Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25044
� . e �(ljJ[Q) D(ljJ ®�,r[t®� o�� [}D® @[}D�® o (5\§ � When a lllilitary � @ � 0 mru @ who bears �itne1f_? . @ a�d destruction in g B U r m a � � Thousands of eleventh-century stu pas dimple a sandy plain. Countless pilgrims climb 3,000 steps, aching to be healed. Thirty-seven guardian spirits await them on top. Within a cave of 10,000 Buddha images, blackness swallows me in the womb of an ancient land. I am barefoot, padding along cold stone steps, groping a lichen-covered wall that bends into the cool, alabaster knees of 'a giant Buddha. Legs folded in meditation. Eyes closed in the dark. Darkness so complete, even with open eyes I cannot see. Blind fingers lead me around a corner. Suddenly I am drowning in a bath of filmy light. In deference-or is it fear?-I recoil into a corner. The golden Buddha before me is ten times the size of my awe. I am just a little afraid, spooked by the shadows and the ineffable power of his presence. Water dribbles from the cave ceiling above. A drop grazes my forehead. A third eye, as if now I should always see. A monk in crimson robes ambles up and sits near me. Hunkered together in this small niche, we con- template the darkness and the diaphanous light-the light dawning on Burma. Since the British bowed out almost 50 years ago, a succession of tenuous and tyrannical governments, from trial "tigers," a moniker for their robust economies, Burma A look at beauty, aealn has struggled to simply maintain. Its development thwarted, the only constant during Burma's volatile revolving-door regimes has been an isolationist policy that locked the country in a time warp of its own design. Until recently. In the last few years, Burma's current government has launched an ambitious tourism campaign. Today most of the coun- try is open to visitors, many areas for the first time in half a centu- ry. Good news, right? Maybe. By all accounts, the rulin.s military junta known by the omi- nous acronym SLORC (::,tate Law and Order Restoration Council) gets an "F" for its human rig'hts record. They began with a brainwashing purge akin to China's Cultural Revolution, changing the names of villages, rivers and even the country itself back to the pre-colonial vernacular. Burma became Myanmar, Rangoon became Yangon, the Irrawaddy River of Rudyard Kipling fame became the Ayeyarwady. Later, strong- arm tactics by the country's round-table (and reportedly rotund) generals included an escalation of terror against the Karen rebels with whom an ongoing war for autonomy ensued. Add to that the imprisonment of political opposition leaders and even a heinous policy of forced labor. To promote "Visit Myanmar Year 1996," the government exploited an age-old Burmese custom of voluntary community ser- vice by "recruiting" entire villages to rebuild Burma's crumbling infrastructure. Railroads, bridges, even the behe- socialist regimes to military juntas, have ruled Burma. While moth moat around Mandalay Palace were forti- neighboring Thailand and Malaysia transformed into indus- fied with the slave labor that carries the weighty burden of air-brushing Burma for tourism.