Dear Panamanian Politico,

Lets go ahead and preface this one by reinforcing that the views in this blog reflect my own opinions and not those of the U.S. government, Peace Corps or any of its affiliates. I pose a struggle here between the rich and poor everywhere. The first world and the third world mix and meet often, but don't tend to average so well. There is some underlying reason why the lexicon ignores "second world," "first and a half world" and "second and three-quarters world." I don't understand the divide because we all seem to be human, of one image. Feel free to agree and disagree with this. Fearless? Fearless. Ahead.

Dear Panamanian Politico,

Let my first words be to wish you an overly wonderful morning with angels shining down upon your featherbed and hope everything you touch is turning to gold as you deserve. I say these things because I know greasing your ears is a necessary practice to get you to lend a fraction of your attention here. To me. Your people. Our issue is a general lack of respect and it is two-fold: (1) we tire of the apathy you demonstrate towards the content of your own progress-promising speeches and (2) we laugh, not so much WITH you as AT you, as we run your gauntlet, standing in line for our so called freedoms.

In the end we are smug, smirking outside and inside because the chokehold you thrill yourself in claiming upon the poor is actually not so incredibly uncomfortable. Sure we'd like the worms out of our bellies, but I think the black-lung of your cancers is not such a grand improvement as you might think. I live outside. I live with Mother Earth, God and the gods where their blessings are as evident as they are breathtaking. You fear the sun. You fear the cold. From the climate-controlled halls of your homes and institutions you have constructed a universe full of themes and objects with which no god is familiar.

Our interactions are increasingly awkward. We are invited into your world to earn the money that is only useful to buy your goods and perpetuate our bondage to make more of this evil capital. Money has started robbery in our village and for what? I can trade it for the chips, cookies and stale bread you offer but they leave me obese, with rotting teeth and missing the fresh bread of my grandmother's hearth. Yes, you built my road, but we begin to feel the motivation was to rob the working hours of our men to make you even richer. Toss them just enough bone to keep their teeth busy while we quietly open their jugulars. Your charity often barely values the trepidation we have to show to tolerate your presence. So little do you understand about our environment, both human and natural, that your attempts to help often precipitate more work for us and even conflict within our communities. And yet your jelly rolls continually spill out into our lives pushing false agendas and expecting a photo-op gratitude that we oblige with equal falseness.

You choose to laugh loud, but we choose to laugh long. After you've poisoned your water sources, corrupted your babies and cooked your eyeballs on the pocket-sized, hot skillet screens that supposedly respresent the pride of our civilization, I will fight for the old ways. I will remember the names of the plants and the motion of the planet. I will struggle to defend culture, tradition and teach my children to feed themselves from the earth's bounty.

Let me close with a brief thanks for stopping the practice of murdering us outright for speaking against you, but preface the gratitude with the observation that it was not all that long ago you perpetrated this as well. The parents and grandparents remember those days.

From,

El Campo