Tajaiporavo

Today’s Post: Let’s Vote

After trying to find a better way to begin this post, I will just start off by saying that in many ways, politics, both domestic and international, constitute the bête noire of Peace Corps service. I could be guilty of exaggeration, but to me, there are few other issues so central to who we are as volunteers but so little discussed.

Perhaps this is for good reason. In 1971, President Nixon separated the Peace Corps from the U.S. Department of State and in 1981, President Carter made the agency completely independent by executive order. As a volunteer today, I can conveniently tell Paraguayans that the Peace Corps is managed separately from American diplomatic or military endeavors in their country. Our office is separate from the Embassy and it is forbidden for us ever to serve in military intelligence in our countries of service. This is critical. From its inaugural year (1961), the program´s volunteers have been accused of participating in intelligence activities on behalf of our government. The bright line between the U.S. Peace Corps and other agencies of the federal government operating internationally permits me to sincerely note that my only objectives are those mandated by the Peace Corps: technical assistance and intercultural exchange.

Volunteers are also asked to refrain from espousing domestic political views in any official capacity – thus the disclaimers that many of us attach to our blogs. The institutional atmosphere at Peace Corps is studiously apolitical. And why should it be different from any other government agency? Apoliticism steers the Peace Corps away from corruption and ideological programming and creates an environment that is comfortable for American volunteers and staff regardless of their politics.

Likewise, we are instructed, for very good reasons, to avoid Paraguayan politics. Political partisanship is forbidden. Our invitations to serve in Paraguay even suggested that we leave at home all garments of the colors of the two major political parties: red for the Colorados and royal blue for the Liberales. Volunteers serving in 2008, when sitting President Lugo was elected, recall heightened security measures surrounding his election. He was the first Liberal elected since the 35-year reign of Colorado dictator Alfredo Stroessner, and nobody was quite sure how the notoriously finicky first handover of power from one long-dominant party to its rival would turn out. Staying clear of Paraguayan politics makes us safer as volunteers and, less importantly, also makes us more effective. It is critical that volunteers be able to live and work with Colorados and Liberales alike. And besides, the salient issues of Paraguayan political party identification are so foreign to the interests of most volunteers, it would seem pointless to pick sides.

Yet the studied apoliticism of Peace Corps and its volunteers, though sensible, is, to me, a sort of winking, willful silence. Let’s put aside the amusing (to me) reality that volunteer political affiliation rates probably approximate those of Nancy Pelosi’s district more than John Boehner’s. It comes down to the universally fraught connection between policy and politics. The U.S. Peace Corps is a body authorized and governed by U.S. policy. Officials at each level of the extensive hierarchy stretching from the agency’s director in Washington down to country-level Associate Peace Corps Directors (APCDs; they are our closest superordinates as volunteers) promulgate policies directing volunteers how to do our work. These policies include necessary banalities such as safety and vacation regulations as well as the potentially more controversial rules on, for instance, condom distribution (we can’t give them out, but we can be present while someone else does, as long as we have lived in our communities for at least six months). Behind every such policy lurks politics.

I am being too obvious by discussing condoms and contraception. Volunteers’ support of condom use and family planning would probably be contested by many Americans and host country nationals alike. But what about the more subtle, but still relentlessly political questions behind our priorities as volunteers?

Formally, I am a volunteer in the Agroforestry Extension project of the Environmental sector of the Peace Corps in Paraguay. Main goals for my sector include: capacitation of farmers to improve soil management, utilization of agroforestry systems, and preservation of threatened ecosystems; working with committees, governments, and other social groups to enhance their sustainability; and consciousness-building aimed both at students and their teachers. I happen to think that all of these goals are worthwhile, but the discourse of sustainability that underlies them is not universally accepted. At its best, sustainability takes the form of sustainable development, which enhances quality of life as well as environmental conservation. But perhaps struggling families in my community don’t need more trees or environmental education. Maybe they need income, job skills, and industrialization to help them achieve the basic levels of education and healthcare that many of us take for granted in the United States. Perhaps my warnings about climate change and habitat destruction are a red herring, deterring community members from spending time and energy enhancing their quality of life in other ways.

Decades of ineffective development work in Paraguay and many other nations beg further questions. Volunteers in my sector as well as others (Agriculture and Community Economic Development, for example) often work with communities to develop local industries or commercialize agricultural products. By doing so, are we simply importing capitalism and dependence into areas that formerly have been self-sufficient, if impoverished? Are we inviting unintended consequences of increased pollution and consumerism and eroding traditional ways of life? I am currently working with a farmers’ committee in my community to petition funds for mixed plantations of eucalyptus, citrus, and native timber species. My goal is to encourage committee members to convert degraded farm and pasture land into plantations. But what if some want to cut down native, second-growth forest to plant the new trees? I won’t be able to stop them.

I believe deeply in my work as a Peace Corps volunteer and in the models of development work espoused by the Peace Corps in Paraguay. I think that if development work can be done well and sustainably, the type of small-scale, sustainable projects that we are encouraged to promote here are the closest I’ve ever seen people getting to that elusive goal. But this certainty doesn’t erase the fact that the objectives we promote and the policies that govern us are produced through politics and operate in a Paraguayan political context.

Peace Corps work runs afoul of Paraguayan politics surprisingly little. Imagine what Americans would say if a foreign government sent volunteers to poor or underserved communities in the U.S. to support environmental conservation, community organizing, comprehensive sexual education, and political transparency. On the contrary, Paraguayans are generally “tranquilo” about our presence here. I am happy to say that most people in Prettyview support the work I am doing and view it as important, at least to my face. Nurses, teachers (profesores), local NGO representatives, and other community leaders have often been among the most supportive. But other volunteers tell stories of entrenched political machines that resent interference and appeals for transparency, or, at the least, of corruption and lack of interest on the part of municipal governments and other institutions. My assessment is that the Peace Corps in Paraguay has done a good job of operating in a way that is aligned with dominant political currents in the country, rather than fighting for inappropriate changes. If this is a conscious objective of the Peace Corps in Paraguay or elsewhere, then it is a deeply political one.

This brings me to the political events of recent months, an eclipse with the United States and Paraguay playing the roles of the celestial bodies. In the first days of November, both countries held major elections. In the United States, the 2010 midterm elections brought into play every seat in the House of Representatives, 37 Senate seats, 38 governorships, and 46 state legislatures, and many municipal positions. Paraguay’s system is somewhat different. The President, Senators, Diputados (like Representatives), Governors, Mayors, and City Councilors all serve terms of five years. Unlike the American system, where positions in the Senate as well as state and municipal government are up for election somewhere in the country every two years, Paraguayan elections are nationally synchronized. In 2008, all currently serving politicians above the municipal level were elected. There have not been elections since then, and this year marked elections in every part of Paraguay for lists headed by an intendente (mayor) and including aligned candidates for consejal (city councilor). In 2013, officials at the level of the departamento (like the state) and the national government will be elected.

Governance of most municipalidades in Paraguay was contested by a candidate from the conservative Colorado party and the Liberal party. In some cases, candidates from smaller parties such as the liberal Frente Guasu and/or conservative Movimiento Patria Querida joined the fray. The parties’ primaries occurred around the time that American primaries did earlier this winter (or summer, in the North). In some municipalities, the various progressive parties fought it out, so that some municipalities had no Liberal candidate and all of the leftist voters were united under the banner of an aligned party, which fielded a consensus candidate.

Also unlike U.S. elections, Paraguayan municipal elections are organized into lists. Voters select a list, headed by a candidate for mayor. If the winner carries a large majority, a commensurate number of councilors from his or her list will serve with her. There is no voting for individual consejales.

U.S. and Paraguayan elections were a mixed bag for me. I’ll be circumspect and say that I was happy with the outcome in Prettyview, where the protégé of the current, unresponsive mayor was defeated by his challenger from the other major party. In a Jerry Brown move, the new intendente actually held the job for a term some years ago. I plan on making a trip into the municipality (about nine km from Prettyview) to formally present myself later this year. I was less happy with the outcome of American elections. Though my paper absentee ballot from Maricopa County never arrived, I did get to vote. By dint of numerous applications, hours of internet time, and some costly postage, I both mailed a federal write-in absentee ballot (printed off the internet) and faxed in an Arizona ballot delivered to my e-mail inbox in an unexpected eucatastrophe on Election Day. My receipt of an e-mail confirming the ballot’s tabulation by the Maricopa County Elections Office was cold comfort: not a single partisan candidate I supported won his or her election. My new representative in the House made waves prior to the election by claiming that our current president is the “worst president in history.” Move over Buchanan, Hoover, and all the Gilded Age executives in chief! At least hunting didn’t become a constitutional right in Arizona – another minor consolation.

So ends another political season and my musings on the hidden politics of Peace Corps service. I did do everything I could leading up to the Paraguayan and American elections to encourage my neighbors in Prettyview and my fellow volunteers to vote. Even when we don’t like how elections turn out, nothing could be more important in terms of our responsibilities as citizens. Often to the detriment of our civic life, modern democracies frequently require, much less ask, so little of us. And there are many, including participants in the demagogic Tea Party, who believe even less in the old standards of civic virtue. My attitude is that we should vote “early and often” while it’s a duty permitted us.