Editorial I wrote on Guatemala last summer:

After my trip to Guatemala last summer I wrote a bit. It was published in Fort Benton's widely read paper "The River Press".

Tacy, I believe you are a Wendell Berry fan - I quote him and he uses fecundity, the word of the month, a good one for those who are fond of spring.

Those of you who live or are privy to Guatemala, let me know if I'm fouled up on any of my facts.

Here tis.

During the summer celebration, I attended the reconciliation event on the levee across from Rita and Stu Elliot’s. The cavalry, sitting a-top a group of tired horses, spoken words from both Native American and white man, and the art of a young representative of the Nez Perce tribe were all participants in the ceremony of further reconciliation and trail dedication.
I had just returned from an educational trip to Guatemala through the University of Montana and Augsburg College. We focused on the interconnectedness and inseparability of social and environmental justice. As a result my experience on the Fort Benton levee was heightened – for reconciliation in all of the Americas, with all the truly “native” people, is deeply needed.
Thousands in Guatemala have been killed, have lost their land, and live in fear. This was a result of a 36-year civil war, started by the United States government who had economic interest in a banana company.
If you hunker down in a college classroom the word “post modernity” is sure to sneak up on you. What is it? Well, to return the favor, I will sneak up on it by defining its predecessor, modernity. Modernity, in my own words, is the era in which the conquering European (carrying Christianity in tote) made a lot of mistakes by employing the world view, “we are better than you and are going to take your land and tell you how to be, because you’re wrong and were right”. The Post Modern man/woman has realized that there are a whole lot of other (valid) cultures and (valid) ways of life that look very different from the pale-faced blokes from Europe – (Praise the Lord!) And yes, this even goes for the understanding and expression of God.
I am presently staring out my window at our peas and their pods in our garden – the lack of rain has us with some dry peas and a surprisingly early completion to harvest. My family, myself, and all of us surrounding Fort Benton, exist on this land that was at one time freely roamed by a different people with different ways, who are no longer able to roam because one nation conquered another. I am thankful for the freedoms we have to work hard, to raise peas, wheat, and whatever else we may choose. But I question, what should I do with a freedom that comes at the expense of the freedom of others?
Globalization, the interconnectedness of life in this age of technology, and the corporations that financially take advantage of this continues the age-old injustices, sucking those, without the competitive capital edge, dry – the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer. There are 12.7 million people in Guatemala and 6% of those own all the land. Land is continually taken from the indigenous and given to the racially upper class, the Spanish. They also have no representation in their government.
The European expansion, Guatemala, and corporate power may seem distant to our Fort Benton farming community but it is not. The world population is rapidly increasing and becoming more and more connected, yet Fort Benton and towns of the like are shrinking. The family farm is few and far between, and it doesn’t matter because Walmart will sell it cheaper...
A favorite writer of mine Wendell Berry says,
"I would argue that, at least for us in the United States, the conclusion that ‘there are too many people” is premature, not because I know that there are not too many people, but because I do not think we are prepared to come to such a conclusion. I grant that questions about population size need to be asked, but they are not the first questions that need to be asked. The “population problem,” initially, should be examined as a problem, not of quantity, but of pattern. Before we conclude that we have too many people, we must ask if we have people who are misused, people who are misplaced, or people who are abusing the places they have….I would argue that it is not human fecundity that is overcrowding the world so much as technological multipliers of the power of individual humans. The worst disease of the world now is probably the ideology of technological heroism, according to which more and more people willingly cause large-scale effects that they do not foresee and that they cannot control.” (Home Economics, p149-50).
Guatemala and Fort Benton are two peas in a pod, both part of the Americas, both connected to new and old “natives”, and both feeling the effects of unjust patterns. The new frontiersman is the CEO, saddling up the next airplane to gallop at 700 mph into the world’s developing nations to reap cheap labor and natural resources at minimal cost. The “place” and people of Fort Benton and the “place” and people of Guatemala are not the priority – profit is.
I hope we can face injustices of the past and present, realize their magnitude and find the energy to alter our personal and societal paths. I was able to meet some of these poor and oppressed people and I suppose that gets a guy to write articles like this.