Ugly Americans and Liberal White Guilt

Today I had to try to explain Disneyland and Epcot, etc. to my Ngobe friend who is in school with a double major of education and tourism. This is one extraordinary feat of courage over culture; I can't explain how amazing an experience this is. It is as difficult to explain how extraordinary this is, to overcome everything of a culture that is against you to go to university as it is to explain Disneyland to one who's never seen or heard of a tilt-a-whirl. Thank God for computers--that our friend does not have and even her university lacks adequate computer education--to show these strange sights of the "First World." Plus I've never been to a Disneyland or any of these theme parks and have never had any desire to go. So I was limited. Thank God for a husband with children and a husband who had money to take his children to such places. (I just wanted to see Tinkerbelle and go on Mr Toad's Ride; that's the extent of my desire. But Baja is still at the top of my list of places to go and any Disneyland thing is not on the list at all.) After looking at such "experiences" as SITTING in a car like place or on a seat in a train-like thing--just to sit--and see these "amazing" things as Thunder Mountain (Isn't that the "ride" that shows mining? I doubt they explain the atrocities and evils of mining on these adventures.) And while I can understand a planetarium and long for their pieces of the sky, I have no understanding of a Lucas Star Tour, as much as I love R2D2 and C3PO. Capitalism has never looked so evil as looking at the millions of dollars it takes to create one of these places when my friend lives in a house without a door, without screens, and who lives over a semi-tidal body of water that, by all accounts, should be a festering swamp of endless tropical diseases. Did I mention the rats that live in her community? And that her beloved cats not only catch the rats but are adored and sleep with her, despite her husband's protests? Having me for a friend who also has two cats who sleep piled on top of me has only helped her argument for sleeping with cats. Might they not keep the rats at bay? Seems only practical to me. Why are there BILLIONS of dollars to build theme parks all over the world when millions are not spent in the Third World to provide safe homes, education, safe food, medicines and health care? Why are those billions not spent on providing the Third World, particularly the Panama of my home, with condoms, dental dams, lube, and meds for HIV and AIDS when the Virus is killing the Ngobe and the Kuna and unknown thousands of Panamanians? Why are millions not being spent for liberal, open, accepting churches to welcome GLBT folks--rather than ALL the churches here who are soo conservative that only the "old" bad theology is taught? Does Disneyland in Paris make ANY sense? When does Paris, the City of Lights, need a theme park, for Christ's sakes? Isn't Paris enough? Doesn't it contain enough magic of its own without the evils of Disney? Yes, I think Disney is evil; so does John Donahue, SJ. SO THERE. And I've now seen another reason to consider Disney evil. Magic bolts and lights don't seem to help children with imagination; they seem, to me, to HAMPER an imagination. Aren't stars and planets and black holes magical enough? Why aren't we building more planetariums and observatories all over the world so children can see the real magic that inhabits the skies? Funny, I was going to write about our trip back to the First World, 4 glorious weeks of seeing friends in the cool, magic of fog and redwoods in San Francisco. Isn't it enough that we here have to deal with Evil Chiquita? And to add Disneyland to a syllabus of tourism in a land of such a fragile, magical, glorious, breath-taking eco-system without teaching classes in tourism that explain the DIRE need to hold on and protect this fragile eco-system? Why not start with the glories of one's own homeland before venturing out into the human-made "lands" where Cinderella and Snow White are not from a book fueling a child's imagination but people dressed up like Snow White and Mickey Mouse so children can say they've had their pictures made with "Snow White" and "Minnie Mouse?" How on God's green earth can one explain US fairy tales in a culture that MUST have its own, fairy stories or the like that I'd like to learn? Explaining the story of Snow White drew howls of laughter as much as the pictures we pulled up on the internet to show what Disneyland REALLY looks like? With all the gazillion dollar skyscrapers going up along Balboa Avenue at the expense of lovely old buildings and delightful little cafes and shops, I would not be surprised that, if one day, Panama does not have its own Disneyland. The idea makes me want to puke or cry or scream. As I look out my window and see the bit of sunset I can see, here in the town that Cristobel Colon and Chiquita built, I wonder at the greed of humankind's "white, Anglo, Western world" whose leaders have done nothing but take and seize and destroy the wild and wonderful places in out and of the Third World? Mount Rushmore is stupid enough in the sacred lands of the First Peoples; who knows what sacred sites are under the atrocities of Disneylands, the world over? What of Paris did we destroy to build DisneylandParis? One expects better of the French; I certainly do.