Just a thought.

Last year there seemed but a glimmer of hope for entering into relationships with my students which went beyond discipline in the classroom and academic rigor. This year has been a very different experience as has my approach to being in the classroom. I think a combination of things changed only with time: being a foreigner, a teacher with zero teacher training or experience, not understanding most anything, cultural peccadillos, and my lapsing impatience. I thought how I might like to enter into a very different dimension of friendship with my students this year. It seems as though I have. It has been more beautiful for me this year too. But ‘beautiful’ needs some explaining. Enter: “Civic Monday”. The first school bell of the first hour of the first day of the new week is a sort of initiation where we sing while the flag is hoisted, the national anthem recited, and the various meanings of the important days to occur that week are relayed by a student with the microphone. It’s not my favorite part of the week, yet it affords me an hour to stare at the Andes in the background and smell all the weird smells in the air that morning. Last year I remember a series of moments where students would faint or cry or just be plain-old out of sorts. Other teachers dealt with it each time. I remember being a kid that age, about ten years ago, smelling, being hungry, mood swings, frustrations and just trying to understand the road to adulthood as I still remained a child in many ways. It was also a beautiful time. I think some of my classmates in high school had formed much better relationships with our teachers than I did. But mostly, I think, it was the student who had problems at home who made the strongest connections. I, on the other hand, had a good Dad who worked hard; my Mom worked hard too and also lovingly made my lunch every day; I was privileged and loved, and truly wanted for nothing. Sure, I caused problems and acted out, but I always felt like I was going somewhere and that I had a lot of support in doing what I wanted to do. Now, I’m on the other side of that student-teacher ‘beautiful’, and I’m in another privileged position. Now when kids at school on “Civic Mondays” start to cut-up or cry, there’s a good chance they’ll come straight to me if I’m close in proximity. And it’s not always a situation that is solved by handing them some bread and saying, “You have got to eat breakfast or your school day will be a wash”, or, putting a Band-Aid on their wrist where they got cut from putting their bike away; sometimes it’s the inconsolable tears and whimpering that I deal with, the my Dad beat me this morning and chased me out of the house to the street where I escaped in a taxi, and now I’m afraid to go home because of what he’s going to do to me tonight for not staying home and letting him finish what he started.... This is hard. The rest of my day is mostly ruined, but I won’t go through the gamut of emotions here because it is without fathom and its depths are just an ugly side effect of the episode of child abuse itself. And it makes me feel small, shrinks me actually, and I’m dizzied by the not-knowing-what-to-do and the helplessness of the situation altogether. I do what I can, talk with whom I can, and things only scab over. They never get better or different, but ebb and flow with the constant progression of moments which put distance between one ugly schism and the next to surely come. The abuse won’t stop either, and although it seems a nihilistic and inept consolation for dealing with these injustices, I won’t stop being there either, no matter how boring "Civic Mondays" are. I’ve found a new admiration I for the teachers whom I saw help the students during my high school days who, other than being dedicated professionals, simply knew how to be a human being. But I think I have to remember that this need not only happen in the classroom but in society at large....   

Who wants to live in a burning house?

It may sound a bit condescending or arrogant, but I seriously doubt that most Americans generally know anything about “illegal” immigration. What people often read in op-ed pieces from their local newspaper may very well be interesting, but that doesn’t make any of it true. Thanks to the absence of any real dialogue and especially the lack of truth regarding immigration, it is no wonder that people as absolutely inept, inexpert and thoughtless as Jan Brewer, are elected to the office of Governor in a border state like Arizona – home of the luddites’  SB 1070 legislation which the Supreme Court so flaggingly tackled this month. It isn’t that amazing that so many pundits and jingoists are capitalizing on something so few know anything about.

Let me say that, based on the centerpiece provision in SB 1070, the “show me your papers” provision, I can’t help but think about the policies enacted by certain regimes throughout Western Civilization’s history which lead to the oppression of myriad groups of people based on skin color, sex, religious profession, class echelon, etc. Law enforcement is required to verify someone’s status if they have cause to believe that that person might be in America illegally. What sort of signs will they look for and, who will be the majority of their suspects? I can only wonder.

Many people have commented that the legislation passed in Arizona, Alabama and plenty more states is of the same nature as the legislation of Nazi Germany, which allowed the Nazis to identify certain groups and condemn them to certain death. Arizona and Nazi laws may be apples and oranges, perhaps, but one cannot argue they nonetheless stem from the same family of political thought. Martin Luther King, Jr. quipped decades ago that we must remember that everything they did in Nazi Germany was legal. He, of course, was not drawing any connection to problems of the border per se, but rather the Civil Rights issues with which he labored. But the point stands: even if what states are doing is by definition “legal”, it does not make it right or just or ethical or moral. States are not moral agents as Noam Chomsky reminds us. But how could America ever be likened to such a monstrosity as Nazi Germany? Who knows. Nevertheless, America absolutely ought to be judged accordingly when it starts to act like a totalitarian, tyrannical, despotic behemoth. Otherwise, if people don’t like it when their country is held accountable for terrible policy foreign and domestic, maybe they should live somewhere else, some place even less democratic than the US.

The truth is that I am a convert from America’s Conservative camp. I grew up admiring Bush the Younger, and hating the “terrorists” because they “hate what America stands for” and because they “hate my freedoms”. Nevertheless, once too many things were simply unbearable, too many untruths irreconcilable with what actually was, I was passionately rocketed to the Left. What is even more amazing about America is that there is no such thing as left at all! And, to commit myself knowingly and openly to the informal logical fallacy of assessing the makeup of the many by the properties of the few, allow me to say I feel that those who claim to be “on the right” in fact neither truly know what it is that they want, nor do they practice in earnest what it is that they preach.

One of my major qualms is the platform regarding “small government”. I am absolutely pro small government. I really do think that the hoodlums who call themselves libertarians and republicans in Arizona are not actually for smaller government, neither are they actually libertarians or republicans for that matter. “The Federal government isn’t going to tell my state what to do about the illegal immigration problem.” No, it isn’t; there is no need for the Federal government to be snooping in your home, car, and grocery cart when you are – at a state level – already sky-rocketing the amount of government oversight in everyone’s lives with backward legislation as is SB 1070. And thanks so much, for that matter, for the Patriot Act – way to show America that you really pine for smaller government. And, what of the speed-trap cameras on the state highways? It reeked of big brother and big government: way-to-go, Arizona! Voter registration ID: yet another extreme overture (albeit a farfetched pipedream) to bigger government. The hypocrisy and lunacy of what American conservatives do while calling their policies “measures” to protect us from the terrorists and the “illegal” immigrants (who they plot as the antagonists who secretly conspire to destroy America) is, nothing other than unconscionable. Does anyone remember when some tried to make the “anchor-babies” farce stick? Wow. Such hairebrained muckra gives me great pause and gives me no reason to believe most are even somewhat trully educated.

Let me also say not in my own defense but, for those who will continue to bury their heads in the sand anyway, American liberals are not beyond reproach. Furthermore, I seldom (if at all ever – unfortunately) meet a liberal or a democrat for that matter who is as critical of Obama as I am. We could have done what the underwhelming minority of conservatives did for the 8 years of Bush the Younger's regime: we could have held Obama so accountable that any opposition from the right would have seemed to be but a whisper, or, redundant at best. I wager that if you actually think Obama is anything more than a flagrant moderate, you need to recalibrate your political prism because you probably think that Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter actually believe what they say and write. You might just be a full-blown reactionary or a true-believer.

What most people think they know about the issue: “illegal” immigrants don’t “get in line” and come to America the “right way”; “illegal” immigrants come to America to reap the benefits of our wealthy nation without doing anything to “deserve it”; “illegal” immigrants “plug-up” hospitals and “take jobs” away from Americans; “illegal” immigrants create an unmanageable “burden” on states and public resources; “illegal” immigrants bring crime; “illegal” immigrants don’t pay any taxes and still receive benefits; anyone who enters the country “illegally” is a criminal; “illegal” immigrants are overrunning the United States like never before…. The list is comically extensive, and mythically untrue. If there actually existed a functional way for people to immigrate to the United States “legally”, ought it not to have worked by now? If you are someone who sounds giddy like Borat when you scream “USA, number 1” and never questions what that means, maybe you should start questioning whether or not “USA, number 1” means, “USA, best policy found on Earth”. It does not.

While I assume that many American shoppers don’t want their “roll-backs” at Wal-Mart to disappear, they do want the immigration “problem” gone, and as fast as possible. Let’s be honest for once at least. This desire for "illegal" immigrants to disappear means that there are people in America who equivocate the immigration problem disappearing with the disappearance and deportation of Mexican nationals and other groups assessed by ethnicity or "race". Unfortunately for most American xenophobic or otherwise, the thought of paying more than $5.96 for a package containing 6 pairs of socks is unthinkable. And the price of the average American’s socks has everything to do with immigration. The only way for socks and other goods to remain as cheap as possible is for them to be made where it is cheapest to make them. If this means creating business in one country only to disrupt and destroy lives (including in America itself) when that business and prosperity leaves, the consequences for immigration can’t be honestly considered unforeseeable by anyone with a thought in his or her head. Americans who don’t honestly think (or worse, who choose not to think) that the globalized world and globalize economy is driving – as it always has since America immemorial – immigrants to our borders and shores, are absolutely uninformed or just plain senseless.

Oh, you don’t want Guatemalans living “illegally” in Los Angeles? You don’t think the Chinese should be “illegally” migrating to the US through a small town just outside of Tijuana, Mexico? You don’t say! I have a piece of advice for the xenophobes among us then: read a book on how international political economy and trade and policy actually work in the world. When the Adidas factory that YOU, ME, Bill Clinton and CAFTA all decided should be in El Salvador moves to Korea because of changes in Washington’s whims regarding textile tariffs which all of a sudden favor them more, don’t act so righteous and feign such a narcissistically scandalized torment by the migration of people to the place where opportunity and jobs might still actually exist. I quote myself shamelessly from my last post: “Indeed, Latin America’s textile and clothing exports have increased over the years, enjoying not only proximity but also a history of trade preferences. Of course, after several barriers to Chinese textile exports were eradicated in the mid-2000s, Latin America’s share in the market declined with negative results for manufacturing in the region. Between 2000 and 2004, one of every four maquiladora plants left Mexico for China. The majority of the plants were textile and other low-value and laborious businesses.” Were the Mexicans just going to go to China to keep their jobs? Are most Americans just that madcap and quixotic when it comes to their world view of politics and economy?Or, do you not understand what capitalism actually is? And I don’t mean the theoretical capitalist pretext for the predatory plutocracy that America espouses domestically.

When will Americans understand that we are simply reaping what we have sown for so many generations? Why do we choose to live in a burning house while shamelessly fingering others for starting the fire?

Developing World Trade

Why doesn’t the United States treat Latin America and Asia with an attitude of economic “conversion” nowadays? After all, there is a strong case to be made for a newer, more relevant disposition toward these important trade regions. We might well ask if current US-style trade drives the developing world to look for better trade partners, leaving the American economy behind. And, if the US seems to promote trade agreements with the developing world for its own interest, then is the US truly concerned with broader implications of such trade policy? 

True, America has sought economic and political hegemony in the developing world for centuries, often with a murderous and meddlesome history of political and economic intervention. The familiar tools of policy: intervention, war and aid. All commonplace in late 20^th Century, the US employed many more implements to forge economic inroads and shackles in the developing world. We need only name the countries – Cambodia, Vietnam, Japan, Guatemala, Chile, El Salvador, etc. – to remember our failed and unfriendly attempts at global economic hegemony. 

Today, we ought to ask if this inheritance is worth maintaining, or if we should change our ways. Make no mistake that we are in that position. And perhaps it would do the US some good to recognize a number of details often left by the wayside.

The Other America

Latin America showed an impressive fecundity for economic growth in the decades 1950 through 1970. Yet with the termination of state-run programs and development plans, such growth shriveled. Importantly, this economic period allowed for collective groups to stipulate greater political and social democracy, thus checking the usual economic strengths of the upper classes. Moreover this twenty year growth period was more evenhanded and more evenly distributed than anything that was to follow. 

What we take away from this epoch in Latin American’s economic history is substantial. Simply put, there existed amply viable alternatives to the often predatory flavors of capitalism which Latin America experienced largely under the Reagan administration. Yet as with many other things at the time, the US felt free to ignore this. 

The concept of free trade eventually garnered strong bipartisan political support in the US after Reagan. President Bill Clinton made globalization a mainstay of his foreign policy, ratifying the infamous North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Any talk, however, of calibrating the balance between development and private enterprise gave way to the powerful protections afforded corporate and property rights. 

But Latin America’s experiment with an economic teleology underpinned by the new brand of international commercial law – and the ratification of free trade – meant some of the greatest instances of dispossession for the region. Countries with undercapitalized state industries legalized laissez-faire fundamentalism as they grew desperate for foreign capital and investment. This change in legislations was indubitably symptomatic of the violence waged against economic nationals and Latin American socialists. It made the costs of challenging Washington’s wants bloody for anyone opposed to the new economic alliance. 

From the outset of the 20^th Century Latin America suffered record-high wealth inequality. Between 1947 and 1973, per capita income in Latin America rose over 70 percent in terms of real wages. Yet from Reagan to Clinton, 1980 to 1998, average per capita income languished at a dismal zero percent. IMF protocol led to more frustration due to its pathetic job ensuring better health care services, education programs or nutrition prerogatives. 

At the end of the 1960s, roughly ten percent of Latin Americans were destitute, with their poverty defined as subsistence by today’s standards on less than two dollars daily. By 1996, one-third of Latin America’s population was destitute or, 165 million people. In 2005, at least 220 million people lived below the poverty line. This means that in less than ten years, regional poverty increased 20 percent. 

Hindering Self-Determination

In 1981, the International Meeting on Cooperation and Development took place in Cancún, México. US President Ronald Reagan unveiled his plans for a new economic system. Until this debut the language of “developmentalism” was frequent in discussions on international economic relations. The leaders of Latin America took a shining to the economic thought of Raúl Prebisch, the Argentine economist who headed the United Nations Economic Commission on Latin America. His widely acclaimed contribution: radically restructuring the terms of global trade.

Support was international. In September of 1981, the 21^st president of France, François Mitterrand, implored that America open its markets to developing world products, making further demands on America: renegotiations of crushing debts, stabilize prices for primary products, and enter into global talks that would legitimately recognize Third World grievances. Canadian and European politicians showed their support, suggesting that development aid be increased from $26 billion to $50 billion annually. 

The implications of what developing nations themselves wanted were broad in scope. The majority of these placed demanded new international institutions. The list included a World Bank affiliate, with the duty of ensuring the manageability of energy costs. Many also sought to form one collective in order to voice their interests at the U.N. General Assembly. Economic tides were ebbing from and not flowing towards Washington.

Nations called for increased financial assistance to developing countries, rich-world technologies and industry transferred to poorer nations, lowered tariff barriers to manufacturing and recognition of full sovereignty in terms of natural resources and economic activities. These nations wanted also to legitimize industrial expropriations and nationalizations, and setting prices for ten main commodities (cocoa, coffee, sugar, rubber, copper, tin, etc.)

Reagan balked at the creation of such institutions, and Latin America became a Frankenstein of unfettered free-market debauchery. The region endured the onset of cheap consumer goods and dubious promises of better services via privatization. There was of course the dual transfer of both legal rights and rich-world production facilities (and the promise of higher wages). Yet somehow this transference magically benefited only a small portion of Latin America’s working sector, neglecting to redistribute the wealth more impartially. 

This change in both legal and trade dynamics invited U.S. corporate expansion, and US companies used the region for raw materials and agriculture. American firms came to dominate the railroads, electric companies, ports, mines and oil fields of the continent. Railroads, postal services, roads, factories, telephone services, schools, hospitals, prisons, waste management, water, broadcast frequencies, pension systems, electric, television and telephone companies were sold for disadvantageous reasons. Latin America bore the sale of over two thousand government industries between 1985 and 1992 alone. Multinational corporations and the superrich of Latin America, growing amazingly rich in the unprecedented process, swooped in to assume the property. 

Alas, a debt crisis ensued and killed the New International Economic Order’s nonaligned economic aspirations. A windfall of economic stabilization tactics were employed to make Latin America more attractive to foreign investment and capital: tax cuts, exempting foreign companies from labor and environmental laws, slashing health care funds, etc. Education and other social services suffered as regulations were abandoned. Unions were hostile to the gears of the new economy and legislation was passed to allow business to repatriate 100 percent of their profits. Subsidies designed to protect national manufacturing evaporated, interest rates ran amok, and state industries as well as public utilities fell to privatization. Poor countries which sought to unify efforts and set commodity prices – to bring about fairer terms from the industrialized world – experienced capitalism’s miraculous race to the bottom. It was the next step in attracting foreign capital. 

The Unassuming Player

Unlike what happened for the US under Reagan, China employed a mix of Keynesian deficit-financing and plenty of infrastructure projects in the name of economic stimulation. After decades of unusual direction, China eventually healed to the WTO in 2001, left somewhat bound to neo-liberal rules of the world market. Nevertheless, both the state and communist party power in China made for a distinct economic makeup. 

Under Mao Tse-tung, China became the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Vast changes in economic and social policy were soon to follow. The state set out to tax China’s peasant commune sector rather than afford it subsidies. The government subsidized urban workers with lowered food prices, buying food from rural farmers at low prices. Equipped with food and far-reaching improvements in public health, China prompted its economic reforms with a thrust of agricultural production, a healthy public, and a radical market reform of its food sector. 

In years that ensued, the Chinese government designated numerous cities along the coast and other regions to absorb foreign investment. This resulted in failures for the automobile industry and manufactured goods. Nevertheless, the majority of business success came from overseas Chinese with their intimate connections back home. Nominal legal protections for businesses magnified the importance of these informal Chinese relations. 

China also underwent incredible rates of urbanization. 40 or more cities exceeded one million people after 1992. Such growth required large investments of fixed capital too. Chinese projects sought to absorb surpluses of capital for years to come, including one project worth $60 billion. China built subway systems and highways in several major cities, and proposed thousands of miles of new railroads connecting the interior to the flourishing coasts. Shortly after the turn of the millennium, foreign direct investment (FDI) represented more than two-fifths of China’s GDP. China became the largest recipient of FDI in the developing world, destined for second place to US FDI.

The results of China’s changes were not all positive. In 1975, however, China’s per capita income was between seven and eight percent of that of Western Europe; by 2000, China had an economy one-fifth the value of Europe’s. Today, China grows at an impressive eight percent per capita rate annually. What is more, China is eradicating its own poverty: roughly two-thirds of China’s population subsisted on less than one dollar per day in 1981, declining to just 17 percent in 2001.

As a developing world power, China faces myriad challenges, economic and otherwise. The renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs coined China as the world’s “most successful economy” since 1978. Yet Sachs acknowledges that China continues to play economic “catch-up” with the rich, industrialized world thanks centuries upon centuries of economic subjugation by the West. But China as a nation of people today is important to consider. The Chinese population alone accounts for 1.3 billion today, more than one-fifth of the world’s population. This is in itself a commanding amount of human capital. 

China should not be considered alone in terms of potential trade – especially in terms of Latin America. Russia and India are also experiencing various class transformations. The alliance formed between Brazil, India, China, South Africa and others at the Cancun conference signals the beginnings of a different and important force in global politics, with the potential importance to rival the alliance established in Bandung in 1955. 

Suitable Bedfellows

Little more than a decade ago China and India changed the trajectory of Latin America’s economic future. Benefiting the South American continent in particular, one of Asia’s most important contributions was raising prices for Latin American commodity exports. The many growing ties with Asia have indeed meant the economic upturn of Latin America, owing particular kudos to China. 

Did the US neglect Chinese president Hu Jintao’s visit to Argentina, Chile and Brazil in November of 2004? President Jintao bore promises of Chinese investment worth millions of dollars. Why? Because Latin America is home to the many commodities that China desperately needs to continue its formidable growth. 

These were not empty promises: direct investment totaled $4 billion in 2004, and Chinese businesses did not limit their investments to infrastructure alone. Ecuadorian and Venezuelan oil fields and Peruvian mines represent but two areas of investment for Chinese businesses. Jindal Steel and Power, an Indian company, followed Chinese business savvy and fostered a $2.1 billion investment in Bolivian iron-ore deposits – a massive investment for such an impoverished country like Bolivia.

It would be a mistake to think the relationship between Asia and Latin America is one-sided. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez visited Beijing shortly after the Chinese president’s tour of South America and extolled China’s plans to invest seriously in Venezuela’s oil industry. A strong partnership with China can liberate Venezuelan dependence on US petroleum consumption, invariably adding to its own political prowess in the hemisphere. 

China’s visit to Brazil was no small detail either. A promising relationship between China and Brazil’s agribusiness and environmental services can only bolster their growing economic prowess. The good news for China is that Brazil exports more beef, coffee and orange juice than any other country in the world. A Brazilian agriculture research institute claims that Brazilian agriculture could utilize another 90 million hectares without even approaching the rainforest if need be. But export and agricultural dominance aside, Brazilian farming rates exceeded six percent from 1990 to 2004 — a growth rate twice that of the EU and US. 

Given the economic growth that China foments in Latin America, we should remember that Latin America has long been considered one of the most advanced regions in the entire developing world. Geographical location has meant close proximity to US markets for years, and some speculate that closeness has given Latin America an advantage especially in the arena of “low-value-added” manufacturing. 

Indeed, Latin America’s textile and clothing exports have increased over the years, enjoying not only proximity but also a history of trade preferences. Of course, after several barriers to Chinese textile exports were eradicated in the mid-2000s, Latin America’s share in the market declined with negative results for manufacturing in the region. Between 2000 and 2004, one of every four maquiladora plants left Mexico for China. The majority of the plants were textile and other low-value and laborious businesses.

Do not discard the US interests at stake here. If we focus on changes pertaining to Mexico, the Central Americas and the Caribbean textile exports, we should also note that Chinese economic possibilities stir up thoughts of future nonalignment with Washington’s economic interests. Whereas once these areas in Latin America subsisted on US necessities in trade and proximity – and with China absorbing this area of production and exports – what will Latin America be free to pursue henceforth without the previous dependence on the US? 

With China and other parts of Asia (especially India and Japan), Latin America can wager a sustainable, prosperous growth. But Latin America recognizes the need to consider policies that stimulate areas like education and research, as well as transportation and infrastructure. Otherwise, the type of development procured through economic growth may peter out before positive effects are ubiquitously felt. 

The American Attitude

President George W. Bush swore in his 2000 presidential campaign promised not to cajole Latin American leaders into kneeling before Washington’s interests. Instead, he promised to listen as a basic duty of his presidency. But obviously the attacks that took place on September 11, 2001 changed the gaze of Bush’s presidency. And when President Hugo Chávez made his disgust for the IMF model of development in Latin America known, and the White House shamelessly supported the coup to stop Chávez in 2002. It was as disastrous for the White House as it was successful in cementing popular opinion for Chávez and his own economic aspirations for Latin America itself. 

México was not eagerly forthcoming with its support for the invasion of Iraq, landing threats from Bush’s White House. The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) objected to the war, and was reprimanded with nothing short of flagrant threats. As numerous Latin American countries signed off on the International Criminal Court (ICC), the US bullied them with economic threats so as to procure deals exempting US citizens from certain ICC jurisdiction. Brazil’s opposition to the Free Trade Agreement of the America’s whipped up anti-trade sentiment from the White House, and Argentina likewise experienced Washington’s acidity when it started to openly think outside of the free-trade box. 

What do we take away from this tug-of-war in the early 2000s? Essentially, the White House is met with such international opposition because it long espoused an economic model that, rather than foment development and stability for its neighbors, lead to political calamities and economic woe, misery and poverty.  

Many experts agree that developing nations ought to be wary of sponsoring outright neo-liberal regimes for the sake of economic development. Often times the expert prescription is to remain skeptical of accepting life under the pretext of boundless capital accumulation and economic growth without regard for social, political and ecological consequences. Otherwise these nations might help to spawn the inalienable rights of private property and profitability (and even corporate personhood), rather than their own useful prosperity. 

The world has witnessed Washington’s agenda, recently extended through violence in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and decades ago in Latin America. The proclivities of imperium furthered the rich-world agenda via tools we call the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, Wall Street, and the World Bank. Nevertheless, several communities which constitute the developing world — especially Latin America and Asia — are ready to reject all this. Many are ready to work strictly under the auspices of their own values and interests. These include but are not limited to values of an open democracy dedicated to social equality, and economic political and cultural justice.  

But maybe we continue to miss what is in plain sight. All across the globe – China, Brazil, Argentina, Taiwan, Korea, South Africa, Iran, India, Egypt, Eastern Europe, etc. – there are groups and social movements working for reforms and expressing at least some semblance of democratic values,  even if opposing the fancies of Washington. Unfortunately, the US continues to project the idea of economic burgeoning that can only be found within the context of neo-liberal American values. The requirement: that even those who disagree ought to accept these values based on the definition of what civilization is and what it demands. This disposition obviously continues to estrange the people of Latin America and China, and perhaps what they want for themselves. 

To paraphrase a quip from Dick Cheney, the human impetus for self-determination is great. As Latin America and Asia continue to find one another relegated to the margins of global society by US interest, they will continue to symbolize Cheney’s platitude of self-determination. Most likely, then, they will continue to trade together; alike in what they do not yet have, and what they desire. 

Ugliest Dog, Mother Cow, Dinner

Classes have been going swimmingly lately. I've been preparing the kids for their end-of-trimester exams, and finishing up the grade averages to boot. After a short bout with Typhoid fever and some other illnesses, I feel like I'm "back on the horse". It feels good to not have parasites or anything else, and teaching seems much easier because I have energy now and don't feel like my insides are melting.

The other day we were reviewing for the religion exam with my students from Cuarto B, and they wanted to talk about soccer as opposed to the topic at hand (the boys, not the girls). I then explained that most North Americans were good at soccer but, not necessarily the US. I said that we have historically liked other sports, and soccer is much more widely enjoyed by Canadians and Mexicans -- or so it seems. 

I was then informed that Perú had just beaten Canada by something like two points. I made a joke about why Perú beat Canada (slighting Canadians, of course), and said that perhaps they -- the kids in class -- should reevaluate the importance which they place on soccer. This suggestion was a non-starter of course, because reevaluating the importance of soccer is stupid apparently.  

But Profe, how can you say that there are more important sports than soccer even for 'gringos'? "Easily", I said, and I begged their permission to explain further. 

I proposed that US Americans were not noted for soccer skills because oftentimes we are just too occupied with sports that are essential to survival. I said that cross-country running is perhaps a stronger sport for us than soccer because, all gringos know they might one day come across a bear and have to out-run it for some distance and quickly. I said that swimming was also a stronger sport for us because if we ever fell into a large body of water for some reason (plane crash, emergency water landing, etc.), we would have to be able to swim for some time in order to maximize our chance of aqua survival. Then I suggested that sport like boxing was also more important for us than the likes of soccer. Why? Because one day we might have to defend ourselves and find it required of us that we maintain the stamina of an amateur boxer.


They found my reasons funny enough, laughed a little, and got back to work. I was glad not to have to talk about soccer any more that class.

Inter-be

The penultimate chapter of Thich Nhat Hanh’s You Are Here explores the Buddha’s essential teachings. It is a chapter, he explains, to help rid meditative practitioners of false teachings oftentimes ascribed to the Buddha. “If you are not sure that a teaching you have received is authentic,” he writes, “you should refer to these marks.” He is referring to the three ‘Dharma Seals’: impermanence, non-self, and nirvana.

A Westerner might consider the language that Hanh uses and find it impactful. He says that “nothing has a permanent identity” and that impermanence itself is nothing negative. Pre-Socratic philosophers in our Western tradition also explored a similar revelation about the constant change in everything – Heraclitus espoused that you cannot step in the same river twice, albeit once

Hanh writes, “We are made of elements called form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.” Encouraging us to “look deeply into their nature,” we come to understand things for what they really are: manifestations. “A feeling or a perception is very real,” writes Hanh, “but you cannot find anything permanent in it. You cannot detect a permanent presence in anything whatsoever. You will never find anywhere a self, or a soul, that lasts.” Many who are familiar with popular Buddhism might object, broaching the ‘notion’ of a soul that survives death and lives on. Nevertheless, Hanh warns that, “…this is not really what the Buddha taught.” 

Enter the example of the corn seed. Westerners, might think that when a seed of corn dies, it is the end of that seed. Of course for the Christian as well as the Buddhist, seeds of corn do not bear souls. Yet Hahn’s example encourages us to see the seed as in a process of transformation: the seed technically dies yet gives life to a whole other corn plant. The seed is impermanent, but manifestation of another corn plant is feasible given the proper conditions. For life to continue, a death -- or, ceased manifestation -- is invariably necessary. 

Hahn elaborates further: “There is only continuation, only manifestation, because birth and death are just ideas. Being and nonbeing are just concepts. Reality is free from all these ideas and concepts.” Hahn admits that life is possible after death, but there is no need of a permanent entity to make life itself at all possible. What makes life possible is that we inter-are inasmuch as life itself inter-is. 

Whether people or corn, we cannot have separate existences because it is impossible. A corn plant does not need a self or, “separate existence” to produce flowers and fruit; it need only “inter-be” with the whole cosmos. “Reject impermanence,” Hanh writes, “and you reject life.”

On 'Simple Living'

I desired for so long to write about simple living because, up until now, hearing the two words in tandem – “simple” + “living” – in fact made my skin crawl. What an amorphous subject! How the heck does one subscribe to and live it? Well, I’ve spent twenty months living under the supposed aegis of ‘simple living’, and I used to loathe all philosophy which clouded the subject. Nevertheless, I did not abandon it outright, and I think I made great strides in my understanding of it.

I lived for some time in community with a someone who, every now and again, said, “There is a right way to live out the JVC experience, and there is a wrong way.” I sat with this postulation for many months, wondering exactly what to think about it. The conclusion I drew was not favorable for this ploy: how can someone apply this stark characteristic to such a diverse consortium of experiences (and people, for that matter) – if only to draw this outrageously binary conclusion? It sounded cult-ish to me; a la I alone know the truth and only I can access it. I then wondered how to go about dissecting the mischievous topic of ‘simple living’ – not wanting to wager such an iron-clad, dogmatic gambit myself. Luckily, it came to me one night, woke me up without any hope for a good sleep, and forced me from my bed to write about it.

In the rich vein of Occidental thought, we often find that when people go about formally or informally philosophizing, the need tenaciously arises to draw distinctions, to categorize, and to accumulate information about both natural phenomena and concepts. We will now do this very investigative work with the topic at hand.

To me, it would seem that, based on the other volunteers whom I know, ‘simple living’ consists in a broad-stroke makeup of perhaps just two things:

1. If simple living means to usher us toward a greater freedom while serving in this experience, then each one of us must decide which type of undergirding freedom we find therein: the freedom from, or the freedom to (these, of course, not exhausting the gamut of freedom per se, but simply considered so here, given our agency as teleological beings).
2. We ask ourselves: why do we choose the type of freedom we do to accompany ‘simple living’?

If ‘simple living’ is decidedly conceived of as belonging to the freedom from category in our inherent agency, then ‘simple living’ necessarily becomes a lifestyle of privation. We risk rendering ourselves to a legalism that is largely trying and wearisome, and which may lead us to regard ‘simple living’ not as good and beneficial, but rather as some superego to govern our every craving and whim. Yet, if simple living is otherwise considered as belonging to the freedom to category, then we preclude fixating on the presence or existence of things which we think inhibit our progress in simplicity; we are not focusing on abstaining from attachments at all. And thus, we are freer to consider the ample ways in which we might “simplify even further”, as the ‘Covenant’ puts it.

Now, one can understand how depending on certain privilege and status as a world citizen, ‘simple living’ can easily lead to – if we jump to conclusions without deeper deliberation – a rejection of material goods, immediacy, and other commonplace American societal elements and attachments. But, I propose that a more finely tuned consideration of ‘simple living’ will not give us cause to think that these things do in fact lead to a greater simplicity. What is more, I offer that when indeed we choose to simplify, we ought to open as many doors as possible – growing and broadening our access to simplicity. Conversely, if we shroud ourselves in the type of legalistic fixation which only leads us to abstention from things and attachments, well, ‘simple living’ quickly becomes the fruit of negative regulations. Living simply, then, increases in difficulty not because it is the harder experience to live (i.e., living without), but because, I contend, it is more superficial, and therefore the easier route, a farce.

What woke me up that night is itself simple enough: I feel we ought to choose the positive, freedom to basis for ‘simple living’.  I hope, too, that it might be regarded as a solution as to the seemingly nebulous nature of ‘simple living’ as we strive to give it life with our volunteer experience.