Summer reading

Columnist Bernardo Vega explains some of the logical conclusions he experienced in his travels around the world and then applies these to a current situation. In Mount Hagen in New Guinea, the white man first arrived in 1932. Vega says that he met a very old man who explained to him why the local tribes thought that these men were gods. First, because they arrived without women carrying their bundles and men only hunt and women carry the burdens. Second, because they had their legs covered in the cloth that we call pants, instead of the traditional skirt made of leaves and vines, obviously they were not men since they would dirty themselves when they defecated. From the native point of view, their conclusions were totally logical.
Vega then tells of a man he met in Nepal, so immersed in his philosophy of not killing anything that he ate no meat, nor vegetables, nor fruits and subsisted totally on milk. And from his point of view, this was totally logical.
Then, while on an archaeological dig, the economist said he met an old man who used to raise pigs, feeding them almost exclusively on lobsters that he harvested from the coastline where they were abundant and easy to obtain. He complained about the fishermen who started to come in boats and took all the lobsters for some new people called "tourists" who paid a lot of money for the lobsters. The old man, not finding any alternative food source for his pigs, stopped raising them and lived in abject poverty. Within his lack of knowledge, he had acted completely logically.
Then in 1965, a few months after the civil war began, a group of friends got together in Jarabacoa to talk about the sad and uncertain future of the Dominican Republic. Vega says that academic learning was bubbling over. During an intermission, the much younger economist talked to an old fellow who looked after the summer cottage and asked him what he thought was going to happen in the country. He shrugged and said "Nothing, there is too much 'adjacentcy'" as he held his hands together. The rural philosopher gave Vega a clear picture.
The memories of these experiences came back to Vega when he read a statement by a very high-ranking military officer who said that there were 10,000 officers and men in the Dominican air force. Vega asks how many aircraft in flying condition there are at San Isidro Airbase. He estimates around 20, and that makes for 500 men for each aircraft. The same officer also said that there were 10,000 officers and men in the Navy, and Vega says that with just ten ships afloat, that makes for 1,000 men for each craft. He then asks, where is the logic?
The former US ambassador states that the Army has shifted its helicopters to the airport at El Higuero and asks - why not transfer the Air Force planes and helicopters there, too? The land around the San Isidro base could be developed and the proceeds could go to education and health care. Finally he asks why the does the government not sell the large lot that is across the street from the Hotel Hispaniola and the Hotel Santo Domingo. The large amount of money that this would generate could be used to place Police nearer the neighborhoods that need patrolling and what is left over could go to schools and hospitals. He asks: "Isn't this logical?"

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