Rats and roaches live by competition under the law of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.
–Wendell Berry
Several weeks into my stay in Nicaragua, I went to a restaurant on the beach for dinner after work. There had been power outages nearly every night that week, and while blackouts were common, my host family claimed this was much worse than usual. While we were at the restaurant, the power went out once again. The only light came from the moon and stars, and their reflections on the water, or so I thought at first. But then I looked down the beach, where there was still a glow of electric light. It was coming from the Rancho, an expatriate community and resort built on the bluff overlooking the ocean where many locals worked, but where none had the means to live. The Rancho had its own generators. The residents there would not experience the blackouts or ensuing lack of running water felt by the surrounding communities. In those moments, watching the glittering light of the Rancho, I started to understand that true poverty for Nicaraguans was not the lack of running water or the shoddy infrastructure; they could deal with these things, and had for years. Real poverty was standing in the darkness, watching those lights, and knowing you could not get to them, not because of your location, but because you did not have enough money. Many groups are attempting to “fix” this poverty in Nicaragua. The question remains whether the structures of development currently in place match the structures of poverty that need to be fixed.
Although this one instance helped define poverty in Nicaragua for me, economic status was demonstrated and determined through a number of circumstances on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast. With access to television, including many North American shows, the community was able to compare their lives to those they saw on screen. The area where I lived was rich in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and development workers. Nearly every North American in the area was an aid worker or volunteer, or because of the surfing and tropical climate, a tourist. Many times they were both. I myself fit into this category. There was no shortage of comparisons to be made to determine what poverty was, both by the North American visitors and native Nicaraguans.
Although this one instance helped define poverty in Nicaragua for me, economic status was demonstrated and determined through a number of circumstances on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast. With access to television, including many North American shows, the community was able to compare their lives to those they saw on screen. The area where I lived was rich in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and development workers. Nearly every North American in the area was an aid worker or volunteer, or because of the surfing and tropical climate, a tourist. Many times they were both. I myself fit into this category. There was no shortage of comparisons to be made to determine what poverty was, both by the North American visitors and native Nicaraguans.
Redefining the Core and Periphery
The structures of poverty in La Virgen Morena and the surrounding communities are shifting, although generally they resemble structures of poverty throughout the world. Nicaragua is firmly in the economic periphery; products flow out of the country to the economic core of countries in the global north (Wallerstein, 1974: 2). With the advent of tourism in the stability of the 1990s following a thirty year long civil war, places such as the Rancho have begun to build an insulated “core” of their own right in the middle of Nicaragua’s economic periphery. Goods, services, and workers flow into the Rancho from the surrounding community, and while GDP per capita has risen steadily in recent years and economic activity is growing (World Bank), structures of poverty remain intact for the locals. The predominant industry in the region has shifted from agriculture to service and tourism, and while it is more profitable, there is also little opportunity for advancement or innovation, and more than ever the economy is dependent on fluctuations of Western markets. Although time will tell, this new core and periphery structure problematizes Sach’s idea of getting one foot “on the ladder of development” in order for economies like Nicaragua’s to move forward in a model of linear growth (Broad and Cavanaugh 2006:25).
There is also the unspoken industry of development. Its status as a peripheral country make it a candidate for development work; the very things that make Nicaragua poor, in addition to its recent political stability and safety, also make it an NGO magnet (Dichter 2003:4). The small catchment area where I worked boasted three separate NGOs, all with missions varying on a theme of poverty and development. The clinic where I worked focused on pediatric and maternal healthcare with a special emphasis on public health and education. They worked to combat environmental impoverishment by providing specialty healthcare unavailable outside of the city of Rivas, which was home to the nearest hospital, dentist, and grocery store, and was two hours away by bus. They also focused on alleviating material poverty by providing families with water filters and plumbing through a micro-health insurance program to address the root causes of endemic health issues such as parasites and kidney problems. Even their program for diabetic patients was a response to the material poverty which forces people to eat diets of rice, beans, and processed foods and sodas because those foods are cheap and available, but which contribute to the double burden of chronic and acute disease in Nicaragua. Another nearby NGO boasted a beautiful campus with a gym, pre-school, and sports facilities. Their mission is to provide technical and vocational education in the region, as well as to provide structured activities for community members, especially adolescents and children. A third NGOs interns were sent to the area to develop sustainable projects with the communities where they lived.
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Relegating Nicaraguan culture to the periphery because it forms what Sachs calls “cultural barriers” in the name of development could be seen as its own form of structural violence, which should not be justified as a means to the proverbial end of poverty. The lights of the Rancho are still out of reach for most Nicaraguans. |
Tourism and NGOs have also begun to create a cultural core and periphery through their influence in Nicaragua. North American values are taught and normalized, cited as healthy, smart, and sustainable. I observed everything from what to eat to how to raise your children being taught as a skill to Nicaraguans by North Americans because of Nicaraguans’ “lack of education.” Some Nicaraguans seemed to accept the North American way as superior simply because it was North American. For instance, when I interviewed mothers about parenting for the research project I conducted while there, more than one woman asked me after the interview if I had suggestions or tips on child rearing. As I am childless and twenty-one, it seems that my only possible source of supposed expertise in this area came from my status as a North American. Relegating Nicaraguan culture to the periphery because it forms what Sachs calls “cultural barriers” (Sachs 2005:60, 87) in the name of development could be seen as its own form of structural violence, which should not be justified as a means to the proverbial end of poverty.
In traditional terms, Nicaragua is perfectly poised to “develop.” It has been politically stable for the longest period in a century, the tourism industry could be seen as providing the first step of Sach’s “ladder of [economic] development’ (Sachs 2005: 73), and increasing North American influence is slowly abolishing cultural “obstacles to development” (Sachs 2005: 60). Aid is coming in from the U.S., Spain, and the World Bank (World Bank), and a canal funded by the Chinese is in the works, heralded by the government as a new development project and economic opportunity (O’Grady 2015). But the lights of Rancho Santana are still out of reach for most Nicaraguans. |
Can the economic growth that is so lauded truly be development when it is creating a new local economic and cultural core, especially one which leaves so many stuck in the periphery? Do the structures of development which struggle to meet the material needs of Nicaraguans match the structures of poverty with which they have always struggled, or are they more band-aids trying to patch holes that are simply too big?