Coming to Peace Corps
fresh off being unemployed and living at my parents’ house post-January 20th,
2017 made me as “activist” as they come. My famously misspelled “Say No To Facism and
White Supremecy” sign attended many protests, I have a desktop folder filled
with letters to representatives and I actually watched C-SPAN on a regular
basis. Scott Walker’s office also became familiar with my rambling,
un-rehearsed phone calls.
FLASHFORWARD to our pre-departure staging event
in Miami. 34 bright-eyed and bushy tailed Peace Corps Volunteers sat in a stale
breakout room of a Crowne Plaza listening to a rambling list of rules. Discussion of politics is discouraged
and must be meticulously PCPC (Peace Corps Politically Correct). Wat? We aren’t
even supposed to tell people who we voted for or attend local protests. We
aren’t supposed to be civil rights warriors.
I am to assume the role of “pacifist”: anti-war, nonviolence, passivity.
This makes sense, it being the PEACE Corps and all…
Nonetheless it was a tough pill to swallow,
coming off reading Franz Fanon’s chapter “On Violence” in his book “Wretched of
the Earth”, which essentially states that social change and progress isn’t
possible without violence.
So then how does “development” (with a capital
‘D’—shout out to my International Studies professors) factor in to all of
this? Is Development purely economic? Is progress and social change “D/development”?
How do you respect a culture while “developing”
it? Who am I to decide what needs to be “D/developed”? I literally have no
idea. More to come over the next two years. [Side-bar: academics in
international geography fields like to distinguish between Development and
development. D= top-down, trickle-down, GDP-based, the West brings “progress”
to the Rest.]
This is why I am ok
with being a pacifist
(right now) and why I’m madly in-love with Peace Corps approach to development
[despite being interwoven with other war-mongering and otherwise unsustainable
international practices]
1. Volunteers are only sent where they are directly invited by a host
government. Then
they are only sent to communities that seek out a volunteer.
2. Volunteers are only authorized to
serve in sectors that the host government determines. The DR accepts currently:
Education (we are the only Peace Corps country that teaches literacy in the
native language), Business, and Youth Development volunteers.
3. Peace Corps’ Three Goals are
beautiful:
a. Provide trained men and women to
interested governments
b. Share Dominican culture with
Americans
c. Share American culture with
Dominicans
d. (low key: marry a Dominican/ have Peace Corps babies)
4. We aren’t here to change a culture. This is what colonists did. Through building relationships we
will, in theory, be able to have meaningful and non-imposing conversations
about our views on things like: machismo, gay rights, education systems.
5. We are required to conduct a 3-month research study on our site to understand and learn
before we come up with “development” ideas related to improving Childhood
Literacy.
6. Once we have a project idea that has
been created alongside our Dominican project partners, implemental strategies
are collectively decided upon. No
project is a Peace Corps Project. Our existence is as facilitator.
So I guess I love a part of what my government
does internationally. But we also do bad things. This is evident especially serving in a Latin
American country and learning/ seeing/ hearing of Estadounidense occupations
and the dictators we’ve backed in the name of “democracy” (aka capitalism). Karl
Polanyi’s Double Movements describe this nicely. The idea with Double Movements is that when markets are unleashed in
order to take advantage of labor, nature, and money, an opposite movement is
formed contradicting these practices by calling for social protections.
Contradictions. This idea is so perfectly illustrated by a short vignette from
“The Spirit of the 60’s, History of the Peace Corps:
Background
bullets for this cool vignette I want to share with you:
·
1930-1961: DR suffers terrible
dictatorship. Atrocities
included but not limited to: killing everyone who disagreed with dictator
Trujillo, a mass Haitian genocide, allowing Jews sanctuary during WWII only to “whiten”
the race.
·
1961:
Dictator Trujillo killed
·
1963:
Intellectual professor-type who was in exile in Cuba during Trujillo’s reign
wins presidency. The name’s Bosch, Juan Bosch.
·
Juan
Bosch began implementing his Fidel-influenced ideas of governing. According to my Spanish teacher, “Bosch
could have made the best system of government that the DR has ever seen”.
·
1965: U.S. gets angry that things
happen in the world without their consent and also, COMMUNISM IS THE DEVIL. In
the name of “democracy” (aka capitalism) we invade the DR, oust the
democratically-elected leader and put in a dude named Joaquín Balaguer,
Dictator Trujillo’s former right-hand man.
Cool
vignette which so perfectly describes what side of history I’m trying to be on:
In 1965,
Estadounidense troops stormed the beaches of the DR and the two sides clashed
with bullets and bombs. In the chaos and
violence of the invasion, Peace Corps volunteers rushed to the beaches to cart
off wounded Dominicans to clinicas. Other volunteers held lights for hours
as doctors conducted emergency surgeries.
So if my
government is going to send missiles to foreign countries, I’m confused why
they sent me here to teach kids how to read. But I love that they did. I can’t
be an activist right now, but I’m ok with that. The Double Movements are alive
and well and I’m content to be on this
side of history as a pacifist.
#millennialstatus
