To Hell With Good Intentions

[Orwellian_Ghost]

I was impressed by your insight that the motivation of U.S. volunteers overseas springs mostly from very alienated feelings and concepts. I was equally impressed, by what I interpret as a step forward among would-be volunteers like you: openness to the idea that the only thing you can legitimately volunteer for in Latin America might be voluntary powerlessness, voluntary presence as receivers, as such, as hopefully beloved or adopted ones without any way of returning the gift.

I was equally impressed by the hypocrisy of most of you: by the hypocrisy of the atmosphere prevailing here. I say this as a brother speaking to brothers and sisters. I say it against many resistances within me; but it must be said. Your very insight, your very openness to evaluations of past programs make you hypocrites because you - or at least most of you - have decided to spend this next summer in Mexico, and therefore, you are unwilling to go far enough in your reappraisal of your program. You close your eyes because you want to go ahead and could not do so if you looked at some facts.

It is quite possible that this hypocrisy is unconscious in most of you. Intellectually, you are ready to see that the motivations which could legitimate volunteer action overseas in 1963 cannot be invoked for the same action in 1968. "Mission-vacations" among poor Mexicans were "the thing" to do for well-off U.S. students earlier in this decade: sentimental concern for newly-discovered. poverty south of the border combined with total blindness to much worse poverty at home justified such benevolent excursions. Intellectual insight into the difficulties of fruitful volunteer action had not sobered the spirit of Peace Corps Papal-and-Self-Styled Volunteers.

...

Next to money and guns, the third largest North American export is the U.S. idealist, who turns up in every theater of the world: the teacher, the volunteer, the missionary, the community organizer, the economic developer, and the vacationing do-gooders. Ideally, these people define their role as service. Actually, they frequently wind up alleviating the damage done by money and weapons, or "seducing" the "underdeveloped" to the benefits of the world of affluence and achievement. Perhaps this is the moment to instead bring home to the people of the U.S. the knowledge that the way of life they have chosen simply is not alive enough to be shared.

...

I am here to suggest that you voluntarily renounce exercising the power which being an American gives you. I am here to entreat you to freely, consciously and humbly give up the legal right you have to impose your benevolence on Mexico. I am here to challenge you to recognize your inability, your powerlessness and your incapacity to do the "good" which you intended to do.

...

http://www.swaraj.org/illich_hell.htm

[Warpy]

1. I'm nobody's savior, nor am I their judge. I am changing the world.

I'm doing it one poor woman (mostly) at a time throughout the third world. I'm giving them what they say they need, not what I think they need.

http://www.kiva.org

[thunder rising]

2. "recognize your inability, your powerlessness and your incapacity"

That's not very hopeful.

So Mexico is the way it is and nothing will change it. Ok, then why do we have such an "undocumented" immigrant situation? Thousands keep coming here to get the American life experience? We must send out our people, simply because they can educate; even if they impose some of their American values.

Note: I admit we should stop supporting the wicked governments that oppress the citizens of South America. And assist the populations to acquire the basic rights of rule of law, and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

3. Did you read

the entire essay?

The paternalism hasn't changed a bit.

Amazing if that is what you gleaned from Illich's classic piece.

[varelse]

4. Thousands keep coming here to get the American life experience?

I haven't met any immigrants from Mexico who were here for "the American life experience".

I've known several who are here for the paycheck(s) they can earn here, and they not only send much of that home, but also return home as often as possible. I've also known (and still meet) immigrants who are here to stay, if they can - but they tend to keep to the "Mexican way of life", which (in my experience) is strongly family-oriented. Grandmothers are cherished and contested among their children and grandchildren - the elderly are respected and valued, passing from the household of one grown child to the next. Old folks die at home, not in a hospice... these are the immigrants I have known. Not a single one that I've spoken with has had any glowing praise of the "American way of life" - quite the reverse, in fact.

My personal experiences might be a bit biased though, by having grown up in California, within walking distance of the border.