Octubre, mes de la revolucion de 1944!

:: No hay respuestas magicas ni metodos milagrosos para resolver los problemas que enfrentamos, simplemente los de siempre: busqueda de entendimiento, educacion, organization, accion... y la clase de compromiso que persiste apesar de las tentaciones de desilucion, apesar de los tantos fracasos y pocos exitos, inspirado ...por la esperanza de un futuro mas brillante (Noam Chomsky)

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A finales del siglo XIX la economía guatemalteca comenzó a depender enormemente en la industria cafetera. Dicha transición intensificó la explotación colonial, el racismo y el autoritarianismo en el país... A través de medidas legales y sociales los campesinos se vieron obligados a dejar sus pequeños cultivos y a comenzar a trabajar en plantaciones. En las plantaciones los campesinos estaban a la disposición de los hacendados (dueños de las plantaciones)... Los hacendados usaron la autoridad que tenían sobre los campesinos para meterlos a la cárcel injustamente y abusar de ellos física y sexualmente.

Al comienzo del siglo XX, distintos grupos campesinos demandaron que el gobierno interveniera en contra del mal trato de los hacendados... Por diez años, entre 1944 y 1954 el gobierno intentó de una manera tangible responder al clamor del pueblo...

En junio de 1944 estudiantes universitarios y maestros de la capital, desafiaron el poder del dictador Jorge Ubico con una huelga y manifestaciones públicas a las que pronto se agregaron elementos de todos los sectores sociales.

Los movimientos pacíficos de junio derrocaron a Ubico. El triunvirato militar que les siguió en el mando, entregó luego la presidencia al general Ponce, a quien la Asamblea Nacional nombró presidente provisional. Pero como el pueblo de Guatemala ya no estaba dispuesto a soportar otra dictadura militar, el 20 de octubre de 1944 el Ejército Nacional apoyado por las masas trabajadoras, se sublevó y derrocó al general Ponce.

Después de las elecciones democráticas celebradas en diciembre de 1944, dos presidentes reformistas, Juan José Arévalo y su sucesor Jacabo Árbenz, restringieron muchas de las prerrogativas y privilegios de la oligarquía cafetera... Los nuevos gobiernos ratificaron una constitución social-democrática, restringieron el trabajo forzado, legalizaron los sindicatos, promulgaron un código de trabajo, expandieron el derecho al voto, y aprobaron una reforma agraria de gran escala...

El periodo de reforma terminó abruptamente en 1954, cuando la CIA derrocó a Árbenz.

Participatory Research

"This implies breaking the monopoly of knowledge in the hands of the elites--i.e. giving the people their right to assert their existing knowledge to start with, giving them the opportunity and assistance, if needed, to advance their self-knowledge through self-enquiry as the basis of their action, and to review themselves and their experiences from action to further advance their self-knowledge. In this reflection-action-reflection of the people, professional knowledge can be useful only in a dialogue with people's knowledge on an equal footing through which both can be enriched, and not in the arrogance of assumed superior wisdom. Altering thus the relations of knowledge ... is a central commitment of what is being termed as 'participatory research'."

(Breaking the Monopoly of Knowledge, Anisur Rahman)

Society, crazy indeed!

Today, as I read articles for my class "Sociology of Development", I get frustrated with the state of affairs (political, economic and social) in our world and for our lack of meaningful action to change things around.

My frustration drives me to remember Alex McCandles whose story was told in the movie Into The Wild. The following quotes from the movie and soundtrack describe my feelings at the moment:

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods; 

There is a rapture on the lonely shore;

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar; 

I love not man the less, but Nature more... 

- Lord Byron

Society, you're a crazy breed.

I hope you're not lonely, without me.

Society, crazy indeed...

I hope you're not lonely, without me

Society, have mercy on me.

I hope you're not angry, if I disagree.

Society, crazy indeed.

I hope you're not lonely...

without me.

-Eddie Vedder

Guatemala:

you fall heavily on my chest.
i cannot breathe.
a smile silenced by hunger.
a heart turn cold by powder.

oh hands chipped by the sun.
oh backs broken by labor.
tell me you can see beauty.
tell me you want to go on.
tell me you are still waiting for tomorrow's sun.

Critics of modern development

Ivan Illich

"We have embodied our world-view in our institutions and are now their prisoners. Factories, news media, hospitals, governments and schools produce goods and services packaged to contain our view of the world. We--the rich--conceive of progress as the expansion of these establishments. We conceive of heightened mobility as luxury and safety packaged by General Motors or Boeing. We conceive of improving the general well-being as increasing the supply of doctors and hospitals, which package health along with protracted suffering. We have come to identify our need for further learning with demand for even longer confinement to classrooms. In other words, we have packaged education with custodial care, certification for jobs, and the right to vote, and wrapped them all together with indoctrination in the Christian, liberal or communist virtues." (Illich 1997: 95)

Illich found the rational human decreasingly able to shape his or her environment because one's energies were consumed in procuring new models of the latest goods. According to Illich, rich nations imposed a straightjacket of traffic jams, hospital confinements, and classrooms on poor nations and called it "development." Yet, more people, quantitatively and relatively, suffered from hunger, pain and exposure than at the end of WWII... For Illich, the "benefits" of the modern world, even its medical systems, education, and democracy, were far from being obvious. The direction this takes is toward total abandonment of development because it inevitably involves growth that will ultimately prove falal. (From Peet and Hartwick, 2009)

Arturo Escobar

"Development can be described as an apparatus .... that links forms of knowledge about the Third World with the deployment of forms of power and intervention, resulting in the mapping and production of Third World societies.... By means of this discourse, individuals, governments and communities are seen as 'underdeveloped' (or placed under conditions in which they tend to see themselves as such), and are treated accordingly" (Escobar 1992: 23)

"Development was--and continues to be for the most part--a top-down, ethnocentric, and technocratic approach, which treated people and cultures as abstracts concepts, statistical figures to be moved up and down in the charts of 'progress'" (Escobar 1995: 44)