It's not the crack, it's the character flaws

 

  I for one will be very glad when this Rob Ford business is over. He has been an embarrassing and poorly considered choice for Toronto mayor on all kinds of fronts, and whether he did or didn't smoke crack on video is really just one small detail in the long Ford story.
    What to do with morally errant politicians? We're all over the map on that one, but for me it mostly comes down to putting the various specifics in context and deciding if the picture of the person who emerges is the kind of person you want running your town, province or country.
    For instance, politicians cheating on their spouses. All kinds of factors have to be considered before a voter can conclude there's cause for alarm.
    If it's a garden-variety cheat, I'm probably going to be OK with it. Sure, I dream of a world where garden-variety cheating is unnecessary because we're all so happy in our relationships, but for now, I don't think it indicates anything about whether a person is fit to govern, other than they're a lot like the rest of us. (They do lose a lot of credibility with me if they lie, though.)
     But now let's consider Elliot Spitzer, the New York governor who got caught out buying high-end services from sex workers. I felt very differently about that form of cheating  - not because it involved sex workers, but because Spitzer in his political life had played the morality card and led crack-downs on sex workers.
    So I would judge a guy like that to be a liar and a hypocrite, not to mention stupidly wasteful given how much he was paying for the sex. That is not a person I would deem fit to lead. The "crime" - cheating on your spouse - is the same, but the different contexts change everything.
     The problem from a voter's perspective ought not to be whether a politician's heart (and brain) goes wandering, but if it wanders in a way that reveals deeper character flaws indicating aspects of the person that go completely against the qualities of a leader.
    And in that context, consider Rob Ford.
    Again, I don't think things like illegal drug use, colourful friends or histories with addiction are absolute indicators as to whether a politician is fit for office. I don't know about you, but I could think of at least a dozen moments in my own life that I would not want caught on video. (Happily, smoking crack is not one of them.)
    I accept that people are complex. I remind myself regularly of my own glass house anytime I feel the urge to become high and mighty. We are the sum of all our parts, and in my experience people who have known darkness and trouble often make the very best leaders.
     In the context of the Ford story, however, the alleged act of smoking crack on video is just a sidebar. That was just the latest story line to be added to the heap of story lines that the Toronto mayor has generated since taking office. Truthfully, given all that has gone before about him, is it that big of a surprise to think that Rob Ford might have smoked crack?
    So in this particular instance, I was already convinced that Ford is not political leadership material. We don't want our communities and countries led by people who repeatedly make disastrous personal decisions and then lie to cover them up. It's not about whether there are skeletons in the closet, it's when they're still piling up like crazy, reinforcing the image of a dysfunctional, disorganized and chaotic person who doesn't learn from failure. Is that the person to lead your town?
    I think a person can have secrets and still be an excellent leader. An act has to be put into context, and measured against the actions the person subsequently took to resolve the problem. I once saw a provincial cabinet minister survive being outed as a former heroin addict, because the moment the news hit she responded with dignity and honesty about that period in her life. The way she handled the situation made me respect her even more as a leader.
     But that's not how the Ford story has played out. He went into the smoking-crack revelations already looking all wrong, and everything that has happened since has underlined my perception of the man as an unfit mayor.
   The thing that gets me the most is that Ford had to know the video was out there, and that one day people would see for themselves the truth about whether he did or didn't. But nope, he just kept denying it. The sheer stupidity of that is indicator enough of a man who isn't leadership material, which is why I lost respect for Bill Clinton after his "I never had sexual relations with that woman" speech. Past secrets don't define a leader, but really poor decision-making before and after certainly does.
    As does honesty, a quality that I think we've really let slide in our governments. What does it say about a country or community when people can't trust that their political leaders are being honest with them? I've got no problem with political leaders having skeletons, I just want to know they have the insight, courage and maturity to grow through their mistakes, not just stumble incoherently through one after another.
     So yes, the way a politician manages personal problems definitely counts for me. As does honesty. And competent at their jobs, because honesty and ethics are important but so is being able to do the work.
    It's rare that someone comes along who scores badly in every category. But those ones just have to go, and should be cause for serious reflection among the citizenry as to what they were thinking by electing such a person. The Rob Ford video might be the final nail, but he's been building that coffin of his for a very long time. 

The dark side of fair trade

Copan kids heading into the coffee fields at harvest time

When I stand in my Canadian shoes, I am an ardent supporter of fair trade – comercio justo as it’s known here in Honduras. Count me in for any practices that try to help small producers in under-developed countries make a decent living from their coffee crops and such.

But when I look at fair trade from the perspective of Hondurans, things get a little muddy. That’s especially true around the question of prohibiting child labour.

Taking steps to stop children from being forced to work to produce goods for the developed world is, understandably, one of the most fundamental principles of fair trade. Back home in Canada, I took pride in paying more for fair-trade coffee, believing that the extra cost was worth it if it ensured that some struggling family somewhere in the world earned a bit more for their coffee crop and didn't have to send their children into the field like tiny slaves.

But like I say, it all just gets a little less clear once you look at it from the Honduran perspective.

Beans, corn and coffee are easily the three most important crops for poor rural families in this part of Honduras, the west. The first two keep a family fed. The third – coffee – generates pretty much the only cash many of the families will see over the course of a year. Rural Hondurans are quite good at living a very nearly cash-free existence, but coffee is a treasured “money crop” because it pays for all the things that even resourceful Hondurans couldn't otherwise access -  like schooling, health care, shoes, laundry soap, electricity, purified water, transportation, household emergencies, vet care and animal feed, to name but a few.

In other words, coffee really matters. And fair trade really matters, too, because as always the producers are the ones who make the least money by the time coffee beans go from their fields to your cup at a high-end specialty café. I once crunched the numbers to get a sense of the difference, and it turns out that a nice cup of coffee at your favourite café sells for roughly 100 times the price that the producer got for the beans that went into that cup.

So yes, an organization that certifies producers to ensure they make more money in exchange for adhering to better agricultural and hiring practices – what’s not to like? But there’s the theory of fair trade, and then there’s the reality.

For instance, child labour. Given that more than 80 per cent of coffee producers in Honduras are small one-family operations, everybody in the family has to work when the harvest is on. And for the really poor families who don’t even own land, it’s even more important to hire the kids out to producers looking for extra hands during the harvest from October to February.

The public primary schools shut down for a two-month vacation in December-January specifically so children can work in the fields. When the coffee season is on, giant truckloads of children being driven off into the hills around Copan Ruinas or even to nearby Guatemala is a routine daily sight.

It’s child labour, there’s no doubt about that. In an ideal world, these kids would be in school rather than working. But it’s also the only way that a lot of Honduran families can make it through the year. For mothers with small children, taking their kids along for a day of picking coffee is often the only option if they don’t have anyone to look after the child while they work.

For these families, the well-intentioned fair trade prohibition against child labour looks very much like a threat, a risk to their livelihoods. If all the growers in Honduras actually stopped using child labour, the result would be disastrous for so many people. From a Honduran perspective, prohibiting child labour actually increases the risks for children.

Nor is the certification process easy, or cheap. Some of the small co-operatives have figured things out, but it would be difficult if not impossible for a small independent producer to get certified.

And yes, fair-trade beans fetch a higher price on the market for producers. But meeting the requirements for fair-trade or organic designation also means higher costs. Last year, a local fair-trade-certified coffee co-operative here in Copan also learned the hard way that buyers sometimes just declare they've got enough fair-trade product for now, leaving producers to sell on the regular market regardless of the extra time, work and money they've put in as certified growers.

What’s an ethically aware coffee drinker to do? I’d suggest buying from a local coffee-roasting company that purchases directly from growers in under-developed countries. I went along on a coffee tour earlier this year with an Australian couple who own Jasper Coffee in Melbourne, and I was really impressed at how much support they give the Copan producers who they've been buying from, and how much interest they take in their lives. That’s the kind of coffee company I’d like to support. (In Victoria, Level Ground looks like it might have those kinds of relationships.)

And please, continue appreciating the principles of fair trade, and the good work that the movement has done in under-developed countries. It’s just that like everything else in this world, doing the right thing is more complicated than just buying into a brand. 

Water's Edge: A short video of the beautiful Moskitia

    First morning back in Copan Ruinas after more than 2 weeks in the Moskitia. I'm happy to be home, but going through the 44 gigabytes of video footage I brought back from the region has certainly reminded me of how lucky I've been to be able to explore this gorgeous part of Honduras.
    I'll be making at least three short videos from the trip - one that highlights the projects in the region of my organization, the Comision de Accion Social Menonita, a second that ties into another CASM project to try to attract tourists and investors to the area, and this 5-minute glimpse of the region that I made this morning to share with my readers and Facebook friends. Hope it whets your appetite for more, because underneath all that astounding beauty there are a lot of problems that the region needs help with.
 

A wondrous place, a fragile future

   

Sunrise at Palacios

This place, this place. With each passing day I am astonished by its beauty a little more, and a little more worried for its future. What will ever become of the fabulous and vulnerable Moskitia?

    In another life, the Moskitia would be a world-renowned destination sought out by adventure travellers who crave that thing that’s so hard to find in this modern world of ours: An authentic experience. Whether the travel fantasy is vast stretches of empty Caribbean beaches, thriving indigenous cultures, or a world of lagoons, rivers and wildlife to explore, the Moskitia delivers. Monkeys, toucans, orchids, herons, fish dinners straight from the sea – all here.

    But this is not another life. And the overwhelming presence of narco-trafico in the region – while not nearly the danger to tourists that it is to those working directly in the business – pretty much guarantees that the Moskitia isn’t going to be seeing a lot of new travellers any time soon.

    The people who live in the Moskitia would love to see more tourists passing through. Jobs are hard to come by in this isolated and neglected region, and tourists boost the local economy in all kinds of ways – from the tours they take to the food they eat, the gas that powers their boats, the hospedajes and lodges they stay at while here, and the places they pass through on their way into the Moskitia.

    But the tiny toehold that the industry was just starting to get eight or nine years ago has ground to a halt under the weight of the 2009 coup in Honduras, a struggling global economy, increasingly dire travel warnings from the U.S., and the growing presence of serious-looking armed men in the cocaine business who don’t take kindly to outsiders.

    The Moskitia has always been a place for pirates. The state of Gracias a Dios, which encompasses the Moskitia, was practically made for illegal activity with its 16,600 square kilometres of waterways, hidey-holes and deep jungle. But cocaine trafficking is not just a few bad guys in eye patches stashing plundered booty, it’s a multi-million-dollar international business that is deeply integrated into life, government and policing systems in Central America.

Gulls and terns gather at the sandbar near Brus Laguna

    I visited Brus Laguna yesterday with my work mates, taking photos and videos for what is intended to be a promotional video that will spur tourism and investment in the Moskitia. Unfortunately, almost everyone we talked to in the little town was glum and worried, brought down by two murders this week, the murder of a couple and their young child a couple of weeks ago, and a rather horrendous shoot-em-up between rival drug traffickers a month or so ago that left 13 dead.

    Nobody’s killing tourists, of course. But that’s of little comfort to tour operators who are understandably nervous about bringing people into a situation that is well beyond their control. (Truthfully, well beyond anyone’s control.) One woman who was organizing tours in the region as part of a small Miskito collective cited two incidents last year that convinced the 11 families who had formed the collective to just pack it in.

    In the first incident, one of the small planes that brings the cocaine into Honduras from Colombia landed very close to where a group of travellers was staying. Nothing happened, but several of the travellers were very curious about the late-night landing and the small specks of light that appeared in the area after the plane came in.

    In the second incident, a tour guide was leading travellers through the jungle when suddenly a group of heavily armed men passed by. Pressed to come up with a quick answer as to who the armed men were, the tour guide told the group the men were guardabosques – forest conservation officers.

    That got everybody through a difficult moment. But fearing for the safety of future tour participants and of those working with the tour group - who would ultimately be blamed by those AK-47-toting “conservation officers” for bringing outsiders into the territory - the collective shut the tours down this year.

Miskito fishermen salt the day's catch, Brus Laguna

    My own travels here have been unadventurous, but for the countless sightings of super-powered boats carrying armed men zipping through the waterways of the Moskitia. But I have the benefit of being with my co-workers - all Hondurans and known in the area as staff of the Comision de Accion Social Menonita.

    My co-workers tell me if and when it’s safe to take photos and videos when we’re out and about, and I do what they say. I don’t scare easily, but even I don’t think a fair-skinned stranger toting a camera and stumbling solo into a place like Brus Laguna would be a good idea right now.

     The locals have been living with narco-trafico for many years now in the Moskitia, and they’ve all learned how to pretend not to see it, how to adjust their daily routines to avoid the dangerous hours of commerce and the high-risk areas.

    But how can you tell a tourist not to take photos because they could be putting their own lives or those of others at risk? How do you ensure they don’t wander into a situation that they’d be well-advised not to wander into? How do you keep everybody calm when – unlike the locals - they’re not at all used to the sight of armed and largely unfriendly men, or even the balaclava-wearing military doing boat patrols? And how does one convey to the narco-traficantes that this is just a garden-variety traveller wandering by, not an undercover DEA agent looking for trouble?

    Well, you can’t. That’s the essence of the problem in the Moskitia. So much beauty, so much potential risk. Now the Honduran government has signed an agreement with a British company to allow massive oil exploration in the region - a cause for concern in any fragile environment, but especially worrying in an ungovernable area under the management of a government that doesn't care to manage anything at the best of times. 

    I hope a day is coming when the people of this amazing region can put all of their troubles behind them and welcome the world. But at the moment, that day seems a very long way off.   

When cocaine is all there is

   Drugs are on my mind, as they often are these days. South American cocaine, to be more specific, 800 tons of which are reportedly moved north every year to eager markets in the U.S. and Canada. And the majority of it passes right through this region where I’m working at the moment - the Moskitia.

   Just before I left Copan Ruinas to come down here, I was telling an American friend about how I loved coming to this gorgeous place but at the same time always felt a bit on edge because of the enormous presence of The Business, as I've come to think of it. She was astounded that such a thing could be going on in plain sight without the military and Drug Enforcement Agency being all over it.

   But of course, that’s the thing about The Business in a country like Honduras (or anywhere, for that matter): It’s complicated.

   One of my co-workers here in the Moskitia was complaining this week about the tendency among people in the scattered, isolated villages around here to view the industry as an employer rather than a scourge.

   But in truth, it IS an employer, in a region that has damn few. It’s also a customer for the handful of hotel and restaurant services eaking out a meager existence, and probably even an emergency lender at the neighbourhood level for families in a jam.

   The Business owns real estate, legitimate businesses, tourist attractions, gas stations. When the notorious Los Cachiros cartel was busted last month, people in the cartel’s home town of Tocoa protested over the jobs that would be lost if authorities shut down the cartel’s many businesses, which include a very popular private zoo.

   Here in the Moskitia, who can blame anyone for getting in on some of the thriving business going on right in the ‘hood? The people are completely on their own here, ignored by their government and largely shunned by development organizations. They've got no electricity, no infrastructure, no money that would let them leave and no jobs that would help them stay. 

   If you were sitting in your crappy shack with your kids getting eaten alive by mosquitoes coming in through the holes where the windows would go if you had the money to buy any, what would you do? Those of us from drug-consuming countries like to frame the selling of drugs as a values issue, but it’s just another way to make a living in a place like this.

   A dangerous way to make a living, mind you: Narco-traficantes have a way of settling scores that leave women, children and countless young men dead, as two recent incidents in the Moskitia proved yet again. It’s a business with a terrible penchant for violence. The presence of the industry in Honduras is not benign, but I suspect it’s too well-integrated and perhaps even too essential to the country’s economy - and certainly to the economy of the Moskitia - for anyone to put a stop to it.
     Whatever the solution, it won’t involve sending armed troops into this fragile region to do battle with the “bad guys.” I don’t know if the lines were ever clear, but they certainly aren't anymore.