Letter #53: Culture Shock 102--A dark fantasy of Fanon and middle age

Well, I decided arbitrarily that it is time for me to write home again. At first, I was going to scribble out a diatribe about the center where I serve (with negative 40% operating profit margin to no one’s surprise, chagrin or even titter) and how difficult complacency is to overcome even when the bus is blithely flying off the cliff. Soon enough, however, I realized that I was having an inward hissy-fit and who wants a testimonial of self-pity, right?

Right, especially after beginning to watch a flic sent to me by a most excellent friend here in the Peace Corps that seems to be a latter-day Hispanic version of the Wretched of the Earth. Unfortunately, the computer lacks volume and I the facility in Spanish to make out much the dialogue. The visuals are intensely revealing, nonetheless; guns need no subtitles.

Life is suffering. And to think I was talking about John Rawls’s theory of distributive justice just yesterday with our wonderful ‘Doctora’ at the Peace Corps. This film is sobering – “Sid and Nancy” type of sobering. You know the world is a tough place when ‘hacer sexo’ is the one of the very few moments of pleasure wrested from long days and weeks of misery of grinding poverty.

Survival of the fittest in this dark world means surviving in a gang where expansive tattoos are one of the few means of identity. There are many people I know with tasteful tattoos – ones I would like to have had, if I had had the guts. The tattoos in this film are not among those: they hide God’s handiwork behind a permanent persona of survival on the surface. Enough for now.

So after checking in with a few friends via e-mail and facebook, I set off for my first quest officially as a middle-aged adult. You see, I have endured my first “itis” since my tenth grade year and that was only tonsillitis. Nothing serious, to be sure, but it did require a little experience that led to my second culture shock here in Mexico.

To get this ‘itis’ thing down, I decided to set off from my apartment today to take a urine culture to the laboratory. I tucked it in a bag, figuring it was sealed. Why I did not wait to do the deed until I got to the center lies beyond the scope of this letter as well as my mind.

When the here-and-now seems to be spiraling down-and-out, along comes those instances of unexpected cheer when the trite migrates beyond the trifling into the true…My culture shock today was one of those. As I walked along about half way to the clinic, I got the culture shock.

The translucent culture jar was in fact not sealed: AWKWARD. 

So, I had to carry it in my hand. When I got to the clinic, I found that the dump was closed for the day. Well, you can imagine the reactions as headed back to the apartment, walking through the streets with a dripping urine culture in my hand, plain to the sight of others. Again, why I did not consign the contents, visibly yellow to innocent bystanders, down a street drain attests to my not thinking well on-the-fly. 

Discreet as I tried to be, there was no hiding the cargo. Oy vey. So the pleasantries of small-talk became highly charged verbal ions electrified by choice facial expressions.

• When people passed me by from behind, they invariably looked down at my hand and then at me, either smiling or expressing (understandably) annoyance. So, I would say the logical small-talk response, “Sí (subtitulo: “Hey, pal, watcha lookin’ at? I am the one who has to carry this thing!”).
• When someone looked at me like I had committed some crime against humanity or, at least, a sin against God, I would smile, shrug my shoulders and say, “Yo sé…” (sub-titulo, “I know, I know. But, judge that ye not be judged, IDD-EEE-UT…”)
• When some Mexican family was simply enjoying the rhythm of a sunny day and had the temerity to walk in a relaxed gait in front of me, I would say with an urgency similar to that of Grant taking Richmond, “Por favor, con permiso!” (sub-titulo, “Get the ‘F’ out of my way! Can’t you see I have a culture shock here in my hand?”).

Hopefully, by now, you have some sense of where I was coming from and so I will wait until Monday morning and do what I really should have done all along: drop a casual thirty pesos (two and half bucks, that is to say, can you see) on a taxi and go to the clinic at 7:30 a.m. By the way, that film is harsh, really harsh. More about that film, now.

Life in Hell is pretty easy to figure out, even if can one only manage an occasional ‘entonces’…But then comes that smoldering justice borne by the noble savage though, in this case, it manifests with a machete through the jugular of a man about to attempt his second rape in a week -- in front of the victim's family -- having murdered his first target: a fourteen year old girl who tried to resist.

With this first sexual assault occurring in a cemetery; it is Camus on steroids, this visual anguish. The flic is unsparing in its visuals. The fifteen year old boy tries to stand up for one fourteen year old; he does save another, as the thundering herd of migrants hurtles forth from Honduras through Mexico toward Tejas. These “illegals” desparately seek what we take for granted everyday.

That boy's love for the second girl -- chivalry in all the wrong places -- is finally consummated, not by the way that long word usually implies but in making sure she gets to Tejas. The price for that love? Giving up his smart-phone and then, moments later, his life so she may live after a quick trip across the Rio Grande on an inner-tube.

The vengeful gang members pursuing him through Mexico finally vindicate the tattooed leader that the nameless teen had killed so other innocents could live. To make a depressing film almost completely hopeless, the fifteen year old urchin-saint is first shot by his ten year old brother, admittedly after some hesitation.

Quickly enough, however, fear and the mandate of early manhood kicks in and snuffs out that flicker of humanity in the ten year old brother. The little one has passed his initiation, now, and watches as his new extended family (all under twenty-five years old) arrive and light up on the body of his former sibling to make sure the message, whatever that message is, remains clear.

And there isn’t a damn thing one can do about it. It is only a movie, right? One of the things that neither Hobbes nor Rousseau could possibly have envisioned was the casual continuance of such nihilistic poverty amid so much plenty in our time.

 Indeed, that protracted poverty is the structural violence of our time. So, now it is my time to get up, dust myself off and don some decent clothes to attend a very worth-while fund-raiser so that I can feel somewhat worthy, too, with that culture shock in my refrigerator, safe for democracy.

Letter #52: the other price of admission

It becomes ironic in life when a son realizes that not only has he forgiven his father, he has morphed into him. In actuality, there really should be nothing unusual about this abrupt awakening to one’s past. After all, most people remain, throughout their lives, creatures of habit beholden to frames of reference. Well, that has certainly proved to be the truth with me.

In this last essay, sounding like my father forty years ago, I will try to touch on a few decisive issues that will make me say, like my father had about himself, “Why, I am so far out, I’m in.” The issue of pro-life versus pro-choice in the last discussion made untenable any allegiance to the Democratic Party. The good news is that, contrary to my fear, abortion simply has not become a popular form of birth control.

GAY MARRIAGE: civil unions yes; marriage, no. Full rights ought to be accorded to, and enforced on behalf of, partners who enter long-term committed peaceful relationships. Marriage is a sacrament and the base of the family unit. It is a tradition not to be trifled with unless the rights of partners in civil unions can not be protected. Then civil rights accorded in civil society trump religious tradition..

DEPT of DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION BILL: opposed. While we are cleaning house, let’s get rid of the U.S.A. Patriot Act. As is often the case, the muscle-bound over-reaction of the government has likely hurt the larger society more than did the original provocation. If there is evidence to document a probable cause of a clear and present danger, then get the warrant and arrest the citizen like everyone else.

The WAR on DRUGS: decriminalization yes; legalization no. Too many people are getting murdered in Mexico and too many black youths rot away in jails for petty crimes. Re-direct the war into one against addiction. That gets people out of jail who have no business being there and frees up a lot more resources to help the addicts who need it and to arrest the really bad people selling stuff to kids.

BRADLEY MANNING: innocent and good for Wiki-Leaks. Bradley Manning did what a responsible citizen should do in airing out information that wasn’t secret but damning. Wiki-Leaks took pains not to reveal truly sensitive information per Manning’s request. Vilifying Manning as some deranged homosexual probably is the best argument I could devise to support the implicit righteousness of his behavior.

The INVASION of IRAQ: supported. The problem with this war of aggression was not misinformation. It was, as I wrote at the time, the absence of a formal Congressional declaration to hold the government and the American people accountable. By 2003, any observer could see that the sanctions did not work and that a nation of oppressed people was going hungry. President Bush bravely ended that.

ISRAEL and PALESTINE: both have rights. Israel has a right to exist and the Palestineans have a right to return. What is taking place now is apartheid and it is brutalizing a once-liberal democracy. The U.S. has likely forfeited its opportunity to facilitate a one-state solution. It would be interesting to know how many Palestineans have been killed by the I.D.F. versus Israelis by terrorists. The math ain’t pretty.

IRANIAN NUCLEAR CAPABILITY: non-issue. Iran’s rising stature in the region is the issue. Southern Iraq may become a shadow satellite of Iran, a strategic set-back for the U.S. One of the hoped-for benefits of the “twinvasions” of countries flanking Iran was to topple that much harder society to defeat militarily. So we are now demonizing a gangster regime, possibly pushing it into gangster actions.

AFGHANISTAN: time to go home, now. The surge in Afghanistan actually assured an outcome the U.S. did not want, unlike the earlier surge (which I had also opposed) in Iraq. The difference? Afghanistan is not a nation but a no-man’s land contained by the frontiers of three erstwhile empires – the British, Persian and Russian. Call me a reincarnated Gladstone but our National Guard was designed to defend our people not an empire.

WALL STREET RESCUE: opposed. Instead of putting up all of this money to exempt plutocrats from facing up to the consequences of their actions, the Federal Reserve could have ring-fenced the Street and liquefied the overnight markets to keep regional and retail banks working. Main Street would not have gone broke bailing out Wall Street. The whole rationale reeks of paternalistic prattle.

OCCUPY WALL STREET: support. These people are exercising rights peaceably to assemble under the Constitution. Claims of criminal infiltration smack of excuse-making rhetoric. If there are criminal elements identified, produce the evidence, get a warrant and arrest the alleged criminals. Then let the law abiding 99% go back to demonstrating. We owe them thanks, not spanks.