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Boatswain’s Log September 4^th. Ballsack.

 

It seems like the homework we receive here keeps piling up. I got up this morning and walked to Spanish and when I got to Spanish at ICADS I was blessed to receive the gift of homework in the form of a 10 minute presentation about a root of children of the street and a worksheet of some kind. That put me on edge. I am always on edge the day I get assigned things.

 

After Spanish was over I took a taxi with 3 other guys to LASP where I proceeded to throw down (after a fashion) with Javier who is the man in charge of my concentration. In Spanish we conversed about the fact that there is a crap-load of homework (we are researching for a paper, there’s a paper due next week, and there’s lots of reading to be done…not to mention ICADS homework) and I find it difficult to really be able to engage with my family when this is the case. He informed me that the first month was the most academically rigorous. We would be pushed hard and then about the time we roll to Nicaragua things would be easier. According to Javier our program is one of the most academically challenging programs that is offered by any study abroad program. That’s probably true. Natalie who if you recall is the hardcore Costa Rican woman came in and said that I needed to make a choice with regards to what I was going to do with my time. Was I going to make the sacrifice in grades to spend time with my host family or was I going to get good grades? Sigh. I dunno. It’s a hard call to make. There really is a whole lot of homework. I am a committed student who doesn’t like to slack off on work, but at the same time I can’t be trapped in a universe that is comprised completely of school work or I will go mad. Basically I guess I’ll just have to see.

 

It’s interesting here. Time goes so fast. We get done with class and then it’s time for homework and then it’s practically bed time. The days all sort of blur together and seem to be differentiated by new breakfasts. I wonder if it will ever slow down. I guess it is right now because I am making time to blog. I could make time for other things…hmmmm. I really hate being under the gun and being forced to do things all the time to manage my time. I thought I was done with that at the end of this last year…I guess not.

 

After talking to Javier I went to see my advisor for my paper. Her name is Karina. She’s a lovely woman who gave me a big stack of books as a gift for my research paper as soon as I got into her office. I was appreciative, but at the same time…I now have a stack of 8 books on my desk to read in about 2 weeks. One is almost done. She was really helpful though. We chatted a bit and she told me I would be able to interview a man who was a priest for the revolutionary army in Nicaragua…Bizarre. She said that he never would pick up a gun himself, but he gave spiritual help to those who were. Karina speaks Spanish a bit better than English so we’re going to be doing most of our talking in Spanish, which is good.

 

After that it was time for class. Javier lectured on the history of Costa Rica. Here’s the thing about Costa Rica. Remember how I said it was a peaceful rise to democracy? That was wrong. There were lots of military coups, the Indians were mostly dead by the time the Spaniards got there so that’s why there weren’t many encomiendas, and then it seems that recently there isn’t a whole lot of democracy going around. A part of the constitution here says that a president cannot be elected twice in his lifetime, but current president Oscar Arias is a guy who got himself elected again…in a shady fashion by influencing the part of the government that assures that this sort of thing doesn’t happen. The weird thing is that he helped create that part of the government. He then proceeded to get elected by a margin of 3000 votes by manipulating the media…all of which is owned by him or his elite supporters. Once in office this shady guy passed a referendum that signed Costa Rica on to the Central American Free Trade Agreement…which means that Costa Rica has to privatize the majority of it’s industry and services (education, healthcare, etc…) and not add tariffs to imports. Joy…According to Javier the education in Costa Rica was formerly only public and everyone had the same school. The rich went to school with the poor. There were no private schools. Then recently, schools started going to crap. Javier said that the same system of education that was part of the social guarantees set up by the government in 1949 was slipping. He got one of the best educations ever and for free. He has to put his own children into private schools because the public schools would be essentially deciding that they would be professional failures later in life.

 

I could go on. Let me summarize. The rich are getting more and more rich here, the middle class is shrinking, education and health care that were formerly free and excellent are now being privatized and costly, and the amount of poor people are increasing every day. The short of it all is: Despite the economic growth seen in the country, Costa Rica is slipping more and more towards a third world nation every single year. That’s heavy business.

 

I was thinking as he was talking about this. What should we be doing? As citizens of the United States. Our government’s policies (CAFTA) are effectively thrusting Latin American nations into the third world at our benefit. Or rather to the benefit of multinational corporations based in the US. We as the American people are sitting by and watching as our nation bleeds other nations for their labor, resources, and markets and saying to ourselves “What’s wrong with Latin America?”

 

Oscar Romero had things to say about capitalism and communism. He said they were both idolatry. He said that communism had a tendency of placing the value of humanity over the value of God and worshipping it. He then said that Capitalism ‘idolizes money and “human goods” ‘. In his own words:

 

“Which is more serious: to deny God out of a false idea of human liberation, or to deny him out of selfishness raised to the level of idolatry? Who are the greater hypocrites: those who believe in this world to the point of denying openly what is transcendent, or those who use what is transcendent and religious as a tool and justification for their idolatry of the earth?

          Both are atheism. Neither of them is the truth that the church of the gospel teaches so beautifully: ‘The sublimest reason for human dignity is human beings’ call to communion with God.’ “

 

This made me think. The church is meant to be a light in the darkness. We are meant to call our people to Christ. To a higher standard. Are we in the United States failing to do so? Are we failing our brothers in the Lord in Latin America by not standing up for them in opposition to our countrymen who would abuse their labor and their land?

I think we may just be. Are we lulled into sleep by the comfort we exist in? The world grows darker and we, as the light, hide under a bushel.

It’s for me too. I’m not perfect. I am certainly no Oscar Romero. In reading his book I have found that he had so much Christ-like character. The man was incredibly humble. He stood for non-violence in a place where violence claimed the lives of so many he knew. His friends were killed and tortured and he preached a gospel of peace and forgiveness until the moment that they killed him too. Do you get the depth of that statement? It’s easy for us who have never known the idea of having a friend arrested and tortured to make claims about what we would do, but this man of God who saw the people he loved disappear, be killed, or be tortured preached forgiveness for the broken until the day he died. The broken he preached for included the ones killing his friends. That is huge. We have a Columbus Day in the US. To mark the arrival of the greedy man who sought his fortune. Maybe we should have an Oscar Romero day. It would do us good to have a change of perspective.

I got a bit “preachy” (as my dad would say). None the less. Look at the things I am learning. Reading books about Latin America here make them more real. It seems to matter more and be less of an academic exercise. It’s hard to have to read so much, but I guess the value of the things I learn will probably change me forever. I just hope I get to see a volcanoe or something cool in the midst of all this learning.