The Birth of the Rebel Jesus (Reconsidering Ronald Reagan)

´´When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.´´ -Archbishop Dom Hélder Camara

First of all, merry Christmas! As I celebrate Christmas in an entirely new way (expect a post on how Christmas is celebrated here in the next month…but I want to wait to write that until I’ve actually celebrated it!), know that I am thinking of and praying for each of you and hoping that you have a joyful holiday season.

This Christmas post has an admittedly strange subject (Ronald Reagan and the effect of U.S. neoliberal economic policies on Latin America), but it’s inspired by and structured around Jackson Browne’s beautiful, tongue-in-cheek, and profoundly challenging ballad “The Rebel Jesus.” Stanzas of the song will be included in italics. I recommend taking the time to listen to the song itself in this video.

Before proceeding any farther, I want to admit up front that this post is going to be honest and strongly opinionated. I recognize that, and I know that many of you will disagree with me. I know that many of you (including my dear parents – Hi Mom, Hi Dad) voted for Ronald Reagan. Many agree that his ideas of capitalism and neoliberal economics are in fact the best way to govern our country and our world. At least one of you (hello James, if you’re reading this) sleeps with a framed picture of the man next to your bed! Forgive me then, friends, if I speak too strongly. My purpose is not to offend you but to offer a different perspective, one widely held in Peru and as far as I know among the majority of the Latin American world (not including the proportionally miniscule rich aristocracy), on policies that we often take for granted as “necessary to defend democracy and freedom.” I want to offer you the perspective, as far as I understand it, of those who have lived through the negative effects of these policies and who know better than any of us ever could that in the economic and foreign policy decisions of the United States, there are Lives in the Balance.

All that said, let us begin:

All the streets are filled with laughter and light
And the music of the season,
And the merchants’ windows are all bright
With the faces of the children.
And the families hurrying to their homes,
As the sky darkens and freezes,
Will be gathering around their hearths and tables
Giving thanks for God’s graces
And the birth of the Rebel Jesus.

Many of you know that I tend to identify myself more with the left end of the political/theological/economic spectrum (Understatement? Yes.) And because of that, I have encountered many difficulties working with the more theologically and socially conservative Protestant church here in Peru. However, something very interesting I’ve noticed is that regardless of how conservative the people I’ve met are in their religious beliefs or understanding of personal moral conduct (no dancing, no drinking, etc.), none of them are economically conservative as we define it in the United States. And they all have their fair share of complaints about the policies of good ole’ George W. Bush.

But then again, that’s not really that remarkable. Most people in the States have their fair share of complaints about W. Bush-bashing is the cool thing to do. Heck, even the Dixie Chicks are doing it. What may come as more of a surprise to my readers is the virtually unanimous criticism of Ronald Reagan.

The United States loves to glorify Ronald Reagan. Reaganomics. Military strength. The Fall of Communism. Reviving our investment-centered economy. Though of course the inherent goodness of any of these things is certainly debatable (and I would be willing to talk about any of them with you, if you would like), the fact of the matter is that our national history generally remembers Reagan as a president who, in the face of any struggle, did all he could to serve the interests of the United States of America.

Well they call him by the Prince of Peace
And they call him by the Savior,
And they pray to him upon the sea
And in every bold endeavor,
And they fill his churches with their pride and gold
As their faith in him increases
But they’ve turned the nature that I worship him
From a temple to a robber’s den,
In the words of the Rebel Jesus.

And you know, despite what I or anyone else might say about the long-term effects of his policies on our country, the above is true: Ronald Reagan consistently did all he could to protect and serve the United States. But in the eyes of the people I’ve talked to here in Peru, that’s exactly the problem. Reagan was always looking out for the United States. And whether we like it or not, he lived then and we live today in a global community. The president of the world’s greatest superpower (or one of the world’s two greatest superpowers, in Reagan’s time) cannot justifiably look out for the interests of his or her country alone.

Some of the Reagan administration’s foreign policy blunders are well-known, such as the Iran-Contra scandal, where the administration, likely with Reagan’s blessing, used money that it had illegally gained from selling arms to Iran to, also illegally, support a right-wing, essentially terrorist group in Nicaragua working to overthrow the democratically-elected leftist Sandinista government. Other similar but lesser-known stories arise all over Latin America (Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama) with the same pattern: US aids right-wing, military overthrow of a popular government that we perceive as a “potential Communist threat.”

However, undoubtedly, when we think about the foreign policy of Reagan, the major even that comes to mind is the end of the Cold War. A milestone in history that any history book I’ve ever read regards as one of the greatest accomplishments in 20th-century history. And certainly there were good things that came from it; the Soviet Union didn’t have a great human rights record either, to say the least, and there are ways in which its demise contributed to human freedom, health, and dignity. However, one has to ask, was Reagan really “assuring the safety of the world in the face of a Communist threat” by building up our nuclear arms program? Was his ideal of neoliberal capitalism really the way to protect individual rights and liberties? After all, what about the rights to life, food, water, shelter, and health that the poor, in the US and abroad, were effectively denied by these policies? Why did the “great and legendary” president of a country that was to be the “beacon of light and freedom in the world” increase funds to the military but decrease healthcare spending? Where these policies really about the good of the world, or were they to protect our own interests?

We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year, when Christmas comes,
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why there are poor
They’d get the same as the Rebel Jesus.

But the point of this post isn’t just to criticize the attitude and actions of Ronald Reagan and the policies of his administration. Because the fact of the matter is that Ronald Reagan, or George Bush, or Joseph Stalin, or Adolph Hitler, or any other well known historical figure who has played a role in serious human rights abuses, did not do it on his/her own. The blame extends even outside the circle of their administrations and direct supporters. The self-centered political and economic rhetoric so evident in the foreign policy of the Reagan administration existed in our country long before Reagan was born. George W. Bush did not detain Muslim-Americans after 9/11 without our fearful assertion that this was in fact the best way to detect Homeland Security, nor did his father send political refugees from Haiti to the inhumane, concentration-camp-esque living conditions of Guantanamo Bay without our xenophobia to support him. Stalin and Hitler would not have been able to commit the atrocities they did without the masses of people who believed in what they preached and without powerful countries like the US and Great Britain initially turning a blind eye to what was going on in Germany and Russia. The responsibility for what happens to our brothers and sisters living in other countries does not lie solely with our heads of state and elected officials. It belongs to you and to me.

I’m currently reading a book called Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor by Paul Farmer, the doctor and human rights activist about whom Mountains Beyond Mountains is written. Writing about his experience working as a doctor of the poor in Haiti, Peru, Cuba, Russia, and the United States, Farmer focuses on the root problem of the diseases he treats, which he calls structural violence. While he chooses to spend less time defining it and more time demonstrating it through patients’ life stories and real life situations, some of us (like myself) like more concrete definitions. So for those other Meyers-Briggs J’s out there, structural violence is, as I understand it, the existence of political and economic systems that, while they may not directly wage war against people (as the US did with the Contras in Nicaragua), perpetuate inequalities and lead to the inescapable suffering and death of the poor and oppressed.

This is hard stuff – harder still when we hear Farmer’s diagnosis that a great deal of the structural violence in the world is caused by the neoliberal economic policies of our dear old US of A. Whether we want to admit it or not, the lives of many of the world’s destitute are affected by our daily decisions. Where does the food we eat come form, the clothes we wear, the oil we use? I challenge you to start asking that question, and if you don’t know the answers, to do some research. I warn you, the answers you find will probably disturb you. This is not a fun exercise. But it is, I believe, the only way to begin to construct a truly peaceful world, free of the overt and covert violence that plague our world today. The only way to begin to construct the Kingdom of God.

But pardon me if I have seemed
To take the tone of judgment
For I’ve no wish to compete with
This day and your enjoyment
In a life of hardship and of earthly toil
There’s a need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure, and I bid you cheer,
From the heathen and the pagan
On the side of the Rebel Jesus.

And this, perhaps, is why this Christmas season, I ask you to reconsider Ronald Reagan. I ask you to look at a president that the we the rich of America have idolized (and sometimes the poor too, for that matter) and remember those whose lives and families were torn apart by the violence, actual and structural, that his policies created in the Latin American world.

And here I return to the quote by Dom Helder Camara with which I began. Here in Peru, I have the opportunity to “serve the poor.” But what good is it for us to serve the poor if we don’t work to change the systems and situations that have cursed some people to be poor in the first place? And what good am I really doing offering my time and assistance if I continue to live my life according to the oppressive and violent structures that give me a nice free T-shirt but don’t pay the Haitians who made my shirt a fair wage with which to feed their families? (Just for the record, I chose Haiti for that example by looking at the tag of the T-shirt I’m currently wearing. What’s worse – it’s a shirt from a church event! I’m telling you, friends, this structural violence has just become an ingrained and acceptable part of our culture.)

So friends and family, merry Christmas. Know that on this special day, it is hard for me to be far from you. But I take comfort in the knowledge that December 25th, we will be united in a celebration of joy, peace, giving, love, and perhaps even the overturning of structural violence. Feliz Navidad a todos. Let us celebrate the birth of the Rebel Jesus.

This is the Air I Breathe...

Those of you who have similar tastes in music to me or who actually click on the hyperlinks I put in here know that very often my titles or just random lines in my blog are quotes from songs that really speak to me. Those of you who know me well, then, should be confused and perhaps a little bit concerned to see that the title of this post is a quote from a cheesy contemporary Christian song by one of the MANY Christian pop divas (Let’s call her Rachel Nicole St. Knapp, shall we?) who, in my oh-so-humble opinion, all sound exactly the same. Have 3 months away from home really changed my tastes in music that much? Has the theological conservatism of the churches I’m working with gotten to me?

The answer, of course, is no, which will undoubtedly relieve some of you and disappoint others. I just thought the title would be an interesting and ironic segue into what I want to talk about. For the record, the song is called “Breathe” and is by Rebecca St. James. The first verse goes:

“This is the air I breathe
This is the air I breathe
Your holy presence living in me.”

It goes on and on, and you know, it’s sweet, but musically rather boring and not at all lyrically profound. But what I want to share with you today is about the actual air I breathe. And while I certainly believe in the omnipresence of the Holy Spirit, this air is not “God’s holy presence living in me.”

The air that I, along with everyone else in Carabayllo and northern Comas, breathe smells like shit. I apologize for the language, but there’s really no other way to describe the foul odor that has permeated every bit of my being for the last several weeks. The smell comes from outside but since every Peruvian home has some sort of open air courtyard inside, it’s everywhere. I wake up with it in the morning and go to bed with it at night. I’ve gotten to the point where I sometimes have to walk with my shirt over my nose, looking like some bad imitation of a bank robber. It’s foul. It’s nauseating. Disgusting. There’s no other way to describe it. The air I breathe smells like shit.

I guess the next logical question is why does it smell this way? Well you see, there’s a nearby lake or some sort of body of water into which much of our district’s sewage is dumped. On hot summer days (which is at least 5 days a week, and yes, I live in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s summer here), the sewage-infused lake water evaporates, and the wind brings this delightful evaporated-sewage-water into the city. The beautiful mountains that I enjoy every day and through which we took our caminata in September trap this air, the sun gets hotter, the smell gets worse…you get the picture.

Living and working in one of the poorest sections of a big city is teaching me a lot about pollution and environmental abuse. Things that I never could have experienced in Richmond’s West End Suburbia, or the beautiful and idyllic campus of William and Mary, where it’s still 1693, just with wireless internet everywhere. The grass and trees I’ve always take for granted struggle to survive here. In their place are dust and trash. Often burning trash, which doesn’t really help with the smell.

I don’t say these things to paint a picture of Peru as a dirty, ecologically irresponsible country. On the contrary, I want to share with you the reality in which many people, myself now one of them, live, and ask each of you to reflect for a minute on your place in the big picture of environmental destruction. I know I’ve done my fair share of damage. It’s so easy for us to do in our comfortable Northern lives. Though we will soon enough, right now we don’t experience the direct impact of our actions. Sure, the summers are warmer, but we can fix that with just a little more AC. We hear about glaciers melting, the water supply diminishing, but our sinks still work, and when thirsty, it’s not hard to find a glass of cold water. Most places will give it to you for free!

Things are different in the barrios of Carabayllo and Comas. You see, people in Peru, as in many countries around the world, don’t have the “luxury” to sit around debate whether Global Warming “exists.” It’s a part of their daily reality. The days are hotter, the sun is brighter. Summer comes and winter ends, both a month earlier than they used to. It rains when it shouldn’t, but the expected rains don’t come. Glaciers in the Andes that are essential water sources for the mountain provinces like Huacavelica are disappearing faster than anyone imagined. Water towers here in Lima read “Water is Life, Be Careful with Every Drop.”

The shortage of water is what I personally notice the most. The water for our neighborhood is shut off nearly every night, and Eduardo explained to me that this has become necessary in recent years to ensure that the supply of clean water is able to last all summer. The water at the IEP Collique where I work with the Compassion Program, is shut off every day after about 2. Large buckets of water sit in the bathrooms for the afternoon kids to wash their hands and fill their toilet bowls. It’s all just expected at this point. Like Eduardo said, it’s the only way there will ever be enough water to last the summer.

We just finished a short environmental unit with the 9 to 12-year-olds at Collique. We talked with them about the environmental problems that Peruvians face in their daily lives. Global warming and the shortage of water, contaminated food and water, and the toxic wastes produced by mining companies like American-owned Doe Run in La Oroya (please click here to read Joe´s latest blog on the subject...also watch the video he has included) and watch the video, by the way), the list goes on. Then we did a unit with them on the good ol’ 3Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle. I was really struck by the way the teacher of the class explained reusing, once again on the theme of water. She challenged the kids to find less-traditional ways to reuse water in their households. Use the water you used to wash the rice to bathe. Then take that water and throw it on the floor before you sweep (floors lie somewhere on the spectrum between dirt and concrete, and it’s necessary to wet the floor before sweeping so you don’t generate a ton of dust). It was a truly humbling experience for me to hear these kids, most of whom live in one-room, dirt-floor houses without personal access to water, talking about resource preservation. Honestly, it made even my bi-weekly bucket showers here seem a little extravagant and luxurious. While the wealthy like myself take running-water showers daily and literally play with water as if it were a toy, the poorest people that I have met are bathing themselves in the bucket of water they used to wash the rice. The inconsistency bothers me, as I hope it does you.

Those of you who follow the liturgical calendar (or some, like Laura, who take it upon themselves to ENFORCE the liturgical calendar!) know that we are now in the season of Advent, preparing ourselves for the coming of Christmas and re-opening ourselves every year to the coming of the Kingdom of God to earth in the form of one of “the least of these.” I challenge you all, as I challenge myself this Christmas season, to ask yourselves if the coming of Christ has more to do with lights, trees, and nativity scenes, or with a pail of water, carefully and lovingly siphoned out so as to take only what is necessary and share faithfully with others.