Consciousness of wealth:
On Christmas afternoon a group of children in La Canoa held a real baseball bat and ball for the first time in their lives. They had been used to making substitutes in order to play their favorite sport. They touched the bat the way an antiquities art collector will touch a priceless crown of gold, covered with huge diamonds and rubies. It resonated within them as an object that gave them extraordinary pleasure.
In the eyes of the beholder:
We discover that the appreciation of beauty requires a prior cultivation... a learning process. These very same children would not be impressed with a brand new professional soccer ball or a four hundred dollar Big Bertha golf club.
The beauty of saving a place for future generations:
The countryside in the Dominican Republic is undergoing a profound change. When the Old Testament speaks about the sacredness of caring for a farm or a range as a God given inheritance, the beauty of that awareness is lost to contemporary Dominicans. Today´s youth have yet to discover the wonder of cultivating a sacred trust.
Food wars:
Staple foods become profane ...things whose price is manipulated by wealthy government subsidies. Local farmers lose the energy to compete with the beans of powerful agribusiness. Little holdings pass into the hands of migrant workers who have no rights to the land. They work it as a "thing" ... rather than as a living trust for the benefit of a family that extends its reach into the future.
General Candalier:
For a few years, General Candalier fought against deforestation. He used strong methods to inflict pain on those who would chop down trees without planting more of them; paving the way for soil loss. But those policies did little to foster a spirituality of the land. Eventually his harsh policies won him many enemies who used political power to marginalize his efforts. From his experience we learn that force alone will not teach people to love the land and want to protect it for the future.
2008, the year of the conuco:
When the slaves fleeing Egypt arrived in the "Promised Land" they found all of the best properties occupied by walled city dwellers who lived close to rivers; so they moved up into the mountains and began the laborious process of transforming wild lands into "conuco" or self sufficient farms that soon became capable of feeding more than the immediate families. They went from wandering in the desert to marveling at the growth of food close to their homes. Today´s modern generation of Dominicans wander in a desert of materialism. May 2008 be the year when more people flee from this slavery and discover the simple beauty of food growing close to home.
