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Love your neighbor…

April 13, 2009 | posted by Jon under nicaragua, updates

Throughout the past few days of riding, a number of chains of thoughts have been cycling through my mind as I try to distract myself from the heat and humidity that the coastal plains of El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua have brought us.

I will try to share them with you (hopefully in a coherent fashion) to give you some idea of what we’ve been up to, where we have been, and what I have been thinking about for the past few days.

In Nicaragua, Lars and I recently spoke with man who was wearing a shirt that said, ¨Yes to CAFTA.¨ (for an excellent CAFTA explanation, see Lars’ People of…MASECA? post) We were fascinated by this, and went up to talk to him, because everything that we had ever heard or learned about CAFTA would seem to give Nicaragua one of the strongest voices against CAFTA.  But he spoke positively of the bill, saying that it gave Nicaragua a chance to expand its markets on a more international level.  We shared our opinion as well, saying that we thought the idea in principal was a good one, but that it put unequal markets on the same playing field,benefiting the US more than any other participating country

When George W. Bush was lobbying to pass CAFTA, he referred to Central America as ¨our backyard¨  Does this not make all of the Central American countries our neighbors?  Countries that now share not only the same hemispheres and borders, but also the same products, produce, and ¨prosperity,¨ thanks to CAFTA and the economics of neoliberalism?

Leviticus 19:18 in the Message reads - ¨Love your neighbor as yourself.  I am God.¨  That seems like a pretty clear message to me.  We are called, above many other things, to love our neighbors as ourselves.  I challenge the readers (and writer) of this post to expand the definition of your neighbor to an international level.  I can tell you there is an incredible amount to love about these countries, cultures, and people.  There is also an incredible amount of good that could be done if more neighborly love were shown between countries.

Some questions to ponder:  What does it mean to love neighbors internationally?  Who do we consider our neighbors, especially in this ago of instantaneous communication?  Are we loving our neighbors through CAFTA? What does loving your neighbor mean on the US-Mexico Border?  How do we show our love from afar?  Where do we begin?