Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 1 Fieldwork Under Difficult Circumstances

2 Regime Change at Practicing Anthropology Ronald Loewe and Jayne Howell

4 Living and Working in a War Zone: An Applied Anthropologist in Afghanistan Patricia A. Omidian

12 Are You With the F.B.I.?: Fieldwork Challenges In A Post 9/11 Muslim-American Community Tony Gaskew

18 Who Burned Down Our House This Time?: Ethnography & Conflict in Timor Leste Patricia L. Delaney

24 Unstable Relocations: Meeting the Other in Kurdolato Bruno Anili

29 Turbulence Within the Cuban Diaspora in South Florida Indira Rampersad

35 We Find Ourselves in the Middle: Navajo Relocation and Relocatee-Host Conflicts Orit Tamir 2 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 Regime Change at Practicing Anthropology

By Ron Loewe the Journal of American Folklore, the be evaluated individually. Finally, we American Anthropologist, and Culture, strongly encourage submissions from and Jayne Howell Medicine and Psychiatry. His mother, practicing anthropologists as well as recently deceased, says all the articles are professors and students. or obvious reasons, I did not really good, but that he should learn the We are also contemplating some Fwant our first issue of Practicing difference between a colon and a semi- changes, but don’t look for these in Anthropology to go to press on the colon. Hopefully, now that he is an editor, the first issue. One of the things we are Ides of March, but the people who set he will. He is completing a book on na- considering is introducing a broader production schedules are, undoubtedly, tionalism and identity in Yucatan entitled variety of submission categories: brief less superstitious than cultural anthro- Making Mayas into Mestizos: National- comments on articles that were pub- pologists, at least this one. Anyway, it ism, Modernity and its Discontents. lished in earlier issues; book, museum is with a sense of optimism and a touch We should also mention that Krystal exhibit and film reviews; anthropologi- of trepidation that Jayne Howell and Kittle, a graduate student of ours who cal humor, editorials/op-eds, or possibly I release our first issue of Practicing is studying aging in the gay community a forum in which contemporary issues Anthropology. We hope it is considered will be working with us. Krystal is a can be debated. These, hopefully, will a good one, but please let us know what talented artist and musician as well as stimulate an ongoing dialogue between you think by writing to our new address a good anthropologist, and will help us readers of Practicing Anthropology. at [email protected]. copyedit the journal. In any case, we do not plan to shy As our first order of business, we away from controversy. In light of would like to thank the previous editors Plans for Practicing Anthropology the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and of Practicing Anthropology, Jeanne the Human Terrain System, there is a Simonelli and Bill Roberts for their Some things about Practicing An- renewed interest in ethics in anthropol- stewardship of the journal, for giving thropology will stay the same for the ogy. As we begin our turn as editors, us a quick tutorial in editing, and for foreseeable future. Practicing Anthro- Terry Turner, professor emeritus at the lending Kristen Gentke from Wake pology will remain an editor-reviewed, University of Chicago, has proposed Forest University to us for the time be- as opposed to a peer-reviewed, journal reinstating the language in the 1971 ing. Jeanne and Bill, in our estimation, and will continue to publish relatively AAA statement of ethics that prohibited produced many interesting issues of PA, short articles (3,500 words) on topics anthropologists from engaging in covert and we hope we can adequately fill their of general concern to anthropologists research or withholding research find- shoes. In any event, it seems as though inside and outside the academy. We ings from the population from they were editors are generally appreciated about are interested in receiving case studies obtained. The Network of Concerned as much as IRS agents or bill collectors, in medical anthropology, education, Anthropologists (NCA) supports the so we need to stick together. international development, tourism, resolution. Most members of the Na- As our second order of business, we business, etc., which address important tional Association of Practicing Anthro- would like to provide brief introductions, substantive, ethical or policy concerns pologists (NAPA) oppose it. Wouldn’t so our readers know who we are. Jayne in the practice of anthropology. We this be an interesting issue to debate in Howell joined the faculty at California also invite submissions relating to the pages of Practicing Anthropology? State University (Long Beach) in 1994. anthropologically-oriented program She is currently on sabbatical in Oaxaca, evaluation, social impact assessment, Mexico, completing her book Rural Fieldwork in Difficult Settings and cultural resource management as Girls, Urban Women on urban migration, well as innovations in the teaching of While fieldwork has been fraught schooling, and employment in this south- anthropology. While articles do not with difficulty since the beginning of eastern state. In addition to her research require extensive citations, manuscripts modern anthropology, the present issue on education, she has written about indig- should discuss the methodology or highlights new difficulties which have enous identity, US migration, domestic methodologies employed and should emerged in the wake of the wars in Iraq service and prostitution in Oaxaca, and be well-grounded. We will continue the and Afghanistan, the Patriot Act and domestic violence in the United States. practice of publishing issues focusing the rise of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab Ron Loewe joined the CSULB faculty on a particular theme (when we receive prejudice in the United States. In the in 2006. He has published a number good proposals), but, as is the case first article, for example, Patricia Omid- of articles in small, effete journals like with other journals, each article will ian, a medical anthropologist who has Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 3 lived and worked in Afghanistan for not insurmountable if one is open and hosts and newcomers. In this case, seven years, discusses the need as well honest about his background. Kurdish immigrants not only found an as the difficulty of maintaining a clear The article by Patricia Delaney, a economic niche in a community where boundary between her work and that former Peace Corp worker who devel- native Italians were leaving in large of the military. Omidian’s article also oped health education programs in East numbers, but are seen as an important reminds us of the old adage that “truth Timor, provides another example of social asset that can help the local com- is the first casualty of war,” especially the personal side of fieldwork during a munity maintain its vigor and evolve. when the truth about negative maternal time of war. While most Americans are In a discussion of ethnic tension closer health outcomes implicates the U.S. familiar with the atrocities carried out to home, Indira Rampersad discusses con- military. Anyone who has followed the by Pol Pot in Cambodia, few Americans tinuity and change in the attitudes of Cu- debate within anthropology about the are aware of the violence and famine ban-Americans toward the U.S. embargo Human Terrain System (e.g., the use of that claimed the lives of an estimated as well as the Island nation itself. Through anthropologists in military brigades) or 200,000 East Timorese, nor the role of an analysis of interviews with Cubans the emerging discussion of the Minerva Indonesia and its US ally in this matter. living in the United States and Cuba, she Research Initiative, a DOD grant pro- Delaney’s poignant recollection of the notes the emotional toll that travel restric- gram to promote social science research fear she felt for her former co-workers tions have had on many families as well in strategic hotspots like the Mideast, and fictive kin after she returned to the as the growing political diversity within will find this paper of interest. US, serves as a reminder that our ethical the Cuban-American community. The paper by Tony Gaskew, a crimi- ties to the people we work with do not Finally, we close this issue on a nologist working in a Muslim commu- end once we leave the field. happier note by including Orit Tamir’s nity in south Florida, shows that you do Bruno Anili’s study of the peaceful paper of the Navajo-Hopi land dispute, not have to leave the U.S. to run into coexistence between Italian hosts and a dispute which finally appears to have some of the same problems: suspicion, Kurdish migrants who settled in the run its course after more than one hun- mistrust and expulsion. However, as coastal community of Baldolato demon- dred years. Gaskew’s piece demonstrates, even strates that immigration can sometimes difficult obstacles to field research are have very positive outcomes for both Ron Loewe and Jayne Howell n

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http://www.sfaa.net/sfaapubs.html 4 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 Living and Working in a War Zone: An Applied Anthropologist in Afghanistan

By Patricia A. Omidian anthropology hold ourselves give us ac- cess to and credibility in local commu- nited States military initiated a nities through specific examples from Uprogram to hire social scientists, my work there, as a way to address the and particularly anthropologists, for problems of militarized anthropology. their wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Action anthropology, as delineated This paper is a discussion of action by Tax (1964) was an important con- anthropology as it has unfolded for tribution to the development of anthro- me in Afghanistan from 1998 to 2008 pology as a discipline. He advocated and highlights examples from the field an approach that combined theory between December 2001 and December with practice—that one’s work should 2008. Through examples of my work as be practical as it advances theory and an applied anthropologist in Afghani- that it helps solve local problems (Hill stan I will show how the role of the an- 2000). Public anthropology holds a thropologist must be kept separate from similar perspective of doing anthropol- any armed actors in the field in order to ogy for the public good, and not just for maintain ethical integrity, standards for the sake of an academic career (Purcell proper research and the safety of those 2000). These approaches highlight the need for applied anthropologists to who are studied and of those who carry Patricia A. Omidian out the studies. work collaboratively with local popula- tions to help them solve problems they Introduction identify as important. The Afghans with whom I worked identified “responses to or emergency aid worker, unlike the violence” as one of the critical problems soldier or other military personnel, must This paper is a discussion of action they wanted changed. depend on the largess and the protection anthropology as it has unfolded for me As an anthropologist it was important of the local community. Militarized an- in a region of the world that went from for me to stay neutral in order to work; thropology subverts our work and puts obscurity to the center of the world’s therefore, I never carried a weapon, us on an ethical slippery slope. It also attention in 2001 when the World nor did I allow my staff or surveyors increases the danger to us as the local Trade Towers were destroyed in the to be armed. When working in areas of people with whom we work find it dif- United States. By that time I was firmly high conflict, having weapons or armed ficult to distinguish between combatants entrenched in Peshawar, Pakistan, guards can increase the level of risk to and non-combatants, the soldiers and where I worked with both Afghans1 and myself and those with whom I work. It the civilian aid workers—jeopardizing Pakistanis and lived with an Afghan sets up a power imbalance in the wrong personal safety and development work, refugee family. When I started work- direction when doing fieldwork. In Af- while increasing the likelihood of future ing in the region in 1997 the US was ghanistan where tribal and or extended violence. not at war and Peshawar was a great family relationships matter, using a place to practice anthropology because weapon to protect oneself can lead to a of issues around war, refugees and the Without Guns: Living and Working situation of subsequent retaliation. The dominant culture of the tribal Pakh- In a War-Zone (2001-2006) only person a gun protects in this kind tuns. I traveled and conducted research of situation is the person with the most in Afghanistan from 1998 to 2001, After working with refugees in the guns or the person who can garner the before moving to Kabul, where I was United States for 12 years, in 1997 greater support from others. It also cre- based until January 2007. The data I traveled to Peshawar, Pakistan on ates a question among the beneficiaries and experiences for this paper focus a Fulbright Award. After completion of trust. on the years (2001-2006) when I lived of my Fulbright I remained in the Applied anthropologists struggle to and worked in Afghanistan and include region, sharing home and hearth with stay safe, build culturally appropriate insights I have gained on return trips an Afghan refugee family. During programs and to speak for those who (2007-2008). I will examine how this period I was employed through are without power or resources. The the ethical guidelines to which we in various consulting projects for interna- anthropologist, like the development tional non-governmental organizations Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 5

(INGOs) and UN agencies, conducting it was known as the best school that was important, the rebuilding of a research and designing culturally appro- in the whole city. Now there is nation. priate programs in both Afghanistan and no glass left in the windows and The biggest problem faced by the Pakistan. I also traveled in Afghanistan children can fall through the holes residents of Kabul was where to house under the Taliban, conducting participa- in the walls of the third floor. all the returning Afghans. International tory trainings and research in a number aid workers can make do as I did, but of areas, mostly in the rural central We worked hard each day and spent local residents needed permanent highlands. Working in Afghanistan each evening traveling around the city housing. Kabul was destroyed, with under the Taliban had many challenges viewing what was left of their collec- many areas flattened by the internecine though safety was not one of them. For tive memories. The city of Kabul still conflict that followed the departure of the most part, it did not feel like war had a ghostly feeling about it that first the Russians in 1989 and the collapse because people seemed too frightened winter. There were few cars and almost of the Najib government in 1992. The or disheartened to fight. no electricity. Yet, it was no longer the houses that remained were old, drafty In 2001, I was working for an Af- silent city it had been under the oppres- and incredibly expensive—at over US ghan NGO that had development proj- sive Taliban. $10,000 a month in an exclusive area ects inside Afghanistan but was based The painful memories were contrast- of Kabul called Wazir Akbar Khan, in Peshawar when the World Trade ed with the sheer energy and excitement where INGOs traditionally had their Towers were blown up on September of post-Taliban life. For example, as we offices. I lived in the NGO office where 11. Within days I was evacuated and traveled to a Kabul market for curtain I worked; my bed was a cotton mat that sent back to the US to wait. I was in fabric for our office, we were met by would be stored during the day and touch with my colleagues in Peshawar many women covered head to foot in brought out at night and placed by my as they waited for the US to begin the blue chadari (burqa) that became desk. Middle class people struggled for bombing. At that time most Afghans the center of world attention under places to live but returnees and the poor wanted the US and coalition forces Taliban. As I walked through the narrow had no options. Housing was scarce; to come to Afghanistan and force the alleyways of the fabric market, women winter bitterly cold, summers hot and Taliban out of their country. would come to me, pull the cloth of the dusty. By Christmas, I had returned to the chadari back over their heads so that Before my Afghan “family” could Peshawar and flew almost immediately I could see their wonderfully smiling return to their home in Kabul they had to Kabul to join my colleagues there. I faces. Everyone shook my hand and to move the family that was there out lived between Kabul and Peshawar for asked me to come home with them for and repair the place. This took most of the next 4 months, until I moved out of tea. This was a middle class area and spring. I continued to live in my office Pakistan and based myself in Kabul in the mood of the place was celebratory. until summer, when they arrived from March 2002. I continued to live with Taliban had just left Kabul and Karzai Peshawar—the whole family, parents the Afghan family from Peshawar when arrived in their place. Hope was high and six children. I felt like I had a home they returned to their home near the and everyone was ready for change. In again. Their home was near the airport airport in Kabul that summer. Over the these areas the chadari was gradually in an apartment complex that survived course of the next two years I had the abandoned, to become a symbol of class the war. We lived another two years opportunity to conduct health and liveli- and village connections. together before I moved into my own hood surveys, as well as trainings in In December 2001 women, Afghan apartment. Adjustment was hard for all survey methods and gender awareness and foreign, traveled throughout the of us in the early days. The children in many areas of the country. city without a headscarf, but by the struggled with a school system that That first winter in Kabul was unfor- spring 2002 it was clear that Kabul had was barely functioning, overcrowded gettable as a time of great excitement, become a very conservative and ner- and corrupt. Electricity in Kabul came hope and the sharing of bittersweet vous city. By the summer even the most regularly from March to July and memories. I shared my colleagues’ determined women in my office asked then would fade to a 2-4 hour period pain and joy of returning to Kabul me to wear a headscarf when I was in every third day in winter. Heating after their years of exile: joy at return- public. Women’s head covering became was a problem in winter and I think I ing and the pain of seeing the nearly a topic of conversation at many expatri- never warmed up between November complete destruction of most of city: ate gatherings. As the war increased in and March. We did not have adequate miles of bombed out buildings with the south between the Americans and heating for the first two years. I wore whole neighborhoods destroyed. One of opposition groups, there were enough several layers of clothing and a winter my colleagues cried as he pointed at a anti-government actions in Kabul to coat indoors, adding gloves and boots ruined three-story structure: keep people from relaxing. A bomb that when I went outside. Stories of people exploded in a nearby market injured freezing were constant reminders of There! See what is left of my high one of our office guards. Yet, we all felt how difficult life was for the poor who school. When I was a student, like we were contributing to a process lived without proper housing. Security 6 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 problems, curfews and robberies also with a driver from the NGO, seeing Maiwand was dangerous even in 2002 impacted everyone’s lives. some places that are no longer accessi- and my NGO did not want us there, During this period I conducted a ble because of the escalation of the war. but we were assured that the US forces large survey for UN and the CDCs Our first trip was to a remote area of were in control. The first village we (Omidian 2002). In this survey I was Badakhshan in the north. The area was entered turned out to be about 5 kilo- mandated to do a qualitative study breathtakingly remote and gave one the meters from an Al Qaida training camp. of maternal mortality issues in five impression of being on the roof of the Most of the village was empty, as fami- districts where verbal autopsies were world. It was August yet each morning lies had relocated to other areas to avoid carried out by the quantitative team (cf. there was ice on the stream near where the fighting. Women who remained in Bartlett et al 2005). The areas of study we stayed. We had so much fun that we the village took Fatima and Rana to included remote villages with subsis- believed the whole survey would be as a nearby hill and pointed out a place tence agriculture (Badakhshan), rural easy. We were told there were security where a nomad camp had been bombed with access to urban markets or semi- problems but we did not feel it. Our by US fighter jets, killing most of the rural areas (Kandahar and Laghman) only problem was finding enough food men, women and children in camp. We and urban groups (Kabul). I did this to eat in the local village. could not verify the story but it sent survey as a project within the Afghan Our next stop was in the eastern chills through all of us in spite of the NGO where I was employed. With the province of Laghman, close to Paki- lovely fall weather. We conducted the help of the staff, we hired four survey- stan. In the evening of our first night interviews and mapping exercises and ors, two sister/brother teams (Fatima there, as we settled into a routine, the left for the long drive back to Kandahar. and Nasir Khan, Rana and Kabir2). men went out to get water for cooking The next day we visited another vil- Fatima and Rana had survey experience. and washing. Fatima, Rana and I were lage, not far from a dried riverbed and Nasir Khan and Kabir were to act as sitting talking when we heard shouts across from vineyards that had died be- escorts for their sisters and to conduct and fighting beyond the wall of the cause of the very severe drought. Upon surveys with the men in the villages compound where we stayed. I could not arrival we started to interview a group we would visit. I trained the team in understand the dialect but it was clearly of women in a home when the Nasir survey techniques, including participa- trouble. Fatima was close to panic as Khan called us out of the house and told tory methods like resource mapping and they listened to the voices. The noise in- us to quickly get into the cars. We had time lines, semi-structured interviewing creased then stopped. So did our hearts. to leave immediately. Once in the cars and observation. We also spent a great Within minutes the men of our group re- and on our way, he angrily told us that deal of time working on methods for turned, but things had clearly gone from UN logistics had selected a village that recording the information. Because the bad to worse as our luck ran out. Nasir was pro-Taliban and pro-Al Qaida. He areas we would be visiting were remote, Khan had been stabbed. Fortunately, overheard some of the village talking we had to get the information the first he blocked the knife with his arm or about kidnapping the UN woman who time. We found that it worked best for it would have been a stomach wound. was traveling with us. Being Japanese, them to work as teams, with one team He and the others had inadvertently she looked like a Hazara woman, an member acting as interviewer and other stumbled across a robbery in progress— ethnic group despised by the Taliban. as scribe/observer. For example Fatima, by men dressed as police. The driver Our third day was no better for elder to Rana, was an excellent inter- and Kabir rushed Nasir Khan to the surveying. We were again told the vil- viewer and Rana was quick with note local hospital where his wound was lage to visit and headed off on the long taking and observations. We conducted bandaged. Because of the tribal issues bumpy drive over dirt roads and river- the interviews in the morning and spent in this war torn area, and because we beds. When we arrived the place was the entire afternoon each day writing were strangers, we did not want to take deserted. The night before US troops up notes, discussing what was seen and the chance of further violence, but we had come to the village and arrested done that day. The men would interview had to wait till morning before we could every male over 15, leaving only one village men and conduct a mapping travel. After a sleepless night, we left old man and the pre-adolescent boys exercise in each village. I assigned for Kabul as soon as we heard the morn- to guard all the women and children. Nasir Khan to head the survey team, ing azaan (call to prayer). I cancelled The women wanted to talk to us so we giving him responsibility for logistics the survey for this province. Nasir Khan conducted our interviews with them but and our safety. I put more trust in his healed quickly and was ready to travel left as soon as we could. There was the local knowledge than in UN security again after a short rest. possibility of angry people attacking us reports. As members of the NGO world, The third province on our program out of frustration. This was truly and we would be traveling without guards was Kandahar, where we were to travel active war zone and we were intruders. or weapons; our protection depended on to Maiwand district with a UN staff I was feeling that each day’s trip in this local knowledge and sometimes luck. person, a Japanese woman, to conduct area was getting us into more dangerous For four weeks the five of us traveled more surveys. UN logistics for Kan- predicaments. In spite of all the hazards, to remote areas of Afghanistan by car dahar chose the villages for us to visit. we had good data from Kandahar and Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 7 returned to Kabul. Security conditions Service Committee (AFSC) in Af- compound (which was actually on one in the south were already deteriorating ghanistan, a position I held until leav- of the US military bases in Kabul). by the fall of 2002 and, by 2005, only ing the country in 2007. During that Unfortunately we were at an impasse. those traveling in armed caravans felt time I conducted numerous surveys No guns or soldiers were allowed in our safe. In 2008, those would be targeted, and consultancies for other agencies, compound and she was not allowed to as well. Each year Afghanistan moved but AFSC’s work focused on building enter if her guards did not come with toward more chaos, with fewer areas schools in remote areas of the central her. We held the meeting elsewhere. where roads were safe. I returned again highlands and in the mountainous In another incident, thieves climbed to Laghman in 2003 to complete a dif- northern province of Faryab. At this the wall and entered our office com- ferent survey, yet, shortly after my visit time the psychosocial wellness pro- pound in the night. Our unarmed guards the office where I stayed was bombed. gram that was developed (c.f. Omidian were alerted and because of the noise By 2004, Laghman was far too dan- and Papadopoulos 2002; Omidian and they made, the robbers climbed back gerous and many NGO offices in that Miller 2005; Omidian and Lawrence over the wall without taking anything. province were forced to close. Nation- 2007, 2008) for refugees in Peshawar No one was hurt on this occasion. Our ally, security continued to deteriorate, was expanded and tested in schools, guards then asked if we would sup- so that by 2006 Ghazni, a short drive rural communities and with interns ply them with or allow them to carry from Kabul, proved too dangerous for from Kabul University. My greatest joy weapons. As a Quaker organization, the AFSC staff to visit. In 2008, no road out came when I would leave Kabul and answer was no. But we also breathed of Kabul was safe. War and chaos had travel to remote areas of the country, a sigh of relief that our guards were engulfed most of rural Afghanistan. staying in villages and working with not armed when we later learned the As areas became more dangerous for the people. We worked in areas where robbers were part of the local police. the delivery of reconstruction and hu- there were no PRTs actively working. They thought our compound was empty manitarian aid, because of the war, the Shortly after starting work with after dark and had planned to make a US government and NATO increased AFSC, I moved into my own flat in an few dollars quickly. Had our guards their use of Provincial Reconstruction area of the city where no other expats been armed someone might have been Teams (PRT), military groups that tried (international workers) lived. My shot or killed, which would have left to engage in reconstruction activities, language ability and understanding of our agency in trouble with the local including the building of schools, clin- the culture, thanks to the seven years government for wounding or killing ics or water systems. Most NGOs (both with my Afghan family, allowed me to police. Our office rule was that if armed local and international) worked hard to pass as an Afghan who had returned thieves came into the compound to rob distance themselves from military ac- from the west. This was important, not the place, our guards (local men with tors, including the PRTs. It was standard to confuse locals, but to allow me the large families to support who make a procedure for NGOs to have signs on security of anonymity in a city that was low but steady wage) were instructed to their offices and cars prohibiting weap- always insecure. Those who knew me, not resist. We would joke and say that if ons. There was an active campaign by including all my neighbors in my apart- armed robbers enter the compound, the the NGO community to try to discour- ment block, knew I was not Afghan. only thing the guards would do is offer age NATO from expanding the system, This period had its dangers and the them tea, something Afghans do for any but it failed. It was important to signal international community was constantly guest. a clear separation between military bombarded with warnings of threats. In the three years as the country work (and even USAID) and civilian/ My neighbors protected me numerous representative for AFSC (2004-2007), I non-governmental work. Although the times by telling people who searched was able to travel throughout Afghani- idea of using the military to provide aid for “foreigners” that none lived in our stan, conducting surveys on health, sounds like a good idea, it is removing area. I was again dependent on the local education and mental health. But the the symbolic boundary that aid workers community for my safety. greatest joy was in working in remote (and anthropologists) need to stay safe As head of the AFSC office in Af- provinces, trying to promote education and which allows us to be seen by local ghanistan, we followed the same rules and some form of change, as identified communities as neutral. That boundary as most aid agencies and did not allow by local communities. This work was no longer exists in Afghanistan. The guns on the premises. This occasionally not without struggle. Yet, had we been military bid for Afghan “hearts and led to problems, for example, once a armed, the trust we developed with minds” means that there is no longer a consultant from the US, funded by US local communities would have been al- distinction between armed and non- State Department, wanted to visit our tered. Most of these areas are governed armed actors. Afghanistan has since office. I was looking forward to seeing by warlords with militias or traditional become one of the most dangerous her but the regulations for her safety tribal leaders who have an armed fol- countries for aid workers. as a US contractor demanded that she lowing. Many NGOs in Afghanistan had In 2004 I became the Country Rep- be in sight of her armed guards when stickers on their cars showing that there resentative for the American Friends traveling anywhere outside of her office were no weapons in the vehicle. It was, 8 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 and is, important to distance oneself and when I stopped jumping at the sound of The economy of Afghanistan also one’s agency from armed actors in any a car backfiring, or at firecrackers, Paki- suffers from war, and is based on conflict zone. A few NGO workers with stan, the place I ran to for security and drug trafficking in opium and heroin. guns would not alter the situation in a safely, came close to being torn apart Corruption finds itself all the way positive way. by the same forces that are destroying to the highest levels of the govern- In the summer of 2006, I realized Afghanistan. ment. In spite of the efforts of a few that I was burning out from the stress of well-meaning nations, the country has security issues, a hard existence that in- Afghanistan 2007-2008 almost no accountability or rule of law cluded summer dust storms and freezing and remains in the control of warlords. winters, limited electricity and water. Something about Afghanistan and There is an absence of justice or safety. At a deeper level it was the sense from the resiliency of the Afghan people In September 2008, I spent 5 days in all my Afghan friends of loss of hope makes for an unbreakable cord, pulling Kabul and stayed with 3 families whom in the future of Afghanistan that made me back again and again. The country- I have known for many years and talked to a number of others. At that time security was uppermost on their minds. Each family had a family member (uncle, cousin or son) or knew someone who had been kidnapped for ransom. “Where some countries have cans and bottles littering Some were released, others killed. The kidnappings were primarily for ransom, their hillsides, Afghanistan has burned out and rusted and if money was paid, the victim was released to their family unharmed. tanks flanking roads, sitting under bridges and scattered These cases tended to be men in their later years who had wealth or attracted like autumn leaves over a landscape that is barren and attention because of political status. One family was asked to pay three million starkly beautiful, silent reminders of 30 years of armed US dollars, another US$40,000. In a country where the average salary is less conflict.” than $50 a month, these kidnappings demonstrate a new kind of economic activity. Even more frightening for families of the middle class were the kidnap- leaving easier. At the same time, I could side is devastated by the joint terrors of ping and murder of young men between no longer judge safety for myself or my war and drought. Where some coun- the ages of 15 and 30. The boy or man office colleagues and friends, who were tries have cans and bottles littering would be taken while on his way to willing to put their lives on the line their hillsides, Afghanistan has burned school, work or shopping for the fam- for me. There were several incidents out and rusted tanks flanking roads, ily. Most were killed with the excuse where my local friends hid me, such as sitting under bridges and scattered like that they said or did something against when Kabul erupted in violent riots that autumn leaves over a landscape that another ethnic or political (read ethnic) targeted INGOs. My staying could add is barren and starkly beautiful, silent group. These occurred frequently to their risk. It was time to leave. reminders of 30 years of armed con- enough that all families felt at risk. Since moving out of Kabul in Febru- flict. The country is mountainous, arid When one man (a distant relative of a ary 2007, I visited Kabul many times in and remote, and the people have been family I stayed with) was kidnapped, 2007 and 2008. I now live in Karachi at constant war—wars that are local, his kidnappers told the story that he was Pakistan, a place that feels modern and national and regional, often at the same arguing with someone and made a rude filled with liveliness. I took a faculty time. Afghanistan sits at the crossroads remark about Ahmad Shah Masoud—a position at the Aga Khan University of trade and threat; currently India war hero from the north. He was killed (AKU). Yet, while I was visiting Af- and Pakistan fight their battles there and yet his family did not find the truth ghanistan for AKU at the end of 2007 and Iran uses it to overstretch the US until well after his body was buried. Benazir Bhutto was killed and I had military by supporting the enemies When the family went to the police to to extend my stay in there until the of their enemy. The situation has file on the case, they were told that their violence in Pakistan calmed down. become steadily worse, yet, I find son was one of 171 missing youth in My Pakistani friends told me to stay in I return to visit friends and former that area of Kabul city. These cases were Kabul until they let me know it was safe colleagues, trying to come in time the most worrisome because there was enough to return, about a week later. to share in the Muslim holidays or a feeling in Kabul that ethnic divisions Life had felt normal in Karachi and just Persian New Year. Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 9 motivated many of the issues around become especially contentious along to recognize the horrors of unintended security. Many felt that ethnicity was this route. People were worried but said consequences that result from our inter- being used to divide various groups in they could not do more than adapt to ventions, how much more so will this Afghanistan and that the divisions were these problems and get on with their critique sit on those militarized anthro- being supported by popular media and lives. pologists. I actively avoided weapons US/Karzai policy. People were afraid I found the country growing steadily and grounded my work, my safety and and openly talked about their fears. tenser as armed actors operate from the safety of my staff through a connec- Afghans, generally, were tired of every sector. The anti-government tion to the people with whom I worked. the war and have been for decades, groups are fully armed, as are the war- Trust is hard to establish but critical but there was a major shift since 2006 lords, drug lords and mafia groups. The to any field endeavor. As an applied toward American policy in Afghanistan. government has its army and police, and anthropologist I work for the people I Before this, people would complain but has been arming local militias to help “study” not for those who pay my way. would add that the US needed to stay combat anti-government groups. Guns To do otherwise hurts more than myself, because the Karzai government would not be able to cope with all the prob- lems. In 2008, they told me that the US was making the same mistakes that the Russians made years before. As I talked to people I found no distinction being “The US government has introduced a system called made between ISAF forces, NATO and the US military. All were seen as The Human Terrain System (HTS), in which social making things worse not better, though people were afraid that if any of these scientists, including anthropologists, work for them in groups pulled out of Afghanistan the results would be catastrophic. They Afghanistan and Iraq. The goal is to help the military expressed anger at the way the US continually failed to respect Afghan understand local communities and to reduce the number culture. The killing of civilians was unforgivable and played into the hands of deaths.” of anti-government groups (AOG). On this trip it was unclear which of the various groups people feared most: the Taliban, Al Qaida, drug lords, war- are seen by locals as having become it also damages the profession and lords, mafia groups or other powerful part of the aid sector as well, with more the anthropological position to “do no criminals. PRTs building schools or hospitals. Into harm.” Peacock et al notes: Ethnic divisions became more pro- this mix of military and para-military nounced and were used as an excuse to units, weaponry, factions and violence, Anthropologists’ engagements kill. Many people told me horror stories anthropologists (and other social scien- with military and intelligence of the Kandahar/Kabul road, now too tist) have stepped in to add to the confu- agencies have the potential to dangerous for anyone but the poorest sion. Confusing non-military activities damage relationships of trust with of people to travel. There were frequent with military actors is a dangerous the people studied as well as the roadblocks and check posts with Taliban slippery slope, one that anthropologists reputation of the discipline (2007: (sometimes Taliban dressed as police) must avoid. 17). where everyone was checked. They looked for signs that the person works Because our work is grounded in par- for the government or an NGO. One Militarized Anthropologists ticipant observation and a dependence method was to take the numbers from on those we study for our survival, I the person’s cell phone to find where The US government has introduced a find the whole notion of a militarized he works. When they found numbers system called The Human Terrain Sys- anthropology to be inappropriate for of foreigners on the phone the owner tem (HTS), in which social scientists, many reasons. Leaving aside the whole of the phone could be beaten or killed. including anthropologists, work for question of the reputation of anthropol- Also, members of certain ethnic groups them in Afghanistan and Iraq. The goal ogy as a discipline, the first point one were also at risk, including Hazaras and is to help the military understand local must consider is “who is being studied Panjshiris (those from the area where communities and to reduce the number and what is the purpose of the study.” Ahmad Shah Masoud lives). Issues be- of deaths. Yet, if action anthropology Interwoven in this is the whole issue of tween Pashtuns and other groups have is fraught with problems and has been criticized for an arrogance in failing trust. 10 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009

In Afghanistan, goals and benefi- information into my report. In the end it As the war in Afghanistan illustrates, ciaries were always clearly stated at was about trust and intellectual honesty. the ally one day may become an enemy the onset of any project. When do- Had I been working for the US military, the next; roles are constantly shifting ing the study for the UN in 2002, as I would not have been able to maintain in a very malleable social landscape described above, I and my team were either. where families are complex social units. paid through the UN on a CDC initiated The second point in this debate re- In order to survive each family has study of maternal mortality (Bartlett lates to power configurations. How does members who are communists, Muja- et al 2005) with myself and my team the militarized anthropologist deal with hedeen, Taliban and anything else. The doing the qualitative portion that looked the imbalance of power? When I enter a enemy of today may become the hero of at knowledge, attitudes and practices village, it is by local transport, whatever tomorrow. A militarized anthropologist (KAP) (Omidian 2002). In Kandahar that might be, possibly by foot, donkey, cannot carry out participant observa- we found one unexpected cause of horseback, jeep, car or van. But I come tion or even participatory research in maternal mortality that was not liked with a group of Afghan aid workers, by order to understand the more subtle by the agency funding the study. It was invitation of the local community or by aspects of these family configurations. that US military action was a leading a representative. I am not naïve and I If she/he did, the information would be contributor to the death of women of know that there is a clear imbalance of questioned, as the power inherent in the childbearing age in the areas we visited. power in any relationship I establish but relationship between the community I was asked by my contact person in the those lines of power actually work both and the researcher overrides any ability UN in Kabul to remove this information ways. The local community may or may of the community to offer a differing from my final report, as it would upset not protect me, while I can leave when perspective. That terrain is fraught with the US donor. I refused. Consequently I want. The community can also ask danger for them and does not end when my study was not circulated with the me to leave, refuse to speak to me or the anthropologist leaves. And this is quantitative study, though European invite me to stay a while. Based on what where I think the greatest problem lies and Canadian colleagues working in the is happening around me, I can usually for the anthropologist who works as a area of maternal health were given the respond appropriately. member of an HTS team. document. They were asked not to share The HTS of the military works by it with Americans. As an anthropologist different rules. Bickford rightly calls Conclusion I felt an obligation to be honest regard- this a “use of anthropology as a weapon ing my data and to report my findings. in counterinsurgency operations” As we work, we have to remember It was not for me to censor my work for (2008:5). He goes on to state: that our work can be used against the fear of insulting the donor; rather, it was people we study. That is the nature of important to give voice to those whom I While one may inadvertently what we do and where we do it (Sider had met and interviewed. cause harm through fieldwork, 2009). We have to do the best we can The purpose of the study was to the problem with militarized to protect those whom we study, with understand maternal and infant deaths anthropology and the HTS is the whom we share lives and to whom in rural and urban populations of four knowing, intentional use of skills we owe our profession. Militarized areas of the country. The information and insights for combat, to trade anthropology is about a gross imbalance was to be used to develop culturally in hurt and injury, wounding and of power, as well as the subversion of appropriate and critically-needed health death, fragmentation and destruc- a discipline that has an ethical chal- care that would target the populations tion. Keep in mind that “coun- lenge to do no harm as we work among being served. As with most research, terinsurgency” is combat, and those who may lack power in the global other information comes that is not definitions of a ‘counterinsurgent’ setting. The American Anthropologi- expected and may even be unwelcome. is fluid (Bickford 2008:8). cal Association clarified its stance on What we do with that data is impor- this (though they did not go as far as I tant. The reason for this study was to If our task understand the day-to-day would have liked): understand how Afghan women and lives of people and we are to “do no their families tried to prevent deaths harm”, how does a militarized anthro- Our framework for evaluating the from occurring and how they dealt with pology fit our definition of anthropolo- ethics of anthropologists’ engage- it when it did. To know that military gy? To enter a community as a member ment with US intelligence and action was negatively impacting their of the military, a person with power and defense communities is grounded chances of survival was important. As the weight of the US army behind her/ in four basic principles: to do the anthropologist it was my task to him brings about a level of power that no harm; to provide disclosure help give them a voice so they can be the local person cannot act against— of one’s work and role / not to heard. The Afghan agency with whom I since any reaction can get them arrested deceive; to uphold the primary worked needed to know, also, that I (an or killed. The imbalance is so great that responsibility to those involved American) could be trusted to write that it is easy to overlook. in one’s research; and to maintain Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 11

transparency, making research implementation. We live in a commu- Study in Four Areas of Afghani- accessible to others to enhance nity and become part of them, building stan. Kabul: CDCs and UNICEF the quality and potential effects a platform of mutual trust. Health Sector. of it as critique (Peacock et al In the declared “war against terror” 2007:14). many ethical standards (including hu- Omidian, Patricia and Nina Joy Law- man rights and freedom from torture) rence Any work an anthropologist does can have been set aside. Militarized anthro- 2008 Community Wellness Focus- be used against the community studied pology is just one more in the long list. ing: A Work in Process. The Folio: by those in power. Though we can- This is a slippery slope that reminds A Journal for Focusing and Experi- not control how our data is used once me that the damage may not show ential Therapy 21(1):291-303. published, we can control how we right away. Yet, I have not doubt it will 2007 A Community Based Approach maintain loyalty to the populations who come back to haunt us. I was speaking To Focusing: The Islam And Focus- share their lives with us. In this paper I at a seminar in Karachi in December ing Project Of Afghanistan. The have tried to give concrete examples of 2008 when I was asked to explain Folio: A Journal for Focusing and action anthropological techniques and why anthropologists helped the British Experiential Therapy 20(1), applications in an active conflict zone. subjugate the Sub-Continent and then Applied anthropology is aptly suited worked against the Muslims. This man Omidian, Patricia A and Kenneth Miller to help address peace-building pro- was referring to the way social anthro- 2006 Addressing the Psychosocial cesses, program design, implementation pology was introduced and used in the Needs of Women in Afghanistan. and assessment. As anthropologists we first half of the twentieth century, but Critical Half 4(1):17-21. can offer a nation coming out of war in- his question was fair. Just as those who sights into ways international programs were perceived to support colonialism Omidian, Patricia A and Nina Papado- can be locally adapted. Participant ob- in British India, the militarized anthro- poulos servation affords us the opportunity to pologists will be seen to act on behalf 2003 Addressing Afghan Children’s understand people in the way that other of the army they serve and not for the Psychosocial Needs in the Class- aid workers cannot match. The anthro- good of the local community they study. room: A Case Study of a Training pologist tries to understand things from For Trainers. IRC Female Educa- the local point of view and this is our Notes tion Program, Peshawar Pakistan. biggest contribution. I cannot list all the times I had to let someone know that the 1The people of Afghanistan generally Peacock, James (Chair), Robert Albro, word for a person from Afghanistan is refer to themselves nationally as Af- Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, Kerry Fos- Afghan and the money is Afghani. And ghans; Afghani is the name for Afghani- her, Laura McNamara, Monica Heller, that Afghans do not necessarily dislike stan’s currency. George Marcus, David Price, and Alan their daughters but if you ask them in Goodman (ex officio) Iranian Farsi how many children they 2Not their real names. 2007 “AAA Commission on the have, in Dari the same words ask how Engagement of Anthropology with many sons. Sometimes the information References the US Security and Intelligence is as simple as how rude it is to slam a Communities” Final Report door. But it all comes together to allow Bartlett, Linda A, Shairose Mawji, Sara for program development that meets Whitehead, Chadd Crouse, Suraya Sider, Gerald M. culturally specific criteria. Dalil, Denisa Ionete, Peter Salama 2009 Can Anthropology Ever be Fieldwork carries risks when it is 2005 Where giving birth is a fore- Innocent? Anthropology Now conducted in developing countries, but cast of death: maternal mortality 1(1):43-50. when working in war zones or areas of in four districts of Afghanistan, continuing conflict, the risk is increased. 1999—2002. The Lancet, 365 Patricia Omidian holds a PhD (1992) There is always an imbalanced relation- (9462):864 – 870. from the University of California San ship, but we can overcome some of that Francisco and University of California by how we work and what we want Bickford, Andrew Berkeley’s joint program in medical our work to accomplish. What we as 2008 Report from the Field: Skin- anthropology. She has worked as an anthropologists have to offer develop- in-Solutions: Militarizing Medi- applied anthropologist in Afghanistan ment work in these situations is enor- cine and Militarizing Culture in and Pakistan since 1997. Omidian is mous. It is through the anthropological the United States Military. North currently an Associate Professor and lenses of observation, comparison and American Dialogue. 11(1): 5-8. the Head of Social Sciences for the Aga cultural relativism that the applied an- Khan University’s Faculty of Arts and thropologist can bring critically needed Omidian, Patricia A. Sciences, Karachi Pakistan. She can be n insights to program development and 2002 Qualitative Maternal Mortality reached at [email protected]. 12 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 Are You With the F.B.I.?: Fieldwork Challenges In A Post 9/11 Muslim-American Community

By Tony Gaskew It is very difficult for me to describe my emotions as a law enforcement of- his article is based on my experi- ficer witnessing the World Trade Center Tences as an ethnographer and crimi- collapse to the ground like a deck of nologist conducting sixteen months of cards. In my eighteen-year law enforce- field research among a Muslim Ameri- ment career I had never experienced a can community in central Florida study- more helpless feeling in my gut, and I’ve ing the impact of the USA PATRIOT witnessed my share of indiscriminate and Act, and highlights the unique chal- shameless acts of violence in my life. lenges and obstacles facing researchers Within minutes, my emotions ran be- conducting participant observations tween a cloudy fear and a deep uncontrol- within Muslim communities in the lable anger. Were we going to be attacked United States in the aftermath of 9/11. again? Who was responsible and more Establishing and maintaining trust and importantly, what could I do to help? I credibility with research participants has said to myself, “Is this really happening?” always been the foundation upon which Over the next several weeks, various fieldwork is built. For ethnographers media pundits’ began offering their engaged in research within Muslim opinions on the religion of Islam, American communities today, they must presenting religion as “the primary overcome various hurdles, including a motivator for the 9/11 attacks.” As well, my fellow police officers did not have a deep sense of mistrust, alienation, fear, Tony Gaskew and potential issues of national security. single positive thing to say about Islam. Every law enforcement agent I knew, Background regardless of race, gender, or ethnicity, shared my feelings of anger and fear Islam. I had never gone to a library and towards Islam. An FBI Joint Terrorism On September 11, 2001, I was a conducted research on Islam, read the Task Force was formed and we began major crimes detective working at law Qur’an, or even visited a mosque, yet I to encourage citizens to report any enforcement agency in central Florida. was making opinions based on my fear “suspicious activity.” Hundreds of tips It began as any other normal day, that is, and anger. This lack of knowledge and were called into our community hotline a normal day in a police culture. I was understanding towards Islam ate away describing anyone who remotely shared reading through a telephone wiretap at me, creating more of an impact than Middle-Eastern physical characteristics transcript and taking some notes in I ever could have imagined. To fill this as being “suspicious.” Many of these preparation for a criminal complaint on intellectual void, on January 2002 I “suspects” were in fact innocent career- a drug investigation I was conducting, enrolled at Nova Southeastern Univer- oriented professionals: engineers, doc- when a fellow detective and co-worker sity to complete my doctoral studies, tors, and professors, whose only crime entered the office and yelled, “we’re un- with the goal of focusing my research was to have a Middle-Eastern physical der attack…. Muslims bombed the World agenda on understanding Islam and the appearance and name. I thought to Trade Center and the Pentagon…what are events of September 11, 2001. I felt myself, “Things might be getting a little we going to do?” I immediately turned on compelled to examine the complexities out of control. Are we really going to the office television monitor and watched of Islam from my own perspective as a waste our resources surveilling anyone in amazement as the events of 9/11 law enforcement agent. who looks Muslim? Are we (police) unfolded before my eyes. Four airplanes doing more harm than good in our had been highjacked, two crashing into counterterror mindset?” Introduction the World Trade Center, one into the As was true of many of my law Pentagon, and a fourth had crashed into a According to the Council on Ameri- enforcement co-workers, what I knew field in rural Southern Pennsylvania, just can-Islamic Relations 2007, an estimated of Islam was primarily from word-of- a couple hours away from the University 6-7 million Muslims reside in the United mouth, counter terrorism training, and of Pittsburgh campus where I work today States. However, conducting research the media. None of these are unbiased as a professor of criminal justice. within Muslim American communities or credible sources of information on Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 13 can pose unique challenges for ethnog- and Muslim American communities. career had no direct correlation to my raphers. Historically, cultural immersion Although statistically speaking, the ma- current research agenda, it did trigger a has provided ethnographers with the jority of Muslims in the United States series of questions I was forced to con- ability to engage in participant observa- are indigenous African-American, my front during my study. As a researcher, I tion and develop what is called an “emic research participants were predominate- often wear three distinct hats: as a crim- perspective,” or the ability to see the ly immigrants of South Asian and Arab inologist, as a social scientist, and as an world through the eyes of the group being descent (Table 1). Although my par- ethnographer (though not always in that studied. Since the terrorist attacks of Sep- ticipant observation included countless order). Each has its’ own unique role tember 11, 2001, Muslim communities in interactions between men and women, in my research agenda. I firmly believe America, faced with varying degrees of only a handful of my interviews were that in order to understand the hidden public and governmental scrutiny, have conducted with women; difficulties of nuances of group behavior and social all but closed the doors for researchers interviewing women were largely due to relationships, one must use experien- regarding true cultural immersion with the customs and cultural nuances of the tial immersion to examine the subjects the community. For criminologists like population, which prohibited me from being studied: a sort of criminological myself who have practical experience in engaging in one-on-one contact with verstehen. For criminologists however, the profession of criminal justice, using female participants unless a male escort the use of ethnographic methods of ethnographic methods exposes me to was present. inquiry can be both exhilarating and unique risks that include legal, emotional, frightening. Unlike traditional research- and ethical dilemmas. Confronting My Own Role as a ers, criminologists with practical experi- I discuss here my experiences as a Researcher ence in the field of criminal justice often criminologist and former law enforce- face ethical conflicts arising from their ment agent conducting ethnographic Prior to accepting a faculty position loyalties to their professional duties and research among a Muslim community at the University of Pittsburgh, I spent their responsibility to protect the rights in Florida in the aftermath of 9/11. the majority of my professional career of research participants. Establishing and maintaining trust, as a law enforcement agent in Florida. One of the first issues I faced in respect, and credibility with research My assignment to the Organized Crime my study was the concept of open and participants has always been the foun- Task Force in central Florida during honest disclosure. What if the research dation upon which fieldwork is built. September 2001involved managing participants were curious about my Ethnographers engaged in research with “covert” criminal investigations, which background and began to inquire about Muslims living in the United States, included the use of electronic surveil- my life before entering academics? may find this a daunting task. Today, lance (wiretaps). Although my previous Should I tell them the truth and possibly researchers must overcome various challenges, including a deep sense of mistrust, fear, and potential issues of national security. Table 1. Participant Demographics Table 1: Participant Demographics

The Setting Variable Number (n) Mean (%)

From August 2005 through Janu- ary 2006, I conducted fieldwork in two Participants 443 (total) separate Muslim communities within Immigrant 381 86.1% central Florida, through participant Indigenous 62 13.9% observation and interviews with both indigenous and immigrant Muslim Gender American community members. My Male 434 97.6% Female 9 2.4% field research took place in various so- cial settings throughout the community, Ethnicity such as mosques, community centers, Caucasian-American 6 1.4% homes, places of business, picnics, African-American 39 8.8% restaurants, and shopping centers. Hispanic-American 23 5.2% The focus of my study was to exam- South Asian 207 46.7% ine the social conflicts facing Muslim Arab 155 34.9% Guyanese 6 1.4% Americans in the aftermath of 9/11, Iranian 4 .9% and to provide insight on how the USA Sudanese 2 .5% PATRIOT Act impacted the relation- Bosnian 1 .2% ship between law enforcement agencies

14 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 ruin my chances of finishing a very when conducting fieldwork within fieldwork location sites throughout cen- promising research project, or rather Muslim American communities today. tral Florida. I also contacted the Council brush off such inquiries with a nod and In fact, as I reflect on my 16-month on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a smile? More importantly, do I have journey, my relationship with my many a nationally recognized Muslim civil an ethical obligation as a researcher gatekeepers later formed into friend- rights organization. After first establish- to fully disclose my previous career if ships, which extended far beyond what ing telephone contact, I personally met I’m aware it could impact the voluntary my fieldnotes could ever reflect. with representatives of CAIR, and after nature of participation in the study? In My initial contact with the commu- presenting my research agenda, they as- this post-9/11 climate where the lives of nity was made through a scheduled visit sisted me with making several contacts Muslims in the United States have come at a mosque in central Florida. After within central Florida, specifically an under such intense law enforcement with the imam (spiritual/community established Islamic community center. scrutiny, surely some of my participants leader) and explained the basis of my Islamic centers in America have become would choose not to involve themselves research, he referred me to a Muslim an extension of mosques, providing a in this research once they were made American community leader who was a community center setting, sponsoring aware of my former law enforcement professor at a local university. Several various religious, social, and education- career. I found myself in a unique situa- days later, I met with the professor for al venues. Activities such as weddings, tion as a criminologist, an ethnographer, several hours, and the meeting actually lunches and dinners, mentoring and and a former law enforcement agent, turned out to be an in-depth examina- sports activities for children, and parent- with little or no guidance from previous tion of my background. This meeting ing and marriage counseling classes are research conducted under similar condi- was the first of an on-going series of held at Islamic centers. Upon a gate- tions. In the end, I decided to be truthful tests regarding my honesty and desire to keeper’s referral, I visited an Islamic about my law enforcement career if build and maintain a sense of trust with center in Orlando, Florida and began to asked, even if it resulted in the project’s the Muslim community, which I faced establish relationships throughout the demise. From my perspective, effective throughout the duration of this research community. These gatekeepers provided long-term fieldwork that examines the project. Without being prompted, I me with ready-made credibility, and it lives of “vulnerable populations” must explained in great depth about my past would have been impossible to conduct be based on trust, respect, and credibili- as a former law enforcement agent. this research without their direct and ty, all of which would have been jeopar- Although at times this became some- continuous intervention. dized had I decided to be less than truth- what uncomfortable given the cur- Prior to entering my first fieldwork ful. Although I lost a few participants as rent social climate and my aggressive setting, dozens of telephone calls a result of my decision, I reaffirmed the ethnographic research agenda, it was were made by my gatekeepers to local confidence of my “gatekeepers” who also refreshingly honest and required a Muslim community leaders requesting were ultimately responsible for my suc- unique sense of personal vulnerability their “support” for my research project. cessful immersion into the community. as a researcher. I was well aware that As one of my gatekeepers explained to my former law enforcement career me, “you have a choice…you can either Gaining Entrance into the could negatively impact any chance of conduct your research by showing up Community completing this project, because I could unannounced and having the entire easily be perceived as a “government community treat you as an outcast, or One of the first things I discovered spy” trying to gather intelligence within you can humbly request the blessing conducting field research in a Muslim the community. After a series of ques- of a few key people and be granted ac- community in the United States is the tions about my ethnicity (because the cess to the community.” After a couple importance of having steadfast gate- professor initially thought I might have of weeks in what seemed like a con- keepers. In contrast to ethnographers been Egyptian), the professor laughed tract negotiation, I was informed they who conduct research abroad, the and commented, “You can’t make-up would allow me to conduct fieldwork difficulties face when trying to gain this kind of stuff…a former cop wants at the local mosque and other settings entrance into US subcultures is less to experience first-hand how it’s like in the community, providing I did not frequently discussed in monographs. to be a Muslim after 9/11…yes…I will use any video or audio equipment to However, since the attacks of 9/11 and introduce you into the community.” record any conversations. Since the the increased law enforcement directed Within the following weeks, he person- IRB at my university prohibited the toward Muslim Americans, I have real- ally introduced me to several well- use of any electronic recording devices ized that Muslim communities have established Muslim Americans who during my study anyhow based on the become extremely weary of “unfamil- resided in the area, who in turn intro- rationale that that Muslim Americans iar faces” that suddenly appear at the duced me to other Muslims throughout in the aftermath of 9/11 were a “vulner- mosque for daily prayers. Establishing central Florida resulting in a “snowball” able population” by IRB standards, this and maintaining a continuous series of effect for producing new gatekeepers. request posed no foreseeable problems. “gatekeepers” become a requirement These contacts enabled me to establish Although the use of fieldnotes as my Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 15 only data collection instrument was a completely different reaction. I learned underlying message of this accusation. tedious and time consuming process, the participants associated signing the I asked myself “What’s the big deal… I was left with few options. Several of informed consent with the interview if they’re not doing anything illegal, the community members also required process conducted by government offi- what’s there to be worried about?” verifiable proof that I was a researcher cials under the National Security Entry- Who cares if the F.B.I. or any other and doctoral candidate, and requested Exit Registration System (NSEERS), law enforcement agency is conduct- a copy of my university transcripts and or what is commonly referred to as ing surveillance on the members of the research proposal outlining the purpose “Special Registration.” Under NSEERS, community?” By then, I had provided and methodology of my study. I was told all foreign nationals from countries copies of my research proposal, col- several of the Muslim community leaders whom the State Department and the INS lege transcripts, the personal contact wanted to ensure my project had no hid- determined to be an “elevated national information of everyone involved in den agenda or that it would not be used security risk” were required to undergo the study, and subjected myself to what to spread misinformation regarding the mandatory fingerprinting, photograph- seemed like a background investigation. practices of Islam. Since part of my IRB ing and interviews. As such, “Special I had answered every question posed to mandate required that I provide business Registration” ultimately led to the ques- me, and agreed to every stipulation re- cards containing my contact information tioning and deportation of several immi- quired by community leaders; however, and the contact information of my univer- grant Muslims who resided in the area, I could not overcome this sense of fear sity IRB to all potential research partici- creating a climate of fear and mistrust and mistrust projected toward “outsid- pants, I strongly encouraged everyone between law enforcement agencies and ers.” At this point, there was very little involved in the study to verify my status the local Muslim American community. I could do to convince them of my offi- as a doctoral candidate and to closely Within a matter of hours after at- cial status as a researcher and I was pre- examine the research project agenda. tempting to secure a signed informed pared to abandon the project. One of my consent form from a research par- gatekeepers insisted that I not give up, Problems Obtaining ticipant, I was contacted by a Muslim and explained to me the refusal to sign Informed Consent community leader and informed that I the informed consent was a reflection of was no longer welcome at the mosque their deep sense of fear and lack of trust During the onset of my fieldwork, I or any other community sponsored in people since the events of 9/11 and discovered the majority of my research activity, and that they were formally added, “by requiring their signatures, participants, based primarily on the withdrawing their support and participa- you implied that either you did not trust credibility of my gatekeepers, were tion from the study. I was immediately them, or they should not trust you.” It somewhat comfortable with my pres- informed by one of my gatekeepers that was at that moment I finally realized ence and were initially cooperative in several members of the community sus- the how politically charged the climate allowing me to conduct field observa- pected that I was never a researcher, but had become for Muslims in America. tions and brief interviews at the mosque in fact an F.B.I. Special Agent attempt- As my research findings suggested, one and Islamic Center. However, as I began ing to cultivate “police informants” of the primary social conflicts Muslim to immerse myself into the community within the Muslim community and Americans face today is to overcome an and attempted to conduct more struc- conduct surveillance on the mosque. environment of discrimination, alien- Although I was very empathetic at first, ation, fear of law enforcement, and a loss tured and in-depth follow-up interviews that required participants to sign an given the Islamophobic environment of respect, honor, and dignity as a result many Muslim Americans are forced to of the USA PATRIOT Act (Table 2). informedTable consent 2: Social form Conflicts(an IRB man Facing- Muslim Americans in the Aftermath of 9/11 date from my university), I received a deal with after 9/11, however, I quickly The events of September 11, 2001 became somewhat angry because of the created a social climate for many of my

Table 2. Social Conflicts Facing Muslim Americans in the Aftermath of 9/11

To confront and take a self-critical and To resolve long standing To overcome an environment of introspective look at traditions and ethnocentric attitudes and discrimination, alienation, fear of law systems of belief in relation to practices between immigrant enforcement, and a loss of respect, extremism and violence within the and indigenous communities. honor, and dignity as a result of the USA practice of Islam. PATRIOT Act.

16 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 research participants where their defini- Florida were very tense in my fieldwork were just as vocal in their passionate tion of “trust” was being transformed setting, as word spread throughout the criticisms of the U.S. government as both internally and externally, which community that a “Muslim informant” were immigrant participants. In fact, was reflected in their transient identi- had led to the investigation and subse- I heard a similar type of frustration ties as Muslim Americans. The wounds quent arrests of fellow Muslims. Based and anger directed towards the U.S. of 9/11 run deep for Muslims in the on my fieldwork experience, nothing can government during a Fulbright-Hays United States, as they have been forced be more devastating to the “assabiya” research project I participated in over to examine their own Islamic practices (social cohesiveness of the community) the summer in Egypt. I spent the major- and historic sense of ummah (Muslim than to discover “one of their own” is a ity of my fieldwork in Cairo, Luxor, and community) in the backdrop of a less party to acts of tribal betrayal, regardless Alexandria conversing with members than forgiving world. It is important of the circumstances. Many participants of the Muslim Brotherhood (an orga- for researchers to understand during silently shared their disgust with me nization outlawed in Egypt) who did periods of crises, Muslim Americans regarding the actions of this “police not bite their tongues when describ- have begun to “close ranks” in order to informant” insisting that as a Muslim, ing their bitter contempt for the U.S. regain their sense of trust and security. he should have been more pious and government. However, in this case, Although my participants were gracious committed to dialogue, persuading his these Muslims who shared their angry hosts and provided me sensitive per- “brothers” from committing acts of vio- perceptions of the U.S. government spectives on their unique worldviews, lence against the United States instead of were Egyptian citizens on Egyptian soil. “outsiders” would always be perceived assisting the police. As one participant The question becomes, how much anger as “outsiders,” and I was an “outsider.” explained, “the most pious thing would can Muslim Americans direct towards Fortunately, my gatekeepers were have been to understand why these the government of the United States unwavering in their friendship and their brothers felt violence was their only or the president of the United States commitment for the successful comple- option…not to just stop this single act… before it crosses the line into matters of tion of this project. My initial gatekeeper, but to prevent this mindset from spread- national security? What about crimes the university professor, contacted several ing into multiple acts of violence.” Other uncovered during fieldwork settings of the key Muslim community members participants felt these high profile arrests such as immigration violations? What and personally vouched for me jeopardiz- were simply a “hoax” invented by the is my legal obligation to report these ing his credibility and reputation in the U.S. government to belittle Muslims. situations? In this politically charged community. He emphasized the benefits These incidents triggered another environment does one’s loyalty lie to the community of not only complet- set of issues regarding national security with the protection and well being of ing this type of research endeavor, which that highlighted the complexities of research participants or with the safety brings to the forefront the concerns and ethnographic fieldwork among Mus- and security of the United States? I voices of Muslim Americans regarding the lim Americans. I began to ask myself, lived with this quagmire throughout a impact of the USA PATRIOT Act, but the “What if during my fieldwork I observe year and a half of very intense field- hypocritical tone it would set to pick and or overhear what I believe to be “suspi- work, and was prepared to make some choose who would be allowed to exam- cious or unusual behavior?” Although difficult choices if confronted with this ine the nuances of Islam and the lives of ethnographers have been successfully ethical dilemma. However, I learned Muslim Americans. After a few days of navigating through “shark infested” you can have the best of both worlds. meetings between key community mem- fieldwork settings in the United States As my brothers who are currently bers, I was once again allowed to continue saturated with drug trafficking and police officers in Chicago have always with my field work and began to immerse violent crime for many years (Anderson reminded me, “once a cop, always a myself into the community. 2000; Bourgois 2002) issues of national cop.” Thus legally, my loyalty lies with security are creating new concerns. the national security of my country. If I The Liberty City Seven During my fieldwork, members of were to have overheard a terrorist plot the Muslim community often described (which I did not) my loyalties would During the course of the study, a the United States government and have fallen on the protection and safe- small group of Muslims law enforcement President George W. Bush in aggres- keeping of the greater community and authorities labeled as “The Liberty City sive and very unfavorable terms, and innocent American lives. I would have Seven,” was arrested in South Florida, openly described their anger, bitterness, terminated the study, regardless of the and accused of plotting to destroy the and frustration with American foreign findings or the amount of time invested. Sears Tower in Chicago and other land- and domestic policy towards Muslims. I As a criminologist, social scientist, and marks in the United States. During the should clarify that both indigenous and ethnographer, my loyalty must lie with next several months, additional arrests immigrant Muslim participants shared a the protection and wellbeing of my of Muslims were made in California and belief in a government inspired “siege” research participants. Even at the risk of New York for alleged terrorist plots. The on Islam. That is, African-American being stigmatized as a “traitor” by some days immediately following the arrests in and Hispanic-American participants of my law enforcement colleagues, I Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 17 must provide a safe and secure platform had opened in just a matter of seconds for References for my participants to share their most future researchers seeking to examine a intimate perceptions of Muslim life. As plethora of uncharted topics within Mus- Anderson, E. citizens of the United States, regardless lim communities across the United States. 2000 Code of the street: Decency, of their place of birth, Muslim Ameri- As noted throughout this article, the af- violence, and the moral life of the cans have the legal right and freedom to termath of 9/11 can pose unique challeng- inner city. New York: W.W. Norton harshly criticize the government and all es for ethnographers. This essay provided & Company. of its elected political figures, including a number of insights into the dynamics the president of the United States. As of fieldwork in post-9/11 Muslim com- Bourgois, P. criminologists involved in ethnographic munities. For criminologists, finding the 2002 In search of respect: Selling research, we must recognize our own right balance between professional and crack in el barrio. New York: Cam- roles in this process, and find a happy academic loyalties is essential. This in- bridge University Press. medium between our legal, emotional, and ethical loyalties. I understand that in a post-9/11 world, the lines between national security and research ethics might become cloudy and tough on the “As criminologists involved in ethnographic research, spot choices will have to be made. If ever these two worlds collided and one is we must recognize our own roles in this process, and forced to make a decision, I would hope a researcher would choose to abandon find a happy medium between our legal, emotional, and the project. No study, regardless of the possible outcomes, is worth crossing the ethical loyalties. line into matters of national security or ” betraying the anonymity and confidenti- ality of the research participants. volves knowing your role in the research Institute for Social Policy and Under- Conclusion: Finding the process, and understanding just how far standing you’re willing to go in order to success- 2004 The USA PATRIOT Act: Right Balance fully complete the project and protect the Impact on the Arab and Muslim study participants. I decided that in order American Community. The Insti- On January 21, 2009, Barack Obama th to be an effective ethnographer, I would tute for Social Policy and Under- was sworn-in as the 44 President of the have to confront my own legal, emotional, standing. 1-32. United States of America. During his in- and ethical fears. At the same, I under- augural address President Obama stated, stood my limitations, and was prepared to Ramadan, T. end the project rather than to jeopardize 2004 Western Muslims and the As for our common defense, we the safety and security of my country or future of Islam. New York: Oxford reject as false the choice between my research participants. My goal is to University Press. our safety and our ideals….we continue to examine the post-9/11 social are a nation of Christians and complexities facing Muslim Americans, Tony Gaskew is an Assistant Professor Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and and to encourage other criminologists of Criminal Justice and Coordinator of nonbelievers. We are shaped by to embrace the unique challenges of us- Criminal Forensic Studies at the Uni- every language and culture, drawn ing ethnographic fieldwork during their versity of Pittsburgh. He is a Fulbright- from every end of this Earth….to research journeys. Hays Fellow, an FDD Terrorism Fellow, the Muslim world, we seek a new a University of Pittsburgh Faculty way forward, based on mutual Acknowledgements Diversity Fellow, and a member of the interest and mutual respect. Consortium for Educational Resources My deepest gratitude goes out to on Islamic Studies (CERIS). He is the My conversations with Muslim American author of the book Policing Muslims friends, fellow colleagues, and students at the Islamic Society of Central Florida and the Council on Islamic-American American Communities (2009) and has the University of Pittsburgh echoed a con- conducted research in Egypt and Israel sistent sentiment of praise and the admira- Relations (CAIR) for their support dur- ing the course of my research. Most of examining the Muslim Brotherhood, so- tion for President Obama’s speech, seeing cial justice, and structural violence. He it as a “new chapter” in how Muslims all, I would like to thank the countless Muslim Americans in central Florida received his Ph.D. from the Graduate will be perceived not only in the United School of Humanities and Social Sci- States but globally. I can only wonder how who have given me their unwavering trust and participated in this project. ences at Nova Southeastern University. many “closed doors” President Obama He can be reached at [email protected]. n 18 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 Who Burned Down Our House This Time?: Ethnography & Conflict in Timor Leste

By Patricia L. Delaney “although politically the country is free, its people remain chained by poverty.” Introduction Similar sentiments were expressed by a rural village chief in 2003 who told me, “Labele han demokrasia.” (You can’t he Timorese Ministry of Labor eat democracy.) estimated that over 175,000 people T Security is maintained by a small (out of a total population of roughly force of Australian “peacekeepers” and 1 million) resided in camps for Inter- a slightly larger contingent of UN police nally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in May officers. The level of violence fluctuates 2007. These camps, which sprung up but most foreigners have been warned in the immediate aftermath of politi- to “defer non-essential travel to East cal violence in May of 2006, provide Timor” (which is just government speak shelter, food, and security to children, for “don’t go unless you have to.”) women, and men in every district of this The Timorese themselves, of course, small country. Hundreds of Timorese, continue to suffer tremendously from Patricia L. Delaney and a handful of foreigners, have been forced and self-selected displacement, killed. Thousands of homes have been the daily terror of gang violence, and burned to the ground. Victims of rocks, persistent fear that they will never be Molotov cocktails, spears, and tradition- World War II. Some elites, including able to create a secure environment in al poisoned arrows appear regularly in Portuguese, mestiços (people of mixed which economic and political develop- the National Hospital in the capital city, Portuguese and indigenous Timorese ment can happen. Needless to say, it is Dili. Families, friends, and neighbors ancestry), and members of the Chinese- difficult to do ethnographic fieldwork in have been torn apart in a cycle of vio- Timorese minority, escaped to Portugal these conditions, and things are infi- lence, house burning, score settling, and or Australia just before the Japanese nitely worse for the Timorese people revenge. Whole sections of the country, took over in Timor. themselves. as well as specific neighborhoods in After World War II ended, Timor Dili, are “no-go zones” for people from returned to Portuguese control, and specific regions. Methodology and Reflection:The became independent in November Even before the current crisis, life Anthropologist’s Lived Experience 1975. Just one month later, the Indone- in East Timor was difficult. Accord- with Conflict and Displacement sian army invaded East Timor, killing ing to the UN Development Program thousands and sparking a cultural and (UNDP), the country has the lowest This discussion stems from a variety political movement which came to be human-development in all of Asia. Even of both “academic” and “applied” known as the resistance. The invasion compared to developing countries such research experiences in Timor Leste, took place at the height of the Cold War as Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar, starting during the period immediately and the Indonesians used the rationale Timor is disadvantaged. It is by far the after Timorese independence in 2002.1 of “stopping the spread of commu- poorest country in the region, with a per Prior to independence, Timor Leste nism” in their backyard. It now appears capita income of just $370 per year. The had been colonized by the Portuguese clear that the United States, which had average Timorese person can expect to (from 1515 to 1974); occupied by Japan provided Indonesia with most of its live only to the age of 55.5 years. Over during World War II; and then brutally weapons, provided at least tacit approv- 50% of the population lacks access to occupied by Indonesia (1975-1999). al for the invasion. Many US, Austra- clean drinking water. Fully one-third of The Japanese occupation of East Timor, lian, and Timorese scholars describe women between the ages of 15-49 are from January 1942 to August 1945 was the Indonesian period as “attempted malnourished. 64% of people experi- relatively brief in duration but particu- genocide.”(Jardine: 2002) ence food insecurity in an average year. larly brutal in execution. The Japanese In April 1976, the United Nations Over 50% of both men and women killed over 60,000 Timorese civilians, urged Indonesia to withdraw and over aged 15 are illiterate. The cumula- or almost 13% of the total population, declared its intention to continue to tive result of these numbing statistics as punishment for their collaboration consider East Timor as part of Portugal. is a situation in which as UNDP put it: with Australian commandos during The massive resistance movement grew Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 19 and guerilla troops successfully fought much from the immediate post-refer- three different transportation advisors off more than 40,000 Indonesian troops. endum period. Most were unemployed recommended three totally different Within Timor, the resistance movement and many felt left out of the economic traffic patterns for the capital, Dili. One continued unabated for the duration of and political development of the coun- day the street in front of our office was the Indonesian occupation. Although try. The decision to utilize Portuguese a typical two-way affair. The next week the Indonesian government claimed as a national language, which fewer it was one-way going one direction. A that only a small minority of Timorese than 10% of the population speaks, few weeks later, it was one-way going people supported the resistance, the particularly rankled. The combined the other direction! Almost everything later referendum showed just the op- legacy of so many decades of violence, was like that. posite to be true. repression, and resistance and the post- The security situation in the country After decades of struggle, the independence challenges combined to was precarious. Foreign peacekeepers, Timorese finally had an opportunity set the stage for the current violence. UN Police Officers, and a variety of to express their own opinion about the other military officials patrolled regu- future of their country. On August 30, First Fieldwork in Timor Leste: larly. Many of our Timorese colleagues 1999, the UN held a popular con- Applied Anthropology from still seemed shell-shocked. The trauma sultation about future of East Timor. was recent; one Timorese friend vividly Despite fear of repression, reprisals, and 2002-2004 described the psychological damage violence from the menacing presence as “scabs, not scars.” Everyone had of the anti-independence militias, the I first went to East Timor in late horrific stories of displacement, gang Timorese turned out in overwhelm- 2002 as the Associate Peace Corps rape, torture, and other atrocities at the ing numbers to vote for independence. Director. My job was to develop health hands of the bapa (Indonesians) but After the vote, the Indonesian-backed education projects in rural areas. My most didn’t talk about it openly. It was militias engaged in a campaign of terror. husband served as a UN Volunteer in only after you got to know someone that Hundreds were killed and over 250,000 the Ministry of Environment. We lived you learned things like how many times Timorese were forced across the border and worked in the country for eighteen their house had been burned down. into West Timor. Approximately 50% of months. It was an exciting time, full And yet, most malaes (foreigners) the infrastructure in the country, includ- of the promise of a newly independent felt safe. We snorkeled and ate at Thai ing electrical wires, telephone services, country that had long suffered at the restaurants (although we did avoid bridges, and schools are destroyed in hands of occupying powers. Like many the “unexploded ordinance beach”). the militia violence. other expatriates in the country at the I walked to work or sometimes took After the triumphant return of time, we felt privileged to be participat- a local taxi. We saw evidence of past resistance leaders, and with Interna- ing in the birth of a new nation and we destruction everywhere, but like most tional Peacekeepers guaranteeing that quickly developed a real affinity for the other malaes (and many Timorese Indonesian rule would not return, the people and cultures of Timor Leste. elites), we got caught up in the opti- successive UN administrations sought At the same time, it was often mism, hope, and excitement of inde- to help the Timorese begin to create a challenging both for us and for our pendent Timor. We presumed that all of new nation. The political elites, many of Timorese colleagues. The Indonesian the violence was in the past, attributed whom had been in exile abroad, came militias had destroyed most of the virtually all of the blame to the Indone- back to Timor and assumed important country’s infrastructure when they sian militias who ransacked the country positions in both the government and departed in a rampage in 1999. The new in 1999, and saw the Timorese people the UN administration. nation lacked roads, bridges, telephone as passive victims who needed our help Despite the fact that they joined wires, irrigation systems, schools, and to rebuild the country. together to fight the Indonesian occupa- even electrical lines in many places. I was working as an applied anthro- tion, the many indigenous groups in Jobs were scarce and many people pologist and I found that ethnographic Timor have maintained their autonomy suffered from tropical diseases. The methods were a great help in my work and independence.2 Connections to one’s Timorese were excited about the idea in the “forro” (the hinterland). I spent ethnic/linguistic group, clan, and lineage of being independent, but had little much of my time in the countryside remain important even today in Timor experience with actually governing. interviewing traditional leaders, and Leste. Although some inter-marriage has The UN assistance mission, which was trying to identify communities that happened, especially in Dili, most people supposed to help the Timorese transition would be ready to work with future maintain a strong ethnic/cultural identity to independence, was a bureaucratic Peace Corps Volunteers on public health based on their region of origin. behemoth, full of people from dozens of projects. Average Timorese, former resistance different countries with at least as many Back in Dili, my husband and I fighters, and those who remained in ideas about how to set up government moved from our first expatriate house Timor during the occupation (instead structures. The end result was often to one that was more integrated into of going into exile), did not benefit as confusing, sometimes frustrating, and an actual Timorese neighborhood. We never boring! In a one-month period, 20 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 increasingly spent our free time not summits, and internal UN documents displaced during the Indonesian occupa- with malaes but with our Timorese heralded the huge investment of the in- tion, could not only use the Internet, but neighbors. We became especially close ternational community and declared that could also focus on lotion, seemed like to our landlords and eventually devel- the Transitional UN administration and a huge accomplishment. oped what anthropologists refer to as the subsequent “capacity-building” with After the grueling trip from the East a “fictive kin relationship” with them. the Timorese civil service had succeed- Coast of the US, I finally arrived in Dili. After the death of one child and the ed in preparing the Timorese people to Ms. Kristy Sword Gusmao, the Austra- birth of another, we were asked to be- manage their own government, civil lian-born First Lady of Timor Leste was come godparents to their youngest son. society, and economy. on the small plane with me. She saw me We maintain a close friendship with tear up as we landed, and when I turned his family and a have a deep sense of Return to East Timor: to her and said “welcome home,” she responsibility for his welfare. Preparations for Return and quickly replied “you too.” It did feel like I was coming home! Expectations of Normalcy Post-Independence Euphoria I went to live with “our” Timorese family. This time, instead of living in In early 2006, I was awarded a Although we work with Peace Corps the big rental house, I moved into a Fulbright grant to teach at the National room in the grandmother’s house. The took us away from Timor in early 2004, University and conduct ethnographic my husband and I continued follow- symbolic move from malae (foreigner) fieldwork. The country had continued to to honorary oan (child) was satisfying ing the country’s progress and spent develop. The international peacekeepers much of the next year trying to figure and important. The fact that my husband had mostly departed and the security had not accompanied me was beneficial out a way to get back. Just a little less situation had remained calm. The Peace than a year before the most recent to my research. I was quickly drawn Corps and other development agencies into daily life, meals, and household crisis, an article in the New York Times were expanding their presence. Our Tourism section quoted an aid worker work. I participated as an honorary fam- friends sounded optimistic, hopeful, ily member in ceremonies, memorial saying: “I feel like it is becoming safe and less stressed than they had been here and tourism is about to take off services, and the funeral of the family between 2002 and 2004. I was thrilled patriarch. And, as it turns out, I ended in the next 10 years. We can say we to be returning and anxious to examine were here at the beginning” (New York up having a front-row seat at the begin- the positive changes happening in the ning of the most recent political crisis in Times June 5, 2005). The very fact that country. I e-mailed Timorese colleagues the country was featured as a tour- Timor Leste. at the Peace Corps asking for shopping In the first few weeks, I was largely ist destination confirmed what most lists. The young women in the office foreigners thought: the United Nations optimistic about the progress in the asked for lotion from Victoria’s Secret! country. My key informants, both in the “experiment” in East Timor was seen It was a great example of the globaliz- as a success. In virtually everything family and in the forro largely con- ing power of the Internet. It also seemed curred. Table 1 reflects these thoughts written from 2001 to 2006, East Timor to be an encouraging sign about the be- was cited as “the model UN success as I summarized them in my April 19th ginning of normalcy in Timor. The fact fieldnotes. story.” Dozens of papers, books, policy that these women, all of whom had been

Table 1. Perspectives on Change Table 1: Perspectives on change Pros (in 2006) Cons (in 2006) . Better Communication Systems . Corruption (Prime Minister’s nephew) . Better Electricity . Roads in Dili (Prime Minister’s nephew had . Some new bridges, road repair contract to repair) . People don’t seem afraid anymore (not that . No jobs, no economy to speak of previous high level of anxiety), although still . Military unrest (among Timorese military easily spooked force) . Less uncertainty about everything (roads, . Fear of refugees returning from West Timor/ phones, etc.) people have not forgotten . Fewer malae advisors; more empowered . One party state Timorese . Confusion nafatin (continues) about local . Oil Money government roles and responsibilities . No UN police/people still feel secure/less talk about security

Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 21

The Timorese seemed lighter, less chaos of IDP camps, marauding gangs, burdened. There was a nascent middle and the renewed presence of interna- class. In contrast to earlier days, res- tional peacekeepers on the ground. taurant patrons included Timorese too. On Sunday, April 30th, 2006, on what People were hopeful and the country turned out to be the night before the seemed to have turned a corner. And flashpoint event, I explained the situ- then, almost literally overnight, a politi- ation in the following way on my web cal, military, and security crisis erupted blog: and shattered the hopes and dreams of the Timorese people (and the interna- The Troubles: Those of you that tional community who supported them) have been following BBC will once again. know that there have been a few tense days in Dili. Approximately Ethnography in the Midst of 1/3 of the Timorese defense force Conflict (April 2006- July 2006) was dismissed over one month Need Caption Here ago. They were protesting what Although I had not intended to do they called discrimination. The government called them insub- ethnographic research during an armed summer hoping to return and continu- conflict, I found myself nervously ordinate. They’ve been staging (mostly) peaceful protests ever ing my work via email and telephone. watching national television with “my” My “fieldnotes”(written from my house family as the head of the army, the since. This week was different. They marched on government in the US) demonstrate the incredibly prime minister, and, eventually, the high level of the anxiety, uncertainty president all tried to calm peoples’ fears house for four days in a row. On the fifth day, something seems to and fear among the Timorese (and the in the lead-up to the crisis. I checked in anthropologist). several times each day, and made sure have snapped. we had stockpiles of food and water on 5/25/06: Lucia sounds happy, re- hand. Eventually, I stopped going out at Everything is calm now and for- eigners were never targeted…but lieved—almost excited. Australian night and started interviewing everyone troops have landed and everything I knew (both Timorese and malaes) rocks were thrown at government buildings; a few government cars will be fine. Kids are fine. Ivete about the crazy rumors that were circu- is fine—even joked that she was lating. were burned; and some thieves took advantage of the chaos to rob worried about me coming! They At one point, I helped some members saw the planes and the flood- of the family evacuate preemptively and steal. More importantly, the Timorese were also traumatized lights…gave them confidence that to a relative’s home in the hills above everything would be ok. Dili. Most of the older people stayed (again) and many ran away to the behind. They said they wouldn’t leave hills, to the U.S. Embassy, and to the various church compounds. 5/26/06: Spoke with Lucia: She’s their house again. They had done it scared and was crying. They are too many times. Over the weekend, The television news tonight th at the convent and are saying that virtually every Timorese person I talked (Sunday, April 30 ) broadcast a message of calm from the Prime people are at the gate, threatening to expressed abject fear. Most seemed to come in if they don’t give up terrified in ways that seemed completely Minister and then showed a very depressing montage of images 1 individual…Asked me to call out of proportion to what I perceived Ramos-Horta and ask for help to be the threat level. Rumors circu- of fleeing people, burning mar- kets, and police officers crying (and I am sitting here eating an lated wildly about the government, the 3 in frustration. All the while, John English muffin!). Foreign soldiers military, smuggled arms, and infiltrators have arrived….but fighting con- from Indonesia. The malae community Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ was playing in the background. (Delaney blog: tinues….malaes go right, shooters seemed to scratch its collective head. go left. The English word I heard over and April 30, 2006) over again that weekend was “over- 5/30/06: Lucia and kids still at reaction.” More than one thoughtful Just two days later, I was forced to evacuate the country. Of course, as it Tia Madre’s (convent)….sleep- political analyst wondered aloud if the ing on the veranda; kids are sick; Timorese “know something that we turns out, the Timorese were right and the malaes were the only ones caught down to $30 because she bought don’t” or if they were just “tauk tein” shoes for First Communion…. (easily frightened). completely unawares by the rapid disintegration into violence and chaos. cried and laughed and told me The conflict simmered for quite a about rumors—ema Lospalos long time before it erupted into the I spent much of the North American 22 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009

(people from Lospalos) saying displaced from their homes. Two of the variety of others. Mostly, though, peo- that they will attack if Alkitiri three women who just last year were ple seemed shocked to realize that they (Prime Minister) is fired; Peace- casually asking for lotion from the had nobody to blame but the people of keeping Forces not doing much; United States are now all unemployed Timor Leste. don’t know where people are…. and living in regionally segregated Everyone expressed horror and nobody is working and stores are IDP camps. The third woman is in amazement at the net effect of the con- all closed…..returned to house for exile in Australia with her three young flict: an ethnic division that had never the first time today…..doesn’t see children. Another colleague, the main been significant before.4 For the first a solution or a way out. I cried and driver for the Peace Corps, was living time, people were being killed, maimed, talked about options for sending in the office because his house had and terrorized simply because of their money and for possible escape to been burned to the ground. His wife region of origin. A malae colleague (one Indonesia (cheaper than Austra- and several children had escaped to who had lived in the country for almost lia)….said people are still getting their native village in the East, but he 5 years) confided that he was not sure across the border with money… stayed because of his sense of duty to that the Timorese would ever be able to less talk of violence or threats to the Peace Corps Volunteers. His eldest forgive each other for what had hap- the compound. daughter, who had been living with pened in a three-month period during him in Dili, moved to the IDP camp 2006. I was alternately heartbroken, horri- near the airport because they wanted After the immediate physical vio- fied, and incredibly frustrated by what her to finish the school year. lence subsided, and the family seemed felt like impotence. I wanted to do Lucia and her children finally secure, my panic turned to depression. something. Because I was so far away, moved back to their looted (but It wasn’t just the harsh reality of life in I focused almost exclusively on the un-burned) house in early August. IDP camps and the lack of security…. impact that these events were having Her mother, the matriarch of the but the collapse of international support on ‘our’ family…and I worked to help clan, defiantly remained in her home for Timor. As a Timorese colleague them psychologically, physically, and throughout the chaos. They all seem in the Peace Corps said when I saw monetarily. tired, depressed, and anxious. Rumors him in August of 2006, “Everything abounded and most folks seemed to we worked for during four years was Participant Observation During a be strategizing about ways to leave gone in one day.” He was describing Lull in the Conflict: Impacts and the country. Just as in past crises, the the profound disintegration of sympa- middle class and elites are thinking thy, patience, and understanding of the the Discourse of Blame (July 2006) about exile in Portugal, Australia, or international community. Literally in a even Indonesia. matter of days, Timor went from being I was able to go back briefly in July, The evidence of physical violence, “model UN success story” to just a run- for a heart-wrenching 3-day visit. Be- looting, and burned out houses was of-the-mill basket case in the Global cause the U.S. Embassy had evacuated everywhere. Everyone I met (whether South. all Americans back in March, they only friend, colleague, or just acquain- It is hard to imagine that the country permitted me to come in for a short tance) wanted to tell their personal will ever have the goodwill and support “trip.” Unlike my flight in March, this horror story. A casual acquaintance, that it enjoyed during the UN transi- one was not full of optimism, hope, a young man who worked as a waiter tional period again. The Timorese, a and words of encouragement from at a restaurant often frequented by long-suffering people, have morphed carefree political leaders. Instead, the malaes and elites, pulled me aside at from ‘hapless victims’ to ‘perpetrators flight was full of malae colleagues breakfast and asked, “Mana (Older of violence.’ Although the current crisis doing the same thing that I was by tak- Sister) Patricia, Why did they burn can be explained, in part, by the mis- ing advantage of the lull in the crisis down my house?” takes and failures of the UN, it has been to return to collect belongings, wrap While most malaes talked inces- labeled a ‘home-grown crisis.’ Unlike up our affairs, and say our goodbyes. santly about how ‘surprised’ they were the previous waves of occupation from After the tears of reunion at the airport, and how “caught unawares” they had the Indonesians, Portuguese, and even we drove by one of the largest IDP been, the dominant discourse among the Japanese, it seems that the Timorese camps right next to the airport. I was the Timorse was one of frustration and have nobody to blame but themselves shocked by the hundreds of white tents despair. Time and again I heard that this this time around. and seemingly endless array of burned was “worse than 1999 because we did out houses along the road. Needless to it.” People critiqued and analyzed and Conclusions say, the anxiety that I felt was minor discussed. Fingers were pointed at the as compared to the suffering of the one-party political system, the elected Timorese people. The current situation in Timor seems leaders, the international community, dire. But given the violent history of I learned that all of my former col- the youth gangs, “bad people”, and a leagues from the Peace Corps had been occupation, resistance, and terror to Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 23 which the people have been subjected journey for both of us. I returned again patterns found among most indigenous since the earliest days of colonialism, for two weeks in January of 2009, and groups in Timor. it is perhaps surprising that the coun- I am very happy to say that the politi- try has only experienced the relatively cal and security situation has improved 3Dr. Jose Ramos-Horta was then For- low-level of post-independence conflict substantially. eign Minister of the country. Because that we have seen to date. One might Life is starting to look like what I of my former status as a quasi-diplomat honestly expect the country to be much described in my fieldnotes back in 2006. with Peace Corps, I am on a first name more dysfunctional. Unemployment is decreasing, foreign basis with him. The title of this article asks: Who assistance is back on track, and most burned down the house this time? This (but not all) of the IDPs have been suc- 4It remains an open question whether time around, the answer is clearly the cessfully returned to their communities the events of 2006-2008 tapped into Timorese….but it is hard not to see of origin. The international community long smoldering ethnic tensions the hands of the Indonesians, Por- (and especially the UN) now seems to between indigenous groups in eastern tuguese and even Japanese at work. realize that they pulled out precipitously (lorosae) and western (loromono) East As Timor moves forward to address in 2005. They are now committed to Timor, or whether political leaders this tremendous social challenge, maintaining a long-term presence in the manipulated their followers by whip- the international community should country. ping up previously non-existent ethnic continue to assist in the process of On a more personal note, I was able hatred. healing the nation by providing as- to complete some additional fieldwork sistance with mediation, economic and, most importantly, I attended our 5U.S. Agency for International Develop- development, and by encouraging the godson’s 5th birthday party while I was ment (the major development assistance national government to make effective there! I plan to continue my long-term arm of the US government). use of the many talents of non-Portu- research and personal relationships in guese speakers and non-elites among Timor Leste. My husband and I remain References Timorese society. in touch with family and friends there. We hope to return together in May of Jardine, Matthew Postscript 2009 and I am already working on ways 2002 East Timor: Genocide in Para- to get back there for a more extended dise. Odonian Press. The crisis in Timor continued for time, perhaps over an upcoming sab- the remainder of 2006 and through the batical year. Mydans, Seth whole of 2007. While violence levels 2005 “New Nation Has Beaches ebbed and flowed, most Timorese and Notes Like Bali’s but Few Tourists.” New malaes lived in fear of further unrest. York Times, Travel Section, page 8. Curfews were enforced by an interna- 1The country is officially called June 5. tional military stabilization force and República Democrática de Timor most UN agencies kept only “essential Leste, but is referred to as East Timor United Nations Development Program personnel” in the country. Because the English-language version. The two 2006 Human Development Report: of continuing insecurity, Peace Corps terms will be used interchangeably in East Timor. opted not to return to Timor Leste. Na- this paper. tional elections in May of 2007 brought Patricia L. Delaney is an applied some new hope, but also new tensions 2The indigenous peoples of East Timor social anthropologist. She currently and waves of aggression. I maintained are culturally, linguistically, and ethni- holds a position as Assistant Professor contact with the family, friends, and col- cally diverse. They trace their origins of Anthropology and Gender Studies leagues throughout this period, although to Melanesian, Austronesian, Papuan at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, I was prohibited from traveling there by and Asian ethnic groups. More than Vermont. Patricia’s work straddles the the U.S. Embassy. a dozen language groups, including worlds of academia and the applied In May of 2008, I was finally able to Mumbai, Tetun Terik, Tokodedi, and realm and she actively seeks to keep a return to Timor Leste once again. Os- Makasai exist throughout the moun- foot in both worlds….bringing students tensibly, I went back to do some applied tainous half island that is modern to the world of international develop- research work on a USAID5-funded Timor Leste. Dozens of groups are ment practice and nudging development project. Mostly, I used the project as represented and each group exhibits its practitioners to draw upon theoretical an excuse to go back and check on our own culturally, linguistically, and so- and academic understandings in An- friends, “family,” and colleagues. My cially specific characteristics. Despite thropology. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. husband joined me for a short vacation the cultural heterogeneity, it is pos- in Anthropology from U.C.L.A. and a after my applied research was finished. sible to generalize to some extent and B.S. in Foreign Service from George- It was an exhausting and emotional describe some of the common cultural town University. n 24 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 Unstable Relocations: Meeting the Other in Kurdolato

By Bruno Anili toleration (whose humane concerns often disguise the dominant desire of She climbs on the bull’s back, being left alone, not bothered by the and ambles gently along, taking others). the girl into shallow water and As of the end of 1997, Europeans then further out, and faster, and became aware of a different possibil- terrified now, she looks way back ity associated with the relocation of at the distant shoreline and holds foreigners on their continent. The events on right to the great beast’s horn that were to gather media attention as the wind, freshening, whips and from all corners of Europe happened in tunic, which streams into pennants a forgotten town in southern Italy, one behind her. stricken with poverty and depopulation “The Rape of Europa,” in: and unlikely to produce any major phil- Ovid, Metamorphoses, book II osophical revolution in conceptualizing identity, otherness and similar abstract he increasing number of immigrants concepts. In the process of writing my Twho reach Europe’s southern shores doctoral dissertation, a project centered can represent both a threat and an op- on a study of the ideological domination portunity for contemporary Europeans. liberalism, I also became interested in While the principle of toleration might the experience of the encounter between the community of Badolato and a group appear both desirable and expedient Bruno Anili for dealing with this social phenom- of Kurdish clandestine immigrants. enon, it can be an inadequate modality While the liberal principle of toleration in encounters with “the Other.” Using appears increasingly inadequate as the the experience of a group of Kurdish ideological script for concrete instances Badolato was experiencing a condition clandestine immigrants in Badolato, of the encounter with the other, I argue of seemingly irreversible decline typical Calabria as an ethnographic example, that a practice of hospitality of the kind of many small villages in southern Italy I argue that the paradigm of hospitality that I discovered in the course of my and in other areas of the country. Those articulates a vast array of possibilities research in Badolato is more appealing Badolatese who did not find work in for rethinking inter-ethnic relations in both at the theoretical level and in its the village or in the newly constructed theoretical and political terms. practical implications. Whereas tolera- Badolato Marina (a neighborhood tion is typically defined by an attitude of located on the Ionian coast about six ki- lometers from the historic center) have Introduction mutual respect in which identity bound- aries are fixed and not to be transcend- emigrated elsewhere, including to the ed, hospitality carries within itself the bigger cities of the region, the industrial The eponymous myth of Europe possibility of creatively redrawing those areas of northern Italy, various destina- evokes the forcible relocation of the boundaries, incorporating a dynamic tions in northern Europe, or as a last Phoenician princess Europa, raped by element that makes it more adaptable to resort to Australia and the Americas. Zeus under the semblance of a bull. A change and the emergence of different The population declined dramatically— similar pattern of expansion, westward situations.1 from 7,000 to 700 people according to and north, marks the route on which some estimates—in few decades, as clandestine immigrants embark in their the emptying of the town left behind a journey of hope from the Global South The Kurds of Badolato rearguard of old folks. toward Italy or Spain and from there However, beneath the desolating to the affluent countries of northern Founded in the XI century by the immobility that seemed to accompany Europe. European attitudes towards Normans of Robert Guiscard, Badolato Badolato to a death by outmigration, those unwelcome immigrants gener- is a typical village on the top of a hill another type of change was occurring. ally range from outspoken hostility that thrived for centuries and became an In 1986 a provocative campaign was (often times embellished with unhid- important fortress in the defense of the launched by local political and social den racist overtones) to compassionate coast from the attacks of the Saracens. However, by the end of the 20th century activists under the name of “Badolato Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 25 paese in vendita” (Badolato Town food and money and promised to settle on a more or less stable source of in- For Sale). This was an effort to attract them in empty houses. Officials prom- come, produced locally and independent Italian and foreign tourists who would ised them work in new enterprises that of the rimesse, are, in a certain way, a invest in the maintenance and remodel- would make the most of their skills” privileged class. This is the case with ing of the houses that the emigrants had (Carroll 2005). In a short time, Badola- the Kurds. abandoned without indicating any plan to had attracted the attention of national As for the religious aspect of the to return to them. The initiative was and international media, and television integration of the Kurds into the social only moderately successful, as a few crews came to report on the strange fabric of Badolato, worries about the foreigners, mostly from Switzerland case of the village that welcomed im- forcible nature of their conversion to and northern Europe, did buy houses migration. Catholicism are not at all preposter- and made Badolato their regular vaca- After a few months, the majority of ous. However, such an interpreta- tion destination. However, this was not the original group of 825 Kurds had tion of their baptisms does not take a solution to the problems of a dying left for their final destinations, primar- into account the peculiar character community. ily Germany and Switzerland. Yet, of traditional religiosity in Southern At the end of the century, though, the efforts of local administrators and Italy’s villages. While this is obviously this village plagued by emigration residents had succeeded in convinc- an overwhelmingly Catholic environ- experienced unexpected opportunities ing a few of them to stay to work in ment, it is not one in which religion for resurgence and reinventing itself as construction, cleaning, and agriculture; emerges as an identity marker used to a land of immigration. The March 22, others opened artisan laboratories, differentiate among various communi- 2000 English daily The Guardian re- and still others a Kurdish restaurant. ties (as for example it was in Bosnia- counts the dramatic events of December It bears noting that at this stage in the Herzegovina in the aftermath of the 1997: Kurdish experiment in Badolato, power dissolution of Yugoslavia). Here reli- structures all too familiar in the most giosity is perceived and experienced It was December 27, 1997. Boats inveterate practices of the immigration as one element of a larger picture of raced to the ship and ferried its were being reproduced. On the eco- “tradition,” not to be theorized per se, human cargo to land. The Kurds nomic level, the newcomers were typi- and whose exercise is better under- were penniless and did not speak cally (but not exclusively) employed in stood as a series of ritualized habits, Italian, but for the villagers of “works of construction and cleaning,” rather than as a coherent set of moral Badolato, on Italy’s toe, they had an embryonic tertiary sector that caters and canonical formulations. In this one priceless asset - youth. to the affluent (yet sporadic) tourists context Catholicism is not necessar- […] from Switzerland and northern Europe. ily an exclusionary force, but rather And then the Ararat arrived: a On the cultural level, the enthusiasm peacefully coexists with a vast and Russian-made rustbucket that had with which the local priest welcomed dynamic substratum of alternative left Istanbul for Rome six days the new members of the community, beliefs, ranging from a diffuse super- earlier. The perils and £1,500 price as symbolized by baptisms on Easter stition, to enduring practices of magic tag had deterred elderly Kurds night, cannot obscure the fact that the and divination, to residual particles of from making the journey, so the Kurds are predominantly of Sunni pre-Christian religiosity. This context new arrivals were mostly under Muslim confession and, presumably, might also be hospitable to the intro- 40. They had not planned to make were not seeking conversion to another duction of Muslim practices. a life in Calabria, one of Italy’s religion. Despite some legitimate doubts, the poorest regions, but that was what However, some complementary case of Badolato soon came to be seen they were offered (Carroll 2005). reflections may help to refine the first as an interesting and largely success- impressions about these patterns of ful experiment. The people of this In other words, two days after seeming economic and ideological little village had not only passively Christmas 1997, the people of Badolato domination, by making sense of them tolerated the presence of the Kurds received the unexpected present of 825 not in the abstract, but in light of the on their territory (what in many other Kurdish asylum seekers. The Kurds specific local context. The productive places would have been a remarkable received an expected warm reception system of Badolato, like that of most achievement in and of itself), but locals from the Badolatese in return. They had Calabrian villages, is one that does not had actively welcomed the guests with reached the tip of southern Italy with favor the emergence of a highly differ- signs of concrete hospitality. Badola- no intention of relocating there, but entiated and dynamic class structure. On tese houses were literally opened for only because it was the most conve- the contrary, this subsistence economy the Kurds, and the whole population nient landing in their journey to Ger- is fundamentally based on the rimesse participated in collective efforts to help many, France, Belgium, and Sweden. (remittances) sent back home by emi- the newcomers establish viable and The Guardian continues: “Central and grants. In an area chronically plagued durable premises for sound, if modest, regional government gave the Kurds by unemployment, those who can count economic subsistence. An April 2000 26 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 news report from BBC asked a very normalization at that time, but the per- These disputes were of the kind that interesting question: “Could this be the spectives for the social experiment that is not at all uncommon among young answer for Italy’s other dying cities?” they represented looked now gloomier men, regardless of their ethnicity, and (Gilhooly 2000). A few years later this than ever.3 they never escalated into hostility ambitious question about the ability of Toward the end of the summer of between Kurds and Italians, and in the generalizing from the Badolatese ex- 2006 I made a trip to Badolato. On the end strengthened community ties. perience was supplemented by a more windy road to the top of the hill I expe- An area of special interest to me was basic concern: Was that experience rienced alternating feelings of hope and the linguistic contamination between the still in place? In order to answer such expectations of disappointment at each two communities. While the Kurds had questions, I decided to do research in curve. When I finally reached my desti- been learning Italian from the locals, the the field, rather than relying on news nation I found a sleepy town, seemingly Badolatese had also started to use Kurd- reports and other mediated sources of oblivious to its simple, clean streets, ish terms in their daily parlance, greet- information. and of the breathtaking beauty of its ing the elderly in the deferential manner scenery, between the Ionian Sea and typical of the newcomers. Misunder- Doing Research in Badolato the Calabrian mountains. In the mid- standings had not been uncommon, like day sunshine, only a few people walked when a Kurdish man had asked a shop- As I was planning my research activ- slowly in the piazza, between the town’s keeper for a “gas bomb” (bomba a gas), ities, I resolved to conduct open-ended two cafés: if that was Badolato, I started rather than for a much more innocuous interviews with a number of subjects, to think, perhaps I would have been “gas tank” (bombola a gas)… Unfortu- divided by the subsets “Badolatese” and better off taking pictures that day, rather nately, in the climate of excitement and “immigrants to Badolato.” In both cases than hoping to meet people. optimism typical of the early days of I recruited my interviewees through Luckily, I had already scheduled an this experience, more serious mistakes face-to-face interactions and “snowball” appointment with Daniela Trapasso, were made too. Unconditional hospital- techniques. Also, studying the more the coordinator of the Calabrian section ity and generosity were bestowed onto recent developments of Badolato’s expe- of CIR (Italian Council for Refugees). the newcomers, in ways that made it rience, I learned that, despite the initial Created in 1990 under the patronage difficult to eradicate expectations that excitement and optimism, it had not of the United Nations High Commis- were to prove unreasonable in the long turned out to be the squaring of the circle sioner for Refugees, CIR defines its run. of the immigration and aging population basic mission as: “to defend the rights I then met with a local historian and problems. In fact, along with the media of refugees and asylum-seekers in Italy” cultural animator. His perspective was coverage, came the interested interven- (http://www.cir-onlus.org/chisiamo2. also extremely helpful in delineating the tion of the national government. With htm). The conversation that we had social and cultural impact of relocation, bureaucratization came inefficiency and in the office of CIR was an extremely both as stimulated by the “Badolato corruption, a quasi-Pavlovian sequence helpful introduction to Badolato’s social Town For Sale” initiative, and by the ar- in the Italian context. reality. From the vantage point of her rival of the Kurds. That very afternoon, Additionally, complaints were raised institutional position, but especially as I was walking down a street, I heard by different corners of the Euro- from the perspective of an active social a Muslim prayer coming from a win- pean Union about Italy’s lax attitudes worker, Daniela was careful to define dow, and the British accent of a young towards the problem of clandestine the relationship between the immigrants lady coming from the next balcony. immigration. As a result, Italy’s adher- and the local community not in abstract Neither would have been a likely occur- ence to the Schengen Treaty was called terms of integration, but, much more rence in nearby towns; the proximity of into question and passport checks at realistically, as a form of coexistence. the two added to the peculiar character the Italian border were reintroduced on In particular, she pointed to the of the phenomenon. When I returned to a temporary basis by both France and many instances in which members of Badolato in the summer of 2007 I had Austria.2 ‘Strongly encouraged’ by its one of the two communities had par- brought a set of questions for open-end- northern partners, Italy had to recon- ticipated in ceremonies and religious ed interviews with me. By now I knew sider its policy of “friendly hospitality.” practices of the other group. Explor- that on a hot, sunny day most people The majority of the Kurds were placed ing each others’ traditions, Badolatese were likely to spend at least some in gated camps, under strict police youths had crossed the fire like their time at the beach, in Badolato Marina, surveillance. The infamous “Welcome Kurdish counterpart did as a ritual of returning home in time for lunch. So Centers” (Centri d’Accoglienza) were initiation into adult life. Funerals had I spent the morning re-familiarizing created, soon to be followed by the even also been an occasion for encounters, myself with the streets and sights of more infamous Centers of Temporary and many had incorporated rituals the town. I also took notice of the cars’ Permanence (Centri di Permanenza of both the traditions. Minor alterca- license plates: alongside the local ones Temporanea, or CPT). The Kurds who tions had involved young men of both there were quite a few from central had already settled in Badolato escaped groups, mostly in relation to women. and northern Italy, as well as Swiss, Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 27

German, French, Swedish ones, some concoction of fatalism, hospitality, their positions as non-racist, answering belonging to returning emigrants, some attachment to one’s own roots. So my in the negative the question on whether to the new house buyers. question: “Would you prefer to be richer they would have preferred that more Around 4:30 pm the roar of the first elsewhere, or poorer in Badolato?” Italians (as opposed to foreigners) had Vespas headed down to the beach an- generated an overwhelming majority relocated to Badolato. Some went so nounced the end of the siesta. Small of answers in favor of being poorer in far as to say that they preferred having clusters of middle-aged and old men Badolato. The allure of material wealth foreigners relocate to the village rather started assembling, some sitting in the was much less attractive than the appre- than Italians, as the former offer better shade on the piazza’s benches, some ciation of values like health, friendship, opportunities for cultural contamina- playing cards and sipping soda in the tradition and especially the feeling of tion and an overall evolution of the cafés. Old women gathered on the “belonging” to a place and community. local mentality. As for the non-racist church’s stairs, and then got inside and To this constellation of civic values, the disclaimers, in most cases they sounded started praying before the mass. Tourists priest also added the sense of mission genuine; others echoed the frustration at followed the Vespas to the beach; young that characterized his vocation as an their own alienation in the big cities of immigrants, mostly males, took the apostle among his people. the north by showing little warmth for benches that were left in the piazza. Additionally, while a general consen- the newcomers. It was time for me to start approach- sus emerged on the fact that Badolato Not surprisingly, the category “im- ing somebody; and I did so, not without had changed dramatically in the last migrants to Badolato” was a much some insecurity and shyness. As I few decades, the exact nature of the more heterogeneous one. It included started talking to people, I noticed that transformation was the object of much both homebuyers from elsewhere in some were at least as eager to talk to disagreement among my interviewees. Italy and Europe, and underprivileged me as I was to listen to them. At first At one extreme, a strongly nostalgic immigrants from Africa, Asia, and some people felt unprepared to answer mood permeated some holographic Latin America. Despite the obvious my questions, and pointed to their edu- reconstructions of an idyllic past, one socioeconomic differences, these two cated neighbors. My reassurance that in which the town had been economi- groups shared the important experi- I was not looking for accurate histori- cally self-sufficient, if not affluent, and ence of being a part of Badolato’s cal information, but for their personal especially one in which the moral fiber community without having been born experiences, was able to convince most and the demographic composition of the into it. In particular, most immigrants of them. Also, as I asked the questions Badolatese population had been much interviewed underscored the fortu- that I had carefully phrased while plan- sounder. On the other hand, some of my itous nature of their move to Badolato. ning my research, I realized that they informants were more ready than others Virtually no one had chosen it delib- were most useful as a starting point to recognize the amazing progress that erately, and few had even heard of it for free-floating conversations, rather improved communication, transporta- before relocating. Paradoxically, this than as a rigid grid to impose on my tion, and education had represented for parallels the condition of Badolato na- interviews. Badolato. tives who had not chosen to be born in I spent several days in Badolato, and The main focus of my interviews that specific community. met with over fifty people, of whom was, obviously, the issue of co-exis- The attachment to Badolato might around thirty I identified as “Badola- tence. The Badolatese who had emi- not be as strong among the immigrants tese,” and around twenty as “immi- grated to escape poverty and unemploy- as it is among the locals. Yet several grants to Badolato.” What I learned ment, and who had now returned to people commented enthusiastically from these conversations is hard to their hometown, whether seasonally or on the help that they received as they summarize in a few paragraphs; and the permanently, were split on the issue of adapted to the new conditions, and lessons that I drew on how to conduct whether the arrival of the immigrants showed a degree of affection towards research is certainly another highly had benefited or harmed Badolato. the town. They also appreciated the valuable aspect of my experience. Some tended to sympathize with the lack of pressures to conform. Specifi- I met with a very loquacious priest newcomers, recognizing that they cally, the immigrants enjoy being able and with an equally talkative old performed valuable social functions, to keep their traditions, language, food, communist, a living testimony of the taking jobs that Italians would have religion. Many strongly associate this strength that the party of Antonio refused. Others resented the fact that sense of liberty with life in Badolato. Gramsci once enjoyed in that district of the immigrants now received assis- However, others, like one young man landless laborers. From the perspectives tance and in some cases subsidies, from Nigeria who voiced his intense of their different systems of beliefs, while their early years in Switzerland frustration about the conditions and these two interviewees agreed on many or Germany had been marked by social limitations of his relocation, lamented points, in ways that might have sounded marginalization and inadequate eco- the isolation of Badolato, its small size, surprising to observers less familiar with nomic remuneration. Almost all of my the lack of opportunities for both work the dominant mentality, a centuries-old interviewees were careful to characterize and entertainment, and the lack of a 28 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 fast, reliable Internet connection. While both the illusion of a sudden, unprob- tion, together with vast inefficiencies he had no regrets about leaving his coun- lematic integration, and that of the in the management of the existing try, he was ready to go somewhere else. uncompromising preservation of rigid CPTs, have rendered a number of these But is this really just a case of unsuccess- identities are renounced. Researchers centers overcrowded and unsafe for the ful immigration, or is there more to this too can learn from this experience, as occupants. Several non-governmental story? Aren’t many young Badolatese registering and deciphering the elu- organizations, including Médecins Sans similarly fed up with life in a small town, sive signs around which fluid identi- Frontièrs (Doctors Without Borders) and itching to get out of it? All in all, this ties continuously renegotiate their and Amnesty International, have de- might be the ultimate, albeit ironic, proof boundaries can be both challenging nounced the systematic violation of ba- of integration. and highly rewarding. sic human rights in Italian CPTs. (See for instance Amnesty International’s document “Italy: Lampedusa, the Island of Europe’s Forgotten Promises,” available at: http://www.amnesty.org/ Both government agencies and NGOs working with en/library/asset/EUR30/008/2005/en/ “ dom-EUR300082005en.html.) issues of relocation can learn from the experience of References Kurdolato that the peaceful coexistence among mutual Author Unknown “others” can be a demanding political and social project, 2009 Consiglio Italiano per i Rifu- giati. 1990-2007 Diciassette anni di and at the same time that it is a realistic goal, if both the storia del CIR. Electronic document retrieved on 02/06/2009. Carroll, R. of the uncompromising preservation of rigid identities 2000 They were God-fearing people like us, and God knows are renounced.” we needed them. The Guardian, 02/22/2000. Electronic document retrieved on 02/20/2005.. I learned with some disappointment that no one from the original nucleus 1J. Derrida and A. Dufourmantelle’s Derrida and A. Dufourmantelle of Kurds was left, as in the long run (2000) Of Hospitality provides an 2000 Of Hospitality. Stanford: Stan- they had all preferred to join their rela- extended discussion of hospitality as a ford University Press. Translated tives in Germany or Switzerland. Yet project of ethical responsibility. by R. Bowlby. their legacy had stayed behind, both in the experience of the Italian Council 2The Schengen Agreements of 1985 and Gilhooly, J. for Refugees, and in the nickname of 1990, signed by a number of Euro- 2000 “Italy: Immigration or extinc- “Kurdolato”. With all its difficulties, pean countries, establish “the gradual tion.” in BBC News, Wednesday, problems, mistakes, this unplanned abolition of checks at their common 19 April, 2000, 21:09 Electronic experiment in encounters between borders.” document retrieved on 02/20/20005. immigrants and natives provides in- . the encounter with the “Other” in our politano law on immigration, the CPTs contemporary societies. Both govern- are centers for the temporary deten- Bruno Anili studied Communication ment agencies and NGOs working tion of foreigners who have entered Sciences at the University of Sienna, with issues of relocation can learn Italy illegally, and which for a number Italy, focusing mostly on semiotics and from the experience of Kurdolato of reasons (including lack of docu- political economy. He is currently a that the peaceful coexistence among ments of identification and nationality), Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at mutual “others” can be a demanding cannot be immediately expelled from the University of Oregon, with his pri- political and social project, and at the the country. The steady growth of the mary areas of interest in political theory same time that it is a realistic goal, if phenomenon of clandestine immigra- and comparative politics. n Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 29 Turbulence Within the Cuban Diaspora in South Florida

By Indira Rampersad

nites States-Cuba policy has Uvaried significantly during the five decades since the first waves of Cuban immigrants came to the United States. The disproportionate impact that the earliest immigrants had on U.S.-Cuba relations has created a deep social, political and economic schism between this group and the later waves. Though these later migrants now constitute a “moderate majority’ in South Florida, they nonetheless endure a double mar- ginalization because of their alienation at both the state and community levels. I conclude by affirming that the 2008 transfer of power from Fidel Castro to Raúl Castro, combined with a reconfig- uration of the power structure in South Florida to which President Obama seems poised to pander, signal that the Indira Rampersad much anticipated radical change in U.S. Cuba policy may not be forthcoming. This article is part of a broader re- Cuban Migration to the United (Zebich-Knos and Nicol 2005). This first search project examining U.S.-Cuba pol- States: 1959 to the Present wave of exiles began life anew in Miami, icy from 1961-2006 (Rampersad 2007). and by the end of the 1960s many had Data were collected using a mixed There are 1.3 million Cuban Ameri- begun to prosper. Wayne Smith, visiting methods approach including content professor at Johns Hopkins University analysis of major American newspapers, cans in the United States today, with four major waves of Cuban immigra- and former Chief of the U.S. Interest archival research on official documents, Section in Havana (1979-1982), had books, journals, newspapers, magazines tion to the U.S. identified historically. The turning point in immigration to the been closely following the Cuban migra- and websites and a series of unstructured tion waves to the U.S. He told me in an and semi-structured elite interviews United States came with Fidel Castro’s rise to power on January 1, 1959. Two interview at his office at the Center for conducted in the U.S. between 2005 and International Policy in Washington D.C. 2006, and participant observation and hundred thousand Cubans left for the United States between 1959-1962, set- in July 2005 that because of the influ- interviews in Cuba and Florida during ence of these early, wealthy immigrants, tling primarily in Miami Many of these the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Inter- . “Cuba seems to have the same effect exiles were associated with the Ba- viewees include scholars, leaders of both on American administrations as the full tista dictatorship and were upper class hard-line and moderate Cuban American moon has on werewolves.” Cubans. Most had lost everything to the groups and their staff members, and This first wave continued until 1973. Cuban Revolution and were angry with members of Congress and congressional Between 1965 and 1973, the U.S. gov- the Castro government’s policies. Others staff. The 2005 interviewees were gener- ernment sponsored flights from Havana favored reform of the corrupt old regime, ally contacted initially by email, some- to Miami called the “Freedom Flights.” but felt betrayed by the communist times followed by a phone call to arrange An estimated 260,000 Cubans took ideologies of the revolution. They were a face to face interview in Miami, New advantage of this policy and emigrated. all hostile toward Fidel Castro and the York and Washington D.C. The 2006 and In the early years, these immigrants Cuban revolution and these sentiments 2008 interviews were generally con- were the remnants of the social and came to define the political or “exile ducted via the phone from the University economic elites and in later years much of Florida. ideology” of the Cuban community 30 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 of the Cuban middle class. Because of 1990 due to the economic crisis Cuba the antagonism of the hardline com- cultural and family affinities, most of has been experiencing since the col- munity produce a double marginaliza- these émigrés settled in Miami, though lapse of the Soviet Union. The arduous tion syndrome of the generally ignored some established a Cuban community conditions of the crossing resulted in moderate faction, relentlessly struggling in Union City, New Jersey. Both com- 86 percent of the rafters being younger to repeal the embargo through warmer, munities were led economically and than age 40; 20 per cent of these rafters friendlier relations. politically by the oldest post-Castro women. The first group arrived in 1991 The second, third and fourth waves exiles—those who were most strongly when the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted constitute a larger, non-elite, racially opposed to the Castro regime. 2,203 Cuban rafters attempting to cross mixed sector of the community which This first wave was considerably the Florida straights. However, the ma- migrated mainly for economic reasons. different from subsequent waves, jority, consisting of about 31,500 left in They espouse a more centrist ideol- comprising numerous professionals and a large-scale exodus between 7th August ogy and are more open to dialogue business people, as well as the military and 14th September, 1994. Out of this with Cuba. They are deeply patriotic to and administrative personnel associ- came a significant policy. To prevent a Cuba, and relations between members ated with the previous Cuban regimes. situation of uncontrolled Cuban immi- of this generation and Cubans in Cuba It had a relatively high educational gration, Clinton signed the U.S.-Cuban have been quite good, and improved in level, surpassing the median for most Agreement of September 1994 in which the post-Cold War era. Members of this immigrant communities. Strongest the U.S. agreed to admit 21,700 balseros group do not have much direct influence opposition to Castro’s revolution came held in Guantánamo. The significance on official U.S. policy toward Cuba, but from this group which harbored many of this is that the U.S. was unwilling to they have been able to foster substantial hostile elements, including a few writ- accept Cuban migrants as refugees since relations with Cuba at a non-state or ers and musicians who were opposed future rafters would be returned as illegal civil society level over time through to Castro’s hardening cultural policy in aliens (De Vise and de Valle 2004). familial ties, remittances and humani- the sixties. These early exiles organized The last wave consists of legal tarian organizations. Many members under the powerful anti-Castroite, Jorge migrants. The airlift of 1965-1973 was of this group are members of moderate Más Canosa, who led an organiza- regularized and successful applicants organizations such as the Cuban Ameri- tion known as the Cuban American were able to leave in accordance with can Commission for Family Rights, the National Foundation (CANF) which quotas agreed to between 1981 and 1989 Cuban American Alliance Education he founded in 1981 under the Reagan first by President Carter and later by Fund (CAAEF) and the Cuban Com- administration. The members of CANF President Reagan. At the height of the mittee for Democracy. This wave of mi- have been the most privileged of all the balsero crisis, Clinton agreed to admit no grants also seems more inclined toward generations of exiles with regard to both less than 20,000 immigrants from Cuba rapprochement with Cuba, and prefers wealth and as beneficiaries of the U.S. annually, not including the immediate a resolution to the bilateral conflict government’s generous assimilationist relatives of U.S. citizens. In 1995, 17,937 through negotiation and dialogue. Most policies (Franklin 1993). Cuban were allowed into the U.S. and are opposed to the embargo, and are The second wave of migrants came 26,466 arrived in 1996 (Wasem 2006). branded “dialogueros” (those willing to in the Mariel boatlift of 1980 when negotiate) who are perceived as traitors 125,000 entered the U.S. These immi- Ideological Schism Within the to the exile community. Alfredo Durán grants were poorer and darker than their Cuban American Community of the Cuban Committee for Democracy predecessors. It is estimated that 40 commented from Miami in a phone percent or 50,000 were blacks or mulat- The early wave of predominantly interview in 2006 that “it is only in tos. Some were sent as ‘undesirables’ white, affluent, pro-embargo, anti- Miami that “dialoguero” is a derogatory by the Cuban government and included Castro exiles continuously advocate word. Everyone else view dialogue and the mentally challenged as well as some a hardline policy to Cuba. This is in discourse as something positive”. 26,000 with criminal records. The U.S. sharp contrast to the later waves of Cuban Americans vary in their views on government adjusted to this change by poorer, darker and moderate factions Cuba itself and relations between Cuba being less welcoming to the marielitos. who advocated friendlier relations and and the exile community have been quite To avoid a future mass immigration of more dialogue with Cuba. This schism good. Members of the predominantly this nature, President Carter passed a has been widening because of the ex- white, elite sector who migrated mainly Refugee Act which eliminated preferen- tremely close alliance between the small for ideological reasons constitute the bulk tial treatment of people from communist hardline community and successive of the upper crust of the contemporary states including Cuba, and placed a ceil- American administrations which have Cuban American community. They have ing of 1000 on the number of refugees collaborated to consistently tighten the remained consistently hostile toward the admitted from Cuba (Croucher 1997). embargo to the detriment of the larger Castro regime and they dream of invad- The third wave consisted of 33,000 moderate faction, most of whom have ing the island in order to recover political balseros or rafters who left Cuba after relatives in Cuba. These policies and power and property expropriated by the Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 31

Cuban government. Generally rightest in angered the community to the extent to Cuba to pressure the Castro regime their political orientation, they are also that even former hardliners vocifer- but does not advocate restrictions on economically and politically powerful. ously reject them. Amongst these is Joe family travel. They constitute the force which backed García, former Executive Director of the However, this “softening”of his hard- the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. They once rabidly extremist Cuban American line position was counteracted by the are also well organized politically and National Foundation (CANF), which rise of Jeb Bush as Governor of Florida have managed to retain a lock on U.S. is now packaging itself as a moderate in 1998. Several analysts and anti-em- policy that influences successive Ameri- organization. During my 2006 interview bargo activists attribute the recent tight- can administration to legislate hard-line with Joe García (who is still a member of ening of the embargo to the fact that Jeb policies against Cuba, particularly on CANF), he outlined the new contours of is the brother of President George Bush election years. the realpolitik of Calle Ocho, traditional- and a close ally of the hardline Cuban The ideological conflict between the ly the seedbed of anti-Castro activities in American community. Max Castro, groups is being played out at both the na- Miami: “We’re not single-issue anymore, referring to the handful of powerful tional and community level in the United and we care about much more than just hardliners, asserted in our July 2005 States leading to direct confrontation the embargo.” He affirmed that “some interview in Miami that a “tiny dog is between moderate and hard-line Cuban Cuban Americans are stuck in Cold War wagging a very big tail in Miami.” The Americans. This conflict has intensified politics as reflected in the Elián drama confrontation with Lincoln Díaz-Balart in recent times as moderate Cuban Amer- but the American public has moved past was only one public incident in a politi- icans vigorously protest recent measures the Cold War.” cal drama that will climax when new to tighten the embargo legislated via the The 2004 restrictions on family travel generation Cuban Americans and those 2004 and 2006 Reports of the Commis- resulted in a heated confrontation be- who migrated after 1980 come to full sion for Assistance to a Free Cuba. tween an angry, protesting Cuban Ameri- political maturity as they register and can mob and Representative Lincoln vote in the next decade. It seems that U.S.-Cuba Policy in the Post- Cold Díaz-Balart at the Miami International the cracks within the community are th War Era airport on June 29 , the day before the widening as former Republican sup- new travel restrictions to Cuba kicked in. porters slowly turn away. In our 2006 In December, 2003, the first Com- When the protesters spotted Díaz-Balart, interview, Silvia Wilhelm who founded mission for Assistance was established they pursued him to the parking lot and the Cuban American Commission for by the Bush administration. The Com- spilled their venom as he stood beside his Family Rights reiterated that, “it is mission’s first report was published in car. “You’re dividing families!” one per- highly likely that soon the issue of the May 2004, proposing new restrictions son yelled amid a frenzy of shouts and family will supersede the issue of the on family, academic and cultural travel intense finger-pointing (Nielsen 2004). embargo”. Wilhelm and her organiza- to Cuba (www.cafc.gov). Described as Joe García’s actions are further evidence tion have even launched frontal attacks “the dumbest policy in the face of the of a softening in attitudes within CANF on Díaz-Balart for his role in the 2004 earth” (Heuvel 2004), the report met toward U.S. Cuba policy and increasing family restrictions to Cuba (Lovato with a barrage of protests from both antagonism toward hardliners. Using the 2004). Incidentally, Díaz-Balart’s father, American and Cuban American citizens vigilant media to full advantage on that Don Rafael, was married to Fidel Cas- who were especially incensed with its fateful June afternoon, García blamed tro’s sister, making the rabidly right- proposals for renewed restrictions on Díaz-Balart for giving bad consul to winged congressional brothers, Lincoln family and academic travel and remit- President Bush on the 2004 restrictions and Mario Díaz-Balart, the nephews of tances. The members of the Commis- on family travel (Nielsen 2004). el Comandante, Fidel, himself. sion included leading Cuban Americans The formation of the Cuban Lib- In 2004, President Bush arrived at in the Bush administration, namely, Dan erty Council, the breakaway faction of the Miami Arena to deliver a speech Fisk, fellow staff member of former CANF, was in direct response to the aimed at rallying support among older, staff member, Jesse Helms, and Jose actions of members like Joe García, more conservative Cuban Americans. Cardenas, ex-employee of the Cuban who resigned as Executive Director of Instead, he was greeted outside where American National Foundation. The CANF and opted to campaign for the a group of younger, highly educated Commission did not receive the flurry Democratic Party in the 2004 elections. twenty-, thirty- and forty-something of media attention as did the 1992 Cu- The move was perceived by the New Cuban American protesters who came ban Democracy Act and the 1996 Helms York Times as a signal of political diver- to speak truths to power. Lustily waving Burton Law . However, several newly sification of Cuban Americans (Aguayo American and Cuban flags and placards formed and existing groups protested 2004). García admitted in our Miami saying “Bush: Don’t Divide the Cuban the measures and continue to voice their interviews in 2005 and 2006 that CANF Family” were members of groups such displeasure with the new measures. is not monolithic and the members have as Cuban Americans for Change and the The 2004 restrictions on family travel, varying views on U.S. Cuba policy. He Cuban American Commission for Fam- parcel deliveries and remittances have himself supports the sanctions on trade ily Rights, which oppose the travel and 32 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 remittance restrictions with the same members who are ailing. The Human better”http://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/ passionate fervor as the hardliners in Rights Watch website (http://www.hrw. cuba1005/index.htm). their relentless quest to topple the Cas- org/reports/2005/cuba1005/index.htm) Romero could no longer visit with tro regime via the embargo. For these includes a host of poignant examples of the new restrictions. Her last trip was moderates, the family crisis has sup- families hurt by this policy. For example, in May 2004, so she was not allowed planted the embargo. The result is that Saray Gómez had visited her family to visit again until 2007. In effect, the the 46 year embargo that has been ce- before her father died in January 2004, regulations prevented her from send- mented by exile patriarchs and ex-CIA but is now forbidden from visiting her ing money for his medical care. She operatives is beginning to unglue and mother who is also seriously ill. Several could send remittances to members of there are visible cracks in the icy wall other Cuban Americans had visited Cuba her “immediate family,” but the only which once characterized exile politics. earlier have to wait three years to return. relative in Cuba who fit that definition Yet, in some cases, the ice is beginning In another case, Nelson Espinoza told was her father who was too ill cash to melt as reflected in the softening of Human Rights Watch that “I can’t wait checks or sign them over to someone ideological position of prominent mem- three years to see my sister, who is in a else. Under the 2004 regulations, her bers of CANF such as Joe García and very delicate condition, because I don’t nephew did not qualify as a member of its leader, Jorge Mas Santos. know what’s going to happen.” Simi- her “family.” It also became much more The new restrictions have resulted larly, Lorena Vasquez, who visited Cuba difficult and expensive to send supplies in a tense relationship between Cuban in 2004, was very concerned about her as it became harder to find other people American civil society and the state. sister who had cancer. “It’s likely I won’t traveling to Cuba and willing to carry Amongst those most affected are chari- see her again,” Lorena Vasquez said. goods for her. Romero’s absence was ties. The Cuba-America Jewish Mis- “She won’t last three years.” acutely felt by her nephew and his wife. sion, in Berkeley, California, can no For many moderate Cuban Ameri- “After the restrictions,” the nephew told longer send youth groups to Cuba as cans, the issue is not so much about Human Rights Watch, “I was alone with part of its program to strengthen ties be- saying goodbye to a family member the old man and my husband was in tween American and Cuban Jews. June as helping him/her to live. As Human charge of going and finding what medi- Safran, Executive Director, is quoted as Rights Watch affirms, one of the pri- cines he could.” We were waiting for saying that young people who traveled mary objectives of these family visits is Mari to come. But she couldn’t come to Cuba before the Treasury Department to provide ailing relatives in Cuba with and she couldn’t send the Pampers and changed the rules in 2004 learned valu- money and medical supplies. The 2004 the medicines. So we had to endure able lessons: “The children were more restrictions have made it increasingly rough times. After several months, they serious about their education and more difficult for Cuban Americans to send began to run out of diapers and basic tolerant of people because in Cuba they remittances and supplies through couri- medical supplies, such as iodine and learned that what you owned did not in- ers. Sandra Sánchez had been sending hydrogen peroxide, which they needed dicate what your class was. Rather, your medicine to her father, who had cancer, to clean his bed sores” http://www.hrw. position in society was determined by every month. She later realized long org/reports/2005/cuba1005/index.htm). what you could achieve” (Perry 2006). delays in its arrival because the number Delvis Fernández who heads the The most contentious issue, however, of people traveling had been reduced. Cuban American Alliance Education seems to be restrictions imposed on fam- In relating the sad story of Marisela Fund (CAAEF) told me in our phone ily travel remittances and parcels to Cuba Romero and her ailing father, Human interviews in 2006 and 2008 that he which many challengers, both American Rights Watch (2005), notes that Romero actually became proactive in resisting and Cuban American, view as a flagrant left Cuba in 1992. After both her mother the embargo because of the restrictions abuse of fundamental human rights. With and sister died in 2002, her cousin and imposed on him and many of his fellow the new restrictions, relatives can only his wife were the only remaining rela- Cuban Americans in visiting Cuba. “I visit once every three years and visits are tives who could take care of her ailing wanted to visit an elderly relative but the limited to immediate family – parents, father. Romero hired two helpers and new laws prevented me from doing so” children, siblings, and grandparents. made frequent trips to Cuba so that she he asserted. “It is rather ironic that the Cousins, aunts and uncles, nephews and could pay them, bring money and sup- embargo should be tightening in the post- nieces are excluded. plies, and, perhaps provide her father Cold War era when Cuba no longer poses On these grounds, Human Rights with the love and care he so desperately a security threat to the United States”. Watch joined the torrent of protests needed. “Whenever she came he be- An irate Alvaro Fernández, President and interviewed a number of Cuban came very contented,” Marisol Claraco, of the Cuban American Commission for Americans who expressed their outrage her nephew’s wife, told Human Rights Family Rights, told me in our interview at the “inhumane” regulations which Watch. “Because even though he had in Miami in July 2005 that “the Bush are entirely inadequate for people Alzheimer, he knew who she was.… Administration was the first in U.S. his- with relatives in poor health, and even She would lie next to him and talk to tory that deemed itself fit to define what worse for those with multiple family him, and he would feel her love and get comprised a family. A Cuban family at Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 33 that. I can assure you that the measures with restrictions on academic travel and trade. Interestingly, Barack Obama pre- made every Commission member’s humanitarian aid such as such as the sented an almost identical position on blood boil over.” He was supported by Emergency Network of Cuban Ameri- May, 2008, during the heat of his elec- Silvia Wilhelm, founder and Executive can Scholars and Artists. Anti-embargo tion campaign in Miami. Obama echoed Director of the organization, who in our activism amongst both new and existing García when he said that he would seek phone interview in December, 2006, organizations have also increased in “an immediate change in policy to al- described the measures as “anti-family, protest of the new restrictions. low for unlimited family visitation and un-American and anti-Cuban.” remittances to the island. The restrictions have released an Post-Script: U.S.-Cuban Relations Yet, Obama’s policy on Cuba seems avalanche of indignation and angry After Fidel Castro and ambivalent at best. Despite his overt op- outbursts amongst the Cuban American position to the embargo, Obama declared community, incensed that the American George W. Bush that “I will maintain the embargo…. It government should decide who their provides us with the leverage to present immediate family is. The turbulence in The glacial confrontation between the regime with a clear choice: if you South Florida concretely materialized old and newer waves of Cuban Ameri- take significant steps toward democracy, into a storm of protests when on 27th cans continue as the administration beginning with the freeing of all politi- April, 2005, more than 700 Americans makes way for the first African-Amer- cal prisoners, we will take steps to begin traveled from thirty five states to partici- ican President of the United States, normalizing relations… I promise to pate in what they called a “Cuba Action the Democrat, Barak Obama. I have pave “the road to freedom for all Cubans Day” in Washington D.C. (www.people- been writing a regular column for the by securing justice for Cuba’s political forchange.com). It was a day of advoca- Trinidad Sunday Guardian, with articles prisoners, the rights of free speech, a free cy on Capitol Hill organized to demand that assess the potential changes in both press and freedom of assembly; and it that Congress end the Cuba travel ban the Cuban and U.S. administrations and must lead to elections that are free and that “divides families, denies Americans the implications for U.S. Cuba policy fair” (Moynihan 2008). So this would not their fundamental right to travel and free under the new presidencies of Barak come without preconditions since Obama access to humanitarian support, harms Obama and Raúl Castro, throughout would only “accept libertad (freedom)” Cubans, restricts a market important to the 2008 election year. Even before for the “captive nation” of Cuba. American farmers and impedes the cre- the 2008 election campaign, there was On the other side of the Florida ation of American jobs”. The participants growing speculation that the new voice Straits, Raúl Castro announced potential also included over 100 Cuban Ameri- of the moderate majority, the impending changes underscoring the need to boost cans who are angered by restrictions on demise of the older, right-winged con- salaries and raise domestic food produc- family visits. The activists were joined servative generation (including a visible tion to substitute for massive increases in by several Congressmen and Senators softening of attitude within CANF), and the world price for basic food products including Senators Bacchus and Enzi and the transfer of power from Fidel Castro Cuba imports. These changes have been Representatives Flake and Delahunt. The to Raúl Castro suggested potential very slow in coming and Cubans are not Day’s activities was sponsored by the change. Thus, the icy walls around very hopeful that they will materialize Center for International Policy, the Latin South Florida’s ideological battles may even as their own demands for imported American Working Group, The Washing- soon crumble leaving behind the rubble consumer goods increase. Since 2006, ton Office on Latin America and fifteen of old exile politics in a new political Acting President, Raúl Castro, had other organizational co-sponsors (www. and sociological configuration. expressed hopes for normalization of peopleforchange.com). The 2008 election campaign brought relations with the United States. Toward But the protests seem to have fallen into stark relief the reconfiguration of the end of January 2009, both brothers on deaf ears. As if to add fuel to the the power structure in South Florida. Fidel and Raúl Castro had kind words for fire, in July 2006, the Commission for Prominent members of the of the former Obama. Fidel Castro told the Argentine Assistance to a Free Cuba issued a right-winged CANF supported the President, Cristina Hernández de Kirsch- 93-page second report which attempts Democratic party. Indeed, Joe García, ner, that Obama “not only had a very to counteract perceptions that the first the former Executive Director of good background as a political leader, report was nothing but an “American CANF, was the Democratic candidate but also that he was a man he saw as be- occupation plan”. The recommendations for the U.S. House of Representatives ing absolutely sincere.” For Raúl Castro, include a budget of $80 million for the in Florida’s 25th congressional district, Obama “seems to be a good man; I wish next two years to ensure a “transition” running against incumbent hardliner, him luck,” but added that Obama “may rather than a “succession” of Cuban Republican Mario Díaz-Balart An inter- be raising hopes to high” (http://www. leadership (www.cafc.gov). The report view with Joe García in August, 2006 startribune.com/nation/38155294.html). has been provoking intense criticism revealed that he was in full support Barak Obama was just inaugurated from several Cuban American and of the removal of U.S. restrictions on as President on 20th January, 2009, humanitarian organizations concerned family travel and remittances but not on and it is yet to be seen whether he will 34 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 initiate relaxation of the embargo. It is cafc/rpt/2006/c18232.htm, ac- U.S., Making Up Is Hard To Do. still uncertain if and how he can sway cessed December 9, 2007, accessed Star Tribune. Electronic docu- the three hardline Republican candi- December 9, 2007. ment, http://www.startribune.com/ dates, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and Mario nation/38155294.html, accessed and Lincoln Díaz-Balart, each of whom Croucher, Sheila L. February 6, 2009. retained their congressional district in 1997 Imagining Miami. Ethnic the 2008 elections. In short, the much Politics in a Postmodern World. Rampersad, Indira touted changes in U.S. Cuba policy Charlottesville: University Press of 2007 Down With the Embargo: including complete removal of restric- Virginia. Social Movements, Contentious tions on family travel, remittances and Politics and U.S. Cuba Policy trade under an Obama presidency may De Vise Daniel and Elane de Valle (1960-2006). Ph.D dissertation. be longer in coming than is expected by 2004 Cuban balseros helped change Department of Political Science, the newer waves or moderate majority the political flavor of Florida. University of Florida. of Cuban Americans. Cubanet. http://www.cubanet.org/ CNews/y04/sep04/03e12.htm, ac- Wasem, Ruth Ellen References cessed February 7, 2009. 2006 Cuban Migration Policy and Issues. CRS Report for Congress. Aguayo, Terry Franklin, Jane Electronic document, http:// 2006 Exile Leader in Miami Join 1993 The Cuba Obsession. 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Lovato, Roberto Language and Literature, a Master 2004 Rocking the Cuban Vote. The of Philosophy in Latin American Author Unknown Nation. Electronic document, http:// Literature, a graduate diploma in 2005 Families Torn Apart. The High www.thenation.com/doc/20041101/ International Relations and a Master Cost of U.S. and Cuban Travel Re- lovato, accessed November 8, of Philosophy in International Rela- strictions. Human Rights Watch 17:5. 2006. tions, all from the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad. Bulmer-Thomas, Victor and James Moynihan, Michael C. She has been a political columnist for Dunkerly 2008 Obama’s Overlooked Cuba the Trinidad Guardian and Trinidad 1999 The United States and Latin Speech. Reasononline. Electronic Express newspapers and currently America: The New Agenda. Lon- document, http://www.reason.com/ writes a regular column for the Trini- don: Institute of Latin American news/show/126750.html, accessed dad Sunday Guardian and the New Studies February 7, 2009. York based Guyana Journal. She has been awarded two Fulbright scholar- Commission for Assistance to a Free Nielsen, Kirk ships for study in the U.S. one of which Cuba 2004 Politics and Policy. Miami facilitated the pursuit of her Doctor of 2004 Report to the President. Elec- New Times. Electronic docu- Philosophy in Political Science which tronic document. http://www.cafc. ment, http://www.miaminewtimes. she attained from the University of gov/cafc/rpt/2004/c18166.htm, com/2004-07-29/news/politics- Florida, Gainesville in 2007. Her accessed June 10, 2005. and-policy/, accessed December 2, main research focus is on U.S Cuba 2006. policy. Dr. Rampersad is currently Commission for Assistance to a Free employed as Lecturer in Political Cuba Price, Niko Science/International Relations at 2006 Report to the President. Electronic 2009 Castro Brothers Have Nice the University of the West Indies, St. document, http://www.cafc.gov/ Words for Obama But for Cuba- Augustine, Trinidad. n Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 35 We Find Ourselves in the Middle: Navajo Relocation and Relocatee-Host Conflicts

By Orit Tamir 2,940 households, and of more than 10,000 Navajos. This has been the largest nly relatively recently have human forced relocation of American citizens Omigration and resettlement processes in the United States since the World War been studied in an effort to understand, II period incarceration of over 110,000 in depth, the effects of resettlement on people of Japanese ancestry—most of the relocatees and their hosts. This paper whom were American citizens. focuses on the relations between Navajo Navajos and Hopis lived side by side relocates from the Former Joint Use Area, in the Black Mesa region of northern th their initial relations with their Navajo Arizona for centuries. The 16 Century reservation hosts, the various disputes Spanish arrival to the Southwest, the that ensued, followed by “20 years later” regional slave trade, and the Navajo comments on the long term impacts of pastoral lifestyle compelled scores of the land dispute and the forced relocation. Navajo people to move closer to Hopi This paper than examines the Navajo case villages. Land disputes between the pas- in the context of forced relocations cases toral Navajos and the dry farming Hopis from around the world. flared up from time to time. Alterca- tions over land increased in frequency Introduction after President Chester Arthur signed an Executive Order on December 16, 1882 setting aside approximately 2.5 million On a cold rainy October 1987 day acres of land “for the use and occupan- I was driving my Cutlass 442 toward cy of the Moqui (Hopi) and such other Orit Tamir Pinon, Arizona (the Navajo Reservation). Indians as the Secretary of the Interior At the Hopi Cultural Center I turned into may see fit to settle thereon.” The state the Oraibi road that on that particular day of affairs was exacerbated with expan- turned into a soup of clay-mud. Cursing District Six. Due to increasing tensions sions of the Navajo reservation. By in a number of languages, I asked my- between the two tribes, Congress passed 1934 the Navajo reservation completely self, why don’t they (whoever ‘they’ are) the Navajo and Hopi Rehabilitation Act surrounds the 1882 Executive Order pave this road? What on earth am I doing (P.L. 85-740) in 1950 that was intended Area (EOA). Navajo living on the EOA here? (Field notes, October 30, 1987). This to promote cooperation between the gradually outnumbered the Hopi, a fac- was my introduction to consequences of tribes by providing federal funding for tor that widened the scope of local land the Navajo-Hopi land dispute that resulted the construction of infrastructure includ- disputes (Tamir 1999:71). in the forced relocation of over 10,000 ing roads, hospitals, radio and tele- Land disputes intensified in the Navajo people. I lived in Pinon for a little phone communications. The Act also 1940s as a result of an action taken by over two and a half years. I never really authorized funds for the development the Secretary of the Interior pursuant went away. I have continued to visit the of off-reservation employment oppor- to the Indian Reorganization Act 4. people who became my fictive kin, partici- tunities for members of both tribes and The Secretary established 21 Grazing pate in their ceremonies, and have recently for the continuing relocation of Navajo Districts on the two reservations (the concluded a study on a four-year cycle of and Hopi people to the Colorado River Navajo reservation and the EOA) for the Sun Dance in Pinon. My frequent vis- Indian Reservation. By 1957 hopes livestock control and to improve range its provided me with ample opportunities for cooperation and amicable resolu- management and soil conservation. Dis- to personally observe changes and visit tion of land disputes between the two trict Six, comprised of about 631,000 with friends and acquaintances. peoples had evaporated. The Hopi Tribe acres, was identified as an exclusive sought and got legislation from Con- Hopi district located in the south-central Roots of the Navajo-Hopi gress, Public Law 85-547, authorizing portion of the 1882 EOA. In essence, both tribes to sue one another for title Land Dispute that was the first partitioning of the to the 1882 EOA. On August 1, 1958, EOA. All remaining districts were as- the Hopi Tribe sued the Navajo Tribe The Navajo-Hopi land dispute had signed to the Navajo Tribe. The Hopi under the authority of P.L. 85-547—the led to the involuntary relocation of over Tribe protested the establishment of case is known as Healing V. Jones. In 36 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009

1962, a U.S. District Court in Prescott, The Act ordered equal partitioning of households in Pinon. Eleven of these Arizona ruled that the Navajo and Hopi the JUA between the Navajo and Hopi households provided home-sites to re- tribes have undivided equal rights to the tribes and the relocation of people resid- locatee households who lost their entire surface and subsurface of the EOA with ing on land partitioned to the other tribe. customary land use area. the exception of District Six (which It also established the Navajo and Hopi Pinon relocatees were relatively remained exclusively Hopi). The area Relocation Commission (Commission) young; with a median age of 18.3 years, outside of District Six became known as as the executive arm. The relocation and the average education attainment of the Joint Use Area (JUA). was supposed to be completed in 1986. 7.7 years. Most reloacees were fluent in Following the court decision a series Instead it has been limping along for ad- both English and Navajo, but older relo- of initiatives by the Hopi Tribe aimed at ditional twenty odd years. After years of catees spoke only Navajo, and a number protecting the JUA’s grazing resources delays Senator John McCain (Arizona) of children spoke only English. Most re- resulted in a sequence of federal actions introduced a bill that resulted in a 2006 locatees described themselves as ‘tradi- that had serious consequences for the amendment to the Land Settlement tional.’ While at the time of the research unemployment in Pinon was higher than that of the wider Navajo reservation, the rates of employment and income among relocatees were ogenerally higher than “Traditional territorial buffers between residence the norm in Pinon, a tribute to their rela- tive employability (younger with higher groups that have been an integral part of Navajo settle- education attainment) vis-à-vis the rest of the population in the community. ment pattern, all but disappeared for relocatees who lost Some relocatees felt that their kin- hosts were reluctant to provide them their entire traditional land use area. Disappearance of with one acre home-sites due their own restricted land base. A young relocate these buffers often resulted in host-relocatee land disputes explained: that ranged from verbal assaults, through vandalism, to My aunt sort of did not want to let people move here because she had sheep and horses grazing here. We physical violence.” had no place to move and we had to move. Finally, she said OK and signed the papers. socio-economic fabric of Navajos living Act that calls for the completion of the Another relocatee recalled a similar in the JUA. On July 1, 1966, the Bureau relocation by September 30, 2008. experience: of Indian Affairs froze all residential, commercial, and infrastructural devel- Navajo Relocatee-Host Disputes The Commission just move you opments in the JUA unless the Hopi out (of HPL) and that’s it. You Tribe approved them. In 1972 proceed- The Relocatees have no place to go except this ings, an Arizona District Court ordered Seventy-one Navajo households were one acre. You know, it seems I got drastic reduction of Navajo livestock originally slated to relocate to Pinon. stuck right here in this one acre. and restricted construction in the JUA to At the time of my initial ethnographic Dela Bahe (the host) still thinks developments approved by both tribes. fieldwork (October 1987 through De- that she can run her sheep and These actions failed to resolve the land cember 1990) 47 relocatee households goats and come into my house any dispute. After a series of congressional (171 individuals) had already relocated time she wants. She acts as if this hearings, the U.S. Congress passed, to Pinon. Twenty-seven households house is hers. on December 22, 1974, Public Law (57%) were relocated in five group 93-531—the Navajo and Hopi Indian moves (Navajo families that have relo- Traditional territorial buffers be- Land Settlement Act (the Act). The Act cated as a unit from Hopi Partition Land tween residence groups that have been intended to facilitate a settlement of all (HPL) to Navajo Partition Land (NPL) an integral part of Navajo settlement of the rights and interests of the Navajo and whose replacement homes are pattern, all but disappeared for relo- and Hopi Tribes in the JUA and was within close proximity). I interviewed catees who lost their entire traditional subsequently amended in 1980 (P.L. members of all relocatee households, as land use area. Disappearance of these 96-305), 1988 (P.L. 100-166), 1991 well as members of 293 other house- buffers often resulted in host-relocatee (P.L. 102-180) and 1995 (P.L. 104-15). holds—73% of the total number of land disputes that ranged from verbal Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 37 assaults, through vandalism, to physical use area retained at least some of their infrastructure electricity was available violence. A middle age relocatee blamed traditional territorial buffers and did to only 38% of the households in Pinon the disputes on the relocation: not experience disputes with members and indoor plumbing was available to of the host community. only 18%. There are Navajos who hate Most hosts’ homes were located in us. We found ourselves in the The Hosts the outlying areas of Pinon. The homes middle, unwanted by the Hopi The host families in Pinon were were small, only six had electricity, and and by Navajo relatives of ours. typically close kin of relocatees who none had running water. A host who was We (relocatees and hosts) have provided home sites for them. Like in her seventies lived in a tiny one room the same blood, but why hate other JUA residents, host families ex- cabin about 10 miles from a paved road, each other. It is not right. At the perienced the impacts of the livestock had no electricity, no running water, present time it is the same. We reduction, construction freeze, and and no form of transportation provided do not visit with relatives, the other related hardships. Eleven host several home sites for a group move of hate still continues. I hear a lot families provided one acre home-sites relocatees. She was bitter that she herself of bad words about us, but I just from their own cultural land use areas did not qualify for relocation home: let it be and do not bother with to each of the relocatee households. it. Our hosts also complain about They were not compensated for the I was told to move out of this area our livestock. They say “you re- land they provided. On the contrary, (HPL) long before the reloca- locatees already got new hous- some were forced to further reduce tion begun, and I did. Later, my es.” But we cannot even herd their livestock holdings to fit the new application was turned down… I sheep around here. Our relatives carrying capacity of their grazing land, moved here because my old home tell us not to use the land for or to otherwise accommodate reloca- in the other sheep camp, over the grazing. At times we are even tees’ grazing needs. (HPL) fence, was burned down by scared to go out to improve our Hosts were typically elderly—all some drunks. living conditions, so we just stay but one were in their sixties or older. in one place. We brought with us All host households were headed by She complained that not only the relo- only a few sheep from our previ- women, authenticating both women’s catees do not help her with daily chores, ous home. They want us to take place in traditional Navajo social hier- but they asked her to pay for rides and our sheep somewhere else ad not archy and their customary rights to the for helping her hauling wood and coal: graze around here. Some of our land. A host explained: relatives turned against us, no They (relocatees) were crying communication with them. That relocation house, the woman to me saying that they are going from that house is married into the to be taken away. They are all Another relocatee complained about family. That why it was decided my youngest sister’s children. vandalism that she attributed to the host that a house should be built there. So I signed (the home site lease) family: They asked me if they could have papers for them. They only look a house built for them there and at me from inside their big homes We do not get along very well I approved. The other relocation all day. (with the hosts) because we are house over there, the man is my having problems. They broke our oldest brother’s grandchild, so he In one case the hosts, an elderly window frames in the living room. calls me shinali (paternal grand- woman and her daughter, insisted that The problems started when the (re- mother). He said that he wanted they were not aware that relocatees location) house was built. Before to move because the Hopi were would be sharing their customary land that they wanted very much that forcing people out of the land over use area as well as occupying the one we move out here. The Commis- there, where he lived with his wife acre they had provided: sion said that when we move they near her relatives. I told him too (hosts) will probably get running to go ahead and have a relocation They (relocatees) never let me water and electricity. But once the house built for them over there. know that they are going to move house was completed, the prob- here. Even though I am his sister lems started. Elderly Navajo hosts who lived alone it does not mean he can just go expected the younger relocatees to help ahead and move. I live in this Ho- Relocatees who did not experi- them in daily tasks. They also antici- gan ((traditional Navajo octagonal ence disputes still felt crowded: “my pated that utility services promised to one-room home) near their new neighbors are good to us, but we are relocatees would also extend to their house since I was twenty-one. But too close to one another.” Those who homes. This was significant since after they (relocatees) told me ‘this is moved within their traditional land years of freeze on construction and mine, you stay away from here.’ I 38 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009

hope one day they will move away on human populations bring to the fore to off-reservation boarding schools or from here. a wide range of mixed results. On one move to Flagstaff or even Phoenix in hand are claims of increased multi-di- order to provide their children with The case developed into a long and mensional stress, substance abuse, and better education. More recently a full bitter dispute. The elderly host was very the breakup of families. On the other service Indian Health Service clinic and unhappy with the relocatees, which in- hand, are new employment opportuni- associated housing opened in December clude the family of her married brother ties, improved housing, improved infra- 2006. who moved from another community structure, and revitalization of beliefs According to the 2000 census, there where they lived on the customary and practices. are 1,190 people living in Pinon, 92% land use area of his wife’s family—as The single most important compo- of the population is Native American customary in Navajo tradition. Since nent determining the present status of (46.3% under the age of 18). Most of relocation, her brother separated from Pinon is the fact that the chapter lies this population was born and raised in his wife and moved out. She recalled: within the former JUA. Compared to Pinon and vicinity and many house- other chapters on the Navajo reserva- holds are still widely dispersed, the Houses built for relocatees are tion, Pinon is remote and populated by result of Navajo traditional land use pat- on one acre lots and they have no very traditional Navajos. One paved terns. The average household size in the right to use other land. We have road, Navajo Route 4, connects Pinon community is 4.7. Most Pinon families the right to use the land, our birth with neighboring chapters and with live in small wood-frame houses and in places are on this land…. We hear the Agency Town of Chinle, Arizona. hogans (traditional Navajo octagonal or other relocatees fighting with The rest of the roads are graded and round Navajo homes) which they build people over land. We still fight un-graded dirt roads notorious for their themselves. Many homes are over- with her (daughter-in-law). Just ruts and “wash board” surface during crowded, have cement or dirt floors, recently we lost our sheep herd. dry months. After rain or snow these and some still lack electricity or indoor We found out that one of her sons roads often become impassible due to plumbing. Most households use wood took them up to the mountains. mud or flash floods. There is visible and coal for heating, and butane for My daughter asked me to go with evidence of, and lots of complaints cooking. When possible, homes are situ- her to check it out because she about, drinking of alcohol and of hair ated along the major paved and graded was afraid to go alone. When the spray. There is also a marked rise in dirt roads, along school-bus routes, and boy was away from the house we substance abuse, especially metham- parallel to power lines. The median went to check where the sheep phetamine, and problems associated income of a household is $19,271. Of were. The next thing we know, with youth gangs have been spun out Pinon’s population, 52.1% is under the she [daughter-in-law] was running as well. The Sun Dance movement on poverty line. Out of the total population, toward us with a big rock. Before the Navajo reservation, that was ini- 54.7% of those under the age of 18 and we could even move she hit the tially a reaction to the forced relocation 100% of those 65 and older live below windshield of our new truck near from the JUA, spread to Pinon where the poverty line. The rate of Navajos the place where my daughter was its focus is on addressing youth related living below the poverty level is the sitting. I hope that one day they substance abuse and gang problems highest in the U.S., even among Ameri- will move out to a place they will (Tamir 2006). can Indians. feel comfortable at and that every- The hub of political and administra- thing will be healed. tive activities is “Pinon village.” Locat- The Context ed there are the chapter house, a senior In another incident the host’s daughter citizens’ center, a post office, a gas sta- Major development project such as was herding sheep not far away from tion, a mini strip-mall (a supermarket, the construction of the Kariba Dam in her uncle’s relocation home when sud- a Laundromat, and three other outlets), Zambia, the Aswan Dam in Egypt, and denly shots were fired in the air—she the Bureau of Indian Affairs dormitory, Three Gorges Dam on China’s Yangze was scared and run away. She charged three missions (Catholic, Presbyterian, River produce major environmental that the relocatees sold their land and Mormon), Navajo Housing project, and disturbances, promises of anticipated way of life for a new big house echoed few Navajo homes. Most of the busi- benefits, and the forced relocation of the sentiments of some other Pinon resi- nesses opened during the mid 1990s. local populations—all for the “public dents who did not provide home sites Also during the 1990s Pinon’s K-9 good” (Hansen and Oliver-Smith 1982; for relocatees. public school was expanded to include Goldsmith and Hilyard 1986; Scudder a high school, a much needed develop- 1973; Cernea 1999). Natural disasters Pinon Twenty-Years Later ment that eased the burden of children such as the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami spending hours every days en-route to that caused widespread devastation Long term cultural, behavioral and eco- and fro Chinle High School. Still, some leaving an estimated 230,000 people nomic consequences of forced relocation parents prefer sending their children dead and scores homeless, the 2005 Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY 39

Hurrican Katrina where at least 1,836 Conclusions Scudder, Thayar people lost their lives also forced scores 1973 The Human Ecology of Big of people to relocate, and the 2008 It has been 20 years since I first arrived Projects: River Basin Develop- Cyclone Nargis that may result in the to Pinon on that dreary and wet October ment and Resettlement, Annual death of as many as 100,000 people day. Since then some of the relocatees and Review of Anthropology, 2:45- in Myanmar (Burma) also left about all the hosts have passed on. Children of 61. 1.5 million people without provision of clean water, sanitation, and homes. Armed conflicts such as the Arab-Israeli dispute, the war in Iraq, and the Darfur conflict in western Sudan resulted in the displacement of millions of people. The “The Navajo-Hopi land dispute has played out for over forced relocation that resulted from the Navajo-Hopi land dispute is unique: it more than 100 years, with multiple missed opportunities is not part of a development project, it did not result from a natural disaster, and deadlines for conflict resolution.” and it is not an outcome of an armed conflict. It is primarily the result of a land dispute between two tribes. The Navajo Nation was primarily interested in avoiding massive relocation of its relocatees are in limbo—the forced relo- Tamir, Orit people. cation of their parents left them with no 1999 What Happened to Navajo Re- The Navajo-Hopi land dispute has cultural land use rights of their own. They locatees from Hopi Partition Lands played out for over more than 100 are landless in a culture where “being in Pinon? American Indian Culture years, with multiple missed oppor- Navajo” is directly tied to one’s cultural and Research Journal 23 (4). tunities and deadlines for conflict land use area. Some of them live in Na- 2000 Assessing Success / Failure resolution. A close look reveals that vajo Housing Authority homes in Pinon’s of Relocation, Human Organi- the federal government created a legal version of a ‘project;’ few moved into zation, 59(2). Are Living Her dispute when it created the EOA for the land using area of their spouses; and, Dreams—The Sacred Mountains the Hopi and “such other Indians,” others have left Pinon and the reservation Dinè Sun Dance, In Wiseman, which included the Navajo inhabitants altogether. Many in Pinon and vicinity, Regge, Thomas C. O’Laughlin, and who lived in the EOA. The govern- while pleased with having a supermarket, Cordelia T. Snow (Eds.), South- ment compounded the land dispute by K-12 schools, and a clinic also blame western Interludes: Papers in Honor creating grazing districts that perpetu- the widespread methamphetamine and of Charlotte J. and Theodore R. ated individualism and relocation from alcohol abuse, and the spread of various Frisbie, The Archaeological Society District 6 that in turn were further juvenile delinquencies in the area on the of New Mexico , No. 32, 2006. enhanced by courts with the creation of land dispute, the forced relocation experi- the JUA. The federal government also ence, and on related loss of “Navajoness.” Orit Tamir (Ph.D. 1993, Arizona State grossly underestimated the number University) is a professor of social and of Navajo and Hopi households that References cultural anthropology at New Mexico would be forced to relocate, and over- Highlands University. She concentrates looked the multi-dimensional impacts Cernea, Michael on the consequences of resettlement of forced relocation upon them (Tamir 1999 The Economies of Involuntary and associated socio-cultural changes 1999, 2000). The good news about the Resettlement, Washington, DC: The and ethnographic CRM work. Her Navajo-Hopi land dispute is that the World Bank. ethnographic focus is on North Ameri- tribes are no longer at daggers down can Indians in general and Southwest over it. Legal aspects of the land dis- Goldsmith, Edward, Nicholas Hilyard Indians in particular. Theoretical inter- pute have been settled, and the fewer 1986 The Social and Environmental ests include the effects of development, than 100 Navajo families still living Effects of Large Dams, San Fran- change, and globalization on micro- on Hopi Partition Land are either leas- cisco: Sierra Club Books. populations. Orit conducted long- ing the land or preparing to relocate. term field research among the Navajo The bad news is that the original esti- Hansen, Art, Anthony Oliver-Smith Indians of Arizona as well as short-term mated cost of the relocation was $40 1982 Involuntary Migration and field projects with various Indian tribes million; the actual cost exceeded $480 Resettlement: The Problems and in the Southwest, Japanese-American million. The cost of human suffering is Responses of Dislocated People, survivors of World War Two internment incalculable. Boulder: Westview Press. camps, and participated in a collabora- tive project in The Gambia. n

40 PRACTICING ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2009 Editor Search Editor-in-Chief, Human Organization

The Society for Applied Anthropology announces a search for a new Editor-in-Chief of Human Organization, a journal that has been recognized as a leading scientific publication in applied anthropology since its founding in 1941. It is published four times annually and is directed toward interdisciplinary as well as anthropological audiences.

The term of the current co-Editor team, David Griffith and Jeff Johnson, ends in December, 2010. The successor’s term will begin on January 1, 2011. The search is being initiated now to provide for a smooth transition.

The initial term of service for the new Editor-in-Chief will be three years. The term is renewable for one additional three-year period. The Editor-in-Chief of Human Organization also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Society for Applied Anthropology.

In addition to making at least a three-year commitment to the journal and to serving on the SfAA Board of Directors, candi- dates for the position should be able to secure release time (where possible) and other institutional support to supplement SfAA resources, constitute an Editorial Board, promote and cultivate the journal, and offer editorial expertise and direction. Additional criteria include:

1. Experience as a journal editor, associate or guest editor, and/or editorial board experience 2. A strong record of publication in applied social sciences 3. A history of involvement in applied social science research/practice

Persons interested in applying for the position should provide the Publications Committee early on with a letter of intent, which can help initiate discussion and provide potential applicants with necessary information.

The actual application should contain the following:

1. A letter of interest that indicates the candidate’s experience, ideas, and vision for the journal, and any support (such as release time, space, equipment and editorial assistance) that will be available from the host institution 2. A letter of from the candidate’s institution that demonstrates commitment to provide resources such as course release time, teacher/graduate assistants, computer support, office equipment, and so on 3. Additional letters of support from colleagues and professional associates 4. A copy of the candidate’s vita or resume 5. A proposed budget

Additional material may be requested by the Publications Committee at a later date.

The application deadline is September 15, 2009. Applications should be sent to:

Society for Applied Anthropology, HO Editor Search, P.O. Box 2436, Oklahoma City, OK 73101-2436

Questions concerning the position can be directed to Nancy Schoenberg, Publications Committee Chair ([email protected]). We especially encourage interested individuals to contact current editors David Griffith ([email protected]) and Jeff Johnson ([email protected]).