After that oh-so-unpresumptous title, this post demands a bit more seriousness than some previous posts. I have started to get beyond the pangs of homesickness and constant culture shock to participate in my placement and surroundings a bit more, and two weekends ago I had one of the most profound participatory experiences of my life.
I spent Friday through Sunday discussing food sovereignity, the right to eat, and the dangers of soy monoculture (devoting most of the Argentine farmland to soy production for export) in this country and others in South America. The women with whom I work at the mission in Resistencia and I attended a women´s retreat at an organic women´s coop farm near Santa Fe, the capital city of the province below El Chaco. The well-organized event was very educational and allowed me and other participants to develop our understandings of the problems related to food access in Argentina and especially how those problems relate to women´s lives.
The conference´s focus on "food sovereignity" was concerned with the basic human right to access ample, high-quality, culturally appropriate food. An important part of food sovereinity is the necessity of communities (i.e. nation-states) to produce all or most of their own food needs, so as not to be dependent on other nations for basic alimentation. This is especially relevant in Argentina, which, like the U.S., has vast tracts of agriculturally productive land. Based purely on natural resources, there is no reason that any Argentine should go hungry.
However, those vast tracts of land are currently producing soy for export instead of wheat, corn, beef, citrus, and other crops suitable for human consumption. Argentina is currently the second largest producer of soy in the world (after only the U.S.) , as soy genetically modified for Round-Up pesticide has proved extremely profitable for a very few people. Now, I do not know much about soy farming in the U.S., other than that I live around and am related to many soy farmers. I believe that the environmental controls on pesticide are fairly strict, and that we also have a greater need for soy than Argentina does. But the results of a rapid transition to soy farming here have had disastrous effects on the agricultural economy. Thousands of farm laborers have lost their jobs, forcing them to move to the cities, where there are no more jobs. In the meantime, basic foodstuff must be imported at high prices. Mass unemployment combined with increasing food costs have produced a lot of really, really unneccesary hunger. Poor environmental controls on RoundUp may have caused birth defects and considerable sickness in children who encounter the substance.
Many of the people who own the land on which soy is grown are not Argentine, and view the land as a short-term investment rather than a long-term sustainable project. Consequently, many farms are in constant soy production, with no crop rotation or thought of maintaining arable soil. The quest for soy land (which turns a short-term profit) has also contributed to the mass deforestation of El Chaco (where we are living this year). The destruction of this ecosystem has led directly to the increase in summer temperatures from around 100 degrees Farenheit, to insufferable heat that often approaches 120 degrees F.
Although there are many comedores (soup kitchens) that have been offered soy-based dishes, it turns out that soy actually impedes young children´s ability to absorb nutrients. So feeding them soy amplifies the problems of anemia and malnutrition. Many are asking why wheat and beef, the staples of Argentine diet, must become more and more inaccesible to all involved. In a food-rights sense, the concern about importing and exporting most of one´s food has more to do with direct connections to food production than the more common environmental concept of "food-miles," which may or may not help the environment, and also may or may not help people eat.
One thing that surprised me was the close connection of soy production to the trafficking of women. Some argue that the infrastructure which soy production demands also provides avenues for trafficking: highways and railways, increasingly used to transport soy and decreasingly used for public transit, make clandestine transport easy, and any subsequent attempts at getting back home more difficult. In addition to this, the movement of employment from agricutural communities to trucking and transit creates a mobile population of mostly men alone, far from home, helping create the market for prostitution. This theme has been a major interest of the women´s group at our church here in Resistencia (see previous entries in this blog for more information). One of the women at the retreat shared that she had intercepted her neighbor´s 12-year-old daughter on her way to a fishy job offer that would almost certainly have landed her in forced prostitution; knowing that we are all only 2 or 3 degrees away from women being bought and sold is tragic and makes me understand better why this topic is attracting so much attention in the church and nation here.
Anyway, for more information, some in English, you can look at the website http://www.lasojamata.org. This is a horribly complicated and horrifying problem, especially since assuredly no one intended to cause so much harm to land and people through profitable farming for export. Of course, overproduction of soy does not help anyone except those who buy soy cheaply for use in biofuel and cattle feed.
The event made the local paper, if you can read a bit of Spanish: http://www.unosantafe.com.ar/26.10.2008/noticias/8612_M+s_de_150_mujeres_discutieron_el_modelo_agropecuario_vigente.html
The retreat, incidentally, allowed me to experience a robust, pro-child, pro-family feminist spirit that I have not felt in a long time. Many women brought their babies, and of course mate was consumed on all sides. (see previous post) I bought my own mate, made of recycled materials at a women´s coop in Córdoba. I also accompanied one of the women who was with me in painting a Lutheran rose in a mural commemorating the event, which made me reflect on the Christian spirituality that is often absent in such discussions.
So why should this be a topic of concern for missionaries and for Christians? Why do I think that a symbol of Lutheran faith relates to food rights? I have been reflecting on this a lot, and am tossing around some ideas in my head.
We are commanded to feed the hungry, and I see food rights as securely grounded in Christ´s teachings. That all should have access to food seems enshrined in Leviticus, in the Gospels, in the example of the early Church. I also recall that Jesus used culturally appropriate food to communicate--figs, fish, wine, bread. The central sacrament of our faith asks us to remember Christ through metaphors of food. Our need for His love and redemption is, like our need for food, constant, and our expressions of that need are culturally mediated. Perhaps in solidarity for food rights, we can all try to use locally produced bread and wine/grape juice for our communion celebrations. Please pray for the many South Americans fighting for access to affordable food and for those accompanying the men, women, and children suffering from unneccesary hunger today.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
What does Nelson Mandela have to do with Argentina?
After two months in Argentina (can you believe it?) and several emailed, Im'ed and mailed questions about what we're up to, I've realized that its about time for me to explain/describe my role in this missionary experience. Angela has already done a great job of introducing her placement and I'm sure that in the coming weeks and months we will both be able to introduce you to the various people that have entered and enriched our lives here, but let me first respond to the question posed in the title of this post: What does Nelson Mandela have to do with Argentina?
Absolutely nothing.
Nevertheless, I spend the majority of my working hours in Resistencia at the offices of the Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones Nelson Mandela (the Centro Nelson Mandela, or the Nelson Mandela Center for short), which is a non-registered, non-profit NGO in downtown Resistencia. The man in charge is Rolando Nuñez, a lawyer that has worked on human rights issues since the center was founded in 1995, an outspring of socio-political organization against the provincial gubernatorial campaign of a former member of the military dictatorship. In the last 13 years, Nuñez, his colleagues and friends have worked on a wide range of issues, the majority of which focus on the grave problems that confront the inhabitants in the interior of El Chaco (the province in which we currently reside, one of the poorest in Argentina).
In my two months at the center, we've taken on deforestation, the construction of steel mill, the unexplained deaths of some ten people in a small municipality in the interior, a collapsed medical-care system and the not-so-independent judiciary system in the province, just to give you an indication of the wide focus that the Centro Mandela maintains. While the focus may be expansive, the function of the center tends to be very simple: put people in contact with each other. Dr. Nuñez (the title of "doctor" tends to get added to the names of all lawyers here) has developed many strong relationships with hundreds of social players in the provincial, national, and even international arenas. He wakes up early and keeps regular office hours, receiving walk-in clients as well as government functionaries, always with his cellphone close at hand. He almost always knows the right person to call to help someone if he can't do it himself. The Centro Mandela thus functions as a locus of activity for NGO's, students, doctors, lawyers, unions and individuals (especially from aboriginal and indigenous nations) to share information, resources and solidarity. The other, much more public, function of the Center is to make sure that the information available to this network is made public through the media. Nuñez is very adept with mass-media communication, wielding critical adverbs like bureaucrats handle stamps and signatures. His articles, editorials and radio interviews communicate a passionate defense of human rights and dignity, that is often supressed by the government's populist discourse and public cynicism.
What do I DO at the Center? First of all, you should ask yourself why that question matters. After taking a few seconds to think about that, I'll tell you that I go into the office Tuesday through Friday mornings, helping Rolando respond to emails and typing documents that he dictates to me, frequently destined for publication in some media outlet. My adequate Spanish vocabulary and decent computer skills have set me up well for this task, as well as my ability to quickly learn about tasks at hand, making me more familiar with topics as we go along, making the whole process more efficient (for example, I remember names, people and abbreviations, making dictation significantly easier). When I'm not typing, I'm usually reviewing information, studies, newspapers, etc., looking for any relevant information about El Chaco and what needs to be done to help those that are suffering in the interior. When Rolando is on the phone giving a radio interview, I take care of his cell phone and let people know that they need to call him back.
If this gives you any indication of the kind of work that we do and its importance, let me describe my first week to you: Visit the courthouse, parole office and jail on my second day. Attend a conference on public lands and their illegal distribution at the Provincial Legislature on my third day. Fourth day, attend public meeting on the instalation of steel mill in which we represent a minority voice, outnumbered by a large number of angry respondents that criticize our rejection of the steel mill.
And we drink a lot of mate at the office as well. Yum!
In addition to working at the Centro, I also spend several afternoons in the Barrio playing with the kids in the workshops, working with a group of women on issues related to civic engagement (they want to start up an office which can direct people towards government services), and with the local adult school on environmental issues. We're currently thinking about how to link my two placements and we're following up on a couple of very good ideas, which include everything from visiting the interior with a group from the Barrio and increasing media sensitivity and literacy in the Barrio. We'll see where some of this goes.
The Center is named for Nelson Mandela for no specific reason. His international organization has no connection with our office and to the best of my knowledge that is fine for both sides, but his message of peace and justice, especially in the political arena, is one that the Centro Nelson Mandela center in Resistencia takes up every day. The time that I spend with Rolando is constantly engaging, challenging me to develop communicative and expressive strategies to communicate effective critique and to generate the dialogue that may eventually realize effective change. Rolando is becoming a remarkable mentor, full of passion and commitment. His work seems to have such a direct impact on the problems that he addresses that I'm starting to (re)consider going to law school. The LAW is such a formidable institution, resistent to participation my non-experts, which is why the indigenous groups that have rejected Western education and white-people ideology are so disadvantaged, and inappropriately so. There need to be people who will fight for the oppressed, who will help the mute find their voice, and who will strive for peaceful, respectful and dignified development that ACTUALLY engages peoples' needs.
Can I be one of those people? Do I have to be a lawyer to do meaningful work? Of course, this has also fed into the professor vocation as well, building up some questions about the relationship between literary production and democracy, more specifically thinking about how certain forms and themes ellicit participatory responses from various sectors of the general public. Consider for example, the way that people talk about George Orwell's novels 1984 and Animal Farm. These get cited in A LOT of discussions with a variety of audiences and with many different interpretations. Both novels still appear on high school reading lists and Orwell continues to enjoy popularity with American, British, and other readers. What about these two books make us still reference them? What about Uncle Tom's Cabin made it such a powerful book for its time? If you get what I'm getting at here, then you can see the direction that some of my thoughts about potential doctoral work might take (given that I'll be dealing with Latin American writers, probably from Mexico and Argentina).
The way that we make sense of our world is intimately attached to the stories that we know how to tell/hear about it. That's why the media work of the Centro Mandela is so important, working off of the strong community relationships that run through it. As I look forward to what awaits me in the coming months, I expect anything to happen, but I continue to affirm that:
The depressing realities of the marginalized peoples in El Chaco may be complex, but resignation CANNOT be an option.
If you can read Spanish and are interested in seeing the Centro's website, click HERE.
Absolutely nothing.
Nevertheless, I spend the majority of my working hours in Resistencia at the offices of the Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones Nelson Mandela (the Centro Nelson Mandela, or the Nelson Mandela Center for short), which is a non-registered, non-profit NGO in downtown Resistencia. The man in charge is Rolando Nuñez, a lawyer that has worked on human rights issues since the center was founded in 1995, an outspring of socio-political organization against the provincial gubernatorial campaign of a former member of the military dictatorship. In the last 13 years, Nuñez, his colleagues and friends have worked on a wide range of issues, the majority of which focus on the grave problems that confront the inhabitants in the interior of El Chaco (the province in which we currently reside, one of the poorest in Argentina).
In my two months at the center, we've taken on deforestation, the construction of steel mill, the unexplained deaths of some ten people in a small municipality in the interior, a collapsed medical-care system and the not-so-independent judiciary system in the province, just to give you an indication of the wide focus that the Centro Mandela maintains. While the focus may be expansive, the function of the center tends to be very simple: put people in contact with each other. Dr. Nuñez (the title of "doctor" tends to get added to the names of all lawyers here) has developed many strong relationships with hundreds of social players in the provincial, national, and even international arenas. He wakes up early and keeps regular office hours, receiving walk-in clients as well as government functionaries, always with his cellphone close at hand. He almost always knows the right person to call to help someone if he can't do it himself. The Centro Mandela thus functions as a locus of activity for NGO's, students, doctors, lawyers, unions and individuals (especially from aboriginal and indigenous nations) to share information, resources and solidarity. The other, much more public, function of the Center is to make sure that the information available to this network is made public through the media. Nuñez is very adept with mass-media communication, wielding critical adverbs like bureaucrats handle stamps and signatures. His articles, editorials and radio interviews communicate a passionate defense of human rights and dignity, that is often supressed by the government's populist discourse and public cynicism.
What do I DO at the Center? First of all, you should ask yourself why that question matters. After taking a few seconds to think about that, I'll tell you that I go into the office Tuesday through Friday mornings, helping Rolando respond to emails and typing documents that he dictates to me, frequently destined for publication in some media outlet. My adequate Spanish vocabulary and decent computer skills have set me up well for this task, as well as my ability to quickly learn about tasks at hand, making me more familiar with topics as we go along, making the whole process more efficient (for example, I remember names, people and abbreviations, making dictation significantly easier). When I'm not typing, I'm usually reviewing information, studies, newspapers, etc., looking for any relevant information about El Chaco and what needs to be done to help those that are suffering in the interior. When Rolando is on the phone giving a radio interview, I take care of his cell phone and let people know that they need to call him back.
If this gives you any indication of the kind of work that we do and its importance, let me describe my first week to you: Visit the courthouse, parole office and jail on my second day. Attend a conference on public lands and their illegal distribution at the Provincial Legislature on my third day. Fourth day, attend public meeting on the instalation of steel mill in which we represent a minority voice, outnumbered by a large number of angry respondents that criticize our rejection of the steel mill.
And we drink a lot of mate at the office as well. Yum!
In addition to working at the Centro, I also spend several afternoons in the Barrio playing with the kids in the workshops, working with a group of women on issues related to civic engagement (they want to start up an office which can direct people towards government services), and with the local adult school on environmental issues. We're currently thinking about how to link my two placements and we're following up on a couple of very good ideas, which include everything from visiting the interior with a group from the Barrio and increasing media sensitivity and literacy in the Barrio. We'll see where some of this goes.
The Center is named for Nelson Mandela for no specific reason. His international organization has no connection with our office and to the best of my knowledge that is fine for both sides, but his message of peace and justice, especially in the political arena, is one that the Centro Nelson Mandela center in Resistencia takes up every day. The time that I spend with Rolando is constantly engaging, challenging me to develop communicative and expressive strategies to communicate effective critique and to generate the dialogue that may eventually realize effective change. Rolando is becoming a remarkable mentor, full of passion and commitment. His work seems to have such a direct impact on the problems that he addresses that I'm starting to (re)consider going to law school. The LAW is such a formidable institution, resistent to participation my non-experts, which is why the indigenous groups that have rejected Western education and white-people ideology are so disadvantaged, and inappropriately so. There need to be people who will fight for the oppressed, who will help the mute find their voice, and who will strive for peaceful, respectful and dignified development that ACTUALLY engages peoples' needs.
Can I be one of those people? Do I have to be a lawyer to do meaningful work? Of course, this has also fed into the professor vocation as well, building up some questions about the relationship between literary production and democracy, more specifically thinking about how certain forms and themes ellicit participatory responses from various sectors of the general public. Consider for example, the way that people talk about George Orwell's novels 1984 and Animal Farm. These get cited in A LOT of discussions with a variety of audiences and with many different interpretations. Both novels still appear on high school reading lists and Orwell continues to enjoy popularity with American, British, and other readers. What about these two books make us still reference them? What about Uncle Tom's Cabin made it such a powerful book for its time? If you get what I'm getting at here, then you can see the direction that some of my thoughts about potential doctoral work might take (given that I'll be dealing with Latin American writers, probably from Mexico and Argentina).
The way that we make sense of our world is intimately attached to the stories that we know how to tell/hear about it. That's why the media work of the Centro Mandela is so important, working off of the strong community relationships that run through it. As I look forward to what awaits me in the coming months, I expect anything to happen, but I continue to affirm that:
The depressing realities of the marginalized peoples in El Chaco may be complex, but resignation CANNOT be an option.
If you can read Spanish and are interested in seeing the Centro's website, click HERE.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Tomando Mate
The past couple of weeks have been pleasant but busy here in Argentina. I am getting steadily more absorbed in my placement at the Mission, where I´ve started some yoga and recorder (the musical instrument) workshops. We enjoyed a visit from our program coordinator and also another ELCA pastor last week, and had fun teaching our guest how to make empanadas! Then on Monday our "host family" invited us to an asado (backyard barbeque, roughly) of lamb to celebrate a long weekend. For the record, lambs are adorable, and also delicious. Also for the record, mid-day asados have the advantage over evening asados of giving the body longer to recover before the next day of work.
And I have been tomando a lot of mate.
Tomando mate [pronounced mah-tay], or "taking mate," is a cultural practice to which I was first introduced by former YAGM volunteers in April. It refers literarly to drinking a semi-bitter her
bal infusion of crushed yerba mate leaves in hot water. But this beverage and its associated accesories and practices permeate life here in the Chaco (and throughout many parts of South America). One takes mate by putting the loose, crushed leaves in a mate gourd, pouring hot water (about 2 ounces at a time) over the leaves, and using a bombilla, or a metal straw with a strainer on the end to separate the water from the leaves, to drink the beverage. Few Argentines like tomando mate alone, however. This is an intensely social activity, and one person holds the thermos, pours new water into the gourd and passes it to each person in turn.
When we arrived in Resistencia last month, the first thing we did was tomar mate in the back of the pastor´s van, while transporting ourselves and luggage to our new apartment! Since then, I have taken mate in our apartment, in the church, in the after-school program, on front porches, in plazas, in our back yard, and with the hairstylist in the salon where we got our hair cut today! That we do drink mate is usually established within the first few minutes of any introductory conversation here, a question right up there with "Where are you from?", "How long will you be here?", and "Do you like the Chaco?" (Which, of course, we do.)
While mate has not yet replaced coffee in my life, it is here the preferred morning stimulating beverage. Children as young as 18 months old begin sipping from their parents´mates, although most people under the age of 15 prefer a gag-inducing amount of sugar with theirs. This baffled me--when I share mate with the kids at the mission, my stomach revolts at the amount of sugar trying to infiltrate. But then I remembered my introductory attempts at coffee, my junior high days of crunchy coffee, before I learned to appreciate the bitter glory of the bean itself! Very similar.
One thing I do not do much is drink mate alone. While some people do have their equipment at hand at all times (like my coffee mug in the U.S.), it is also the base of many a social gathering. Many conversations begin, "Let´s meet up in the plaza and tomar mate." Those who hold onto the gourd after completing their serving will hear jovial teasing, "It´s a mate, not a microphone!" When we walk up and down the streets of Resistencia, and see families, friends, and courting couples drinking mate in peace on every corner of the city, I feel that at least something is right in the world.
Last week on Friday, I had the honor of tomando mate at a political rally in which (strictly adhering to ELCA policy) we did not participate, but observed. Throughout this peaceful request that the government of the Chaco fulfill electoral promises and enforce the existing laws, people celebrated solidarity in uplifting the rights of all. As we navigated the edges of the crowd, taking both pictures and mate, we ran quick bit of mate to the pastor helping lead one of the participating associations. This was a powerful moment for me: accompaniment is not about trying to exert political influence or expressing the "right" political opinions or scoring "political rally points" to bring up in conversations for the rest of my life, but spending time with people, in communities, and drinking a lot of mate.
And I have been tomando a lot of mate.
Tomando mate [pronounced mah-tay], or "taking mate," is a cultural practice to which I was first introduced by former YAGM volunteers in April. It refers literarly to drinking a semi-bitter her
bal infusion of crushed yerba mate leaves in hot water. But this beverage and its associated accesories and practices permeate life here in the Chaco (and throughout many parts of South America). One takes mate by putting the loose, crushed leaves in a mate gourd, pouring hot water (about 2 ounces at a time) over the leaves, and using a bombilla, or a metal straw with a strainer on the end to separate the water from the leaves, to drink the beverage. Few Argentines like tomando mate alone, however. This is an intensely social activity, and one person holds the thermos, pours new water into the gourd and passes it to each person in turn.When we arrived in Resistencia last month, the first thing we did was tomar mate in the back of the pastor´s van, while transporting ourselves and luggage to our new apartment! Since then, I have taken mate in our apartment, in the church, in the after-school program, on front porches, in plazas, in our back yard, and with the hairstylist in the salon where we got our hair cut today! That we do drink mate is usually established within the first few minutes of any introductory conversation here, a question right up there with "Where are you from?", "How long will you be here?", and "Do you like the Chaco?" (Which, of course, we do.)
While mate has not yet replaced coffee in my life, it is here the preferred morning stimulating beverage. Children as young as 18 months old begin sipping from their parents´mates, although most people under the age of 15 prefer a gag-inducing amount of sugar with theirs. This baffled me--when I share mate with the kids at the mission, my stomach revolts at the amount of sugar trying to infiltrate. But then I remembered my introductory attempts at coffee, my junior high days of crunchy coffee, before I learned to appreciate the bitter glory of the bean itself! Very similar.
One thing I do not do much is drink mate alone. While some people do have their equipment at hand at all times (like my coffee mug in the U.S.), it is also the base of many a social gathering. Many conversations begin, "Let´s meet up in the plaza and tomar mate." Those who hold onto the gourd after completing their serving will hear jovial teasing, "It´s a mate, not a microphone!" When we walk up and down the streets of Resistencia, and see families, friends, and courting couples drinking mate in peace on every corner of the city, I feel that at least something is right in the world.
Last week on Friday, I had the honor of tomando mate at a political rally in which (strictly adhering to ELCA policy) we did not participate, but observed. Throughout this peaceful request that the government of the Chaco fulfill electoral promises and enforce the existing laws, people celebrated solidarity in uplifting the rights of all. As we navigated the edges of the crowd, taking both pictures and mate, we ran quick bit of mate to the pastor helping lead one of the participating associations. This was a powerful moment for me: accompaniment is not about trying to exert political influence or expressing the "right" political opinions or scoring "political rally points" to bring up in conversations for the rest of my life, but spending time with people, in communities, and drinking a lot of mate.
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