Author Archives: Michael

Ferry Los Cristianos, Tenerife to Santa Cruz de La Palma

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Volcan de Tuberiente at Los Cristianos

Volcan de Tuberiente at Los Cristianos

Ferries are the most important communication links between the Canary Islands and although there are direct flights from the UK to the airport of Santa Cruz de La Palma they are all (to the best of my knowledge) for those on package holidays and not suitable for the independent traveller. There are inter-island flights but they are expensive if you are not a Canary resident – who get subsidised travel. Here is some practical information for those wishing to travel from Los Cristianos in the south of Tenerife and Santa Cruz on the island of La Palma. Tenerife Sur is the busiest airport in The Canaries and as both Ryanair and Easyjet fly there opportunities exist for cheap flights.

To get from the airport to the centre of Los Cristianos you don’t need to get a taxi as there are two buses that serve the route. The 111 and 343 both stop at the airport. The cost one way is €3.10 and takes about 20 minutes. It’s about a 10 minutes walk from the bus station in the centre of Los Cristianos to the port.

Two companies offer an option on this route. Naviera Armas run the slower boat whilst the Fred Olsen Express run the jet propelled fast ferry. This used to have a reputation as a whale killer – the lack of a propeller mean they have a low sonar signature. The normal boats that cover this route are the Volcán de Teide (Armas) and the Benchijigua Express (Olsen) and have a passenger capacity of 1,500 and 1,291 and top speeds of 26 and 38 knots respectively. With such foot passenger capacity you would have to be extremely unlucky to not get the boat on the day you might wish to travel.

However, although turning up and getting on board might not be a problem it’s well worth while booking in advance (both have that facility on their web sites) as the prices are cheaper if you book some days before departure. In the low season you can expect to pay up to €35 for Armas and €43 for Olsen. In both directions the two lines call in to San Sebastian de La Gomera. The scheduled time for the ‘slow’ boat 3 hours 45 minutes and the fast one is 2 hours 50 minutes. When I took the slow boat from Los Cristianos in January 2014 it left 15 minutes late and somehow lost another 30 minutes in what seemed, at least to me, favourable sea conditions.

The difference of an hour shouldn’t make much difference unless you might be catching a flight from either of the Tenerife airports. What might well be worth considering, though, is any desire you might have to spend time out of the interior of the boats. The Volcán de Teide has bar facilities, which are open in the summer, on the top deck which is a great place to soak up a bit more of the Canary sun and take a look at La Gomera as you pass along its eastern side.

The only place you can stand outside on the Olsen boat is at the stern as the speed of the boat will have you swimming the rest of the journey if you get caught in the wind. When I first went on the Olsen boat some 12 years ago another down side was the noise but these vessels and becoming more powerful and quieter all the time. Maybe not good news for whales but perhaps for the passengers.

As for facilities on board they’re much of a muchness. The normal bars, cafés, restaurants (not on the Olsen) and shops as well as some sort of place for young children to play. But if the weather is good it makes sense to just watch the world go by, soaking up the sun with a cold drink in hand.

As for departure times the Volcán de Teide leaves Los Cristianos at 18.30 Monday- Friday and 12.00 on Sunday. There’s no sailing on Saturdays. From Santa Cruz de La Palma it’s a crack of dawn touch as it leaves at 04.00 Tuesday-Saturday and 16.00 on Sunday. There’s no sailings on Mondays. As far as I can tell this is the timetable throughout the year.

The Benchijigua Express leaves Los Cristianos at 19.00 Monday-Friday and 11.30 on Sundays. There’s no departure on Saturdays. From Santa Cruz de La Palma it leaves at 05.30 Tuesday-Saturday and 15.00 on Sunday. There’s no option on Mondays.

These times mean that much of the journey will be in darkness for much of the year, only around June and July will there be a chance to get a good view of both La Gomera and La Palma as you sail past. That’s unfortunate as both these islands are impressive if you travel or walk their hills so seeing them from the sea is a bit of treat.

12 Years a Slave (2013) – dir. Steve McQueen

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'Strange Fruit' - Lynching in Indiana, 1930

‘Strange Fruit’ – Lynching in Indiana, 1930

You wait years for a film to come along which addresses the issue of slavery in the United States and then you get two within a year of each other – and both being multi-nominated in the award season that sees the film industry worldwide slapping itself on the back. But these are very different films and perhaps in that way show that there is no real consensus on how to portray one of the issues that determined North American society, more or less from its inception. 12 Years a Slave is the latest offering and it shows there’s still a long way to go before the matter can be said to have been put to rest.

One of the problems of such emotive issues (the Holocaust and the Nazi plan of the ‘final solution’ which led to the murder of millions of Jews being another) is that to criticise a film which portrays slavery as not being very good is seen as tantamount to condoning the practice.

By the end of 12 Years a Slave we are not left with a clear message of the obscenity of slavery or any other exploitative and oppressive means by which a minority of the population use the majority for their own perverse pleasures. At the end of the film Solomon Northup returns to his family (this is not giving anything away as the very title suggests that his slavery was not for life, as was the fate of millions of others) not by an act of defiance, not by risking everything (including his life) to escape but by a legal ploy, by presenting a piece of paper which proves that he is a ‘free man’ – the fact of anyone having to have that piece of paper in the first place being another obscenity within American society at that time, in antebellum USA.

There are gaping holes in the story from the very beginning. Northup is depicted as a ‘fine fiddle player’ but seems to have become exceptionally wealthy from playing a musical instrument. Musicians can make a mint out of their music both in the past and now but surely he’s not in the same league as a Mozart or The Beatles? He is abducted after spending some time playing in a circus which doesn’t have the same resonance as playing in whatever was the Madison Square Garden of the early 19th century. When he doesn’t return home after this circus engagement, his family not having the slightest idea of what had happened to him, how is it they seem to be able to survive very well thank you when the principal bread-winner has disappeared? In a Dickens novel they would have been on the way to the workhouse before Northup would have been put up for auction.

His life pre-abduction is displayed as quite idyllic. He’s respected by wealthy and distinguished whites, he’s fated as a good customer in a white owned shop and generally shown as living in what can only be described as a multi-ethnic paradise. This is not the picture of the United States that seems to fit with what else was going on at the time.

Although slavery in the northern states was gradually being made illegal in 1841 (when the film starts) slaves would still have been common on the streets of New York as they accompanied their owners on trips north. We see an example of this when Northup goes shopping with his family. A southern slave is depicted as astounded that a black man could be free – but in this scene Northup is more interested in buying trinkets than the fact that chattel slavery is evident on the streets of cities north of the Mason-Dixon line.

(Jumping ahead here – during the final credits we are told that Northup became active in anti-slavery movements from 1853. It’s a tragedy that many people don’t see injustice in the world, even though it exists all around them, until it directly effects them personally. Incidences of police brutality, inefficiency and conspiracy or miscarriages of justice are just a few cases in point that are occurring all the time in the UK.)

It also doesn’t fit in with the open racism that existed in the Union Army at the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, only eight years after the period of his forced labour. The film Glory (1989) is a cinematic reference to the racism that existed in a war that, we are generally told, was to rid the country of the scourge of slavery – and it’s also worth remembering that these black only units even existed in the Second World War.

What is also missing from the state sponsored version of the history of that period in the mid 19th century was the real reason for the civil war in the first place. Firstly, the Confederates wanted to secede and that would have weakened the young US in economic struggle with the European capitalist powers – that ‘great liberator of the black race’, Abraham Lincoln, once stated that he would have accepted slavery if it would ensure the Union.

Secondly, and more importantly, slavery was a brake on capitalist development and exploitation. If we ignore any moral repugnance at the institution of slavery we have to accept that it is unbelievably inefficient. Although it was brutal it didn’t mean high levels of productivity and that was what American capitalism wanted, and needed, if it was to play a role on the world stage.

At the same time the film is full of stereotypes. We have the brutal slave owner who gets drunk and forces the slaves to get up in the middle of the night to dance for him, Northup providing the musical accompaniment. He’s also infatuated with one of the young slave girls and regularly rapes her. We have the put upon and ever suffering ‘southern belle’ who knows what her husband is doing but society wouldn’t thank her for leaving him and her petty acts of spite against the innocent slave girl only seems to stress her impotence and frustration.

We have the ignorant and vicious white overseer whose only claim to importance is his brutal control of the slaves and he hits out at any challenge to his ‘authority’ – yet another example of the economic inefficiency of slavery. Then we have a couple of liberals, probably to give ‘balance’. One a slave-owner who’s strapped for cash and the other a free thinking Canadian whose ideas, freely expressed, surely would have made his life impossible in the plantations of the time. He’s Northup’s ticket out. We even have a former slave woman who becomes mistress of her house and gets tea served to her by a slave girl on the terrace of the big house. Now I’m quite prepared to accept that all these stereotypes existed at the time, slavery being such that it was prone to anomalies, but do we need them all in one film?

But the trailer and the film’s poster try to mislead us. Although based on an autobiography this is known to only a few so images of him paddling along through the swamps on a makeshift raft imply an escape attempt as does the figure of him running in the poster. His quote immediately after his capture of not wanting to just to survive but to live is made so that we can see him on the point of breaking when he joins in the singing on the death of one of the older slaves, a religious chant that keeps the slaves in their place – they can suffer the indignities of their slavery if Christ (a black or a white one?) is waiting to greet them at the Pearly Gates standing beside Peter.

We see that he’s really been broken when he viciously whips the young girl who had infatuated the ‘Master’, preferring to beat rather than be beaten. To hurt the innocent on the orders of the guilty is what allows exploitative and oppressive societies to continue to exist and it’s this aspect of 12 Years a Slave I find most problematic.

There is no challenge to the institution of slavery anywhere in the 134 minutes. He looks back when the carriage comes to pick him up with a white friend from New York holding a piece of paper proving his status. That in itself is pushing things as by all accounts these plantation owners were a law unto themselves and we must remember that all this takes place only 8 years before the declaration of the Confederacy – about which we learn nothing at all from this film.

Steve McQueen (one of the few black directors making feature films that get wide distribution) has missed an opportunity if he wanted to really challenge the history of slavery. If he wanted to use a book as a starting place why not choose the brilliant novella The Kingdom of this World by the Cuban author Alejo Carpentier – about the revolt of the Haitian slaves, their revenge against the whites and their lackeys and the establishment of the first Black Republic. Or he could have based his film on The Confessions of Nat Turner, about a slave revolt in Southampton, Virginia in 1831, written by William Styron. This was controversial at the time of its publication but at least the slaves got up off their knees in one of the 250 documented revolts (why so few?). Yes they were defeated and cruelly put down but defeats are there to teach us to make sure of success the next time.

Because failure to get up off your knees doesn’t mean that repression won’t be as vicious. Lynchings of black people (and a few of their white supporters) weren’t an aspect only of the period of slavery. Just look at what happened after the Civil War and the way that Reconstruction was attacked with the growth of the Ku Klux Klan. Billy Holliday’s song Strange Fruit is about whites, men women and children, proudly posing for photographs at lynchings in the first part of the 20th century. And what of later killings of black people in the US, from George Jackson, who was murdered in the prison system on 21st August 1971 or the very recent shooting by a white racist vigilante of Trayvon Martin on 26th February 2012?

Or he could even have attempted something about the history of the Black Panthers where the black population were prepared, for the first time in any organised manner, to defend and protect their communities.

But that would end up asking more questions than it answered. If it’s right to rise up and fight against oppression under the system of slavery then surely it’s equally OK to do so against the system of wage slavery. But that would send a signal that perhaps so-called parliamentary democracy and recourse to the legal system is incapable of ridding the world of exploitation – and that wouldn’t do.

Django Unchained (2012) might have been a fanciful fantasy but at least it depicted a fight back and the exacting of revenge. However, in an age where Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedom is the preferred way forward anything further than Tarantino’s comic book representation would probably never get past the pitching stage.

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013) – dir. Justin Chadwick

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Sharpville Massacre May 1960

Sharpville Massacre May 1960

Considering that the period covered was one of the most dynamic and crucial in the development of Black Southern Africa the film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom is remarkably pedestrian, slow, ponderous and ultimately unsatisfying. This isn’t surprising when you consider that the whole emphasis is placed on an individual with political events merely being a historical backdrop rather than looking at those events and analysing how any individual relates to the greater whole.

Being based on Mandela’s autobiography (of the same name) published in 1994 (a 750 pages doorstop that seems to have been his primary aim after release as he wrote this prior to his being elected South Africa’s first Black President in April 1994) this perhaps is not surprising but I would have thought that a film based in a period of massive upheaval and conflict should have recognised that social movements have a momentum of their own and that an individual’s role should be measured, for good or bad, in how it progresses that social movement.

The film is basically in three parts.

At the very beginning we are presented with an idealised childhood and youth in the South African bush. When he goes off to study at University Mandela’s wish is only to become a successful and wealthy lawyer. He’s a smart-arse lawyer and we are shown an episode in court where he wins a case by playing on the racism of a white woman. She is so disgusted at having to answer questions from a ‘kaffir’ and having to justify to him that a pair of knickers are hers that she walks out of the courtroom and the case collapses. So we are introduced to the Mandela who is a clever and astute lawyer.

But in this period he’s not especially interested in politics. This is the 1940s, before the formal establishment of Apartheid, and although the formal and legal institution of that system has yet to be written into law we are still dealing with a racist and segregated society. But Mandela, although having contact with the African National Congress (ANC), seems more concerned about using the pistol in his trousers than any true weapon against the State.

When, as a result of the openly racist National Party in the whites only election in 1948, strict segregation of the races is enforced and Mandela moves into a house in the Orlando township he is given a speech were it gives the impression that he is the only one who really understands what is going on in the country – here the film seems to play around with the timeline of events for dramatic effect. This establishes a theme that continues throughout the rest of the film, Mandela knows best, Mandela is the one who doesn’t break when the pressure is applied, Mandela is the clear and thoughtful leader who sees the future whilst others are lost in a wilderness. In this way any voices, either in agreement of otherwise are totally ignored.

We get the start of the hagiography that is the film with demonstrations of his ability as a public speaker, a demagogue who says what everyone else is afraid to say – and throughout the rest of the film very few significant statements are made by any of the other characters. In such street meetings the camera flashes to other ANC supporters who look concerned when Mandela makes a statement that might be construed as inflammatory and going too far and which might bring down the wrath and anger of the white racists. This despite the fact that the film, in an earlier scene, shows that many in the ANC were challenging the system BEFORE the active involvement of Mandela. He was not a leader from the off and, in fact, although not shown in the film, Mandela later became instrumental in side-lining the more radical elements within the movement.

Towards the end of this first third he develops as an egoist and self publicist having the newspaper cameras around when he burns his passbook. This follows the Sharpville massacre of May 1960 in which 69 people were butchered during a Pan-African Congress (PAC) organised protest against the obligatory carrying of identification papers. The PAC was much further to the left than the ANC and the two organisations vied for the mass support of the South African population. In those pictures he’s smiling as if it were yet another photo opportunity and demonstrates how he rode on the backs of others who had taken the initiative – not for the last time.

After Sharpville - Mandela burns his passbook

After Sharpville – Mandela burns his passbook

The only period in the whole of his life where Mandela might be vaguely considered to have followed a revolutionary road was during the first couple of years of the 1960s. Then he followed some military training in Algeria and this period saw the establishment of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation, known in shorthand as MK), the military wing of the ANC. This organisation limited itself to sabotage activities in its beginning and rarely went much further for the rest of its existence and it was the activities of MK that led to the arrest and trial of Mandela and others from the ANC leadership.

Much has been made of Mandela’s closing speech at the Rivonia trial of 1964 where his last words were ‘it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die’. This was inspired by Fidel Castro’s speech after the failed attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba on July 7th 1953 and considered the start of the Cuban revolution. Castro’s last words were: ‘Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me’. (Don’t you ever get the impression they were speaking with history in mind rather than anything else?) It is true that they could have been sentenced to death at this trial but the Afrikaaners were to deny them their desire for martyrdom and instead sentenced them to life imprisonment. Fine, stirring and defiant these final words might have been but a better idea of Mandela’s political thinking, which he maintained till the end, can be understood if the whole of the speech is read, where, among other things he speaks of his admiration for the British establishment.

The second section of the film concerns his time in prison. Yet again all the other inmates become mere cyphers. For example, on arrival at Robben Island prison he is shown as the only one remaining defiant as when he shouts out ‘Amandla’ (meaning ‘power’) which would expect the reply ‘Awethu’ (‘to us’) Mandela’s call is met with total, demoralised, silence.

Being a prisoner was the most significant role that Mandela played in the South African liberation struggle and became the symbol for anti-Apartheid campaigns throughout the world. For 18 years he was isolated from the struggle like all the other prisoners on Robben Island and wasn’t aware of or in any way involved in the direction of the struggle as it intensified. Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s one after another of the countries that had been dominated by European colonial powers gained their independence, often after bitter, bloody and determined armed struggles. It was in this way that Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Angola gained their freedom from direct foreign control (but not from international capitalist interference). Things were starting to get out of control in South Africa and fearing the country would move much further to the left after any possible victory in the liberation struggle Mandela was brought back into the political process to create division and promote moderation.

This very selection of someone who had been out of contact with the everyday struggle becoming the representative of the black population says a lot about the failure of the ANC to make any significant inroads during their so-called ‘armed struggle’.

This, third, section of the film plainly shows the attitude Mandela had to any sort of collective leadership and decision-making process. Probably the most significant discussion amongst his fellow prisoners and the clearest political stance (and the only one in the film) they took was totally ignored by Mandela. When they voted that he shouldn’t be meeting with the ‘The Boer’ leadership by himself his response was ‘I take note, comrades, but I will do what I think is right.’ He assumes the inalienable right to be the only capable of making the ‘correct’ decisions!

At the same time we are shown that he is becoming increasingly estranged from his second wife, Winnie Madikizela, who, living and fighting in the townships, had realised that the situation had changed radically from what it had been at the beginning of the 1960s when he had been tried and imprisoned.

In this third part of the film we see Mandela playing everything as a one man show. He calls for unity when it’s his ideas that are being challenged, using his international reputation to beat down his opponents. He accuses Winnie of not following the capitulation ANC leadership as she calls for the struggle to become a true armed struggle and not to continue to throw unarmed children in the battle against machine gun-toting thugs in armoured vehicles.

Despite this open individualism and depicting his political manoeuvring the film still arrives at the general consensus in the end, that of a patient, elder statesmen who considers that peace with the white oppressors is preferable to true liberation for the South African working class, both black and white.

It was for that reason he was so fêted at the end of last year after his death on 5th December. His legacy being a South Africa where the same political and economic forces are in control, albeit with some black faces feeding at the trough, and an increasingly desperate situation for the majority.