Nations of Folkmoot
A melange of colors, languages and customs make up this year’s Folkmoot celebration.
The nations Folkmoot participants hail from all corners of the globe; some countries have cultures and histories that will be familiar to Americans; others are diametrically opposite.
Here’s a look at the nations of Folkmoot.
Canada
Quick: can you name the president of our neighboring country to the north?
Can’t do it? You’re not alone. A recent poll found some 91 percent of Americans could not do so either. America’s ignorance of Canada is nothing new; perhaps because this country so closely parallels the U.S. —both in look and feel — we think it gives us a license to not care.
Too bad.
Canada’s emblematic psyches are born of both its wild frontier, its English and French settlement past, and its polyglot of cultures that strive to create a better place. The past few years, Canada has focused on terrorism, security, immigration and dealing with its high taxes. In January, national elections brought a major change as the long-reigning Liberal party lost to the Conservatives. Meanwhile, Bloc Québecois, which has argued for the separation of Quebec from the rest of the country based on language and culture, has lost steam; only about 40 percent of Quebec residents now support the movement.
Head of state: Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Population: 32.3 million
Per capita annual income: $28,390
People: British descent, French descent, Italian descent, Inuit, plus significant minorities of Irish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Greek, and Chinese
Religion: Catholic (45 percent), Protestant (36 percent) and minorities from most major religions around the world
Language: English, Spanish
Gabon
To understand the history of Gabon is to also understand that of France, because like so many other countries in Equatorial Africa, Gabon’s triumphs and tragedies are closely tied to those of its mother country. Gabon was formed into a nation at the turn of the 20th century when it was separated from neighboring Congo.
Its early years were marked by revolts against slavery and indentured servitude; meanwhile, private French companies robbed the nation of its natural resources. Gabon gained independence in the 1960s and soon began to take advantage of its manganese, oil and uranium deposits, an event which brought the tiny country magnificent wealth.
Of course, when resource prices plummeted in the 1980s, so did the country’s fortunes.
Amazingly, President El Hadj Omar Bongo has stayed in power through almost all of this — a small miracle in the shotgun wedding world of African politics. In July 2003, President Bongo had parliament alter the constitution to allow him to run for president in perpetuity.
Head of state: President El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba
Head of government: Jean-Francois Ntoutoume-Emane
Population: 1.4 million
Per capita annual income: $3,940
Religion: 75 percent Roman Catholic, 20 percent Protestant
People: 92 percent Bantu tribes, 3 percent European Language: French, Fang, Myene
Colombia
It might be easy to think that the citizens of Colombia have drawn a tough lot in life: a civil war has made much of the country difficult to inhabit, violent crime and kidnappings are a fact of life, and much of the country is run, for all practical purposes, by drug lords.
Only, just when things start to look bad, you see there is an incredible amount of beauty.
Colombia’s cities are vibrant and etched with gleaming skyscrapers. Its elegant coastal towns are full of cobblestoned alleys and quiet plazas. Its mountains are straddled by glaciers and ethereal tropical rainforests. Inhabited by Indians but settled by the Spanish, Colombia today is a mix of these two cultures.
Drug trafficking remains the nation’s Number One industry, raking in an estimated $6 billion annually. Moderate-right independent President Alvaro Uribe has worked hard to reinforce security, eliminate drug crops and settle the country’s millions of internally displaced refugees (second only to Sudan).
Homicide and kidnapping rates are both down appreciably, but traffickers and right-wing paramilitaries continue to cause problems.
Uribe’s term expires this year, and Colombia’s Constitutional Court has amended laws so he can run for re-election.
Colombia gets about $740 million a year from the U.S., mostly for drug eradication, making it America’s biggest aid recipient outside the Middle East.
Head of State: President Alvaro Uribe
Population: 45.6 million
Per capita annual income: $2,000
People: 65 percent mestizo (mixed European and indigenous descent), 25 percent European, 20 percent indigenous
Religion: 90 percent Catholic
Language: Spanish
Venezuela
We hear a lot about the need to wean America from its dependence on foreign oil — and usually that term is closely allied with the Middle East. However, America’s two largest oil exporters are closer to home: Canada and Venezuela.
Venezuela is a country of spectacular scenery and culture. It is also home to the world’s tallest waterfall and South America’s largest lake.
But like parts of the Middle East, Venezuela (named by explorer Alonso de Ojedahas to mean “Little Venice”) has also been home to political unrest.
The discovery of huge oil reserves near Maracaibo in the 1910s ended decades of coups and economic instability and brought prosperity to the country. By 1930, Venezuela had become the world’s largest oil exporter, though most of this money stayed with the elite, and corruption remained.
In 1998, Venezuelans signaled they had enough: they voted, army colonel Hugo Chávez as president. Six years earlier, Chávez led an unsuccessful coup against the government and spent time in jail. Chávez was re-elected in 2000.
Chávez is charismatic, easy to access, and extremely popular. And, because he occasionally hangs out with Fidel Castro and favors socialist-style economic initiatives, has earned the scorn of George W. Bush. In 2002, following widespread demonstrations, a coup blessed by the United States succeeded in briefly detaining Chávez. Chávez won a 2004 referendum.
Head of State: President Hugo Chávez
Population: 26.7 million
Per capita annual income: $4,020
Religion: 96 percent Roman Catholic
People: 94 percent mestizo (mixed European and indigenous descent), 3 percent European, 2 percent Caribbean African, 1 percent indigenous
Language: Spanish
United Kingdom (Scottish Highlands)
Pushed up into the northern edge of Britain, Scotland takes the brunt of the North Sea’s moody weather. This is the home of dark beer, Loch Ness and spare snowy peaks.
The Scots are no strangers to heritage festivals. Founded in 1947, the Edinburgh International Festival is an annual festival now seen as one of the most significant celebrations of the arts in the world. More avant-garde, meanwhile, is The Fringe. This festival supports “open-access for all performers” and was witnessed by 1.25 million spectators last year. And a group of festivals which might sound familiar to many Western North Carolina residents are the Highland Games, many of which have been taking place for so long that it is not known when they were started or why. They showcase traditional Highlands sport.
One of the world’s great engineering marvels opened recently in Scotland: the Falkirk Wheel. The wheel is a modern link between the region’s two main canals and replaces an old system of 11 locks. Boats approaching from the higher Union Canal now sail into a standing body of water which is cut from the canal through locks. Boats are then spun on a rotating wheel through the air down 115 feet to the Forth and Clyde Canal.
Head of Government: Queen Elizabeth II
Head of State: Prime Minister Tony Blair
Population: 59.7 million
Per capita annual income: $33,940
People: 82 percent English, 9 percent Scottish, 3 percent various south Asian, 2 percent Irish, 2 percent Welsh, 2 percent Ulster
Religion: 60 percent Anglican, 25 percent Roman Catholic, 2 percent Muslim , 2 percent or less each Presbyterian, Methodist, Sikh, Hindu, Jewish
Language: English
France (Brittany)
France lost their bid to be World Cup champions by a single overtime goal kick and a last-minute head butt. The let-down was short-lived, however. That same week, Le Tour de France opened.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, in Brittany, the summer beach season had begun.
“Finistère,” or “land’s end,” is term used to describe parts of this pyramid of land called Brittany that juts into the Atlantic.
Rocky and tied to the cadence of tide and wind, Bretons are fiercely independent and cherish their own language and their own legends.
Head of State: President Jacques Chirac
Population: 60.5 million
Per capita annual income: $30,090
Religion: 83 percent Roman Catholic, 5 percent Muslim, 2 percent Protestant, 1 percent Jewish
People: 85 percent Celtic and Latin; 7 percent North African, 4 percent Asian, 3 percent Basque Language: French
Ecuador
Ecuador is a multiethnic, multicultural nation which is among the least-developed in South America. Freed from Spain in 1822 by the great liberator Simon Bolivar, the nation has more than 14 indigenous groups which maintain their own traditions and ways of life.
That maintenance has continued in spite of huge development pressures to many rural areas now home to both isolated cultures and natural resource development.
The country has a varied and beautiful landscape. Straddling the equator, Ecuador includes territories in both the Northern and the Southern hemispheres. There are striking glaciated peaks, coastal lowlands, Amazonian rainforests and the Galapagos Islands. Thousands of people were forced to flee their homes this week as Tungurahua volcano, located 85 miles south of the capital of Quito, continued to erupt.
Some 3,700 people were evacuated over the weekend as the 16,550-foot-high volcano began releasing toxic gases and at least four lava flows.
No injuries have been reported. Tungurahua had been inactive for eight decades.
Meanwhile, 90 days remain until the country’s general elections. The 9.1 million people registered plus overseas residents will go to the second round of voting on Nov. 26 to elect the president and vice president, plus parliament members.
The winner will replace the current president, Alfredo Palacio, who became leader in April 2005 when Congress removed Lucio Gutierrez for financing his 2002 drive with funds supplied from overseas.
Head of State: President Alfredo Palacio
Population: 13.3 million
Per capita annual income: $2,180
People: 65 percent mestizo (mixed European and indigenous descent), 25 percent indigenous, 7 percent European, 3 percent black
Religion: 95 percent Roman Catholic
Language: Spanish
New Zealand
Few nations in the world can claim the sort of natural beauty that New Zealand does. Its spine is a chain of snowcapped peaks; its midlands an assemblage of spindly lakes and arid vineyards; its coastlines alternately bejeweled cities strung out like pearls on a necklace and ensconced in wild rugged cliffs.
New Zealand was not even discovered until around AD 800, and continuous settlement dates from about 1200. Whites happened upon the place in 1642.
Initial European contact with the native Maoris was often not pretty; more than once, visitors were killed and eaten. In 1840 Maoris ceded rule of their country to Britain in exchange for protection and guaranteed possession of their lands.
As we know in America, treaties like that don’t always work out as planned. It has not been until recent years that a resurgence in Maori culture has come to have a more meaningful impact on Kiwi society. Reconciliation, meanwhile, remains at the top of the government’s to-do list.
The Cook Islands are a South Pacific protectorate of New Zealand.
Population: 4 million
Per capita annual income: $20,310
Head of State: Queen Elizabeth II
Head of Government: Prime Minister Helen Clark People: 68 percent New Zealand European, 15 percent Maori, 5 percent other European, 5 percent Polynesian, 6 percent Asian
Language: English, Maori
China
Just two weeks ago, Chinese authorities finally opened a high tech rail line linking the cities of Beijing and Lhasa, the capitol of Tibet.
The rail line sails across tundra and over a 17,000-foot pass. It also continues a decades-long effort by the Chinese to dilute Tibetan culture and destroy the influence of the Dalai Lama.
Is this heavy-handedness necessary for China to maintain its competitive edge? Or are forgotten demons still nipping at the heals of the world’s most populous nation?
Such questions will become more commonplace as the country readies to host the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Hu Jintao’s government continues to seek economic growth and the admission of China into the World Trade Organization.
Head of State: President Hu Jintao
Population: 1.3 billion
Per capita annual income: $1,290
People: 93 percent Han Chinese
Religion: 45 percent Confucianism, 30 percent
Buddhism, 20 percent Taoism, 2 percent Islam, 1 percent Christian
Language: Chinese
Thailand
The tourist brochures are true: Thailand truly is a country of long white beaches, incredible food, imposing temples and breathtaking natural beauty. Though tourists and Hollywood often see it as a place of wild abandon (think The Beach), religion and monarchy are actually the bedrocks of Thai culture and permeate everyday life.
In the sometimes chaotic world of Southeast Asia, Thailand — like its neighbors Malaysia and Singapore to the south — is an oasis of stability and burgeoning economic prosperity.
In 1997 the Thai baht, the standard currency, collapsed, ruining the economy (and that of many other southeast Asian economies too).
This year, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra faced calls to resign in the wake of criticism over his family’s sale of stock. Several anti-Thaksin demonstrations prompted Thaksin to dissolve parliament and call an impromptu election in April.
Head of State: King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX)
Head of Government: Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra
Population: 64.3 million
Per capita annual income: $2,190
Religion: 94 percent Theravada Buddhist, 3.9 percent Muslims
People: 84 percent Thai, 12 percent Han Chinese, 2 percent Malay; 2 percent Khmer, Karen and Hmong
Language: Thai, English
Mexico
Mexico is a travellers paradise and a vote counter’s nightmare.
Mexico is an iconic nation of sandy beaches and Mayan ruins, illegal border crossings and sprawling shanty towns, epic artists and surrealist poets.
It’s also been the scene of massive demonstrations the past week in the wake of a July 2 presidential election which gave Felipe Calderón of President Vicente Fox’s conservative National Action Party a win by about 1 percent.
Leftist presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador has charged ballot-stuffing and miscounts — and in some cases provided videotape to prove his point — and on Sunday told a crowd of supporters in Mexico City estimated at 1.1 million to wage a campaign of “civil resistance” to push for a manual recount of the election.
The Supreme Court of Mexico court has until Aug. 31 to rule on appeals and until Sept. 6 to name a winner.
Head of State: President Vincente Fox
Population: 107 million
Per capita annual income: $6,770
People: 60 percent mestizo (mixed European and indigenous descent) and 30 indigenous
Religion: 90 percent Roman Catholic
Language: Spanishnguage: Spanish
