Exciting News!! We Have a Home in Belize!!!!!!

Today we found out the name of the village we will be living in: Otoxha!!! Its a small Kechki Mayan village very close to the Guatemala border. It sounds like we will be living with our area leader who is a Mayan woman that is very active in the community. We will be working in that village as well as in the villages of Corazon and Dolores, which will require us to stay in shape with 30 min bike rides each way! We will be working on nutrition and hygiene, literacy, and helping out with the new baby chickens the family recieved! We are absolutely ecstatic. These are the areas that we have really been vocusing on in our preparation and now that we know that we will for sure be using them a lot we are excited to prepare even more! Its so exciting to know that we now have a home and a, or 3 villages  that are waiting for us to arrive! Here are some pictures that we got from Pantaleon the project leader. Enjoy!

Presentation of a Short History of the Sandinistas

Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional-Sandinista National Liberation Front

By Brian

History about the people were staying with in Nicaragua

The beginnings- The Monroe Doctrine

The U.S. has a long history of intervention in Central America due to the Monroe Doctrine which was a doctrine of domination by the U.S. essentially saying to the European colonizers “Stay out of our backyard!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kInJWF5--jE

While many U.S. citizens consider the Monroe Doctrine as a blow against the monarchies of Europe, history has shown that it has meant the domination and exploitation of the people of the America’s.

?Do you know what the America’s is?

This is proven by the amount of U.S. military interventions in the America’s because of private economic and military strategic purposes.

Argentina

1890

Troops

Buenos Aires interests protected

Chile

1891

Troops

Marines clash with nationalist rebels

Haiti

1891

Troops

Black workers revolt on U.S.-claimed Navassa Island defeated

Nicaragua

1894

Troops

Month-long occupation of Bluefields

Panama

1895

Naval, troops

Marines land in Colombian province

Nicaragua

1896

Troops

Marines land in port of Corinto

Cuba

1898-

Naval, troops

Seized from Spain, U.S. still holds Navy base at Guantanamo

Puerto Rico

1898-

Naval, troops

Seized from Spain, occupation continues

Nicaragua

1898

Troops

Marines land at port of San Juan del Sur

Nicaragua

1899

Troops

Marines land at port of Bluefields

Honduras

1903

Troops

Marines intervene in revolution

Dominican Republic

1903-04

Troops

U.S. interests protected in Revolution

Cuba

1906-09

Troops

Marines land in democratic election

Nicaragua

1907

Troops

"Dollar Diplomacy" protectorate set up

Honduras

1907

Troops

Marines land during war with Nicaragua

Panama

1908

Troops

Marines intervene in election contest

Nicaragua

1910

Troops

Marines land in Bluefields and Corinto

Honduras

1911

Troops

U.S. interests protected in civil war

Cuba

1912

Troops

U.S. interests protected in Havana

Panama

1912

Troops

Marines land during heated election

Honduras

1912

Troops

Marines protect U.S. economic interests

Nicaragua

1912-33

Troops, bombing

20-year occupation, fought guerrillas

Mexico

1913

Naval

Americans evacuated during revolution

Dominican Republic

1914

Naval

Fight with rebels over Santo Domingo

Mexico

1914-18

Naval, troops

Series of interventions against nationalists

Haiti

1914-34

Troops, bombing

19-year occupation after revolts

Dominican Republic

1916-24

Troops

8-year Marine occupation

Cuba

1917-33

Troops

Military occupation, economic protectorate

Panama

1918-20

Troops

"Police duty" during unrest after elections

Honduras

1919

Troops

Marines land during election campaign

Guatemala

1920

Troops

2-week intervention against unionists

Costa Rica

1921

Troops

Panama

1921

Troops

Honduras

1924-25

Troops

Landed twice during election strife

Panama

1925

Troops

Marines suppress general strike

El Salvador

1932

Naval

Warships sent during Faribundo Marti revolt

Uruguay

1947

Nuclear threat

Bombers deployed as show of strength

Puerto Rico

1950

Command operation

Independence rebellion crushed in Ponce

Guatemala

1954-?

Command operation, bombing, nuclear threat

CIA directs exile invasion and coup d'Etat after newly elected government nationalizes unused U.S.'s United Fruit Company lands; bombers based in Nicaragua; long-term result: 200,000 murdered

Panama

1958

Troops

Flag protests erupt into confrontation

Cuba

1961

Command operation

CIA-directed exile invasion fails

Cuba

1962

Nuclear threat, naval

Blockade during missile crisis; near-war with Soviet Union

Panama

1964

Troops

Panamanians shot for urging canal's return

Dominican Republic

1965-66

Troops, bombing

Marines land during election campaign

Guatemala

1966-67

Command operation

Green Berets intervene against rebels

Chile

1973

Command operation

CIA-backed coup ousts democratically elected Marxist president

El Salvador

1981-92

Command operation, troops

Advisors, overflights aid anti-rebel war, soldiers briefly involved in hostage clash; long-term result: 75,000 murdered and destruction of popular movement

Nicaragua

1981-90

Command operation, naval

CIA directs exile (Contra) invasions, plants harbor mines against revolution; result: 50,000 murdered

Honduras

1982-90

Troops

Maneuvers help build bases near borders

Grenada

1983-84

Troops, bombing

Invasion four years after revolution

Bolivia

1987

Troops

Army assists raids on cocaine region

Panama

1989

Troops, bombing

Nationalist government ousted by 27,000 soldiers, leaders arrested, 2000+ killed

Haiti

1994-95

Troops, naval

Blockade against military government; troops restore President Aristide to office three years after coup

Venezuela

2002

Command operation

Failed coup attempt to remove left-populist president Hugo Chavez

Haiti

2004-

Troops

Removal of democratically elected President Aristide; troops occupy country

Augusto Sandino-

He was born in Nicaragua in 1895, as a young man he left Nicaragua and traveled Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico finally returning home in 1926. He worked in a mine owned by a U.S. company. Already well traveled and experienced in the suffering of the poor he started to organize the mine workers who were severally being oppressed, his organizing transpired into an army and he fought with the liberals against the conservative ruling government.

The liberals who had nearly overwhelmingly gained the support of the people were sure to win a 1926 election. Because of the threat of U.S. economic interests being challenged by the liberals the U.S. Marines were sent in. This was the start of a civil war between the liberals and conservatives.

Under U.S. guidance and supervision the conservative Nicaraguan bourgeoisie created the notorious Nicaraguan National Guard under Anastasio Somoza. Due to this pressure the liberals signed a peace treaty which disarmed their army, but Sandino refused to disarm and continued his guerilla campaign until the U.S. military left Nicaragua.

Finally in 1933 The U.S. Marines left after Sandino’s guerillas caused significant damage to U.S. corporate interests in Nicaragua. In 1934 the conservative Nicaraguan government offered Sandino peace with full amnesty for himself and his guerillas. But they were betrayed by Anastasio Somoza and he was assassinated. Then followed a vicious campaign of repression of his supporters and within a month Sandino’s guerillas all but disappeared leading to one of the longest and brutal dictatorships in the history of the Americas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpdbtLMamVs

The Somoza Family Reign of Terror

From 1930-1979 Nicaragua was controlled by the Somoza family. From 1936 to 1956 Garcia Somoza ruled Nicaragua. Such a long reign was possible due to owning much of the Nicaraguan economy as well as having (or controlling) the support of the countries military. He was also supported by powerful bourgeoisie in the U.S. which helped concretize his political will in Nicaragua.

When Garcia Somoza came to power he handed over important government positions to family members as well as placing his family and friends in judicial positions. This guaranteed that the law would bend to his will.

Various coups happened throughout this period in which Somoza was able to hold onto power, until 1956 when he was shot by a young 27 yr old poet named Rigoberto Lopez Perez. 8 days later he died in the Panama Canal Zone where he was sent for medical attention.

Garcia’s son succeeded him and due to his fathers assassination there was a suspension of civil liberties and wide spread torture of political opposition was documented. Throughout the Somoza family regimes they espoused anti-communist rhetoric which helped garner support of the U.S. The Somoza family even allowed the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba to be launched from Nicaragua.

In 1972 an earthquake killed nearly 10,000 people and left 80% of Managua’s (the capital) commercial centers in ruin. During this time the Somoza family amassed major wealth by wide spread corruption and theft of international aid organizations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnMawUCFHCc&feature=related

In 1979 Anastasio Somoza fled Nicaragua due to the increasing revolutionary front by the Sandinistas. This ended the Somoza family dominance of Nicaragua. He fled to Miami and then Paraguay where he was assassinated by the Sandinistas in 1980.

One of the Sandinista assassins was quoted saying "We cannot tolerate the existence of millionaire playboys while thousands of Latin Americans are dying of hunger. We are perfectly willing to give up our lives for this cause."

Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional

The FSLN was a Marxist group formed in the early 1960’s in response to the Somoza dictatorship. The founders were Carlos Fonseca, a teacher and a librarian who was killed in 1976, Tomas Borge who was the only founder who survived the war and others. By 1979 they had grown in power militarily, and popularly. They were able to take power in Managua on July 19, 1979. A rough estimate of 50,000-150,000 people died in the liberation war.

Throughout this time they implemented mass literacy campaigns and focused on better health care for the poor. 1980 nearly 6 months after the FSLN victory they initiated the National Literacy Crusade, the results were fast and amazing, Nicaragua went from 50% illiteracy to 12%. Also a national health care initiative was implemented with the help of the Cubans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRxG_j-sbrA

While these initiatives were great they had to deal with the Contra’s a U.S. backed and trained rebel group. Needless to say this put a damper on the progress of the people’s revolution. The rebels were made up of Somoza military loyalists and the dictator Ronald Reagan was quick to support these murderers.

In 1983 the U.S. government stopped funding the Contra’s officially. So the CIA took it on and in one of the worst crimes against humanity, started funding the Contra’s with the support of Ronald Reagan and the CIA by importing cocaine into the U.S. Thus began the crack era in the U.S.

The FSLN held Nicaragua’s first truly democratic election in 1984 and won by a landslide. In the 1990 election FSLN lost and their reign was ended. Throughout their rule they were denounced by Washington as being a dictatorship but yet free elections were held and power conceded when the people voted against them in 1990. More proof that the U.S. ruling class can only have democracy in its own country by making sure they have dictators around the world who are on their knees for them.

In 2006 Daniel Ortega former FSLN president of Nicaragua once again won the election. With this victory he joined ALBA. ALBA is an economic bloc established by Latin American countries to break away from the dehumanizing free trade hegemony of the U.S. While FSLN has lost much of its revolutionary fervor of the 20th century it seems to hold the publics support.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFt1BVMn_HE

Some Sources:

Blum, William. Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventionism Since World War II. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995.

Ege & Makhijani. "180 Landings by the U.S. Marine Corps" (History Division), Counterspy (July-Aug. 1982). Foreign Affairs Division, Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress.

Richard Grimmet, Instances of Use of Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2001. CRS Report for Congress, 2002.

Grossman, Zoltan. Over a Century of U.S. Military Interventions. Self-published, revised Jan. 1, 1995.

Sklar, Holly. "Who's Who: Invading 'Our' Hemisphere 1831-," Z Magazine (Feb. 1990).

U.S. Congress, Committee on Foreign Affairs' Report. Background Information on the Use of United States Armed Forces in Foreign Countries. Washington, D.C.: 91st Congress, 2nd Session, 1970.

Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York: Perennial Library, Harper & Row, 1980.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/COLDsandino.htm

Belize Annual Report

Here is the Annual Report for Belize- You can check out what has been going on in the projects we are going to and read a message from our project leader Pantaleon!

HPP Belize Annual Report 2

Learn some Q'eqchi with us!

Here is a little video I found of some Q'eqchi words. This is one of the Mayan languages spoken in the area of Belize where Brian and I will be so we are going to start practicing these phrases!


Learn K'ekchi' from Lipscomb Missions on Vimeo.

Central American Investigation Plan

Central america travel plan

View more presentations from unionmade.

Fundraising: Finished, Tickets: Booked!

Yes it is true. After a long and trying journey, Team Parrot officially finished our fundraising as of Saturday!! Woo Hoo! We decided to stay around Dowagiac for our last weekend because we were so close to finishing and because we are running short on time to finish other important tasks. It was very successful, booking our first Wal Mart and Sams Club we took over the Niles, Mishawaka area and finished our goal and even managed to raise over $500 to use at our projects in Belize!!

Also during this time we have been preparing our investigation period: deciding what countries to visit, making appointments for vaccines, checking on visas, etc. And we officially purchased our tickets!! We will fly out of Chicago and into Nicaragua in 2 WEEKS!!! AHHHH!!!! Yesterday we went as a team to finish buying supplies we need and between that and knowing that we can finally put fundraising behind us, it is really starting to feel real. We are really going!

Today we went and got our vaccines (so much fun!) which included Typhoid Fever and Hepatitis A, as well as our prescription for Malaria medication. Those pharmaceutical companies must really love people who travel and the doctors that are so good at scaring them into needing all different kinds of shots and medications.

Now our focus is all on finishing up the plans for our investigation. Wednesday night we have to present to all of the teachers and talk about where we will be going, what the headline for our investigation is, what our budget is, etc. Then the teachers can give us input to help us get the most out of our time. We will be sure to post our presentation of our plans once it is finished! The plan is of course more of a general outline, as we know and invite this time to be somewhat open so that we can feel free to go along the journey as it comes. Who knows what kind of people and organizations and adventures we will face once we are down there!

We are super busy for these last 2 weeks here with a lot of studies, presentations, and preparations to be done! Keep checking back as we count down our last days in the US!!

Finally More Pictures!!!

Andra updated the pictures from the last 2 months finally!!! Check it.

Fundraising Update

One last weekend of fundraising. Last weekend was a major success in Chicago with a grand total of $2500 raised, extra effort by Andra allowed this number to happen. Yesterday Andra and Sunny went cloths collecting in Ft. Wayne, IN. They had to visit 24 clothes bins and today I took the clothes to Merriville to be weighed, the result was 3,500 pounds collected which means they probably earned around $200-$275 for ou team fundraising. This Friday thru Sunday we only have to raise $600 to complete our fundraising for Belize. Our strategy is to make this goal by early Saturday and the rest of the money will be raised directly for our teams discretion in Belize (for the projects of course).

We have less then 3 weeks till we leave and still there is much preparation to complete. So that means we should be really busy, but that's no different from when we started our team in January. It's official also that Andra and I will be in the Mayan dialects of the Toledo district in Belize or South Belize and Sunny and Hyun Jung will be in the Spanish speaking area of Northern Belize or Corozal.

I'm hoping that on occasion we will have access to the internet to keep up with the blog, once a week would be nice but once a month is probably a more realistic. We will see!!!

Detroit Report for Upcoming IICD Newletter

January Belize Team: Recollections from Detroit

Detroit is a beautiful city with a rough exterior which has been battered by the cataclysm of outsourcing. It is a large city in which only a third of it is inhabited, leaving a look of devastation and tragedy as if recently it was shattered by war. In this setting January Belize Team(JBT) went to Detroit for an action period near the end of February. The experience was great in so many ways: working with IICD Detroit, staying in a Detroit home built by the Young Detroit Builders(YDB) and just being able to stay in this historic city.

The reason we had this “action week” was to work with IICD’s clothes collection. This consisted of working with IICD Detroit for 3 days, our Detroit comrades run the clothes collection warehouse. JBT worked alongside the workers collecting clothes in Detroit and the surrounding cities, organizing and distributing books to local groups and schools, and driving around Detroit handing out the IICD newsletter to business owners who host our clothes bins.

On the first night we arrived JBT was lucky enough to go to the Detroit Pistons game(basketball) the first night. We were able to thanks to Roland a YDB Director who gave us tickets and then left. It was a lot of fun but Detroit lost. The stadium was mostly empty and probably only a third full, I couldn’t help but think of the parallel of the population between the fans in the stadium and of people in Detroit. For some comedy relief it’s worth noting that an old married couple from Detroit renewed their vows during half-time with all 20 of their children with them, unfortunately their 250 grandchildren could not all fit on the stadium floor, literally. Condom anyone?

Hyun Jung, Sunny J and I all went out separately at least one day and collected clothes. This is quite a job because there are around 300 clothes bins in Detroit. Of course we didn’t go to everyone everyday but went to around 25 locations, this takes nearly 8hrs. This is a good experience for the Poverty Fighters and Development Instructors in Dowagiac for many reasons, in fact about a third of the budget for the school comes from clothes collection. This is why it is so important to extend our hands in solidarity and action from Dowagiac to Detroit. If it wasn’t for those in Detroit we would not be in Dowagiac, therefore we couldn’t go to the projects in third world countries to develop the community. To me it’s very important that the volunteers of IICD really appreciate and understand the work of our clothes collection, in the future it would be nice to have the workers in Detroit see what we do in Dowagiac because the preceding sentence is also true for them.

On another day, two days for me, Hyun Jung and I went to clothes bin hosts and gave the store owners the IICD newsletter. This is a good action to show our appreciation to the hosts. We also took that time to address the hosts needs and ask if they had any grievances with the clothes bins. For the most part they were indifferent to me but still many were happy and appreciative for the visit. In this way IICD builds a better rapport with the hosts and lets them know that because of them it helps send JBT and other teams to fight poverty in Latin America and Africa, and that IICD is attentive to the clothes bin. I also thought of this time as an investigation while driving around Detroit. One of the most interesting finds throughout the trip was the ethnicity of the people I saw strolling around and the ethnicity of the business owners(hosts). I would say 95% of the people I saw walking around were of Afro-American decent. Yet I would say 5% of the businesses were owned by Euro-Americans and 95% owned by immigrants from Arabic countries (I went to nearly 60 host businesses). This was particularly interesting for me and I wondered where does the black community work? How is this possible? Those will be good questions for a future article.

Andra the whole time, with the help of Sunny J on one day worked with donated books. They organized the books from big cardboard bins, with special attention to the mass amounts of donated encyclopedias IICD had. Andra then got in contact with many different organizations and the local library. The Library took all the encyclopedia’s and they brought the rest of the books to a literacy program for children, also to a non-profit that does adoption and development disability services for children, and the last was a federally funded pre-school for low income families. In Detroit “book aid” like this is desperately needed in these community groups, schools, and individual homes, I hope to see future IICD action weeks follow our footsteps in this regard, Andra did a great job.

Our accommodation in Detroit was an amazing experience. The Young Detroit Builders let us stay in one of the number of houses they have renovated. When Gil a YDB leader brought us to the house I was very intimidated. The house was surrounded by a raggedy looking fence with a lock. One of the first things Gil told us was something of the fashion of ‘be careful this is a bad neighborhood, and the house hasn’t been broken into in nearly a year, so you should be fine.’ Needless to say this didn’t help my anxiety. The windows of the house were boarded up with square particle board on the outside and a 2x4 on the inside which was used to secure the particle board. The inside was very nice and there was one couch and one microwave and that was it and that was more then enough for our team. The area seemed to be populated, with probably about a fourth of the houses vacant, in my experiences in Detroit this ratio is actually not bad. After a few days my anxiety went away and honestly I felt there was no reason to have fear as that distorts your reality of the situation, I was starting to settle in but by then we only had two nights left. Also it needs to be said that the youth of YDB renovated the house themselves and did an amazing job. YDB trains inner-city youths to get their GEDs and to learn vocational skills at the same time. Their program is very empowering and the only problem is that it’s needed a thousand fold more in Detroit and hopefully as they grow that will become a reality.

Also during this time in Detroit Hyun Jung became ill. So Sunny and I took her to the emergency room. This was quite an experience as well, the hospital sees anyone who comes in, and the deal is they bill you later. We were recommended this by one of the warehouse IICD workers, he said that if you ask anyone from Detroit where they go it’s the Triage. This simply is because you don’t have to pay immediately or give them some form of insurance, and the fact is he said many Detroiters don’t ever pay once they receive the bill. They had nice facilities and supposedly some of the best doctors so I’m inclined to believe the state of Michigan makes sure their compensated.

The Detroit action weekend was surely a valuable experience for our team. Although some us (including me) weren’t sure if it was the best thing to do with the little time we had, we ended up concluding afterwards as a team that it was very important. I personally feel that it’s an obligation of every team to have this action weekend and to understand why we do them; for solidarity with IICD Detroit and for understanding of why and how we are able to live in our beautiful school and go to our projects. Without this knowledge and these experiences from Detroit I would have missed a very important aspect of IICD and my comprehension of the workings of IICD would have only been half full.

One Month Left

We are officially 2/3 of the way done with our training and our time here at IICD. Its a busy time with wrapping up fundraising, preparing our project binders, planning our month of investigation through Central America, doing crash courses in Spanish, shifting project leaders, taking care of sick Brian, deciding who will go North and who will go South (two of us will be in the northern part of Belize and two in the southern. they are very different situations in a lot of ways), and getting mentally prepared to leave! Whew!!

Anthony our team leader has to do some travelling of his own so we got shifted over to Lola! She was on the Brazil team January 2010 and we are very excited and feel so lucky to now have the support and wisdom of TWO great team leaders. Lola will also be the one that is with us on our investigation period.

It is really exciting to be getting so close to the end- and sad too. This month is filled with so much preparation that feels really real and practical now. I am starting to really imagine what it will be like and what kinds of people I will meet and experiences I will encounter. I am really anxious to finish fundraising just to get that weight off of my shoulders and be able to put all of my attention on my other preparations.

So many exciting things to come- I can't wait for this next and final month here at IICD!

Fundraising in Chicago and Preparation for Belize

We have decided to finish our fundraising during the weekends in Chicago. This last weekend was our first excursion to Chicago. We couchsurfed and stayed with some amazing Romanians. They were great and really inviting. Actually they recommended us to many stores in which we did great at. In the end we raised $2,100 in three days!!! We felt very accomplished.

Chicago is very beautiful and incredibly diverse it probably has a community from every country in the world. Personally we were in the Korean and Eastern European areas. The Korean community was very hard on us, but the E.Europeans really contributed.

Throughout fundraising I had some virus or the flu, still I'm recovering. So it was very difficult to fundraise but I forced myself to (against the recommendations of Andra and Sunny).

Now we are working on our project binders which we will bring with us obviously to the projects. This includes agricultural, social, hygienic, medicinal and literary material we will/can use at our project. I missed the beginning of it because I was bed-ridden yesterday but Andra had brought me up to speed today and I'm very excited to get started on it.