La Vida Merideña: Telling Stories of Our Year

We All Live in a Jell-O Submarine

2009-04-29T11:20:00.002-04:30

Throughout the first eight months, each of us have had our struggles. Missing friends and community. Advancing our language skills. Changing our diets to reflect the economics, scarcities and abundance of local food. Learning to live with uncertainty and realizing that advanced planning is a preference and a privilege.

One of us, however, has approximated “going native,” or at least becoming bicultural in her bones. Last week at breakfast, Risa had a request for us. For her snack at school, could we please stop sending peanut butter cracker and carrots? Instead, she would prefer an arepa with cheese. Wrapped in tinfoil. In the shape of a heart. Each morning, she and her friends at school eat their merienda, morning snack, together. She would like to be like them. Unlike the rest of our family, who instinctively grab the arepa like a burger, Risa looks around for a napkin to eat the food the same way everyone else in this country would. However, she holds tight to her vegetarianism despite her friends adding all kinds of meat to fill their arepas.

Spanish has six different ways of conjugating verbs. Victor has mastered the patterns, but choosing among the three past tenses is a challenge. Anson has learned to conjugate present and preterit with study and practice. Their progress this year is impressive, and Victor recently noticed that folks he found difficult to understand early in our year now sound comprehendible to him. After twenty years of speaking Spanish, I feel fairly comfortable but make occasional errors. Then, we have our truly bilingual daughter. Risa feels the conjugations intuitively, with only a few mistakes that mimic not an English speaker, but a young child raised in Spanish.

The months in Venezuela with my family gives a new way of experiencing this society, quite distinct from my previous years here as a younger person. I see how the kids’ classrooms and sports teams value both conformity and community, with a tight-knit affection among students. I have spent a lot of time discussing with Risa why she is the only girl on her gymnastics team who doesn’t have pierced ears. After living here a year, it doesn’t make much sense to force her to wait until age ten, and she will get earrings in the fall for her seventh birthday. After years in Latin America among beggars in public places, Anson has engaged me in difficult conversations about why this happens, and how begging is tied to personal circumstance, cultural practices, national policy, and global inequalities.

Risa’s classroom has an English class in which the teacher, a college student, teaches them Beatles tunes. My daughter loves the class because she gets to master songs that she had heard before. To my amusement, she has learned them with the ear of a native Spanish speaker, belting out at the top of her lungs the songs in her classmate’s accent. Why the heck wouldn’t we live in a Jell-O Submarine? Yum!

Merida and Sunday's Elections: A Brief Report

2009-02-12T10:45:00.003-04:30

This weekend, Venezuelans will vote yes or no on a constitutional amendment to end term limits for all government officials. The measure will almost surely pass, probably with support in the low fifty percentage points. Despite U.S. press rhetoric, and serious flaws in President Chávez’s governance, the president is popular and supported by the majority. The referendum will put an end to weeks of intensive street rallies, some marred by violence, but mostly peaceful by both sides.

Our town of Mérida has seen both peaceful and violent manifestations of peoples’ feelings about the enmienda. In the past three weeks, demonstrations and riots at the University of the Andes (ULA) have accelerated. I plan to photograph a “no” march organized by students this afternoon at 4pm (Thursday 2/12) The occurrences of violence against demonstrators at universities throughout the nation have escalated as students, originating mostly but not exclusively from Venezuela’s small middle-class, play an increasingly central role in opposing the amendment proposal. The last Tuesday in January, reports of student injury from clashes with police emerged from three campuses throughout the country.

Beginning in early December, President Chávez began a public process to amend the constitution in order to abolish term limits. Citizens will vote on the measure on February 15, which will be the third election cycle in fourteen months. The campaign hit full stride in the late January, with a commiserate shift in tone and activity on campus. Several times a week students organize forums on campus and in five days, students have covered the town in graffiti supporting both Sí and No positions. The ULA official website is filled with opposition to the proposal, and administrators left their offices January 27 to join the “March for No”. Within one hundred yards of each other, upbeat students proclaiming Sí and No publicly campaign several times a week without interaction as police watch at either end of the street.

The recent events at ULA enflamed further when armed pro-Chávez demonstrators, according to news accounts, arrived at the demonstration. At the entrance to ULA’s largest of three local campuses, young men protesting Chávez wore ski masks and t-shirts to hide their identity. As they burned tires in the street and threw rocks, the police stood watch with rifles and bullet-proof vests. When tear gas wafted into the Social Science and Economic Cafeteria, students calmly walked out to stop the burning sensations in their eyes and nose. It took me a minute to realize that I was breathing tear gas, feeling much more panicked than the matter of factness reflected on the faces of those around me.

The police lanced the tear gas towards group of student organizers protesting the proposed constitutional amendment and the alleged vandalism of student government offices by a pro-Chávez organization. Reports from eyewitnesses, newspapers and websites offer highly conflicted reports of the sequence of events and responsible parties, depending on the source’s allegiance to Chávez or the opposition.

Located 425 miles southwest of Caracas in the country’s only primarily university town, Merida’s ULA has frequent strikes and street disturbances. Typically, the actions involve grievances over university autonomy and student conditions. It is a rare student who graduates in the five year normative time, thanks to days and even weeks of suspended classes due to actions ranging from highly coordinated public protest to street closures by small groups of masked encapuchados. The scene of hooded young men throwing rocks and burning tires occurs at least once a month in front of one of ULA’s campuses. Police have no authority on campus grounds due to strict constitutional law mandating university autonomy. This includes the street in front of ULA, giving even a small number of students the ability to close the main artery of the city during peak hours.

The campaign for the amendment reflects a decade of struggle in which each side publicly claims to be pacifist. Meanwhile both positions dismiss and berate the opponent. Pro-amendment literature describes university student opposition as “bourgeoisie university students,” lumped in with social sectors labeled “the squalid”, the anti-Venezuelan, and the devil. Opponents dismiss Chávez supporters as irrational and “bought,” labeling a victory in the amendment proposal “indefinite destruction for Venezuela”, leaving neither side with much room for considered discussion. Although polls vary, the amendment appears to have slight majority favor among Venezuela’s nearly seventeen million voters.

Tuesday’s demonstrations included a series of unusual events that indicated the escalation of tensions in light of the upcoming constitutional election. A motorcycle group of armed Chávez supporters arrived and the Venezuelan National Guard sent tanks to the main avenue, although accounts vary as to who gave orders for the action. The tanks’ presence echoed Chavez’s pronouncement that students who blocked the streets would be “swallowing some of that good kind of gas.” He added late last week that university administrators were behind the recent protest, “using the kids” and “poisoning the youth.” Nonetheless, he called the students “embarrassing and pitiable,” products of what he calls the poor training in their universities.

Chávez supporters and opponents continue to clash, occasionally in the streets but more often on their separate television channels and within families. As I interview young adults for a book project on how their generation constructs political and economic subjectivities, adherents to both sides articulate more careful analysis of their opponents than the public rhetoric suggests. University students in Mérida express a desire for an alternative, not necessarily to Chávez, but to the civil society impasse in which the university is embroiled. Opositores describe positive aspects of what supporters call the Bolivarian Revolution, including policies to help the poor, a return of sovereignty, and national cultural promotion. Adherents admit a weariness with repeated elections, crime, and heated rhetoric, complaints often voiced by their opponents. Venezuelan public discourse, however, continues at a standoff, making it difficult to imagine student de-escalation with either President Chávez in office or an oppositional victory.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-22T16:15:00.009-04:30

I have always loved the idea of the New Year’s Bash. I imagine the “When Harry Met Sally” version: Champaign, fancy clothes, great music, and a balloon drop at midnight. Sounds delightful. Never done it. My tribe doesn’t do big parties, really. There is no line in my budget for formalwear. And I don’t recall any kids around when Harry kissed Sally. A

U.S.

New Year’s party is decidedly age segregated. While some Americans ring out the old in this way, many of us greet the New Year drooling on our pillow.

Venezuelans consider New Year’s a central holiday. It is as important as Christmas, if not more so. When I tell them that my family will not be together on this night, and some will not be awake to even recognize the changing year, they give me looks of pity and surprise. Venezuelan New Year’s Eve is a family affair, and it involves dressing up. Generations spend the evening together, sharing good food, music, and, among adults, alcohol.

One of my most vivid and fond memories of my exchange student year in Maracaibo was a night of Champaign, dress-up and celebration on December 31, 1987. So much did I want to relive this event with my family that I planned our winter vacation dates around arriving in Maracaibo for “The 31^st,” as the holiday is called. After a tearful goodbye to my in-laws and recovery from the eight hour drive (at 30 miles an hour – a topic for another time), I began my anticipation of the evening.

I prepare the kids for a late night beyond their wildest dreams. Most U.S. parents treat bedtime the way the NFL treats the football schedule. Perhaps a major terrorist attack might create a delay, but not much else. I have hosted and attended many U.S. parties where parents depart because they do not want to violate the sacred bedtime hour. Venezuelans do not let some calcified schedule interrupt a gathering. Once again proving that culture often trumps biology, this does not seem to phase kids a bit here. My Venezuelan niece does not take a nap to prepare for the late night, nor does her family worry about or even mention that she would be “up past her bedtime.” My gringo daughter has not had a lifetime of late-night family gatherings, so we nap in preparation.

Around 7:30 pm, we lose half of our revelers when Anson fell sick with a sudden flu. He and Victor spend the evening at my host sister’s apartment with Direct TV. Disappointed but anticipating the evening, Risa and I dress in our best and head out.

As Venezuelans spend the evening with family, couples negotiate

how to split the evening, using techniques deployed by partners in U.S. Christmas. My host sister’s husband spends the first part of the evening with his wife, then leaves with his father to arrive in time for ringing in the year with siblings and mother. My brother and his wife for the past twenty years have spent the evening with their mothers, with their children following the pattern. Tio Nerio has been the annual host for my maracucho family’s New Year’s Eve for over two decades. A business owner living in a spacious home with ample help to cater the party, he hosts with Champaign and gracious rooms to spread and spend the evening. For several hours, Risa plays with her cousin Cami while I pinch myself, unable to believe that I have returned to this family after twenty years, and that they have welcomed me back with such grace and affection. We talk, drink Champaign, and take pictures.

Close to midnight, the grapes arrive at the table. Each guest tries to eat twelve in the last minutes of the year, making a wish for each. Risa and I work on our grapes together. Her wishes: a horse and “horse equipment.” My wishes: health, a book manuscript, continued family joy. My host mother, who loves Barack Obama as passionately as I do, wishes along with me for his success as president. Our wishes made, we begin waiting. We count down to midnight. Risa and I give the first hug of the New Year, followed by hugs and kisses for EVERY person of the twenty-some guests who spent the evening toegehter.

We rush to the street to watch the fireworks being shot out across the neighborhood. “There is some major money being shot out here,” comments more than one guest. The girls look giddy (see left) as across the entire horizon, in the dark of Venezuela’s second largest city, fireworks explode. The delight on Risa’s face as she hugs her cousin and watches is the moment I will remember always from this night.

After the business of welcoming in 2009, it is time to eat. Women from the family have brought the must-serve Venezuelan holiday dishes, including hallacas, turkey, pork, Russian salad, and a version of lasagna. Tio Nerio’s cook and house manager of twenty-eight years also provides fantastic food. To top things off, my host sisters own a high-end, by-commission-only bakery, Delicious…, so my sister also bring one of the country's most traditional dishes, quesillo, and a fabulous lemon pie. The girls have already eaten, and move straight to dessert. Other guests arrive. We take turns at the table enjoying this bounty. It almost replaced the Thanksgiving we missed this year. The only thing missing were my two guys, stuck at home thanks to the flu.

My family considers their New Year’s party to have an early ending. “By 1:30, we’re done. It’s time for bed,” my mother tells me over and over. No problem for the gringos! I remember concerts and dances lasting all night when I lived with them in the 80s. Other friends in our hometown Merida reported festivities lasting until three or four.

At the end of the meal, the party is over. We say goodnight to each person with a kiss, and walk into the sultry night, just Risa, my host Mom, and me. Risa chatters in Spanish about the night, the food, and how tired she is. She clearly feels proud of her ability to stay up so late! I carry her to bed and tuck her in around three. Despite no balloon drop, it was a magical evening for us both.

Some Things We Love

2008-11-09T23:42:00.008-04:30

Thanks to my mother for urging me to post the link to my recent op-ed piece on Venezuelan responses to our election process and the victory of President-Elect Obama (Sorry, just have to write that as many times as possible). It started as a blog entry...

We have much to tell and will be back soon with more. In the meantime, may I share a few things we are loving (besides the frequent rainbows, right, we saw during the peak rainy season):

Learning new names: Risa has us all whupped in this area, but we all work hard to remember the many people we meet. The challenge is compounded by the fact that Venezuelans are famous for giving their children creative names. I work with two Lenins. Many composite and transliterated names exist that we work hard to remember...

Ice Cream - in addition to the world famous kind mentioned in Anson's blog, great ice cream exists all around town. We have none at home, but head to the ice cream parlor about twice a week.

Gaita - the traditional music of Christmas time in Zulia. Darcie lived in Zulia's capital in the 1980s and loves that the radio one state to the south also plays them.

Great weather all the time!

Arepas - a national bread that originated here in the Andes. We love the corn and wheat varieties, and the house we live in has a great kitchen appliance to make them...the Tostyarepa.

Hot elections for political junkies like us. All regional elections occur on Sunday, November 23. Can you really call someone a dictator when he allows his party to risk losing the election? Can you call an election process clean when the government hands out tons of benefits in the final two months and stamps it all with the ruling party's name? On the other hand, don't you WISH that the ruling party in the U.S. would have created grand accomplishments in the two months before the elections? On the other hand, on the other hand...Venezuela is living one of the most complex political situations I have ever seen, and no U.S. media source covers it in a way that is adequately complex for my tastes.

Coffee - The littlest hole in the wall and the campus snack bar have espresso machines that equal any U.S. coffee shop. I buy the majority of my coffee at the law school cafetin (the roof partially showing on the right of this photo). The food servers behind the counter, charged with taking orders, making coffee, and heating up food in the microwave, greet me as profesora or doctora and remember which coffee I like. As they serve about 500 people a day. Pulling the coffee from a Tupperware tub kept next to the machine, they prepare for me my marroncito grande. I start to salivate in anticipation of yet another fabulous cup, and they pass a clear plastic vessel filled with coffee (about 2oz of coffee and milk, but more coffee than a cafe con leche) over the counter, along with two packs of sugar and a stirrer. That's right, two ounces, a serving that satisfies beyond these embarrassing 300 calorie coffee drinks from Starbucks.

Bananas. Are we obsessed with food? Claro que SI. Our back yard is filled with criollo banana plants that we harvest. Darcie has been making whole wheat banana bread for the kids to take to school as a snack. When it doesn't get eaten at home first. Here's Risa with a bit of the harvest.

On many evenings on the car trip home, the children comment that they miss Iowa. Their family and friends. The familiarity. The comfort. Victor and I do, too. And yet when Anson writes in his notebook at school "A mi me gusta vivir en Venezuela." (I like to live in Venezuela), I know what he means. How lucky we are for a year in this beautiful, fascinating, creative place.

Forget politics, I just want a hot shower...

2008-10-20T10:43:00.001-04:30

What’s more important, the daily drama of everyday life, or the bigger political picture? For the past two weeks, I have struggled to write the story of the student protests occurring in Mérida and how they have caused me to rethink my usual blanket support for student activism. The glitch comes from the impossibility in discerning a reality that I feel I can report, so I leave that post for another time.

Our own lives have been full of learning Spanish, losing a first tooth (Risa), making friends in two languages, and structuring what feminists call “reproductive labor”(what we do to keep alive) around the daily possible outages of water or electricity. Yesterday, Venezuela experienced a blackout throughout most of the country. Sunday’s a great day for one to happen, as people mostly relax anyway. New friends invited us to a birthday party at a pool on the other side of town, so the only change fell to Victor to negotiate our car through the intersections in which, in his words, “no one was holding the conch shell.” Without stoplights, things slowed down, but we didn’t see cars piled up on the side of the road. Everyone drove through the intersections super-aggressively at 3 miles per hour, resolving the problem. We won’t imagine how the hospitals and groceries stores waded through – hopefully, the generators went there first.

We left the laundry half-wet in the washer, since we had no water for the fourth time that week. I felt fortunate, as my friends in apartments have been without steady water for days now. This condition creates flurries of work when the flow is restored and everyone rushes to bathe, wash, and flush before it is turned off again. Sometimes, water is off due to infrastructural problems caused by heavy rains. Other times, the problem is local, as my friend’s apartment in which the contractor constructed an additional building without putting in more pipes.

You can imagine what happened when everyone got home to my neighborhood last night after a weekend of no water and a day of no electricity. In this, the chavistas and the oposición joined together. We fired up our necessary and non-necessary electrical appliances, quickly overwrought the electrical grid, and produced first a brownout and then un apagón total throughout the neighborhood. Anson wrote his school report on the battery of the laptop with a candle on each side. Risa chatted with me while I washed the dished by candlelight. I was so grateful that we’d made dinner before the lights went out! And to have water to wash the dishes by! Once again, my favorite Unitarian Universalist hymn runs through my head: For all that is our lives, we sing with thanks and praise. For all life is a gift, that we are called to use.

For my shower this morning. For a classroom with lights. For a coffee pot. For water and electricity, even some of the time, I give thanks and praise!

2008-10-12T09:45:00.002-04:30

I’ve always thought of myself as being interested in the protecting the environment. In Des Moines I try to conserve the earth’s resources as much as possible. I religiously save cans, plastic, glass and every scrap of paper I’m done with. Whenever I have to go somewhere in the car my first thought is “Who can I carpool with?” Littering has been one of my pet peeves for as long as I can remember.

In this aspect coming to Venezuela has been an eye opening experience. There isn’t anyplace in this city of about 250,000 to recycle glass, paper, or plastic. Aluminum can be recycled at one place on the outskirts of town and the only way to get it there is to drive and drop it off. I feel this offsets any benefit to the environment.

We live north of town in can what can loosely be described as a suburb. A Spanish speaker would say we live in the “campo.” It takes me 15 minutes to get to the edge of town if I am the only car on the road. The average time to reach anything on the north side is 30-35 minutes. To get to ULA where Darcie teaches is an additional 15 minutes.

This doesn’t sound much worse than what I might do in a typical day in Des Moines between shuttling the kids to school and to after school activities. The difference is that I do this drive 3-4 times EACH day! I do it once in the morning to drop everyone off. Then I do it again to pick up the kids at noon when school is over. We drive home for lunch. This is called “almuerzo” in Merida. It is from about 12-2:30. Almost everything shuts down including retail stores and all businesses. Then things start up again. I drive into town for a third time to drop off the kids at either school (from 2-6) or to sports (fencing & gymnastics) from 3-5. I do carpool to sports. Unfortunately, the site is on the far south-side. It is a good 30 minutes from the point I pickup the other kids by the university. If it is a school afternoon or a day I don’t drive to sports I will have to drive into town again to pick up the kids.

I haven’t calculated the average number of hours per day I’m in the car – I don’t have the heart……! It costs me between 3-5 bolivares ($2-3) to fill up my average small car tank. It is this fact may have created an interesting juxtaposition in me. I am not feeling guilty about all of this driving. There are even times when I catch myself idling the car for a few minutes waiting for someone in a parking lot when in the US I wouldn’t dream of it for more than 30 seconds. Is it because of the cost of gas or is it because of the environment? I’m not sure……..I do have lots of time to think about this in the car though………

How do you say, ‘Can I play with you?’ in Spanish?

2008-09-25T11:39:00.006-04:30

The blog stopped last week for our new schedule of school and sports. Anson started 5th grade and Risa 1st at the Colegio Pequeño Mundo, the small world school. While we are still trying to pull together the complete uniform, with help from some Venezuela friends, the kids have the special pants, with shirts soon to come. By Venezuela standards, the school is small and laid back, with a strong emphasis on art and music and no homework. Risa has about twenty classmates, while Anson is in a combined 5-6 class with 14. This suits us, as the children have studied in combined age classes their entire school years. Their teachers are sisters, and the school is run by a three generation family that is not related to the sisterly teachers.

School meets each day from 8-12:30, with a great deal of this time used for recess and snack. Also, the classes meet two afternoons a week for more drawing, art, and music. Each student studies piano or violin (ours will do piano), as well as recorder. Although I know they will encounter difficult days with language and relationships, the children up to now bound into school each day excited to be there – a joy to see!

Each morning and afternoon class begins with a warm greeting (cheeks together, make a kiss or a hug), and a hello to individual classmates. Anson has our friend, Ale, in his class. A sixth grader, she went to school for four years in the U.S. and helps out with translation. While I am concerned that this will slow down Anson learning Spanish, he keeps a notebook of words he learns or wants to learn in Spanish. Dodge ball, banned at our Des Moines school but a favorite of Anson’s, is an occasional recess game, much to his delight. The kids also love to draw, and pictures are “sold” each day at recess for pretend currency from a little house that also serves as an imaginary ice cream shop. They also wrote a short play the class performed this week.

Risa’s discussions of school revolve around friends and play. Each day, she issues the report on whether or not she “has a friend.” If a child decides not to play with her, Risa describes that the girl “doesn’t want to be my friend anymore.” Even though I know this is not the truest of characterizations, oh how my mother’s heart aches! She wants to be included in the classroom play with blocks, and to tell her story as well as understand those of others. The determination and patience required push her limits, in a way that I hope encourages her language learning as well as growth of that undefined characteristic of “personal fortitude.” This week, she has mastered use of the verb, “jugar,” to play, and practices with me how to say “¿Puedo jugar contigo?” Can I play with you?

We're Back - And One Reason Why We Were Missing

2008-09-21T15:30:00.003-04:30

Thanks to all of our friends who wrote wondering if our blogging stopped because of the political situation in Venzuela. After reading commentary in English and Spanish, I am still undecided whether an actual coup was in progress. Although surely things will develop further, our presence in Mérida is stable for now. Fortunately, we were occupied with much happier events, too many to write about in one blog entry.

Last weekend was filled with cooking preparations for Risa’s Venezuela birthday party, a Monday night event that included eight kids ranging from four to eleven, as well as nine adults. Working as a foursome, we managed a clean house and a pretty nice food spread. The kids enjoyed sugar, the grownups wine. A continuous mix of English and Spanish rang throughout the house, as all the adults and most of the children were somewhat bilingual, with the new kids in town heavy on the English side. My favorite part of the evening was singing Venezuela’s own birthday song, even if I had to twist a few arms for everyone to do it. It had been twenty years since I’d gotten to sing it with a group. The 30 and 40 somethings reminisced about 80s music in Venezuela, songs indelibly burned on my brain from my days as an exchange student.

The kids tore around the sidewalk patio that surrounds our house. Anson insisted on buying extra dice so that he could host a grand Liar’s Dice match. The kids bet everything from broccoli to oreo cookies (guess which was most popular?). The party broke up at 11:15, something parents would never allow in Des Moines. Not a single meltdown ensued and the entire party was great, great fun.

We have struggled to feed the kids to their satisfaction since their arrival, as the food they are used to is unavailable or too expensive for us to justify purchasing on a regular basis. Except for those Venezuelans who use the government subsidized supermarket or exchange Bolivares on the black market, I have not figured out how Venezuelans feed a family on a regular basis. That is why Risa got a jar of peanut butter for her birthday, which she may eat whenever she wants. At 26 Bolivares a jar (about 12 dollars), it is too expensive to be the central part of our diet that it is in the U.S. Everyone is happy with rice, and thankfully both kids like the national bread, arepas. But Risa has yet to find a protein that she consistently likes.

Aside from feeding picky children and planning parties, we threw ourselves into the back to school schedule, the biggest reason for blog silence. More to come!

A Blog Post From Risa: Our Dogs in Mérida

2008-09-12T15:31:00.004-04:30

We share the yard at our house with two German Shepherds. They are Barni and Benchi (Barney and Benji in English). Our dogs in Mérida are big, and they like to chase bugs. When they see a bug, they run after it and bark at it. They play together a lot. Sometimes they jump up on people they don’t know, and on people that they do know. Here’s an example. Once, one of the dogs put his paw on top of my head! And another time, one of our dogs bit my elbow because he thought I was playing. I’m not afraid of them because I know they are just playing.

Sometimes, the dogs come into our house. We don’t want them to because they’re too big. They will run around our house and break things! When they try to come in, we say ¡FUERA! In English, ‘fuera’ means ‘out’.

I like our dogs because they bark at people when they come by. Then, we know if someone is trying to rob us. I like to run with them. Mama likes how they sit on the porch with her.

A New Wrinkle

2008-09-11T22:08:00.005-04:30

After a great day at work meeting colleagues, and visiting the most incredible state-owned fencing gymnasium ever, we actually found something for dinner that elicited relatively few complaints and settled in for the end of our evening. All in all, a superb day.

Then, the phone rang. The head of the Mérida North America-Venezuela cultural center called, letting us know that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez expelled the U.S. Ambassador and recalled the Venezuelan Ambassador from Washington.

The details are complicated. Tonight, Chávez asserted that a plot existed from the opposition to assassinate him. I was not convinced by the evidence presented on television to this point, although a more complete report is forthcoming Tuesday.

President Chávez gave an impressive speech tonight in front of thousands of supporters, mostly young and dressed in red. Look at the link for about 45 seconds to see the crouds. In the first thirty seconds of the video, Chávez says, "Convince yourselves, Yanquis and Pitiyanquis...you will never return to govern Venezuela!" He frames his current feud with the U.S. government in the context of past events. South America remembers the 35th anniversary of its own September 11 as the day the socialist Allende government was violently overthrown by a military coup supported by the CIA and the Nixon Administration. Thus, Chávez’s announcement is particularly symbolic on this day. In 2002, a failed coup was embraced by Washington even as Latin Americans expressed concern at the threat to democracy. This event makes the theory of an assassination plot – and the condoning of such an act by the U.S. government – seem plausible to Chávez supporters.

Chávez further frames his action as an act of solidarity with Bolivia. Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, in this moment accuses the U.S. of supporting opposition movements against him, and expulsed the U.S. ambassador. The situation in Bolivia has created high levels of street violence, with deaths and wounded.

Chávez’s critics claim that this is an opportune moment to rally his supporters as he faces serious opposition in local elections and is implicated in a bribery case involving a mysterious suitcase found in Argentina containing $800,000.

What does this have to do with the beautiful little year we are making for ourselves in Mérida? Perhaps nothing. But, this being the first expulsion of the U.S. Ambassador in Venezuelan history, we may be asked by the State Department to evacuate. We’ll know more tomorrow.

Learning from the Radio

2008-09-11T13:45:00.006-04:30

In Des Moines, we were pedestrians, especially in the summer. In Mérida, we drive. A lot. Every day. We listen to the same radio station on our trips through the colas, the traffic jams that double our driving time. "Paaaaaatience, much paaaatience, with the traffic jams," the DJ urges us. The emisora that accompanies us is 97.5: Tourism Radio. How perfect!

Run by the government, the programming includes regular, fairly long live broadcasts of Chávez speeches, and the news reports are pro-government. I hear the perspective that is so reviled by many of my university colleagues. I pay attention to how the state frames the news, and I even got to hear Chávez utter his hot new insult, pitiyanqui, from his own lips.

The play format has 100.3 ‘The Bus” (a Des Moines ipod-shuffle radio station) beat by a mile. Want to hear a gaita song, the traditional music from Maracaibo, Venezuela? Check! How about “I kissed a girl?” Presente! What about some 80s Venezuelan pop (the music of my youthful sojourn here)? You got it! And what if I’m in the mood for The Cars? Or salsa? Or “Endless Love”? Check, check, check. It’s called adult contemporary, and when we are willing to sit through the chattiest DJs ever, we reap a station playing range of musical styles, almost all of which fit my tastes. Except maybe the Lionel Riche/Diana Ross duet -- but Risa loved it.

Until yesterday, the ads on noventa y siete punto cinco (97.5) annoyed me to the point of changing the station. To my ears, they are overly repetitive and hyperbolic. Little did I realize, they serve as my secret Spanish teachers. In the past day, Anson and Risa have begun calling out the words and phrases they recognize from the ads as they listen. This morning, they sang along with the merengue-style furniture store ad. They chant the call numbers in time with the announcer. Little sponge-brains are amazing! And, their noticing the sounds and places of Mérida brings Latin America to me with a whole new set of eyes.

Escuela Daze

2008-09-07T22:39:00.000-04:30

All of us will be in school this year. Victor will study Spanish at the Venezuela-North American Cultural Center. The University School, CEAPULA, will have two new students as Anson enters 5th grade and Risa 1st. I am working at the University of the Andes, where I will start to co-teach a course on gender and human rights in October and other duties as assigned, dividing time between the school of Juridical and Political Science and the School Of Humanities And Education. All of this has become possible from the generous commitment of time from the director of CEVAM and my university liaison.

I am proud of Risa and Anson for tackling school in Spanish. The first month will be a struggle. The kids will start school knowing numbers in Spanish up to 1000, the letters of the alphabet, greeting questions, the basic school vocabulary (they’ll know when to get their cuadernos out, por lo menos.), and Anson will be able to read. But that's it. I pass on to them the wisdom of another Fulbright mama: by Christmas, they'll be dreaming in Spanish. This will be the end of the primary reason Victor and I have used Spanish in the home to this point: to talk about the kids so they can't understand what we're saying.

The kids both look forward to wearing a school uniform, but for different reasons. Risa appreciates that the clothing requirement involves new shoes, while Anson looks forward to the streamlined elegance and egalitarianism of a single daily uniform. School starts for them - we think - on Risa's birthday.

What are they doing in Venezuela?

2008-09-07T22:36:00.000-04:30

Last July, I came across of list of goals for myself that I had written in summer 2005. Among the items was “live abroad with my family.” I had forgotten this declaration, but clearly it permeated my subconscious. A year ago, Victor and I found ourselves scrambling to plan my application for a teaching/research Fulbright Fellowship to Mérida, Venezuela. We received news in early April that the funding had come through.

In some ways, this is a hard time to go to Venezuela. Both sets of parents now live in our hometown, Des Moines. We have active lives of neighborhood involvement and Unitarian Universalist church commitments. Victor owns two businesses, both of which benefit from his co-presence with them, at least in the same country. And then there are the media reports on Venezuelan crime (real, but not as much in Mérida) and politics (more complicated than most sources lead to believe - surprise, surprise). As our children grew all too quickly, we realized the time would never be better to live and learn from residence outside of the country we call home.

I remember phoning home from St. Petersburg, Russia during that summer of list-making. Anson, then eight, asked when I was going to take him along on my travel. Although my daughter told our dental hygienist that we were going to Venezuela to “get out of Iowa,” the reasons Victor and I designed a year in Mérida were more complicated than that. But she formed a start at an explanation: to give us time away from the taken for granted political, economic, and cultural setting that is the United States so that we may see ourselves and our country in a different light.

This blog is a hybrid written for family and friends. Some of the entries will share with you our day-to-day experiences this year. Already I am stunned by how these weeks have brought us together as a family, drawing Anson and Risa into the tightest sibling camaraderie I have ever seen between them. We are grooving on the beauty of the Andes and our neighborhood. As we explore the Andes Mountains, school in Spanish, and more, we will share our adventures with you. It compliments Anson's blog, which he is doing as a homeschool project throughout the year (He's also going to the university school along with sister Risa.)

My particular project involves talking with young adults about how they view their economic and political futures in light of globalization and neoliberalism, which I define as the increasing control of the market over most facets of our everyday lives. We, particularly Anson and I, have immersed ourselves in trying to understand the changes occurring in Venezuelan society. My neighbors, colleagues, and strangers freely share their opinions about their country’s governance – and their thoughts about the U.S. As I did in China, I will share with you the stories I hear. I write not as an expert on the country, but rather as a curious observer committed to social justice, participatory democracy, and the belief that most things are more complex than what meets the eye.