Speechless

Today I am burnt out by the poverty that surrounds me, the sun that dries me to the core, and my failure to see any real solutions to the dependence on the immigration north that provides the only hope for so many desperate Mexicans. For the past two weeks, I have been traveling in an area of Mexico know as “the Mixteca” - an over farmed, harsh, mountainous landscape between Oaxaca and Mexico City. The region has depended on small-scale farming of corn, peanuts, sugarcane, tomatoes, onions, and chilies for basic survival since long before the Spanish arrived; but today, as their soil looses nutrients and as the rainy season turns into days upon days of dry sun-scorching heat, its indigenous and mestizo inhabitants risk their lives to wash dishes in New York City, build houses in Maryland, and pick grapes in California.

I have talked with hundreds of Mexicans who have worked in the U.S. and returned to their tiny farming towns to transform their dirt floors into concrete ones, and their nylon windows into glass. I have spoken with women who, left behind while their husbands work in the U.S., struggle through tears to express their worry that their husbands will never return, and then what will they do to provide for their children? Migrants have told me about their crossing north – the dead bodies that they come across, the thieves that steal everything from them, down to the shoes that they are wearing, and the rapes of the young women. I have spoken with teachers, professors, and local government officials about their micro-credit programs, the opening of small-scale factories, and the scholarships that they struggle to provide so that the youth will stay in Mexico. But despite these efforts to create jobs, educational opportunities, and social services, these local politicians and educators are the first to tell me that there is nothing they can do to keep people from risking their lives to wash dishes in the U.S.

This morning, I spent time with a brave farmer, who has risked everything and invested more than $70,000 over one year to cultivate 3 acres of Papaya so that he can sell them for less than 15 cents per kilo; through this farmer’s pride in his accomplishments and his service of providing at least 10 jobs in his town of 10,000, I cannot manage to tell him that I do not see how he could ever earn a profit.

Indeed, life is rough in the Mixteca, and while none of what I am seeing is a surprise, the impact of their poverty on my being is overwhelming. I ponder all the theories of macroeconomics, globalization, and the culture of poverty that I have studied, and yet I have no answers. How could I possibly expect that these people would somehow have made sustainable economies out of the $100 they receive from migrant family members every 2-6 months? Sustainable economies with what product and for what market? I doubt that the $12.00 I spend on my hotel room and the $10.00 I spend on food is making any real impact and who knows when they will see another foreigner here?

I wonder about how a less corrupt government could save the people of the Mixteca or how a friendlier neighbor to the north could provide opportunities or even how a revolution in the international market for fruits and vegetables could give these farmers a chance to keep on living as they have for centuries. I even think about how an education based on critical analysis rather than Mexico’s current system of teaching students to memorize and become faithful bureaucrats could reshape the day-to-day reality of the Mixteca. But all my thoughts – the strength of my mind that comes from growing up in abundance among critical thinkers and my $100,000 college education – all these thoughts just get twisted in me swelling head and I am left whispering to myself, “get yourselves out of here, flee north, or wherever you can go to find opportunity, just get yourselves out of here.”

As U.S. soldiers from Kentucky, South Carolina, and Arizona begin to swell along the U.S./Mexico border, I know that fleeing the Mixteca is not a “sustainable” solution, but is it possible that in the 21rst century people can just die out like the dinosaurs? Then, I think about the potato famine in Ireland that pushed millions of Irish to Boston in the mid 19th century, and I am left wondering who created that word sustainable? Furthermore, I think about the impoverished people living all over the world today, suffering from diseases that we know how to cure, dying from hunger at the same time that U.S. farming surplus rots in the fields or is sent south where it annihilates the earnings of local farmers, or all those poor people that are dying from the droughts and floods that have “mysteriously” increased in the past 5 years. I think about all those people – numbers that far outnumber the hundreds of people that I have spoken with in the Mixteca – and that word sustainable troubles me more and more.

I know that poverty and inequality have always existed, but in today’s globalized world, what happens when the son that dropped out of school in the 4th grade makes $500 a week in New York City, while the son who studied law can barely feed his family – let alone own his own home – while he makes less than $100 a week in the Mixteca?

We used to be separated by simple lack of knowledge about our neighboring countries, but today the enormous inequality and lack of justice of the world is as intimate as a conversation between a husband in the Bronx and his wife in Tecomatlan. This illegal intimacy – in all of its insanity, pain, and disjointedness – seems the most sustainable solution that I can imagine for the people of the Mixteca.

Paradoxical, no? Illegal migration north is the most sustainable solution despite the impending crisis and dead end that it provokes. And with this sun-soaked, swollen head, I am left wondering, “What happens to people when there are no good solutions? What will become of the Mixteca when all their kindergartens close for lack of students, or when the money sent from the U.S. dries up – or worse – when the U.S. economy can truly no longer sustain these honest laborers? What happens to civilizations when their most rational choices lead them blindly towards self destruction?”

I do not have the answer. But I do know than in a “globalized” world, we are all intimately connected to the problem, and whether or not our rational brains lead us towards self-destruction or self-renewal is a responsibility shared by all of us.