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215 C H A P T E R 17 Globalization-from-Below: Letter from Honduras Hans Edstrand Fresh out of university, I arrived in Central America in December 1997. I was young, idealistic, invincible—on a personal crusade to find my life’s purpose and, I hoped, rediscover the beauty in human nature. With a spring in my step and a pocket full of common sense I embarked on my quest and stumbled into an opportunity to contribute in a challenging yet fulfilling way. The two phases of my journey have not only put a human face on global development, but also demonstrated that when people work together anything is possible. For me, globalization-from-below means people from the North and the South united in grassroots projects to empower poor communities. Perhaps destiny, or pure luck, or perhaps just the will to serve guided my path. It quickly led me through Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, only to dump me in what a friend calls “the exhaust pipe of Central America,” Tegucigalpa, Honduras. With little Spanish and no contacts, I was just another gringo in this stormy sea. Pollution, crime, intense poverty, and overall social chaos don’t encourage a newcomer to put down roots, but that’s just what I did. Landing work at a local orphanage operated by the international humanitarian organization Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (NPH) marked the first step in my odyssey. The orphanage, called Rancho Santa Fe, has a fairy-tale quality; it is a magical city of over five hundred children, with homes, school, workshops, church, and recreational facilities. At any given moment, you’ll find children doing what they do best: playing, laughing, singing, studying, inevitably fighting , but most of all growing up in a very loving environment. Rancho Santa Fe offers these Honduran orphans emotional and spiritual support, along with education and practical training to become productive Honduran citizens. Over the next nine months, this facility became my home as I worked, played, laughed, and cried with my new family. During this enchanted time, I learned to appreciate the good fortune implicit in growing up in Canada and Sweden, and discovered how to share that fortune with my Honduran counterparts through teaching them a myriad of practical and personal skills ranging from carpentry to cooking. All the while, I was inspired by being a member of an international organization that could weave such a beautiful web of worldwide collaboration; it offered life-saving benefits to these victims of Third World poverty. Nonetheless, the extent of Honduran underdevelopment shocked me. Neither my university studies in geography, economics, and politics, nor my travels through Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua prepared me for Honduran realities . If a country like El Salvador can be considered Third World, then Honduras would seem to be in the Tenth. From highways to telecommunications, from police and government to business and industry, Honduras just falls further and further behind. The United Nations Development Programme ranks Honduras 113th out of 174 countries in its Human Development Index; it cites the low average income as the most significant factor delaying development. Not very informative, really, unless you’ve lived with this level of poverty and can somehow internalize what 113th translates into: chronic unemployment and low wages; systemic governmental inefficiency and widespread corruption; hunger and disease for the general populace. Nor does it take U.N. statisticians to determine the root problem: quite simply, the Honduran economy is stagnant and too externally oriented. Lacking a widespread tax base, the government is perpetually bankrupt. The story is the same every year. Children lose approximately a third of their schooling, as teachers are on strike negotiating subsistence wages; the police don’t have the tools (vehicles, gasoline, radios, firearms) to be effective; the roads and bridges disintegrate; modern communication, especially by telephone, remains a constant challenge and inaccessible to the majority. Thus, Honduran society is utter chaos and the population endures chronic poverty. As one “privileged” university graduate confessed tearfully, people watch helplessly as they sink further into poverty each year. It seemed as if life could not get much worse for the average Honduran. But it did with the unwelcome arrival of Hurricane Mitch. And, ironically, this further devastation of October 1998 led me to the second phase of my quest. Although it destroyed bridges, roads, businesses, and agriculture, the damage to Rancho Santa Fe was minimal. NPH was in a good position to assist the rest of the country in the emergency...

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