nicaragua: cigar factory

one of the most thought-provoking parts of our trip to nicaragua was a visit to a cigar factory north of managua. at the entrance to the factory we were greeted by a smiling man who was, appropriately, smoking a cigar. he spoke english well, unlike many of the people with whom we interacted in nicaragua. he was an executive of some sort in the cigar company, and he was obviously proud to give us a tour.

at the beginning of the tour, i was reminded of a visit to the glenfiddich distillery in scotland several years ago. in each case there was a boutique, even sexy, product. and the factory tour is a chance for everyone to feel good: the makers of the product get to show off, the consumers get to learn about something they already enjoy. at the end of the tour the factory gets to sell things to the visitors, and when its all over the visitors have a fun story to tell their friends back home about where cigars (or single-malts) come from.    

and this sort of boutique-factory-tourism seemed to be what our smiling, smoking guide at the cigar factory had in mind. he was enthusiastic as he led us from room to room, explaining each aspect of the process - fermenting the tobacco in ammonia, sorting the leaves according to color, cutting the leaves and removing the veins, attaching the final layer of tobacco and cutting the end, sealing each cigar in a plastic wrapper. 

but despite our guide's enthusiasm, the tour quickly took on a darker tone. in each room workers - mostly women - stood or sat at long tables under flourecent lights. there was no music playing. the workers spoke little with one another, and smiled almost not at all. our guide spoke about the workers, but rarely with them, and he never invited them to speak with our tour group or to explain what they were doing. with a few exceptions, there was nothing on the bare walls. the workers, we learned, are paid by the piece, rather than with an hourly wage. their hands worked quickly, performing the same repetitive tasks many time a minute. as we moved from room to room, i wondered to myself: are we being given a feel-good tour of a sweatshop?

all things considered, i wouldn't label this factory a 'sweatshop.' the conditions were not brutal in the way that word suggests. and the majority of the workers left around five in the afternoon, so the hours were not crushing or dehumanizing. still, the factory was dismal. the conditions were dreary and the tasks dispiriting. the work certainly appeared to be boring. it required very little development of their human capabilities. i was reminded of a line about jurgis in the jungle, where sinclair says that he was able to learn his task in about a minute, and then expected to do it over and over, all day every day.

the nature of the factory work was all the more striking in contrast to our visit to the home/workshop of artisan potters a few days earlier. the potters control every aspect of the production process - from digging the clay out of the ground to removing the finished pots from the kiln and bringing them to market. in contrast, the workers at the cigar factory each perform one task repeatedly as part of a production process with a highly differentiated division of labor. it was like moving from the world of medieval craftsmen to the industrial age. i don't mean to romanticize the work of the potters. it clearly involved hard work, and they did not live lavishly. but it was clear that they were proud of their work, and they embodied a kind of comfort and pleasure that was conspicuously absent from the cigar factory. i can say without question that i would prefer the vocation of the potters to the cigar-assemblers, if i was asked to choose between them.

nicaragua

Last week I traveled to Nicaragua with a group of professors from Boston College. The purpose of the trip was to introduce BC faculty to Nicaragua, and to open doors for future faculty involvement with international teaching and service in Central America or elsewhere. 

In essence, we spent the week as students, learning about the history and people of Nicaragua. We met with students at the Universidad Centroamericana, a Jesuit university with 8,000 students in Managua. We visited elementary schools and a women's health center. We heard lectures from the editor of a Jesuit journal of culture and politics, and the director of a development research center. We went into the home/workshop of Nicaraguan potters who demonstrated their production process - from digging up the clay and preparing it, to throwing pots on a kick wheel using bicycle spokes and other found objects as trimming tools, to firing the pots in wood-burning brick kilns that they build by hand.

We traveled to an organic coffee farm near Estili, in the mountains north of Managua. We had a delicious lunch with members of a women's farming and business collective, and we sampled their coffee. The villagers showed us coffee plants, growing under the shade of banana trees. Many of their coffee plants have been devastated by coffee rust. They also pointed out hills where contra guerrillas attacked the village in the 1980s, killing and kidnapping several villagers.

We attended mass at one of Nicaragua's Christian base communities. We met with a leading Nicaraguan feminist and former Sandinista, who talked to us about the current situation of women under the Ortega government, the problem of domestic violence, and the (lack of) women's rights in both private and public life. We listened to members of an indigenous community, some of whom fought with the contras, and who are now seeking recognition of land rights that stretch back to before the Spanish invasion. We had dinner with a leader from the autonomous regions on the Atlantic coast of the country, an area populated chiefly by people of indigenous and Afro-Caribbean descent, many of whom are Moravian Christians. We heard from Fernando Cardenal, a Jesuit priest and liberation theologian, explain his role in the Sandinista revolution. We saw what remains of the old cathedral in Managua, severely damaged in the earthquake of 1972 that destroyed much of the capital. We stopped by an active volcano. According to some, the Somoza dictators would drop their opponents from planes into the volcano to disappear them. 

The picture below was taken in Granada. I am not sure why this image was painted on the side of this particular building, but the figure is immediately recognizable to any Nicaraguan. The man in the hat is Augusto Sandino, the much beloved national hero of Nicaragua. In the 1920s, Sandino led a nationalist guerrilla campaign to oust the US Marines who then occupied the country. In 1934, Sandino was betrayed and assassinated by General Anasastio Somoza Garcia. With support of the US, the Somoza family established a repressive dictatorship that ruled the country until 1979.

new orleans: jazz fest

i spent last weekend in new orleans, celebrating the upcoming marriage of some friends. we spent time in the french quarter, and the garden district, and most of all at jazz fest. 

our local hosts were wonderful. not surprisingly, the music was great. the big name acts included fleetwood mac, phoenix, hall and oates, and frank ocean. i was pleasantly surprised by how down-to-earth the whole event was: lots of families, food by local restaurants, and very little very corporate-sponsored stuff. some great costumes, too.

scyphozoa: cnidaria

earlier this month, i made a visit with a friend to the shedd aquarium in chicago. despite having lived in chicago for 8 years, this was my first trip to the aquarium.

near the top of the list of cutest animals must be the sea otters - although i still cannot believe that their fur can grow as thick as 1 million strands of hair per square inch. and the jellyfish were marvelous:

we did not, however, see the (purportedly) immortal jellyfish. 

holiday travels: family and friends

i am back in boston for the spring semester, after several weeks of travels and visits with family and friends. here are a few pictures from those visits. the first two are of my grandmother, who lives in vaucluse, SC.