Banner of Blood: Reflections on Memorial Day

Banner of Blood:

Reflections on Memorial Day

No mistaking it, it’s a genuine Midwest-American celebration: Memorial Day. A morning parade filled with everything red, white, and blue kicks off the day, while posters with slogans like “freedom isn’t free” and “support our troops” plaster front yards and car windows. The discount plastic patriotic merchandise, flags, paper plates, plastic cups, garden kitsch, are only a dollar and the print on the back reminds us “made in china” Families pack into their SUVs and head to the park with coolers filled with over processed, over packaged, and over hydrogenated foods, anxious to get back to their television sets. Meanwhile, US troops are abroad, and we are blindly supporting their continual violations of human rights, their actions to protect private corporate interests, and their tactics to keep the countries opposed to capitalism intimidated and living in fear. This whole idea of remembering our fallen is a but difficult for me to conceive when the schools hardly seem to acknowledge the immeasurable number of death at the hands of US trained troops and the results of foreign policies.

This lifestyle and these ideas of patriotism, development, and the notion of the US as a world power and promoter of freedom and democracy, are nothing I am capable of being proud of. To be clear, I am not proud to be an American, and no amount of plastic flags lining the entrance of the super market will make me feel any different. I feel like we all missed that essential class called independent thought 101. And I am angry that anyone who questions theses ideals or people who think outside of the dominant discourses, have be persecuted in a witch-hunt they call democracy. This discourse’s chief enforcer is the constant bombardment of ideas about what it means to be American, to be a consumer, to be a man or to be a woman, the list is endless.

Is this freedom? If we do not have intellectual freedom and the spaces for alternative discourses to develop and cultivate naturally in communities, how can we say that the US is a free country? In conclusion, “freedom isn’t free,” but banners of blood are on sale, this Monday only, a 99 cent special.

The Role of Militarization in Building U.S. Hegemony in Latin America

The Role of Militarization in Building U.S. Hegemony in Latin America

In his book, Open Veins of Latin America, Eduardo Galeano demonstrates that the U.S. economy and its ability to wage war depend on the consumption of Latin America’s resources. During the 20^th century, the U.S. has been able to control the resources in many Latin American nations. Under the guise of development or security, the U.S. has dispossessed through military intervention, controlling the economy through loan systems, and by establishing U.S. capital interests in the region. The result of this U .S. economic hegemony, often created and reinforced with military aid, has in fact not promoted stability, but rather has created uneven development in the South. Galeano writes, “Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others” (Galeano, 2). In addition to uneven economic development, the effect of militarization to control resources has significant cultural, political, and economic impacts on the nations in which it is employed. The atrocities and lasting effects of state terror are explored in the anthologies When States Kill and Death Squads. Through these sources, it is clear that dispossession either through military or proxy intervention facilitates the hegemonic control of resources and creates legacies of violence and poverty. This essay explores U.S. military intervention as the key apparatus for establishing economic and political control in Latin America.

Galeano tells the history of resource extraction in Latin America, especially after the industrial revolution and during the development of modern capitalism. In this period, U.S. companies extracted resources like iron, tin, nitrate, and oil in many Latin American nations and established economic and political control in the region while quickly exhausting the resources. A good example of economic domination through embargos, taxation, and political manipulation, is the case of the Standard Oil cartel in several nations during the middle of the twentieth century. Standard Oil, or one of its many subsidiaries, had been established in Latin America since the turn of the century. Galeano writes, “The structure of the cartel implies the domination of many counties and the penetration of many governments” (158). Stand Oil was able to extract crude petroleum from Venezuela, México, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia; while they refined the resource elsewhere, quickly turning a big profit without returning any of the benefits to the providers. In 1939, the Mexican government attempted to take control of the black gold and nationalize their oil, but the Stand Oil cartel organized a mass blockade of Mexican petrol (Galeano, 159). Uruguay tried to resist foreign domination by constructing a refinery, but they still had to buy their own raw product from the Stand Oil cartel, eliminating the nation’s profit margin (Galeano, 161). In Venezuela, members of the cartel played key roles in creating tax cuts and evasion of worker rights, insuring over $300 million in additional annual profits (Galeano, 168). It is clear that any resistance by workers, unions, or governments, was met with new mechanisms to maintain economic control. Through this example and in all of Galeano’s work, one can see that as early as the nineteenth century, the western capital structure controlled the resources, the economy, and the government in Latin America.

Galeano demonstrated with the case of Standard Oil that corporations had already well established control in the economic and political sectors of Latin America by the mid twentieth century. However, as further internal resistance grew against foreign intervention, the U.S. turned to military intervention to secure capital investments. The U.S. used, and continues to use, military intervention to ensure capitalism as a world economic system. It seems that the public would widely protest violent military intervention for resources, but the U.S. has found several ways to skirt around this issue. For example, in the post WWII era, one major theme that was used to legitimize military intervention was anticommunism and counterinsurgency tactics. Both of these tactics lacked validity since they only served to maintain control by preventing countries from nationalizing their resources. Furthermore, these interventions have perpetuated violence and kept nations economically dependent on the U.S. Nonetheless, the U.S. has found many opportunities to fund military action to preserve capitalist hegemony.

Galeano notes that most of the military projects in Latin America are in areas rich in resources and previous capital investments (Galeano, 136). Direct military intervention has not only been used to protect specific corporations, but also to protect the larger idea of the free market. One has to ask themselves how free a market can be staring down the barrel of a gun. For example, military action has ensured the power of governments which supported foreign investment. Such is the case of U.S. military involvement in Nicaragua. Chomsky writes, “The region is one of the world’s most awful horror chambers, with widespread starvation, semi-slave labor, torture and massacre by U.S. clients. Virtually every attempt to bring about some constructive change has been met with a new dose of U.S. violence…” (Chomsky, 4-5). During a 1927 occupation of Nicaragua, the U.S. marines established La Guardia, insuring the rule of Somoza and a military state able to crush any opposition (Grossman, 64). During the fifty-two year Somoza dictatorship, La Guardia controlled the country with violence and torture methods they learned in U.S. military training camps. Almost 5,000 La Guardia cadets attended the School of the Americas during these years and in addition the U.S. military had over 164 separate programs for training proxy armies during the Somoza regime (Grossman, 67). La Guardia killed tens of thousands of people and became the elite upper class in Nicaragua, benefiting from U.S. foreign investments and their own clandestine enterprises.

In When States Kill, Grossman writes that eventually anticommunism became the U.S.’s main justification for supporting the violent La Guardia rule. Chomsky writes that the development of the anticommunist and anti-Sandinista sentiments shows the U.S.’s fear of Nicaragua’s potential economic independence (81). The result of the Nicaraguan intervention met several key goals for the U.S.: the threat of communism and nationalized resources was destroyed while U.S. capital investments were secured. Furthermore, the U.S. was later able to call on its proxy Nicaraguan army during occupations of neighboring nations.

As the case in Nicaragua shows, the military apparatus is essential to securing U.S. hegemony in Latin America. The use of proxy armies in military intervention for the control of resources is complicated because the nature of indirect intervention further separates the oppressor and the oppressed. For example, Regan and Carter administration both supported regimes that secured what Chomsky calls the fifth freedom, “the freedom to rob and exploit” (Chomsky, 47). U.S. supported violence has been systematically conducted under the guise of development plans, anticommunist sentiment, and promotion of democracy or the Four Freedoms.

Just as the U.S. trained La Guarida to combat to the supposed evils of communism and then reaped the economic benefits, the U.S. continues to provide a great deal of military assistance to Columbia. The U.S. officially intervened in the civil war in Columbia in 1989 when the Clinton administration designed Plan Columbia to eradicate the problem of illicit crop growing (Dugas, 242). However, it quickly became clear that Plan Columbia increased military funding to an already very complicated and violent situation. The U.S. aid plan financed arms and training for the state military in counterinsurgency tactics to fight guerillas and paramilitary. However, many state military officials are deeply imbedded in the paramilitary regimes (Dugas, 237). The military aid to Columbia keeps the U.S. in a certain position of power over the economic and social conditions of the country, while continually violating human rights. Dugas writes, “These decisions have sent a clear message to Colombian military officers that human rights violations will not stand in the way of receiving U.S. arms and training” (240). Plan Columbia became even more contradictory during the Bush administration. Particularly after 9/11, the goal of Plan Columbia changed to include rhetoric of counterterrorism and is currently focused on protecting the Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline (Dugas, 242-243). This adapted plan continues to ignore human rights and furthermore it protects foreign capital investment. In 2003, the U.S. sent seventy U.S Army Special Forces troops to aid in protecting the pipeline, and continues to train state military in counterterrorist tactics (Dugas, 247). Plan Columbia perpetuates civil unrest, human rights abuses, military conflict, and at the same time it is conveniently protecting one of the biggest oil pipelines in Latin America.

We have discussed in class that the conditions in Latin America are not an absence of development, but rather the product of development. The conditions in Nicaragua, Columbia, and arguably any other Latin America country with a history of U.S. involvement, will continue in states of violence and oppression under the U.S. hegemonic economic model. At the same time, the U.S. has continually drawn at-home support by creating dominant discourses and common fears of communism, terrorism, or equally obscure campaigns. The U.S. economic and military domination has left the South largely mis-developed and reliant on U.S. support. In examining the evidence of the situations in both Nicaragua and Columbia, it is apparent that Galeano’s theory is correct: the U.S. capitalist model’s ability to function is solely based on its ability to control the extraction of resources by any means necessary, in many cases with the use of the military apparatus.

Postscript

The role of the military apparatus in securing the capital interest of the U.S. is described very clearly in these materials. Yet, we can see the same situation clearly in the U.S. involvement in Iraq repeating the sequence. The contradiction that is most striking to me is that while there is published material about this connection, the media and the system that is promoting the “war on terror,” “war on drugs,” and the “spread of American Democracy” seems to overpower the much more logical arguments. History does repeat itself, especially the history of U.S. military intervention for resources.

People slap stickers on their car “to support our troops” and I have wonder if they are choosing to look the other way or if they really believe in the system they supposedly support. Sadly, I think most people really believe in the U.S. foreign relations policy. It makes me ashamed to be a part of a culture that is so easily controlled by the glowing box streaming into most U.S. kitchens and living rooms. The main threat to international security is not a “terrorist” group, but in fact the larger force of military and economic dominance.

The other issue I find highly problematic about the mainstream cultural interpretation of U.S. intervention is the fact that violence on the part of the resistance is portrayed as the root of all evil, as “terrorism,” yet violence at the hand of a U.S. soldier is seen as noble. I don’t agree with either interpretation. War is not noble and I don’t necessarily admire insurgence violence either. One of the popular questions that exemplifies this dichotomy is “did the U.S. deserve the 9/11 attack?” I think it is important to establish the difference between deserving violence and understanding the events that may have lead to said violence. I think the distinction needs to be clear between deserving the attack and there being reasons for it.

This is not a new game, just different players. The U.S. is attacking terrorist in the same way we saw them attack communism in many Latin American nations, nations rich in resources. Our nation has some of the worst geography and history ratings in public schools and it certainly shows in popular thought.

Every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction, and as we have discussed in class, one can understand the oppression in a region by understanding the amount of resistance.
Bibliography

• Dugas, John C. “The Columbian Nightmare: Human Rights Abuses and the Contradictory Effects of the U.S. Foreign Policy.”

• When States Kill. Ed. Cecilia Menjívar and Nestor Rodríguez. University of Texas Press: Austin, 2005.

• Galeano, Eduardo. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. Monthly Review Press: New York, 1997.

• Grossman, Richard. “The Blood of the People: The Guardia Nacional’s Fifty-year War against the People of Nicaragua.” When States Kill. Ed. Cecilia Menjívar and Nestor Rodríguez. University of Texas Press: Austin, 2005.

• Noam, Chomsky. Turning the Tide: The U.S. and Latin America. Black Rose Books: Montreal,1987.

Civil Unrest between Venezuela, Columbia, and Ecuador

Editorial Rant: Civil Unrest between Venezuela, Columbia, and Ecuador

A couple of days ago, I read a headline that distracted me from my schoolwork, I noticed a ticker come across the screen, declaring the situation between Ecuador, Columbia, and Venezuela is worsening.

I shook my head in frustration. I tried to return to my work, but I became distracted by my thoughts about the roots of this conflict. I began to surf the articles from the last four days on the developing crisis between the three nations. Earlier this week, Raul Reyes, a Columbian rebel leader was assassinated by paramilitary causing a domino effect of finger pointing and militarization of the region. To my disappointment, but not to my surprise, there is no mention of the United States government, funding, or military in the reports. Some readers may finds themselves asking why I find this problematic, I explain below:

The US is in some way connected with these events. Having studied these relationships in university courses, I know that it is possible for blood to be shed in Columbia without staining the hand’s of any US solider. To be more specific, the US may not have troops deployed in any of these nations, but they do contribute a hefty amount of military aid to Columbia. (Columbia is second only to Israel in US military aid). This monetary contribution, supposedly to fight the war on drugs, actually supports a strong paramilitary in the region.

The murder of Raul Reyes and other rebel leaders by paramilitary has caused political, social, and military unrest between Ecuador, Columbia, and Venezuela. All the delegates have been removed from their neighboring positions and battalions and tanks sent to the border. Chaos is quickly developing.

So I ask myself, what is the motivation for the US supporting this paramilitary action abroad that would cause such chaos in countries where they claim to be supporting the development of democratic values? In my opinion, the answer is quite simple. Like other foreign polices, this case is a perfect example of military funding that seeks to secure resources and also play on the fear of the American public. The US has openly opposed Chavez and his policies in the past, and I don’t believe the roots of this conflict are any different. In the last Venezuelan election, Chavez was elected by the democratic majority and the US paramilitary tried to bring him out of power. He has put an embargo on oil going to the US, when Venezuela used to be the 7^th biggest importer of oil to the US. He contradicts everything the neo-liberal politics emphasize; he wants his country's resource to benefit its own people, not a foreign investor. Not only has Chavez allowed his country to take control of its own resources, but there was recently talk of having other neighboring nations join the embargo as well. For this, Chavez’s politics are seen as a threat to the US handling the “free” oil market.

It is difficult to see these countries banning together now, considering the recent developments. It is really unfortunate, especially considering that Chavez attempted to negotiate peace talks between the conflicting militants groups in Columbia. If the nations had been able to join together in an embargo, they would inevitably become more economically independent, no longer requiring the financial crutch of the US military aid.

Considering all this information, I am implying that the military funding for the war on drugs is indeed the central source of the recent conflict between Venezuela, Ecuador, and Columbia. This is of course, my own speculation. However, I do think in democracy we have the responsibility as citizens to constantly question our country's foreign policy, know where our tax dollars go, and question the amount of involvement we have in developing international issues.

The bottom line is that the situations and conflicts are complicated and they become even more complicated with money and pressure streaming in from the US and US corporations. Wake up America: the US in not just at war in Iraq, but in fact funding conflicts to have part in controlling resources abroad.

Literacy in Amazonian Peru

Literacy in Amazonian Perú:

Teaching in the Community of San Pedro de Mangua, Loreto, Perú

A single row of thatch roofs houses connected by well worn footpaths line the thin strip of land between the Amazon rainforest and the Napo River in San Pedro de Mangua, Perú. Across the river, the chacras (fields) yield yuca (root vegetable) and plátanos (plantains). The river between the community and the fields is a multipurpose source of fish, drinking water, and transportation.

San Pedro is a true community. People care for their neighbors, no one worries about their children being abducted on the way to school, and there is no hyper materialism, liked that inflicted on many individuals in American culture. There is an understanding of the connection to the earth as an entity which provides sustenance. At first glance, the community may seem like an isolated time capsule of a bucolic life from the past, but with the growing presence of globalization, the needs of the community are quickly changing and the agricultural lifestyle is threatened by an invasive industrial economy.

Many young people in San Pedro say they want to leave the rural communities to work in the city, however, many of them inevitably stay in their communities since there is often no other option. My host mom told me she and her husband decided to move to San Pedro in order for their children to have the opportunity to go to secondary school.

Truly, the only way to develop a life outside of the rural communities is to finish secondary school and go on to university or a vocational school. Taking this cultural trend into account, I ask myself, “What is the goal of literacy? Should literacy be a tool used only to leave the rural lifestyle behind?” For some, this may be the objective of literacy, however, I think literacy can further strengthen the sense of identity and improve the community through a grassroots mobilization. As education philosopher Paulo Freire writes in 1970:

“In fact, those who, in learning to read and write, come to a new awareness of selfhood and begin to look critically at the social situation in which they find themselves, often take the initiative in acting to transform the society that has denied them this opportunity of participation. Education is once again a subversive force.”

The emergence and pervasiveness of the global market makes education all the more important since it promises to liberate and empower people and communities. Imposition of outsider religious and social beliefs has altered the culture in Amazonian Perú. For example, most communities used to have a plethora natural healers like curanderos (healers), parteras (midwives), and sobadores (bonesetters). With outside influence denouncing many of these useful cultural practices, many communities are left without ways to care for themselves.

Today, the people of the Amazon region are exploited by conflicts over resources like oil and lumber which are fueled by the “war on drugs” and allegiances between U.S. corporations and Peruvian companies. This mangled web of national and international forces continues to dispossess the people economically and educationally. As a result, I believe Freire’s assertion that literacy education can help people learn about what is happening to them in order to empower them.

Literacy should not simply be seen as a way out of the rural life, rather it should be used as a tool to prevent further resource depletion and violation against indigenous cultures. For example, the trash problem that now exists in many Amazon communities did not exist in the past, when local cultural practices reigned. It used to be that all prepared food was wrapped in a giant leaf and after use was discarded; the wrapping would bio-degrade. Now plastics and batteries make their way into the communities and people discard them in the same way, but the plastic and metal materials will never bio-degrade. New solutions and understanding of these new waste products is necessary for the people’s survival. The advent of globalization without education suppresses the quality of life for communities like San Pedro. Literacy education empowers people to understand issues, like trash management, so that they can initiate positive change for themselves and their environment. It’s important to note, that literacy is not a way out of a rural lifestyle; it is a way to understand the community’s connections with the global marketplace.

I had the opportunity to join the wonderful community of San Pedro for a summer as an elementary school teacher. I felt safe and accepted in the community and fell in love with the people, the environment, and the lifestyle. It was an eye-opening experience to observe the education system during a time when literacy has truly become a crucial aspect in this community. The most poignant discovery I made was to understand how power struggles between the masses and the government are manifested in the lack of funding for rural public schools, the absence of teacher support and training programs, and centralism which all contribute to unequal distribution of literacy education throughout the country, especially in the Amazon region.

After two months of working with the students and teachers in San Pedro, I left with many mixed emotions. My feelings about the politics surrounding education are complex. I recognize that as globalization continues to expand to all parts of the world, there is now more than ever a need to promote culturally applicable literacy programs. In Perú, these programs should be designed specifically to meet the needs of different regions of the country. That is, the national curriculum designed by the Ministry of Education has no applicability in the Amazon region.

The (Other) War for Oil

The (Other) War for Oil:

Dispossession and Violence in the Amazon River Basin

In the global market, the corporate world obtains resources through dispossession: that is, corporations take from local people what is rightfully theirs. There are endless examples of foreign companies exploiting, often violently, indigenous peoples who happen to live in resource hotbeds. It seems that in the global market, resources and profit are more important than human integrity or cultural preservation. The Amazon region is a perfect example of how the global market is employing dispossession and exploitation for capital gain. The Amazon River basin is home to the world’s highest concentration of natural bio-diversity; not to mention lumber, gold, and oil.

I read an article a couple of days ago titled “Ataque a Indígenas” (Attack on Indigenous people) released by the BBC. The article recounts a massacre of 15 Waorani people. The Waorani people live in and around the Yasuní National park in Ecuador, and recently had tried to detain illegal loggers who trespassed in the area. The logger detainees aggressively resisted the people’s right to protect their land and its recourses. The loggers killed 15 women, men, and children by decapitation. This atrocious violence is sadly familiar in the region, as the surrounding area is rich in valuable lumbers and the oil reserve could potentially yield over 1,000,000 barrels. (BBC Mundo).

This case is certainly not isolated, as much of the felled lumber in Ecuador is illegal, but Ecuadorian police say that it is simply impossible to patrol theses areas. In thinking about the violent dispossession exemplified in this story, and other similar cases, I reflect not only one the causes of such atrocities but also on the brutal loss of human life and systematic oppression in the region. There is a larger structure in place here that perpetuates this situation, and simply stated: it is a war for resources. Oil drilling and processing, timbering, and crop spraying for the “war on drugs,” are rapidly destroying virgin forest and the people who live there. Unregulated pursuit of oil, lumber and other resources in the region is destroying the culture, its people, and not to mention the environmental integrity of the region.

Working in the Amazon River basin this past summer, it became quite apparent to me that the global market has indeed penetrated the region. The fable of the mysterious and isolated Amazon is a lie that disseminates ignorance about what is really happening in the region, and also perpetuates exoticism of the people and the culture. I saw that the daily passing of lumber barges quickly eroded the shoreline of the river and it tributaries while rocking the small boats of people fishing, washing clothes, or crossing the river to farm. Theses subtle changes and annoyances in daily life reflect the much bigger problem at hand. Seeing the piles of lumber stacked atop a ship spewing black smog into the pure air made me feel completely disheartened. I wondered about the lives of the people working in the industry, wondered where that lumber would eventually end up, and consequently felt shame and embarrassment for being a part of the global market that is so quickly alerting the world.

The recent massacre of the 15 Waorani people is not an isolated case, nor does this problem have a simple solution. The problem is that many corporations that come into the Amazon region form strong alliances and business partnerships with the government owned industries, freeing these corporations from regulations. It is an entangled relationship. As corporations profit on low operational costs, many governments in the Amazon region have developed a strong dependency on the outsider investment. The government, under the pressure of their reliance on foreign investors, often develops laws to protect unlimited resource extraction. However, there is little legislation protecting the rights and lives of the people who live in the Amazon River basin.

Unlike the arguments in support of a free market, these corporations actually do more to harm than good for the people in the Amazon River Basin. In fact, since the commencement of commercial oil activity in 1967, the overall number of people living in poverty in Ecuador has actually gone up from 47%-67%, while 45% of Ecuador’s export income comes from oil (Kimerling 62). Looking at the numbers, there is no denying that the quality of life in the region decreases while the corporations’ profits increase.

The recent Waorani massacre reminds us of the direct brutality that these industries bring into the region, but oppression comes in other forms as well. These industries bring pipe-lines that require mass deforestation and drilling that pollutes ground water and food sources. People and entire communities working for these companies also experienced a severance from a sustainable lifestyle. For example, Chevron-Texaco operating in the Amazon produces five million gallons of toxic waste leaking into the groundwater everyday (Kimerling 64). Various on-going class action law suits have been filed, none of them resulting in Chevron-Texaco initiating any clean-up or changing their operational procedures. In the midst of all the environmental destruction and human rights violations in the name of profit, Chevron-Texaco has earned a total thirty billion dollars in profit in Ecuador alone (Amazon Defense Coalition 2). In this case, the oil extraction and pursuit of capital yields results more like that of a war than the results promised by the free market.

Resource depletion in the Amazon region exemplifies how globalization and multi-national corporations run unchecked destroying human lives and the environmental condition of our planet. The solution lies in the hand of an informed public to reduce consumer needs for such resources, demand legislation for fair business practices, and to promote an empowered voice of the peoples living in the Amazon River basin.

References

Amazon Defense Coalition. “Chevron’s Dirty Business in Ecuador: 13 Examples That

Expose a Corporate Cover-Up.” Published report. 2006.

“Ataque A Indígenas.” BBC Mundo. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/latin_america/

newsid7245000/7245354.stm. Accessed February 14, 2008.

Kimerling, Judith. “Oil, Lawlessness and Indigenous Struggles in Ecuador’s Oriente.”

Green Guerrillas. Nottingham: Russell Press, 1996. 61-73.

Drug Use Abroad

Drug Use Abroad:

Gateways to New Experiences, Uncharted Consequences, and Cultural Exploitation

You’re a student abroad, living new and different experiences, expanding your definition of the world and its people; so when the opportunity presents itself to take part in the drug culture, do you puff or pass? Where can students draw the line between keeping an open mind and risky activity?
The culturally informed traveler should ask him or herself a series of questions:

• ‘What is the cultural norm in this situation?
• What are the possible dangers and consequences of this?
  
• What impact does this particular substance have on the people, culture, worker’s rights, or the economy?
  
• Will this experience bring me closer to the culture or push me away?’

Participating in a tradition or practice involving drugs has the potential to bring one closer to the core of cultural standards, but as an outsider, it can also be seen as exploitative, and moreover, potentially dangerous. Knowing the risks and possible consequences related to any particular substance are important in making an informed decision about drinking or drug use abroad. Every study abroad handbook warns students about drugs abroad, but never really divulge the details for these concerns.
In my experience, the cultural norms and one’s own personal comfort level have much to do with making informed decisions while abroad. That said, and because this article is public forum, my experiences abroad have also taught me that one certainly does not want to find him or herself in a situation where authorities become involved in a drug experience abroad. As a foreigner, travelers give up many of the rights that may be legally guaranteed in the States, like due process and protection from police brutality or bribery. The bottom line is there is a risk factor any time travelers participate in illegal activity.
Students need to learn the cultural norms for both young adults and the overall culture, as these two norms often tend to diverge. For example, I was talking to some of my friends who studied abroad in mainland Europe and also in the British Isles, where they experienced a very relaxed standard for drinking in the streets and city parks, a practice that is not legal in the States. Generally, this is something young adults and students are permitted to do, although it is technically illegal in many European nations. If the drinking is kept relatively tame, the police tend to look the other way. Even though this is a culturally accepted practice, students should be well informed that there is still potential for legal trouble and personal safety concerns.

In addition to personal and legal dangers these decisions may have, there is also another factor to consider: cultural exploitation. I am talking of course about drug tourism. Where can a student draw the line between exploring a culture and exploiting a tradition? As ceremonial drugs are a part of certain cultures in varied regions, having these experiences has the potential to bring one closer to the beliefs and traditions of the society. However, I think more often than not, tourists are focused on the drug and not on exploring the cultural roots of the experience.
For example, in the Amazon region there is a sacred ceremony based on the guided consumption of the hallucinogenic ayahuasca plant. The ayahuasca plant and accompanying ceremony is a very sacred tradition in shamanistic healing, a ceremony that demands much respect and preparation. I talked to one shaman who told me he would not conduct the ceremony unless the recipient lived with him for at least fifteen days, meditating, reflecting, and keeping a special purifying diet in preparation for the ceremony. Clearly, there are still many true shamans who take the practice very seriously.
Unfortunately, walking around the city of Iquitos, it becomes quite apparent that this ceremony is being exploited farther than its intended use. One can find bottled ayahuasca vended in the open air markets and the streets are littered with advertisements for ayahuasca journeys with a shaman. Interestingly enough, these advertisements are generally next to, or a part of, eco-tourism advertisements. The problem is that this very potent drug is not meant to be taken recreationally; it can be very dangerous if not administered by a true master of the holistic spiritual and healing arts.
When I was in Iquitos, there were reports in the newspaper of female tourists being violated while under the influence of the drug. Other consequences include simply becoming violently ill for six to twenty-four hours after ingestion. In this particular case, there is not much risk of being arrested or getting in trouble with the law, but there are personal safety concerns to consider in addition to the exploitation of a religious tradition. On the other hand, this specific aspect of the culture may be worth exploring for the more adventurous and more prepared traveler. It can reveal an aspect of the religion and culture of the Amazon region not available in readings or tours. If treated with respect and caution, there are some traditions that may be learning experiences for travelers.
With all the personal growth and expanding experiences abroad, many students abroad have a more relaxed view on drinking and drug use, but there is a very fine and somewhat blurry line between expanding ones mind and poor decision making. Even in this mind frame, students still have to consider the consequences of being ‘caught in the act.’ Ask yourself, ‘what rights do I have as a foreigner in this country?’
Observing local culture and simply discussing theses issues before hand will be helpful to making an informed decision. Understanding the cultural norms, the potential risks, as well as the laws and legal system of the host country will surely inspire informed decision making while abroad.