Anchal Kannambadi
Article: http://panampost.com/carlos-sabino/2015/11/16/foreign-aid-bankrolls-violence-in-guatemala/
This article
is about the Norwegian Embassy, and how they are attempting to aid Guatemala in
their Oil export, however they seem to have a political agenda, and are causing
more violence between Guatemalans. The Norwegians believe that they are working
well with the people, however they have restricted the growth of the
Guatemalans instead. Since Guatemala has a complicated political system, the
Norwegians do not realize that they are promoting extremist groups, which
causes more harm. The Norwegian embassy has the intent to help
finance and support the “indigenous communities” within Guatemala, but they are
not realizing that their money is going towards organizations that “treat
conflict as a profession.” At the end of the article, it is stated that the
Norwegian embassy has realized that their involvement with Guatemala is not
beneficial, and they have ended their experiment.
This article reminds me of our discussion on War, Politics, and Power, in which we talked about how Power and violence tend to go hand in hand. Although Norway wants to help out Guatemala, they are harming them more, because Norway, which is a democratic country, seems to want to advance their allies and political agenda, but they are causing more harm. I see this idea as something similar to what Michael Foucault believed which was how 'we cannot have perfect knowledge of the world because everything we know is filtered through biases.' Norway seems to want to help out Guatemala, but their "idea" of what is considered helping, does not seem to help anyone. Foucault's idea on power also is that power is about reaching goals, and although Norway has the right idea of funding other third-world countries, they were not doing it for the benefit of the Guatemalans rather it was for the benefit of the Norwegians.
I agree that today, power and violence seems to go hand in hand. Many people establish their power through violent means. It is definitely a more common way to establish power. I also agree that many countries are motivated by their own goals.They often use doing good as a cover, but in the end most of the actions they do it is because it benefits them in one way or another.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that power and violence are strongly related especially when a dominant power is aiding an "third world" country in some way. Foucault also heavily stresses the importance of knowledge in power. Norway's lack of knowledge of Guatemalan politics is what lead to the heavy violence within Guatemala. I think this is a common theme in any kind of colonial aid as well. The dominant power is only focused on its goals that it doesn't see what it's doing to the country it's actually supposed to be helping.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Foucault that we can not have perfect knowledge of the world because we see it through biases. I think that this happens a lot with powerful nations and third world countries. Powerful nations sometimes get involved in situations to them that may seem bad but to the other nations it is not and sometimes they create a bigger problem within nations just to seem like savior.
ReplyDeleteThere definitely seems to be a trend where first world countries attempt to "help" third world countries, but do not have enough knowledge of the political system in that country and instead make things worse through their ignorance. The main examples I am thinking of are the US's actions during the Vietnam War as well as our attempts at nation building in Afghanistan. I agree with Briona that the dominant nation sees themselves as the "saviors" of the smaller nation, but instead are only creating more turmoil and imbalance within the country.
ReplyDelete