Old Toad on a Bike
George W Bush boasts of Nation building in Iraq. Examine the US record in its own backyard, Latin America.
English writer, Simon Gandolfi, will journey the length of the Pan American Highway south from the Mexican border with the United States to Tiera del Fuego. He will interview students from all backgrounds at state schools, religious schools, and private schools.
STUDENTS POSE THE QUESTIONS: environment, economy, foreign affairs, civil rights.
Gandolfi will enable communication between Latin American students and their British counterparts.
What is the student perception of the US?
How do Latin Americans perceive the United States’ closest ally, the United Kingdom?
Gandolfi’s books have been translated into a dozen languages, including Spanish.
Gandolfi lived in Cuba for five years during the 90s where his two sons attended State Primary School.
He is seventy-years-old.
He will travel alone.
He will travel by motorcycle, not a Big Bike, but a Honda 125cc Job, the typical work motorcycle of Latin America.
Essentials of Gandolfi’s exploration are the dangers posed by guerilla activity and the aftermath of civil war. Gandolfi will visit schools neigbouring sites of massacres (Guatemala, San Salvador, Chili). Where do students lay blame for this seemingly unending violence?
Who do they demonise: the CIA and the School of the Americas, Shinning Path, Tupamaros, the ever present oligarchy?
Has a mirror-image been created in present-day Iraq?
Does an elderly English writer on a small motorcycle survive the journey?
In what way do the attitudes of Latin Americans to the aged differ from attitudes in the United Kingdom?
Will Gandolfi’s experience aid him in communicating with his youngest son, a sixteen-year-old Spanish language A-level student at a Sixth Form college?
That US citizens have no sense of history is a common belief shared by the people of Latin America and the Middle East. What do the youth of Latin America know of their own history? How do they perceive the Conquistadors? Do the history books studied in Latin America differ in content and perspective from those studied in the US and the UK?
How do students reconcile the sublime architecture of the Spanish conquest with the simplistic view of the Conquistadors as savages?
So what picture do British students have of Latin America?
Does Latin America matter?
Mexico alone has a GDP of $1.006 trillion and economic growth of 4.1%
Brazil has a GDP of 1.5 trillion and growth of 5.1%
Argentina, Chile, Peru and Uruguay have a combined GDP of $800 billion and an average growth of 7%.
Do students know of past British economic involvement in Latin America? A British bank raised the first Argentine Government loan; British capital financed most railways; the railways were built by British engineers.
Yet British exports to Denmark (six million inhabitants) now exceed those to the entire Latin American subcontinent and Spanish is spoken by eight-hundred-million people yet taught only in a minority of British state schools.
The Cottage
Stowe Lane
Colwall
Herefordshire
WR13 6EH
Tel: 044 (0)1684 540 115
simongandolfi@hotmail.com