For the most part I’ve tried to steer clear of political content on my blog site.  Mostly because I’ve tried to re-dedicate my life to not giving energy to those things that do nothing but divide us.  There are actually people who are supposed to be doing that job. That said, it has been frustrating, and at times a little painful, to be down here and reading about and hearing about our president wanting to take his foreign aid ball and go home.

I’m going to speak to Guatemala because that’s what I know.  To punish a Central American country because they are not doing enough to help us solve our “immigration problem”, is like going to a guy on a corner, holding a sign asking for help, and telling him you’re taking his sign and his money because he has not done enough about the traffic situation at that corner.  His life is focused on a very small set of priorities.  On survival.  He would be baffled by our attitude and actions.

Guatemala is struggling to convert roads from dirt to pavement.  To improve the movement of it’s citizens.  I’m not talking about roads that are out in the countryside.  I’m talking about roads that many people have to travel in their everyday lives.  They are roads that are choked with dust from traffic in the dry season, and full of runoff gulleys in the rainy season.  Sometimes there are near impassible slide areas because there is no erosion control.  And did I mention the numerous single lane bridges?  The few people in cars, the more numerous people in busses, might wait in line for a half hour for their turn to cross.  if you are on a bicycle, a scooter, or walking, you can sometimes slip through a little easier.  Our commutes in America, while frustrating, are easy.

Guatemala struggles in many areas to bring water to it’s people.  One of my sponsor kids, Edgar, lives in a village called San Miguel Milpas Altas.  The water system in San Miguel is turned on two days a week.  On those days, people collect water in any vessel they have to get them through three or four days.  It probably wouldn’t shock you to hear that sometimes it doesn’t come on.  In many of those cases that doesn’t mean it will come on the next day.  It will come on the next scheduled day.  Again, I’m not talking about a village that’s out in the boonies.  San Miguel is only a handful of kilometers off the main highway between Antigua and Guatemala City.

Even in population centers, Guatemala struggles to provide consistently functioning water and electrical systems.  Right here in Antigua, in the house I’ve been living in for the past several weeks, we have been without water all or parts of four different days.  We have been without electricity for one entire day.  For all you math majors out there, that’s an average of more than once a week that people are without these services.

I can only hope my point is becoming clear.  The Texas border is surreal to Guatemalans.  For them to think that their government  could do anything about the situation there, or for their government to think that, wouldn’t even be laughable because they have way to even conceive the notion.  The good government officials are singularly focused on infrastructure.  NGOs are focused on education and healthcare.  Some them indirectly dependent on foreign aid by the way.  Agriculture is a lot of big American companies.  Some of them enjoy foreign aid “incentives”.  Few of them deserve any kudos.  But they do employ a lot of people.  Some rural ag cooperatives, formed by native people, are becoming very effective.  All of it requires huge amounts of what I think of as cultural energy.  And there is no energy left over for McAllen, Texas.  And there shouldn’t be.

Our immigration system is screwed up.  But to lay even a part of the fault at the feet of countries like Guatemala is baffling.  I can tell you it certainly is to Guatemalans.  There is an unfortunate shift going on in the way the people of Guatemala perceive America and Americans.  Some Americans couldn’t care less about that.  Getting back to the metaphor of the guy on the corner; If we don’t care that his lack of knowledge, resources, or energy, prevents him from any willingness, and all we can think of is to punish him for it, now we are back to my frustration and pain for a country that I love.  I don’t love it more than my own.  But how did we get to, it’s got to be either/or?  That’s a rhetorical question.  I believe that people actually do know the answer.

I know there are many, many people who don’t think like me.  Some of them are reading this post.  But for me, what has always been the thing that makes America great, is we have cared.  How have we forgotten that after pummeling the Axis Powers, we made them whole again.  This is who we were, and still should be.  And we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that while we were doing all of that, we were advancing our own social programs at home.  Programs that are not perfect.  But honestly, without them, this 70 year old retired person would be hurtin’.  This is why I’m proud of my parent’s generation.  Are our kids going to be proud of how we are doing things?

The opposite side of that coin is, if you don’t think like me, the hell with ya.  We all have to acknowledge our piece of that.

Point made or no, I’m going to stop.  I have a very early shuttle to the airport tomorrow.  And writing this was emotionally exhausting.  Some posts my fingers touch the keyboard and I just write it.  This was not one of those.  I’ve been working it for two days, and It took me probably one hundred  times longer to write it than it takes to read it.

If the airline gods are smiling, I will be back in the twin towns as evening begins.  Weatherbug is promising me 64 degrees.  I’m liking that.

I love you all.  (Even if you don’t think like me). 🙂