Fast Times in Cerro Iglesias

“That’s not what we think, that’s how it is,” an affable tech guy told me matter-of-factly when I asked if he thought Ngäbes were lazy. Unbeknownst to him, he was at the time helping the Ngäbe-run cooperative, which was the only thing keeping me from jumping down his throat. I was in a city a long ways from the Comarca, and it’s likely that this friendly, college-educated young guy had had little to no contact with Ngäbes in his life, but he didn’t hesitate to write off the entire race as indolent. I was in the same area a few months ago when three middle aged women expressed the same sentiment. The irony of their doing so while sitting in rocking chairs in the middle of the day on a weekday escaped them.

It seems common for those who have never been to the Comarca and have had little contact with Ngäbes to color them all as lazy and dirty. Unlike Lou Dobbs towards Mexicans, the feeling is not one of anger but disgust and superiority. I don’t get the sense that Latinos think Ngäbes are taking their jobs, but more that there could be an ocean between them and the Comarca for all they care and that they shouldn’t be wasting any time or money on Ngäbes. A friend of mine told me he was on a bus (outside of the Comarca) speaking Ngäbe with a friend when someone turned around and told them they should be speaking Spanish. I’ve heard similar stories in the States of soccer moms telling supermarket employees that even if they’re speaking amongst themselves, they oughta be speaking English here in America. But because overt racism is no longer socially acceptable, incidents like I described with the tech guy are fairly rare.

Racism now resembles the intangible but all-important high school popularity. What Hollywood gets most wrong about high school are the mechanisms involved in excluding the uncool. Movies play up the big, bad jock (usually named Brad) flinging rubber bands, and the evil cheerleader (Kelly) maliciously telling the nerds about parties they aren’t invited to. This makes the popular easier to villainize, but in reality there are very few wedgies and more of a general and accepted sense of hierarchy, status, and superiority. Racism outside of the Comarca is very similar, and although I don’t see Ngäbes and Latinos interacting daily, the interactions I see often are weighted with a similar overtone. Also like high school, while Ngäbes snark amongst themselves about Latinos, many of them emulate the Latino culture and are quick to escape the Comarca if the opportunity arises.

Therein lies one of development’s greater challenges: if the work I do allows or causes people to further shun their own culture in favor of the homogenized Latino/American world of Yankee hats and Daddy Yankee (a reggaeton group), can I call that work positive? If I help someone produce and sell bread, and then with that money, he leaves the Comarca to live in the city, is that progress? The community loses a leader and his children grow up not speaking their own language. What I tell myself is that development is about providing choices to those who didn’t previously have them. Their course of action is an exercise of personal freedom. I would prefer that he stay and live and work and raise his children in the Comarca, but I also realize he is deciding between a world of dirt floors and a world of electricity, between subsistence farming and grocery stores, accordion music and Shakira. So I can’t blame him.

In the end of the movie, the nerd usually triumphs at the Big Party, lands the impossibly gorgeous girl, and realizes how lucky he is to have the friends he has. I guess I’m hoping for the same sort of thing.

Photos: a nearby hill carved away to get rock for the road, road construction, the soccer field, where the road, the dumptruck, and everything else is in play, some high school kids watching soccer, the last orange of the season.