Honduras: Epilogue

UPDATE: As one should expect, the situation in Honduras has deteriorated since the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Corie has written about this for the Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective’s blog, noting that the US continues to deport people to Honduras in the midst of this crisis. On Facebook, Emily posted a link to an article on the MADJ website and a translated excerpt by the Honduras Solidarity Network:

From the Broad Movement for Dignity & Justice: "The Tolupán People in Honduras are about to die of hunger

“The measures imposed by the Honduran government to prevent the spread of #COVID has been a form of death sentence for indigenous communities, as the classist and elitist nature of the government does not take into account the socio-economic realities of these populations...

“MADJ cites the high levels of poverty in these communities as well as the state-led dispossession of indigenous peoples from their lands for mining, dams, and logging projects. This has threatened their livelihood, land control, and food sovereignty.”

Suffice it to say that things are getting worse for the people we met there. I encourage everyone to donate to the Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective to help them weather this storm.

Ya know when ya get that one comment on your blog that confirms all your worst fears about yourself, as a writer and a human being? Well, I got one of those recently. It was submitted to the Day 6 post:

“This is painful to read. I wonder what your colleagues think about your condescending attitude and constant judgement towards them? Maybe you are trying to portray yourself as vulnerable, but it reads as whiny and entitled. You need to sincerely consider why you are doing this blog as well as why you shouldn't.”

I don’t know if I should exalt this one anonymous comment to earth-shattering status, but it sounds so thoughtful that I find it impossible to ignore. I could say that it doesn’t really matter. The commenter didn’t bother to leave any identifying information, so it seems a rather cowardly pot shot in the dark. But it’s so biting and incisive that I can’t just dismiss it.

I initially deleted it, being too upset to think rationally. When you’re as socially isolated as I am and have as much emotionally invested in your writing as I do, a comment like that is devastating. But then I decided to post it, because I didn’t want to be scared of some fucking anonymous blog comment. And I wanted to deal with it instead of sweeping it under the carpet. Yes, I was devastated, but, if I deal with it head-on, I could get over it and, hopefully, become stronger, so this shit won’t keep punching me in the gut every time.

It’s also a source of energy for me, engaging with my fear and pain. If I try to avoid thinking about it, that energy gets redirected in harmful ways. I told my parents about it and nearly came to tears. They empathetically told me that I shouldn’t let it get to me. That helped a lot. Obviously, the comment isn’t the problem; it’s just the trigger for another round of fear, shame and self-flagellation.

After I decided to post it, I was hoping for a torrent of good comments to drown it out. But that didn’t happen. This was the only comment submitted to my blog for the Honduras series. I was disappointed by that, so I checked to see how the comment looked on the page. To my shock, it was almost impossible to notice. There’s just a little link for comments at the end of each post. For most readers, it would’ve been easy to miss. Until this post, I may’ve been the only one who saw it.

But it brings up a point worth addressing. If my fellow delegates or colleagues found that my account treats them with a “condescending attitude” or “constant judgment,” I apologize. That wasn’t my intention. I hold so much in that, when I finally let it out like this, it’s often messy, overheated or ill-conceived (or all 3).

Since I started posting this series, I’ve been worrying that it was hurting the very people I wanted to celebrate. I only revealed my thoughts and feelings in the hope of purging my grief and bringing attention to the plight of WFP’s partners in Honduras, not to shame or embarrass anyone.

When I questioned why Corie and Ale were “waxing rhapsodic” about Power Chicken, I didn’t understand the value of their seemingly silly devotion to a fast-food joint. But they were coping with despair on a daily basis. In order to keep from being overwhelmed by it, they had to take advantage of any opportunities for joy, no matter how trivial.

It was only my bourgeois, soul-dead perspective that found this behavior improper. But, over the course of the delegation, I began to understand the importance of embracing both the silly and the sublime, the horrible and the hilarious.

After learning of the evil that undergirds my First-World way of life (about 16 years ago), I became wary of joy, thinking it a selfish indulgence. But this prevented me from grieving. As a result, I got stuck in a rut of self-pity that blotted out the sun and kept me from seeing the joy and beauty in the world.

Rather than processing the sorrow, I tried to avoid it. But this only stopped the flow of all emotions, and I became like an old house: moldy, dusty and empty. The more I withdrew from the world, the more my emotions curdled into resentment and bitterness.

They loved Power Chicken because you have to embrace it all, the absurdity, beauty and horror of Life, if you want to do good. I may not have written this series in a humble-enough voice, but I have the utmost respect and admiration for them. To do what they did while preserving their sanity was a herculean feat.

From the start, I was worried about centering myself in the narrative over our Honduran partners. But I found it impossible to engage with others’ pain without addressing my own. I also thought it might engage fellow First-Worlders who, like me, struggle to relate to people in the Third World. This seems to have been borne out by the blog’s pageviews. As of this writing, the Prologue has 42 views, and no other installment has more than 25.

It took me about 3 weeks to get over the sadness when I returned home, but I was able to let myself grieve. I didn’t feel the need to hide it at work, in public or in front of my roommates. That felt like a big step. I’m not even sure why I was sad though. The detachment obscured the connections between my emotions and their causes.

I think it had more to do with leaving the delegation than with what I’d seen. But maybe I should just let myself be sad without questioning my motives so much. Maybe I really do care about those people in Honduras. Do I really need to beat myself up over it? I don’t know.

Once the sadness passed, I was able to start writing the blog. The first draft was done within 2 months of the trip (which is fast for me), but I kept procrastinating on the revisions. I think I was afraid to finish the blog because I didn’t want to close the book on that experience. It would force me to say goodbye to my fellow delegates again.

That made it hard to finally post it the last 2 weeks. But that’s what I’m doing now, saying goodbye to the experience and trying to move on. Now I have to find the next project, the next group of people I can vibe with, and that’s the really scary part, because I don’t know if I can find another experience and group like that. But that’s life. Those of us with abandonment issues just have a harder time dealing with it.

I shouldn’t be so worried. The Oaxaca delegation was great, and the Honduras delegation was even better. If I keep taking those chances, doing what I believe in, I should be OK. There’ll be stumbles along the way, but the more (reasonable) risks I take, the stronger I become. The more I push myself (again, within reason), the better able I am to handle the pitfalls.

Of course, this is all obvious, cliché bullshit that anyone with half a brain understands intuitively. So why do I have such a hard time with it? Besides the aforementioned emotional issues, I think it may have to do with the Western concept of history as a March of Progress.

I used to subscribe to this belief, common in the West, that history is leading either to a techno-utopia or apocalypse. But now I know that history is cyclical. Some things get better, some things get worse, and then the process is repeated, just with different variations. There will never be a Reckoning when all these conflicts are resolved, so there’s no point in waiting for the Rapture when you’ll be proven right, because it’s never gonna happen.

You’d might as well just work for your idea of justice while you’re alive, because there’s no Great Scorekeeper in the Sky who’s gonna come down and proclaim a winner based on who’s the most virtuous or righteous or whatever. The meek shall not inherit the earth; they aren’t gonna inherit shit until they get their act together and stand up for themselves. And even then it’s a long shot.

There will be no ultimate defeat of Evil and no ultimate victory for Good. There will always be pain, suffering and injustice. These are immutable features of the human condition. In one of the articles in our delegation binder, it mentions a popular protest chant in Latin America: ¡Adelante! ¡Adelante! ¡La lucha es constante! “Forward! Forward! The struggle is constant!” I would amend that to: La lucha es eterna. “The struggle is eternal.” (But then it wouldn’t rhyme.)

So you’d better enjoy the journey, because there’s no guarantee you’ll ever reach your destination. That’s what makes it so hard for me to keep fighting, because my journey has fucking sucked. My inability to get my personal shit together has kept me from fully committing to the struggle. I’ve tied my happiness to the success of the fight for social justice, and that just doesn’t fucking work.

I have to accept failure as an option and the limits of my ability to change the world. Being able to process emotions healthily should help a lot with this. I have to grieve for what’s been lost so I can let it go and move on to the next fight. And I need to be able to revel in the victories so I have enough hope, strength and courage to carry me until the next victory.

But the good news is that I’m making progress on that front (all this self-absorbed navel-gazing notwithstanding). In the past year, it honestly feels like I’ve developed new muscles in my cheeks for smiling. My smiles feel bigger, better and more convincing (at least to me).

My brain seems to be rewiring so I can feel greater empathy and joy. I didn’t even start to like kids until my late 20’s. However, since I became an uncle almost 4 years ago, I’ve been thoroughly enamored of my nephew. I’m more delighted by him every day and less concerned about his future.

It’s easier to celebrate others’ success now. I’m getting over my envy and starting to feel real happiness for them. This is because my life has improved thanks to the risks I’ve taken, and I’ve come to believe (for real this time) that my happiness is mostly up to me.

I didn’t write about my fellow delegates nearly as much as I wanted to. I was (and am) afraid of saying the wrong thing. (See anonymous blog comment and my emotional fallout.) But it should go without saying that they’re all really smart, highly principled and deeply caring people. I’m content to keep the rest of my memories of them and the delegation offline, which I will treasure always.