Word of the Day: Conservador- conservative (conservativo means something else that has much less to do with politics.)
I've been having a hard time explaining my political opinions to people lately. Like every other part of me that I have to translate between languages, there are some things that just get lost along the way. For instance, my personality is completely different in Spanish: while in English I derive a lot of my humor from sarcasm, in Spanish, I rely a lot more on self- mockery, whether of my language abilities or my physical klutziness.
When it comes to political opinions, however, I think part of the problem is that my beliefs don't transfer well culturally. Chilean society is so polarized between left and right, especially between older and younger generations. There's very little left of the tradition of centrism that originally distinguished Chile as "exceptional" to political scientists, which arguably was never as strong as some claimed to begin with.
This presents a problem because I consider myself a moderate. I had a long discussion with a friend yesterday about what that means. He argued that it meant being willing to split the difference on issues sometimes in order to accomplish tasks, but that means ultimately you will always have to pick one side or the other, meaning there's not really any such thing. Kind of valid I guess, but for me, I see being a moderate as recognizing that issues are never black and white problems and that therefore, their solutions should be not be treated as such.
I tried to briefly explain my political beliefs to a friend the other day who wanted to know if I'm a democrat or a republican back home. I replied that I'm to the left of both parties, which is sort of true, but I'm not sure I did a good job explaining why in culturally appropriate terms. Ultimately, I accept the free market system, although I maintain that it needs a load of reforms to make it just, equitable and sustainable. I accept capitalism as a paradigm that is best for generating innovation but I don't agree with the highly consumeristic society it has created nor the inequities it continues to perpetuate. Nor am I an anarchist by any stretch: I recognize the need for authority within society and the good that responsible political policy can create.
I describe myself to the left of the left in the sense that I am frustrated by the inability of either party in America to truly distinguish itself from the other, other than in useless shouting matches. Additionally, as someone I was interviewing for my research in Guatemala once described to me "The parties have their owners". This holds true in the US and if you look hard enough on either side of the aisle, the "owners" are pretty much the same people. Or rather, corporations. Ultimately, I'm the most disillusioned by the lack of focus by either party on issues that I think should be of the upmost priority, namely education, poverty and the environment.
I was thinking a lot about politics during a visit to El Teniente, the largest mine in the world yesterday. It was a very interesting site, but our exposure to the actual issues surrounding mining were very sanitized. I think this was partly due to the fact that the mine is very mechanized because it is so big, leading many of the employees to be technicians operating complicated machines rather than what we might traditionally think of as miners. I really missed Professor Winn this round: I feel like he would have squirreled us off on some side path somewhere to talk with some workers directly. Instead, we were accompanied by Carmen Gloria, our program director, Loreto, her assistant and Loreto's husband, a captain in the navy. Wonderful and gracious people, but as they represent a very specific segment of Chilean society, not the right people to bring along for a critical viewpoint. There was little talk of anything related to environmental issues or worker's rights during the trip although they were very open to showing us how a lot of machinery operated and explaining processes which were astounding when thinking about the phenomenal human ability to dominate the natural world. We also visited Sewell, a restored mining town, right near El Teniente. At one point, our guide described the conditions of workers as "a paradise." I'm pretty sure that no one's job is a paradise, especially a 19th/20th century miner who worked in the ground for 12 hours at a time. "Well managed", "good relative to other working conditions" might have been more appropriate phrases that wouldn't have put me off quite so much. I just found the comment to be intellectually dishonest and patronizing, a somewhat stereotypical example of a dialectic within Chilean society that maintains that the empresarial business class is responsible for the wealth and well being of the country.
In reality, both workers and empresarios need each other. I'm still waiting for a political dialogue to emerge that will recognize this, pretty much anywhere in the world. Workers deserve rights, respect and equality. To achieve this ideal, there would hypothetically have to be sacrifices from the business class, because wealth distribution, not to mention its social affects, are far too skewed. But the problem I have with the extreme left here is that it seeks to demonize the business class. In many cases, this is fair: why do some people in Chile get to have 3 houses in safe and gorgeous neighborhoods while others only have cardboard shacks that barely stand? There are too many inequalities in this world that are undeniably inhumane and wrong.
For me, however, any dialogue that attempts to deny humanity to any class group is unacceptable and ultimately unrealistic, however historically justified it may be due to exploitation. At the end of the day, we've all got to live with each other and as I see it, the challenge is not to let the popular segment of society "win" but rather to create a societal will to allow everyone to prosper, according to their own terms, rather than as a paternalistic imposition.
All in all, I grateful for the fact that feel I've made connections with so many people during this trip whose political beliefs vary widely from my own, whether they are further to the left or the right. While it's wonderful to be in the Tufts bubble where the majority of people agree on issues, I've found it really stimulating to have my beliefs challenged, because it forces me to analyze why I think the way I do. While it can be frustrating at times to avoid offending people unnecessarily, particularly my host family, I love seeing the way in which the circumstances of people's lives have affected the way they think. And furthermore, being able to connect with people despite huge differences makes me very hopeful about the possibilities of creating societies that are civil. If I can agree with a republican over the stupidity of corn subsidies, who knows what's possible!
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