What’s left of a bird paradise?

birds for Chapman, who was thrilled.On a morning in early August, a cen-

tury and nine years after Miller loadedhis specimens onto river rafts and com-menced his return to New York, a groupof researchers tramped through muddyfields to their base camp, a ranch in a ru-ral outpost of the city of Florencia.

The team, led by Andrés Cuervo, anornithologist at Universidad Nacional inBogotá, has organized six expeditionsacross Colombia, collecting birds anddata for comparison with Chapman’s;this was the fifth. The undertaking,called Alas, Cantos y Colores — Wings,Songs and Colors — is financed by theColombian government, with the par-

Miller was working for Frank Chap-man, the celebrated curator of birds atthe museum. Chapman suspected thatColombia’s wildly varied topographyhad given rise to an unusual density ofspecies, and he sent collectors likeMiller to bring him birds from all cor-ners of the country to study.

Miller set up camp on a farmsteadcalled La Morelia, surrounded by whathe described to his mentor as “a perfectocean of forest stretching out ahead asfar as the eye can see.”

There, he and his Colombian assist-ants worked day and night, beleagueredby rain, malaria and insects. By the endof July, they had collected more than 800

In June 1912, Leo Miller, a collector withthe American Museum of Natural His-tory, arrived in the Caquetá region of Co-lombia, where the eastern foothills ofthe Andes melt into the forested low-lands of the Amazon basin.

ticipation of research institutions in Co-lombia and the United States. Studies ofspecies from the same place over longperiods of time are rare in science, andthis resurvey project stands to speakvolumes about how tropical birds haveresponded to changes in land use andclimate.

A lot has changed in this part of Ca-quetá since 1912. For one, the “ocean offorest” has been reduced, after decadesof expanded cattle grazing, to mere is-lands in a sea of pasture. Before arriv-ing, the researchers had pored throughsatellite images in the hope of finding aforest big enough to sustain the kind of BIRDS, PAGE 6

Above, from left, Andrés Cuervo, Juliana Soto, Jessica Díaz and Andrea Morales Rozo, members of the expedition Alas, Cantos y Colores (Wings, Songs and Colors), in a forest nearMorelia, Colombia. Top left, Nelsy Niño of Colombia’s Instituto Humboldt with a pair of Lafresnaye’s piculets, tiny tropical woodpeckers; top right, a many-banded aracari.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY FEDERICO RIOS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

FLORENCIA, COLOMBIA

109 years after a studyof Colombia’s avian fauna,a new survey takes stock

BY JENNIE ERIN SMITH

..

INTERNATIONAL EDITION | TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2021

ROCKY ESCAPESCHAOS AWAITSMANY AFGHANSPAGE 3 | WORLD

WRITER’S TOUCHHE WILL TACKLETHE HARD TOPICSPAGE 18 | CULTURE

SUMMER IN A JARPRESERVING JAMS ANDJELLIES IN PEAK SEASONBACK PAGE | LIVING

The plan, to repatriate the skeleton of aNapoleonic general who died on a Rus-sian battlefield two centuries ago, wassupposed to bring together the leadersof two nations long at odds.

The remains of Gen. Charles ÉtienneGudin, who was killed in action in 1812during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia,would be flown home with official pomp,and President Emmanuel Macron ofFrance would host his Russian counter-part, Vladimir V. Putin, for a funeral thatwould serve as a symbolic burying of thehatchet.

Instead, General Gudin’s return toFrench soil on July 13 was far more low-key: His coffin was flown in on a private

plane chartered by a Russian oligarchand was welcomed with a small ceremo-ny in a grim hangar at Le Bourget air-port, near Paris, next to a decommis-sioned Concorde jet. The presidentswere nowhere in sight.

“It was not the repatriation that wasoriginally conceived,” said Hélène Car-rère d’Encausse, a French historian ofRussia.

Once seen as an opportunity to lever-age history for diplomatic purposes, theplan was eventually sunk by France’sunwillingness to countenance Russia’sincreasingly tough domestic and foreignpolicies. The unraveling of the projectalso spoke to the peculiar relationshipbetween France and Russia, shaped bya complicated shared history filled withshadowy intermediaries and backdoordiplomacy.

General Gudin’s case, Ms. Carrèred’Encausse said, “reveals the complex-ity, the difficulty for France in thisFrench-Russian relationship.”

A favorite of Napoleon, General Gudindistinguished himself in battle before FRANCE, PAGE 2

A Napoleonic skeleton for diplomacy

A ceremony in June in Moscow commemorating the transfer of Gen. Charles ÉtienneGudin’s remains to France from Russia. The Napoleonic general died in 1812.

ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

LE BOURGET, FRANCE

Plan to repatriate remainsof a general fails to healFranco-Russian relations

BY CONSTANT MÉHEUT

The New York Times publishes opinionfrom a wide range of perspectives inhopes of promoting constructive debateabout consequential questions.

The nights were the hardest.From the moment Medardo Mairena

decided to run for president, in directchallenge to Nicaragua’s authoritarianleader, he was certain the security appa-ratus would eventually come for him.

Over the summer, he watched asother opposition leaders disappeared.One by one, they were dragged fromtheir homes amid a nationwide crack-down on dissent by the president, Dan-iel Ortega, whose quest to secure afourth term had plunged the CentralAmerican nation into a state of perva-sive fear.

Since June, the police have jailed orput under house arrest seven candi-dates in November’s presidential elec-tion and dozens of political activists andcivil society leaders, leaving Mr. Ortegarunning on a ballot devoid of any credi-ble challenger and turning Nicaraguainto a police state.

Mr. Mairena himself was barred fromleaving Managua. Police patrols outsidehis house had scared away nearly allvisitors, even his family.

During the day, Mr. Mairena keptbusy, campaigning over Zoom and scan-ning official radio announcements forclues to the growing repression. But atnight he lay awake, listening for sirens,certain that sooner or later the policewould come and he would disappearinto a prison cell.

“The first thing I ask myself in themorning is, when are they coming forme?” Mr. Mairena, a farmers’ rights ac-tivist, said in a telephone interview inlate June. “It’s a life in constant dread.”

His turn came just days after the call.Heavily armed officers raided his homeand took him away late on July 5.

He had not been heard from until lastWednesday, when relatives were al-lowed one brief visit. They said theyfound him emaciated and sick, com-pletely disconnected from the outsideworld.

Government critics say the unpre-dictability and speed of the arrests haveturned Nicaragua into a more repres-sive state than it was during the earlyyears of the dictatorship of AnastasioSomoza, who was overthrown in 1979 bythe Sandinista Revolutionary Move-ment led by Mr. Ortega and severalother commanders. The Sandinistasgoverned the country until losing demo-cratic elections and ceding power in1990. In 2007, Mr. Ortega returned aspresident.

After 14 years in power, unpopular NICARAGUA, PAGE 4

Fear grips Nicaragua asit veers intodictatorshipMANAGUA, NICARAGUA

President has civic leadersand political opponents arrested as election nears

BY YUBELKA MENDOZA,ANATOLY KURMANAEVAND ALFONSO FLORES BERMÚDEZ

CARACAS, VENEZUELA A few years ago,Venezuela was experiencing suchdevastating food shortages that peoplestood for hours in lines just for achance to buy basic staples. Venezue-lans reported losing an average of 24pounds in 2017. Today, such hard timesfeel like a distant nightmare.

People can now buy groceries, medi-cations and other goods that for nearlya decade were impossible to find,thanks to the informal dollarization ofthe economy and the partial lifting ofprice controls and import tariffs byPresident Nicolás Maduro’s govern-ment. After years of deprivation, neareconomic collapse and political chaos,this shift has improved the quality of

life for many peopleacross Venezuela.Using the dollarinstead of the localcurrency, the bolívar,has its drawbacks,but it has broughtfragile stability, fornow.

Venezuelans spon-taneously began toadopt the dollar in2019 as a way offending off hyper-

inflation. American dollars, and otherforeign currencies like the euro and theColombian peso, have breathed somelife into the production of rum and thecollapsing oil industry.

Steve Hanke, an economist at JohnsHopkins University and an expert onhyperinflation, told me that dollariza-tion, even if it is improvised, ratherthan an official policy, can help people“protect themselves from the ravagesof the bolívar’s hyperinflation.” In thecase of Zimbabwe, making the U.S.dollar the official currency in 2009brought the economy back from thebrink.

In Venezuela, nearly 70 percent of alltransactions were conducted in thatcurrency as of June, according to LuisVicente León, a pollster in Caracas.About 60 percent of those purchaseswere in cash and the rest using wiretransfers or online payment systemslike Zelle and Venmo.

More than five million people, orover 15 percent of the population, havefled Venezuela in recent years. Thattranslates into greater access to dol-lars in the country, since many Vene-zuelans abroad send money to theirfamilies back home. In fact, before thepandemic, remittances had been ris-ing. In 2019, the diaspora sent an esti-mated $3.7 billion to relatives, up fromthe $3.5 billion sent the year before.

An economyof lettuce inVenezuelaVirginia López Glass

OPINION

After years ofdeprivations,an informaltrade in U.S.dollars isallowingpeople to buygroceries andmedication.

LÓPEZ GLASS, PAGE 15

Sharpen employee perspective.Empower forward thinking.

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