Sympathy for the Devil

Hi everyone. For the moment I have suspended the Spanish translation of my experiences in Costa Rica. There weren't that many readers, and I feel that there are more important things to move on to. I will try to provide translation, from time to time, of the topics discussed here.

One of my facebook friends recently posted a link to an article about the anti-Ethnic Studies law that went into effect on January 1, 2011. His initial comment on the post was the following: "People should be raging hard over this, this is an outrage and overtly racist agenda by the right-wing of the Arizona government."


A self-described political conservative soon chimed in, saying: "On one end I can see how it seems illogical considering first amendment rights, however, in public schools, there is no room for classes that promote one race over the other. This is to say that there should not be classes that say Latinos are better than everyone else, just the same as it would absolutely shameful if there were pro white supremacy KKK classes. This law bans those as well. I should say that classes that can still exist are ones that examine the differences between cultures, and the differences between the clash occurring in Arizona between illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, and the citizens of that state that are just fighting for the lawful enforcement of our borders and criminal laws. There shouldn't be just a Mexican heritage focus class, nor should there be a white heritage focus class. People both black, white, brown, whatever color, should be aware of everyone else and should try to learn as much as possible not just about themselves, but more importantly everyone else."

This comment irked me. Discontinuing Ethnic Studies is not merely illogical, it's wrong. It's wrong from a First Amendment perspective, and it is wrong from the perspectives of equality and solidarity. In U.S. schools, all class curriculums are based on the promotion of the histories and values of one race over another by telling history only from the perspective of the anglo conceptualization of the white race. It is important to distinguish this concept of "race" from the Chicano/Latino concept of "raza." The concept of raza unifies, even in its most elementary sense (see, for example, Vasconcelos 1925). In a broader sense, "la raza" as an umbrella concept includes Latino immigrants to the United States, Chicanos from north of the Río Bravo, mestizos from nearly every nation in the Americas, including both white and black residents of these countries, and the indigenous peoples of North America, Central America, and South America. In my experience, it also tends to include North American whites who are in solidarity with Chicano and other social movements. "Race" on the other hand is a concept invented by the anglo oligarchy of the budding United States for the purpose of dividing people into distinct social classifications on the basis of physical characteristics.

The concept of race is taught in public schools, both within the curriculum itself and through the everyday perceptions of dominant societal attitudes that children cannot help but absorb through their elder role models. The history and the perspectives of the KKK are, of course, discussed in public education, both openly as an example of a racism that was (but assumedly is no longer) extant in past decades, and more subtly through the academic doctrines of American exceptionalism, manifest destiny, "Judeo-Christian" philosophic perspective, and the ever-present fantastic construction of the white man's burden to "guide" and "educate" more "primitive" peoples.

Therefore, classes on white supremacy are not required because white supremacy is part and parcel of the public school curriculum in the United States, because the United States as a nation has been founded on the hierarchy of white supremacy. Ethnic Studies classes have attempted to provide a stark contrast to this curriculum by juxtaposing the dominant anglo historical paradigm with the stories and histories of people of color. The point is not to say that "Latinos are better than everyone else"--the only reason to use this as a argument in favor of the law that will ban Ethnic Studies in Arizona is to paint such classes as uniquely pro-Latino against a backdrop that imagines a supposed vacuum of education concerning white history.

The "citizens" of Arizona are not "just" fighting for lawful enforcement. They are, and have for some time been, exceeding the existing law in the interest of further castigating migrant workers from south of the border and, by extension, Latino people in general. This is not just about borders; it is really an issue of race. To be clear, this law prohibits all Ethnic Studies classes. The specific targets of this law are the original Chicano and Aztec inhabitants of that land, but really any non-anglo historical perspective was effectively and categorically criminalized on January 1.

As a teenager, I went to Lynnwood High School. There, we were taught that indigenous peoples were primitive and susceptible to smallpox. We were taught that racism effectively ended when Abraham Lincoln won the civil war. We were taught that "good" natives like Sacajawea wanted to help the whites explore [and conquer] their land.

We were not taught about the smallpox infected blankets that were given to the natives by whites in order to exterminate them. We were not taught that indigenous peoples possess highly scientific and detailed knowledge about the flora and fauna of their environments to such an extent that scholars have compared African and Native American shamans to "walking libraries," or that things like sustainable living and modern democratic governance were originally Native concepts. (To be fair, we were not taught anything about sustainability at all.) We were not taught that lynchings continued at an alarming pace well into the 1950s and 1960s, nor were we taught about the ongoing racially based socioeconomic inequality that still divides our nation today. We were not taught about the Chinese Exclusion Act. Jim Crow was a catchphrase for a series of laws that we were not meant to fully understand. We were not taught about the BIA's sterilization programs or about the continued genocide of First Nations peoples. In fact, we were not taught to think of Native peoples as pertaining to "nations" at all. We were taught that they were ignorant savages. Not in the same sentence, of course--that would be politically incorrect--but both of those words were used to describe Native people in my high school history courses. Finally, we were not taught about the widespread native resistance to colonization and about all of the times that treaties with Native American people (treaties are law, mind you) have been broken by the white U.S. government.

To use anglo law as an example of goodness is to remain safely inside a perspective that allows whites to think of themselves and their way of life as being somehow innocuous and objectively right. But the truth is that the U.S. and its laws have long targeted people of color as scapegoats for the detrimental effects of its own imperialism. To uphold a racist system of laws is to uphold racism.

Violence against Latinos has been on the rise for the last 10 years. People are being beaten to death, dragged behind trucks, shot across the border, starved in detention centers, and deported to other countries in spite of the fact that they are citizens.

The last time I checked, Europeans were immigrants to this continent as well, but everyone seems to keep forgetting that fact. In fact, the average Chicano or Mixtec person probably has more claim to this land, via bloodlines alone, than 95% of the "white" population of the United States. But we are supposed to assume that the downtrodden citizens of Arizona are "just" trying to get the "law" enforced. Meanwhile, they're also passing new ones, laws that limit the scope of history that can be taught to children--laws that promote fascism in the midst of an environment of ethnic hatred instead of democracy.

These laws bear a stark resemblance to the laws passed in the 1930s in Germany or the laws passed in the 1970s in El Salvador. They are the types of laws that legalize one ethnicity's existence at the expense of another. When my friend's facebook friend said that there is "no room" for Ethnic Studies, in my mind there was a strong connection to the Nazi concept of levensraum, which included the domination of both physical and epistemological space.

For this reason, I am sick to death of the blanket of silence surrounding these issues, issues that pertain to the rights to life, liberty and property (inter alia) of entire categorizations of people but are somehow not kosher fare for dinner table discussion. I am sick to death of hearing story after story of lives lost through murder, starvation and other forms of violence while hundreds of thousands of people have their bodies seized in an unlawful and illegal detention that runs contrary to the concepts of justice and equity for which the people have for so long struggled. And I am sick to death of hearing that all of this is being done in the name of fighting "illegal" immigration when such statements invariably come from the mouths of the white descendants of those hopelessly destitute European immigrants whose only hopes and dreams for their own future were inextricably bound to the statement that today still adorns the Statue of Liberty:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
with silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

-- Emma Lazarus, 1883

The wretched hypocrisy of the European American descendants of the very same people for whom those words once held so much meaning is a licentious slap in the face to American ideals, yet at the same time it so clearly exposes the color lines upon which their opinions are founded. The minutemen want to (and often do) kill "illegal" (viz., Latino) immigrants while anti-immigration groups in Arizona want to stop "Mexicans" from crossing "the border" and influencing their culture. The only difference in their perspectives is the amount of physical force used; and, as Professor Devon Peña recently pointed out, the epistemological violence of the latter opinion is every bit as aggressive and destructive as the former.

To say that we should all just be equal with one another, integrated without distinction, blindfolded to the lines of division by which each of us is inexorably bound, while tortured Salvadorans and Guatemalans live in constant fear for their lives, their personalities irrevocably fractured by the interrogation and psychological warfare methods of the CIA and the elite ATLACATL battalion, and while Sheriff Joe makes immigrants march around town in their underwear like animals, to ignore all of this and to say that nobody really needs Ethnic Studies classes anyway, is to be complicit in the face of a quite clearly racist doctrine.

For as long as anglos continue an unwelcome and imperialist occupation of Aztlán, they must be made to realize that there are multiple convergences of identity and history that, if viewed through the lens of truth, would clearly give more legitimate claims to Chican@s and to Latino immigrants than to Jan Brewer.

But this is not the story that has been told in the school curriculum; it is not the story of American exceptionalism, it is not the horror story that has been conjured up by the confluence between anti-immigrant attitudes and the push factors of U.S. imperialist origin that force la raza to migrate from suddenly war-torn and impoverished homelands to seek work in the very territories that were once the exclusive domain of their own ancestors. It is not the story of the person who pays thousands of dollars to be dropped off in the middle of the desert only to be shot at and potentially die from dehydration, only to arrive in a land that entirely shuns their language, their skin color, and their history--if for no other reason than that this very history is a stark reminder that the birthright of this person, of this Chican@, was stolen from them at gunpoint by the U.S. government.

Estúpida américa, mira a ese chicano
con un gran cuchillo
en su firme mano.
No quire matarte;
sentado en un banco, talla crucifijos;
pero no lo dejas.
Estúpida américa, oye a ese chicano
que grita improperios en la calle.
Él es un poeta
sin papel ni lápiz,
y como no puede escribir, explota.
Estúpida américa, aquel chicanito,
que tronó en inglés y en las matemáticas,
él es el picasso
de tu costa oeste,
pero va a morir;
mil obras maestras,
colgando en su mano.

--Aberlardo Delgado

Post by Chaim Eliyah, 5 January 2010

8 de marzo de 2010

Update: The link in my last post was wrong. The link for my new blog is: http://ajob4chaim.blogspot.com/

Actualización: El vínculo en mi artículo anterior fue un error. El vínculo para mi nuevo blog (lo cual es en inglés) es: http://ajob4chaim.blogspot.com/

No hay suficientes horas en el día...

Les voy a extrañar todos y todas. En este momento estoy enfermo y me estoy dando cuenta de que no voy a poder ver todos mis amigos durante los siguientes diez días antes de salir para Costa Rica. Lo más que puedo esperar es ver algunos de ustedes y tener una despedida lacrimosa.

Mientras entiendo la razón que voy a Costa Rica, nunca voy a poder entender por qué me he vuelto un viajero internacional que viaja con tanta frecuencia. Yo sé bien que parte de ello se debe a mis ganas incesantes de conocer el mundo y la falta de vínculos familiares aquí en Seattle. Siento que tengo mucha suerte por tan solo saber en dónde está mi hogar y agradecido de ser bendecido con una riqueza de amistades y relaciones profesionales aquí. También siento afortunado de vivir en la tierra de Tajoma ([tɪkəˈbɪt] en Duwamish) y la gente Duwamish, la gente del salmón y la música grunge. Aunque la cultura de Seattle es verdaderamente rica, mi proyecto de tesis en la universidad me demostró que padecemos de ciertos tipos de conocimiento ecológico. Ya que no podemos, lógicamente, arrasar todos los rascacielos al suelo y mágicamente volvernos jardineros comunales de todo el año como los shuaras, siento que voy de rumbo a encontrar otro paso intermedio entre la vida urbana y la vida de los selváticos. Si logro formar un vínculo con la comunidad de Colonia Libertad que también sea de valor en mi búsqueda de excelencia académica, seré muy feliz.

Aprendí un montón de lecciones valerosas la última vez que fui a Costa Rica. Esta vez regreso como un viajero más experimentado. Se cambiaron las tornas y seré yo dando lecciones, no solamente de la gramática y la ortografía sino la ontología de las empresas en busca de materiales primarias. Estoy seguro de que los estudiantes tendrán por lo menos tantas lecciones para enseñarme a mí.

Por favor, siéntanse libre de seguir mis pensamientos y experiencias en este blog mientras sigo la brisa hacia Alajuela. Perdónenme si no logro verlos todos antes de irme. Tendremos mucho de qué hablar cuando vuelvo en septiembre.

paz amor y la esperanza

Jaime

10 de febrero de 2010

Note: I am beginning a translation of this blog to keep my translation skills sharp; it is no longer an active blog. To read my active blog, please check out "The seemingly never-ending job search" at http://ajobforchaim.blogspot.com/. Also, if anyone knows how to move blogspot entries to a different blogspot address, please don't hesitate to email me.

Apunte: Estoy empezando a hacer una traducción de este blog para poder poner en práctica mis aptitudes de traducción. Este blog no es activo. Para leer mi blog actual, dirígese a "The seemingly never-ending job search" en la dirección de Red http://ajobforchaim.blogspot.com/. A propósito, si alguien sepa cómo trasladar las entradas de blogspot a otra dirección de Red, no dude en contactar conmigo por email.

Si encuentre un error grave en la traducción, también sería bueno que contacte conmigo por email. Siempre es mi intención esforzarme al máximo en el campo de la letra.

De regreso a Centroamérica

Casi tres años exactamente después de terminar mis estudios en el extranjero en Costa Rica, regresaré por ahí como maestro el 17 de marzo de 2010. Voy a ofrecer mis servicios de buena voluntad a una comunidad rural y pequeña que se llama Colonia Libertad, la cual se ubica en las montañas de la provincia de Alajuela. Me hospedaré en la casa de una finca sustentable de la macadamia. Esta finca se forjó de la jungla por los colonos hace algún tiempo.

En esta área se padece de recursos estatales para la educación, así que se ve la necesidad de programas como el Proyecto Ganas. Esta es una situación parecida a la que observé entre la gente indígena de las áreas rurales de Costa Rica durante mis estudios en el exterior en el 2007. Espero descubrir un nuevo sentido de solidaridad dentro de esta comunidad mientras examino los vínculos que ellos tienen el uno con el otro tal como su vínculo con la tierra. Voy a seguir explorando el concepto de Conocomiento Ecológico Tradicional dentro de comunidades sostenibles.

Esto será una oportunidad de leer mucho, visitar a algunos amigos viejos, quizás cruzar la frontera al país vecino de Nicaragua y de desarrollar mi ser. Me espanta encargarme de mi primera aula. ¡Deséenme suerte!



http://www.projectganas.org/home.html

20 de agosto de 2010

It's Check Out Time...

¡Hola amigos! This will be one of my last posts, if not the last post, on the Colonia Libertad blog. Thanks for following. This time in Costa Rica has been interesting, wonderful, exasperating, challenging, and fun. I got to know my third rural community in much greater depth than either the New Mexican goat dairy or Numpaim del Noroeste in Ecuador. I was able to form bonds with families in that community that I hope will last a lifetime. And, I was able to get a firsthand taste of the difficulties of top-down organizing vis-á-vis the frustrations that I experienced while trying to teach English in a community with minimal interest in learning a foreign language.

I'd like to go over the history of this project and some of the highlights in this last post. I also hope to provide a sample of what I have learned about the culture of this stalwart people.

I found out about Project Ganas in December at a benefit dance with live music. I met Sara Sanford, the director of the project, who said that she was looking for people with teaching experience to go down to Costa Rica and live in the community. I was super excited about the prospect of returning to Costa Rica, where I had studied in 2007. After a brief interview, I decided it was for me. During the interview, I was told I had the choice between having my own house or staying with a family (a home stay). I opted for having my own house.

Of the information obtained in the interview, I wrote:

State educational resources in the area are lacking, creating the necessity for programs like Project Ganas -- a situation similar, but not identical, to what I discovered among rural indigenous groups during my 2007 study abroad. I am hoping to discover a new sense of solidarity within this community and examine their ties to one another and to the land as I continue to explore the concept of Traditional Ecological Knowledge vis á vis "sustainable" communities.

I had no idea. State educational resources in the area are nearly nonexistent. There is a school with four classrooms. All of the faculty except for two persons are part-time. The students receive less than three hours of education per day, including recess, which is often extended due to a lack of available staff. Materials to help the students, who are significantly behind in all subjects, are scarce. The first graders, half a year into their instruction, could not tell me the difference between five and six. The fifth graders could not explain the difference between three halves and three quarters. This is, in fact, similar to the situation faced by rural indigenous communities in Costa Rica.

I was able to form strong bonds with the community and learn about the community's agriculture. The agriculture of Colonia Libertad is "conventional," which means that they use chemicals to create healthy-looking monocrops. The people are generally aware of the environmental dangers of using such chemicals, but they are also unwilling to allow their crops to be eaten by the bugs. I have noted that the Shuar family I stayed with, the Chiriap, didn't seem particularly concerned about rainforest bugs in their family garden. I'm not sure what the differences in practice are that create the "necessity" for pesticide use, but it deserves further investigation. One obvious difference is that the "ranches" of Colonia Libertad are seen as permanent or semi-permanent spaces of food production, whereas the gardens of the Shuar are temporary and move from place to place on a cycle of anywhere from three to seven years. The Shuar also practice a swidden-fallow technique that could deter insect life from taking root. In addition, the Shuar view their environment as sacred, which the people of Colonia Libertad do not.

As for sustainability, I have noticed that since the time I began writing my thesis, environmental sustainability has become a catchphrase for just about any green label seeking to market its products to conscientious consumers. As such, it's become a topic I wish to avoid. I can say that the lifestyle of a person from Colonia Libertad is much less ecologically destructive than that of the average American (viz., citizen of the United States), but I can't make any judgments as to their overall sustainability. The Institución Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) has overwhelmingly opted for "green" power producing options such as wind, water and geothermal energy, but I'm not sure that the energy consumption of the Colonia would be sustainable if it were forced to produce its own electricity. In addition, the demand for larger televisions and more powerful personal computers is bound to drive up the need for energy in the foreseeable future. The burning of plastic and other disposable products (styrofoam, paint containers, etc.) is of moderate environmental concern. The eutrophication of the immediate water supply is evident and most likely permanent as long as the current water system remains in place. There is a nearby river, jalapiedras, which has drinkable water and is suitable for bathing. There is also a steady water supply from a nearby mountain that seems likely to remain a good source of clean water for as long as the community population does not exceed the maximum water supply. All in all, I would say that the ecological health of this area is resilient and does not overtly threaten the existence of the nearby cloud forests.

Returning to the overview of my experience with the community, my welcome to the community was lukewarm and indicative of a lack of preparation. When I arrived in Colonia Libertad, people thought that I was perhaps the famed Peace Corps volunteer. I have since met the Peace Corps volunteer and I have decidedly decided that we are not the same person. She is fantastic, though; her name is Andrea and she has done a really good job of working with the local government to determine what types of projects the community would like to have in the works. I think that this would be a good angle for Project Ganas, too. If I'd had my druthers I would have liked to begin with the Association (the local government) to see how someone of my skills could have been of better use to the community. By the time I finally did meet with the Association, there had already been some major miscommunication and I wasn't able to establish clear objectives other than "come on over to my ranch sometime to talk history."

I would have liked to have learned a lot more about the history of the Colonia. I feel that I was able to learn a good deal about the culture and a rudimentary amount of history, but I would have liked to have had time to really explore in-depth the histories of individual people. I honestly feel that attempting to organize English classes in the community was such a waste of time. The people would have appreciated a person interested in their personal stories much more. I feel that when and if I come back to the community, I will make sure to dedicate some time to recording the histories of the community's members.

My first conversations with the community members were about religion. Religion forms a central part of the ontology of Colonia Libertad. There are two options for religion: Catholic, and Evangelical. People were surprised to learn that I had religious dietary preferences that they were unfamiliar with. Everyone in the community believes in God as the primary reason for the existence of everything they see and as the driving factor behind everything they experience, a fact that I found mildly annoying at first, but learned to accept. (I am an agnostic with some lifestyle habits left over from years of religious searching.) I even learned to say "Que Dios le acompañe" as a salutation when leaving, which means "May God go with you."

I found the stay in the community to be much different than I had imagined. For one thing, it was hotter than 100 degrees just about every day during March and April, and it was impossible for me to adjust to this steady high temperature. I was constantly dehydrated and often sick. There was not internet; I learned to travel to nearby Guayabo to be able to make my blog posts and keep in touch with friends. Eventually, I learned how to activate my iPhone in Costa Rica in order to spend less time away from the community. 3G phone service is the primary mode of access to the internet within Colonia Libertad, with Nokia being the preferred brand (Nokia makes internet tethering extremely intuitive). I became known as a technical go-to person, a guitar player and teacher, a singer and an adamant English professor. I felt that things in the community were going quite well.

Pet peeves of mine were the constant doubts about my living situation (detailed in prior blog posts) and the lack of a concrete schedule for teaching classes. I came to really like the night group, because at least they always met at the same time, even if they didn't always come to class. I became really good friends with the police across the street from the school, and they became my nightly audience as I played off all the songs I know on the guitar one by one. Eventually I was able to find a fan in Guayabo and I was able to cool off a little bit. I also got accustomed to the Colonia Libertad dialect of Spanish. I learned that a teja was 100 colones and a caña was 1,000. I learned that "si la güila se cae, se va a romper la choya." (If the little girl falls, she's going to break her head.) I learned that "al chile" means "la pura verdad" (the whole truth). I can now maintain a conversation with anyone from this area.

I've already talked enough in other posts about leaving the school and moving in with a host family, so I don't see any point in belaboring the subject. When I was told that I couldn't continue to teach the school students that I came here to teach, my opinion about the whole project changed irrevocably. Honestly, I should have just stopped trying to teach English at that point and started doing a bit of history or ethnography. The last three months could have been put to much better use. And truly, as a male in this community, in order to be seen as part of the community you have to get up in the morning and go do something that has to do with farming or community infrastructure. It took me a while to learn this, and once I learned it, it sort of frightened me. I knew that, with my flat feet already taxed from walking on rocks all day, and having suffered several sprained ankles already, there was no way that I was going to be able to do physical labor. This is exactly what makes me doubt the integration of differently-abled persons within subsistence farming communities, although I am told that there are communities that do it quite well.

And so, I was halfway wrong about the community's "work ethic." I was working mostly with youth who seemed to be apathetic and interested in material wealth, but I didn't get to know the elder generation until I moved in with a family and was able to observe their lifestyle. When I did, I came to the conclusion that the community is in crisis, and not just because of a lack of Western academic education. The spirit of the community seems to be dying, or at least undergoing major transformation. The twenty- and thirty-year-olds either have major developmental problems (e.g., alcoholism), are involved in work that does not involve agriculture, are raising children, or have permanently moved out of the community. The teenagers do not seem to be interested in agriculture. Hence, the community as it stands today may have a certain amount of economic and/or ecological resilience, but the outlook for the future is not what I would consider hopeful.

I'm going to leave it there for now, I may try to post again in the near future with some pictures (if I can find a decent internet connection) and a few last words. In the mean time, if you're looking for more reading material, you can check out my guest blog at mexmigration, a history and politics of Mexican Migration blog. I will also be opening up a personal blog to share my thoughts about searching for a job in the recession, which might cover more than one geographical location and will deal with the continued difficulties faced by a recent college grad trying to find work (me). I hope you'll check it out.

Until the next time, then!

From Escazú, Costa Rica
Chaim S. Eliyah

4 de agosto de 2010

There but for the grace of God, go I

Today officially marks two weeks since my return to Colonia Libertad. It's been an interesting time and I think I'll be going back a little sooner than expected.

I just poured beans from an old plastic gas can (I don't think it ever had any gas in it, but who can be sure?) into a metal bowl to be used in the kitchen. Doña Magdalena, my host mother, explained to me that the beans are grown, dried in the sun, and then put into the plastic cans at night, which are then capped off during the day (all of this to prevent "sweating" or the beans getting little bubbles). I also learned that these beans can be put right back into the old ground in December to make beans for the next year! Wow :)

I finally started English classes last night; none of the former students could get together until then, and new students have been hard to find. To paraphrase my friend from the Peace Corps, there's just not much interest in learning English here.

I'm going to complain for a while now. To skip the complaining, click here.

After coming back to town, my host mother described me as "sad." I suppose I have been a little sad about the overall outcome of this trip. After being kicked out of the elementary school, lied to about the possibility of continuing to teach at the high schools, and reduced to teaching a single night class in which only five people stayed the course, you could say I lost a bit of the enthusiasm I came here with. When I first started teaching English here, you would have thought I was reading from the gospel of St. John. But after seeing the results of my labor drift into the wind several times, I'm feeling a bit more like Job.

Several days ago, Pablo from Finca La Anita came to tell me that my host father had gone to the Asociación de Desarrollo Integral (The Association of Integral Development), which is the governing body of the town, to talk about the nature of my stay at his house. He purportedly said, in a nutshell, that it's costly to have me around, that there didn't seem to be any classes, that I should work out some kind of rent with my host family, that I didn't seem to be conforming to the rules of a fairly religious household (viz., I've had my girlfriend over late at night), and that they've had a lot of problems with volunteers who are afraid of work. I tried to take this speech in stride as much as I could, although for me it was quite the slap in the face. I have organized classes four times here, and was in the process of doing so again when Pablo had this talk with me. I explained to Pablo that it's sometimes a little hard to get the community moving right away, and that I thought a week and a half was still within the reasonable time limit for organizing classes. I also explained to him that I am a volunteer and that I'm not prepared to pay rent while I'm working for free. He replied that he would never do volunteer work, but that the volunteers who have been respected in the community have been the volunteers who were out sweating trying to build the community. It definitely seems like there is a lot more respect here for physical endeavors than intellectual ones. I guess I feel like if I had signed up for physical labor it would be one thing. I was told there was a need for teachers and that I would be a teacher in this community.

Pablo's response to everything was basically "I'm just the messenger." This is interesting, because I tried to follow his advice and take these matters up with Changuelo (my host dad) at some point later that evening. Changuelo admitted he had talked with the former President of the Association (they just changed governments) but said that he was asking for support for me, the volunteer, from the Association. I'm not sure what got lost in translation, but I know that I am just about fed up with having to deal with drama and politics here in the community. It's entirely true that a visitor to a foreign culture cannot expect the culture to conform to them (Pablo's words), but I have bent over backwards to be as easygoing and dependable as possible, I have knocked on all the right doors, I have offered the best of myself even when I knew I was being lied to, I have fixed more than half of the computers in the community for free or next to nothing (sometimes more than once), and I'm just not getting paid enough to deal with this crap anymore.

To make matters worse, I stopped by the police station the yesterday to talk to my friends there, and they informed me that someone wrote a letter to the police department saying that I should be investigated as a terrorist suspect because of my name. As near as I can tell, this didn't come down from INTERPOL or the CIA or anything of the sort; this was a letter from a local community member. Apparently the U.S. is exporting more than just beans these days.

Well, there are some positive notes. I got word from El Centro de la Raza that they absolutely loved the 60-plus pages of translation that I did for them. If you're interested in seeing the results maybe you should check out their Learn, Teach and Grow maternity classes in the fall. They're going to give me a letter of reference as a translator! YEAH! Also, the class last night went swimmingly well. There was plenty of laughter and learning, a good consensus about what type of schedule we should have. A lot of the students are now able to translate basic English phrases on their own. Lo veo como el Gollo: sólo bueno. (There's a business here in Costa Rica called "Gollo" that has the advertising slogan "Only Good." I see it like Gollo: Only Good.)

So, I'm sorry for the rather negative blog post. It's been grey skies down here. I'm coming back August 26th and I'm going to grab the first thing that looks like a real job and just get lost in work for a while. It could be Starbuck's for all I care. Most of all, though, I'm sorry to the people in the community who really want to see me stay longer. I've formed a lot of positive bonds here and I hope those will develop into some kind of ongoing relationship in the future. Maybe Project Ganas' dream of having an early childhood and maternity education center here in the Colonia will come true after all.

Until then, I will be excited to come home and see all of my friends in Seattle and Keizer.

From Colonia Libertad,

Chaim Shalom Ammi Eliyah