I want to write about poverty because I will be able to speak to you from my authentic voice - from my roots. I realize that I am swimming against the flow but for the first time in my life I feel that an invisible barrier has been broken. It is the barrier that had held me on the other side of the tracks. I do want to make a difference in the world and I do have something to say.

I come from generations of people who have been suffering without a voice for 600 years. They have had the European and North American boot on their throats. Or they were murdered for going against what they believed were injustices perpetrated against their brothers and sisters for what they viewed as the inexcusably arrogant domination of another culture.

I am writing about poverty with the hope of entering into a dialogue with you on this distressing topic. I strongly believe that there is enough wealth in the world to eradicate hunger, homelessness, and improve the standard of living of the world's poor. The distribution of global wealth is totally inequitable, especially in terms of poverty in Latin America, Africa, and Asia as well as in Canada, the USA and Europe.

What about my experience?

Working class struggles are in my bones and part of my own family's history. My mom was pulled out school in grade 3 so that she could go to work to help her parents. My father was not able to complete high school because he opted to go to work at 13 to help his family. My parents' fate was to be born in a poor cradle and not a rich one and they had no opportunity to develop their intellectual potential to the fullest. I respect my working class father for all the sacrifices he made in his life to feed, shelter, and protect his family. I am very proud to call him my father. My mom and dad worked very hard to give my brothers and me a better life than what they had growing up, and for that they have my respect and admiration. They taught us that there is nothing wrong with hard work if you do it with integrity. In looking back at what they accomplished, I am not sure that I would have been able to pick-up my bags and my child at thirty-five like they did and go to a new country, with a different culture and language.

As a child in Latin America, I lived in a house with a roof that leaked when it rained and had no indoor plumbing. My parent's remuneration from their hard-earned jobs was only enough to buy food and pay rent. Yet, somehow they always found some money to share with the less fortunate in the family. My maternal grandmother's pension was very small and my dad would share some of his wages with her every week. With some of the money left over my mother would take me to a Saturday movie matinee and my father would take my brother to a Sunday afternoon soccer game.

There is no glamour in being poor

There is no glamour in being poor, in having no running water, no food, a shelter that is vulnerable to weather extremes. "But the price of poverty is above all else a human one. At the very least, each poor citizen experiences material deprivation, shattered aspirations, and diminished access to quality schooling, housing and even medical care. Depending on where they live and what kinds of persons they are, poor individuals can also be affected by ill health, functional illiteracy, deficient self-esteem, and social isolation, as well as being victims of crime" (Ambert, 1997, p. 21).

The distribution of wealth

"Poverty is not written in the stars; underdevelopment is not one of God's mysterious designs" (Galeano, 1998, p. 7) In North America, the Mecca of economic freedoms and free enterprise, there are an incredible number of wealthy individuals. The owners of the wealth have come by their riches in many different ways. We glorify Hollywood and sports personalities with all their millions - these very wealthy persons own more than one
home, and have an entourage of people that look after their every whim. How do these individuals become like royalty? They are like queens and kings with royal palaces, eating nothing but the best foods available and demanding nothing but the best clothing while objectifying the rest of humanity because fans and groupies believe them to be heroes and above the crowd. Bill Gates, technology's emperor does contribute to certain charities but how is it that someone worth so many billions doesn't do more for his poor fellow world citizens. How can some individuals accumulate so much wealth and others have absolutely nothing to eat and have to live on the streets? Another example of extreme wealth in Europe is the Queen of England and her multi-millionaire cohorts. How do they rate having all these honours and riches bestowed on them? The rest us, the ordinary people work very hard for what we earn.

Is it fate?

Why can't this extreme wealth be distributed more equally? Why should there be such disparity? But the media mesmerize with dazzling magazine articles and surreal TV programs, which keep us stupefied in adoration of all these so called celebrities - even when the celebrities are dead. In terms of John Kennedy Jr. and his father for example, the media keep on digging up rubbish to feed people's curiosity and the leeches that produce all this filth just get richer.

The inequities are so huge

The ravages of Aids in Africa and other human massacres presently hold millions of children orphaned in Africa.

In some South American countries children are murdered and sold for organ transplants, in others homeless kids are gunned down to control their numbers. Is this fair?

"The sinister dialectic of victim-hangman relations: a structure of successive humiliations that starts in international markets and financial centres and ends in every citizen's home" (Ibid. 1998, p. 275) "Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. It has more foot-washers than shoeshiners: little boys who, for a penny, will wash the feet of customers lacking shoes to shine. Haitians, on the average, live a bit more than thirty years. Nine out of every ten can't read or write. For internal consumption the barren mountainsides are cultivated. For export, the fertile valleys: the best lands are given to coffee, sugar, cacao, and other products needed by the U.S. market. No one plays baseball in Haiti, but Haiti is the world's chief producer of baseballs. There is no shortage of workshops where children assemble cassettes and electronic parts for a dollar a day. These are naturally for export; and naturally the profits are also exported, after the administrators of the terror have duly got theirs. The slightest breath of protest in Haiti means prison or death" (Ibid. p. 275).

In Latin America there are no jobs available even though in some of the countries there is a highly educated population; hopelessness is rampant because ordinary citizens cannot fight the politics that keep the families of the rich in power.

"To earn what a French worker gets in one hour, the Brazilian now has to work 2.5 days. A little more that ten hours' work gets the U.S. worker the equivalent of a month's work by a Brazilian... Hardly one in four Brazilians can really be considered a consumer. Forty-five million Brazilians have the same combined income as 900,000 privileged citizens at the other end of the social scale" (Ibid. p. 251). In the U.S. billions are spent on fighting wars in foreign soil - meanwhile poor American children, women and the elderly suffer health care issues, education, as well as unemployment.

The buzzword "globalization" displaces workers in North American cities and sends the manufacturing jobs outside North America to have the goods manufactured more cheaply. "Labor costs for the manufacturing industry for example, are generally much lower in Mexico or Brazil than in the United States" (Ibid. p. 278).

"Whatever Latin America sells - raw materials or manufacturers - its chief export product is really cheap labor" (Ibid. p. 279)

"Slave ships no longer ply the ocean. Today the slavers operate from the ministries of labor. African wages, European prices" (Ibid. p. 279)

No new jobs are being created and thousands of people have become unemployed and large numbers are in the manufacturing sector. We live in a world where in the U.S. it is perfectly OK for a movie actor to demand 20 million dollars for a lead role in a movie, and for the government to spend 500 billion dollars on military paraphernalia to fight ghost wars created by the USA. Elsewhere in the world, millions of people are dying of starvation, or are suffering illnesses for which they cannot buy medication.

The disparity is unreal.

Poverty in Canada and the USA is concentrated in the inner cities and small towns. Unemployment, lack of education, crime, and the number of children born under these circumstances continue to increase. Dedicated people ensure that the U.S. continues to have the best-equipped and trained army in the world and to reign as the world's #1 super monetary power. Surely, we can spare a few billion dollars to invest in the study of creative solutions so that the devastation of poverty can be eradicated. The world has incredible universities and incredible brainpower that could be used in a positive manner instead of using them to create weapons of mass destruction whose only purpose is to destroy life.

The hate and racist attitude toward people looking for a better standard of living is incredible

One of the most astonishing, racist and hateful things that I have read toward my culture was in a paper by a Jungian analyst. In his paper, he states that "the invasion of Latin culture into the North has also taken the form of massive human migration.... One of the largest population movements in all of human history has occurred during the last several decades from the countries in Latin America to the United States and Canada. In Chicago my home city", he goes to say, "there live today over one million people of direct Hispanic decent. The political map of Chicago has been redrawn in the last twenty years and is now divided into three more or less equal parts: one third European, one third African American, and one third Hispanic.

In cities like Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, and San Diego the percentage of Latin inhabitants are even higher. Spanish is rapidly becoming a 'must learn' language throughout the United States if one wants to relate to the general population, not to mention getting through the airport in Miami... This ... invasion ... creates anxiety about losing the fundamental values and images that have gone into forming the identity of our northern European based cultures. The psychological threat of cultural regression and dissolution leads us to anticipate ... a loss of familiar cultural identity" (Stein, 2000) My response to this gentleman's concern is: has he checked lately who is collecting his garbage or cutting his grass in his affluent Chicago neighborhood? Who is serving the tables and washing the dishes at his favourite restaurants? Who is nurturing and looking after his wealthy clients' children? Surely not his buddies from Princeton or Yale, nor his affluent students...

The poor also have hopes and aspirations

It is our obligation as aware and conscious citizens of the world to create a campaign to bring our concerns to the people responsible for running our countries, our cities, and our towns. We must begin to think more creatively about this extreme world situation. There are pockets of people that have begun to think about this outside the box, for example the lead singer Bono from the rock group U2 is one of those people. Like Bono there are a number of other people including ordinary citizens that are working very hard for change. In some cases it is not lack of education but lack of opportunity that keeps people trapped in a poverty cycle. In some countries the people are leaving their homelands for unknown destinations, anywhere where they can find work to provide food and shelter for themselves and their families. The sooner that we realize that this affects our collective unconscious the sooner that solutions will begin to materialize.

References

Ambert, Anne-Marie (1997). The Web of Poverty, Psychosocial Perspectives. Binghamton, New York: Haworth Press Inc.

Galeano, Eduardo, H. (1998). Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Stein, Murray (June 2000). On the Politics of Individuation in the Americas. A paper presented at the Second Latin American Congress of Jungian Psychology.