Yesterday morning Mom embarked on a great expedition, a voyage that took her and her faithful companions through a sea of obstacles and tribulations, along a winding and twisted road through rain, through sleet, through hail, but her heart was never daunted, no, not for the world, her head held high and her fighting spirit stirred within her, her long desired destination being: rocky Ithaca… errr, sorry…I mean, a teachers training conference in Caazapá. (Alright, now I know that the Odyssey is getting to me).
All joking aside, Mom did leave home early in the morning in our Isuzu with teachers Juan Manuel, César and Sixta, and the truck loaded with vittles for the “jornada” in Caazapá. Not ten minutes passed and she came back to get her bag of clothes. Something is always forgotten when you’re traveling, ain't so? So now we hope that things will go out well over there and that the majority of the teachers will show up. Mom has received much unfounded flak this whole year because of being the Supervisor of the Aché Education, so this conference might be a little hot. But we’re praying. Dad and Brian were in Asunción, where they were doing all the necessary paperwork for Brian’s trip to Norway (for those that don’t know, Brian is going to a filming DTS in Ålesund, Norway), and Blanca was in Coronel Oviedo with her mother and little brother. So Sylvia and me stayed at the house because of school, but don’t worry, we weren’t lonely. Simón Pychangi and Vicenta Kuanchingi, two aché from Puerto Barra, are staying with us because of school too. And early this morning Dad and the others came home by bus, although Blanca got a lift from a pastor who was coming this way, and with them came Eva-María Röβler, a linguist who is working with the aché and a good friend to us.
In recent memory there are two main events that stand out, which happened last week.
Saturday Night. A wedding was being held, and we were invited. At seven, we the Fostervolds, except for mom who was sick, decked out in our finest attire, got in the car and headed down to the Rio de la Plata church. It was the marriage of Olinda and Mateus. Olinda is an old friend of ours, sister to Ninfa Arce, one of our most trusted teachers, and Mateus, well… everyone knows him. They’ve been in a relationship for… oh… ’bout a year or two now and things have gone well, considering that Olinda has a small daughter too. So it was joyous news when one afternoon Olinda came up to the door and gave us the wedding invitation.
We arrived at the church and found that it was packed, no seats available and many people outside peering through the windows, but then again the church wasn’t very big. The service was very nice, or so I heard since I couldn’t see very much, but the bride and groom were looking very nice, especially the bride. After the service everybody went out, got into their vehicles and drove to the banquet. The location of the feast was in the salon of the fairgrounds of the Agro Show, one of the most important agricultural expos of Paraguay. Coincidentally, that was the same site of the other main event in recent memory.
On Friday morning Dad, Brian, Juan Manuel and Me were at the Agro Show grounds attending the Proyecto Nuevos Liderazgos (Project: New Leaderships), a conference about the impact of the region on the every level of Paraguay and how to safeguard it, organized by the Coop and Héctor Cristaldo, president of the Union of Production Guilds and a major friend to the Aché. About forty Brazilian farmers were there, a few Paraguayans and upwards ten Aché as well, along with Murray Bryant and Prof. Luis. Three speakers were going to talk there, one from an economical standpoint, another from a journalistic view and lastly from a political stand. The conference room was well filled and as we came in the economist “Banana” Ferreira, a friend of Dad’s, was talking.
In the economical side Paraguay is the on a road of enormous breakthroughs. Paraguay is the 6th largest producer of soybeans in the world, 3rd largest exporter too. It was the second country with the biggest growth rate the world last year, at 15.3 %. The agricultural sector is the backbone of Paraguay’s economy, giving more revenue to GPD than the hydroelectric dams of Itaipú and Yacyretá combined. He explained the relationship of cash crops with animal breeding with fertilizers with biofuels with petroleum with everything else. Everyone is related. Soybeans, corn and sugarcane are used to make feed for animals. A bad crop in the States is a great thing for us down here, and vice-versa. The majority of fertilizers are produced in countries around the Caspian Sea, like in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan or Uzbekistan, and when problems erupt there the price of fertilizers go up. With biofuels the need of crops like sugarcane goes up to make ethanol and consequentially the price for petroleum rises. Libya gave two percent of the world’s oil and now with the civil war there the price of petrol went up 20 percent. Everyone is related. And Paraguay plays an almost unwitting major role in all of this, yet certain key figures in the government want to stop it all.
That’s where the second speaker came in. His name was Miguel Noto and he was a reporter. He showed us how people of extreme left wing ideologies are trying to bring down the mechanized model of agriculture, source of Paraguay’s riches. This systematic attack has been going since prior to 2000, and not just in Paraguay but worldwide. It’s core ideas is that soybeans are hazardous, agro-toxins kill, multinational entities are akin to the devil and that mechanized agriculture irreparably destroys the land and the environment. A whole load of bull. And key members of government, notably President Lugo, are propelling these principles among the Landless Peasants (Campesinos) and in the mass media. Already there is resentment among the people of the capital against the Brazilians, saying that they stole all the land and what not, which is wrong since Paraguayans themselves sold it to them. The Campesinos, though, take it more to heart. Guided behind the scenes by politicians, they invade private property declaring that it is theirs by right. Now don’t take me wrong, I do believe that many of them are sincere in what they ask and it’s the government’s responsibility to alleviate their poverty, but some of the shady dealings that happen in the shadows, meaning shadows of ignorance, are scary. To the point, about a month ago the president of the Liga Nacional de Carperos (LNC, a Campesino organization) declared that the only way to solve the “problem of the 8.5 million hectares of ill-gotten land” was to nullify all the rural land titles to “sort out the rightful owners”. Elsewhere the LNC said that the first step to attain national sovereignty was to expel all the Brazilians subsequent to the compensation the must pay to the state for their illegal occupation of lands, and then they must expel all foreigners, and then install “real” Paraguayans on the lands. If this would ever come to pass, no one would be safe. And Lugo supports this type of rhetoric. The president of the LNC made his statement on TeleSUR, a Venezuelan TV station.
The danger is great and there is no counteroffensive from the hard-working farmers who know the truth and whose livelihood is at stake. So Miguel outlined a way to create national awareness, through the press, though radio, though videos. “I’m a reporter, use me” he said, “Invite reporters to see what you do”. Also political pressure is needed. So that’s where the last speaker came into place.
Gonzalo Quintana went to the front. In his youth he had a wide assortment of oddball professions, until, as he jokingly put it, “I got tired of working and turned to politics”. The former president of congress talked about the decaying political and state systems. He showed an image of a group of migrating geese in formation. They are in that formation in order to slacken wind resistance and positions are rotary, so that when one tires the other can take the load of leader, receiving maximum wind resistance, he explained. The core policy of the vast majority of politicians is ‘what I get out of my position’. The politician claims to represent the people but really represents himself. We need to cultivate new leaders, leaders who have the people at heart, people who can represent faithfully our interests. The state is a vicious cycle of successive governments who steal as much as possible and try to remain in power as long as possible, usually ruining the good things their predecessors did. He showed a graph of how the state worked under the Stroessner dictatorship and how it works now under Democracy, and, alas, the system is not the same but going worse. The regime depended on a 4% of the GPD to function, yet know that figure has grown exponentially and if unchecked will ultimately collapse. Just the bureaucratic system is maddening. He told an amusing story about how the odyssey he had to face to just renew his I.D., taking a whole day to do so when it could just last under a few hours. “We must change the structures before they fall on us” he said. Then he showed again the image of the geese. That is how we should be.
That finalized the conference, and we all headed back home to eat.
Now back to the wedding. The whole hall was beautifully decorated in green, white and gold and rows of tables set with fine china. There was lots of music and, later, lots of food. Oh, the food! Rice, salads and potato salad, and Churrasco (Brazilian barbeque) all on two long tables. It was delicious. During the feasting the groom went around with his best man performing a Brazilian tradition of cutting a piece off the groom’s tie in exchange for money. After everyone ate their fill and the desire for heady wine was appeased (oh, there I go back to the Odyssey again…) there was time of relaxation and the photographer took a ton load of pictures of the newlyweds. After that they brought out the desserts. Oh, the desserts. Little cups of chocolate-covered strawberries with cream and also assorted chocolates truffles. Heavenly. After such delicacies I could not eat the cake, which surely was great as well.
Finally, around 12 the disco started. We left early with Dad, and then came back to get Sylvia and a few friends. Along the trip with Dad we reflected about some social issues underlying the night. We wondered how so much money could be spent on parties like this and the like, while in the very town of Naranjal there are sectors with a very low standard of living, not poor, but not exatly middle class either. Or if that is not a very pressing issue, then why couldn’t people use their money to boost the teachers’ miserable salaries, teachers who work from morning to night. All the money that flows through the bread basket of Paraguay, and they use it for grand (and, I can’t deny, fun...) parties, while much bigger issues lie beneath the surface, issues that are in danger of exploding. It reminded me of the conference, just the other day. So many things, wonderful things, but other things that must change, or else…
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