Spanish, music totalitarianism, and why subsistence farming just isn't what it used to be

Ok ok, it's time for an update. It's been pretty busy lately but I'll try to cover everything. Going reverse-chronologically ...

Yesterday I did my first interview in Spanish by myself, after becoming progressively bitchy after each interview where I had trouble following along or asking many questions as Marguerite and the interviewee did their thing in great Spanish. But this time, I managed to keep an employee of the Spanish embassy talking for an hour, and if I remember correctly, he even said some interesting stuff. So screw you Ramon! And this afternoon I'll have the great pleasure of listening to my stuttering, heavily accented Spanish this afternoon as I work on the transcript. Quel bonheur!

Last Friday we had another successful party at the apartment. Pretty much the same deal as last time, with the same battles over music as one might expect from such a diverse group, but there were lots of people, and they brought booze this time! Towards 2:00am I decided to play Stalin and impose my DJ skillz on the remaining dancers, so we closed out the night with James Brown, Jamiroquai, Janis Joplin, Prince, Jackson 5, Pulp Fiction, and the Rolling Stones. Yeah! There were some amazing dancers too, and even if you're not great it's so fun to dance with someone who is, and isn't bitchy about it. I had no idea Maceo Parker could be so danceable. More importantly, however, somebody brought a brownie, for Noemie, though I didn't realize this. And as I nursed my groggy brain the next morning all I understood was that there was available chocolate, and it was sooooo good. One of the best I've had, even though it was an industrial brownie from the supermarket or something! Sorry Noemie, better luck next time. It's good to know Colombia can do brownies right.

Moving backwards, that day Marguerite and I spent the day visiting and indigenous village that has been participating in a temporary migration program between Spain and Colombia, where they go to Spain for 4-9 months and spend the rest of the year in Colombia. Jean, I have now seen subsistence farming, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. (for those of you who didn't participate in our weekend discussions of the evils of the modern world and the existential advantages of subsistence farming, as we ate waffles and cereal at the Berkeley dorm cafeteria, now you have a little idea of what I did those two years down in the People's Republic).

In essence, this is a tight-knit community of 150 people, and by community I really mean more of an extended family. The community-building programs they finance with the funds sent back from Spain are used, among other things, to educate their children in traditional medicine and agriculture, as they try to rebuild aspects of the indigenous culture that had been lost or ignored for decades. One odd aspect of the whole deal is that, if I understood correctly, they have had the help of historians, anthropologists, and biologists to help them identify some of these bits of culture. We're going back this weekend so hopefully I'll be able to clear this up, since it does seem kind of strange.

One odd part of their whole community deal is that part of the village land is owned communally, but when they talk about the funds they receive from Spain, most of which goes to the family of the worker with a quota for the village, they talk about it in purely hardcore capitalistic terms, an investment in the future, much as The Economist or Wall Street Journal would. They want to be self-sufficient and wasting hard-earned remittances on booze or TV sets is not part of the plan. They've apparently reconciled this with the intense community ties and communitarian emphasis of everyday life.

Other nuggets of info you might find amusing include: the fact that one of the guys we talked to is a photography buff, but he says that film and developing are too expensive so he'd like to get a digital camera; they want to shoot a video (in digital) with the kids of the village; the leaders we talked to all had cell phones; they want to send their kids to university one day; they have internet access and email addresses via computers in the town a few minutes away; they are getting financial and technical help from a Spanish NGO to start producing eggs locally, so they can become more self-sufficient in their food supply.

So subsistence farming just ain't what it used to be.

In any case, it was cool to see an extremely concrete example of the benefits and costs of temporary migration programs, which we've been reading about in academic journals for weeks now. Let's throw in a buzzword: globalization. In a recent email about this (I'm really lazy, don't want to write it again), I wrote that "While globalization isn't anything new, it's still impressive to see to what extent this phenomenon can affect a small, remote group of Indians that just want to sell some eggs and have enough land to truly become self-sufficient."

...

"So many little things contribute to the realization of these dreams and each step is so fragile. If the US and Europe end agricultural subsidies, will Spanish agriculture remain competitive? [and would these Indians still have jobs there?] If Spanish unemployment gets worse will the agreements that allow these programs to function smoothly remain in place? Will Catalonia still want to import foreign workers? If the price of oil keeps rising will these people be able to afford plane tickets? ... What happens to this village if the bird flu hits Colombia?"

So there you go for now. I'll have more updates about our extreme sports weekend, plus tons of photos, sometime when I'm not sick of staring at the computer screen.