Tamia Dakinah is the state's newest Miss Liberia Minnesota. | Photo from Facebook group Miss Liberia MN. Beauty Pageant

To make other cultures real through vivid first-hand stories and to explain the connections between “us” and “them” – that’s our goal here at Round Earth Media and Linda Sjostrom, our web editor, understands it well. Linda has spent time reporting and editing for print and radio both in the United States and abroad. Here, a recent event prompts her to not only reflect on a story she covered in the past, but to also consider identity.

Linda Sjostrom: Just last month, a crowd gathered at the Miracle Empowerment Center to witness the crowning of Tamia Dakinah as Miss Liberia Minnesota 2010. In the same way, others across the country have or will name someone the Miss Liberia of their own state this year.

The title is, to me, an interesting one. Many of us are familiar with pageants like ‘Miss Minnesota’ and ‘Miss USA’ – roles that dub their bearers as representatives of one singular place. The title I’m thinking about now seems to hold quite a different meaning. Miss Liberia Minnesota. A representative – a part – of not one area, but two.

As I think this over, I think of the tens of thousands of people who are Liberian in my own state. What does it mean to identify as Liberian? What does it mean to identify as Minnesotan? And how do those dual roles play into each other, and into all of the other roles that encompass daily life?

I’m reminded of conversations I had in 2009 while writing an article about Deferred Enforced Departure (DED). Then – and now – thousands of Liberian refugees living in the United States are on DED status. Originally granting Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in 1991 for affected residents during a bloody civil war in Liberia, the United States government has for years extended their allotted here in light of ongoing hardships in Liberia. While their status has changed from TPS to DED, the pattern seems to be the same: Liberians who came to the United States as victims of war are told they must leave by a certain time, and then shortly before that date arrives their DED is extended for 12 or 18 months at a time.

While the war in Liberia is officially over, deep economic struggles still face those living there, along with bouts of violence. Unemployment alone sits around 85 percent, according to the last estimate of the CIA World Fact Book. At this point in time, many say Liberia would struggle if made to reintegrate so many people back into its workforce at once. The United States would lose thousands from its own workforce, a large proportion of which work in the healthcare sector. A bill is currently going through the legislative process to grant Liberian refugees permanent residency, but it is a bill that was first seen in 1998. Again a pattern exists: eight times a variation of this bill has been introduced, and eight times it has died upon reaching committee.

I can’t help but think about how much a year means in my own life. Each year I, just like all people, accomplish some things and fail to accomplish others. Things change for me each year, but never yet to a point where I’ve ever had to leave the country without actively choosing to do so. It’s strange to think that my year can be so different from the year of someone standing near me – that something which affects so many people in the area I call home is something I haven’t personally experienced. My experiences and identity as a Minnesotan or a North American or a woman may not be the same identity others have formed around those very things.

Perhaps finding the connections between our different identities is part of what Round Earth seeks to accomplish.

While the Miss Liberia Minnesota Scholarship Pageant may very pointedly demonstrate the way several different countries and cultures often help shape the way we identify ourselves, reminders of this can be found in so many ways each day. It can be found every time someone hangs a flag or learns a second language. It can be found whenever someone serves dishes from outside the country they reside in, or teaches the next generation of young people how to craft the artwork that traditionally has told the story of their ancestor’s native country.

And it can be found, also, in those who may experience it in a more urgent way – those who have one foot in Liberia and another in the United States, in an annual limbo between the two.

International star Bocafloja says he wasn’t really interested in politics or social change when he first started out – but now it's a different story. | Chris Wilson

Rap, in Spanish, easily crosses borders with fans in the United States, Canada and throughout Latin America. One of the most popular independent rappers in Spanish is Aldo Villegas, also known as Bocafloja (which means “loose mouth”). Bocafloja has been active in Mexico City’s hip hop scene since its inception in the mid-1990s and, as Mary Stucky reports, over the years he’s acquired a huge following in both Mexico and the United States.

Listen to this story

The following is a transcript. To listen to this broadcast, please click on the play button above.

Stucky: When he started out, Bocafloja says he wasn’t particularly interested in politics or social change – which are now constants in his music.

In the beginning, he just liked the beat.

Bocafloja: The first time I wrote a rhyme, I was probably like around 13, 14 years old and my first demos were made when I was 17, 18 years old. So when I was like 19 or 20 I started to travel a little bit, to be more aware about the social and political issues in the world.

Stucky: That’s when Bocafloja started including sharp political and social messages — against racism, oppression and economic inequality.

This single is called Opcion B or Option B. The lyrics translate: decolonize your soul, recognize your power, open your eyes.

Bocafloja: We were the first in Mexico and one of the first in Latin America to use hip hop in a different way. We’re trying to forget about barriers and frontiers and we want
to build and connect with different artists all over the hemisphere.

View Photo Gallery:

Stucky: This month Bocafloja will release a compilation album featuring artists and producers from across North, and South America and the Caribbean – including the United States.

Bocafloja: The main objective is to produce a cultural exchange between the different marginalized communities, using hip hop culture as a way to communicate and create and produce art and share knowledge.

Stucky: These days Bocafloja spends a lot of time in the United States, where his reputation is growing. He founded an artistic collective that organizes concerts, spoken word events and community dialogues in New York and California as well as in Mexico. He’s also published a collection of poems — one of the first literary books from Mexico’s hip hop generation.

Bocafloja: With the book, it was important to let people know, especially here in Mexico, that some of the poets from the hip hop generation were able to be at a certain academic level. Also it was a way to motivate young kids, from the barrios, from the ghettos, to be more familiar with reading, with lecture.

Stucky: His fans did seem motivated at Bocafloja’s recent concert in Mexico City where they mobbed him for autographs. But despite his wide popularity, Bocafloja says he’s always conscious of hip hop’s roots among the poor and marginalized.

For the World, I’m Mary Stucky, Mexico City.

Chris Wilson contributed to this report.

Mixed reviews of Mauricio Funes’ first year in office

An article by the Los Angeles Times says Salvadoran president Mauricio Funes is under fire for failing to tackle corruption and halt rising violence and drug trafficking. It cites an editorial by the El Salvador-based online newspaper, El Faro, that says Salvadorans are not better off than they were a year ago and a poll by the Institute of Public Opinion at the University of Central America in San Salvador that shows 60 percent of the population says violence has increased with the new government. Read the article here.

Yet, a research project by the Center for Democracy in the Americas found that Mauricio Funes and his party are “truly governing the country.” In an advanced edition of the project’s report, researchers do not ignore the immense challenges before Funes and what he hasn’t been able to accomplish so far. But they also recognize and point to several achievements by Funes and his administration officials: they responded swiftly and effectively to natural disasters, provided school uniforms, supplies, shoes, and hot meals to all public school students, and secured loans from the International Monetary Funds to prevent bankruptcy and keep the country afloat for the next four years. You can read the advance copy here.

As we get closer to our trip to Central America, we will be blogging about some of the most important issues facing the region. One of the most contentious issues facing the country of El Salvador is gold mining. Is it an economic boon or an environmental disaster? From NextGen journalist Ambar Espinoza the latest on the case involving the so-called Pacific Rim mine.

Gold mining in El Salvador: Pacific Rim verdict expected in August 2010

Last year in June, the Canadian mining company Pacific Rim filed a lawsuit against the government of El Salvador in the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and under the U.S.-Dominican Republic Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) for failing to grant mining exploitation permits. The company can sue the Salvadoran government, even though Canada is not part of the international trade agreement, because the company has U.S. subsidiaries. Pacific Rim argues that El Salvador violated investment rules. The ICSID expects to rule the case by the beginning of next month. If the decision goes against the government, then the Salvadoran government will have to pay Pacific Rim more than $70 million. The company is also asking the government to pay for its legal costs.
Below is an article (in Spanish) published this week (July 6, 2010) by the Salvadoran newspaper, La Prensa Grafica de El Salvador, which reports that a verdict is expected next month. I’ve summarized more or less what it says above. You can also read an article, published last year in Foreign Policy in Focus, that goes into greater detail on this issue’s background and its significance. The question that the FPIF article poses is: Can private interests trump national sovereignty under international law?
You can also listen to the public international hearings from May 31 and June 1, 2010 here in both English and Spanish.

From La Prensa:
Resolución de Pacific Rim aún está pendiente
El tribunal del CIADI se comprometió a dar en julio noticias sobre el arbitraje.
Escrito por GN3
Martes, 06 julio 2010 00:00
El tribunal del Centro Internacional de Arreglo de Diferencias Relativas a Inversiones (CIADI) que le da seguimiento al arbitraje que ha interpuesto la empresa Pacific Rim en contra de El Salvador está pendiente de revelar si desestima o no la demanda.
Se tenía programado que los primeros días de este mes habría una nueva audiencia en la que se daría una respuesta a la solicitud de El Salvador de declarar frívola la demanda de Pacific Rim dada la falta de argumentos válidos de la compañía minera.
El tribunal, encabezado por el británico V.V. Veader, señaló que si se desestimaba la demanda, no procedería el seguimiento del tribunal. Así mismo, indicaron que posiblemente a principios de agosto se podría dar una resolución final en la que se determine si el Estado salvadoreño debe de pagar o no los más de $70 millones que exige Pacific Rim. Este monto corresponde a la inversión que ha hecho la empresa desde 2002 en exploración minera, sin que el Gobierno le autorice los permisos de explotación.
Demanda por CAFTA
Pacific Rim presentó la demanda en junio de 2009 bajo los términos del CAFTA.
La empresa es una corporación canadiense con sede en Vancouver, Columbia Británica –y por tanto no estaría incluida en el CAFTA– que tiene tres filiales: Pac Rim Cayman LLC en Estados Unidos, y Pacific Rim El Salvador y Dorado Exploración, también en El Salvador. Fue la filial de Pacific Rim en Estados Unidos, Pac Rim Cayman LLC, la que presentó el reclamo en virtud del CAFTA.
Además del monto demandado, la empresa solicitó al tribunal que sea El Salvador el que asuma los costos y los honorarios del juicio.
Spanish-language article’s link.

Today we’re posting on three interesting ideas — – this is not an endorsement but we think they’re ideas you’ll want to know about.

Round Earth intern/researcher, Christa Hillstrom, is a graduate of Northwestern’s journalism master’s program. She has traveled and reported widely and her current passion is to raise awareness about an important and painful global issue. Here’s Christa’s blog, Human Goods: Understanding Today’s Global Slave Trade. I’m always interested in what Christa’s reading. Do you have any books to add?

Recently, we learned about a movement called “entertainment education” – using media to inform, educate and change behaviors in the developing world (we’re talking here about radio soap operas on subjects from preventing AIDs to protecting the environment). This is a movement that’s really seems to be taking off. How does it strike you?

World Pulse is part of the media revolution endemic to the internet, using technology to connect women around the world. This does not appear to be vetted journalism but it is an interesting source of information and perspective as the World Pulse mission is to address what they see as the under-representation of women and children in the international news media. Do you think we need to see “global issues through the eyes of women?”

Having worked as a journalist for 25 years, I know first-hand the power that excellent journalism has to crack open distant worlds and bring them directly to my doorstep. Why is this important? Because thanks to a story by Round Earth journalists, I suddenly discover that the beautiful bouquet of flowers I buy each week at my local supermarket is grown by a woman in Ecuador who supports her entire family through her flower garden. This knowledge, this sudden flash of recognition about how connected my home in St. Paul is to her village in Central America, makes the miles disappear and that bouquet resonate far beyond its beauty in the vase.

Making the unfamiliar familiar is a powerful force, and something that Round Earth journalists take seriously. Next generation journalists seek out the seemingly small and often hidden pieces of the world and place them in a context that helps us understand how truly interconnected we are. Stories about real people, not just the powerful elite, are like pebbles tossed in a pond. The ripples touch the shores of people’s lives halfway across the world. And it’s often those tiny details that touch us profoundly and propel us into action.

This kind of journalism isn’t easy. It’s grueling work that requires tremendous energy, commitment and grit. It’s not just about attending press conferences or researching online sources…it’s about listening, talking and walking among real people. It’s time consuming and resource intensive reporting that is rarely rewarded by mainstream media.outlets anymore. But Round Earth is all about the hard-to-get details. And that’s why it’s such an important organization to support.

Roger and Jacqui on the porch of their home, looking out at the Mekong River. | Mary Stucky

Per capita, Laos is the most bombed country on earth. For nine years, every day, around the clock, the US rained bombs down on much of the country. The bombing was intended to stop Communist supply routes running through Laos into Vietnam. Many of those bombs… called cluster bombs… are about the size of a tennis ball and never exploded. So years after the war ended, the bombs were still claiming lives every day.
On a recent trip to Laos, reporter Mary Stucky met an American couple who worked to stop that death toll.

Listen to this story

The following is a transcript. To listen to this broadcast, please click on the play button above.

Mary Stucky: I last saw Roger Rumpf and Jacqui Chagnon sitting on their porch, the sun slowly sinking into the Mekong River on the outskirts of Vientiane. The American couple came here in 1978, hired by the Quakers to help people in this war-ravaged country.

Jacqui Chagnon: Business was gone. The streets, you could walk across the street and never have to look. Everybody was struggling, even in Vientiane the capital. But once we went out to the countryside we realized it was even worse.

Roger Rumpf: Some people were moving back to their old homes in the war zones with nothing practically. All of their buffalo, their other animals, had been killed or driven off.

Stucky: What Roger and Jacqui found when they went into the countryside would break their hearts. Thousands of Laotians – many of them children – had been killed and maimed by unexploded bombs, left over from the Vietnam War. At times it seemed as if a bomb had just claimed a life in almost every village they entered. This story was typical.

Chagnon: A young man had just been killed when he was hoeing a small hole to put a post for building a new house for his new family. He had just gotten married. And he struck a bomblet and the blomblet went off and it severed his heart. There was another boy that was blinded.

Rumpf: It’s hard for Americans to understand – and other people – how a countryside can be completely littered, that they’re everywhere, there is no way to escape them. You walk down a path, you move anywhere, you gotta look down… you gotta watch what you’re stepping on, and you’ll probably be stepping on a few underneath the ground. They’re hidden, you cannot see them anymore. The erosion, the rainy seasons… they sink into the earth and you don’t know where they are.

Stucky: Farmers wanted to plant rice but were afraid to venture into their fields. Children picked up a shiny metal object only to have it blow up in their hands. Roger and Jacqui were horrified. These two young people, working in a small forgotten country, were determined to get the world’s attention.

First they went to the U.S. military. The military said nothing could be done to remove the bombs – just cordon off the area and keep everybody out. But that would mean cordoning off two thirds of the country. After years of war people needed to go into their fields to plant rice.

So Jacqui and Roger had an idea. Laotian farmers use hoes, but hoes strike the ground and are likely to set off a bomb. A shovel turns the ground up gently. But there was no money to buy shovels. So, back to the United States went Jacqui and Roger – traveling from one church to the next.

Rumpf: Ten dollars a shovel. We would ask people to contribute one shovel for one family in Laos and we raised a lot of money, over 30 thousand shovels sent at one point. A very simple approach to a very complex problem.

Chagnon: It wasn’t a strong enough solution, however. We knew that, but it was what we could do at the moment. What we realized in the end – we had to take a stronger and much more professional approach to this.

Stucky: Roger and Jacqui approached MAG, the Mines Advisory Group, a British organization that won the Nobel Peace Prize for its work to ban land mines. Finally, 20 years after the Vietnam War ended, MAG began removing unexploded bombs in Laos. Thanks, in part, to Roger and Jacqui, the world was beginning to take notice.

Chagnon: The war in Laos, it’s not written in our textbooks. You hear about the Vietnam War, the Vietnam War and here in Laos, by the way, it’s called the U.S. war in Laos. It’s not called the Vietnam War. So we were helping to explain that but also bringing out a whole host of information of what had happened here and the depth of what had happened.

Stucky: Roger and Jacqui aren’t done with their work against cluster bombs. They’ve been campaigning for an international treaty to ban their use and require their remnants be cleaned up.

A number of countries have signed on. So far the U.S. has yet to be one of them. The U.S military calls cluster bombs legitimate and necessary weapons, but President Obama has taken one step in the direction of a ban by effectively outlawing the sale and export of cluster bombs outside the U.S.

Jacqui and Roger are ever hopeful that the treaty will become international law and the world will never again see another country like Laos, littered with unexploded bombs.

My father’s international business career took me overseas from age two; and for the ensuing years until I turned 16, my early view of the world was shaped by my immersion in a number of different cultures.

Right after finishing high school and college, I immediately took off, on my own, this time, for Latin America – where I have lived and worked, intermittently, for more than four decades.

These comings and goings between Minnesota (now my home) and the other destinations in which I work make me aware of the huge “global awareness gap” that exists between ordinary Americans and the people in other countries I visit. I have come to see this consciousness gap as a threat to world peace, to our environment, and to our economic survival.

Apparently, it is not profitable for the established media to maintain news bureaus and/or correspondents in all corners of the world; and there is such a plentiful supply of cheaper local material, only the most sensational overseas events make it through the editorial process.

There is a desperate need to foster the development of a new generation of globally connected journalists who can bring important stories into our consciousness here in the U.S. – and, in so doing, help us better inform ourselves and equip us with the insights we need to work effectively for peace, environmental preservation and some semblance of shared prosperity with our global neighbors.

This is why I believe the work of Round Earth Media is so important.

Robert H. Scarlett

Alexandra Bounxouei - the Lao Princess of Pop - isn't your typical pop star. | Photo by Mary Stucky

You could call Alexandra Bounxouei the Britney Spears of Laos – she’s young and vivacious, with a legion of devoted fans around the world. But she’s also a classically trained violinist. Mary Stucky has the story of the Lao Princess of Pop.

Listen to this story

The following is a transcript. To listen to this broadcast, please click on the play button above.

Stucky: 22 year old Alexandra Bounxouei looks the part of a pop ingénue…. with tight jeans, big sunglasses and her little dog tucked under one arm. But then …there’s her music.

It’s a striking combination of rap and traditional Lao melodies played on ancient instruments – in this case, a reed-based flute called a khene with Alexandra Bounxouei… playing the violin.

Bounxouei says combining pop and rap with traditional folk tunes is what made her such a hit. She says Laotians love the folk melodies in her music.

Bounxouei: It’s called… (she sings a bit of it) so it’s exactly the same pattern as my song.

So that touches the people’s hearts because everyone goes like ‘woo woo’ putting their hands up and dancing like crazy.

Stucky: But blending pop and traditional wasn’t Alexandra Bounxouei’s only innovation. She also wears pants when she performs.

Bounxouei: Well, before me Laos women never ever wore pants on stage. It was always traditional Lao skirts. It’s called a sinh, basically a long, long, long skirt. It’s made of silk and all hand made. But I wanted to do something new and I needed to dance, and of course if you wear a Laos skirt you can’t dance.

Stucky: And then another surprise – fans started asking for her autograph.

Bounxouei: The first time I felt awkward because people don’t do that ,here. They wanted me to sign on all kinds of places like opening their shirts and ’sign it on my heart,’ on their cheeks, on their hats. (giggle) It’s really sweet.

Stucky: Bounxouei’s father is Lao but her mother is from Bulgaria. They met there when her father was studying on a scholarship. The family moved to Laos when Bounxouei was just a baby. But she never quite fit in.

Bounxouei: When I was young it was very, very harsh because they didn’t really accept me as one of them. They always called me ‘oh big eyes, big eyes’ because my eyes were always bigger and my hair was lighter than the rest of the people.

Stucky: But now Bounxouei thinks her appearance contributes to her popularity.

Bounxouei: In this entertainment scene, you need to be unique to make people remember you. That’s what made people remember me.

Stucky: Bounxouei has toured in US cities where there is a Lao diaspora — Nashville, St. Paul, Washington DC, and Seattle. She’s starred in movies and TV shows back in Laos and Thailand.

But Bounxouei isn’t counting on a long career in entertainment – in fact, she’s currently studying at a university in Japan.

Bounxouei: I can’t always be on top. There are always new people coming up so I think I need to so do something else to make my life more stable, stabilize myself (laughs).

Stucky: But for now, Alexandra Bounxouei is the Lao Princess of Pop.

For The World, I’m Mary Stucky, Vientiane, Laos.