Gratitude 126

I don't know why I am still on this Gratitude series, especially given that I'm writing more about Latin America, but in many ways this is still laced with Gratitude:  for the countries of Latin America, for the people and what they have survived, endured and overcome; for the pleasure of knowing some of these people as friends; and also Gratitude for the many doors that learning the Spanish language has opened to me.

I am thinking today about poverty in Latin America, a historical and very chronic problem still in many countries: notably in Bolivia, Paraguay, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala and still in much of Mexico and Venezuela.  The economic inequality in these countries has been part and parcel with the traditional social inequality imported by Mama Espana, but also a defining feature in many of the aboriginal cultures.

There is something hugely destructive about this kind of social hierarchy, which unfortunately has been with us since our ancestors transitioned from hunter gatherers to farmers.  Spain remained very close to the Roman social model and this remained unchanged through the Middle Ages.  Even though Spain, like the rest of Europe, experienced a Renaissance, in many ways, thanks to the Church, their thinking remained for many centuries more stuck in the Middle Ages.  The king and queen dominated their lords and courtiers who with the priests dominated the serfs, vassals and burghers who dominated the workers and farmers who dominated the slaves and outcasts.  In Mexico the Aztecs and in Peru the Inca had their own social hierarchy: priests, chiefs, workers and slaves.

There was no real Enlightenment.  There was no understanding or concept of basic human rights.  If anyone was spoken to about equality they would have either looked at you like you were a witch or a heretic or they would have laughed in your face.  There was no hope for mobility, there was no flexibility.  Small wonder that miscegenation was punished and any offspring of racially mixed unions were treated like refuse and garbage.

Life in those times was very difficult and for most a constant struggle.  Education and literacy were far from universal.  And the church had completely defaulted on its most elemental responsibilities: to communicate effectively to people the love of God and that God is love, not to mention the necessity and importance that we love one another.  I believe that it is this complete lack of love, from our lack of contact with God, that has precipitated in this kind of rigid hierarchy and inequality.  This inability or refusal to recognize our own face in the face of the other and the divine presence in all.

Where there is real love there is no lack because everything is shared.  Where there is love there is no violence because we take time and care to understand and know one another, especially the other.  Where there is love there is no trauma because everyone can grow and flourish with the sense that we are all valued and cared for.

So much of our human history has been so void of this beautiful reality that sometimes I find it sickening.  I am also often saddened that civilization is always  gauged by language, writing, art, science, culture and advanced military technology, but absolute nothing is given or said about whether those people really loved one another and loved the stranger they encountered.

Can this ever happen?  I really don't know.  Is it worth striving for?  Well, hasn't it always?