It was just ten days ago. Ten days ago, I spent the day teaching, or "teaching", as many days before extended breaks seem to go. As I dismissed each class that day, I was at least cognizant enough to say, "Have a great Spring Break, and IF I see you in ten days, we'll do...(insert teacher speech here)."
That was another world: a world in which person-to-person contact was not only preferred, but often mandated; a world in which, at least here in the hinterlands of Iowa, we could imagine this virus being sort of an H1N1 type of thing, something we got our shorts in a bunch about but was kind of just a blip on the radar; a world in which a Dow Jones below 20,000 was highly improbable; a world in which, even if we got super bored (which generally didn't happen because there was so much going on), we could rely on live sports and arts to distract us.
10 days, and the world turned upside down.
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In the highlands of Peru and Bolivia, there is a word that exists both in Quechua and Aymara, the two most prominent languages of the Incan empire, that denotes a huge shake-up in the grand scheme of things, where those who were ruled become the rulers and vice versa, a world turned upside-down: Pachakuti. They use the word mainly to describe two historical instances: when the Incas established their Andean empire and dominion over the smaller, weaker tribes; and when the Spaniards arrived and brought with them a new language, a new religion, and an unhealthy obsession with the silver mines up in Potosí. According to some, a Pachakuti arrives every few hundred years; for the indigenous of Peru and, in particular, Bolivia, some of the poorest people in the world, the Pachakuti can't come soon enough.
Of course, the word Pachakuti is not only used in these two literal instances; it is an idea, a philosophy, a descriptor for phenomena out of their control and beyond their comprehension, a way to make sense of being oppressed for centuries and a hope that one day it might not be like that. It's really not such a foreign idea. "The meek shall inherit the Earth," Jesus said, and some of his his most fervent followers believed that indeed, Jesus would bring about the end of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and the imperial materialism of the Romans. For them, for some even today, Jesus would bring justice and peace to temporal affairs. Jesus would bring the Pachakuti.
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It is an interesting intellectual exercise to think about how the current Coronavirus crisis might reflect a Pachakuti. How often do we hear, or say: "This is unprecedented"; "We have never dealt with something like this"; "This will reorder the economy in ways we've never seen before". On a more banal level, as many sports fans have noted, Major League Baseball was played through two World Wars but has been ground to a halt by a microscopic ne'er-do-well.
Interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying and unsustainable. Just like Jesus' message of peace and equality was swallowed up and appropriated to serve the needs of the Roman Empire--just like many Christians today see their wealth as a sign of the Messiah's approval rather than the fruits of an unjust economic system-- certain members of the United States Senate are working hard, as I write this, to make sure those who already have so much--those whose lives will be least affected by this virus, who have more than enough to weather the storm--receive as much (or possibly more) help as the rest of us.
I shouldn't even start, because I won't stop. Okay, one example: the Big Four airlines spent 42.5 billion dollars the last five years on stock buybacks, dramatically increasing the wealth of the their shareholders. The didn't seem to sense the need for a rainy day fund in a cyclical industry. Now they want $50 billion dollars from the federal government, and Senate Republicans are ready to hand it to them, no strings attached, all the while squabbling over whether to grant ordinary workers 4 months of unemployment instead of 3, and criticizing them for not having savings from their $11 an hour job. In other words, our leaders are going to make sure the Big Four airlines, etc., will not end up on the bottom of any potential pachakuti.
Okay, I promised, just one. But you get the idea.
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Moreover, the entire concept of even entertaining the idea that the current times in Iowa reflect a Pachakuti speaks at once, and only to, a privileged class of people like myself who've scarcely faced adversity, particularly middle-class people in North America and Western Europe. Disaster--natural or manmade--does not equal Pachatuki, simply because it's generally the world's most vulnerable who bear the brunt of it.
Just in my kids' lifetime--the oldest will be 14 next month--let's take a global overview: in 2006, a tsunami caused by an earthquake ravaged the Indonesian island of Java; In 2010, a powerful earthquake rocked Haiti, the only place in the Western Hemisphere poorer than Bolivia; In 2011, another earthquake roiled Japan and precipitated nuclear radiation; that same year, rebel militias started to fight back against Bashar al-Assad in Syria, precipitating a refugee crisis that continues to roil the world; in 2014, Russian invaded Crimea and the Eastern Ukraine, while a plunge in oil prices coupled with economic mismanagement and American sanctions provoked a series of crises in Venezuela that led to a refugee crisis rivaling that of Syria; in 2019, the Amazon and Australia literally burned; and all the while, the countries in the so-called Northern Triangle--Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador--continue to experience homicide rates higher than Iraq or even Syria, while the drug cartels in Mexico do their best to match them.
But yeah, I have to stay in my house for a few weeks. Vaya Pachakuti....
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I first learned the world Pachakuti from a book I read with my eighth graders, La tierra de las papas (The Land of the Potatoes). The story is told by María, a middle-class girl from Madrid who has to move to La Paz, Bolivia, with her dad. María could easily be my son in female, and I could be her father: white, liberal, well-educated, well-meaning. One day, as he explains the concept of Pachakuti to María, the dad ponders what would happen after the Pachakuti. At first, he talks optimistically about a reversion back to old customs and enough food for everyone, but then he grows increasingly cynical (paraphrased and translated by me):
Father paused, and said,"Oh, who am I kidding? If the indigenous suddenly ruled society, they wouldn't do any of that. They'd join country clubs and drink whiskey and buy Mercedes and dye their hair blond."
Just then, a blob of jelly landed on his shirt. He said "Shit" and went to clean it up. I still don't know if he said "Shit" because of the jelly or because the indigenous wouldn't do the Pakachuti right.
Yeah, that guy could definitely be me.
Stay safe and stay in touch,
Mark
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