Letter #47: Thanksgiving comes to México

In México, the main meal of the day is called ‘la comida’ and is eaten over an hour’s time (perhaps ninety minutes) anytime between one and three o’clock in the afternoon. At El Centro de Ingeniería y Desarrollo Industrial (The Engineering and Industrial Development Center or ‘CIDESI’), where I serve as a Peace Corps volunteer, we usually eat this comida around 2:00 p.m. And so it went today.

Except this was not your normal comida but a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner. As the people came in and enjoyed the turkey, potatoes, stuffing, crackers, cheese, salads, pumpkin pies, etc. and as the amount of food available turned out to be sufficient, that peace-of-mind that only the fatigue of preparation can bestow finally calmed my shyness.

Instead of reciting the menu of dishes to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that today’s qualified as an adequate Thanksgiving dinner, felicitously conincidental with the far more formal family event hosted by the Purnells in Annapolis at 3 p.m. (E.S.T.), I prefer to focus on the men and women who made this day, this meal, this time one for me to remember gratefully and one I want to share with you all.

Alejandro Obregón, a senior budgetary analyst at CIDESI, cooked an eighteen pound turkey, while juggling year-end account reconciliations and a meeting yesterday (i.e., November 23rd) in Mexico City, meaning up at 5 a.m. and home at 10 p.m. Alex likes to cook and, though bedeviled for twelve hours with that steroid-stuffed bird, it showed this afternoon, deliciously. Alex proved his goodwill by cutting the turkey – and all of this the day before his fortieth birthday! That turkey went fast, let me assure you.

Alejandro Obregón (CIDESI) Daisie Hobson (Peace Corps, to the right)

Daisie Hobson, a fellow Peace Corps type serving at CIDESI, has quickly emerged as our star volunteer here with skills needed by the center to change its organizational culture from one of “knowledge is good” (thank you, Bluto) to “knowledge is change”, as in the mobilization of the inert intellectual capital. While Daisie’s virtues are many, her grace in explaining what the holiday meant – with a heartfelt tear in reminding each of us to consider something for which are grateful today – transformed the comida from a technical success to a triumph of goodwill. Besides, Daisie’s magic salad was to die for…honestly.

Sylvia Salas, part of the team that manages CIDESI’s campus in Querétaro, was a guest of honor for her recent and complete recovery from cancer. A lovely lady well loved across CIDESI, Sylvia displayed a grateful humility about her recent good news that moved me to honour her today, this day of thanks. Sylvia contributed a carrot cake, as good as I might find North of the border. Why am I convinced of its excellence? Because that cake was the last of four desserts laid out and the first to go. Each time turned around, that cake was smaller. When I was finally ready for my piece, only crumbs remained…rats.

Sylvia Salas (CIDESI, to the left) Gerry Mayer (Peace Corps)

Gerry Mayer, who completes his two-year tour tomorrow (i.e., the 25th of November), was a gracious guest of honor as well. In singling Gerry out, I want to talk about what Gerry did for CIDESI. Like me, Gerry arrived at CIDESI with little to do. Unlike me, however, the reason was because his project fell through before his arrival. Most people would have whined, pined or resigned in a huff of self-pity. But Gerry Mayer did not do that. Instead, he set about to make his tour a success some other way, which he did by tutoring in technical and colloquial English. At his peak, Gerry hosted sixteen students. Today, he attended the comida with his best pupil whom he has been sure to mentor in her business quest. Beyond his dry wit, I will miss Gerry’s example of making the best out of an inauspicious beginning.

Magda Durán (CIDESI) Lupita Baltazar (CIDESI)

Finally, Magdalena Durán and Guadalupe Baltazar, all of CIDESI, made significant contributions. Magda and Lupita did most of the support work – together with some others from the Human Resources Department – to graduate this meal from a potential comida of errors to a time worth writing home about this evening. It was this mosaic quality of many diverse hands making the dinner special that made me feel grateful enough to recite an abridged version my father’s perennial Thanksgiving grace: “God, we thank you and ask for your blessing today. For our friends are family and family are friends.”

Norman Rockwell would have been proud.

Letter 46: Kafka, coffee and Querétaro

“There it goes. This is it. This time it’s war! Imagine its doing this at six forty-five in the morning. They’re getting bigger and stronger and if I don’t do something soon, I will lose the very friends that define the difference between growth and godlessness.” And so I spoke silently to myself. It tried a feint; but a retreat through outflanking, a brilliant move the first dozen times, would not work now: no way, no how. The guerilla tactic continued, almost instinctively.

Creating a disturbance to its left and darting right, I had it, easy. About to relish my personal chorus of victory, by reciting Lieutenant Commander Chekhov of the United Star Ship Enterprise – NCC-1701 – “Got him, Captain Keerk!” Until it stopped dead (soon though it would be itself) in front of me, folding its two top limbs - arms, I suppose - in front of it and focusing its many visions on me. This situation was a first, perhaps in history, certainly in my little piece of it.

No one would ever believe me. Even if I had tried to make this up, people would dismiss it with a smear of contempt saying, “Ned, you can’t make this sh*t up…” What occurred over the next few minutes that morning merits the re-telling even if people think I am a little – even a lot – ‘off’, “Yes, Ned, was a nice boy…and a fairly decent fellow…so sad, really.” But truth is truth, crushing and simple as it is.

“Hey, pal, what are looking at? Okay, okay: I admit I look ugly but you act ugly…” That got me angry, being mocked by some pip-squeak a fraction of my size. But such is the humiliating insult of an insolent insect. It represented at least the third cockroach in as many days to cut right across visual plane in broad lamplight. After a few misses, I had finally nailed the others: crushed like a bug.

What pleasure – what a feeling of victory; what a rush of power! After getting this one, I intended to clean the floor with a toxic concoction so strong, it would roust Rachel Carson out of her nap from here to eternity. But this day, it did not quite work out that way. That damn cockroach was not about to resign ITSELF to its properly ordained fate.

“Me? an IT? you say! Well look at you! You, with your aerosol sprays and that bottle with Spanish text you don’t understand but take comfort in the skull and bones on the label, you Yalie wannabe…fuhcrisake…”

“Hey!” I yelled, “Excuse me!!!”

“Excuse you for what, dinkweed?” replied this nasty little gnat turning sarcastic and imitating me while dancing an Irish jig on its two bottom legs, “Look at me: I’m so cool…I’m a Peace Corps volunteer…well [expletive deleted], you who so nobly laments man’s inhumanity to man. Why can’t hypocrites like you just leave it at that?”

“Leave what at what?” asked I. Damn tough being toyed with by a bug.

“O jeez!” as it rolled all sixteen of its eyes. “You’re duller than I could ever have imagined. some are thicker than others. Why can’t you erectile dysfunctions with your projectiles without compunctions just confine your cruelty to yourselves and leave the rest of the hell alone…?”

By now, I was smoking peeved, “Listen, you filthy little bastard, I won’t stand for this in my living room…”

“Oh, yes, you will…”

“Oh, no I won’t,” said I, adding snittily, “And just tell me why you think I should?”

“Because you don’t own this dump. You rent. Or had you forgotten, Einstein?”

“Einstein! Einstein? Why you, you, you…” I was so unnerved by this bug I could not speak and just foamed at the mouth, my head buzzing like a bee-hive.

“Hah!” he said contemptuously wiggling his antenna in a manner calculated to annoy me. But he continued, “You go through life, smugly assuming that you are just a little better than others, just a little more sensitive, just a little less understood…fuhgetaboutit, fuhcrisake, you prig.”

“I do not have to tolerate this…” I countered.

The cockroach, with doom imminent, continued utterly undeterred, “You will prevail here today. Hope you feel good, killing a defenseless little insect…ooohhhh – you’re such a hard-guy! What with killing us who are a millionth of your size.”

Squinting hard, I glowered, to no effect, as it continued without hesitation, “And, guess what, jerk? I have to live off your scraps and Mister ‘I’m-so-cool-that-I’m-above-culture-shock’ only leaves bits of Kit-Kat bars and potato chips for me to eat! You know something? If your clod-hopper didn’t get me, your diet would…”

“That’s it!” I replied plaintively, trying to paraphrase Emerson to gain the upper hand, “There comes a time-“

But the bug cut me off, “yeah, yeah, where immolation is insecticide…Trust me, your pedantry precedes you, Julian…yeah, that’s right: Julian on the bus…”

Truly humiliated at being called as the one character I feared the most in all the ficition I have read, I said icily, “You germ-laden little louse! That is enough. You are one dead bug, bug…”

“Hey, I know you’re gonna kill me but do you have to insult me by referring to me as one of them?”

Again I was disconcerted, “One of whom?”

The bug quavered slightly – or was it a shrug? – and bawled, “A louse! That’s what! And, hey, look at you, squirm-weenie! You and your mammal-mania…why your actions display a colder blood than I’ve ever had…diddling with Emerson, fuhcrisakes, you philosophical flip-chart…”

At that point, I snapped stomped hard but missed. It looked truly frightened but quickly regained its composure and said, “That’s right. You can’t out-argue a bug. So just crush me…good for your karma…”

Shrugging my shoulders, I retorted, “Karma? How can you talk about karma? You have a life span of two weeks, tops…”

“Huh? More like five days with peaceniks like you around…” It sneered at me, “At least that bounced Czech had more empathy for me than you ever will...”

Being humbled by people is not fun. But to be belittled by a bug? So I reached for the can, resorting to aerosol for the first time in many years. It knew the end was near but it still refused to move. Its sarcasm and critical faculty had bought itself a month in human terms but my patience had dissipated after five minutes.

Nevertheless, it remained composed as I readied the can. Then I remembered reading somewhere that bug spray works like nerve gas. Damn! With compassion and frustration swirling uneasily inside my heart, I decided to make its end quick – a mercy shot with the stomp of my left foot. Enfolding the crushed corpse in single-ply toilet paper – I am roughing it, you know – I flushed it down the toilet.

Then I brushed my teeth, finished dressing, clipped on my Peace Corps pin and headed off to the science center where I serve the United States of America, helping our benighted neighbors to the South. As I locked the door, in a hurry because I was now running late, I remembered a long-forgotten fragment of that signature Kipling ditty learned in grade school:

“You’re a better than I, Gunga Din.” I looked around furtively, saw a neighbor and smiled faintly, “Buenos días, señor. ¿Cómo está usted, esta mañana?”

Letter #45: like 1845 - time for a new war with Mexico

The war on drugs is lost; long live the war. Yes, we need to fight the good fight. Perhaps we could frame our efforts in terms other than war. One word can be enough to harden hearts and close minds. In this phony war on drugs, such chemical casuistry turns what really ought to be a concerted policy to address a national ill into misguided imagery to justify consequences beyond the countenance of civilized men and women. We know the reasoning, “Hey, it’s war: innocents regrettably die.”

Or to be more bluntly traditional, the war on drugs has been anything but a just war. Over forty years of trying to cut demand through mass incarcerations, border patrols, tougher penalties for dealers, drones violating Mexico's sovereignty and government-sanctioned gun-running have not significantly reduced the demand for illegal drugs in the U.S. In fact, the unintended and often unmentioned consequences – the collateral damage of this phony war – re-appear so often and are so consistently damaging that they undermine the intentions of the policy, no matter how fine they once were.

We all know the consequences north of the Rio Grande: the demoralization of millions of young blacks through jail-time for petty crimes; the deaths of others because the current policy so often looks away from the poorer communities riddled with gang warfare and cheap drugs; the absence of support for any but the wealthier addicts sincerely seeking help; as well as, omitted support for suffering families. The suffering in Mexico – some 125,000 dead – categorically trumps any justice in this ‘war’ since the origin of the problem lies squarely in the United States.

Continuation of this war on drugs guarantees more such collateral carnage in Mexico. So the intentions of this war on drugs remain “good”: well that is just wonderful. Such intentions, however, fall utterly to dust in the glare of accountability for the damages imposed upon so many people not involved in the trafficking or use of illegal drugs . The policy itself becomes fundamentally unjust and the predictably fatal fall-out inheres to, and compromises, the righteousness of its premise.

Our highest levels of leadership, in both parties, lack the courage to stand up and out publicly and ask the American people: “What is it about America – the most powerful, richest, greatest society (blah, blah, blah ad blauseam) in history – that so many of her people resort to illegal drugs and excessive alcohol consumption?”. Such a basic and simple question has few in the way of constructive answers.

But without the courage to admit to, and the inward capacity to address, a spiritual illness run rampant, nothing new is tried and no risks are taken: the scourge simply gets worse by default. All of these constraints –harsh consequences, hardened criminals, institutional racism / classism, and absence of courage – beg a comprehensive and easily understood solution like legalization, right?

Well it’s not that easy. Just how would drugs be legalized? It is not hard to suppose that well meaning government entities would impose a minimum “legal using age” and, as a complement, some type of regulated potency for the drugs. In short, the legalization of drugs would almost certainly parallel the restrictions in place for liquor (i.e., minimum age of twenty-one and regulations on quality).

Therein lies a most chafing rub: narcotics distribution channels already reach down age levels as low as children in junior high school. Additionally, with the two or three generations of drug use already entrenched, popular taste may well have inclined to a level of potency far above the one that a responsible government could safely permit. Thus, a sweeping legalization of drugs would create the perverse and unintended effect of getting even stronger drugs funneled down to even younger kids to create a life-long preference for the illicit products available on the black market.

So what would Americans – or, more, likely their leaders – do to face this unanticipated dilemma? Send every kid from the seventh grade or higher to some six-year boot-camp to monitor their every move? Blame the Mexicans and wash their hands of even more narco-sobre-narco killings with innocent caught in the casino fire? Pour pesticides across Colombia so nothing grows, including illiterate natives (i.e., ‘expendable’ people) poisoned by a different kind of toxin? Just do nothing and simply let predominantly less privileged American kids dabble in more and dangerous drugs, succumbing to the pressure of rugged marketers competing in a narrowed domain? How many people might die under a scenario like that?

Legalization only becomes the phony peace to displace an equally phony – and equally failing – war. Yet there is a third way quite possibly out of the dilemma. But first, America needs to ask the question it has avoided for forty years for want of an easy answer. This simple question will arguably be the most difficult part of a new policy. Why? Because the search for an answer to why the American spirit has a gaping and gangrenous hole at its very center will:

• confound the conservatives who focus solely on personal responsibility and not on the structural violence of poverty;
• lead the liberals into areas of personal choices and morality beyond the reach of government intervention aimed at populations, not people;
• stump and short-circuit the mechanistic zeal of the technocrats; as well as,
• bring out in bold relief the current inability to sustain a long-term policy in a hyper-kinetic society buzzing with belligerence.

My opinion is just that, an opinion. First, we change this phony war into a renewed crusade against addiction. Like it or not, spiritual illness is endemic to American society. Who knows why; who cares why. Millions suffer under addiction while other millions suffer in prison. So, from a policy perspective, how do we as a people fill that spiritual void with things other than illegal substances? In my mind, at least, we would announce this crusade by:

1. decriminalizing the consumption of drugs by addicts who turn themselves in to the local Health and Human Services office;
2. rehabilitating addicts, even if the whole state of Alaska has to be set aside as one great big re-hab;
3. teaching minimal jobs skills (besides making license plates) for addicts being rehabilitated;
4. offering tax breaks for those companies hiring recovering addicts;
5. light, misdemeanor sentences for recreational users or addicts not taking advantage of the amnesty program initially or dealers with minimal amounts (intended for friends) with referral to the local re-hab; and,
6. stiff sentences professional dealers that increase if the drugs are significantly stronger than those distributed to addicts or targeted toward people below the age of 18.

Would this solve everything? Of course not. At least we will have resources freed up to educate the poor, support the afflicted and incarcerate the real gangsters: dealers preying on our youngsters. These ideas are worth considering only as part of a larger, though lamentably mute, debate about what we, as a country and as a people, do to change a failing policy that is no longer just. Would México be willing to pitch in? Oh, I can think of more than a hundred thousand reasons why she just might help.

Letter-44: Hey Aaron, you forgot your wheaties

Being a Peace Corps volunteer has in fact been more than it is cracked up to be. Indeed, thirty-five years of dedicated procrastination have paid off in that I have the confidence to contribute to the technology transfer programs of my agency and accomplish more than I did working longer hours while dodging real and bureaucratic bullets in a development agency overseas. Ironically, until a month before my deployment to México, I had a vision of teaching school in a remote hill-town on the Baja Peninsula, meditating at night, writing the great American novel by day and giving Siddhartha a run for his money.

Yet, I arrived in Querétaro, an internationalist city of about a million people, somehow selected for the Technology Transfer Program without the vaguest notion of what tech transfer was or why I should be selected for such a heady program given a rather ‘grey-flannel’ background in banking and government work. But here I was and the last thing I wanted to do was nothing. After all, I had come to México to contribute and, by jingo, I was going to do that.

Realizing within days that my background was quite unlike most others here, if only because I had taken one science course in the last forty years, I deflected daily panic by remembering how Kansas City Athletics infielder, Bert ‘Campy’ Campaneris, pulled of a truly remarkable feat in the Major Leagues in the 1960s by playing a different position in the field – including both positions of the battery – in each of nine innings. If Campy could pull that off in the Major Leagues, well than a classic ‘jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none’ like me might do something here in México as well.

What has made this tour profoundly maturing for me as a merry misfit are two things: the support of the Peace Corps, particularly in language training and some orientation on technology transfer, as well as the openness consistently exhibited by my host country agency, El Centro de Ingeniería y Desarrollo Industrial (CIDESI). Additionally, I cannot fail to credit two other Peace Corps types at CIDESI – Miss Daisie Hobson of Arizona and Mr Gerald Meyer of Utah – who have empowered me in matters technical and shown me the way to goodwill.

After three months of grueling – but excellent – language training in the Peace Corps, I landed in CIDESI for a project that did not start moving forward until seven months later. So I read and read…and read…would get a piece of raw meat just in the nick of time…and read some more. Eventually, I would cull the 50-60% of the material not relevant to CIDESI of a Mexican government accounting manual to be applied in implementing a new system of book-keeping imposed all governance entities, agencies and state-owned enterprises at all levels in the Mexican government.

In short, I had willingly signed up for the grunt work of the project. Again, this challenge proved to be one of perspective. Three thoughts reassured and reconciled me to that sought after servitude. First, the busy-work would keep me engaged, knowing that I would come to understand fiscal economics and accounting in México as few other Yanks. Second, not only were my colleagues already over-burdened with the normal grind of finance but also had to cope with an institution writhing its way through a radical restructuring of the organization and re-shaping of its culture.

Third, in finance, one simply has to do the crud-work, do it well and display a willingness to do it to earn professional credibility. In that respect, at least, Querétaro is no different than Canary Wharf and CIDESI is identical to Citicorp. Reading several thousand pages in Spanish of regulations, laws, accounting standards and the like kept me busy for four months. Nevertheless, glutted with my intellectual Wheaties, soon I yearned for more; that is, to do more, to contribute more and, most of all, to learn more.

So, with the encouragement of CIDESI acquaintances outside of my department – together with the kind support of my finance colleagues – on my spare time, I prepared a vision of tech transfer and how it might work at CIDESI. To accomplish this rather herculean task, way outside the realm of my experience and pushing the parameters of my project plan, I got a reading list of eight books, primarily from a mechanical engineer at CIDESI who is the in-house visionary. More than anything, however, I took the cotton out of my ears and put it in my mouth and listened…a lot.

All of these things, again with thousands of pages of preparatory studies force-fed mainly at night and on week-ends, enabled me to put together a decent ‘first-stab’ vision expressed in a slide-show. The senior engineers graciously invited me – a French Literature and ‘Politics’ major – to join their efforts. Their invitation was allegedly based on that slide-show, my rudimentary command of Spanish (a/k/a, lisp and giggle) and my “mente hiperactiva” (i.e., right-brained, at worst entertaining, enthusiasm). The five words I have repeated over-and-over, for I can not pretend to be a jock at this stuff, are “solamente primas materias para refinarse”.

Since then, I have held intensive meetings the line Directors of the major research areas to solicit their respective visions; developed two technology road-maps; written ‘off-white’ papers analyzing risk management and financial oversight of projects; as well as, participated in presentations to, or speeches by, senior agency officials. Soon, very cold-sweat soon, I will suggesting ways of integrating financial concepts into project management be led very well by Daisie Hobson.

CIDESI has really stepped up its support for me with four months of daily Spanish training, attendance at a national accounting forum, and three outside courses / conferences on tech transfer, accounting standards and communications skills. Once again, my fellow Peace Corps volunteers, both trained engineers, have been critical in my effort to discipline whizzing thoughts, divergent ideas and dancing pages into some decent ideas.

These contributions, together with my open encouragement for others to take what I produce and make it so much better, have proven to be instrumental to being invited to more interesting tasks. Just as I wash the dishes after my ‘novia’ makes dinner for me, however, I never want to let go of crud-work entirely because, after all, I am a Peace Corps volunteer and helpfulness remains the name of the game, at least as long as the cotton remains out of my ears and in my mouth.