Letter--19: Unpalatable Patriotism

Letter-19 (from Querétaro): Being Palatably Correct for the Good of the Country.

The Peace Corps has three basic missions, the latter two of which make its mission unique and long-lasting, especially with our younger compatriots. First is to convey technical knowledge, usually in things like agriculture, small business development, English or health. The second and third missions, however, make the difference.

These are to generate goodwill in host nations toward the United States and to bring unique cultures back home. From what I have seen in Mexico – though our Southern neighbor is an outlier among Peace Corps missions – the younger volunteers do a magnificent job.

Why?

They connect with younger professionals and will empower them professionally. These young host country counterparts represent the generational inflection points of their societies. It is their willingness to emulate the best Americans have to offer and pride their professionalism above economic opportunism that may turn the tide for these countries.

After all, I know people my age are simply too tired and too used to particular world views to change easily. So, it is a joy to see these young Yanks, whose professionalism sharpens their sincerity, do what I wish I had many years ago. Nevertheless, this old hoot has reasons to chuckle along the way.

For example, a dinner party I attended last evening. A new friend in Querétaro was celebrating her twenty-fifth anniversary and invited me to a very informal dinner. The invitation delighted me and so I picked up my wind-breaker and make-shift Spanish and went to the dinner. The people in attendance were all Mexicans and generally my age and I felt right at home bringing goodwill to Mexico like a Peace Corps Trooper.

Then came the test. The dish at the other end of the dining table with steaming hot corn tortillas looked like a chicken goulash to me. Great, I thought: no ‘puerco’; Mexico is the pork eating capital of the world, surpassing even Germany. The assumed goulash came my way just the way I wanted it and that meant lots of it. Only when it was in front of me did I realize that this was not chicken that everyone was eating but cooked chicharrón.

Chicharrón – yes, do roll those r’s once you have finished rolling your eyes – is basically the fatty part of pig-skin dried and spiced like a cheese doodle. As a munchies food, it is just awful. Though enamored of México in many ways, when I see chicharrón, I head for the hills like Pancho Villa from Woodrow Wilson’s army. I shuddered at the unspeakable horror sitting in front of me. I neither noticed nor cared that others loved their fare. As far as I was concerned this stuff made high-school cream-chipped beef on toast (a / k / a SH*t on a shingle) look like food fit for a king.

I looked quickly for a dog to which I could inflict this madness. None around, dammit. I was trapped by Peace Corp’s second mission. So with all of the earnestness at my command, I ate the slop with no outward hesitance, relying on years on careful training for stoicism to see me through. For all of the private melodrama, the food was not half-bad. I even had a second helping!

What is that last line of the national anthem again? Something about the home of the brave? The only drawback I found was that the chicharrón had the texture of calamari I used to eat in Manhattan trying very hard to impress some dinner date that I was sophisticated. I faked it then and I faked it last night. The critical difference? In Manhattan, I was ‘enjoying’ calamari for some rank courting opportunism. Last night, I ‘enjoyed’ chicharrón for the good of the country.

I apologize for the longer than usual letter. I wanted to answer Choate teacher, Tony Hodgin’s, e-mailed response to my admittedly over-the-top statement that forty Peace Corps volunteers would do more than four hundred USAID field reps in Afghanistan. Actually, there are seventy volunteers in Mexico and my statement was an exaggeration. The reasoning behind it remains the same. Tony understands development issues better than most people; he deserves an answer (long over-due).

The seventy Peace Corps volunteers in Mexico are in a country that wants us to be there working on small projects that people can replicate easily. These matters are all about legacy. What will today’s people think of our efforts in twenty years. I am willing to bet USAID’s bottom dollar (never my own, of course) that Mexicans will not remember the technical skills conveyance or some $5,000 project for bee-hives. What they will remember are that those damn Yankees were damned good Yankees; that they were worth emulating by their basic decency and integrity.

In Afghanistan, however, USAID is operating in a very unfriendly and difficult environment. Much of its effort is being dissipated, with little of the way in positive legacy to leave behind. If the U.S. government pulls development work back to secure and truly welcoming parts of Afghanistan, the aid dollar will go much further. That said, there are other, debilitating issues with USAID around funding out-sourced ‘development’ contracts to a highly in-bred development community.