journal #1 - mexico, chiapas:
chiapas.mediosindependientes.org/display.php3

journal #2 - chiapas, honduras:
dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/87108/index.php

journal #3 - honduras, nicaragua:
dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/87109

19 december 2003
managua
nicaragua

well, we had a couple more meetings on the atlantic coast.....and got to swim in the caribbean by moonlight....then headed back to managua. this is the end of the pastors for peace section of the trip, now I'm on my own with a friend as we head back north by land. travelling with a group like the Pastors for Peace is always an experience -- we had an age range of folks from 19 to 82 ,including some real characters. like my friend bob from chicago, who spends all his time watching football and collecting medicine to send to nicaragua. none of the people on the caravan were pastors, except rev. walker, the program director, who joined us in honduras. sometimes people think that the 'pastors for peace' caravans are just pastors travelling to central america. but the 'pastors' part of the name, I think refers to pastors in the US who help collect the aid and organize the events. it's a network of both religious and non-religious people who want to work in solidarity with the struggles of people in central america.

in bilwi, on the atlantic coast, we got to visit the autonomous indigenous university URACCAN. 'autonomy' in nicaragua means something different than it does in chiapas. in nicaragua, the 'autonomous agreement' was made in the eighties between the sandinista government and the people of the atlantic coast, in order to allow some degree of self-governance for the under-represented population of the atlantic coast. but the agreement was problematic to begin with, and a lot of those problems have yet to be resolved, as we discovered during our meeting with the miskito council of elders....but more on that in a minute. first, about URACCAN -- it was started in the 90s and has three campuses and over a thousand students -- but no dormitories! though they're hoping to build some soon, right now students have to travel to school or else live with host families. most of the university's funding comes from international solidarity groups, mostly in europe. the campus we visited is built on a former sandinista military base, and they had to have the UN come in and do mine-removal in the area (from landmines placed by both the Contras and the Sandinistas) before they could start classes. although the students were on vacation, there was teacher-training going on when we visited -- teachers from the districts voluntarily giving up their vacation time to come and get trained. and there were quite a few classes going on -- at least 100-150 teachers being trained. this is in a district where teachers' salaries are among the lowest in all of central america.....you have to be a devoted teacher to keep going under the conditions these teachers have in their classrooms.

there's also a center for traditional indigenous medicine there at URACCAN. one of the program heads spoke to us about traditional medicine, and really tied it all together with the culture and spirituality of indigenous people. he talked about the elements of fire, earth, air and water as all being essential to life -- and how traditional people would use the campfire to call for spirits to be present and aid in whatever decisions or discussions were happening around the fire. how they'd use water to cleanse and purify, including steam baths of herbal mixtures to deal with certain ailments. we also heard an author of a book about traditional medicine talk about how the people in this area consider the trees to be sacred, and that each tree has a spirit. they would not cut a tree until they are sure that the spirit has left the tree, thus giving them the permission to be able to cut and use the wood. now imagine how a people who believe this must feel when they see the wholesale deforestation of thousands of acres of their woods!! and tht's what's going on now -- massive deforestation.

we got to meet briefly with the miskito council of elders, who told us about some of the environmental devastation wrought upon their region by generations of gold mining and logging by multinational corporations. the climate has gotten drier and hotter due to the deforestation, and meanwhile, as their resources are being sucked away by multinationals, the people are steadily getting poorer. they receive no benefit from the logging, nor from the mining. instead, the mines use an antiquated method that was long ago outlawed in the US, that dumps arsenic and other poisons into the rivers of the region. there's also a hydroelectric plant that has been identified as a source of toxins in the water supply. but here, unlike in chiapas, these representatives of the traditional tribal elders of the miskito people do NOT feel empowered or represented by their supposedly 'autonomous' elected representatives. to the council of elders, these elected representatives are merely playing along with a game in which they have no control, and which is, in essence, an ILLUSION of autonomy -- for they are still under the jurisdiction of the national government in managua. the council of elders called a general assembly of the miskito people to address this issue, which was attended by representatives of over 400 communities, in which they came up with their own 'autonomous constitution', that would allow for self-government by the people, mutual respect between the miskito and the other indigenous inhabitants of the area (creole and mayagna), and control over their own land.....of course, the national government wouldn't want that, because the national government gets tax dollars from the multinational corporations who are mining and logging these people's land (but the atlantic coast inhabitants never get to see any of these tax dollars...). so instead of responding to the document composed at the atlantic coast general assembly meeting, the federal government went ahead with its OWN 'law of autonomy', law #445, passed last year, which divides all funds produced on the atlantic coast into four parts -- one quarter for the local government, one quarter for the municipal government, one quarter for the regional government, and one quarter for the national government -- but none for the people! the people, who didn't want their resources sold out from under them to begin with!! but I guess, as in all governments I've seen so far, the people don't count for much. it's the money that determines the laws.

so we came back to managua to find the students planning a massive strike, because the government has not been providing the funds allocated for education -- 6% of the national budget. see, when the sandinistas re-wrote the nation's constitution in 1979, they guaranteed education through the university level for all citizens. but in 1990, when chamorro (a nasty, corrupt, wealthy old bureaucrat from the somoza school of thought) was elected by a war-weary population who were sold on campaign promises that chamorro would 'end the contra war' (because he was buddies with the main perpetrators of the war, the US government), chamorro began to slowly dismantle the educational and healthcare reforms of the sandinistas. while he couldn't change the constitution itself, he helped implement such things as so-called 'autonomous schools' that received no government funding (and thus required students to pay fees), but were the only schools available to young people in many areas. in the late 90s, an extremely corrupt president named Aleman dismantled even further the free educational system that had existed in the 1980s. aleman was convicted of corruption charges a couple of weeks ago, and sentenced to twenty years of house arrest (in one of his expensive villas by the sea). so needless to say, after 13 years of losing funding and support for their schools, the students of today are getting pretty upset with the ongoing corruption of US-supported presidents such as chamorro and aleman. so while students in haiti are demanding the return of their democratic president jean-bertrand aristide, students in nicaragua are demanding an end to the string of corrupt presidents who, with full US support, have all but dismantled the educational system of nicaragua.

meanwhile, the Central American Free Trade Agreement was passed through in Washington, DC yesterday, with very little mention in the news, and with the exclusion of costa rica, who stepped out of the agreement at the last minute, calling it 'colonialism by the US'. I have to agree with costa rica's representative on that point, because this trade agreement, called CAFTA by it's acronym, offers very little benefit to the central american countries who have signed on to it. that is: guatemala, honduras, belize, nicaragua and el salvador. these are among the poorest countries in the WORLD, and because of their huge debt burdens, they are extremely vulnerable to US threats of sanctions and withdrawal of aid. so under pressure from the US (the only country whose companies stand to benefit from the trade agreement), these countries signed on. the people here are really upset about it -- you can hear it in the student's chants as they protest, and see the graffiti all over the streets. no matter what lies the US wants to spread about how CAFTA will 'benefit' these countries, many of the people here know what costa rica's representative was brave enough to articulate: this economic trade agreement is nothing more than the latest form of corporate colonialism by the US. and if there's one thing all these central american countries have in common, it is a history of massive, often brutally violent, US intervention in their internal affairs -- in short, this region is merely experiencing the latest stage of a long history of US colonialism.

22 december 2003
san salvador
el salvador

coming into el salvador is always so damn depressing......this country seems to have all the worst aspects of the brutal colonialism that has wrecked this region for the past hundred years, but without the redeeming qualities of ancient mayan pyramids or beautiful mountains and volcanoes. it is extremely polluted, and the population is weary of long years of war, and wary of US visitors. hell, I'd be wary of gringoes too, if I'd been through the brutal US-sponsored war these people have lived through. so many hundreds of thousands of people died in central america because of the 'war on communism' -- in guatemala, el salvador, honduras, nicaragua, panama.......can't the US just LEAVE THIS REGION ALONE??? but no, they have to come in with their smiling white ronald mcdonald clown face, with their pizza huts and KFCs, their mega-malls and superhighways. WHY?? why do these companies find it necessary to invade all these war-torn areas with their consumer culture, their bad pop music and cheap plastic toys? can't they just LEAVE THESE POOR PEOPLE ALONE???? but somewhere in new york or LA or san francisco, there's a marketing executive that's examining the numbers, determining that there is an untapped market here, a population that has yet to be indebted by credit card spending frenzies, and they are DETERMINED to put in the advertising dollars necessary to GET THESE PEOPLE TO BUY their cheap, stupid products. I HATE THE CONSUMER CULTURE!! it really makes me sad to see these people, survivors of a decade-long war that took at least one loved one from every family, going to the mall and buying into the culture of consumerism that is being sold to them by lying, swindling, corrupt US companies -- many of whom made money off the war that killed their loved ones.

but just like in the US, people want to ignore it. the problem is that here, it's harder to ignore. the contrast is so blatant, so evident in every square centimeter of this country. there has been so much blood spilled here. and now......the superhighway is being cut through the mountains ..... small shacks are pushed aside or cut in half by the work crews as they build the straight road to the shore. plan puebla panama at work........and all along the newly-cut cliff are painted slogans for the right-wing party, ARENA, in red, white and blue. ARENA, the party made up of former death squad leaders, the dictatorship of the elite......it makes sense that their party colors would be red, white and blue. and it would also make sense that, on more than one occasion, I noticed that their signs had been defaced by red blotches....representative, perhaps, of the blood that was spilled by their members, back in the 1980s, in the days of the war.

will reagan ever be brought to justice, for the thousands of executions, tortures and violent killings? will kissinger? john negroponte? oliver north? john foster dulles? george bush? or will they die celebrated american heroes? WILL THE TRUTH EVER COME OUT????? the truth: that these men were involved in perpetrating the most brutal and horrendous of massacres under the guise of 'fighting communism'? some people know this already...it's in the public record, some would call it 'public knowledge', for the information IS available for those who seek it out. but it's not widely known by the american public.... most people would consider reagan a hero, or, at the very least, would not call him a murdering crook. but why is it that, throughout US and world history, those men who are celebrated as 'heroes', often have the most brutal regimes? what does this say about history? about historians? about us, as a people????? when will we stop celebrating murderers as heroes, and begin recognizing TRUE heroism and recording it in our historical books. ben linder, now THAT's a true hero. can we please remember ben linder in our history books, and send kissinger to trial for crimes against humanity? that would truly be justice.

when I go to the protest at the School of the Americas in Columbus, Georgia each November, and I hear the names of the victims of death squads in central and south america read out over the loudspeaker, and the people in the crowd all respond 'Presente', I feel a surge of defiance, and yes, justice, in a way. for these names, these victims of death squads, are people who were supposed to be forgotten. the people who were killed in the 'secret' wars, whose bodies were left to rot, whose stories were brushed under the rug. but we are again exposing them to daylight, proclaiming that they are Present, that they are there with us in front of the gates of Fort Benning, quietly condemning their killers. and that in and of itself is a form of justice. maybe we'll never be able to bring their killers to trial. maybe kissinger and the others will be written down as heroes. but WE will write our own histories. we won't let their deaths be in vain. we'll stand up, and we'll grow in our numbers, as more and more people decide they're not going to take it any more...and here in el salvador, and in ft. benning georgia, we will find justice somehow.

some people in my family seem to think that I should be ashamed of having been arrested at a protest against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in Quebec, in 2001. but down here in central america, when I tell people I was arrested for protesting the Free Trade Area, guess what they say? they say, 'thank you.' 'thank you for standing up for us, the poorest people in the world, we who have no voice in the negotiations. thank you for taking a stand, for standing up to the powerful multinational corporations who are trying to control our whole planet. thank you for putting yourself at risk to defend our livelihood, our traditions, our forests, our earth.' I don't know how to get my family to understand that standing up against the Free Trade Area is something to be proud of, and in fact, I would be ashamed if I did NOT do something to try to stop it. I'm not saying that getting arrested or going to protests is necessarily the BEST way to stop it, but it is one way, and I don't really know the best way to stop it, but I am trying. and all of us who go to these protests are trying, really trying in the best ways we can think of, to stop the destruction of this planet by those who would kill the last tree for a profit, or poison the last river for a buck. if the last forest were cut, and I did not do something, ANYTHING to stop it from being cut, that's when I would REALLY be ashamed. think things are not that bad, not that desperate? that everything's A-OK? think again. and try looking outside of the US borders before saying that everything's A-OK on this earth. cuz it's not. we're in a really desperate situation, and we ALL need to do what we can, to avoid extinction of the whole species, and the poisoning of the planet by companies that see only the profit margin, nothing more.