La vida salteña

I think this will probably be the entry that is most difficult for me to write. It's not that I have anything controversial to say (yet), but that it's very difficult to put into words the atmosphere of the city that surrounds me, and the little part that I play in it. Salta has so much beauty--both natural and cultural--that any attempt to describe it seems to leave something out. As for my part in it, at the moment it seems rather mundane in comparison, but it's impossible to understand what I'm doing here without that wonderfully/painfully inevitable word: context.

I must admit that my knowledge of Argentinian history is rather sparse. It's mostly pieced together from the little I remember about Latin America from History and Spanish classes, reading a rather biased but informative account of the military government that took over in the 70s ("The Shock Doctrine"), and picking up little snippits from signs at tourist attractions. But, in a nutshell (from my semi-ignorant perspective.. find the real history here), General San Martín, hyped up on the recent American and French Revolutions, helps to liberate South America from hundreds of years of Spanish colonial rule of a land rich in resources and native culture (the Spanish weren't so interested in the latter). Argentina declares independence May 25, 1810 (bicentennial just passed), and form a constitution on July 9, 1816. Argentina enters the modern market, and Europeans flood in by the thousands (indigenous peoples now make up less than 1% of the population). The democratic government takes hold, but occasionally suffers military overthrows, the latest ending in 1983. Argentina remains a powerful economy, but is held back (in my view) by a deadly combination of privatization and corruption, epitomized by former President Menem. (I apologize if this short history contains some heinous errors. I feel it is important to show what I "know", even if incorrect).

Salta seems to have been pivotal throughout this history. In my mind it is an anchor point both historically and geographically in South America, with threads fingering out to the north that connect it with indigenous and Incan roots, and southernly fibers that, while perhaps weaker, link it to colonial and modern influences. This makes Salta feel quite a bit different than the rest Argentina, because of its lasting resemblance to the Andean cultures of nearby Bolivia and Perú. Being such an anchor implies a certain amount of conflict (think of other anchors like Washington, D.C., London, Rome, etc.). They are places of both violence and victory, suffering and pride, history and future. Salta is no exception, and in this respect its cultural foundations reflect perfectly its environmental make-up, an incomprehensible clash of desert and jungle that converge in the Lerma Valley that holds the provincial capital (see this map). Although there is a constant tension between competing forces--whether they be climatic or cultural--the resulting beauty that somehow endures makes the tenuous balance much more interesting and rich than if it weren't there. As for those who live here, I don't think I would be overextending my "geo-cultural" analogy to suggest that the soaring mountains that rise over the valley not only represent but embody the achievements, aspirations, and struggles that together define what it means to be "salteño" (someone from Salta). It's all part of what makes Salta live up to its' nickname, "la linda" (the beautiful).

(aside: by way of example, my host-father once joked during one of his impromptu history lessons--typically given on motorcycle rides--that "the fighting [for independence from Spain] started in 1810, but we're still not sure who won!". In the context of my analogy, I think it's significant that he made that statement as we passed a war memorial that lies on the edge of Salta, and is therefore the first thing you would see coming into town from a scenic route to the north that is particularly beautiful and diverse)

I feel very lucky to be in such an interesting place, but to be honest my tension is by proportion much less significant. It's not torrential downpour vs. insufferable drought, noble gauchos vs. Spanish oppressors (see here), or military dictators vs. rebel students (see here). My conflict is much more internal: between feeling useful but uncomfortable on the one hand, and feeling utterly insignificant but comfortable on the other (and from the tone of this entry so far, you could probably guess which is currently winning).

It may sound backwards, but I think most people before going out into the field expect--even want--the former. Maybe it's just me, but it seems that part of feeling like you've accomplished a lot requires feeling like you sacrificed a lot, too. In fact, it's the subtext to the saying, "Rome wasn't built in a day": something so substantial should demand a huge input of time and work. (entirely unrelated, but thinking of Roman proverbs reminds me of that hilarious Anchorman moment: "please.. continue"). Obviously sacrifice is not the only element of feeling useful--we can all remember moments where we "gave our all" and still didn't meet our goals--but I think it would be difficult for me to think that I had done something really great without having used a lot of energy and maybe even felt some pain. In other words, felt uncomfortable.

That has been my problem: I feel too comfortable. I thought that by leaving my home and going off into a foreign land to help the less fortunate would be really hard. The fact is, I've simply transported my already comfortable life to a different place. Yes, there are slight differences--I now eat dinner really late at night (sometimes at 11PM), ride the bus instead of drive my Dad's van, and use the internet a lot less (only during siesta or late at night)--but for the most part I live each day thinking, "This shouldn't be so easy!". I can wake up late, my two hosts--Graciela and Beatriz--spoil me worse than my mom and Cynthia combined (they don't let me do the dishes or laundry!), and confusions and stand-stills in conversation are happening much less often, so I'm having a great time getting to know their families and friends. I even have something I don't have at home: a steady tennis partner! Getting lost on the bus for an hour and a half and waiting in the cold for a few hours after watching Michael Jackson's "This Is It" at the local Hoyt's seem like mild inconveniences in comparison with all the good things I've been given here.

And, while the promise of hard work lies on the horizon, for now it's just not as demanding as I expected. My "first day" seemed a lot like the others, just that I woke up earlier, met a veteran volunteer of ADRA Salta (Pilu), and learned the bus route to one of the ADRA depositories. In a whole week of work, all I seemed to be able to accomplish was to organize some clothes to send on a trip I couldn't go on. I tried to make that feel important, but at the end of the day, taping together pairs of disorganized shoe donations hardly felt like the intense, difficult regimen that I was looking for in my humanitarian (ad)venture. What is missing? Have I really just been self-righteous in my attempt to be self-sacrificing? Is it possible to feel both comfortable and useful?

What I've come to realize is that the humanitarian adventure is an illusion. It is foolish--and very American--to think that with some determination and hard work you can start to turn things around in an instant. "Dream big", "reach for the stars", "be all you can be", "impossible is nothing", "just do it"... these are the mottoes that drive us. Although I think it's hard to argue that the optimistic dedication these phrases inspire could be a bad thing, I do think it is terribly misguided. A failure to work within our limitations--whether they be personal, institutional, or systemic--leads to one of two undesirable outcomes: 1. dissatisfaction with work that does not live up to our grand expectations, or 2. exaggeration of work that wasn't actually as great as we make it seem. This is a terrible dilemma, because there is no such thing as perfect work. As long is that is true, the overly-optimistic humanitarian will always see "room for improvement" as failure, or, to compensate, remain in denial that improvements in the work were really necessary.

Unfortunately, this is one of those situations where I know the solution to my problem but it still seems unsolvable. It's hard to disillusion-ize myself. That is, it's easier to recognize my limitations (personal, institutional, systemic) than it is to accept and work within them. I recognize that I am impatient, but it is hard to be patient. I want to feel like I'm making significant changes right now, even though I know that change for the good can take a lot longer than I would like. It's easy to recognize the institutional limitations of time, money, and disorganization that face ADRA in Argentina, but much more difficult to acknowledge them instead of simply getting angry at them. It's perhaps easiest to recognize the limitations of the system we live in--the lack of real help we provide to those in need, and all of the social, political, and cultural pressures that get in the way of doing so--yet these are the things that seem nearly impossible to change.

So, now you can see (and me too, in writing all of this out) that while small, my internal conflicts have the power to really affect my work, and, perhaps more importantly, my perspective on my work. Breaking down my illusions while maintaining a healthy level of optimism could prove to be a difficult task, especially when the possibility of feeling both useless and uncomfortable looms darkly in the corner. Learning how to feel productive by finding the right balance between sacrifice and suffering--i.e. suffer physically by working too much, or mentally by working too little--could be even harder. No pain, no gain?

(p.s. sorry for all the text, you can find some of my pictures of Salta here)