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October 29, 2007
Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.
In the last couple of days I've been doing a little more sitting than I'm used to, and a lot more trying not to laugh.
I'm not supposed to open my mouth very wide, chew or smile too big. Yawning is right out. Also strictly prohibited are soccer, opera singing and ostrich impressions.
In Saturday afternoon's frisbee tournament I was laid out by a forearm that opened a nice gash just under my chin. It bled so much that I even had to come out of the game. Since then I've been sporting the ever-fashionable athletic tape beard that holds the gauze and aloe vera in place.
It's times like these when one realizes how much one laughs during the course of daily life in Justicia Global.
On Saturday night people had to keep elbowing Carlos because he couldn't stop being funny. "Shhhh! Hey, cut it out! You're making Tim laugh again!"
That would work for a couple of minutes, then he would start in again. "I just went to this restaurant that boasted an Especialidad en comida criolla e internacional. Their specialty is Dominican and international food. That's all food. How can their specialty be all food?
"So I said okay, let's see. I went in and ordered a taco. They said, 'we don't have tacos.' Enchiladas? 'No, no enchiladas.' I said, that's funny. Maybe you should change your sign then. You should put, Specialty in Dominican and international food... except Mexican."
A little bit later it was the one about the drunk at the top of the telephone pole. "People were gathering around, watching him screech and curse unintelligibly. ¡Raschhh! And 'el diab- maldit- mierda hijoe... c-c-connnñooo!" (At least two-thirds of Carlos's jokes have at least one raving, screeching, cursing drunk in them.)
"A police officer arrives at the scene and orders the man down. 'What are you doing up there? Come down before you hurt yourself!' ¡Cooonññño! bellows the drunk." Carlos does the drunk guy really well. He licks his lips, crosses his eyes, blinks, sways, wavers, wags his finger, licks his lips again, and then forces out a stuttering, belligerent, nearly unintelligible string of high pitched curses that always ends in ¡C-c-coonnnññoo!
"'Get down from there, you bloody drunk!'" More swaying, more shushing, more slurred references to genetalia. "The policeman draws his weapon. 'Maybe this will convince you to come down! Don't make me have to shoot you out of there!" Heyeyeyey- sshhhh- n-n-noo te ponga u-uapo, ombe- pérate... ¡c-c-conñññoo! And he starts to climb down. Ever so slowly, the drunk inches down the telephone pole, and stumbling all over himself he approaches the officer.
"¿T-t-tú sabes quién sssoy yo? D-do you know who I am? he asks the officer. 'Uhh...' ¡Sshhhh! ¡coññooo! Do you... know who I am?? 'Uh, no, I'm sorry, I...' You don't know who I am?!! screeches the drunk, waving his finger and spraying his spittle onto the officer. The officer snaps to attention, salutes, and begins to stutter, 'Excuse me, sir, no, I don't...' ¡Cccooñño! I'm the drunk that was at the top of that pole!!"
So by this time I'm holding my athletic-tape-adorned face and shaking quietly. At this rate my healing process will be slow, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
October 14, 2007
Lyndon B. Johnson is such a popular guy here – he was the U.S. president who ordered the full-scale invasion of Santo Domingo in 1965 – that the Dominican National Police are commemorating his policies in 2007.
Johnson's "War on Poverty" strategy has been slightly tweaked to fit the current context in the DR: what we're seeing here is a "War on Those In Poverty."
Officers in full battle gear took control of the streets of a bunch of the popular neighborhoods of Santo Domingo earlier this month after a national strike was called. The boys in the above photo spent the day "protecting Dominican democracy," according to the caption accompanying the photo.
The girl, for one, isn't buying this whole "democracy" business. Twenty-two civilians have been killed by cops in her neighborhood during the first nine months of 2007. National Police kill an average of four people a day throughout the country, mostly poor young men in urban centers.
Police violence is a symptom of a larger crisis: the contradictions inherent in our "democratic" system. The more the economic situation worsens for the majority of Dominicans, more state repression is needed to keep everything in "order." That, in turn, leads to a downward spiral where more future combatants are born every day. At least the guys selling bullets are happy.
October 2, 2007
In the Earlhamite magazine they send me every quarter I came upon an article written by a recent Earlham graduate.
In the article our writer thanks several professors for their contributions to his education. Among the list we find the following praise: "Stephen Butler taught me to maintain a skeptical distance from the myriad ideologies, a skill that has served me well throughout my years of graduate school."
I was a little upset by this statement, not because I have anything against Stephen Butler, but because of how our writer treats the word "ideologies." It's as if ideologies were like measles that you could catch if you got too close.
I understand "ideology" simply to mean a set of beliefs - or "ideas," if you will - that shapes the actions of a person or a group. When I think of ideology, I think of two major schools of thought.
The first recognizes the accumulation of wealth and power as a historical process, and analyzes states and institutions as social, historical constructions. This perspective sees our current form of social organization as inherently violent and unjust, and it calls for a radical transformation of the way our society is set up.
The second emphasizes property rights over human rights, claims competition as the natural way of things, and promotes the free market as the only solution to society's ills.
People with the second ideological position, who happen to have most of the economic and political power in the world today, are generally more invested in keeping things the way they are.
They're the ones who spend tons of time and energy trying to convince us that the battle of ideas is over. They're the ones who coined the cute little acronym, TINA: There Is No Alternative, referring to the state of our dog-eat-dog world. They tell us we're at "the end of History" - that is, there are no more ideologies, only the Capital T Truth of the survival of the fittest.
So we start to see that "maintaining a skeptical distance from the myriad ideologies," or claiming no ideology at all, fits nicely into the second school of thought. Choosing not to take sides in a world where someone dies of hunger every three seconds while barges of food are dumped in the ocean to maintain stable market prices, is a tacit vote of support for the barge dumpers.
That's what upsets me about our writer's non-position. It must be very comfortable there in Not-Taking-Sides-Land, keeping the world at arm's length in order to study it and critique it without having to take responsibility for changing it.
If you're not interested in a building a society where everyone's human rights are respected, fine. But please, be honest about the fact that you have an ideology and go and sit with the free market people. Whatever you do, just don't come to me whistling the tune of neutrality. |
