My HeyDay

All the human hopes condensed in a hundred faces. Maybe all men got one big soul everybody's a part of; all faces are the same man. The smartest person I have ever met said once to me that "life is better measure by experiences -and friends- than by time", and I could say that it has been the case this month. I barely remember the distant day when I left Washington, bringing lots of hope and anxiety as my luggage. Four weeks later, I just can say that there is another world, and I have been there. The emotional implication with the people of these two small countries has been far more intense than anything I could experience in my last three years in the US. I know that. I guess that dreams, like anguish, bring people together. And suffering equals everybody. How did we lose all the good that was given us? Let it slip away. Scattered careless... But I learned a few things in my time here:

Be Empathic: I come back convinced about that indisputable truth. That we are nothing if we only care about ourselves, self-focused and just developing a earthly shrine dedicated to our ego. Popularity, professional success, beauty, all those things are meaningless temporary achievements that nobody will care about in few years. Wrong fights. Et in Arcadia ego... We really are not ourselves until we don't come in touch, empathically, with the world we live in.

Care about Democracy: I also bring along a dozen of doubts and "research questions" around our basic idea of Democracy. Political Science still desperately needs to come back to the fundamentals and redefine the concept. Robert Dahl, a pope in Political Science and a good old Yale professor, was always very sad because of our constant struggle to just agree about this basic definition. But the fact is that when we come to places like Honduras and El Salvador, and we observe the workings of their political systems, formally a democracy, one misses so many pieces that would funnel representation from the citizens to the government, that it's hard to accept this sort of liberal democracy in the general definition. Politicians struggle to survive in power here, in a constant fight between elites, but just for the sake of gaining the grace of the economically powerful establishment. Nonetheless, you would note that either Europe or the US are not so different. Only, from time to time, as it was the case of El Salvador this month, a powerful grass-roots movement allied with economic turbulences can break the pattern and bring some hope. Even if it remains to be seen how long-lasting this change in the rules of the game is going to be until the new elite is co-opted. But in a regular democracy, real alternation should be the rule and not the exception. Those who do not see the dangers in a democracy with a very unbalanced representation are just blind. Even Machiavelli would acknowledge that. The Prince should not just exert fear, but also love, in his fellow subjects, and he has to avoid the monopolistic rule of any special group. The Prince, in our present time, is us, the voters, the People.

Worry about Development: My optimism and pessimism about Development and development professionals grew in parallel in this trip. I still observe, and suffer, what I call the "bureaucracies of development", those international and national agencies blahbling the development jargon we are used to and caring, mainly, about procedures. Becoming the Kafkian nightmares they were not meant to be, due to the high expectations all we put on them. But the hope is that a myriad, million-strong army of community organizers, teachers, healthcare trainers, Jesuits!, volunteers and especially, that [still] small elite of development professionals -hey, Pax!- who want to transform the way this work is performed to a more complete, jargon-free, human-based, multi-disciplinary and efficient discipline. They just can succeed at some point.

Hunt Friends: Someone said that when you gain a friend, you find a treasure. There is something magical in connecting with another person, enjoying his/her conversation, sense of humor, views of the world, and stories from the past. It's like two trains running at the same speed and coming from different tracks, and at some magical point those tracks become parallel pathways and both trains have time to spend together in their trip. Friends come and go this way, but many of them, those who shared that deep connection with us, inexorably become a share of our memories and soul. And said that, traveling alone is a great way to meet people and make some random, few good friends. There is something exotic in being a foreigner which other people find enticing, and they are naturally open to conversation. One day, I remember, I was in the balcony of a café in Jewel Key looking at the sea, and this old woman, Shannon, came next to me. We started talking about how would life look like in this narrow, overpopulated key, and five minutes later I was telling her my deepest existential anxieties and dreams, my life cross-roads and tough choices. And, fifteen minutes later we were sharing a table for lunch and sharing a drink. Is it not magical?

I came here with lots of questions and I found some few, but enriching answers. First, one should move his steps towards the future not basing his decisions on fear, but on pursuing the things that enlighten you and make you happy. Also, you are never alone if you decide not to be. Loneliness is a personal choice, afterall. Somehow, it is the refusal to open your self to the other. And many people, even if constantly accompanied, are indeed very alone in this world. And the last and most important one, Flor de Caña is still the best rum in the Caribbean. Period. No discussion about that.


- AMOR OMNIA VINCIT -

Labels: honduras, salvador, Verdades Como Templos, viajes

At 7am, we drove towards "California", a small community of peasants west of La Ceiba, surrounded by banana fields. A group of fifteen women met us at 9am in the humble house of one of them, in order to proceed to the gathering. The sun was intense outside, and I sat in the hammock, looking at the colorful walls but limited furniture of the place. A hen looked at me from the kitchen.

Fifteen Women - We sang the hymn all together ("Unity, Discipline, Work, Bravery!") and I was introduced to the group. The coordinator engaged us in some relaxing activity to break the seriousness of the morning, and we danced the "hen" song -later, I had to do that myself in front of all the women to get rid of my own shyness-. We all discussed about remedies against dyarrhea in new-borns, in a very socratic way -we engaged them in asking about the pictures we were showing, asking to propose solutions for every symptom. We talked about their personal stories, micro-businesses and doubts. And after a couple of pictures and a lot of laughs, we left. I could see the face of my mother or my grandmother, years ago, in many of those women. I promised them to send back a copy of the pictures I took. I was happy about having spent some time among them... the real reason I came down here. I felt touched, but still an outsider.


A Kid and a Broken arm - Later on the road, a young teacher stopped us, asking for a ride for her and a kid. When I opened the SUV's door, the kid had a totally broken arm, between the hand and the elbow, in a very ugly way: the arm was still together just by the flesh! He was dying in pain, and we drove fast towards the local "clinic". Apparently, what they call the sobador (lit. "toucher"), a sort of mystical local leader who fix easy lessions in extremities, was out attending someone, and the mother of the child was reliant to let us give them a ride to the closest hospital. The kid was crying: "My mother doesn't have money". I offered to pay the bills, to make it easier. We could not stand the image of the guy in such a deplorable, painful way, and the slowness of the mother to make a decision. She was influenced by a local man, who happened to be the nephew of the sobador, and said that "he always fix everything... even if you go to the hospital, you'ld have to come later to my uncle's clinic for sure". Ignorance, fear, lack of trust to outsiders and peer pressure played here a strong role against the future of the kid's arm. If the kid was not going to the hospital, we offered then to give them a ride to where the sobador was. "He is very close!", say the sobador's nephew. We drove by a dirty road for 20 mins and I couldn't stop seeing the S-shaped arm of the child, who broke into tears. No painkillers around. The road became very complicate for the SUV (no 4-wheels traction) and the mother decided to walk the rest of the trip. They left us, walking, under an intense sun, that morning. I thought in all the unnecessary suffering of the kid, and what was going to wait for him later: the sobador will fix his arm by force, without painkillers, and without deep knowledge of all the deep tissues and nerves that he may break in the process. He would put some wooden tools to keep the bones together, but the kid will play around the next days, after much pain that day, and the bones wouldn't fix perfectly together because of the movement, leaving him a flawed arm for the rest of his life. And we were just 20 mins ride from the closest hospital...

We are trapped - In our way back to the main road, driving backwards -no way to u-turn in between the fences and fields- the wheels get trapped in a swamp. No way. We stopped one old man with an older horse, and he helped me pushing the car out of the trap, with no success. In the meantime, I bargained about the horse, with the crazy idea of bringin' it to DC. Later, two younger men appeared on the horizon, and joined us in the impossible mission. We were discussing strategies to escape from that mud trap when another SUV miraculously appeared on the dirty road, and they happened to have something to push us out of the trap. An observation: nobody questioned the need of helping us, or freerided, because all of them assumed our problem was theirs as well: community-based solidarity at work! We gently shaked hands after getting the car back to the road, and we wished God may help us in our future.


Smuggling and Drug Pirates - During that day, I heard seven different stories of young men shot and killed in the area in the last week. Assuming that the average is half that rate, so like 3.5/week, it gives us an homicide rate of 80, very high even for the region, and three times that of Washington South East. Cocaine smuggling is behind 90% of those homicides. One guy was found at midday next to the road by a school bus, with his hands tied with a cell phone charger cord and a shot in the head. They didn't even care to hide the body. Another taxidriver, 22, was found in a condo's door with six head shots at sunset by a girl I met here. Another guy in his 20s was found dead by some coworkers while dropping garbage in a dump. In every story I heard, the person actually found the body, which makes everything really creepy. This is a beautiful, but violent paradise...

Labels: honduras, tropics

Labels: honduras, tropics

The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda wrote this poem inspired by the "cute" influence of the big banana-producers in Central America. Honduras, in particular, served to coin the term "Banana Republic" in that period, when Chiquita and Dole fighted to control the mainland and provide us with those $0.50/lb bananas you find in the supermarket.

Then the trumpets bray, and all
of earth braces itself
and Jehovah deals out the land
to Coca Cola Inc., Anaconda,
to Ford Motors and other corporations:
and The Fruit Company, Inc.
takes the ripest for itself,
my land's central coast,
my sweet hips of America.
Then it baptizes it again as
a "Banana Republic" country
and upon our slumbering dead,
upon our straggling martyrs
who have usurped heroism,
liberty and flags,
it colonizes us into a comic opera:
it outlaws free wills,
gives Caesar's crowns as bounty,
unleashes jealousy, plants
the dictatorship of the maggot,
maggot of Trujillo, maggot of Tachos,
maggot of Carias, maggot
of Martinez, maggot of Ubico,
and these maggots are soggy
with humble blood and marmalade,
these drunken maggots crawl
around our common graves,
these circus maggots, these academic
maggots, adept as any tyrant.

The Company disembarks
among the blood-thirsty maggots,
our coffee and treasured fruits fill
the brims of their sliding boats
from our submerged fields like tea trays.

Meanwhile, along the sugared
gulfs of our harbors,
indians fall over, buried
under the morning mists:
a little carrion rolls about, a thing
without a name, a shrunken number,
a clot of dead fruit, spilling
onto the pile of all this rot.

Labels: honduras, tropics

This morning, I was having an inexpensive but delicious breakfast ($0.50) in a very modest place. The "señora" cooked and prepared the meals for everybody, and when I went to pay, she smiled and asked for feedback. "It was delicious" I said, and she smiled in satisfaction.

Later that day, I was visiting the National Anthropological Museum. Lonely Planet praised the place so much, that I couldn't leave San Salvador without paying a visit to the institution. And the experience was quite rewarding, even if I was the ONLY visitor of the huge museum that day. It was a bizarre privilege.

After that, I sat in a Taiwanese veggie place for a quick lunch. I noticed that, like in San Francisco, there are huge Chinese communities in several Latin American countries in the Pacific: Peru, Ecuador or some Mexican cities come to my mind. It was also the case in San Salvador. Here, like in Madrid, the owner, who was having dinner with his family in one of the tables and didn't speak Spanish at all, said "Hola" with difficulties and he called the Salvadoran girl to take my order. Later, after a banana milkshake and some curry rice, I was ready to leave the country.

Once I was at bus station, the only available ticket to Tegucigalpa was first class. I bought it. The bus was just impressive. We had a huge sofa -not seat, a sofa- for us, a complimentary champagne glass and newspaper before the departure, and several ammenities in between. It was like the first class in a transatlantic flight. The waitress offered another lunch right after the departure. This was happening while we were driving by San Salvador outskirts, with all the slums, brick and concrete "houses", watermelon and coconut stands and children playing soccer in the streets. And dogs. Here, the left party electoral signs, even if more rudimentary (just paintings in walls), were more common than the conservative party's propaganda. Just the opposite to what happened in the affluent area were this upscale bus line departs from. It was a huge contrast, again the phantom of inequality, to see the things we, white skinned people, could enjoy inside that mobile bubble of luxury, crossing through a world of scarcity and needs. Again, that phantom everywhere.

Soon enough, we left behind San Salvador, and the green hills and coffee fields and volcanoes filled the scene. After two hours, El Salvador, its people and the future to be written tomorrow in the election day, were already behind. Thanks for everything, El Salvador. I am leaving richer than I came.


PS. After two flat wheels and more than 8 hours to cover 133 miles between both cities, I arrived to Tegucigalpa at 10pm. The hotel looks like an awesome colonial palace (6 rooms) overlooking the river, and the hills of Tegus, packed with lights and little houses, look like a Van Gogh starred night. Just impressive...

Labels: honduras, salvador

In a week, I'll be landing in San Salvador for a month adventure. I am supposed to work in two projects for a small non-profit in San Salvador (El Salvador) and La Ceiba (Honduras). In between, I'll have to travel through both countries, stop in Tegucigalpa, meet the people from the Spanish official cooperation, flight to La Ceiba, work on the project, and visit the Islands of the Bay (aka Roatán) in the weekends. During my time in El Salvador, we'll design a project to build a school to train unemployed low-income women expelled from the Maquilas (sweat-shops), and in Honduras we'll write a proposal to gain funds for micro-lending to poor women who want to run their own business in order to sustain their families. It's amazing how women and their perseverance have been, so frequently, the mortar of survival in our societies.

As the departure day gets closer, this adventure it's increasingly enticing me for many reasons -a real opportunity to help and travel- but particularly cuz I'll be able to escape from DC, its dramas and people. I need to detox from this local culture of blind career-building, super-egos and unleashed ambitions, and reconnect with the simple things in life that should guide human dreams and humble ambitions. The proximity of others, the sense of doing the right thing, the relaxation of the Latin American soul, manifested everywhere in smiles, songs, hugs, tastes and their friendliness, and yes, the warm, warm sun.

Labels: honduras, salvador, tropics