part two of economic charla, it blows that it's taken me this long and i've forgotten some of what has been said. day two was coming from the opposite direction, about the values the bible upholds as being directly opposed to the economic system that exists today in our increasingly globalized world (mainly in reference to the US and Europe). so the first point is that when you criticize any system people expect a solution, a counter proposal if you will. the problem is that i don't have a magic system up my sleeve and i really have no idea what the solution looks like on a big scale, because change has always started from the base, revolutions begin in small communities that have the power to affect world conciousness, no matter how small in number and i have to believe that it is possible. so we started with the creation stories, in one of the stories human beings are the end and in the other just the beginning. woman, created after adam, is the pinnacle and jemstone of creation and it is clear she was created as companion, to be the equal in every way of Adam-this is the significance of the rib (she wasn't created at his feet no matter how history tries to distort woman's place). the idea of imago Dei or that we were created in God's image has caused unimaginable damage to the rest of creation when assumed because of this we are superior with the right to exploit rather than be stewards and protect the richness of creation. however, from this we also reach a valuable conclusion that all human beings have inherent value and dignity versus the functional dignity that human beings are reduced to in economic terms-judged and valued only for what they can produce and thus the elderly and children become economic baggage. also, the creation stories come from a prospective of abundance not scarcity as in economic theory. abundance is the starting point. thus the sabbath isn't about production, or about efficiency but about rest and rhythm of life that has nothing to do with economic interactions. in the story God says it's not good for adam to be alone and after trying to find a suitable companion among the animal kingdom he creates woman-hence man is by nature social and enters into society versus the individualism that our economic system encourages and produces. the idea of choice is also very interesting because in the story of adam and eve they chooce self awareness, they have free will to make choices versus the shallow ecomic decions we make-where is the freedom in choosing between twenty brands of toothbrushes? i wish i remembered more of this point. the story of cain and abel is relevant as well because after the murder God asks where is your brother? and cain answers 'am i my brother's keeper?' the implied answer is yes, you are. and so in a social world we are indeed required to have social responsiblities to our brothers and sisters-we can't ignore their cries as we continue to hoarde the wealth that capitalism generates while the gap between rich and poor continues to grow. the last OT story that we discussed was Moses and the Exodus. the points were that oppression and inequality do not just happen; they are human choices, human decions-Pharoh dictated that the people were enslaved. Furthermore, God liberates. when moses askes who this god is who's calling him to a crazy mission because there were so many gods he answers with the name I AM. i've always wondered about that one, sure things get lost in translation but it's still weird. but the name means absolutely nothing until God acts, and what is his first action? the first thing he does is liberate and free the oppressed: this isn't just a reform, he completely destorys the system.
the more i'm down here and the more our group discusses i notice when more and more when i'm walking around numb-numb to the poverty on the streets and the begging, dirty kids asking for a peso, the three kids who came into the clinic the other day with their grandma three of a family of eight kids with a drug addict dad and a mom that works, numb to the stories of the maquila women who work up to 24 hour shifts and get fired with no compensation or get cut for working too much overtime trying to put food on the table and they are literally killing themselves working so hard. so it's that or the incredible weight of sadness and disbelief at what we as human beings have done to other people. i couldn't help but cry on the bus when we went to la chureca talk about being uncomfortable and at the same time acutely aware of each and every feeling of overwhelming sadness, anger, disgust, repentance damnit it was so fucking hard. i don't have the vocabulary to put it into words, how do you put an experience like that on white paper or a computer screen i guess, it's too clean to sanitary too removed from the reality. how do you rationalize kids working and living in garbage and not just that but breathing nauseating fumes every second of every day and squinting through the smoke, tasting the smell in their throats-you wonder what hell is like and i think i could take you there. vultures for effect. so where is this liberating god? good question where the hell are we? God had nothing to do with people living in garbage but that doesn't mean he's abandoned them, you look someone in the eyes and they're just another person living in this hell on earth-if could have been me, why wasn't it? so what good are words when the world is so fucked up. the only time i feel fire is when we talk about breaking the system, dreaming that another world is possible and not only that but that we have to be the ones to change it. so how do i even think about going home in a month and going back to my jesuit university that costs more a year than the combined income of pretty much everyone packed like sardines on a dozen buses? i repeat things are messed up. i hope someone says we're radical, that we're living out something of the truth we've experience here, if not we've failed. what good is theology if it doesn't touch your life, what good is anything if you don't live it?

so i'll preface this by saying i'm not personally attacking anyone here nor do i want to come off as preachy or self-righteous because the truth is i'm just as stuck in this sickness as anyone else. so our last couple theology classes were taught by Michael Barram, a professor at St.Mary's in San Fransisco. He teaches a course there entitled wealth and poverty in the Bible and i really liked the guys ideas so here in outline fashion i'll try to present them. so first as further preface he takes up the assumption that we believe in the bible, which i know is quite a leap of faith especially when you begin to ask hermenutical questions. so in the bible it says you cannot serve two masters- it's either God or mammon (wealth) but you can't be the slave to both. from the very beginning it's tremendously improtant to notice the language of such a statement- the terms of slavery and conversely freedom are framed in this dicotomy from the get-go. So Barram also notes that in our present-day society (the US and western Europe) the worship of mammon, in the form of consummerism and capitalistic systems has become a religion and we as human beings are the slaves of wealth. So in a world where the 5% of developed countries control 85% of the world's income we must look at the values this system holds that causes this gross inequality and sustains it as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Again Barram treats it as a problem of values, which even when unconcious are pivotal to everything we do. the presuppostions and assumptions that we bring with us along with our values shape reality. indeed who can argue that within the states we have created our won reality, our own world in which a two story house, two car garage, picket fense and 2.5 kids is normal. it must be conceded that how we interpret reality has everything to do with our social surroundings as well as our values and pressupositions this is known by some as social location. clearly my reality as a college in the US is far removed from Nicaragua and the families i see at the health center and in the neighborhood struggling to just survive. The funny thing is while this seems obvious-that reality is flexible and quite diverse in different parts of the world the discipline of economics fails to take this into account. The field is taught as a set of facts, with a sense of inevitability and moved to the abstract realm of mathematical calculation with the sacrafice of values. the god the economy serves, few can argue differently, is mammon. it's to the point where, philosophically, we can't even think differently, we can't dream of a world that opperates differently. So for a quick history lesson in 1776 Adam Smith wrote the Wealth of Nations and in this book emphasized two things: the division of labor as a way to increase production and Laissez-faire or a setting free, hands off approach to the market. While originally the man wrote about producing more wealth in every nation to the betterment of all peoples and as a moral philosopher harped on the need to distribute this new wealth being produced because according to him while every one person gets wealthy, 500 fall through the cracks and thus it must be the government of some other body to step up and redistribute the money. However, the proponents of neo classical economics took all moral concern out of Smith and stressed impersonal market forces. positive economics or facts became the center while normative economics got taken out of the equation completly. additionally, the theory is based on the idea of equilibrium, based on ideal situations and the idea that everyone has full information. but of course, there is a priviledge of information and it serves the wealthy. all this is to say that postivie vs normative economics sets up a false dichotomy becaue even facts are laden with values, if history teaches us nothing else it is this-we as human beings are never truly objective. So i´ll treat each of three areas according to the neo-classical theory and then, later, the Bible. So firtly human nature. in econ it's based on the scarcity of resources. competition exists to create a winner and a loser and the individual becomes homo economicus: an econmic chooser who chooses among scare resources seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. furthermore, we choose based on utility and the hb is redued to a mechanism because everything else we do when we aren't consuming, mainly our value system, is hard to measure and exceedingly difficult to chart. words like good fair just appropriate when it comes to economics and consumign go out the window...we don't ask ourselves if everyone needs a new car, an ipod, a new computer but the marketers only care about the question will it sell? and thus our value as hb's is a functional value based on what we can produce. the one with more purchasing power is more valuable, it's everywhere- i can go to the private hospital and have state of the art tests and treatments while a Nicarguan kid from a broken family in managua has to come wait in line at my health care center where sometimes we don't have the medication he needs or we miss the diagnosis because there were one hundred patients in a day seen by two doctors. we seem fine with the idea that those who don't have are inherently worthless, they get pushed to the margins, we try to hide them from our sight and take their voice so we can sleep peacefully at night. Secondly, society. so in neo-classical econ society doesn't really exist except when two people enter into a monetary trasaction, otherwise relationships mean nothing. there is no gut level responsiblity for one's neighboor because we are not inherently connected, rather the individual seeks one´s own well being and autonomy. there is no such thing as the common good or social well being, only sharholders matter and who gives a damn about who produces the goods or what they get paid? freedom is an interesting word, especially in the US of A. while originally it could be understood as freedom from tyranny during the French and American revolution now we use it interchangeably with autonomy: i'll do what i want, back the hell off and i don't give a shit about you. thirdly, progress. we measure this in terms of GDP growth and clearly no one cares how that wealth is being distributed-so the elites get richer, and the poor get poorer that was inevitable right? so mutating the idea of laissez-faire for personal gain the deregulation of companies as far as the environment and labor laws go is appaling. in this reality, one competes energetically to beat the competition and if I do well and don't help anyone else there is no blame, i don't have any moral responsiblity because i worked hard and clearly everyone else didn't. this is success right? buying that house and car and maybe if I give a couple bucks to charity i´ll be a good person. I hope the page is bleeding sarcasm quite obviously but i'll web these ideas together with biblical themes when i find my notes.
i wanted to describe a scene from my day today in URO at the centro de salud. So URO can get boring but today i enjoyed the sight of two kids pucking their guts out, several adults and babbies pooping into plastic bags and then carrying them to the lab themselves. it took five second year med students to take one old man's temperature, the whole time glancing over their sholders to stare at me some more. i listened to the man's stomach sounds' later with a stethoscope. women randomly whip out their boob and start breast feeding, everytime i think first gross and then how kristin would say it was beautiful. i have offically mastered the mercury thermometer, it was getting exceedingly embarassing to not be able to find that stupid line of mercury. i finally wore my white coat to work and go compliments on being more professional even if i was still wearing sandals. i rode the bus home delighting in my oreo cookies and deciding to walk for a far bus stop because i just didn't have it in me to yell parada.

so two days ago already i started my social service which is really not much of a service on my part but more like me standing akwardly and trying to learn as much as possible and fumble through spanish at one of the biggest public health clinics in the city of managua. i´ve been in the emergency room to date, to give an idea of what i´m talking about here the emergency room has four main tasks or stations if you will. the first is nebulization which consists of a main nebulizer pump with four connected masks, the patient-usually a baby-sits and breaths in the vapor to help with respiratory difficulties. i´m pretty familiar with this from my own experience with asthma and having my sweet pink nebulizer but it makes me cringe when i see the method of sanitizing the masks after each patient-letting them soak in soapy water-and then taking them out one by one as needed without changing the water everytime. the next station is where i get to actually do something, taking blood pressures, temperatures and pulses, respirations. i´m ashamed to admit for the life of me i can´t read a mercury thermometer, i never have been able to and it´s lame to try to explain everything in the states is electronic. blood pressures are also old school por supuesto. there are four doctors i´ve met who work every day in the emergency room-three men and one woman. they have at most a five minute conversation with the patient and then proceed to write an average of three perscriptions and sometimes a referral. i saved the best station for last, this is where they 'curar' people which consists of a tray that is in no way sterile that has nylon gloves, a bottle of water, bottle of liquid soap and bottle of betadine. the wound is washed until screams are illicited, then rubbed with more soap and water and gauze. then if it´s an open wound they proceed to squeeze and squeeze pus or blood or other colored excretions from the wound. all of this done without numbing and is incredibly painful. they also stitch peoples wounds up and gratefully use local anesthetic. i´m amazed by the amount of people who injure themselves with machetes, maybe it´d be more understandable in the campo but managua is perhaps the most urban city i´ve been to in central america, croweded, loud, polluted, i don´t see any vegatation or open land where one could even need to use a machete but they find their way to the clinic, mostly with mangled feet. the wounds so dirty, literally filled with dirt and wrapped with a dirty t-shirt soaked with blood that i´m suprised i haven´t seen more patients with terrible infections returning to the clinic. i´ve been talking with the different doctors and especially the medical students who are there doing most of the work. mostly the doctors sit and read the newspaper, there is a male auxiliary nurse who runs around practically running the place in the afternoon once the students leave for class. the other day was particularly exciting because doctor romero taught me how to suture. i practiced on a piece of paper and everything, so this was around noon and he told me if a patient came needing sutures before it was time for me to leave the i´d have to try out my new skills. i was terrified that someone would actually come before i had to leave at one. fortunately for them no one came the next hour in need of stitches. i get so excited to think i´m so close to getting to participate and really help people out but at the same time it becomes drastically clear how many years of school i have yet to go. i met a second year student who was only 18 the other day and i couldn´t help be a little jealous, he was spending his mornings in the clinic getting to learn how to suture while i was studying chemistry and physics, sometimes i wonder why it was necessary. but i know that it´ll be worth it because i can see myself doing this day in and day out, i get so excited and itching to see more, learn more that i know i´ll never run out of passion, run out of desire to learn more, to help more.
i´m so behind in writing about theology classes that it is shameful. Rafael Adagon was our first lecturer after Luis that is, he´s a dominican priest who is originally from Spain but has been living and working in Nicaragua for years now. he stressed a couple points, first that LT has it´s roots in the prophetic tradition of the Bible and focuses on groups that are marginilized, excluded, and on the periphery. The OT prophets of conversion succeced in two main aspects, criticizing the political institutions of the time and calling for justice according to God´s will. secondly, they condemned the religious practices that legitimized these injustices. he also sites that the novelty of the CBC's is their analysis of reality. they are able to illuminate the causes of oppresion out of their own reality and experience. the methodology is to see, judge, and then act. their hope exists as an attitude of conversion. the other point i most identify with is that LT stresses the social and structural sin over the personal and calls for transcendence. there are lots of pages of notes left to remember and write about but i´ll leave that for later.
so random experiences that i´ve had, first the buses suck especially when they are filled to capacity and gross men block the exit so that i have to squeeze past them and resort to physical violence just to get off the moving bus that´s about to leave me behind. the bus stops are also intense at times, the other day in the rain there was a man beggin in the street, in the middle of the street. at first we thought he´d fallen off of a bus and was injured because he looked like he was trying to stand up and couldn´t. clearly something was wrong with him, drugs or alcohol or some other physical maledy and he was almost run over several times as people did nothing, including me. i felt frozen and scared and absolutely clueless as to how to respond to the situation. was i supposed to run out into the street and try to help him and risk my life when who knows if he even needed or wanted help. it was strange, surreal almost to just stand there and watch. tomorrow we are going to the garbage dump where people live and work to recover recycleables to try to survive. people literallly living like animals in a garbage dump. it´s hard to wrap my mind around it much less see it with my own eyes. vamos a ver manana. i´m already sad. how do you begin to comprehend people living and eating decomposing meat, fighting flies and vultures and cows for the waste of others. and shouldn´t that mean more than it does, how can someone not be affected? not feel the weight that their fellow human beings are bearing? it´s heavy and it´s only getting heavier the more we learn, the more we come to know.

so in 1990 to the amazement of pretty much everybody the sandinistas lost power to a new neoliberal government. the only thing these 14 political parties had in common was that they wanted the sandinistas out of power and they believed violeta chomorro was the best candidate to do so. what violeta stood for in most people´s eyes was peace, with 55% of the vote she defeated the fsln (45%). this new government lessened state holdings and state power that the sandinistas had won with arms and increased the private sector with the privitization of things like health, water, electricity... even with the back¡ng of the imf and wb the economy still was looking grim with 33,000% inflation if you can imagine. Aleman was the next president who is infamous for his corruption and paricularly of pocketing much of the aide that came after hurrican mitch. his party, the PLC, were liberals and were anti violeta and anti sandinista by definition. this era revovled around making accomodations in order to segure the forgiveness of foreign debt from HIPC and in order to do so the government decreased social services and invested in things like tourism and casinos. the coffee crisis of 01 had deep impact on the poorest campesinos as they lived under bridges literally starving to death without a strong reponse from the government. the food for work program did little to alleviate the problem. aleman and ortega made a political pact in 1999 to eliminate party pleuralism and in doing so tried to secure both their places in government, in power and in corruption. in 98 allegations that ortega had abused a family member came out in the media and evoked a reformation and new image for ortega spear headed by his wife, now his billboards are in soft, happy colors like pink, yellow and blue instead of the black and red that people associated with war and death. from 01-06 Bolanos, the vp of aleman whose claimt to fame was his strong stance against corruption succeded in having aleman put on trial and did absolutely nothing else. his 'war on corruption' however meant sacrificing his political party, the plc, for only a 20 year sentence for aleman which has ranged from house arrest to country arrest. with no party he had zero executive power and simply vetoed every legistlative agenda and vice versa. while aleman had stolen millions of dollars he had put up signs in the campo claiming to be investing in that sector of society, the man literally showed up and only put up a sign but the people felt like they were being helped, not being forgotten. bolanos however dropped all pretext and invested soley in the urban sector, with the belief that cheap labor is all nicaragua has to compete in the ever increasing globalized market. here are just some of the results: as of 06 nicaragua is the second poorest country in the western hemisphere with 85% of the population living on less that $2 a day, 45% on less than $1. 44% have no access to water although luis has been quoted saying the rich have supernatural powers because where previously there has been no water, someway they can make it appear. today the right and left are more polarized than ever and due to the pact one needs only 35% of the vote to win with a 5 spread margin. it´s funny to see western unions in communities that lack electricity...nicaraguans leave to el salvador and costa rica and the us in search of better opportunity. 700 salvadorans leave for the states per day. nicaragua is different from other central american countries according to aynn because people are aware of their rights as a direct result of the revolution of the legacy of sandino and fronseca. they know how to creatively organize. for her, the us is a numbing society, like walking around with anesthesia becasue of the complacency of individuals in the states. what gives her hope is seeing measurable change in a small country like nicaragua when the us is just so big. she recounted a nicaraguan saying in english for us, 'there´s never been so much country in such a little heart'. i´m not sure that i can judge for myself if this is true or not, nor if it will be possible after just two months here. i can say that the theologians we have met are full of truth and some to me have been prophetic. but other people will tell you the revolution is dead, that people here are just going about living their daily lives and struggling to survive. it´s easy to romantize revolution, la lucha, the collective dreams of a people. was it ever as good as people remember? the point that sticks out to me is that they succeeded, yeah we crushed them with low intensity warfare and now i get to see kids´ ribs sticking out on the street and hear about the ally in mercado oriental were ten year olds sell their bodies for 5 cordobas (a quarter) because they have no food. but if we are to learn from history, the ideals that the sandinistas had were revolutionary, in the beginnning they wanted to help the poor of their country realize the dream for a dignified life. i can´t say i believe that is what my government´s dream is, either domestically or certainly not abroad. i have hope that change is possible, that social movements can revolutionize a country. so do i think obama will win the election? do i think that even if he does he can really change the course the us is on? i don´t have an answer, but i have hope that we´ll wake up from our complacency, our numbness before we start some more wars. there are still some beautiful things that i get to see here, it´s not all misery and politics. we went to laguna de apoyo this past weekend which is a volcanic lake that is incredibly, breathtakingly beautiful. we met and talked with a social activist from israel over our dinner of spagetti, potatoes, and tona and some more of the world´s realities intruded on our paradise. but like i said there is still beauty, some of the best poetry ever written comes from this country. i don´t know where else i´d fit this in so it might as well be now. this poem speaks for itself:
Cancion de Otono en Primavera
Juventud, divino tesoro,
!ya te vas para no volver!
cuando quiero llorar, no lloro...
y a veces lloro sin querer.

plural ha sido la celeste
historia de mi corazon.
Era una dulce nina, en este
mundo de duelo afliccion.

miraba como el alba pura;
sonreia como una flor.
Era su cabellera obscura
hecha de noche y de dolor.

Yo era timido como un nino.
Ella, naturalmente, fue,
para mi amor hecho de armino,
Herodias y Salome...

Juventud, divinio tesoro,
!ya te vas para no volver!
cuando quiero llorar, no lloro...
y a veces lloro sin querer...

Y mas conoladora y mas
halagandora y expresiva
la otra fue mas sensitiva
cual no pense encontrar jamas.

pues a su continua ternura
una pasion violenta unia.
En un peplo de gasa pura
una bacante se envolvia...

en sus brazos tomo mi ensueno
y lo arrullo como a un bebe...
y le mato, triste y pequeno,
falto de luz, falto de fe...

Juventud, divino tesoro,
!te fuiste para no volver!
cuando quiero llorar, no lloro...
y a veces lloro sin querer

Otra juzgo que era mi boca
el estuche de su pasion;
y que me roeria, loca,
con sus dientes el corazon.

Poniendo en su amor de exceso
la mira de su voluntad,
mientras eran abrazo y beso
sintesis de la eternidad;

y de nuestra carne ligera
imaginar siempre un Eden,
sin pensar que la Primavera
y la carne acaban tambien...

Juventud, divino tesoro
!ya te vas para no volver!
cuando quiero llorar, no lloro...
y a veces lloro sin querer...

!y las demas! En tantos climas,
en tantas tierras siempre son,
si no pretextos de mis rimas
fantasmas de mi corazon.

En vano busque a la princesa
que estaba triste de esperar.
La vida es dura. Amarga y pesa.
!ya no hay princesa que cantar!

Mas a pesar del tiempo terco,
mi sed de amor no tiene fin;
con el cabello gris, me acerco
a los rosales del jardin...

Juventud, divino tesoro,
!ya te vas para no volver!
cuando quiero llorar, no lloro...
y a veces lloro sin querer...

!mas es mia el Alba de oro!

so that´s it, i wish i were a poet. i´ll translate the part i like best: when i want to cry, i don´t cry and at times i cry without wanting to. it´s much better in spanish. me voy.