Hello Beautiful

I fell in love with politics this week. Granted, it took a divine sequence of events, in the only successful revolutionary Central American country, but it has convinced me that law is the answer. (I was questioning law; I want to practice human rights law, but would prefer to skip the American Law-school experience)

In the last four days, The Center for Global Education has allowed my Furman study abroad group the opportunities to: visit a factory in a Free Trade Zone (maquila, or ¨sweat shop¨), meet the most famous female guerrilla at the UCA, Dora Maria Tellez, meet a Contra Leader, the PLC, stay in a Sandinista neighborhood for three days that suffered a massacre under the Somoza dictatorship, visit La Chureca, the Managua Trash Dump where people live and work, and then have the privilege to meet with Fernando Cardenal, a priest who was involved in the revolution and directed the National Literacy Campaign (reduced illiteracy from 51% to 17%). When then came back to the hotel and CGE neighborhood, which has been militarized because we happen to share it with the President, Daniel Ortega. In effect, we are reading and witnessing politics constantly. On Saturday, a critical journalist´s office in Nicaragua was illegally searched and documents and computers stolen. To quote the Contra leader, ¨this kid doesn´t know what to do with power.¨ Ortega, the President, is so fearful of US intervention, he and his party have corrupted a true revolution. To prove the US involvement, besides training death squads in Georgia on methods of torture, Nicaragua won 18 billion dollars against the US in an World Court Case.

Context! I am doing my homework or having philosophy class in either a militarized neighborhood or Sandinista neighborhood, and then leaving daily for meetings with key historical leaders.

This leaves me addicted. Addicted to experiential learning. To read about the revolution, the politcal parties, but then meet these people face-to-face. I literally read about both Dora Maria Tellez and Fernando Cardinal and was sitting with them two days later. In Mexico, we studied the effects of NAFTA and then walked in the corn field of farmers fighting NAFTA. As if that was not enough, we got to hear from the Union of Farm Workers, who were very honest. Saying that the chemicals in their food were making them sick. And, that they exported their corn to have it taken to the border, labeled, and then imported back to be sold to the same Mexican people who produced it. In effect, this is true. Thanks to the trade agreement between Candada, the US, and Mexico (NAFTA) all three countries are competing at the same level. This is ridiculous given the production power of the US compared to Mexico. Especially if the US corn is being subsidized by 50% and all labor is mechanized.

Fernando Cardenal said tonight that ¨politics is the most effective exercise of charity.¨ I am choosing to believe this and thus structure my career around this belief. It is clear structural change is needed, that neutrality only helps the oppressor. A time comes when the ¨band-aid can no longer cover a bullet hole¨and a differentiation must be made between justice and compassion. Compassion is handing out food, but justice is "asking why the poor have no food" (Camara). Even with the threat of being called a communist.