Q: You have a long history of activism for peace and justice. What led you down this road? Can you recall any particular influences, beliefs, circumstances?
A: My love of the natural world was probably first influenced by my mother, who was a real tree hugger. I can recall her getting awestruck by an old Oak or some other majestic tree. She would comment on unique trunk displays, on various shapes or shades of leaves, or on the sound of the wind rustling through the branches. As a teenager growing up in Miami, my “stompin’ ground” included the Florida Keys and the Everglades. I saw them both change dramatically over my time spent there and I felt a loss of opportunity for future generations to even know what will be missing from their lives. As an adult, I quit my legal secretary’s job and volunteered at the Environmental Center of Miami Dade College, where I was nurtured by some wonderful Earth Literacy mentors. About a dozen years ago I met my Co-Madre (Co-Mother), Ana Maria Vasquez, and began my travels to the jungles of Central and South America. There I met the most beautiful place I’ve ever known and watched it become a massacre site, making an undeniable connection between environment and human rights. My field of study at FIU was Environmental Sciences with a minor in Sociology, so I guess that makes me a Social Ecologist. Although, I really prefer to stay out of the boxes of ists or isms. I prefer ishs; like 9:00 ish or 10:00ish.
I was also greatly influenced by growing up in the ‘50s and ‘60s. I was a product of duck and cover drills and the piercing sound of the Saturday afternoon air raid siren. I lived a block from the railroad tracks in Miami during the Cuban Missile Crisis and I saw the tanks and missiles being shipped to Homestead Air Force Base. I was a terrified little girl who lay awake many nights thinking the plane overhead was a Russian bomber come to drop a bomb on me. Until one night, in my mind’s eye, I saw a little girl in Russia lying awake thinking the plane overhead was an American come to drop a bomb on her. Suddenly my “enemy” was no longer a slathering Russian bear, but rather a scared little girl just like me. It was an early realization that people have no vested interest in war, but governments do. Once I realized the duck and cover drills were a perpetrated ruse, not a plan of action for survival, I was mad at my government for deceiving us all about their MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) scheme and traumatizing my childhood.
And then, as a teenager, there was Vietnam. My older brother had joined the Peace Corp and was sent to Afghanistan. I was horrified by the visuals of death and destruction, and I was shocked and ashamed by photos of the My Lai massacre. I questioned what kind of dehumanization it would take to cause one human to treat another so cruelly. I began to protest the war. And I began to look at “geographic history” patterns. The imaginary lines called borders would be redrawn and names would be changed hundreds of times over. So called “leaders” would come and go, some beneficent and others unbelievably cruel. Some awful dictators, like Duvalier of Haiti and Marcos of the Philippines, were even installed with the help of my own government.
I wondered what it might mean to be a person who lives on and nurtures a plot of land in what they know to be a particular country under a particular rule of governance, only to find ones self suddenly bound by another set of rules or, even worse, to be displaced from the only land you have known. What about those relatives who now live on the “other side?” We use a May Sarton quote, sent to us by Wendy Clarissa Geiger, that expresses how we view this little planet of ours. It says, “Turn toward each other quietly and know that there are still bridges even nations cannot overthrow.
Q: What brought you to conceive of Bridges Across Borders?
A: No matter where we travel, we have seen repetitive patterns of need. All peoples need the same basic essentials of clean air and water, sufficient nutrition, adequate housing, access to basic health care, education for our children, and meaningful work to engage us. We know that diminishment of resources leads to conflict. We know that even the preparation for war is environmentally destructive. And we know that war as a means of resolving conflict takes generations to emotionally overcome, no matter what the conflict outcome. So we work on small but meaningful projects of economic empowerment in keeping with the local cultural traditions. We work on human rights issues affecting people and their land. And we work with youth to teach creative conflict resolution and steps to creating peace.
Q: You claim that Bridges is an “international collaboration of activists, artists, students and others who cherish cultural diversity and global peace.” Could you elaborate on this claim? Who would most likely be attracted to Bridges Across Borders?
A: We mean all the people with whom we collaborate on projects. The four CoFounders of BAB are all dedicated activists who came together because the respective work we were involved in has common threads despite the diverse regions of the planet where we had all been working. We work with cooperatives of papermakers and soap makers; weavers of cotton “mochilas” and palm baskets; carvers of wood and tagua, aka vegetable ivory because it looks and feels like ivory but it comes from a seed, so no animal had to lose body parts. We just held a Viva la Mujer benefit concert to honor the strength of women and we had musicians and poets and other volunteers who used their creativity to further the work of BAB. We are always seeking new POPs (People of Passion) who want to help. We have a wonderful program teaching Suzuki violin to kids in an orphanage in Magdalena, Mexico. In Cambodia we are working with a group called Tiny Toones that teaches break dancing to street kids. One of our Co-founders, Ana Maria Vasquez, is an incredible Eco-artist who donates her art to our fundraising efforts. We sell the reproductions on our website and at events. She also is an amazing mural painter and incorporates the community into the mural project. Right now they are making adobe and painting a mural with natural paints in Mexico. As for myself, I draw stick figures and make a feeble attempt at two songs on the pan flutes, but I have talents that express my passion for this work, and hope that all my organizing efforts are expressed with artistic grace. We believe that people do their best work when working at what they love the most.
Q: Considering the recent controversy over illegal immigrants and the opposition to “amnesty” by conservatives, where does Bridges Across Borders stand in relation to this controversy? In other words, it seems that you are going against the trend to tighten immigration laws and restrictions, how do you feel about that?
A: Our mission statement is to dissolve the imagined and imposed borders between us. Those borders are the stereotypes and misconceptions we have been taught about each other as well as the boundaries imposed by governments. So the first realization is that the true demarcations are those of nature and culture. Borders change at the whim of governments; mountain ranges hold firm. Next, we need to remember that things like pollution created in one place doesn’t respect the border lines, but invades areas that now pay the costs even though they never attended the consumption party. Things like pollution and global warming do not carry a passport. Then we need to imagine ourselves faced with a natural disaster in which we lose our home. We have to migrate to another county or another state. Imagine a severe drought, like a dust bowl, and your people starving. Imagine a massacre that sends you fleeing across whatever border offers any possibility of safety, even if not offering a promise of security. And even if you know that to cross a line makes you an illegal alien forced into the shaows.
To d
emonize hard working people who are trying to make a better life for themselves as illegal and criminal, is a false attempt at personal security. When I hear the argument about smugglers and unseemly types, I always get a vision of the movies we’ve seen of bank robbers and train robbers heading “south of the border” to escape prosecution. That doesn’t represent the bulk of travelers in either direction.
Why are we willing to bring in resources from a place but not the people whose loss of those resources has made them destitute? If job security is the concern, then supporting Fair Trade, rather than Free Trade, would eliminate the constant corporate global shifting to seek ever cheaper wages. And the hypocracy in policy is confusing. Trade with Communist China, no problem. Trade with Communist Cuba, no way Jose.
If homeland security from afar is the guise of a huge border wall across the south, then what about a wall across our Canadian border? The truth is we can’t build big enough walls to keep our problems in and others’ problems out. Peace is our only true security and we’d better start putting our precious and limited energy into creating that.
For us at BAB, the ability to move around and to bring visitors is crucial to being able to develop appreciation for each other’s cultures. When we can eat together, laugh together, discuss our common problems together, then we view each others culture with appreciation for what each brings to the table.
Note: Why should I not be able to have any one of my friends visit me here? It is harder to get together across those lines than most people would think. (Denying those matters of the heart (relationships) is not good use of brain matter if building good relations is the goal.)
Q: You list six major goals for BAB, which ones do you feel you have achieved with the most success and how was that accomplished?
A: Everything happens in collaboration with others. Frequently we are just the initiators and weavers, then some other group will tap in and do such remarkable justice to a program that we are delighted to pass it on and fill some other holes. We then just make ourselves secondary to the operation of the projects. By being on hand in the region we can troubleshoot and then serve as support. We never seek ownership. We just want to get things going and in self sustaining mode as much as possible. The projects themselves actually belong to the people we serve.
We frequently facilitate cross cultural exchanges, bringing people to tell their stories first hand. In addition to traveling and bringing volunteers to the regions where we have projects, we also attend their events, such as the Wayuu “Yanama” in the Colombian coastal desert this past April.
Our goal of preserving ancient cultures and ancient species is met through our solidarity with indigenous land rights, promoting Fair Trade of their crafts, and sponsoring cultural interchanges. We do our little part to preserve ancient species of sea turtles by collecting and hatching turtle eggs, then releasing the babies back to sea. It is an amazing thrill to hold a tiny turtle in your hand but a painful realization knowing that the odds are very scarce that she will survive to return to this beach for nesting.
We provide some basic services such as feeding the Elders in Jaque, Darien, Panama through our Meals on Heels program; recycling the town’s paper with our handmade paper cooperative; collecting and recycling plastics or making methane gas for cooking from organic waste in our Garbage Reduction and Transformation project, or hosting Youth Leadership Gatherings. In Southeast Asia, we work on a Housing Rights campaign; we have provided vaccines for thousands of kids who work picking through garbage at the landfill for anything of value; and we provide Clinical Legal assistance to trainees who can act as a consultant in remote villages.
Q: What obstacles, if any, did you have in achieving some of your goals? In what ways, if any, did you overcome these obstacles? If you have been stymied by some obstacles, what do you suggest would be helpful in overcoming them?
A: We work in some pretty remote regions, so one challenge is communication between here and there. Where we work in the Darien jungle there are no roads, no internet, and only two phones in town that only sometimes work. Things don’t always follow an expected timeline, so we have lots of chance to test our virtuous patience.
Getting visas to bring people here from Colombia and Panama can be a challenge to our goal of people to people sharing of cultures. It is getting harder all the time for people who do not have monetary means to be granted permission to visit.
Financing is always an obstacle. Though we keep our operating costs very “low budget” by not paying office rent it is still a struggle just to raise the funds to pay for our part time administrative assistant.
Q: In your work with Fair Trade, what ways have you found to make their merchandise more accessible to others outside their sphere of influence? Why do you feel this is a worthwhile effort?
A: Indigenous groups have always had artisans that represent their unique cultures through weaving, carving, sewing, and have always sold their crafts. Providing an additional fair outlet for their crafts is a big boon to their economy as well as helping us to connect people here in the north to their causes for self sufficiency.
In the case of the afro-population, many of whom are refugees from a massacre in Colombia now living in Panama, they landed there with nothing and no hope of making money. Now the ladies are making the most beautiful recycled paper cards. We work mostly, though not exclusively, with women’s cooperatives. Financial empowerment to women translates into immediate betterment for the family. We collaborate with other groups in Panama to market the paper in the city and those groups have even sponsored workshops for the papermakers to enhance their artistic and marketing skills. But this is a small town and we never want to set up a factory situation. Right now the ladies get together under an outdoor structure and the kids are playing while the ladies make the mash and set the deckle to dry on old tin sheets in the sun. So we can’t always guarantee quantity to be sold through some of the Fair Trade catalogs. We do want to get set up in small local Fair Trade stores, but we have to do that on a case by case basis according to stock on hand. We sell on our website as well and we are now in the process of enhancing the online shopping capabilities. We will be getting some beautiful new things for the holidays which will arrive here in mid-September.
Q: Regarding your current campaigns, you mention WAYUU solidarity and SOA/WHINSEC. Would you care to comment on these efforts? What has BAB been able to contribute towards them?
A: We have been attending the SOAW demonstrations as an organization since our inception. The School of Americas, now aka WHINSEC, is a training ground for Latin American soldiers. The “school” was previously located in Panama, where it was known as Escuela de Asasinas, or School of Assassins, until it was ousted from there and set up at Ft. Benning, GA. Closing the training ground is directly related to our work in Central and South America, since many of the perpetrators of massacres have been SOA graduates. Manuel Noriega of Panama was a star pupil prior to his arrest, by the way. Many other less infamous graduates have committed documented atrocities. For the last two years we have brought Debora Barros Fince, indigenous Wayuu representative, to the gates of Ft. Benning to speak of the massacre committed against her Colombian coastal desert community. Her clan is in exile in Venezuela right now and each year they host an international return to their land so it is not deemed abandoned and sold to the mining company extracting from the area.
Each year the U.S. Congress gets closer to de-funding this SOA t
raining ground. Like Abu Graib, a name change to WHINSEC can’t clean up the memories of the history. Too many atrocities have been associated with its activities. The trainings of SOA and funding of Plan Colombia have only served to fuel the internal conflict in Colombia. There is too much evidence of collusion between the Colombian military and the paramilitary to pretend that our tax dollars are being used well by the Colombian government. Some few readers may have seen, hidden somewhere in the back pages of their newspaper, that Chiquita was deemed guilty of hiring paramilitary who murdered union organizers in Colombia. Shame, shame, shame on Chiquita and other corporations who resort to such abhorrent behavior in order to maintain low wages without resistance!
Q: BAB has a plethora of activities, such as the Bioregional Exploration of Darien Gap, Panama. What is upcoming and how can others get involved?
We are located out in the country just northeast of Gainesville and we humbly maintain our offices in a reconstituted old construction trailer. We’re a small organization with a big reach. On occasion we host local FUNdraisers, such as our mural painting party on our office trailer or the Viva La Mujer benefit concert at the historic Thomas Center in Gainesville. If people just let us know to include them in our email events list we’ll be happy to keep them posted. But we mostly get to meet new people by moving around ourselves, so we encourage groups and classes to invite us to give a presentation. We can give presentations appropriate to all age groups on a number of topics. Another thing folks can do is to host a house party. They can invite their friends and we can even make a special dinner party and Fair Trade crafts sale. This is a great idea for holiday shopping with conscience, and we will be fresh back from Darien in September with a new and beautiful supply of Waunaan baskets, recycled paper cards, and other goodies. Maybe your group wants to sell some crafts to raise money for our collective projects, your own group’s projects, or both. For those who have a special talent to share in a hands-on fashion, we have internships and volunteer opportunities available.
Of course, we always hope that folks will support our work by general donations, personal or gift memberships, or conduct a yard sale, bake sale, or other fundraising activity to adopt a project of your choosing.
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