Antonio Saldívar is a hero to westernize thinking just by being a teacher that questions it. He never gives us any solutions or answers. He makes us come up with them. His objective is not to convince us of anything but just to present ideas. If he was to tell us answers he would feel this is wrong and the opposite of what he is trying to teach us... to question.
So I did question. I questioned everything I believed in about poverty and development and I remembered something:
Poverty and Development: a story of me in Peace Corps Paraguay
One day I was standing at the bus stop outside CAACUPE. It was 40 celcius, and I had
a backpack full of food. I was waiting for an hour on a busy street for my bus. It was
the only bus that return to my site, one per day, and I could not miss it. It was never
on time.. so I waited. These moments were mixed with joy and tiredness, I had food,
vegetables!, to last me a month in my backpack. It was summer so no vegetables
were available anywhere near my site, nothing grew in the months of 40 celcius.
I was tired because my bus left that morning at 5:40, and I had carried my big
backpack around CAACUPE picking up various things. It was hot, I was dyhydrated.
A short toothless man approached me. He began to talk to me in Spanish, since I
was a foreigner, they never began in Guarani. He mumbled angrily at me. I could not
understand him, but I understood what he must have said from the one sentence I
could understand. “ Paises como suya saca el miel de nuestra pais”. To translate: “
countries like yours take the honey out of our country”. He was mean to me, and I
was very happy to run and jump onto my crowded bus to the campo when it finally
came. I was safe from him, but not his words. Those stayed with me.
And still have.
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