ECHOES of SILENCE

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Most Recent Tour: NOVEMBER 5​ - 25

NICARAGUA, ALBA AND CLIMATE CHANGE:

THE PROMISE OF A GOOD EXAMPLE

BOOK NOW: HOUSE CONCERT, CHURCH SERVICE, LECTURE, PICKET LINE, CONFERENCE, you name it!

 

 

The Promise of a Good Example:

Nicaragua, ALBA, and Climate Change
 

 

For almost forty years UK-born musician/organizer Paul Baker and his Nicaraguan wife Fátima Hernández have worked pro bono with the Chilean, Salvadoran and Nicaraguan peoples, as Paul puts it, "Surviving by skin of teeth and seat of pants. Quite a ride, but it's exciting (if tough on 'trousers'!), sharing life with people who drop into bed not knowing if there'll be food for tomorrow, yet always greeting you next day smiling, their children washed, pressed and ready for school. Fátima herself is a barrio girl, a guerrillera at 13 who fought the Somoza dictatorship to bring Nicaragua justice.  She's worked on in barrio health and education ever since, and now primarily cares for severely burned children. It's wonderful to work with her/her compañer@s. Thanks to them/their FSLN government, after years of neo-liberal regimes killing land reform, destroying health and education, Nicaragua is the 'threat of a good example' once again."

 

Contact Paul to set up presentations here: Paulbaker2004@yahoo.com.

 

 

This extraordinary country should be paradise, of course. Like so much of the made-poor 'Third World', it has tremendous reserves of genuine wealth of all kinds: water, forests, biodiversity, sources for renewable energy, living indigenous cultures, wonderful coffee and other superb crops.  Even gold. However historically and still today, the Me-First World, abetted by those same neo-liberalist forces, takes most of these magnificent resources to sustain its own ultimately unsustainable 'developed' way of life, so imposing poverty on Nicaragua. And today, to add disaster to injury, as the North's consumerist chickens come hobbling home to catastrophic roost, this valiant country, in the very cross-hairs of the global warming their droppings(!) have created, is forced to pay twice over.

 

Paul's music: 

 

"I Thought I Heard Sweet Victor ... Singing", an original song about legendary Chilean singer/martyr Víctor Jara conceived in Victor's own house, recorded at the Foundation Víctor in Santiago with a group of torture survivors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tti7tGNUow (copy to browser)

Playing Flamenco to Garcia Lorca's 'La Guitarra' on his 'green guitar', fashioned in secret from an old drawer & retired toilet seat while a supposedly silent Trappist monk: La Guitarra Soleares: https://myspace.com/paulbakerhernandez/music/song/la-guitarra-soleares-15271075-15072260 (copy to browser)

 

Yet far from seeking revenge, today's Nicaragua is the promise of a good example, launching a new world order via ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of our America, joining El Salvador, Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and others to build a new global society rooted in fair trade, solidarity, gender/racial balance, and care for the Earth.  Like most of us, Fátima and Paul plan to die with their boots on, plus a vital part of Paul's own work is to challenge the corporate media's virtual embargo on reporting these wonderful Latin American initiatives.  So he (alone, alas) is in the US Nov 5-25 to help break that embargo/raise some funds (to shine those boots, support Echoes of Silence projects.

 

Can you and/or your group please help to: -

 

*Set up house concerts, discussions, lectures, sermons, in schools/colleges, unions, groups, faith communities, etc.? Happy to do joint benefits to support local groups and causes.
*Send contacts for other possible venues?  

*Send contacts for press, radio, TV?
*Help with tickets via transferable frequent flyer miles or by special donation? 

*No fixed fee: honorarium as possible (passing the hat is fine). Dump the limo, board up the Ritz: bus, floor-space, and a drop of Chilean red are perfect. 

Hot-off-the-press CD 'Where is Yesterday?' also for sale.

 

Please contact Paul to set up presentations here: Paulbaker2004@yahoo.com (copy to browser).

Donate to Paul and Fatima's Echoes of Silence work tax-free online via fiscal sponsor http://PeaceWorks.org ('Donate' then 'Allocate') (copy to browser)

Or send checks made out 'PeaceWorks/Echoes' to 36 Loantaka Way Madison NJ 07940

 

Please pass on this message to others who might be interested.

Thank you.