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THE JOURNAL OF

INQUIRY STUDENT CROSS-CULTURAL FIELD RESEARCH

V O L U M E 8 • S P R I N G 2 0 1 4

CONTENTS

Breanne Ackerman, sociology

Interaction and Identity: A Community of Practice’s Impact on Social Cohesion in Multilinguial McLeod Ganj, India

Richard A. Bruner, history and international development

Mr. ______, From Masaka Hill, With a Missile: Who Assassinated Rwandan President Habyarimana?

Michael Patrick Curry, latin american studies How Money Grows on Trees in Peru: Agroforestry as a Solution to

Poverty in Granja Porcón

Carter Martyn Newey, exercise science

Choices and Barriers in Rural Mexican Healthcare

THE JOURNAL OF

INQUIRY STUDENT CROSS-CULTURAL FIELD RESEARCH

V O L U M E 8 • S P R I N G 2 0 1 4

CONTENTS

Interaction and Identity: A Community of Practice’s Impact on Social Cohesion in Multilinguial McLeod Ganj, IndiaBreanne Ackerman, Spanish translation ............................................................................................ 3

Mr. ______, From Masaka Hill, With a Missile: Who Assassinated Rwandan President Habyarimana?Richard A. Bruner, history and international development ............................................................. 19

How Money Grows on Trees in Peru: Agroforestry as a Solution to Poverty in Granja PorcónMichael Patrick Curry, Latin American studies ............................................................................. 37

Choices and Barriers in Rural Mexican Healthcare Carter Martyn Newey, exercise science ............................................................................................ 49

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In 2010, I explored the patterns of social interaction in McLeod Ganj, India. Through a case study there I saw how the communities of practice formed around different social domains of interaction and transaction and the impact they had on the cohesion of those groups. When different ethnic groups form communities of practice across language barriers and social identities, their focus on common goals and interaction may strengthen social cohesion. However, habits and customs set distinct patterns of interaction in different social domains. In McLeod Ganj, in domains (such as education) where interaction brought an understand-ing of shared identities, as well as a respect for differing identities, communities of practice often made room for more friendships and understanding between ethnic groups. Domains that focused more on functionality (such as business) did not encourage the same cohesion. The closeness of different ethnic groups could be related to the nature of the social domains where they usually interacted.

IntroductionAs we sat in his shop looking out on the colorful streets of McLeod Ganj, India,

my Kashmiri neighbor Suresh1 boasted to me that he could identify most people’s nationalities with just a quick glance. He would call out to them the appropriate shalom, namaste, good morning, tashi delek, or greeting in whatever language he guessed their mother tongue to be. Even if Suresh knew little of his customers’ language besides that initial greeting, he said those welcoming words were good for business, because they caught people’s attention and gained a little bit of con-fidence. Suresh told me he knew he could communicate through pantomime if he could just get that first step in the door. His words not only showed me the impor-tance of language as a primary identifier among people, it also showed me that individuals are willing to work together in many ways if they are brought to step across their initial ideas of limitation and difference.

As I spoke with Suresh, I thought how in my hometown in the U.S. people do not have the same knack as the locals of McLeod Ganj to pantomime with perfect dignity in order to communicate. My neighbors at home were not as used to dealing with obvious cultural differences either. McLeod Ganj held a completely new pat-tern of social interaction and cohesion because, in order to operate, the individuals in McLeod had to cooperate. In this community, I wanted to learn if these people who were used to working together across differences in language, ethnicity, and culture also chose to build relationships together as friends and neighbors across

Interaction and Identity: A Community of Practice’s Impact on Social Cohesion in Multilingual McLeod Ganj, Indiaby Breanne Ackerman, Spanish translation

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those same lines. I wanted to understand if the increased contact between these groups, and the way they crossed over what other cultures viewed as strong social boundaries, had strengthened social cohesion.

McLeod Ganj, India McLeod Ganj is a small town in Dharamsala, stretched along the arms of the

Himalayan foothills in northern India. It has been a refugee town since 1959, when the Tibetan religious leader, the Dalai Lama, felt it necessary to flee his home after China had claimed sovereignty over the Tibetan region. The Indian government accepted the Dalai Lama and the other Tibetan refugees, designating the Dharamsala area for the Tibetan government in exile. English was decided upon as the lingua franca there, in order to enable better communication with the Indian people in the local area, as well as with those is the United Kingdom and the United States (Gyatso 1990: 150). Throughout the intervening years, Tibetans have flooded to the area. Coming from the distinct regions of Tibet, they brought with them cultures that were markedly different and dialects that were not always mutually intelligible. These Tibetans gathered to McLeod Ganj in order to preserve their culture and religious freedom. More recently, Westerners have also gathered there to learn more of the Tibetan culture and religion, for tourism, and for education. The presence of so many Westerners has brought Indians from other states to join the local Indian population in doing business. All of these groups and a few other nationalities have combined in this small mountain town to create an environment where people are accustomed to mingling with others quite different from themselves.

From an Original HypothesisThere are many ways to identify oneself with social groups. People are born

into some groups, they are assigned to other groups, and they learn and choose still more groups. Three possible groupings are speech communities (Ruiz 1984), e.g., Eng-lish or German speakers; social identities, e.g., Christians or Haitians; or communities of practice (Wenger 1998), e.g., members of a soccer team or work crew. Because mem-bership in a community of practice may be learned and does not always require a set identity or language, people can cross barriers that other methods of social grouping cannot. For example, an American, Christian English speaker could join the community of practice of the Tibetan Women’s Association, even though she is not of the same primary speech community or social identity.

With so many different peoples living together in McLeod Ganj, I felt that how individuals participated in communities of practice would be an important way they identified themselves in addition to their speech communities and social iden-tities. I expected to find that residents of McLeod Ganj participated more frequently in interracial interactions because they were part of many different communities of practice that included different languages and social identities. I expected that this flexibility in crossing language and identification lines would bring about more social cohesion between ethnic groups.

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Through the course of my research I found that the residents in McLeod Ganj did interact across barriers of language and social identity to form many strong communities of practice, but there were distinct patterns in how, when, and why different ethnic or language lines were crossed to form these communities of prac-tice. Established norms and some prejudices largely directed how people chose to group together in different social domains. The nature of the social domains where ethnic groups interacted often affected how strong the personal relations were between the groups. In this small town of so many cultural groups, people were still very aware of how they interacted with those around them and with whom they chose to group themselves.

Methods and LimitationsIn order to understand more about the community of practice’s impact on social

cohesion, I conducted a three-month qualitative case study in McLeod Ganj. I con-ducted unstructured and semi-structured interviews with members of the community, including Tibetans, Indians, and Westerners. I also led focus groups with students, where they discussed social topics together. I recorded most of these interviews and discussions in order to analyze and understand them more fully. I also attended many community events and recorded and analyzed the functions and interactions in which I participated in a daily field journal.

I gained valuable understanding of the culture by living with two Tibetan families, one that had lived in India more than thirty years and one that had come from Tibet five years before. This allowed me to understand some of the differ-ences in lifestyle between the Tibetan newcomers and the more established Tibetan residents. I built rapport with Indian shopkeepers in the area. My participation in Hindi classes also gave me valuable access to the Indian community through the friendships I formed with my teacher and her friends and family.

There were naturally limitations to the depth and comprehensiveness of my study due to the brief length of my stay and my own language barriers. I consider the greatest limitation to this study to be the narrow demographic scope repre-sented by my contacts, a problem arising from my language limitations. There were whole segments of society I did not access, such as the local Indians who often only spoke Pahari and Hindi, and the older generation of Tibetans who often only spoke Tibetan and Hindi. These groups may experience different interactions and have different opinions than those I worked with directly. It would be valuable also to explore these other groups for a more complete understanding of the social rela-tions in McLeod Ganj.

Because many Westerners go to McLeod Ganj specifically to help in the Tibetan cause, another challenge is the locals may have sometimes only told me what they felt I wanted to hear—that Tibetans and Indians live comfortably together and that Westerners are welcome and appreciated. However, I feel the combination of those perhaps automatic responses, my detailed personal observations, and the interviews with individuals who trusted me enough to express their honest feelings, gave me

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valuable insights into the social situation in McLeod Ganj, India. There is room for further exploration of the Indian experience in the community, since my contacts focused more on the Tibetan view of interactions. For those who would continue a further exploration of this topic, this research uncovers valuable questions and points to consider.

Literature ContextFor my research, I drew from many theories regarding social grouping, lan-

guage barriers, and social behavior. Etienne Wenger’s concept of a community of practice formed the base of my research because of its ability to show people’s natu-ral patterns of interaction according to desires and needs. I explored speech com-munities using Richard Ruiz’s ideas of how a language’s social status has an impact on how and when it is used. Joan Bybee’s work regarding social domain theories also helped me understand the differences of behavior in various settings. Amartya Sen’s ideas of how interaction beyond simple transaction brings an appreciation and a more comprehensive view of others’ identities helped me understand why people sometimes judge others’ differences as dividing and sometimes as enrich-ing. Throughout all of these theories, communities of practice formed the common thread where these ideas and social behaviors could be observed for a further un-derstanding of social cohesion in McLeod Ganj.

The Community of PracticeA community of practice is a valuable way to evaluate social cohesion, because

it is formed more by people choosing to join together than by outside groups forcing them to join. The requirements for membership can be learned and self-defined. It is a way of grouping and identifying ourselves according to the activities we choose to do, which are more fluid than the languages we speak or our ethnicities. The for-mation of a community of practice has been described in the following way:

[It is] an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations—in short, practices—emerge in the course of this mutual endeavor. As a social construct, a community of practice is different from the traditional community, primarily because it is defined simultaneously by its membership and by the practice in which that membership engages. (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992: 464)Etienne Wenger, one of the foremost figures in developing the community of

practice theory, has said that the requirements for the formation of a community of practice are “joint enterprise,” “mutual engagement,” and “shared repertoire” (Wenger 1998: 2). Each of these elements contribute to the formation of the simple communities of practices we encounter everywhere in daily life. Wenger explains that the basic element of a community of practice, the joint enterprise, “is not just a stated shared goal, but a negotiated enterprise, involving the complex relation-

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ships of mutual accountability that become part of the practice of the community” (Wenger 1998a: 80). For example, a joint enterprise could exist among directors of an Indian school. In the daily, weekly, or monthly interaction of these individu-als working together to meet their goals, the next requirement for a community of practice, mutual engagement, exists. The frequency of the directors’ meetings, and the effort they put into their goals, would correlate with the strength of the personal relationships in that community of practice. The final distinguishing feature of this group would be their shared repertoire, perhaps the specific lingo those individuals would understand better than any outsider who overheard their discussions. How-ever, this shared repertoire of “joint resources for negotiating meaning” (Wenger 1998a: 85) is not limited to language. Shared repertoire not only represents “lin-guistic resources such as specialized terminology and linguistic routines, but also resources like pictures, regular meals, and gestures that have become part of the community’s practice” (Meyerhoff and Holmes 1999: 176). Communities of practice with these three identifiers exist even in places we rarely recognize.

These three requirements for a community of practice can be adapted to fit a variety of groupings; they can be learned, they can be adopted for a time and then left behind, or they can be a directing influence throughout a person’s life. Although a community of practice often lines up with projects and specific activities, “it does not appear the minute a project is started and does not disappear with the end of a task. It takes a while to come into being and may live long after a project is com-pleted or an official team has disbanded” (Wenger 1998: 4). The fluidity and uniting power that identifying oneself with a community of practice has is a strengthening factor in social cohesion.

Uniqueness among Other Methods of Social GroupingCommunities of practice play a significant role regarding social cohesion in

multi-ethnic communities because of their differences from other methods of social grouping. Being members of the same speech community may bring an ability to communicate, but it does not address anything about “maintenance or (de)construc-tion of boundaries between categories” (Meyerhoff and Holmes 1999: 179). Mem-bership in a speech community does not require interaction with other members and can be arbitrarily defined from the outside. Social identity, although often involv-ing interaction, does not require interaction among its members either. Oftentimes, “group identity is defined through comparison and competition with outgroups” (Meyerhoff and Holmes 1999: 179). In comparison to these methods of grouping, it is easier to see how, in a situation of marked differences, such as in McLeod Ganj, social cohesion is increased in communities of practice. Its membership is based on an internal construction of shared goals and practices, in which “boundaries are main-tained, but not necessarily defined in contrasts with outgroups” (Holmes 1999: 179).

An individual can be a member of each type of social grouping in many different instances in their lives (Willoughby 2009). For example, a person could be a partici-pant at the NGO Learning and Ideas for Tibet (community of practice) for only a sum-

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mer, and may not be a speaker of the Tibetan language (speech community) during that time. That individual may be a Buddhist or an atheist (social identity), or may change from one to another. Some other individuals may share one or more of these identities without any conflict. We can avoid “unhelpful dichotomies” (Meyerhoff and Holmes 1999: 179) when we understand the flexibility of these social groupings.

Interaction and Transaction in the Community of PracticeAn emphasis on meaningful interaction makes a community of practice unique

among the other combinable social groupings and networks:

A community of practice requires regular and mutually defining interaction. In a social network, by contrast, weak ties exist even among people who have limited or infrequent contact. In short, a social network and a [community of practice] can be differentiated by the nature of the contact that defines them. A social network requires quantity of interaction; a [community of practice] requires quality of interaction. (Meyerhoff and Holmes 1999: 180)

A community of practice focuses on the quality, not quantity, of relations between its members. This is often the difference between interaction and transaction.

Transaction is necessary for modern-day life. We transact doing business, buy-ing groceries, selling goods, etc. We transact with people all day long, sometimes hardly acknowledging their individual lives and personalities—it is easy to order a burger without once thinking about the employee taking your order as a real, indi-vidual, complex person. In society, friendship is not a requirement for transaction. One does not have to love or even like people to transact with them—one just has to be civil according to cultural customs. Interaction, however, is more personally involved (Stanley 2010). The transaction of a man going to his regular store to buy bread may step over into interaction when he begins to take personal interest in the workers he speaks with, considering their thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Voluntary interaction often marks a step of closeness. Such interaction often moves beyond the immediate context of the transaction at hand and identifies the people involved as members of many other relationships and social groupings as well. It recognizes the complexity of individual people. That is part of the value of interaction, quality instead of mere quantity.

Regarding interethnic relations, heightened contact does not always equal a better understanding or a more harmonious relationship between groups. Sometimes quantity of interaction in and of itself only aggravates the situation, for people may focus on the experiences that confirm negative rumors (Sen 1998). If one group of people feels that another group often cheats in business deals, they may remember only the interactions where they felt cheated, instead of the many interactions that turned out well.

Interaction and IdentityNotwithstanding these instances, interaction does allow room for a better un-

derstanding of other people because it recognizes more than one role or identity

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in another person. As opposed to transaction, which can confirm negative ideas because of the ways it emphasizes one way of identifying an individual (e.g., shop-keeper only), interaction generally acknowledges more than one identity (e.g., shopkeeper, but also father, friend, etc.). Interaction is valuable as it recognizes the multiple identities people have, and opens room for people to find similarities at the same time that they respect differences.

People often place exaggerated emphasis on cultural differences. Amartya Sen, a noted researcher on the relationships between identity and conflict, reminds us that his-tory does not show the peoples of the world growing up separately, but rather shows they have interacted across differences constantly (Sen 2008: 6). People and peoples are always connected. Sen claims that identifying cultural difference as the cause of conflict is not sufficient but rather explains that when people combine economic inequalities and cultural attributes is when conflict often ensues (Sen 2008, abstract).

As individuals, people often defend the fact that they are not one boxed iden-tity. However, even as these individuals see themselves as a complex mixture of identities, they may see others as only one main identity. This is what often causes us to feel different from them. People’s transactions limited into one social domain can affirm limited identities. Instead of seeing someone else as a mixture of identi-ties both similar and different from themselves, they focus on the identity they are transacting with—usually one different from themselves. This differentiation iso-lates people and limits social cohesion.

Language as Problem, Right, and ResourceOne strong identifier that can either limit or encourage social cohesion is the

speech community. However, being capable of communicating in the same lan-guage does not guarantee interaction. Richard Ruiz (1984) wrote a seminal work in linguistics explaining how people’s attitudes toward a language affect how that lan-guage functions in society. Ruiz explained the effects of viewing language as a prob-lem, as a right, or as a resource in social transactions and interactions. Because social patterns influence what languages people choose to learn and who they choose to speak to, understanding how certain languages are viewed in society can also help in understanding how people interact.

Language is an outwardly definable identifier that obviously affects how peo-ple communicate and interact with each other. Language can affect interaction more than it does transaction; people can often communicate basic transactions without language but may find it harder to develop personal interactions without the help of verbal communication. Because it is difficult to be a member of a community of practice if one does not speak a common language, people’s attitudes toward the languages in the community will greatly influence how and where communities of practice are formed. If some languages are viewed as having a lower status and people do not want to learn them, then the speakers of those languages will be lim-ited in the communities of practice they can join.

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Social Domains and Cohesion According to the Language Domain Theory, language can be used differently in

different social domains (Bybee 2005). People also interact and transact along different identity lines according to the domain, such as business, education, or religion. This theory sheds light on how, in different domains of society in McLeod Ganj, different social identities take precedence and different rules apply. In some domains, social cohesion is stronger than in others because of the norms people follow.

All of these theories combined give insight into the daily life of individuals living in McLeod Ganj. Having an understanding of these theories and patterns can help decode the behaviors and emotions I observed there and how they relate to the close-ness of that community.

Communities of Practice across Languages, Cultures, and Social Domains In researching the community of practice in McLeod Ganj, I saw there were distinct

patterns of interaction between the different language and social groups according to social domains. Some patterns were acknowledged and encouraged but others were more subtle or less supported. Interethnic communities of practice were alive and well in some domains, with an accompanying tight cohesiveness, while interracial interac-tion was scanty in others. People chose who they interacted with according to the para-digms they had. I will outline the interaction patterns I perceived according to ethnic groups and social domains.

There are three main ethnic groups in McLeod Ganj: Indians, Tibetans, and West-erners. In general, the Indians could be divided into subgroups of local Indians, many of whom are poor and lower on the social scale, and Indians who are visiting or who have moved in from other states to do business. The Tibetans are divided into sub-groups according to what region of Tibet they are from and when they arrived in India. Westerners are divided somewhat by their originating countries, but more importantly by their purpose for being in McLeod Ganj, whether they are students, hikers, tourists, etc. Communities of practice formed differently between all of these subgroups.

Social DomainsPatterns of interaction also developed differently in separate domains of society.

I will treat each domain specifically, but Figure 1 gives a helpful visualization of how each ethnic group tended to interact. Although all groups transacted together, this chart emphasizes where groups interacted more closely.

BusinessMcLeod Ganj comprises three main streets, each lined with shops and booths

that practically overflow into the roadway. Business is an integral part of life, and there are different expectations for how people transact and interact in that domain.

Though shopping may seem a transactional activity, one American volunteer felt that shopping in India is often much more interactive than people expect. Katie, who had lived in the area for almost a year, shared a story involving two shops close

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to her house that she visited often. Katie explained that she had stopped going to one man’s store, because the shopkeeper opposite him got a puppy that she liked to play with. She confessed that “it was kind of awkward” passing the first man’s store, because she had a friendship with him, and she felt bad never stopping in. She shared, “I finally went in there for something, and he confronted me about it. He said, ‘Why don’t you come to my shop? You go play with that puppy, but you don’t come to my shop anymore.’” She confirmed, “In India, I find that [the transac-tion/interaction] rule overlaps a lot. When we are doing transactions there is a lot of interaction—more than we’re used to.”

Even in the business arena communities of practice were formed. One Indian friend offered to take us shopping, promising to take us to “the good shops.” I saw the joint enterprise she was seeking for all of us in making a successful busi-ness deal between us. She took us to her friends’ shops of course, where she could bargain them down better than a stranger could have, because she had a shared repertoire with them. When we established a relationship with the shopkeepers, we continued the mutual engagement she had started. Transaction turning to interac-tion happens as a regular matter of course in McLeod Ganj. As Katie the Ameri-can volunteer said, “It’s more than just shopping, you develop real relationships whether you like it or not.”

These relationships and communities of practice develop most often with West-erners as the common link between Tibetan and Indians. However, sometimes the shared identity of business ownership created the space for a community of practice

Tibetans

Indians

Westerners

Figure 1. Social interactions, showing in which domains each ethnic group tended to interact with others most frequently. Domains are listed in order of frequency.

Interactions within Social Domains

Tibetan/Westerner interactions• Education• Politics• Religion• Media

Tibetan/Indian interactions• Business• Media • Education

Westerner/Indian interactions• Business• Religion• Education

Tibetan/Westerner/Indian interactions• Media functions• Education• Business

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between Indians and Tibetans without Westerners as intermediaries. Suresh, my Kashmiri shopkeeping neighbor, shared an example of this in his feelings about the adjacent shopkeepers. He was a newcomer to the area and had found close friends in these people. Next door was a Tibetan café, and Dechen, the owner, often came by to chat with him, and would whisk away his one-year-old son to stay with her for the afternoon. He and his wife never worried about his son with her, and the trust between them was evident. The genuine relationship created between those shop-keepers was evidenced later when Suresh suffered a severe accident and was badly burned. Among the people who stepped forward to help was Dechen, who took care of the little boy, did the family’s laundry during the days after the accident, and made the hot and tedious one-hour bus ride to the hospital several times to support the fam-ily. In that street, in that small section of shops, the owners came together as friends to offer personal support because of the community of practice they were a part of. The joint enterprise of their business efforts brought them into mutual engagement, and they crossed the usual borders of their ethnic identities because of how their interactions emphasized their likeness. Other neighbors living only houses away knew and cared little about the accident, because they were not members of that community of practice.

In McLeod Ganj, Westerners sometimes form negative ideas of Indians because their general connections with them are largely business related. When they make judgments based only on those transactions, Westerners may feel that Indians are only looking for the opportunity to earn money from them or swindle them. Katie noticed in her business transactions that because many Indians hoped for Westerners’ busi-ness they often treated her with more respect than they treated Tibetans. While she appreciated the respect, she did not necessarily like the implications. She explained, “I feel like a big ol’ fat dollar sign walking around.” Although business transactions are more interactive in India than in some other places, and communities of practice may form between shopkeepers and customers, they are not as strong or personal as connections in other domains. Unless Westerners stepped beyond business inter-actions, they often did not establish as close relations with Indians as they would with Tibetans. There were, though, opportunities for Westerners to interact with Indians in more consistent communities of practice, such as in education. Those Westerners who joined these communities of practice were generally those who were in McLeod Ganj for longer periods of time.

PoliticsIn the political domain, the interethnic communities of practice were mainly

between Westerners and Tibetans. Local Indians were largely uninvolved in the prolific political associations in McLeod Ganj. One Indian woman expressed her feelings candidly in limited but clear English, saying that although Tibetans and Indians were generally peaceful together, there was some tension underneath the surface. She drew a comparison with her former neighbors, who she heard arguing in their house, but who always left hand in hand “like good couple.” She felt that

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although Tibetans and Indians seemed peaceable, they were not very trusting of each other, and did not interact much on a personal level. She added, “Now is quiet, but anytime fight.” Small difficulties regarding land, social opportunities, and other resources were a common source of underground tension. She said that, though she transacted with Tibetans constantly, she had no Tibetan friends, because they were “not interested in us; only interested in foreigner.”

Indeed, most Westerners coming through McLeod Ganj would find the more interactive opportunities with the Tibetan people through political and educational involvement, and would therefore build stronger relations with them than with Indi-ans. Westerners often only hear the Tibetan side of the local situation. One Ameri-can woman shared what she had observed: “I see Tibetans and Indians living and working together. . . . A lot of times it is harmonious, other times it is not harmoni-ous. I see the tension there between the Tibetans and the Indians, mostly [from] the Indians—well, it goes both ways.” While this young woman understood there were small conflicts on both sides, she understood and connected with the Tibetan side better, because she volunteered with them. She explained, “I have heard stories of the Tibetan people that I know who have been treated rudely . . . specifically picked out because they are refugees and this is not their country. . . . I do see that.” Yet Rashmi, an Indian woman, also shared her own painful experience of being rudely treated by a Tibetan: A man had yelled at her to leave his “home,” and it had upset her, for in her mind, he was a guest in her “home,” and he had no right to treat her discourteously. India granted Tibetans political refuge, and she felt he should have been more respectful than he was. After just that one experience Rashmi said she did not want to seek out any further interactions with Tibetans. She explained, “I don’t take risk!”

Rashmi agreed that the Tibetan’s great political need encouraged their interest in other countries and people, which brought about the close Tibetan and Western relations. She felt that because Indians had land and more stability they did not have that same impetus to build relations with the many Westerners who came through. However, she recognized that this had negative effects, because, as she told me, “then you get bad impression of Indians.” Indeed, Westerners sometimes felt that Indians did not care about them as personally as Tibetans did, because In-dians did not show them the same level of interest.

EducationEducation was an area where Tibetans and Westerners frequently crossed so-

cial identities and language barriers to form communities of practice. Westerners often interacted with Tibetans to learn about Buddhism and the Tibetan culture, and Tibetans often interacted with Westerners to learn English and other skills. Education-based interactions between Westerners and Tibetans often became strong communities of practice. Though education-centered communities of prac-tice involving Westerners, Indians, and Tibetans did exist, they were less common, and Indians in these groups were usually students from other states.

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Tibetans often seek out educational help from Westerners, and friendship eas-ily develops from that type of interaction. Dzema, a Tibetan woman I helped with learning English, spoke of a former teacher with whom she had worked. Apart from schooling, Dzema also had gone hiking with her teacher and had often invited her to her home. The two had developed a close relationship that had continued after the teacher left. This situation was a common occurrence in that social domain. In general, Tibetans welcomed Westerners into the personal aspects of their lives with surprising quickness. Volunteer Katie, who had been teaching Tibetans for six months, shared her insights on why this occurred. She said McLeod Ganj was a community in transition. Tibetans were constantly arriving and departing. Indians also came and went, either seeking business or moving elsewhere for education and livelihood. Westerners especially were transient, coming to pass a weekend or a sum-mer, ready to volunteer and eager to learn. Because of Westerner’s impermanence, Katie felt that Tibetans had become accustomed to accepting them quickly into the heart of their organizations, recognizing that if they were to learn from these vol-unteers and take advantage of the skills they offered, they had to be quick about it. Because people’s efforts to teach, learn, and help one another so easily develop close, personal ties, Tibetans and Westerners often looked on each other as members of the same team—their own giant community of practice.

ReligionReligion is such an intrinsic part of both Indian and Tibetan cultures, and each

culture respects the uniqueness of the other. Because the social identities of religion are strong, there are not so many shared communities of practice between Tibet-ans and Indians in that domain. Again, the Westerners are much more frequently those involved in cross-cultural communities of practice. Many Westerners come to McLeod Ganj precisely because of its religious uniqueness; it is the home of the Dalai Lama, and Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims all live together there. An Indian woman explained that anyone who showed interest in religion would be welcome in their temples, and sincere interest often leads to an opening for friendship and interaction even when language is a barrier. One Tibetan woman shared how she had helped a French woman find and circumambulate the temple and, though both spoke limited English, their interactions brought a sense of connection, and the Tibetan woman invited the French woman over to her home for tea. They met together several times as friends, brought about through a simple interaction over religion. Truly, it is a unique religious environment there.

MediaMedia and technology play a dramatically larger role in McLeod Ganj than

most other Indian towns of its size. Technology creates different communities of practice that cross over cultural barriers. In June 2010, McLeod Ganj hosted the Miss Tibet Pageant. On the evening of the event, Tibetans, Westerners, and Indians came together to enjoy the program, but those groups also had worked together for

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months to plan the affair. Such public social events often brought the members of the community together to work with people they would not normally work with, and those communities of practice created relationships that continued after the event.

The year 2010 also held the World Cup, and one Westerner shared how she had gained a sense of shared identity with all the other Westerners as they came together over football (soccer). She said she created her own community of practice with people she normally would not feel akin to, but because people were discussing the game daily in the restaurants, she could “share that with every other foreigner,” and it felt like a mini community to her.

Intra-Cultural CommunitiesIn addition to cross-cultural communities, intra-cultural communities of prac-

tice also show how people identify and group themselves. Tibetans still maintain a strong regional identity, often meeting together according to which traditional Tibetan state they are from. They also create communities of practice across these regional identities based on other factors. Tibetans who have grown up in India are often involved in social work and political groups. Recently arrived Tibetans often form communities of practice with their education classmates. All of these commu-nities of practice mix and match other methods of identification. Indians also some-times group themselves according to occupation or religion or region of origin.

Language AttitudesIn each domain of society, language is a great factor in how well people can inter-

act with and be members of a community of practice. Although it is possible to be members of the same community of practice without speaking a common language, it is not common or easy.

People’s attitudes toward language as problem, right, or resource will affect how people interact in communities of practice (Ruiz 1984). Both Tibetans and Indi-ans in McLeod Ganj generally feel that learning the English language is a resource. Both for education and for business, it is a viewed as a great benefit. Newer Tibetans in McLeod often learn English before Hindi, whereas Tibetans of the older gen-eration often have learned Hindi but not English. This generational change reflects who these people feel it is most beneficial to communicate and work with.

Indians and Tibetans strongly maintain their own right to speak their native languages. Although a Tibetan nun acknowledged the difficulties of having to re-sort to hand gestures at the market with Indians and her inability to speak with Westerners, she continued to study and learn in her own language, because she felt using her language was an important part of maintaining her culture.

There are definitely certain problems that come with the multilingual nature of McLeod Ganj. For example, at the Miss Tibet Pageant the proceedings were done in English in order to include a broader audience. However, in widening the audience to include many Indians and Westerners, most Tibetans of the older generation and the poorer local Indians were excluded. Rashmi explained that Tibetans’ outward

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focus creates a divide by sending a message that they only care about those who can help them. She has responded like many other Indians seem to have done. She said, “I have no need to talk to Tibetans.” She felt that sometimes they pretended not to know Hindi when she tried to speak to them, which she described with resentment, saying, “They do cheating.” To her, the experiences she had with Tibetans avoiding interaction with her had spoiled her desire to be friends with them.

Identity as a Key in Interactions The way people identify themselves and others sometimes shapes how they

view their interactions. Rashmi’s experience of being treated rudely by a Tibetan had more of an impact on her because of the man’s ethnicity. She said that if it had been an Indian who had treated her the same way, she would not have taken it so much to heart. She also projected that experience onto Tibetans in general, identify-ing them with one general assumption: “They are selfish.” In the same conversation, she shared an experience of an Indian man denying her water, when she had asked at his door. She said refusing water in their culture was something that “God never forgive.” However, she did not attribute that man’s actions to Indians in general, be-cause she interacted with so many Indians that, when she thought of him, she did not identify him as an Indian man but rather as a rich businessman. She identified him in a less integral, more action-based category than race or religion.

Amartya Sen explains that violence and discord come as we see identifiers lining up along religious, economic, and cultural lines (Sen 2008). He argues that we cannot base discord on cultural differences or economic factors alone but that they com-bine. However, because people—including Rashmi—often base misunderstanding and mistreatment on culture, religion, and other umbrella identifiers, they sometimes make judgments on the whole culture based on individual experiences. One reason that interethnic communities of practice help with social cohesion is that they build member’s understanding of people’s complex identities. They can see others not only as Tibetans, Westerners, or Indians, but also as students, shopkeepers, faithful believ-ers, or teachers. Instead of only acknowledging the identities that a person has that are different from their own, they can also recognize the identities that are shared. They are able to start building identities together which can cross over and clarify general cultural assumptions.

One Tibetan student shared his experience of meeting a Mongolian student. He had felt how different their lives were when she shared stories about drinking horse milk, but he remembered their similarities when they both got excited about the same popular song. They were from different countries, but they were both students, and they both were influenced by the same media. Even Rashmi, who said she had no Tibetan friends, did concede that she knew and worked with one Tibetan with whom she had a small friendship. She had invited him to her little daughter’s birthday party, an act which stepped beyond transactions of business and built a personal relationship. Instead of identifying him as only a Tibetan, she recognized him as a fellow business owner and respected that identity in him. That

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example shows how people can see more clearly what they have in common with others when they recognize multiple identities in other social groups.

Significance of Communities of Practice in a Multiethnic SocietyIn McLeod Ganj there are complicated interactions between all of the social

and ethnic groups. Both the Indians and the Tibetans are ordinarily respectful to each other, even if they have some prejudices and frustrations. They transact, acknowl-edging each other’s customs and lifestyles. Westerners are also welcomed and have many opportunities to socialize and interact. As one young man explained the situ-ation, “I am a Kashmirian, so what I have to do, I can do. If there is Tibetan guy, he can do what they do. You are American. What you have to do, you can do.” In general, that teeming community manages the social complexities very well. Com-paring McLeod Ganj to her home in the U.S., Katie said, “There’s a stronger sense of community here in general. So many people live so close together, you cannot not get along.”

However, the intricacies of and challenges to social cohesion in McLeod Ganj surface beyond the necessary transactions—in people’s elective interactions. The com-munity’s social needs and attitudes create different levels of integration in different domains of society. Because of the nature of people’s interactions, strong interethnic communities of practice tend to develop more frequently between Westerners and Tibetans than between Westerners and Indians. Tibetans and Indians infrequently develop strong relationships with each other because of language and social barriers.

Different ethnic, social, and language groups learn to identify with one another in communities of practice. When people from different ethnic groups are involved together seeking similar goals, they can recognize similarities that are often over-shadowed by larger differences. However, even though many individuals come closer together and are more understanding of differences in their close relation-ship, there are still strong social attitudes and customs that keep groups segregated and limit establishing communities of practice.

The power of an interethnic community of practice lies in how it gives people an opportunity to work together for a joint interest and learn about their differ-ences in an unintimidating environment. That open-minded contact can remove the boundaries people have often built from ignorance or prejudice. It is easier to come to an understanding on areas where individuals disagree when they come from a place where they know they also work together.

In any community, the more identities people can acknowledge in themselves, the more they relate to those around them. The more identities people recognize in those around them, the less threatening others’ differences may be. Acknowledg-ing the flexibility and interplay of social identities enables people to interact in appropriate ways in order to avoid unnecessary dichotomies and to build social cohesion. In order to understand different cultures and ethnicities more fully, a person can seek for ways to join a community of practice with those around himself or herself. Working for a joint enterprise, with a mutual engagement, and building

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a shared repertoire can give individuals valuable opportunities to come closer to-gether and understand one another.

A community of practice is valuable in that it brings people together for a common goal who normally may consider themselves quite different. Often, once individuals step across the threshold of those initial differences, they may be able to work together quite capably—something that Suresh the Kashmiri shopkeeper understood when he called out greetings in people’s native languages. Building confidence in a small area can bring people across the threshold of perceived differ-ence to enable further interactions and stronger communal cohesion.

NOTES1. Names have been changed.

REFERENCESBybee, Joan, McClelland, James L. (2005). “Alternatives to the Combinatorial Paradigm of

Linguistic Theory Based on Domain General Principles of Human Cognition.” The Linguistic Review. (22), 381–410.

Eckert, Penelope, McConnell-Ginet, Sally (1992). “Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice.” Annual Review of Anthropology 21:461–90.

Gyatso, Tenzin. (1990) Freedom in Exile: The autobiography of the Dalai Lama. NY: HarperCollins Publisher.

Meyerhoff, Miriam, Holmes, Janet. (1999). “The Community of Practice: Theories and methodologies in language and gender research.” Language in Society 28 (2), 173–83.

Ruiz, Richard. (1984). “Orientations in Language Planning.” The Journal for the National Association for Bilingual Education. 8 (2), 15–34.

Sen, Amartya. (2008). “Violence, Identity and Poverty.” Journal of Peace Research 45 (5), 5–15.Stanley, Marty. (2010). “Best practices: Transaction vs. Interaction,” TechJournal South. Octo-

ber 29, 2010. http://www.techjournalsouth.com/2010/10/best-practicestransaction-vs-interaction/.

Wenger, Etienne. (1998a) “Communities of Practice: Learning as a Social System.” Systems Thinker. 9(5), 1–10.

—. (1998b). Communities of Practice. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Willoughby, Louisa. (2009). “Language choice in multilingual peer groups: insights from an

Australian high school.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 30(5), 421–35.

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IntroductionIn April 2014, Rwandans marked the twentieth anniversary of the Rwandan

Genocide. Thousands gathered at the Amahoro Stadium in Kigali to remember and mourn.1 The Rwandan Genocide was an ethnic conflict in the small East African country of Rwanda where roughly one million people were slaughtered in one hun-dred days from April to July 1994. The genocide still has a sharp sting in the minds of Rwandans not only due to the atrocities but also because many refute the genocide ever happened. In this awful story of hatred, guilt, and war, there are many myster-ies that remain unanswered. One of the most pressing and hotly debated today is in regard to the spark that set off the genocide.

On the night of 6 April 1994, a plane prepared to land at the Kigali International Airport in Rwanda. Just before 8:20 p.m.—as it was approaching the runway—a surface-to-air missile struck the jet’s wing, knocking out its engine. In quick succession, a second missile was fired, which hit the Falcon 50’s tail. The plane burst into a ball of fire and slammed into the garden of the Presidential Palace.2 All twelve people on board were killed, including Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana. In a larger sense, the victim of the attack was not just President Habyarimana; it was the entire Rwandan populace. Once Habyarimana had been killed, the leaders of the attack took the reins of the govern-ment and initiated the genocide; Habyarimana’s death was the spark that set it all off.3

Because a culprit has not been convicted, many concerns have been raised ques-tioning the legitimacy of the Rwandan government today and whether all of the ma-jor perpetrators of the genocide have been at least identified, if not captured. Many claim Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame is responsible for the attack—an allegation he has repeatedly denied. If Kagame is convicted of the assassination of President Habyarimana, then the legitimacy of the progressive Rwandan state is in jeopardy, and the real culprit of the assassination, Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, would get away, which would be one last victory for the génocidaire, who was the most enthusi-astic of the killings. This paper will analyze the culpability of the individual suspects and (in order to do so) the political and social environment of Rwanda, their potential motives, and the evidence that has surfaced thus far.

Rwandan Historical BackgroundBefore European colonization in the 1890s, Rwanda was a stable monarchy

with two major classes: the Hutu majority, who were largely farmers, and the Tutsi

Mr. _______, from Masaka Hill, with a Missile: Who Assassinated Rwandan President Habyarimana?

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minority, who were mostly cattlemen. Although historians debate about the level of cooperation between tribes, pre-colonial Rwandans did have the ability to change their tribes, and intertribal confrontations were largely scarce.4 In the late nineteenth century, Germany acquired the country and established a protectorate monarchy.5 However, the German government stayed out of domestic affairs and mostly left the natives to self-rule. After the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, Belgium took control of the region.6 The Belgian government believed if it empowered and controlled an elite minority, then it could use that minority to control the rest of the populace. Therefore, the Tutsi minority group was selected to achieve Belgian ambitions. Tutsis were given significantly more education, money, and business opportunities, as well as being placed in powerful positions in the new Rwandan government.7 As might be expected, the Tutsis abused their power and unjustly subdued the Hutu majority. The Belgians had instilled class conflict in a country that had not had class separation. As social rank solidified in Rwanda, the resent-ment between the two classes escalated.8

In 1959, the violence began when a Tutsi political group severely injured Domi-nique Mbonyumutwa, a Hutu political rival. In retaliation, a nationwide Hutu upris-ing began.9 For the following year, Hutus beat and often killed many Tutsi leaders. In 1960, the first national vote resulted in an overwhelming Hutu victory, and Grégoire Kayibanda was elected to lead the new provisional government.10 The following year, the monarchy was abolished and Rwanda declared a republic. Then, in 1962, Rwanda was officially given independence, with Hutu Kayibanda as president.11 He instituted a regime focused on the absolute submission of the Tutsi minority to the Hutu major-ity in retaliation for the decades of Tutsi abuses. A bloody cycle of rebellion and mas-sacre ensued for the next decade, during which thousands of Tutsis fled the country and none were allowed to return.12 It was during this time period the term Inyenzi (cockroach) was applied to Tutsis, because often they would hide during the day and only come out at night. Additionally, the term was used to describe a Tutsi militia group near the southern border of Uganda that would harass Hutu troops.13

In 1973, Kayibanda was ousted from office by Major General Juvénal Habyari-mana, who later came to represent an ideological movement called Hutu Power, which believed in further subjugating the Tutsi. Although just as strict and politically severe, Habyarimana set up a dictatorship that was significantly less bloody. Rather than mas-sacring the Tutsis, Habyarimana segregated them and passed laws to subdue them. An example was the law that “denied [Tutsis] jobs in the public service under an ethnic quota system which allocated them only 9 percent of available jobs,” even though Tut-sis made up about 25 percent of the population.14 As a result of Habyarimana’s policies, several foreign countries supported his regime, because they believed he had finally brought peace to Rwanda after a decade of Kayibanda’s violent regime.15

During Habyarimana’s time in office, many of the host countries that had taken in Tutsi refugees tried to send them back, because they believed Rwanda had suf-ficiently stabilized; however, Habyarimana forbade them. In response to this action, Tutsi refugees in Uganda created the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in December

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1987.16 For the next three years, the RPF trained themselves in refugee camps, and a large portion of them joined the Ugandan army in preparation to invade Rwanda.

The Civil War and Theoretic PeaceOn 1 October 1990, RPF soldiers—led by Paul Kagame—deserted their posts in the

Ugandan army and invaded Rwanda.17 Initially, the Rwandan state military, with French and Belgian support, defended Rwanda. With that support, the Rwandan army drove the RPF back to Uganda. After about a month of the conflict, the Belgian army pulled out, but the French stayed. Following the Belgian withdrawal, the RPF resumed its invasion and a bitter civil war broke out that dragged on until the summer of 1992, when a cease-fire was announced, and the RPF began negotiations with Habyarimana.18 These negotiations lasted a year and were not finalized until August 1993.

Starting with the invasion of the RPF, Rwanda saw an intense escalation of ethnic conflict. For example, in December 1990, in an effort to rally Hutus against the invad-ing Tutsis, the “Hutu Ten Commandments” were published by Hutu extremists.19 These strictly outlined who was friend and foe and instilled the concept that Tutsis and their sympathizers were traitors, murderers, and thieves. The idea that the Tutsis were Inyenzi meant they were disgusting insects that needed to be stomped out, and this idea started to take root among the average Rwandan. By relating Tutsis to cock-roaches, it became easier to dehumanize them, and it also made the Hutu Ten Com-mandments more acceptable to the average person. These aspects and many more added to the concepts of Hutu Power ideology. Hutu Power ideology, in essence, be-lieved the Hutus were superior to Tutsis, and Hutus had the right to complete control over the country. It also advocated the submission or extermination of the Tutsi. This idea of elitist Hutu Power was quickly propagated among the population through the radio and newspapers.20

Accompanying this Hutu Power ideology, hate radio was launched to teach the ideology to the people. RTLM (Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines) was the most prominent radio station advertising Hutu Power; it worked to brainwash the popula-tion to hate the Tutsis. Joining the hate radio programs were twenty different news-papers, all propagating similar hate-oriented views. The propaganda agencies would spread rumors that Tutsis were plotting Hutu genocide or that Tutsis were killing innocent Hutu children or plotting to seize power and enslave them.21 Based on how quickly the average Hutu took up arms against the Tutsi once the genocide began, it becomes clear that these efforts to dehumanize the Tutsi worked very well.

Between the Rwandan civil wars (1993–94), the Interahamwe (literally “those who attack together”) was also created.22 It was a Hutu youth militia group devoted to the persecution of the Tutsi. The Interahamwe would sporadically kill and torture Tutsis and those who sympathized with them. By early 1994, several thousand Intera-hamwe were recruited and trained by high-level military officials.23They would go into villages and rile people up with their anti-Tutsi rhetoric. The Interahamwe effectively brought Hutu power ideology and hatred of the Tutsi to the common people in a way propaganda could not.

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While this hatred was growing within the country, Habyarimana was working with officials on the Arusha Peace Accords in an effort to end the civil war and give Tutsis their proper rights. During the meetings with the RPF in the late summer of 1993, Habyarimana politically distanced himself from his close friends and allies. As he was trying to create peace with the RPF, several political groups—once loyal to Habyarimana and the old regime—grew disenfranchised with Habyarimana’s middle-of-the-road political moves and his new compromising policies. Habyari-mana agreed to several concessions in the Peace Accords, which extremist parties, powerful individuals, and he himself had originally fiercely opposed—such as the integration of Tutsis into the Rwandan military. The most powerful of these extremist groups was the Akazu, which was made up of close friends and family of Habyari-mana who were powerfully positioned in the Rwandan government. The Akazu and the appendages to it would be the ones who would take control of the government after the death of President Habyarimana.

The Akazu and other groups, frustrated with Habyarimana’s change of heart, formed a loose coalition and plotted genocide during the civil war and more intently during negotiations for the Arusha Peace Accords. Lists of Tutsis and those who sympathized with them were compiled; These lists (numbering in the thousands) included doctors, teachers, and the Tutsi wives of Hutu soldiers. The extremists ordered hundreds of thousands of new machetes from China and secretly stashed them across the country.24 Soldiers with AIDS were identified and reserved for stra-tegic rape plans.25 The Interahamwe, which acted as the militant arm of the Akazu, were organized and stationed all around Rwanda in preparation for the genocide.

In that intense political and social climate, President Habyarimana signed the Arusha Peace Accords in August 1993.26 Habyarimana was skeptical the accords would work, but he insisted to his cabinet that it was important to keep this agreement and establish peace between the two armies. The controversial elements of the accords stated Tutsi refugees would be allowed to return to Rwanda, the RPF would merge with the Rwandan Army (which was 100 percent Hutu at the time27), and there would be a transitional period of joint Tutsi and Hutu control leading up to a true democratic government, which was the most threatening clause to the Hutu extremists, because they did not want Tutsi influence in the government at all. To ensure a peaceful transi-tion, UN peace keeping troops were invited to Rwanda to monitor the process.28

However, over the next few months, many of the proposals from the Arusha Peace Accords failed to materialize, and Habyarimana was slow to make the changes he had promised. For example, although the UN mission had arrived, the majority of RPF forces were still stationed at the northwest edge of the country, and several months later the two armies had not yet started to merge. In fact, only a small detachment of the RPF was stationed in Kigali. On the one hand, it looked like Habyarimana was favoring the Akazu, because he postponed the peace accords, and on the other, it looked like he was working toward integration and compromise with the RPF. These dualistic actions sent mixed signals to the Hutu extremists and the RPF.

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The Genocide and AftermathIn this context, President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down on the night of 6

April 1994, and the chaotic genocide ensued. The only clear successor to the Rwan-dan government was Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, who had worked against the Hutu extremists and had rigorously tried to establish the Arusha Peace Accords. The next morning, a crisis meeting in Kigali was held where she was selected as the leader of the Rwandan government. However, Colonel Bagosora (a high-level Akazu who was also high up in the Rwanda military) and others quickly discounted Uwilingiyimana’s capability to lead the country and suggested the mili-tary take control instead, a suggestion that Lt. General Dallaire of the UN quickly rejected. By late that morning, Uwilingiyimana was dead. A SPOT Intelligence report29 from the U.S. Department of State dated 7 April 1994, from the U.S. embassy in Kigali to the secretary of state, described the fall of the Rwandan government:

Military elements are also blamed for the subsequent killing of Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and the seizure and or killing of several other Rwandan cabinet officials including the senior ranking Tutsi. The Prime Minister had attempted to reach the home of the U.S. deputy chief of mission, but fled when she heard gunfire in the area. She subsequently sought refuge in the UNDP headquarters, but presidential guard elements broke down the door and executed her, according to [the U.S. Ambassador] Rawson.30

Soon after she was killed, the ten Belgian peacekeepers who were charged with protecting her were brutally murdered by Rwandan troops. So quick and power-ful was this new Akazu-led government that within hours of the crash, presiden-tial guard soldiers had no issue with breaking into a UN facility and murdering the prime minister and then killing the Belgian peacekeeping troops. Although an international incident could have occurred because of the death of the peacekeep-ers, the Belgian government quickly pulled out of the country. In the chaos of the assassination, the Akazu quickly took control of the government and, with little internal opposition, appointed Jean Kambanda as prime minister and leader of the interim government.

The Akazu acted as the brain to the new government. They quickly organized their forces and began to execute their plans. RTLM and the other hate radio pro-grams acted as the voice of the new administration. Interahamwe, and other mili-tary elements, became the strong arm of this new government. RTLM played up the situation and told the country the RPF had plotted to murder the Hutus and was coming to overthrow the government, among other things. The hate radio programs announced who needed to be killed and where to find them. The Akazu’s lists31 were distributed to the Interahamwe and the military, which, for the most part, carried out their orders with effectiveness and speed.

Interahamwe and military personnel organized unaffiliated civilians into kill-ing teams in order to “put them to work.”32 The Interahamwe would drive almost everyone to hunt and kill Tutsis or Tutsi sympathizers, regardless of their personal

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moral conviction. A génocidaire named Pio later described what it was like to work for the Interahamwe during the killings:

Anyone who had the idea of not killing for a day could get out of it, no problem. But anyone with the idea of not killing at all could not let on, or he himself would be killed while others watched. Voicing disagreement out loud was fatal on the spot. So we don’t know if people had that idea. Of course you could pretend, dawdle, make excuses, pay—but above all you could not object in words. It would be fatal if you refused outright, even hush-hush with your neighbor. Your position and your fortune could not save you from death if you showed a kindness to a Tutsi before unfamiliar eyes. For us, kind words for Tutsis were more fatal than evil deeds.33

As pointed out by Pio, the average citizens participated in the killings mostly out of fear for their own lives and for personal protection. The Interahamwe were like slave drivers that ran the genocide. They went into villages, rounded up the people, and forced them to hunt and kill the Tutsis. Some of the people enthusiastically took up the cause, others opposed it, and, as Pio describes, those who were resisted were executed.

For one hundred days, from 6 April to 4 July 1994, these killings happened all over the country. Often times where larger groups of people resisted together, such as Bisisero or Butare, units of Interahamwe were sent to kill them, or troops were parachuted in at night to start the massacres. Churches and schools were viewed as sanctuaries from the killings, but they too were eventually made into cemeteries, nowhere seemed safe. Finally, on 4 July 1994, Paul Kagame and the RPF took Ki-gali, and when the capital fell, the genocide ended. Thousands of Interahamwe, sol-diers and Akazu personnel, along with others who had enthusiastically participated in the killings, fled to Zaire (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in order to escape punishment for their crimes. Many of them believed they were “cleaning up the country” and had not committed any crimes.

Although on a significantly smaller scale, as Paul Kagame and the RPF were hunting down the masterminds of the genocide, a counter genocide led by the Tut-sis occurred after the official one had ended.34 Often people who were angry at the death of a loved one tracked down the murderer and exacted their own vengeance. RPF soldiers occasionally hunted down and killed members of the Interahamwe, Akazu, or other killers without trial. Because of this, even more people fled and joined into the masses of both Tutsi and Hutu refugees.

After things had calmed down a little, Paul Kagame informed Zaire it should either extradite the Hutu extremists who had perpetrated the genocide back to Rwanda or allow Rwanda to come and get them. When Zaire refused, Kagame ini-tiated the First and later the Second Congolese Wars in pursuit of the interim gov-ernment officials and others who had escaped to Zaire. Soon after the fall of Kigali, Kagame established a government in Rwanda and ruled as a de facto leader until 2000 when he was sworn in by the Supreme Court as president.35 In 2003, he helped to cre-

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ate the new Rwandan constitution—mostly a copy-and-paste of the U.S. Constitution with the exception of a seven-year presidential term. A few months later, he ran for president and won with 95 percent of the votes.36 Then, in 2010 he ran for his second term and won with 93 percent of the votes.37

Since the genocide, Rwanda has made incredible progress in terms of politics, security, and other ways. Today, Rwanda is one of the leading nations in the world in terms of women’s rights, with the highest percentage of women legislators.38 As of 2012, Rwanda was ranked the safest country in Africa.39 Kagame’s rule has focused on justice, forgiveness, and progress. Incredible feats in justice have been undertaken, and many of the low-level génocidaires have been forgiven and reintegrated into Rwandan society. Higher-level perpetrators have been taken to court in Arusha, Tan-zania, for justice at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). However, this national progress has come at a cost. Kagame has threatened numerous political opponents and many have fled the country fearing he would have them killed. These reports are scattered, often do not tell a whole story, and are often not very well docu-mented, but nonetheless these incidents seem to occur. Additionally, Kagame’s re-gime has banned newspapers that have fought against the government, which raises concerns regarding freedom of speech.40

With this historical context in mind and a better understanding of who the bel-ligerents were, we can turn our attention to the suspects who might have shot down President Habyarimana’s plane. The first and most obvious suspect is the Akazu and the appendages that took control of the government immediately following the death of the president. The next most likely suspect would be the RPF, which was led by Kagame, because they won the war and took control of the country. These are the two most commonly debated suspects and each deserves significant attention. However, following those two primary suspects, Colonel Bagosora and the French and Belgians deserve some scrutiny.

The AkazuThe best evidence to suggest the Akazu assassinated President Habyarimana is

the speed and efficiency in which the genocide took place after the plane was shot down. For instance, Linda Melvern, in her book Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide, explains what happened in the city of Gisenyi:

The killing in Gisenyi started within hours of the plane crash. It was systematic and well-organised with soldiers and militia taking part. The militia drove around in vehicles provided for the purpose and were armed to the teeth. Whole families were taken away on lorries, told they would be safe but instead taken to the public cemetery, known to the extremists as the “commune rouge” (red commune), where they were killed. Those who tried to flee to neighboring Zaire were shot at the border.41

It is hard to justify that a massacre as quick and as effective as what happened in Gisenyi was spontaneously organized and executed through the radio ninety-five

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miles away from the main scene of activity within a few hours. Elsewhere, within an hour of the crash the armed and trained Interahamwe flooded the streets of Kigali, as if they had been waiting for an order.42 The speed and efficiency in which the genocide happened shows the Akazu’s premeditated plans for mass genocide, and there is a tremendous amount of information to support it. For instance, on 10 Janu-ary 1994, a man code-named Jean-Pier, who was a high-level Interahamwe, attempted to warn the UN of imminent genocide and defect from the unit. He informed Lt. Gen-eral Romeo Dallaire that the Interahamwe were preparing genocide, and they were setting up execution centers capable of killing one thousand people every twenty minutes.43 The Akazu certainly had the intent and capability to massacre the Tutsis. It is not a far stretch to suggest they also intended to assassinate the president as a means to initiate and excuse the genocide.

As for the Akazu’s motive, President Habyarimana had distanced himself from them and others in the Rwandan government, and had made compromises with Rwanda’s enemies, which the Akazu did not approve of. The deaths of Prime Minis-ter Agathe Uwilingiyimana and several other key players in the government also allowed Akazu members and other Hutu extremists to take the power they had wanted and establish a government that would have been true to the ideals Habyarimana had supposedly betrayed. If it was the Akazu who assassinated Habyarimana, then the assassination was a coup designed to overthrow the moderate government, to stop the implementation of the Arusha Peace Accords, and to exterminate the Tutsis.

However, if the Akazu assassinated the president, then why is there still silence? Certain serious questions go unexplained. The Akazu eventually lost the war, the government, and the country; if they organized the attack, then why did no one con-fess to it in the later trials? Additionally, the army commander of Rwanda’s forces, General Deogratias Nsabimana was also on that plane.44 His death caused plenty of confusion and significantly inhibited the Rwandan military at the outset of the war. If the Akazu were to have assassinated the president, it would have made sense to have done it at another time in order to not also kill their army commander.

If we believe the Akazu’s claim of innocence and defense, then, in the event of an assassination on the Rwandan president, it would seem logical to stop the attack-ers from doing more damage. Along that vein of logic, the genocide was an over-exaggerated reaction to the assassination and was in the defense of the nation. To the Akazu, the prime minister seemed extremely connected to the RPF and the assas-sination because she had worked feverishly to support the Arusha Peace Accords, despite being part of Habyarimana’s cabinet. It was possible she was leading a coup against the government. Therefore, acting quickly, they had her killed. Unfortunately, or conveniently, her death immediately created a power vacuum in the government, and the Akazu were prepared to fill that power gap. A report from the U.S. embassy to the secretary of state commented on this political situation: “Because of Habyarimana’s failure to swear in a government, Rwanda lacks a constitutional successor.”45 In that situation, the Akazu, who made up a large portion of the presidential cabinet, would have been justified in taking control of the government.

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The RPFNow let us examine the RPF and the president who is under scrutiny for the assas-

sination of Habyarimana. There are fewer sources on this subject and many of them are very radical, which makes it difficult to fairly extract events and facts.

Some of the evidence against Kagame are the apparent efforts and great lengths he has taken to silence those who might speak out against him, especially regard-ing the assassination of President Habyarimana. In June 2010, General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, who was a high-ranking general who had fought alongside Kagame, was accused of terrorism46 by the Rwandan government. Before the trial took place, the general fled to South Africa, and in his absence, he was convicted and sentenced to twenty-four years in prison. In South Africa, he declared refugee status and was protected by the South African government.47 General Nyamwasa then made a public statement that Kagame had in fact ordered the assassination of Habyarimana, and he was willing to testify and provide evidence of how Kagame conducted the assassination.48 A few days later, Nyamwasa was attacked and was shot in the stomach. General Nyamwasa fought off the attacker and when the would-be assassinator’s gun jammed, the attacker ran. Soon after the assault, six men were rounded up and tried for the attempted assassination. Three of the six men were Rwandan soldiers, loyal to Kagame, suggesting Kagame had ordered the attack on Nyamwasa.49

Furthermore, a journalist named Jean Leonard Rugambage, who lived in Kigali and worked for a controversial newspaper entitled Umuvugizi,50 investigated the attempted assassination of General Nyamwasa and the claims the general had made. He was compiling a story about governmental corruption and was citing the claims from General Nyamwasa. Then, soon after returning from South Africa, two men attacked Rugambage and shot and killed him.51 These men were soon caught and con-victed for the murder in Rwandan courts. During the genocide, Rugambage had mur-dered a man and served eleven months in prison before being released and forgiven by a Gacaca court.52 As it turns out, one of the men who was convicted of murdering Rugambage was the brother of the man Rugambage had killed in the genocide.53

It appears that General Nyamwasa had betrayed Paul Kagame and was willing to testify that Kagame had in fact assassinated President Habyarimana. The connec-tion between Nyamwasa’s attackers and Paul Kagame indicates Kagame was trying to cover up the general’s testimony against him. In the midst of that mess, a journalist was about to further expose the story and spread the news. It appears that Kagame had him killed as well to hide his role in the assassination of President Habyarimana.

In addition to this, a piece of circumstantial evidence needs to be examined: the missiles. Soon after the assassination of Habyarimana, Colonel Bagosora conducted an investigation and tried to find out who shot down the plane. On 25 April 1994, the launchers and serial numbers used in the attack were discovered. Bagosora went pub-lic with his findings in July 1995,54 and the serial numbers were traced to their source: “The missiles were part of a batch bought in Moscow in 1987 and then supplied by the Ugandan government to the RPF.”55 This turns out to be an interesting piece of damn-

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ing evidence for the RPF. If this is true, then the missiles fired on the president’s plane belonged to the RPF and, therefore, Paul Kagame.

The RPF had plenty of motives for assassinating Habyarimana. For example, Habyarimana had failed to make progress in setting up the provisional government he had promised, and Tutsis were still arbitrarily being murdered in Rwanda by the Interahamwe. Perhaps Paul Kagame thought if he cut off the head, the body would die as well, and the senseless killing of Tutsis in Rwanda would finally end. Kagame ulti-mately succeeded when he came into Rwanda, destroyed the old government, hunted down and killed most of his enemies, and took control of the state. In doing so he set off, and won, two more African civil wars; he took the country and eventually set himself up as president.

However, there is a good defense for Kagame as well. Although the Arusha Peace Accords were very slowly being implemented, they were being implemented. Even though he had not necessarily won the war, through negotiations he achieved most of his war aims anyhow. If he wanted to more quickly implement the Arusha Peace Accords, he could have gone through other legal channels to hurry up the reforms, such as by appealing to the UN. There also seems to be little sense in Kagame starting up the war again and endangering thousands of Tutsi lives still in Rwanda in the face of increased ethnic tension due to Hutu extremists.

Furthermore, since the establishment of the new government in 2003, Kagame has taken serious efforts to find out who shot down Habyarimana’s plane.56 He has repeat-edly expressed his desire to work with the ICTR in efforts to answer the mystery of Habyarimana’s death. If he had ordered the assassination, then he would not be so eager to find a culprit and possibly endanger his own reputation. Also, those who have testified against Kagame have had other issues with his leadership that caused them to become disenfranchised. The reports against Kagame have always come from deserters after they have left the ranks, not while they worked with him. They could be quickly condemning Kagame because it is easy and to simply spite their old leader. That much credibility should not be given to deserters who already have a vendetta against Kagame. The question regarding Paul Kagame that many ask: Is he a George Washington figure that saved the country and people of Rwanda or a manipulative African tyrant?

Colonel BagosoraColonel Bagosora is one suspect that has not received as much attention from all

the theories regarding the enigma of President Habyarimana’s death. Part of this may be due to the fact that after the genocide he fled to Zaire, regrouped the scattered Interahamwe, and in vain led missions to counter Kagame and to take back Rwanda. Eventually he was captured and tried. Currently, he is serving a life sentence in Arusha for the atrocities he committed during the genocide. Perhaps theorists feel like he is paying for his crimes, has already been convicted for all he did, and the book has been closed on Bagosora. So people continue to search for the missing assassins still out there, when it could be the man already behind bars.

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Examining Bagosora’s role in the genocide, his capabilities, and influence, it becomes clear he had the potential to order the assassination. He was very closely involved in the preparations for the genocide and significantly helped to prepare the way for it. Bagosora was also very close to the Akazu and had a good deal of influence within the organization.57 He had access to the presidential guard who patrolled Masaka Hill as well as the military in general. He then became one of the most prominent organizers and leaders of the genocide. Gérard Prunier (a Frenchman who is considered an expert on the Rwandan genocide, because he was intimately involved in a French refugee operation at the close of the genocide) wrote: “It seems that, inasmuch as there was a general organiser of the whole operation, this distinction has to go to Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, director of services in the Min-istry of Defence and behind-the-scenes creator of the ‘Provisional Government.”58 At the outset of the genocide, Bagosora gave frequent orders to carry out selective assassinations of political opponents.59 He had had experience with coups before; he played a significant role in helping to bring Habyarimana to power in 1973 with the coup that overthrew Kayibanda.60 So Bagosora had the experience and had the potential to overthrow Habyarimana.

It appears Bagosora had also taken steps to establish himself as the ruler of Rwanda. Before the genocide, the ambitious Bagosora had seen himself as presidential mate-rial and had pushed repeatedly to be promoted to commander-in-chief of Rwanda’s armed forces.61 Soon after Habyarimana was dead, Colonel Bagosora was present in the crisis meeting with the UN and suggested that the military he led take con-trol of the country and settle the situation. When Lt. General. Dallaire rejected his offer and pointed out that Agathe Uwilingiyimana was the rightful succes-sor to lead the government, he verbally countered Dallaire’s offer and said she could not lead the government because she did not have the authority, but Dallaire insisted she take charge.62 Within a few hours, she was killed by presidential guard troops, which may have been sent by Bagosora, because he had strong influence over them. Once Uwilingiyimana and others had been eliminated, what was left of the Rwandan government held a meeting on 8 April to establish an interim government. Apparently Bagosora was one of the main figures in organizing this meeting.63 However, he was advised he could not pursue power, because the new government would then look like a coup. In response to that request, he backed off from leading the interim government.64

Bagosora had plenty of motives to assassinate the president and General Nsabimana. He was a member of the Akazu and was upset with the reforms Habyarimana had been pursuing. General Deogratias Nsabimana had recently been given the position of commander-in-chief over Bagosora.65 But after the death of Nsabimana, Colonel Bagosora conveniently took up the reins of the Rwandan military. Although he was technically not the new commander of the military, he did wield much more power after Nsabimana was dead. Killing both Habyarimana and Nsabimana was beneficial to Bagosora, yet the death of Nsabimana was not beneficial to the Akazu as a whole. So it seems indicative of a coup led by Bagosora

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against Habyarimana and the Akazu. In fact, initial Belgian military intelligence reports on 7 and 15 April 1994 state Bagosora was responsible for the attack.66

Perhaps Bagosora’s best defense is that he did not take control of the country and he did not win. If the assassination was a coup led by Bagosora, then it does not make sense why he would stop short of actually taking the government when he had come so far. Additionally, the Belgian government later blamed others for the assassination, thereby taking the spotlight away from Bagosora and onto others. Finally, although many of his men later testified against him in court, none of them accused him of assassinating Habyarimana.

French and BelgiansAnother question needs to be asked to add to the mystery: Where were the

missiles fired from? Based on numerous accounts, many researchers believe the missiles were fired from a place called Masaka Hill, which was near the airport. Only the presi-dential guard and Belgian UNAMIR soldiers had access to patrol this particular hill, which narrows down the suspects, and almost eliminates the possibility of RPF involve-ment.67 Gérard Prunier writes that it is possible, but unlikely, that RPF troops snuck onto that hill and fired the missiles.68 He adds this to the history of the assassination:

The men thought to have fired the missiles were depicted by several eyewitnesses as having been white. They were seen driving off in a vehicle on Masaka Hill minutes after the plane crashed, and although nobody saw them actually fire the missile, their extreme hurry makes it credible that they were fleeing from the site. . . . Their identities are thus a complete mystery.69

According to these statements, the men who pulled the trigger were most likely these white men driving recklessly off that hill. Although no one saw them fire the missiles, this does seem probable. A large percentage of the white people in Rwanda at the time were French and Belgian, and both have been accused for the attack.

The French have been accused of the assassination by the Belgian Commission of Inquiry and also by a prominent Belgian journalist.70 At the time, there was a small detachment of French soldiers in Rwanda who had not yet left the civil war, so the French had the means to accomplish the assassination.71 However, the French were more supportive of Habyarimana’s rule prior to the genocide than during the war. They were also supportive of the interim government during the genocide, going so far as to evacuate the interim officials, knowing full well the heinous crimes they had committed. There are numerous accusations that the reason France sup-ported Habyarimana and the interim government was in defense of maintaining Francophone nations and fearing Tutsi involvement from Uganda would change the country into an Anglophone country. Therefore, the French likely did not assas-sinate President Habyarimana. If some French soldiers had for some reason killed President Habyarimana, it was by no means an order from the French government.

But the Belgian UNAMIR troops are a possibility. The Rwandan Ambassador to Zaire, commenting on who shot down President Habyarimana, stated that “certain

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Belgian circles are involved in supporting the RPF for reasons unknown to us.”72 Also, just after the attack, RTLM broadcasted that it was the Belgians who had killed the president, and then the ten Belgian peacekeepers protecting the prime minister were brutally killed—this probably aided in the Belgian decision to quickly leave the coun-try.73 Furthermore, Belgian UNAMIR soldiers did have access to Masaka Hill and were allowed to patrol it. They had the firepower, the means, but not a clear motive. Similar to the French, even if certain groups of Belgian soldiers supported the RPF, there was by no means a desire from the Belgian government to have Habyarimana killed.

Conclusion and Series of EventsThe Akazu were plotting to assassinate Habyarimana. They were preparing for

genocide and knew exactly what they were going to do. They had prepared their con-tingency plans and were ready to assassinate the president. But they were not the ones who fired the missiles. Additionally, if they were going to kill the president, they would have done it at another time. There was no need to also kill their army commander. They take plenty of blame for the assassination, but were not likely the ones who did it in the end.

It is largely possible Paul Kagame also was plotting to kill President Habyarimana, to invade the country, and to set himself up as president. It is probable he hired Belgian UNAMIR soldiers to fire the missiles he smuggled to them. But if he had ordered the assassination, he would not be so zealous today to find a culprit. Neither would he have wanted to initiate another war when things were already favoring his aims. If he wanted to speed up the Arusha Peace Accords he could have gone through other channels. Furthermore, if Paul Kagame was ever convicted of assassinating President Habyarimana, it would severely damage the political legitimacy of the Rwandan gov-ernment, and potentially destroy the peace which he has created. Even though he did not kill President Habyarimana, he actively tries to extinguish the idea that he might have done it, because the idea is dangerous enough by itself. In order to maintain the progress he has made with Rwanda, he is willing to have others killed to preserve that political legitimacy, his legacy, and maintain stability in Rwanda. Those who attack Kagame’s reputation use the idea that he assassinated Habyarimana in an attempt to discredit him, yet those accusations are not the reality.

It is less likely, but possible, French or Belgian soldiers assassinated President Habyarimana. They had the means, and the Belgians certainly had access to the loca-tion; however, their motive is doubtful. The French and Belgian governments had no interest in having Habyarimana assassinated. If French or Belgian soldiers did commit the assassination, then it was not under orders from their superiors but by individuals acting alone, and this seems more probable.

In the end, I conclude that Colonel Bagosora is the culprit, and he can be separated from the Akazu, because his motives were for personal gain over Habyarimana as well as the Akazu. I submit the assassination of Habyarimana occurred in the following manner. Bagosora was an intimate member of the Akazu and knew of the Akazu’s in-tentions to initiate the genocide and possibly to kill the president, but in that scenario,

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he would not have ended up on top. So he, and possibly a few others, concocted a coup d’état to overthrow the government and set himself up as leader of it. He knew he could not have his men fire the missiles, so he bribed, manipulated, or blackmailed some Belgian UNAMIR soldiers to actually fire them. The Belgian soldiers in Rwanda at the time were there on a peacekeeping mission, so they had more access to more locations around Kigali. Bagosora also had access to the presidential guard and could have eas-ily manipulated the situation to allow his hired Belgian soldiers to sneak onto Masaka Hill, fire the missiles, and then get away. Being the one who found the missile serial numbers, Bagosora was in a position to forge the numbers or replace them with other captured RPF military equipment. He also did not go public with his findings until 1995—a year after the genocide—which would have given him ample time to forge the serial numbers. Whether or not the missiles fired actually belonged to the RPF, the Rwandan forces, or the Belgians is unclear.

When the president was killed, the chief of staff of the Rwandan military also died—killing them both was beneficial to Bagosora’s coup. Due to their deaths, he immediately placed himself in a more influential position of the military and, thereby, in a situation in which he could take control of the government. At the crisis meeting with the UN, Colonel Bagosora was insistent that the military, led by him, take charge of the country. However, Lt. General Dallaire of the UN con-tended that only Agathe Uwilingiyimana could lead the government, something that angered Bagosora immensely.74 To solve this problem, Bagosora had her killed within a few hours. But the presidential guard did not stop with her death. They captured and brought back to Camp Kigali the ten Belgian UNAMIR soldiers who were protecting Uwilingiyimana. When they arrived at Camp Kigali, which was where Bagosora had been holding meetings, Rwandan soldiers seized the Belgians and brutally murdered them. Apparently, the Rwandan soldiers who killed the Belgians had believed a rumor that the Belgian UNAMIR soldiers in custody were the very Belgian soldiers who had shot down the plane carrying the president—which was true.75 Colonel Bagosora ordered his men, or initiated the rumor, to kill the very Belgian UNAMIR soldiers whom he had just hired to fire the missiles. Their deaths would cover his tracks so no one could testify he had ordered the at-tack on Habyarimana. It would also explain the silence revolving around the death of Habyarimana, and the lack of witnesses to the assassination. Furthermore, this sequence of events would better explain the deaths of the ten Belgian soldiers.

Soon after these events, there was a meeting of all the Akazu in which they determined who would lead the government. Bagosora was a key player in organiz-ing this meeting and bringing together all the personnel who had the authority to declare a new government, most likely in hopes that he would be appointed as the leader.76 However, he was told to back off and not take control of the government in that meeting, otherwise the situation would look like a coup. When the Akazu re-jected that Bagosora lead the new government, he saw he could not succeed without also killing the Akazu, which would have blown his cover and quite possibly have ended his coup.

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Therefore, he decided to join them and not push his coup any further. He had already won more influence in the Rwandan military and gained significant politi-cal power. Now he could easily take to his secondary objective: exterminating the Tutsi—which he did very efficiently. To cover his intent to betray the Akazu, he enthusiastically took up the genocide and helped to stack evidence again the RPF in regards to the assassination. A few weeks later, he was the one to discover the serial numbers of the missiles.77 He could have easily fabricated the serial numbers, or taken them from other RPF stashes. Bagosora did not even go public with his findings until after his capture, giving him more time to frame Kagame and further condemn his old enemy. The game was already over for Bagosora, so one last thing he could do, would be to condemn Kagame.

It really is not too bold to suggest Bagosora had conspired to lead a coup against the government and kill President Habyarimana, as well as the commander of the armed forces to not only overthrow the presidency, but also the Akazu. To do this, he convinced some Belgian UNAMIR soldiers to fire the missiles that downed the plane, then to cover his tracks he had them killed. He tried to further his coup against the government when at the crisis meeting he pushed for military control, then again he pushed for military control of the state in the meeting with the Akazu, which he ran from behind the scenes. When the Akazu would not go for his coup, he decided to join them. Then he covered up his tracks by fabricating evidence against Paul Kagame and enthusiastically supporting the interim regime. In the end, Colonel Bagosora assassinated President Habyarimana and initiated the Rwanda Genocide.

NOTES1. The Guardian: Global Development, “Rwanda genocide: 20th anniversary brings a nation

together to mourn,” The Guardian (7th April 2014). http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/apr/07/rwandan-genocide-20th-anniversary-thousan–ds-mourn-stadium (accessed 17 April 2014).

2. Linda Melvern, Conspiracy to Murder, the Rwandan Genocide (London: Verso, 2004), 133–34.3. Ibid., 254–55.4. Peter Uvim, Aiding Violence, the Development Enterprise in Rwanda (West Harford: Kumarian

Press Inc., 1998), 13–15.5. Charles Edward Smith and Lynn M. Case, A Short History of Western Civilization (Boston: D.C.

Health and Company, 1940), 694.6. Ibid., 711.7. Uvim, Aiding Violence, 16–18.8. Gérard Prunier, The Rwandan Crisis, 1959–1994: History of a Genocide (London: C. Hurst & Co.

1995), 51.9. Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide, Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (New York: Cornell University

Press, 2006), 178.10. Prunier, The Rwandan Crisis, 51.11. Ibid., 54.12. Straus, The Order of Genocide, 23.13. Prunier, The Rwandan Crisis, 54.14. Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, “Life Before the Genocide” http://www.hmd.org.uk/node/101

(accesed 10th April 2013).

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15. Most notably were the French and Belgian governments, which often gave blind support to President Habyarimana because they wanted to support francophone nations across the world.

16. Prunier, The Rwandan Crisis, 72–73.17. Ibid., 93.18. Ibid., 160.19. Straus, The Order of Genocide, 29.20. Melvern, Conspiracy to Murder, 49–64.21. Ibid., 49–64.22. Uvim, Aiding Violence, 64.23. Straus, The Order of Genocide, 26–27.24. Melvern, Conspiracy to Murder, 56.25. John Kelly Sasha Hakizimana, conversation with author, Kigali, Rwanda, August 2009. His

mother was raped by soldiers and later died. Johnny was then orphaned at age 9. Additionally, Mukmana Donatella and Brysiewicz Petra, “The Lived Experience of Genocide Rape Survivors in Rwanda,” Journal of Nursing Scholarship 40(4):379–84.

26. Prunier, The Rwandan Crisis, 191.27. Ibid., 186–87.28. Uvim, Aiding Violence, 62.29. When crises happen, the State Department often demands an on the spot intelligence reports.

Hence a SPOT intelligence report is an on the spot quick demand for intelligence. 30. U.S. Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research, SPOT Intelligence Report, 08:45

EDT April 7, 1994 Rwanda/Burundi: Turmoil in Rwanda. SPOT Intelligence Report (Washington, DC, 1994).

31. The thousands of people on these lists were mostly those whom the Akazu believed would oppose Hutu power government, support Tutsis, were in fact Tutsi, or were powerful individuals they thought would not back the new government.

32. This was a common phrase used by the Interahamwe and Hutu Power advocates when organizing the forces for the genocide.

33. Jean Hatzfeld, Machete Season, The Killers in Rwanda Speak, trans. Linda Coverdale (New York: Picador, 2003), 76.

34. Prunier, The Rwandan Crisis, 306.35. Albert C. Nunley, African Elections Database, http://africanelections.tripod.com/rw.html#2003_

Presidential_Election (accessed 12th April 2013).36. Ibid.37. Ibid.38. Valerie M. Hudson, Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill, Mary Caprioli, and Chad F. Emett, Sex and World

Peace (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 169.39. The New Times “Rwanda safest place to live in Africa,” The New Times (19 November

2012). http://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/index.php?i=15181&a=60827 (accesses 21 April 2014).

40. BBC News: Africa, “Rwanda ‘assassins’ kill reporter Jean Leonard Rugambage,” BBC News (25 June 2010). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10413793 (accessed 9 April 2013).

41. Melvern, Conspiracy to Murder, 167.42. Ibid., 134–35.43. Romeo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil, the Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (Toronto: Random

House Canada, 2003), 144–46.44. Melvern, Conspiracy to Murder, 262.45. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Secretary’s Morning Summary,

April 7, 1994, Secretary of State’s Morning Report, (Washington, D.C., 1994).46. He was accused of grenade attacks in Rwandan markets and later working with another

accused Rwandan terrorist in South Africa.

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47. BBC News: Africa, “Africa: Rwanda’s General Nyamwasa in SA ‘murder plot’ Evidence,” BBC News (20 June 2010). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18522188 (accessed April 9, 2013).

48. Allimade Milton, “Sub-Sahara Africa: Did Paul Kagame order the 1994 assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana.” Global Research (18 August 2012). http://www.globalresearch.ca/did-paul-kagame-order-the-1994-assassination-of-president-juvenal-habyarimana/32399 (accessed 8 April 2013).

49. Ibid.50. The paper regularly published anti-Kagame articles and argued against the government.

Therefore, it had been banned by the government. In retaliation, the paper launched a website, which was subsequently shut down by the Rwandan government. Then the chief editor fled to Uganda to continue his work. BBC News: Africa. “Rwanda ‘assassins’ kill reporter Jean Leonard Rugambage.” BBC News (25 June 2010) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10413793 (accessed 9 April 2013).

51. Umuvugizi, “Press Freedom Hero: Remembering Rugambage, a Victim of Press Suffocation in Rwanda,” UMUVUGIZI (25 June 2011) http://www.umuvugizi.com/?p=2682&lang=en (accessed April 9, 2013).

52. A Gacaca court is an old Rwandan judicial system practice in which the villagers gather and try a person for their crimes. If the villagers forgive the person on trial, then that person is allowed to return to the village and have their crimes forgotten. This court system was commonly used for perpetrators of the genocide.

53. BBC News: Africa, “Rwanda: Two arrested for killing reporter Rugambage,” BBC News (28 June 2010). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10432592 (accessed April 9, 2013).

54. Bagosora Theoneste, The Rwanda Documents Project, ed. Peter Erlinder, http://www.rwandadocumentsproject.net/gsdl/collect/mil1docs/index/assoc/HASH0138.dir/doc71030.PDF (accessed 8 April, 2013).

55. Melvern, Conspiracy to Murder, 264.56. Ibid.57. Prunier, The Rwandan Crisis, 165–67.58. Ibid., 240.59. Melvern, Conspiracy to Murder, 162.60. Ibid., 284.61. Prunier, The Rwandan Crisis, 167.62. Melvern, Conspiracy to Murder, 138–39.63. Ibid., 174–75.64. Ibid., 172–73.65. Prunier, The Rwandan Crisis, 167.66. Melvern, Conspiracy to Murder, 261.67. Prunier, The Rwandan Crisis, 214.68. Ibid., 218.69. Ibid., 214–15.70. Ibid., 213–14.71. Ibid., 214. 72. Ibid.73. Melvern, Conspiracy to Murder, 266.74. Ibid., 138–39.75. Ibid., 153.76. Ibid., 174–75.77. Bagosora Theoneste, The Rwanda Documents Project, ed. Peter Erlinder, http://www.

rwandadocumentsproject.net/gsdl/collect/mil1docs/index/assoc/HASH0138.dir/doc71030.PDF (accessed 8 April, 2013).

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REFERENCESAfrican Elections Database. http://africanelections.tripod.com/index.html.BBC News: Africa. “Africa: Rwanda’s General Nyamwasa in SA ‘murder plot’ Evidence.” BBC

News (20 June 2010), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18522188 (accessed 9 April 2013).

—. “Rwanda ‘assassins’ kill reporter Jean Leonard Rugambage.” BBC News (25 June 2010), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10413793 (accessed 9 April 2013).

—. “Rwanda: Two arrested for killing reporter Rugambage” BBC News, (28 June 2010), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10432592 (accessed 9 April 2013).

Dallaire, Romeo. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. Toronto: Random House Canada, 2003.

The Guardian: Global Development, “Rwanda genocide: 20th anniversary brings a nation together to mourn,” The Guardian (7th April 2014). http://www.theguardian.com /global-development/2014/apr/07/rwandan-genocide-20th-anniversary-thousands-mourn-stadium (accessed 17 April 2014).

Hakizimana, John Kelly Sasha. Personal interview (August 2009) Hatzfeld, Jean. Machete Season, The Killers in Rwanda Speak. Translated by Linda Coverdale. New

York: Picador, 2003.Hudson Valerie M., Ballif-Spanvill Bonnie, Caprioli Mary, and Emett Chad F., Sex and World Peace.

New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. “Life Before The Genocide.” http://www.hmd.org.uk/node/101

(Accessed 10th April 2013).Melvern, Linda. Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide. London: Verso, 2004. Milton, Allimade. “Sub-Sahara Africa: Did Paul Kagame order the 1994 assassination of President

Juvenal Habyarimana.” Global Research (18 August 2012). http://www.globalresearch.ca/ did-paul-kagame-order-the-1994-assassination-of-president-juvenal-habyarimana/32399 (accessed 8 April 2013).

Mukamana, Donatilla and Brysiewicz, Petra. “The Lived Experience of Genocide Rape Survivors in Rwanda,” Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 2008.

Prunier, Gérard. The Rwandan Crisis, 1959–1994, History of a Genocide. London: C. Hurst & Co., 1995.The Rwanda Documents Project. http://www.rwandadocumentsproject.net.Smith, Charles Edward, and Case, Lynn M. A Short History of Western Civilization. Boston: D.C.

Health and Company, 1940. Straus, Scott. The Order of Genocide, Race, Power, and War in Rwanda. New York: Cornell University

Press, 2006.Umuvugizi, “Press Freedom Hero: Remembering Rugambage, a Victim of Press Suffocation in

Rwanda.” UMUVUGIZI (25 June 2011) http://www.umuvugizi.com/?p=2682&lang=en (accessed 9 April 2013).

U.S. Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Rwanda/Burundi: Turmoil in Rwanda (April 7, 1994). Released by the Freedom of Information Act, U.S. Department of State. Washington, DC: Freedom of Information Act Release, 1994.

U.S. Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Secretary’s Morning Summary (April 7, 1994). Released by the Freedom of Information Act, U.S. Department of State. Washington, DC: Freedom of Information Act Release, 1994.

Uvim, Peter. Aiding Violence, The Development Enterprise in Rwanda. West Harford: Kumarian Press Inc., 1998.

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IntroductionUnder a decade ago, 58 percent1 of the Peruvian population was considered

impoverished. Since that time, Peru has continued to progress and develop in a num-ber of essential areas. While poverty and unemployment were once on the rise, Peru today continues to implement policies and initiatives to promote entrepreneurship2 and earn the title of a developed country. Its percentage of improved water sources in rural communities continues to grow. As of 2011, about 66 percent3 of its popula-tion now has access to a suitable water source. The most recent data shows Peru has lowered its poverty ratio to 27.8 percent. Its efforts to improve the quality of life and lift its citizens out of poverty have been successful. One project in particular has seen incredible success due to a collective effort in a small but growing community named Granja Porcón, located in the high Andes outside of Cajamarca in northern Peru. Granja Porcón, a rural Peruvian cooperative that has worked in conjunction with the Belgium gov-ernment, successfully implemented agroforestry and overcame significant challenges to achieve a sustainable economic solution to widespread poverty and unemployment (see Figure 1).4

The Community of Granja PorcónIn the early 1960s, Granja Porcón was a

struggling sheepherding farm community of only seven people. As time progressed, their eco-nomic success depended entirely on the rainfall, which would determine the amount of grazing vegetation for the sheep. The dry straw the people collected for fuel would not burn long enough for cooking or heating.5 The community that had grown from the origi-nal seven was now shrinking, and there were very few jobs for the next generation of sheepherders. They recognized they had no system of education; the children would grow up and would either herd sheep or work in the environmentally controversial gold mine nearby. The only other option in the 1960s was to move to Lima to find work, which contributed to the unfortunate increase in homeless citizens in the inner city of Lima. Their options were limited, and none of them offered a suitable future.

How Money Grows on Trees in Peru: Agroforestry as a Solution to Poverty in Granja Porcón

by Michael Patrick Curry, Latin American studies

Figure 1. Map of Cajamarca, including Granja Porcón (shaded area)

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On 24 June 1975, the Second Law 17716 of the agrarian reform was implemented by Juan Velasco Alvarado. According to the new law, the land would now belong to whomever worked it, a change intended to reverse the struggles and injustices imposed by Spanish rule and the creation of haciendas.6 This hopefully would help mitigate the ongoing economic inequality. Under the law, the granja (farm) was considered a coop-erative where all of the people and businesses of the community worked for a common goal. All money earned would be shared equally among the entire community.

A man named Alejandro Quispe Chilón was elected as the new general president of the Peruvian cooperative La Cooperativa Atahualpa Jerusalén (The Atahualpa Jerusalem Cooperative). The name has Incan roots: The organizers lived in the same Andean region as their Incan ancestors, as well as 140 km outside the city where the Incan king Atahualpa was murdered by the Spanish conquerors. “Jerusalem” comes from the community’s strong evangelical Christian beliefs.

Under President-elect Quispe, a new project was underway with plans to provide a solution to the weak and unstable economy of the community. “The hacienda was effectively taken over by the Ministry of Agriculture as a sheep breeding and agricultural experiment station . . . in conjunction with SCIPA (Servicio Cooperativo Inter-Americano de Producción de Alimentos), a US-, Canadian- and Belgian-advised Peruvian agricultural modernization program.”7 The innovative project was to hand-plant an army of pine trees across the sprawling land, worked and owned by the people of Granja Porcón. The arduous labor of surveying, planting, tilling, harvesting, logging, etc., was done by the members of the struggling community of Granja Porcón, while much of the planning, donations, and regulation was handled by national and interna-tional organizations. Belgium contributed in great part through the donation of many species of pine-tree saplings, as well as general project planning and infrastructure (e.g., access road construction, exportation of goods, preparation of raw materials, etc.).

Although Quispe met almost unanimous opposition from the community, he persevered and maintained focus on investing for the future. Many of the people wanted to continue working in a familiar vocation: sheepherding. Sheepherding at least provided seasonal benefits, and these traditionalists had difficulty believing planting trees would provide food for their families. However, as time went on, the community began to expand by erecting new buildings and diversifying their local market economy with a dairy-products factory and a zoo. Thus, the people began to see improvements in their community from their investment in agroforestry.8

The designated area for planting trees was up the mountainside, just outside the center of the community. The area chosen was located on two of the commu-nity’s largest mountains, Huamani and Buenos Dias. The terrain was incredibly steep and difficult to access. The most plausible strategy for the forestation of the mountainside was to airdrop seeds; however, Porcón did not have the funds nor the resources to plant via helicopter. As a result, in the beginning, and continuing to this day, workers manually carried each seed and sapling up the mountainside and planted them by hand. This trip up the mountainside and back can take anywhere from five to seven hours.

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Over the past twenty years, the community has grown seven types of pine trees: pinus radiata (central coast of California), patula pine (highlands of Mexico), smooth-bark Mexican pine (Mexico), Gregg’s pine (eastern Mexico), Montezuma pine (Mexico and Central America), bishop pine (California, some Baja California), and pinus devoniana (Mexico). These diverse pine groves cover a number of moun-tains in the area, totaling more than thirteen million pine trees to this day.9

The expansive tree farm not only produces wood to satisfy the demands of the domestic market but exports to neighboring countries like Bolivia and Ecuador. The wood is used for furniture, paper pulp, raw construction materials (specifi-cally support beams in houses), as well as fuel or firewood. A quick survey of the community would show that, by planting trees, the community benefits not only financially but also in the development of resources. The readily available wood is widely used for building new restaurants, libraries, homes, greenhouses, and other community-oriented structures. Small covered storage areas, continually stocked with available firewood, may be found adjacent to clusters of homes.

Today, the cooperative covers 10,966 hectares with a population of twelve hundred people. Almost half of this number consists of active evangelical Christians, who con-tribute to the attitude of spirituality and honesty so apparent in the community today.10

Key Factors for SuccessAlong with the hard work and dedication of the working people of the com-

munity, certain factors came together to cement a foundation and create a catalyst for the success Granja Porcón would see not only in its efforts toward sustainable natural resources but in the culture of the community as a whole. The governmental support, which came in full force, helped initiate progressive and sustainable de-sign in the process, while the locals pushed to keep agroforestry alive and thriving through work and innovation.

Put simply, foreign and national resources, local beliefs, an adequate ecosys-tem, and grueling manual labor helped lift Granja Porcón out of poverty and to-ward a viable future.

Foreign and National Resources In 1965,11 Peru and Belgium adopted a joint policy under which, five years later,

the Program for Cajamarca Development (Programa de Desarrollo de Cajamarca or PRODESCA) was created. This program was based on the new agrarian reform laws that gave land to those who worked the land. Involved in the same efforts was the National University of Cajamarca (UNC), represented by liaison Pablo Sanchez Zevallos. Funds from the Inter-American Development Bank (Banco Interameri-cano de Desarrollo) were granted to newly formed communities under the agrarian reform. The funds were used to help implement forestation efforts in struggling communities. The plants were housed in a nursery located at the UNC. Other com-munities actively involved in and benefitting from this program at the time in-cluded Choten, La Collpa, Sorochuco (Tingo), and Granja Porcón.

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Many of the trees used were eucalyptus (Eucaliptos globulus), because these grow to be strong and tall. In some instances, newly introduced pine trees were used in few communities. Granja Porcón was one of the select communities that opted for pine trees. In 1975, when the program was just beginning to take flight, Don Alejan-dro Quispe Chilón, the general president of Granja Porcón, became fully invested in the new program. Quispe felt the new policies offered job opportunities to his com-munity and family. Initially, Porcón planted an area of two hundred hectares on the aforementioned mountains, Buenos Dias and Huamani, first trying eucalyptus with unsuccessful results. This led them to consider the severe conditions of the high alti-tude and attempt pine tree species (specifically pinus radiata) instead. The pine trees successfully grew, and the collective efforts moved onward. Today, one lone eucalyp-tus tree stands high amidst the thirteen million pine trees in Granja Porcón.

In 1976, La Molina National University of Agriculture, with the complete sup-port of PRODESCA and the General Management of Forest and Fauna (la Dirección General Forestal y de Fauna), pursued a massive study concerning the feasibility of industrial forestation and raised 180,000 hectares of coniferous trees to meet the needs of the pulp and paper factories while also significantly improving develop-ment in the Cajamarca Region.

Belgium responded in the same year with its complete support with the cre-ation of the Center for Forestry Training and Research (Centro de Investigación y Capacitatión Forestal or CICAFOR). This center served as a technical and financial resource for the challenging and massive industrial forestry project. The organiza-tion stayed in place for the following twenty years to ensure the proper steps were taken to guarantee the project would be sustainable for many years to come.

Among the many projects where CICAFOR had a positive influence was the ven-ture to build a number of arboretums where certain rapid-growth species of trees could be introduced to increase production speed of useable wood as a raw mate-rial. Quispe responded positively to the offer from CICAFOR, which assumed all costs and began production in the land around Porcón. The arboretum was named El Rejo and constituted 150 hectares of pinus radiata, among other types. It was dur-ing this project that access roads, bridges, distribution channels, and firewalls were completed, with maps of the area. In addition, CICAFOR built forestry facilities to house thirty workers, complete with beds and a room for meetings and training. The project these public, private, and international organizations were taking on was a new assignment that had never been done before. The main goal of the organiza-tions was to define the process of successfully reproducing what they practiced.

Local BeliefsMuch of the surrounding regions were unable to achieve the success Granja Por-

cón saw in their time moving forward. Quispe attributes most of this success and smooth progress to the foundational religious beliefs12 of the community. The cooper-ative’s name, Atahualpa Jerusalem, is evidence of the strong religious tie interwoven in the community’s daily life.

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When discussing the feasibility of this project in other areas, Quispe said, “You have to be honest. This firmness and bravery to be honest has to be founded on your belief in God. Your goal needs to be to benefit the entire town and not just yourself.” He identi-fied the tendency in Peru for men to work hard to earn money and turn around and spend it all on alcohol. Quispe believed the success his community has seen is due to the honesty and integrity of the workers and money handlers.

Throughout the town, wood signs that quote scriptures from the Bible are hung from all public buildings, city centers, maps, restaurants, and bridges. Almost half of the town members consider themselves evangelicals. Quispe also decided to invest in forestry, because he felt the Bible outlines God’s plan for him. He attributes his calling in forestry to a verse found in Isaiah 41:19, which states, “I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together.”13 Quispe explained that the land where Porcón was situated could arguably be considered a wilderness, since little vegeta-tion was readily available.

Not only religious beliefs played a central role in the success of the forestation project in Porcón. Quispe’s dedication to forestation as a solution to poverty and unemployment was innovative and forward thinking. The Peruvian and Belgium governments provided financial and logistical support, but because Quispe caught the vision, he persevered through the hardship and challenges faced in taking on such a task. He remembers being confronted with opposition from his townspeople. They said he was psychologically unstable. They asked him how they were sup-posed to survive off of sticks and trees, since they were both things that could not be eaten. They argued they should not be so worried about decades into the future but instead should worry about feeding their families today. Quispe responded by say-ing they would not eat the sticks, but they would eat because of the sticks. His fore-sight and innovative courage kept this project alive throughout the forestation task.

The system Granja Porcón functions by requires absolute honesty. The people work by a system known as a cooperative, an organization that has different indus-tries and means for income that compiles all earnings and distributes them evenly throughout the community. Their one-for-all economic system is one that could easily crumble with the abuse of greedy and selfish leaders.

Fortunately, the city has seen only the positive consequences of the cooperative organization. By doing so, the town has diversified production and has developed dairy production, construction, tourism, and gastronomy. Granja Porcón functions profitably on a cooperative-based, honesty-requisite system.

Adequate EcosystemGranja Porcón is located 2,800 to 3,500 m above sea level (9,186 to 11,482 ft above

sea level). The natural area is vegetated with straw, dry grass, and scattered eucalyp-tus trees. June through September there is light rainfall that rarely exceeds 25 mm each month. However, October through April, the average rainfall is well above 50 mm and even exceeds 75 mm during late winter and early spring (see Figure 2).14

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The high levels of rain combined with the cooler temperatures found at such high altitudes gave Granja Porcón perfect conditions for growing trees, specifically, the seven types of pine trees found there today. Although not natural to the area, the pine trees thrive in the setting where soil is rich and rainfall abundant. As noted earlier, alternative types of trees were tested and were unsuccessful, while conditions were suitable for various pine tree species.

Figure 2. Average rainfall in millimeters for Granja Porcón

Challenges to OvercomeThe progress toward economic and employment stability was not without a

fair share of challenges.15 Porcón was trying to completely reassign and retrain their entire community to an industry they knew nothing about. These men and women had very little education or experience in anything besides sheepherding, and now they were to drop all they knew and invest their time, future, money, and energy into planting trees; something that had never been done in the region. By their own initiative, they planted around four hundred hectares of trees. They stood out among other cooperatives as a community ready to work.

When the governments offered their resources, the people were expected to trust the government representatives from Peru and Belgium, as well as their leader, Alejandro Quispe. This was a major challenge to overcome from day one. The work force had little experience and would require training and review and guidance throughout the entire process. As the government invested money in Granja Por-cón, they built offices and housing for workers where they could host meetings for planning, training, and progress updates. When the government initially decided to produce their own wood, they owned no land, so they were forced to look to the

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private sector. This led them to Porcón, the unexperienced community with a heart to work.

As planning and production began, CICAFOR began to organize the system Porcón had formed. There were no fire lines or access roads; there was no mode to extract harvested trees in a productive manner. When informed, Porcón agreed, and they began work. When CICAFOR and Belgium began looking for a suitable place to expand the production of trees, a place was found that crossed some of the sheep pastures. The proposal to begin planting trees here was met with opposition, because the people were accustomed to corporations coming in and exploiting the resources of the poor. They feared Belgium had come to slowly take away everything they owned. Fortunately, communication was facilitated through Quispe, who fully backed and supported the efforts of CICAFOR and Belgium.

As production increased, the trees they harvested were less accessible. They harvested the trees closer to the city until those had all been sold, then they moved further and further away from the town to find trees ready to be harvested. The work-force at the time was mostly women, who had to do the harvesting. They then had to carry the wood back into town to be sold. As they understood the system more, they worked harder and more productively.

Although the people of Porcón initially were skeptical of the corporations that assisted in implementing agroforestry, their relationship was improved greatly when CICAFOR and Belgium representatives offered to help develop their water supply systems and access roads. In the beginning, the road that connected Caja-marca to Granja Porcón was poor and was not suitable for most cars. The people feared letting go of what was familiar to them. By offering improved living stan-dards the people could see, CICAFOR gained their trust.

The Positive Impact of Planting Trees in the AndesWhile the community became fully invested in agroforestry, they began to see

major changes in their circumstances. It became evident within a couple of years that the project was benefiting the people of Porcón more than they had imagined.16

Before any agroforestry had begun in the community the people lived in straw huts. With the new production of wood, they built over three hundred houses from the trees they harvested. The women of the area now had a strong source of fuel to cook food and boil water. It gave them means to have light in the evenings and meet up as a family. It helped to dry wet clothes and wash diapers for the babies. As mentioned above, CICAFOR improved their water system and access roads to help gain their trust and facilitate the sale of the raw wood once harvested.

Success and improvement in Porcón began to grow exponentially. Initially, there was only one truck a week to take wood to Cajamarca to be sold; now there are almost ten a day. The wood not used for construction is purchased by the pulp and paper companies or sold to other businesses that find uses for scrap wood.

The city has diversified their economy by creating a milk-producing plant to produce their cheese, yogurt, milk, and other dairy products famous throughout the

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region. Porcón has a zoo full of animals from all the various regions of Peru (coastal, jungle, and highland). Hiking paths and rappelling courses intrigue tourists from all over the world. Hotels and cabins welcome visitors who want to enjoy the peace of the Andes Mountains overnight. The roots of the trees and the leaves on the branches help filter the water and provide cleaner water sources for those in the city. All in all, Granja Porcón is now a thriving town that has assured its place on the map.

ConclusionGranja Porcón was a community facing a future with little promise in the

mid-1960s. The livestock they raised depended heavily on the growth of grass in the area, which was sparse due to fires and droughts. The community had mea-ger living conditions (limited housing built from straw and mud, no educational resources, and unhealthy diets) and a struggling industry that hardly supported their economy. Due to an agrarian reform policy, agriculture and land ownership changed in a decade and offered a future to the small town. A combination of foun-dational elements led to a successful implementation of forestry in Granja Porcón, contributed by the Peruvian government, the Belgian government, and the leader-ship and workforce in Granja Porcón.

After twenty years, the progress has given them the flexibility to diversify their economy by building dairy factories and stores, a community zoo, a library, hotels and restaurants, and a tourism program. Health in the community has dramatically increased, and the town is projected to continue growing and developing while carry-ing on the strong forestry and wood production into the future.

NOTES1. Peru: Poverty headcount ratio at national poverty line. World Bank. Accessed Nov. 2013. http://

data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.NAHC/countries/PE?display=graph.2. Concurso Para Quitarse el Sombrero. http://concursopqs.mass.pe/.3. Peru: Improved water source, rural. World Bank. Accessed Nov. 2013. http://data.worldbank.

org/indicator/SH.H2O.SAFE.RU.ZS/countries/PE?display=graph.4. Carton, Charles. Reforestation and management of basins in Atahualpa Jerusalem, Granja

Porcón, Cajamarca. Experiencia de Manejo de Cuencas, Experiencia locales. http://www.cepes.org.pe/pdf/OCR/Partidos/manejo_integral_microcuencas/manejo_integral_microcuencas15.

5. Quispe Chilón, Manuel. Interview conducted on 8 July 2013 at Granja Porcón, Cajamarca, Peru.6. Granja Porcón web site. History and Culture. http://www.granjaPorcón.org.pe.7. Love, Thomas and Anna Garwood. “Wind, sun and water: Complexities of alternative energy

development in rural northern Peru.” Rural Society, Vol. 20 (3), June 2011: 294–307. GREENR. GALE CENGAGE Learning. 1 Jun 2011. http://find.galegroup.com.erl.lib.byu.edu/grnr/infomark.do?action=interpret&source=null&prodId=GRNR&userGroupName=byuprovo&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&docId=A273716559&type=retrieve&version=1.0&finalA uth=true#.

8. Quispe Chilón, Alejandro. Interview conducted on 8 July 2013 at Granja Porcón, Cajamarca, Peru.

9. Ibid.10. Granja Porcón web site. History and Culture. http://www.granjaPorcón.org.pe.11. Carton, Charles. Interview conducted online on 19 Nov 2013 from Provo, Utah.

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12. Quispe Chilón, Alejandro. Interview conducted on 8 July 2013 at Granja Porcón, Cajamarca, Peru.

13. Holy Bible: King James Version. Isaiah 41:19.14. Granja Porcón Monthly Climate Average, Peru. World Weather. Online.http://www.

worldweatheronline.com/Granja-Porcón-weather-averages/Cajamarca/PE.aspx.15. Carton, Charles. Interview conducted on 7 July 2013 at Granja Porcón, Cajamarca, Peru.16. Ibid.

REFERENCESBetter forestry, less poverty: A practitioner’s guide. FAO Forestry Paper 149. Food and Agriculture

Organization of the United Nations. Rome. 2006. http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/a0645e/a0645e00.html.

Carton, Charles. Interview conducted on 7 July 2013 at Granja Porcón, Cajamarca, Peru.Congreso de la Republica de Peru. Accessed 1 November 2013. http://www.congreso.gob.pe. Granja Porcón Monthly Climate Average, Peru. World Weather Online. http://www.world

weatheronline.com/Granja-Porcón-weather-averages/Cajamarca/PE.aspx.“Peru.” World Bank. World Development Indicators. Accessed 31 October 2013. http://data.

worldbank.org/country/peru.Portal del Estado de Peru. Accessed 1 November 2013. http://www.peru.gob.pe.Science Direct. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169204612003258.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCESFarnsworth, Tessa. In a town in Peru money does grow on trees. Dowser.org via Christian Science

Monitor. 8 October 2013. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2013/1008/In-a- town-in-Peru-money-does-grow-on-trees.

Gallegos, Hugo. “Cosechando en mis Andes: la industria maderera peruana podria dejar de depender de la explotacion de los bosques naturales de la selva para ir orientandose a proyectos forestales en la sierra. Para ello hay algunas iniciativas del gobierno y tambien mucho interes de inversionistas privados.” Semana Economica, Feb 18, 2007, Vol.1058, p.3 (3), 2007.

Tovar, Carolina; Seijmonsbergen, Arie C.; Duivenvoorden, Joost F. “Monitoring land use and land cover change in mountain regions: An example in the Jalca grasslands of the Peruvian Andes.” Landscape and Urban Planning, 2013, Vol.112, pp. 40–49, 2013.

APPENDIXPhotos 1–5: Conditions in Porcón before 1975. Pictures portray living conditions during that

time, vegetation of the surrounding land, and occupations of townspeople.Photos 6–12: Conditions in Porcón on 8 July 2013. Pictures portray progress of forestation close

to town center as well as 2–3 miles out, townspeople dress, raw wood material production and storage.

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Choices and Barriers in Rural Mexican Healthcare

by Carter Newey, exercise science

IntroductionRural healthcare throughout the world has commonly faced barriers impeding

quality healthcare delivery. Rural Mexico, for example, faces challenges of poverty, government policies, distance from hospitals, a misunderstanding of healthcare expectations, and deeply rooted cultural beliefs among patients, including the over-dependence of home remedies. While there have been extensive studies on rural medicine in various parts of the world, there is little published on how healthcare functions in the small villages northeast of Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico. One of these villages is Santa Rosa, about an hour by bus outside the city of Irapuato, which has a population of just a few hundred people. Given the small size of the village and the distance from the nearest hospital in the city, I hypothesized that many of these barriers also affect the region of Santa Rosa and surrounding villages, having a nega-tive impact on its residents in their ability to receive sufficient healthcare.

From early May to early August 2010, as part of the Mexico Field Studies pro-gram at Brigham Young University, I spent three months living in the remote vil-lage of Santa Rosa in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. My purpose was to study the healthcare system in the rural community and discover which barriers kept people from receiving quality healthcare. To discover these barriers, I engaged in participant observation at the small health center in Santa Rosa, spending time shadowing the doctor, nurses, and patients. I also conducted twenty-four semi-structured and vari-ous unstructured interviews to better understand the common challenges villagers face with regard to their healthcare decisions. Additionally, in the city of Irapuato, I visited public and private hospitals, which gave me an opportunity to better un-derstand urban healthcare as compared to rural healthcare in Santa Rosa. Through these methods I saw what role the health center played in this community and how it helped satisfy patients’ healthcare needs. I also discovered alternatives to the health-care services provided at the health center, including home remedies and traveling nurses. Most importantly, I identified the major healthcare barriers impeding quality patient care in this area. On a national level, such barriers include a complex and frag-mented healthcare system regulated by the government. Locally, a lack of common understanding between healthcare providers and patients often fosters unrealistic expectations and resistance to patient treatment.

As an ethnographic description of the healthcare system in Santa Rosa and the surrounding area, this study is meant simply to present my observations while

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interviewing villagers and shadowing in the health center. It is my hope that my experience may benefit others in their own endeavors to understand and improve healthcare not only in rural Mexico but around the world. My observations com-plement the reviewed literature by determining whether the challenges that have been observed in other rural areas also present barriers to people in the ranchos of Guanajuato as they seek healthcare solutions. Since health is an important factor in quality of life, this study is intended to promote further research into the healthcare system in rural Mexico.

Literature ReviewPrevious studies on rural medicine helped identify barriers to rural healthcare

in other parts of the world that might also influence the quality of healthcare in Santa Rosa. Factors identified in the literature include poverty, limited resources, and the process of choosing a healthcare provider, each of which will be discussed.

A study by V. Nelly Salgado-de Snyder, Ma de Jesús Díaz-Pérez, and Tonatiuh González-Vázquez describes the order of seeking treatment used by residents of Jalisco, Mexico, in a study of mental health (2002). In this community, people suf-fering from illness do not immediately go to the doctor but will first try to treat the problem themselves. If this fails to solve the problem, they will then look for help within their social circle and then, finally, will visit a doctor. According to this study, “inhabitants of rural communities tend to seek help from physicians, only when the symptom persists and the suffering associated with it seems to be out of the individual’s control, or if members of the social network or the ethno-medical local system refer the patient to the physician.”

This is significant, because patients living in rural settings tend to be self-sufficient. They have learned over the years how to survive while somewhat removed from city centers. This includes aspects of healthcare, which explains why they will do as much as they can on their own to treat illnesses and injuries before seeking more advanced medical care.

A major contributing factor influencing healthcare choices and access is poverty. Poverty can greatly affect the way people view themselves and their ability to receive healthcare. According to a study by Tezoquipa, Monreal, and Siller, “there is a clear idea that, if women had had economic resources, their health problem would have been solved differently. They are also convinced that, due to being poor, they have to content themselves with bad-quality medical care” (2005).

While this attitude is prevalent among Mexican women, many attempt to change their economic situation by having their husbands work elsewhere. Men will leave their families for extended periods of time in the pursuit of economic opportunities in the United States. It is estimated that over 70 percent of adult men in the ranchos outside Irapuato have left at one point for the U.S., seeking better jobs (Wilkerson 2008). The money earned in the U.S. is sent back to their families in Mexico. This helps provide for the family’s basic needs but usually is not enough to pay for private healthcare.

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Aside from economic barriers, there is a wide variety of other factors, including insurance, geography, parent educational attainment, parent beliefs, use of home remedies, and folk medicine practice. Among the many potential barriers, the most important (according to one study) are a “lack of health insurance and lack of a regular source of care” (Flores and Vega 1998).

Many rural health centers and healthcare practitioners in rural areas face barri-ers, such as limited information access. These “barriers to information access include lack of time, isolation, inadequate library access, lack of equipment, lack of skills, costs, and inadequate Internet infrastructure” (Dorsch 2000). Because doctors prac-ticing in more remote locations have limited access to the resources they normally would have in the city, they often have difficulty keeping up with current and ef-fective medical practices.

In light of these factors affecting many small, remote rural communities, self-treatment, poverty, and resource limitations, Christiane Brems et al., observed that “the smaller a provider’s practice community, the greater the reports of barriers, with the most severe barriers reported in small rural communities” (2006).

Public and Private Healthcare in MexicoOverall, the healthcare system in Mexico seems to be fairly good, with many

of the same medical technology and resources used in the United States. Many U.S. doctors receive their training in Mexico and, likewise, many Mexican doctors receive training in the United States. Because healthcare is generally much cheaper in Mex-ico than in the U.S., people may associate doctors trained in Mexico with lower quality care, but often this is not the case (International Living 2014).

In order to understand the healthcare system in rural Guanajuato, it is best to begin with a description of how the health system is organized at the national level. Healthcare in Mexico is highly fragmented into different entities that work together to provide healthcare for Mexican citizens. There are two main sectors involved: private and public. Private healthcare is much costlier, and its practitioners run their offices as a business, appealing to those with more money while providing care with a high level of attention. In the public sector, healthcare is provided by the government and is virtually free to its patients. Public healthcare is usually more crowded, slower, and lower quality than what can be found in private hospi-tals and clinics. Both sectors have their advantages and disadvantages (Soderlund, Mendoza-Arana, and Goudge 2003).

In the private sector, there are usually more services available, and patients can enjoy being cared for in a more private setting than they would receive in a gen-eral public hospital. However, the costs can be considerably more expensive and, therefore, more feasible for the wealthy population. According to interviews among health-center staff and villagers, private hospitals and clinics offer a competitive alternative to public healthcare centers.

For the most part, public hospitals tend to be overcrowded and provide fewer services than private hospitals. They often have long wait times and lack sufficient

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space to house sick and injured patients. Patients are also usually unable to choose which doctor treats them and may have limited treatment options. Because of over-crowding, many times patients’ families are not permitted to visit. On the other hand, public hospitals provide an incredible amount of service for very little cost, and sometimes they are completely free to patients. Public hospitals are funded primarily by the federal government and seek to provide cheap or free healthcare for as many people as possible. They do this by working through a government program called Seguro Popular.

Seguro Popular and OportunidadesSeguro Popular (Popular Insurance) was established in 2001 as a means to al-

low the poor Mexican population without health insurance access to free healthcare. It is estimated that about half of all Mexicans have health insurance (Knox 2012). Of the citizens who do not, many will turn to Seguro Popular as an answer to their financial healthcare needs. “By the end of 2007, 20 million people in Mexico were Seguro Popular beneficiaries, 35.2% of these are rural families” (Julio, Gomez, and Marie 2008). After meeting certain qualifications based on income, Seguro Popular offers health insurance for the low-income population in Mexico and covers most medications and treatments up to a certain amount. Because of Seguro Popular, the vast majority (80 percent) of villagers were covered by this government- and donor-funded program, which made it possible for them to receive free or cheap healthcare in the health center in Santa Rosa, as well as public health centers and hospitals in Irapuato. Through this program, they are able to receive regular care they otherwise would have found very difficult to obtain. Without it, improvements in healthcare access would not happen at nearly the rate they are now in Mexico.

In addition to Seguro Popular, another government-funded program seeking to aid poor Mexican families called Oportunidades (Opportunities) works hand in hand with Seguro Popular to combat poverty while improving healthcare. While Seguro Popular covers healthcare costs for the uninsured, Oportunidades seeks to help with other financial needs in addition to healthcare, including costs related to education and food. It benefits people by paying cash to families, conditional upon beneficiaries regularly attending health sessions, receiving health checkups, and meeting certain educational requirements. Villagers using Oportunidades are required to attend regular health-related meetings discussing preventative measures such as frequent hand washing and basic hygiene. As positive as Oportunidades may appear on the surface, many Mexicans fear the abuse of the system, resulting in recipients using cash from the program to pay for unrelated expenses not intended by its founders. However, Oportunidades has been seen as an effective means to motivate villagers to take care of their health as well as keep their children pursuing educational programs (Julio, Gomez, and Marie 2008).

Levels of Healthcare It is helpful to distinguish between the three levels of care (Andre and Pascal

2005). The first level deals with prevention and treatment of minor illnesses and inju-

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ries. Rural health centers, including Santa Rosa, provide this first-level care. Second-level care handles emergencies, births, serious illnesses, and provides specialized treatments, such is the case with both public and private hospitals found in Irapuato. Third-level care deals with the most serious of illnesses and injuries, including cancer and high-risk operations. For someone in central Mexico, one would need to travel to Leon, Guanajuato, or Mexico City to receive treatment at this level.

Santa Rosa Health CenterUnder the first level of care, the government of the state of Guanajuato pro-

vides small health centers to rural areas and staffs them with doctors and nurses, assign-ing one doctor for every three thousand residents. These health centers are assigned to nearby villages to provide care. The villages of Ojo de Agua, Las Adjuntas, Santa Rosa, La Estancia, and El Encino are covered by the clinic in Santa Rosa. These vil-lages are located within an hour bus ride northeast of the city of Irapuato. Santa Rosa is the largest of the surrounding villages, with a population of a few hundred people. Comederito, a village just a few miles beyond Santa Rosa, lies outside the responsibility of the Santa Rosa clinic and receives its healthcare by means of a transient doctor who visits the village twice a month. Although it is typical for rural health centers to cover a larger geographical area, some villagers feel this means there are not enough doctors to adequately meet the healthcare needs of patients. Still, quality of care has improved and healthcare coverage has expanded over the years.

Before the Santa Rosa health center existed, most people would either have to find a way to Irapuato or go to a health representative in the village called an auxiliar. An auxiliar functions similarly to a nurse, having certain medications on hand in case of emergencies. When the health center was provided by the govern-ment and built by the hands of the villagers in the 1980s, the need for auxiliares was officially replaced, although a few villagers will claim to still practice as auxiliares.

The health center itself consists of two buildings: one for meetings for discuss-ing health as a part of Oportunidades and another, the main building, where patients are received and treated. The main building contains a simple waiting room, a con-sultation room, an examination and minor surgery room, a hospitalization room for those too sick to travel to Irapuato, and a private room for the doctor to live in during off hours. The health center has some basic equipment, such as an exami-nation table, a simple ultrasound, and so on. The center is staffed by two nurses and one doctor who work together to administer care to the patients. The posted health-center schedule for visits lists its open hours as Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. and Saturday 8:00 a.m.–12 p.m.; the doctor is also available for emergencies outside these hours. Financially, the health center is run by the govern-ment, which provides it with resources and materials. The Santa Rosa clinic is one of several rural health centers in Guanajuato operating under the headquarters in Torres Landa, located in Irapuato.

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MethodsSince health centers are such a critical link in the healthcare system in this part

of rural Mexico, it was useful and necessary for me to become as involved as I could in the activities at the Santa Rosa clinic. For approximately two hours (10:00 a.m.–noon.) each day the doctor was present, I engaged in participant observation at the health center, Tuesday through Friday, during the three months I lived in Santa Rosa. I participated in several activities, including traveling with the nurses to nearby villages as they vaccinated children under the age of five. I also conducted a census survey for the health center in the village of La Estancia to gather patient and resident information for the health center.

The majority of my time was spent sitting with a young doctor rendering his required year of service in a rural area. I observed the doctor-patient interactions during consultations, taking note of everything I could from the types and treat-ments of health conditions patients possessed to the manner in which the doctor treated his patients. I observed firsthand how the health center operates and identi-fied what I felt to be its strengths and limitations. In addition, participant obser-vation helped me establish relationships with the doctor and nurses in the health center, making it easier for me to conduct interviews with them later on.

Interview subjects were found primarily through snowball sampling. There was no particular criteria for what qualified someone to be interviewed other than the intent to obtain a large enough sample size to sufficiently represent each of the surrounding villages.

I conducted twenty-one semi-structured interviews among men and women, eighteen years old and older, living in or near Santa Rosa, including the villages of La Estancia, El Encino, and Comederito. Each interviewee signed a consent form, and nearly all of them agreed to allow the interview to be recorded. I also completed three interviews under the same conditions with the Santa Rosa health-center staff to pro-vide a healthcare professional perspective on rural healthcare in that part of Mexico.

The majority of the interviews took forty-five to ninety minutes to complete, depending on the length of the answers given as well as the respondents’ understand-ing of the questions. The interview questions were primarily focused, in some way or another, on identifying common barriers to healthcare the villagers faced as well as the choices they make to receive healthcare. Most questions identified behavioral choices, such as where one might go to give birth. Other questions focused on their under-standing of the healthcare system as it operates on a local level. I asked some questions about opinions on how they felt the healthcare system was working for them individu-ally or as a family. Interviews were typically conducted face to face at the person’s home in a comfortable, open setting. In addition to Santa Rosa, interviewees were also represented from the nearby villages of Comederito, La Estancia, and El Encino.

LimitationsThe following results reflect the opinions and experiences of the individuals

I interviewed and may or may not necessarily reflect the general attitudes of the

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larger population. Having an interview sample size of only twenty-four, rather than a larger sample size spread among villages, made it more difficult to arrive at a strong conclusion. Also, interviewees were not selected randomly, although I tried to obtain at least several interviews from four of the major villages near the health center, including Santa Rosa, Comederito, La Estancia, and El Encino. In addition to working with a faculty mentor only remotely through e-mail, I was also limited in research experience and may not have included all relevant aspects of healthcare during interviews. However, this information is still valuable in the sense that it provides insight into the lives of villagers living under certain healthcare conditions from their perspective, which may be helpful in overcoming the challenges faced in this or other rural settings.

FindingsThe majority of villagers in Santa Rosa and the surrounding villages reported

they were satisfied with the health center in terms of basic level-one health care. The health center provides the majority of basic healthcare needs. However, according to some villagers, it still needs improvement in several areas, especially in terms of what is provided by the health-center doctor.

Although Seguro Popular and Oportunidades helped tremendously with med-ical care, poverty was still a major factor affecting health conditions in the villages. For example, there was little or no running water present, and since the main water pipe running through the village was indefinitely out of order, villagers used a well next to the river. Here they filled buckets of water, tied them to donkeys, and sent the water back home to be used for everything from washing dishes to drinking water. Since water was typically used without purification from chlorine or boiling, diarrhea and dehydration were common ailments.

Nutrition was also an important factor affecting villagers’ health in a variety of ways. Since most families lived off the land to some degree, harvesting corn and other crops, they subsisted on a mostly natural, yet limited, diet. Staples were corn tortillas and beans with few fruits and vegetables. Since fresh fruits and vegetables were mainly found in the city, malnutrition was common. Sometimes, however, people bought fruits and vegetables from the city or from traveling sales trucks passing through the village. Refrigeration was also uncommon, making the storage of fruits, vegetables, dairy, and meats difficult.

Sanitation and hygiene practices were substandard compared to public health recommendations, which was in part affected by the lack of a functional water sys-tem in the villages. This led to more communicable diseases being treated in the health center that could have been prevented had better hygiene habits been prac-ticed. Many patients who came into the health center were treated for cases of diar-rhea, dehydration, and gastrointestinal infections. This was largely due to exposure to pathogens that could have been avoided. While interviewing villagers, many noted the importance of covering food from flies, washing hands, and using a few drops of bleach to disinfect drinking water. Upon observing villagers, including my

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host family, as well as interviewing the health-center staff, it became apparent many of these precautionary measures were not put into practice as often as they should have been. This may have either been because of a lack of understanding of their importance, or the people were not accustomed to implementing these safeguards because of cultural or personal reasons. In spite of these examples of challenges influenced by poverty, poverty was less of a barrier to receiving healthcare in the villages than I had anticipated because of tremendous coverage from Seguro Popu-lar and Oportunidades.

The rural location of Santa Rosa played a significant role in what type of healthcare was available for villagers. Because of the fairly remote location and small population of Santa Rosa compared to the city of Irapuato, the health center only provided basic medical care. This was consistent with what was identified in the literature. It is understandable why the local health center would not con-tain advanced medical resources to handle severe conditions. However, there is a higher risk of death when a level-two center, such as the hospital in Irapuato, is too far away for the patient to be treated in time. Unfortunately, the primary mode of transportation between Irapuato and Santa Rosa is a bus, which runs every hour or so. In an emergency situation, villagers will usually find someone nearby with a truck to drive faster into the city. Most people did not have cars and depended heavily on the bus schedule. This was fine in routine care cases, but in emergen-cies this often resulted in major problems. One woman I interviewed told me of an experience when she went into labor while in the village. Because of complica-tions caused by the long journey to the hospital, her baby passed away by the time she reached the hospital. This is just one example of a barrier to rural healthcare resulting in a tragedy. Some are controllable and preventable, while others, such as distance, are not.

Lack of information affected healthcare in the villages in a few ways. First, there was a disconnect between what the doctor and nurses at the health center expected the villagers to understand and do and what the villagers felt they needed to with respect to their healthcare. For example, the doctor believed too many patients were coming in for treatment for conditions that easily could have been prevented if they practiced better healthcare habits, while patients felt like the health center was not doing enough for them. It is for this reason there has been a push from Opor-tunidades to provide monthly health education meetings at the health center. Since over 60 percent of patients belong to this program, many attend. According to the doctor, despite monthly health meetings, the actual implementation of better health practices among patients had been lacking, which meant patients were still seeking treatment for preventable conditions. Miscommunication or lack of communication is likely the cause of this disconnect since patients often spoke timidly with the health-center staff concerning what they felt were injustices. On the health center’s end, not having Internet access, a recognizable name for the health center, an address, or even a telephone made it difficult to communicate information to patients about when the doctor or nurses were running late, the need to reschedule appointments,

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and so on. Most patients also do not claim a home address or phone number, mak-ing communication even more difficult.

Unlike information barriers mentioned in the literature, a lack of continuing education in terms of medical training was not an issue among the healthcare staff in the Santa Rosa clinic. Both nurses and the doctor were well qualified to diag-nose and administer treatment to their patients. They also kept in close contact with their headquarters of Torres Landa, receiving new supplies and medications as needed. Since they constantly had access to new information to improve their prac-tice, being “out of date” was not a concern. One potential issue as far as education is concerned could be a shortened amount of experience studying medicine before practicing it. Unlike medical training in countries such as the U.S. where an under-graduate degree is required before entering medical school, to become a doctor in Mexico, one would go from high school straight to medical school, followed by a two-year residency. The doctor in the health center was in his last year of residency when I was present. Although he was young (twenty-five years old), he seemed very knowledgeable about medicine.

When asked if the health center meets their needs, nine patients/interviewees responded “yes,” seven said “no,” and four said “sometimes.” One interviewee did not give an answer, and the other three interviews came from health center staff and were asked a different set of questions. Generally speaking, there were mixed feelings concerning health center satisfaction. Although many people felt the health center was doing a fine job, from the other patients’ perspective some felt like the health center was not doing enough for them. They did not understand why the health cen-ter did not always follow its schedule or why waiting times were so long. Because of these and other issues, villagers often turned to other places to meet their healthcare needs, such as the health center in Aldama (thirty minutes by bus from Santa Rosa), even going all the way to Irapuato. Differences in opinions on the Santa Rosa health center are likely due to a variety of factors, including positive or negative experiences while there, as well as the patients’ perception of their own health and how they would seek treatment when sick or injured.

The order of treatment was generally similar among villagers. Most people, during the onset of illness, will start treating themselves with home remedies. These are typically herbal teas passed down from generation to generation, said to help cure a variety of sicknesses. Although they are not supported by scientific research, they are commonly used because the villagers believe it helps them heal. The most interesting home remedy I encountered was jars of venomous snakes and scorpions soaked in alcohol. The family that used them said it worked as a type of antidote against animal bites. When bitten by a venomous snake, scorpion, or spider, alco-hol from the jar of the same type of animal that bit them would be rubbed into the wound. It was claimed to counter the poisonous effects of the bite.

If home remedies did not solve the ailment, most people turned to the health center for help. If a sickness or injury was not too severe it was usually resolved at this step. If it was something beyond the scope of the health center, patients received

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a recommendation paper from the doctor or nurses to take with them to the hospital in Irapuato to receive treatment. This recommendation helped speed up the treatment process to ensure that patients with more urgent or emergency needs were treated before patients with less critical conditions when they arrived at the hospital. Most cases, even emergencies, could be resolved at the hospital in Irapuato. However, if there was a specialized surgery or cancer treatment, those cases were referred to the hospital in Leon, Guanajuato, where the most resources and advanced equipment are available to help patients.

A major barrier reported by villagers I interviewed had to do with the health center not keeping its schedule. I noticed this myself many times as I tried to shadow the doc-tor during his consultation hours throughout the week. I caught him there about half the time. For example, one morning around 11:00 a.m. I walked past the health cen-ter to see over a dozen people surrounding the health center fence waiting for the nurses or doctor to arrive so they could be treated. I was surprised to discover some of these families had walked for over an hour from their homes only to find the gates locked. Many waited for hours until they were helped. When I interviewed the doctor and nurses about this, they responded that there are responsibilities beyond what is seen at the health center itself that need to be addressed. They report to their headquarters in Torres Landa, pick up supplies, and then drive to Santa Rosa. Sometimes there was not time to post a sign and notify patients when they were going to be late. This is something the villagers did not seem to understand as I interviewed them, which led some to hold a negative view toward the health-center staff. Later in the interview with the doctor, he mentioned personal reasons for not being available during his scheduled hours or after hours during emergencies. He was supposed to live in the health center all week except for Sundays; instead he was driving back to Irapuato in the afternoons sometimes just because he liked it better in the city, wanted to see his girlfriend, and received the same government stipend either way. Because of this, patients distrusted the doctor and did not know whom to turn to in case of an emergency or even a regular consultation.

Aside from not keeping a regular schedule, villagers reported barriers with long waiting times and a lack of equipment, supplies, and some medications normally avail-able in the health center. When I asked the doctor and nurses about this, they told me they had made improvements to the health center over the years with more rooms, more equipment, and more medications than ever before. Waiting times had also decreased to five to thirty minutes for consultations due to greater efficiency and orga-nization. They acknowledged the health center was not perfect, but it was doing a good job overall to satisfy the needs of its patients as long as the patients were committed to regular checkups.

AnalysisSome of the barriers, such as distance, lack of transportation, lack of equipment

and supplies, and over-reliance on home remedies, were barriers I expected to encoun-ter after discovering them in the literature. Other barriers, however, such as the doctor

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not keeping the posted schedule and the miscommunication between the health center staff and its patients, were issues I had not anticipated.

Comparing the two categories of people interviewed (local villagers versus the health center staff) revealed a number of interesting insights as to the current status of the healthcare system in Mexico, especially as it relates to the Santa Rosa clinic and surrounding area. There seemed to be two main sides to issues surrounding the bar-riers to healthcare in the villages. What it came down to was a lack of understanding and communication between the health center and its patients. Being involved with both groups put me in a position to understand to a better degree the perspective from each side. I could sympathize with the villagers not receiving treatment at the health center when they needed it. I could also understand why the nurses and doc-tor at the health center were unable to satisfy every need presented to them by their patients. While some of these issues apparently could be corrected on a local level, others are not because the health center in Santa Rosa is only a small entity within a large and complex national healthcare system.

ConclusionBased on my observations and the interview responses, the healthcare system in

the villages seemed to provide sufficient basic care for the majority of villagers, with the health center playing an important role in helping to keep villagers from Santa Rosa and nearby locations healthy. According to the people interviewed, there are improvements that should be made in terms of improved communication between health center staff and patients, better patient health education, and increased treat-ment availability among patients. These are not easily corrected issues but will hope-fully be improved over time with the right measures.

Rural healthcare in Guanajuato, Mexico, provides some idea of what healthcare may be like in other parts of Mexico as well as other rural areas around the globe. According to interviews from villagers and health center staff, rural Mexican healthcare (at least in Santa Rosa) is generally improving with time but is not yet where it is hoped to be. There are strengths and weaknesses in the health system, which are continually changing with the evolving cultural and political practices in Mexico. Because of its limitations, patients in the villages often turn to other sources for their healthcare needs, including home remedies, other health centers, hospitals, or private doctors in the city. Despite healthcare barriers, including poverty, government policies, long distance from hospitals, a misunderstanding of healthcare expectations, and traditional home-remedy practices among patients, villagers have access to an important health center provid-ing basic and necessary healthcare. Healthcare in Santa Rosa is improving and will continue to improve as long as government programs, healthcare providers, and patients do their part in helping to make quality healthcare in rural Mexico a reality.

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ISSN 1939-3148 (Online)

Presented by Brigham Young University’s David M. Kennedy Center for InternationalStudies to highlight outstanding student field research with elements of primary and

original research.

PUBLISHER

Jeffrey F. Ringer, directorDavid M. Kennedy Center for International Studies

Brigham Young University

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Kirk W. Larsen

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Jain Willis

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