We go to the beach to have fun. Sandals, a hat, sun glasses: all set! Perhaps also a book or a beach ball. A day trip to the beach also means taking precautions: we apply sunscreen and we take mosquito repellent. We don’t want the bugs spoiling our fun.
We know the seashore is mosquito territory, but, when we go there for a holiday, we don’t plan on eradicating them. We pack food in the picnic basket, not informational flyers on larval hatcheries. If a bug bites, the answer is a slap, not a public health campaign. If there’s another bite, there will be another slap.
Bear with me: I write about mosquitoes just for illustration. Often a short-term measure is good enough as a solution and we need never address the underlying problem. Especially when we have our heads in other things. Why does this matter? Because, after four years in which Trump allowed mosquitoes to be fruitful, multiply and replenish the Earth, Biden has finally begun swatting them. And in Guatemala we celebrate because one by one he is dealing with them.
From the US’s vantage, it seems a sensible course of action. And indeed it has served well for a long time. A superpower must care about everything: from a military coup in Myanmar to the election of a corrupt judge in Guatemala. But, for the same reason, it is impossible to treat everything thoroughly. Even when the causes are known, it might be enough to just do the minimum (swat the mosquito) and right away move onto the next point on the agenda.
Of course, this doesn’t get rid of the mosquitoes. With a little luck, it just keeps them at bay. And so the war on drugs was already starting up in the 1960s, and yet here we are: six decades later and no end in sight. The US made war on the Sandinistas in the 1990s, and yet today Ortega weighs ever more heavily on the backs of Nicaraguans. Efforts to prop up Guatemala’s rickety democracy go on and on while its elections become ever less significant. Corrupt officials are singled out and even arrested, but new ones fill their places almost as fast. And US embassy officers try to scare the living daylight out of migrants with horror stories about the journey north, but still they take off: there’s so little to lose.
Maybe we do need to keep talking about mosquitoes. Because the mosquito that bit us came from a barrel of water from which another thousand will be borne. To rid ourselves of them, it is not enough to swat right, left and center. We must empty the barrel of water. But that would require that actual water come out when we turn the tap. And this would require that the Mayor not steal the money for public works from the Municipality. But electing an honest mayor would require that the elections not be bought by the owner of the shrimp farm down the street, who in his luxury home has his own well and screens on the windows, so he neither worries about mosquitoes nor cares about their breeding grounds.
And so, one thing after another, it turns out the mosquitoes are not really the problem, just the tenants of a whole system. And we help them multiply when we buy the shrimp from the owner of the farm as much as when we side with the Mayor because he shares our politics. And this applies even if neither he nor we want the mosquitoes to breed.
Swatting mosquitoes works as long as there are not too many of them and as long as we have a quick hand and a sharp eye. But in Central America problems multiply faster than mosquitoes
And so, back to the Administration in Washington and its determination to spend its holidays in Guatemala these days. Swatting mosquitoes works as long as there are not too many of them and as long as we have a quick hand and a sharp eye. But in Central America problems multiply faster than mosquitoes. And Trump and his craven enablers have already proved that there are no guarantees about the quality of the response. In just two years they could be back with a legislative majority.
Maybe it is time to go further, instead of simply dropping four billion dollars on migration—as if they were bombs on Syria. Instead of closing deals with an elite that says it will create jobs but never does, perhaps it is time to risk financing the businesses of those who will take away their monopolies. US needs to talk to new people. And, instead of the tone-deaf insistence on elections, actually ensure the space for candidates who are worth choosing, even if they don’t see eye-to-eye with American foreign policy. US needs to trust new people. Swatting is no longer enough. Perhaps it is time to do something different, with different people, for different purposes.
Image: “Shadows and projection – palm leaf” (2019, own image).
