Contrastes

I'm writing this at 8 am, because I couldn't sleep anymore. It's hot already and the motos have been driving loudly past my open window since 6ish. Right now is also about the only time that it's comfortable to drink a cup of coffee also, seeing as it will be about 90 degrees by nine or ten. Ah, life on the coast has begun.

It's astounding how different the basics are here. I've been thinking a lot about contrasts recently. As much as I enjoyed the orientation time in Bogota- for the amount of information from incredible sources and the time exploring the city with my fellow Seeders- I found myself feeling frustrated and purposeless the weeks ticked on. Why we were sitting in an office and spending money in coffeeshops if our eventual purpose is living and working with communities, all of which live at a much lower standard of living than we were? Why were we listening to one lecture after another when the best lecturers will be our neighbors in our communities? How do I adjust personally from living in the largest city I've ever lived in- to living in the smallest town? I think the most pertinent question was- why can't I just get going, get to the community, and start doing what I prepared to do?

(Momentary break to run downstairs and buy bananas from the man pushing his cart of fruits and vegetables up the street. This place is fantastic.)

Of course, there is a logical counterweight to all of these frustrations, which was something I could articulate when I felt purposeful. It was indisputably important that we get the big picture of what is happening in Colombia and how our work as Seeders is all connected. I would also be floundering if I hadn't been supported in work and friendship by the rest of our team for those months, and I'm ceaselessly grateful for that. But overall, I think the clearest result of our time in Bogota was a vision of the contrasts that exist in Colombia, in lifestyle, in peace work, in ourselves... Living in Bogota, as frustrating as it was, was an enduring lesson in the importance of contrast.

One of them- Bogota has sections that look like the upscale section of any major city in the US. You can buy a full lunch (soup, rice, plantain, salad, meat, and juice) for 2-4 dollars, but there were whole sections that I, as an upper middle class US citizen, could never afford. The public transportation was like a metro in an large city, packed with young businesspeople in their black powersuits, heading to work at the multinational banks or businesses downtown. However, there are vast neighborhoods within and on the borders of the town where people don't have consistent electricity or running water. There are powerful contrasts within the city, for sure, but there are also slap-in-the-face contrasts with where we are now. 

Sincelejo, the capital of Sucre, a department on the coast, has no natural industry. There is no factory network and few large businesses, and one of the largest employers for young men (many displaced from farming communities in the region) is moto-taxi driving, where many are trapped paying rent for their motos that they can barely make up in a day of driving around the city. Most of the streets fade to dirt or are full of potholes. It's poor, in short, and there simply aren't options for work for young people- university? Think again. Taking a step further out- my community, Caño Berrugita (which is a community within Macayepo, a region) lies at the end of 2 hours of terrible road. When it rains, only massive trucks can get up the road because all of the ruts fill with water and churn into a muddy mess. There's electricity, but no cell phone service. No hospital, or clinic, or nurses. A fellow Seeder, Leonel, lives in a town unaccessible by more than boat or moto because the roads are also horrible. The government has promised electricity, but has been beyond slow in following through. An hour from Cartagena, the tourist base camp and recently much-publicized new face of Colombia, is Mampujan, where Anna will be living, a community of desplaced people than lives crammed into a tiny piece of land on the side of the main road. I could give example after example of the contrasts within Bogota and between Bogota and the coast, but I'll settle for just one more. There are no funky coffeeshops in Sincelejo, and there is only one store in Macayepo. How can Colombia be considering a newly booming economy if 47% of its population lives below the poverty line?  Contrast.

Another contrast we've been struck with over and over: It's gorgeous on the coast. We've tried a different fruit juice everyday, most I've never heard of, and most of which grow in my backyard in Macayepo, which incidentally produces almost all of the avocadoes eaten in Colombia (and exported). On Sunday, we went to an isolated strench of beach and swam in the Carribbean ocean, drank fresh coconut water and rested under stately palm trees. From the roof of the office, we can see the sun set in orange, purple and yellow splendor every evening, with thunderclouds in the distance turning red around the edges. Anywhere we drive, we see rolling green hills with stately trees and healthy cattle herds. The soil is so rich they say that you just have to throw a seed on the ground and it'll grow. We have to remember why we are here, though. 

Beauty means desirability. Just ten years ago, the region was devasted by a series of massacres in the rural communities, largely carried out by paramilitary groups. Why here? Beaches mean ports and the Carribbean means access to the powerful drug routes through Mexico to the consumers in the US. You can trace a line from massacre to massacre and see that the targeted communities lie right along a prime drug traffiking route through the mountains to the port. Many of the communities displaced, meaning that even as I watch the sunset over Sincelejo, I can see the neighborhoods on the margins- 30% of Sincelejo is made up of displaced people, which makes so many things difficult- unemployment, petty crime, available services. Rich soil also means perfect grazing land for many hugely wealthy landowning families who have snapped up the land left by displaced people for their massive plantations. In many cases, paramilitary groups were formed as private security groups for these families or used by large corporations and the local government to intentionally displace people to make way for palm oil or sugar cane plantations. Constrast: beauty doesn't only mean perfect Carribbean paradise, but it also holds hands with devastation.

The way I'm feeling about finally being on the coast is also quite a few contrasting emotions. There are four of us here working: Larisa, Will, Anna, and Leonel, and Jes, one of our leaders, who will be living in Sincelejo. We're all camping out at Jes' now and doing a second phase of orientation with our partner group, SembrandoPaz. We are living in communities fairly far from each other, but will reunite here once a month for team meetings and collaboration. Our orientation ends this Friday and I'll pack up my newly acquired kitchen supplies, mattress, and backpack and move (provided it doesn't rain) out to Macayepo. From the little time we've been here, I can say a few things for sure. Above all, I'm delighted to be out of the city and into the hot, green, growing, open coast. So many cloudy days in Bogota were disheartening for me, and I've been drinking in the changes here- from hammocks to enjoying cold showers to borojo/zapote/guayaba/corozo juice. Macayepo also reminds me (almost alarmingly) of Nimule, South Sudan, where I spent a summer a few years ago. At the least, the lifestyle is very similar, which means I'll be living with the necessary and working hard. I'm quite excited to try to live in that way again. I know no matter what I do, I am talking from a place of comparably infinite privilege, but I'm excited to cook over a wood fire, walk (or ride a donkey) miles to surrounding farms, wash my clothes in the river, and learn about growing yuca. 

The contrast- it's all scary and overwhelming. The town is small and so, so isolated. The living is hard, and the social fabric is fractured into many pieces. The community has resettled only its original land, but it's barely ten years after the massacre and displacement and so much was lost. I can get excited about living and being there, but I haven't the slightest clue how to step into community processes of seeking reparation, mediating disputes between churches/paramilitary allies and victims/leaders in the community/youth and their families, establishing land rights, or even pushing for a new road to get the avocadoes to market. It's a lot right now.

I suppose overall I'm hoping that I can remember how much contrast can teach us. It would be easy to say how excited I am to be here, or how beautiful the beach is, or how destroyed Colombia is by the drug trade, but it's much more real to talk about the contrasts: the wealth and lack of options, the beauty and destruction, and the excitement and fear. There is much more life in the middle space between the poles, and I just hope I can hold onto both ends, and the reality that reality, en la Costa, is quite complex.

Mama God

This morning, I decided to do church on my own.  I've had an interesting relationship with church over the last few years.  I have been blessed to find inspiration and support in various communities outside of church, especially at EMU.  Over and over, I found myself seeing and talking about God in conversations over dinner with my housemates, as we read poetry for our prayers, or in classes as we talked about love and vulnerability, or on the porches of our neighbors, as we shared healing stories of grace and the sacred feminine, in response to the terrible truths we also encounters together.  Church, then, has been an additional space, but far from the only space where I find God.  More often than not, I also feel like a spectator, rather than a contributor in churches.  I enjoy spectating, but when I take time to intentionally think about and interact with God on my own or with others outside of an organized space, I find myself much more moved and connected with God.  And so, this morning I took a break from spectating and thought.


A dear woman-friend shared this poem with a small group of women several months ago:


Bakerwoman God
Bakerwoman God,
I am your living bread.
Strong, brown, Bakerwoman God,
I am your low, soft and
being-shaped loaf.
I am your rising bread, well kneaded
by some divine
and knotty pair of knuckles,
by your warm, earth hands.
I am bread well kneaded.

Put me in your fire,
Bakerwoman God,
put me in your warm, bright fire.
I am warm, warm as you from fire.
I am white and gold,
soft and hard,
brown and round.
I am so warm from fire.

Break me, Bakerwoman God.
I am broken under your caring Word.
Bakerwoman God,
remake me.
- Alla Bozarth Campbell


This morning, I baked bread, and prayed to Bakerwoman God.  I've been thinking about women so much recently- about the impact that countless women have had on my life, and about both the suffering many quietly endure and the endless fountains of strength they find.  And yesterday, another dear woman-friend asked me how I had encountered Mama God's "untamed edgelessness" here in Colombia.  And so- here is a prayer, for women.


Mama God,
Thank you for the baker women in my life.
thank you for my mother, and grandmothers, and great-grandmothers, who have been baking bread for all of us.  thank you for making my mom's bread always turn out better than mine, because it reminds me that there is wisdom in her years of hard work.  thank you for my favorite childhood memory- warm oatmeal bread and homemade strawberry jam.  thank you for a home, and thank you that this year, you watered the grain my mom planted.  thank you for gardens.
thank you for my sister, and the constant reminder that we grow from difference, especially when we reach across and share.
thank you for Mama Carolina, Jua and Agnes, who knew that they could transform their gender-decided place in the kitchen into a powerful cooking pot of female strength.  thank you for the simple combination of yeast, flour, water, and salt.  thank you that kneading can be done in any language.  thank you that women pass wisdom through their strong shoulders that carry the water, and their palms that knead, and their rhythmic steps in the Sudanese dust.  thank you for blanketing us in the same stars.  thank you for crossing borders.
thank you for Arundati Roy, Anais Mitchell, and Andrea Gibson, who remind me to speak.
thank you for Marvat, and the radical hospitality she shows to the enemy.  thank you for the simple resistance of sharing warm pita together in an occupied land.
thank you for Maria, and her graceful stubborn belief in the power of children, dirt and plants, mixed well and watered.  thank you for Amanda, who heals us all with her gentleness and listening wisdom.  thank you for Meg, and the way she sees brokenness and wholeness at the same time.  thank you for Emma, and her sense of ecosystem and wild beauty. thank you for Hannah, who reminds me to love myself even from far away, by putting a painting of naked dancing women on her wall.  thank you for Jess and her boundless, encompassing, comforting joy.  thank you for Greta and her sense of self.  thank you for Chrissy and her honest, unflinching search for connection.   
thank you for the many, many women of EMU.  thank you for giving them the wisdom to challenge even the definition of woman.  thank you for the conversations behind the counter at the coffeeshop and the library.  thank you for the tattoos and the poems.  thank you for the fierce denial of other definitions.  thank you for spirit-chasing.
thank you for the baker women I have met here in Colombia.  thank you for the women who believe in bringing peace through determined solidarity and know that that often means just sitting together.  thank you for good food, and laughter over the table.
thank you for the Senora, who reminds me that bread is what Jesus chose to give us life, to prove the universal truth of abundance and enough.
thank you for incredible generosity, of giving your gifts to all humans, men and women.  thank you for not having eyes that define through gender, even though we are so determined with our boxes. thank you for men.
thank you for the wide arms of the ocean.
thank you for my body, my soul, and my heart.  thank you for waking me up every morning, and giving me the strength to carry on.
thank you, Shenandoah, river and mountains.  I know your reckless daughters make you proud.


and Mama God, I have so many questions.
why, Mama, have I heard so many stories of women, especially here in Colombia, being beaten by their husbands?  why here?  how do we stand up and say no?  why do we still blame women- for being unfaithful, for being provocative, for being anything less than virginal perfection? 
why, Mama, are women's bodies the battlefields for so many wars of power?  why is there a logic of rape?  when did it become a weapon?  when will we learn that our bodies are gifts, not property to be exploited by others?  
why is it that we watch each other through eyes of objectification?  why do we judge? why do we see ourselves as accessories for the men around us? why are we secondary?  helpers?  sacrificial?  where do our standards of beauty come from?  how do we find the intrinsic worthiness you have given each of us?
Mama, what is patriarchy?  how do we step back far enough to see it? how do we find the dances and poetry and fearless love to break through?  how do we find the words? how do we talk over boundaries of gender?
and another thing, Mama.  what is a better word than warrior, to talk about your power?  what does a powerful peace sound like?  how do we not become passive and sacrificial in our striving for peace?  how do we keep our fierce love?
this is too big, Mama.  help us see the world through different eyes.  help us find ourselves.  


thank you, Mama God.  thank you for bread, brokenness, and hope.

Opening the doors

I'm in a field of work.  That's a strange thing to say.  While I would argue that peacebuilding is something that everyone can do everyday, everywhere, I think there's still a very different angle to actually having the job-title of peacebuilder.   A lot of the mental work that I've been doing this last month is trying to wrap my head around what this actually looks like or feels like for me, and trying to integrate so much from my experiences and study- philosophy, tools, theology, memories of conflict, interpersonal relationships, theories of why conflict happens, traumas- into a lived, daily practice of peacebuilding here.  I can't quite put my finger on the difference between studying in the States and working here, but it's something along the lines of involvement- perhaps a shift from mostly taking in to giving my energy out.  Anyway, I want to reflect a little on something one of our presenters said last week about academics and presence.

We were working over some analysis tools with a presenter- the nested model, for example, which breaks the conflict down into four different levels (situation, relationship, sub-system, and system) and different time periods to help strategically understand the stages of conflict.  I made a comment about horizontal networking- essentially, building relationships with other academics/peace workers all over the world, in order to share information with them.  It's a key part of acknowledging globalization's benefits in fighting globalization's harm: building a web of folks that can collaborate against the huge world systems that inhibit alternative and resistance movements.  The presenter responded with a powerful cautionary tale that I really, really needed to hear.  She spoke against our analysis tools, our academic understanding, and our mid-level collaboration.  Or rather, she didn't condemn them, but challenged us to keep them to ourselves.  She shared about working with Colombian women who had suffered severe, specific sexual violence, and her horror at her instinctual response to their stories.  She began to analytically compare them to women that she had worked with elsewhere- this degree of pain, that specific experience, this similar memory, this benefit, that detriment.  Her analysis was her distance.

One thing that has been consistently irking me as we learn more and more about Colombia is the ease with which I am analyzing the conflict.  Hearing about the armed conflict is always exciting- terrible, but exciting.  It's another piece of the puzzle- what was the motivation of that paramilitary group in that massacre?  How did the displaced person tell their story in that setting?  What does that reveal about their needs?  How does the US money influence the governing political elite?  International corporations?  Let's take notes, draw a diagram, have another conversation where we compare and contrast our experiences with agribusiness, arms trafficking, cultural epidemics of fear, chosen trauma, protests... it can get really unemotional.  Callous.  It can get really scientific, diagnostic, strategic.  I worry myself.

I worry myself because I feel like we peacebuilders/workers can tend to respond to conflict in the same style as military officials.  We strategize, and it feels good.  It is a kind of triumph to map it all out, to have long, well-informed conversations about the state of the world.  To track the connections between evil corporations and governments and the education system and poverty and the military and terrorism... and to feel like we are doing a good service by figuring it all out, then strategically analyzing where our peace work can fit it.  And then I wonder what the hell I'm doing.  I'm standing over a map, moving troops in tactical formation.  Where is the grace, the love, the beauty?  Where is the artistic force, the hugs and hymns, the helplessness, the ranting and the middle of the night sleeplessness?  Where are the emotions of our lucha (fight)?  

I'm scared.  I'm scared that we are closing our eyes just as much as we say the other side is.  I'm worried about my callousness.  I've been trying to work against this, intentionally, and I'm thinking that trying to open up my heart and remember what I'm fighting for (and against) is the most important work that I've done here so far.  Recognizing that if we stop at understanding and analyzing, we lose our reasons why.  I forget that the reason I'm here is because sometimes the truth of the world breaks me inside.  Because my family is full of unspoken stories of trauma.  Because Mama Carolina from Sudan escaped from a refugee camp as a child and walked dozens of miles to find her mother, and because she cried with me as she told the story.  Because I feel a little jolt of triumph when I see a new plant sending out leaves.  Because yesterday I was talking in English on my cell phone and a man who was picking through the trash for recycling to sell asked me for a few pesos, and I didn't give him any.  Because I shared a meal with displaced folks on Wednesday, and talked about the joy and necessity of having God in your life.  Because I've seen so many people cry about their loneliness.  Because baking bread always feels like an act of resistance, and a reason to dance.  Because yesterday, someone laughed because they listened to me laugh.  Because I pass so many homeless men when I go running in the morning.  Because someone I know is going off to war.  Because there are so, so many stories of shame and pain and loss here and everywhere, and also because each one is precious and worth listening to. 

These are some of the stories, some of the emotions, some of the pictures that lie underneath our diagrams and maps and strategies.  We need to remember the little pieces, beyond our cynicism and analysis.  So much of my work is and will be trying to keep the doors open and letting the reality in, in its unique and painful ugliness and truth.  I'm trying, and praying for help.

Gratitudes

I love looking at things from a slightly different angle, and one way of shedding new light on old habits is... translation!  I want to say first off that language is culture is language- I don't want to simplify the fact that every sentence/phrase/grammatical structure can illuminate something about the people that use them.  For example, there is a lovely structure of phrase in Spanish, "se me rompio," which literally means "the ___broke on me" and neatly places the blame on the object, not the actor.  In other words, you didn't break the glass/chair/window, it broke on you.  I'm not sure what this illuminates about cultures that speak Spanish, but it's certainly different than the English version of "I broke the glass."  

Anyway, to take a turn for the serious, where I've been noticing linguistic differences the most have been in when and where and how I talk about God.  I've never been one to feel particularly comfortable talking about God or Jesus- I can talk about theology til the cows come home, but I don't often refer to God in daily conversations.  It might have been because I didn't grow up doing it, or because I'm not actually that comfortable, or because I don't actually include God very often in my daily thoughts.  I think it's a combination of the three.

Here, I've been thinking about God's place in the language a lot more.  One of the most common phrases of the senora who is hosting Daniela and I is "que Dios le bendiga"- may God bless you.  Another very common one "gracias a Dios"- thanks to God- or "por la gracia de Dios"- by God's grace.  "Ojala" is actually derived from the Arabic "inshallah," which refers to a future event, something like- may God grant that ___ happens.  Prayers often include a lot more repetition of God's various names.  This might not been too different from our many, many different slang uses of God's name in English, but I'm inclined to think that it's more serious here.  

I've been thinking a lot about this shift in language and how this affects my conception of God in daily life.  In every church I've been to so far, there has been a time for sharing of testimonies, or giving thanks for God's presence in our lives.  Most of the time, I probably wouldn't have said what people share.  I've been amazed at several older women especially, who describe everything in their days as an act from God's hand- from getting up in the morning to the food on the table for lunch to a trip going smoothly to a visit from a friend to praying for another... As I type this, I realize that I have heard people give thanks for similar things in many other churches, but I want to emphasize that this sounds quite different to me.  

To me, a lot of what I've given thanks to God for, or prayed for, I've believed God was linked or related to.  I've given thanks so many time for the beautiful, complex, created world we live in, and the people that inhabit it, but I think I've been more likely to see it as a world with a separate God than to see it as God.  I think this might be the difference- I've mostly acknowledged God as a presence in the world, but here I keep hearing about God as an actor in the world.  It's almost as if I'm saying- thanks God, for giving us this beautiful world- and the older women are saying- God, without you, nothing would happen.  Thanks.

I know I'm making quite a few cultural leaps here, but I wonder what this could say about entitlement.  I'll bring this down to the interpersonal level to make more sense.  I have always had enough to eat.  Period.  My prayer- "thank you, God, for the food" acknowledges God, but it's not very serious.  The universe has always treated me well, and will continue to treat me well.  Thanks, in that sense, means that God plays a supporting role.  I don't really need her help.  The Senora (who is hosting me) has gone hungry many, many nights.  She has told me that often the worst pain wasn't her own hunger, it was watching someone else suffer and not being able to help.  Several times, the Senora has invited me for a cafecito (cup of milky coffee) and piece of bread- saying that no one should ever go to bed hungry.  When the Senora thanks God for her cafecito and bread, she means it, just as she means it when she prays for her son's safe journey, or for our work in Colombia, or for her daughter's work situation.  God is directly involved- without God's presence, none of these things would happen well.  The Senora, and every Colombian I have met so far, have lived through enough insecurity that I'm beginning to hear this- we have to be grateful.  It's not guaranteed- and God is within it, around it, behind it, creating it.  God is the goodness.  God is what sustains us, our everyday.

By the grace of God, today:  yucca for dinner, warmth, a view of the mountains, ridiculous teasing between friends, safe arrivals, long distance communication technology wonders, people that work for peace, a world where everyone knows everyone, a capable body, good shoes, early morning coffee, the ability to get around, green leaves....

When you think about it, the list goes on and on.  Thanks, God, for your creating, sustaining presence in our lives.

Reflexiones

Escribi el siguiente poema despues del un encuentro con la realidad aca en Colombia.  (por favor, disculpen los errores del espanol)

Libertad

Yo:  Todos los dias, salgo de la casa y
volteo a la izquierda.
En el suelo, las huellas antepasadas
marcan el camino.

Me sigo, dia tras dia, asi que
no me pierdo bajo el cielo nublado y entre
las gotas de agua que caen.
Mi chaqueta roja es impermeable a lagrimas, aun
lagrimas celestiales.

Me destaco entre las masas.
Tengo un tatuaje que mira
desde debajo de mi manga
cuando agarro el pasamanos
en el bus.  Soy mona
y jamas me pinto el cabello.

Tengo un accento,
y demasiadoes documentos officiales.
Mi nombre es inolvidable,
unico, e intencional.

Ando sola.  Codicio mi independencia.
No miro sobre el hombro-
los que me siguen son
bendiciones, son suertes,
son canciones y oraciones.

Me quedo en la ventana
para ver la vista, y cuando el atardecer
llena mi espiritu, bailo en la calle,
descalza,
porque se que tengo zapatos en la casa.

Tu:
Mira atras  (te persiguen)
No me hables por telefono (lo interceptan)
Pinta el cabello (conocen tu rostro)
Jamas grita, chilla, baila (te escuchan)
Mira por la ventana (pasa un desconocido)
No llores (sabran)
No denuncies (no haran nada)
Callate  Escondete
No tengas esperanza
(no existe)
No alcanzaras el mar.

Lead Change

Wow- it's been quite a few packed weeks since I last added to the blog, and I have a list of ideas for entries, but I'll start with the most recent idea and work backwards from there.

I was surprised today to be listening to our morning lecture (we call them charlas, or chats, which is actually a better name as we usually semi-casually discuss something, as opposed to having a formal lecture) and to suddenly think of a horseback riding metaphor to explain what we were talking about.  I suppose horseback riding is probably the skill I've most practiced in my life, so it's inevitably part of my subconscious, but usually it doesn't occur to me to explain modern armed conflict through horses.  Bear with me.

When you are cantering a horse, it will lead each step of the stride with one of the front legs- it will make contact first with one leg, then throw the other out in front.  The second that lands, or the one in front, is called the lead leg.  When a horse is cantering in a circle, to maintain balance, it has to lead with the inside leg.  Thus, if you switch directions, you have to change leads.  Often, you start out changing leads by bringing the horse down to a trot, then asking it to pick up the other lead.  When you and your horse know each other, you can move on to a flying lead change, which is effectively switching the leading leg in the air, as the horse continues to canter.  To ask, you have to gather the horse up- pull on the reins while keeping leg pressure on so it doesn't break stride, therefore helping the horse tighten and shorten the stride, until the key moment when you lift the outside rein and ask them to change.  Most horses, when they feel the leg and rein pressure together, tilt their ears back and listen hard, bend their necks, slow down, gather their legs closer and closer- until, bam, you ask and they tilt their whole body up and flip the leading leg.  Then the stride lengthens and you are back in the original stride, speeding around the corner.

It's quite beautiful, however, unfortunately I'm going to use it to describe a not-so-beautiful chain of events in Colombian modern armed conflict.  This morning's charla effectively described a kind of lead-change in Colombian policy and conflict- not any profound or fundamental change, but rather a gathering up, a careful reorganization of the factors, a deluding vision of slowing down, peaceful processing- and then, most dangerously, a potential acceleration in the same conflict, but perhaps in a slightly different direction.  A few themes that reinforce this assessment of the process:

1.  From 2002 to 2006, Colombia's President Uribe effectively mirrored our President Bush's security vs. democracy strategy- that is to say, the ideology that sometimes, democratic principles must be sacrificed for the greater security of the state.  Any organized, armed opposition to state was considered a terrorist group, and in Colombia, this definition was expanded to narco-terrorists, a category that included all the guerrilla groups.  These groups were considered the ultimate enemies of the state, and security against insurgents/defeat of drug production was the most important role of the government.  Both the governments of the US and Colombia have changed, in a strangely similar way.  Presidents Juan Manuel Santos and Obama are more subtle, and less overtly pro-force.  Both have at least advanced political dialogue that acknowledges difference without condemning it, and appear to be trying to advance policies that at least discuss complexities beyond good/bad guys.  However, they are still speaking the military-industrial complex language of a hammer as the answer to deeply, deeply rooted problems that include global inequality, drug demand meeting supply, and lack of economic options.

2.  During Uribe's presidency, with heavy fumigation and intense military attacks on guerrilla groups, government statistics show a decrease in hectares of coca cultivation and in numbers of guerrilla members.  However, alternate statistics point to advances in coca production per hectares (same quantity, more efficiency), and to little to no decrease in traffiking and processing.  Also, guerrilla groups may have lost numbers, according the government statistics (which, due to the horrific 'false positives' scandal of Uribe's government- passing off probable assassinations of young people as guerrilla casualties-should be taken with a fistful of salt), but they have also gained territorial access.  In a classic tactical response, they have run to the hills and dispersed both their numbers and tactics.  They are certainly not giving up.

3. Paramilitaries- Uribe also mounted a demobilization campaign against the paramilitary groups (non-governmental, privatized armed groups, originally formed as security groups for large land owners and narcotraffikers).  Supposedly, all but three pockets of paramilitaries demobilized.  Regretfully, a new classification has emerged in the last few years- bandas criminales or criminal bands- considered isolated armed groups without a political agenda.  A territorial map shows these groups acting in the exact same areas of Colombia as the 'demobilized' paramilitary groups.  Also, over half of the elected Congress is currently under investigation for suspected links to the paramilitary money in the election process.  The paramilitaries are also far from over.

4.  Briefly- multinational involvement- especially with the supposed decrease/ change in the nature of the conflict, Colombia has been recently opening its doors to foreign investment.  Mining, agribusiness, palm oil, and hosts of other multinationals have been courted by the government to come and invest in the industrial growth of the country.  Unfortunately, this is also a continuation (or reconfiguration) of the historical pattern of land consolidation and holding by a very isolated and powerful elite, just the changing of names of the elites from Colombian family names to multinational business brands.

Remember that I am still in the exposure/understanding stage of this conflict, and these are some of my first thoughts.  I am obviously ignorant of most of Colombian history and politics, but these are my first impressions with a little study.  To me, this doesn't look like the root problems are anywhere near being resolved (or even examined).  Instead, it looks like a momentary pause and re-assessment or re-strengthening of the various parties- to finish the metaphor, the gathering together before a big change in form.  This armed conflict is morphing, evolving, growing or intensifying or becoming more subtle- but in any case it is far from coming to a halt.  I'll keep reflecting on this theme as the months go on, so we'll see how my thoughts change.

Reflections on the Fourth of July, from the outside

Today, we decided to have a celebration of the things we love about the U.S., in protest of the conventional patriotism represented by the mass-celebration of the Fourth. The idea was to gather and reflect on aspects of the US that we hoped were different, and also give some concrete examples of the good about our home nation.

I didn't know that this process would be as powerful for me as it ended up being. Let me give some background on what I've been thinking about in these last few weeks regarding the US. When I make a significant change in my life- geographically, relationally, educationally... I have the tendency to reject where I've come from. As I try to adapt to the new situation I find myself in, I compare it to where I'm coming from, and it usually comes out as much more positive. This is incredibly easy to do when I'm leaving the US. All the sudden, as I watch people playing futbol in the park, gather for large family celebrations, eat traditional foods, listen to folkloric music, travel to beautiful natural wonders, and learn about cultural heritage, I find myself selectively remembering and criticizing the US. We are nothing more than fast food, the war on terror, commercial rap music, SUVs, and suburbia. We have no cultural heritage. We are the privileged, the guilty ones, the consumers, the exploiters. I enter this mood of repentance, emptiness and guilt. I feel like I have nothing to contribute because my background is nothing compared to the rich context I find myself in.

Today was a fascinating switch on the whole paradigm I've described above. Simply changing my thought process to think about both the terrible and inspiring things about the US, at the same time, was quite revelatory. There are awful things about the US. Our foreign policy is a disaster, designed to use the rhetoric of terror to justify a world-wide imperial search for resources. The institutionalized racism of the prison system, the education system, and the cultural narrative of success; the unchallenged myth of endless economic growth; the exportation of democracy through the military; the incredible destruction of the land we live on by the industrial food system... these are the aspects I keep at the front of my mind. They are true, and they are powerful. There is a system designed to preserve power as it is, to protect the status quo, in place in the US. This is obvious to me.

What is harder for me to talk about, at first, is the humanizing current that runs beside this complex and destructive structure. There is an expressive, beautiful, protesting, living river of people that is always pushing against the framework of power... and this is where I've grown, loved, and found inspiration. This is what I discovered today: that I love the poetry of the US, from modern spoken word artists Andrea Gibson and Anis Mojgani to Wendell Berry and Walt Whitman. I love the political fiction, from John Steinbeck to George Orwell. I listen to Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and the beautiful folk that follows in their footsteps, seeking inspiration outside of the American dream. In the US, I have found movements for immigrant rights, protests against the School of Americas, people who bike as their primary transportation, school-garden teachers, backyard gardens, pacifist theology, multicultural communities and families, gatherings of Muslims, Jews and Christians concerned about the violence in Israel/Palestine, rainbow stickers, the Shenandoah Valley, bluegrass music.... There is so much more.

What I am gathering from this process of celebrating the good in the US is a powerful sense of pride and love, but not in the US exclusively or as a superior state. It is in, rather, the beautiful, expressive, loving, and human current that runs in contrast to the terrible, destructive, power-hungry system. This is everywhere. This is in the US, in Colombia, in Sudan and Pittsburgh and in every family and community and, indeed, in you and I. There is an attempt at balance, an equilibrium. This by no means forgives or erases the responsibility for the terrible things we have done and are capable of. However, it is impossible to throw out anything as wholly evil, because as we try, we discover that we have gathered goodness from the same thing we are criticizing. I have grown up in the US. It is my nation, but what I am learning from it is not to praise it over any other, but to recognize the lesson it is teaching me. 

Life is both beauty and ugliness, all wrapped up together. It is both lament and celebration, and I, at least, have grown by experiencing both. For this, I have to thank my home country.