weddings, radios and elections

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Felicidades!

It’s 8:52pm, closing in on my usual bedtime, but I’m so excited I can’t go to sleep just yet. My sister’s getting married!! That’s right, little Melinda is planning to elope next June 28 with live-in boyfriend, fellow economist and all-around great guy Thayer Morrill, and I couldn’t be happier for them! I’m planning to come back to be part of the festivities! Now if only I could convince them to honeymoon in beautiful Paraguay….

Paraguay, Paraguay everywhere!

So Paraguay is popping up all over the place, specifically in the sports world. In case you missed it, our football team made a not-horrible showing in the FIFA World Cup last month (holding England to just one goal, tying Sweden and beating Trinidad and Tobago, thank you very much), and just advanced in the South America World Cup over Argentina yesterday. And apparently our bicycling team just made it into the Tour de France semifinals, a first for a South American team!!

You might be asking yourself, how does she know so much? There are no newspapers available here in Tacuati – occasionally someone traveling from a large city will bring a newspaper and it’ll get passed around for a few days, and any big local (ie. football) news makes on our radio station, but that’s about it. And when I’m in Asuncion I will buy a paper, but that’s only once a month. Well, friends, I’ve become an informed global citizen over the past few days, thanks to the BBC WorldService. Their South American broadcast was apparently cancelled a few months ago, but some adept shortwave radio user found that the West African broadcast is sent from the island of Asencion in the middle of the Atlantic, and we can pick up the signal here!! It comes in sporadically for me (like cell phone service and pretty much everything in Paraguay – nothing is reliable) but on occasion I can sit and listen to the news, including features such as “Have Your Say, Africa.” I’ve been able to follow this Lebanon situation quite closely, unfortunately, and am also up to date on all the latest cricket matches worldwide J

Elections

Doesn’t it seem like just yesterday I was describing the Presidential elections in Honduras?? Well, in Paraguay this November we’ll have local elections, which here in Tacuati means it’s time to choose a new intendente, or mayor. I know there are politics everywhere, and this is my first real experience with small-town politics, and it’s just plain crazy. Starting this Sunday, the two major parties, Colorado and Liberale, will have their internal elections, primaries really to choose their candidates.

One candidate for the Colorado party is Antonio Torres. His twin brother is currently the mayor, and his family is humongous, I think there are 14 siblings in all. My host mom here was a Torres, as is the Supervisora of the schools, and just about every other appoint-able official in town. You can see the problem. Apparently he’s well-liked in the asentamientos because he’s a nice guy, will visit people and terere with them, but obviously many people see a problem with the Torres’s pretty much running this town. It puts me in an interesting position because so many members of that family have been good to me here, and are my friends. Sometimes I wonder if there are enough people in town who aren’t Torres’s for another candidate to even stand a chance! People have been lined up in the Mayor’s office for weeks to put in their special requests, and suddenly the roads are being fixed, and schools have magically received the chairs and doors they’ve been asking for for years now. Oh, this guy was mayor once already, before his brother.

Another candidate is Lindstron. He has personally annoyed me by having pickup trucks run around town blaring propaganda at 930pm and 630am the past few days, but he has a lot of support it seems. I’ve been told he’s an honest guy, and that he has plans to build a hospital and bring computers and do all sorts of good things. He was mayor once before too. There’s a third Colorado candidate, Hugo something, but no one seems to pay much attention to him.

I don’t think the Liberale party will have internals here because there’s only one candidate, Don Orlando, who happens to be my landlord and owner of the carniceria next door. He seems to be a nice guy and is certainly wonderful to me. The Liberale party doesn’t have a fraction of the cash that the Colorados do, so it’ll be interesting to see how he fares against whoever wins on Sunday.

Peace Corps Volunteers are prohibited from taking part in any political events or issues, but it’s been interesting for me to talk to people and just listen to their perceptions about politics and how it affects their lives and how they want things to change, but also have very little faith that things ever will improve. That’s a major cultural difference here, the belief that things can and will improve. The American Dream may be cheesy, and you can argue if it’s as true as it was generations ago, but the fact is we have a persistent cultural belief that hard work will have positive results, and that it’s possible for one person to make a difference and improve her/his life or the lives of others. I’m learning so much about the things I’ve taken for granted.

ps-So the powerful Torres guy won the election, of course, but it could get interesting. This Linstrom fellow, who is apparently rich beyond belief, may throw his support to the Liberale candidate in the general election in November. Vamos a ver....