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November 16, 2006
In March I wrote an impassioned post about La Federación de Campesinos Hacia el Progreso of Bonao. I wrote about how in 1996 the Federation mobilized thousands of mountain farmers to fight a Spanish mining company and the Dominican government to save their river and homes -- and won. Read this post
It is with sadness that I report on the current state of the Federation. It's a painful story but there are some valuable lessons.
The Federation was formed in the spirit of cooperation and solidarity among Bonao's rural population. At its peak thousands of people walked for hours to attend protests, community improvement projects and workshops on health and sustainable living. All of the members worked without pay and pitched in out of their own pockets when collective expenses came up. (This is the model Justicia Global was founded on.)
In 1998 the Federation became incorporated as a non-profit organization, and everything has sort of deteriorated from there.
Now the handful of members who are left go after international funds for isolated projects. Reforestation, workshops, and eco-tourism are all valid ways to improve the quality of life in Bonao, but the way they go about things has completely changed. Now that there's foreign funding flowing into the organization and the core staff is paid, no one will work for free anymore. The sense of solidarity, of "we're all in this together," disappeared in a hurry when the people saw their leaders using the organization for personal financial gain.
What the Federation has done is convert their most loyal members, who before worked long hours without pay and walked from community to community organizing their neighbors, into mere employees. The Federation set up a series of colmados, general stores, for organizational profit and put some of their most effective organizers there. Now the ex-organizers are tied to the store and can't even leave to attend Federation meetings or assemblies, not to mention organize their communities.
Last month we visited an old friend who has been one of the most consistent members of the Federation for years. How's the Federation doing? She didn't know. It had been two months since she'd been in the office. Why? Funding dried up and they didn't have enough to pay her $90-a-month salary.
This is not a new strategy. Institutionalization has been one of the most successful ways of demobilizing grassroots political movements throughout Latin America. International foundations and governments woo leaders with big grants and salaries, and as we saw with the Federation, the movement's people power starts to disintegrate.
Granters get to choose what projects they fund. If the organization does anything genuinely threatening to current power structures (which should be the goal of any self-respecting popular political movement), funding is revoked and the organization is quickly crippled.
What's the alternative to the non-profit model of social change? We saw it in the early days of the Federation: regular people who recognized their strength in numbers got together to demand their rights.
Is this a lot slower than the institutional model? Of course. But imagine if the Federation had been receiving government funding in 1996 when the Hispaniola Mining Company was trying to bully its way in and exploit the province's gold and rivers.
Would there have still been a fight? I imagine Federation leaders wringing their hands: "Well, this mine is going to destroy our way of life. But if we oppose it, we'll lose funding for our reforestation project."
November 14, 2006
The group of kids I work with in San Cristóbal surprised me with a birthday poster, tag-team birthday hugs and orange juice with ice after our meeting on Sunday the 12th. (Click on the photo or any of the ones below to see a larger version.)
Said poster was in the works in the house next door to where we were drawing and learning a poem. When I went in looking for markers, I noticed the older kids hard at work but somehow did not see the mammoth ¡Feliz Cumpleaños Timoteo! poster on the table.
So I was genuinely surprised at the ferocity of the birthday attack when it came.
On Sunday we memorized a poem that reflects Justicia Global's commitment to building a society based on justice and equality. The kids memorize rhymes very easily, and they can recite dozens of four-line rhyming poems off the tops of their heads.
The problem is that currently, most of the poems the kids know have to do with putting their body parts up close to the body parts of people of the opposite sex. Our job is to channel their impressive capacity for memorization into more uplifting messages. Here's the one we learned on Sunday. You can see the kids crowded around the poem in one of the above photos.
No sembré la mata
Que ahorita estaba subiendo
Pero qué buena está la fruta
Que ahora me estoy comiendo.
Así que sembremos
La justicia y el amor
Para que otra gente coseche
Una sociedad mejor. |
I didn't plant the tree
I was climbing a bit ago
But how sweet is the fruit
I'm eating right now.
In this way let's plant
Justice and love
So others can harvest
A better society. |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 4, 2006
In an attempt to detain an imminent rubella outbreak in the Dominican Republic, local officials have mobilized their most apt and persistent health care professionals, initiating a national effort of goodwill and concern for the well-being of the citizentry.
Nurses with needles set up shop everywhere from universities to banks to bus stations in order to administer shots for the disease locally known as rubéola. The goal: to inject everyone from 17-40 years of age by whatever means necessary.
Rosa Morales, a Registered Nurse designated to staff the Caribe Tours bus terminal, commented on the nature of the national strategy: "Wherever people congregate, that's where we're called to go. Here in Caribe Tours it's simple: after you buy your ticket, we help you make the most of your time as you wait for your bus. Why not get vaccinated?"
Morales added that one need only show a form of I.D. to receive the free injection, and that "it doesn't hurt a bit."
Dr. Ricardo Martínez, Secretary of Public Health, has been pleased with the effectiveness of the campaign to date. "I want to congratulate our assertive, hard-working staff -- and give special recognition to the public relations team," Martínez said. "They've managed to get the public worried enough about rubéola to get out and get vaccinated, but not so terrified that they alter their consumption habits."
Even foreigners without proper identification are eligible to be vaccinated free of charge. United States citizen Timoteo Sánchez participated at the Caribe Tours terminal:
"After I got over the initial shock of women waving needles in my direction in the bus station, and the same women insisting that they stick me with said needles, and not letting me go until they succeeded, yes, I'm glad it's done," Sánchez said. "I mean, it's no Cuba, where you get chemotherapy or vision-restorative retinal surgery for free, but it's a step in the right direction."
The Office of Public Health considers the vaccination-in-bus-terminal strategy to be a sort of pilot program for Dominican health distribution services in the future.
In the works are campaigns to offer blood tests at gas stations, general pediatric care in supermarkets and prostate exams at movie theaters, all free of charge.
"We may have the lowest percentage of social investment in the Western Hemisphere," Martínez said. "But the little money we do spend, we make sure everyone notices." *
*Note: Though the preceeding news article is largely fabricated and names have been changed to protect the vaccinated, the event upon which this piece was conceived is absolutely true. I was indeed accosted by two extremely assertive women in the bus station who insisted that I roll up my right sleeve and cough. The second- and third-to-last paragraphs are the author's own predictions; he has no confirmed sources within the Office of Public Health for such projections. In the last paragraph, however, we return to documented facts. In 2004 the Dominican Republic invested a miserable 6.4 percent of its Gross National Product in education and health care combined. The regional average is 15.1 percent.
November 2, 2006
Dominican leaders, pressured by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to implement the newest round of fiscal reforms, may raise the national sales tax (ITBIS) to 20 percent.
Wait -- read on! This is not a boring post! It may be filled with acronyms and economic jargon, but it's actually a fairly simple equation.
The ITBIS (pronounced ee-TEH-bees) is currently at 16 percent. It functions like U.S. state sales tax, tacked on to every purchase made, including food.
Why so ungodly high? Dominicans don't have an April 15. There are no W-2 forms, no local, state and federal taxes. There's just not the infrastructure to handle this kind of paperwork, and so much of the economy is informal anyway that a federal income tax system would be tough to implement.
That means sales tax is one of the largest forms of income for the Dominican government, and in most cases the only way Dominican citizens ever pay taxes.
Sounds like a decent deal, right? Pay a little more at the cash register for every purchase, but throw out the headaches and number-crunching come tax day.
Not so fast. The high ITBIS tax collection strategy turns out to be a great deal for the rich, passing the lion's share of the tax burden onto the poor majority. (Fifty-three percent of Dominicans survive on less than two dollars a day, the recognized international definition of poverty.)
If a wealthy guy making $3,000 a month buys $50 worth of groceries, he'll be charged $8 in ITBIS (16%). A worker making the average per-capita income makes about $150 a month. If she buys the same $50 in groceries, she's also charged $8 in ITBIS.
That's fair, right? Wrong. Let's look at it in terms of income tax, where the wealthy should pay a higher percentage of their income into public funds because they receive greater benefits from public services.
Wealthy Guy paid $8 out of $3,000, an income tax of 0.3% on his groceries. Ms. Worker paid $8 out of $150, an income tax of 5.3%.
So we see the Dominican system is heaven for the rich. Business tycoon Steve Forbes, who in 1996 ran for U.S. President on a Flat Tax platform (a plan to slash taxes for the rich), would wet himself with glee in the Dominican system.
But we're not finished yet. Things will get better for old Mr. Forbes and his business-owning buddies. Today in a newspaper article I read that "collection of the ITBIS is low, due to the high incidence of extortion and fiscal evasion."
So the business sector, which is in control of the great majority of public funds supposedly collected through the ITBIS tax, isn't coughing up our money. They're sitting on it, investing it, turning it into more money, and sending it overseas.
Even when our business owners do eventually pass on the ITBIS to the government, it usually takes them months. And while this free 16 percent profit is in their pocket, it acts like a 0 percent loan to themselves, capital they can use to generate more capital.
This is why an ITBIS increase to 20 percent is such a big deal. It fleeces the already floundering poor majority and continues to line the pockets of the few rascals on top.
It's fascinating and sickening to watch the nation's wealth gap yawn ever wider before my eyes. But luckily I don't have to stop at being sickened. Phrases such as "fiscal reform" and "International Monetary Fund" make me get up every morning to work at making a new way. |
