The New York Times International - 28.09.2019

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I NTERNATIONAL EDITION | WEDNESDAY,AUGUST 28, 2019

MIAMI HEAT

THE BEST POOLS

AT THE BEACH

BACK PAGE| TRAVEL

THE GULL’S STORY

THIEVES, YES, BUT

QUITE RESILIENT

PAGE 10| SCIENCE

ABET ON TECHNOLOGY

CADILLAC IS REVVING UP

FOR A COMEBACK (AGAIN)

PAGE 5| BUSINESS

weakens ties with their own, and wid- owhood can spell disaster: Some of In- dia’s 40 or so million widows are violently purged from their homes each year. But many of India’s castaway widows — most of them illiterate, some married off as infants — have seen significant improvements in their quality of life over the last few years. Prodded by a flurry of public petitions and court rul- ings, the government and rights groups have invested tens of millions of dollars into lifting the conditions of abandoned women. The money has gone not only into building group homes for widows, but also to funding pensions and providing work training and medical treatment. While some of these changes are taking place across India, they are most vis- ible in Vrindavan, about three hours’ drive south of New Delhi. The city is a maze of narrow streets and regal sand- stone temples. All day long, thousands of pilgrims gather to pray at the base of giant statues of deities. It is believed that widows have gath- ered in the city since Chaitanya Ma- haprabhu, a 16th-century Bengali social reformer, brought a group of them there to escape from suttee, a now-banned practice in which Hindu widows immo- lated themselves on their husbands’ fu- neral pyres.

Like thousands of other widows exiled from their homes to a city in northern In- dia, Nirmala Maheshwari said she was abused by her family after her husband died. “They saw me as a burden,” Ms. Ma- heshwari whispered recently, recalling her first day at a new shelter for widows in the city, Vrindavan, as other women crowded around her bed, comforting her by squeezing her shoulders and hands. Ms. Maheshwari said she had lost her social value in the eyes of her family, and her son and other relatives starved and beat her. Given her lowly status at home, Ms. Maheshwari said she was shocked when she stepped into the lobby of her new home: the Krishna Kutir ashram, a government-run facility with about 1, beds, a freshly dug swimming pool and free food and medicine. Hindu brides are often expected to live with their husbands’ families. This

For many years, the widows in Vrin- davan, which is considered the child- hood home of the Hindu god Krishna, have survived by singing devotional songs in temples for a few rupees a day, and by begging for money in white saris, a signifier that color had drained from their lives. Homelessness was common among

Vrindavan’s widows. Some lived in door- ways. When they died, garbage col- lectors would sometimes stuff their bod- ies into jute bags and throw them into the Yamuna River, according to local media reports. While widows often felt they had no place else to go, the trip to Vrindavan I NDIA, PAGE 2

Widows taking part in a yoga class at the Krishna Kutir ashram, a government-run facility in Vrindavan, India. Widows in India are sometimes violently purged from their homes.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY REBECCA CONWAY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

The brown sugar bubbled in the pan. The marinated goat meat sizzled when added. Spoonfuls of olives and capers were heaped into the mixture. Then Alt- agracia Alvino, who can make this dish with her eyes closed, froze. “Did I put spice in here?” she whispered to herself in Spanish. Alvino, 66, was careful to make as lit- tle noise as possible because it was 7: a.m., and her husband and her 20-year- old grandson, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., one of baseball’s brightest young stars, were asleep in their rooms of the family’s To- ronto apartment. The familiar scent of cooking meat was unavoidable, though. Silver hair in a net, Alvino leaned in to

inspect the meat, decided it indeed lacked kick and reached for a package of crushed red pepper. She had plenty of time to perfect the feast of white rice, stewed beans and goat before Guerrero awakened at 11 a.m. and quickly departed for Rogers Centre, carrying bags of the food to share with both his Blue Jays team- mates and their opponents. Alvino may be the most popular and powerful grandmother in baseball. For about two decades, she has filled the bel- lies of hundreds of players, most of them Latin Americans far from home. Eating her comfort food is a tradition that has become especially popular among players from the family’s homeland, the Do- minican Republic. A few have come to call Alvino “Abuela,” or Grandma, yet most have never met her. She was there for every step in the career of her son Vladimir Guerrero Sr., who was enshrined in the Hall of Fame last year, and now she oversees his son’s. “I do it out of love,” Alvino said re- A LVINO, PAGE 13

Her stewed goat is the talk of the big leagues

TORONTO

To baseball’s Latino players, grandmother of a Blue Jay star is the cook they all love

BY JAMES WAGNER

Altagracia Alvino cooking on the morning of a game day while her grandson Vladimir Guerrero Jr., a rookie third baseman for the Blue Jays, slept at their home in Toronto.

TARA WALTON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

The New York Times publishes opinion from a wide range of perspectives in hopes of promoting constructive debate about consequential questions.

As President Trump intermittently es- calates and moderates his trade war with China, his conflicting signals re- flect a reality that limits his actions: He can try to sever the deeply intertwined American commercial relationship with China, or he can prod economic growth to assuage the fears of investors around the planet. But he cannot do both at the same time. Mr. Trump need not rely on the testi- monials of economists to deduce this. He can disregard the admonitions of news outlets he derides as fake news. He can simply consult the one source whose verdicts he tends to celebrate: the stock market. Among those who control money, por- tents of further trade hostilities between the United States and China, the two largest economies on earth, have proved an impetus to sell with abandon while amplifying talk of recession. Inti- mations of a deal avoiding further ani- mosity reverberate as a clarion call to buy, sending share prices higher while easing worries about a potential global economic downturn. Mr. Trump often appears caught between competing impulses that pull markets — and his China policy — in op- posite directions. Talk of a trade deal with China makes for happy stock markets and retirement account statements that Americans open up to learn that they are, also hap- pily, richer. For a president seeking re- election next year, this option holds ap- peal. Thunderous threats of fresh tariffs on Chinese goods and the forging of a new order in which American industry for- sakes China may damage share prices and shrink economic growth prospects. But it brings plaudits from Mr. Trump’s most ardent political base — national- ists who portray the trade war as a tough but necessary piece of business, the sort of action evaded by the cowards who occupied the White House before. The latest evidence for this state of af- fairs came in recent days, as Mr. Trump angrily reacted to China’s announce- ment of retaliatory tariffs of 10 percent on some $75 billion worth of American exports. On Friday, the president unleashed fu- rious tweets threatening China. He vowed to raise tariffs on $550 billion of T RADE, PAGE 6

Stark choice

faces Trump

in trade war

with China

NEWS ANALYSIS LONDON

BY PETER S. GOODMAN

President can sever ties or prod economic growth, but he cannot do both

The Amazon, the greatest reservoir of fresh water and biodiversity on the planet, is burning. Its degradation, which threatens to reach a cata- strophic tipping point, means less oxygen and rain as well as warmer temperatures. Human actions have been the driving cause. In Brazil, which holds 60 percent of the Amazo- nian rain forest, wildcat land grabbers and ranchers, who set fires to clear land in implicit partnership with a lenient government, are the main culprits. We have been here before. In 2004 deforestation rates were much worse than they are today. In the last years of that decade Brazil stepped back from the brink and im- posed constraints on what had been a free-for-all in the region. We now need to be more ambitious than we were then. The threshold problem is land tenure. Less than 10 percent of the land in private hands has clear title. Chaos reigns: No one knows who owns what and pillage is more rewarding than either preservation or production. To overcome the chaos we must distin- guish long-term squatters committed to making a life in the Amazon from predatory ranchers and loggers, and award them full ownership. In 2009, a law established the legal basis for this vital change by organ- izing the distribution of federal land in the Amazon. Successive federal admin- istrations have been slow to carry it out but the state governments are ready to step in. The Brazilian Amazon is more than trees; about 30 million people live and work there. We need to ensure that the forest is worth more standing than cut down. To that end, we must give the inhabitants of the Amazon the means with to both use and preserve their environment. The linkages between the urban economy and the forested Amazon are not yet in place. The free economic zone in Manaus, the capital of the Amazon’s largest state, could well be somewhere in China; its factories assemble products like cellphones and motorcycles. The environment-friendly but primitive production techniques adopted by the native populations in the interior lack the scale and technology required to create a viable econ-

To save

Amazonia,

help Brazil

Roberto Mangabeira Unger

OPINION

We need to figure out how to sustainably use the rain forest for the benefit of its inhabitants and the world.

U NGER, PAGE 9

G7 REVERSALS PUT WORLD OFF BALANCE President Trump defends his seesaw- ing on China trade, saying, “That’s the way I negotiate.” PAGE 5

‘They saw me as a burden’

INDIA DISPATCH VRINDAVAN, INDIA

BY KAI SCHULTZ

In a holy city, India has built a sanctuary for abused widows

Kali Dasi, who is around 75, said she tried to return to her family last year and reconcile with them, but when she got there relatives drained her life savings, about $230.

nytimes.com/thedaily

How the news should sound. A daily audio report on demand. Hosted by Michael Barbaro.

Issue Number Andorra € 3.70Antilles € 4.00 No. 42, Austria € 3.50Bahrain BD 1. Belgium € 3.50Bos. & Herz. KM 5. Cameroon CFA 2700

Canada CAN$ 5.50Croatia KN 22. Cyprus € 3.20Czech Rep CZK 110 Denmark Dkr 30Egypt EGP 32. Estonia € 3.

Finland € 3.50France € 3. Gabon CFA 2700Germany € 3. Great Britain £ 2.20Greece € 2. Hungary HUF 950

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Malta € 3.50Montenegro € 3. Morocco MAD 30Norway Nkr 33 Oman OMR 1.40Poland Zl 15 Portugal € 3.

NEWSSTAND PRICES Turkey TL 17U.A.E. AED 14. United States $ 4.00United States Military (Europe) $ 2.

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Altagracia Alvino cooking on the morning of a game day while her grandson Vladimir

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Guerrero Jr., a rookie third baseman for the Blue Jays, slept at their home in Toronto.

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The New York Times International - 28.09.2019

‘They saw me as a burden’

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