Living my dream... or just perpetuating a nightmare..?

At some point during my college years, I don’t remember exactly when, I remember thinking how amazing it would be to teach and live abroad.  When I first found out that there was a demand for teachers internationally and that those teachers get a pretty sweet gig, it became my dream to do that.  

I love travelling and I love teaching.  To combine these two things became my dream, which I am now living.  Yes, I am living my dream and it is simultaneously an amazing experience and an extremely guilt-ridden one.  

I am so happy that my daughter is being raised abroad and will be bilingual from an early age.  I love the fact that she is growing up and has grown up in a place where everything isn’t cushy and easy, but is raw and real.  She is surrounded by so much natural beauty and amazing people that all help us to provide a unique and meaningful early life for her.  She is so lucky, and I want to impress that upon her and hope someday she uses her fortunate position in life to aid those who are less fortunate.

Here’s where the guilt-ridden side comes in.  I love my life.  I love my job, my friends, my boss, the beautiful country we live in and mostly my wife and daughter.  However, there is a lot of hurt in this country.  Over half the population lives in poverty.  It has been ranked on the top 10 worst places in the world for women and children to live.  And finally, corruption and impunity rule.  However, that does in no way tell the whole story of Guatemala.  Most Guatemalans have never played a role in the story of their beautiful country.

Over the past 75 years the United States has been a major player (in a negative fashion) in Guatemalan affairs:

• 

  Jacobo Arbenz, 1st democratically
  elected President of Guatemala

  In 1944 they led and supported a coup through the CIA to remove Guatemala’s first democratically elected leader,  Jacobo Arbenz, from office.  Why?  Not a simple answer, but a corporation named United Fruit Company was worried about losing land, so they used their connections to convince Eisenhower that the President was a communist.  He wasn’t of course, but nonetheless was seen as one in Washington and forced to leave the country under threat of violence.
• This led to a series of Right-Wing military dictatorships directly supported, both financially and militarily, by the United States.  This is when violence and impunity became the norm in Guatemala.
• In the early 1980’s Reagan ratcheted up support for the dictator Efrain Rios-Montt who, according to the UN, committed a genocide against Ixil Mayans in the northern highlands of the country.  These actions were supported directly by the weapons and money given to Rios-Montt from the Reagan administration.

These are just a brief overview of the horrid negative effects that my country has had on the beautiful country that I currently live in. What if another country even tried these actions in our homeland?  How would Americans react?  

While I am living my dream, I am often torn with the guilt of the actions my country took here.  Everyday I see the challenges that Guatemala faces and so much of the negative facets of life   here can be directly linked to the coup of 1944 and the aftermath of brutal dictatorships that divided this country and created violence as the norm.  Look what my country has done.  Worse yet, so few American even know or care.  

I wonder if I’m doing any good here or just making a difficult situation worse?  While I’m living my dream, my country helped to create a nightmare of a situation in much of Central America.  The little I’ve mentioned here is just the tip of the iceberg of the USA’s negative influence in this country and region.  My hope is that in some tiny way I can inspire hope and progress in this often times forgotten, but incredibly beautiful corner of the world.

I still remember...

I remember it like it was yesterday.  My students weren’t even born.  

I was getting ready to take my first test of my junior year in college and turned on CNN.  What?!?!? A helicopter had flown into the World Trade Center?  Or at least that was the first guess.  Then, it happened.  Live on television the second plane flew into the second tower of the World Trade Center, and fear filled the nation, the world and my heart.  

Nothing like this had ever been imagined.  If you would’ve have wanted to make a Hollywood film about something like this, you’d have been laughed out of the room because it was such a preposterous suggestion.  Yet now, we were all watching it live on television.  It was not a movie, it was real.  

What gives me more sadness then remembering that horrible day is what has happened since.  Fourteen years ago I had never seen more unity in America and the world.  Over 1 million Iranians took the streets in Tehran to voice their support for our country in our time of need.  Everyone rallied behind the United States and there was a sense of brotherhood as I haven’t seen since.  

But fourteen short years later the reality saddens me.  The United States is now more ideologically divided than anytime since the Civil War.  We are still fighting wars that few American citizens seem eager to end.  The American government is still keeping 28 pages of the 9-11 report secret, so survivors, family members and American citizens still don’t have the truth. Furthermore, it has been almost impossible to get the American Congress to pass the now famous “First Responders Bill” made notorious now by Jon Stewart’s activism.  Add to this Congress’s lack of ability to provide body armor and proper healthcare for the veterans returning from the two wars began by the US. And fourteen short years after this horrible tragedy world polling shows that over 70% people in the world think that the USA is the “biggest threat to world peace.”  

How has this happened?  How did we squander this opportunity?  How have we become so divided?

It’s easier than ever to not pay attention to the problems in the world.  Distraction and escapism in the form of reality TV, manufactured news and busyness do a great job of keeping people ignorant about truly significant events.  I hope we can all agree that war and supporting the first responders and veterans is more significant than reality TV and fantasy football… but that’s a hard message to sell to modern America.  

I understand how much easier it is in this world to be ignorant to the reality.  But, it in no way is helpful to only remember tragedy once a year and to forget the daily tragedy so many live in.  To forget the Syrian refugees or half of the world that daily lives in poverty is not helpful, but only continues the trend of apathy and ignorance all too apparent in our world today.

Modern culture has the capability to enable activism or to infantilize us…  We all make our choice.