Nobody In, Nobody Out

I am sitting on a wooden bench in the eighth floor apartment of a family whose five year-old I am trying to teach English. I am watching the Chinese television's English language coverage of the Honduran election. Reporting is only ever a collection of images and soundbytes, but it is interesting to observe which images and soundbytes different cultures consider relevant. The Chinese version of the story shows a man surrounded by supporters in blue shirts accepting victory on behalf of Hondurans of all colors, and a man surrounded by supporters in red shirts conceding defeat in an election conducted by a sovereign state. Then the TV shows the green flag of Brazil and a third man speaking his version of events. The newsreader goes on to mention that multinationals such as the OAS refused to send observers or recognize what happened on November 29.


Elsewhere of course I see other versions of the events. Al Giordano reports on rallies organized by the Frente Nacional Contra el Golpe de Estado rallying outside the Brazilian Embassy. Jim DeMint of South Carolina also stands by his friends in Central America--but of course he has a different set of friends. Last time I was in Central America I talked to an American who had just been in Honduras and said that the people he had talked to didn't seem to think much of either side. Journalists often try to search for the authentic story, to give us the true voice of the people. But I have come to believe that there are often multiple simultaneously valid narratives—and which version you identify with depends—in life as at Fenway Park, on which team you were already rooting for. And a lot of what people say is really just picking apart some one with a good fastball. Most of the criticisms by human rights organizations after the coup (Government violence, suppression of dissent) were the same complaints they were making prior to the coup. And by putting a national figure in the spotlight, their actions gave dissident groups a common cause to rally around—peoples' frustration could be directed in a concrete direction. Central Americans who organize with Frentes Nacionales have had better success in the long term than those who looked to International figures for deliverance. At the beginning of the twentieth century soldiers under the command of the oligarchs killed men like Sandino, Zapata, and Farabundo Marti, but Marxists were eventually able to use them to create movements based on home-grown inspiration, as opposed to concepts like international socialism, neo-liberalism or deference to the Yankees. And at the beginning of the twenty-first century Zelaya's not dead, he's only in the Brazilian embassy.


I have just begun teaching a course on the history of English-speaking countries, and just did a unit on Ireland during the troubles. It is interesting to see what the people who designed the Chinese textbooks think is worth mentioning—did you know that under the Brehon Law which applied in Hibernia prior to the arrival of the English, a woman who had borne a child was sometimes considered a better candidate for marriage because her fertility was proven? And I talked about the Troubles. I did give it a little bit of a slant—as some one who grew up listening to the Pogues, I can't help having a different attitude about what went on in Ulster than some one who grew up listening to Skrewdriver. I'm in the green corner, not the orange one—but I tried to be fair to both the Celts in the UDA and those in the Provisional IRA. I talked about Bobby Sands—who took the weapon of the Hunger Strike even farther than Mohandas Gandhi had. Of course Sands' people had had to endure more centuries of oppression by English concepts of Law and Right than Gandhi's had. The New York Times obituary on Sands talked about how Sands' actions would only prolong the conflict. It is true, but things written in places like the NYT play a role in prolonging conflicts as well—including criticisms of rebels in Catholic countries who have demonstrated willingness to put their lives on the line for their beliefs. Researching my presentation, I also found that after Sands was called home, the Islamic Republic of Iran renamed Winston Churchill Boulevard, to Bobby Sands street. Both were elected members of the British parliament who inspired the armies of their people, but for some reason the British Embassy changed the location of their main entrance to avoid putting the Irishman's name on their letterhead.


The date November 29 stood out for another reason. Ten years ago another group of rebels faced the men with guns and disrupted a different three-letter internationalist organization. People who talk about genocide of precolumbian peoples forget that what was done to the peoples of North America by the soldiers of the city of Washington DC, is not so different from what was done to the peoples of Europe by the soldiers of Rome and her successors—the tribes disappear as independent political entities and are only remembered in place names like Seattle and Tegucigalpa. Every time you say those words, you are using the vocabulary of a non-Indo European language. In the movie recently made about the encounter you can see a generational rift between the protesters of my generation, and those like Paul Schell, who faced the men with guns during the Vietnam conflict. Supposedly one influence on the protestors who orchestrated the complete collapse of the WTO in that city was Ward Churchill, author of Pacifism as a Pathology. Talking, marching documenting, speaking truth to power is a game which the system has figured out how to keep marginalized. Sometimes it is necessary to use the chinks in the neo-liberal model to slip in a Trojan Horse which becomes impossible to ignore. Vietnam era liberals have created a huge alphabet soup of organizations in which people talk, and publish documents, and pass resolutions and criticize actions from a perspective which infringes on national sovereignty without having having a coherent alternative to put in its place. And the members of the working class on both sides of the barricades in Seattle are marginalized from the discussion. The English system of Law includes a concept called “duty to retreat.” People are required to cede space to an officer of the Law as representative of the sovereign—and this expectation makes possible a certain type of order. However, in nations without a King, much has been accomplished by those involved in civil disobedience in violation of the “duty to retreat” before officials representing a government or multinationals. What the protesters in Seattle had in common with Gandhi and King was this refusal. Refusal to obey “duty to retreat” results in violence—but it also makes the violence embodied in Law and its enforcement, impossible to ignore. It is a reminder that people who say “violence never solves anything” should not be identifying with the Sheriff of Nottingham.


It was interesting to read my president's attempt to find a coherent way forward in Afghanistan. In my unit on English speaking countries we talk about government. How the English constitution evolved over time, through centuries of trial and error—and even in the American Republic the original articles of confederation had to be replaced by a constitution written in light of experience. And the role of a place called Langley cannot be ignored. CIA training helped bring down governments in many parts of the world—since they installed different native figures, it was not exactly colonialism. But it was a distortion. And many people resented it—and resolved to change the leaders which CIA operations had left them with. It is important to remember that the Islamic Republic of Iran exists not merely because of those who marched beneath the banner of Khomeini's interpretation of Islam, but also Marxist groups such as the Fedayeen-e Khalq. The CIA represents something different from the armies which have existed from time immemorial. Their trade, like that of a soldier, is overthrowing and protecting governments. But they do not march beneath a banner, and do not wear uniforms. Unlike people in an army or a color revolution, they are not risking their lives for a piece of cloth. They are, to put it in union terminology, scabs. And the current Afghani constitution, like so many documents from the latter half of the twentieth century, would not exist, without events orchestrated by those who took money from the scabs in Langley.


In the 1848 century the Maya of the Yucatán staged an uprising against the foreigners who had oppressed them for centuries. They had their enemies on the run and were about to take the city of Mérida. They suddenly stopped—a swarm of ants informed them that it was time to plant corn. It seems unlikely that some one ordered this maneuver—some actions do not have intellectual authors, they merely reflect empowered individuals acting within established cultural priorities. War can be documented in almost all human civilizations, as violence can be seen throughout the animal kingdom. But different civilizations have different priorities. The Maya did not seem to consider it a grave sin for an animal to kill another animal—but the calendar, and cultivating Zea mays was more important than continued attacks against their Spanish overlords. Bobby Sands said his revenge would be "the laughter of our children." And all kinds of people take actions which reduce the number of laughing children in future generations--some even more significantly than armies.



Even in a season when nation does not lift up sword against nation, it can still be useful to learn war to understand the conflicts going on between the various elements present within every nation. This is for the citizens of the Islamic Republic of Iran: those who renamed Winston Churchill boulevard Bobby Sands street in memory of the Irish Republic Army's officer commanding for the Maze prison. And to those with their boots on the ground, wearing my colors.


Ay-ay-ay-ay Cantan, no llores
Porque cantando se alegrese
Cielito lindo, los corazones.

mil metros sobre el nivel del mar

I am watching a movie called the Founding of a Republic 建国大业 . It is about the origins of the modern Chinese government. A scene from the beginning of the movie stays with me. Underneath a portrait of Doctor Sun Yat-Sen, two men dressed in the same Mandarin suit descend the two halves of a double staircase. Both are disciples of the father of modern China: one is Chairman Mao, the other is Chiang Kai Shek. They are holding a joint press conference, and many people in the audience express their joy at seeing the two men who focus the hopes of so many members of their race, standing together. In subsequent scenes the two are leading opposing armies, but unlike what I was expecting, no one is portrayed as a villain. Regardless of which side they are on, the pivotal figures of the nation's history are portrayed as sober leaders bravely facing difficult decisions. It is always comprehensible why some members of the Chinese race would see these various figures as worthy of loyalty. One of Chiang's generals finally decides to join Mao's cause. Chiang's final move is blocked when the Americans refuse to allow him to refuel his jets at an airbase they control in Korea, and the son of salt merchants ends up outmaneuvered by the son of a peasant.


I will shortly be teaching a course on the history of English-speaking countries. I often incorporate songs into my teaching and was thinking of one from Phil Ochs
“You're supporting Chiang Kai Shek, while I'm supporting Mao,
and when I've got something to say, sir, I'm going to say it now.”
But after seeing that movie I think I may choose a different song. And it makes me realize in some ways that there are other parts of the song which seem off-key. He is singing to college administrators about their alleged thought crimes:
“You'd like to be my father, you'd like to be my dad
and give me kisses when I'm good and spank me when I'm bad.”
But in actual fact, the hostility of the singer is obvious, while that of the authority figures being lampooned might well be a projection. It's actually possible to want to act like a father without wanting to infantilize the person you care about. Och's song represents both the best and the worst of the American 60s—on the one hand the resolve to stand by new values, and to search for them outside Western civilization—on the other hand a sneering at the paternal instinct. It is an archetypal representation of the idealism and the readiness to assume the worst about those with other ideals. This hostility towards male authority figures was an artifact of the time, and similar to that of the red guards here in China, who attacked many administrators and authority figures in the middle of the hierarchy, while professing their ultimate loyalty to Chairman Mao. Anyone in a position of responsibility learns that some orders will be obeyed and others will not be, that giving in to the demands of some people means ignoring others.


I especially like Phil Och's song, There but for Fortune, in which the folksinger takes a sentiment often expressed in Victorian England, “There but for the grace of God” and makes it accessible to people who don't believe in a personal deity. But compassionate emotions sometimes extend the circle to one group while closing to another. When I was in Guatemala in 2004 I learned to play that song. I also learned another song, one which cast aspersions on American Serviceman. I was once at a party in a house of people from Europe and Canada, the mood was jovial, I was thinking of showing off my skills, and to distance myself from the military. But when I picked up the guitar, the voice inside my head said “Don't sing that song.” I think it is both possible and necessary to separate the perspective and emotional tone manifest in different songs by the same author. Ochs' broad brush allegations about the members of the working class who served in Vietnam were picked up by white college boys. And a few years later, many of the same insinuations ended up being picked up by white college girls to be thrown at subsequent generations of college boys. Although I like Phil Ochs, it occurs to me that there are reasons to tone down the smug allegations the folksinger vows to express.


There's also the particular nature of the allegations. The dominance of mercantile interests in the Yankee economic system often required them to intervene militarily in the affairs of their more agrarian southern neighbors. The Old South's Episcopal aristocracy was driven down by men like William Tecumseh Sherman. From the land which suffered under his scorched earth policies a new group eventually arose to enforce order—and one of the chief trespasses with which they were concerned was the one Ochs chose to speak of. They paraded the flag of rebellion at nighttime rallies where they knew there was no danger of being shot--because they had ensured that the men they targeted could not use their weapons. Like the folks in white sheets, the folksinger is not talking about an action by a particular man, but painting it as a collective crime—and trying to shame an entire group of men regardless of their individual actions. For the Klan of course, it was coloreds and Catholics kept in their place by speech and theatrics about things disturbing to white womanhood.


Another scene in the Chinese movie involves a long-haired student, speaking to a rally. His arm gesticulates wildly and he shouts about the need for democracy. Later we see him in darkness. There is gunfire, and his glasses fall to the ground with the right eyepiece shattered. The conventions of contemporary story-telling place certain events off-camera. And this works to minimize the types of questions which make it difficult to repair the social fabric.



For some one who grew up in my generation, democracy and human rights were supposed to be universal values whose value should be obvious to all enlightened individuals. We watched the desire for them topple oppressive power structures in places like Berlin and Johannesburg. But looking back now, I realize that the collective nature of the oppression was a big part of why western students rallied to these concepts. Not necessarily because there was an exact identity between their ideologies and colored peoples' struggles for freedom. In our history, Mandela assumed power because of democracy and the support of an international human rights community, but it is quite likely he would have exercised a different form of power, much earlier if not for his people being sugjugated. In South Africa, human rights served as a way of restoring men of color to the authority they would have had if the great white race had never interfered. As with Jim Crow in the post-Reconstruction South, a form of Protestantism which had become almost Levitical in its hostility toward joy and art, played a large role in creating ideological justification for maintaining the strict separation. Of course the flip side is that the collective nature of the struggle and the orderliness imposed by the Dutch gave symbolic acts much greater resonance. Mandela saw violence as a last resort but while at Robben Island, he justified the use of sabotage against the government which imprisoned him. When released he was able to use symbols to unify the nation. Once he was at liberty, he did not turn the Law to turn collective punishment against those who oppressed him—he sought to find truth, to document how Apartheid had functioned. Talking about Mandela with an Irishman here in China, he mentioned his attitude to the Springboks, an all-white national Rugby team which had previously been the focus of black animus. As president, Mandela donned a cap to show his support, and the team went on to win the 1995 Rugby World Cup. It sent a powerful message—and all it took was a hat.


To return to the Chinese movie, there is another symbolic resonance to the scene of the long-haired student and the glasses—to something which happened forty-some years later. It was also an issue of human rights and democracy—but it was not a European-descended minority holding back a much larger native population with different language and traditions. All the players involved were of the same race—and one with traditions far more ancient than those of any government run by white folks. And as the scene reminds us, many people in the Chinese leadership at that time might have been idealistic students themselves, or watched friends who were idealistic students fall in the struggle to build a China free of Western Imperialism. Those who died at 天安门 in 1989 had made friends with one group of soldiers, so the authorities sent in new soldiers, with no personal relationships to those who labored to build the Goddess of Democracy. At 天安门 and elsewhere, young people in Asia risked a lot more than the four who died in Ohio. Gandhi once corrected people who talked about trying to improve the world without spilling innocent blood. “No,” he said, “but it must be innocent blood.”


Mao saw that War is better understood as a battle of will than an excuse for killing people—thus when Chinese officers left Chiang Kai Shek to support him he accepted. This is the same thing which has happened for most successful conquerors from Alexander the Great to Cortez. The descendants of those who followed General Lee fought for the City of Washington DC on subsequent occasions—although they sometimes avoided blue uniforms. Navajos on the warpath were killed by the US army, but in uniform they helped us defeat the Army of Japan. Alaskan natives, including the Yup'ik tribe, have the highest rate of service of any ethnic group in the fifty states. What happened at 天安门, like so many other things the sixties generation likes to talk about in emotionally fraught ways, involved the death of individuals—but it was done to destroy a movement, a focus of opposition to the government built the principles of Chairman Mao. Like the officers who originally sided with Chiang, some of the survivors of that day have decided they can serve the Middle Kingdom better by not denigrating the legacy of Mao.


Recently I read a book critical of Zhou En Lai not for his own actions, but for his awareness of what happened under Mao. Zhou En Lai and I share the same last name, and my father pointed out that the building in Southwestern China, on the back of the fifty yuan note was saved from destruction partially through his actions. Once people feel free to speak as if Chairman Mao were the embodiment of evil, no one can escape the charge of complicity, regardless of their personal conduct. But if Mao is maintained as an exemplary figure, that regard can extend both to his able lieutenants, and even those who fought bravely and resourcefully against him. The conflict can be seen, like that between Jacob and Esau in the book of Genesis, as between two members of the same family. Later on in Genesis, when Joseph is thrown into the well, he doesn't blame the patriarch Jacob—and once he gets out of the well and is elevated by a foreign government, he doesn't even hold it against the siblings who threw him there.



In the 19th century a prostrate Chinese government had to deal with a concept called extraterritoriality. Western governments claimed the right to intervene to protect their citizens regardless of how the Chinese legal system viewed their actions. The concept of universal human rights is in a sense an extension of extraterritoriality—now foreigners can cast themselves as the protectors not merely of their own citizens, but of people born and bred in China. And this is objectionable not merely because Western governments kill black boys on mopeds. Even when the criticism is leveled by non-governmental organizations which are professionals at criticizing action, it represents the attempt to universalize a frame of reference developed in secular Europe—one which at best can trace its roots back to the French Enlightenment, and is full of concepts which have not endured the test of a single human lifetime. China has its own traditions of discourse on just governance, dating back millenia to Confucius and others.


When the Jesuit Mateo Ricci arrived in China on September 10, 1583 he spoke of the cultural continuity between the Middle Kingdom and the Catholic Europe he left behind. But different people use different frameworks of analysis when they search for universal principles. The concepts which seemed universal to a Jesuit when the Son of Heaven was an individual human being were different than those which seemed universal to Jacobins in Paris after the guillotining of the King. And the Jesuit's ideas of what to do were different than those who attempted to impose the Code Napoleon, or those who would impose any other legal code--universally, without respect for national sovereignty and cultural differences. Working in human rights I noticed that it seemed to attract people with colonialist attitudes towards other peoples' consciousness—people full of ideas for how the government should be run, how other people should think--even the words we should stop using. And so human rights may have served as a good way for us to make sure we vented those colonialist impulses on each other, rather than interfering with people with the responsibility to actually accomplish things.


Except for the Cultural Revolution—China has long enshrined the importance of filial piety—in stories from a century ago, the pecking order from the emperor on down had become an overly oppressive hierarchy. Which may be why the excesses of the cultural revolution served as an inevitable counterbalance. Most Chinese relationships are described reciprocally—one party is the head, but there are obligations incumbent on both. And from Confucius to Lao Tze, most Chinese philosophers talk in terms of principles rather than Law--which is often stressed in the West. Like many ancient discourses, there is a narrative of justifiable actions rather than individual rights. And these principles have been recognized quietly over time. In his own day Confucius was merely an advisor to a minor governor—it took time for his wisdom to percolate to the center of consciousness.


And if you look back it is not clear what China would have gained had they made concessions to the students at 天安门, or allowed them to become a cause celeb among Westerners. Russia after the fall of communism is still not renowned for free speech or freedom for dissenters. The Chinese economy is arguably more healthy than those who listened to Western experts in the wake of the fall of the Soviets. And representative democracy as a way to determine the “will of the people” has demonstrated a tendency to deadlock—which is actually what it was designed to do. At the time of Bush versus Gore I read an article comparing how the legitimate head of state for England was determined by battles between soldiers in the 18th century, with how the legitimate head of state for the United States was determined by battles between lawyers at the dawn of the 21st. And a much smaller number of people were involved in that discussion than the number who chose Hu Jin Tao. In Germany or Mexico, or Minnesota, we have often seen that even where there is no manipulation when the votes are cast, the decisive element in the number of ballots is something which, for a population as large as a modern nation-state, is statistically just noise. It becomes impossible to ignore the dominance of Judicial branch over the other two. Moreover, procedural maneuvering within the two-party system often ensures that neither the populace nor the politicians can freely voice their true beliefs. A combination of ideological polarization and a very limited range of acceptable views mean that even a politician who might not be the lesser of two evils in a different system, may very well be forced to act like one. Moreover our political system encourages the development of blocs which are dedicated to the proposition that whatever the other party does is idiotic—and a minority who voice that discontent in as offensive a manner as possible. Whether a Republican or a Democrat is in power, contemporary American democracy involves large numbers of people talking as if the head of the nation should respond to their desires like a marionette. People here in China have less reason to mutter about the motives of the person responsible for exercising headship. Whether you are a member of a nation with Monarchy, Democracy, or One-party rule, there are certain tradeoffs you cannot avoid making. And a qualitative distinction between systems doesn't necessarily imply a qualitative distinction in other measures of good governance.



Twenty years ago, Chinese students looked to Western governments for solutions. But now they might look elsewhere. Many western ideas have been readily adopted throughout the world—especially products developed by engineers working with materials whose properties they can test to the breaking point. Guns, cars, and cellphones have a utility which people from most cultures other than the Amish recognize. Wires and wheels don't need to be translated, but for institutional cultural constructs language, and even dialects, can make a critical difference. Cars and computers function as advertised because they are designed by people who work with objects and parts machine-tooled to be interchangeable. Democracy and human rights are more complicated--and often function at the expense of local wisdom and traditions. The attempt to force their adoption by the rest of the world might be compared to asking everyone to use a computer program which still has some significant glitches. Democratic systems designed by the administration put into power by the supreme court may not be what the rest of the world needs.



Mao grew up as a peasant. And in contrast to orthodox Marxists trying to foment a revolution by organizing people who lived in cities, Mao was one of the twentieth century thinkers to see the strengths an agrarian nation could draw on. He understood the wisdom of peasants and designed a concept of guerrilla warfare to allow his followers to move among peasants like fish swimming in water. His concepts inspired the people of the nation of Vietnam, who in declaring their independence from France authored a document which borrowed a great deal from Mr Jefferson's declaration of independence. Like another set of former colonies, they had to fight for their independence against a great English-speaking Empire from across the ocean. Their victory over the corrupt leaders of Saigon ensured that the initials VC will always be a reminder of the limits of the power of the city of Washington DC—a city which a French architect designed to exclude J street, as a snub to Mr Jefferson. It is one thing to advocate regime change. But some one has to end up taking the place of a dictator. Even when you have toppled a real slaveholder, those whom the Yankees would put in his place will thus always be seen as tyrants.

When I was in Guatemala it always interested me that although I was in a Catholic country, the worst crimes were attributed to a Protestant. And not merely a Protestant in the sense that the successor of Thomas a Becket, or the Catholic Priest who sought to reform the church with the concept Sola Scriptura are considered Protestants. He is part of a church which has only been baptizing for a little over thirty years. A great deal of money has been spent to try to use the judicial system of his nation to bring him to court. The legal pressure has forced the military to release some archives, and my friends in Guatemala are grateful for the documentation of what happened to their families. There is the possibility that after decades he might be tried, which would be a symbolic victory. There were many dictators in Latin America, only Peru's Alberto Fujimori has gone to trial. An Asian without the history to build family connections gets punished for things boys with European blood got away with, and the human rights community calls it a victory against impunity. But there are many types of symbolic victories, and not all of them require a lot of money, or lawyers. The man who is the focus of grievance about the violence once came to the valley of Rabinal, wearing a sombrero like the ones peasants wear. Some one who had harvested corn and beans from the mountains above Rabinal, picked up a stone. And the Protestant was no longer wearing the Sombrero.

I am Submarine U-571

They say that the bellybutton of the world is a Guatemalan lake with two volcanoes. There is a place there I like to visit, with an excellent view of two perfect blue cones rising out from the surface of the lake. Most of the hotels in the area are built in an ecologically sensitive manner, using local materials, solar power, carefully manicured grounds, and designed in a way which provides an exquisite counterpoint to the beauty of the landscape. A much more famous Guatemalan destination is the city of Antigua—also full of elegant buildings with beautiful gardens, though made of thick stones rather than stucco or recycled bottles. Hotels in both locations have staff who dress in traditional indigenous clothes. But here at the lake they dress that way because that's the way they dress all the time—in Antigua the Guatemalan staff usually wear a uniform designated by the hotel and change into Western clothes when their shift is over. It all contributes to a beautiful environment for the tourists who buy rooms and drinks—but what in the city of stone is a sort of play-acting at the way things used to be, here, overlooking the docks of Santa Cruz is something still woven into the fabric of peoples' lives.


I was there on a Saturday, a day when people are encouraged to dress themselves up in outfits from a rack of used clothes, the men often in drag. We sit in the dining hall eating fried chicken, and for dessert a younger man spending a few months working at the lodge brings out coffee. I talk to him later—and he tells me that the scenery with the lakes and volcanoes, reminds him of his home state. Later on in the evening the tables are pushed aside for dancing, and a guitar performance of the owner's favorite songs.


Later still a group of about seven guests is drinking beers under the open sky, discussing a movie called the History Boys, which almost everyone in the group has seen. I sit in a sleeveless white dress and confidently expound at length on my interpretation of whether the movie should be called “homo erotic.” In retrospect I realize that, like the boyish teacher in the movie, I am picking my arguments based more on the reaction I hope to provoke from others than on what I actually believe myself. Finally, the guy from Oregon takes a deep breath. “No, it's not OBvious. That's not the way I look at it. And why are we spending so much time talking about this when we've already established that the way you define the word is different from the way everyone else at this table defines the word?” The definitiveness of the Oregonian's response reminds me that I am advocating a point of view I'm not completely sure should be advocated. After a pause, he starts to tell us about his adventures in the kingdom he calls Saudi.


Getting to the hotel was a little complicated. It was five o'clock, and I wasn't sure when the boats stopped running, but took a chance on one going to the place nicknamed “gringotenango” in hopes that there would still be one to the hotel at Santa Cruz. One boatman, who senses my uncertainty—promises me a charter for seventeen bucks. I end up paying. I am frustrated when I learn that boats run until six, and that I have rewarded some one for deceiving me by paying him ten times as much as I should have. But I also realize that, as with so many transactions, it's an issue of information as much as morality. If the terms of service had been clearly posted when I made my decision, the opportunity for antisocial behavior would not have existed. Our culture's focus on individual responsibility and culpability, sometimes gets in the way of analyzing how social conditions involving multiple individuals creates moral hazards which make the fruits of darkness more rewarding than the fruits of light.


Earlier I had visited another program where I had worked. Because of difficulty with funds the place is currently semi-abandoned, though some of the plantings still thrive. Walking there, I am surprised that an area which was full of cornfields two years ago is now filled with Avocado trees and enclosed with razor wire. As I walk I hear some one call my name. There must be something about my gait, because he's the fourth person in my life to recognize me at a distance after several years, not by my face, but by the way I walk.


I'm surprised to see him here. When I was last here, three masked men knocked on some one else's door to deliver a message that he would be killed if he didn't leave. Now he's working next door at the avocado farm—and seems just as jovial as when we worked together two years ago. Having been through multiple situations in Guatemala where people received death threats, it's interesting to notice how things unfold. It often feels like a Victorian mystery novel in that you work through a progression of explanations, each different than the last, but each seeming consistent. The difference is that in Victorian novels some one like Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple shows up to solve the mystery, and in Guatemala you almost never get to that final chapter. Of course, Sherlock Holmes was an opium addict, and it may be that the only people who could clear things up in Guatemala, are those with skeletons in their own closets. After hearing several contradictory stories with the ring of truth, you realize that information behaves the same way whether it is true or false—and that for definite resolution, you need not just the wisdom of Solomon, but the decisiveness he used to determine the true mother of a disputed baby.


One of the explanations was that the threat came from a person we knew and worked with—some one who seemed generous and friendly and hardworking—and whom I was once assigned the responsibility of making a phone call to, but neglected to when I was sent outside the country for a week. Some one I spent an enjoyable afternoon touring lakeside cabins with a woman who later ended up in a relationship with the man who received the threat. It was odd to consider that some one whose handiwork and self-assurance I admired might have sent a message like that, and that some of my own actions may have played a part. And if it wasn't him, it might well have been some one who in the right circumstances, would have displayed an equally good-natured side. It's strange to consider that if you have one group of friends in Guatemala you report on the human side of the impoverished victims of violence—but with another group of friends you might well end up humanizing impoverished peasants who end up participating in intimidation. Sometimes you meet both in the same family. Some one once asked us to leave because he said his own sons had threatened to kill him if he kept on talking to the people from human rights. People often attribute threats to the after-effects of the civil war, but I have also heard of threats made previous to it, by members of their own village, who recognized their power being threatened by some one stirring up people with new ideas—not so different from what the elders of Athens did to Socrates. Most of these threats were conditional rather than existential, “stop what you're doing, or die,” the type of message people in the United States can afford to communicate with lawsuits. People in Guatemala habitually attribute contemporary violence to the sort of secret organizations which were active in the eighties, but now that the code has been established, even people without clandestine connections can take advantage of it. In any event, my friends' attitude suggests that he wasn't permanently traumatized. But it does mean that instead of working in the office of a non-profit, he's working outside on an avocado plantation which didn't exist when the threat was sent.


I see other things in Guatemala as well. I sit in a cornfield and discuss the plagues of caterpillars menacing the trees and gangs menacing the town. I drink wine in the Spanish cultural center with a woman I met in Huehuetenango and shake hands with a man wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the emblem of the hammer and sickle.


The name of this essay is taken from a movie about World War II. It is the name of a submarine, which midway through the movie changes hands. At one point it is occupied by a group of sailors obeying the commands of the Fuhrer Adolph Hitler, the only person ever to occupy that office. Later it is taken over by sailors obeying a chain of command leading back to Franklin Roosevelt, the thirty-second president of the United States. Tom Lehrer has a song about the rocket scientist who during the Second World War, built rockets first for the Germans, and then for the Americans.
“When the rockets go up, who cares where they come down.
'that's not my department,' says Werner von Braun.”
And, depending on what vocabulary you use to analyze the situation, the change in personnel of the U-Boat is not significant. Throughout the movie, it is occupied by military men, following orders to kill people. That's why people shout “you're just like them.” You could say such an attitude is the opposite of Werner von Braun's cavalier perspective towards the machinery of death, but it shares his sense of equivalence.


Some people say we shouldn't have gotten involved in World War II. You can construct alternative histories in which Hitler's Totalitarianism burned itself out, or Hitler and Stalin eventually annihilated each other. You can point out that the end of our involvement in that war was a forty year cold war with our erstwhile allies. I have visited farms begun by C.O.s from World War II who helped create the basis for searching for an alternative to what General Eisenhower later recognized was the menace of the military-industrial complex spawned by that war--by people who thought like Werner von Braun. It is not necessary to agree with every use of American military power. Dr King opposed the war in Vietnam, but felt that he would have fought against Hitler. Joschka Fischer of the Green party sent German troops to fight with us in Afghanistan, but not in the Bush administration's preemptive strike on Iraq. But although some things can be unbundled, it is very difficult to accept the precedent of Nuremburg and the prevailing definitions of War Crimes unless you accept that American military power can serve the cause of justice.


I have many friends in different parts of the United States. Some are lawyers living in the capital, others are farmers living several hours outside. Both I suspect voted for Obama, but in terms of their political views on things like drug policy, or Israel, or social issues, their perspectives are significantly different. And despite voting for the same party, it would be difficult for the lawyers in the capital to really understand the lives of the farmers. And in many ways the farmers lives and attitudes are much more similar to those of the Republican neighbors they go to church and county fairs with. One farmer received a phone call threatening to destroy his irrigation system if he shot the wrong deer while trying to protect his bean planting from being eaten. But I suspect there were some ways his the lives of those two people living off the land, had more in common with each other, than with the lawyer in the capital. It was because of the farmers that I first learned about going to Guatemala—where I had the opportunity to witness the much bigger urban/rural divide in that country.


The organization I served with originally worked with farmers in rural areas. Studying the civil rights struggle, you notice how it took the work of generations of NAACP organizers working to make sure that some one like Thurgood Marshall could be trained not just to make arguments white men could have made, but to give the lie to the assumptions of Jim Crow by his very presence before the Supreme Court. To make sure that when Rosa Parks stayed seated when the law said she should move, there was a network of people who had her back. In the flickering light of kitchen fires I witnessed the quiet strength of a race full of individuals who, I hope are laying the groundwork to contradict their marginalization with something more definitive than verbal disputation.


Later, however our program shifted focus, and although volunteers were based in rural areas, our activities were shaped by the decisions passed down from lawyers in the capital. A chain of individually reasonable decisions often led to us operating one way in one region and completely differently in another. We were a non-violent, non-military organization, but handling the apparent contradictions sometimes forced us into odd coping strategies. At various points, after receiving assignments from the people the folks in Washington had put in charge, my partner and I would look at each other and mumble “I'm just an enlisted man.” That was the most psychologically effective model for dealing with directives which didn't make sense to us, but which we had given up trying to argue with. The Lawyers handed out T-shirts saying “Silence never changed the world, let loose your voice.” One Guatemalan I didn't meet through our organization pointed out “If it weren't for people who kept their mouths shut in the eighties, I would be dead.” On the other hand, others had similar stories about how people speaking up kept them alive. The folks in the capital often talked as if a certain way of doing things was Obvious, and peoples' lives are at stake. But you could arrive at different conclusions depending on who you listened to first. Now thankfully the organization is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay, and perhaps the energy from a city which is a cultural rather than a governmental capital, will change the patterns of interactions.


The second time I went down to Guatemala I answered a call for emergency presence, and I looked forward to spending more time in the glow of kitchen fires. After we arrived, the lawyers changed their minds. In certain circumstances foreign presence can be an asset, in others a liability. And although our organization had been founded to carry on a vision of unarmed bodyguards, when it came to the legal case, it generally seemed that the Guatemalans we worked with felt safer with a police presence. I could see why, but it also seemed like outsourcing a critical part of our reason for being. In some ways it felt like another manifestation of the urban rural divide: peasants can often find work for children to do, children in the city have little productive role, they just need to be driven to soccer games and have their braces paid for. So, a lot of my time I spent in the capital, watching movies on a DVD player which had been donated by an executive director. The people in charge distrusted mainstream movies, but I sometimes felt that they represented how it felt to be working abroad better than the statistics our administrators quoted us at our informational meetings. It was hard to tell what was really going on, many significant events happened off-camera, and it often felt that the disagreement with members of your own organization loomed larger than anything you were supposedly accomplishing. And with so much being relayed second or third hand, figuring out how to behave in situations of imperfect information seems more important than “figuring out what's really going on.” I could often see how decisions made sense individually, but when bundled together they trapped people in catch-22s. I tend to be a contrarian—and often have views which conflicted with my supervisors, whether I worked in restaurants, planning, engineering, tourism, farming, or accompaniment. It is interesting to note that the non-ideological organizations generally seemed much more accommodating of differences of opinion. They didn't necessarily change their mind when I said I thought we were wrong, but they let me vent as long as I bussed my tables, wrote my reports, or picked my vegetables, like I was supposed to do. It was odd that my supervisors in Guatemala reacted as if the frustrations of thwarted idealism were something they had never experienced themselves. Of course, unlike farms and restaurants we didn't really have a product, so I couldn't be judged on anything other than whether I was giving them unconditional personal loyalty.


Teaching American history in China last year I ran across a section on the birth of second-wave feminism a few decades ago. In addition to their frustrations at home and work, women were also frustrated when they tried to help out at radical organizations. Often they were stuck making and serving coffee while the men made plans. Understandably they felt that with their education and commitment they had more to offer than merely serving coffee, while white college boys monopolized the definition of “the movement.”


When I was in Guatemala the second time, and the representatives of the embassy came to visit, the women running our organization suggested that having a man serving coffee would be an excellent way to demonstrate their commitment to “fighting the Patriarchy!” I don't mind serving coffee, I spent many happy years working in restaurants, and it seemed better than watching another movie. But I had viewed serving coffee to businesswomen and professor's wives to pay my way through college as conforming to the assumptions of the system, not challenging them. And when I volunteered to come to Guatemala, I hadn't come to fight the patriarchy, I had come down to help the Maya people, many of whom are themselves patriarchs. There is a series of negative stories about the conquistadors told in Protestant countries, which is called the “leyenda negra.” In Latin America there is a similar “leyenda negra” about the Yankees. I sometimes got the impression that my supervisors were subjected to these stories, because when they got back from meetings with our Guatemalan allies they would make cutting remarks as if I should feel personally responsible for every native American massacred by the US Army. Once the collective punishment starts being handed out, it's not possible to be innocent, but it is possible to be innocent of casting the first stone. Making people feel discontented can be a good thing, but only if you have a plan to channel that discontent rather than just leaving it to fester into self-hatred. If you're trying to raise awareness so that people do more than just stand idly by—a good supervisor should be able to come up with something for them to do when they do make a commitment. Asking some one to serve coffee to representatives of the Bush administration and calling it “fighting the Patriarchy” strikes me as a good signpost for the limits of what “consciousness-raising” by white college kids of either gender can accomplish.


There is a mathematical concept called an asymptote—which is when a curve continually approaches a value which it never actually reaches. Sometimes that feels like a metaphor for social change movements, especially the sort rooted in progressive ideology. We were trying to find a “different” approach. For a lot of NGOs it seemed to be getting away from the profit motive. But hostility toward the profit motive often manifested itself as a suspicion of people doing things which made them happy—whether there was a direct monetary reward or not. “Trying to find a different way of doing things” served as a wildcard people with organizational power played whenever they felt suspicious of some one else's pursuit of happiness. It felt like Harlan Ellison's Invisible Man, and the narrator's encounter with “the Brotherhood”--though the gender is different this decade.


I contrast that with my time by the lake—the hotels and restaurants, and the avocado plantation, all based on the profit motive, and therefore trying to develop a product other people would be willing to pay for. And the man who served coffee had a speaking role, he actually got to talk to the people he served coffee to. Changing what it means to serve coffee, so that the person in that role can meaningfully disagree with the people he serves it to, strikes me as more significant than changing who serves the coffee. And I thought of the difference between the people who wore indigenous dress because they were paid to, and those for whom it was an organic part of their lives. If asking men to serve coffee constitutes fighting the Patriarchy—I think a lot of for-profit institutions in Guatemala served a lot more coffee than we ever did. And the fact that they don't have to apologize for being a business, or searching for things which make them or their customers happy, means that they are able to carry on playing guitar, building sustainable buildings, and creating jobs for indigenous people.


This date is famous for a surprise airborne attack on the homeland which took place some years ago. Like so many things, our conversational habits lead us to search for a single point in the system at which to place blame. It should also be remembered that it is far more difficult to ignore the heroism of the members of the working class who wear uniforms like those of the FDNY and NYPD than before that attack. When placing blame, some people blame the man who a few days later, spoke of a race between only two horses. Others, in the habit of talking as if all human beings are puppets of Langley, smugly blame blowback from the CIA. If you think about it, it doesn't do much harm to Yankee power to have people making each other afraid of the organization HW Bush used to run. And the current system traps everyone. It can't be much fun being the president of a superpower if you have to apologize for saying you don't like to eat broccoli.


In any event there were probably many individual decisions without which things might have happened differently. One was made by the rulers in Riyadh, to whom Osama bin Laden had offered his services a decade prior to expel Saddam from Kuwait. But instead of accepting the offer, the Royal house prioritized their relationship with their fellow oil barons in the Bush administration. Some would say Washington was far more qualified to deal with the situation than bin Laden and his irregular tactics—but it was outsourcing a function some one with extensive experience in the highlands of Afghanistan probably felt should have been kept in-house. It is quite possible that bin Laden's subsequent career was not what he planned all along, but would have been significantly different if the princes had placed ties of belief over ties forged by dealings with that black liquid.


A few years ago, I read a book by Muhammed Yunus, a man who studied in the state of Tennessee before returning to Bangladesh and originating the idea of mircrolending. He advocates a double-bottom line, combining profit with other goals. He talks about working in an province dominated by guerrillas. After his banks were established, some of the guerrillas became his best workers. “They just needed something to fight for, and we were able to give them something better than terrorism.” Muslim men who had studied the movements of small pieces of metal in order to end peoples' lives instead studied the movements of small pieces of metal in order to improve them. These factors determine whether young men get jobs as defenders of the social order, or create jobs for the defenders of the social order. Like the boatman who took advantage of my ignorance by the lake, carefully observed instances of antisocial behavior can also create information which can help people understand how to create a world with fewer reasons for antisocial behavior. And getting through to an understanding of the dynamics of the system and the role information plays in it can be more important than a focus on what other people “should” think or do.


Had those ruling the land currently called Saudi Arabia behaved differently, there would still be another reason to remember this day. Vive Chile! Vive el Pueblo! Vive los trabajadores! [emailed September 11, 2009]