Who Says We Need to Develop?

Some shots from my Coca-Cola Album.
We are exporting the best of American Culture.

Bolivia is leaking people.  Millions of Bolivians have emigrated--primarily to Spain, Argentina and the United States--in hopes of making some dent in the struggle to survive.  Some return after a couple years or many--to their spouse, their friends, their children--finally having saved enough to buy a home, a car, start a business, or put their children through college--goals impossible to fulfill at home.  Others create small Bolivias in their new home, as immigrants have done for centuries.  My circumstances are completely different, but I am a foreigner in a foreign land, testifying to that there is a commonality among those here who "have left."  It's easy to spend my time with gringos.  How much stronger that commonality must be among those who leave with extreme objectives, who have sacrificed so much to arrive.

Today I had lunch with gringo who lives happily in Bolivia with (Bolivian) wife and son.  His wife has struggled alongside with campesinos who have never heard of the Atlantic Ocean and lectured in prostigious Washington, DC venues and universities.   One afternoon walking through the Plaza Principal, passing an indigenous woman on the street, my new friend remarked to his partner "If they could only get an education, like us..."

"Why would they want to be educated like you?" his wife shot back.

There is an inevitable gringo attitude of we know best.  Consider how in how we've named "the developing world."  "What do we need to develop?" a Bolivian friend of mine recently asked me. "For generations we've had our culture, our society, our way of life.  Who says we need to develop?  


We're sensitve about our diminutive language--even when we roll our eyes calling it "politically correct"--toward one another in the states.  What about our international dimunutive language?

And when will "the developing world" be developed?  When their GDP approaches ours?  When they speak english?  When capitalism thrives there and they begin exploiting poorer nations?  When everyone has wi-fi in their adobe homes?  As my friend Gabo joked with me after an invitation to use the internet in our house: "I'm a child of the 3rd World -- I'm accostomed to using internet cafes."

Five hundred years ago the Spanish arrived with hungry eyes for Bolivia's rich natural resources, and as a result had to "develop" the people as well: they put them to work in mines, raped, killed, and converted them to Catholocism.  Fascinatinginly, in the 18th Century a revolution briefly put the indigenous community in control over the colonial Spanish.  The question arose:  What should we do with these Spanish invaders? Naturally, many suggested they simply kill the Spanish. But ultimately they decided the Spanish needed to be re-educated.  Clearly the Spanish had forgotten how to be human.  The Spanish brutes were incapable of cultivating their own food or building their own homes, therefore they enslaved the local (now Bolivian) population to do this for them.  Thus, the indigenous decided that the Spanish should be placed in small pueblos among the people who could reeducate them and help them develop back into human beings who lived in harmony with nature, with others.  Who live in anyi -- a concept of shalom, reciprocity or harmony with each other and nature.


Coca-Cola....not living with a whole lot of anyi...