A treatise on Globalization

My weekend in San Pedro was a blast. It was great to get out of San Lucas and to a place that was not as touristy as Pana. San Pedro has an amazing international feel to it and we spent the evening partying with the youth/hippie culture, consisting of folk from Guate, Austria, Holland, US, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, Guatemala…The trip back to San Lucas was a bit tiring as we took a lancha, a small, quick boat, from San Pedro across the lake to Pana, then a much larger boat to Santiago and then a pick up to San Lucas. Quite a trip and we were pretty tired by the end of it. I promised in the last post about an update on the mission and here it is:

(The following is taken from lectures given by Father Greg, the priest who assists the running of the mission and parroquia and by Dr. Garcia, a Guatemalan doctor who brings students here from University of Nebraska, as well as a bit of my own opinions added in. I will do my best to reference and clarify and add further resources)

The history of Guatemala, the modern history, is really a story about globalization. In reality, then it is ultimately a story about capitalism. There are two award-winning authors who assert the undeniable influence of the capitalist model on the world. Thomas Freidman, in his book, The World is Flat, provides numerous examples of this. Sachs, a renowned economist and consultant with the UN (most recently famous for his book the End of Poverty) lays out two basic principles that are primarily related to developing countries: (1) Women in Bangladesh walk an hour to work, work almost 12 hour shifts straight, walk back, get up, walk to work, work…etc. (2) When enough money is saved between a group of women (approximately $50), they invest in a microloan to set up some sort of small-business…Step (1) leads to Step (2) and Step (2) is the beginning step out of poverty…The free trade and capitalist model says this is economics working and making better lives for people, Fat
her Greg says it is unbridled capitalism and nothing short of immoral and inhumane. Economics are meant to serve people, not the other way around.

What is globalization? It is about making the world flat, making it instantaneous. It is about communication. According to Father Greg, it is about coming to know you, coming to know all about you. In a sense, I agree with him. However what scares me is asking what are the motivations for coming to know you? I think it is advertising and anyone who has watched foreign television in another country for a “free world product” will notice that it is an ad that we would never see in the U.S. Also, stories of companies coming in with slogans and ad campaigns that totally backfire because of a lack of understanding the language comes to mind as well. Needless to say, this way of communicating globally seems to be an attempt to understand the world in order to impose another view of the world (Confessions of an Economic Hitman is one man´s account of having such job). It is a world where there are predetermined lines of Rich/Poor, Haves/Have Nots, North/South. A simple co
mparison of newspapers will reveal this. Listen to the language people use, the assumptions that are inherently made in their statements. Often times it reveals an Us/Them view of the world where We have it Right and They have it Wrong. Father Greg cites an international summit held in the 1960s. During the early stages of the Cold War there was an international gathering in Budapest where 120 nations were presented the choice to either be democratic and capitalist, or communist and socialist. 2/3 said Other. Now what this Other was is, unfortunately, left to speculation. The assumption Father Greg takes is that the said some form of government and economic policy that supports “hands-on agricultural.”

In 1999, during the last few months of the Clinton administration 25 were invited to develop a plan for globalization in regards to the Third World (or Developing World or Countries that are not fully Capitalist). All of this was directed under the World Bank, IMF, etc. and that is a much more complicated issue that will not be fully dealt with here. Anyways, at the same time, 77 other countries met in Cuba (our “unfriendly” neighbour to the South that no one can seem to remember why we have economic sanctions with them) to discuss development. The answer was roughly “our own country.” (The majority of this is according to Father Greg and his sources. Anything added in on my own was prefaced by an “I think, I feel, etc.”)

This is roughly translated into presuppositions of the industrialized, dominating First World about how the rest of the world should live. This leaves us asking the question of why are there poor people in the South? There are perhaps three ways to answer this question (Fr. Greg):

1) Empirical Lens – because the poor are dumb and lazy. The solution is charity. We feel sorry for them, call them Pobrecito, and shed some tears without really changing anything.
2) Functional Lens – because the poor are uncivilized. They are outside the 20th/21st century. The solution is through intentional programs. We will show you how to be like us. This is what the World Bank and IMF does. It is perhaps even done with the best intentions in the world, but the results are piss poor and often leave a country worse off than before because now they have no internal resources or structures and a huge amount of debt. We need to ask, after decades of aid and trillions of dollars, why are some of the same countries not alleviated from their poverty. Check with Make Trade Fair and the BBC for more on this.
3) Oppressed Lens – because the poor are not able to live as they please. The solution is to let people live their own way. A dialectical conversation and experience is what is needed, and it is what the mission hopes to achieve in San Lucas between a partnership between Mayans/Guatemalans and Americans in the context of the Catholic faith. Dialectical often makes some people nervous as it has some philosophical intonations with Marxism, but simply put, it is looking at reality in an objective way – asking people what they want.

As Father Greg put it, “there is an obligation to enter into dialectics that is rooted in faith in a monotheistic god because within one god is the same beginning.” In one God is one People.

I think this is enough for now as I am running out of time on the Internet and have no more money on me. Also dinner is soon. A short story before leaving though. This afternoon, Katie and I accompanied Father Rich, a diocesan priest from New York who is friends with Father Greg and Father John here in San Lucas, up to a small town in the mountains to say Mass. Driving in a stick shift car with over 200k miles and a broken speedometer, no shocks, loose seats is somewhat an experience when the clouds and fog are so dense that you cannot see any more than 15 feet or so in front of you. Anyone who has been down South in the early mornings will know what I am talking about…But, and this is somewhat typical in Guatemala, there was no mass to be found and after looking for a woman named Isabella, we found there were about four Isabellas in the community (including the one we were talking too!!) We left the twilight zone shortly thereafter.

Hasta luego amigos. Tienen una buena semana.