by Ron Arias
In 1963 when I joined the Peace Corps to work in Peru, I thought I was going to help people in need. Years later I realized they helped me much more than I helped them.
Now that Barack Obama has vowed to expand the Peace Corps, I’d like to emphasize to U.S. Latinos the rewards of volunteer work abroad, especially in Latin America.
I discovered that my Mexican roots connected me to a deeper history and culture than I’d ever imagined.
By working and living among campesinos in the Andes, I grew to appreciate how most of the world lives — struggling on the edge of survival.
The Peace Corps sent me and another Californian to Sicuani, a mountain valley town south of Cuzco, where we ran a food program for Quechua-speaking school children.
We also started a half-dozen other projects. We taught English to adults in the town; we raised quality rabbits hoping farmers would breed them; we imported pigs for the same reason; we got an Iowa tractor company to send us a versatile, one-piston tractor to plow small plots; we tried breeding Brown Swiss bulls with the local, runty cows, and we even ran a summer camp for kids.
We failed at nearly everything except the school food program, the English classes and the camp. But every flop was an adventure, including our showcase effort with two bulls we borrowed from a state-run ranch. One was fully mature and the other was large but as we discovered, still an adolescent.
To publicize the project, we invited campesinos from miles around to see the first day of breeding. They came, but after the first cow was brought into the corral, all we heard was laughter. The younger bull wanted to suckle and went for the cow’s udder, and the older one was only interested in mounting the other male.
We laughed, too, just as we shared other parts of community life, from fiestas to funerals. We even witnessed a tragedy when at a distance we saw soldiers shoot and kill a defenseless group of Indians who were squatting on fallow land belonging to an absentee owner.
After I left the Peace Corps, I taught English for 13 years at a community college. My students always learned about Latin America from me, and since my time in Peru was so intense, I began to write fiction influenced as much by Gabriel García Márquez and Juan Rulfo as by William Faulkner and Bernard Malamud.
When I left teaching for magazine journalism, my success at “parachuting” into hot and dire spots around the globe was made possible by my life in Peru, where I learned the value of being flexible and relatively non-judgmental.
When I interviewed peasants in Brazil or Nicaragua, war victims in Vietnam or Sarajevo, the starving in Somalia, or the targets or racism among Lakota Sioux or Australian Aborigines, I felt a familiarity with life and death at the edge of existence.
Because of my service abroad, I needed no prepping.
When President John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps in 1961, his famous words were, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” To young Americans, especially those with Hispanic roots, I’d like to add: “Also ask what your host country can do for you.”
If you serve in Latin America, like me you’ll receive more than you give. You’ll probably deepen your attachment to your cultural cousins to the south. You’ll learn the benefits of compassion, patience and tolerance, and you’ll absolutely hone your problem-solving skills while expanding the Spanish you may already speak. Those two years will affect the rest of your life. Hispanic Link.
(Ron Arias, of Hermosa Beach, Calif., is author of several books, including the pioneering Chicano novel “The Road to Tamazunchale” in 1975. Reach him at ron.arias@mac.com). Calle/Street ©2009
