11-year-old drunk driver

Our inaugural contribution to “This Week’s Sign that the Apocalypse is Upon Us”

Ummm, where the hell were this kid’s parents?

So, where exactly is Trapalanda?

Trapalanda is at once a myth and a state of mind.  According to legend, Trapalanda is a name of a lost city of treasure located in an Andean valley in Patagonia.  Acording to Chiloe oral tradition, the “City of Caesars” is an enchanted city, one that no traveler has found.  Only at the end of the world will the city be visible in order to convince the incredulous ones of its existence. 

In Ezequiel Martine Estrada’s Radiografia de la Pampa (X-ray of the Pampa), published in 1933, he defines Trapalanda as an ‘illusory country,’ an unachievable utopia of modernity that Argentina, in his example, could never achieve.

I am an historian of this breathtaking, yet troubled, country; however, I utilize the term “Trapalanda” much more liberally, perhaps redefining it entirely.  I am comfortable with that possibility. It is, after all, my blog.

Trapalanda, for me, is an imaginary world, one where I am subjected to the absurdity of all that I see around me – be it the realm of politics and society, my life vocation as an eternal student (who will graduate sooner rather than later, if only to please my mother), or my own impending fatherhood.  Certainly, there are many things that are real that causes life to intervene into my best laid plans – the dissertation, student debt, health insurance, and so on… So, any and all topics that intersect with my life and that of my family are on the table.  All this is the rich mush that will inform “Dispatches from Trapalanda.”

Bienvenido a Trapalanda y saludos desde ahi…