As one of us put it, "You had two choices: you could sit in your room alone, or you could go out and make a total fool of yourself. And when you did, people welcomed you, and helped you become part of their community." By the time I left Colombia, I was totally bilingual and bicultural. In fact, friends have told me that I am a different, and happier, person in Latin America – and they're right. While we may, or may not, attend high school or college reunions, it is the bonds of our shared Peace Corps experience that have held us together through the decades. For the past 50 years, we have stayed connected. I get emails from our group list almost daily, we visit each other, and we have get-togethers every two or three years.
Colombia One RPCV Pancho Lane writes: Two years of total immersion in a different culture was a turning point for each of us
This fall marks the 50th anniversary of the election of John F. Kennedy – and of the founding of the Peace Corps. Even more than Obama's campaign, JFK's victory seemed to mark a new, positive, vision of the US – egalitarian, both in class and race, committed to peaceful solutions abroad as well as at home. For many in the US, and especially in the developing world, the Peace Corps came to symbolize this "New Frontier".
In May.1961, while a delegate to the National Student Association Conference on the Peace Corps, I applied and was accepted to the Peace Corps. On June 25 I started training with Colombia One, the very first Peace Corps group, at Rutgers University. After two months of preparation in Colombian history, Spanish, and Community Organizing, 62 volunteers – all male, because we would be working in remote villages - flew to Bogotá and were assigned to rural communities throughout the country. But no matter where we served, we all visited peasant homes where Kennedy's photograph held the place of honor.
Two years of total immersion in a different culture was a turning point for each of us. As one of us put it, "You had two choices: you could sit in your room alone, or you could go out and make a total fool of yourself. And when you did, people welcomed you, and helped you become part of their community." By the time I left Colombia, I was totally bilingual and bicultural. In fact, friends have told me that I am a different, and happier, person in Latin America – and they're right.
Our Peace Corps experience changed all of our lives. Many of us went on to work in the federal government, or with international organizations such as the UNDP, CARE, and the World Bank. Others pursued academic careers in Latin American Studies, Economics, or Anthropology. I ended up teaching at a Mexican university, and making films about rural indigenous communities like the ones I experienced in Colombia.
While we may, or may not, attend high school or college reunions, it is the bonds of our shared Peace Corps experience that have held us together through the decades. For the past 50 years, we have stayed connected. I get emails from our group list almost daily, we visit each other, and we have get-togethers every two or three years.
On November 4. 2010, 34 of our group (out of the surviving 52) returned to Rutgers to dedicate a memorial plaque on the building where we trained. It turned out to mark the start of the national celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps. MSNBC covered the event, the Assistant Director of the Peace Corps and various others gave talks. For us, it was a moment to reflect on how the vision that inspired us in 1961 has affected the world 50 years later.
From the beginning, the Peace Corps was charged with three goals: to help people in the developing world; to provide a pool of trained Americans with experience in the developing countries, and to help all Americans understand the rest of the world.
Certainly Peace Corps volunteers have achieved much in the developing world, both by our effect on the countries where we served, and by providing a more positive image of Americans. Certainly also many returned volunteers have, as we did, pursued careers that reflect their Peace Corps experience. It is in the Third Goal – changing how Americans perceive the rest of the world – that the Peace Corps has not had the hoped-for impact. Kennedy once said that when there were 1,000,000 returned Peace Corps Volunteers, the US would finally be able to have a decent foreign policy. There are only about 200,000 returned Volunteers so far, and we have engaged in three disastrous wars since 1961.
The Viet Nam war cost the US around 600 billion in 1970s dollars. The Iraq war so far has cost 750 billion, and the Afghan war 350 billion. That's not counting the devastation to the three countries, let alone the destroyed lives and families, at home and abroad.
In Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, our soldiers have little or no understanding or experience of the language and culture, and so view the locals as "gooks" or "hajis". Worst of all, we are – with the best intentions, from our point of view – attempting to impose top-down solutions that are alien to the countries where we have intervened. It took us at least a year in Colombia to learn the language and culture well enough to operate effectively – and to establish the personal relationships that enabled us to make a real impact. More importantly, we were not trying to impose anything, but rather to help our new friends do what they themselves wanted for themselves, on their own terms.
During the campaign for George W Bush's invasion of Iraq, one of my Colombia One friends said to me, "If Bush were to listen to a dozen returned Peace Corps volunteers who served in Iraq, he would never do anything so stupid as to invade." I was in Viet Nam with AID in 1965, and filming in Afghanistan in 1987, and I would certainly have argued against our military intervention in both cases – because of my Peace Corps experience.
Of course the Peace Corps is no cure-all for the ills of the world. But the concept behind it - that we applied in Colombia – is: help people to help themselves, and they will look on you as friends, not intruders.
So on this 50th anniversary, my New Year's wish is for a renewed, more proactive, Peace Corps! Maybe a million returned Peace Corps volunteers will not be enough, but it would be a good start.
"Should it come to it, I had rather give my life
trying to help someone than to give my life
looking down a gun barrel at them."
David Crozier, Colombia I Peace Corps Volunteer
died in Colombia, Dec. 1961
