Tras haber creado mi anterior blog cecilmundo varias personas, muchos de ellos mis alumnos, me sugirieron que creara una secciòn dentro de cecilmundo para publicar mis obras de docencia de idiomas. Dado que la cantidad de documentos de explicaciones, ejercicios y exàmenes de inglès son muy numerosos porque tengo màs de 30 años del ejercicio de la docencia, preferì estrenar blog con mis alumnos a como ellos realmente merecen. En este blog planetcecil no solo iràn mis documentos didàcticos de inglès, sino tambièn la producciòn literaria de varios alumnos que se destacan en las letras. Tambièn darè oportunidad a aquellos que tienen excelentes obras pero que no han logrado publicarlas ya que en mi paìs Nicaragua todo se mueve por la marrana polìtica, y si una no pertenece a determinado partido no verà jamàs publicado su opus. Tambièn tenemos la desgracia de contar con seudoeditores quienes al no conocer verdaderamente de literatura se convierten en mercenarios de la imprenta solo para llenarse ellos mismo de dinero y fama a costillas de los escritores. Todos aquellos que deseen participar en este blog, denlo de antemano por suyo. Aunque lleve mi nombre en un arranque de egolatrìa, yo soy sencillamente vuestra servidora.Cecilia

Las alas de la educación

Las alas de la educación
La educación es un viaje sin final.

La lección de física

La lección de física
Casi aprendida

miércoles, 30 de julio de 2008

Women warriors




28th entry to the Colonel's Scrapbook\
July 29th
dead
1030 King Olav Haraldsson of Norway, dies in battle of Stiklestad .At least this king did earn his crown somehow.1164 King Olaf of Norway, dies. Did he have to wait ion line to enter heaven or hell? 1890 Vincent Van Gogh dies in Auvers, France , after shooting himself with a gun and having left a piece of his ear years ago to a slut
1900 Umberto I Italian king assassinated by anarchist Gaetano Bresci, poor guy,he never really governed and got sent out of the world just for not wearing his crown properly
1762 Rafaela Herrera y Sotomayor defends the Castle of the Inmaculate Conception agains the English pirates, her father has just died and she commands the garrison in the name of the King of Spain
born
1925 Mikis Theodorakis Chios Greece, composer (Raven), when I met him in Paris I was so elated
1883 Benito Mussolini [Il Duce], Fascist Italian dictator (1922-43), hated baths, had syphyllis and adored his mistress Clara Petacci, with whom he was shot and hung at Piazale Loretto. So end all dictators!
1905 Clara Bow silent screen actress (It, Saturday Night Kid),back then those Hollywood stars still had real glamour 1905 Dag Hammarskj"ld 2nd UN Secretary-General (1953-61) (Nobel 1961)destined to die in a plane crash, many people refuse to admit he was gay

PATRIE, FOR WOMEN PATRIOTS
Homeland, or patrie, is feminine in wise old French language. It is adequate. Although history has praised and sung the heroic deeds of men as patriots, since it has been written by males of the species, the patriotic actions of women have always been ignored. Homeland, patrie,is the land that saw you born. Your earth mother. I had the peerless privilege of being born in Nicaragua. I am not exportable, except in writing and in smiling. I love my country with a passion and devotion that is about the only kind of religion I have taken seriously.
It is curious that on a July 29th,1762, a Spanish woman of 19 years of age defended our country, although she was the bastard of a Spanish soldier and a mulatto child whore from Cartagena,Colombia:Rafaela Herrera. Her dad Josè Herrera y Sotomayor, had been yanked out of Colombia to serve at a small garrison on the San Juan River in the province of Nicaragua,and I say province because it wasn`t until 1821 that we became independent from Spain, after the Spaniards had been swindling our gold for a good period of time. The problem with Rafaela was that her dad had just died when the English pirates came marauding into the San Juan River with the prospect of sacking the port city of Granada. She had never been a military, much less in an era when women went barefoot, pregnant and smiling in an orgasm of submission. She wasn`t defending Nicaragua, mind you. Although she was brown and a bastard, two things frowned upon by the Spaniards, she felt Spanish and when she threw the sheets on fire to float on rafts along the river in order to scare off the pirates, she was defending the realm of Spain. Never Nicaragua, which only existed as a province to sack, loot,enslave and produce money for the whites in Spain. Afterwards, she was very resentful because the king of Spain pointedly ignored her, reminded her that as a bastard she had no claim on anything,simply sent a cold thank-you letter, and didn`t give her more than a miserly pension in her old age, when she was already the widow of Pablo Mora, the mother of several retarded kids and raising pigs for a living.Pigs which she called verracos-the Colombian name for swine- and never chanchos like we say here in Nicaragua. She never became Nicaraguan, which is why I laugh at historians who try to make her a national heroine. Yes ,whatever country she fought for, once in her life, not as a military woman but a damsel in distress, she had guts.
Nevertheless, when some people say that my love for the San Juan River is so excessive and obsessive that I could easily become a second Rafaela Herrera defending it, I resent the comparison. I am 300 per cent Nicaraguan, a trained sniper, legitimate daughter of a couple who adored each other legally, and I am not fighting for any king but our queenly sovereignty.
Women have always had more guts than men for war. The old Celts saw women march into battle and fight better than men. Just remember Queen Boadicea when her husband died and her daughters were raped by the Romans, she got everyone in arms and almost defeated the Roma legions. Rather than be raped and shown as a trophy by the Romans, she and her mare swallowed poison. It is said that when dead, she looked like a redheaded fallen angel. When I went to London I took several pictures of her monument. At least the British didn`t forget her or convert her into a man with a wig.
History teems with women who had more guts than men, specially in Africa. Candace was the stunning empress of Ethiopia when blond Macedonian Alexander the Great had the wise decision of not going into Ethiopia, where she was dressed only in feathers, astride her favourite female war elephant, waiting with her spear ready to finish him off if he dared come along. Wisest thing little Alex ever did, run from such a formidable warrior. How to forget Nandi, the beautiful mother of Zulu-nation unifier king Shaka?
Or his legendary grandmother Mtombazi who being 7 months pregnant went into the battlefield and defeated her enemies? Not to say his common law wife Pampata, a colonel in his army, who led the female regiments into battle and cared for his three Abyssinian colonels, cats Khalampopo, Kazhilimpopo and Limpopo?It was Pampata who buried him after he had been stabbed to death by his half brother.
But my absolute favourite is queen Nzingha of Ndongo and Matamba(now present-day Angola), who not only was a great patriot, military commander and elephant trainer, but also someone who fought to rid her people of the impeding threat of getting exported for slavery. Too bad she died in exile, after so many years of battles and hardships and having to negotiate with the Dutch to keep out the Portuguese. Another brave warrior queen was Amina, also African, considered to be better than any man at weapons and strategies. She built the best fortifications and defended her reign as only she could. Those are the women who serve as role models for all those patriots with skirts or military women commanders of today.
I could never leave out colonel Manuela Saenz, Simòn Bolìvar`s passionate Equatorian lover who on one occasion even saved him from being assassinated. Wild, well read, sexy and agile, she adored the Libertador so much that she sacrificed her reputation and life to him, being his shadow and confidante and one of the most clever militaries in history. Too bad she ended translating love letters for American whalers back in her hometown, and thus she was interviewed by the American writer Hermann Melville(the author of Billy Budd and Moby Dick). Towards her old age, she fell and had an accident that left her in a wheelchair, dying from the plague shortly afterwards. I still question her taste. Bing a skimpy, Bolìvar could have never given her kids, and he still had the nerve to feel superior to her. Typically male, poor idiot.
Women have always loved their homeland passionately for on real reason:we give birth.
That natural superiority simply allows us to love the homeland-la patrie-as one would love a baby one has brought into the world. Nobody can peel the birth pangs of self-determination, the pains of independence as well as us women, perhaps because we are always trying to shake off the dictatorship and foreign invasion of our males. Even in the moment of love, we are said to be conquered, although we may secretly remain uncolonized all our life. My San Juan River provides the water in which I forge the uniform of my sovereignty every time I come to him. He is the perfect lover a patriotic woman should ever need, the one who doesn`t lie about hours, or evoke others smack in your face to see if you cringe with vibrating possessive jealousy, or tell you he adores you but suddenly disappears into a black cloud never to be seen or heard from again.
Sovereignty is the shield we women wear for the sake of our own peace of mind, knowing this is our land although we may be stripped of clothes, children, status, maiden name or whatever, and it is a fully requited love. The only one we may ever savor in our lifetime.

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