Tropical Depression
Cuba has the highest rate of depression and suicide in the New World. So why does Castro's vaunted health care system deny the very existence of mental illness on the island?
Cuba has the highest rate of depression and suicide in the New World. So why does Castro's vaunted health care system deny the very existence of mental illness on the island?
Mehyar said he had a car, but he didn't bring it with him.
"It's broken," he told me, and I'm sure my expression gave away my dismay. "We can take a cab, or we can take my bike."
The express bus from Hyderabad to Dantewada takes fifteen hours on a good day. As the suburbs of the software hub are left behind, and then the wrought-iron gates of Ramoji Film City, the smooth pavement falls apart. But the sweep of paddy fields and palms—a facsimile of the INCREDIBLE INDIA! billboard hanging at the Delhi airport when I first arrived—grew more hypnotic with each mile, making up for the rough going. Hills loomed in the hazy distance. Cowherds shunted their stock out of harm's way, and women carried grain in clay pots on their heads.
From the VQR website:
"Bolivian President Evo Morales won office three years ago with the support of the nation's coca growers. He's supporting those cocaleros with his "Coca Si, Cocaína No" program, allowing coca to be produced and marketed legally, while barring production of cocaine. This is a difficult line for Morales to walk, but he does it to satisfy both his citizens and the international community."
There are two Jamaicas.
Tourists see the north coast country—its all-inclusive hotels, sunny beaches, and high-end restaurants—and a few fleeting glimpses of what most believe is the worst privation they have ever witnessed. They see half-naked children, zinc-roofed homes, hustled trinkets, and they think poverty. They think they are seeing the other Jamaica, but they are not.
Kelly Hearn tells the story of one trip into the Amazonian rainforest to give a big-picture look at the hydrocarbon industry's push into the Tropical Andes.
When the trumpet sounded,
everything was prepared on earth,
and Jehovah divided the world
among Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, and other corporations:
The United Fruit Company Inc.
reserved for itself the juiciest piece,
the central coast of my own land,
the sweet waist of America.
—Pablo Neruda, "The United Fruit Co."