Willie Nelson = Globalization

As I noted on my facebook page, he's looking really old. He is a master
showman, though! Emily and I shelled out our $110 (for the two of us)
for pretty good seats to the concert at Red Rocks Ampitheatre. Aside
from a cameo appearance by Dennis Kucinich (which makes me roll my
eyes), the concert was fantastic. Old stuff, new stuff, that same old
guitar that had holes in it fifteen years ago (at least)... Awesome.

In some ways, Willie Nelson represents much of what's right with
America. Not the fact that he looks to be 232 years old, but the
remarkable number of musical traditions that you hear wound up in his
music. Jazz, blues, the African-American spiritual tradition,
bluegrass, cowboy ballads, folk, rock and roll... He's managed to
incorporate all that and more--and each of those musical genres has its
own complex global pedigree. Africa, Ireland, the Caribbean, New
Orleans, New York... Like the states. We don't have a single,
monolithic culture, but we've combined an almost infinite number of
cultural traditions, blended them together, and produced something new.
And maybe (at least in Willie's case) something better.

"...on the road again..."

Villainy

I'm not sure it's okay for Aubrey to use the phrase "chillin' like a
villain." I mean, what's next? "I was hangin' wit' me and my thugs"? Anyways, "villainy" is exclusively the property of individuals with curly moustaches (or zig-zaggy moustaches, like Wario), cowboys wearing black hats, and Canadian landlords tying beautiful young women to the railroad tracks:

"You must pay the rent!"
"I cannot pay the rent!"

However, the following phrases would clearly be acceptable:

I'm in Italy...

"Relaxing like a white person,"
"Fighting off Ninjas"
"Fighting off Pirates"
"Watching the Ninjas fight off the Pirates"
"Watching the Pirates fight off the Ninjas"
"Making fun of Silvio Berlusconi"

Great night, crappy morning

Slept great last night, in my expensive hotel room right across from the
Mexico D.F. airport. Nice soft bed, and air conditioning to boot.
Plus, the sign said that the tap water was drinkable. I didn't test it,
though. After a great (though too short) night's sleep, I woke up to an
unfortunate stomach ailment which had me a little worried. I made it to
my flight in time, and the plane is descending into Denver now. Gracias
a Dios, I'm traveling today on a plane, and not on a bus. Can't wait to
see Emily.

Why on God's green earth...

...does everybody in Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras assume that I want
to pay in dollars? I don't even carry dollars in the states!

Pictures

In other news, I've updated my web site with new pictures--if you're so
inclined, go to

http://sobek.colorado.edu/~wrightgd

Then click on "My Life Outside" and "Guatemala '08" link.

Guatemala City (Again)

Made it into the airport. It's really getting nice. Last year when I
was here, they hadn't installed a lot of windows, and the rain was
coming in. There's still a lot of work to do, but it's nicer than (a)
Juarez Airport in D.F., (b) O'Hare, and (c) Juneau, AK. I think it
might have been cooler the last time, though, both because of the rain
coming in, and also because of the construction workers cooking their
lunches on open fires under the terminal building (which is raised on
columns).

It's about even with Moline, Illinois, since Viru Viru (Guate.) has a
Pollo Campero, and all Moline has is a map of the Moline/Davenport area
tiled into the floor. Come on--Moline/Davenport? That's the least
geographically interesting area in the Universe, except for the vast
areas of space between the stars which have no matter. I think they
should have reconsidered, and installed a swimming pool with water slides.

One thing has me confused, though--there are drinking fountains here.
Does that mean that you can drink the water? I won't be testing them,
but I'm curious.

The Ancient Mayans and Political Legitimacy

I've already talked about Mayans and International Relations, so it's
time for and "Ancient Mayans meet Comparative Politics" post.

The Ancient Mayan city states were amazing--huge temples, remarkably
well-developed mathematics, the world's most accurate calendar, etc.
Freakin' brilliant. And, unlike the Incas, they had a writing
system--didn't keep all of their knowledge tied up in knots (literally).

However, when you get past all the glitz and hype (I know that's a
strange way to put it, but you know what I mean) the whole system was an
elaborate way for the noble classes to live off the backs of the
peasants. There was, of course, no democracy, and my interpretation of
the Mayan system is that all of this stuff--the temples, the human
sacrifice, the ritual torture and self-torture--was aimed at generating
a sense of legitimacy for the regime. If they could use ceremony to
convince the population that they could communicate with the gods to,
among other things, make it rain on a regular basis, they could keep
getting the poor people to feed them.

This gets to something of a cognitive model of politics--as opposed to
the rational choice model that Zane and I were arguing about a couple of
weeks ago.

A rational assessment of costs and benefits is an important part of the
system, but it's important to recognize that the reason this system
worked for so long was that people _weren't_ always rational, at least
in an economic sense. The reason is that their belief systems were not
a reflection of the way the world really works.

In other words, the rulers really couldn't start the rain, so it wasn't
rational for the peasants to keep feeding them. However, the peasants
didn't know that until the climate started to dry out--one of the forces
that Mayanists apparently believe brought about an end to many of the
Mayan city states.

On the other hand, there are some interesting interpretations about a
rational choice interpretation of the way the Mayans did believe.

For example, why on earth would the Mayan ruler pierce his penis with
the spine of a stingray if not to provide a very dramatic signal to the
people that their belief system was accurate: "If I do this really
painful thing, and say it's for the purpose of religion, people will be
more likely to believe me than if I do something really pleasant and say
that I'm bringing the rain."?

Personally, I would much rather be the ruler that says that he needs to
eat a big plate of pancakes every day to make sure the corn grows, but
since you already know that I love pancakes, that might be a hard sell...

Mayan Traditional Costume

One of the most fascinating and beautiful things about traveling around
Guatemala is the beautiful traditional costumes the (mostly) women and
(occasionally) men wear. The colors are simply stunning, and every
village has a slightly different design, although more and more Mayan
people are switching to factory-produced costume which is still
beautiful, but doesn't have a strong regional or village tone.

Regardless, I will eventually try to put some pictures up to show some
examples, though I don't have many photos of Mayan costumes--women here
are famously averse to having their pictures taken.

Some people believe that the Mayan costume was originally imposed by the
Spanish, which wouldn't surprise me, since the clothing here has some
interesting similarities to the clothing worn by Quechua and Aymara
speakers in Bolivia and Peru. Regardless, however, the Mayan people
have taken ownership of the clothing, and they identify very strongly
with their traditional costume as one of the more important parts of
their costume.

It would be interesting to know more about the origin of the
costumes--that is, the origins of the differences between regional
costumes. I wonder if regional costumes play an economic role--similar
to the "branding" that marketers engage in for consumer products today.
If village A has a particular costume and a particular product, and you
see somebody with that pattern on, you can be pretty sure that they'll
be selling that product. And if it's a high-quality product, consumers
will come to associate the costume with the good and it's quality.

It's also likely that the costume plays a political function in terms of
local security--even if you don't know everybody in the region, if you
see somebody wearing a strange costume on, you know to keep an eye on
them, because they're not constrained by the local kinship bonds in the
area...

Just some thoughts--somebody (some Anthropologist, probably) knows all
the answers to these questions, but I was thinking about this last
summer, and the thought popped into my head again today for some reason.

Money

"Quetzales"? "Lempiras?" Why on earth would you decide to name your
national currency one of those things. Or "dollars" even. What silly
names.

I like "peso" and "pound." Those make sense. What if we had named
_our_ currency after our national bird? The "bald eagle" would soon be
known as the "baldie." Or worse, if we had followed B. Franklin's
advice and adopted the wild turkey as our national bird, they would be
"turkeys." That's worse than the Canadian "loonie."

No offense to Turks or Victor Borge aficionados intended. I'm not
talking about the country, I'm talking about the bird.

Another Soap Box

Perhaps it's the heat down here, but the microbus ride got me thinking
about another American phenomenon, which is nationalism. Okay, I of
course, realize that nationalism isn't a purely American
phenomenon--that there are nationalists everywhere, and of every
stripe. However, how can we be such strongly nationalistic people in
the states, when so few of us have actually been to other countries to
see how our lives compare? How can we make a reasonable comparison
without really knowing what goes on in other places?

I would, of course, consider myself relatively nationalistic--I think it
would be hard not to realize how great things are in the US with just a
little bit of travel down here. But I really wish that more Americans
had the inclination to travel in places like this, both to understand
their problems a little better, and to understand what's so great about
the U.S.

Immigration and Trade Policy

Started out my day in Chiquimula, where a Guatemalan guy helped me find
the right microbus--as he was leading me in the right direction, we had
a conversation that started out with me asking for the directions, and
ended with him telling me about all the places he had been in South
Dakota.

Somewhere along the way, he told me that he had been deported by U.S.
immigration authorities about six months ago, from Southern California.
Apparently didn't harm his goodwill towards us Estadounidenses, though.

After we found my bus and shook hands, I got to thinking about the
simplistic ideas of the anti-immigrant advocacy crowd, who believe that
immigrants are taking jobs away from US citizens and importing
undesirable cultural traits.

It's no coincidence, I think, that these are the same people that argue
vehemently for unregulated free trade.

Not that I'm one of the anti-globalization crowd (I'm not) and not that
I believe the world is this simple (it's not), but the people who
support free trade but oppose immigration do not see the trade and
immigration issues as complex shades of grey. They see simple shades of
black and white:

trade = good
immigration = bad

Broadly, this is consistent with the idea that globalization is a
zero-sum game, and we (the US) gain from trade, and the other guy (the
Guatemalans etc.) gain from immigration. It's further consistent with
an unwillingness to share the benefits of globalization. We want to
import cheap consumer goods from China, but we don't want to allow the
poor Mexicans take advantage of our better-paying labor market.

Like a teenage kid who wants to enjoy all the benefits of the good life
without sharing any of the responsibilities...

Makes me mad, when I think about how that sort of attitude might have
impacted my day. What if that guy was mad about his deportation, and
decided to take it out on the only Estadounidense around?

I'm with the crowd that favors regulated, increased global trade, and
regulated, increased migration. Free movement of people and goods to
facilitate markets, with democratic regulatory procedures, when markets
don't produce desirable outcomes (like increases in poverty and
inequality which sometimes result from unregulated markets).

In any event, I hope that the Guatemalan guy who helped me out today
will get another chance to come back to the states legally in another
year or two, under new immigration laws which permit greater
immigration, but more closely regulate the immigration we have. Blows
my mind that the far right wing rails against the welfare state, but
wants to stop people who want to come to _work_ from crossing the
border. That's nonsense.

Things I'm looking forward to once I leave...

1. Seeing Emily
2. Granola
3. Yogurt
4. Bolivian coffee
5. Cuy

Things I'm going to miss about Guate.

1. Corn tortillas with everything
2. Refried beans
3. Pancakes for dinner
4. Chicken buses
5. More chicken buses
6. More pancakes for dinner
7. Pollo Campero

Chiquimula

One of the great things about Spanish is that the pronunciation is
really easy, so you can figure out the pronunciation of this town
yourself--however, in case you feel un-motivated...

Chee-kee-MOO-lah

Say it out loud to yourself--isn't that just the coolest name ever?
Better than Albuquerque!

So, I was sort of hoping to make it into Honduras tonight, but I didn't
make it--still in Guatemala. The pullman bus (Greyhound-style) out of
Guate. was wicked slow, and terribly non-entertaining. Forgive me for
complaining about safe driving, but COME ON! You PASS slow drivers in
this country, even if it's a blind corner on a mountainside. However,
the bus driver for Rutas Orientales had evidently been trained as a
schoolbus driver in the states, so no driving about about 12kph for him.

So, in addition to the fact that I didn't get as far as I would have if
I had taken chicken buses, I feel guilty about being an elitist,
traveling by tourist shuttle (ugh!) then fancy bus. At least I could
sleep. And although the tourist shuttles are pricier than what the
average Guatemalan would pay taking chicken buses, it works out to be
about the same for me, because I always get taken so badly in Guatemala
City taxis. Next time I'm here, I'm going to spend a couple of days in
Guatemala city figuring out the bus system, where you can travel from
one end of the (monstrous) city for about 15 cents (if you don't get
robbed along the way).

To put it prosaically, Guatemala City blows, but I really have to get
more comfortable with traveling around it, if I'm going to spending more
time here in the future. I'm pretty much okay with traveling around the
whole country, but the city is still a bit of a mystery to me.

On the other hand, Chiquimula is nifty. I've been thinking about
spending an extra night here and visiting the pilgrimage site at
Esquipulas tomorrow, though I would like to give myself plenty of time
to enjoy Copán, and to soak in the (bloody, exploitative) Mayan history.

As an aside which may appeal to the average middle-school boy (or adult
of that maturity level), I picked a book up about the Maya when I ran
out of other English-language reading material. Among other fun facts,
it describes how Mayan male nobles would initiate themselves into
adulthood by piercing their penis with a stone knife (obsidian?). That
totally gives me the willies. No pun intended.

Anyways, Chiquimula is described as pretty much a "point of transit" for
travelers by the Lonely Planet book (and I am more of a traveler than
anything else at this point in the trip), but it's a pretty prosperous
town, and there is a nice plaza, a cool market, at least a few nice
looking restaurants, and a Paíz, which is one of the local chains owned
by Wal-Mart.

...I know, I know--Wal-Mart is evil--but their grocery stores have some
advantages down here.

First, they have much stricter health standards for produce and meat
than the people selling veggies across the street in the market (who
have no such standards). They're also reliable buyers for local
producers, and they sell a fair quantity of locally grown organic food,
encouraging the growth of a local organic industry.

But in any event, after spending a couple of days in Antigua and another
couple of days in Panajachel, it's nice to be in a place where there
aren't too many (any?) pasty faces around. That will all end, though,
if I go on to Copán. Think I'm talking myself into staying another
day. We'll see what I decide. Local fair's going on here, so it might
not make a difference what I decide, if the hotel's already full up for
tomorrow. If I'm going to pack my crap up again, I'll just pack up and
move on.

Totally jealous...

...of Boz and Aubrey's N. African experiences, by the way. Seriously,
how awesome is that!

The plan

So, I'm going to cut out of Panajachel one day early--I don't really
have any interviews that I can do very easily without going to another
village and setting up shop there, which will most likely take more than
a day--so I'm going to head out a day early for the ruins at Copán,
Honduras, which I've been hoping to see all summer.

I've been doing some early Christmas shopping, and in the process, I've
picked up a pretty big bundle of crap, so I'm going to forgo the chicken
buses mañana in favor of a tourist shuttle to Guatemala city tomorrow,
where I'll pick up a Greyhound-style "pullman" bus to, I think
Esquipulas, where there is an interesting (modern) religious site. From
there, I'll head by bus to the Guate./Honduras border, and on to Copán.
Saturday and Sunday, I'll be down there, and I'll be back in Antigua for
Monday and Tuesday, then my flight out of Guate. on Wed/Thurs, with a
13-hour layover in Mexico City (I've been under-budget enough that I
could pay the exorbitant fee for a reservation in a hotel room in the
D.F. airport Holiday Inn, spending the equivalent of about two weeks of
my typical Guatemalan lodging in a single night.

On the road again...
Like a band of gypsies, we roll down the highway...

But really, I'm looking forward to getting home for a bit, seeing Emily,
sleeping in my own bed, and having a nice cup of tea!

Jurisdictional Size

I've posted about jurisdictional size at least once before--I think
probably twice, but by God, there it was again staring me in the face!

Got in two interviews today, which should be the last for the trip.
Kind of a shame in a way, because this municipality is turning out to be
a pretty fruitful place to do interviews, but the reason I'm spending so
little time here is that there are some legitimate questions here about
the comparability of this case to a number of other cases in the
project. If you've ever traveled in Guatemala, you're probably familiar
with Panajachel, because it's so heavily involved in tourism, an not
coincidentally, because it's in such a beautiful location on the shores
of Lago Atitlan. The heavy presence of tourism also means that there
are a large number of differences between "Pana" and most other
Guatemalan municipalities, including (a) a very high concentration of
service industry, (b) very dense population, (c) high foreign-born
population, (d) many people in town who aren't residents or voters, and
if you talk to the hippies around, (e) location in a cosmic vortex...

I'm pretty sure that the "cosmic vortex" dummy variable will turn up to
be statistically insignificant, however, the other ones are real concerns.

That said, I got in this great interview which really illustrates the
argument I'm hoping to make about jurisdictional size and shape. I was
talking to one of the employees of the "mancomunidad," or co-management
area, which has it's office in the municipal building here. The
mancomunidad--called Mancatitlan (the Latinos like the acronyms, if
anything, more than we Gringos do) is made up of four municipalities on
the Eastern shore to lake Atitlan. The organization was created just a
couple years ago, in order to deal with solid waste management
problems. Basically, San Andrés, a muni up on the hillside, was
discharging its waste into watercourses that run into Panajachel, Santa
Catarina, and San Antonio, down on the lake shore.

In order to find a solution, the four municipalities joined together to
form a larger jurisdiction with the idea of addressing the waste
problem. The three lower municipalities get the problem solved--and a
reduction in the costs of being downstream (literally) from San
Andrés--and San Andrés gets some of the funding that the mancomunidad
attracts into the area, meaning that it can spend its fungible resources
in other area.

In effect, the municipalities are of a size and shape which is
sub-optimal for addressing these environmental problems, but the
creation of a mancomunidad creates a jurisdiction which is much closer
to optimal for the waste management problem. The remarkable thing is
that the four municipalities, together, match the appropriate watershed
almost perfectly, and therefore, the jurisdictional size is, according
to the theory put forth by Ferejohn and Weingast (I think) in 1995 (I
think), is almost perfectly optimal, because it matches the costs of
addressing the problem to the benefits of doing so, leaving no
externalized costs to anyone outside the muni.

The Maya and IR Theory of Conflict

So, one of the problems with international relations theory, and
especially the study of international conflict, is that there is a
finite universe of cases from which to test theory, and in general,
because the number of international conflicts is limited, there is a
problem (of varying severity, depending on who you ask) with scholars
deriving theory using the same data we use to test the theory. This
definitely takes place--we look at the record, and say, "Gee...
Democracies don't seem to fight one another very much," and then we go
out and formally test that idea using (often) huge datasets of
country-year-pairs of countries.

Depending on who you ask, this might be a major problem, or not much of
one at all--many historical institutionalists, for example, who have no
problem generating theory while testing it, as something of a dynamic
process of working with historical cases--that's a poor attempt at the
way Steinmo puts it in one of his books. On the other hand, to a lot of
positivistic-types, this sort of thing is anathema to scientific
inference.

Regardless, one interesting project might be to find a way around this
sort of thing by tapping cases and observations which haven't been very
often used for this sort of thing.

Specifically, I'm thinking about Mayan city-states, although there are a
number of other potential cases for the fruitful harvest of country-city
state-dyadic pairs.

It would be an interesting thing to go back and generate a number of
case studies and a quantitative dataset of the interaction between
different mayan city-states to determine if realist, liberal,
constructivist, or rationalist approaches to IR better explain the
outbreak of conflict between these "countries." I believe that there is
a strong argument to be made for the utility of this research
design--the only question that I have is whether archaeologists know
enough about the relations between these city-states to generate enough
data to engage in an exercise in hypothesis testing.

I am, of course, nothing but a hirsute nerd, but wouldn't it be
interesting to go back and try to build a statistical dataset of
conflicts between Central American empires, to test if, for example,
trade pacified conflict between Mayan city-states or increased it, if
similar values between societies pacified countries (for example, as
Aztec ideas waxed and waned in the Mayan territory), and if power parity
increases or decreased conflict back before Cortéz and Alvarado? And of
course, the case-study research that would go along with that process...

Man, think of the interesting people you'd get to talk to!

Haggling, Supply, and Demand

As I near the end of my trip to Guatemala (just a little bit more than a
week left down here), I'm doing three things.

First, I'm trying to finish off a couple final interviews, to be able to
come back to the states with a pretty strong idea of what's driving
Guatemalan forestry outcomes. I think I have a good handle on things
down here, and I know that in the time I have remaining I won't be able
to do all of the things I would like to do, but everything about this
process is a story about finding the optimum tradeoff.

Second, I'm missing home and Emily, and really looking forward to
getting back to the states for a little while. Missed our anniversary
while down here, but Emily and I are planning a replacement anniversary
and a trip to the Tetons for a couple of days during Labor Day. Plus,
I'm really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed for a while, and
getting a cup of tea and some good strong coffee.

Third, I'm doing some Christmas shopping. I know it's early, but it's
not often that you can buy hand-woven Guatemalan textiles for a
reasonable price.

So I bought a couple of things today--one blanket, and a couple of
tablecloths. Beautiful, all of them.

But in the process, I had to haggle, which I hate, because I'm terrible
at it. I've got the wrong cultural upbringing, the wrong skin color,
and the wrong sense of imperialist guilt to be any good at it. So I
inevitably get a poor deal.

But the process of haggling, which is commonplace in most transactions
down here, gave me some food for thought. In some ways, doesn't a
market imply the flow of complete information about the price of a
good? If prices are such an important part of the process of
interacting in a market, in what ways do economic models of these
interactions miss what goes on in places like Guatemala, where there are
often no set prices? What happens when cost is not a result of only
supply and demand, but also (a) my haggling skills, (b) the cut of my
clothes, and (c) the ability of the hawker to size me up for what I'm
worth...

Just a lot of questions without any real answers, and without a strong
enough understanding of microeconomics to be able to make any hypotheses
about these questions.

Bolivian Travel

The NYTimes has a pretty good story about Bolivian tourism, complete
with a pretty good (though not great) picture of the Uyuni Salt Flats in
the rainy season.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/travel/10adven.html

Some bad news

Two bad things happened today--one was my fault, and one (probably) wasn't.

First--not my fault--my nice, lightweight, packable ripstop montbell
shoulder bag got slashed in the market at San Juan Comalapa. A real
shame--when I got it, I had the idea that it would be a great bag to be
able to pack up in my backpack, though I can't say I've ever had the
opportunity to do that. But it was a really nice bag!

The good news is, I bought a replacement--a nice leather shoulder bag
with a pretty secure closure which I made more secure by adding a
padlock (feeling a little paranoid at the moment). Thick leather that
will be a bit of a deterrent to another such incident.

The second bad thing--my fault--is that I probably paid too much for the
shoulder bag, which isn't a bit deal, but one thing after another. The
guy kind of had me over a barrel. I told him what had happened to my
other bag, and he was the only one in the market that had a replacement
that was big enough for my computer (and I think he knew it). And I
hate haggling. Hate it!

Kind of a downer--though I have to say, I had a good time up in San Juan
today, where I bought a weaving in the local style, which uses silk
thread as an accent. Bought it from a very friendly Guatemalan woman
with a surly teenage son. Pretty entertaining. Beautiful things down here!

All in all, not a bad run without any such bad experiences--I've spent a
lot of time in places where I've been warned about such things, but this
is really the first such experience that I've had bad luck like that.

I should add, as well, that nothing was stolen--or at least nothing that
I've noticed, which means nothing of value. And if that's the worst
thing that happens today, I'm doing okay. As I always say, I always
feel like I'm getting off easily, as long as I don't get kidnapped.

"Yale's Zedillo"

I'm a little behind on my blog reading--Google Reader wasn't cooperating
with me when I was in Salamá, so I couldn't use the offline function. I
gave up on it, for offline purposes at least, and I'm using this RSS
aggregator called NetNewsWire which doesn't do the aggravating things
that Google Reader does... So I'm catching up.

On August 2, Mankiw (in his blog) refers to "Yale's Ernesto Zedillo."
We're not talking about another Zedillo here, right? There is only
one? I'm offline here, and I would normally want to check this before
sending the post off, but if I wait, I'll forget.

Shouldn't that be, "Former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, now of
Yale University?" Or am I missing something. If I was the guy under
whom Mexico democratized, and I was referred by a snarky Harvard
economics professor as "Yale's... whatever" I think I'd be ticked off!
So maybe I'm wrong, and there are two Ernesto Zedillos.

Mindless drivel

First off, I'm back in Antigua for a couple days--Maureen's heard all my
complaining about this town, but as I told Emily last night, it's pretty
fantastic to be able to travel just about four hours and go from
(relatively) rural Guatemala, with all of its charms and frustrations,
to a place where you can almost feel like you're in the states for a
couple of days.

Aubrey's put her blog up--I'll put a link in the sidebar.

She mentions in her first post that she has reservations about the whole
blogging thing--presumably thinking (at least in part) of my thoughts on
poisson models and canine rationality--then apologizes. No offense
taken! I have no illusions that many of my posts are of interest to
anyone but me. But it does feel good to be able to ramble on about
things when I haven't had a conversation in English in a while.

So, the fact that I'm here in gringolandia means that I'll be able to
put up some pictures on the internet, using (I think) my web page
(http://sobek.colorado.edu/wrightgd). I also started a picasa page, but
I'm not sure it saves me much time. On the other hand, Ying's gotten
after me for costing the data lab lots of money by never cleaning off my
sobek account (I apparently have more on the server than everyone else
in the department, combined) so maybe I should do Picasa.

In any event, I'll put a post up when that's done, with the details.

Handlebar Time

For the last couple of weeks, it's been getting close, but this morning
(as I was playing with my moustache riding the Chicken Bus back from San
Jerónimo) it finally started to curl correctly.

I believe that this is Emily's favorite moustache permutation. Just a
little hint of a handlebar curl. One inebriated peasant stopped on the
street, stared, and laughed openly. I wasn't offended--better that than
a reasoned response to at least 100 years of American imperialism in the
region.

Along completely different lines, have any of y'all ever heard the
Ramones' "We're a Happy Family"? Terrible (but hilarious) lyrics:

We're a happy family (x3)
Me, mom and daddy
We're a happy family (x3)
Me, mom and daddy

Sittin' here in Queens
Eatin' refried beans
Wearin' (?) all our magazines
Gulpin' down chlorazines (?)

We ain't got no friends
Our troubles never end
No Christmas cards to send
Daddy likes men...

Not quite as terrible as "Mississippi Mud" with Frankie Trumbauer, but
pretty terrible... It does help one to understand how people abroad get
such ridiculous ideas about people from the states. The Guatemalans
aren't afraid of the states (nor should they be--they're far tougher
than the average Estadounidense), but the Europeans down here have no
problem with traveling around Guatemala City, but "Isn't it dangerous in
the U.S., with all those guns?"

At that moment, I'm always torn between giving them the correct answer
("Only if you meet a big-haired, blonde, Texas woman in a dark alley")
and really playing up the "tough American" role ("Yeah, but the big hair
don't scare me!")

Please forgive the Texas bashing, incidentally. It's the Ramones.
They're putting me in a goofy mood.

I'm going to get some Pollo Campero!

Rational Choice: Taking Over the World

And I'm not rooting against it...

I interviewed two forestry technicians at the local INAB (/Instituto
National de Bosques/--National Forest Institute) office in San Jerónimo
today--really nice guys. Soft spoken, and very knowledgeable. They
were also dressed and acted like they spend a lot of time doing hard
work outdoors, which I find encouraging. Stained jeans, faded shirts,
and work boots with worn soles.

Although they were trained in silvicuture, they were rational choicers
in disguise, explaining to me in detail how a series of forestry
incentive programs created by the Guatemalan national government had
made it economically desirable for campesinos to engage in forest
management and sustainable forestry.

They showed an understanding of the fact that peasants in rural areas
face strong incentives to heavily discount the future (their hungry
children, among other things, present an incentive to do something to
make money today rather than tomorrow). And they were aware that, even
when faced with government incentives for re-forestation activities,
there are still barriers to peasants' participation (like the fact that
they often lack title to their land, so they're not eligible to receive
subsidized seed and fertilizer).

This was a refreshing change from some of the interviews I had in
Uspantán, where individuals told me that peasants only failed to engage
in sustainable forestry practices because they were "uneducated" and
"ignorant." I'm the first one to recognize that education may play a
role in promoting good practices in forestry (and any other policy
area), but these individuals were unwilling to recognize that peasants
might have rational reasons for doing the unsustainable things they
do--reasons like feeding their families.

In fact, I would argue that the average peasant spends more time
carefully weighing the costs and benefits of his actions than your
average middle-class gringo, and therefore, is probably more "rational,"
in the economic sense, than me. For one thing, the utility associated
with a given unit of money is a hell of a lot higher when you make so
little--Q.5 (about seven cents) is worse than nothing for me, as I can't
buy anything with it, and it weighs down my pocket. For the peasant,
though, that's pretty close to buying the ingredients for a meal (not
one that I'd want to eat, but still...) and maybe enough for more than
one person. For another thing, because they typically make so little
money, their time is relatively more valuable than what they do own, so
they'll probably spend much more time thinking about how to spend their
money. That extra Q.5 I wasted today so that I wouldn't have to walk
down a half a block to another store where I knew the soda I bought
would be cheaper would be dearly prized by someone who makes less than a
dollar a day.

Kenny Rogers

Today was the third time in as many days that I've heard a van driving
by with loudspeakers on top (a la Jake and Elwood) playing Kenny
Rogers. And not "The Gambler," either. The first time, it was Kenny
Rogers doing "Me and Bobb[ie] McGee," and this last time, it was "Coward
of the County."

I can see why the Guatemalans would like that stuff--they obviously love
Ranchero music (it plays pretty much constantly on the Chicken Buses),
and that's also all about story telling as well. But even so, it was
unexpected.

But I have to admit that half the time, when I'm bouncing around on a
bus out here, I've got Waylon Jennings running through my head...

"...someday, the mountain might get 'em, but the law never will..."

To be perfectly honest, though, I could go for a little Jerry Reed.

I've been thinking about Alaska a lot the last couple of days, and
missing it. Not sure why that's going through my head now--there sure
are much more immediate things that I'm missing (like a good cup to tea,
for one thing), but hearing Kenny Rogers makes me think of Fairbanks (on
account of my favorite radio station--the Fbks. classic country station,
which forever seemed to be playing Jerry Reed and Roger Miller).

I used to get done with work or school up at the U. and drive out to the
cabin, listening to that station, singing along with Jerry or Roger, or
if it was really late, listening to Art Bell talk to nut jobs about
UFOs. I would pull off Gold Hill road onto the packed snow of the
unpaved roads around my cabin, and the moon would often be so bright
that I would turn off the headlights for the last half mile or so, just
to appreciate how beautiful it was, with the moonlight reflecting off
the road, and the snow piled on the black spruce trees all around.
Didn't matter that the light were off--you could see as well as in the
daytime...

Down in Southeast, Emily and I would go for a walk in about any
weather--if you waited for it to stop raining, you'd grow moss while you
waited--and I remember walking in the snow down lake street, or more
likely, walking through the rain. In the winter, when the ice on the
lake next to lake street froze, the whole community would turn out to
skate, and you could get your skates sharpened by the guy in the S.O.B.
truck (stands for "sharpens old blades," as he would tell you as soon as
you walked up), then go out skating with the kids in the high school,
all their parents and everyone you knew from around town. It felt like
you were living a Norman Rockwell painting, with prettier mountains in
the background.

Rain was often so heavy there that if there was a pinhole in your rain
jacket, you'd be soaked through in the twenty minutes it took you to
walk to the bookstore and back.

The most beautiful sunset of my life was there--the most incredible
purples, reds, and oranges reflecting off the clouds on the horizon.
Saw it right out Emily's window, looking out over the fishing boats in
the harbor and looking out over the perfect volcanic cone of Mt.
Edgecomb. Damned it I know if I'm spelling that right anymore, though.
It's been a long time.

Wouldn't mind getting back there, though. First think I'd do is finish
up the kayak that's half built in my folks' basement in CT, and the
second thing I'd do is buy a boat for Emily. Then we'd go paddling...

how come...

...people in the states don't walk around with machetes tucked into
their belts like they do here?

I should note that here in Baja Verapaz, there seem to be more people
with machetes in sheaths in their belts, and fewer people riding bikes
and holding the machete in one hand and the handlebars in the other.

When I was up in Uspantán, I got to witness maybe the most frightening
scene of my trip here, which was a little kid of maybe eight years old
twirling his machete around his fingers...

Good times. Good times.

San Jerónimo

Made my first visit out to San Jerónimo today, just to get my bearings
and take a walk around. It's a pretty little town with a pleasant plaza
and an interesting museum which is a former sugar refinery, and houses
the machinery for sugar refining, and also a reasonable display of Mayan
artifacts.

The municipal building is reasonably sized and a little run down. I
think that's a good sign--I get suspicious of shiny town plazas with
piped-in music (as I've noted, shiny means quality down here) when the
municipal per capita income is in the $1200 range.

There's also a hotel in town, with a restaurant, but it's a ways out of
the center. Looks very pleasant, but I took a look at a room, and it
doesn't have much on my room here in Salamá (though there is a swimming
pool), so I'll probably keep the room here, since this is Q85/night and
that's Q125. Probably cheaper for me to eat my meals out here, as well,
though of course it would be better to get more exposure to the town
itself. I'll just have to make an effort to spend quite a bit of time
out there.

Incidentally, I wish the Latin Americans would get their story straight
on what the central plaza is called. I asked for directions to the
"Plaza Principal" the other day in Cobán, and the guy gave me directions
to the shopping plaza which had Pollo Campero in it. I guess that's
where he thinks all the gringos want to go!

"Parque Central" is what I should have said, but Holy Crap, I wish they
could just pick a single term for the plaza...

Here: "Parque Central"
Mexico: "Zócalo"
Bolivia: "Plaza Principal"
Peru: "Plaza de Armas"

Okay, that's a little over-simplified, but you get the idea...

The last one is my favorite--a historical allusion to the fact that the
central plaza was where all the local men would gather with their guns
and lances when the town was under threat. Not a bad system, really.

What on God's green earth does "Zócalo" mean, by the way?

And what ever happened to the citizen militia in the states? The
benefits of such a system:
1. Cheaper to maintain a citizen militia than a standing Army.
2. A lot harder to get into wars when every male voter will be heading
off to fight the infidels, the communists, or the terrorists.
3. Gets around Maureen's point about the obsolescence of the 2d
amendment (only a benefit if you're a gun-totin', "bitter" resident of
rural America.)
4. I think there's something to be said about state-building and
citizen-building with such a system. It would be interesting to know if
I was right or wrong, but my suspicion is that there is something to a
social constructivist story about how military service promotes a
feeling of national identity.

And how come we don't build towns this way anymore in the states? I know
of a couple of rural places in Eastern Connecticut that still have a
town green surrounded by a grid (more or less) of streets, but how come
we don't follow that system anymore? Other things being equal, who
wouldn't prefer to be within a couple minutes' walk of a town common or
a Plaza de Armas? Preferably complete with a monument to (a) G.
Washington, (b) Simón Bolivar, (c) Justo Rufino Barrios, or (d) Jay
Hammond.

Salamá

After a noisy night in my (very nice) hotel room in which I didn't get
much sleep (I was within earshot of at least three evangelical
protestant services at one point), I decided that it was time to find a
new place to stay, and as long as I was packing everything up and
heading out of the hotel, I might as well just move on to Salamá, which
will probably be my base for my next case study, unless there's a place
to stay in San Jerónimo (the lonely planet book doesn't mention anything...)

So I packed up my stuff, and headed out to find the microbus station,
from whence I hopped on and headed to Salamá, about an hour and a half away.

I commented to the Peace Corps folks in Uspantán the other day how easy
it is to get around Guatemala. They looked at me like I was nuts, but
it really is easy to get around this little tiny country, once you
figure out how things work. The cities are really quite close together,
and even the really rural stuff is usually within a couple of hours of a
major town. You can't head out with a real stringent schedule and hope
to stick to it, but it really is remarkably easy to get from one place
to another.

I'm just glad that I only have a small backpack and a little shoulder
bag. When I head on to Bolivia, I'll also plan on cutting the size of
the baggage down. I've dropped some things along the way, but I'm
pretty sure I can go even smaller. Don't need as many clothes, among
other things. It's easy to get around, but it's a little tricky when
you're switching buses at noisy, confusing highway junctions when you've
got a bunch of luggage.

Incidentally, _The Simpsons_ isn't funny in Spanish.

Salamá is a nifty little town. It's a lot hotter here than in the
highlands--we're still surrounded by mountains here (really beautiful
ones), but it probably got up into the mid-80s today. And it's humid.
Amazing how, in just a couple of hours, you can go from sweaters to palm
trees. Noisy and

I had this really good taco-like thing tonight for dinner. It had this
thick, wheat flour tortilla, and it was filled with steak and cabbage.
Excellent, but I'm not sure if the cabbage was cooked or not. Hope it
doesn't make me sick.

Before my Cena Peligrosa, I took a walk up to this beautiful little
chapel on a hill which has really good views of the surrounding
countryside. Took a couple of pictures, which I'll put up when I get
the internet again (probably not for a while). The chapel is called
"Calvary." Appropriate, since it's on a hill, but it strikes me as a
little gruesome that the place the Romans used to torture and kill
dissidents and criminals has found its way into our culture that way...
"The Place of the Skull," if I remember correctly--that's what Calvary
means. Was that in Jerusalem? Can't remember.

Guatemalan Restaurants

I bash Guatemalan food a lot, but I have to say, the other day, I
ordered a breakfast with eggs that didn't come with beans, and I kind of
missed them. That's a little troubling, and I think I've gained a
couple of pounds this trip, in the process of getting used to refried
beans twice a day. I'll be glad to be in Bolivia, though, where
Salteñas are on the menu, along with yogurt and bread.

That said, my favorite restaurants down here to date:

1. Restaurante Nick's Place in San Pedro--best pizza I've ever had,
short of the Mexican place in Sitka, Alaska (with portraits of Emiliano
Zapata up all over the place).
2. The Bonanza (I think I called it something different before, but
it's the Bonanza) in Toto, where you can get my dream breakfast: two
pancakes, two scrambled eggs, coffee, and bananas.
3. Picadilly in Uspantán, where the "American" breakfast includes corn
tortillas.
4. Little coffee place in San Pedro up from the Pana dock that serves
you espresso in a paper cup, with coffee bushes in the backyard and
beans roasting out front.
5. Mi Taco Express in Usp., which the peace corps folks call "Fat Kid
Mexican." Seriously good stuff--and what a friendly family that runs
the place!
6. Sarita's, the Guatemalan ice cream joint. Love the banana split.
Not too many places where ice cream sundaes are that good, and they come
in a reasonable size for a change... Of course, if you show up on the
right day looking for cartons of ice cream, you just might be forced to
buy their entire stock, which consists of a liter and a half of
chocolate and strawberry.
7. And what list of Guatemalan restaurants would be complete without
that Scion of Guatemalan Exports, Pollo Campero? Where the mascot on
the sign seems to happily exclaim, "come on in and consume my brethren."

Moving on to Cobán

After a breakfast of pancakes (of course) at the Picadilly Café in
Uspantán this morning, I headed on to Coban, from whence I'll head to my
next case study, which I've decided is San Jerónimo, Baja Verapaz.

The day involved another beautiful microbus ride, complete with 22
passengers in a 15 passenger van, through some stunning country, and
past lots of landslides, due to recent rains. A muddy, slippery ride,
too, on a road that is still mostly unpaved.

Coban is an interesting town--it's becoming part of the Gringo Trail,
but it isn't as touristy as I had imagined. Some hostels and touristy
restaurants, but still mostly traditional Guatemalan comedores, and no
place with wireless internet that I've been able to find (I have some
work to do in the web). Also, a beautiful central plaza, though fewer
people here in traditional dress here.

I had a bit of a time finding a place to stay, but a local helped me
out, and I wound up with a pretty nice room, complete with TV, that's a
little ways out of the center, but otherwise a great deal. Q60 a night
(about $8) for a clean room with a balcony, TV, lukewarm shower, and 45
entertaining minutes of the owner trying to find the key to the room.

And I had the best tortillas of my stay down here in a café in town.
The coffee is great here, too. They all seem to be using local beans,
and the coffee here is less acidic than that in the highlands, and way
better than Nescafé, which is what you get at the Picadilly.

Still trying to decide what to do for tomorrow. I want to be in San
Jerónimo on Mon., but I might spend tomorrow here. The fair is here (!)
which would be fun, and I'll be spending plenty of time in San J. and
nearby... Plus, I need to buy a new umbrella, since my old one got bent
on the roof of the micro on the way here. No big loss. It was too big,
anyways. I'll make sure to get a smaller one this time. I could
probably get one in San J., but it'll be more fun to play the market
game in a big place like this.

Plus, there's a Pollo Campero here--and who wouldn't relish the chance
to eat at Campero for their succulent fried chicken, which (according to
another traveler I met) comes in two flavors--salty and saltier.

That's my kind of place.

WPPA

In a party caucus (Up With King Caucus!), the Wool Pants Party of
America has decided to back former president and imperialist James K.
Polk for president.

54'40" or fight!
Polk for prez in '08
WPPA
Cotton Kills

Methodological Crap

Okay Aubrey, I promise I won't blog about poisson or negative binomial
regression after this...

Zane mentioned that I should try to transform the DV by normal means by
logging it to see if that works--the reason I've been eyeing those other
wacky models, though, is that the transformation doesn't work. Too many
0's. So I started to wonder if poisson is appropriate--but it doesn't
meet the assumptions of the model, anyways. I'll play with it more when
I get back to the states and have Ying's notes on hand, but I'm really
not sure what to do with it.

It becomes normal if I log the un-recoded variables--but the problem is
that all the 0s disappear and become missing data. And if I recode the
data so there are no 0s (just add 1 to the variable) then the
transformation doesn't work. I get this normal distribution with a huge
spike way off to the left side. Wish I could post a picture with the
e-mail...

I've been thinking that this (poisson model) might make sense, because
at least one of the outcome variables--the number of municipal employees
in forestry--is count data, and the distribution resembles a poisson
distribution.

But basically, I'm trying to deal with this badly skewed distribution
that I can't log into Gaussian normality.

On another note, the size variable that I was hoping would work out
(that was significant before I did some data cleaning, and now is
insignificant again) has this very clear significant and positive
relationship with conflicts, with two huge outliers that make the
relationship insignificant again. The two cases have something in
common (they're different from the other munis because of size, but also
because of, among other things (a) climactic zone, (b)
narco-trafficking, (c) shady border-town operators, (d) number of
Zapatistas, and (e) frequency of Ninja attacks).

So, I've been thinking that maybe I should pay a visit to Melchor de
Mencos or Santa Ana, Petén.