November Newsletter - Kevin in Uruguay

Part One

Monday, when I should have been updating (this is, after all, Mate Mondays), I was instead at the Embassy of the United States of America to the Eastern Republic of Uruguay. Say that ten times fast. Good. And now in Spanish - La Embajada de los Estados Unidos de América a la República Oriental del Uruguay. You can say that ten times fast as well, if you so desire. Silliness aside, I had to go to the embassy to get extra pages added to my passport. If you absolutely must go to a U.S. embassy while abroad, this is the reason to have to do it - it´s (for a goverment-run office) fairly quick and painless and does not involve interrogation; the same cannot be said about procedures for lost/stolen passports, tax concerns, etc.The embassy, quite frankly, is a shabby testimony to what I would call the American ideal, but is probably a wonderful example of what the U.S. has become in the eyes of the rest of the world since 1898. You wouldn´t have thought that a little old affair like the Spanish-American War (a 6-month or so struggle between the U.S. and, in the words of Dave Barry, "a nation with the military prowess of a tuna casserolle") would be a defining moment in U.S., and world, history, but it is. The day we sailed into Manila Bay with guns blazing was the day that the Republic died and the Empire was born. Earlier in my time here, I read a rather tedious, although brief, book on protecting Christianity from imperialism. I can´t say that I fully agreed with the author, and he did an incredibly poor job of proving to me that he really believes that the current U.S. government is just another in a string of imperialist administrations rather than somehow an enormous aberration, but he had his good points, too. We decided 109 years ago that our God-given duty is to meddle and dominate, and so we meddle and dominate away, not particularly caring that the rest of the world doesn´t particularly care to be meddled with or dominated.The U.S. embassy here in Montevideo is a beautiful, or tragic (take your pick) piece of that history. It makes no effort whatsoever to appear like more typically Uruguayan buildings in the city, which is a shame when you consider that Montevideo is an architectural gem. Nope, we came in and built an ugly, square gray concrete building that looks exactly like every other goverment office building ever put up by the U.S. Entering the building is the next affront to the sensibilities. It´s one of the very few buildings in central Montevideo to have a wall around it, and I´ve not seen a wall that tall since leaving the U.S. The capitols of both Argentina and Uruguay are more accessible than the U.S. embassy - no mean feat in countries with histories of political violence and instability. To enter, you have to wait until a security guard decides to give you access, and if you´re in line for a visa, I recommend wearing comfy shoes, as you´ll be there a while. In another nod to good ol´ American government bureaucracy, the embassy only allows entry up until noon-ish, takes about 30 holidays during the year, and isn´t open on the weekends. In other words, if you have a 9-5 Monday to Friday job, you´ll be taking the day off to do your business with Uncle Sam.Once you´re let inside, you´re given a number for your wait in the consular section, go through security two times, and then, after surrendering your cell phone and all other signal-receiving electronic devices, are allowed into the consular office. At least they have reading material....IN ENGLISH. If you´re Uruguayan and not in the mood for U.S. News and World Report, The Economist, or Popular Mechanics, then you´re going to be bored. Oh wait, if you´re Uruguayan, you´re filling out visa paperwork while being bossed around and sent back and forth. As a U.S. citizen, one of my inalienable rights is apparently to a magazine and a relatively peaceful wait. They took care of my business without being too rude (shocker), and that was that.I think my favorite moment came after the embassy of fun and adventure. It´s located right on La Rambla, the beautiful seaside path in the city (at least they did a good job of picking prime real estate to ruin with such an ugly building), so I decided to walk for a while and enjoy the sunshine. The natural curve of the coastline resulted in a spectacular view of the city skyline...and the embassy, sticking out like a drab concrete middle finger against the backdrop of Parque Rodó. And then, it was gone. I walked around the bend, and I didn´t have to look at it any more.I don´t want to seem like an unpatriotic, America-bashing, Dixie Chick-lovin´ ex-pat. I love my country, and I love the ideals - life, liberty, equality before the law - that are layed out in so many of the foundational documents that we hold dear. At the same time, I know how we act - arrogant, self-absorbed, brutal. We´ve backed military dictators over freely-elected leftists to spite the Russians, not caring that those military dictators were more brutal killers than the socialists we overthrew in places like Chile and Nicaragua. We´ve hamstrung the economies of many a developing nation with the World Bank and IMF´s restructuring programs. We´ve let ourselves become ignorant of global issues and never give a thought to our impact on other peoples because our money gives us the luxury of not having to think about it - when you´re on top, you don´t have to think about the other 99 people in a heap beneath you. If they squirm too much, you can always give them a swift kick to get them to stop shaking your TV around and messing up the reception. If there´s just one thing I want to bring back home with me from all my time abroad (nopt just my time in Uruguay), it´s this - empires decline and fall because, in their time of need, they don´t have any friends. Maybe it´s time to start thinking a little more about who we really are, and what we really ought to be.
Part Two

So, I promised the positive side of my struggle with my identity as a U.S. citizen who is extremely conscious of his country´s extremely shoddy record in international relations, and of the perceptions (several of which are probably very right-on) that much of the rest of the world has concerning the U.S., and not even 24 hours after part one, I feel ready to bring my thoughts on this matter to some degree of completion.The upswing is that, for the first time in my life, I don´t feel apathetic about my identity and citizenship. That little blue passport, and the country it represents, isn´t just a tool to get me in and out of all the countries of the world; it´s an integral part of who I am. I might criticize, I might be outraged, I might be angry, I might be desperate for a change, but by God, I am a passionate United States citizen who cares about his country and wants it to make just, right-minded decisions about its actions in the world. When I hear about liberty and justice for all, it´s not just the end of a pledge; it´s the beginning of a journey. If this is what we are going to stand for as a nation, and it is a glorious ideal to pursue, then we need to be committed to understanding what that means and how then we are to live in the world as a nation. I don´t think that imperial-minded relations with the rest of the world promote liberty or justice; in fact, I tend to seem imperialism as the opposite of those things. It undercuts those very things, at home and abroad, in the name of more wealth, more power, and more prestige.So, where´s the good news in this? The good news is that we always have a choice - a choice as people, a choice as communities, a choice as a nation. We can genuinely try to understand what peace and justice mean in a global context, or we can ignore the question and then try to shut up our collective conscience with more meaningless consumerism. We can protect ourselves and our citizens from harm, or we can behave recklessly, using our force to pre-emptively terminate threats that probably don´t exist, all the while considering the other possible benefits of this use of force. We can promote fair global economic policies that encourage, rather than exploit, developing nations, or we can pretend that those people over there are only starving because of their own corrupt governments. We can be a republic that defends the civil liberties of its people and balanced economic development of its states and that only uses its military power in times of absolute global crisis when not using force would be suicide or irresponsible, or we can be an empire that puts right-of-government above right-of-citizen, puts reckless global corporate capitalism above fair, equitable economics, and that flexes its military muscle whenever it so desires. That choice is in our hands - in my hands, in your hands. I know which one I want, which one leads to genuine national security, prosperity, and liberty.

Part Three

Saying that reading the Bible is dangerous to insular, oft-imperialistic North American thought is an understatement. If there is any other text out there in the world that comes down so hard on capitalism, multinational corporations, imperialism, self-centered thinking, reckless individualism, and pork rinds as the Bible, I have yet to encounter it. Of course, the grand irony is how often the Bible is used to justify those things.This, however, is not going to be a claws-out assault on biblical misuse or the imposition of one´s politics upon the Bible, forming it to be what you want it to be. After all, that just perpetuates a cycle of scripture wars and hard feelings, which is as counterproductive a thing as there can be. Rather, this is about my own journey, the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other, as I´ve grown and been changed by God in my times in the world.Probably the hardest thing for anyone from the West/North (take your pick on the nomenclature) to see when they´re out of their comfortable country of origin is poverty. Poverty exists in the West, too, but a few people hustling you for change on the street or sleeping on the heat grates is a different experience from seeing children with stomachs distended from hunger and malnutrition, or entire neighborhoods of tin-and-plywood shacks. It´s unsettling and can shake the faith of even the most devout person, especially once you get to know the children or the people living in the shanty town.I´ve heard many a televangelist and misinformed Christian attribute prosperity, both personal and national, to God´s special blessing, to the idea that God materially rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked with poverty. That, however, does an incredible disservice to a great many people that I´ve met all over the world. I simply cannot believe that Zurqina, a little girl whose mother has a stall in a food market on the University of Ghana´s campus, is living in desperate poverty because she and her mother are just bad people. Conversely, I don´t see Donald Trump as being a great man of God or a towering example of morality simply because he has more money in the bank than most other humans can ever dream of having.I´ve found that money means nothing regarding how "good" or "bad" a person is. There are rich people who make their money by hurting other people, and there are rich people who make their money by being fair business people, and who typically give back plenty of what they have. There are poor people who are wonderful people, living lives filled with the fruits of the Spirit, and there are poor people who use their poverty as an excuse for alcoholism and domestic violence. People, at the end of a day, are people - they´re not good, they´re not bad, they´re people. Sometimes, people choose to hurt other people, and sometimes they choose to build others up. When people choose to hurt others, to oppress them, to take advantage of them for a buck, a cycle of poverty is created - I´m going to take your money and resources, then keep you at a level of development that serves my needs, but doesn´t give you much of a chance to break free. This isn´t biblical; this isn´t in line with a Living Word of jubilee years, 31 chapters of Proverbs exhorting care for widows and orphans and standing up for the rights of the oppressed, prophets who identify abuse of the poor as one of the principle sins of their people, a Messiah who chooses to live without wordly comforts but rather only what He needs to live, and a faith community that shares all its goods in common. I raise my voice about the ways things are and the way things could be not because I´m just another 22 year old stereotypical liberal; I do it because it´s my faith.I don´t think God has a favorite political party, or that God loves one or two nations while pouring contempt on the rest of them. I don´t think God tosses down heaven-sent moneybags to people for not fornicating. I think God gave us a world filled with the good things that we need to live, and that our mission as followers of God, followers of Christ, is to be serious about, and faithful to, God´s call to stewardship - to find ways to ensure that starvation, lack of access to clean drinking water, lack of access to adequate health care, pollution, and the many other ills that too often characterize human life in the world outside the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe become nonexistent, or at the very least incredibly rare. We have the means, but do we have the boldness to say "no!" to comfortable consumerism, to accept the radical call to take up the cross and follow Jesus in His path of vulnerability and rejection of the easy life? Maybe that´s not a fair question; some days, I´m the kind of person who´s ready to storm the walls and proclaim a year of jubilee, but other times, it´s not so easy. Maybe it´s a process, a dialectical journey requiring patience, commitment, and above all, faith in a God who has called us to something more than living for ourselves and refusing to think of every other beautiful child of God in the world as just that - our brother or sister, created in the likeness of the same God. Maybe, in the words of John Lennon, I´m just a dreamer, but just maybe, I´m not the only one.