Once more, living outside
of the U.S. has meant that the fourth of July has snuck up on me,
unheralded by department-store sales and recipes for red, white, and
blue desserts. In my small town, there will be no fireworks. All
the men will go to work in the morning, hiking into the hills to
check on the corn, and will come back sweaty and hungry to their
wives, who will have worked all morning to clean the house and put
sancocho (the Costeño stew) on the table.
My brother was just here
visiting from the same U.S.A. for a few
days, and besides the early morning cow-butchering and horseback trek
to visit someone's fields, we spent a lot of time
chewing on the stark differences between our current lives. I think,
for my part, this translates into me venting about various aspects of
my job. Perhaps venting isn't quite right, but I remember that I
would repeatedly have a conversation with a community member about
some aspect of our work, then as I translated to Dylan, I would
explain why this part of my work was frustrating. The word I use
most often is “try,” as in, “we're trying to involve the
younger men in our projects” or “we're trying to promote
democratic participation” or “we're trying to creates channels of
communication between leaders.” Once more, I feel like the
beautiful conflict analysis diagrams and development project plans
from EMU are bare guidelines, and the real work is just years of
slugging away, piece by piece building process.
I asked
Dylan once if he thought I was being overly negative about my work,
and his reply put to voice something I'd been thinking for a while.
He said no- rather the context was wrapped in negativity. The people
here are extraordinarily brave and loving, but they wrestle
constantly with a host of things that try to cut them down. I think
living here is most importantly an experience of structural violence
in almost every form, and I'm not exaggerating. This is a community
of poor peasant-farmers, living on rich land, but without the tools
to profit from it. They are recovering from a massacre and mass
displacement, which caused unimaginable material losses, tears in
family structure, fear and distrust in others from the community, and
on and on. The government is unresponsive to their pleas for better
roads and schools, and folks here are too busy, without resources,
and underprepared to organize well. The worst part is that most of
the influences around appear to be working against them. The
Colombian and international vision of development doesn't have a
place in it for the preservation of the small-scale farmer.
Reparations and aid for displaced people tend to be monetary
hand-outs, which negatively affects the pride and resilience of
independent farmers, now reduced to spending days filling out
paperwork in Colombia's bureaucratic behemoth. Even the weather
seems to be conspiring against them. An unscientific understanding
sees climate change warping the rainy season patterns, meaning that
every year, many of the farmers simply bet wrong. As we speak, there
is rice turning yellow in most of my friends' fields, thanks to the
lack of rain all June.
Over
and over, I get this feeling that this village is at the algae end of
the food chain. A rural agrarian community in a country hell-bent on
reinventing itself as an economic power... globally, it is not a
promising story. Another village of campesinos is expendible,
especially if there is something valuable under the soil. The
passion that people have for their yuca crops, the knowledge of
exactly which tree has the best mangoes, the lengthy arguments over
the price of cows, and the fierce bonds of family and community...
these things are not worth developing or preserving from the
standpoint of progress. I should say, from the disassociated plans
for progress. If we educate, if we rethink, if we rehumanize, if we
listen to the campesinos themselves, these things can be understood
for their true values. How strange, that something can be worthless
from one angle and priceless from another.
And so
we keep on trying. I keep on trying to express to my community my
vast appreciation and wonder at this way of life, and we keep
thinking of ways to strengthen it.
As we
approach July fourth, I find myself in a different place than last
year. Last year, I thought long and hard about the things I loved
about the U.S.- especially the brilliant, vibrant people who resist
the push for global dominance, by living and loving each other in
their own communities. This year, I'm trying to understand a
helpless fury drected at the top of the food chain. I could qualify
this fury for pages- I know that the American Dream isn't true for so
many within the U.S., and I know that it isn't the only factor that
plays in Colombia's (or many other developing nations') path to
economic and political success- and it isn't helpful to flatly blame
anyone, especially not a nation as huge and diverse as the U.S. I do
know that something is deeply wrong, and I think it's perhaps the
myth of the American Dream. Maybe it's still the blessed myth of the
bootstraps that stalks us, as we desperately try to believe that the
problems in a Colombian village are centered around lack of
organization, not the demoralization of centuries of having
everything held just out of their reach. Maybe it's the fact that
people in my village ask me over and over about the U.S. as if it's
the promised land, not the land that has stolen that promise at some
point from every country in Latin America.
I don't
know where to direct my anger. I don't know how to understand the
incredible gap of opportunity and possibility for myself and the
average 23-year-old in my town. I don't know how we can start to
value community, sustainable planning for the future, resilient
economic systems, and transformative relationships. I don't know how
not to feel guilty about everything (although I cope, and I ignore,
and I don't). I don't know how to talk about development- what is
essential? What is a right?
The
only thing I can think recently is that we have to learn that not
everyone has bootstraps, and maybe a better model is talking about
hands. Maybe we need to reach out our hands more often, and help
pull each other up.
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