I worked near the area of Ayotzinapa almost thirty
years back. I was a very young doctor having fun, hunting on weekends, swimming
and playing basketball, moving between Huatulco and Acapulco; a few medical visits
were done on horse because of the rain and the roads; during the week a few
murders, arm robberies as well as kidnappings were known, I witnessed one murder
and waited for the police to pick the corpse up. This is the region where most of the African
Mexicans live since they escaped slavery; an invisible region for the majority
of Mexicans. I had good friends and
survived the experience working the year for the State to pay for my education
(Social Service). Nothing different from
what we saw thirty years back compared to today, except that more people are
involved (the population doubled from the 80’s), people are from different
races and places. As a consequence more
people are death. Most of our
Independence’s heroes come from that region (Guerrero is the state and means “warrior”). It was a beautiful experience in my 20’s but
it would be difficult to tolerate now.
For good or bad, I have walked a long way from that.
When I discussed similar issues with my professors,
the director of the Medical School at that time told me: “I reflected on what
you told me, woke up in the middle of the night, looked around, found everything
in the same place and went back to sleep.”
Every day and every night I think about what to do in order to help our
athletes to overcome culture.
Just as she was beginning, two busloads of students
from the notoriously radical rural teachers' college in nearby Ayotzinapa, who
had come to town to raise money to supplement their meager 50 peso daily
allowance, headed for Iguala's central square. According to the Federal
Attorney General's Office, the mayor ordered the local police chief to stop
them. After a minor clash with police the students "borrowed" three
buses from the local bus station to return to Ayotzinapa and later travel to
this year's march in Mexico City commemorating the October 2, 1968 massacre
in Tlatelolco, and were driving out of town when they were sprayed
with machine gun fire by police and gunmen from the Guerrero Unidos (United
Warriors) cartel.
Three
students died, as well as a soccer player in a bus bringing a third
division team to town that was also fired on, a taxi driver and his female
passenger. One student who panicked and ran off when his classmates were
rounded up by police and gang members was later found dead, his eyes gouged out
and face flensed with a box cutter, in an act of gratuitous violence. Forty-three students
were bundled into police cars and have disappeared.
We have spoken about the need of creating a culture in
order to overcome what we see and experience in our environment. It looks like it is a waste of time, but unfortunately
it is necessary if we want changes and results in any endeavor. It is not “kicking a death horse,” AA says
that an “alcoholic is alcoholic until he/she dies.” AA has been working with alcoholics on how to
create different habits for decades, and it has experience (they created a
culture to overcome alcoholism); alcoholics need to go to meetings regularly if
they want the benefits of the program. We
always have to come back to the basics, how to create the culture to achieve
our goals.
23 nov. 2013
A mother asked me about
schooling for her children because she placed them in a traditional system in
Mexico, and they used to go to an alternative school. I did not have a doubt to answer: “What do
you want for your kids? You should take
a decision for your kids based on what you want.” Reading material and human behavior are and
should be universal; it is called civilization. On the other hand, Education
should take priority while learning whatever is taught. Otherwise, we end up with too much schooling
and little education.
1) Sit down to do your work for at least 10 minutes if you are six years
old. Sit an hour to do your homework if
you are ten. This should be learned in
any system traditional or not.
2) Learn to practice what you learned at school and make excellence a
habit.
3) Wait for your turns.
4) Apologize for what you do against others and against the rules.
5) Thank somebody when he/she is helping you.
6) Do not harm people regardless if it is on purpose or not. My patients say regardless of being conscious
or unconscious; but defend yourself and others if somebody is behaving against
the rules. Rules are written and there are
consequences if we do not follow them.
Unfortunately, there are places where consequences do not exist at all
and people trespass the rules.
To accomplish what is
mentioned above we need many centuries civilizing ourselves. Nowadays, we even struggle to see what
belongs to us versus what belongs to others.
Nature, lions, tigers are not voters in a democracy as well as many
others in this globalized world, and we need education to understand them as
OTHERS; we do not need democracy, we need education. We need years of education
to be part of this “new world.”
TRIATHLON represents the sport that requires the best education to
perform well. I let you read three
different articles that point out the difference in our schooling and our
education. Triathlon is not for
everybody as you can see.
The Aimless War
By JOE KLEIN Joe Klein –
Thu Dec 11, 6:10 am ET
AFP/File – US soldiers
block a road at the site of a suicide attack in Kabul in May 2008. US Defense
Secretary Robert …
"Things have gotten a
bit hairy," admitted British Lieut. Colonel Graeme Armour as we sat in a
dusty, bunkered NATO fortress just outside the city of Lashkar Gah in Helmand
province, a deadly piece of turf along Afghanistan's southern border with
Pakistan. A day earlier, two Danish soldiers had been killed and two Brits
seriously wounded by roadside bombs. The casualties were coming almost daily
now.
And then there were the
daily frustrations of Armour's job: training Afghan police officers. Almost all the recruits were illiterate. "They've had no
experience at learning," Armour said. "You sit them in a room and try
to teach them about police procedures - they start gabbing and knocking about.
You talk to them about the rights of women, and they just laugh." A week
earlier, five Afghan police officers trained by Armour were murdered in their
beds while defending a nearby checkpoint - possibly by other police officers.
Their weapons and ammunition were stolen. "We're not sure of the
motivation," Armour said. "They may have gone to join the Taliban or
sold the guns in the market."
When I write this blog I am thinking aloud to be able
to speak to my athletes and families. I
have the same problem as the British Lieutenant Armour: “They´ve had no experience
at learning.” How to go beyond basic
principles is the barrier to break in order to succeed. The students and the “police” have the same
background and learning experience; they hardly know any other way.
