Musings on Culture…and a few other updates

Ideas brought to the New World

At Reconnect we discussed differences in culture between Latin America and the United States in order to make some sense of the common frustrations we’d been experiencing in our work and living in our communities. Before I delve into cultural generalizations, I give the disclaimer that these are of course generalizations, I’m not trying to stereotype, and of course there are exceptions. While generalizations may not be true of every individual in the group, they serve as a framework for understanding. It is helpful while living in this total cultural immersion at times bewildered as to WHY people act in ways that make no sense to me to be able to analyze these differences.

We discussed the ideas from the book Views of Latin America based on the differences between values brought the New World by Spain/Portugal and England. In Latin America, the Spanish and Portuguese had the goal of recreating or transplanting their systems from Europe to the New World. On the other had the British were trying to break away from the old order in Europe had the goal of creating a whole new system. This resulted in stark differences between Latin American and North American cultures and below is a summary of SOME of the differences.

Latin America

Economy: feudal, land-based, mercantilist, monopolistic, state-influenced

Society: rigid two class immobile society

Education: rote memorization, deductive, unscientific reasoning

Religion: pattern of absolutism and orthodoxy

Politics: authoritarian regimes, conservative reactionary right with revolutionary left

North America

Economy: capitalistic, individualistic

Society: mobile middle class

Education: non-conforming, questioning, inductive, scientific reasoning

Religion: freedom and pluralism

Politics: supportive of representative democracy; free speech, press, assembly

Factors to keep in mind that influence Guatemala today:

-The high percentage of indigenous people and being a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual nation

-Machismo – apparent in discrimination in the workplace and public sphere, whistling/cat calls/inappropriate remarks on the street, domestic violence, women having to ask permission from their husbands to leave the house

-The history and repercussions of the 30 year civil conflict

-Corruption in politics, police, and an ineffective justice system

-Violence, delinquency, organized crime, narcotrafficking

-High levels of poverty being second highest in level of unequal distribution of wealth in the Western hemisphere, behind Haiti, according to UNDP

-The relationship to the United States economically, socially, geographically, historically

-Immigration: social effects of such a huge portion of the population living abroad and economic effects of remittances

-Influence of (or dependence on) NGOs/international development aid

Culture Matters

I might have mentioned some of the following ideas during training, I can’t remember, but after being in country for seven months now, they resonate stronger. Below are some of the difference between North American and other cultures. These ideas are taken from the book published by Peace Corps Culture Matters.

Individualism vs. collectivism. Self-explanatory.

Universalism vs. particularism. The idea that rules should apply to everyone equally or whether rules apply differently to different people, depending on how much money or influence you have.

Monochronistic vs. polichronistic. Concept that time is objective and punctuality and completion of tasks is valued vs. subjective concept of time that is more fluid and where punctuality and timely completion of tasks are not as important.

Low power distance vs. high power distance. Society is less hierarchical and it is acceptable for those in positions of power to associate with those who have less vs. rigid social hierarchies with stricter rules about interacting with superiors.

Achieved vs. ascribed status. Staus is achieved through hard work and education vs. who you know or who your family is.

Interal vs. external control. Life is what I make it vs. life is what happens to me.

How culture is reflected by language (or how culture is shaped by language?)

Obviously language is culture. The longer I live here and the better my Spanish gets, the more I see how intertwined they are. It is interesting to compare how

Gender. Latin American culture is machista. Every noun has a gender and every adjective has to agree in gender. Linguistic rules regarding gender are rigid; societal rules regarding gender roles are rigid. The word for wife, esposa, is the same word for handcuffs. Hmm…what is that saying?

Relationship to nature. In English we say We’ve had a lot of rain. In Spanish you say Ha habido mucha lluvia (There has had a lot of rain). To whom does the rain belong? English speakers want to own and control everything, including rain, whereas Spanish speakers don’t treat nature as belonging to anyone.

Responsibility/blame/fatalism. In English the passive voice is rarely used and taught to be avoided. In Spanish it is a common and acceptable construction. In English we say I broke the window and claim responsibility for the action. In Spanish they say Se me quebró la ventana (the window was broken to me), which in the passive voice avoids blame for the action as if it were out of control of the speaker.

Okay back to what else has been going on…

April has been a crazy month of birthdays for the family that I live with. Birthdays here go something like this. Around 5 am they light off firecrackers to wake the whole neighborhood. Sometimes there is loud music in accompaniment. They don´t go to school or work that day, because it´s their birthday (or their parents don´t go to work in order to prepare the celebration). The whole morning is spent preparing a lunch and baking a cake that will be shared with the family members and perhaps some close neighbors and friends. With all the hours it takes to prepare the lunch, it is scarffed up in no time. For kids there is a piñata in the afternoon where all their little cousins are invited. Every kid has a chance to swat at the piñata and there is a mad rush for all the candy that erupts out. Then there is singing of Happy Birthday (in English oddly enough), cutting of cake, serving of snacks – usually sandwiches with chicken salad on white bread. The whole affair is festive and fun. This week it was Luisito who turned seven. He is seriously the cutest kid ever and his chubbly little cheeks were glowing with delight the whole day. I gave a him a snappy red toy car that he was quite excited about.

One of the NGOs active in El Chol is starting a project for a Youth Council project. It will involve 4^th through 8^th graders in a process of learning about citizen participation through elections, creating an agenda of needs, and executing projects that they come up with. So the NGO took a group of people from El Chol and Rabinal that included teachers, city council members, and other involved people to the town of Los Amates in the department of Izabal in the eastern part of the country. There we met with some youth who had been active in the Council in their towns and their adult mentors and they shared their experiences. It was a great meeting and we learned a lot that we will hopefully be able to implement here in El Chol. We were near the East Coast, so it was ridiculously hot. We bought ice cream and couldn´t eat it fast enough to keep it from melting all over the place. We took advantage of being in that region of the country to visit the Mayan ruins of Quiriguá in the afternoon. After driving for awhile through endless banana plantations, there are huge monoliths with carvings. There is also part of the city which is still being excavated where you can see the stadium and perfectly carved steps. It was a fun day all around, despite getting up at 2:30 am to leave by 3 and getting home at 9:30 at night. It was cool to hang out with the teachers and city council members.

I've been trying to take advantage of the knowledge of the people who work for the NGO´s and to tag along when they make visits out to the communities around here since the muni itself does not have any transportation. I went again with a Licenciado (term for someone with a Bachelor’s degree) who works for an NGO that gives workshops on citizen participation and the development councils system to the aldea of Los Jobos. It’s great to observe his presentations and it´s a wonderful opportunity to meet people from the communities and introduce myself. I chatted with the COCODE president there and he asked me to give a short presentation to the middle schoolers there who were going to help him fill out the agua and sanitation questionnaire that I designed for our Municipal Database. So I flew by the seat of my pants and entered a crowded classroom full of about 50 curious middle schoolers and explained to them the questionnaire. Talk about intimidating. The workshop with the Licenciado ended up started an hour and a half late because another NGO had planned a personal hygiene presentation for the same time, so we had to wait til he was finished. I was once again surprised by the number of people who didn´t even know how to write their own names and had to use a fingerprint as their signature on the sign in sheet. In all about 40 people attended the workshop and participated well. These workshops almost always include a snack and a meal provided by the NGO, which stretches the budget. On the way back into town we stopped at a friend of the Licenciado´s family’s house in another community. They were very kind and gave us pure sugarcane juice, a strong, sweet, brown beverage and dinner of tortillas, beans, and eggs.

The next morning I observed another workshop that the Licenciado put on, a training for trainers. This is a program where community leaders are elected to be trained to train other community members in a program about the System of Development Councils using prerecorded CDs and workbooks. Once again it was good to get to know more community members and learn more about the programs.

Last weekend I went with my site mate to the small rural community of Chilascó, about three hours north of El Chol. We visited the ecotourism volunteer who lives there and works with the community association that manages the park with the tallest waterfall in Central America. The town itself is quite small and has limited services, but after asking around with found a woman put together some plates of beans with hot dogs and tortillas to take with us to eat to complement the other tienda snacks we found. It´s a beautiful place that with cool fresh air and totally green. We camped out in the cloud forest, aptly named because you are literally walking through clouds. It´s like a tropical jungle, but not hot. The hike in is a bit strenuous, but totally worth it to be in the thick of such a peaceful forest. Our attempt to make a fire had limited success so while we did get some small sticks to catch on fire, we were never able to get any big flames that stayed. We slept on the ground with a mosquito net in a covered area with a thatched roof. It was nice falling asleep with the sound of crashing water. In the morning we hiked the rest of the way in to get right up next to the waterfall, although it was so foggy we couldn´t see a thing and all the pictures are of grayness. It was an awesome trip though and I felt like my soul was revived after spending some good quality time with nature.

There was a 5 on 5 soccer tournament planned in which the employees in my office organized a team. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to play since there was to be a men’s league and supposedly a women’s league. Except that they couldn’t get enough women together to play, so I couldn’t play.

One of the very frustrating things about work here is that meetings get cancelled often, with short notice, or no notice. Several times it’s been planned to meet with the city council to get our Women’s Office project approved, but the meetings have been canceled. We also had a meeting planned this week with our office, an NGO, and the mayor to discuss the situation of the COCODEs, but it was canceled. Then the monthly COMUDE meeting was canceled also this week because the mayor had to go out of town. I had several orders of business to attend to during this meeting, but it was unfortunately postponed for the following week when I have a mandatory Peace Corps security meeting out of town. So I’ll have to wait til the May meeting. The difficult thing is also that so many people are involved in the monthly municipal development council meetings that it’s hard to inform everyone. So several people who’d had to travel significant distances came into our office that hadn’t gotten the message that it had been canceled. Sad when the Planning Office can’t plan.

It´s mango season! There are delicious, delicious mangos abounding everywhere. You can buy them on the street conveniently cut up in bite-sized pieces. Or buy them large, whole, and juicy for a good price. I've made mango curry a couple times too after I bought too many mangos too eat and they got super ripe so I had to mash them up and put them to another use. It turned out to very a very yummy alternative use of mangos. I love that all the special fruits that are expensive in the states abound here….fresh pineapple, avocados, papaya, mangos, etc.