Bigots of the Americas – from the Guatemalan Highlands to Postville, Iowa

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that it’s actually 2015. Usually I have that feeling when I travel to developing countries and take in the standard vistas of poverty: terrible roads, daily power cuts, throwing your TP in the trash, etc. And Guatemala is generally no exception, though our experience of it thus far has largely been one of sheltered ex-pat comfort. But lately, I’m also getting that “is this really 2015” feeling when I turn to the NY Times and read yet another incredulous account of bigotry and voodoo policy, courtesy of Los Republicans.

Trump and Friends exude a certain 1914 vibe: the world on the brink of war, entire continents full of dark-skinned, bloodthirsty haters of freedom, with carpet bombing and personal armaments being the only sensible way out. It’s the kind of rhetoric that usually passes for policy in the Banana Republics – rile up enough fear about some evil-doers (invoking the U.S. has worked pretty well) and you don’t actually have to say anything else of substance. And it turns out the Know-Nothing base is alive and well in the First World, too.

New markets for Trump piñatas in LatAm

Jimmy Morales, the president-elect of Guatemala, has elicited many fair comparisons with The Donald: both political outsiders, both with zero experience in elected office, and neither with any particular compulsion to articulate specific policy positions on issues. The difference is that Trump’s wolf cry is bigot-catering Islamophobia, phobia of refugees and immigrants, and generalized phobia of anything phobi-able. Morales, by contrast, built his campaign on a maddeningly simple but simultaneously semi-righteous slogan: “Neither corrupt, nor a thief.” What leadership credentials of statecraft! But it’s not really a phobia at all, rather a rejection of the kleptocratic state Guatemala has become, a country where the 250 richest residents have the same amount of wealth as the poorest 8 million (that’s equivalent to to the top 0.001% having the same as the bottom 50%, whereas in the U.S. the 1% have about the same as the bottom 20%).

Neither corrupt, nor a thief..

And here we are: a comedian who defends his blackface routine can be the president of a developing country, today, in soon-to-be 2016. Amazing, but at the same time perhaps not shocking, especially in a country where a majority of rural inhabitants cook on open fires inside their homes and literacy is a privilege. More surprising by far is the 21^st century reality up North, where a Trump or a Cruz can be at least the second-best leadership proposition that the US has to offer, especially on the tail of the Obama Hope-Change Enlightenment.

...just a racist!

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Kat and I have actually met an amazing number of new people in Guate thanks to Pepe, our dog. This is probably an obvious feature of pet ownership, but it turns out it’s pretty easy to talk to strangers about dog food. The cool thing is that a lot of these strangers have amazing stories to tell. A few weeks ago we met Luis Argueta in the dog park a few blocks from our building. Luis is an accomplished documentarian, whose films focus on the experiences of Guatemalan immigrants in the US. One of his films, abUSed, tells the story of the 2008 Postville Raid, in which the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (the serendipitously acronym-ed ICE) proudly showcases their skills in handcuffing factory workers and separating families. In the case of the Postville, the factory was a Kosher slaughterhouse managed by the orthodox Jewish Rabushkin family, and a majority of the 400 people arrested and subsequently deported were Guatemalan immigrants. Argueta interviews many of their families, and depicts lives of struggle and hope. The trailer is definitely worth a watch. Also, here’s an excellent piece on the recent history of Postville and its unlikely transformation into a Midwestern hub of diversity.

Easy pathway to citizenship for this future migrant/ wild bandito! Also he will take your jobs.

In this, the Year of the Fear of the Refugee, the Bigots of the Americas are crossing paths, in a way. Morales is a comedian who also happens to be a racist. But it was his idea of a State that serves, instead of State that steals, that catapulted him to victory. By contrast, Trump et al are people who have found that, in 2015, bigotry can be winning idea. As the Republican crazy train careens toward Iowa, let’s consider Postville and all the other villes like it. And by that I guess I mean making your conservative family members watch that trailer. Good luck and Feliz Navidad!

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In other (sunnier) news, Guate is treating us supremely well. My work continues to be stimulating (more soon on that, for real) and Kat just accepted a job at Semilla Nueva, where she’ll be advocating for the scale-up of bio-fortified agriculture, both to increase yields of small-holder farmers and decrease rates of malnutrition among Guatemalan youngins. In the fun department, we’re about to head off on a week-long road trip with Ben and Germaine to the Oriente: Semuc Champey, Rio Dulce and Caribbean Coast. Hasta 2016!

¡MEET PEPE!

(he’s named after a delicious Guatemalan chicken stew called Pepian)

'Sup dawg?

Pepe is a four-month-old rescue dog that we adopted from AWARE, an organization that runs a shelter for abandoned or abused dogs in Guatemala. The farm houses over 300 dogs and even some cats and bunnies. They also spay/ neuter, and vaccinate all of their animals.

At the AWARE farm with his friend Sorrell 

Hanging with his squad at the AWARE farm 

Using bacon treats to make him look at the camera

Getting acclimated to our level of sophistication

75 percent of the population here lives below the poverty line (~$3/day), making life difficult for most Guatemalans. This creates an unhealthy situation for domestic animals, and animals are generally not treated well. The streets of Guatemala City (as well as Xela, Antigua and other towns we've visited) are full of stray dogs, many emaciated and grossly neglected. 

So, when we got here we decided it made sense to adopt – and we are so happy we did because now we get to hang out with this playful, affectionate, goofy, cuddly little dude every day.

His mom is a border-collie and we think his pop is a Lab of sorts.

Also, Pepe’s been a cool tool for making friends. We’ve met a bunch of friendly expats and Guatemalans in local parks who have invited us to Halloween parties, on hikes and other dog-loving activities.

Hogging the yoga mat

Sleeping, running, inhaling food and pooping are among his favorite pastimes thus far. 

He’s awesome. 

John Foster Dulles Doing Cocaine off Chiquita Bananas in a Mudslide

[Warning: this post may contain sweeping causal claims of historical events!]

Former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (yes, the namesake of DC's eyesore of an airport) was Time Magazine’s Man of the Year in 1954. That was the same year he successfully orchestrated a coup against Jacobo Árbenz, democratically elected President of Guatemala.

"He reinforced the outposts"

Dulles and his brother Allen (the CIA Director!) both had interest in United Fruit Company (now Chiquita Banana) – Johnnie D. was a major shareholder and former legal counsel for United, and Allen sat on the company’s Board of Directors.

In the 1950's, UFC was the largest owner of private land in Guate. So it was pretty inconvenient for Los Hermanos Dulles that Árbenz won the presidency on a promise of land reform, which meant taking some of United’s uncultivated acreage and giving small parcels of it to the indigenous people who lived nearby.

Sounds pretty innocuous, but in Cold War ‘54, all the Dulles brothers had to do was cry Commie, and popular support quickly accumulated to take down Árbenz. The whole charade is narrated in chillingly simple terms in this short 5-part documentary.

Like many of its Central American neighbors, Guate quite literally fell back into a pattern characteristic of a Banana Republic, that is to say a perennial basket case where government officials are bought and sold by a plutocracy of elites, a revolving door of corruption with little capacity to govern. Guatemala’s case was one of the worst - during the decades that followed Árbenz's ouster, the country descended into a 36-year civil war with over 200,000 losing their lives at the hands of the army. The vast majority of the victims were the same landless indigenous peoples that Árbenz was trying to protect when he reclaimed land from United Fruit.

Diego Rivera’s “Glorious Victory”

It’s far from a clean causal link of history, but it’s not crazy to suggest that weakened states such as Guate are fertile ground for gangs and violence. While hard to estimate exactly, there is consensus that a large proportion of the gang activity in Central America, particularly the Northern Triangle (Guate, Honduras and El Salvador) relies on drug trafficking to the US via Mexico.  Many of the Central American gangs (e.g., Mara Salvatrucha, Barrio 18) also reportedly have ties to some of the biggest cartels in MX (Sinaloa, etc). And there's plenty of evidence to suggest that politicians find it hard to resist lining their pockets with drug money.

And when drugs are astronomically profitable, it's tough to convince poor campesinos that they should stay away from the business. Two weeks ago I went up to the Western Highlands region for work, and spent a couple days in San Marcos, a Department which borders Mexico. CRS is involved in several different USAID-funded "value chain" projects in the area, mostly training farmers on improved techniques for coffee production. This is no doubt important training, but the motivation is definitely 2-fold - improve livelihoods, sure, but also create an alternative to trafficking drugs into Mexico and a disincentive from engaging in the region’s newest agricultural activity, poppy farming. Guate is now among the world’s largest producers of poppy, and it ain't being used for bagels (though interestingly, there has been some discussion of legalizing and taxing the production of poppy in Guate).

Which war was/ is dumber - the war on communism or the war on drugs? Both were pretty worthless - both ideologically and in terms of measurable results - and both had disastrous consequences on the lives of poor Central Americans. Sure, legalizing drugs might not be a panacea (see Hamsterdam), and while plenty of smart people make arguments against it (also here), it's also hard to claim that legalization of pot would no effect whatsoever on cartel activity or violence.

Last summer’s immigrant influx at the US-Mexico border was notable for the throngs of unaccompanied minors from Centroamérica, many of whom had traveled in desperation at the behest of their parents worried about the effects of violence in their communities. It’s possible that the US response to this wave, $1 billion in aid to the region (the so-called “Biden Billion,” though still not approved in full by our quagmire of a congress), will help reverse the trend of military aid to stem the drug trade, and actually focus on education, youth vocational training, small business assistance and other programs.

Did John Foster Dulles cause Guatemala's civil war? Is he complicit in the deaths of 200,000 Guatemalans who just wanted a little bit of land to farm on? Subsequently, is failed US drug policy among the root causes of gang violence in Central America? And to what extent is American intervention responsible for its downstream effects, as manifested in weakened Guatemalan institutions today?  Examples are tragically abundant, like the municipal governments who continued accepting poor people’s money to issue building permits in villages they knew were susceptible to mudslides. Some might call this symptoms of a weak state, others might call it structural violence. Which happens to be the legacy of actual violence.

Next episode: light-hearted dog blog, I promise!

Kat + dogs = Fun!

Guat's Up!

Guat’s Up friends and family!?

Our first month here has been eventful – election mayhem and peaceful protests bringing thousands of citizens from all socioeconomic and political classes together. It’s been amazing to witness all the momentum towards positive change.

We have also been able to travel to gorgeous spots. Here is MattKat at Lago de Atitlan this weekend. 

[ Hi! ]

                                                                   [ Magical ]

As Matt mentioned in his previous post, he has been slaving away at his job in the big city, while I have been taking Spanish classes and living in a home-stay in beautiful Antigua (except for last week when I traveled with Matt for his work trip and took classes at a school in Guate’s second city, Quetzaltenango, a town in the country’s Western Highlands).

My teacher in Antigua is Carmen, a wonderful woman who is incredibly funny, patient and kind (she and I are pictured slightly blurry below). I have a blast conversing with her for hours on end. Our talks range from the mundane - such as how to order food in a restaurant, to Guatemalan politics and gender inequality. She is 36 and studying to be a lawyer in Antigua but law school is time-intensive (5 years) and expensive.

                                                               [ Hola Carmen! ]

My homestay situation, although rewarding, has been less than comfortable. My Spanish is choppy and I feel like an idiot. I’m the outsider in the house who is incapable of complex sentence structure. Ugh. I want them to think of me as more than just a walking dollar sign, but they frequently ask me to borrow money and don’t seem particularly concerned with paying me back. The money is insignificant, but I’m hung up on the principle. It’s the same feeling when I buy food from the corner store and the owner charges me 3x what he charges a Guatemalteco. On the one hand, I realize that my dollar will go farther in the owner’s hands and he needs the money more than I do. On the other hand,  it’s hard to fight back against my natural instincts of not wanting to get ripped off just because I’m a gringa.  

                                                                  [  Antigua  ] 

I’ve also been looking for work in policy arenas where there is serious need– and there is a lot of need since Guatemala trails its Latin American counterparts in virtually every social and economic indicator – from maternal mortality to gender inequality, from poverty to childhood nutrition.  

We’ve been reading a lot about the battle over Planned Parenthood and the fate of healthcare options for low income women in the US, which has a lot of parallels for women here. 

In Guatemala, the average indigenous woman has an average of 4.5 children (vs. 3 for non-indigenous women) and half of all Guatemalan children are chronically malnourished to the point of physical stunting.

[ These photos are from a free dental clinic I volunteered at that was funded by contributions from the United States (George Mason University). Free clinics are the only healthcare option for most. ]

Abortion is illegal in Guatemalan but the use of contraceptive methods (including the opportunity to plan and space pregnancies) is perfectly legal and not used by the indigenous population because there is miscommunication and a lack of education. Health facilities are poorly stocked and there is a strong machista culture that doesn’t afford women much agency to make choices without their husbands.
  
It would cost Guatemala relatively little to educate their low-literacy indigenous populations living in remote areas. I think that creating and expanding programs that combat myths about birth control and stress the importance of planning pregnancies will help reduce poverty significantly.

Ok that’s enough serious talk for now. 


Next post from me will be about our new dog (we don't have him/her yet but she/he is coming!)

¡Bienvenid@s a GuatesHappening!

the "barrio" - zona 10, guatemala city

Guate’s happening, you ask? Well, Guate’s happening, obviously! Welcome to KatMatt’s blog, a fun fact-filled and (hopefully) regularly updated space in which we download our brains on all things Guate. Sometimes we’ll post serious wonky musings about poverty and development in Latin America. Other times we’ll post fun things about the places we travel and the food we eat. Sometimes we MIGHT EVEN POST BOTH AT THE SAME TIME.

Anyway, we’re here because I started a job with the Latin America Office of Catholic Relief Services, where I’ll be leading Monitoring & Evaluation efforts on many of the agency’s projects in the region – more on that later. Kat’s already deep into Spanish re-immersion, and for the next month is staying M-F with a host family down the road in Antigua, well beyond earshot of my toxic English. She’s also looking for work in the policy arena (e.g., asylum, immigration, rule of law, juvenile justice), so hit us up if you have any ideas and/or leads!

Speaking of Antigua, it’s quaint as hell, what with its cobblestone streets and charming colonial architecture, flanked by badass volcanoes on all sides. Some shots from this past weekend:

Obligatory calle de volcan shot

Niños riding the chicken bus

Fruits of the cocotero

From the coronas exhibit at hotel santo domingo

longing looks at earthlodge

But back in la ciudad, euphoria still runs high from the recent ouster of Guatemala’s ex-presidente, Otto Perez Molina, the result of his involvement (i.e., leadership) in a particularly egregious example of kleptocratic statecraft. Now known as La Linea, the deal consisted of government officials accepting bribes from Guatemalan companies in exchange for skipping out on payment of customs duties. In a country where the social safety net is full of holes already (think hospitals without syringes, villages without water, bankrupt social security), this is pretty high on the dictatorial d-bag scale. Following weeks of peaceful protest, Molina was swiftly stripped of his immunity by Guatemala’s congress on September 1 (the day we arrived), tendered his resignation the next evening, and went to jail the day after that. He’s still there, awaiting trial. Incredible and unprecedented, in this country and beyond. #CentralAmericanSpring?

prez palace from above - 100k protesters deep

In the meantime, general elections were held a week ago. No candidate won more than 50% of the popular vote, so there’ll be a runoff between the top two candidates on October 25. The choices aren’t great either – a comedian with no political experience, who has been called Guatemala’s Donald Trump, and a former First Lady (nicknamed “The Bulldozer”), who divorced her husband so she could get around a pesky law prohibiting family members of former heads of state from running for office.

GuateMALLa

While the protests and celebrations have been going on downtown, Kat and I have mostly been hanging out in Zone 10, a bougie enclave home to embassies, expats and wealthier Guatemalans (for safety reasons, CRS has a clearly defined "green zone" where its employees can live). Z10 also features several big fancy malls, including Oakland, which is a block away from our temporary housing. In some ways, this is a bit of a shock to the system. It’s surely a tad strange to come to the second-poorest country in the hemisphere (only Haiti is poorer, by most measures) only to find yourself in a mall with a Starbucks, an IMAX cinema (complete with buttkickahs) and authorized Apple dealer. But as it turns out, there is no shortage of millionaires in Guatemala City. The parking lot at the mall is full of Benzes, Beamers and Porches. Some mall-goers (especially the teenage children of the uber-elite and politicians) are apparently tailed by their plain clothes body guards. A friend told me last weekend that some rich dudes who don’t want to battle the city’s heinous traffic simply take their helicopters, whether it’s to the mall, office or the golf course. Indeed, Guate is also one the world’s 10 most unequal countries, which may explain the high levels of violence and other social woes.

But don’t worry about us (hi mom!) – almost all of the violent crime is restricted to areas of the city where gang activity is most prevalent, and along the Mexican border up north. Plus, we blend in real well - here’s Kat enjoying some fresh-squeezed OJ in a bag, as the Antigüeños do.

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