Interviews with Exiles

In keeping with this post, I’d like to write reactions to things I’ve read in my research in the past couple weeks. Hopefully this will serve the dual purpose of providing a way for people who are interested to have a sense of what I’m doing and how I’m effected by it, and a way to get me more excited about my work and, optimistically, more motivated to do it.

About a week ago I was reading about studies done in the 1960’s 70’s and 80’s about the emigration of Argentines. One such study looked at the social and psychological conditions of political exiles coming back to Argentina after the return to democracy in the mid 80’s. Conducted by the Argentine sociologist Hector Maletta, it is based on interviews he conducted with former political exiles, and published internally at the Instituto Torcuato di Tella. The irony of living as an expat in Latin America, the son of an immigrant, reading and writing about immigration was not lost on me; relating to this was unavoidable:

“Antes de su retorno, muchos albergaban imágenes idealizadas de Holanda, su pueblo tan amistoso, sus acogedoras relaciones sociales. Despúes del retorno las cosas no lucen tan rosadas como en su imaginación”.

“Before their return, many emigrants harbored idealized images of Holand, their friendly neighbors, their cozy social relations. After they came back things weren’t as rosy as they had imagined.”

I’ve certainly kept a rosy image in my mind of Cleveland. This may seem bizarre for a city’s where the major pastime is complaining about how much it sucks. But I remember everything I love about it; it means “home” for me so much more than it ever has in the past. that idealized image has had almost a year to grow there in my mind. I sort of wonder what I’ll think when I come back.

“El exiliado, como cualquier emigrante, ha estado ausente durante cierto tiempo. Este hecho banal encubre varios niveles de significación. Por una parte, en su ausencia han seguido sucediendo cosas, su país ha continuado existiendo y evolucionando sin él (una clara demostración de que el no es imprescindible). Este costado de la ausencia es uno de los mas angustiantes para el exiliado, porque evoca e implica uno de los aspectos más siniestros en la idea de la muerte: el mundo (el país) puede seguir existiendo aunque yo no esté.”

The exile, like any emigrant, has been away for a certain period of time. This simple fact has several layers of significance. On the one hand, in his absence things have kept happening, and his country has continued existing and evolving without him (a clear demonstration that he isn’t irreplaceable). This aspect of his absence is one of the most anguishing parts of exile, because it evokes and implies one of the most sinister aspects of the idea of death; the world (the country) can keep on existing when I’m not here.

Also:

“entretanto, también a el le han sucedido cosas, también para él ha transcurrido un tiempo que no puede compartir con quienes se quedaron. El cambió, creció, reorientó sus preferencias ideológicas (tal vez no en la misma dirección que sus connacionales) y regresa quizá...con una apreciación de su propio país marcada indeleblemente por su experiencia en otros países, una experiencia que conduce a comparar y relativizar lo que para los otros puede parecer obvio, único o inevitable.”

In the meanwhile things have also kept happening to him, there’s also passed some time for him that he cannot share with those who stayed. He changed, grew, reoriented his ideological preferences (and perhaps not in the same direction as his compatriots) and comes back perhaps with an appreciation for his own country marked indelibly by his experience in other countries, an experience that drives him to compare and to see in a relative way what for others seems obvious, unique and inevitable.

This is very true for me, in ways I can’t begin to describe now. I’ll either be vague enough to be just restating the above less eloquently, or be so specific I’d be writing you a book. Better I think, to write that book in parts, but I will simply say briefly that my views about politics and about ideology, about relationships and about family, about economics and my career all of these have changed in some way. At this juncture, it seems that going back home will be proof positive of just what has changed.

“Muchos se fueron en una etapa de la vida, y vuelven en otra completamente distinta. Se han producido cambios en la constelación familiar: el padre ha muerto, o los hermanos se han casado, o ya no viven todos juntos.

“Many left in one period of their lives and came back in a completely different one. There have been changes in filial configurations: the father has died, or the siblings have gotten married, or they don’t all live together anymore.”

Since I left I have had the sense that a chapter of my life had ended and another one had begun. I feel even more convinced of this now. I’ve spent the last eight months thinking about an urn that’s sitting in my house somewhere, a foreign object that I’ve never seen before, eight months reshaping my goals. With the small but important difference that I'm not here fleeing military dictatorship Maletta could have been writing about me.

The posts that aren’t here

For months now I’ve been engaging in a bit of self-deception related to this blog. As soon as I got off the plane (actually as soon as I showed up at the airport) I started writing in the notebook given to me by a friend and teacher from back home, about the million things I’ve been thinking about ever since February 5th. My intention was that I would take these things I’d scribbled down in my notebook and publish them as a record of my time here, in a manner akin to original meaning of “log” a chronological record of thoughts, experiences and happenings.

That notebook is filled now, the first of such gifts that I’ve ever successfully completed, something I see in itself as a kind of accomplishment. And yet most of the things I wrote have stayed there. Worse, or perhaps just more strange, I’ve misremembered those things I wrote as if I’d posted them. I’ve presupposed a kind of bed of recorded writings on this blog that were never there, that have stayed in ink and paper and never crossed over. And then, perversely, I find that I’ve only written things here, when I didn’t have them written down in any previous medium, precisely because I feared that I’d forget them otherwise.

You’ve all done this. You’ve written something, or practiced a musical instrument or read a book or any number of productive things precisely because you were supposed to be doing something else. It seems we’re always supposed to be doing something else.

But there’s another element to this that occurred to me as I was rereading an email correspondence with a friend. She told me that her dad’s death was always on her mind in the months after it happened, in a way that seemed so obvious to her, but that was not obvious to everyone else.

It happens to me too. I'll be sitting at dinner having pizza and beer with some American friends here, and I mention my dad’s death, because it is relevant to something I was talking about. Well of course it’s relevant! It factors heavily into my thinking, so it seems only natural to make explicit reference to it from time to time. And yet when I do, I have this whole lot of explaining to do and have to deal with people’s reactions which are inevitably frustrating, whether inadequate or overblown. Usually, to avoid this issue, I just don’t bring it up.

This is actually one of the great advantages of a blog as a means of communication. Blogs can be anonymous. I've been reading one such personal blog lately, which among other things is about the personal experiences of a woman who's been in an abusive relationship and was raped. By its anonymity I can read about the thoughts and insights of someone who would never have told me these things face to face, but which I’m able to access precisely and paradoxically because I don’t know her real name.

It's not anonymity that's really important though, my dad's death isn't exactly a secret that I would need to hide with a pseudonym. It’s already in the realm of common knowledge; the obituary comes up in the first few entries in a Google search. Unlike Harriett, what happened to me happens to most people and is completely ordinary in many ways. And yet any treatment I give it verbally seems inadequate, or seems to misrepresent my relation to that reality.

That last sentence seems really abstract, so let me try to be clearer by analogy. My dad’s death isn’t something that happened—it’s a reality that’s in the background of everything, like the bass part of a song—maybe you don’t always notice it’s there, but it colors everything else, and if it were possible, you would notice if it went away. It isn’t the melody, it’s not obvious and in-your-face, even though it may get a solo (and inevitably some people will start talking at this point, as if the music has stopped). It’s undoubtedly important, as it is the base upon which the rest is built. But it is important for its constant and enduring presence and not because of sharp pitch or dramatic changes.

Writing, in particular the blog medium, can be good at this not so much because of the potential anonymity though the net (although this undoubtedly does help some people), but becase it allows you to explain things on (and in) your own terms, and it gives the person on the other side of the glass the ability to take it or leave it.

I had to share this

For those of you who are dorks about linguistic differences I'd like to quickly describe an advertisement that literally could not work in English.

On the left side is the image of a good looking man in stylish clothing. Superimposed over this image are three words:

"La" actitud

"La" Campera

"Las" Gafas

And then on the right side is an image of a perfume bottle, the only text accompanying it:

"El" perfume

So subtle and completely untranslatable...

Those of you who speak romance languages explain it to your friends.

Writing about what I'm writing about

It occurs to me that I haven’t written very much about the major thing that I’m spending my second semester here doing, so I thought that I should remedy that. In addition it ties in significantly with what I’m doing here in the first place, on a number of levels.

As part of my study abroad there are several academic concentrations you can choose to pursue in lieu of simply enrolling in a few classes at the local universities. These include film, human rights, and an independent research, which is what I’m doing, and which is why I chose to do this particularly program, here in Buenos Aires. I had decided a while ago that I would come for two semesters and spend the first semester figuring out exactly what I wanted to research, and the second semester researching it.

After I’d decided this but before I came to Buenos Aires I took a course in research methods, partly to fulfill a class requirement and partly as a kind of preparation. Conveniently, the content of the class was essentially writing a research proposal detailing your topic and the potential research methods you would do to investigate it. I brainstormed a couple different ideas and sent some of them to my professor to see what she thought. But, when the day came that we had to present our topic, I decided on another topic proposal, which I’d typed up hastily that morning:

The education systems of developing countries have produced some brilliant natural and social scientists, doctors and academics, but are often unable to keep them, as these individuals seek opportunities abroad. Sometimes this occurs because certain fields are simply not available in these countries, requiring students to study in Europe or the United States in order to continue their studies. Often though it is simply the appeal of getting out of the country to a place where there are greater opportunities to make more money and enjoy benefits that are not available in the developing world. To what extent are developing countries hurt by their inability to hold onto some of their brightest scholars, and in what ways does allowing academics to study in other countries actually benefit the home country? What sort of policies should such countries enact to encourage or discourage emigration of this kind?

Although it was last minute, this wasn’t at random. I’ve long had an interest in mixing up my studies and my life, and although I’ve spent the last year and a half thinking, reading and writing about this topic, its interest for me goes back far longer.

In 1982 my father joined the ranks of these skilled migrants when he left Guatemala to study abroad, and after meeting my mother his migration became permanent. When I was born in the United States, my dad made sure that I was a dual citizen and that my siblings and I would get to know the country where the rest of his (my) family still lived. In high school I began studying Spanish (which I didn’t grow up speaking) and I’ve basically spent the rest of my life looking south.

In February my dad suffered a fatal heart attack, a week and a half before I left to study abroad. Before that time, Dad used to flirt with the idea of going back to Guatemala to teach, to retire or even to purchase farm land there. When my mom got him to read Three Cups of Tea, a book about an American climber-turned-philanthropist building schools in Pakistan (my dad was an avid climber in his youth), my dad said "I could do that. But it wouldn't make sense to go to Pakistan. I could have more impact" economists would say he'd have a greater comparative advantage, "in giving back to Guatemala". Guatemala has, in the language of my discipline, suffered a permanent loss of highly skilled human capital.

So now here I am, having missed the South I was aiming for by about a continent, and continuing to ask a question that really goes further than “brain drain”—a question about what was lost and how to replace it.