Carolina Peace - December 16, 2005

December 16, 2005

Written by Michael Berg

Friday, 16 December 2005

Greetings from Asuncion! Here is what has been happening in Paso Yobai.

Last Thursday was the festival for the Virgin of Caacupe. This was a day off for everybody, so I didn’t go to the Municipality and I cancelled English class. It’s easy to let everybody know about what is going on in English class. I just go to the two radio stations with the announcement, and within an hour everybody in town knows.

In the early afternoon I went to a rehearsal for the church youth choir, which Doña Celia talked me into taking part in. She convinced me it would be a good way to get involved with more people in the community, and she told me that the kids liked me. She also said they needed a second guitar to accompany the children.

After rehersal I went to the creek and swam around. After that there were “Human Being Races” by the creek. They were held at the horseracing track, which has a starting gate which can fit two horses. The people were placed in the starting gates as if they were horses; the gates were opened just like for a horserace, then the human beings bolted out and raced for 100 meters. All of the participating human beings were men. There was a good size crowd on hand to watch the proceedings.

The first race was closely watched. I didn’t know the racers, but the one named Oscar won, which was important to remember because when I got back to town people who didn’t attended wanted to know who won the first race. A LOT of people had money riding on that race.

Then there was a pause for about a half an hour (things are usually kind of slow in Paso Yobai). Then Nelson, who is albino, raced this other guy who is kind of fat. This was billed as “El Blanco” versus “El Gordo”. Nelson started out way ahead. Surprisingly, the fat man caught up and they were neck and neck around the 50 meter point. But then the fat man lost his balance and tumbled into the railing.

After that race this strong looking man went around challenging people to race him, trying to goad them, thumping his chest, exhibiting the most awesome display of machismo I have seen in Paso Yobai. My first reaction was, what the hell? I’ll race him. But then I learned that you had to bet $30 in order to race him. That’s why nobody wanted to take him up on the offer. $30 is quite a lot of money in Paso Yobai, and I’m not much into betting.

Eventually the Human Being Races gave way to jumping competitions, which took place on the horse/human racetrack. People continued to bet on the jumpers. My feeling is that if you are going to race human beings in the same track and with the same formalities that you give to horse races, then the competitors should put children on there back to act as their jockeys.

I left the running and jumping competitions to get ready to go see the Virgin of Caacupe procession in Barrio 8 de Diciembre.

A lot of people were at the procession. I joined them as they were leaving the chapel. We marched around the barrio, led by the music of a small brass ensemble. There were also people carrying a replica of the Virgin of Caacupe. The streets had tacua braches set up as arches for us to march through. Many of the arches had balloons, little flags and other decorations. We eventually got to the 8 de Diciembre Virgin of Caacupe shrine and the priest led a mass.

A couple days later the youth choir played for a special high school graduation ceremony. I really had trouble keeping up with the songs, many of which we had never rehearsed and I had never heard before. Also Marlene, the other guitarist (at 16, the oldest performer) didn’t want us to tune our guitars together, which to me made the combination of our two guitars sound awful together. Since Marlene was a good guitarist and according to Celia the main point of me being there was to be with the children, I just smiled and pretended to play. I think it went very well.

On Monday after English class I went to pick up my bicycle from the bicycle repairman. I was tired and just wanting to get the bike, go home, cook dinner, eat dinner and sleep. The man asked me to sit down. I sat. He said, “It’s hot today.”

I said, “Yes, it is hot.”

We sat there for a long time saying nothing. Then he got out the terere and we began to drink. It was after a couple rounds of passing the guampa (terere cup) back and forth that he broke the silence.

“Do you have a fishing net?” he said.

“No,” I said.

“A fishing pole?”

“No. I don’t fish much. Do you like to fish?”

“Yes I fish. I catch fish in the creek.”

“Are they big fish?”

“No. They are small.”

“Small fish are good, too.”

“Yes, I like small fish.”

Silence.

After a while I broached the subject of the bike, we talked about the English class, paid for the pedal and left. The whole thing took about half an hour. This way of doing things is the way it had to be done – this is the way things are done in Paso Yobai. I could not have just gone in and asked for the bike. That would have been quite rude. There’s a real beauty in living like this. It reminds me of the ideas of Martin Buber, the whole idea of having an I and Thou relationship, and the idea of Immanual Kant that people should be treated as and end in themselves and never as merely a means to an end, such as getting a pedal fixed on the bike. (I used to study that kind of stuff with my grandfather but I haven’t read it for a while). It is a great way of living, as long as you don’t have to stick to a tight schedule.

You just have to learn to allow a lot of time for everything and never be in a rush. When you come anywhere, people tell you sit down – “Eguapymi!” This is polite. You then sit down, drink terere and remain there for anywhere for a few seconds to a few hours before anything else happens. There is nothing rude here about having someone wait for a long time – but it is rude to keep people standing. A significant amount of time is spent by people moving chairs from one place to another.

I couple days ago I went to Nueva Guairá to meet Niño Lugo and help him and Hector the teacher with their computer. I knew that I would probably be of little use for the computer problem, but I wanted to go to Nueva Guairá, the rural compania on the northern edge of Paso Yobai district. I’m steadily getting to know the entire district.

I bicycled there and back – 14 kilometers each way. This might not seem like much, but when your cycling surface is fine powder dust and sand, and it’s a hundred degrees out under a big, big sun – well, 14 kilometers is a long way. It took 1 ½ hours to get there.

The whole way there I was thinking about two things:

1. I was visiting a grown man named Niño, which is Spanish for child. Why would a grown man be named Niño? I realize that he wasn’t a grown man when his parents named him, but could they really have been so short-sighted as to think that he would be a child forever?

2. Why would a place located inside the state of Guairá be named Nueva Guairá (New Guairá)? It didn’t seem to make sense. New York is not inside of York. New Zealand is not inside of Zealand. New Guinea is not inside of Guinea. New Jersey is definitely not inside of Jersey. It’s true that New Dehli is more or less surround by Dehli, but except for the cows in the road in both places there is little resemblance between New Dehli and New Guairá.

Yes, I was thinking about those two things for an entire 1 ½ hours.

To my complete satisfaction I got logical answers to both conundrums. Niño was born on December 25 and his full name is Niño Salvador Lugo. The Child Savior. As for Nueva Guairá, until the 1980s it was part of the bordering state of Caaguazu. There was person who had property in the area and for some reason or another preferred to have the property registered in Villarrica (the capital of Guairá) instead of Coronel Oviedo (the capital of Caaguazu). This person also had a close connection to General Alfredo Stroessner (he was “almost his brother-in-law”). He used his connections to get the federal government to change the borders and transfer the area to be part of Guairá state. Thus when the border was changed it was newly made part of Guairá, thus the name Nueva Guairá.

I checked the computer at the school, and as I expected, I have no idea why it isn’t loading. I will let you know, as I consistently let people know here, that I am not a computer technician. But I noted all the details I could and I am going to ask this actual computer technician whom I trust about it as soon as I get a chance to get to Villarrica. It will happen, there is no rush. Classes don’t start up again until early February (they are on summer break).

After looking at the computer I spent a couple hours talking to Niño and his brother Lucio. They are both farmers, and Niño is also the coach of the Paso Yobai soccer team (which, by the way, is slated to play for the Guairá championship this Sunday). If it wasn’t for the change of borders, Niño wouldn’t even live in Paso Yobai and thus would not be coaching the team.

Just as I’ve come to expect with people here, especially in the deep rural areas, Niño, Lucio and the whole family were extremely friendly and welcoming. We drank terere. I drank too much terere, and it made me hyper. In the midst of all this terere drinking, Lucio was asking me questions about the U.S.A. He asked me, “Is it true that people in the United States don’t drink anything but beer and that they drink thirty cans a day?”

I couldn’t help but break down laughing. “Look at me,” I said. “Where am I going to fit thirty cans of beer?”

I explained that some people drink a lot of beer but a lot of people don’t drink any. We have water, soda, juice, all sorts of drinks. I also explained how you can get in big trouble with the law if you drink and drive. This really surprised Lucio. Technically this against the law in Paraguay too, but it is common behavior and the law is seldom enforced.

I’m not sure where the thirty beers a day idea came from. I understand why so many people think that real Americans are tall and blond (television and Mormon missionaries.) I understand why people think that all Americans are super rich. But this idea about the beers baffles me.

We started to talk about farming, and Lucio went into detail about what he grows on the farm. He told be that he just bought two oxen for a total of $300 and that it is now much easier to plow his fields, although he would prefer a tractor to the oxen. He said that the Japanese come to Paraguay and have excellent farming techniques and that he wants to learn from them.

On the way to Nueva Guairá I passed is this huge estate. It is even more denuded of its original jungle than the rest of the territory surrounding it, and it is full of cows. The estate is owned by a German-Paraguayan named Manfred Hieber. Hieber doesn’t live on his estate and has huge estates in several parts of Paraguay. According to the Lugo brothers, the land previously was in the hands of several small farmers, who voluntarily sold their land to Hieber. Many of these farmers didn’t know how to handle the money they got from the sale, and now have neither land nor money. “If you know how to manage land but don’t know how to manage money, you shouldn’t trade you land for money,” Niño told me.

It seems like pretty good advice. They were telling me that I lot of the people who complain about being landless sold their land willingly, took the money, and now complain about being landless. They told me that they consolidation of so much land has not been good for the community of Nueva Guairá because there are less people there. Still, Niño and Lucio feel that the farmers who sold their land and now complain have nobody to blame but themselves.

I told them what I could remember about the pre-NAFTA ejido system that existed in Mexico, in which individual families own land, which can be passed on to other family members, but cannot be sold to people outside the community. Under such as system, families and individuals have control of their own land and can profit from it, but there is no temptation to make the irreversible decision to sell out, because it is illegal. In my mind this system was one of the best land distribution schemes that there has ever been to balance the rights and needs of individuals, families, communities and future generations.

Both of the brothers said that they were interested the learning more about the ejido system so I’m going to try to find more information on it to give to them.

After too much terere Niño’s wife (whose name I admit escapes me) gave me warm Sopa Paraguaya. I was hungry, and it was delicious! It was by far the best tasting Sopa Paraguaya I have ever eaten. I ate three pieces. My body only needed two, I think because it was hot and the Sopa Paraguaya had a lot of pig lard. So on the hot ride back I vomited what I seemed like the exact equivalent of one piece, and then felt great again. The human body is an amazing thing.

The most amazing thing was that Niño told me that if it took me 1 ½ hours to get there, then it would take me one hour and five minutes to get back. Low and behold, I got back in EXACTLY one hour and five minutes.

Yesterday I heard this creepy music coming through the window. I thought, no, it can’t be, but it was. An ice cream man had driven his truck from Villarrica to Paso Yobai and was playing that music that ice cream men all over the world play, the type of music that makes me think of Ray Bradbury and Stephen King at the same time. This was the only ice cream truck I have ever seen in Paso Yobai.

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."