Walker Elliott Rowe's Blog, page 7

Questions Arise After Lawsuit by Chilean President Challenges Freedom of the Press

by Alana Gale

photo “The President of Chile, Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria” by Alex Proimos

3rd June 2016. Santiago, Chile. This Tuesday, President Bachelet filed a defamation lawsuit against the magazine Que Pasa. She said what the magazine wrote about a political scandal involving her daughter-in-law was libel and slander.

Caso Caval: The Case Against Bachelet’s Daughter-In-Law

Natalie Compagnon, the president’s daughter-in-law, went to court in late January of this year for the Caso Caval scandal. Compagnon owns 50% of a company called Exportadora y de Gestión Caval Limitada. The company was accused of corruption because its members, in addition to being accused of tax fraud, received a loan to buy and flip industrial property at a huge profit.

In February of 2015, the magazine Que Pasa published an article exposing Compagnon’s involvement in the scandal. The article also claimed that her husband, Bachelet’s eldest son, played a part in the corruption.

The scandal impacted the president’s popularity immediately. Her approval rating fell by 20 points at the end of 2015. BBC Mundo said that the negotiation of millions by Compognon’s company contradicts Bachelet’s insistence that Chile needs to fight against inequality.

Then, on May 26th, Que Pasa wrote another article that revealed a telephone recording of the leader of the scandal, Juan Díaz, claiming that the profits would also benefit President Bachelet herself. It was this article that spurred Bachelet to action.

The Lawsuit Against Que Pasa

In response, Bachelet filed the defamation lawsuit. She said that she was using her right to defend herself from lies and injuries that affected her honor. She added that she could not allow people to invent falsehoods against her person.

Although Bachelet says she still supports freedom of the press, Que Pasa argues that she is limiting their liberty of expression. They explained that they only reproduced what was said by someone involved directly in the scandal. Moreover, the information was not secret—it was accessible to the public and was obtained legally by the journalists.

Additionally, the College of Journalism press release pointed out that the government “must understand that representatives of the government are permanently more likely to be scrutinized and matters related to their personal and public lives can be discussed in the media because of their connection to the public interest.”

Jose Miguel Vicanco, from Human Rights Watch, also asserted, “That a chief of state files criminal charges is not consistent with international standards with regards to liberty of expression.”

Freedom of the Press in Chile

Right now, the World Press Freedom Index by Reporters without Borders ranks Chile at 31 out of 180 countries. This ranking is based on evaluation of factors such as pluralism, media independence, media environment and self-censorship, among others.

Likewise, the Freedom of the Press 2016 Report for Chile by the Freedom House classifies Chile as “free.”

But this lawsuit by Bachelet could hurt Chile’s world standing with respect to freedom of the press with those annual ratings.

Guy Toussaint

by

Guy Toussaint

photo “Desert” by Moyan Brenn under Creative Commons License

“Guy Toussaint: Deviant Art & The Poetry of Murder,” Alexander Milton’s unfinished dissertation in service of his PhD candidacy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, was unfinished precisely because he disappeared, presumably in the Sahara, in 1973. It was in that year Mr. Milton traveled to Morocco to complete the research for the unfinished book, the only known piece of scholarship (realized or no) devoted exclusively to Guy Toussaint and his peculiar brand of poetry (evidence of which is scant). [Some few chapters appear in other scholarly works of the time but rely more on characters peripheral to Mr. Toussaint including, but not limited to: Cunt: The New Poetics of the Belgian Underground; The O.F.F.A.L. Manifesto; and Feverish: The Don Brook Story.] When Mr. Milton had not contacted his parents, Joe and Edna Milton, for some many months after his return was due, they contacted the consulate in Tangier whereby a search for the missing scholar was quickly enacted. An assiduous consular officer traced Mr. Milton’s vertiginous path to Bou Arfa, a northeastern gateway to the Sahara. The assiduous officer, through much diligent effort, was able to discover Mr. Milton had hired a guide and a camel for a journey into the great desert, though he never took his journey despite leaving a full deposit—much to the guide’s pleasure. The guide assured the assiduous officer that if any horseplay had been involved, he had had no knowledge or part in such—there the trail went cold. Near given up on the forlorn Mr. Milton, it was only by happenstance that the assiduous officer discovered a key left by the missing man in the hotel bar one evening while he (the assiduous officer) was having a cocktail after a long day chasing ghosts of Mr. Milton. A particularly handsome barback caught the assiduous officer’s eye, words and pleasantries were exchanged and a key of questionable utility was thrust into assiduous officer’s palm—the handsome barback seemingly having confused the missing Mr. Milton for the assiduous officer, noting the relative rarity, in 1973, of white men in Bou Arfa. (Now more common, they are known colloquially as raz-ah-bil-cous—whose rough translation, while losing something of the native flair, approximates the English phrase “doe-eyed faggot.”) After some inspection, the key was related to a locker in the bus station, the contents of which—a pair of loafers, a toiletry kit and an audiotape partially destroyed by a viscous substance of unknown origin—are the last known evidence of Mr. Milton’s, and perhaps Guy Toussaint’s, existence. Due to Mr. Milton’s secondhand equipment and technical ineptidtude—he was a graduate student after all—his portion of the exchange is wholy inaudible, and likely was even before the damage of vicsera and sand. It seems appropriate in any event, the recordings having assumed Mr. Milton’s fate; the only ghosts allowed to speak here are Mr. Toussaint’s.

In the interest of immortality, we reproduce the recoverable portions of the audiotape in there entirety.

—the Editors.

Guy Toussaint, eh, where to begin? In the beguine, no? Ha ha, joke of course. Let me think one moment, yes, I remember, I meet him is originally in sixty-six, sixty-seven maybe. March? April? It is in the spring. Parlez vous Francais? No? This is shame, no matter, I need to have practice my English. Okay, I continue. I am making letters in the café to send to my family in Honduras. I drink cappuccino and eat brioche, it is beautiful morning, there is much sun and birds is making delightful noise outside. My pen is making on the paper in the ways to happen when to family I am writing. I tell of weather and how wonderful is here. I say nothing. It is true that my mother think I am in Espana not Maroc at all. You understand? She think her boy is find success in Barcelona. I do not tell my mother that have no money or no work and that sleep under bridge last night, but I have fountain pen and expensive kind paper to steal from the shop when boy not looking. This to make pretend of her son’s success far away from Honduras. It is struggle for me and my family to come here and I not want to make my mother feel is no good. Her efforts is nothing. My mother she live in shack above shop where she sell Fanta and sandwich to tourists and workers and her boy in Espana is big important to our family and even to neighbors so I must make appearance that I do okay. When I leave home I go to La Ceiba where I catch freighter for Rabat. Through Fés to Tangier where I am here, where we both are here. You understand? You like another? Tea maybe? No? Okay. I continue. La Ceiba is very dangerous place, many bad person who like take advantages of boy like me. I am sixteen at time. But is okay and I survive and sneak on freighter. When to catch me, I make passage by scrub, yes? Scrub is right, no? Very good! I scrub dishes and help cook. My mother, she is good cook and teach me many things how to cook. Most crew of ship—her name is el Corazon—they is to like Honduran food, they from Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, so they like food I to make. The ship cook, he come with captain who from Serbia, so they like my cook more than what cook make. This is why survive and they no throw me off ship, so I live. It is happy time. I like to cook for the men and the weather is very nice and the ocean is very beautiful. I never see anything like it Honduras where there is no place to go where I can see nothing but water everywhere surrounding……nighttime take what I have is nothing but small things from my family and I leave ship. When my feet touch, what you call this, where boats live? No, this is not what I thinking. Um, is duck? Okay. Yes, I on dock run very fast to can get away from ship will see me and tell I run away. I run until my chest there is painful and I never look back until that I am in city and everything quiet. This when I realize for first time I speak no language they speak! I not even know what language is they speak! Is difficult, no? I was young boy from San Pedro Sula and the stars above is not even the same! Is crazy!…….What? Yes, yes, I know Guy Toussaint, I tell you this. What? You know I know him, why you ask? What? Okay, okay. No problem, no problem. This how I get Tangier. I meet Guy Tangier. What to say for Guy? He most beautiful man I know. Not in way he pretty or have face like woman or something, yes? I don’t know how to say, he is like sculpture with his bones outside his face. His clothes always very nice. He has good tailor. We to same tailor for many years. He is very nice man. Has shop nearby. I can show you you like, yes? He make wonderful suit for very low price. Yes? Okay, but not to blame me later, eh? Okay, okay, yes. I talk of Guy. His face I was talking of. He has nose like knife. Like, eh, the scimitar? Yes, the curve knife tourist buy in shop from street merchant in market in Fés, or is possible down by dock, see I remember, here. You go to Fés? No? Oh, it very nice place. You should visit before you leave Maroc. There is restaurant I will tell you of. You go there and say to man that Tito send you and he give you best meal in North Africa I promise you…(audio ends)

—Antonio Ortiz “Tito” Cruz

…borrowed iodine from old woman to paint new cuts on hands and feet…

—Unknown Fragment

…foolishness? It’s all nonsense Mr. Milton, let me assure you. Oh I do not doubt there were indiscretions, but I find it very hard to believe that Guy engaged in any behavior that would qualify as criminal. Things are quite different here in the Maghreb, Mr. Milton, as you no doubt shall discover. This misunderstanding is the product of silly officious twits who involve themselves in matters they could not hope to understand. Guy was entirely separate from their limited experience, of this I can assure you. He was an artist for God’s sake! You speak of them as if they approached his station. Fiddlesticks! Guy was Hermes walking these lonesome sands. It has been my experience that such parochial understanding is a problem of your people if you don’t mind me saying so. Oh yes, I have met some lovely Americans, but why must you be such a ‘Baab, from Oomaahaa.’ No don’t misunderstand me, I approve of your project, I just don’t want my friend’s name sullied. Quite simply, there was nothing to it. The matter has far outgrown its interest. Why force the boy off? Guy was happy here, or happy enough. As happy as any of us can be. Why then did he do what? Those are still mere accusations. I have heard of no verifiable proof to back them. Oh yes? Please enlighten me. Nonsense. No. His business was his own, as it is with any man of Guy’s stature and experience. What circles he traveled in when not in my presence are of no concern to me. Such connexions are truly the province of an American. Certainly Guy was familiar with women, as I’m sure you’ve discovered, not everyone in Tangier is a queer. Only most of us! Forgive my joke, it’s just so, well, true. No, I don’t think so, perhaps he diddled a lad or two in his day, how could I keep abreast of such things? Surely you can allow a man his peccadilloes besides. The truth of it, I am sad to say, is that it wasn’t as if we were even that close. I don’t think he was terribly fond of anyone. Guy was a difficult man to understand in relation to oneself, in the sense that he had no needs, if you understand my meaning. He was self-contained, not aloof or, to use your silly term, introverted, but as in the aesthetics of the matter. He was a hermetically sealed being, quite marvelous really. I certainly enjoyed the sight of him, he was a very handsome man. Hmm? As I said on the telephone, I met him at party thrown by the cultural attaché, a terrible bore really, but it is pleasant to exchange in the mundane from time to time with others of the same hue. Certainly not! Why else would I have stayed in this blasted desert for so long? I often dream of my gray Hampshire, but then I awake with a new friend by my side and the dream is as quickly forgotten. Indeed. Then ask your question! I was introduced by, well, I don’t remember. Perhaps Albert Patterson, one of your countryman. Albert is Albert, his wife the more engaging of the couple I must say. Oh yes, I think Guy would agree with that assessment. She would be the one to ask about his poetry, my literary loves are confined to the theatric, poets are a tiresomely sincere bunch. No, he was not, I said poets. While Guy may have scribbled the occasional line, I would not consider him a poet, so to speak. Not in the traditional sense at least. Artist? Yes. In the manner of Shiva. We engaged in drink and palaver, occasionally dined in each other’s company. Suliman knew him better than I, you should speak with him. Suliman ibn Aziz. You plan to? Well good then, perhaps we are done. What more do you want? No, I most decidedly…

—Lawley Tippendale

…dark hair protected a pale earnest face……vaguely to the square. She looked through him and he scratched the bandage on his face. The waiter approached and she ordered, relaxing into the wine he set beside her, she sighed through her nose. He slipped a sliver of the raw meat into his mouth……foreign….… picked a hair from his eye……unswept walkway led to hard seats with threadbare cushions exposing sharp stretches of metal crossbar……tetnus and pushed his hand into the corner of the metal till it began to bleed. A clock bounced at the head of the bus, above the driver, tied in place with twine. It read…(audio ends)

—noted as D. (?)

…a most splendid man. Yes, absolutely Guy and I met at a party thrown by Alfie and Margo, yes, the Pattersons. Lovely couple, have you met? Oh, wonderful people I assure you. You plan to? Oh, good, good good. Double good! Yes, we met at the Patterson’s, a lovely man, and so attractive! I hear he was very talented, I am a bit of a philistine when it comes to poetry. I saw him on occaision, the regular circuit of parties, the Patterson’s, with Suliman about town. Yes, Suliman ibn Aziz. What a pleasant thing of you to say. Thank you. Yes, as a matter of fact he is my cousin. They were quite close. Oh, yes, you know men, always off playing their little games…

—Ismae bin Hatoumi

…acquaintance of my husband, Albert Patterson. No……with men like Guy. I don’t really know, ask Albert if you like, he could probably smell the viscera on him. Men do that, don’t they? Smell each other like rutting bucks? I think so, I’ve seen it. You see a lot of that here. Because of Albert, of course. He likes it here. The atmosphere is fruitful for his compositions. I put aside my own ambitions long ago. Don’t look at me like that. You have no conception of our relationship. Don’t misunderstand me, I care so little of your opinion, I’m sure. Albert and I met at a party at the Corcoran Gallery. Yes, in Washington. It was his exhibition. My first novel had just been published, he had read it, we talked. Two months later we were married. I’m sure my parents……through Europe, we lived in Venice, Nice, now we live here. Ten years. What this has to do with Guy I can’t begin to fathom. No, I haven’t read his work. Privacy wasn’t the issue, I don’t know if he ever wrote anything down. His was not a conventional method, but yes, I suppose I am somewhat familiar with it. Once or twice we discussed Albert’s paintings, Guy didn’t much care for them, but appreciated, what did he say? there, ‘hidden moments,’ yes, that’s what he said. I thought it was curious. Albert was not pleased when I told him, I don’t know why, it was a fine thing to say. He can be so odd……stories. We’ve all heard the stories. Why would it trouble me? I wasn’t afraid……mad, mad world…

—Margaret Patterson

…no longer feel…….disappeared, all of me, as if into an infinite abyss. Everything has fallen away, my name, my country, my profession, my mask, my mission, all is gone and without meaning, down the long dark hole with no end. I see now what you do, its ineffability……fool I was to think I could have understood, translated somehow. The star above are part of it all aren’t they? The distance between them like the distance between the cells of my body. Part of this I feel inside what used to be me, what used to move me, now forever away and yet of the same cloth, the vast tapestry. It is all dead now. I have found ……

—Unknown Fragment

…Twillbeen. Twillbean was the first and not the last, she her face like Hejira, spread like crucified hawk in sun……crimson……(audio ends)

—Unknown Fragment

Guy Toussaint, he belonged here. It is rare for me to say of a foreigner, particularly of a French. I first saw him in the souk, drinking coffee and nibbling pistachios. Excuse my English, Guy did not nibble, he took each nut carefully, not as a plurality, removed it’s shell and placed it in his mouth whereby he commandeered it’s very essence, yet in a manner certainly the pistachio, were it apt, would willingly submit. Such devotion. Yes, as I said, I saw him in a café in the market and I watched him for a moment, not having seen the man previous. And he was very handsome, have you seen pictures? Such a powerful nose he had, like the desert hawk. I watched him for some time and, once certain I was not mistaken of his character, I introduced myself. Yes, not often mind you, but my role sometimes necessitates such interactions. Excuse me? Why yes, I do so often. We are a hospitable people Mr. Milton. Perhaps it is not so in, where are you from? Ann Arbor? This is? I have traveled to New York only, though on more than one occasion. I am certain yours is a delightful country, but as is mine. I am quite content. Of Guy? You’re being sincere? Yes, I am aware that you wish to understand Guy, but such matters are private ones. Given the circumstance, however, for your edification, the answer is no. May I continue? Yes, thank you. I introduced myself and in the following months we saw each other with some regularity. Mr. Tippendale, yes, Lawley too was there on occasion. I associate with many of the expatriate community. I did my schooling at the Sorbonne, you see. I have some experience traveling in those channels, though I must say I prefer being in my home waters so to speak, while the others I swim with are the new fish, heh, heh. It’s a little joke, of course. But as I said, I found Guy to be a man who belonged in the Maghreb. As the bedu would say, it is as if he has looked into the desert night and seen his death in the stars. Only such a man can ever truly belong among the Arabs. What did he do? For a profession you mean? I do not know, such things are not so important are they? It is said that he wrote poetry, or perhaps painted watercolours, but I do not know if this is accurate or just a fancy of the chattering class of ladies one finds in Tangiers. For my part I never read any of his work. I was not interested. I have no need to write books on his accomplishments. He was my friend and that is quite enough. We walked. We talked. What friends do I suppose. Have you any friends Mr. Milton? The same then. Or perhaps not. No matter. Carry on with your questions. Yes, I am certain he had many mistresses, but our time together was private from such worldly concerns. It was a time for men to speak in confidence. Perhaps it is different in Ann Arbor, but among my friends, the discussion of such conquests would be considered ill-mannered, not to mention unnecessary. To once again assuage your rather prurient curiosities, I would suppose Guy to have been a harsh, if capable, lover. Yes, I do speak of him in the past tense, perfect progressive, no? I am not certain either, hence I ask a native speaker. Well never mind, it is of no importance. I do not think he is dead, if that is what you are asking. No, I do not imagine I will. Of course we were close, but what is it you must think of Guy, that he is a pigeon……will meet again……(audio ends)

—Suliman ibn Aziz

Dimlik buggery…dizlik…buggery…buggery…bugger…bugge…bbbbaa…

—Unknown Fragment

For the last several years, Erik Wennermark has been living and writing throughout Asia; he recently relocated from Hong Kong to Tokyo. His work is available in Guernica, Talking Book, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @erikwmark.

Drought Continuous in Chile, Heat Increases

By Alana Gale

photo “Embalse” by Christian Córdova under Creative Commons License

27 May 2016. Santiago, Chile. Last week we wrote an article focusing on how El Niño controls weather patterns in Chile. This week, we take a look at how increased heat—which may be an effect of El Niño—is influencing the lives of the Chilean people.

A small weather data sample has shown that this autumn and this spring in Chile have been hotter than previous years. For instance, was 1°C warmer than . Likewise, the average mean temperature was 2°C higher than .

So what are the consequences of these rising temperatures for Chile?

The “Mega-drought”

Despite the fact that El Niño brings more rainfall to some areas in Chile, there are still many regions not getting enough rain. In fact, twelve of the 22 weather stations for the Chilean Management of Meteorology reported a deficit in precipitation.

This has led to the longest and most extensive drought in Chilean history. And the hotter weather is only making the drought worse.

The drought, which has been called the “megasequía” in Spanish (“mega-drought”), has gone on in some zones for over six years. It also covers seven regions of the country, stretching from Coquimbo to La Araucanía.

The continuation of the drought is especially unfortunate for farmers. The president of the National Agricultural Society told El Mercurio that farmers depend on rain, and when it doesn’t rain for 30 or 40 days, the crops are in danger. He added that the damage to potatoes, wheat, oats, and barley has been irreversible.

In fact, some farmers in Coquimbo and Ovalle have even abandoned their farms because of the drought. They moved to the city to find jobs there, instead.

The Higher Risk of Forest Fires

Another consequence of the drought is a bigger threat of forest fires. The region of Araucania has been in a drought for several years. So there is a higher chance that forest fires will occur in three of Chile’s national parks: China Muerta National Reserve, Nalca Lolco National Reserve, and Conguillio National Park.

Last year President Bachelet issued a national alert because of these fires. She said that she would invest millions of dollars to improve access to underground water and to build more plants to filter water so that it is drinkable. But the drought continues.

Chile’s Depleting Water Reservoirs

Also related to the drought is the decreasing amount of water in Chile’s reservoirs. According to the General Management of Water in Chile, the reservoirs in Chile are only filled to 35% of their capacity.

Although the region of Coquimbo has more water in the reservoirs than it did last year, other regions, like Puclaro, Cogotí, La Paloma and Recoleta are still filled to less than half of their full capacity. And these are the biggest regions in the country.

The main reservoir for the region Biobío is Lake Laja, and it has a 66.8% deficit. José Luis Arumí, a hydrologist at the University of Concepción, said that the reservoir would need twenty years to refill.

But it has little chance of refilling if La Niña strikes. We noted last week that if La Niña comes, the drought might intensify further.

Journalism Internships in Santigo, Chile

At Southern Pacific Review we welcome interns to write news and do reporting about events in Chile.  This is an unpaid position. It fills school requirements for an internship abroad and helps college graduates who are trying to break into journalism gain experience.

The Death of Print Journalism

We know that the journalism business is turned upside down now.  The major sites for news today are Facebook and Google.  But those, your journalism professor would say, are not news sites.

The for-profit news business is almost dead because Facebook and Google have take almost all the advertising revenue and few people read print publications.  That’s why so many print and online news and general interest sites have gone out of business or get by on donations.  Even those remaining sites that have tried to expand to stem the hemorrhage of ad dollars, like The Guardian, have had to retrench and lay off. Some cities in the USA do not even have a local newspaper anymore. Or what they have is a shell of their former self.

How to Start you Career as a Journalist

So, if you are looking to make a career in journalism you need to forget about The Washington Post and consider finding some niche to differentiate yourself among the huge pile of resumes.  Specialize. Reuters is hiring, as the new news model for The Washington Post and others is to pay wire services like that for articles instead of staffing their own overseas or even domestic news bureaus.

The other niche that will never go away is something like writing for industry publications, like oil and gas and, of course, computers. Computer journalism is difficult to break into because there are too many people interested in that.  But there are hundreds of other fields, like mining, shipping, or salmon fish farming, all of which you could experience first hand in Chile. That might not sound glamorous, but writing about topics like that pays the bills and will become interesting to you as you do it. The other option is to write for a PR firm.

But to get in the door at any of these places you need experience.

Writing and Journalism Internships in Santiago, Chile  

We are the only English language publication left in business in Chile that devotes itself to writing news about Chile.  There are others devoted to, for example, fly fishing. The reason for that is we are non-profit and even non-revenue.  We don’t even accept Google ads.  It’s just not viable to be in the news business in that way anymore.  So we do it for fun.

Work From Anywhere

We need interns to pour over the Chilean news and write summaries for us.  We only need one or two interns at a time, as we publish only a couple of articles per week, preferring quality over quantity.

We need news articles on Chile.  If you have a flair for writing and write well then you could go beyond that and write essays, such as write about your travels here, or weigh in on culture issues.  It all depends on your skill, your devotion, and your way with words.

Stay with us for 3 months or stay for a year.  Work from overseas if you want and live anywhere in Chile you want.  We all work remotely.  So there’s no need decamp to and live in the polluted crowded city of Santiago when you could live, say, in Patagonia, the desert, or the beach. Network with others and make friends.

We only need 10-20 hours of your time per week, or less.  So you can gain experience that you need for your school internship requirement or job prospects, yet not have to work a full-time job.

What do Interns Do?

You need to be able to read Spanish and write English well.  You do not need to be able to speak it, as you would not understand the Chilean dialect anyway, at least at first. You should be a reader, as only people who read write well.

What you will do initially is write summaries of the Spanish language news. That means read the newspapers here, online or in print, and write summaries of their articles, and watch TV news.  Fill out the details with information you research with Google using Spanish or English sources.  Write 500-800 word pieces. Publish one article per week, two if you feel ambitious.

To do more in-depth writing, it would take you some months to get familiar with national and local issues to write about those.  So you could not do any original reporting or analysis at first.  But stick with us a while—leave when you want to—and you could do that. We will teach you.

So get in touch.  Write to our publisher.  That would be me:  werowe@walkerrowe.com.

Walker Rowe,

Publisher

Internships in Chile

At Southern Pacific Review we welcome interns to write news and do reporting about events in Chile.  This is an unpaid position. It fills school requirements for an internship abroad and helps college graduates who are trying to break into journalism gain experience.

The Death of Print Journalism

We know that the journalism business is turned upside down now.  The major sites for news today are Facebook and Google.  But those, your journalism professor would say, are not news sites.

The for-profit news business is almost dead because Facebook and Google have take almost all the advertising revenue and few people read print publications.  That’s why so many print and online news and general interest sites have gone out of business or get by on donations.  Even those remaining sites that have tried to expand to stem the hemorrhage of ad dollars, like The Guardian, have had to retrench and lay off. Some cities in the USA do not even have a local newspaper anymore. Or what they have is a shell of their former self.

How to Start you Career as a Journalist

So, if you are looking to make a career in journalism you need to forget about The Washington Post and consider finding some niche to differentiate yourself among the huge pile of resumes.  Specialize. Reuters is hiring, as the new news model for The Washington Post and others is to pay wire services like that for articles instead of staffing their own overseas or even domestic news bureaus.

The other niche that will never go away is something like writing for industry publications, like oil and gas and, of course, computers. Computer journalism is difficult to break into because there are too many people interested in that.  But there are hundreds of other fields, like mining, shipping, or salmon fish farming, all of which you could experience first hand in Chile. That might not sound glamorous, but writing about topics like that pays the bills and will become interesting to you as you do it. The other option is to write for a PR firm.

But to get in the door at any of these places you need experience.

Internships with Southern Pacific Review  

We are the only English language publication left in business in Chile that devotes itself to writing news about Chile.  There are others devoted to, for example, fly fishing. The reason for that is we are non-profit and even non-revenue.  We don’t even accept Google ads.  It’s just not viable to be in the news business in that way anymore.  So we do it for fun.

Work From Anywhere

We need interns to pour over the Chilean news and write summaries for us.  We only need one or two interns at a time, as we publish only a couple of articles per week, preferring quality over quantity.

We need news articles on Chile.  If you have a flair for writing and write well then you could go beyond that and write essays, such as write about your travels here, or weigh in on culture issues.  It all depends on your skill, your devotion, and your way with words.

Stay with us for 3 months or stay for a year.  Work from overseas if you want and live anywhere in Chile you want.  We all work remotely.  So there’s no need decamp to and live in the polluted crowded city of Santiago when you could live, say, in Patagonia, the desert, or the beach. Network with others and make friends.

We only need 10-20 hours of your time per week, or less.  So you can gain experience that you need for your school internship requirement or job prospects, yet not have to work a full-time job.

What do Interns Do?

You need to be able to read Spanish and write English well.  You do not need to be able to speak it, as you would not understand the Chilean dialect anyway, at least at first. You should be a reader, as only people who read write well.

What you will do initially is write summaries of the Spanish language news. That means read the newspapers here, online or in print, and write summaries of their articles, and watch TV news.  Fill out the details with information you research with Google using Spanish or English sources.  Write 500-800 word pieces. Publish one article per week, two if you feel ambitious.

To do more in-depth writing, it would take you some months to get familiar with national and local issues to write about those.  So you could not do any original reporting or analysis at first.  But stick with us a while—leave when you want to—and you could do that. We will teach you.

So get in touch.  Write to our publisher.  That would be me:  werowe@walkerrowe.com.

Walker Rowe,

Publisher

El Niño in Chile

by Alana Gale

photo “Drought” by Javier Carabelli

 19 May 2016. Santiago, Chile. For the Chilean people, El Niño is more than just a familiar concept. It’s occurring right now, and it actually has a big impact on the country’s weather cycle.

  What is El Niño?

El Niño itself is the name for one phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle (ENSO). The cycle refers to fluctuations in the temperatures of the Pacific Ocean, right along the equator.

El Niño is the warm phase. During this phase, water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean are unusually high, as much as 7 degrees Fahrenheit above average. The cold phase is called La Niña. So the water temperatures during La Niña are lower than normal. El Niño happens more often than La Niña.

Normally, each phase lasts nine to twelve months. On average, they are only supposed to occur every two to seven years.

But recently, these weather phenomena, particularly El Niño, have been especially strong. CNN reported that the El Niño weather event in 2015 was one of the three strongest ever recorded. This is very important for Chile, because El Niño can largely impact the weather in South America.

  El Niño’s Connection with the Weather in Chile

One effect for Chile of El Niño is a raise in temperatures, said climatologist Roberto Rondanelli to Bio Bio Chile. Rondanelli is an investigator at the Weather and Climate Resilience Center. Back in September 2015, he predicted that those last months of 2015 would be hotter than usual because of El Niño, especially in the central zone of Chile. And later reports confirmed it, with 2015 the hottest year on record since 1880.

El Niño can also cause another major change in weather patterns: increased precipitation. From Region III to Region VII of Chile, there can be a greater total amount of rainfall, or more intense rain. But why?

The atmospheric circulation in Chile, which is what influences the weather patterns of the country, is defined by two factors.

The first is called the South Pacific subtropical anticyclone. This is a circulation of winds in a region of high atmospheric pressure. It contributes to the usual weather in the north and center of Chile.

The second is the Subpolar Low-Pressure Belt, a region of very low pressure normally situated between 45° and 55° South latitude. The belt moves to lower latitudes during the winter, causing the development of frontal weather systems between La Serena and Concepción in Chile.

With El Niño around, the South Pacific subtropical anticyclone weakens, which decreases its effects on the central and northern parts of the country. This means that frontal systems coming from the west can move more easily to these places. So these areas have more frontal cloud bands, which in turn generate a greater amount of rainfall.

This rainfall is often a welcome sight for many areas of central Chile, where there are frequent droughts.

This does not include the northern desert. It hardly rains at all in Atacama, the world’s driest desert.  The average rainfall in Iquique, for example, is almost zero, 0.03 inches.

Yet the bottom of the desert gets rain, at least on rare occasions.  Last year there were devastating floods.  Some of the children living in that region had never seen rain.  We wrote about that here.

It is this region from the bottom of the Atacama Desert south toward Santiago where there is some agriculture, at least wine and table grapes along the river valleys, where rain and moreover mountain snow is needed and is expected, at least a little to keep farming going.

Unfortunately, what follows El Niño could actually make things worse for that area and central Chile. In the area around Santiago, rainfall is just above the definition of a desert.  In other words, it rains in central Chile about the same as Los Angeles, California.

The Aftermath of El Niño

Climate experts, who met at the International Meteorological and Oceanographic Conference of the Southern Hemisphere in October, discussed what would happen after El Niño.

The experts thought it was likely that La Niña would follow. And just four days ago, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published an article saying that there were signs La Niña might develop.

Because La Niña is the opposite phase of El Niño, the weather during La Niña is usually opposite, too. It is typically cooler and drier in Chile during La Niña.

If La Niña returned, the droughts already taking place in dry zones of Chile would probably continue, or even intensify, say the climate experts.

So El Niño and El Niña play a big part in the weather in Chile.

The State of Indians in Chile and the Americas

by

Walker Rowe

Map From The Language Gulper.

Thumbnail graphic from Famous Crying Indian Commercial in the 1970’s.

I am in a unique perspective to reflect upon the condition of the Indian here in Chile and all of Latin America.  This is because I was born and grew up in South Carolina, where there were many wars between the English settlers and Indians, and now live in Chile, which is a culture of mestizo, i.e. Indo-European people, and also the site of a continuing Indian rebellion.

I want to tell you briefly what is the situation of Indian cultures in Latin America versus that of Anglo-Saxon America.  You might be surprised to hear that the Indian peoples who were pushed from their homes by British and French settlers today are in many ways better off that those here in Latin America.  They have their own lands today.  Their cultures were not erased as they were for many Indians in the rest of the Americas.

The Mestizo Race of Peoples

But first a little background.

There is a fundamental difference between how the French and English people who settled Canada and the United State treated their Indian populations and the Spanish who took Latin America.  There is no way to couch this in euphemism. We have to be blunt here and say that the Spanish Conquistadors raped, married, and took the Indian women as wives, mistresses, and concubines.  The English and French did not. Instead, they butchered them, along with the men, children, and aged.

You can literally see this history written on the face of the brown-skinned people here in Latin America.  That clash of civilizations produced the race of people we now call Mestizo.

Here in Chile, for example, there are basically two kinds of people: those of Indian descent and those who are of European descent.  The whitest people here sit at the top of the social hierarchy.  You can see that when you look at who owns the businesses here and all those white faces on television and in the magazine ads.  These are the people whose parents and grandparents immigrated here from Europe.  Their last names are German, French, English, Italian, and of course Spanish.

Contrast that with people whose skin is darker and hair jet black.  These people are either pure Indians or of mixed ancestry.  These people will usually have Spanish surnames or even Indian ones if they comes from an Indian culture that survives today, like the Mapuches of Chile.

Skin and hair color for the most part defines where people are here in the social classes.  Take a look at who runs the banks, cell phone companies, and grocery store chains in Latin America.  With the exception of Mexico, which is a culture of almost entirely Mestizo people, you will not find many dark skinned people having those positions. Central America too is a little bit more like Mexico.

Among Latin American countries, there is more European blood among the Chilean and Argentine people than other countries.  That is a direct result of immigration.  In Argentina so many Italians came there that their version of Spanish sounds Italian. In Chile the immigrants are more mixed.  For example Chile’s richest man is of Slovenian descent.

What Color is your Rainbow?

Now, there is good news with regards to political power if you are of Indian descent, which is that Indians have come to political power in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.  That is just, as they are the majority populations there. That hold on political power is not the case in Colombia, Chile, Paraguay, Argentina, or Uruguay.  Chile’s president, for example, has French grandparents.

Consider an example, the president of Bolivia is an Aymara Indian. There are millions of people living in that wide swath of region from Peru through Bolivia who consider themselves Aymara, Inca, Atacama, Diaguita, or of other Indian race.  Those cultures have survived as well as their languages, at least in the case of the Inca and Aymara.  Millions of people speak those languages.  That is also the case of Mapuche Indians in Chile, who live several thousand miles south of those high desert people of Peru and Bolivia. Take a look at the map at the top of this essay.  It shows where Indian languages are spoken today in South America.

Mexico is a different situation.  The people there are less European than, say, Argentina.  With the exception of certain communities, like Chiapas, Mexicans would not call themselves Indians.  The people of Mexico are descendants of the Mayan and Aztec Indians, whose culture has disappeared entirely.

Boots on the Ground

Now, what is fascinating to me, and I hope to you as well, is to consider the number one distinction between Indians and the USA and Canada and Latin America.  Indians in the USA and Canada have their own lands. In Latin America they do not.

The Mapuches here in Chile have literally been at war with European invaders for 500 years.  I wrote about that at length here.  They are fighting even today.  What they want is what Indians have in America and Canada, their own lands.

When the English came to America they fought frontier wars against many Indian nations. The French even allied themselves with the Iroquois and Cherokee people when they took on and lost a war to the British.  But for the most part it was settlers and then the British and finally American armies fighting the Sequoia Indians in Florida, the Cherokees in the Carolinas, the Navajo in New Mexico, and the Apaches in Arizona.  In addition there are hundreds of Indian cultures that exists and still exist in all of the USA, all the way from Connecticut to Washington.

When these people were defeated by European immigrants to America they were pushed onto reservations.  The best lands were taken from them and they were moved to some of the worst, such as the most barren parts of the Arizona desert. The Cherokees, for example, were pushed all the way from the mountains of Carolina to the plains and rolling hills of Oklahoma. Almost 1/2 of Arizona is Indian territory.

Here is a map of the larger Indian nations in America and where they are or were located. It is taken from the website of a school in Georgia.

The Indians in America were given dominion over their domains.  In other words they kept and still keep their own system of government.  They pay US taxes, but are often exempt from state taxes and state law.  The police in the states need the permission of the tribal police to enter the reservation.  Violate federal law and Indians go to American prison just like anyone else.

So while the Trail of Tears was a horrible ordeal, the Indian in America is better off with regards to real estate than the Indians in the rest of the Americas. They have their own lands.  Plus their cultures were not erased.  They kept their own language.  You can write documents in Microsoft Word using the Cherokee language today.  Turn on the radio in the deserts of New Mexico and you are liable to hear Navajo.

Here is the Cherokee alphabet:

There is one final point to make which is the situation on the American reservations is not exactly rosy.  There is high unemployment and alcoholism.  The reasons for that might be they are a defeated people.  Look at the YouTube video at the top of this essay.  It gives you some idea of how Indian and American cultures have clashed, leaving the Indian, in the case of that commercial, in tears.

I hope you have found some of this useful or interesting.  It’s not something I have seen anyone else write about before. I welcome your comments below.

 

Continuous Analytics Defined

Here we assign a name to and define a new methodology, Continuous Analytics.

Continuous Analytics is the extension of devops, Continuous Integration, and Continuous Delivery to big data development. It plugs data science and data engineering into the traditional software development model and Agile methodology where coding, testing, and deployment are all run as automated processes.

This software engineering approach lets big data teams release software in shortened cycles, which is the goal of Agile iterations. The data scientists store their code in Git together with the programmers who write APIs to connect to datasources.  The devops and big data engineers code scripts and playbooks in Ansible and Docker to lay down the big data software, networks, and storage, and spin up virtual machines.  Testing is automated and built into the process.

Adding Big Data Members to the Development Team

Big data developments adds people to the development team who have not traditionally been working there. Data scientists are mathematicians and statisticians who write code, but they usually work in isolation from the traditional development team of programmers, product managers, project managers, testers, and architects. Continuous Analytics brings them onboard with everyone else.

In particular we have these two distinct roles related to big data and analytics:

The big data analyst is trained in mathematical and statistical modeling and machine learning.  Before big data made technology it possible to apply analytics to large amounts of data to solve business problems, you typically found these scientists working on, for example, clinical trials at university hospitals. Now they have been made part of tactical business planning as they work with live business data and outside data feeds and report predictions and correlations that they find there to business managers.


The big data engineer is a platform specialist.  They are responsible for designing the big data architecture.  This includes architecting, configuring, and installing the big data tools:  Kafka, HBase, Spark, Hadoop and others.  They work with virtualization and network architects and programmers to write scripts to automate the installation of all of that in public and private clouds.

The Disjointed Big Data Development Process

Continuous analytics solves the main problem with how analytics is coded, which is it has been done without an overarching methodology, like devops and Agile, and no common set of tools.

In the siloed approach to big data development, the data analyst uploads a file or downloads a feed to do data exploration.  So they work independently from the data laid down by the big data engineer, who is installing Spark and configuring Kafka.  They are also one step removed from programmers who are working with Twitter APIs and writing code to retrieve data purchased from data brokers.  

Someone looking at this approach from above would question that. They would say It obviously makes more sense to work on the data in its final form up front.  This is made easier as various big data systems like Spark have interactive command line shells written in Scala, Python, and R, which are the programming languages the data scientists already use. With those shells the data scientist can build up their models in an interactive way. They select data from the Spark RDD, group it, filter it, make cross tables, and create visualizations in the sandbox mirror of live production data.

If they are not working with the rest of the team they are working on only a subset of the actual data. So they cannot see the complete results from their regression analysis or predictive model until that is pushed to production.  It is better to work on the complete data the first time around.

When integrated with the rest of the development team, data scientists do not have to modify their code to switch from spreadsheet .csv files to Hadoop, Spark, or Hive format. They keep their code in the same repository as the regular Java programmers and architects who are writing build-out scripts thus allowing it to be run against automated testing frameworks and release to the main code branch. Code repositories like Git would not support having two different production-ready versions of the code.

Analytics as Code

Continuous Analytics follows the same practice as devops, whose mantra is Infrastructure as Code. Continuous Analytics says Analytics as Code. That means everything is abstracted so that it can be pushed out in a continuous release fashion and deployed to any set of clusters at any time.  There are no clumsy, time consuming manual steps, as all of that is written as code.

The requirement that everyone on the development team write code is new to mathematicians, statisticians, and physicists.  But they quickly adapt to this model.  That both creates clean and reliable code and boosts cross-team communications. It also imposes standards across the team so that handoff from one person to another is not as difficult.

Breaking it Down into Steps

Here is how big data development progresses from data exploration to production build.  Here too is how all of that is made smoother with Continuous Analytics.

Data Exploration—this is where data scientists prototype their ideas against actual live data.  This tests their assumptions and yields insights that lead to new models and algorithms.

Development—data patterns and insights found in the discovery phase are transitioned to production-ready code with little to no refactoring.

Test—as algorithms and machine learning models are coded they are pushed through unit and integration tests to enable continuous integration into the master branch.

Deploy—the automatic push to production comes next.  At this stage, the techniques similar to Canary Releases—which release changes to a subset of the system rather than the whole—are applied.  Canary allows two or more instances of the model to exist at the same time. This also facilitates performing QA validations without impacting production users.

Monitor—checks performance and accuracy of the analytics models. For example, it runs checks to verify that, for example, the union of two sets of n tuples is 2n. It also looks to reduce the error statistic in regression and other analysis.  Monitoring gathers all of this and data on system health and performance and feeds that back into the development process, where changes are made and released back into production.

 

So Continuous Analytics takes the lessons learned from Agile development and devops and applies those to the big data development process.  This is logical and natural as writing statistical and modeling analytics code can be fit into the traditional coding process.  This imposes efficiencies and standards that shorten the release cycle and gets the output from analytics into the hands of business planners faster.

 

Who is to Blame for the Red Tide in Chile?

By

Walker Rowe

People dream of going to Patagonia to fly fish for salmon and trout in the cobalt blue streams ringed by snow-capped mountains and steaming volcanoes.

This area of glaciers and fjords is a good place to farm salmon too.  Now that industry is taking a blow again as the red tide has shut it and all other fishing down too in that region of Chile.

Red Tide Disaster

Red tide is an algae bloom that can make people sick and in rare cases is fatal.  And it kills fish, lots of them. It shuts down fishing in the area too as the health authorities say people should not eat fish coming from contaminated areas.  It is a phenomenon that can last for months.

The situation is not unique to Chile. In the USA algae blooms are common. There are entire areas off the coast of Louisiana where the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf of Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay where there are no fish at all. That is blamed on nitrogen due to the excess use of fertilizer.  Of course the Mississippi River drains the vast agricultural section of American known as The Corn Belt. Nitrogen spurs the growth of algae which snuff out all life as they consume all the oxygen in the water.

This is particularly bad news for Chile’s export salmon market.  Salmon is Chile’s second largest export. The fish are raised in giant offshore pens mainly off the island of Chiloé which sits at the northern end of Patagonia, next to the port city of Puerto Montt.

As we explain in this article, small fishermen there have seized roads across the island as they negotiate how much the government will pay them while they are out of work.  Tourists and salmon exports cannot leave.  Stores on the island are running out of food.  

Impact on the Salmon Fishing Industry

Chile exports 800 million tons of salmon each year worth over $3 billion USD. 98% of what is produced is destined for exports.

Felipe Sandoval of Salmon Chile told El Mercurio that because the protesters are blocking the roads it could cost the industry $9 million per day.

Part of the damage, he says, is damage to the brand too, when the fisheries cannot supply their customers for prolonged period of time.

This is the second problem this year.  An algae bloom killed fish back in March.  Then the salmon fishers dumped those fish into the water, which the fishermen protesting today say helped cause the new red tide problem.

These fishermen and some environmental groups blame the red tide on the salmon fish farming industry.  Others say it is global warming or El Niño. No one can say for sure. Even before there was a fish farming industry and even before there was global warming there were red tides.

But environmentalists are clear on their opinions.

Who is to Blame?

The protesters are asking as part of their demands that the government make a study as to the connection between the salmon fisheries and the red tide.

The Colegio de Biólogos Marinos de Chile told the University of Chile radio that the red tide is caused by global warming. A U. Chile marine biologist dismissed that group as being sponsored by the industry and said the problem is the fish farming operation dumps too much nitrogen and carbon in the water as they fatten up the salmon by feeding them ground up fish. He also says that the government has set rules that would regulate the industry so that not too many fish are farmed, but the government has never actually enforced that.

The Oceana organization said that the Chilean Salmon fisheries use 500 times the antibiotics as the Norwegians do.  

National Geographic and others say that the growth of fisheries has been explosive, prices are falling, and no thought is given to having a sustainable system.

Alex Muñoz, director of Latin America for Pristine Seas National Geographic said, “The most important question is not who caused the red tide, but there is an environmental problem much larger than just the coasts of Chiloé that is caused by the intensive industrial fishing in Chile that has contaminated this area for more than 25 years and whose consequences we are still feeling today.”

The Corruption Connection

The situation with industrial fish farming here in Chile is closely related to that of the commercial ocean fishing industry.  This relation shows their political clout.

91% of the fishing quota here was given to nine families in Chile in the 2012 law known as the Ley de Pesca (Fishing Law) or Ley Longueira.  It was passed after over-fishing caused the fishing stocks to collapse.  That law gave the vast majority of fishing quotas to industrial fisheries who operate large fleets of large boats.  Contrast that with the artisan fisher, or artesanal in Spanish, who are fishermen who go to sea in small open boats.  

These commercial fisheries fish mainly for sardines, jack mackerel, and anchovies, much of which is ground up to feed to salmon and cattle.  Since this law was passed, which was supposed to help protect depleted fishing stocks, the number of species declared endangered has gone from 2 to 8. This caused one comic to joke that, “There are more fish in the grocery store than the ocean.”

Now two things have surfaced. First, it has been alleged that one of these nine families paid bribes to Jaime Orpis, who was a senator on the committee that has jurisdiction over fishing.  He has been forced out of the senate and the UDI political party. And then Pablo Longueira, who was the minister who proposed the law that bears his name, has been charged in a bribery scandal related to SQM mining company.  Longueria was the conservative candidate for the last presidential election.

Because of this bribery scandal, the Communist Party introduced a measure to overturn the fishing law.  Even President Bachelet says the issue needs to be revisited.  

Some people ask: if there are not enough fish in the ocean, why are Chilean fishing companies grinding up fish to feed to other fish and cattle?  But recent articles have suggested that situation might correct itself as fish protein has surged in price thus making it too expensive for such luxuries as turning it into cattle food.  Cows, of course, are supposed to eat grass.

Red Tide Strikes Chile, Again

by Alana Gale

 photo “Pescados” by Tomás J. Sepúlveda

13 May 2016. Santiago, Chile. Over the past week, the red tide has dominated the news in Chile.

The Biggest Red Tide in History

A red tide, which gets its name because it can turn seawater red when it occurs, is an outbreak of algae, called a bloom. Because of the bloom’s toxic nature, it kills fish, plus it can make seafood dangerous for human consumption.

This is not the first time Chile has experienced a red tide. Scientists say this particular outbreak is unprecedented.

Regarding the tons of dead fish washing up along the shores of the Chilean coastline, a man interviewed on BBC news noted that he had never seen that many dead shellfish in his 44 year life.

The exact cause of the red tide is unclear. We discuss that in this article.

Whatever the cause, the impact of this red tide on Chile extends beyond the dead sea—the tide has paralyzed the fishing industry.

 On April 29, Chilean president Michelle Bachelet declared the four provinces in Los Lagos region as emergency zones. This means that people living there are forbidden from selling their seafood products.

Bachelet recognized that this would cause problems for the industry. She promised compensation of $100,000 Chilean pesos ($147.10 USD) to the fisherman because they cannot work.

  A Flood of Protests

But the fishermen were not satisfied and have seized roads in the area and taken to the streets to protest.

The leader of the Quellón Artisan Fishermen, Denisse Alvarado, told El Mostrador that no one can live on $100,000 pesos. His groups wants the compensation raised to $400,000 ($588.41).

The objections to the government’s offer intensified as the week progressed. On May 2 almost two thousand fishermen blocked the access routes leading to Chiloé Island.

The protest took place after the fishermen had met with the provincial governor of Los Lagos, Leonardo de La Prida. The fishermen told him that they wanted at least $300,000 Chilean pesos ($441.31 USD). De La Prida replied by saying that the compensation of $100,000 was only to start, and that the figure could be discussed again in the future.

That didn’t stop the fishermen from protesting. They barricaded the Chacao Channel to keep ships from transporting goods from Chiloé Island to mainland Chile.

In the province of Osorno, also in Los Lagos, another of the protests caused two accidents. One of the accidents led to the death of a person who couldn’t leave their vehicle, which had caught on fire.

Fishermen Reject Offer

To try and appease the fishermen, the Minister of the Economy Luis Felipe Céspedes announced on Monday that the government would give out initial compensation of $300,000 Chilean pesos. This would be followed by three more monthly installments of $150,000 ($220.65 USD). The financial support would go to 5,500 people affected by the red tide. Céspedes even said that they hoped to start distributing the money within the next couple of days.

And still the fishermen protested that it wasn’t enough. The same day, nearly ten thousand people marched peacefully in Puerto Montt to demand more money. At night, the protests turned aggressive. Special Forces were required to intervene after a number of riots on Monday night.

By the end of that night the situation had escalated further, after nearly 500 people confronted the national police, the carabineros. The incident resulted in the detention of of 23 people and five injured policemen.

Meanwhile, in far away Valparaiso, eight people were arrested for refusing to stop their own unauthorized protest.

The latest monetary demand of these protesters is an initial payment of $300,000 Chilean pesos, followed by five installments of the same amount. In reply, Céspedes said that the government still wanted to help the people affected by the tide, but that they couldn’t give into all of the fishermen’s wishes.