I bought my ticket yesterday. It’s that kind of trip. I’ll be gone for a week, and probably won’t have time to write while I’m there.

There is much to say, though. I’ve got a heap of questions to unravel and feelings to express about all of this, but they’ll have to wait.

The school was located on a city block, wedged between other businesses on either side, all in a one-story cinder block row. Walking through the narrow entrance was the main office, which was just a single desk, with an old manual typewriter, an aged hole-punch, and stacks of papers. On the walls were little hand drawn cartoon faces and cartoon suns and clouds, the kinds of decorations you’d expect to see in a place teaching primary school teachers. Past the main office was an open air courtyard, and all of the classrooms themselves. Maybe 8-10 cinder block square spaces the size of maybe a small U.S. classroom, with rows of very old, chipped wooden desks. The ceilings were that foam paneling stuff you see in office buildings, but browned in many spots by leaks. On the floor were rusty electric fans, and the only thing on the wall (especially since it was still “summer” break time), was a half-chalkboard/half-whiteboard panel.

I didn’t see a single book anywhere in the whole school. I didn’t see any technology either, except for the manual typewriter at the front desk. The registration system was made up of students’ names in a single notebook.

This is a private school. It costs us more than a month’s worth of an average Guatemalan’s salary to pay for this school each year. Imagine paying for this level of schooling for 5-10 children.

I was shocked and deeply saddened by this experience. To know that even private high schools like this are not even comparable to the access to education and resources that a public high school offers here in Seattle. The difference is night and day.

And this really got me thinking. What does it mean to think about youth empowerment–which is my paid work–in an anti-imperialist way? What does it mean to support youth empowerment for marginalized young people in the U.S., which respects and validates their experiences of oppression and their demands for equity…but in a way that also encourages solidarity with the very different realities and needs of fellow youth across the globe?

Truth is, I actually think that we’ve been bad at this in our own organization. When young people come in with complaints about their day, about their school, about their lives, the almost automatic response is to take their side, nod our heads, and universally respond, “man, that’s so messed up.” And it is…but I also think it’s important to be aware of the relative privilege that U.S. youth have compared to youth in other parts of the world. Building a global revolutionary youth empowerment movement demands this. What is the role for context and broader thinking when talking about injustice and organizing in U.S. youth’s lives?

What I want to avoid doing in thinking about this is playing oppression olympics. I don’t want to discount any youth’s experiences of injustice, be it racial profiling in the hallways, or lack of access to quality textbooks, or whatever. However, doesn’t real youth empowerment for U.S. youth also mean education about their incredible level of privilege and access in the bigger global picture, and the need for them to flex those muscles for justice as well? How can youth organizers in the U.S. work on their own issues and fight for changes, while also recognizing the other issues that youth are facing in other places, even within the U.S.?

For example, Glendi. When she was ten, her family pulled her out of primary school completely. She was set to work on the coffee plantations, spreading fertilizer and doing other tasks…for 4 years. She began 4th grade at 14 years old (the age that U.S. youth are usually high school freshmen). This is not uncommon. She was lucky, in fact, to get the option to return to school at all…her sister never did return after 6th grade. Her mom has a 3rd grade education, and still regrets the lost opportunity. Vicky’s school was described above, but what about the fact that in addition to school, she also gets up at nearly 4am every morning to grind the maiz for tortillas, handwash the clothes for 12 people in the communal tank, handwash the dishes for 12 people in the communal tank, sweep and mop the floor, and cook breakfast before and after going to school? At the same time, facing similar problems that young people face here, such as sexual harassment on the bus and by teachers, inaccurate and racist education, and structural racism against her and her peers as indigenous youth.

This is a fundamentally different structural reality for young people–and Glendi’s family is actually relatively well off within the village!–than what the majority of even marginalized and poor youth face in the U.S. Indoor plumbing, library access, public transportation, mail systems, etc…are basic infrastructural elements that even the U.S. poor mostly have access too…at least in Seattle. Even undocumented latino immigrant youth have a relative privilege compared to many of their peers in Latin America…because they made it across the border…that is a big, big deal! I think these different realities should be really taken into account when we talk about organizing, and what youth empowerment looks like.

Really, what I’m trying to say is that in the U.S., youth empowerment must not just be about empowering young people to face their own oppression in their communities, but also to build up a radical, movement-based sense of themselves and organizing in solidarity with youth who are fighting their own oppression on a global scale. This means that within our moments of “that’s so messed up” we also have moments of recognition of how many options youth here actually have–like my organization, which pays youth up to a 3-month Guatemalan salary to organize for change–and how they can use that structural privilege to fight against imperialism.

What I’m also trying to say is that when I eventually move to Guatemala for a short or long period of time, I want to think about how to do youth empowerment work there…and I really want to think about how it could look different from what we do up here in Seattle.

I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts about this stuff over time.

Now I’ve just returned from my 8th trip to Guatemala, and on the plane home alone, I was just weeping, weeping. I was so moved by how much I love that country, its people, its history, and especially the family that has welcomed me in there. Guatemala has changed me in so many ways, I feel like it’s a critical piece of understanding who I am and what I value these days. How could it be otherwise, with Glendi in my life??

But as I’ve eluded to in previous posts, I don’t really talk about it much anymore. I think that as the ties with Guatemala have grown stronger, and as I become more humbled by how much I don’t know or understand, it becomes harder for me to share. It’s not just the class and race complexities that make it hard to talk about, it’s the whole web of it. Just how different the whole picture is from the realities of my life and my friends’ lives in the U.S.

But I want to keep trying. This blog first started as a way for me to talk about Guatemala and my growth as I spent my first six weeks there. Now that I’ve been there 8 times, there are so many deep reflections that I could be doing here, and I want to give myself the freedom to do that.

But for now, let’s just settle for a quick few fun highlights from my trip:

-Riding for 7 hours in the back of a pickup truck on the way from the capital to Glendi’s family’s house. I love the wind, the sickening sweet smell of burning sugar cane, the disgusting, shit smell of the rubber factories, and the way my legs always completely fall asleep. It’s precisely the length of the journey, so many unknown locations and people that we pass, that really affects me…makes me feel so small in the world.

-Setting up two makeshift basketball hoops outside the family’s house, and playing almost daily 2-on-2 and 3-on-3 tournaments with nearly everyone in the family and extended family, from the 6 year old twins to the 35 year-old Inés. Since I’m a giant compared to everyone else, I get to play Shaq style, just totally guarding and blocking everything…that is until they got really good at passing underneath my legs!

-Picking coffee with Glendi’s dad and brothers on our little plot of land…my first time learning how they pick coffee. It was fun, and the social nature of it reminded me of our old family fishing trips in Alaska. I’m glad that even though the family is very conscious of the exploitation they face when they pick coffee at the fincas…that the actual activity is enjoyable for them. For me, even spending one day doing it, I appreciate just how hard they all work under the sun, and with all the bugs, every day of the week. Glendi’s dad also tried to teach me how to cut brush with a machete…but…that’s going to take me a lot longer to learn! Wow!

-Seeing all of the URNG (the old guerrilla army turned leftist party) graffiti on every single road sign in the area. It gave me hope about increased leftist mobilization since my previous visits, and reminded me that next time I want to plan more than just family time…I want to really seek out and spend time with some more organized Guatemalan leftists. However, I also cynically thought that the graffiti could just be one night’s work of just a small group of youth…who would still be great to connect with!

-Reading 5 books and writing all sorts of stuff in my journal, really re-connecting with some of my favorite political ideas….which hopefully I’ll be writing about more. The peaceful thinking time I had, mixed with the playful family time, really allowed me to get grounded with a lot of the emotional and political stresses that I’m feeling in Seattle these days

-Swimming, swimming, swimming!

-Visiting the kids schools was just so, so humbling. To see, generally, how young people live, interact, find their identities within their families…it really makes me question the work that I do in Seattle. What is youth empowerment in the context of deep poverty? What is youth empowerment in the context of barren schools with no books, and only a few typewriters that are in the main office? What is youth empowerment in the context of rigid gender roles that also maintain a very real family labor system…that if not maintained can grind a families health and hygiene to a halt? Wow, oh, wow are these big things to think about…and they just humble me when I think about my job.

It probably sounds like the trip was mostly low-key fun, and though it really was fun, what made it so powerful was that underlying everything was an emotional intensity, and some critical realities that I can’t really talk about here, but which gave everything a real electricity. Guatemala makes me feel in a way that makes me realize how numb I usually am. And it really makes me ask myself why I feel so numb so often. But that’s another thing I hope to write more about.

Until then, I’m home, I’m thinking, I’m feeling. And I’m alive, and that’s so, so special.

Much love,

Jeremy

Here’s the short version: Glendi and I are more or less the sole breadwinners for our family of 11 people in Guatemala (and occassional supports of 4 or 5 others). This means at least one monthly payment to cover all food and utilities expenses (which are constantly rising in this economic climate), but it also needs to cover school fees, clothes, transportation, medical expenses, and so much more. This is something that we, of course, have built into our budget, but every month, when we send our payment (and especially when we have to send our frequent emergency payments), I am just struck by this reality. We are responsible for the health, nutrition, safety, and economic stability of a huge family who we barely even get to see every year. Coming from my own very stable U.S., white, managerial middle-class family, there really is no straightforward way to assimilate the full implications of this. It takes time, and it is a daily struggle (and one which I am privileged and honored to be a part of).

Truth is, it’s something that I find hard to talk about with my friends, and especially with my family. Sure the numbers and broad politics of it, fine. But the deeper emotions that I live with, and which have been stirring in me for these two years that Glendi and I have been living together…this is something else. I mean, I’m still me. I still like movies. I still play video games. I still like new gadgets and toys and all of that shit. And at the same time I don’t just have some distant family that I married into because I love their daughter…her and I are their core economic (and often emotional) support. I am involved. I have been grabbed by a context and pulled into the center of a family that is so different from me in every way…and it’s so real and so immediate that often there isn’t a lot of time to pause and analyze it.

I mean think about it as like some pop-ed workshop scenario exercise about power and privilege: Twenty-something middle class white guy marries spanish-speaking immigrant campesina and becomes a primary breadwinner for her 11-person family. What are the intersections of oppression? What does allyship mean? Just how problematic is this social relationship? I’ll tell you! It’s extremely problematic, and it’s also our daily life. With an economy in rural Guatemala in which there is almost no legal work, where health problems are mounting within the family, and in which the majority of children are still focusing on their education, what other options does Glendi’s family have but to depend on what their family in the U.S. can send them? And in a context where we make 4-8 times what they make in a month for doing much easier work, what moral option do we have but to send part of our check to them every month?

Having friends who are mostly white, anti-racist activist types, this is something that I like to talk about, but which leaves me feeling lonely. It’s a situation where I feel so much more comfortable talking with immigrant folks, because they know what it’s like to send the moneygram or money order, and to know that it’s never enough.

It’s never even close to enough.

And it’s so, so much harder, and so much deeper, when this beloved family calls and needs to ask for more. To think about their dignity, and the fierce injustice of needing to depend on this white guy and his wife (who only got here because of marrying the white guy) to be able to fucking pay for their pre-school for the twins, or the diabetes medicine, or little cotton balls for a school diarama…and even more complicated when we are stretched, and we don’t know if we can pay…but we also know that we do have a subscription to netflix that we could cancel or cut back…

This is just the beginning of me talking about this and working it out. It really goes so deep, and touches so many layers that I am going to need time to get at it. But I really want to. Because I feel like my inability to express myself about this to my friends and family is really cutting them off from understanding what my life and emotional state are really like…

…and also why I sometimes think that a lot of current U.S. activist preoccupations and analyses are kind of bullshit…much more than I used to, anyway. I mean, when people who you love are fucking screaming from malaria, or locked up in fucking Texas deportation prison, or they are eating beans and rice for the 7th straight meal of the week, because they can’t afford even carrots…then yeah, one’s sense of what is most important politically really changes. And you kind of do start thinking about some “oppression olympics” and some “class reductionism” sometimes. It’s hard not to. But it’s also important to keep the bigger picture in mind…but it does change you.

And I have been really changing. Not toward the sell-out side of the spectrum, not by a long-shot. More toward the, I am so pissed at this society that I need to do more side of the spectrum. My anger is a lot more visceral, and a lot less academic than it used to be.

As you’ll see as I eventually write about this more.

This will be a big deal if it happens. Not only because it’ll be the second ex-guerrilla group after the Sandinistas to win power in Central America, but also because it will keep the leftward tide moving in Latin America. Who knows, maybe 2012 in Mexico? It also will of course have interesting implications for Guatemala, and their weak center-leftist president, Colom.

In other news, Venezuela has its regional elections on Sunday, will almost all the governorships and mayor positions in play. It’s the first vote after the Chavistas’ constitutional referendum loss, and Chavez and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela are putting A TON of energy into it. I’ll be watching closely, as it will be a good gauge of what direction the Venezuelan revolution is moving.

A lot has happened while I’ve been away, and there is a lot that I’d like to cover (Burma, gender justice, the US anti-war movement, immigration justice, and so much more), but I want to make sure that I cover that which I’ve been best at covering: shifts in power in Latin America.

About a month ago, Rafael Correa’s leftist coalition in Ecuador triumphed in their elections to the constitutional assembly. They have more than a sufficient majority to write any constitution they want, and the draft of the constitution that they are discussing is really promising. They are heading toward a similar kind of “socialism for the 21st century” as Venezuela…not the neo-liberal stuff of Chile and Brazil. I’m excited about this process, and I think they have a lot more momentum in their favor than the constitutional assembly in Bolivia, which is just having a really, really hard time right now.

At the beginning of November, the center-leftist Alvaro Colom defeated the right wing ex-general (and school of the Americas graduate, and ex-head of the secret police) Otto Perez Molina, to become the president-elect of Guatemala. It’s so weird, Glendi and I have actually seen him speak in person, so I’ve been within 15 feet of the future president of Guatemala! I wasn’t hopeful during his campaign, but his victory speech was so directly tied to his ideas and his social-democratic ideology, and his follow-up announcements as well, that I believe that he does want to bring change to the country. Also, in a Telesur interview they asked him if he’s a leftist, and he said something like, “if being against neo-liberalism, which has brought so much misery to Latin America makes me a leftist, then yes, I’m a leftist.” That was impressive. He also declared that he would have normal, friendly relations with Cuba and Venezuela, and is already set to discuss petroleum deals with Hugo Chavez in December! This is a good sign…he’s not playing to the powerful by distancing himself from the Latin American left. He’s also not afraid to reference Jacobo Arbenz, the last lefty or center-lefty that Guatemala’s had…who was ousted in a coup in 1954. I’ll keep blogging about Colom, but for now I’m enthusiastic.

On December 2, Venezuelans will vote on new constitutional reforms…69 of them in total (voted in two bloques). These are designed to “deepen” and “accelerate” the move towards socialism and popular power. The media has focused primarily on the reforms which would allow indefinite re-election of Chavez, and which would allow for certain democratic liberties to be suspended in states of emergency…and I think there is real room to criticize these. However, the reforms also include major strengthening of the super-democratic communal councils, prohibition of discrimination against LGBTQ people, social security for informal workers, lowering the voting age to 16, a 36 hour work-week, free education through the university level, separating popular militias from the military command…and more. I think it’s certain that if this passes (and polls are all over the place on this one), the process in Venezuela really will change significantly. That country is moving!

In Paraguay, a popular ex-bishop, who is rooted in liberation theology, Fernando Lugo, is running for president and is ahead in the polls. They call him “the red bishop.” Elections aren’t until 2008, so we’ll see. But this looks really promising.

Also promising is Mauricio Funes, a respected long-time journalist in El Salvador who is now running for president with the ex-guerrila group, the FMLN. He has a really strong chance of winning, and watching videos of him on youtube, I totally think he’s got what it takes. If he wins, then Central America will definitely be considered as part of the leftist trend in Latin America. Right now, it’s too much of a mixed bag to tell. Now come on Mexico! Must we wait until the 2012 elections for you to go left, or might you have a revolution before that?

This was just a little update. In future weeks I’ll want to write more about Venezuela, and maybe about Colom, but for now this is fine. I’m just trying to get in the habit of writing again.

Hope you all are doing well!

Glendi, her mom, and her brother Ivan will meet me in the airport, where we will travel by bus for four hours to reach her home, and there we will spend 1 bittersweet week, as Glendi prepares her things and her family says goodbye.

I’ve been talking with Glendi’s dad and he seems a lot more prepared emotionally than he was a few months and weeks ago. Stilly crying occasionally, but much more open about his excitement and happiness for us as well. Glendi is excited. Her mom is excited and sad, of course.

I have so much I want to write about, but I don’t have the time. Hopefully during the summer, now that school is out (yay!).

I want to talk about my hopes and my fears about Glendi and I. I want to talk about the possible futures, about the balance between this relationship and my other friendships. I want to talk more about the politics of this relationship. There is just so much. There are all of these things that I’m thinking about all of the time, but I still haven’t put them down in this blog yet.

Still, for now I can tell you that I feel so free and happy…and I’ll let you know where it goes from there.

Much love, and hope to write a least once from Guatemala.

What they have hinted at, though, is pretty interesting in my opinion. Crucially, they are calling for constitutional reform, including the possible convocation of a constitutional assembly, to “build a new republic.” While possibly not as ambitious as Evo, Correa, or Chávez, it is an interesting parallel.

Further, they discuss guaranteeing indigenous political participation and gender equality in political parties, regulating property, reforming the intelligence services (notorious in their brutality) to come under democratic control, redefining the role of the military, fighting corruption and crime, reforming the economy and tax system, and more and more and more.

As of like two weeks ago, Menchú was in 4th place with only like 5%, but the most popular, Alvaro Colom, only has like 25%, and the campaigns only officially started last week. The majority of Guatemalans are indigenous, and so if Menchú can energize indigenous communities, I think she could possibly have a shot at second place, thus being a part of the second round, against Colom. This would be really interesting, with Guatemala facing a turn even slightly leftward for the first time in half a century.

Guatemala doesn’t have the kind of social movement strength that Ecuador or Bolivia had in electing their presidents. It is very much still a traumatized society, from everything I’ve observed and read. So maybe there just won’t be a strong lefty government there for a long time. But even a non-corrupt social democratic government, which can build even basic civil institutions (like a tax system, a real justice system, school systems, health care, etc.) would be a massive improvement. I do think that Colom’s center-left UNE is corrupt, but they also have a very strong infrastructure and they can also possibly win a lot of congressional strength, so I don’t think even their win would be so, so bad. At least they could get some institutional functionality out of it.

I’ll write in more detail about the campaign and compare the candidates as things build. But for now I’m just glad that ambitious language like “new republic” and “constitutional assembly” are being discussed. People in Guatemala don’t trust the system. That’s why talking about going beyond or outside the system is refreshing to me…and hopefully will be refreshing to the indigenous base. But the deeper question is, do indigenous Guatemalans trust Menchú or think she’s a sell out, and do they believe in her electability enough to vote for her instead of Colom (who also has his base amongst indigenous people)?

Also, an update about the Guatemalan elections:  A recent poll has Rigoberta Menchu in second place to Alvaro Colom, 20% to something like 32%.  If the two of them make it to the second round and shut out the hard right candidate, Otto Perez Molina, that would be excellent.  But there are still many months to go and I don’t think the campaigns even legally start until May.

Chávez has been cranky lately about other radical Venezuelan parties and organizations not being willing to dissolve themselves to join his new united socialist party, and I think his reaction is really telling. I mean, come on, how can he so easily expect the Venezuelan Communist Party — with decades and decades of history of struggle — to dissolve themselves so easily to join a party that will clearly maintain Hugo has the figurehead? His reaction really bothers me and I don’t think it bodes well for the future of the process…which overall is still beautiful, but seriously, Hugo, practice what you preach and move aside a little bit!