of the 2011 Nobel Laureates held at the Swedish residence.

From right, Meridian International Center Ambassador Sharon Wilkinson greets Ambassador of Zambia Sheila Siwela and Ambassador of Mozambique Amelia Matos Sumbana at a panel discussion for the diplomatic community held at the Meridian International Center on the 2012 U.S. presidential election.

Lantos Human Rights Prize PHOTOS: MERIDIAN INTERNATIONAL CENTER

Ambassador of Switzerland Manuel Sager poses a question to the panelists at the Meridian Insights discussion on the 2012 U.S. presidential election for the diplomatic community, which was supported by the Walter and Isabel Cutler Endowment for Global Understanding.

From left, pollster John Zogby discusses the upcoming presidential primaries with panelists Ambassador of Liechtenstein Claudia Fritsche and Newsweek contributing editor Eleanor Clift at an “Insights at Meridian” panel exploring “The Race for the White House: Preparing for the Primaries” at the Meridian International Center. From left, Bernard Jackson of the DC Green Corps, Meridian Ambassador Sharon Wilkinson, Chloe Bacon of the Meridian International Center, wife of the Fiji ambassador Queenie Thompson, the Meridian’s Danial Orange, and Ambassador of Fiji Winston Thompson help to plant 100 trees in Oxon Run Park in Southeast Washington as part of a Meridian partnership with Washington Parks and People as well as the DC Green Corps.

Meridian International Center President and CEO Stuart Holliday, left, joins Meridian volunteer Chloe Bacon at a tree planting in Oxon Run Park. The Meridian Center, as part of its Global Service Leaders Initiative (GSLI), coordinated volunteer activities in over 50 countries around the world in honor of the U.N. International Volunteer Day.

Spain National Day

Recently appointed Ambassador of Estonia Marina Kaljurand joins Ambassador of Spain and Mrs. Jorge Dezcallar de Mazarredo at the Spanish National Day reception held at the ambassador’s residence.

January 2012

From left, Ambassador of Slovenia Roman Kirn talks with Ambassador of Ukraine Olexander Motsyk, Ambassador of Monaco Gilles Noghes and Meridian’s Janet Blanchard at a panel discussion for the diplomatic community on the 2012 U.S. presidential election.

PHOTO: GAIL SCOTT

From left, former U.S. Ambassador to Burundi Robert Krueger; Annette Lantos Tilleman-Dick; her mother Annette Lantos, widow of the late Congressman Tom Lantos (D-Calif.); 2011 Tom Lantos Human Rights Prize winner Paul Rusesabagina, a humanitarian who was behind the movie “Hotel Rwanda”; his wife Tasi Rusesabagina; and Lantos Foundation President Katrina Lantos Swett attend an award ceremony hosted by the Tom Lantos Foundation for Human Rights in honor of Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who saved more than 1,000 refugees during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Japan Armed Forces Day From left, Mrs. and Maj. Gen. Atsushi Hikita, defense and military attaché at the Japanese Embassy, join Mrs. and Ambassador of Japan Ichiro Fujisaki for the Japan Armed Forces Day reception at the Japanese ambassador’s residence.

Ambassador of Mexico Arturo Sarukhan, left, is welcomed to the Spanish National Day reception by Social Secretary Diane Flamini.

From left, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Alexander Vershbow, Ambassador of Spain Jorge Dezcallar de Mazarredo, and Ambassador of the European Union João Vale de Almeida attend the Spanish National Day reception.

Latin Investment

PHOTO: LARRY LUXNER

From left, Jorge Quiroga, former president of Bolivia; Alejandro Toledo, former president of Peru; José W. Fernández, assistant U.S. secretary of state for economic, energy and business affairs; and Carlos Mesa, former president of Bolivia, speak at a conference on investing in Latin America at the offices of Duane Morris LLP.

The Washington Diplomat Page 59

DIPLOMATIC SPOTLIGHT

The Washington Diplomat

Turkish Jazz

PHOTO: GAIL SCOTT

Sri Lankan ‘Rice & Curry’ Ambassador of Sri Lanka Jaliya Wickramasuriya, left, welcomes Baltimore journalist and blogger S.H. Fernando Jr. to his residence to celebrate Fernando’s new cookbook, “Rice & Curry: Sri Lankan Home Cooking,” which was included in The New York Times 2011 List of Notable Cookbooks.

Chilean Rakizuam From left, Ambassador of Chile Arturo Fermandois and his wife Carolina (wearing an indigenous hand-woven shawl) join Smithsonian Undersecretary for History, Art and Culture Richard Kurin at the reception for the Chilean Rakizuam Celebration at the National Museum of the American Indian. The Rakizuam is a festival of how ancient, artisanal crafts and teachings provide cultural understanding.

January 2012 Ambassador of the Netherlands Renée Jones-Bos and her husband Dr. Richard Huw Jones attend the final concert of the season in the Turkish Embassy’s Ertegün Jazz Series.

Ambassador of Turkey Namik Tan, left, welcomes jazz lover Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), dean of the Congressional Black Caucus, to the Turkish Embassy’s Ertegün Jazz Series, in collaboration with the group Jazz at Lincoln Center and sponsored by Boeing, which honors the memory of Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegün, son of former Turkish Ambassador Münir Ertegün, who held the first inter-racial concerts in Washington at his embassy.

The Turkish Embassy’s Ertegün Jazz Series finished its first year with jazz singer Gretchen Parlato, left, who joined Mica Ertegün, the widow of Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegün, who with his brother Nesuhi and father held the first inter-racial concerts in Washington in the 1930s and 1940s.

Ambassador of Bulgaria Elena Poptodorova and her husband Georgi Petrov attend the Turkish Embassy’s Ertegün Jazz Series.

Ambassador of Monaco Gilles Noghès and his wife Ellen Noghès attend the Turkish Embassy’s Ertegün Jazz Series.

Ambassador of Luxembourg Jean-Paul Senninger and his wife Louise Åkerblom attend the Turkish Embassy’s Ertegün Jazz Series.

Singapore Showcase Singaporean President Tony Tan Keng Yam, left, decorates Ambassador of Singapore Chan Heng Chee, dean of the Washington female diplomatic corps, with Singapore’s Distinguished Service Order, the country’s highest honor except for those who have served in the Cabinet.

PHOTOS: GAIL SCOTT

PHOTO: WWW.PICTUREWORDS.GIZ/NDINVESTITURE2011

Salvadoran Food Festival Ambassador of El Salvador Francisco Roberto Altschul Fuentes, second from right, joins Ben Velásquez, right, executive chef and instructor at Escuela Carlos Rosario, and his two young assistants at the First Salvadoran Food Festival featuring gourmet dishes prepared by six top Salvadoran chefs held at the Embassy of El Salvador.

PHOTOS: LARRY LUXNER

PHOTO: GAIL SCOTT

Ambassador of Singapore Chan Heng Chee, right, welcomes renowned Singaporean Chef Jimmy Chok, who recently offered to cook for her at the residence during his family vacation in Washington.

From left, Permanent Representative of El Salvador to the Organization of American States (OAS) Luís Menéndez, his wife Margarita de Menéndez, Mary Culham, and Permanent Representative of Canada to the OAS Allan Culham attend a gastronomic event at the Embassy of El Salvador.

Algerian National Day

From left, Mrs. and Ambassador of Algeria Abdallah Baali greet Ambassador of Djibouti Roble Olhaye, the dean of the diplomatic corps, at the Algerian National Day reception held at the Mandarin Oriental.

Page 60

The Washington Diplomat

From left, Ambassador of El Salvador Francisco Roberto Altschul Fuentes joins Mrs. and Ambassador of Belize Nestor Mendez at the First Salvadoran Food Festival held at the Embassy of El Salvador.

From left, Ambassador of Benin Cyrille S. Oguin, Ambassador of Timor-Leste Constancio da Conceicao Pinto, former Ambassador of Grenada Denis Antoine, and Ambassador of Zimbabwe Machivenyika Mapuranga attend the Algerian National Day reception.

From left, Mrs. and Lt. Col. Samy Lammari, the air attaché at the Algerian Embassy, join Mrs. and Col. Hamid Kalla, defense, military and naval attaché at the Algerian Embassy, as well as Mrs. and Ambassador of Algeria Abdallah Baali for the Algerian National Day reception held at the Mandarin Oriental in Washington.

Ambassador of Egypt Sameh Shoukry, left, joins Ambassador of Bahrain Houda Nonoo at the Algerian National Day reception.

January 2012

AROUNDTHEWORLD HOLIDAYS BAHAMAS Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

BRAZIL Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

CHAD Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

ALGERIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

BAHRAIN Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

BRUNEI Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

CHILE Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

ANDORRA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 6: Three Kings’ Day

BANGLADESH Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

BULGARIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

CHINA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

BARBADOS Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 21: Errol Barrow Day

BURKINA FASO Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 3: Anniversary of the 1966 Uprising

COLOMBIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 6: Epiphany

ANTIGUA and BARBUDA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day ARGENTINA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day ARMENIA Jan. 1-2: New Year’s Holiday Jan. 6: Armenian Christmas AUSTRALIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 26: Australia Day AUSTRIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 6: Epiphany AZERBAIJAN Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 20: Martyrs’ Memorial Day

BURMA (MYANMAR) Jan. 4: Independence Day

CONGO, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

BELGIUM Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

BURUNDI Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

CONGO, REPUBLIC OF Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

BELIZE Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

CAMBODIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 7: Victory Over Genocide Regime

COSTA RICA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

CAMEROON Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

CROATIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

CANADA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

CUBA Jan. 1: Liberation Day

CAPE VERDE Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 20: National Heroes’ Day

CYPRUS Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 6: Epiphany

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

CZECH REPUBLIC Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

BELARUS Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 7: Orthodox Christmas

BENIN Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 10: Traditional Day BOLIVIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA Jan. 1-2: New Year’s Holiday BOTSWANA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 2: Public Holiday

CÔTE D’IVOIRE Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

Fax to: The Washington Diplomat at: (301) 949-0065 E-mail to: news@washdiplomat.com Mail to: P.O. Box 1345, Silver Spring, MD 20915-1345

Jan. 1: Day of Restoration of Czech Independence

HONDURAS Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

MALAYSIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

DENMARK Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

HUNGARY Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

MALTA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

DJIBOUTI Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

ICELAND Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

MARSHALL ISLANDS Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

DOMINICA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

INDIA Jan. 26: Republic Day

MAURITANIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 6: Epiphany Jan. 21: Day of the Virgin of Altagracia Jan. 26: Birthday of Juan Pablo Duarte

INDONESIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

MAURITIUS Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

IRELAND Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

MEXICO Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

EAST TIMOR Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

ITALY Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 6: Epiphany

ECUADOR Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

JAMAICA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

EL SALVADOR Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

JAPAN Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 14: Coming of Age Day

EQUATORIAL GUINEA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day ERITREA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day ESTONIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 6: Epiphany

APPOINTMENTS Austria Hans Peter Manz has been appointed to be the ambassador of Austria to the United States, having most recently served as Austria’s ambassador to Switzerland since 2007 and foreign policy advisor to the federal chancellor from 2000 to 2007. In addition, he has served in the Office of Vice Chancellor and Minister for Ambassador Finance (2007) and head of the Hans Peter Manz Department for Political Integration and International Cooperation in the field of Justice and Home Affairs at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Vienna (2000), where he was also temporary head of the Department for International Organizations (19992000) and advisor in the Department for Eastern Europe (1987-91). Other postings abroad include minister, deputy chief of mission at the Permanent Mission of Austria to the United Nations in New York (1994-99); minister-counselor, deputy chief of mission at the Austrian Embassy in Switzerland (1991-94); first secretary and deputy chief of mission at the Austrian Embassy in Tehran, Iran (1985-87); as well as second secretary at the embassy in Switzerland (1981-85). Ambassador Manz holds a doctorate of law from the University of Vienna and joined the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 1979.

Pakistan Sherry Rehman was appointed to be the ambassador of Pakistan to the United States by the Pakistani government on Nov. 23, replacing Ambassador Husain Haqqani, who resigned in the wake of allegations that he orchestrated a high-level memo seeking U.S. assistance to rein in the Pakistani military in return for the civilian government adopting pro-U.S. policies. Haqqani, who served in Washington since May 2008, has denied any involvement in the memo,

January 2012

Send Us Your Holidays and Appointments

ALBANIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

ANGOLA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 4: Martyrs of the Colonial Repression Day

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT

FIJI Jan. 1: New Year’s Day written by businessman Mansoor Ijaz, and has returned to Pakistan while the Supreme Court investigates the “memogate” scandal. Rehman, 50, is a member of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party and a prominent activist in support of women’s and minority rights. She most recently served as a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan since 2002, including as ranking member of the National Security Committee. In 2008, she was appointed federal minister for information and broadcasting, stepping down in 2009 to protest new restrictions on the media, after which she authored several legislative bills and resolutions on foreign and security policy, human rights and media protections. She has also authored several bills to combat violence, rape and honor killings against women. In addition, Rehman is the founding chair of the Jinnah Institute, a Pakistani-based think tank that promotes fundamental rights, tolerance and pluralism, and an award-winning journalist with 20 years of experience in both broadcast and print Ambassador media, having served as the former editor of the Herald newsmagazine in Sherry Rehman Pakistan. Among other accomplishments, she co-authored the 2005 book “The Kashmiri Shawl: From Jamavar to Paisley”; was awarded the title of “Democracy’s Hero” by the International Republican Institute in 2009; chaired the Lady Dufferin Foundation Trust, which provides women and children’s subsidized health care in the province of Sindh; and served as a member of the Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention at the East West Institute in Brussels and Parliamentarians for Global Action in New York. Rehman studied politics and foreign relations at Smith College in the United States and at the University of Sussex in Britain. She is married to banker Nadeem Hussain, president and chief executive officer of Tameer Microfinance Bank.

FINLAND Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 6: Epiphany FRANCE Jan. 1: New Year’s Day GABON Jan. 1: New Year’s Day GAMBIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day GEORGIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 7: Christmas Day Jan. 19: Epiphany

JORDAN Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 30: King Abdullah’s Birthday KAZAKHSTAN Jan. 1-2: New Year’s Holiday KENYA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day KUWAIT Jan. 1: New Year’s Day KYRGYZSTAN Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 7: Orthodox Christmas LAOS Jan. 1: New Year’s Day LATVIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day LEBANON Jan. 1: New Year’s Day LESOTHO Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

GERMANY Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

LIBERIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

GHANA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

LIECHTENSTEIN Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 2: St. Berchtold’s Day Jan. 6: Epiphany

GREECE Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 6: Epiphany GRENADA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day GUATEMALA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day GUINEA-BISSAU Jan. 1: New Year’s Day GUYANA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day HAITI Jan. 1: Independence Day

LITHUANIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day LUXEMBOURG Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

MICRONESIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day MOLDOVA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 7-8: Christmas Holiday MONGOLIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day MOROCCO Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 11: Independence Manifesto Day MOZAMBIQUE Jan. 1: New Year’s Day NAMIBIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day NETHERLANDS Jan. 1: New Year’s Day NEW ZEALAND Jan. 1-2: New Year’s Holiday NICARAGUA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day NIGER Jan. 1: New Year’s Day NIGERIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day NORWAY Jan. 1: New Year’s Day OMAN Jan. 1: New Year’s Day PALAU Jan. 1: New Year’s Day PANAMA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 9: Martyr’s Day PAPUA NEW GUINEA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day PARAGUAY Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

MACEDONIA Jan. 1-2: New Year’s Holiday Jan. 7: Orthodox Christmas

PERU Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

MADAGASCAR Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

PHILIPPINES Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

MALAWI Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 15: John Chilembwe Day

POLAND Jan. 1: New Year’s Day

Continued on next page

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Continued from previous page PORTUGAL Jan. 1: New Year’s Day RUSSIA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day Jan. 7: Russian Orthodox Christmas RWANDA Jan. 1: New Year’s Day ST. KITTS and NEVIS Jan. 1: New Year’s Day ST. LUCIA Jan. 1-2: New Year’s

Page 62

Holiday ST. VINCENT and THE GRENADINES Jan. 1: New Year’s Day SENEGAL Jan. 1: New Year’s Day SERBIA Jan. 1-2: New Year’s Holiday Jan. 7: Orthodox Christmas

The Washington Diplomat

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January 2012

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from page 23

Hormel us. But many of us have seen firsthand how quickly change can come. In our lifetimes, attitudes toward gay people in many places have been transformed. Many people, including myself, have experienced a deepening of our own convictions on this topic over the years,â&#x20AC;? said the secretary of state, under whose tenure domestic partner benefits were extended to gay and lesbian members of the Foreign Service. (Former U.S.Ambassador to Romania Michael Guest, a gay man, resigned in 2007 to protest discrimination against same-sex partners of Foreign Service officers, who were awarded few benefits.) At an earlier event co-hosted by the State Department and Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies (GLIFAA) in celebration of LGBT Pride Month, Clinton reflected on the diplomatic push to advance gay rights, both at home and around the world.

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;[I]n March, the United States led a major effort at the Human Rights Council in Geneva to get other countries to sign on in support of a statement on ending violence and criminalization based on sexual orientation and gender identity,â&#x20AC;? she said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;And in the very next session of the Human Rights Council â&#x20AC;Ś the council passed the first-ever U.N. resolution recognizing the human rights of LGBT people worldwide â&#x20AC;Ś and we made it absolutely clear that, so far as the United States is concerned and our foreign policy and our values, that gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights.â&#x20AC;? While the situation for the LGBT community has certainly improved, discrimination is still alive and well â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and Hormel is not shy about calling it out. Gay marriage is still illegal in much of the country and is not recognized by the federal government, and although the military has repealed DADT, the question of shared benefits for gay partners remains. Of course, the situation in the United States is not nearly as bad as the treatment of homosexu-

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als in other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Uganda and Iran, where sodomy can be punishable by death (see sidebar on page 23). But in the United States and around the world, there are still plenty of people who believe homosexuality is an abomination against God. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Those so-called fundamental Christians say things that Jesus would have never said,â&#x20AC;? Hormel pointed out, with an emphasis on â&#x20AC;&#x153;never.â&#x20AC;? But Hormel is optimistic and believes intolerance toward the LGBT community in the United States will fade out over time, especially now that DADT has been repealed and many courts are planning to consider whether bans on gay marriage are constitutional. Education, he says, including books like â&#x20AC;&#x153;Fit to Serve,â&#x20AC;? makes all the difference. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Equality can only come from acceptance, and acceptance can only happen when people know who we are.â&#x20AC;?

Rachael Bade is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat. PHOTO: SKYHORSE PUBLISHING

January 2012

The Washington Diplomat Page 63

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January 2012