July 4th Reflections

All my recent entries (including this one) have carried the "Blogging Abroad Challenge" badge. I have signed up for this challenge in attempt to write more regularly and write from different angles. The second I saw this week's theme ("Quotes & Proverbs") one phrase immediately leapt to mind:Si no tienes padrino se muere sin bautizar.

"If you don't have a godfather, you die without being baptized." To get ahead in the world you have to know someone.

Dominicans use it with the resigned air that you use when acknowledging an unpleasant but long learned truth. This is especially true in a country that struggles with corruption as much as the Dominican Republic. Political favors, employment, even healthcare can depend on who you know or how much you pay.

I don't drop the C-word lightly. I have a disclaimer on the side bar of this blog stating that the opinions on this blog doesn't reflect the opinions of the Peace Corps but this is still very much a PC project. This means that I take responsible representation of my host country very seriously.

Peace Corps service is incredibly rewarding but it can also be baffling, frustrating, and disappointing. Sometimes you just need to vent but that isn't what this is about. Because corruption in the Dominican Republic isn't a matter of my opinion or my frustration but fact: it ranked 120 of 176 countries on Transparency International's "Corruption Perception Index." This means that there are 119 countries less corrupt than the DR and only 56 more corrupt.

The classic example of corruption is la botella ("bottle"): a job for which you are given a title and a paycheck but don't have to do anything. I once met a store owner who was also a prominent campaign organizer for the political party in power. As a token of appreciation for his efforts he was appointed "Assistant Ambassador to Canada" despite not speaking English or French or even having traveled to the country.

This example might be a little comical but corruption is a much bigger that that. The DR was one of 11 countries involved in the 9 billion Odebrecht bribery scandal - the largest such scandal in recorded history. . Seven people went to jail.

I feel OK talking about corruption because Dominicans talk about it. A lot. Corruption is a widely acknowledged problem that enters virtually every political conversation that doesn't involve a politician. And, rather awesomely, Dominicans not only talk but take action. The Odebrecht case appears to be the last straw for many. There is currently a nationwide protest movement (La Marcha Verde - "Green March") demanding el fin de la impunidad: "the end of impunity."

I have written admiringly about Dominican politics before and that hasn't changed. It is, in fact, quite heartening to know that they haven't given up on their young democracy despite everything. The people take to the streets to make their voices heard and voter participation is higher than in the United States.

Still, the folks in the green t-shirts and ballcaps have a long march ahead of them.

Today, here in the mountain village, far from any other Americans except Cat and any fireworks, I am grateful to have grown up in a country where where my education, employment and health didn't depend on my having a "godfather."

By CPI standards the USA is not the least corrupt country in the world but certainly far less corrupt than the DR.

We're number 18!

Happy Independence Day.

Why does the town council own a butcher shop?

The sign below says "Ayuntamiento of the Municipal District of *Town Where I live* Services Open to All."

Ayuntamiento translates exactly to "town council." People use the word to refer to the building, the elected officials therein, the services offered thereby, and the employees who provide them. I've known this word since I talked to the vice-sindico of my CBT pueblo . Despite its flexibility, I was hard pressed to make sense of it in the following context:

In case the blood-red letters in drippy font didn't clue you in carnicería means "butcher shop" and the sign therefore reads: "Town Council Butchery of M.R.L" (¨M" is for Municipalidad and R.L is the initials of the town where I live). This building is right next to the savings cooperative where I work everyday. I can see it through the window near my desk.

Despite this familiarity, or perhaps because of it, I haven't given much thought to what it is or what goes on there. Like I wrote in my last entry, the first six months in site have been intense. When I'm overwhelmed I tend to either shut down or open up all the way, so I ended up accepting a lot of things without much investigation. Sometimes it's best to just file things under "that's weird" and move on with your day.

Last week, I saw a handwritten sign that I lamentably neglected to take a photo of. It was posted on a street corner and declared in the formal language of Dominican government announcements that the ayuntamiento would be holding a subasta for municipal service providers and that anyone was welcome to attend.

After 8 months in country, my written Spanish is pretty good. I can read the paper (without a dictionary) and contemporary novels (with one). I can write a professional email. I can write poetry. My spoken Spanish it pretty good, too, though it varies depending on context. If you are a complete stranger with a thick country accent, talking about something I am not familiar with, I might only get 60% of what you are saying. If you are an educated, urban stranger I probably bat about 80% and my average goes up when I tune into your particular way of talking. When conversing with someone I know well about a topic where I know all the vocabulary, I can sometimes communicate with 100% fluidity. On a good day, I go to sleep feeling like I speak Spanish.

That day, I was feeling confident: I understood all the words on the sign except for subasta. I looked it up in the dictionary: it means "auction." What municipal services was the town council going to auction? I was intrigued. I also felt guilty for never before having attended a meeting of the ayuntamiento. It seemed like a basic background thing that I had neglected for too long. I decided to attend.

In a small town everyone knows everyone, so even though I've only lived here half a year I recognized half the people in the room.  Some were you usual movers-and-shakers whose presence was to be expected. The presence of some of the others might have been surprising if I knew what the heck was going on. There were some greetings and smiles of recognition.  I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but the building is the exact same vintage as my house and has an identical floor plan.  The meeting took place in the "kitchen." Imagine, if you will, 30+ people in the following space.

Cluttered kitchen table included for scale.

I took a seat and the meeting began. That 60% to 100% I just bragged about? That only happens in a one-on-one context where I am able to ask follow-up questions of polite people who are concerned about whether or not I understand what the heck was going on.

Gracias a Dios, the form of the meeting was identical to municipal meetings I have attended in the US. There was an agenda and a secretary to read it. But the main agenda item, the subasta felt like, well, an auction, and not a silent one. With everybody talking at once my comprehension dropped to about 25%. But one thing was clear: the ayuntamiento was auctioning off the rights to the carnicería that bears it's name.  Only on my walk home did I have presence of mind to wonder, why the heck does a city council own a butcher shop in the first place?

That night, I did not go to sleep feeling like I spoke Spanish.

The next day, I talked it over with Mariano, a community leader who also happens to be one of my favorite people in town. He has lived in the pueblo all his life and has watched it grow from a group of dozen a families to a small town of 2000+. He has been instrumental in that growth, having been involved in just about every community project over the years. He serves on the comite de crédito (credit commission) of my savings cooperative and had been at the subasta the previous night. He has a lifetime of experience that he is eager to share and is kind and patient with my uneven Spanish. He is concerned about whether or not I understand what the heck is going on.

He explained to me that in a small country like the DR it makes sense to organize services like roads, schools and police at a provincial, or even national level. As such, Dominican municipal governments have very few excuses to few taxes on their citizens which means they sometimes have little revenue. By owning, and auctioning the rights to, services like the butcher's shop the ayuntamiento can simultaneously guarantee a source of revenue for itself while also guaranteeing that these services exist in their town. What is more, the ayuntamiento sets a maximum price per pound at the carniceria to ensure that the meat is affordable to its citizens. In a town with serious hunger in living memory that makes a lot of sense.

It's an interesting way of doing business, and governance, that I am happy to have learned about. I'll probably attend more meetings of the ayuntamiento in the future and record my reflections on other interesting stuff here.

How the Salchicha is Made

Now that elections in the DR have passed, I think it is safe to talk some about politics here. Not that I can say that much about them: Peace Corps volunteers are deliberately apolitical. I certainly have political opinions but it is inappropriate for me to share them here or anywhere else during my service. They would only get in the way. But I think there is no harm in describing how the democratic process works here - to the extent that I understand it.

On 15 de Mayo 2016 Danilo Medina, the sitting president of the Dominican Republic, was re-elected with 60% of the popular vote. This gave him a margin of 25 points over his nearest challenger, Luis Abinader, in the most crushing defeat in the history of Dominican democracy.

Danilo is a member of the PLD and Abinader the PRM. The remaining 5% of the vote was split between 6 other minority partidos. The biggest winner of these was the Alianza Pais with 2.5% of the presidential vote. In the American two party system we would call these "third parties" but this would be a total misnomer here. The minority partidos are more than three. They are more than 6 actually. All told, there are 32 registered partidos in the Dominican Republic and 26 of them matter enough to be included on the ballot.

Why, you ask, if there are 26 partidos were there only 8 presidential candidates? Well, there were more candidates initially but they dropped out when their partidos formed alianzas with either the PLD or PRM. On the surface the Dominican process looks a lot like the US: direct democracy, bicameral legislature, etc. The key difference is alianzas and the difference they make is huge.

Using an example from US politics, let's turn back time to the 1992 presidential election. Many believe that Bill Clinton was elected because Ross Perot, a "third party" candidate, cost George HW Bush crucial votes. This was exactly what the Republicans worried would happen. But imagine: what if, instead of saying "well, it's a two-party system and there's nothing we can do," the Republicans had signed a preemptive powersharing agreement with Perot's Reform Party? In exchange for dropping their presidential spoiler the Reform Party would receive guaranteed appointments for non-elected positions and support in some local elections. This would help the Republicans retain power by guaranteeing them the presidency and would help build the Reform Party from an upstart operation into a real party with office holders spread throughout the country. The parties could even campaign together!

In the DR this happens all the time. It is the bread and butter (or, better put, the beans and rice) of Dominican politics. This is why there were only 8 presidential candidates on the ballot. All of the remaining 18 "major minority" partidos formed alianzas with either the PLD or PRM. This is why Danilo, the most popular presidential candidate in the history of his country, appeared side-by-side on posters for candidates of the BIS, a minority Socialist party that took in less than 100,000 votes nationwide.

Sure, the BIS won't win the presidency without a candidate, but it's not like they really had a chance at that office anyhow. Significant local wins can help BIS establish a stronghold in certain parts of the country. This can be expanded upon over time and suddenly your minority partido isn't so minor anymore. That's exactly what happened with the PLD. PLD is currently the majority partido in Dominican politics. One of the 18 parties they allied with was the PRD, which used to be the majority partido. In fact, the PLD began life as an offshoot of the PRD!

So that's how the sausage is made at the levels of the partidos. But what does it mean for citizens? Like Americans, Dominicans grumble about how their politicians are all crooks, but to judge by voter turnout they are far less jaded than we are. This years election had over 70% voter turnout. I imagine it's because Dominicans can vote their conscience with the party of their choice without feeling they are "throwing their vote away" on a candidate who will never win.

The Dominican enthusiam for democracy is apparent not only in the polling place. Unlike the US where campaigns are mostly media affairs, Dominicans campaign vigously in the streets. Each of the 26 partidos has their colores and groups of suppoters regularly parade the streets in matching outfits, shaking hands and going door to door. This do this for months on end. I have been in here less than 3 months and not a week has gone by that I haven't encountered a parade or manifestacion of some kind, even when I was in a small town of less than a thousand people. It is exactly the kind of rowdy, participatory democracy that I have read that the US used to have.

Of course, there is a dark side. This year's election was notable not only for it's surprisingly decisive presidential victory but also for it's orderliness. At the church I attended during CBT the priest implored from the pulpit against violence on election day. Like Americans at sporting events, sometimes the excitement gets out of hand. Cheers for your team turn to jeers for the other. Rough words and blows are exchanged. Sometimes people die. In previous years, Peace Corps issued security alerts for volunteers to stay in their homes on election day.

But not this year. I was able to walk the streets of the small town where I now live and feel safe as I shared in the exictement. It was truly something to see.

Final note: Since my last entry my wife and I have been quite busy! We have received our site assignment, visited it for a few days, returned to the capital to complete training, and have moved permanently to our new site in the northern reach of the province Elias Piña where we live with a new host family.

I have a lot to write about! But I need time to process things. I'll post here when I have understood enough to have something intelligent to say.

Some shame on Earth Day

I am in the Advanced Spanish class, the highest level here in CBT. Based on the strength of my conversational skills, I have been placed with native speakers and those who have lived in Spanish speaking countries for extended periods of time. I am clearly bringing up the rear and for this I feel a little vergüenza (shame).

I used Spanish for several years at a job in San Francisco but there it was more important for me to be understood than to understand. I can talk fine with other slow Americans. Also I can communicate easily what I mean to Dominicans but when a Dominican is speaking to me it is like listening to a song from a radio station faraway. I can catch words and phrases among the noise but I understand totally only when the signal is particularly clear. I (almost) always get the gist but often miss details. Yes, I am thrilled to be invited to your party but I have no idea where we are meeting or at what time.

Despite that, I am an "advanced" student so my Spanish class is not focused on the practice of grammar and vocabulary but on practical application thereof. As a group we have been required to plan and execute community projects and that means speaking in Spanish without a net. This is how I came to find myself entering the offices of the ayuntamiento (municipal services division) to meetloop with the alcade (mayor) of the pueblo. Hello. I am Kevin. I come from Cuerpo de Paz from the United States.  Us volunteers are organizing a cleaning of the river for el dia de la tierra. Can the ayuntamiento help us?

Such a meeting is bread and butter for me in English but the idea of doing it in Spanish provoked some anxiety. I knew I would recognize the alcalde from his posters all over town (it's an election year - more on that later) but what would I say if he asked me difficult questions? I ended up speaking to his assistant - the alcalde was presumably campaigning - who thought highly of Cuerpo de Paz and spoke slowly for my benefit.

It went exactly as a meeting would in the US except that he did everything longhand on paper. There was no computer anywhere in the office.  He called in the head of the workers who did not speak slowly but I survived. I had to ask him to repeat himself more than once. Would the ayuntamiento be able to help us? Yes, his honor the alcalde would be thrilled to assist the volunteers of Cuerpo de Paz in cleaning up the river with local youth. How many students would we be bringing?

We had already planned to paint a map of the world on a wall at a local liceo (high school) the day before the river. We had also prepared a short charla on environmental conservation. We hoped to recruit some kids there and there's 16 volunteers, so let's say 30 total?

Thirty estudiantes! Que Bueno!

CBT is a busy time. Training sessions and Spanish class run from 8 to 5. Parts of most weekends and evenings are devoted to tarea: individual assignments and group projects. We get so busy that we barely have time to play dominoes and drink cerveza. The morning of the day of we were to paint the mural we took a field trip to a cacao factory in the campo. In a small settlement of 300 souls a dozen women turned the local harvest into dulces, bollos, and vino. They were supported by a PC volunteer who functioned as a sort of live-in business consultant. It was a wonderful project to see.

The fábrica was 40 minutes from the carretera (highway) deep among the fincas de cacao acessible only by treacherous dirt roads. Our guagua bottomed out more than once and a times the river ran over the road a few inches deep.

they were so treacherous that the locals staged a huelga to demand the local government improve them. It is after all an election year and the síndico (the same guy as the alcalde but in a different position, something akin to a state senator - DR politics will get their own post when I am less confused) should be paying attention. The manifestantes felled trees and blocked the road at both access points to the highway. It was a nonviolent action. We were safe but would be delayed. We rolled up the windows and turned around.

Our only option was to cut north, deeper into the campo, through even worse roads to reach a different carretera. As we proceeded into the interior the houses turned from concrete (the construction staple of the Dominican well-to-do) to frayed wood, a legacy of an earlier poorer time. The faces on the campaign posters changed. People sat on their front lawns and laughed at us from plastic chairs. I am sure they thought us to be profoundly confused tourists. Eventually the land flattened and we were in a new country. The fincas gave way to fields of piña and we found the carretera.

Our chofer got us back without complain but three hours later than we planned. We had called the directora of the liceo from the road. It was not a problem to reschedule the mural and the charla but it would be after earth day and we wouldn't be able to recruit estudiantes for the river clean up. After the

The next day my Spanish class advanced, sin estudiantes and somewhat shamefacedly, to the river. It was a gorgeous morning.

Lacking cars and packed into busy families, Dominican teenagers go to the river to have fun and accidentally start new families. We found evidence of this in the bushes and on the banks. Workers from the ayuntamiento joined us. They had provided fundas (plastic bags; Dominicans use the more common Spanish bolsa to refer primarily to the scrotum) and latex gloves for 50, but between bothe groups we were about 15.

The head of the workers was there. He explained that his men (and they were all men) hadn't visited the river to clean up since Semana Santa the previous month after which they removed about 25 fundas of picnic debris.  We worked side-by-side, my radio tuning in and out of my English thoughts to catch the kind of words that working men exchange on a hot day: curses (Dominicans use "c**t" with the versatility that Americans use "f**k") chistes, and fragments of popular songs.

Some unscheduled Dominicans came and the head man entreated them to volunteer: ¿No tienes consciente? Don't they have a social conscious? No, they were just there to wash their horses, or their motorcycles, or themselves.

The radio signal tuned in perfectly for me to hear him say: "It's a c**ting shame that the only volunteers that clean our river have to come all the way from the US.

I wanted to tell him he needn't be embarrassed. The river, honestly, wasn't any dirtier than one in any similarly poor area of the US. I have sat on river banks in depopulated areas of Michigan where no one has come for the beer bottles and condom wrappers in a long time. I wanted to explain to him all the complexity of what had lead to that moment, but I was shameful of my Spanish and tired.

Between us we removed about 20 bags of trash, some of it half-buried in the tierra. Behind a bush I found some feed bags filled with earth. I asked the head man about them and he told me that they had been gathered by a caco farmer to use as potting soil for new plants. These we let be.