A Little More than Just a Headline
Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here’s my version, then theirs.
Long before moving
to Caceres, I spent some time teaching and traveling around the ex-Soviet
republics that straddle the Caucasus Mountains. Cowboy capitalism was rampant in the area
and as a result the locals were quickly beginning to realize that perhaps the
new reality they had long dreamed of wasn’t as great as they had expected. In
Azerbaijan, the only highway that had been repaired since the Soviets had left
was the one that ran from the capital to the oil terminal where the pipeline to the West began. The so-called friendly West’s main concern was made very clear on
the only smooth road in the country. Beyond that shiny tarmac to the Caspian, the
rest of the country’s infrastructure was in steady decay. Once glorious squares
that gave homage to the Socialist republic were now covered in weeds. Now, headless
statues of Lenin and Stalin presided over crumbling monuments to a different
era. The money had run out and there was no one left to care for the grandiose
projects that crumbled in each main square as you travelled from Baku to
Tbilisi. The new dictators had their own cult of personality to build and
mother Russia wasn’t paying in dollars. No one had the time to think or care
about the past. Public works projects often tend to be that way. The 4-year politician gets some money from the EU and puts up some Caceres Centro signs that
are soon forgotten, left to literally fade away. Now the new idea is to build
an escalator in Alzapiernas street to help the steady stream of pensioners who come
and visit our fair city get up that steep hill. How long until those rotating stairs stop turning? If grafitiers
can’t be stopped from splattering the walls along Pintores and Moret street with their brutally ugly scrawl,
how long will it take until something gets caught in the stairs? Alzapiernas (raise your legs) earns its name, especially after a day touring the old town but you only have
to climb the stairs and look across the street for a reminder of another
project left to rot, the infamous elevator to nowhere.
