NOTE: This text is an excerpt from this space:

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=01/05/21/5929612

poster's note: what begins as some pretty cynical thoughts about holding anarchist ideals in today's world ends with this gem! (edited and "chopped up" into paragraphs for easier reading)

(...)

With a benign sense of resignation and a heartsick gut, I fled the snows of the Cascadian winter and headed of to warmer climates. I had no idea I was to experience things that would highlight the validity of my [anarchist] politics like so many thousands of flaming churches.

A heavy pre-dawn mist waited in from the Andes, swirling its way through the stagnant air, pausing only slightly as it clung desperately to the overgrown jungle along the banks of the Rio Napo. A pair of bats the size of pit bulls bickered back and forth overhead as our canoe slid silently through the muddy brown water. After too many days dodging buses and riot cops in Quito, it was quite a descanso to sit idly by with my partner Mamy watching kilometer after kilometer of wild jungle pass as we plummeted downhill with the river on its tireless journey Eastward. Within a matter of days, the Rio Napo would gouge its way through the artificial boundaries of Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil before conjugating with the glorious Amazon and washing into the saline bliss of the Atlantic ocean. But for now, the river was gracefully carrying us to a small Quiche Indian village 30 miles downstream like a giant liquid freight train.