"We are the Silenced"

As I've been reminded by friends in Africa, doing development work in a middle-income country like El Salvador is officially, is a lot different than in a really destitute country like 80% of Africa. In a context like the one I'm observing and partially experiencing, the message that's shrieking into my ears is about power.

Amartya Sen in a lot of ways revolutionized the way people like us think about poverty. He put it in terms of voicelessness instead of a lack of material wealth. Of course, a lack of material wealth is a critical part of what poverty is, but the principal cause is a lack of power. I think these distinctions are actually best viewed in industrialized countries, but personally, I see them particularly strongly here... maybe it's just the change of scenery, or maybe it's the deeper poverty contrasted with the daily and highly visible exhibitions of wealth. (I live in a huge house with a family I had a connection to through work, and a block and half away is a neighborhood where everyone has a tin roof and it also houses a clique of MS-13). And so I'm becoming more and more interested in power relations locally and nationally between the people who have it, and the people who don't.

My basic conclusion is this, and I'd be curious to see if anyone else out there has been experiencing or thinking about similar things: I just don't think you can consider something "sustainable development" if it doesn't work to empower people without any, and therefore ultimately change the system of power relations that led to the situation of poverty and oppression in the first place. So in other words, the things that I'm doing with my internship that doesn't have anything to do with advocacy or trying to change the system, then I'm not doing development. There are many good things that we all could do, but it will take more than a series of good things to create or facilitate that kind of change.

I had a conversation with a remarkable Salvadoran woman today. I was telling her about my recent revelations on the topic I've been trying to explain here, and she said something to me that I thought was profound. It took many cliches that have seemed perfectly helpful and reasonable to me, and made them utterly ridiculous and exposed how my thinking still doesn't reflect the kind of thinking that works for justice: the "voiceless" are not the voiceless, "We are the Silenced;" live simply so that others may simply live? No, I want to decide to live simply too; You want more equity for the poor? You want more justice? I want EQUITY, and I want JUSTICE!

How small my thoughts on development have been. We can work for development, offer some nice charity "From the American People" that these poor saps didn't deserve but we decided to give in our benevolence... or we can work for justice/human rights (whichever you prefer ;) ). I hope you're inspired to really change something today... and tomorrow.