REZEKNE, Latvia — On a continent of fractured loyalties, a kaleidoscope of separatist passions extending from Scotland to eastern Ukraine, Piters Locs, the 70-year-old champion of an obscure and, at least officially, nonexistent language, has a particularly esoteric cause.
“We are a separate people,” he said, showing visitors around the private museum he has built to celebrate the language and literature of Latgale, a sparsely populated and impoverished region of lakes, forests and abandoned Soviet-era factories along Latvia’s eastern border with Russia.
While Locs insists that he has no desire to see the area break away from already tiny Latvia, such passion …read more
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
