I hope this is just the beginning of mainstream international coverage. And may creative, compassionate people find more just and equitable ways to do 'development' wherever the local indigenous populations are at risk.
Thomas Friedman has famously written that thanks to globalization the earth is now flat. To which it must quickly be added that it is flatter for some than for others. While Friedman cites remarkable (and real) advances in places as far flung as Hyderabad, India to make his case, there are still many in the world – billions – who don’t really get a piece of the pie, a place at the table, a level playing field. If anything, for many the earth is becoming more treacherous. But his argument is not entirely without merit, because globalization really isn’t leaving any corner of the globe untouched.
Case in point: Sipacapa, Guatemala. Many of my childhood memories revolve around Sipacapa, where we lived in an adobe house with a tin roof and a bare concrete floor. Behind our house was the community soccer field, and on a clear day we could look out past the eucalyptus trees and see Mexico, several mountain ridges away. There was no electricity or running water in the area in those days, so we’d hike down to a spring in the valley and fill jugs with water which would then be used for cooking, or heated on the wood stove and used for bathing in the pulley-operated shower we built on the front porch.
The village now benefits from electricity and running water. They’re even paving the roads, and many community residents have cell phones. The ways in which this unprecedented connectivity improves people’s lives are many. But globalization is a two-edged sword. The same force that has brought these modern advances has also brought, for one thing, the mining industry – not just to Sipacapa but to many remote villages throughout Latin America and around the world. Mining companies promise economic and community development but seldom keep their word because those with power to hold them accountable, quite frankly, don’t bother. Indigenous peoples, meanwhile - whose interests are officially protected under international agreements - are for all intents and purposes powerless when push actually comes to shove. See the No Dirty Gold campaign for more on these life-and-death issues.
Because I grew up in what is now a mining-affected area and because I am a Christian who is concerned about how abuses of power affect the poor, I returned to Sipacapa this spring to learn more about the mine and to do interviews with people in the area. While showing me around, an old family friend pointed out the local radio station, sitting up on a hill with a tall antenna. The station had been instrumental a few years prior when Sipacapa residents organized an official referendum in which the people voted nearly unanimously against mining in their community. The radio station enabled voting at thirteen different locations to occur simultaneously, and allowed for transparency in the process. Ultimately, though, it wasn’t enough, and the mining operation continues.
Early next year in Guatemala, congress will consider a telecommunications reform bill that will determine the fate of 170 of these community radio stations throughout the country that provide news and information to indigenous people in their own languages. The aim of the bill is to set aside a wave band specifically for such stations and to reduce the cost and red tape involved in obtaining licenses. In areas with high illiteracy, community radio is essential for the dissemination of important information like storm warnings and provides a forum for public debate on important issues.
It will be interesting to see whose interests prevail in congress, in a land with a government modeled after our own. And it will be a poignant snapshot of the pros and cons of globalization. From my standpoint, connectivity is good, generally speaking, as long as it’s a two-way street. I think most residents of Sipacapa would agree. But who really gets to call the shots? In the case of community radio in Guatemala we will see whether globalization will be a force for good or ill in the lives of the poor, for whom the world has been anything but flat.
For more on the situation in the Sipacapa area and elsewhere, check out COPAE. Among other things, they are working towards an alternative development plan for the region that will align more closely with the needs of the local people rather than the wishes of a Canadian board of directors. In other words, they are helping the indigenous people to work for flatness on their own terms.
I've spent the past three days retracing my roots here in Guatemala City, where twelve days past the due date and weighing in at ten pounds, six ounces I came into this world back in the year of 1982. An evangelical televangelist was the president of the country at the time - or dictator, I guess I should say - and once the dust settled on the 36-year civil war it turned out he was one of the most ruthless offenders of indigenous human rights the country had ever seen. And the country has seen its fair share, tragically.
I share that for no reason other than that this country is a land of contradictions, which was perfectly illustrated earlier in the week at a restaurant way out in the highlands when the faucet in the restroom didn't work -- instead you had to dip a bowl into a bucket of water sitting in the corner -- and yet the automatic hand-drier worked just fine. As I was pondering this afterwords it occurred to me that Guatemalans ought to really like Johnny Cash because he too was quite contradictory for most of his life.
So here I am in this city of three million in a fairly poor and tumultuous country, this city where I was born and where I have so many memories, and I've been going here and there in taxis, without a clue as to the layout of the place. It's a tricky city to navigate because it is on a plateau but has ravines all around it with little fingers of flatness sticking out as if to taunt the elements of nature, which also means you rarely can get from points A to B in a direct line.
On Thursday I headed over to a bookstore/cafe I had read about because, well, it is a bookstore/cafe and I am who I am. It was so posh, though, it made me scratch my head, puzzled that this place and Sipacapa -- where I had been just one day prior -- could actually exist in the same universe, much less the same developing country. Yesterday I visited a few museums and a market, and on the way back in the taxi I got into a discussion with the driver about world Christianity and the rise of Pentecostalism. He said that in Guatemala City people are leaving the Catholic Church in droves and joining evangelical and Pentecostal churches. I had heard that 60% of the country identified as either Pentecostal or charismatic, but I also know about where Guatemala ranks in terms of homicide and corruption, and you wonder how these faith and crime statistics can coexist. But they do.
So today I headed downtown, to Kilometer Zero, to the central plaza which has on two of its sides the National Palace and a cathedral, respectively. During part of the tour of the palace we walked through a photography display of the quetzal, Guatemala's national bird. Legend has it that when the Mayan warrior Tecun Uman was fighting against the Spanish invaders back in the day, a quetzal descended on him as he was dying, and ever since the bird has a bright red chest on account of spilled Mayan blood, and it refuses to sing. It is also said that the quetzal cannot live in captivity, which alludes, apparently, to the fact that Guatemalans highly value their freedom.
Today on the tour as the guide pointed out the series of photos of quetzals in captivity, an older Guatemalan man said, "What about the saying, about quetzals not being able to live in captivity?" The guide didn't skip a beat, and responded, "That's right. They cannot live in captivity." And we moved on, down the hallway, no questions asked.
