In the Name of Development

The wind outside reminds me of Moscow’s constantly changing weather. The sky is a clear, light blue, yet the constantly present pollution caused by the hundreds of cars and black, lead-filled smoked emitted by the city buses obscures the view of the volcanoes that overlook the city. It should begin raining this afternoon. Huge thunderclouds with white voluptuous tops and ominous black bases will soon threaten the valley where Guatemala City is located. Yet for the last week, these clouds have merely threatened imminent thunderstorms for it has barely rained these last days. They say here it is a la Niña year, which makes the weather erratic. Maybe that’s why the rainy season has actually been dry.

Outside, the garden is filled with plants that we would only see as house plants in the United States. Spider plants are a regular feature in gardens. Succulent plants flourish in these gardens, their swollen leaves puffed like cheeks filled with air. I hope these plants flourish in the thick carbon dioxide poison that is spewed from the cars speeding by on this small pedestrian street. I hope they return a small bit of oxygen for me to fill my lungs with clean air.

Thankfully, the overwhelming stench of low-grade diesel does not permeate the inside of the apartment. Yet, as I sit here, I think of Drs. Von Walden and Lee Vierling’s discussions of climate change. I think about global change caused by humans cutting down forests, contaminating the earth with pesticides, and polluting their water sources with human waste.

I can’t help to think that while the United States emits 25% of the world’s carbon emissions, at least in most of the country we can breathe the air and not worry about lung cancer, lead poisoning, and the black lung. At least in most places we can drink the water, sit on the grass, escape to a park, and live in a clean environment. Most of us have the right to a decent, equitable life.

I sit and ponder the emphasis Moscow, Idaho, places on recycling and composting waste. I think about how Maggie and I had one bag of garbage a week. If only we had had a way to compost, we would have had virtually no waste. All the values I hold, the concepts I have towards minimizing the waste I contribute to the environment are in conflict here. All my environmental and social values collide with the realities I experience in Guatemala. I hope their values do not include poverty and pollution in the name of development, yet I fear they do.

As I drove with Sandra and Bill to Xela, we saw construction workers tearing the mountains down to widen the highway. Fine cream colored dust filled the air, kicked up by cars as they screamed past us through the construction zones. People too impatient to wait for the on-coming traffic to pass through the construction site caused further problems by blocking the one lane through which traffic could pass.

From no where emerged people in the informal business sector passed by the cars peddling handicrafts like musical boxes shaped as Ferris wheels and brightly woven hand bags, and selling habas, chifles, mangos, stuffed chiles, and chicken lunches. They yell in their harsh voices to announce what they sell. Straggly feral dogs trot along behind them hoping one of the women may drop her wares and provide them with a free lunch. People got out of their cars to smoke, take a piss, and stretch their aching legs as the line of automobiles grows ever longer, spreading back towards Xela from the road construction site. It’s as though everyone knows it will take at least 40 minutes to pass through a 500 foot stretch of construction.

Finally, the traffic began to move. First from the opposing side, the drivers forced their way through the double and sometimes triple lanes of impatient drivers clogging the road. Then, to further frustrate the situation, the cars, buses, and trucks that had passed illegally and clogged traffic honked their horns, yelled, and shoved their way back into the one lane of traffic going through the construction site. The lack of order destroyed whatever efficiency existed in the destructive construction zone.

Eventually we started driving again through the precarious zone to continue the long and sinuous drive back to Guatemala City. Black smoke poured from the tail pipes of the trucks and brightly painted second-hand school buses as they huffed and puffed around the tight corners and over the mountain passes on the narrow highway. My lungs, already aggravated by the dust, were further molested by this poison inflicted upon them. I could feel them begging me to return home to the clean western air of the United States. My mind and heart agrees with them, beating a steady rhythm that forms the words, “It’s time to go home, home, home.”

Previous rainstorms had ripped through these construction sites, carrying off the valuable top soil and layers of other soils from the mountain down into the ravines below. Huge rivets coursed through the loose soil by the road construction. On the downward side of the construction, the erosion is so bad it threatens to destroy the roadway in a matter of years, months, or even weeks. On the hillside above, hovels, where entire families live, hang dangerously close to the precipice. Their precious corn field, planted inches from the roadside, is covered with the same fine dust that coats the roadside construction area.

We passed by signs stating “Do not throw garbage. Fine Q 5,000.” Yet, all around the signs lay heaps and piles of plastic containers, pop bottles, grocery sacks, food waste. Painfully thin dogs, their ribs protruding from their sides, dug through the piles with their muzzles and paws searching for some bit of worm-filled meat, molding bread, rotting vegetables to fill their stomachs. The trash heaps cascade down the mountainside, into the waterways below. Probably these rivers are the only source of water for the wretchedly poor populations of rural people living in this area.

Beautiful views of exotic conical volcanoes were marred the entire drive by the cinderblock constructions that pass as dark, dank homes for these country people. Most are partially constructed. Rebar sticks out of the roofs, a reminder of hope for better days to build a second floor sometime, who knows when, in the future. Bare grey blocks plastered together and occasionally coated or painted remind me of prison cells filled with prisoners of poverty. Little to no expense is spared to make these buildings aesthetically pleasing. The repetitive construction of these Soviet style constructions fails to orient me to where we are in the country. All the buildings are identically constructed in the square, squat manner. All spread dismally across the landscape and function for utility rather than for comfort.

I look at the land, which is in its own right beautiful. But, I think despairingly at the atrocities that humans have done to it in the name of development. In the name of development they are tearing down mountains to widen a road. In the name of development, they credit cinderblock homes as being safeguards against earthquakes. They use these instead of traditional adobe construction. In the name of development the poor rifle through garbage in search of recyclable material to sell for a meager profit. In the name of development, they let their fields be drenched in pesticides and chemicals. They allow their rivers to be filled with contamination. They let their stomachs be filled with amebas.

As I observe this stark reality I think, “If this is development, I want nothing to do with it.”