Interview in the Field

All right, forgive me for the stupid title, but this was my first interview actually conducted in the middle of a field.

Interviewed a campesino community leader at about 1PM yesterday. He wasn't home, but his daughter took me out to the field where he was working, and we did the interview standing in the rows of corn.

Normally, I start my interviews with a handshake--think that's especially meaningful if I'm interviewing some rural farmer who's used to being treated like dirt by the local white folks. But this guy didn't want to shake hands, because he was literally working in the dirt with his hands--seeding, I think--and he was covered up to his elbows in this rich, black organic soil that they farm in, here.

One of the very non political science-y things that has really impressed me about doing these interviews has been the fact that, no matter how small or large the community, there seems to be somebody (sometimes a couple of somebodies) around that is clearly cut out for being a community leader. Every leader is a little different--some are smiley, some are very serious, some are talkative, some are quiet, some are men, a lot are women (I'm pretty convinced that women run the world around here), but it seems to come out in their mannerisms that they're used to telling people what they should do, who they should vote for, what their priorities as a community should be.

I don't think this guy could have had anything more than a 6th grade education, and I'd be surprised if it was at that level. But he really knew what was going on. And he had a pretty strong idea about what the local government was doing wrong. Hard to argue with "the district really should at least channel the raw sewage away from the secondary school, instead of having it run right by the schoolyard."

It also really impresses me how well-informed locals are about their local governments. I have never interviewed any citizen who, though they may have been apathetic about national politics, didn't have a strong and well-informed opinion about their local governments.

People really are better prepared to be informed consumers of democracy at the local level.

One of these days, I'll figure out how to measure the qualities of leadership, and I'll be the next Ron Inglehart. Without the huge head.