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A Two-Week Immersion With Central America & Dismal Lessons Learned
I can’t save the world. What, then, should I do?
The resounding note of experiencing Central America and being immersed in a culture that appears to be quite distinct from my own is that the world is vastly more interconnected, interdependent, and commonly bound than we might suppose.
Though the geographical and cultural differences are so apparently obvious — a common summation of any cross-cultural experience — there is a disturbing mutuality that weighs on perceptive eyes.
Conclusions concerning the stark differences amidst collective consciousness, however, are less decisive.
The Question Resulting From Seeing the World
In a region such as Central America, there is, at once, an austere beauty; a romanticized visualization of assumed primal simplicity and exotic landscapes.
Rarely, however, do we recognize the overt emphasis on the grasping toward supposed modernism, industrialization, and the economic, political, and structural trappings of civilization that have vastly determined the current state of this area and demographic.
Even more rare is the acknowledgment of why such dispositions of imperialism in Central America have been so forced.
The reality is that not only is Central America rife with suffering, the complexity of the global situation is disconcertingly overwhelming.
As I heard from a variety of voices — many of whom exist at the expense of economic and political globalization — the narrative arc of the region became tangible; economic interests of powerful nation-states tend to (as they always have in history) control areas of desirable natural resources. The result is an immense loss of autonomy, culture, life, and sustainability.
Phenomenologically, having an experience such as this forces one to now understand the world with more complexity and insight. When you see the depth of the world, not only does romanticism fade, it is now…
