Dermot - Looking back on year 1

Walking down Avenida Bolognesi, Tacna´s main drag, you almost forget you are in Latin America. You can buy ice cream, read the newspaper, and embrace a modern, internet-connected Peru. Less than three miles from the center, however, the street lights and paved roads disappear and the estera (cane) huts prevail, until you find yourself in the midst of some of the worst poverty in the country, in a neighborhood called Viñani.

When I think of the “third world,” I think of Viñani. I know that Peru is “developing” and that the term “third world” is offensive; but one trip to Viñani makes you realize the absurdity of maintaining a quixotic and semantic focus on the euphemisms we use to describe an impoverished existence that is so unjust and difficult. Viñani crushes all politically correct thoughts about poverty and “living in solidarity with the poor.” Quite frankly, the place feels other-worldly. I have trouble identifying with the people. Nothing will allow me to free myself from the privilege I feel over them and the distance I feel from them. I am most gringo when I spend time in Viñani.

Every time I visit the place, I want to curse. I resort to vulgarity not only because of my indignation at the injustice of the situation, but—more importantly—because I am presented with a frustrating problem that is so damn mind-boggling to solve. At Harvard’s commencement last year, Bill Gates said, “The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity. To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.”

I can now identify with Gates on how complexity thwarts progress on poverty, as I feel overwhelmed by the challenges of confronting it and will protect myself with something that feels like indifference. When I am not indifferent, I feel that I can only apply small bandages on a gaping wound. I am completely uncertain if I am actually helping anyone when I visit those I have befriended out there.

On second thought, the last paragraph also explains many of the problems with “Western” philanthropy in Viñani. Did you notice what I did? Look at how this do-gooder JV described his relationship with the poor. I offered vague terms to describe the “desperate masses.” I rightly expressed my frustration and indignation, but incorrectly presumed that I am helpful in applying the “small bandages” that I can offer, or that I have sufficient experience to “solve the problem of poverty.”

I also set up a nasty relationship with the “poor,” in treating them as nothing more than passive repositories of my charity. I am the doctor; they are the patient. I know what they need and I will provide it. JVI challenges us to examine these unjust dichotomies that we can often create in our interactions with the poor.

On my Reo/Diso this past month, I read a speech by the radical Catholic priest Ivan Illich, who notes that “the road to hell is paved with the good intentions” often carried out by North American volunteers serving abroad. In a brusque and often cynical form, Illich goes on to indict my work, writing to a departing class of volunteers to Mexico, “You are ultimately-consciously or unconsciously- ´salesmen´ for a delusive ballet in the ideas of democracy, equal opportunity and free enterprise among people who haven't the possibility of profiting from these.” Illich goes on to condemn the very existence of organizations like JVI, which send volunteers into “developing countries,” as we will only experience a very damaging false solidarity with the poor whom we are purportedly “serving.”

Illich would have me pack my bags and return to the US tomorrow. Moreover, his strident indictment will serve as a constant reminder to me in my second year, of the dangers endemic to acting with self-righteousness as a JV. For better or worse, though, I am still in Peru. You call me a hypocrite or a seductive salesman of corrupt Western values. I will explain in my next entry why I do not believe this to be the case, yet will definitely give Illich his due, given the infernal pain I have seen “well-intentioned” NGOs cause at an orphanage here in Tacna.

Learn more about Dermot here.