Kent posted this – that’s a lot of work for a comment in an Open Thread, and I think it deserves a wider audience.
Since this is an open thread, how about a thread or discussion about Harris’ visit to Guatemala today? I have a lot of thoughts on the subject.
Today Vice President Harris is in Guatemala looking for ways to reduce immigration pressure from Guatemala and what they call the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras). This is a topic that is near and dear to me. And much of the coverage just wants to make me scream. Yes, corruption is an issue, but there are larger public health, religion, and economic issues at play as well, not to mention climate change.
By way of background, I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala for 2.5 years in the late 1980s when the Guatemalan Civil War was winding down. After that I worked from time to time on other development projects in Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica in the early 1990s and have been back to the region many times since then and still maintain a lot of friends and acquaintances there.
I was sent to Guatemala to work as a beekeeping extensionist as part of a USDA funded program to control and mitigate the spread of the Africanized (killer) bees and was assigned to a fairly large work area, the entire department of Sacatepequez which my Guatemalan counterpart and I covered daily by motorcycle. We had perhaps 25 different villages in our work region.
At that time Guatemala had a population of about 9 million and population pressure was the most obvious social problem that was undermining economic prosperity. I would encounter rural families with 10, 12, or 14 kids and would ask them how many kids they had, and how many they wanted. “As many as God wills” was the common answer. There were public health programs and public health workers in rural Guatemala who were promoting family planning at that time. I knew many of them. Some were Peace Corps volunteers working in public health, but more often it was Guatemalan health workers doing it on their own. For example, all Guatemalan med students need to do rural residencies as part of their training so there were a constant stream of educated middle class Guatemalan med students being sent out to the rural towns where I worked and we would often socialize along with the school teachers. A lot of people were working on family planning efforts.
But these efforts were undermined at every step by a toxic alliance of conservative Catholic and US-based evangelical groups who pressured in both DC and within the Guatemalan Congress to put a stop to all family planning efforts in Guatemala. This was the end of the Reagan era and start of the Bush I era and they were largely successful. This was part of Reagan’s 1985 “Mexico City Policy” described the 1960’s and 1970’s as a time of ”demographic overreaction” in which too many governments plunged into population control without adopting economic policies that would raise living standards and lead to voluntary decisions to limit family size. The effect was to strangle family planning efforts across Central America in an effort to limit abortions, which were never common in the region anyway. The squelching of family planning programs was ultimately successful. Clinton and Obama did little to fight to reverse these policies.
Fast forward to today and the Guatemala of 9 million people that I knew in the late 1980s has ballooned to a country of 19 million today even AFTER millions have migrated to the US. Guatemala was overcrowded at 9 million in the late 1980s. Guatemala is a country of 42,000 square miles which makes it the same size as Virginia or Tennessee. But it is extremely mountainous and rugged. Imagine Tennessee with 3x the population, much of it rural, and much less arable land and you get the picture.
During the 1990s the Clinton Administration took up the mantle of free trade under the notion that trade deals with Central America would open up US markets and lead to prosperity. Along with NAFTA, they negotiated the Central American version called CAFTA which was signed into law during the Bush Administration in 2005 but was years in the making and originated in the Clinton administration. How did that work out for rural Guatemalans? I will give just one personal anecdote. In the late 1980s one of the big rural development efforts was to push for modern chicken production. My counterpart’s family was part of a chicken cooperative that built a set of seven chicken barns so they could raise chickens for local markets on a 6-week rotation and they had quite a successful little business that was mostly run by the women while the men worked in the coffee fields. Other development agencies were prompting the same thing. There were Spanish volunteers building chicken farming cooperatives in the neighboring town.
On one of my trips back to my old village in the late 1990s I noticed that all the cooperative chicken farms were abandoned. I asked my counterpart what happened and he said “let me show you”. It was market day so we walked up to the market and there was a refrigerated semi truck parked at the edge of the market selling boxes of frozen chicken thighs and legs labeled “Tyson”. “Take a look” he said. They are selling gringo chicken at less than it costs for us to raise chickens here. It is impossible to compete. And what is wrong with you gringos that you don’t eat the chicken legs and thighs?” This was the time period when chicken nuggets, chicken fingers, and chicken breast sandwiches were exploding in popularity in the US which meant that US poultry producers were swimming in a sea of unwanted chicken thighs and legs. They only really had US markets for breasts and wings. So under CAFTA they were legally entitled to dump vast quantities of surplus chicken thighs into the Central American market with no restrictions or tariffs. The local Guatemalan poultry industry, (which was largely an artesanal rural industry) was wiped out overnight. At that time around 2000, my counterpart’s son Emilio took off for Los Angeles because there was no longer any functional work to do locally.
At the same time, and under the same free trade agreements, big textile mills were going up in that part of Guatemala. Might those provide economic opportunities? Most of them were Korean and due to lax labor laws they largely and intentionally hired only girls between the ages of say 14 and 20. Why just girls? Because they are the easiest to control and least likely to organize or advocate for better wages and working conditions. It really disrupted family life and dynamics in many rural towns because girls were forced to drop out of school to work in the maquiladoras as the only breadwinner for the family while their fathers and other brothers couldn’t find work.
The other thing that happened at that time was the winding down of the Civil War and its replacement with the drug war. During the 1980s the Reagan Administration poured millions of dollars of military aid and training into Guatemala and El Salvador (and later Honduras as part of the Nicaraguan Contra war). When those wars reached peace agreements in the 1990s a lot of unemployed former soldiers found employment with the drug cartels which started using Guatemala as a transhipment point to the US. They were often paid in drugs rather than money, which jump-started a whole wave of drug addictions and drug crimes in Guatemala and fueled an explosive growth of drug mafias in both rural and urban Guatemala. While the US eyes were turned elsewhere. It is basically the same criminal reign of terror that Mexico is experiencing. And, of course, 9-11 completely turned US focus away from Central America and towards the middle east for two decades.
Ad climate change to the mix which has made much of rural Guatemala far less productive, and a Guatemalan aristocracy that is both incredibly venal and racist, and pours its fortunes into politicians and parties dedicated to minimizing taxes and regulation on Guatemalan business and keeping social and labor rights at bay. And we end up with what we have today. Countries that are overpopulated as a direct result of US policy, whose economies are strangled as a direct result of US trade policy, and whose corruption and violence are also a direct result of US policy and neglect.
What are the answers? There are no easy answers. Certainly nothing that will affect conditions in Guatemala or its neighboring countries in the short term. We are talking about a generational effort that will need to combine: (1) health care and family planning, (2) education, (3) favorable economic policies that direct investment to the region, (4) anti-corruption and anti-crime efforts to eliminate the current “impunity” and (5) democratic reforms to empower poor and rural folks.
I often contrast Guatemala to my wife’s home country of Chile. Which has the same population as Guatemala but is far more prosperous and stable and really much more like a mid-level European country than Central America. Or even Costa Rica which is somewhere in the middle. Like the US, Chile also sucks immigrants from surrounding poorer countries and even from as far away as places like Haiti. Chileans who travel and study overseas rarely stay but almost always return to Chile where there are opportunities. My wife’s large extended family has lots of younger cousins who have studied abroad in the US and Europe but every single one has returned to Chile because they have opportunities there. Guatemala could have a different fate if we had the will to make the investment and effort. Immigration is largely a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.
Kent is here to answer questions and for conversation with anyone who is interested.
RedDirtGirl
Thank you for this post. It is amazing to me how the policies that are touted as “lifting all boats” never actually do that. It’s more like some boats get to go faster, and their large wake sinks the smaller boats. I remember a documentary about the local Caribbean dairy industry being decimated by cheap US milk.
ilieitz
This happens in a lot of Peace Corps countries. I lived in Jamaica under two regimes. The first was Michael Manley and the other was Edward Seaga. I was there for both 18 months each. Manley was all about Jamaica being self sufficient. His roots campaign ( rely on ourselves to survive) was popular but he was allied with Castro so we needed to undermine him. The 1980 election was brutal and Seaga won. He was pro American(Reagons first foreign visator). Everything changed in Jamaica. The people in the country lost their ability to make money. The govt undermined all local business by bringing in cheaper American goods etc. We have a lot to answer for
ilieitz
Don’t know my nym got changed. Sorry. Hope you see my comment
H.E.Wolf
Kent – Thank you for your service as a Peace Corps volunteer! One of my siblings did a Peace Corps stint in Guatemala, beginning in late 1990, and found it life-altering in many significant ways.
[ETA: And my sibling would likely share your frustration about the ephemeral nature of the work accomplished.]
eclare
Very informative article, thank you!
Kristine
Thank you for this extremely informative post.
Kent
Hi guys. Those were just some random thoughts I put into a comment in a previous thread. If you want to see photos of my Peace Corps time I have a google photos album. I’m the young blonde kid
See if this works: https://photos.app.goo.gl/aLg6G7SW6Ni5Dno57
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: Beard of bees. I am done.
ilieitz
Let me try again. I was a volunteer in Jamaica from 1979-1982. My time there was split between Michael Manley and Edward Seaga as P.M. Manley was a social Democrat that was allied with Cuba. His roots campaign (Rely On Ourselves To Survive) was popular and the people in country were thriving. When Seaga won in 80 everything changed. Seaga was Reagons first visitor. They undermined Jamaica’s economy and everything fell apart. We have a lot to answer for
AJ
@Kent: this is very illuminating and helpful. Thank you for writing this all down and sharing.
And ty Watergirl for promoting to a full post. This is great.
Kent
A couple more comments regarding immigration.
First, despite the fact that there are indeed legit asylum claims, I’m guessing that 95+ percent of Central American migrants are really economic refugees. They have been trained to make asylum claims because that is what the law demands. We have lots of people suffering from gang violence in Chicago and Detroit but how many are knocking at the door of Canada asking for asylum? I listened to an NPR interview not long ago where they interviewed a Guatemalan campesino in Mexico at the border waiting for hearing. He told a story about how he turned in some corrupt officials in a rural cooperative in his small rural Guatemalan village and then left because he got death threats. And he said he was worried that they will find him in Mexico. Think about that for a minute. Some petty corrupt local embezzlers in rural Guatemala are NOT the cartels. They don’t have the ability to reach across borders and hunt people down. He could have been equally fine by just moving a couple of towns over in Guatemala. But there is no way to do that and earn a living other than complete manual labor like cutting sugarcane or picking coffee for slave wages. So he headed to the US for economic reasons with an asylum story. Life is really dire in some parts of rural Guatemala for a whole lot of reasons. People are, indeed desperate. But they are largely economic.
Kent
Not just a bee beard. A beard of killer bees. That was another older volunteer during our training. We were badass. I could tell you endless stories about killer bees.
ilieitz
Peace Corps volunteers have seen a lot of the shenanigans of our govt first hand
Raven
I knew a fellow who was killed fighting with the Sandinistas in 1982.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/books/ct-books-last-great-road-bum-hector-tobar-20200902-3xfqo7irlrewvmig57l6pxsdnu-story.html
WaterGirl
@ilieitz: I approved the comment, so it showed up. and then I changed your name at #2 to the name that displays at #3.
I hope I got that right!
Sure Lurkalot
Wonderful post and pictures, Kent. Thank you for your valuable insights and Peace Corps service. My BIL served in Swaziland and his lessons learned were valuable too.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent:
I already said I am done. Good day, sir. I said, good day.
eclare
@Kent: Love the mountains! Did the truck in the last photo fall off the road?
The photos of people are striking.
Omnes Omnibus
@Raven: A high school classmate of mine was a Marine embassy guard who was killed in El Salvador in 1985.
ilieitz
Thanks
WaterGirl
@Kent: Let me know if you want me to add the links to the top post itself.
Kent
Another point. A lot of the lefty talk about Guatemala always comes back to the CIA. Which has indeed meddled in Central America for decades and did indeed instigate the 1954 Coup and overthrow of Arbenz and replaced him with a horrific military dictatorship.
But the correct way to think about it was like the 2016 election in the US. We had a country divided between Clinton and Trump and it didn’t take all that much for the Russians to tip the balance in Trumps favor. Same thing happened in Guatemala in 1954. There were extremely powerful right wing opponents in Guatemala to the left wing Arbenz regime who were desperate to see him overthrown. First among them was the Catholic Church which more or less led the opposition to Arbenz. The entire Catholic hierarchy in Guatemala was from the oligarchy and there were priests in every town riling up the conservative forces, sending women out to beat pots and pans, and preaching against the Godless socialism of Arbenz. So the country was essentially at a tipping point and it didn’t take much of a push by the CIA to tip it over. Chile in 1973 was much the same thing. That isn’t to excuse US intervention. But both of those coups could well have happened without any US intervention and would have had the support of large swaths of both societies.
My wife is Chilean and grew up under Pinochet. She tells me stories about all the middle and upper class ladies who would go down to protest in front of the houses of high ranking Army officers during the Allende regime, beating pots and pans, and taunting the military asking when they were going to intervene to save the country. It only took a small push by the CIA to make that coup happen.
Kent
Guatemala is absolutely rugged like Switzerland with lots of 13,000 and 14,000 ft. peaks which are as high as the highest peaks in the Rockies and Sierra. I was out riding motorcycles with two Peace Corps friends and we ran into that truck which had slid off the road. The driver had left to go find help and left those poor guys there to guard it. They had been there for 2 days when we drove by. Rural mountain roads can be terrifying. Especially if you are on buses on the downhill side of the bus. I much preferred getting around by motorcycle and explored nearly every inch of the country by bike during my time there and may subsequent visits.
ilieitz
I remember reading the international Newsweek when they had articles about Jamaica. We were all “what country are you talking about because it sure wasn’t Jamaica”
Kent
The older woman in the bee beard was a woman named Nancy who was retired and divorced and decided to join the Peace Corps as an adventure. She was very badass and fearless and ended up marrying a famous Guatemalan retired history professor. They settled down in El Tejar Chimaltenango which was pretty near my site. I would drop in frequently for dinner parties. They always seemed to have a collection of students and intellectual types dropping in so it was a real political and cultural round table and I heard many many fascinating inside stories about the country and politics over drinks at Nancy’s house. She started a scholarship program and ran the Peace Corps Guatemala charity Friends of Guatemala for some years, which is a worthy place to drop a few $$$. They have zero overhead, all the admin is volunteer and friends of mine run it: https://www.fogrpcv.org/
Mark in Algarrobos
I don’t have a whole lot to add. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras, 1981 to 85. Lived in Costa Rica for 6 years, Panama now for a dozen years. I agree with everything Kent wrote, it tracks exactly with my experience.
The one point I’d like to make:
You know the difference between Costa Rica and Panama, who send almost no emigrants to the US, compared to the northern triangle? They don’t have armies. Costa Rica got rid of theirs back in the 1940s, and Panama did it in 1990, after the invasion. The militaries are parasites on the populations. They run the businesses, they run the crime. As long as they run those countries, there will be thousands of refugees.
BlueGuitarist
Thanks Kent!
MagdaInBlack
Thank You, Kent.
arrieve
Thanks, Kent. Really interesting — if disheartening. And your pictures are wonderful!
Kent
@Mark in Algarrobos: Exactly.
My experience in Guatemala was that the guerilla groups were an absolutely pathetic bunch who were zero threat to the government but that the Army would have had to invent if they didn’t exist in order to justify their oppression and economic exploitation.
In Guatemala, most of the high ranking officers were Ladino (non-Mayan) from the working class who rose up through the ranks and then used their military positions to steal everything in sight and create their own giant ranches in remote parts of Guatemala by driving out all the local indigenous Mayans through atrocities. There was even a Banco de Ejercito (Bank of the Army) back then where they could corruptly launder their ill gotten gains. And the army had tentacles everywhere. It was corruptly allied with the wealthy Guatemalan oligarchy but not the same people as the rich would never dream of sending their kids into the army. They are the ones who do weekend parties in Miami rather than hike around the mud in the mountains of rural Guatemala.
The main purpose of the guerillas was to give the Army reason to exist and to absorb US aid from the Reagan administration.
After the Central American wars were largely settled in the 1990s with the Esquipulas Peace Accords (brokered by Costa Rica’s Nobel Peace Prize winning president) it took them a nanosecond to pivot into drug operations. They immediately aligned with the Columbian and Mexican cartels to turn Guatemala into a transhipment point. I actually saw it happen once. I was motorcycling down along the coast in Santa Rosa (near the El Salvador border) where it is flat sugar cane country. I came to an Army roadblock which you can usually get past if you are a gringo but not this time. While I was waiting I watched a cargo plane land on the road up ahead, get refueled by an army tanker truck, and then take off again. They picked that particular road because it was long and flat and it was so rural that there were no electrical poles along side the road to hang up a plane. That was maybe 1991 when I was back visiting on vacation.
sdhays
@Mark in Algarrobos: How did they get rid of the armies without the out of work soldiers becoming a problem like what happened in Iraq when the US disbanded the Iraqi Army?
Kent
@Mark in Algarrobos: My wife is Chilean so we now go there every year and she is down there right now. Chile has a big powerful military but also sends pretty much zero immigrants anywhere else. But that is largely because Chile is utterly non-corrupt. They are almost Swiss-like in their hatred of official corruption. And I have noticed that few ever leave because there are plenty of economic opportunities and wealth to keep people in Chile. My wife has tons of cousins who have studied abroad in the US and Europe but not one has ever stayed because there is so much to go back to. In fact, Chile currently sucks in undocumented immigrants from all the surrounding countries including Argentina which was once rich but is not corrupt. And even from as far as Haiti. My wife’s parents have a Haitian nurse.
So it is really the twin problems of militarism and corruption.
Origuy
@Omnes Omnibus: Not just killer bees, clown killer bees!
ronno2018
@Kent: wow awesome photos. I wish I did a peace corps stint. damn.
Laura Too
What a great post! Kent,thanks for all of the information. Thanks Watergirl for thinking of us all and elevating it. I wish I read faster and had endless time to read all the comments on every post but usually late night & early morning I catch some. We are lucky to be surrounded by such amazing people that have wonderful stories!
CaseyL
@Kent:
Neither of which problem seems solvable. The countries you mention which are thriving and stable – Costa Rica, Chile, and Panama (I think Panama is doing well; I could be wrong) – are anomalies, and I’d love to know why.
ronno2018
@Kent: that is great to hear about Chile. I was an exchange student in Brazil in the early 80’s and I wish they had the same values as Chile. Maybe someday?
Nelle
Thank you for sharing this. I wonder how many jackals have lived, not just traveled, outside of the US.
Kent
@ronno2018:@Kent: that is great to hear about Chile. I was an exchange student in Brazil in the early 80’s and I wish they had the same values as Chile. Maybe someday?
Chile is damn near as wealthy as the US but they are super good at hiding their wealth so it doesn’t show up in official stats. This is where my inlaws live. https://goo.gl/maps/2ykUvSDj3V8JxUmz5 They have a 3,000 sf flat that is half a floor in this building. My wife is there as we speak ordering empanadas and wine via uber eats. Because she is too lazy to walk the 3 blocks to this giant 2-story modern grocery: https://goo.gl/maps/gSt7FEYtcXJnEVXC9
It is much more like Europe than Central America.
Mark in Algarrobos
@sdhays:
@sdhays: Good question. I’ll guess, since I wasn’t in either place at the time. The armies weren’t as big, or nearly as well armed. People found honest work.
In Panama, the PRD, the political party of the military dictators has endured, and currently holds the presidency. But they are totally democratic now. They are opposed by parties descended from the traditional oligarchy.
O. Felix Culpa
@Nelle: I’ve lived about 15 years overseas, in Asia, Europe and Africa. Now I live in New Mexico, which an astonishing number of Americans–including some airline and immigration officials–don’t know is part of the USA.
namekarB
Great thread!
Kent
They have middle classes that invest in the country. Uruguay is also in that group. Venezuela used to be as well 40 years ago but that is a whole different story.
The other country that I have hope for is Colombia. It is the largest Spanish speaking country in the hemisphere after Mexico and is making great strides. As is Mexico for that matter if they can ever get over the drug wars.
Argentina could be a wonderful place but they keep fucking it up with endless corruption and incompetence. It used to be much wealthier than Chile. Now you constantly run into Argentine waiters and cab drivers in Santiago who came over for work. Which is shocking if you know what those two countries were like say 30 years ago.
Laura Too
@Raven: Thanks for the link. I put a hold on the book at the library, can’t wait to read it.
Kent
Two questions I would get when I lived in Juneau Alaska and would unavoidably run into cruise ship passengers outside my office.
Wapiti
Thanks for the informative post, Kent. And thank you for your service :)
I was in Panama with the US Army in the late 1980s, in a construction engineer unit, and we did some nation-building work in Costa Rica, Bolivia, and after the invasion, Panama. But I never made it up to the northern triangle or anywhere in South America besides two trips to Bolivia, maybe 5 months total.
Mark in Algarrobos
@sdhays:
@sdhays: Good question. I’ll guess, since I wasn’t in either place at the time. The armies weren’t as big, or nearly as well armed. People found honest work.
In Panama, the PRD, the political party of the military dictators has endured, and currently holds the presidency. But they are totally democratic now. They are opposed by parties descended from the traditional oligarchy.
@CaseyL:
@ronno2018:
@CaseyL:
@CaseyL:
@Kent: I never have been to Chile, unfortunately. I made it as far as La Paz, Bolivia on my South American bus trip, and had to turn back.
I can only compare the countries I have experience with. The northern triangle, to which you could add Nicaragua, on one hand, and Costa Rica and Panama on the other hand. All are in close proximity, similar (not exact) history, size, culture, etc. One hand sends economic refugees to the US, the other doesn’t.
E.
Great thread and photos, thanks. I was in Guatemala in 1984, on the bum, rattling all over the place on buses or hitch-hiking. I was 19.
I met a couple of Italian guys who happened to like basketball, so we traveled from town to town striking up games with the locals. Then one of the Italians broke his foot and I got a real interesting introduction to public health care. It involved a long, long bumpy ride in the back of a cargo truck but when we got to the “hospital” they very quickly and skillfully set the bone and put him in a cast. They had no mechanism by which to accept payment. The doctor asked my friend if he would please leave the crutches at the airport when he went home. Didn’t matter where, just leave them in the country.
Your photos brought me back.
O. Felix Culpa
These are great stories. Thanks to all for sharing a part of the world that I’m less familiar with.
Kent
@Wapiti: The best parties BY FAR in Guatemala were the ones thrown by the US Marine embassy guards. They had a whole giant walled compound that took up a whole city block in an upscale part of Guatemala City that was basically a big mansion with huge gardens and a big pool. They had rows of free weights and benches lining the pool deck and would basically just hang out by the pool and pump iron when not on duty.
They would throw these big catered parties and invite the Peace Corps girls and us guys would get invited along to act more or less as chaperones. Although most of the Peace Corps women could look after themselves and were there for some young marine dudes anyway.
It was damn surreal to be at a lavish party in Guatemala City thrown by US marines catered by an endless parade of Guatemalan maids and waiters.
Dan B
@Kent: Lago Atitlan! We call our back yard pond / water storage Atitlan after the friends who have visited the lake and the crew of Guatemalan guys who dug it out – and did the mini plateau with the excavated soil. We call it Tikal.
Friends visited Guatemala ten years ago and hated being stuck behind walls with guards.
We were “impressed” with the teenagers with sub machine guns who checked the plane when our flight stopped on our way to Costa Rica.
Reagan seemed to be especially fond of dictators and policies that put the elite classes at war with the poor.
mali muso
Thanks for this insight and for your service from another returned Peace Corps volunteer. On the subject of the living quarters of the US embassy guards, I actually met my husband (host country national) at a marine corps house expat party. Wasn’t usually my scene, but I’m glad I stopped by that evening.
As for the spillover effects of US adventurism abroad, the overthrow of the Libyan government in the last decade ended up causing havoc in my former host country of Mali. And it’s still reverberating to this day (the transitional government formed after a coup earlier this year just got couped again last week).
Jay
@Kent:
it is, and it isn’t. We had a Guatemalan refugee, a former officer, gunned down by the United Nations Gang, as it was a condition of their cocaine deal.
half a dozen “cartels” had passed the “requirement” on, in behalf of a Municipal official, who had dipped his hands into water projects.
Kent
@Jay: Yes, of course. Those are the 5% of cases that are legit. Probably mostly mid or higher level whistleblower types who got crosswise with the very powerful.
But that’s not the huge majority of dirt poor campesinos making asylum claims at the US border
I actually think we ought to let a lot of them in as we can certainly use the labor. And they are hard working as hell. But that’s not the political world we live in vis a vis immigration policy.
Dan B
@Kent: She won’t walk to the Grocery Palace!? Reminds me of Pasadena and Beverly Hills / Westwood.
Thanks for a great write up of a region of the world the US media mostly ignores.
Kent
@mali muso: One of my best friends from college did the Peace Corps in Niger during the same time (87-89) and it took our letters about a month to cross. His experience was entirely different. I think he got malaria 3 times and was in a truly dirt poor and remote location. He ended up working for the UNHCR and UNICEF in Africa and I think is still there, having worked for the UN in pretty much every hot spot from CAR to the DRC.
Kent
@Dan B: Yep, the upscale parts of Santiago resemble LA as much as anyplace else. Except the Andes next door are much higher and more magnificent. And the city is more urban than LA with more high rises and such. This is not a poor country: https://www.google.com/search?q=santiago+chile+skyline
Jay
@Kent:
dude didn’t get crosswise with the very powerful.
got crosswise with a low level functionary., basically a building inspector.
problem is that even the Army, is gang connected.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
I don’t know if anybody is going to read this, since it’s so late now, but I wanted to say a few things.
My adopted country is Honduras. I lived in s small town from 1994 to 1996 working in a bilingual school. I fell in love with the people I met, some of whom are by now and really more like family, and I fell in love with the country.
And while some of the particulars may be a little different from Guatemala, broadly speaking, things are much the same, and derive from the same roots. I would guess that things are much the same in El Salvador and Nicaragua as well.
It frustrates me to see these countries with so much potential just stay mired in this condition. These are amazing, wonderful people, and many of them could be doing amazing, wonderful things, things that would benefit the whole world.
One of the kids who was in my fourth grade class my first year is now a chemical engineer. She got her graduate degree in the Netherlands. She asked me to write a letter of recommendation when she applied, and I told her I’d do it on one condition: that she swear to me that once she got her degree, she would go back to Honduras to help there, rather than stay in Europe, or head to the U.S. or Canada or any other first world country.
She told me that that was what she wanted to do anyway, because she loves Honduras, and wants to help make it better. So she’s there now, working on finding a way to get clean drinking water to people on a big enough scale to really change things.
Anyway… She’s hardly unique. There are who knows how many people just like her, who could do great work, and want to do it. Every time we consign somebody to grinding poverty, we all lose. We lose whatever that person might have given all of us.
And really, the way to help these countries, to get them from the condition they’re in to the first world, is so simple.
It’s a Marshall Plan for Central America and Mexico. Think about it. After World War II, we helped turn much of devastated Europe into a place that was worth living in. We did the same in Japan at the same time. We could do it again.
I mean, shit, we’re the Greatest Country on Earth ®, right? We can do anything we put our minds to, right? We could do it there if we wanted to.
And right there is the hitch. Too many of us don’t want to. They think it would be too hard. Or cost too much. Or they don’t want to give a bunch of bad hombres “free stuff”. Or something else. There’s always some reason we can’t do it. It really depressed me, because this would lessen, or even do away with altogether, so many problems, for them and for the U.S.
But I fear we’ll never do it, because too many Americans just don’t want to do the work as a country. We could, and it would be so much better for everybody. But we won’t. Maybe someday we’ll yank our collective heads out of our collective asses. I live in hope that someday we will live up to our potential. But I can’t see it happening any time soon. I’ll keep hoping though.
Another Scott
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): Thanks very much.
Cheers,
Scott.
NotoriousJRT
@Kent:
Am enjoying your comments. Thank you for sharing. Business took me to both Guatemala and Chile in the mid – late 90’s. Your photos and commentary really take me back. I enjoyed both countries but spent more time in and became more partial to Guatemala. I loved that place. I think I always will, and it breaks my heart to think of the suffering of its people.
Brachiator
@Kent:
Coming very late to the thread to thank you for your comments.
This has been an ongoing problem in Central America and South America, often with racial overtones. The Reform War of Mexico and later struggles saw an elite which saw itself as European join forces with the military and the Church and fight against liberal and indigenous forces. This kind of thing is happening again in Bolivia, Venezuela and Peru.
Again, thank you very much for your comments.
Ramalama
@O. Felix Culpa: I would have thought the “New” part would give it away. It’s ‘Merican.
Ramalama
…and thanks to Kent and Watergirl. This post was a very enjoyable read.
Rick
Thanks – I was Peace Corps Costa Rica ’68-70 and did ‘time’ in Guatemala in 1972 with the American Red Cross (teaching first aid and water safety). Crazy time with so much killing going on – it was pretty insane of the American Red Cross to send us there but they did. Beautiful country but…
Rick
@Raven: And look at what the Sandinistas turned into! A different sort of dictator but still dictators.
O. Felix Culpa
@Ramalama: One would have thought so, yes, and one would have been wrong. :)
Andrew
I am reading everything in this thread with interest. I have in mind possibly emigrating to a Spanish-speaking country and to that end I’ve been intensively studying Spanish for the past 9 months and have been working on learning as much about the history and current affairs of nations I have interest in moving to. I really don’t like the ignorance and neglect this nation has shown towards the nations south of us, and this needs to change.
Tommie Sue
@Kent: Having spend 40 years in Central America, doing research, occasionally living, and writing about–mostly–El Salvador, but with a lot of time in Guatemala, I thank you for writing this. You nail it. The chicken co-op story is classic. The U.S. NEVER thinks ahead, never considers (unintended) consequences. Or, maybe they don’t care. For the last four years, I have been writing expert witness declarations for asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle and I have to disagree with your generalization regarding why people leave; with over 150 clients, to date, I have had only two potential clients for whom I refused to write a declaration because they were obviously economic migrants. VP Harris was correct about at least one thing in her presser yesterday afternoon: Most people don’t want to leave and do so only because they see no other alternative; many have relocated internally 1-3 times before abandoning their country. I would appreciate connecting with you via Linked-in or Facebook.
Jado
Boy, that sounds like a complicated problem. Wouldn’t it be easier for us to just be racist jackasses and say that the Central Americans are all MS-13 operative coming here to murder our sons and rape our daughters? I think that’s a lot less work. How about we elect a reality-TV host as president and then allow the most racist, corrupt, and moronic people to set policy for 4 years? Agreed? Agreed.
Whew. I’m exhausted. That was some tough work right there, solving the Central America problem. Now I know how Jared felt when he solved the Middle East issues.