Message-ID: <33170BCD.6BD6@uniontel.net> Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 08:46:05 -0800 From: David Johnson <mailto:pinefarm@UNIONTEL.NET> Subject: Middle class values To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
Like almost everyone who talks about third world development, I
used to deplore the lack of a middle class in these countries. I did this
without really thinking too much about it and continued to do it even
after my own experiences seemed to pull me the other way.
I was a Small Business Volunteer but, when I got to my rural
site, I found that one of the main barrier to any sort of meaningful
development was the very people I was suppose to be helping ie: the local
merchants.
These people seemed to do all of the things I was suppose to help
them with. They kept good books, they were efficient and I came to
dislike them as a group.
They understood the campesinos in ways that I never would and
they used this knowledge to take advantage of them and to enrich
themselves at their expense.
They stocked all of the gaudy crap that they knew appealed to
them and they refused to introduce items which could have helped them.
The few hardware items they stocked, such as pipe fittings cost anywhere
from two to three times what they cost in the capital.
` If you wanted to buy steel pipe, for example, all they stocked
was 3 meter lengths which they would not cut or thread.
Even though the campesinos cut all their firewood by hand, they
wouldn't stock the small bow saws which were also readily available in
the city. I would ask them about these things and they would say that
nobody ever asked for them. This, of course, because nobody knew they
existed.
They were, as a group, the most conservative and anti progress
group I ran across with the possible exception of the local school
administration, another middle class group.
The merchants were always nice to me in an oily sort of way
where-as the school people were rude and down right mean to the education
volunteers who attempted to work with them.
The merchants could afford to humor me because they knew that I
wasn't actually going to be able to accomplish any of the things I tried
to do.
There was an agricultural coop in the town and this was also the
property of the town middle class. The campesinos belonged but, the
better educated, sharper town people held all the power and routinely,
over the years cleaned out the treasury through loans to themselves.
Surprisingly, I found that I liked the much maligned upper class
better than I did the greedy, grasping merchants. I even came to like
several of the patrones who held the campesinos in servitude with their
loans.
I didn't want to do that but, I found that, while they took a
rather patronizing attitude toward my ideas, they did, at least, listen
and tell me what they thought. The campesinos would never do that. There
was that wall of courtesy between us. Neither I nor they would ever
express what we actually thought. I would write my views in my journal
and they would, I suppose, discuss my ideas, whenm I wasn't around.
With the patron, if he thought I was full of shit, which I often
was, he would tell me so. I needed that.
These guys were not the bloated exploiters I expected them to be.
They were progressive, hard working guys. Cowboy hats, boots, pickup
trucks with Cb radios long hours and hard days. The kind of people I
instinctivly like.
I gotta think some more about this before I write any more.
Dave Johnson