El Norte or Bust! by Stoll David;

El Norte or Bust! by Stoll David;

Author:Stoll, David; [Stoll, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00


Chapter Six

Projects and Their Penumbra—Swindles

Missionaries, guerrillas, soldiers, and politicians have all, in their different ways, promised Nebajenses the rewards of modernity. When such benefits actually arrive, it is usually in the form of a project—typically a projection by outsiders of how Nebaj could become a better place if only the Nebajenses would organize in a certain way to carry out certain improvements. Since Catholic and Protestant missionaries introduced this model in the 1950s, the Nebajenses have taken to it with vigor and ingenuity. They have organized themselves in many ways—as Christians, revolutionaries, voters, and Mayas, as women, violence victims, and solidarity groups. Their hopes in projects reached an apogee with the 1996 peace accords. Thanks in no small measure to projects, most Nebajenses are now better shod, housed, doctored, and schooled than before. But they place fewer hopes in projects, and one of the reasons is the difficulty of distinguishing between projects and swindles.

This is not just a challenge for illiterate peasants. In cooperation with the U.S. Agency for International Development, or so she thought, an experienced Ixil organizer collected Q25 quotas from women to start a weaving cooperative. She added Q800 of her own and delivered Q2,500 ($320) to a Guatemalan employee of USAID. He was never heard from again. When she asked USAID, it informed her that he was no longer an employee. A former mayor of Nebaj told me how, in 1990, when fifty quetzals was a substantial sum, a K’iche’ aid coordinator arrived in town announcing a project to supply roofing and other building materials. The mayor and 150 other Nebajenses each handed over Q50. On the appointed day, they chartered vehicles to Tecpán, Chimaltenango, to take delivery. Here they found themselves in a crowd of five thousand people. The aid coordinator never showed up.

Swindles such as these are a mirror image of village-level aid projects, the kind that stress participation, and the way they resemble such projects is not very flattering. In both projects and scams, as Jan and Diane Rus have observed in southern Mexico, a central role is played by the promotor or intermediary—the villager who signs up neighbors for free or low-cost benefits. To receive the benefit, villagers must attend meetings and provide unpaid labor. Most attractively for swindlers, villagers must also pay aportes, or contributions, to demonstrate that they are not just lining up to receive a handout.1 Other parallels include

the largesse that comes from a distant and mysterious source;

the rhetoric of democracy (“grassroots” in English, popular in Spanish), even though donors have made key decisions beforehand and will prevail in case of disagreement; and

the rhetoric of community, even though the most aggressive and mendacious individuals collect disproportionate rewards and are rarely punished.



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