Resurrection in El Salvador:
Why Visit El Salvador?
My friend gives me a print-out of the US State Department's warning against travel in El Salvador. The dangers it describes unnerves me. "Wouldn't some beach time in Mazatlan make a little more sense for a vacation?" he wonders. Why would anyone go to El Salvador?
In spite of my privileged position, I have an appetite to know the truth. For many Americans, privilege brings with it the luxury of obliviousness. We don't need to know what the forces of globalization are doing because they don't affect us. We don't need to know the impact of a new International Money Fund (IMF) regulation on a person who sews clothing in Honduras or plants beans in Panama. Paul Wolfowitz may well be running the World Bank. Who cares? The victims of structural poverty care. Free trade, neo-liberalism, globalization are all concrete and real issues to the half of humanity trying to live on $2 a day. When it comes to these issues, you'd be impressed by their savvy.
When we learn that people in the poor countries know so much about us and our policies, I'm inclined to figure it's merely out of admiration of our way of life. When we are ignorant about others and their struggles, we are also ignorant about ourselves and our impact on others.
This blissful ignorance seems innocent and innocuous. But, combined with power, it can bring smug self-delusion, belief in our own superiority and a presumed right to dictate morality to others. This is the evil cocktail that causes good Americans to celebrate American Imperialism.
This privilege-rooted ignorance makes Americans easy to mislead into war. "Fighting for freedom," we willingly send thousands of our children to die and almost eagerly divert billions of much needed dollars from domestic spending to "defense." To populations on the receiving end of the American crusade, the "freedom and liberty" our president touts is freedom for corporations to exploit natural resources and liberty to take advantage of the labor of weaker countries.
Continued |
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